Customer Analytics

Customer Analytics refers to the processes and technologies that give organizations the customer insight necessary to deliver offers that are anticipated, relevant and timely. It has become an integral part of the work system of any organization in the world. EXIN Media brings for you the importance of Customer Analytics.

Customer analytics is becoming critical. To understand why, consider this: Customers are more empowered and connected than ever. And becoming more so. Customers have access to information anywhere, any time— where to shop, what to buy, how much to pay, etc. That makes it increasingly important to predict how customers will behave when interacting with your organization, so you can respond accordingly. The deeper your understanding of customers’ buying habits and lifestyle preferences, the more accurate your predictions of future buying behaviors will be – and the more successful you will be at delivering relevant offers that attract rather than alienate customers.

Customer analytics is often managed by an interdisciplinary group made up of business owners from different departments within the company, including marketing, sales, customer service, IT and business analysts.

Forecasting buying habits and lifestyle preferences is a process of data mining and analysis. This information consists of many aspects like credit card purchases, magazine subscriptions, loyalty card membership, surveys, and voter registration. Using these categories, profiles can be created for any organization’s most profitable customers. When many of these potential customers are aggregated in a single area it indicates a fertile location for the business to situate. Using a drive time analysis, it is also possible to predict how far a given customer will drive to a particular location. Combining these sources of information, a dollar value can be placed on each household within a trade area detailing the likelihood that household will be worth to a company. Through customer analytics, companies can make decisions with confidence because every decision is based on facts and objective data.

The most important thing to remember is the fact that the goal of customer analytics is to create a single, accurate view of the customer for the group to work with and make decisions about how best to acquire and retain customers, identify high-value customers and proactively interact with them.  Failure to have enough accurate data can make any insight derived from analysis wildly inaccurate.

Cause Marketing

Cause Marketing or cause-related marketing refers to a type of marketing involving the cooperative efforts of a for-profit business and a non-profit organization for mutual benefit. The term is sometimes used more broadly and generally to refer to any type of marketing effort for social and other charitable causes, including in-house marketing efforts by non-profit organizations. EXIN Media brings for you the basic information that you needed to know about Cause Marketing.

Cause marketing differs from corporate giving (philanthropy) as the latter generally involves a specific donation that is tax-deductible while cause marketing is a marketing relationship not necessarily based on a donation.

Numerous studies have shown that cause-related marketing has helped to increase a company’s profits. The possible benefits of cause marketing for non-profit organizations include an increased ability to promote the non-profit organization’s cause via the greater financial resources of a business, and an increased ability to reach possible supporters through a company’s customer base. The possible benefits also includes positive Public Relations (PR), improved customer relations, additional marketing opportunities, and making more money.

Although originally a marketing strategy that occurred offline, cause marketing has been conducted more and more through online channels in the last decade. This is due in part to the increasing percentage of households with internet connections. As with other types of marketing campaigns, companies can leverage online marketing channels along with other offline channels such as print and media.

Cause marketing can take on many forms, including:

ü  Transactional Campaigns: A corporate donation triggered by a consumer action (e.g. sharing a message social media, making a purchase, etc.)

ü  Point of Sale Campaigns: A donation solicited by a company at the point of sale but made by the consumer (e.g. consumers are asked to round up their purchase or donate a dollar when they check out online or in-stores)

ü  Message-Focused Campaigns: Business resources are used to share a cause-focused message. For example a campaign that encourages behavior change (e.g. don’t text and drive), drives awareness about an important cause (e.g. talking with elderly parents about driving) or encourages consumer action (e.g. signing a petition to save whales from captivity).

In recent years, online auctions have been used in cause marketing strategies using a number of different online auction platforms. Companies have created programs to help sellers and corporations donate a percentage of their sales to a non-profit organization through the use of auctions. Businesses and non-profit organizations can also use the program for Cause Marketing and non-profit fundraising programs.

Advertising: Communication or Confusion?

Advertising- popularly known as a mode of mode of communication is changing its gear. Once known as a way of setting apart, slowly is changing its tone. Advertising is very gradually turning into a challenge now as the target audience chasing the digital platform. Therefore today, EXIN Media is set to present few words on advertising.

The crisis is quite the same as television felt decade ago when computer started prevail the market. The challenge regarding the notion of TV surrounded with confusion, and so is advertising. The brands as well as the advertising agencies are going through confusion- is it content, a video, or a type of storytelling? The challenges with the notion of advertising have faced in recent years has made the customers choices based on strategic direction, versus simply on what's shiny and new.

Advertising though vastly used as a type of communication, have specific market objectives.  Advertising can communicate the benefits of a product, generate leads for sales follow-up, build the reputation of a company or compare a company’s products and brands against its competitors, according to the industry experts.

However, the more people are now turning into online; advertising has also changed its mode of application. Online advertising is just the message itself. It’s about mapping the customer journey to start a conversation with consumers, leading to engagement, purchase, loyalty and advocacy at different touch points against this integrated journey.

Companies and brands now-a-days are engaging through their online activity through social media platforms, via Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc. Focusing upon the Word Of Mouth to engage the customers, it’s all about creating traffic and let the business grow.

Advertising has the only objective- to catch attention. Consumers now sift through hundreds of messages every day; therefore it’s hard to catch their attention.

With an average of 9-10 hours of daily media consumption by the customers, it's not about starting a conversation, but offering something of value to the consumer. Something they choose to spend time with.

Developing Brand Identity

The Brand Identity of a business is how a company wants to be perceived by its consumers. The components of brand include its name, logo, tone, tagline, typeface, among others. They are created by a business to reflect the value it is trying to bring to the market and to appeal to its customers. Establishing, developing and maintaining a brand identity is extremely important for a company. EXIN Media brings for you the ways through which you can develop the brand for your business.

First of all, try to think what makes your business unique. Understand the personality of the brand — its history, function and the ethos behind it all. Extract every nuance of who the client is and what the company’s about, including the intended target market, how it wishes to be perceived, and formats and outlets for where it wishes to promote itself.

No matter how much experience you have, the client knows the product better than you ever will. Rushing in with a set of en vogue visuals might get you praises from your peers, but could be off-kilter with your client's expectations and what's best for the brand.

Come up with a logo, slogan, tagline or typeface that suits your personality or your business’ personality.

When it comes down to it, brand strategy is business strategy.  If your brand is crafted strategically and implemented consistently, it differentiates your market positioning to create a sustainable competitive advantage. 

With that, always remember that no matter how strategic or practical you get, your success will depend on how well you emotionally connect with your consumers.

Engaging With Customers

Customer Engagement is the engagement of customers with one another, with a company or a brand. The initiative for engagement can be either consumer-led or company-led and the medium of engagement can be on or offline. It can be defined as the emotional connection between a company and its customers. It is extremely important for the successful working of a business. EXIN Media brings for you the importance of customer engagement for your business.

Nothing predicts organic growth like customer engagement. Aggressive advertising campaigns, mega sales promotions, promises of low prices, and reward programs may get customers through the door, but they don't create the types of emotional connections that drive long-term profits and loyalty. If the customers aren't "true believers," then the company risks surviving based on a price relationship alone and will never be able to prosper.

Customer engagement is a worthy goal for any brand, and the surest path to loyalty. The best way to build it is with working on customer-centric method. That means every aspect of the brand is geared towards what a customer wants from it.  Every interaction should affirm the customer's decision to make a brand part of their life.

Though some may believe customer’s purchasing decisions are guided primarily by rational thinking, it can also be quite the contrary sometime. Customers form strong emotions about a company based on their experiences with its people, and those emotions strongly influence their buying decisions.

Customers who love a particular company often say that they “can't live without it”. They shop more often, buy more, tell others about it, and most importantly, are less price-sensitive.

Exceptional customer engagement doesn’t happen by accident, and there’s certainly no ‘one size fits all’ when it comes to keeping the customers happy. But by engaging customers in the right way and at the right time, one can deliver an experience they won’t forget in a long time.

By keeping the customers informed throughout their journey, one can not only reduce customer effort, but also avoid complaints, improve their experiences and prevent them from having to chase the company for information.

Managing Crisis In A Business

Every business, no matter how stable it remains, is bound to get hit by crisis at a point of time. It is almost inevitable. Before a crisis strikes, business owners should think about a how a disaster would impact employees, customers, suppliers, the public and their company’s value. Crisis can strike anytime, anywhere and to anyone in the business. Therefore, having a crisis management plan is an utmost necessity. Well defined and smart companies around the globe are now coming up with a crisis management team of their own.

The objectives during any crisis are to protect any individual (employee or public) who may be endangered by the crisis, ensuring the key audiences are kept informed, and making sure that the organization survives. There should be a written plan which should include specific actions that will be taken in the event of a crisis.

Every organization should ensure, via an appropriate policy and training, that only authorized spokespersons speak for them, and this is particularly important during a crisis. Each crisis communications team should have people who have been pre-screened and trained to be the lead and/or backup spokespersons for different channels of communications.

Today, we have to have — immediately at hand — the means to reach our internal and external stakeholders using multiple modalities. Many of us have several phone numbers, more than one email address, and can receive SMS (text) messages or faxes. We can even send audio and video messages via email. And then, of course, there is social media. This may be the best and fastest way to reach some of our stakeholders, but setting up social media accounts for this purpose and developing a number of followers/friends/contacts on the various social media platforms (e.g., Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+) is not something you can do after a crisis breaks, because nowhere does news of a crisis spread faster and more out of your control than on social media. Therefore, social media should be handled tactfully at such a time

Nothing generates more negative media coverage than a lack of honesty and transparency. Therefore, being as open and transparent as possible can help stop rumors and defuse a potential media frenzy. This transparency must be projected through all communications channels — news interviews, social media, internal announcements, etc.

A crisis that is not managed well can wipe out decades of hard work and company value in a matter of hours. A well-managed crisis confirms that your company has the processes and procedures in place to address almost any issue that may develop.

The most important aspect is that the crisis management plan should be created when everything is running smoothly and everyone involved can think clearly. By planning in advance, all parties will have time to seriously think about the ideal ways to manage different types of crisis.