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1 Minute Advice: How to Create the Right Marketing Budget

A continuing challenge for marketers is creating the right marketing budget. Writing for Marketing Profs, Matthew Sweezey suggests approaching the challenge with three keys in mind:

1. The best marketing budgets start with new ideas about what Marketing is
   Sweezey points out that best-in-class marketing budgets won't be possible unless marketing executives accept some basic marketing tenets, including the fact that marketing cannon be siloed, and technology is the solution to modern marketing.
2. The best marketing budgets match your growth stage
   There are really three different kinds of budgets, writes Sweezey: the budget to maintain branding, the average budget, and the fast growth budget. You need to know the differences and the components of each.
3. The best marketing budgets are flexible
   It is essential for a marketing budget to change with the environment. Writes Sweezey, "The trick to creating a flexible budget is to have the necessary conversations up front. Consider the flex budget as a line of credit: It's preapproved, it's set up, and its terms and conditions are applied when/if it's used."

Read more here (free subscription required).

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1 Minute Advice: Using Sequencing to Build Engagement

It seems that the most compelling way a brand can market its message these days is through storytelling. Stories, of course, can be short or long, simple or complex -- but the best stories are those that engage consumers over time. A new eMarketer report,"Storytelling in Sequence: How Brands are Creating More Engaging Messaging," addresses storytelling from a key perspective: sequencing.

According to the author of the report, analyst Nicole Perrin, “The lines between content and advertising are blurrier than ever, thanks to the continued growth of native as well as the importance of paid channels for distributing marketing content." That means marketers are weaving together the use of unpaid and paid forms of promotion to tell engaging stories that take consumers on a journey. This journey is sequential, so the right information is delivered at the right time. Reports eMarketer, "This type of messaging allows marketers to take advantage of a range of formats and platforms to tell their story to consumers over time in a relevant—and respectful—way. Personalization and automation are at the heart of these efforts."

Read more about storytelling in sequence here.

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1 Minute Advice: Answer Five Questions to Succeed in the Digital Age

According to the consulting firm McKinsey, "many brand organizations haven’t caught up to the realities of the digital age." One of the primary challenges for brands, says McKinsey, is having a "strong and consistent brand voice," because the way consumers interact with a brand has dramatically changed. As a result, it is difficult to effectively manage communications when there are so many touchpoints.

McKinsey proposes that brand marketers need to answer five questions to gain competitive advantage with customers. The questions are:

1. Are you thinking about customer journeys rather than just touchpoints?
2. How useful is your data?
3. Do you truly understand why your customers are doing what they're doing?
4. How relevant are your communications and interactions?
5. Do you have the right people on your teams (and the processes and guidelines to support them)?

Obviously, in order to answer these questions, a brand organization must have a deep grasp of modern day marketing. It is well worth reading McKinsey's observations about each of these questions here: 

http://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/marketing-and-sales/our-insights/five-questions-brands-need-to-answer-to-be-customer-first-in-the-digital-age

This post is brought to you by 123eGuides.com. 123 eGuides are a series of authoritative guides about branding, marketing and small business published exclusively in electronic format to provide maximum value at minimum cost.

1 Minute Advice: What to Do About Declining Brand Loyalty

Warning sign on the horizon: Consumer products executives see a decline in brand loyalty coming, according to recent research reported on by eMarketer. They also believe an increase in online shopping will cause a major disruption in the marketplace.

The leading marketing tactics they plan to use in response to such challenges include creating more personalized customer experiences, increasing mobile and online advertising, and focusing more on social media.

Personalization is key but it is not always easy to implement. According to eMarketer senior analyst Yoram Wurmser, “Although most organizations know that personalization is important, there are a lot of structural impediments that make it hard to do for many companies. The challenge of personalization is that it requires really great integration of customer data across marketing databases and customer relationship management systems. This enterprise-level integration is still pretty rare, and it’s expensive. And even beyond that, a lot of companies are still organized around channels, which can impede full integration.” 

Read more from eMarketer here.

This post is brought to you by 123eGuides.com. 123 eGuides are a series of authoritative guides about branding, marketing and small business published exclusively in electronic format to provide maximum value at minimum cost.