Brand Marketing in a Post-Pandemic World

The Buzz 1: “The best marketers are constantly looking for new digital marketing trends based on the evolution of technology, and platforms, to identify new opportunities…” (smartinsights.com) The Buzz 2: “Advances in technology, data, and analytics will soon allow marketers to create much more personal and ‘human’ experiences across moments, channels, and buying stages.” (mckinsey.com) The Buzz 3: “The digital marketing landscape changes so much and so frequently that it’s almost impossible to imagine what the future of digital marketing may offer in terms of opportunities.” (marketinginsidergroup.com) Marketers! Are you ready to meet the challenges ahead in the next decade? Today we'll bring you insights from six digital engagement, marketing and selling experts. We’ll ask visionaries Kirsten Boileau at SAP, Steve Watt at Seismic, Sarah Goodall at Tribal Impact, Mike Orr at Seismic, Paroma Sen at SAP, and Bernie Borges at iQor, on Digital Engagement in Sales and Marketing in 2030. Join us for this final episode of our globally relevant Changing the Game with Digital Engagement Radio.

The Buzz 1: “Recruiting great marketers should be your number one priority.” (Kipp Bodnar, HubSpot CMO) The Buzz 2: “Marketing’s job is never done. It’s about perpetual motion. We must continue to innovate every day.” (Beth Comstock, former GE CMO & Vice Chair) The Buzz 3: “Just because you are the loudest, doesn't make you right.” (Brian Halligan, HubSpot CEO & Co-Founder) The Buzz 4: “The best marketing doesn't feel like marketing.” (Tom Fishburne, Marketoonist Founder & CEO) Even before the Covid-19 pandemic, technology was accelerating society’s rate of change, especially impacting the skills needed in the workforce. And Marketing has not been spared. “The rapid rise of digitization and remote work has placed new demands on employees who, in many instances, now require different skills to support significant changes to how work gets done and to the business priorities their companies are setting.” (www.mckinsey.com) Today's marketers need to equip themselves to meet the challenges ahead in the next decade. What skills are imperative today? Will those same skills be relevant and needed in 2030? We’ll ask Kirsten Boileau, Anna Millman, Jeremy Kestler, and Emily L. Phelps for their take on Winter is Coming: Arming Marketers with Skills for Today and The Decade Ahead.

The Buzz 1: “Social media allows big companies to act small again.” (Jay Baer @convince Marketing) The Buzz 2: “If you make customers unhappy in the physical world, they might each tell 6 friends. If you make customers unhappy on the Internet, they can each tell 6,000 friends.” (Jeff Bezos, Amazon CEO) The Buzz 3: “We don’t have a choice on whether we do social media, the question is how well we do it.” (Erik Qualman, author, The Focus Project @equalman) Social media has dramatically affected how we navigate every aspect of life. Its impact on marketing is no exception, as in how it catalyzed the transition from push- to pull-centric marketing. According to MIT Sloan Professor Sinan Aral, “Social media is rewiring the central nervous system of humanity in real time. We’re now at a crossroads between its promise and its peril.” This crossroads is forcing marketers to sail a boat they’re still building while battling the stormy seas of short attention spans, political correctness, new social channels and other powerful waves. Argh! What impact will all of this have on the future of social media marketing? We’ll ask social media agency owner Janet E Johnson, Mike Grehan at SEMPO and Anna Millman at SAP for tips to help your social media marketing stand out amid the high seas noise and find friendly trade winds. Tune in for Social Media Marketing aka Building Your Boat While Sailing.

The Buzz 1: “Automated emails, triggered emails, drip email marketing…phrases often used by people considering a marketing automation system…where there’s email, unfortunately there’s spam… plenty of marketers are willing to cross the line to try to generate more leads … They rent lists full of bad addresses and unqualified prospects…too aggressive with frequency and offers…a desire for a quick and easy return. Acting on that desire however can bite you squarely in the arse.” [www.net-results.com/blog] Today there's a solution to over-complicated processes, underqualified leads, too little use of customer data and personalization – Marketing Automation. What is it? Marketing automation utilizes technology to streamline and improve the efficacy of marketing efforts (Salesforce). It allows you to target audiences better and provide them with relevant content, all at the exact right time of their buyer’s journey. But some people say Marketing Automation is almost too good at its job because as soon as a customer or prospect shows a bit of interest in your product or service, a slew of uninvited spammy promotional content begins appearing. Do they get annoyed, click off and abandon their journey with you? Question on the table: Has Marketing Automation transformed the industry in the right ways? Does automated marketing do its job too well? How will the inevitable cookies-less web impact the benefits of Marketing Automation? We’ll ask Neal Schaffer at PDCA Social, Kirill Kniazev at Motili, and Alisha Seegmiller at SAP for their take on Out with the Old and In with Marketing Automation – Beneficial or Spammy?

The Buzz 1: “A brand is no longer what we tell the consumer it is -- it is what consumers tell each other it is.” (Scott Cook, Intuit co-founder) The Buzz 2: “Your brand is the single most important investment you can make in your business.” (Steve Forbes, Forbes magazine editor-in-chief) The Buzz 3: “A great brand is a story that is never completely told.” (Scott Bedbury, Brandstream CEO) The Buzz 4: “Whether B2B or B2C…We all are emotional beings looking for relevance, context and connection.” (Beth Comstock, Imagine It Forward author) The American Marketing Association [www.ama.org] describes “brand” as “...a name, term, design, symbol or any other feature that identifies one seller’s goods or service as distinct from those of other sellers.” More than a year into the Covid-19 pandemic where volatility, complexity, and uncertainty have been at an all-time high, a brand’s ability to get attention, be remembered, and be an educational resource has become more imperative than ever. That, in conjunction with consumers wanting their buying power to reflect their personal values, has placed extreme pressure on brands to get it right. Given all of this, what role does branding play in the buyer’s journey and has that changed since the pandemic began? What could or should companies do to be better at reflecting the social climate or should they not engage in that conversation? What other impacts will the pandemic have on the future of branding? We’ll ask Alicia Tillman, Mike Grehan and Dennis Thomas for their take on Brand Marketing in a Post-Pandemic World.

The Buzz 1: “Today it's not about 'get the traffic' — it's about 'get the targeted and relevant traffic.” (Adam Audette, Chief Knowledge Officer, RKG) The Buzz 2: “Optimizing your website for real people helps you gain your visitors’ trust, starts building a relationship, and lets you sell products without having to jump on a sales call.” (vwo.com/website-optimization) A bit of history (Wikipedia.org): Webmasters and content providers began optimizing websites for search engines in the mid-1990s, as the first search engines were cataloging the early Web. Initially, webmasters only needed to submit the address or URL of a page to the engines, which would send a web crawler to crawl that page, extract links to other pages from it, and return information found on the page to be indexed.” Are you a marketer who still assumes web optimization and search engine optimization (SEO) are the same? Reality check: Not! Web optimization is much more than SEO. It’s the critical first step for an effective digital marketing program, incorporating both on-page and off-page enhancements to ensure your pages are found and visitors to your website take the actions you desire. We’ll ask Aaron Zitzer at Aventi Group, Tom Shapiro at Stratabeat and Diego Pineda at Vengreso for their expert insights on Web Optimization: Make Your Customers’ Digital Journey Suck Less!

The Buzz: “’That thing out there…that is no dinosaur,' says Owen in the 2015 action/sci-fi film Jurassic World. Can the same be said about your email marketing strategy?” (mashable.com) Fifty years ago, in 1971, pioneering American computer programmer Ray Tomlinson implemented the first email program on the ARPANET system, the precursor to the Internet. It was the first system able to send mail between users on different hosts connected to ARPANET. The first business marketing email blast was sent in 1978 – and companies are still using this method of communication with customers and prospects today. Given the digital transformation every business is undergoing now as a result of the global pandemic, we’re wondering if this form of communication is antiquated or truly the backbone of how we entice, engage, and convert customers. Or is it something in between? Does email fit into the modern buyer's journey? What’s working and what’s not? What might the future of email marketing look like? We’ll ask Neal Schaffer at PDCA Social, Lindsay Miles at Emory University and Ashley Melendez at SAP for their take on eMail Marketing: Digital Dinosaur or Business Backbone?

The buzz 1: “The best marketing doesn’t feel like marketing.” (Tom Fishburne, Founder, Marketoonist). The buzz 2: “Marketers need to build digital relationships and reputation before closing a sale.” (Chris Brogan, CEO, Owner Media Group) The buzz 3: “Companies that speak in the language of the pitch are no longer speaking to anyone.” (The Cluetrain Manifesto, 95 business theses, 1999 – 2000) For years, sales organizations have understood the need for a new way to engage prospects and customers – particularly since traditional rolodex-dependent cold-calling was producing dismal results. Why? Buyers are demanding a personalized, customized, and integrated experience along the total customer journey. Yet at the same time, Marketers have been reluctant to embrace a new way of engaging customers – always throwing out the “volume” argument. Who is right? If sales teams are having real success with the “digital engagement” model, why are Marketers so resistant? What information / data / knowledge will help Marketers embrace this new paradigm? How can Marketers support their sales team counterparts for their collective success? We’ll ask Steve Watt at Seismic, Sarah Goodall at Tribal Impact and Charrele Robinson-Brown at SAP for their insights on what it will take for Marketers to change their mindset, skillset and potentially, their toolset, on Marketers’ Reality Check: Your Digital Presence Quotient *DPQ*.

The buzz 1: “Once a niche aspect of the event industry, virtual events have become an integral part of daily life in the time of COVID-19 — and it looks like these events are here to stay.” www.eventbrite.com/blog/11-virtual-event-ideas The buzz 2: “Audience engagement is absolutely key to virtual events…it’s very easy for your audience to get distracted when attending your events online.…provide interactive elements so that your audience feels incredibly involved.” www.markletic.com/blog/virtual-event-engagement Over the past year of the global pandemic, our world has shifted to be almost completely digital. This phenomenon isn’t limited to your day-to-day interactions with peers and colleagues. It has also impacted the way you engage with customers, particularly when it comes to events. Is the transition from in-person to digital events as simple as just putting an on-site meeting agenda online? Not! Delivering an engaging customer experience in a digital event requires a different set of skills, ways of engaging your target audience’s attention, and most importantly, strategies for creating a memorable experience. Which platform/s and visual tools are best for engagement and an immersive experience? How to ensure quality content? How to promote your event on social media and position your call to action? We’ll ask experts Kathy Lopez at SAP, Lauren Stefano at Seismic, and Mark Della Valle at Encore Global / Canada, to share insights and insider tips on building engagement into their own and their customer’s events, what’s working, what’s not, and the biggest pitfalls to avoid. Join us for How to Build Engaging Virtual Events: Insider Success Tips.

The buzz: “If there was one winner in 2020, it was probably video. With everyone online all the time, video became more crucial than ever for marketing and communication.” [biteable.com/blog/video-marketing-statistics] According to Biteable’s video stats for 2021, 60 percent of businesses use video as a marketing tool, and 14 precent of Marketers create videos every day. That’s a lot of video! Indeed, video has been the “king” of media types over the last 12 months. Its popularity brings up important questions about how customers engage with video, the psychology behind its success, and key features today’s marketers should build into their videos to ensure engagement success. We’ll ask Karl Yeh at Benevity, Mischa McInerney at Digital Marketing Institute and Ryan Sonnenberg at SAP about the most engaging video content they’ve experienced and how technology needs to evolve to increase customer interaction in video. Join us for The Psychology of Video Engagement: New King of Marketing Tactics!