There is one thing that every marketer would say they need: content. But what makes for good content and what makes for the best content? Is it storytelling? Is it authenticity? What content drives engagement, versus what content is merely passable? Kristin Frank is a well-respected and highly-seasoned media expert, and after a 20-year run at MTV, it’s safe to say she knows a thing or two about content.“My biggest advice is to not look at marketing, look at it as content. Make sure the story has quirks, make sure it's compelling, treat each individually as a separate piece of content, and be authentic to the platform. If you do that, you will have a relationship with your consumers that you can then speak to them in any way, and they will trust you.”On this episode of Marketing Trends, Kristin, now the CEO of AdPredictive, explains why after a successful career with Viacom and MTV, she had the itch to ditch her comfy enterprise digs and roll her sleeves up with a startup. Kristin also explains why different forms of content resonate with various platforms, how to attack those different channels and how AdPredictive is playing a role in helping marketers turn insights into advertising. Enjoy!Main TakeawaysNot All Platforms are Created Equal: The way people absorb content differs greatly depending on what channel they are using and the way marketers push their content should accommodate those different behaviors. This means that your content cannot be a one-size fits-all approach. Your content must vary by channel to fit what the consumer is expecting For instance, a piece of video might work really well on TikTok and Instagram, but would not generate the same engagement on Twitter. When you are designing your content to fit within a certain channel you have a better chance of resonating with your audience.Don’t View Content as Marketing: Content should be used in the same manner as how you would tell a story. It needs to have quirks, there needs to be a story arc, but most importantly, you should treat every individual show, blog, or post as it’s own piece of content rather than try to group everything together in a larger push. Can I Get Your ID?: Data visibility and data accuracy are two things marketers need in order to drive business values. When you have both accurate data and easily accessible insights, you can gain a better understanding of who your audience is, what their buying behaviors are, and what pieces of content get them to convert to your product.---Marketing Trends podcast is brought to you by Salesforce. Discover marketing built on the world’s number one CRM: Salesforce. Put your customer at the center of every interaction. Automate engagement with each customer. And build your marketing strategy around the entire customer journey. Salesforce. We bring marketing and engagement together. Learn more at salesforce.com/marketing.

Here’s a contrarian thought: buying ads doesn’t win you customers. What does win is when previous customers are happy and willing to tell everybody else just how great you are. Now think about this, before you buy a product, what’s the first thing you do? You read the reviews. From influencers, to friends, to referral codes and trade magazines, the way consumers decide what product or service is perfect for them is dependent on who they trust. David Lehman is the President and Chief Operating Officer at Birdeye, and he knows this more than most.“It's all about what research people are doing and who do they trust? Do people trust the brands? Do they trust the articles that they're getting from them? No, they trust their community, They trust their friends. They trust their network. They trust the crowdsourced reviews of both the business, a product. As a marketer, experience marketing is so critical because you've got to fulfill all of those needs for everybody.”So how are marketers flipping the funnel and tying their success to customer success? On Marketing Trends, David answers that question while also providing an in-depth look at how brands such as Blaze Pizza have used Birdeye’s experience marketing platform to put brand advocates front and center. He also provides a unique look at how marketers can supercharge their SEO strategies on Google, Facebook, and more. Enjoy this episode. Main Takeaways:Did You Leave a Review?: Customers leave reviews to help them advocate for a product or service, but they also read those same reviews to help them make an informed buying decision. Customers no longer trust a brand’s messaging to make their decisions, they trust their peers. This is why it's important to seize control of reviews and aggregate them all into a single place. When you have everything in one place, you can identify and resolve common problems as you see them come through and you can also gather and display top reviews easier. Just Call My Mobile: Customers need to be met on the channels where they are most active, which is mobile. In order to have an effective mobile strategy, you must have an always-on mentality. This means that prospective consumers should always be able to get answers to questions in real-time and you can facilitate that through chat, FAQs, or aggregated reviews.Stand-Up, Stand Out: An well-structured and optimized SEO strategy is a great way to make sure that a company does not get buried on the search pages, but it also is integral when it comes to making sure consumers can find you at a moment’s notice.---Marketing Trends podcast is brought to you by Salesforce. Discover marketing built on the world’s number one CRM: Salesforce. Put your customer at the center of every interaction. Automate engagement with each customer. And build your marketing strategy around the entire customer journey. Salesforce. We bring marketing and engagement together. Learn more at salesforce.com/marketing.

Text message marketing is a powerful tool — after all no other channel provides marketers with the same level of one-to-one communication that you get by sending a simple text. But just because you have the ability to press send, doesn’t mean you always should.“You need to think to yourself before you send any text message, ‘Is this message providing value? Is the person on the other end of this going to look at this and say, yes, I want to save this.’ If it's not the case, you probably shouldn't be sending it because you've got this unicorn right now, and this way to communicate to your customer is so direct, you want to hold it in the highest regard and respect it as much as possible.” On this episode of Marketing Trends, Matt Baglia, the co-founder and CEO of SlickText, dives into the dos and don’ts of text messaging marketing, and touches on the main reason marketers should approach this channel with extreme caution. Matt also explains some of the best practices that will set up any marketer for success. Enjoy this episode.Main TakeawaysSeeking Approval: You always need to know that the information that you are sending to customers is the information that they have opted into. If you don’t have a user's permission to send them content, don’t. If you send materials to a user that didn’t ask for them, you won’t only be breaking privacy laws, but you also run the risk of your materials being perceived as spam, thus creating a negative image for the brand.Set Expectations: When users opt in to your service, you must be explicit about what materials the user is signing up for. This does not mean that you need to provide a long explanation of every message a user will receive, but if a customer is expecting tracking information for a product, that is all they should be receiving.Don’t Hit Send Too Often: Make sure you have a consistent strategy for how often you send your users messages. Nobody wants to read an excessive amount of text messages from your business or organization. A good rule of thumb in most cases is 2-6 messages per month.---Marketing Trends podcast is brought to you by Salesforce. Discover marketing built on the world’s number one CRM: Salesforce. Put your customer at the center of every interaction. Automate engagement with each customer. And build your marketing strategy around the entire customer journey. Salesforce. We bring marketing and engagement together. Learn more at salesforce.com/marketing.

B2B marketing gets a bad reputation. Some will say it’s boring and you can’t be creative in the B2B space. But who wrote the rulebook that said B2B couldn’t be fun or inspiring? Meredith Stowe Christie, the VP of Marketing at HVR, says that regardless of who your client is, B2B doesn’t have to be boring.“It's B2B, but you're still marketing to a human. Chances are, given the amount of people that are watching the Super Bowl, your target is watching the Super Bowl. If you have the budget and a message that resonates to a lot of organizations, why not do that? You want to be top of mind to these folks when they need to make that decision on your product.”On this episode of Marketing Trends, Meredith explains how HVR is spicing up B2B marketing by putting the customer at the center of everything it does. What does that look like? Meredith says it’s about aligning S sales and marketing efforts to tell the best stories because content is what should be leading prospects through the funnel. Enjoy this episode. Main Takeaways:Know your Story: Make sure you know your product inside and out so you can fully tell the story of your company. When you’re marketing complex products, such as data replication, you have to know all aspects of your product to know what your unfair advantage is and what differentiates you from competitors. Make sure you talk to stakeholders at every level of the company so you can gather that intel in order to best tell the story of the company.Every Last Cent: Digital marketing has made it easier for marketers to track where every dollar and every cent is going, but it’s important to remember that as the company grows, your digital practices should too. This means you have to make sure to experiment with what channels you are spending in to create new avenues for the business.Can I Get an Alignment?: We hear a lot about the importance of marketing and sales aligning their efforts, but it’s important to remember that your content should be a driver to make those sales conversations easier for your reps. Make sure the content you produce opens up opportunities for prospective clients to learn about your product prior to the sales conversations.---Marketing Trends podcast is brought to you by Salesforce. Discover marketing built on the world’s number one CRM: Salesforce. Put your customer at the center of every interaction. Automate engagement with each customer. And build your marketing strategy around the entire customer journey. Salesforce. We bring marketing and engagement together. Learn more at salesforce.com/marketing. 

Streaming services and connected television sets now dominate living rooms, but what influence has OTT programming had on brands when it comes to content development, strategy, and advertising? “If you can create content that appeals to the kid, but also the overall family and the parents, that's a win-win. You're going to get no pushback from the parents when everyone sits down and says, ‘Let's watch The LEGO Movie because it's fun, it's funny, it's exciting.’ Brands that want to create content, the reality is that some brands have afforded themselves the rights to be entertainment brands and some are just not there or will never be there.”While sitting down and picking a show has become easier, the ecosystem that on-demand services such as YouTube, Netflix and Disney+ offer is changing the game for advertisers looking to capitalize on the influx in inventory. On this episode of Marketing Trends, Charles Gabriel, Head of U.S. Advertising at WildBrain Spark, explores the intricacies of advertising on OTT services, including where advertisers go wrong in the space. Charles also covers major trends that he sees occurring within the industry, including why linear advertising continues to decrease. Enjoy this episode.Main Takeaways:Money Talks: What used to make TV an easy buy are now the same factors that are making it difficult for advertisers to invest in linear television. With more users cutting the cord than ever before, ratings are not only declining, but traditional media options that advertisers have are far fewer than their streaming counterparts.It’s All About Control: One of the biggest factors leading brands to invest in AVOD services is the level of control and frequency they have in picking where their ads are displayed and which audiences those advertisements are targeting. For example, if advertisers only want to reach families that watch children’s programming, AVOD offers better targeting and attribution for those particular audiences.It’s an Entire Ecosystem: Advertisers are now investing in more than just 15- and 30-second commercials. With streaming services, they can now invest in the entire ecosystem, from the actual content, to the advertisements that are played during the show. This is giving brands more influence in the overall product and the message they are able to send to the audience.---Marketing Trends podcast is brought to you by Salesforce. Discover marketing built on the world’s number one CRM: Salesforce. Put your customer at the center of every interaction. Automate engagement with each customer. And build your marketing strategy around the entire customer journey. Salesforce. We bring marketing and engagement together. Learn more at salesforce.com/marketing. 

Every corner of the world is different, and that means the way consumers buy and absorb media  is different as well. In the U.S., email is a massive channel for brands to reach customers. But what about on continents such as Africa? With a population of more than 1.2 billion individuals, what drives the African consumer? What channels are businesses using to reach them, and where are some of the biggest differences between them and the western consumer?“Over the last five years, the start-up ecosystem has taken off aggressively. People are now building services, products, and services on top of the networks and on top of what the telcos have been able to achieve. The possibilities of what can happen with that sort of infrastructure has taken off. However, the depth of innovation we have seen is really five years-old, and the financial technological system has taken a lead there.”Elo Umeh is the Founder and CEO of Terragon Group, a predictive MarcTech service that is helping African companies connect and reach customers more thoughtfully and effectively. On this episode of Marketing Trends, Elo explains some key differences between the African and American consumer, why email marketing is not a big driver for his customers, and how Terragon is using data and analytics across all channels to help its customers effectively reach its desired audience.Main TakeawaysIt’s a Mobile World: Over the last five years, the startup ecosystem has grown significantly. With more developers building software that incorporates into a tech stack, there is now more of an opportunity for those companies to utilize data and analytics like never before to effectively reach their customers.  Massive Reach: On a continent of more than 1.2 billion people, combined with a landmass greater than other continents, reaching the customer is one of the biggest challenges for African companies. Companies that want to reach their audiences must have an effective data and analytics strategy that is designed to meet their consumers on the go. This means hype-targeting content to mobile devices and social platforms.Different Strokes for Different Folks: Just because a strategy works in the US does not mean that it will be effective for other consumers. In the U.S., email is an effective marketing strategy. But in Africa, you have to account for both web and non-web channels one thing remains true: your messaging must not only be relevant, but it has to solve a unique problem for the customer ---Marketing Trends podcast is brought to you by Salesforce. Discover marketing built on the world’s number one CRM: Salesforce. Put your customer at the center of every interaction. Automate engagement with each customer. And build your marketing strategy around the entire customer journey. Salesforce. We bring marketing and engagement together. Learn more at salesforce.com/marketing. 

Sports and brands are synonymous with one another. The Boston Red Sox are known for the famous Citgo signs that resides beyond the Green Monster. The University of Oregon goes hand-in-hand with apparel and shoe giant Nike, and the University of North Carolina is tightly associated with  the jump man himself and the Jordan Brand logo that graces its uniforms. There is no doubt that brands have made a lasting impact on fan bases everywhere thanks to sports.“Brands have a really interesting opportunity to actually create traditions around game day that are synonymous with the brands and finding things that are meaningful to the brands and become great traditions. A carpet company rolling out the carpet for a team to enter the field, or a particular sign being reminiscent of the kind of offering that a company can bring, or a sponsor of a particular segment or kind of content that becomes part of a game tradition.” But how brands become one with a university is a sticky topic. It requires identifying the right fit between brand and school or sport, implementing a proper strategy, and activating the sponsorship at the right time. With another year of collegiate athletics around the corner, Jennifer Davis, the CMO at Learfield, joined the show to discuss how the company brings big partnerships to life between brands and universities. Plus she explains how sports marketing has become a much more integral piece of the overall sales funnel. Enjoy this episode!Main TakeawaysBranding 101: Brands need to view sponsorship opportunities as a way to not only build gameday traditions with fan bases, but also as an opportunity to align your brand with the university and become synonymous with it. By building out these activations, whether it’s a highlight sponsorship, player of the game, or in-game sponsorship, you are creating memorable moments with fans, generating brand awareness, but most importantly, you are organically aligning your product with the university.Let’s Get Specific: As traditional broadcast mediums have changed, it’s afforded brands to take advantage of targeting specific markets with ad inventories. Instead of just placing a commercial spot across multiple networks, schools can now work with companies to identify specific markets outside of their home base to target, which could help lead to future conversions.You’re Now Free to Pre-Board: Any CMO who is about to take on a new role with a company should design their own pre-boarding/onboarding strategy. Rather than stick to the predetermined path a company has always used for onboarding, this could be an opportunity to take the initiative to meet with key stakeholders in the company to understand where you can best serve the company once you start.---Marketing Trends podcast is brought to you by Salesforce. Discover marketing built on the world’s number one CRM: Salesforce. Put your customer at the center of every interaction. Automate engagement with each customer. And build your marketing strategy around the entire customer journey. Salesforce. We bring marketing and engagement together. Learn more at salesforce.com/marketing.

Kimberly Storin strongly believes that culture beats strategy every day of the week and that you can be the best strategic marketer in the world, but if you fail to build a sustainable culture, your strategy is irrelevant. It’s one of the reasons why when she joined the Zayo Group, she made a plan for her first 100 days, during which she would be relentlessly focused on making sure that within her organization, the sales and marketing teams remain aligned in their vision.“The biggest impact that we're going to have is to get that sales alignment right off the bat so that we can see a great account-based marketing approach. The biggest win that we can have in the next six to 12 months will be to implement account-based marketing.”Kimberly has extensive experience in enterprise technology, having overseen brand refreshes and strategy implementation at some of the world’s biggest technology companies — including Dell, AMD, and IBM. Now, as the CMO of Zayo Group, she helped to implement similar strategies. On this episode of Marketing Trends, Kimberly explains why having a strong ABM strategy is integral to the growth of Zayo Group, she also dives into why every marketing department should devote resources to its own creative services department, and how every new CMO can earn quick wins.Main Takeaways:Building a Plan For a Plan: When you enter any new organization, you have to understand the values and benchmarks the organization needs to hit. A good practice is to start by meeting with all the internal stakeholders of the business to best understand where you earn quick wins. Once you identify these, you can then gain a better understanding of what the key elements and goals of the business are.What Makes for a Good ABM Strategy: A good account-based marketing plan starts with a strong alignment between sales and marketing departments. When both sales and marketing have the ability to leverage market data, combined with the internal data the organization has, it makes for an incredibly streamlined process for identifying the proper prospects to target.Let’s Get Creative: Brand consistency is key, but in order to make sure you are building a strong and consistent message, marketing teams should invest in having their own internal creative agency. When creative services are in-house, it allows you to highlight elements of the brand that matter while building a strong and consistent approach.---Marketing Trends podcast is brought to you by Salesforce. Discover marketing built on the world’s number one CRM: Salesforce. Put your customer at the center of every interaction. Automate engagement with each customer. And build your marketing strategy around the entire customer journey. Salesforce. We bring marketing and engagement together. Learn more at salesforce.com/marketing. 

Every company has a secret sauce —it’s the differentiator that  separates one company from the rest of the pack and keeps it successful long-term. For Juniper Networks, CMO Mike Marcellin says that secret sauce centers around how the company is getting its customers to actively engage with its product.“How someone engages with a brand, with a company, is hugely important. 84% of [consumers] said that experience that a company provides is as important as its products and services. If you're a startup going into a completely new space and you're the only game in town, then the features and capabilities are there. But if you're in a mature industry where it's competitive, the customer experience must be there.”On this episode of Marketing Trends, Mike explains how his team has evolved over the last few years to take a more data-centric approach to its marketing efforts. He also dives into how marketers can effectively use A.I. in their decision-making, and how organizations can reduce operational costs to improve their customer experience. Enjoy!Main TakeawaysYou Want a Holistic View of Your Customers: The best way to gain an entire understanding of who your customers are — what their buying habits are, how they like to be communicated with, and what their preferences are— the first step is to make sure all the first-party data you have on-hand about your customers resides in a single place that is clear and easy to read. This will help in organizing customer portfolios while also giving you a better idea of customer trends in real-time.Good A.I. Starts with Good Data: When using A.I. as a tool, whether that is personalizing certain experiences for customers or in your messaging efforts, you have to start with a solid understanding of where your data is coming from. Without good, clean data, your algorithms will give you unreliable results and skew your customer insights.Are you Hearing Feedback? It’s important to create consistent feedback opportunities for your customers to engage with your company, but it’s equally important to make sure you are not chasing your clients to participate in these conversations. When you have active and willing participants, that means you have stakeholders that are invested in the overall product and want to see you succeed.---Marketing Trends podcast is brought to you by Salesforce. Discover marketing built on the world’s number one CRM: Salesforce. Put your customer at the center of every interaction. Automate engagement with each customer. And build your marketing strategy around the entire customer journey. Salesforce. We bring marketing and engagement together. Learn more at salesforce.com/marketing. 

In 2021, data flows from multiple pathways to a marketer's desk, and the insights generated from those datasets feels endless. But one thing is becoming increasingly apparent; despite the information you have on hand, it’s still never enough.“33% of marketers say they are completely satisfied with their ability to use data and to create more relevant customer experiences. A third of marketers feel like they have the ability to use data, to create a customer experience that's relevant. Think about all the relevancy that we now have with the brand, to think that only a third of marketers think that they're able to do it. To me, that's the opportunity for marketers to figure out how to go from not just using data, but making it relevant to customer experience.”On this episode of Marketing Trends, Edward McDonnell, the Executive Vice President and Chief Revenue Officer for Marketing Cloud at Salesforce, returns to discuss the future of marketing. Plus, he explains how remote work is enabling marketers to build the most talented teams possible thanks to software that allows them to succeed from anywhere. Ed also explains why it's time to focus on reskilling the modern-day marketer.Main Takeaways:More Control, Please: Two-thirds of marketers in a recent survey stated the data that they receive is not painting a clear enough picture for them when it comes to their customers. Marketers in 2021 want more control of their data — where it’s coming from and how it is used so that they can create a more agile and elastic marketing strategy.Hit that Subscribe Button: Subscription marketing is a growing channel for marketers, but it goes far beyond the technology that enables it. Subscription marketing consistently challenges marketers not just from a sales and retention perspective, but it’s forcing them to rethink how they produce content, and how that content keeps users connected and engaged with a brand.Upleveling Your Skillset: Marketers are not lacking creativity, but the way companies engage with them from a remote perspective must change. Businesses need to rethink how marketers can be successful in a remote-first world. This means putting more of a focus on creating workflows that can enable an efficient creative process regardless of where team members are.---Marketing Trends podcast is brought to you by Salesforce. Discover marketing built on the world’s number one CRM: Salesforce. Put your customer at the center of every interaction. Automate engagement with each customer. And build your marketing strategy around the entire customer journey. Salesforce. We bring marketing and engagement together. Learn more at salesforce.com/marketing. 

For years, college athletes have racked up Twitter and Instagram followers due to their on-the-field fame, but despite these large followings, a quarterback known for slinging touchdowns was prohibited from slinging endorsements thanks to a system that prohibited athletes from profiting off of their image or performance. But this summer that changed, and with college athletes now able to profit off their name, image, and likeness, it’s left companies such as Captiv8, an influencer marketing platform, ready to hit the ground running with a new pool of talent. “Scale for creators or athletes within specific verticals is pretty tough. It's hard to snap your fingers and get a hundred college athletes activated in minutes. Platforms like Captiv8 have made it easier to do that in the digital creator space. With creators that have been around for a while, you can go through specific verticals. With college athletes, it's a green field right now.”Krishna Subramanian, is the Co-founder of Captiv8, and on this episode of Marketing Trends, Krishna goes deep into the weeds of influencer marketing and how these new opportunities with college athletes can help brands. Plus Krishna provides some dos and don’t for brands that are looking to partner with influences. Enjoy!Main TakeawaysInfluencers are an Extension of the Brand: Over the last year, brands have leaned more and more on influencer marketing. But despite how loyal an influencer’s audience might be, that audience might not be a match with your brand. Make sure the values of your brand align with that of the creator and with the people who make up their pool of followers.Fighting for Control: How much creative control the brand and the creator requires is one of the main things to consider when partnering with an influencer. If a brand wants more control, don’t partner with top influencers. Instead, partner with lower-level creators that are looking to grow their audience.Going Further Down the Funnel: Right now, influencer marketing is specifically focused on branding and building awareness, but there are far more areas for marketers to derive value from it, including measuring a product viability and the ability to scale content across multiple channels.---Marketing Trends podcast is brought to you by Salesforce. Discover marketing built on the world’s number one CRM: Salesforce. Put your customer at the center of every interaction. Automate engagement with each customer. And build your marketing strategy around the entire customer journey. Salesforce. We bring marketing and engagement together. Learn more at salesforce.com/marketing. 

End-of-life planning is something we often put off. After all, nobody actually enjoys thinking about what happens after they die or where their personal belongings will end up. But the truth is, you have to consider your options at some point. That’s one of the things that makes things tricky for Luke Sheehan, the CMO at Willful.co, a Canadian company that guides users through making their legal will online.“What we really try to do [at Willful] is understand the life stages behind when people are most likely to need something like a will in their life. What we then do is try and understand what the consumers are going through in their mind as they make their decisions.”On this episode of Marketing Trends, Luke explains why that process is challenging, and he talks about some of the ways he uses marketing tools to help ease the minds of consumers and gain their trust along the way. Luke also explains how a good public relations strategy can feed into effective marketing, and why it’s important to understand who your key stakeholders are in order to leverage their influence.Main TakeawaysTapping into the Right Audience: Online services are consistently fighting for legitimacy, which makes it increasingly important for marketers to be able to leverage power users of the product who can help raise brand awareness.You’re in Good Hands with All-State: Partnerships can not only be a driver for brand awareness but they can also be used as an effective avenue to build customer trust. When consumers see online services associated with brands, it removes some of the ambiguity and fears they might have of dealing with a service they can not physically interact with.Doubling Down on What Matters: It may sound simple, but your campaigns need to pack a powerful punch and resonate with your audience. If your marketing message is down the middle, your message is not going to stick. Know your companies strengths and weaknesses, and double double down on the strengths that matter to your consumers.---Marketing Trends podcast is brought to you by Salesforce. Discover marketing built on the world’s number one CRM: Salesforce. Put your customer at the center of every interaction. Automate engagement with each customer. And build your marketing strategy around the entire customer journey. Salesforce. We bring marketing and engagement together. Learn more at salesforce.com/marketing.  

Sometimes the best marketing campaign is the one you never expected. In an age when every shareable moment matters, and getting consumers to engage with your product can feel tiresome, Ring has built an empire of smart-home devices off those shareable moments.“Our marketing teams are very performance-driven in terms of where we're spending our dollars and certainly paying attention to things. [We pay a lot of attention to] shared voice and earned media engagement and we have teams that are really aware of what's happening and how those videos are really powerful in terms of delivering context behind our products and what they're doing.”Founded in 2014, Ring has grown from its humble origins as a video doorbell into a full-fledged line of products and services that includes security cameras, smart lights and security systems. On this episode of Marketing Trends, Mimi Swain, the Chief Revenue Officer at Ring, offers up examples of how Ring uses the shareable moments to build a community of loyal users and also expands on how Ring expanded its product line from a modest doorbell to a robust offering and the importance of showing up where your customers are.Main TakeawaysShowing Up Matters: In order to drive product growth, it’s important to think about the areas your product is showing up — whether that’s on an ecommerce website or at stores such as Home Depot and Best Buy, your product needs to be visible in the channels that consumers expect them to be in and also wherever your target consumers typically shop.Customer Feedback is More Important than Customer Data: Data is important to create a clear view of your customers, but data alone will not paint a full picture of what your customer likes and dislikes about the product. The feedback you receive from your customers is far more valuable in building a memorable and seamless customer experience. Make sure you are consistently engaging with your customers to understand the areas of the product they love, but also their pain points so that you can continue to innovate.Teachable Moments Lead to Product Innovation: When product teams have the freedom to openly innovate and try new things, those moments of experimentation can lead to real opportunities to drive deeper engagement with the products because they are able to freely learn about the products and understand where they fit best.--- Marketing Trends podcast is brought to you by Salesforce. Discover marketing built on the world’s number one CRM: Salesforce. Put your customer at the center of every interaction. Automate engagement with each customer. And build your marketing strategy around the entire customer journey. Salesforce. We bring marketing and engagement together. Learn more at salesforce.com/marketing. 

Taking a customer-centric approach is difficult. It requires not only thinking differently, but also ignoring your own personal agenda for the greater good of the company. But putting the customer first also requires trust and it requires a top-down effort from everyone involved. That’s why PwC’s remodeling of its business strategy is different. “The New Equation” as it’s called, is not just a motto, it’s an entire strategy based on the principles of building trust and helping PwC customers keep up with the pace of change. And the key to any successful marketing strategy begins with a top-down approach and a relentless focus on implementation.“I don't think any strategy is perfect, nor do I think any strategy needs to be perfect. What needs to be far better is the execution of that strategy… All of our people fundamentally understand what we're doing, but it's the getting the confidence in that story and making sure that they really feel supported, bolstered and have everything that they need in order to bring that with confidence.”On this episode of Marketing Trends, we caught up with J.C. Lapierre, Chief Strategy and Communications Officer at PwC, who offered up some insight into the steps PwC went through to implement its new three-pronged services model. Plus, J.C. explains why successful implementation means everything when you’re rolling out a new strategy, and how PwC is forging ahead with a customer-first approach.Main TakeawaysSuccessful Strategies Start with Successful Installations: The best marketing strategies are ultimately the ones that have the best implementation from beginning to end and from the top down. This will help your marketers not only have a strong understanding of the values of your new strategy, but it will give them the confidence to relay that message to the company's clients.The Days of A Siloed Marketing Approach are Over: Siloed approaches to marketing no longer work, especially if you want to have an efficient, cross-functional business. When you eliminate silos, you’re able to effectively and efficiently push your message and your purpose across all your channels without confusion.Don’t Be Scared to Play in New Channels: Even when you’re a legacy company, it’s important to try new channels and continuously evaluate your marketing mix to understand where your message is resonating and where it’s not. Don’t get comfortable with the same strategy that’s worked in the past. For a company like PwC, that meant advertising on OTT platforms, a channel the company had never participated in before.---Marketing Trends podcast is brought to you by Salesforce. Discover marketing built on the world’s number one CRM: Salesforce. Put your customer at the center of every interaction. Automate engagement with each customer. And build your marketing strategy around the entire customer journey. Salesforce. We bring marketing and engagement together. Learn more at salesforce.com/marketing. 

Genna Franconi has been in digital marketing so long, she fondly remembers the day she pushed out the first Instagram post for Barbie. But social media marketing has changed significantly since those days. These days, lone marketers aren’t the ones worried about hitting send on a post at the right time. Instead, brands now have teams of social content creators who monitor trends and leverage a brand’s voice to get personal with consumers and entice and engage them at each point of the buying journey. “For years we have been saying that brands do not need to be investing in organic content...That makes a ton of sense. But if you're trying to participate in a cultural conversation by throwing out content that is old school, those days are over. Now marketing is really sophisticated and marketers are using the channels to reach these audiences. We're not screaming through a megaphone. Now we’re laser-targeting people to give them something that's either helpful or educational within their buying path.”Genna is the founder and managing director of Trade School, an integrated content shop that works with big brands such as Home Depot and FedEx. On this episode of Marketing Trends, she reveals just how the social media landscape has evolved from the wild wild west of marketing to an integral piece of every marketer's toolkit. Plus, Genna touches on the evolution of influencer marketing and why it’s important that every brand and creative agency understand why and how to effectively deploy a successful influencer strategy.Main TakeawaysOrganic Content Sets Brands up for Success: Creative agencies need to understand that the best way to partner with brands is to not only understand the creative voice of the brand, but also the business goals the brand wants to achieve through its creative efforts. If you don’t align your creative vision with the business goals of your brand, the content you create for them won’t resonate with its consumers.Content is Less About Format and More about Engagement: As the social landscape has shifted, marketers’ strategies need to pivot from thinking about what content works best for each social platform to understanding what content will get the most engagement from their consumers. This means marketers should spend less of their budget on large-scale commercials that will reach a broad audience and focus on more organic content that can be targeted to hyper-specific audiences.Influencers are Now Competitors to Agencies: Many brands view influencers simply as talent that they can direct, but the reality now is that influencers must be seen as competitors to creative agencies because of the hyper-targeted audiences that each influencer possesses. The best influencer strategies allow influencers to leverage those audiences and give creative license to influencers so that the material they post is organic and  aligns with the influencer's audience.--- Marketing Trends podcast is brought to you by Salesforce. Discover marketing built on the world’s number one CRM: Salesforce. Put your customer at the center of every interaction. Automate engagement with each customer. And build your marketing strategy around the entire customer journey. Salesforce. We bring marketing and engagement together. Learn more at salesforce.com/marketing.  

Usually, marketers are fighting amongst their peers to generate brand awareness in an already saturated market. How does a camera maker get its latest product to stand out from 15 similar devices? How does a new automaker enter a market to steal customers who might already be loyal to one brand or another? Every marketer has strategies in his or her toolkit for these types of moments, but what happens when you’re literally inventing a market and the only competition you have is yourself?“We're a brand new product, and we're a brand new category. It's not about how do we get incremental sales away from a competitor and into the plant-based egg space. We have to raise awareness that a plant-based egg exists, that it's delicious, but it's called JUST egg.”Tom Rossmeissl is the Head of Global Marketing for Eat Just, a company that develops and markets plant-based alternatives to conventionally produced eggs. On this episode of Marketing Trends, Tom details the trials and tribulations the company went through when developing its plant-based eggs, and he describes the uphill climb the company is still trekking as it continues building brand awareness and getting consumers to change their eating behaviors. He also reveals the influencer marketing strategies the company has deployed to help consumers make the switch to a healthy, sustainable, plant-based diet. Enjoy.Main TakeawaysPick-Up On Aisle Three: When you’re in the CPG space, it’s important to have a full understanding of how your product can succeed while also being able to manage your inventory to maintain your profit margins. For JUST, a relatively expensive product compared to its competitors, this has meant holding off moving to a direct to consumer model while the brand grows.Changing Consumer Behaviors: Marketers cannot rely on consumer’s to make their buying decisions just on their value proposition. While marketers would like those same consumer’s to make purchase decisions based on the environment, the reality is when it comes to CPG brands consumers will still spend their money based on what they believe is good value.Wait, What? When you’re managing multiple brands, it’s important to draw a line and make a clear distinction between the two brands. When consumers see brands, especially in the CPG space, you want them to have a clear understanding of the way each product is produced and what it represents, as opposed to drawing their own conclusions.---Marketing Trends podcast is brought to you by Salesforce. Discover marketing built on the world’s number one CRM: Salesforce. Put your customer at the center of every interaction. Automate engagement with each customer. And build your marketing strategy around the entire customer journey. Salesforce. We bring marketing and engagement together. Learn more at salesforce.com/marketing. To learn more or subscribe to our weekly newsletter, visit MarketingTrends.com.

Marketers are always looking for ways to get their message across to consumers. Whether that’s trying to get them to stop scrolling long enough to watch an ad, or grab their attention quick-enough to prevent them from changing the channel, marketers are waging a never-ending war to get noticed. But instead of racing to get consumers to your web page, why not just target them when they are already in your store?“All the other digital investments, you're just trying to get people to leave their house, or get out of their car, or leave the gym and go to the place to buy your product. We're talking to the people that are standing in the very place where they can buy your product.”Paul Brenner is a broadcasting savant, with a quarter-century of experience in the radio and television industry. He’s watched from the front row how marketers have shifted their advertising spend from traditional broadcast inventory to digital platforms. Now, as the Chief Strategy Officer at Vibenomics, he’s helping those same marketers create a memorable in-store experience through out of home audio. On this episode of Marketing Trends, Paul describes why the audio you hear in-store is an often overlooked opportunity to grow product conversions. Plus, he explains why ecommerce is not the death of brick and mortar stores.Main TakeawaysThe Rise of Digital: While consumers are moving their shopping habits to online platforms, those purchases still only make up for 7% of total items sold. This means marketers still need to place an emphasis on providing a memorable in-store customer experience.OOH Audio as an Asset: Advertisements are meant to make consumers think about a product and then take action. But getting someone to take those next steps is challenging. OOH audio allows for marketers to subtly remind consumers what they may have missed while they are already in your store.Trusted Source: With the move from third-party cookies, marketers must adjust the metrics they use to make their decisions when it comes to how they spend their ad dollars. This means that marketers will need to have more faith in the numbers that media partners report to them when making their ad-buying decisions.---Marketing Trends podcast is brought to you by Salesforce. Discover marketing built on the world’s number one CRM: Salesforce. Put your customer at the center of every interaction. Automate engagement with each customer. And build your marketing strategy around the entire customer journey. Salesforce. We bring marketing and engagement together. Learn more at salesforce.com/marketing. To learn more or subscribe to our weekly newsletter, visit MarketingTrends.com. 

For years the automotive industry has served as a beacon of America's thriving commerce industry. Now that once-thriving sector is facing a global chip shortage, which has caused automakers to slow production. With supply chains sputtering along,what does that mean for manufacturers such as GHSP— a company founded in 1924, with deep roots in providing automakers some of the key components used in everyday cars.“ We're not able to necessarily provide the product that our customers are looking for. They're not always able to, to continue their production. You have the consumer still wanting it. And so it's been unique in the sense that we aren't really looking for a lot of work. We're just looking to fulfill the work that we already have in terms of certainly in our auto space and the markets and companies that we service.” John Major is the Director of Marketing at GHSP, and on this episode of Marketing Trends, John details how GHSP is reinvesting in itself by building up its marketing efforts. John also provides examples of how the company is expanding its product offerings by jumping into the appliance sector, and he details the marketing strategies they are using to build brand awareness and to target potential customers. Enjoy this episode!Main TakeawaysWhere There’s a Will, There’s a Way: When your company is reliant on face-to-face interaction to demonstrate your products and services, it’s important to find new ways to engage your consumers. Consider finding alternative ways to display your products, such as putting together showcase videos or building out a TV studio in an effort to broadcast how the product works.Well, This is New: When you’re entering a new product space, one of the most important things a marketer can do is understand if you have product-market fit. Understanding the niche audience that will need and utilize your product is not only important when it comes to identifying who your target market is, but also in understanding how your service will be used.A Chance to Show Off: While product launches should be used as a marketing tool to build anticipation and excitement for your latest offering, they should also be used as ways to identify future customers and open up conversations for how your product should fit into their current offering.---Marketing Trends podcast is brought to you by Salesforce. Discover marketing built on the world’s number one CRM: Salesforce. Put your customer at the center of every interaction. Automate engagement with each customer. And build your marketing strategy around the entire customer journey. Salesforce. We bring marketing and engagement together. Learn more at salesforce.com/marketing. To learn more or subscribe to our weekly newsletter, visit MarketingTrends.com.

Not every marketing department has a large budget, and not every marketer has the endless resources needed to hire top-flight designers, editors, photographers, and videographers to create big-budget campaigns. So, what do you do if you’re a marketer that is confined to a strict budget? You do what marketers do and you get creative.“What we're doing with Fiverr, we are building a super brand one step at a time, and one step after another. If you are limited with budget, and you need to be creative and smart and brave, this is where the magic really is. This is how we want to build Fiverr as a brand. We want to be a brand that people will talk about and marketers will talk about because they're going to learn from it.”Fiverr originated as a website for quick five-dollar jobs, and has scaled into a two-sided marketplace for freelancers and job seekers, allowing marketers the opportunity to source quality work while trying out multiple freelancers. Gali Arnon is at the center of it all, and as the CMO of Fiverr, she’s working to evolve the company’s image into a well-known super brand. On this episode of Marketing Trends, Gali discusses how Fiverr uses influencer marketing to organically push the brand’s presence on digital platforms, and she also details how a recent brand refresh is putting the company's old mantra of five-dollar jobs in the rearview mirror.Main Takeaways:The Power of Influencers: Influencers remain a savvy way for marketers to gain organic awareness while also aligning the views of the company with the people that actually use the product. YouTube is one channel where influencers can tell their story in an organic and meaningful way without being confined to advertising time slots.The Makings of a Superbrand: Brands are not made overnight and your brand’s story is not written when you first launch. As your brand evolves, so must your message. Your base users may remain the same, but your target audience’s needs and expectations are constantly changing, so your brand needs to pivot as well.Have to Show Up: If you’re a digital marketer or an ecommerce company, search should remain an integral pillar of your marketing strategy. Whether that is through paid acquisitions or SEO, if consumers are not able to find you, or locate what they are looking for while on your site, it’s a missed opportunity to attract them to your brand and introduce them to your story.---Marketing Trends podcast is brought to you by Salesforce. Discover marketing built on the world’s number one CRM: Salesforce. Put your customer at the center of every interaction. Automate engagement with each customer. And build your marketing strategy around the entire customer journey. Salesforce. We bring marketing and engagement together. Learn more at salesforce.com/marketing. To learn more or subscribe to our weekly newsletter, visit MarketingTrends.com.

We have a saying here on Marketing Trends, ‘marketing is meant to be remarkable.’ But what exactly does that mean? Does that mean marketing is great customer service? Or maybe remarkable marketing is advertising that sticks with you. Rob Willey, the CMO of Cheribundi, gave his take on what remarkable marketing actually is.“The fastest way to make remarkable things is via innovation. Meaning identifying what consumers really want or need and catering to that in a meaningful and impactful way. Not every brand can do that, but I think if you start with the consumer, you're headed very quickly in the right direction. I think the wrong direction, which you see a lot of larger companies do is innovate for the supply chain. What can we make more of? What can we make better of? Does anybody even want better of that thing? And what that makes for is a lot of unremarkable products.”On this episode of Marketing Trends, Rob takes a stand on why marketers should stop focusing solely on ads, and instead start aligning themselves with their brand’s views. Rob also dives into how Cheribundi launched a rebrand of its product in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic by developing a better understanding of its power users and leaning into the strategies that separate Cheribundi from its competitors. Enjoy!Main Takeaways:Best Brands Have an Interesting Point of View: While advertising is important from a brand awareness standpoint, the best brands have a distinct and clear focus on what their point of views are and they relay those points of view to their consumers through their channels. A great PR strategy starts with identifying influencers that consumers can not only trust, but build meaningful relationships with. Those brands then use those influencers to relay messages in a unique and ambitious way.Pivot! Pivot!: For startup marketers, digital channels used to be a cheap way to build brand awareness while also gathering valuable information on who your target audience is. But as paid social has increased in cost, marketers have had to pivot their strategies. One of those pivots has been to increase brand relationships with influences. While these relationships can help build authentic relationships with your consumers, it’s also important to have a clear understanding if that influencer is an actual partner who loves your product or service.Rebranding for the Lifestyle: Marketers are always trying to find a better way to understand who their users are, but when you’re going through a rebranding process it's even more important to know who your power users are and why they love the product. Start by identifying your unfair advantage, what separates you from your competitors, and why your loyalists love your product. Then lean into your channels to test your messages and branding on them while gauging feedback as you rephrase the digital touchpoints of your brand.---Marketing Trends podcast is brought to you by Salesforce. Discover marketing built on the world’s number one CRM: Salesforce. Put your customer at the center of every interaction. Automate engagement with each customer. And build your marketing strategy around the entire customer journey. Salesforce. We bring marketing and engagement together. Learn more at salesforce.com/marketing. To learn more or subscribe to our weekly newsletter, visit MarketingTrends.com.

The term, ‘content is king,’ has never been more true than it is today. But while marketers are racing to simply come up with effective content at the speed that consumers expect, there is also a struggle to  produce and scale that content across all of the various channels that exist today.“It's less about costs, and it's more about speed and agility. Our world has changed with the pandemic. We all realize that it's accelerated that change. We all live in a digital-first world and businesses need to adapt to that. They actually have to have the teams inside the business with the right tools to be able to build those experiences really fast and change those experiences on the fly and do it across multiple markets and multiple languages. It's complex.”Bridget Perry knows a thing or two about helping marketers and creatives get access to the proper tools to get things done at the speed at which they require. Bridget served as the CMO of Adobe Europe when the company pivoted to a SaaS-based platform, and she is now the CMO of Contentful, where she is helping marketers push out all the content they need to at the pace and scale they require. On this episode of Marketing Trends, Bridget explains why headless content management systems are the future of content distribution systems, and she dives into the importance of creating a seamless customer experience that reaches your customers across all endpoints.Main Takeaways:Not The Front Door, The Side Door: When it comes to interacting with your brand, digital is often the first entry point for every consumer. But, more often than not, consumers are not interacting with your company's front page, instead, they are accessing your content through other landing pages. As a marketer, it's important to think about all those various touchpoints and make sure you are optimizing every experience to make sure that all your digital endpoints are operating in a cohesive manner.Content for All: It seems like content is being developed at the speed of light and it’s important that marketers have the ability to push that content and optimize it for all the necessary digital channels and not just think about where one piece of content will end up: web, email, text.Speed and Agility: Marketing today is less about overall cost and more about how quickly you can spin up content and then scale that content. As a marketer, your tech stack must reflect the reality that your teams need to be empowered with the particular services that allow them to meet those two critical functions. If your teams cannot operate in an efficient and agile manner, they will fall behind.---Marketing Trends podcast is brought to you by Salesforce. Discover marketing built on the world’s number one CRM: Salesforce. Put your customer at the center of every interaction. Automate engagement with each customer. And build your marketing strategy around the entire customer journey. Salesforce. We bring marketing and engagement together. Learn more at salesforce.com/marketing. To learn more or subscribe to our weekly newsletter, visit MarketingTrends.com.

Let’s be frank: what your brand says and what it actually does are sometimes two very different things. With consumer expectations rising, they are now checking their receipts and making sure that the rhetoric stemming from a brand actually matches its actions.“Consumers more than ever before, and customers more than ever before, look to make sure that what our brand is saying is what is delivered through every interaction and every touch point that they have in their experience. It's a promise, made promise mindset. Your brand is your promise that you're making, your customer experience is how you're keeping that promise through each and every interaction.”Tyrrell Schmidt is the CMO for TD Bank, AMCB and Head of Global Brand for TD Bank Group, and on this episode of Marketing Trends, she discusses how TD adapts its marketing strategies to ensure they stay committed to the bank’s brand promise. She also touches on the unique ways TD continues to put the customer at the center of everything it does, and why the best way to attract new talent is to take a look internally. Enjoy!Main Takeaways:Know Your Voice: As consumer expectations rise, their behavior is changing as well. Consumers are now looking at brands and aligning their spending with brands that have values that align with their own. Brands need to make sure that they are very clear about what their values are and then they have to put their money where their mouth is.A Great Experience Over a Great Campaign: Marketers need to shift their mindset from developing grand campaigns into delivering valuable experiences. When marketers create lasting experiences for consumers through all possible touchpoints, consumers trust that they will always get something good from your brand and loyalty will grow.A Look in the Mirror: The best way to attract new marketing talent is by promoting a culture and atmosphere that breeds success. When that atmosphere exists internally, employees will be more bought in and you will find stars to promote from within.---Marketing Trends podcast is brought to you by Salesforce. Discover marketing built on the world’s number one CRM: Salesforce. Put your customer at the center of every interaction. Automate engagement with each customer. And build your marketing strategy around the entire customer journey. Salesforce. We bring marketing and engagement together. Learn more at salesforce.com/marketing. To learn more or subscribe to our weekly newsletter, visit MarketingTrends.com.

Consumers are different today than they were last year or even last week. Tastes constantly change, and if there is one thing marketers are frequently reminded of, its that there is no secret recipe to understand consumer trends in the marketplace. All you can do is look at the data, and what it says these days is that consumers are more focused on a brand's values than they ever have been before. They want to see transparency and have trust in the brands they buy from. As a result, companies like Vital Farms are at the forefront of many consumers’ minds.“There's a general movement towards people wanting to eat real food and knowing where it comes from to trust that source. That's very much the mindset that we focus on. There’s a demographic, but more a mindset of people that are willing to pay a premium for products that they believe in and trust that are looking for brands that have values similar to their own.”Scott Marcus is the CMO of Vital Farms, a company that prides itself on bringing ethical food to the table while being honest with customers about how that happens. On this episode of Marketing Trends, Scott explains why Vital Farms’ traceability program is helping the company reach these values-focused consumers, and he explains how to meet customers throughout the buying journey.Main Takeaways:A Market Shift: Consumers have been changing their buying habits for more than a decade and it’s important for marketers to understand the reasoning behind that shift. As consumers continue to change their focus to more health-conscious food efforts, or more brand value decision-making, it’s equally as important for marketers to alter their messaging to meet those needs.Stuck in the Middle: When it comes to issues, brands can no longer stay in the middle. Brands must be honest and transparent about where they fall and what issues they support. When brands attempt to play both sides of issues, consumers end up tuning their message out.New Category, New Problems: Building trust is not only important as far as helping your consumers in their buying journey, but it’s equally as important when your brand attempts to enter into a new segment. Brands that build trust with their consumers will have an easier time entering new markets because of the equity that they have built up with their customers over time.---Marketing Trends podcast is brought to you by Salesforce. Discover marketing built on the world’s number one CRM: Salesforce. Put your customer at the center of every interaction. Automate engagement with each customer. And build your marketing strategy around the entire customer journey. Salesforce. We bring marketing and engagement together. Learn more at salesforce.com/marketing. To learn more or subscribe to our weekly newsletter, visit MarketingTrends.com.

We talk about brands a lot on Marketing Trends. From the relationship consumers have with their favorite companies, to the marketing strategies behind what makes them thrive. But while we spend all this time talking about brands, we don’t often talk about parent companies or the challenges they face when marketing a portfolio of multiple brands, each of which serves a very different demographic. Casper’s Ice Cream is one of those companies. Casper’s has outgrown the safety net of its beloved FatBoy ice cream sandwiches and now oversees three very distinct brands and products. What Casper’s had known and done for so long with FatBoy wouldn’t necessarily work with its broader product portfolio, so something had to change. “When the opportunity came to launch those good-for-you products, it really was a real shift in mindset. We'd always kind of sat around and we were the consumers of our products, so we knew what the consumers wanted because we were that consumer. Trying to train ourselves and bring in experts on what the consumers of these other brands wanted was really us relearning everything we thought we knew. ”Keith Lawes is the EVP and Corporate Secretary at Casper’s Ice Cream, a family-owned and operated company producing FatBoy Ice Cream Sandwiches, Jolly Llama, and Churnbaby Ice Cream. On this episode of Marketing Trends, Keith provides the scoop on how Casper’s utilizes influencer marketing strategies to push its brands to various target audiences, and he explains why the company continues to lean into national advertising to grow the business. Enjoy!Main Takeaways:Can You be Influenced: Brands are trying to find real and engaging ways to connect with their audience and one of the ways they are doing so is through influencer marketing. Using influencers does more than just push your message out, it creates a much more organic way to grow your brand’s awareness among the audience that means the most to you. to create your content is an organic strategy to grow your brand's awareness.The Power of Sponsorships: Sponsorships have many benefits. The first is that they act as a key way to get your brand in front of consumers that might not be familiar with your product. Additionally, sponsorships offer a strategy for cementing the power and presence of your brand within the marketplace by showcasing your brand’s bona fides with an already trusted source.Getting to Know Your Brand: When you acquire a new brand, it’s important to understand the consumer base that product is targeting and why those consumers gravitate toward that product in the first place. Don’t just push your tried and true marketing strategies based on what has worked in the past. Make sure you are consistently gauging the market and learning why your consumers are choosing certain products.---Marketing Trends podcast is brought to you by Salesforce. Discover marketing built on the world’s number one CRM: Salesforce. Put your customer at the center of every interaction. Automate engagement with each customer. And build your marketing strategy around the entire customer journey. Salesforce. We bring marketing and engagement together. Learn more at salesforce.com/marketing. To learn more or subscribe to our weekly newsletter, visit MarketingTrends.com.

In an ever-changing landscape mixed with rising customer expectations, a flurry of new channels to play in, and endless amounts of marketing tools, developing a marketing strategy to meet a company's ambitious growth goals can be trying.“The fast acceleration of change puts a lot of demand on brands and clients to make sure that they're up to date on the best path forward.”Melissa Dorko is the Chief Growth Officer at Wunderman Thompson, a marketing agency that prides itself on helping some of the world’s biggest brands think outside the box. On this episode of Marketing Trends, Dorko helps tell the story of agency marketing, and how they partner with clients to inspire growth utilizing unique marketing strategies that put an emphasis on data and technology. Enjoy!Main TakeawaysStart Slow Before Moving Fast: When you are building relationships with your clients it's important to make sure that you are not diving into the deep end from the beginning. Instead, bring them along slowly. Start with a discovery call and move along to small projects before tackling some of the larger big picture things.Data with a Dash of Creativity: Marketers need to be data-driven, but not all your marketing efforts need to strictly be data-driven. Use your data to lead your creative efforts to create materials that not only inspire your audience but resonate with them.On a Rocketship: It's important for marketers to understand that growth is not just determined by whether people think of brands or the value that they provide, but also by what they think of them. While brand awareness is always an important goal to any growth strategy, inspiration and brand values are an equally important part of a brand’s growth strategy.---Marketing Trends podcast is brought to you by Salesforce. Discover marketing built on the world’s number one CRM: Salesforce. Put your customer at the center of every interaction. Automate engagement with each customer. And build your marketing strategy around the entire customer journey. Salesforce. We bring marketing and engagement together. Learn more at salesforce.com/marketing. To learn more or subscribe to our weekly newsletter, visit MarketingTrends.com.

By now you’ve probably heard a lot of our guests talk about the need for marketers to have a 360-degree of their customers. But that begs the question why? What makes up that 360-degree view and what benefits does having all this data actually do for your business?“[Data] is no longer just a marketing function it's the whole enterprise.It's real estate it's where do I open stores? Where do I close stores? It's merchandising, what products should I sell? How should they be priced? How should they be displayed? All relying on real-time data. What's happened is the CMO’s role has become much more central.”Jonathan Silver is the CEO of Affinity Solutions, a data-led intelligence platform that uses purchase signals to help marketers make better decisions. Jonathan and his company are putting all that data to good use and on this episode of Marketing Trends, he explains how. Jonathan dives into what those purchase signals are and how they are helping marketers compile a 360-degree view of their consumers' behavior. Plus, he reveals what the next phase of personalization is and how marketers can attack it.Main Takeaways:Hyper-Personalization: Marketers’ personalization efforts are evolving from simple OOH advertising and targeted ads to individual immersive experiences that include the ability to personalize screens, provide product suggestions, and  use in-store overlays to cater to individual consumers.I Can See Clearly Now: Data has never been more important to the overall success of a company's marketing strategy than it is today. But while data allows marketers to predict trends, and set prices, it’s also allowing those same marketers to put together a 360-degree view of a consumer’s behavior. By creating this holistic view, marketers can see what consumers are doing outside of their stores, websites, and individual interactions. Without data, marketers are only getting a partial view of the customer journey.A Single Source of Truth: As cookies fade away and privacy regulations continue to change, marketers must adjust how they collect information about their consumers and no longer rely on multiple third-party data sources to provide them with valuable insights about their customers. By having a single source of truth, which is a single platform where marketers can access their data, marketers can freely trust where their data lives.---Marketing Trends podcast is brought to you by Salesforce. Discover marketing built on the world’s number one CRM: Salesforce. Put your customer at the center of every interaction. Automate engagement with each customer. And build your marketing strategy around the entire customer journey. Salesforce. We bring marketing and engagement together. Learn more at salesforce.com/marketing. To learn more or subscribe to our weekly newsletter, visit MarketingTrends.com.

In the security realm, no one person or product can fight cybercrime alone. And for marketers, no one product or tool out of a MarTech stack can singlehandedly deliver the experience and support that customers require in today’s digital world. That’s why even for a company such as McAfee, which helps users fight off some of the internet's worst bad actors, there will always be a touch of human interaction in its marketing efforts.“As much as we can use digital, we can be data-driven, we can use A.I. in some places, but there’s still a reality that there's a human factor and the human factor is that customers are fluid. They don't stand still, people move all the time. Our competitors move all the time. There's still for us a human aspect. So that's where we're trying to put focus is how do you operationalize that human piece, so it's not just about having access to data, buying access to data, and having a really good digital story. You need a human story still. We still need human beings engaging with human beings.”That’s Lynne Doherty, EVP of Global Sales and Marketing at McAfee and on this episode of Marketing Trends, Lynne dives into what the future MarTech stack will look like, how McAfee is developing strategies to create a single source of truth when it comes to its data strategy and the challenges of navigating a rebrand while simultaneously being an advocate for your customers and meeting business goals. Enjoy!Main TakeawaysChanging Landscape: The hiring process for marketers is not only opening up new opportunities to hire talent from all corners of the globe, but it’s also forcing marketers to rethink how they host events. Centralized and local events are now a thing of the past. If you don’t have centralized customer locations where you do on-premise marketing and on-premises demand gen, your talent inevitably gets spread out, which means the hiring habits of companies and their customers are changing.Meshing Data with a Human Element: While it’s important for your marketing department to make tough decisions based on what your data is telling you, your entire marketing strategy can’t just be predicated from data. Make sure you are continuing to deploy a hybrid approach to your marketing efforts by utilizing technology and data while mixing in a human connection with your customers.Platform Instead of Products: The MarTech stack is not only a marketer’s candy shop, but it can also be one of the biggest obstacles and challenges when it comes to understanding how their marketing stack best works for them. In the future, the MarTech stack will begin to shrink and instead of marketers relying on multiple tools from various vendors, they will start to rely on platforms that house multiple tools and still create a single source of truth for their data.---It's time to reconnect at Connections 2021! Hear from Marketing, Commerce, and Digital Visionaries who’ve created bold experiences with Customer 360 and learn how to be a successful marketer from anywhere. Sign up now for FREE at bit.ly/SalesforceMarketingTrends---Marketing Trends podcast is brought to you by Salesforce. Discover marketing built on the world’s number one CRM: Salesforce. Put your customer at the center of every interaction. Automate engagement with each customer. And build your marketing strategy around the entire customer journey. Salesforce. We bring marketing and engagement together. Learn more at salesforce.com/marketing. To learn more or subscribe to our weekly newsletter, visit MarketingTrends.com.

Marketing today is about being data-driven and understanding who your customers are. Developing a holistic view of the customer is about to get harder, though, thanks to a new world we’re all about to enter: a world without cookies. “If you are really heavy on third-party data, then you are going to be impacted the most. If you have built a good first-party data strategy and have enough data, you can survive longer. Based on my experience, third-party data wasn't always working or effective. The best way to navigate this is to start building up your first-party. This may be complex for some, but if they start small and slow they can still catch up.”Meet Mazen Mroueh, Head of Global Digital Factory for Frieslandcampina, one of the world’s largest dairy factories. On this episode of Marketing Trends, Mazen tackles the tough question of how marketers can best prepare themselves for a future without cookies and what it will take to build up their first-party data.. Plus, Mazen shares his outlook for what marketers can expect in a post-COVID world and why there is no view quite like a 360-degree look of your customers.Main TakeawaysBut Where Have all the Cookies Gone?: Companies that have been reliant on third-party data are going to have a hard time with the transition to a cookieless world. To help ease that transition to a cookieless world, marketers must start thinking about their strategies to build up their first-party data.Developing A 360-Degree View: The objective for every marketer is to continuously be collecting data, but marketers must make sure that whatever data they gather lives under one unified roof rather than being diverted to different silos. When your data lives in multiple places, it becomes harder to connect all your digital touchpoints. Having a single source of data not only eliminates that friction, but allows your team to gather insights at a quicker pace.The Next Big Shift: The skills a marketer needs to be successful are continuing to shift. While marketers must continue to be data literate, they must also be able to most quickly and effectively. The next wave of marketers will be less about possessing a specific knowledge or skill set, and more about being flexible.---It's time to reconnect at Connections 2021! Hear from Marketing, Commerce, and Digital Visionaries who’ve created bold experiences with Customer 360 and learn how to be a successful marketer from anywhere. Sign up now for FREE at bit.ly/SalesforceMarketingTrends---Marketing Trends podcast is brought to you by Salesforce. Discover marketing built on the world’s number one CRM: Salesforce. Put your customer at the center of every interaction. Automate engagement with each customer. And build your marketing strategy around the entire customer journey. Salesforce. We bring marketing and engagement together. Learn more at salesforce.com/marketing. To learn more or subscribe to our weekly newsletter, visit MarketingTrends.com.

Marketers constantly talk about knowing what your unfair advantage is. For small CPG manufacturers, which are often the driving force behind industry innovation, turning that unfair advantage into a profitable business strategy takes a lot of work and quite a bit of finesse, too. “As a small company, you need to double down on what you're good at. A lot of companies try to move too fast and want to have ideas across the board. Ideas are great, but you've gotta be able to execute and build a program behind it, and build loyalty behind it before you try to explode nationally or explode across a number of categories.”Executing on those big ideas when you’re a small business strapped for data can be near impossible. After all, how are you supposed to know what’s working and what’s not? That’s where Andrew Criezis, Chief Strategy and Product Officer at Byzzer, comes in. Byzzer helps small and medium-sized businesses take action while making more data accessible to small CPG businesses. On this episode of Marketing Trends, Andrew explains some of the industry trends within the CPG space that data is helping to detect, how they are helping SMBs identify that unfair advantage, and how data is helping companies not just understand consumer behavior, but market to their lifestyle.Main TakeawaysTake Calculated Bets: As a small company you need to understand what your strengths and weaknesses are and how they fit into your company’s long-term plans strategically. Once you’ve identified where your strengths are, double down on those strengths and build off of them before you explore new categories.Build a Data-First Culture: The biggest gap between large and small companies is data and how it’s used to drive their marketing strategies. By building a data-first culture, you’re not only encouraging and teaching your employees how to use and derive insights from your data, but you are also formulating a long-form plan for growth that is not reliant on chance, but what your customers are telling you.Data-Know How: Use your data to not only understand who your customers are but to understand how they operate from a lifestyle perspective as well. Regardless of where your data comes from, make sure that it is helping you make calculated decisions to meet your consumers at every touchpoint.---Marketing Trends podcast is brought to you by Salesforce. Discover marketing built on the world’s number one CRM: Salesforce. Put your customer at the center of every interaction. Automate engagement with each customer. And build your marketing strategy around the entire customer journey. Salesforce. We bring marketing and engagement together. Learn more at salesforce.com/marketing. To learn more or subscribe to our weekly newsletter, visit MarketingTrends.com.---This message is brought to you by Salesforce.Hey marketers. Today’s B2B buyers are more complex than ever. And every buying committee has different needs and goals.Salesforce can help.We'll show you how to put each and every customer at the center of your B2B marketing strategy. And you'll learn how top brands like Lyft approach account-based marketing.Salesforce. Market to every account. Speak to every buyer.Find free B2B marketing and ABM resources at https://sfdc.co/every-buyer 

The role of a marketer really is as simple as Jennifer Mathissen says it is.“My job, and really most CMOs' job, is to be the primary advocate for the customer.”Jennifer is the CMO of Santander Bank in the US, and while her assessment of a marketer’s job sounds simple, there’s more to it than meets the eye. A marketer has to provide a story behind the compelling products and services that make up a brand, and a marketer has to create the space that makes it possible for a consumer to build a meaningful relationship with your company. On this episode of Marketing Trends, Jennifer goes deeper on the intricacies of the role of marketers and CMOs, and she explains how to properly build a marketing culture that cultivates passion and creativity. Plus, Jennifer discusses why your marketing efforts should never feel transactional.Main TakeawaysBecome an Advocate: The role of every marketer is to be an advocate for the customer. In order to become that voice for your consumers, you have to make sure that you have a pulse on every aspect of your marketing department and understand where any issues are coming from. Once you have a clear picture of the obstacles in play, you can begin the process of creating a frictionless customer experience ecosystem.More Than a Transaction: Marketing should never feel transactional, but instead your marketing practices should always feel as if they have in mind the best interest of the consumer and not the company. Make sure your marketing materials are never self-serving but are designed in a way that builds a true relationship between the brand and the customer.Refocus Processes to Build Creativity: Every marketing department needs to be cognizant of the process in place that could stunt your team’s creativity. If your marketing team is not passionate and creative, it's a missed opportunity on all fronts. Make sure you are continuously opening the door for your team to be more creative while finding unique ways to keep them energized.---Marketing Trends podcast is brought to you by Salesforce. Discover marketing built on the world’s number one CRM: Salesforce. Put your customer at the center of every interaction. Automate engagement with each customer. And build your marketing strategy around the entire customer journey. Salesforce. We bring marketing and engagement together. Learn more at salesforce.com/marketing. To learn more or subscribe to our weekly newsletter, visit MarketingTrends.com.---This message is brought to you by Salesforce.Hey marketers. Today’s B2B buyers are more complex than ever. And every buying committee has different needs and goals.Salesforce can help.We'll show you how to put each and every customer at the center of your B2B marketing strategy. And you'll learn how top brands like Lyft approach account-based marketing.Salesforce. Market to every account. Speak to every buyer.Find free B2B marketing and ABM resources at https://sfdc.co/every-buyer 

Randy Frisch wants you to know something: he doesn’t hate content marketing. Randy just believes that if you’re going to invest your time and resources into something, you should make it memorable.“The idea there was not that we shouldn't create content. It wasn't that I hate content marketers. It was more so that there's no value in creating all this content if it's not going to get used, and if it's not going to be found.”Randy is the CMO and Co-founder of Uberflip, an experience marketing platform that is empowering marketers to create remarkable content by surfacing the right thing at the right time. On this episode of Marketing Trends, Randy discusses what content experiences are and how marketers can better leverage their content to create lasting impressions on their buyers. Plus, he explains why your personalization efforts are not as good as you think they are.Main TakeawaysSolving the Correct Problem: Marketers are more in control of the B2B journey than ever before, and while marketers are focusing heavily on personalizing those journeys for their buyers, there is often a disconnect between the experiences that marketers deliver and what buyers are expecting.Content as an Experience: Everyone is producing content, from videos to blog posts, and it's easy to just put anything up on your company website. What makes for great content is the experience that surrounds it. This can include things like the visual aesthetic, the landing page it lives on, the display and the placement. Don’t just produce content, but make sure the content you are producing is a memorable experience for the consumer.Marketing and Sales Alignment: Marketing and sales should no longer be operating in silos. On average, when the two departments operate separately from one another, it could cost businesses between 20 and 30% in revenue. To build valuable content, your content must reflect the goals of your sales and should sync with the way you talk about your product and service.---Marketing Trends podcast is brought to you by Salesforce. Discover marketing built on the world’s number one CRM: Salesforce. Put your customer at the center of every interaction. Automate engagement with each customer. And build your marketing strategy around the entire customer journey. Salesforce. We bring marketing and engagement together. Learn more at salesforce.com/marketing. To learn more or subscribe to our weekly newsletter, visit MarketingTrends.com.---This message is brought to you by Salesforce.Hey marketers. Today’s B2B buyers are more complex than ever. And every buying committee has different needs and goals.Salesforce can help.We'll show you how to put each and every customer at the center of your B2B marketing strategy. And you'll learn how top brands like Lyft approach account-based marketing.Salesforce. Market to every account. Speak to every buyer.Find free B2B marketing and ABM resources at https://sfdc.co/every-buyer 

Much like photographers utilize various lens lengths to create different perspectives, marketers have a bevy of different tools at their disposal to create and present different yet equally memorable customer experiences. But if you ask Joy Corso, CMO of Vonage, the view that matters the most is the one the customer sees, and that’s where marketers should be pulling focus.“We're here to deliver solutions to our customers. That's why we're in business and when we do our jobs well, that results in solving that pain point, and it results in a better outcome for our customers.”But in order to put customers first and to see things from their point of view, marketers must have a grip on their tech stack and how it affects the customer journey from top to bottom. On this episode of Marketing Trends, Joy pulls back the curtain on how Vonage uses its marketing tech stack to create lasting and memorable customer experiences. Plus, she reveals why your MarTech stack is the secret sauce to customer success if used correctly.Main TakeawaysCreating a Lasting Experience: Customers today want to get from A to B in their buying process as quickly as possible. But that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be memorable, too. In order to make both a seamless and remarkable experience, marketers are putting more effort into the customer journey than ever before.How Do You Stack Up: It’s easy to buy the latest and greatest marketing tools, but according to a Gartner study, 58% of marketers already don’t utilize their entire tech stack. Make sure to take close inventory of the marketing tools you have on-hand already and make sure you are getting value out of that product before adding more things to your MarTech stack.Business First Mindset: As a CMO, you’re no longer just responsible for the marketing functions of the business. When marketers have a seat at the leadership level, you have to be thinking about the business, understanding the financials, understanding the operations and how the entire business operates as opposed to just the marketing aspect of it. Then the CMO’s job is to align your marketing strategies with that of the business.---Marketing Trends podcast is brought to you by Salesforce. Discover marketing built on the world’s number one CRM: Salesforce. Put your customer at the center of every interaction. Automate engagement with each customer. And build your marketing strategy around the entire customer journey. Salesforce. We bring marketing and engagement together. Learn more at salesforce.com/marketing. To learn more or subscribe to our weekly newsletter, visit MarketingTrends.com.---This message is brought to you by Salesforce.Hey marketers. Today’s B2B buyers are more complex than ever. And every buying committee has different needs and goals.Salesforce can help.We'll show you how to put each and every customer at the center of your B2B marketing strategy. And you'll learn how top brands like Lyft approach account-based marketing.Salesforce. Market to every account. Speak to every buyer.Find free B2B marketing and ABM resources at https://sfdc.co/every-buyer 

In 2021, every marketer is trying to crack the code of who their customers are. What makes them tick, and most importantly, what will make them need your product? But what happens when every one of your customers has a different use case for your product? There’s no one-size-fits-all approach for that situation, so how do you tailor your message to fit their individual needs?“Getting to know customers is a really critical function for any marketer, and it's something that I encourage across my entire team, regardless of role, you need to get to know the customer.”Jeff Boehm is the CMO of Formlabs, a professional 3D printing company that is pushing the boundaries when it comes to what can be printed. Formlabs sells to companies across various industries, from dentists to engineers, to architects, so finding a message that works for everyone can be a daunting task. On this episode of Marketing Trends, Jeff explains how Formlabs is getting to know its customer base by implementing a data-driven marketing approach, and he gets deep on the importance of personalizing your marketing messaging to resonate with the customer.Main TakeawaysGet to Know Your Customers: When your product or service can be used across various industries, it’s important to understand that your marketing message is not going to work for each customer. Instead of focusing on one specific message, use horizontal messaging tactics where one message can resonate with many customers, but then also implement a more personalized approach where you can so that you can better meet your customers’ needsFocus on What Works: Make sure you are focusing your messaging on what is not only more practical for your customers but what is scalable. While Formlabs produces items for various industries, such as movies and TV shows, its primary use case is streamlining manufacturing workflows. Know who your audience is and meet them in the channels that they already frequent.Data-Driven 3D Printing: Everything in marketing is moving toward being more data-driven, which is allowing teams the freedom and flexibility to measure their marketing strategies at a grander scale. With that flexibility, encourage your teams to experiment with their strategies to see what is working and what is not working this way you can fail fast and move on to the next strategy that will work. ---Marketing Trends podcast is brought to you by Salesforce. Discover marketing built on the world’s number one CRM: Salesforce. Put your customer at the center of every interaction. Automate engagement with each customer. And build your marketing strategy around the entire customer journey. Salesforce. We bring marketing and engagement together. Learn more at salesforce.com/marketing. To learn more or subscribe to our weekly newsletter, visit MarketingTrends.com.---This message is brought to you by Salesforce.Hey marketers. Today’s B2B buyers are more complex than ever. And every buying committee has different needs and goals.Salesforce can help.We'll show you how to put each and every customer at the center of your B2B marketing strategy. And you'll learn how top brands like Lyft approach account-based marketing.Salesforce. Market to every account. Speak to every buyer.Find free B2B marketing and ABM resources at https://sfdc.co/every-buyer 

When you think of out-of-home advertising, your mind probably drifts to those aging billboards you see passing by along the highway. And while those old-school relics do fall into the realm of out-of-home marketing, there is actually much more to it. Essentially, the term out-of-home advertising can be applied to anything that can be used as a marketing canvas. Mobile devices, Time Square, digital signage, you name it. And for marketers looking to optimize their ad spend and target specific audiences, out-of-home advertising has become a necessity."The notion of being able to attribute value to out-of-home exposure is something that is really driving that interest....There's an ability of the out-of-home media to actually deliver a very powerful amplification effect on other types of media, so we're creating this very diverse marketing mix where out-of-home is being introduced into the digital paradigm. It is a very different type of media, but it has this tremendous effect of being able to double once-off display mobile CTV, et cetera. So that is obviously very, very attractive and very compelling for omni-channel and digital buyers."Meet Kate Goldvasser, the Head of Programmatic for AdQuick, which many believe is the easiest and most efficient way for marketers to buy outdoor advertising. On this episode of Marketing Trends, Kate dives into the intricacies of programmatic marketing, including why programmatic marketing is forcing the industry into a more measurable and effective type of advertising. Plus, Kate describes how AdQuick is bringing transparency to outdoor advertising.Main TakeawaysMore than a Billboard: Out-of-home advertising is not a one-size-fits-all marketing strategy. While out-of-home advertising was once viewed by marketers as a channel to spotlight their brands via billboards, it has become a full-funnel communications channel.Strategies that Work: Every marketer wants to see their brand's message displayed in high-traffic and densely-populated markets such as New York’s Time Square. But the reality is marketers need to be strategic with how they push their messaging. Out-of-home advertising affords marketers the opportunity to target specific audiences at specific times of the day based on their target customers. Utilizing a strategy in areas outside of New York will allow you to reach a larger audience with moneyWhat is Attribution: Attribution is no longer just measuring and delivering results at the end of a campaign. Now attribution has become a powerful tool for marketers when it comes to optimization.---Marketing Trends podcast is brought to you by Salesforce. Discover marketing built on the world’s number one CRM: Salesforce. Put your customer at the center of every interaction. Automate engagement with each customer. And build your marketing strategy around the entire customer journey. Salesforce. We bring marketing and engagement together. Learn more at salesforce.com/marketing. To learn more or subscribe to our weekly newsletter, visit MarketingTrends.com.---This message is brought to you by Salesforce.Hey marketers. Today’s B2B buyers are more complex than ever. And every buying committee has different needs and goals.Salesforce can help.We'll show you how to put each and every customer at the center of your B2B marketing strategy. And you'll learn how top brands like Lyft approach account-based marketing.Salesforce. Market to every account. Speak to every buyer.Find free B2B marketing and ABM resources at https://sfdc.co/every-buyer 

Missed deadlines, delays, and projects that never see the light of day. These things are the bane of any marketer’s existence, but they are the common obstacles that arise with any kind of project. The true challenge of marketing is much deeper than that. “The biggest challenge of marketing is to build brand awareness of your product or service in a way that resonates with customers to the point that they cannot live without your product. It doesn't matter if you're selling to consumers or businesses, you need to utilize technology to be able to answer questions at all hours of the day and night so customers don't leave your site to head over to a competitor.”Those are the words of Jennifer Sabin, the Director of Content Marketing at Capacity, and it’s her belief that to solve that big challenge, marketers need to be laser-focused on two things: customer acquisition and retention. On this episode of Marketing Trends, Jennifer explains what she means, and she also details why an agile approach to marketing is the best way for marketers to keep up with demanding workflows.Main TakeawaysAgile Marketing: Planning and prioritization are the heartbeats of any agile marketing approach. When taking an agile marketing approach, teams should be assigned due dates with full transparency on the timeline of each project. This kind of workflow gives teams the ability to collaborate freely with one another, while also giving team members the freedom to create a process that will allow them to meet the expectations that were set.Does Your Content Fit?: Not every piece of content will resonate with every potential buyer, but every piece of content that you create should resonate with a particular buyer segment. When developing your content, make sure you know who your target audience is, where they are in their customer journey, and make sure that the content you are presenting them is the right content to resonate with their specific needs.Data-Driven World: Every marketing decision you make should be rooted in data. Make sure you are using every analytics tool at your disposal, from Google Analytics to Salesforce’s dashboard, to see where your customers are engaging with your content. By following the data, you can easily and quickly pivot your marketing strategy and funds to campaigns or ads that are performing better to help optimize your marketing spend.---Marketing Trends podcast is brought to you by Salesforce. Discover marketing built on the world’s number one CRM: Salesforce. Put your customer at the center of every interaction. Automate engagement with each customer. And build your marketing strategy around the entire customer journey. Salesforce. We bring marketing and engagement together. Learn more at salesforce.com/marketing.---This message is brought to you by Salesforce.Hey marketers. Today’s B2B buyers are more complex than ever. And every buying committee has different needs and goals.Salesforce can help.We'll show you how to put each and every customer at the center of your B2B marketing strategy. And you'll learn how top brands like Lyft approach account-based marketing.Salesforce. Market to every account. Speak to every buyer.Find free B2B marketing and ABM resources at https://sfdc.co/every-buyer 

There is one simple tip to keep in mind when it comes to brand building: know who you are and what your mission is. That’s advice from powerhouse brand builder and VP of Brand Experience for Fjällräven, Jean-Marie Shields.  As she explains it, when you have those core tenants down pat, the rest of your marketing can flow naturally. “We're a 60-year-old company and our whole mission is very simple — it's to inspire people to walk with nature. In marketing or branding, we use that message for everything we do.” Throughout her career, Jean-Marie has worked with some of the world’s most well-known brands, from Nike to Lululemon, with a stop at Starbucks in between, and she’s helped grow some of the world’s most loyal customer bases through the power of storytelling and mission building. On this episode of Marketing Trends, Jean-Marie tells us those stories, and she delivers key insights on why branding and messaging is a two-way conversation between brands and consumers. Plus, she explains how Fjällräven’s ability to be flexible in its messaging paid off big time in 2020 and she gives a look at what’s ahead in 2021.Main Takeaways:Two-Way Conversation: The role of branding and marketing is to be an enabler of two-way conversations between the consumer and the brand. While it’s never been more important to understand who your customers are and to meet them where they are, brands must also remain consistent in their values and purpose as to what brought consumers to them in the first place.Messaging Matters: When you are brought on to manage any type of product crisis, you need to keep in mind a few things; No. 1, the messaging you deliver to your consumers must remain honest and open so that they can understand the shift in philosophy; No. 2, the messaging that you are delivering to your team members must remain consistent, and you need to allow for participation and include them in the conversation as to why things are happening and how they can help.The Power of A Good Story: Your partnerships should not only align with your brand’s mission and values but also allow you to build deeper relationships with your user base. For example, when Fjällräven partnered with REI, that partnership served a dual purpose of telling a product/brand story, and also bringing customers closer to a retailer that was already a consumer favorite.---Marketing Trends podcast is brought to you by Salesforce. Discover marketing built on the world’s number one CRM: Salesforce. Put your customer at the center of every interaction. Automate engagement with each customer. And build your marketing strategy around the entire customer journey. Salesforce. We bring marketing and engagement together. Learn more at salesforce.com/marketing. To learn more or subscribe to our weekly newsletter, visit MarketingTrends.com.---This message is brought to you by Salesforce.Hey marketers. Today’s B2B buyers are more complex than ever. And every buying committee has different needs and goals.Salesforce can help.We'll show you how to put each and every customer at the center of your B2B marketing strategy. And you'll learn how top brands like Lyft approach account-based marketing.Salesforce. Market to every account. Speak to every buyer.Find free B2B marketing and ABM resources at https://sfdc.co/every-buyer 

We hear all the time that marketers at their core are storytellers. And there’s no better way to sell your product than to put a story behind it. But what if your product is not really a product? What if the product is simply just analytics? How do you brand that experience? Jim Sinai was presented with that very challenge when he helped launch Einstein, Salesforce’s A.I. for CRM, and he said there were two key things that stuck out about that experience.“There's two actually really important lessons for all the marketers out there. One, research is important, but having a gut and a conviction is also important. Marc had this instinct that it needed to have a persona and it needed to be identifiable and it needed to be something that people could look at and grab onto. The other was that you've got to pitch the story. You can't tell the story when you're trying to sell someone on something that it's right or wrong, you can't just tell them why, you’ve got to go into pitch mode as though you're talking as you're selling the story to the press.”While Jim is fond of his days at Salesforce, he’s now the SVP of Marketing at Procore, a company that is making waves in the construction industry by helping companies get things done quicker, but most importantly on time. On this episode of Marketing Trends, Jim dives into what is making Procore stand above its competitors: including how to best understand and relate to your customers, and why every marketing strategy needs to start by identifying your unfair advantage.Main TakeawaysKnow the Language: When you’re doing vertical SaaS, especially in an industry such as construction, it’s important to speak the language that your customers can understand. Instead of simply telling your consumer you have A.I., tell them how the A.I. benefits them. Customers > Logos: Successful businesses are built on existing and returning customers. This is why it’s incredibly important to continuously maintain a high level of customer service. By creating brand loyalty, and really working to gain a complete understanding of who your customers are, you can then use that knowledge in messaging and marketing tactics rather than relying on flashy logos or branding.What’s Your Unfair Advantage: It may sound like Marketing 101, but one of the most important things a marketer can do is gain an understanding of what their unfair advantage is in the marketplace is, and then exploit that unfair advantage to win the trust and loyalty of customers.---Marketing Trends podcast is brought to you by Salesforce. Discover marketing built on the world’s number one CRM: Salesforce. Put your customer at the center of every interaction. Automate engagement with each customer. And build your marketing strategy around the entire customer journey. Salesforce. We bring marketing and engagement together. Learn more at salesforce.com/marketing. To learn more or subscribe to our weekly newsletter, visit MarketingTrends.com.---This message is brought to you by Salesforce.Hey marketers. Today’s B2B buyers are more complex than ever. And every buying committee has different needs and goals.Salesforce can help.We'll show you how to put each and every customer at the center of your B2B marketing strategy. And you'll learn how top brands like Lyft approach account-based marketing.Salesforce. Market to every account. Speak to every buyer.Find free B2B marketing and ABM resources at https://sfdc.co/every-buyer 

There’s a saying that the most powerful mechanism we have to motivate, to inspire, and to educate is storytelling. And the purpose of storytelling is not to tell you how to think, but to give the listener the tools to draw conclusions, which is why storytelling has been such a useful tool for parents, teachers, and educators of all kinds for centuries. Both adults and kids can understand and learn from stories, and the old school method is making a comeback. Meet the Toniebox, a loveable little storytime friend that’s giving kids an alternative to screens by putting the power of storytelling back into their hands.“If you're a child trying to make sense of the world and trying to learn and grow, what better way to do that than to put hundreds of stories in front of them, to see how other people came across obstacles and had to use creative thinking to overcome challenges. From that sense, it's very empowering and it's very immersive in helping a child grow their imagination.”Drew Vernon is the U.S. Marketing Director for Tonies, an audio storytelling box that introduces children to the wonders of narrative long before they start reading. On this episode of Marketing Trends, Drew dives into his marketing strategy for bringing an internationally-loved product stateside and why marketing storytelling is a winning strategy. Plus, he discusses the importance of having reliable characters and intellectual property that customers can connect with,, and he details how to  conquer the biggest obstacle right out of the gates when you convince the customer to buy the product and keep coming back for more.Main TakeawaysFamiliarity Brings Success: When launching a new product domestically, it’s helpful to have familiar IPs that your customer can relate and connect to. By having characters and artwork that is familiar, it helps ease the mental lift of the consumer and helps them draw conclusions to what their overall experience will be with the product.Adding Value: By creating an ecosystem where the biggest obstacle in the consumer’s journey is the initial buy of the box, Tonies was able to solve for that and then create a lasting value proposition that allows users to continuously add to their existing ecosystem for a relatively low valueMixing it Up: One of the differences between marketing the Tonies box is the ability to showcase it to consumers not just as a toy, but also as a tool for delivering various forms of content. By diversifying the product's value, Tonies is able to market to difference sectors, including consumers and the education system.---Marketing Trends podcast is brought to you by Salesforce. Discover marketing built on the world’s number one CRM: Salesforce. Put your customer at the center of every interaction. Automate engagement with each customer. And build your marketing strategy around the entire customer journey. Salesforce. We bring marketing and engagement together. Learn more at salesforce.com/marketing. To learn more or subscribe to our weekly newsletter, visit MarketingTrends.com.---This message is brought to you by Salesforce.Hey marketers. Today’s B2B buyers are more complex than ever. And every buying committee has different needs and goals.Salesforce can help.We'll show you how to put each and every customer at the center of your B2B marketing strategy. And you'll learn how top brands like Lyft approach account-based marketing.Salesforce. Market to every account. Speak to every buyer.Find free B2B marketing and ABM resources at https://sfdc.co/every-buyer 

Stacey Epstein is a fierce competitor, relentless marketer, and a woman who flat out understands SaaS. Part of that competitive fire is what has led her to be a four-time, first-team all conference soccer player during her collegiate years at Emory University. And that relentless attitude is what’s helped her succeed in the roles of CMO and CEO. But no matter how much hustle you have,  don’t get those C-level titles without fully understanding every ounce of your business.“As a marketing leader, I would never want to work at an organization where someone just says, here's a product, go market it. When you get to the C-level, you're part of the decisions about where the company's going. By the time you get to the tactical part of launching a product, I've been part of the whole process and so I already understand the value proposition. I already understand why this is going to be a powerful solution for the market. I already understand how a rep can be successful selling that. So I would encourage anybody in marketing to think that way.”On this episode of Marketing Trends, Stacey, the Chief Marketing and Customer Experience Officer for ServiceMax, details successful go-to-market strategies that her team followed when launching ServiceMax 360, and she explains the importance of getting to know your customer at all levels in order to create the most effective and seamless customer experience possible. Main Takeaways:Know Your Audience:  As a marketer, you have to constantly be thinking about new ways to consistently delight your audience. This means regularly improving your products and services with them in mind. For ServiceMax, while the “brand” has always been a strong part of the company's customer experience, and its marketing efforts and product will always be rooted in its customer experience.Listening is the Secret Sauce: It may sound simple, but by listening and asking your audience what their pain points are, and where their businesses are struggling, their answers can give you insights into their overall goals and how they can utilize your products within their companies.Know Your Role: As a CMO or head of marketing, once you reach the C-level, you are no longer just an extension of the marketing team. Instead, your decisions now guide the direction of the entire organization, so you have to make sure that the marketing strategies fit in with the overall vision and business goals of the company.---Marketing Trends podcast is brought to you by Salesforce. Discover marketing built on the world’s number one CRM: Salesforce. Put your customer at the center of every interaction. Automate engagement with each customer. And build your marketing strategy around the entire customer journey. Salesforce. We bring marketing and engagement together. Learn more at salesforce.com/marketing. To learn more or subscribe to our weekly newsletter, visit MarketingTrends.com.---This message is brought to you by Salesforce.Hey marketers. Today’s B2B buyers are more complex than ever. And every buying committee has different needs and goals.Salesforce can help.We'll show you how to put each and every customer at the center of your B2B marketing strategy. And you'll learn how top brands like Lyft approach account-based marketing.Salesforce. Market to every account. Speak to every buyer.Find free B2B marketing and ABM resources at https://sfdc.co/every-buyer 

We’ve talked a lot on this show about how today’s marketers are consumed by data. After all, it’s how you get a better picture of who your customer is and how you get a clearer understanding of what’s working and what isn’t across your channels. But the real question is how are you turning all of that data and all of those insights into action that has a measurable effect? “Data isn't this thing that you look at every now and then, it's just something that becomes part of your everyday workflow.”Those are the words of Jay Wilder, Vice President of Product Marketing for Marketing Cloud at Salesforce, and on this episode of Marketing Trends, Jay dives into some of the ways that he has seen marketers optimizing data recently. He also gives an insider’s look at the latest Marketing Intelligence report, which analyzes the trends that are driving performance in 2021. Jay touches on everything from how the rapid shift to digital impacted customers’ expectations of companies and their behaviors, to how this digital-first world has led to an increasingly more complex marketing analytics landscape and he explains why the data we have now is not coming in fast enough.Main Takeaways:Marketing Analytics is Complex: On average, marketers today are using eight different channels, which can lead to 21 different marketing platforms. With so many different platforms collecting data at various locations, marketers are struggling to understand their overall performance.Single Source of Truth: 60% of marketers say it is imperative for them to prioritize a single source of truth for customers. By having a single source of truth for all your data, it allows you to build a better view of who your customers are, allowing marketers to build more personalized experiences.The Future of Data is Faster: The pace at which marketers are using data and analytics remains too slow. With data coming in at such a slow rate, by the time marketers receive monthly and quarterly reports, the information that they are looking at is no longer a complete picture of what is happening in the real-time market. Soon, marketers will be able to have a clear and distinct workflow of data coming in on a daily basis, which in return will lead to a better understanding of their customers.---Marketing Trends podcast is brought to you by Salesforce. Discover marketing built on the world’s number one CRM: Salesforce. Put your customer at the center of every interaction. Automate engagement with each customer. And build your marketing strategy around the entire customer journey. Salesforce. We bring marketing and engagement together. Learn more at salesforce.com/marketing. To learn more or subscribe to our weekly newsletter, visit MarketingTrends.com.---This message is brought to you by Salesforce.Hey marketers. Today’s B2B buyers are more complex than ever. And every buying committee has different needs and goals.Salesforce can help.We'll show you how to put each and every customer at the center of your B2B marketing strategy. And you'll learn how top brands like Lyft approach account-based marketing.Salesforce. Market to every account. Speak to every buyer.Find free B2B marketing and ABM resources at https://sfdc.co/every-buyer 

ROI no longer just means return on investment. Today, it also stands for revenue operations intelligence, which is all about how insights meet education and algorithms are used to help marketers target key personas in order to get ahead of the competition. It’s a game-changer, and People.ai CMO, Justin Shriber describes it as the ultimate tool for marketers.“It's the needle and the haystack problem, and we now have metal detectors that make it a lot easier.”People.ai is an intelligence platform designed to help enterprises align their sales and marketing goals through the assistance of A.I. in order to solve those tricky problems. On this episode of Marketing Trends, Justin explains what it means to be the  CMO of the company, and, he details how marketers should be using A.I. to help them with key tasks. Plus, he talks about how user-generated content has changed over the last five years, and he reveals the role experiential marketing should be playing in your overall marketing strategy.Main Takeaways:Time To Up Your Game: Five years ago, there was a rush to create authentic content that showed your consumers who you were, and marketers depended on customers to deliver a lot of that content. While user-generated content is authentic, the quality of that content can be compromised, so marketers need to find a way to strike a balance between high-quality and truly authentic content.It’s About Experiences: Experiential marketing is about creating unique experiences catered to your audience’s desires, and sometimes that means that the experience you curate has very little to do with your company or product — and that’s okay. The best companies have turned this tactic into a unique way to humanize client relationships.Where A.I. Fits: When aligning your sales and marketing strategy, A.I. should be utilized in a way that helps sales and marketing teams engage their clients, while simultaneously ingesting information that helps identify key personas and orchestrate strategies that helppower growth.---Marketing Trends podcast is brought to you by Salesforce. Discover marketing built on the world’s number one CRM: Salesforce. Put your customer at the center of every interaction. Automate engagement with each customer. And build your marketing strategy around the entire customer journey. Salesforce. We bring marketing and engagement together. Learn more at salesforce.com/marketing. To learn more or subscribe to our weekly newsletter, visit MarketingTrends.com.--- ---This message is brought to you by Salesforce.Hey marketers. Today’s B2B buyers are more complex than ever. And every buying committee has different needs and goals.Salesforce can help.We'll show you how to put each and every customer at the center of your B2B marketing strategy. And you'll learn how top brands like Lyft approach account-based marketing.Salesforce. Market to every account. Speak to every buyer.Find free B2B marketing and ABM resources at https://sfdc.co/every-buyer 

In an ever-evolving world full of raw and untapped potential, brands require a CMO who can keep up and take charge. That’s why when VICE Media Group was in search of its first Global CMO, Nadja Bellan-White was at the top of the list. For more than a quarter century, Nadja has used her voice proactively to challenge brands to think differently, think creatively, but most importantly to think about how they can make an impact in their communities.“My belief is I've worked around the world, and I've always been about being the change. I'm not just going to sit back and complain about something. I'm going to be part of the change, or part of the action. If I want to have a say in how people are portrayed, and in a fair and equitable way, I need to be at the table to help drive some of that change.”On this episode of Marketing Trends, Nadja details why she was excited to accept the challenge of running a marketing team trusted with pushing VICE’s vast portfolio forward. Plus, Nadja details why marketers are in the midst of a renaissance and must alter the way data powers their decision making.Main TakeawaysThe Predictors: Every marketer utilizes data, but it’s no longer just about having data to power your decisions. It’s about how you use that data to continually grow your business and broaden your reach. Data is now the engine which feeds the enterprise and is the center of every marketer’s strategy, which means how you use it must be continually workshopped and refined.Understanding the Zoomers: Generation Z places a premium on if they can trust a brand, which means marketers and their brands must adjust accordingly. If you are not actively trying to fit into where the audience finds value, or where their interest in social  issues intersects with your business, you better be prepared to lose their interest and dollars.A Whole New World: One of the biggest strategic advantages the pandemic has brought about is the efficiency that distributed workforces provide. This also means that marketers now must alter their hiring practices and step outside of what is comfortable. When bringing on new talent, don’t box yourself in. Continuously ask yourself, is this hire coming from a global perspective or a market view?---Marketing Trends podcast is brought to you by Salesforce. Discover marketing built on the world’s number one CRM: Salesforce. Put your customer at the center of every interaction. Automate engagement with each customer. And build your marketing strategy around the entire customer journey. Salesforce. We bring marketing and engagement together. Learn more at salesforce.com/marketing. To learn more or subscribe to our weekly newsletter, visit MarketingTrends.com.---This message is brought to you by Salesforce.Hey marketers. Today’s B2B buyers are more complex than ever. And every buying committee has different needs and goals.Salesforce can help.We'll show you how to put each and every customer at the center of your B2B marketing strategy. And you'll learn how top brands like Lyft approach account-based marketing.Salesforce. Market to every account. Speak to every buyer.Find free B2B marketing and ABM resources at https://sfdc.co/every-buyer 

What kind of power can a World Series ring wield? Think of it like this: For nearly a century, no sports franchise dealt with, more frustration and heartache than Boston’s beloved Red Sox. The brand was known for the famed curse from the deal that sent Babe Ruth to the Yankees and a bouncing ball that squeaked under the glove of Bill Buckner. Sure the Red Sox had Fenway Park, the Monster, and Pesky’s Pole. But you don’t play the games to dance in the shadows of your competitors — and you don’t sell tickets that way, either. You play to win, and winning sells.That’s Adam Grossman, the CMO of the Boston Red Sox, one of Major League Baseball’s most iconic, prideful, and long-tortured franchises. But also one of the most popular and in recent years, one of the most successful in the win column and in the marketing world. Adam joined the club in the spring of 2004, just before the club’s run of four championships over a 16-year window, and just before Curt Schilling’s bloody sock helped will them to their first championship since 1918. And during that time, the club’s image has changed dramatically, from loveable loser to perennial champion. While success on the field plays a big role, sports franchises are responsible for their own brand, and when you’re the Red Sox, being entrusted with that brand is a major responsibility. In this episode Marketing Trends, Adam breaks down the ins and outs of stewarding a sports club’s marketing efforts, how baseball must continue to reinvent itself to appeal to a younger generation, and why managing the customer experience outside of the ballpark is a growing challenge.Main Takeaways:The Ballpark Gets Bigger: The biggest challenge facing sports marketers today remains the expanded customer experience. Marketers have to meet their consumers at various touch points beyond just the ballpark. So from interactions within the community, to the brand’s voice and interaction on digital, the marketing playing field continues to expand at a rapid rate.It’s A Different Game Now: Baseball has its challenges, just like any other industry. One of those is appealing to younger fans. While baseball maintains its popularity, marketers are working on new ways to interact with fans to grow the game even more and they are using everything from virtual experiences to unique behind-the-scenes content on digital platforms to do so.Do We Have Enough Bats and Balls?: In sports, your revenue streams are limited to big-bucket items such as ticket sales, sponsorships and broadcasting rights. While marketing departments are small in sports, because you have limited opportunities, marketers must be creative when it comes to maximizing those streams and being conscious of where you funnel your resources.---Marketing Trends podcast is brought to you by Salesforce. Discover marketing built on the world’s number one CRM: Salesforce. Put your customer at the center of every interaction. Automate engagement with each customer. And build your marketing strategy around the entire customer journey. Salesforce. We bring marketing and engagement together. Learn more at salesforce.com/marketing. To learn more or subscribe to our weekly newsletter, visit MarketingTrends.com.---This message is brought to you by Salesforce.Hey marketers. Today’s B2B buyers are more complex than ever. And every buying committee has different needs and goals.Salesforce can help.We'll show you how to put each and every customer at the center of your B2B marketing strategy. And you'll learn how top brands like Lyft approach account-based marketing.Salesforce. Market to every account. Speak to every buyer.Find free B2B marketing and ABM resources at https://sfdc.co/every-buyer 

Data, data, data. In 2021 it’s all you hear… especially if you’re a marketer. Whether you are taking calculated risks to ensure campaigns are rooted in what the data is telling you, or conducting massive rebranding campaigns, just about all of your activities are rooted in analyzing the numbers and mitigating risks. But data these days is more than just numbers and graphs on a spreadsheet. It comes in all shapes and sizes and can be used to build a valuable connection between brands and consumers. And that’s where Lisa Giacosa comes in.“What gets exciting when you're on the agency side is that you can look at understanding consumers' entire spectrum across multiple touch points, across multiple products and services, and start to stitch those journeys together and think about alliances and the way that you can bring things together. We've been able to go to our clients and say, we know that we can measure this correctly. And we know that we can get this to a point where we can give you a guaranteed outcome against what's going to happen for your business.”Lisa is the President and Global Head of Data, Technology, Analytics, and Insights at Spark Foundry, a global media agency that’s all about bringing the heat to brands by driving higher engagement, affinity, and transactions. Lisa helps make that happen by guiding brands to take calculated risks through the power of data strategy and technology. On this episode of Marketing Trends, Lisa details what that looks like, and she goes deep in one particular area that is on the cusp in the marketing world: TV attribution..Main TakeawaysForget the Jargon: Don’t get lost in three-letter acronyms. Your team should never rely on buzzwords or acronyms when describing a marketing strategy. Teams that rely on these acronyms often lack the ability to articulate how their business or marketing strategy will benefit your team in the long run.We Don’t Have the Whole Picture: One of the biggest obstacles when it comes to TV attribution right now is there is no one single source of truth when it comes to providers. Instead, marketers are left to piecemeal their CTV strategy through multiple vendors.Understanding Data Privacy: There is starting to be a shift now where consumers are becoming more educated and beginning to understand what data privacy means and how it impacts their value exchange when it comes to consumed media---Marketing Trends podcast is brought to you by Salesforce. Discover marketing built on the world’s number one CRM: Salesforce. Put your customer at the center of every interaction. Automate engagement with each customer. And build your marketing strategy around the entire customer journey. Salesforce. We bring marketing and engagement together. Learn more at salesforce.com/marketing. To learn more or subscribe to our weekly newsletter, visit MarketingTrends.com.---This message is brought to you by Salesforce.Hey marketers. Today’s B2B buyers are more complex than ever. And every buying committee has different needs and goals.Salesforce can help.We'll show you how to put each and every customer at the center of your B2B marketing strategy. And you'll learn how top brands like Lyft approach account-based marketing.Salesforce. Market to every account. Speak to every buyer.Find free B2B marketing and ABM resources at https://sfdc.co/every-buyer 

Sometimes marketers can be too nice, or too respectful, or honestly, just not bold enough to either go wild or just say no. After all, the primary goal of any marketing team is to serve the clients’ best interests, but what if what the client is asking you to do is wrong? Or just too vanilla? Sometimes, the answer is to have the courage to think outside the box.“I love crazy ideas. The crazier the idea, the better. That's where true marketing genius comes from is the crazy things where you go, ‘Well, what if we could… and then let's figure out how we do it.’ So I always tell them, we live in a world today where there's very little you can do besides posting something inappropriate on social media that can't be taken back and that you can't stop from a digital perspective. So you have a lot of flexibility to test out ideas, to come up with a concept, run with it and see if it works.”Stephanie Cox has made a career in thinking outside of the traditional marketing constraints. What others might perceive as an obstacle, she tackles head on. She is a modern day marketer with a  no-holds-barred, just-get-it done mentality and she joined Marketing Trends to discuss her role of VP of Sales and Marketing at Lumavate, a company that is helping marketers create apps using low-code. On this episode, Stephanie details how Lumavate pivoted from a sales-led approach to one focused on product, and she gives out some tips and tricks for leveling up the customer journey, and how she flat out gets things done.Main TakeawaysIt’s Not Technically Stealing: Imitation is the highest form of flattery. That’s why marketers that are looking to make the pivot to a product-led strategy should attempt to imitate companies within the space that are already successful. Don’t copy their strategy verbatim, but there is nothing wrong with understanding and using the building blocks that made their campaign successful and then ideate on top of that foundation based on the needs of your company.Be Bold, Folks: When it comes to digital marketing, there is no excuse for sticking to a conservative strategy. It’s very rare for marketers to not be able to pivot if something is not succeeding in a way you thought it could. Don’t be afraid to try new ideas to see if they work, because if they don’t, you can pivot at a moment's notice.The Magic Number: Data is and remains the key to every marketer’s success strategy. If you take a bold leap, make sure your reasoning is rooted in what the numbers are suggesting. That way, if that leap doesn’t pan out, you have a logical explanation for why you attempted it.---Marketing Trends podcast is brought to you by Salesforce. Discover marketing built on the world’s number one CRM: Salesforce. Put your customer at the center of every interaction. Automate engagement with each customer. And build your marketing strategy around the entire customer journey. Salesforce. We bring marketing and engagement together. Learn more at salesforce.com/marketing. To learn more or subscribe to our weekly newsletter, visit MarketingTrends.com.

Automation is hot. It’s new, exciting and it’s sexy. And let’s be real for a second, everyone loves it when their job gets just a little bit easier. Every day, new tools are added and implemented into the modern marketing stack, and personalization tools and chatbots are being used with more and more regularity But how can we optimize those tools even more? What does the optimal marketing tool look like? “The most overlooked thing is people forget that people are human. They use automation to make a bunch of robots, and I don't know about you, but I don't like hanging out with robots, I like hanging out with people. And if your marketing makes me feel like I'm a human and I'm interacting with a human, I'm usually going to be much, much more engaged.”Dan McGaw is the founder and CEO of McGaw.io, a company that focuses on helping marketers get the most out of their technology stack. On this episode of Marketing Trends, Dan details how marketing tools can and should become more human, and he explains the key obstacle that prevents marketers from having a clean revenue-generating funnel. Plus he reveals the one big tweak every marketer should make to their SMS channels to drive better results.Main Takeaways:No End in Sight: It’s hard to define what inning we are in when it comes to analyzing the marketing stack because new software and tools are constantly being built. This constant evolution of technology means you need to strategize on how and what you’ll implement in your own stack. Don’t jump the gun and rush to use  the newest tools that likely still have a lot of flaws to workout. Instead, focus on integrating the tools you already have to make sure they work as a cohesive unit before adding something new.Can You Profile the Subject?: Personalization has never been more important than it is today. But as a marketer, you have to make sure that the people who give you their information are being profiled correctly so that when they sign up for your email list, the information and content that you are sending them directly relates to their needs.Mr. Robot: Your SMS strategy needs to toe a fine line between  effectively relaying your message and content to the consumer, but also making sure that you are speaking directly to them as a person. If your text content makes it feel as if the customer is interacting with an actual person and not a chatbot, you are more likely to see engagement.---Marketing Trends podcast is brought to you by Salesforce. Discover marketing built on the world’s number one CRM: Salesforce. Put your customer at the center of every interaction. Automate engagement with each customer. And build your marketing strategy around the entire customer journey. Salesforce. We bring marketing and engagement together. Learn more at salesforce.com/marketing. To learn more or subscribe to our weekly newsletter, visit MarketingTrends.com.

There are a few things in life Chris Thomas loves: The first is a delicious slab of ribs sitting on his dinner table. The second is playing the harmonica. And lastly, Chris lives to help small businesses find their voice and their audiences, and he does that through his agency, Yonder. Chris started Yonder in his basement and has grown it into a full-fledged agency that companies of all shapes and sizes trust to help them with the most fundamental of problems: finding their audience. “Every time [clients] walk in the door and they're like, ‘We can't generate leads, or nobody knows who we are.’ I'm like, ‘Well, who's the audience? Who are you trying to reach?’ That's really the biggest [obstacle] for everybody. You're a boutique for women over 45 and you're on Facebook trying to market to 50-year-old dudes. That's not going to work. And once they figured out their audience, the rest is easy.”On this episode of Marketing Trends, Chris explains his passion for helping SMBs discover their audience as well as their own brand identity. Plus, he details some of the best strategies for how companies can retool their SEO approach, and he reveals the reason you should never equate retooling your brand with fixing the nuts and bolts of your business.Main Takeaways:Who Is Your Audience?: This is the fundamental question to ask a client that is having trouble generating leads or finding awareness. Once you have clarity on this, targeting efforts and generating meaningful leads becomes much easier.Have Some Self Awareness: As a marketer, success comes by knowing your strengths and weaknesses and adjusting your plans based on those things.  Don’t overstretch yourself in areas that you know are out of your wheelhouse. When you start dipping your toe into unfamiliar waters without a paddle, you’re doing your client and yourself a disservice.Your Brand is Not Your Business: When a small business believes it needs to reposition and work on its brand, what marketers need to be stressing is for them to go back to the basics of the business. They should examine their website and SEO practices, and educate their customers on who they are. Once those business fundamentals have been addressed and results follow, then it’s appropriate to n refocus your efforts on the brand.---Marketing Trends podcast is brought to you by Salesforce. Discover marketing built on the world’s number one CRM: Salesforce. Put your customer at the center of every interaction. Automate engagement with each customer. And build your marketing strategy around the entire customer journey. Salesforce. We bring marketing and engagement together. Learn more at salesforce.com/marketing. To learn more or subscribe to our weekly newsletter, visit MarketingTrends.com.

Cutting the cord is not new, it’s just getting more popular as companies such as Netflix and Hulu, which have each been around for more than a decade, continue to rise. But as consumers continue ditching traditional broadcasting platforms with more frequency, brands are being forced to find new ways to reach their audience, and one way they are doing that is through connected media devices and CTV. Unlike traditional broadcasting platforms, which offer a limited amount of commercial inventory per show, CTV is providing brands more flexibility and thus, more opportunity.“When you think about what's possible in this new digitized version of TV, and when you think about the fact that more and more consumers are cutting the cord, it allows you to secure more reach than ever has been available before through connected television and online video inventory, but it allows you to be more specific and targeted in how you buy that connected inventory.”But how brands distribute to platforms and reach their target audience is the challenging part. Stephanie Geno, the Seniior Vice President of Marketing at  Innovid, is here to help. Innovid is an online advertising technology company that offers distribution and management of digital ads and on this episode of Marketing Trends, Stephanie dives into how the company is harnessing CTV to change the ad game. Plus, she discusses best practices for targeted advertising, and why personalization is a great tool, if you can get past its downsides.Main Takeaways:Cord Cutters: More and more consumers are shifting their viewing habits from relying on traditional broadcast and cable companies to subscribing to streaming services. And while this is not shocking, what is surprising marketers is the amount of inventory and targeted advertising that is available to them through connected tv and the smart marketers are putting that inventory to work for them.Universal Metrics: There is a growing need to create a universal metric system that allows marketers to have a baseline of comparison across various forms of digital marketing. Advertisers need to think in terms of both macro and micro effectiveness across their ad buys, and they need to optimize both.Personalized to My Needs: Personalization creates greater relevance for marketers, but it’s also creating a greater ability to be agile. However, it does not come without its pitfalls. When one-to-one personalization entered the market, it set off a chain reaction of overly-complicated strategies and forced marketers to overthink things. Personalization tactics should be used as a tool to broaden your reach, but also to help marketers extend their creative efficiency, with the ability to test, learn and optimize their practices.---Marketing Trends podcast is brought to you by Salesforce. Discover marketing built on the world’s number one CRM: Salesforce. Put your customer at the center of every interaction. Automate engagement with each customer. And build your marketing strategy around the entire customer journey. Salesforce. We bring marketing and engagement together. Learn more at salesforce.com/marketing. To learn more or subscribe to our weekly newsletter, visit MarketingTrends.com.Show Less

2020 will forever be remembered as the year of a once-in-a-century pandemic, but it should be recognized that it was the year we all got reacquainted with our homes. From streaming a late-night movie in the living room, to hopping on early-morning conference calls in our home offices (or closets or spare bedrooms), in 2020 our homes were asked to do it all. Almost a year ago David Marine, the CMO of Coldwell Banker, joined Marketing Trends to detail the company’s ambitious rebranding strategy and he’s back now to update us on how it all worked out. “2020 was going to be the year of the rebrand, and what a great year it was going to be with all these plans. And as you know, 2020 happened to all of us. So things had to change, but here we are a year later and I can honestly tell you with a straight face that 2020 was actually the perfect year for Coldwell Banker to rebrand.”Things may have worked out for Coldwell Banker, but it wasn’t easy. Campaigns had to be altered, messaging and digital strategies were scrapped and shifted on a dime, and David was along for the ride every step of the way. On this episode of Marketing Trends, David tells us what it was like, he details the wins and losses of 2020 for Coldwell Banker, and he dives into how marketers can be agile in their digital efforts so that they, too, can rebrand or adjust when the time calls for it.Main Takeaways:A Brand You Can Trust: When you have more than 100 years of company lineage, consumers have had time to build trust in a brand. But just because you have heritage and time on your side, doesn’t mean your messaging doesn’t have to meet the moment. Consumers are more likely and willing to trust brads that deliver authentic messaging that matches the purpose of your brand, the story you are trying to tell, and that meets the moment of the ad and acknowledges whatever might be happening in the world.Is That a Hybrid?: A new way to look at your ad spend should be a mix between traditional broadcast channels and streaming services. Your digital strategy should be a mix of your larger media plan. Focus your broadcast plans on marquee events that drive live audiences, such as sporting events. Then use your digital channels to supplement that audience with platforms such as Hulu, that allow you to target your audience while snagging a different demographic at a lower cost.This is Us: When thinking about partnerships, you have to be strategic. Don’t just go out and partner with the first company that is willing to give you money. Instead, ask yourself how this partnership brings value to your brand and does this company meet the standards and expectations that you have already set for yourself?---Marketing Trends podcast is brought to you by Salesforce. Discover marketing built on the world’s number one CRM: Salesforce. Put your customer at the center of every interaction. Automate engagement with each customer. And build your marketing strategy around the entire customer journey. Salesforce. We bring marketing and engagement together. Learn more at salesforce.com/marketing. To learn more or subscribe to our weekly newsletter, visit MarketingTrends.com.