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!

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

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.

Is luxury brand purchases declining?

One must keep in mind that although the recession has hit the world hard and still continues in a descending spiral, there is still a segment of the population that has not felt the impact yet. These are the high-end spenders with a net worth of millions and billions of dollars and they form the support group to the luxury brands of the world. These high net worth individuals are still travelling, purchasing high-ticket items and seeking out services that enrich their lives while they do not cut back on their lifestyles. Their spending patterns are a bit different these days but although prestige products (i.e. Bentley coupé) remains on the shopping list of the ultra-affluent, they are also devoting more money to satisfy their non-material needs such as diving with a world-ranked scuba diver or having a world-renowned chef preparing meals for private dinner parties at their abodes. They continue to spend on what is most vital to them i.e. their health, families, pets and charities.

The world’s population of HNWI’s (high net-worth individuals) increased to 8.3% in 2010 compared to the 17.1% in 2009. The growth of financial wealth of the HNWI’s was 9.7% compared to the 18.9% jump in 2009 after the recession crisis losses of 2008. Although the population of HNWI’s expanded in 2010 along with their wealth, was the growth more moderate compared to 2009.

According to the latest report, LVMH announced a 25% increase in profits in the first quarter of 2012 to 6.6 billion Euros.

Have a look at the following stats from China:

Generation Y is a powerful emerging demographic that should be mentioned here, as they are highly educated and they do tap into the good life. This segment consist of approximately 70 million people that were born between 1983 and 1997 and they are extremely comfortable anything hi-tech. This demanding group are willing to spend in those areas that lend to individualism, such as designer cars and clothes.

Luxury brands are not for everyone, but for a certain individual who has reached a higher level in their lifestyle. Even with the economic downturn in the world today, the wealthy consumers amongst us are still willing to pay for access to exclusive experiences as well as luxury brand products. These high net-worth individuals would rather cut their spending in order to afford a single exclusive valuable purchase that they believe will better their lives (‘trade up/down’ phenomenon). If you approach any luxury brand company such as Vespa, Jaguar Land Rover or Bentley with a discounted proposition, you will be requested to make your future purchases at Toyota or Honda etc. Reason being, luxury brands are very reluctant and unlikely to discount their products or merchandise, not even during an economic downturn but rather include extra services such as an extra year to the motor plan! Why may you ask? Luxury brands believe that they will lose their niche market appeal to the high-end consumer market, as it is detrimental to their brand reputation. They would rather refocus their current marketing strategies to establish a better and more loyal customer base than trying to extend their offerings to a lower LSM group by discounting their product offerings. Therefore, the luxury brands of the world will focus on brand awareness and differentiation.

In the end, luxury brands need to decide what will be in the best interest of their brand and ensure that the strategy stays fool-proof. There is always a risk discounting the brand to accommodate the lower income level consumers desire to own a piece of the brand and on the other hand, keeping the brand exclusive to the traditional market and not comprimising the image. Brands do work hard to keep the prestige on a certain level and by generally speaking, should a Bently be discounted just to ensure that the sales do not decline, the brand image will be damaged to a certain extend that it will not be percieved as an exclusive and elite product.

Are you ready to make the loyalty leap?

Loyalty… the biggest marketing buzzword as there is no shortage of articles and sentiments on this topic. The goal of a loyalty programme is to create barriers to switching which can either be psychological (Virgin Atlantic’s Flying Club membership) or economical (Clicks cash rewards) for the members. But, loyalty programmes have simply become the cost of doing business as they are increasing the cost of serving a price sensitive and sometimes non-loyal customer group. In the end, the goal of loyalty is to drive commitment and faithful behaviour of profitable customers, therefore we need to engage with our customers, make it easy for them to communicate with us, create exclusivity for them and earn their trust.

The silver bullet here is data. Customer data can inform decisions throughout your business that can create the transformation between retaining your customers at present along with developing lasting emotional loyalty. The PicknPays and the Clicks’ of our country are already committed to using data for this purpose, but many businesses are still casual about the application of customer data across all facets of their business – they have yet to take the business-wide leap committing to put the customer at the centre of their purpose.

Customer data items include demographical data, lifestyle information, and transactional data along with the customer experience which ranges from customer complaints to opinion polls. This wealth of customer data allows us to transform the data into a customer intelligence tool. The customer intelligence tool allows us to calculate the customer lifetime value which is an indication of the value (future or current) to a business which differs from business to business.

Most importantly is how this information is fed back to where it is actually required into the business – the marketing department. But it is what the marketing managers do with the data once it is collected that matters most. Unfortunately many businesses still don’t understand how use those customer insights profitably and responsibility to make the customer happy, oftentimes with damaging results to performance, reputation or both. Businesses are reluctant to use the data they have due to the following major reasons:

1. They are concerned about the volume and how to cope with data overload.
2. They struggle to fully integrate the data into the decision-making tools available.

Important to note, this valuable information will assist the marketing team in the creation of new marketing campaigns, provide the right information to the right people at the right time, thereby solving the customers’ needs the first time around.

Easy as pie! So… are you ready to make the loyalty leap?

LoyaltyPlus' Blog: Is Social Media a Fad?

LoyaltyPlus' Blog: Is Social Media a Fad?: Lately, I have been tasked by my MD to launch and implement our Direct Marketing Strategy which also included a segment called Social Media....

LoyaltyPlus' Blog: Where is loyalty marketing heading?

LoyaltyPlus' Blog: Where is loyalty marketing heading?: I have been in the loyalty and rewards business for a couple of years now and recently discovered, interestingly enough, that there are stil...

LoyaltyPlus' Blog: When you change the way you look at things, the th...

LoyaltyPlus' Blog: When you change the way you look at things, the th...: Interesting topic.... do you agree? Let me explain, on the one hand, companies are making use of eCommerce to increase their market share wh...

LoyaltyPlus' Blog: Know your customers well and treat them like royal...

LoyaltyPlus' Blog: Know your customers well and treat them like royal...: The number 1 rule in business is to think of our customers as individuals, then only can we realise that our business is our customer and n...

Know your customers well and treat them like royalty

The number 1 rule in business is to think of our customers as individuals, then only can we realise that our business is our customer and not our service or product on offer. Without our customers, we literally do not have a business to run and good customer service goes a long way to ensure that our customers will return. If we don’t look after our paying customers, we might as well close our doors. Unfortunately many franchises along with JSE listed companies in South Africa have failed miserably in providing any form of customer service.

Herewith a few very important, if not yet crucial customer service tips that we all should be reminded of and try to incorporate back into our businesses:

• Employees will treat your customers the way that they are treated. Do you realise the importance and the value of your employees? Do you great them enthusiastically and are you polite in your interactions with them? Companies do not help customers… people do, therefore you need to meet and exceed their expectations, continuously. By respecting and taking care of your employees, you can create brand ambassadors which any company desperately seeks.

• Quality of service = quality of employees. If you pay peanuts, you will get monkeys. By paying the minimal wage, providing the fewest of benefits or by providing minimal training to your employees, will show in their dealings to your customers.

• Go the extra mile for your customers. You simply cannot create brand loyalty if you don’t go the extra mile for your paying customers. Loyalty is not necessarily set in stone, it is something that has to be created and maintained through your interactions and communications with your customers.

• Customers should be given the benefit of the doubt. A very difficult task to execute but if done right, you will reap the benefits. Never try to win an argument with a customer and don’t ever put your customer in that position either. Train your employees well to listen, stay polite throughout the conversation, maintain a positive attitude with the customer, provide a solution and a follow-up afterwards.

• Greet your customers when they walk in the door. We all want to be treated fairly and made feel special. Happiness breeds happiness!

We need to realise that if we don’t look after our customers, they will go to our competitors and the big money lies in as much as winning customers as in keeping them satisfied and happy.

When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.

Interesting topic.... do you agree? Let me explain, on the one hand, companies are making use of eCommerce to increase their market share while keeping their customers loyal. Therefore, they can retain existing customers, attract new customers to attain sustained profit growth through data warehousing, data mining and customer relationship management. On the other hand, loyalty programmes focus on helping customers to get more value for their rands and at the same time, helping the customers to improve on their social consciousness and health. In this highly competitive market, companies are being challenged by the following factors:

• Customers are spoiled for choice.
• Customers expect rapid service at a lower cost as they want companies not only to meet their specific needs, but also to anticipate what those needs will be in the future.
• Winning customers' trust by offering them a few savings, opportunities to earn points and achieving goals like improving their health (Discovery Vitality).
• Difficulty in retaining customers due to the emerging sales channels, rapid introduction of improved and innovative products along with the increased global competition.
• Technology is changing faster than the customers, customers are changing faster than companies and companies are changing faster than the people who run them. In order to outlast the competitors (direct or indirect), companies have to realise the importance to amend their strategies and processes by investing in technology infrastructure to support their eBusiness activities.
• The Internet has become a mass media vehicle for customer-sponsored communications. Customers are turning more frequently to various types of social media to conduct their information searches and to make their purchasing decisions.

The answer? Companies should focus on providing excellent products/services, adapt to all challenges, provide additional services (especially trustworthy customer service), understand their customers' expectations, offer value for money, advertise systematically and invest in improvements in order to survive!

Where is loyalty marketing heading?

I have been in the loyalty and rewards business for a couple of years now and recently discovered, interestingly enough, that there are still a large number of companies in South Africa today who haven’t implemented a rewards or loyalty programme for their members. A question that comes to mind, haven’t their annual turn-over/profits been affected by the recent recession? If it did, they would have realised that a repeat customer costs less than acquiring a new customer. Do they even know how loyal their customers are? How are they rewarding their loyal customers and how do they do it? Is it working for them on the long-run?

Have a look at the following figure which excellently portrays the customer loyalty cycle:

Gone are the days where Blue Chip companies could base their loyalty programmes on immediate gratification offers due to the market penetration of companies such as Groupon Premium (WOW!), Groupon, Citymob, Ubuntu Deal etc. They have flooded the market place with the daily mind-blowing deals that are being delivered straight to your inbox. The main reason why a company survives these days is through the loyal customer base it maintains. Marketing is quite a dynamic area in a business and the power it has should never be underestimated, neither the fact that it keeps evolving on a daily basis because companies have to come up with new ideas to keep the customer’s interest.

Let me throw a spanner in the wheel by asking the following question, which type of loyalty programme has been the most successful of all times and is continuously reaping the rewards for the implementation company? The answer: the Frequent Flyer programmes in the Aviation Industry with their award-winning formula of keeping their customers loyal! They successfully achieve this through awarding free points for every rand that the member spends at the business and in return, the points earned can then be redeemed.

This blueprint can be applied to any industry in the world, you just have to ensure that you outsource a reputable IT software company who can successfully integrate your loyalty software programme into your POS system, corporate website etc. I am referring to a company such as LoyaltyPlus, who has been the market leader in the frequent flyer space for quite a number of years.

Let us have a look at the SPUR family card for example. When a SPUR member dines at a SPUR outlet in the country, the card is swiped at the integrated POS system, points are awarded to his profile which he can then at a later stage redeem again at any SPUR. Therefore, the circle is completed, from awarding the member in-store and then again allowing him to redeem in-store = WINNING FORMULA!

There is no better time than the present to start rewarding your loyal customers. Failing to do so can be the cause of losing them to your competition.

South African Social Media Stats report

Yesterday, I posted an article about the future of social media. Today, I would like to highlight the following statistical facts on the influence it has on the South African population’s daily lives. If you are still unconvinced, Chatterbox Digital recently posted this video, check this out:

1. More than 4.8 million SA Facebook users;
2. 91% of SA internet users have a Facebook account;
3. 50% of SA Facebook users access it via their mobile phones;
4. There are 1.1 million Twitter users in SA;
5. There are more than 1.5 million Linkedin users in SA;
6. 29% of SA internet users have a Linkedin Account;
7. There are over 460,000 South African Goolge+ members;
8. SA YouTube users upload 48hrs of video every minute.

We need to realise that the Social Media wave is here and we must ride it. Make sure that you stay on top of your game in terms of your marketing strategy, content and monitoring and realise that you too can play this Social Media game!

Is Social Media a Fad?

Lately, I have been tasked by my MD to launch and implement our Direct Marketing Strategy which also included a segment called Social Media. As marketing professionals we are fully aware that our brands must live an active social life and that it is quickly becoming a very important customer service channel - as customers are interacting and socialising on the web.

Gone are the days that you can think of marketing as above-the-line advertising, below-the-line advertising, having a dynamic website and sending corporate newsletters to your customer base. Now we have Pinterest, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Google+ on the social media front to help with the building of your brand in a very cost effective way.

One of my customers recently conveyed their lack of interest in the social media space as they were afraid of bad customer feedback and the impact it would have on their business and brand moving forward. My answer was to use the opportunity to engage with the unhappy customer on how to improve their customer service! Brands need to take note that their customers are talking about their services and products even without them either knowing it or participating in the conversations!

Instead of being afraid – why don’t we all tackle social media heads-on? We need to realise that Social Media is here to stay and it should be considered as a consumer communications channel. Today, customers want to interact and communicate with their brands of choice via facebook, twitter etc. and social media is becoming more popular and part of their lives as internet usage on smartphones increases.

But, we need to be prepared, first of all consider the following before you launch your venture into the social media arena:

1. Have a strategy.
2. Select your channels coutiously.
3. Social media doesn’t provide any ROI but you can measure the social impact of your brand.
4. Choose your resources wisely.
5. Timing is of great importance to when you post your comments etc.
6. Always keep your brand image on the forefront.
7. Have a social crisis contingency plan of action in place.

Social media is growing up fast and customers are investing a lot of their time in the social space, better make sure that you are prepared and visible to reap the rewards!

Still one of my favourite videos which I would like to share with you: 

Check this out!