SigmaWay Blog

Merging entertainment with data is a well-known concept. The marketers and content-creators have always focused on strategies that will resonate with the audiences and keep them engaged. Over the past few years, there has been an evolution of AI in the marketing strategies of content creators, brands, networks, etc. AI uses the deep learning algorithms that can digest, asses and contextualize unstructured data quickly to derive actionable insights. AI can analyze millions of pieces of content at a time, with the help of deep learning which is undoubtedly beneficial for the content creators and marketers. Deep learning helps in predicting whether a campaign will be successful even before it starts. Thus marketers are increasingly turning to deep learning algorithms to make better sense of the contents. Read more at: https://www.thedrum.com/industryinsights/2019/04/03/the-evolution-ai-entertainment-marketing

Bad data generally refers to the faulty or flawed data. All the marketing strategies and tactics become futile if the business falls prey to bad data. Studies have found that bad data are expensive and can cost upto $3.1 trillion per year. One of the important contributors of bad data is the reliance on traditional lead generation tactics by the companies. Third party intent data is a savior to the bad data problem. It helps companies overcome the inaccuracies that might have existed in their Customer Relationship Management (CRM) for years. Companies must ensure that the data provider is a trusted one. To overcome bad data problem, the intent data must be accurate, actionable and targeted. Read more at: https://www.business2community.com/marketing/solving-the-bad-data-problem-in-marketing-02210818

For new Business, it's a challenge to get customers. So, one should incorporate new ideas for marketing. The Internet has widened the option to more affordable and easier option of marketing strategies. Social media like Facebook and Instagram can be used to make the brand viral. Meeting new customers at events or starting a blog may help. Facebook ads can be used to reach out to the customers. Building email funnels, renting a festival booth and attracting customers by giving freebies, volunteering under the brand name, giving samples to product critics can be useful. It can become an effective way to refine or reinvent the product. Offering workshops, posting a video review of the product, running viral contests, building a product page website, sending out press releases are some useful ways to attract customers. Read more at: https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/294265

Instagram is the online social hub for marketing strategies now and using some tools to enhance our content can go a long way in promoting a product better and attracting new customers. VSCO, Enlight, Font Candy, Boomerang, Layout, Crowdfire, Iconosquare, Later, Repost, Have2Have.They are some simple but must-have tools on Instagram to ensure the content and promotion of our business is top-class. Read more at: http://www.business2community.com/instagram/10-terrific-instagram-tools-business-01588891#sG6ef97W2LxZGPvg.97

The way of taking a decision to buy a product has been changed. Now customers prefer and trust visual content that comes from real people over other forms of advertisements. It's an easy job for the company to 'like,' 'comment,' and share the photos customers post about their brand on social media. Juliet Carnoy (marketing manager at Pixlee) writes in her article about three user-generated content pitfalls they need to stay away from. These are: 1. don't forget to permit content, 2. don't feature only a subset of your customers, and 3. don't close off conversations. There are numerous benefits for incorporating user-generated content. Any brand can easily achieve great results by avoiding above mentioned mistakes. Read more at:http://www.socialmediatoday.com/marketing/3-user-generated-content-marketing-mistakes-avoid

Firms looking for potential customers should proceed with caution while deciding on the marketing strategies. The marketing strategies should be not such that annoy customers. Here are some general pointers:
• It is best to come clean about the product and its limitations. There is no sense in hiding weakness initially which might make the customer deflect later due to inefficiency.
• Promotion of the product should be done either through email or phone, not both. Some decorum should be maintained while having a conversation over phone or emailing a customer.
• Demonstrations made to the customers should be engaging and interactive.
• The discussion sphere should not be kept confined to the product only, it pays to enquire about the customer. Even if opinions differ or disinterest is shown by the customer, it helps to give value to the reasons the company got rejected.
Read more at:  http://www.business2community.com/customer-experience/5-sales-marketing-tactics-guaranteed-to-annoy-customers-01274974

Understanding and collecting data is an important part of viable businesses nowadays. Big data helps us in that with its many applications in various spheres. Big data is not only limited to marketing applications, it can analyze structured and unstructured data searching for purchase patterns, build logs and store day to day information. Big data has helped optimize business performances, has led to an increase in productivity and thus it has made its impact felt on the profit margins. Big data empowers organizations with knowledge of their employees thus enabling interactions on an individual level. This is bound to make an impact on employee productivity eventually leading to growth of the organization in the long run. Read more at: http://www.business2community.com/big-data/big-data-a-big-impact-on-productivity-01274278

With the rising importance of big data, organizations are now collecting and storing data, but many don't put it to good use. Retailers can leverage customer data to make personalized recommendations about offers and promotions thus providing a shopping experience customized to individuals. Analyzing customer data can help companies to identify customer preferences for products and the prices they are willing to pay. Customer data can be used to identify the most relevant users to ask for feedback, create new products or services and provide better customer services. By analyzing customer data, companies can identify patterns of behavior of customer data and thus formulate targeted marketing strategies, improve organizational effectiveness and reduce risk and fraud. Read more at: http://www.cio.in/feature/8-ways-to-make-the-most-out-of-your-customer-data

B2B firms can learn from the long journey of B2C firms with mobile apps and learn how to maximize customer engagement and revenues."-Uma Ganesh (CEO, Global Talent Track) Mobiles forced large B2C companies to make mobile marketing and apps as the integral part of their marketing strategy. Apps have already exceeded the web when it comes to consumer time spent. But in case of B2B firms, decision makers use traditional means rather than mobiles across all touch points, including apps, websites, landing pages, email and social media. In building an app, a company need to invest money. In order to make the app work for marketing, it is important to plan that will lead to convenience and customer delight. To know more, follow this link: http://www.financialexpress.com/article/industry/tech/success-with-mobile-apps-in-b2b-marketing/81549/

Instincts, intuition and creativity are invaluable when it comes to customers, but they cannot paint the whole picture. A solid grasp of data and analytics is required along with them to make a mark in the market. For example, logic does not come out as a winner when deciding loyalty but data and applied analytics tells us a different story. Results though counter intuition sometimes provide important insight which helps develop the marketing strategies. Advanced analytics ventures into the field of correlation and converts guesswork into evidence-based decisions. Advanced analytics also improves customer experience.  Sometimes it does not completely rely on intuitive results, deviates from it but helps to validate targeted campaigns.  To know more please follow the link:http://www.cmswire.com/cms/digital-marketing/they-love-me-they-love-me-not-data-analytics-can-tell-you-029247.php

According to a recent study, 50% of the consumers believe that their brands are clueless about how to reach them and only one in three customers believe that their brand understands them. According to Bill Carmody (CEO of Trepoint), the best way to understand the customer is by emotional intelligence. Emotional Intelligence refers to the ability to perceive, control and evaluate emotions. It is about being real, authentic and intuitive and also helps to develop digital marketing campaigns. Here are some tactics to implement emotional intelligence in digital marketing campaign:
• Understand your audience by using social listening tools such as Topsy, Hootsuite and Social Mention.
• Add value to customers rather than simply pushing your agenda. Adding value includes finding ways to enhance and improve the customer’s experience.
• Try to attract customers by thinking beyond benefits and features.
• Think ways to surprise or delight your audience rather than creeping them. This can be done by using predictive analysis.
• Respect when retargeting.
Read more at: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/246390

In this competitive world, most of the organizations are struggling to attract customers. They are advertising on TV, newspaper, billboards. But, they are not getting success.  Here are some successful marketing strategies used to target the right customer at the right place and at the right time are:

·         Content marketing is one of the most powerful marketing strategies. This includes articles on website, e-newsletters, videos and articles on other website.

·         Make advertisement look visually good by adding pictures. According to a recent survey by Hubspot A/B, images used in tweets increase clicks by 36%, increase retweets by 41%, increase in leads by 55%, and increase visit by 31%.

·         Use responsive design, website technology for detecting the customer’s device and providing reformatted website according to the screen size.

·         For transparency, use social media marketing.

According to Lauren Jung (Co-Founder of Theshelf.com), customers believe influencers over Facebook, twitter post for getting information about new trends, innovations and advice for buying products. Influencers are individuals who have the power to affect purchase decisions of others because of their (real or perceived) authority, knowledge, position, or relationship. In consumer spending, members of a peer group or reference group act as influencers.

Here are some tips to make influencer marketing effective are:

•         For making influence marketing successful align with influencer who have the power to influence the buyer’s decision or inbound interest.
•         Tailor your strategy based on the influencer.
•         Try to maintain a relationship.
•         Encourage content creation from brand evangelists.

 Read more at: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/245757

According to Kevan Lee (Content Crafter, Buffer), testing phase in a social media marketing is an important phase, which include "What to test" and "how to test." Some questions you should ask yourself while testing are:

• Which one thing you will be testing?
• What metric will be my best measurement of success?
• Do I have enough data to assume this result will be true and repeatable for everyone?

In this article, the author writes about some tips for improving social media marketing test. They are: testing one variable at a time, look at the right data, compare consistently and check for statistical significance. 

To know more about the test used for various social media marketing sites, read on: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/245478