Tag Archives: Forrester Research

Local Search: “The Next Digital Battleground for Brands”

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If you had to choose the next battleground for digital marketing, what would you nominate? Gamification? Mobile? Content marketing? Well, how about local search? According to a new Forrester Consulting study commissioned by local search automation company SIM Partners (a client of mine), brands with local search strategies are enjoying crucial benefits such as improved leads and brand lift. SIM Partners CEO Jon Schepke says local is “the next digital battleground for brands.” But why? Two words: mobile and context.

First, big brands with multiple locations have made local a priority as mobile adoption increases. According to eMarketer, the global base of mobile phone users was expected to reach 4.55 billion in 2014, and by 2017, nearly 70 percent of the world’s population will own a mobile phone. And mobile phones facilitate commerce: 80 percent of local searches conducted on mobile phones lead to purchase, according to a study conducted by comScore. But local businesses (such as your local pizza parlor) and outlets of national franchises (e.g., Sonic Drive-in; Holiday Inn) aren’t going to get any of that commerce unless users can find them. Hence, search marketing retains the largest share of digital spend according to the Forrester Research US Digital Marketing Forecast, 2014 to 2019 (released in November 2014), with mobile accounting for 66 percent of the growth in interactive spend over the next five years. I don’t think the strength of spending on both areas is a coincidence, and neither does Forrester — the company identifies the mobile savviness of a brand’s customers as a key determinant of how urgent a brand should embrace local.

But something else is going on, too: the rise of contextual marketing. With contextual marketing, brands create more personal experiences based on the context of your behavior, such as where you are located. According to Forrester, contextual marketing is the new marketing remit. Customers, empowered with location- and context-aware devices, expect marketers to customize content accordingly instead of relying on generic messaging that is the same regardless of whether you are in New York or Seattle.

SIM Partners CMO Tari Haro recently noted that according to Forrester Vice President and Principal Analyst Shar VanBoskirk, contextual marketing will “steal media dollars” to fund “customer-obsessed contextual experiences.” And VanBoskirk suggests that to become better contextual marketers, companies need to adopt a number of strategies, including going local. She recommends that brands have global business stories, but make them local in order to be more context-aware. U.S. Bank, for instance, works with SIM Partners to improve its local presence via social media, mobile, and search.

But the new Forrester Consulting report, Uncovering the Benefits of Local Search Marketing, also notes that many brands have not yet fully embraced local search. Limited resources and lack of expertise are hampering marketers’ efforts with local search. To me, the answer is to develop a strategy that links local to context, especially since Forrester Consulting agrees that brands with local strategies are realizing strong benefits. Local search may very well become a battleground, all right — with strategy separating the winners from the losers.

 

The CMO Is Changing — Are You?

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Chief marketing officers are becoming business leaders with operational expertise in order to gain the respect of their C-suite peers. Tomorrow’s CMOs will need to master analytics, technology, and innovation. Those are some of the key take-aways of Your CMO Is Changing, a presentation by Forrester Research Vice President and Principal Analyst Sheryl Pattek. She delivered her remarks October 28, 2014, at the Forrester Forum for eBusiness & Channel Strategy Professionals.

The theme of the 2014 eBusiness Forum, attended by Fortune 1000 organizations, is “Map Your Path to Digital Mastery.” The purpose of the 2014 Forum is to help business leaders understand how to embrace digital as a way of doing business. Pattek helped eBusiness professionals in the audience understand how they need to change in order to prosper on their way to becoming CMOs.

Pattek set the stage by outlining a familiar challenge facing CMOs today. They’re facing an exploding world of marketing channels and customers whose attention span is about 8 seconds — meaning CMOs have 8 seconds or less to engage potential customers before they turn their attention elsewhere. Just as the customer touch points have increased, so has the CMO’s remit: from branding and promotional efforts to a wide range of responsibilities such as eCommerce and customer loyalty.

CMOs are responding to their expanding roles by taking control even as their worlds seem less controllable. They are doing so in a number of ways: linking marketing to business results, tackling broader organizational roles, building influence among the C-suite, and using technology and data to enhance customer engagement.

“CMOs are meeting business metrics like increasing shareholder value and meeting revenue targets, not just building brand awareness,” she said.

Tackling broader organizational roles is not only essential for CMO survival but also for CMOs to deepen their influence among their C-suite peers — a reason why CMOs are investing more time in the strategies that define the operations beyond marketing (59 percent of CMOS are growing their influence in general business strategy).

“CMOs are looking to evolve to the next level in the C-suite,” she said. “Hence, they are expanding their role in strategy and general management. They are developing line management and operational responsibility. Seldom do they make the jump from CMO to CEO. They need to get operational experience first.”

Those broader organizational roles are manifested in four ways:

  • Product development: for instance, the CMO of Quiznos is involved in developing new Quiznos sandwiches. “The CMO has the voice of the customer and can see what’s on the horizon,” Pattek said. “And can feed that insight into a test-and-learn approach.”
  • Profit/loss management: the CMO of Wrigley manages a line operation (Latin America). “Getting general business experience is essential to growing,” she said.
  • Mergers & Acquisitions: the CMO of Land O’Lakes is involved in driving strategy for M&A.
  • Innovation: taking the business to the next level, which is the role of the CMOs at General Electric and Open Text.

With the expanding roles comes anxiety — specifically about the role of technology to support the business. According to Pattek, CMOs generally believe technology has business impact, but their involvement in marketing technology decisions lags. (To wit: 45 percent of CMOs view technology is essential, but only 25 percent are leading cross-functional teams to develop a process for selecting the right technology vendors.)

“Solving the customer data quagmire remains Job 1 for the CMO,” she said. “Only 41 percent of CMOs use big data to make marketing decisions. They feel hampered by their ability to harness the data.”

In fact, mastering technology will be essential for tomorrow’s CMOs to succeed — and technology mastery is but one essential ingredient for future success. Pattek outlined these seven necessities for CMOs to thrive tomorrow:

  • Have a customer orientation, not a brand orientation.
  • Have an analytic mindset.
  • Be a savvy technologist.
  • Possess digital know-how.
  • Be fanatical about innovation.
  • Be a broad business leader.
  • Be a relationship builder.

“Today’s eBusiness expert is well positioned to be tomorrow’s CMO,” she added. “eBusiness professionals possess the broad set of skills required.” Many eBusiness leaders are blazing the trail to be CMO, Sona Chawla, CMO of Walgreens (who is a retail digital pioneer) and Julie Bornstein, CMO of Sephora.

“Sona Chawla and Julie Borstein are people who understand cross-channel marketing and have a keen insight into digital,” she said.

Finally, if you consider yourself to be a candidate to be a successful CMO of tomorrow, here is what you can do now:

  • Help the organization move beyond digital marketing to make all marketing digital.
  • Bring a digital perspective to align consistent engagement across the entire buying journey.
  • Leverage your technology know-how to build the marketing technology infrastructure.
  • Use your customer insights to help CMOs understand what’s happening in your world and with customer behavior in general.

eBusiness leaders who complement their know-how with confidence, a curiosity for new insights, a strong business orientation, and an ability to anticipate and react quickly to change just might be ready to become CMOs of the future. Are you?

Why Winning with Digital Is Like Making a Movie

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Mastering digital business is a lot like making a movie: you need to assemble a network of experts instead of trying to do it all yourself. Embracing an ecosystem to create customer value was the main take-away of Level Up: The Next Challenge in Digital Mastery, a presentation by Bill Doyle, vice president, principal analyst, Forrester Research. Doyle delivered his remarks October 28, 2014, at the Forrester Forum for eBusiness & Channel Strategy Professionals.

The theme of the 2014 eBusiness Forum, attended by Fortune 1000 organizations, is “Map Your Path to Digital Mastery.” The purpose of the 2014 Forum is to help business leaders understand how to embrace digital as a way of doing business.

“Digital mastery is a lot bigger than buffing up your website,” Doyle said. “Your competitors are creating new ecosystems to create better products at a lower cost than you can.”

The alternative to mastering digital is to allow digital to disrupt your business. According to Doyle, 93 percent of business executives say digital technology will disrupt their business within the next 12 months, but only 34 percent say they are ready. “A lot of industries are vulnerable right now, ranging from telecom to media,” he said. “It’s not just a matter of if you will be disrupted, but when.”

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He compared the evolution of digital to the transformation of the motion picture industry. Decades ago, Hollywood studios used to own the entire process of creating and distributing movies via a vertically oriented system. But anti-trust legislation and, more importantly, the rise of TV, disrupted Hollywood, creating a massive decline in movie attendance.

“The power in Hollywood shifted to agile, independent producers,” he said. “The result was better products: fewer, better movies. Movies today are made via an ecosystem of specialists who come together for the purpose of creating a movie: they disband when done.”

He indicated that thanks to digital, the modern way of making movies is being adopted by many industries across the customer lifecycle. Disruptors such as Uber to Wealthfront are “relying on networks of partners to come together to create better products than vertically oriented firms can.”

For instance, Wealthfront is a “robo-advisor” that provides automated wealth management services. Founded in 2011, Wealthfront relies on a network of partners to provide wealth management, ranging from Xignite for market data to Apex Clearing for accounting opening, funding, and trading. Wealthfront hit $1 billion in asset value twice as fast as it took Charles Schwab to do so. And Wealthfront employs only 50 people, most of whom are developers.

“Wealthfront can offer services at much less cost than traditional assets managers,” he said.

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Meantime, Uber famously relies on an ecosystem of drivers, technology affiliates, technology providers, and other partners to upend the transportation industry with surge pricing. Moreover, Uber shares its software with any firm that wants to embed agile, Uber-like capabilities in their own apps.

“When you mess with pricing as Uber is doing, all hell breaks loose,” Doyle added.

According to Doyle, mastering digital is not the province of the smaller start-ups, however. Any business that continuously uses technology to create new sources of value for customers and to increase operational agility in service of customers can succeed as Uber and Wealthfront are doing. In fact, Bank of America, 3M, and Walgreens (all appearing at the 2014 Forum) have done so.

“Established businesses need to accelerate their transition as Bank of America, 3M, and Walgreens are doing,” he added. “Walgreens is undergoing a cultural transformation. Bank of America is riding a storm surge of empowered customers. 3M has a long tradition of customer-centric innovation, which is driving the company’s embrace of digital.”

And the key to winning with digital is the same for big companies as it is for smaller start-ups: move quickly and open up your business to an ecosystem. Act like a modern-day filmmaker and look outside the four walls of your business to find the right talent for the time.

 

How Ticketmaster Has Fought Resale Marketplaces by Disrupting Itself

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If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. That’s the lesson Ticketmaster learned from its own journey through digital disruption, according to Jared Smith, president of Ticketmaster North America. At the Forrester eBusiness Forum November 6, Smith discussed how Ticketmaster has responded to the threat of the ticket resale market by launching its own online marketplace — a gutsy move that has increased sales and improved customer service for the ticket retailer.

Smith said that Ticketmaster is in an unusual position: “we are blessed to be in a business where people stalk our product.” Bruno Mars fans want to know where Bruno Mars will appear and how much it costs to see him even if they don’t end up going to one of his concerts, and they actively use digital to follow his appearances. Ticketmaster customers are passionate. They are driven. They are also frustrated when they can’t get access to their product — and they’ll willingly go to your competitor if you can’t give them that access via an affordable ticket.

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As Smith noted, 90 percent of Ticketmaster’s business comes from online and mobile sales — and in the digital world, it’s far too easy for fans to go elsewhere if you don’t give them what they want, a reality that spurred Ticketmaster to change the way it does business. In the 2000s, ticket resellers like StubHub emerged to threaten Ticketmaster by taking advantage of the ease with which Continue reading →

Forrester Research: How to Adopt an Innovator’s Mindset

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Few industries have experienced digital disruption as financial services have. In recent years, established banks have had their lunch served to them by smaller, more nimble start-ups such as Mint.com and Bankrate.com, which rely on digital to provide services such as money management. But the big brands can win by disrupting themselves, according to Forrester Research Vice President Catherine Graeber, who spoke November 5 at the 2013 Forrester Research eBusiness & Channel Forum, a marketing event whose theme is “Lead the Digital Business Revolution.”

“Gone are the days when all you had to worry about was the competitor down the street,” she said to attendees such as State Farm and USAA. “We have digital disruptors coming at us from other industries. To build the next generation of financial services, you must digitally disrupt yourselves.”

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Forrester Research Welcomes You to the Digital Revolution

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It feels like 1999 all over again at the 2013 Forrester Research eBusiness & Channel Strategy Forum, whose theme is “Lead the Digital Business Revolution.” About 750 attendees from big brands like Southwest Airlines are coming to grips with a wily consumer who uses digital to disrupt entire industries, just as consumers did when the Internet exploded more than 10 years ago. Only this time, consumers are creating their own digital journeys in far more sophisticated ways, across multiple devices, websites, and social spaces. According to Forrester Research, executives of big brands need to transform themselves into digital leaders to thrive amid a new digital revolution.

Forrester issued the challenge through two opening presentations on November 5, one by Vice President of Research Bill Doyle and the other by Vice President Martin Gill, who recently co-authored the report, “The Chief Digital Officer: Fad or Future?”

According to Doyle, “The digital revolution is at the doorstep. But senior leaders are not devoting serious money or resources to digital. They don’t appreciate the urgency.”

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How Smirnoff and Madonna Inspired the World to Dance

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Co-brands between artists and celebrities are all the rage, as evidenced recently by the launch of Justin Timberlake’s relationship with Budweiser and Alicia Keys’s co-brand with Blackberry. At the Forrester Research Marketing Forum April 19, Christopher Swope of Live Nation provided a case study on how artists and brands can work together to deliver results. His discussion focused on how Madonna and Smirnoff, by tapping into shared passions such as dancing and music, generated 1.8 billion media impressions for Smirnoff and helped Madonna undertake the highest grossing tour of 2012.

As Swope pointed out, brands and musicians actually have a long history of working together, examples being Microsoft using the Rolling Stones’s “Start Me Up” to launch Windows 95 and the collaboration between Apple and U2 to cross-promote U2’s “Vertigo” with a special edition iPod. In the best cases, co-brands meet mutually defined goals, and the relationship between Smirnoff and Madonna was one such success.

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The relationship began with a business challenge for Smirnoff:  accelerate consumer engagement with the Smirnoff brand on a global level.

“We wanted to find a way to accelerate the growth of the Smirnoff brand and generate engagement,” Swope said. “We wanted to take the brand to the next level and deepen engagement and participation.”

Smirnoff knew its fans are socially savvy. So for Smirnoff, building a brand was less about “let’s sponsor and put our name on it” but rather to generate engagement and deepen relationships with fans.

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“When you are giving a dinner party, you worry about the right ingredients — mix of cocktails and people,” he said. “You want to create an experience that deepens relationships. That’s how to think about social.”

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The New CEO Job Requirement: Social Media

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The sad results are in: 70 percent of all CEOs have no presence on social networks. And John Mackey of Whole Foods is the only CEO of a Fortune 500 firm who maintains his own blog — yeah, the same John Mackey who stepped in it by comparing Obamacare to facism in an interview with NPR. Hey: it’s time for CEOs to rethink their approach to social — or should I say get an approach since I doubt they think about social very much. Social media is a job requirement for the CEO.

In 2012, George Colony, CEO of Forrester Research (and an excellent blogger), delivered a presentation about why CEOs don’t use social media, and the reasons apply today: a general aversion to risk, lack of time, a generational bias against social, and the existence of regulatory constraints (as Netflix CEO Reed Hastings recently reminded us). Those constraints are understandable — but CEOs need to get over them. The fact is, CEOs need social media. Social helps CEOs better understand their market, their customers, their employees, and their own brands. Even better, social can help CEOs run their companies more effectively. An IBM study says that brands without social CEOs are less competitive, and according to Social Media Today, eight out of 10 employees want to work for social CEOs.

Recently, I sat down with Jermaine Dupri, to discuss how social media helps him be a better CEO of So So Def Recordings. As you might know, Dupri blew up the So So Def Recordings website and replaced it with his own social media community, Global 14. Dupri and I published the outcome of our conversation as a byline in Fast Company, available here. The byline discusses five ways social helps him run So So Def, an example being the way Global 14 gives him insight into up-and-coming musical talent. We also cite other CEOs who use social media effectively, such as Richard Branson, whose use of platforms like Twitter humanizes the Virgin brand.

If you are a CEO (or aspire to operate at that level), I hope our byline helps you embrace social, even if all you have time for is the occasional tweet. Just don’t blow off social.

Your employee, your advocate

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Josh Bernoff and Ted Schadler got it right. In their 2010 book Empowered, they argued the case for companies unleashing their employees as brand advocates especially through social media. (And they continue to discuss employee empowerment on their blog.) Progressive companies understand that building the corporate brand and investing in employee brands need not be mutually exclusive activities. Fortunately my employer iCrossing is one of those companies, as illustrated in two recently published blog posts about the value of employees as brand advocates.

In “How CMOs Can Empower Employees with Social Media Guidelines,” published April 4 on the iCrossing Great Finds blog, I discuss how social media guidelines can support, not restrict, employees as thought leaders and brand ambassadors. I cite the example of how iCrossing tripled the volume of employee blog contributions and boosted visits to our Great Finds blog by 74 percent in one year by helping employees find their social voices with guidelines (which we recently published). Our approach is to go beyond the predictable guideline do’s and don’ts and provide ideas for how employees can use social to speak to our audience of CMOs.

Meantime, in an April 6 Great Finds post, my colleague Nick Roshon asserts that “If Brands Are Publishers, Employees Are Authors” His post focuses on tools that brands and employees can employ to boost authorship authority (especially at a time when search engines like Google are increasingly rewarding content authority).

Nick asserts that CMOs need to “build up their employees as authors of thought leadership . . . Because Google and Bing are already rewarding content authors by making them more visible to search. As Google and Bing embrace technologies that reward the most prolific and authoritative content creators, CMOs that encourage employees to create thought leadership will build more visible and connected brands.

In other words: you can either ride a wave in the direction it is going or someone else will.

How do you empower your employees?

NFL magazine: fumble or first down?

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What publication do you read for in-depth coverage of the Super Bowl? Sports Illustrated or ESPN online, perhaps? If the National Football League has its way, your future choice will be NFL magazine, a recently launched publication covering all things NFL. By issuing its own official magazine, the NFL becomes the latest high-profile brand turned publisher. NFL magazine faces some obstacles, one of which is sports media saturation and a low profile in the digital world. The publication can succeed by becoming more digitally savvy and catering to content-hungry fantasy football enthusiasts.

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