In this chapter, you will read:
1. It’s not about the technology, it’s about the people
2. Find your end user
3. How to enhance the user’s journey?
4. People, location, and influence
5. Capturing the user’s mindset
6. Develop online presence
7. Build your channels
Today, we thrive on instant gratification. Users consume the news via 140-character tweets, watching videos instead of reading long articles, scrolling through photos or gifs, and skipping over the captions altogether. There is no shortage of user-experience lessons to be learned from this cultural shift. The only way for you to survive is to understand that no matter how much technology you have in your hands, you will always have to capture the mindset of your customer. Your customer must always be placed in the center of your online strategy.
You need to realize that your customers are having the control of your company. They always expect an immediate response to their inquiries, and of course many firms find this not only extremely annoying but also extremely difficult. Customer centricity is at the core of individualized marketing. It is rather simple to deliver highly customized messages to the consumers, but the difficulty is in being consistent across all channels.
It has never been only about the technology. We tend to always forget that people should be the focal point of our online strategy. The only way to succeed something like this is to move away from theories and focus on actions. The very first thing you will need to do is to listen your audience. We are not talking about just your clients, but about your overall audience. We are talking about people who could be your future clients but at the same time people who could be influencers to other potential customers.
In order for your customers to feel in control, you need to make sure to empower them with it. For example, this is applicable when you give them the choice for sign-in options or push preference centers. People are more receptive if they feel the cards are in their hands. Your customers should be able to choose via the channel they want to communicate. It is important to monitor closely the device they use as well as their behavior. By doing so, you will develop a 360-degree picture of your customer’s journey and improve the buying process and create a more enhanced and beneficial journey for the customer.
If customers aren’t at the center of your business, you cannot possibly begin to think about your online branding strategy. You also need to understand who your customers actually are and, more importantly, what do they care about. You need to aggregate customer information, often from multiple sources in order to get a rich customer insight. It doesn’t finish there though. The second step would be for you to consider how you can effectively communicate the positive impact that your organization is having on the community. Opening an active dialogue with customers is another way you can bring customers to the center of your business.
When you engage and respond to customer service requests over social media, those customers end up spending 20 to 40 percent more money with the company. Quite simply, organizations will need to adapt or they will fail. Organizations will need a single view of the customer, deeply connected to numerous social and business platforms. That is the only way to build rich customer intelligence and insight. Business leaders will move away from the notion of “what happened” and they will start moving more and more toward predictive intelligence leveraging and advanced analytical techniques. Knowing what your customers wanted or even knowing what they want now is no longer enough. If you would like to survive in the new turbulent environment, you must now anticipate the needs of your customers.
At this point, I should clarify to you that making your business all about the customer doesn’t mean that you should do what the customer wants. The customer centricity is not actually the practice of doing what your customer wants but it’s actually an outcome of how you create mutual value. The evidence that you are customer centric comes from your ability to constantly change and adapt. You achieve your customer-centric outcome by creating habits that change the rhythm within your organization and also habits that change with your supporters. You need to create habits that, of course, start with understanding the customers that matter to you but also include how you prevent problems occurring for them. At the same time, you need to be able to detect problems that might occur for them and be able to differentiate your approach in a way that means something to them. In other words, you need to make them feel special.
The thing to remember is that customer-centric marketing is an ongoing process. Combining the necessary information and tools will allow you to experiment, test, and uncover what delivers the best results, as well as opportunities you may be missing. Once you know what works best, you can reproduce and expand upon specific tactics. No matter how you approach it, putting your customers at the center of your marketing strategy will help you deliver the right message at the right time through the right channel. And when the customer comes first, you’ll see the impact on your profits!
Another place companies fall flat when it comes to branding is in targeting their market. This has been alluded to several times, but this is because of how important it is. What’s more, it’s important not to fall into the common trap of presuming your target market should be “everyone” or “everyone who buys your product.” While it’s true that a company wants all the customers it can get, the simple fact is that “everyone” is not an achievable target market. This becomes obvious when certain large companies refuse to shift with the times. This is most visible in the television and movie industry, where the Internet has rendered the traditional business model obsolete but industries don’t want to accept that. So, they cancel shows or refuse to create certain types of movies because they don’t hit the market the company thinks it wants. They’re afraid to market super hero merchandise to girls, as a currently visible example, and so wind up making less and less money as the traditional market segments.
When deciding on a brand’s target market, it’s important to get an incredibly good idea of who the end user is and, more importantly, who the end user isn’t. A good example of where this goes wrong is in what’s referred to as the “Triple-A games industry,” which refers to large video game developing and publishing companies that create the mass market video games with budgets to rival movies. Because these video games cost so much to make, companies relentlessly focus test their products. Unfortunately, they tend to create focus groups of young males, rather than a more diverse group of gamers. The end result, which is obvious if one reads any of the video game industry news, is that many Triple-A games wind up being incredibly similar. Because of this, independent game developers had a rich market to exploit, finding groups of gamers who were not young males and in doing so carving out a permanent place for themselves. This is all to say that a company shouldn’t presume what its target market is going to be. There must be a solid understanding of who the target market is supposed to be. Any company worth doing business should be able to shift focus when it turns out its product or service is more appealing to a completely different target market.
What firms need to understand is that consumers nowadays are more connected than ever. With the increased use of mobile phones, they have a great amount of power. They are the ones who could decide in a matter of seconds the destiny of your brand. They are the ones who interact with your brand in the digital environment many times per day. So, what you need to do is to develop a unified and personalized marketing approach in order to make sure that you create an experience that will stay in their minds. It’s the perfect time for you to step up and overdeliver. The word “overdeliver” many times sounds quite scary to most business owners. They believe that they should give things for free and hence increase their expenses. But overdeliver doesn’t necessarily mean that. A business could overdeliver in many different ways and mostly through its customer service. It is of paramount importance that you ensure to create an experience for your buyers, which not only deserves but will also ultimately drives brand loyalty and marketing ROI (Return on Investment).
In order to do that, you will need to ask yourselves when does the customer journey begin. For every consumer, the customer journey starts at a different level. For some, the journey might begin once they receive your marketing message, but for some others it might start when they perform a repeat purchase as a loyal buyer. The customer’s journey is the one that will ultimately create a long-term revenue. We should examine very carefully the different steps of this journey and try to use the digital technology in order to create an amazing customer experience. Let’s try to analyze together some things that you should include in your digital brand in order to enhance the experience of the user’s journey.
The very first thing you need to do is to have a welcome program. You have worked so hard to get the e-mail of a prospect customer and you should try to make the most out of it. The reason customers are providing you with their e-mail is because they simply want to learn more about the services you are offering. It is of crucial importance that you invest in that relationship. The user’s journey starts at this point. Many firms have found that a welcome program actually does the trick for their clients. You need to set up a welcome package in all of your digital platforms. In the welcome package, the future customer needs to be aware of exactly what is going to be offered to him or her. Hence, you need to provide details of what the new contact should expect from your digital marketing program. Of course, under no circumstances you should bombard the prospect with all the information at once. The messages should be broken down into pieces. You should provide a message series and each part should provide the consumer with a benefit of your brand.
At this point, you should provide the option to the visitors of your digital platform to set any type of preferences they might have in regard to future communications. Remember that the first interaction is of extreme importance. You do not want to blow this opportunity away! You need to keep in the back of your head that you should gather as much information as possible regarding your customers. If you manage to know more details about them, then your strategy is going to be more targeted and provide higher return on investment.
Lead nurturing is the process of developing relationships with buyers at every stage of the sales funnel and through every step of the buyer’s journey. It focuses marketing and communication efforts on listening to the needs of prospects, and providing the information and answers they need. More and more companies are all about inbound marketing, as a way for them to create more leads. Although it is becoming more and more difficult for them to do so, companies should start relying more on their inbound leads. In most cases, only a relatively small percentage of your inbound leads will be ready to make an immediate purchase, leaving upward of 90 percent of your inbound leads on the table. What you need to do is to create an effective lead nurturing strategy. By doing this, you could see an immediate impact on the results of your inbound strategy—end up with an average of 20 percent increase in sales opportunities.
The good thing is that you have some extremely sophisticated digital technology in your hands. The key here is not to be afraid to ask for help. There are many firms out there that believe they know what to do regarding their digital strategy, but they fail to do so because they don’t exactly know how to implement it. Today’s sophisticated digital marketing technology gives marketers the ability to deploy advanced nurture programs, allowing marketing teams to build brand preference and loyalty both before an initial sale as well as in between repeat purchases.
There are many different nurture programs that you could implement. The simplest and easiest would be to send reminder e-mails every other week. The strategy is that all people on your mailing list receive the same e-mail at the same time. The purpose of the e-mail is not about trying to sell your brand. Most of the times it should be on building the relationship with your audience. Again, that is the simplest and easiest way to keep connected. If you would like to take it to the next level, then you should try to use all the information that you have regarding your customers, in order to perform a more targeted marketing campaign. If you manage to send messages that target directly a specific customer segment, then you are in the right track!
Although most companies have quite a few visitors on their websites, they don’t make enough sales. Some of these companies have no idea why they don’t even know at which stage of the customer journey the consumer decided not to proceed with buy. If you belong to this group, then you need to keep track of your analytics, in order to know for how long and which exact pages the consumer visited in your website. If you already know that the consumers are putting the products or services in their cart but they do not proceed to the actual buy, then you need a cart-abandonment program.
There are many companies that have not even considered of such a solution. They are putting lots of effort (time and money) into attracting the consumers and making them to want the product or service, but they just don’t close the sale. The basic rule of sales always be closing (ABC) applies to online world as well! Research has shown that 67 percent of online shopping carts are abandoned before the customer completes a sale. What you need to do is to use a program that could remind your customers what they’ve left behind and encourage them to complete their purchase. It is a very powerful and straightforward way to reconnect with customers who navigate away from their shopping carts. It means that your company will be able to recapture sales that would have been lost and finally generate more revenue.
If you choose to use such a technique, you will be able to monitor all abandoned carts that never turned into actual orders and then deploy your marketing strategy in order to convert them. For example, you could send some personalized e-mails to those consumers and offer incentives (i.e., extra discount) in order to encourage them to complete the process. If you are selling a more complicated and technical product, then you could offer just expertise and assistance throughout the buying process.
Of course, there are some other tools, such as the browse abandonment program, that work in a very similar way. It’s basically a message series that is being initiated when the visitor leaves your website without completing a conversion goal that you have set. Since these contacts may not be as far along in the buying cycle, the goal of the program is to provide helpful information to the customers and hopefully encourage them to come back to complete the purchase.
One of the most valuable assets of the company, apart from your employees, is your customers. If they purchased from you once, you should try hard to make them repurchase. Each customer is extremely valuable to your company. It costs a lot more to try to bring new customers in than to keep your existing ones. If you manage to do that, you will convert them into loyal customers and then they will be your brand advocates in the web. Many times firms don’t give the attention that is needed in such an important matter. If you haven’t done so, then you need to consider implementing a loyalty program. It could be something very simple that for every three buys, they get something free or they get a discount or it might be something far more complicated. It all depends on how much money you are willing to invest to your loyalty program. Bottom line is that you need to implement a program that rewards your most loyal customers in order to strengthen even more their brand loyalty.
Of course, the following questions might pop in your mind. Who are my best customers? Are the ones who bring me more money? Are the ones who buy more often? Or are the ones who they bought more recently? There are no right or wrong answers to these questions. It all depends on the nature of your business. A way to determine your best customers could be by assessing the recency, frequency, and monetary value of their buys. As I mentioned before, it all depends on the nature of your business. For some of you, frequency could be the most important factor, whereas for some others the amount of money spent in each visit could be the most important factor. Once you have established who those customers are, you need to give them some offers that will apply only to them. A fully personalized offer will make them feel extremely special. In order to make them feel even more special, think about providing them something more than just a discount. You could offer them something like VIP access in some of your products or services. For example, they could have access to your new products first. While a simple coupon code or discount is always a nice offer, consider providing things such as early access to beta programs, VIP access at company events, or access to premium content. These small touches will go a long way in ensuring your brand is always top of mind.
It is inevitable to lose some old customers. Some of them might have switched or they might just have forgotten about your brand. No matter what is the reason, customers will fall off your radar. The question is what you are going to do about it. Bottom line is that you need to reactivate them and start engaging with them more. So how will you do that? The first thing is to use your marketing research. You should use all the data you have from them in order to create personalized messages to be sent automatically. The key is to remember that each customer wants to feel special. Your optimum goal is to turn them into brand advocates. A simple solution would be to send an e-mail on a purchase anniversary. These are more likely to catch someone’s eye than a generic batch-and-blast marketing message. Or, try a special promo code or discount that is delivered over a series of messages. If the customer never engages with the e-mails, consider suspending his or her name from marketing messages. Remember, it’s OK to keep your database clean and full of individuals who are excited to interact with your brand! While these are just a few of the automation techniques you can use to reach your customers and prospects, getting started with these programs will ensure you’re staying in touch with them during important points in the customer journey.
As we have mentioned in this chapter, it’s all about the people. The customer needs to be in the center of our attention. When you think about your brand, you also need to think about who is going to buy it. You need to think not only customers’ demographic variables but also their lifestyle. Lifestyle segmentation is an approach that places emphasis on the shared activities, interests, and behaviors of customers. Along with activities, lifestyle segmentation is driven by characteristics such as shared interests, opinions, attitudes and values of customers. At the same time, you need to understand their past current and future behavior. You need to target customers based on their interest or experience with your company. With this strategy, your market segments have shared familiarity with your products. Benefits sought, usage, loyalty, prospect, or customer status are common characteristics.
The digital world is a huge opportunity but at the same time is a huge challenge as well. As in the brick and wall market you need to identify, through digital this time, how you can raise awareness. Most probably you will have to use the channels that are more frequently used by your customers and start engage with them. As we discussed, at the beginning, you need to take advantage of their demographic and behavioral criteria. Since all of your customers leave a digital footprint, you should take advantage of it. First, you must understand which customers you need to look for, what type of devices they will be using, and when and at the same time which social networks, websites, and apps they engage with.
Digital branding is all about how to manage your brand in the online environment. But what if you also sell your products offline as well? In the offline environment, it is easier to manage your brand and understand the customer. For example, in retail, a customer can pick up the phone to get a location and opening hours, drive and park to the location, walk into a store, get help from staff, find their way to what they need, find a product within the price range to meet their expectations, access the checkout, purchase effectively, and leave safely and securely. All of these elements enhance their experience. The same experience should be provided in the online environment. Most of the firms out there understand this concept but there are only few firms that actually put the customer experience in the center of their strategy.
When we are talking about the element of people, we should not only think about our customers. Along with the external customer we also have the internal one. Your employees need to understand the brand promise because that is vital in order to deliver your brand properly to your external clients. From your end, you need to devote some time and money in order to recruit, educate, and train the right people. There are several reasons as to why your employees are a vital part of your online brand. For example, your customers may seek comfort online by seeing, hearing, and reading about key members of the management or customer service team.
During performing offline branding one key factor is location. In other words, where your firm is going to be based, what are the demographic criteria of your target group (area that they live, language that they speak, income that they have, and so on). The problem that you will have with the variable of location in the online environment is that you will not have total control of your audiences and their location. So, what can you do? The most important aspect of online branding is that you need to adapt. Adaptation to different customer segments is the key to your success. The only way for firms to successfully sell their products across different targets (in terms of location) is to be able to culturally adapt in its market. It means that your website should be fully customized to the different needs of your target segment. That could mean different options in terms of language but to the other extreme that could also mean a totally different web design that will be more appealing to your new segment.
The only way for you to succeed is that you are fully committed to adaptation. The best international brands try to provide a unique strategy for each location. In order to be successful, you could use search engine optimization (SEO), frequency of mobile usage, and choice of operating systems to develop apps. Location as part of brand awareness and engagement has also become much more of a factor with the use of smartphones. The location is maybe one of the most difficult aspects in terms of implementation. It’s the most difficult, simply because in an online environment the retailers are asked to provide a physical location. As much as we try to offer an online experience, we must face the truth! Local stores are where the most important experiences will always happen. Even the world’s largest online retailers have started realizing this and have begun experimenting with pop-up physical stores. The physical experience is going to close the sale. That sale of course might not take place in the physical store but it could take place online. In those stores consumers can touch and feel a product before making a purchase, or even ask questions about the product to one of the employees. Brands that really want to stay in touch do so across all channels and not separately within each channel.
One of the most important variables that could influence your customers is the electronic word of mouth (eWOM). eWOM is an electronic interpersonal communication about products and services between consumers. Make no mistake! It is probably the most influential source of marketplace information for your consumers. The reason why it is so influential is because consumers generally tend to believe other consumers more than they believe you. It doesn’t mean that they don’t like your firm. They simply believe that their peers will provide them with more unbiased information.
There are a lot of product review websites (e.g., consumerreview.com), retailers’ websites (e.g., amazon.com), brands’ websites (e.g., forums.us.dell.com), personal blogs, message boards, and social networking sites (e.g., Facebook, MySpace) that could provide information to other peers. eWOM often occurs between people who have little or no prior relationship with one another. This anonymity allows consumers to more comfortably share their opinions without revealing their identities. The unique characteristics of eWOM encourage consumers to share their opinions with other consumers, thus increasing the volume of eWOM. As a result, there is a greater likelihood that consumers will find other consumers with product expertise on the eWOM platforms. However, the anonymous nature of eWOM can make it difficult for consumers to determine the quality and credibility of the eWOM. Determining the quality of online posts has become even more difficult now that marketers have attempted to influence eWOM by compensating consumers to review products and even going so far as to post their own reviews about their products. Because of this, consumers often look for a variety of cues when determining the quality of the online information.
A business can be marketed in many ways, but some of those options may be a waste of time for your company. For some, building a campaign is about testing the waters and trying everything once, in order to see what works best for them. That is not an effective strategy and leads to a lot of wasted money and time. You need to perform research that will show what works for your niche today so that you don’t waste resources on a plan that could fail.
Digital will continue to flourish but we need to learn how to harness it. In order to do so, we need to understand the different types of technology we have in our disposal. In short, companies that chase the technological trappings of digital without first understanding whether their people have the requisite mindsets to embrace the opportunities for change and reinvention that digital brings, will likely fail. By contrast, executives who look to shape the cultures of their organizations to react quickly to emerging trends and to be open to new ways of working and thinking will be more innovative and better able to spot market shifts and thus become more profitable and disruptive competitors in their industries. That translates into new, ahead-of-the-curve products, a thriving workforce, and new industry-altering business models that can outpace the competition.
As consumers are rapidly moving between channels and platforms, marketers are finding it so difficult to implement an integrated marketing strategy. In today’s highly cluttered digital marketing environment there is a great need for marketers to fully comprehend a new breed of consumers. For example, the modern consumer can check into a store with the use of a geolocation service (i.e., Foursquare, Google+, or Facebook check-in), redeem an offer that is available only for those consumers who are online, pay with Android Pay or Apple Pay, and share his or her comments on social media. Apparently, the new consumer is not simply digitalized. The new consumers have three basic characteristics: they have extremely high social media engagement, they search for local offering, and they do most things through their phones. Smartphones are empowering consumers and transforming shopping and recreational behaviors. Shopping used to be fun. Now it is much more than that. It is a game with immediate rewards and a chance to get in touch with friends and followers.
The first thing that people do when they look for a product is to Google it. It doesn’t matter if we like it or not but the Internet has changed the whole way that we search and evaluate companies. Do you know that some customers out there are looking for your products? The million-dollar question is are your products easy to find and if they are, are consumers ready to buy them? In order for that to happen, your message needs to be conveyed in a way that will convince the consumers to buy it. From your website to your social media networks, it’s all about creating your online and unique “digital bang.” And because the competition is fierce, your digital bang needs to be so loud that it will be very difficult to be ignored!
Of course, at the same time it’s extremely important to have an end game. Basically, you need to set your priorities and targets, right from the beginning. Let’s face it; today’s online marketplace is more competitive than ever. You need some help from someone that not only understands the customer journey but also knows how to develop an online marketing strategy that helps your brand become known as “the best answer” wherever prospects and customers may be looking: search, social media, industry media or e-mail. You need to develop an online marketing strategy that helps create, easy to find, engaging experiences that inspire action. You should identify your business objectives, and use the right combination of digital marketing consultancy services to reach these goals. Whatever your objectives are, they should be the foundations of your digital marketing strategy.
One of the ways to establish online presence is through social media. The mistake that many firms make is that they do not have a specific marketing strategy when they use social media. It’s not only about letting everybody know how great your brand is on Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest or Facebook. You should use social media in order to grow your customer loyalty, build value and most importantly help your business grow. Understanding your audience is key to your brand’s success in social media. The buyer’s journey, from discovery to conversion, may extend over weeks or months of information gathering, consumption and hopefully, sharing. You need to mix traditional marketing, search marketing, and social media to work for your brand and to improve direct website traffic, create brand buzz, and get higher search engine rankings. Your aim is to make the consumers not only to join your social network community, but also to buy your product and to refer your brand to peers and social networks.
Of course, online advertising allows brands to reach out beyond their existing networks, to tap into new, highly targeted audiences via search, social or display ads. Companies get the best ROI in social advertising through strategic planning, top quality ad creative, and ongoing campaign measurement and optimization. You should look into adding e-mail marketing to your integrated online marketing program and establish a customer-centric program geared at converting and retaining customers.
In the following chapters, we will further analyze on how you can build the proper channels in order to have a successful digital brand. There are a few points, though, that you need to take under consideration before you start. First of all, you need to have a clear vision on your branding. As in non–digital branding, the e-branding involves the tone, feel, and message that your brand gives off, whether in nonverbal visual cues or written text. It is of paramount importance that you have been very clear regarding the previous elements. The next step would be to start having an online presence. You could start building your website and have some social media presence. At this point, you need to start increasing the brand awareness.
Later, once you start having an increased brand awareness, you can invest more on your advertising campaign in order to take advantage of the momentum of your brand.
One of the most common mistakes that firms do while building their online brand is that they are not being consistent. Consistency is the most important factor when it comes to communicate your brand. Consistency could be on how many times you post and where exactly but even more what exactly are you saying. It does not matter if you post once a week or if you post everyday as long as you are being consistent. You cannot post every day in your blog for a week and then just forget about it and post again after a month. Of course, that will take lots of effort. It takes time to build authority and rapport with your audience and search engines; consistency helps you build that rapport. You also want to be consistent with where you post. Focusing on a few main digital channels like e-mail, social media, and blogging might be all you focus on. Then, when you are consistent on those, you can add other digital advertising channels. Do not over do it right at the beginning. Small steps are the key!
Another common mistake is that many times firms overdo it. There are so many brands out there that are trying hard to be heard. As a result, they spend a lot of money in advertising with a solely goal to be everywhere and eventually to be noticed. That is a very big mistake. With the use of technology, we can minimize our marketing budget and maximize each effectiveness. What we need to do is to just listen. We need to listen to the audience to understand if our message is accepted from them or not. After that, we need to listen their response. There are so many cases of firms that post on their social media accounts and then they do not even bother checking the replies/comments. That is why if you manage to engage with your audience, your firm will stick out. Of course, you need to bear in mind that everything keeps changing in the digital environment. New technologies, new generations, and new behavior trends force digital marketers to adapt or get left behind.
In a digital world that is constantly changing, marketers need to be proactive to find the latest and greatest opportunities. Those who embrace new digital channels often build stronger and more visible presences because they were there first. You can obviously wait until it’s a tried and true digital channel, but you risk getting lost in the sea of marketers who have also decided to embrace this new channel. For example, brands that embraced video with YouTube from the start didn’t get lost in the crowd of businesses that are now trying to use video marketing in their digital strategy. The digital marketing landscape makes it very easy for marketers to broadcast their message and be quite proactive in their marketing to consumers. Unfortunately, this means that the marketing landscape is very competitive and, sometimes, aggressive. Embracing a few key perspectives is essential for any brand to grow its business with online channels today!
By now it should be very clear to you that an online brand should be all about your customers and not about your firm. The more you engage with them, the more they are going to buy products and services from your firm. The more they buy, the more loyal they become. You can clearly understand that soon your loyal customers are going to be your advocates in the web. What you should never forget though is that customer-centric marketing is an ongoing process.
You also need to think the various levels of the customer journey begin. As we discussed in this chapter, the customer journey might start at a different level for each of your customers. What you need to do of course is to encourage them to stay “tuned” in your online platform. Bear in mind that the key is to constantly try to stay connected and remind them to buy, and last but not least make them come back to buy some more. The digital world is a huge opportunity but at the same time is a huge challenge as well. One of the most important variables that could influence your customers is the eWOM. eWOM is an electronic interpersonal communication about products and services between consumers. Make no mistake! It is probably the most influential source of marketplace information for your consumers. What you need to do is to avoid some common mistakes that most firms do. While building your online brand, you must keep a high level of consistency. Consistency could be on how many times you post, where exactly you post, and even more what exactly are you saying.
In a digital world that is constantly changing, marketers need to be proactive to find the latest and greatest opportunities. They need to take innovative technologies such as smartphones apps under consideration. These technologies empower consumers and transform shopping in a game with immediate rewards and a chance to get in touch with friends and followers.
Aaker, D. A., & Biel, A. (2013). Brand Equity & Advertising: Advertising’s Role in Building Strong Brands. Psychology Press.
Benedicktus, R. L., Brady, M. K., Darke, P. R., & Voorhees, C. M. (2010). Conveying trustworthiness to online consumers: Reactions to consensus, physical store presence, brand familiarity, and generalized suspicion. Journal of Retailing, 86(4), 322-335.
Confos, N., Confos, N., Davis, T., & Davis, T. (2016). Young consumer-brand relationship building potential using digital marketing. European Journal of Marketing, 50(11), 1993-2017.
Dayal, S., Landesberg, H., & Zeisser, M. (2000). Building digital brands. The McKinsey Quarterly, 42-42.
Dubois, D. (2016). Digital and Social Strategies for Luxury Brands. Luxusmarkenmanagement: Grundlagen, Strategien und praktische Umsetzung, 327.
Gürhan-Canli, Z., Hayran, C., & Sarial-Abi, G. (2016). Customer-based brand equity in a technologically fast-paced, connected, and constrained environment. AMS Review, 6(1-2), 23-32.
Keller, K. L. (2016). Reflections on customer-based brand equity: perspectives, progress, and priorities. AMS Review, 6(1-2), 1-16.
Keller, K. L., Sternthal, B., & Tybout, A. (2002). Three questions you need to ask about your brand. Harvard Business Review, 80(9), 80-89.
Landa, R. (2016). Building a brand narrative in the digital age. In R. Landa (Ed.). Advertising by Design: Generating and Designing Creative Ideas Across Media (pp. 78-89). Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons Inc.
Malthouse, E. C., Calder, B. J., & Vandenbosch, M. (2016). Creating brand engagement on digital, social and mobile media (pp. 85-101). In R. J. Brodie, L. D. Hollebeek, & J. Conduit (Eds.). Customer Engagement. New York: Routledge.
Øverland, A. P. (2016). Always on: Digital Brand Strategy in a Big Data World. New York: Routledge.
Pike, S., Gentle, J., Kelly, L., & Beatson, A. (2016). Tracking brand positioning for an emerging destination: 2003 to 2015. Tourism and Hospitality Research, 1467358416646821.
Singh, J., Quamina, L. T., & Xue, M. (2017). ‘10 million followers and counting’: How digital brand alliances between online influencers and brands impact consumer value perceptions. London: Kingston University.
Swaminathan, V. (2016). Branding in the digital era: new directions for research on customer-based brand equity. AMS review, 6(1-2), 33-38.
Yao, L. (2016). Position the Brand: Identify the Role of Social Media for Public Accounting Firms in Digital Age. Master’s thesis, Liberty University.
3.12.148.234