Corporate Eye

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Archives for 2014

Corporate Governance: How many years of experience?

GE BoardGE have highlighted the total number of years that the 18 GE board members have served their shareholders: 140 years. This is paralleled by the emphasis on the page about their CEO having served as Chairman since Sept 7 2001.

These are impressively long periods of service, and including these figures can help to demonstrate the depth of experience and loyalty of the GE board members, assuming that all is going well. (Naturally there is a risk that the board may appear stale if the numbers grow too high).

Developing a Culture of Coaching on Your Brand Marketing Team

learn signAttend a corporate leadership course, and you’ll learn that a company culture that advocates coaching, mentoring, and continuous learning leads to higher productivity, morale, and business results. However, even when the company culture effectively integrates a culture of coaching into its human resources department and training programs, the results often don’t trickle down all the way through the organization.

The bottleneck often occurs at the departmental level, but you can make sure that doesn’t happen in your brand marketing team. Take the initiative to cultivate a coaching culture in your brand marketing team, and you can turn your department into a high performing team.

A new report from the Institute for Corporate Productivity, Creating a Coaching Culture, found that only 23% of respondents to the study’s research survey stated that their company develops a coaching culture to a high or very high extent. The report recommends four things that you need to implement to turn your team into one that fosters a coaching culture for improved results:

  • Coaching should be everyone’s job responsibility.
  • Managers should be held accountable for actively providing coaching to their team members and subordinates.
  • An executive must lead by example and promote the coaching culture.
  • Coaching should be used to transfer knowledge in a positive manner.

When you promote a coaching culture in your brand marketing department, employees won’t just be more motivated—they’ll also be more supportive of the brand they’re marketing on a daily basis. Remember, your employees are your most powerful brand advocates, so creating a company culture that represents the brand promise internally is extremely important. Coaching is one more way to connect employees to the brand in a way that will give your company a sustainable competitive advantage.

A brand marketing team that leverages continuous learning and coaching can evolve into a high performing team and can achieve great success. It’s also a more positive working environment for everyone. As a result, you’ll be able to attract and retain the best talent to your brand marketing team.

Does your brand marketing team foster a coaching culture? Leave a comment and share your thoughts.

Image: Philosophygeek license CC BY-SA 2.0

Consumers Call for Transparency in Use of Private Information

private signNearly nine out of 10 consumers (87%) don’t believe that companies are adequately protecting their private information. That statistic comes from a new survey of consumers between the ages of 20 and 40 in the United States and the United Kingdom that was conducted earlier this year by Accenture.

A Lack of Transparency Concerns Consumers

Overall, 70% of the 2,000+ survey respondents don’t believe that businesses are being completely honest and transparent in disclosing how they use the personal information that they collect about their customers and visitors to their web properties. Furthermore, 39% believe that their personal information is being sold despite what businesses report to the contrary.

Survey respondents were asked how they want companies to be transparent with consumers in regards to how they use personal information. The majority want companies to send the information via email. The overall response breakdown follows:

  • Companies should send an with email details and updates on how personal information is used = 53%
  • Companies should always offer a way to opt-out of new data usage plans = 49%
  • When updates are made to data usage, companies should get approval from consumers before using their personal information again = 40%
  • Companies should publish all consumer data usage details on their websites = 29%
  • Companies should send text messages with details and updates on how personal information is used = 9%
  • Companies should call via phone with details and updates on how personal information is used = 7%

Leveraging Data Usage Transparency as an Opportunity

Based on the Accenture study findings, the majority of consumers are willing to accept that companies will track their online behavior and store their personal information in order to present them with more relevant offers. However, their perceptions of how that data is used represents an opportunity for brands to leverage transparency to demonstrate a commitment to corporate social responsibility (as well as for marketing purposes).

Companies that raise the bar in terms of disclosing how they use personal information can improve their brand reputations in consumers’ minds. At this point, consumers need to be educated in layman’s terms. Presenting a lengthy page of disclosures and disclaimers isn’t the type of transparency that consumers want. Go ahead and publish the necessary legal language, but go a step further by making it very easy for consumers to quickly and easily learn how you collect information and what it is used for. It’s a critical step in differentiating your brand from competitors and building brand trust that leads to brand loyalty and brand advocacy.

Image: Neil Gould

Email or Direct Mail? The Answer is Both

royal mail marketreach mail and email infographicA marketing plan that incorporates email but leaves out direct mail (or vice versa) is a marketing plan that will not drive maximum results. That’s because consumers perceive that email and direct mail are for different things according to a study by Royal Mail MarketReach.

Consumers view email as a fast and informal form of communication that they can respond to quickly, but they view direct mail as attention-grabbing and informative. In other words, direct mail gives a better impression of a brand than email according to this study.

Click on the image to see all of the details in a data visualization from Royal Mail MarketReach. Following are some of the highlights from the report that brand marketers shouldn’t miss:

Did you know that consumers who are considered to be digitally active are actually more likely to take a digital action after reading a piece of direct mail? According to this study, 86% have connected with a business after receiving direct mail from that business, and 54% have engaged with the brand on social media after receiving direct mail from the brand. A total of 43% of direct mail recipients have downloaded something offered by the brand sender after reading the mailer, and 57% believe that mail makes them feel more valued than email does.

The Royal Mail MarketReach study reveals that companies can increase consumer action, sales, and brand loyalty when they integrate direct mail and email marketing. In fact, 51% of consumers want to receive both email messages and direct mail from the companies that they buy from. At a time when most brand marketers are shifting budget dollars away from direct mail, which is expensive, the report reveals that doing so could be a big mistake. Not only do more than one in two consumers want to receive both email and direct mail from companies but another 17% only want to receive direct mail. If all of your budget dollars are going to email marketing, then you’re missing a 17% segment of the audience and you’re not delivering everything that another 51% wants.

Today, direct mail can be extremely effective for the simple reason that the number of companies sending direct mail on a daily basis has dropped so much over the past 10 years. Instead of struggling to get noticed in the mailbox, companies now have to struggle to get noticed in the email inbox. That means the door is wide open for your brand to get noticed with a great direct mail offer and design.

Click on the link at the beginning of this article to download the full report to see all of the study details.

Image: Royal Mail MarketReach

3 Biggest Mobile Marketing Mistakes Brand Marketers Make in 2014

dartboard missAll brand marketers know how important mobile is to the future success of their brands, products, services, and companies, but many of them are making one or more of the three biggest mobile marketing mistakes.

In 2014, these three mistakes are causing many brands to hit obstacles that are impeding their growth progress. If you’re making these mobile marketing mistakes, then you need to recognize them and make changes immediately.

1. Going Cheap on Mobile

Launching your brand effectively into the mobile space so it has a chance to gain a strong position that leads to a sustainable competitive advantage requires an adequate investment in time, money, and resources. The three things you need to be prepared to invest in if you want to maximize your results are:

  • People: Without the right talent, your mobile marketing successes will be limited. The competition will easily be able to outpace your brand.
  • Tools: Without the right tools to launch campaigns, track progress, benchmark competitors, and integrate your mobile marketing with the rest of your marketing plan, you’ll be throwing darts at a dartboard while wearing a blindfold.
  • Experimentation: Without the right testing to learn what works for your brand and your target audience, you’ll be guilty of creating barriers to your own success.

2. Using One-Size-Fits-All Strategies on Mobile

Your mobile marketing strategy is unique. Don’t try to fit your online marketing strategy to the mobile environment, because it won’t work. Saying mobile and online are the same is like saying radio and television are the same. They aren’t. Consider platform-centric strategies they seek opportunities for integration and economies of scale.

3. Succumbing to Shiny New Toy Syndrome

Every day a new cool tool launches that promises to improve your marketing results, give you better access to your mobile customers, and more. Many of these tools are excellent, but if you test every tool, you’ll never have time to experiment with actual marketing campaigns and programs.

Are you guilty of making any of these mobile marketing mistakes? Now is the time to admit it and adjust, because 2014 is already half over. In 2015, companies that are still making these mistakes will be left behind while the competition rules the mobile market.

Image: Tomek G

Original Brand Content Reigns Supreme

blogs vs traditional mediaNearly every social media marketer today is using original content to promote brands. According to the 2014 Social Media Marketing Report from Social Media Examiner, 94% of social media marketers are using original text content in their brand marketing initiatives.

In fact, 58% of social media marketers who responded to the survey ranked it as the most important form of original content, and 81% of survey respondents reported that they plan to increase their investments in original written content in 2014 with blogs showing a significant resurgence in popularity.

It really shouldn’t come as a surprise that social media marketers are increasing investments in original brand content, but seeing the data shows you just how important prioritizing original written content, as well as other forms of original content, should be in your marketing plan. Take a look at the statistics related to original content collected through Social Media Examiner’s survey of social media marketing professionals:

Percentage of Social Media Marketers Using Specific Types of Content in Social Media Marketing Activities:

  • Original written content = 94%
  • Curation of other people’s content = 73%
  • Original visual content (e.g., infographics, memes) = 60%
  • Original videos = 60%
  • Original audio content = 22%

The Most Important Types of Content According to Social Media Marketers:

  1. Original written content = 58%
  2. Original visual content = 19%
  3. Original videos = 12%
  4. Curation of other people’s content = 10%
  5. Original audio content = 2%

Percentage Social Media Marketers Planning to Increase Investments in Specific Types of Content:

  • Original video content = 81%
  • Original videos = 73%
  • Original visual content = 70%
  • Curated content from other people = 46%
  • Original audio content = 33%

Back in 2011, I wrote an article for the Corporate Eye blog that explained the four ways that content builds brands. It’s interesting to see how those four things are exactly what research continues to prove in 2014. Original branded content can effectively increase brand awareness, drive traffic to your brand’s website, boost sales, and more. It should be at the top of your 2014 marketing plan’s priority list!

Online content consumption shows no signs of slowing down, so build your content marketing team and start publishing original brand content (or publish more original content if you’ve already got a team and content strategy in place). Every day you wait is a lost opportunity that competitors of all sizes and around the world are happy to seize.

Image: Rogers Cadenhead licensed CC BY-SA 2.0