Corporate Social Responsibility & the marketing thereof

Did you know that being responsible is directly tied to purchase, with 51% of consumers wanting to reward responsible companies with their business, and 53% saying they would pay a premium for products from a responsible company. 

If you are not 100% certain on what exactly CSR entails, herewith two definitions to broaden your horizon:

• According to the Harvard Kennedy School, “Corporate social responsibility encompasses not only what companies do with their profits, but also how they make them. It goes beyond philanthropy and compliance and addresses how companies manage their economic, social, and environmental impacts, as well as their relationships in all key spheres of influence: the workplace, the marketplace, the supply chain, the community, and the public policy realm”.
• Another excellent definition on CSR done by The Institute of Directors (2002), “CSR is about businesses and other organizations going beyond the legal obligations to manage the impact they have on the environment and society. In particular, this could include how organizations interact with their employees, suppliers, customers and the communities in which they operate, as well as the extent they attempt to protect the environment”.

Recently, I came across a great article that showcased two examples on how companies directly influenced consumers. The reason for highlighting this to you is that it serves as a perfect example on how companies are becoming the rules of the world, bear with me here:

• HubSpot recently announced opening offices in Ireland. For them, the decision was purely to expand the business but on the other hand, new job opportunities was at the forefront of discussion in a country, hundreds of miles away which affected people they have never met.
• Steve Jobs hated flash and therefore none of the Apple products were developed to accommodate flash as a component. Through this tactic, intentionally or not, he has altered the market through his decision to restrict.

You may ask, what is the purpose of your article and what relation does it have with marketing? Well, think about it, who created content about the new offices in Ireland and who communicated that flash wasn’t compatible with any Apple product? The answer: marketing! Therefore, corporate social responsibility should play a fundamental part in any marketing strategy due to the fact that being seen as socially responsible could be used as a PR strategy to help increase revenue.

But, before you go and paint the offices green, it is important to keep in mind that CSR should focus on areas of direct relevance to your company’s sphere of operations. CSR is not about pursuing your CEO’s pet interest and ‘saving the seals’. Although ‘case-related marketing’ and ‘strategic philosophy’ forms part of an element of CSR, they are not central components of the CSR of your company. CSR has been implemented to enhance the success of the company because of its relevance, rather than representing something unconnected to its core business.

I sincerely hope that you’ve found this article interesting – feel free to post your comments or thoughts.

Pointers in redesigning your website

A website is pivotal for any business success as you need a presence to reach buyers in this internet age that we live in, therefore creating another avenue to generate revenue by attracting more customers. A great website can contribute to the formation of a positive attitude towards an online store, increase stickiness and revisit rates, and can stimulate online purchase. Should you be in a position to either redesign or revamp your current website due to either rebranding, making it more user-friendly or simply moving to a new Content Management System (CMS), you need to follow the suggested pointers below:

1. Benchmark your current metrics through Google Analytics if you don’t have access to this information (number of visitors, time spend on site, domain authority, number of new leads, bounce rate etc.);
2. Set your goals to determine for example, what the reason is for the redesign, what you would like to achieve (increase traffic) and how you are going to achieve it;
3. Determine which channels drive the most traffic to your site (buyers vs. browsers, organic vs. paid along with social media measurement);
4. Complete a full competitor analysis as you need to know what they are doing out there to benchmark yourself;
5. Identify your competitive advantage or your unique selling proposition to set yourself apart and also to focus on that during the redesign process;
6. Choose your colour of the site as usability is no longer the ultimate goal for designers as sites must also incorporate aesthetic value along by injecting a little fun and pleasure into their visitor’s lives;
7. Design your site by focussing on personas because your website should speak to buyers, and not just to you;
8. Optimise your site (search engine optimisation) by focussing on the content and who is linked to you);
9. Implement an on-going content strategy which may include blogging, press releases, social media etc.);
10. Just remember, the website quality, system quality, service quality and information quality plays a major role in the attitude of potential buyers therefore, ensure to blow their minds once on your site;
11. Website usability is yet another factor that you should not leave in the dark during this whole revamping process:

• ease of understanding the structure of the site, its functions, interface and the contents that can be observed by the user;
• simplicity of use of the site in its initial stages;
• the speed with which the users can find what they are looking for;
• the perceived ease of site navigation in terms of time required and action necessary in order to obtain the desired results;
• the ability of the user to control what they are doing, and where they are at any given moment.

Lastly, don’t forget about the analytics as you would like to see when and who visits your site.

Good luck with your revamping of your site and may you end up high on the Google ranking pages!

LoyaltyPlus' Blog: Cash is King with Rewards!

LoyaltyPlus' Blog: Cash is King with Rewards!: Today’s consumers are much savvier at finding out what is available to them at the lowest price and I am specifically referring to t...

Cash is King with Rewards!

Today’s consumers are much savvier at finding out what is available to them at the lowest price and I am specifically referring to the retail market in South Africa. Research in the marketplace concludes that the best rewards programme for any company is to offer cash-based rewards due to consumers usually become frustrated with points-based programmes. For example, if you have accumulated points at the start of the programme, the value continues to drop – and who wants to be part of such a programme? The use of points and miles-based rewards programmes are not effective in acquiring or retaining members as it often takes a long time to earn and redeem the rewards.

It doesn’t matter where you go these days or where you shop, you are confronted by staff at the point of sale stops asking you to join their rewards or loyalty programmes. For example, currently in my wallet, I have the following loyalty programme cards at my disposal, e.g. ABSA’s “Rewards Card”, Exclusive Books’ “Fanatics Card”, Boardmans’ “Thank you Card”, Kauai’s “LiveLife Card”, Clicks ClubCard, Dis-Chem’s “Healthy Living Card”, CTFM’s “Accrue Card”, SterKinekor’s “MovieClub Card” and PicknPay’s “Smart Shopper Card”.  Let me confess, I LOVE ‘immediate gratification’ offers and I love spending at the above mentioned companies as they reward me each time. I have done what they have asked me to do and then they compensated me for doing just that. This kind of reward is based on the age-old marketing, value-add concept of “action and reaction”, which always seems to be a WINNER!

We as marketers are confronted each day with the challenge to acquire new customers and what are we going to do to retain them? So you may ask: ‘why is it so difficult to earn a customer’s loyalty?’ The answer to this my friend, is that attention spans are shorter, as the old saying goes ‘time is money and money is few’, patience is running thinner and the competition is visible today more than ever. You need to go in with the right engagement strategy when starting a loyalty programme for your company. The wrong approach is to only focus on acquiring a database full of potentially wrong candidates. The winning solution is to acquire the right consumers from day one as your chances of building solid relationships are much greater by demonstrating value is the key to the long-term success of your programme.

Therefore, you need to determine what resonates with your members and a good programme will offer VALUE, whether it’s in the form of cash-back, merchandise or airline points/miles. The whole concept of a loyalty programme is to change your consumers’ behaviour but remember, if they never receive the rewards, they will lose enthusiasm for the whole programme, and you have failed miserably…

LoyaltyPlus' Blog: The future of Social Media

LoyaltyPlus' Blog: The future of Social media: One of my friends recently posted the following comment on Facebook: “I wonder how we will remember Facebook in 2030. Will we see it as ...

The future of Social Media

One of my friends recently posted the following comment on Facebook: “I wonder how we will remember Facebook in 2030. Will we see it as a craze gone wrong in the same fashion as we think back at disco music, perms, Modern Talking and roller skates? Or will it be mentioned in the same breath as landing a man on the moon, the '95 Rugby World Cup final and Pringles Chips? I suspect the former.” And I intend to disagree, hear me out:

Bob Dylan once said, ‘the times they are a changin’. Allow me to shed some light on the road of social media development:

In 2008, a very interesting article was published in the Public Relations Journal (Public Relations Society of America), on the three-year-long international survey of public relations practioners examining the impact of blogs and other social media were having on public relations practice. The results indicated that both blogs and social media have enhanced what happened in the public relations sector and that social media and traditional mainstream media complemented each other. Further to this, the emergence of blogs and social media has changed the way their companies communicated, especially with regards to the external audiences. These findings suggested that social media complemented traditional news media, and that blogs and social media influenced coverage in the traditional news media sector. Therefore, blogs and social media have made communications more instantaneous by encouraging companies to respond more quickly to criticism.

In 2009, an article was printed in the ScienceDirect Journal (Indiana University) stating that social media was the new hybrid element of the promotional mix as it made it possible for one person to communicate with hundreds or thousands of other people about products and the companies that provide them. It argues that social media should be considered as part of the promotion mix because in the traditional sense it enables companies to talk to their customers, while in a non-traditional sense it enables customers to talk directly to one another.

In 2011, another article was published in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology stated the role Social media was playing in the business industry and how it could enhance existing resources and capabilities in a company. All of this could be done by adopting appropriate social media guidelines, training and policy enforcement across all sectors and departments. Adopting social media by itself will not confer a company’s sustained competitive advantage but capabilities thus enhanced could confer a company’s sustained competitive advantage.

Social media seems to be doing it more frequently than other marketing channels. Let me venture even deeper into this rabbit hole. If you go onto any search engine today, you will find millions of social media jobs being incorporated into marketing jobs along with ROI (return-on-investment) tools to measure your social media content and strategies. Every marketer out there is also fully aware that we need to keep track of the entire do’s and don’ts and changes as social media generates leads – a marketer’s gold mine! We as marketers also realise that social media strategies must form part of the broad and general marketing mix therefore we know that social media is here to stay – period.

Just have a look at the following stats which proves the value of social media:

*Source: Webmarketing123. 'The State of Digital Marketing 2012 Report,' Aug 28, 2012.

Let me end by saying the following to you: if you aren’t prepared for the visual content revolution, you may be left in the dust!

Conquering the internet marketing frontier!

At the speed at which technology is advancing and the ways in which consumer behaviour is shifting it is not about the battle between online and traditional marketing but rather strategically selecting which marketing tools complement one another. We are moving from mass to individual marketing and the more info or data you have, the better you can target a consumer. As a marketer we are faced with one of the biggest decision making processes when confronted with internet marketing as it is such a broad concept with so many different angles and choices and the list can go on. Therefore, before we start undressing this mannequin, we first need to decide what is the major goal that we would like to achieve, for example, to establish an increase in sales within the next year with an average of 15% through e-commerce or repositioning. So how are we planning to execute this jack-in-the-box? Well, by keeping the following objectives in mind: (a) establish a great flow of traffic (people) to our site; (b) establish an interest to keep the potential clients for a longer period on the site to confirm possible sales; (c) persuade potential clients to respond through the great offers advertised and most importantly; (d) get permission to interact with them via newsletters, e-mail campaigns and mobile marketing.

If you have ever found yourself in this foreign space of (a) online advertising (search engine optimization, adwords and affiliate marketing), (b) permission marketing (e-mail marketing, newsletters and mobile marketing) before moving on to (c) social media marketing (social networks, online communities, blogging, viral marketing, online public relations and reputation management), then welcome but know that once conquered, you can consider yourself as the internet’s Joan of Arc!

What are the next steps?

• Build a keyword strategy
• Optimize your website
• Create a blog & marketing offers
• Promote content through the social media portals
• Convert website traffic into leads
• Nurture leads with targeted messages
• Optimize your marketing for mobile viewing

Now go and have fun! Remember to tackle each tactic step by step to make internet marketing more manageable.