SigmaWay Blog

More CEOs are recognizing established companies as a more formidable competitor than an outsider. In order to excel in today's game changing competition, we need to understand what game we are playing. At the beginning, employees understand their jobs, later they lack this capability as the company emphasizes more on organizing customers and products rather than their actual reason from where they started. The KPIs stays disconnected from customer needs, leading to disruption of business. Game changing innovation requires us to 1) Step outside of our organization silos by thinking new products and services from customer point of view using newer technologies. 2) Use right incentives and metrics to cannibalize the market in long run assisting employees to link their efforts to over company's strategies. 3) become faster and flexible to respond to the inevitable shifts by simplifying existing decision making processes. Read more at:-http://timoelliott.com/blog/2015/07/3-key-steps-to-game-changing-innovation.html

With tons of data available with marketers to measure the impact of their business, one thing that need to be kept in mind is not to get entangled in measuring everything. Measuring something that does not have the capability to influence your corporate strategy isn’t a good idea. Knowing what your business is trying to achieve and then deciding on marketing metrics is foremost.  Steve Robins, principal of Solution Marketing Strategy, in an article in TechTarget provides the following points of advice to detangle your metrics:
• Separating strategic KPI’s from nonstrategic metrics
• What to measure?
• Operationalizing KPI’s
• Metrics predict the future
• Finally, looking at best practices
For more insights into this piece follow the link:  : http://searchcrm.techtarget.com/feature/Dont-get-tangled-in-marketing-metrics?utm_medium=EM&asrc=EM_NLN_45313060&utm_campaign=20150716_Spend%20management:%20Were%20SAP%27s%20procurement%20acquisitions%20really%20worth%20$15%20billion?_jbiscobing&utm_source=NLN&track=NL-1815&ad=901719&src=901719

Every business needs a set of loyal customers. The loyal customer varies from one to the other in the field of business. There are customers who are satisfied but are not loyal and can be termed as dangerous customer. They don't really love or hate you. There are customers who are loyal to your loyal program. There are customers who are loyal to your procedure, but not to your products. There are customers who enjoy convenience of our business for some definite reasons. The customers may not like you sometime but they are loyal to whatever they do. A bunch of customer gets attracted only when there is a low price of the products or the process involved. And lastly there are some wise customers who all are loyal to whatever you do. The process or the product process doesn't even matter to them and hence they will stick to the process whatsoever. Read more at: http://www.business2community.com/customer-experience/six-types-of-loyal-customers-01294343

The key to sustain and attract customer is to present the worth of your product. The grace to attain and greet your customer is the primary step to impress the customer. One should be inquisitive i.e. the customer needs should be identified and customer should be given the maximum priority and importance for the moment. The knowledge about the organization and its working should be precisely known so that one can properly answer to the doubts of the customers. A proper teamwork is needed to collaborate and consolidate the working process so that the organization stays more organized and presentable to the customers whatsoever. There is a need to present the structure and information of the company in a decent and nice way so that customers get the right impression. After the whole process, the selling process should be closed and the customer should be thoroughly valued by the organization.  All you need to do after the whole process is to follow up with the customers to analyze and coordinate with the customers on a continuous basis. Read more at:http://www.business2community.com/customer-experience/7-ways-to-wow-your-customers-01279642

Customers today are aware about social media, and are willing to try stuff out and maybe even write a review based on their experiences with a brand. In an ideal world blog reviews should take care of it provided the product is good. Sadly, the world is anything but ideal.
The success of a product does not depend solely on its quality but rather on the advertising that goes behind it. The traditional ways of advertising are costly and often beyond the financial reach of new companies. This is where social media marketing comes in.
Here is a guide to get your marketing strategies take flight:
• Start your product launch campaign with research: Before you start developing your products, try to gauge what your target audience will actually notice and respond to.
• Plan a campaign that creates interest: Make sure that the campaign keeps the interest of fans high and urge them to actively participate in them.
• Video – your most effective marketing tool: It is estimated that by 2017, video will account for 69% of all consumer internet traffic, and video-on-demand traffic alone will have trebled.
• Involve influencers: Influencers are people with followers and fans who quickly respond to any endorsements and recommendations.
• Celebrate the revelation: Celebrate the campaign by rewarding fans who participated, with special gifts and rewards.
• Don’t kill the buzz: Case study videos are a great way to keep the buzz, around your campaign for a while. Read more at:


For more information visit:
http://www.germin8.com/blog/6-steps-to-social-media-marketing-success-product-launch-for-startups/

Recently, email marketers are using the coupons. It was found in a research that 71% of the population say coupons sent in emails very useful.  Email coupons can work very well as a promotional tool and can be effective when they are personalized by product preferences. Jordie van Rijn (author) in his blog writes how we can improve the usage of coupons to improve business. Read more at: http://blog.getresponse.com/making-your-email-coupons-work-harder.html

While data has always played a part in ad campaigns-like whether a potential customer was more likely to see an ad on billboards, TV, or radio-big data has enabled a new era of advertising. With the advent of big data, brands can finally turn to actual numbers and metrics to make decisions-and use technology to help automate those decisions. Specifically, the programmatic advertising industry has deployed big data technologies so that companies and brands can be more precise about who exactly they're targeting. They can rely on exact data generated from GPS on mobile devices, social networks, actual purchasing behavior, and direct customer contacts, and analyze it to pinpoint their target audience. By analyzing this diverse data stream along with 1st-party advertiser data, we can play the right advertisement at the right time for the right person. It’s no longer a question of whether or not you want to utilize big data—it’s a question of how you utilize it.
For more information visit:
https://www.mapr.com/blog/how-big-data-advancing-programmatic-advertising#.Vb-xSPmqqko

Customers are delighted to get gifts for companies. But, some companies fail to do so in a consistent manner. Companies might begin with good intentions, but sometimes they lose their way. Jake Sorofman (a former CMO), writes in his blog how companies sometimes fail to keep consistency. For more information, visit: http://blogs.gartner.com/jake-sorofman/in-customer-experience-consistency-is-the-new-delight/

It is often difficult for CIOs to determine the most appropriate strategy. Hardware vendors who are at the core of the cloud debate safeguard their own interests by hindering the transformation of their customers. This delay by the vendors has generated significant strategic problem for CIOs. However, organizations have started to realize that the actual problem is not with the cloud but the various non-programmatic inefficient devices that employ on it. Various companies have emanated that increases scalability, reduce cost and also improve performance. It is necessary for CIOs to look at the comprehensive strategy while handling these strategic issues. Strategies and tactics are coiled together therefore the tactics used must be in line with the strategies knowledgeable to the companies.

Read more at: https://channels.theinnovationenterprise.com/articles/it-s-time-for-cios-to-separate-strategies-tactics

Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract customers and ultimately drive profitable customer action. Every company has different type of content depending on the product it offers in the market. Content Marketing furnishes a platform to communicate with the customers instead of selling to them directly. For, a content marketing to work efficiently, it is important that it must work simultaneously with a good social media strategy. This is also true in the case of web content. However, content marketing faces several challenges like measuring the Right of Information (ROI) is very difficult and it is essential to have a call-to-action so as to attract customer for purchasing the products.

To know more about this study, please follow the link: https://channels.theinnovationenterprise.com/articles/why-content-marketing-is-important

Back in the 20's, technology used to be simple. Core functions of the system were not affected by the records management. Every organization has started getting connected to the internet in order to make the lives easier of their workers as well customers. Everyone wants to get access to basic information over the internet as it is an opportunity to learn more about everything which relates to good or bad performance. Even from the customer's side, access to internet helps business with floods of data which leads them to focused marketing. Such information is also spread to the hackers. Hackers then use such individual information to get through government entities or set up robbery attacks. As keepers of the information, companies should hence protect the data and make sure trust is not violated. The exposed information is generally customer information. Determined hackers cannot be stopped from entering into the system. Identities are stolen and more valuable information is lost other than just credit card numbers. Data should be protected by the organization as if it was their own personal information. Apps are a disaster these days as they are gateways to information which directly reach the hackers since consumers unknowingly take such things for granted and provide all their details. Security and privacy experts should be hired and organizations should be very careful with customer information. Read more at: http://www.cmswire.com/information-management/protect-information-as-if-it-was-your-own/?pageNum=2

Customers have so many options these days online - to shop, read articles, watch videos and more. A brand or publisher will quickly attract attention of its customers by serving only the most relevant information. There lies the difficulty to figure out what exactly should be the useful information published. Few ways to discover and build better customer profiles are:
Down with static profiles: the building process of better customer profiles never ends. Companies should keep in mind that customers are dynamic and once a macro view of the customer is available, the problem gets sorted.
Why, where and when: context is equally important and information on whether the consumer is on mobile or a tablet or which time of the day it is and other important questions can help companies recognize a clear picture of preferences of the customers.
The customer knows best: consumer choice brought into personalization equation is a positive step for a variety of reasons. This element of choice enhances communication between brand and consumers and provides value to both parties.
Companies which can implement choice, better customer profiles, and context consideration will be able to successfully personalize a user’s experience online.
Read more at: http://www.cmswire.com/customer-experience/personalization-give-your-customers-a-choice/?pageNum=2

It is said that a very small percentage of the retailers are keen on using the customer analysis tool in spite of the retail industry being the most refined tool across sectors for analysis of customer behaviour. Dave Nash(director at consultancy West Monroe Partners), has mentioned that this tool is still not as popular as it should be for the very reason of the dearth of relevant customer data that cannot be assimilated into other operational data and also due to lack of skill and the knowledge to use them appropriately. But Elaneor McDonnell Feit (assistant professor of marketing at Drexel University) believe otherwise. According to her, the percentage of retailers investing in developing their customer data set is high. She is of the view that what is required using these data appropriately to take the right decisions for various functions of the firm and implementing them in the most efficient way. Feit has also mentioned a very innovative and out of the box tool for this purpose: Recommendation engine. The recommendation engine is a mechanized tool to facilitate the buying process of the customers, by guiding them find the thing they need. These recommendation engines are tailored for specific businesses and its customers making it unique as a retailer.
Hence, every firm should have a data driven approach within the retail industry which will help the entire economy to grow progressively and efficiently.
Read more at: http://www.cmswire.com/analytics/retail-could-make-better-use-of-customer-analytics/

New companies prefer to wait for a few years, exploring their profitable opportunities first, before focusing on their financial stability. There are associated risks, of ensuring continuous availability of funds throughout the initial phase. Again, in order to stay in the competition, it is also important to prepare the business model at the earliest. When firms delay in preparing their business models, there remains a scope of further innovation in the model, but it can be costly too, if a model is rebuilt from scratch. In each business model it is important to understand the tradable values, that may include brand value of a company, the company’s intellectual property rights, user circles, user circle data, and information regarding the stakeholders. Read more at: http://venturebeat.com/2015/07/12/how-to-define-your-business-model-when-your-business-is-still-up-in-the-air/

There is always some problem of coordination and mismatch between the sales, marketing and service sector. The customer is often dissatisfied with the various approaches of all the sectors which don’t get aligned to some particular information. So to deliver the best experience there is a need of smooth mechanism between the sectors for better communication and to share the same goal with others. The key to achieve the desired goal lies in cooperating and collaborating with each other. The natural workflow must go on in order to run the organization. But there is a need of collaboration for making out decisions, to manage the system and to solve the project with the collaborative tools. The team members should know the metrics and the prime indicators for the organization which will ultimately lead to the desired objective. There is always a need for a hand to hand practice or a parallel system which will lead to proper customer experience and mutual benefit.

Read more at – http://www.business2community.com/customer-experience/aligning-sales-marketing-service-for-a-seamless-customer-experience-01278273

Niche marketing is a good way to reach out to a difficult demographic. To have a successful niche marketing strategy, understanding the audience is crucial. A tailor-made marketing content targeted to a specific demographic is effective. Here are some tips to have a successful niche marketing strategy:

(i) Marketers should provide consumers with a good introduction of themselves and explain why they are the right ones to satisfy the consumer’s needs.

(ii) Marketers should imagine situations from consumer’s perspective while designing the marketing strategy.

(iii) Empathizing with the customer and understanding and appreciating their feelings is important as it helps to build a long-lasting relationship.

(iv) Using market research data to figure out how to go about targeting the niche audience is helpful.

(v) Uniqueness in content is necessary to achieve success in niche marketing.

Read more at:https://channels.theinnovationenterprise.com/articles/understanding-your-audience-how-to-reach-niche-consumers

The key to develop the infrastructure and development of a company ultimately lies in the incorporating the voice of the structure of the company at different levels. It should not only include the voice of the customer and employee of the organization but the voice of market, business and other important factor of a company as well. To improve the customer experience there is always a need of taking into account the voices of the company. The voice of partners in the venture, the voice of the customer in giving feedback, the voice of the employee about the experience, the voice of the business in dealing financial matters and the voice of the market in the competitive scenario are equally important for a sustainable business. The voice of the reason gives an added advantage when the company is at stake. Thus, to maintain the balance of an organization the voice in the process and working of a company is real important.

Read more at: 

 http://www.business2community.com/customer-experience/the-many-voices-of-customer-experience-01271514

The upgradation and integration of the existing technologies have helped the market in gaining up momentum and keeping up the harmony of the social world. With the advanced equipment and technological know how they can boost up the working of the tertiary sector. The world class leaders aims at satisfying the customers so as to mobilize the proper working of the sectors. The implementation of new techniques is to meet the demands of the information technology, software management companies. The step into the next generation lies with the advancement of the technology, increased productivity and to gratify the demand of the customers.

Read more at: 

http://www.cmswire.com/customer-experience/news-you-can-use-wayin-klout-mailjet-more/#EIM

According to Adweek, "the millennial generation and its millennial mindset understand its powers as consumers, as workers and as future leaders". Seth Chatterley in his article on business2community.com discussed about the various techniques one needs to remember in case of marketing to millennials and they are as follows:

• Giving brands credit.
• Mobile technique.
• Blogs are trusted sources.
• Moving pictures.
• Apple devices.
• Offer them value.
• Ensure honesty in content and community.

Read more at: http://www.business2community.com/digital-marketing/7-things-remember-marketing-millennials-01267636