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1 Minute Advice: Digital Technology Brands Dominate Brand Loyalty

Digital technology brands dominate the 2017 Brand Keys Loyalty Leaders list in the 21st annual survey conducted by Brand Keys, the New York-based brand loyalty and customer engagement research consultancy. Brand Keys examined 740 brands in 83 categories to provide an insightful and comprehensive, cross-category perspective of brand loyalty today.

The top ten Brand Keys Loyalty Leaders for 2017 are, in order:

1. Amazon (retail)
2. Google
3. Apple (tablets)
4. Netflix
5. Apple (smartphones)
6. Amazon (video streaming)
7. Samsung (smartphones)
8. Facebook
9. Amazon (tablets)
10. YouTube

According to Brand Keys founder and president Robert Passikoff, "Since 2000 it's been more difficult for non-digital or non-social networking brands to increase engagement that resonates with consumers' emotions and builds loyalty."

One of the more interesting aspects of this year's list is that some companies appear more than once in the list because they do business in multiple categories. "We call that the Rule of Six loyalty," says Passikoff, "which means if consumers use a brand's products or services in one category, they will be six times more likely to use the brand's products and services in other categories."

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1 Minute Advice: Why Influencers are More Important than Ever

Brand marketers are starting to find that the use of digital influencers can be a more effective strategy than self-promotion.

According to the e-newsletter, Knowledge@Wharton:

"Instead of getting in your face with their own message about their greatness [brand marketers] are letting ‘influencers’ — people you trust — tell you why you should pay attention to their products and services through a voice that sounds far more authentic. The influencer is that mutual friend between a brand and their consumers. Brand marketers continue to struggle to gain attention through traditional marketing strategies, but in a digital age, a breakthrough strategy may in fact be associated with a non-traditional tactic: the use of digital influencers."

Wharton cites several important reasons for the effectiveness of digital influencers, including the following:

• "Influencer marketing allows targeted exposure to the right kind of consumer, one who is already interested in a category that you operate in and will likely pay attention."
• "Influencers are the masters of their niches, and have established a high level of trust and two-way communication with their followers. They know how to incorporate a brand’s products and services into content people are watching and they do it very seamlessly, instead of taking away attention from what they really want to watch."
• "The truth is, when a social media personality you follow day in and day out wears something, drinks something, shows you something, you pay attention to it. And the key word here is attention."

Wharton goes on to make some sound recommendations about working with influencers. Read the entire article here:
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/new-marketing-royalty-rise-digital-influencers/

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1 Minute Advice: Understanding Customer Motivation

As a marketer, if you understand your customer's motivation, you also understand what makes that customer take action, either in the form of an inquiry or an order. The folks at Marketing Sherpa do quite a bit of research on many elements of marketing, including customer motivation. In this intriguing blog post, Courtney Eckerie enumerates and answers five key questions you need to ask to understand customer motivation.

The questions are:

1. Where is your customer in the thought sequence?
2. Where is the traffic coming from?
3. What conclusions do your prospects need to make before buying?
4. What are their pain points?
5. What do they value?

In beginning to answer question 5, Eckerie writes, "Understand that every action a customer takes in response to a given marketing message is a window into two key aspects of their motivation:

• Amount (how much are they motivated)
• Nature (what is powering their motivations)

Once you understand that, then this question (What do they value?) leads you from motivation to the next phase of the Conversion Heuristic — value proposition."

Read the entire blog post for some valuable insights into customer motivation.

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1 Minute Advice: Brand Websites Remain Essential

Most brand marketers are paying a lot more attention to social media these days. That means they may take their eye off the ball when it comes to their website. Recent research shows it is not a good idea to neglect a brand website.

eMarketer reports on a recent survey of U.S. online consumers, indicating that 58 percent of respondents visited more than five brand manufacturer websites in the past six months, and 30 percent had visited more than ten sites. For Millennials, the percentage of respondents who said they visited more than five brand manufacturer websites rose to 65 percent, with a high of 67 percent when it comes to apparel brands.

When shoppers were asked what influenced them to visit brand manufacturer websites, 51 percent of respondents said social media advertising and 47 percent said ads in search engines. Recommendations from friends and family, either online of offline, was noted by 38 percent of respondents.

Visit eMarketer for more on the survey.

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: Email Marketing Continues to be Resilient

Consider email the timeless form of direct marketing: As a marketing medium, email just won't quit. Information from eMarketer suggests the medium is as resilient as ever.

Email continues to be popular with U.S. marketers across all industry segments. A May 2017 report indicates that 100 percent of healthcare or pharmaceutical marketers use email marketing, 100 percent of travel and hospitality marketers use it, and 96 percent of nonprofit marketers use it. The lowest usage is by the retail sector at 81 percent. The primary purpose for email marketing is customer acquisition.

A majority of marketers plan to increase their email marketing budget, said one study. According to another study, almost three-fourths of marketers worldwide said email provides a strong ROI, ranking email as the top marketing tactic.

See eMarketer for more statistics about email marketing.

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.