By Laura Apel, SVP of Marketing, Mitto

Today’s consumers are more connected than ever; the average U.S. household has 25 connected devices. They’re also more impatient than ever. With such tech ubiquity, we’ve lost any remaining patience with inefficiency. Nearly two bakers’ dozens worth of connected devices in our homes and a growing number of channels through which we can communicate has greatly heightened our desire for efficiency. From the palm of our hand—and likely on the same device—we can order food, check our finances, communicate with friends and family and, increasingly, foster meaningful conversations with brands. With so much tech at our fingertips, why go into a store to check if an item is in stock or dial a number for an order status when your favorite brand is already right there on your device on your preferred social media app?

A new survey by Mitto found that 70 percent of adult U.S. consumers have increased their overall social media use since the pandemic began, with 58 percent reporting their messaging with brands via social media has also increased. Today, 87 percent of consumers use social media apps to message with brands. What is it that consumers like so much about social media messaging with brands? Convenience (72 percent), speed (61 percent) and personalization (50 percent) topped the list of benefits.

With brand-consumer social media messaging on the rise, brands have yet another valuable communications channel for effective customer engagement. Let’s take a closer look at the research insights to learn how consumers are using social media messaging to interact with their favorite brands.

Influencing Purchasing Decisions

Social media messaging with brands influences purchasing decisions, with 55 percent of people reporting a brand’s social media messaging had influenced a purchase via the website, followed by 42 percent directly in the social media app and 39 percent in store. With a direct impact on sales, brands will want to ensure social media messaging is part of their omnichannel consumer engagement strategy.

Delivering Customer Support

People are using social media as a way to get help and answers from brands over other communications channels. Seventy-seven percent have used social media to contact a brand’s customer support with 79 percent reporting a positive experience. Further, 58 percent mentioned they prefer that brands use social media to communicate versus other methods, such as email, call or text. Enabling two-way communication on a variety of channels is a great way to enhance the digital experience of a brand’s customers.

Facebook: Preferred Social Media Messaging App

With over 2 billion monthly active users, when it comes to social media app preference it’s no surprise that 78 percnt reported using Facebook regularly to message with brands, followed by Instagram (57 percent) and Twitter (45 percent). Looking at which social media apps consumers prefer for engaging with companies from different verticals, Facebook remained the top app of choice consistently, with 68 percent preferring it for messaging retail/ecommerce, 55 percent for finance/banking, 61 percent for travel and 61 percent for food/delivery service and 58 percent for gaming.

Preferred Message Types

The types of messages consumers would like to see from brands via social media include promo codes (70 percent), sales (61 percent), customer support (54 percent) and order updates (52 percent). When crafting these types of social media messages, brands should consider adding personalization, a call to action or a sense of urgency to enhance consumer engagement.

How brands can integrate social media messaging into their omnichannel communications mix today:

While there are a wide variety of communications channels available, it is important that brands adapt their messaging strategy to meet consumers where they’re at. Clearly social media messaging is a critical channel to enable brands to reach consumers (and vice versa), increase engagement and impact purchasing decisions.

Working with a company like Mitto, a leading provider of global omnichannel communications, brands can implement an integrated omnichannel experience across a variety of communications channels all within one platform, which is critical in providing one holistic voice of the brand and personalized messages no matter which channel the customer is using. This enables marketing teams to increase the chances their marketing messages get read and land well, and customer support and experience teams to immediately reach or respond to customers in a natural, personalized two-way conversation.

Social media has come a long way from simple life updates and photo sharing among consumers, now serving as a strong place of engagement between brands and consumers. Brands that evolve their digital customer experiences to meet consumers where they’re at will be more successful in winning over customers.

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The post How Brands Can Improve Customer Experience Through Social Media Messaging appeared first on Chief Marketer.

By Niki McMorrough / Commercial Director at Relevance

Many of the world’s high-value goods and service providers, such as yachts, cars and real estate, have had an overwhelmingly male client base because, until 2014, men represented more than 93% of all Ultra-High-Net-Worth-Individuals. But this is now changing, and pinnacle luxury companies and brands need to adapt their luxury marketing strategies to appeal to UHNW women. However, it’s not as easy as simply adding UHNW women to a brand’s target audience. Relevance has found key differences in how these women think, feel, behave, and make purchase decisions compared to their male counterparts.

UHNW women require luxury brands to have a fundamentally different approach to doing business, one that is more altruistic, empathetic, and philanthropic. And, this needs to be reflected in their luxury brand marketing. So, it’s not enough to invent a new product or service – companies need to look at their brand ethos, corporate social responsibility, sustainability, diversity, and equality practices to appeal to them.

The team at Relevance has been marketing to UHNW audiences for more than 12 years and specialize in using data-driven insights to drive creative luxury digital marketing strategies that get results.

Luxury Marketing to UHNW Women

Who is a UHNWI in luxury marketing?

A UHNWI is a person with a net worth of more than $30 million in luxury marketing. Net worth is the value of all assets minus the total of all liabilities. Put another way; net worth is what is owned minus what is owed.

UHNWIs represent the second-highest wealth tier on the planet, with around 290,000 of these individuals, surpassed only in wealth by the world’s 2,800 billionaires.

Infographic 1*: Global audience size by Wealth segment

Infographic 2: WealthX UHNW audiences by gender.

UHNW women are rare. There are only 29,300 UHNW women in the entire world. This is just 9.9% of the UHNWI population compared to 263,700 UHNW men.

Ultra-luxury brand marketing needs to be laser-sharp, and, as such, brands need to be seen to move in the right circles and appear in the right places to reach this elite audience.

Closed groups, personalized direct marketing, events and partnerships with other UHNW focused companies are top of the list in the UHNW women luxury marketing mix.

Multi-layered paid media needs to include precise postcode targeting, such as the Cayman Islands, Monte Carlo, and elite U.S. and Dubai postcodes such as Fisher Island, Atherton, Jumeirah Islands, and Al Barera. Relevance has seen great success with multi-layering interest, in-market and personality targeting on top of location to pinpoint audiences even further.

Since 2016, the proportion of UHNW women has increased by some 52%, from 6.5% to 9.9%. The number of UHNW women is rising, and luxury brands should not ignore their presence.

Elite brands should train dealers, brokers, and representatives to notice UHNW women (even if a wealthy man accompanies them) and understand what makes this elite audience tick. They should also seek to employ people that UHNW women will feel comfortable with to handle their inquiries. Initiatives to embrace and encourage gender diversity, such as Rolls Royce’s 25 by 2025 gender diversity campaign, help convince UHNW women that these efforts are sincere.

It seems obvious, but this is still a significant issue for many of the world’s most elite brands, where traditional and sometimes outdated behaviours still preside. Moreover, it can be exacerbated further by regional social customs in some countries.

In Relevance’s data sample, we have found a higher proportion of UHNW women aged under 50 than over 50 (see chart below) and that the disparity is more pronounced than it is with their male counterparts. Wealth-X further backs this up by saying that the mean UHNWI age is 63, but in the under 50’s group, women make up a higher proportion of around 13%, compared to 9.9% overall.

As a result, companies selling to UHNW women need to develop their product offering and luxury brand marketing strategy clearly for both UHNW women under 50 and over 50.

Infographic 3*: Relevance Sample UHNW audiences by age and gender.

How do UHNW women describe themselves?

UHNW women balance business, family, pleasure, and philanthropy. They use keywords such as CEO, mother, founder, wife, entrepreneur, mom, fitness, mental health, foundation, and author to describe themselves, and often found and front charitable foundations, such as Beyone’s Beygood, and Lady Gaga’s Born This Way foundation.

Unlike luxury marketing to UHNW men, where business and sports analogies work in almost any situation, UHNW women need a more balanced tone of voice that puts the person before the role or status.

Companies that target ultra-wealthy women should focus on the emotional benefits that their products can provide. For example, this may include allowing UHNW women opportunities to spend time with friends and family, to have the latest new experiences or to support their philanthropic cause. Ultra-luxury brands should highlight what they are doing to give back to the community.

Don’t focus only on rational attributes alone, such as the engineering, speed, power and build of the product, as this is a very male-oriented way of appreciating things, missing the real emotional reasons why a UHNW woman engages with a product or service.

Infographic 4*: Relevance Sample UHNW women audience bio keyword tag cloud.

Who are UHNW women influenced by?

Very simply, UHNW women are influenced by other women who are like them. Pioneering businesswomen, environmental activists, work/life role models, and philanthropists like Melinda Gates, Arianna Huffington, Reshma Saujani, Susan Wojcicki, and Ann Marie Slaughter.

Pinnacle brands should avoid using ‘influencers’ who ‘look like’ luxury role models in their luxury marketing strategies as they are considered fake, one-dimensional pretenders. UHNW women aren’t interested in achieving ‘the look’ of a successful person. They are only influenced by other genuinely successful people. At Relevance, we call these “Genuinfluencers.”

The first place to look for authentic “Genuinfluencers” is in a brand’s existing customer base. Relevance can help luxury brands identify their genuinfluencers and develop collaboration ideas to reach out to influential customers and advocates.

Infographic 5*: Genuine influencers for Relevance sample UHNW women.

What digital platforms are UHNW women using?

Our sample audience of UHNW women shows that they are 20 times more likely than the average global consumer to use LinkedIn. They also have a high propensity to use Medium (x13.04), Snapchat (x9.52), Spotify (x7.69), Whatsapp (x2.38) and Twitter (x2.35). Because of this, companies like Fly Victor realize it is essential to utilize LinkedIn, and companies like Blacklane have used Medium’s business-focused environment to showcase their working ethics, humanitarian business practices, sustainability, corporate social responsibility and philanthropic endeavors when looking to attract UHNW, rather than simply focusing on the service.

UHNW women are less likely than the global average person to be using Facebook and less than half as likely to be using Instagram and Youtube. So, while elite brands can still find and target UHNW women on these platforms as part of their luxury brand marketing strategy, it’s not a ‘habitat’ that feels ‘just for them’ and therefore requires paid targeting and an extremely audience-centric creative approach to ensure their content reaches the right individuals – Patek Phillippe’s episodic approach to Instagram helps to create a befitting environment.

Infographic 6*: Propensity to use platforms for Relevance sample UHNW women.

What media are UHNW women consuming?

Relevance’s UHNW women sample are reading the New York Times (19%), Wall Street Journal (16%) and The Economist (14%) as well as The New Yorker (11%), Politico (10%), Forbes (11%) and Time (11%), Fortune (8%), Fast Company (8%), and Vogue (9%).

What places and events are UHNW women attending?

UHNW women profiled by Relevance are attending and consuming content from Vogue Runway (6%), Ted Talks (6%), Local Scale (3%), Whitney Museum (4%), Moma (4%) and Guggenheim (3%).

Unsurprisingly, according to Wealth-X, many of these places and publications are centered around New York, which has the second-highest concentration of UHNWIs after Hong Kong.

What are the interests and passions of UHNW women?

According to WealthX, UHNW women are different from their male cohorts because philanthropy ranks as the top interest for UHNW women, at least half of UHNW women are involved in philanthropic causes, whereas UHNW men are more interested in sports. At work, 20% of UHNWI heirs/heiresses work in the not-for-profit sector, compared to only 6% of self-made UHNWI. This Charities Aids Foundation article explains how UHNW women are driving a move towards more sustainable, diverse and collaborative philanthropy than ever before and how this is made possible by gender equality in entrepreneurship and inheritance laws.

The next most important interests of UHNW women include art, education, health, wellness and animals instead of the male preference for technology, aviation, and politics, and these interests are often reflected in their charitable work, such as Emma Watson’s HeForShe project and Shakira’s Barefoot foundation.

What are the personality traits of UHNW women compared to UHNW men?

Relevance have analyzed the personality traits of UHNW women to find that they are vastly more emotionally aware, loving, appreciative of art and self-transcendent than UHNW men. Therefore, UHNW women will resonate with companies who value EQ as much as IQ, such as Adoreum, an international members club for UHNWIs, philanthropists, investors and creative visionaries, who bring like-minded UHNW women together at networking events. Ultra-Luxury brands will need to double down on their art and creative collaborations, as ‘The Londoner’ West End hotel and Rolls Royce have done with their ‘Muse’ program. Since UHNW women can appreciate and resonate with the plight of others (and have the power to do something about it), the messaging for a luxury brand should focus on the collective social gain of a product or service, rather than purely the personal benefits. This might mean pledging to plant trees for every carbon-neutral private jet charter, telling the story of a hybrid, solar-powered yacht such as Nobiskrug’s Artefact, or indeed, pitching a socially responsible business idea for investment by an UHNW woman investor.

What are the personality traits of UHNW women compared to the general population?

UHNW women are more altruistic, energetic yet calm, confident, and driven than the general population. Therefore, like their male counterparts, they will appreciate luxury brands who make the celebration of good causes their number one priority, like Olivela, as well as those who curate bespoke itineraries just for them, such as Ten Group and Quintessentially. If an UHNW focused brand shows appreciation for women who like to constantly challenge themselves to learn new things, try new experiences, travel and soak up culture, as personified in this Patek Phillippe video, this will be appealing to UHNW women.

What are the top personality traits of UHNW women?

UHNW women are highly empathetic, uncompromising, sociable and outgoing, meaning they feel what others feel and are compassionate towards them, they think it is wrong to take advantage of others to try and get ahead and they enjoy the company of others and make friends easily.

As a result, Maari’s brand pillars of Consciousness, community and culture feel spot on for this audience who will reject brands called out for unfair or exploitative working practices. UHNW women may look for brands with Positive Luxury’s butterfly mark, signifying a commitment to making a difference in creating a sustainable and circular economy, and brands who support the philanthropic causes which are close to their hearts.

UHNW women: a growing minority that cannot be ignored.

UHNW women may be in the minority, but their proportion has doubled in the last few years. This fraction of the world’s population (0.0000039%) have the immense power to change the world for the better with their empathetic, altruistic, philanthropic, loving, diplomatic, and culturally appreciative approach to the world. Indeed, they expect ultra-luxury brands to be using their own power for the greater good, and not solely for commerce.

Elite luxury brands should therefore focus not only on what they produce but the way that they produce it to gain the respect and patronism of UHNW women.

Only then should luxury brands look to target and communicate with UHNW women through their platforms, media, and events of choice by using multi-layered targeting that includes postcode, demographics and triple interest targeting, engaging the right “genuinfluencers”, reviewing their luxury marketing, branding and design, and partnering up with other UHNW companies.

If you think your brand has the credentials and ethos to appeal to UHNWIs, then contact us to find out how our ultra-luxury digital marketing, advertising, and design specialists can help you reach and resonate with your UHNW audiences.

—

*Sources for Infographics: World wealth report, Knight Frank, Wealth X, Global Wealth Migration Review, IPSOS, Insead, Forbes, Fortune. Discrepancies are due to rounding and mixed sources.

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Salesforce released its annual State of Marketing report this week, featuring insights and trends culled from a survey of 8,200 marketing leaders across the globe. Not surprisingly, digital transformation accelerated by the pandemic factored heavily into the research. But the extent to which the transformation occurred was surprising to the report’s authors.

“Between 45 percent and 50 percent of global marketing leaders, regardless of region and industry, said their marketing completely changed as a result of the pandemic,” according to Chris Jacob, Senior Director, Product Marketing at Salesforce, in terms of priorities, channel tactics, KPIs and more. For instance, when considering measurement tactics, 78 percent of those leaders say they changed or completely re-prioritized their KPIs.

“That often happens in marketing, but to happen that rapidly and completely change, to completely re-prioritize it to that level, and not one industry or one region, is really unprecedented,” Jacob says. The KPIs that saw the biggest boosts in popularity in 2021 compared to 2020 are customer referral rates, customer acquisition costs and content engagement. The top five most valuable marketing metrics, according to the report, are customer satisfaction, revenue, marketing/sales funnel, content engagement and customer lifetime value.

Digital Engagement Tactics

Looking at digital engagement, the report pointed to marketers’ willingness to embrace new tactics, particularly video content. A large majority of those surveyed (81 percent) plan to use pre-produced video, compared to 13 percent in 2020. Livestreamed video was also extremely popular, with 73 percent saying they will use the tactic compared to only 19 percent last year. Influencer marketing, interactive content and user-generated content rounded out the top five digital engagement tactics.

Massive Data Growth

Another key takeaway pertains to the industry’s massive data growth. Global marketing departments expect a 40 percent increase in the number of data sources they use by 2022, the report says. The most popular data sources are from “known digital identities,” transactional data and declared interests and preferences. “Known digital identities is the number one data source people are using to build a single view and then personalize,” Jacob says, “and then second to that is transactional data, which obviously can tie back to a person as well. So, if you look at the long-term trends in the types of data people are using, it’s those that can be directly tied to a person.”

Still, marketers are less bullish on the quality of that data. “And that speaks to the challenge. We have access to data in a way that we’ve never had before, growing at such a rapid rate, but our ability to use it is very much restricted by the technology, the workflows and the nature of the data itself,” Jacob says.

In fact, 42 percent of marketers said that they were completely satisfied with the quality and hygiene of the data, 40 percent said they were satisfied with its completeness, and 39 percent were content with its accessibility. Marketers are least satisfied with identity reconciliation, integration and timeliness of the data. In terms of the most important data management technology use cases, customer insights, consent management and personalization ranked the highest.

Workflows Within Marketing Departments

Workflow with marketing departments is transforming, too. Most marketing organizations (82 percent) are adopting new policies around remote work. However, many of them feel more connected to their teams versus a year ago. Nearly 70 percent of marketers feel connected to both managers and customers, compared to just under 30 percent in 2020. Still, remote work is not without its challenges: 69 percent said it’s harder to collaborate now than it was pre-pandemic.

Adequate training is another problem area. “It’s not just about the team members being set up for success to run the organization,” Jacob explains. “If you’re not offering [quality training] then your chances of attracting and retaining good people are very low, because people have great opportunities to go elsewhere. Training is not just important to run your programs and make them successful; it’s important to attract and retain the people, too.”

The post Salesforce State of Marketing Report: New KPIs, Data Sources and Digital Engagement Tactics appeared first on Chief Marketer.

Businesses across the globe have had to re-evaluate their business plans in response to a single, clear truth:

Digital is no longer a ‘nice-to-have’. It is imperative.

The phrase ‘digital transformation’ has been all but unavoidable recently because of this truth. Just about every business wants to embrace the future of digital communications and better connect with their customers through new and emerging channels.

A digital transformation strategy is crucial for any business wanting to deliver all-important personalized experiences, but it’s not always easy to put it into practice.

Scaling and personalizing content, collecting and using data, ensuring the relevant people are on board – these are just some of the challenges faced by organizations looking to evolve at pace with technology. And it is often senior marketers leading the charge.

These marketers are expected to steer their organization’s digital-first vision. Sifting through the vast library of martech to find the best fit for their business is hard enough, but that can be even more difficult without strategy or buy-in, particularly at a time when prioritizing precious and finite business resources is so important.

And even then, there’s no digital transformation ‘silver bullet’.

The simple fact is that there’s no point investing in or leveraging technology if there’s no plan or process in place. It’s all too easy to stall or become paralyzed by choice, or not get a proper return on your investment.

That’s why you don’t just need the technology. You need real understanding, and that comes from collaboration, experimentation, and data-driven insight.

It’s not too late to start. To help give your efforts a boost – and help you get buy-in from the top level of your organization – we at Sitecore have opened a Digital Acceleration Hub.

Here you’ll find all the valuable guidance and insight you need to fast-track your digital transformation and be set up for success in the long term.

Sponsored by:

The post Fast Track Your Digital Transformation appeared first on Chief Marketer.

Businesses across the globe have had to re-evaluate their business plans in response to a single, clear truth:

Digital is no longer a ‘nice-to-have’. It is imperative.

The phrase ‘digital transformation’ has been all but unavoidable recently because of this truth. Just about every business wants to embrace the future of digital communications and better connect with their customers through new and emerging channels.

A digital transformation strategy is crucial for any business wanting to deliver all-important personalized experiences, but it’s not always easy to put it into practice.

Scaling and personalizing content, collecting and using data, ensuring the relevant people are on board – these are just some of the challenges faced by organizations looking to evolve at pace with technology. And it is often senior marketers leading the charge.

These marketers are expected to steer their organization’s digital-first vision. Sifting through the vast library of martech to find the best fit for their business is hard enough, but that can be even more difficult without strategy or buy-in, particularly at a time when prioritizing precious and finite business resources is so important.

And even then, there’s no digital transformation ‘silver bullet’.

The simple fact is that there’s no point investing in or leveraging technology if there’s no plan or process in place. It’s all too easy to stall or become paralyzed by choice, or not get a proper return on your investment.

That’s why you don’t just need the technology. You need real understanding, and that comes from collaboration, experimentation, and data-driven insight.

It’s not too late to start. To help give your efforts a boost – and help you get buy-in from the top level of your organization – we at Sitecore have opened a Digital Acceleration Hub.

Here you’ll find all the valuable guidance and insight you need to fast-track your digital transformation and be set up for success in the long term.

Sponsored by:

The post Fast Track Your Digital Transformation appeared first on Chief Marketer.

Gone are the days when the technology team looked at marketing as the team that does the hoo-ha—slick advertisements, flashy websites, and puts logos on t-shirts and water bottles—and marketing saw technology as the team in the basement that does laptops and stuff.

Today, you are either embracing or getting kicked by digital transformation. With much of the buying journey complete before a customer engages a live person from your company, your technology and your brand are indistinguishable to your customers. That is pushing CMOs and CTOs from backstage roles supporting sales and operations to starring roles in revenue growth. A 2016 study by Deloitte and the CMO Council found that 68% of CMOs say their boards and CEOs expect them to lead revenue growth. And according to CIO’s 2019 State of the CIO research, 62% of CIOs say creating new products or services that drive revenue is part of their job responsibilities.

If your CMO and CTO only see each other at board meetings, you may be missing revenue opportunities and letting your customers down. Here are three best practices that will have you finishing each other’s sentences in no time:

1. Work backward to move forward
Change is a feature of modern business—and so is the transformative tension that comes with it and pressures performance. While boards eagerly await ROI for in-flight changes, leaders face the new normal of pitching the board on even more change to remain relevant. Every leader in the c-suite has a wish list of projects that can move margins and missions. By forming an alliance, the CMO and CTO can approach the CEO and board with a single wish list.

It sounds easy, but finding common ground can mean carving it out of protected territories—a chance to use those “healthy conflict” skills your life coach taught you. For us, that alignment came quickly (and painlessly) by collaborating on a common vision for our customers before we started talking about initiatives. That gave us the shared perspective we needed to step back and survey what was working and what to change to move forward.

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• Brands Need to Consider Martech Investments Wisely: Report
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2. Hire for harmony
Building good team chemistry is hard enough within a department but can feel more like alchemy when mixing talent across siloed subcultures. One way to make it a more exact science is to include leaders from both technology and marketing in the interview process when hiring roles with frequent inter-team interaction. These are not courtesy interviews. The interviewers have an equal vote on the final hiring decision.

This practice helps ensure we get the right cultural fit for both teams as well as the skills we need. With large corporate centers in Tacoma, Chicago, and India, TrueBlue competes for talent with the biggest companies on the planet. We used to view that as a disadvantage. But in working together on hires we found that marketers and technology pros want to be part of a company that makes a difference in the world. Our purpose is simple: Everyone understands the importance of having a job. During the interview process, marketing and technology leadership show applicants how what they will do everyday changes lives by connecting people with work. Add in the opportunity to use their talents to transform the industry and we have a pretty compelling story to tell recruits.

3. Team up on transformation
CMOs report a 27% increase in the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning over 2018 levels. This buzziest of hi-tech buzz powers content personalization, predictive analytics for customer insights, and targeting decisions, among other marketing goodness. And marketers want more: CMOs expect to increase their marketing analytics spend 61% in the next three years.

They are not alone. IDC forecasts worldwide AI spending to hit $35.8 billion this year, up 44% over 2018. Your CTO no doubt has CFOs and other chiefs who want to be his or her BFF, too, with AI needs of their own. (They are important friendships: 91% of CFOs say it’s their job to ensure tech benefits happen).

This is where the CTO seat at the corporate crossroads becomes a forcing function. When a vendor invited our CTO to an AI/Machine Learning envisioning exercise, he brought the CMO and sales leaders to the exercise, but also brought detailed requirements from other company divisions. This 360-degree view means no blind spots and ensures a clear-eyed decision that delivers the best ROI.

With digital dependence soaring for brands, marketing and technology teams frequently find themselves in the same lane. Rather than swapping paint in a battle for the lead, CMOs and CTOs who forge a tight bond can team up to draft their way past the competition.

By Maggie Lower, CMO, and Jeff Dirks, CTO, for TrueBlue, Inc.

The post Three Ways Marketing and Technology Can Collaborate on Digital Transformation appeared first on Chief Marketer.

The key to guiding your organization through this sort of digital transformation isn’t about finding the perfect technology solutions. It isn’t about one specific business intelligence (BI) tool or platform. And it isn’t about generating an all-encompassing dashboard or report. Sure, BI tools, dashboards and reports are all facets of digital transformation. But the real key is in guiding the cultural shift at your organization.

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Step 1: Digital Transformation Starts With Culture

Spearheading the change in culture, at both the leadership level and across the broader organization, is your first priority. This should come before even selecting your technological approach to measurement. You want to ensure that leadership has the right mindset around how they’re making decisions—resources poured into measurement are worthless if leadership isn’t using data to drive business decisions. Moreover, it’s also important for your measurement/analytics team to have some knowledge of the decisions being driven by the data.

The takeaway: Before you begin thinking about specific technologies, make sure you’ve secured the proper buy-in across your organization and that your cultural is ready to handle an operational shift.

Step 2: Provide the Right Training

The next step is ensuring everyone has the proper training to understand how to implement analytics and/or garner insights from data.  This includes leadership and all employees who will view or use reports (for example, a Google Analytics report). Of course, you wouldn’t expect everyone to have the same level of expertise as your analytics team. However, everyone using a report should have at least a basic understanding of how that report was generated.

Here’s a simple, actionable way to get started: Ask everyone who will view reports to become Google Analytics certified. It only takes a few hours and will help deepen your team’s understanding of analytics in general and what’s possible to measure.

Step 3: Collectively Determine What’s Important to Measure

Before you can tackle the nuts and bolts of how you’re going to measure and collect data, you have to decide what data you’re going to collect and what metrics will be most valuable to your organization. This needs to be a collaborative decision between leadership and the analytics team. Leadership will ultimately be using the data to make business decisions. Meanwhile, the analytics team has in-depth knowledge of the full measurement process. From the start, leadership and analytics should be working collectively to determine what will be measured and what business decisions will be made based on those measurements.

Step 4: Make Sure Data Can Be Trusted

During a digital transformation, it’s possible to become overly focused on the powerful potential of analytics and miss sight of more fundamental aspects such as data validation. Be careful! It’s critical that by the time data is presented, it’s 100% trustworthy. Lack of trust in the accuracy of data is one of the top reasons why executives go back to making opinion-based decisions—they don’t believe they can trust the data. So before leaping ahead to something complex like, for instance, predictive analytics, make sure that you’ve laid the appropriate foundation and you trust the accuracy of the data you’re collecting. Focusing on Data Governance – knowing what data you’re collecting, how it’s labeled and where it’s stored, is  a great first step.

Step 5: Be Honest with Your Analytics

Finally, it’s important to use analytics honestly. Communicate data clearly both when your campaigns succeed and also when they fail. Measurement isn’t only about celebrating what’s working. It can be just as valuable to use insights to identify what’s not working and to improve the performance and return of your marketing strategy. Be honest and show what’s not working (and how you’re modifying your approach based on data). You will gain respect and trust by not only presenting the pretty angles.

Digital transformation isn’t a quick fix to a single problem. It’s an operational shift. It’s an iterative process and shouldn’t be rushed. But with the right approach, moving from opinion-based to data-driven decision making will ultimately lead to big wins where it matters — your organization’s bottom line.

Jenny Bristow is CEO of Anvil Analytics + Insights. 

The post 5 Steps to Successful Digital Transformation appeared first on Chief Marketer.

The survey of 450 senior B2B marketing decision makers from mid-sized to large companies, conducted by Stein IAS, found that 81 percent of B2B companies see digital marketing transformation as key for their business, but over three-quarters see it as a complex process.

Digital transformation is typically defined as using data and technology to achieve improve scale, efficiencies and profit. Cost is the biggest barrier for marketing organizations in all companies surveyed, cited by 41 percent of respondents, with smaller organizations feeling the economic pinch more.

Other key barriers included integration of technologies (20 percent), and time and resource allocation (14 percent).

True transformation requires a go-to-market approach, that encompasses not only business processes but an assessment of the necessary skill sets, says Tom Stein, chairman and chief client officer, Stein IAS. Indeed, retraining and training team members to think digital first was cited as the most important factor on the road to transformation, after aligning all stakeholders behind a single strategy.

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After an increased ability to contribute to revenue (cited by 36 percent), other key benefits of digital marketing transformation cited included an ability to improve the connected customer experience (19 percent); improved alignment between marketing, sales and other essential functions (14 percent); and improved efficiency (8 percent).

Implementation of digital transformation takes between one and three years, according to respondents. Their top priorities for getting a new strategy in place were activating more digital media and channels (46 percent); activating data for targeting and segmentation (34 percent); and connecting adtech and martech for better media targeting. (31 percent).

For nurturing and conversion, activating lead scoring and performance measurement initiatives were central to respondents’ strategies, cited by 45 percent, as were integrating demand and sales enablement activity (34 percent) and sales/marketing alignment (32 percent).

When it comes to martech investment, CRM systems were the top priority of B2B marketers’ digital transformation strategies, followed by customer data platforms, social management/monitoring tools, data management platforms and content management systems.

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But what does that really mean? Altimeter defines digital transformation as “the realignment of, or new investment in, technology and business models to more effectively engage digital customers at every touchpoint in the customer experience lifecycle.” Why are companies actively pushing this digital transformation? Because doing so improves the customer experience, which increases loyalty and helps turn customers into brand ambassadors.

It’s a worthwhile goal but much easier said than done. The level of the person selected to lead the initiative is one key indicator of how important a digital transformation initiative is to a company. In general, the more important the initiative, the more senior the leader. According to a recent survey by e-Spirit, 62% of companies pursuing digital transformation are tying it to the C-level. Chances are good they see it as having a major impact on their success.

Digging deeper, who from the executive suite is driving digital transformation? The e-Spirit survey shows the CMO is leading the charge in a majority organizations. While CIOs and CTOs are still a factor in a subset of companies, the real driver is marketing.

Targeted communication improves customer experience worldwide

In today’s economy, many business-to-business companies have customers spread throughout the world. While that helps expand your customer base, pushing into global markets does increase the importance of having a global communication plan, processes and tools in place. How does your company share news and information with its customers if they speak different languages or are located on the other side of the world? With so many channels available to help you connect with your global customer base, how can you ensure that the right messages are going to the right people in the right locations at the right time?

But don’t fear this global growth, embrace it. Business-to-business companies need to put in place the infrastructure they need to communicate across all channels. Why is this important? By helping organizations use content more effectively and consistently they can improve the customer experience across all touchpoints and throughout the entire customer journey.

No matter how long they’ve been in business, business-to-business companies must face the reality of a digital world in which customers expect a company’s websites to provide them with all the information they need on any platform they choose. To maintain competitiveness in global markets in the digital age means effectively managing communication channels to support your company’s globalization goals and marketing strategies.

Here are four questions that business-to-business companies should think about when determining if they are truly focused on building customer loyalty.

1. Is your Web presence consistent? In other words, do your websites around the world present a cohesive brand image along with appropriate localizations consistent with your quality expectations?
2. Does your website connect with different cultures? It may not seem obvious to some given the adoption of English as the lingua franca of business but in many geographies it’s a major upgrade if your content management system (CMS) is able to support multiple languages. Just as important to understand is that some terms and symbols mean different things in different cultures and an advanced CMS should address that issue.
3. How easy (or difficult) is it for content creators and editors? Creating and editing content for your digital marketing programs and websites can be difficult because marketing and IT have to work together and they usually don’t have the same priorities. Make sure that content creators and editors have the ability to work directly in the websites without having to involve IT to get the changes posted.
4. Is your technology investment future-proof? Stay away from vendor lock-in. Using best-of-breed technology allows you to be more flexible and simplifies integration with other web applications. Doing so allows you to communicate with your customers faster and more easily which helps your company create an advantage over competitors.

To be successful in the growing global economy, business-to-business companies must move into the digital realm. Today’s world demands a strong digital presence on any device. Managing it all calls for the kind of central hub at the helm that a good content management system offers, working efficiently in the background, making data accessible for use and reuse, monitoring versions and languages, and providing an easy way for content creators to use it.

Oliver Jaeger is vice president global marketing and communications for e-Spirit Inc. in North America.

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