Ewwaaaajaaa thought it was time to leave my brainfarts somewhere. Read a lot, and think a lot. 26 years old and I still haven’t figured out a way to turn off my thoughts. Not naturally at least. Movement and nature usually do the trick. Unfortunately this digitalized society does not cater much to these needs. Instead of bothering friends and family with my endless thought spirals and drag ‘m down the rabbit hole, starting a semi-bullshit blog might be a better idea. Cause secretly I love writing :). Just need to figure out how this fucking website editing shit works.

This blog was originally created for a marketing course back in 2018, as you can see from previous blogs. Called it Mindfull of Mayke back then. Quite a catchy and fitting title I must add, but present day it does not fully captures the vibe. Though my intent is to be mindfull, I it also just to crack on, have a bit of fun and not be too serious. Might switch from English to Dutch, and back again, depending on what mood I am in.

Cheers!!

A strategy indicates the most advantageous direction for an organization to take over a defined period of time. It also outlines which tactics and means should be used to execute this direction. Originating as a military term, strategy is about using your strengths, as well as the context in which you are operating, to your advantage.

In marketing, strategy starts with understanding what the business wants to achieve, or what problem it wants to solve. It then considers the context in which the business and its competitors operate, and outlines key ways in which the business and brand can gain advantage and add value.

You have marketing and digital marketing, but what is the difference? Marketing is that it is the creation and satisfaction of demand for your product or service. If all goes well, this demand should translate into sales and, ultimately, revenue.
If marketing creates and satisfies demand, digital marketing drives the creation of demand using the power of the Internet, and satisfies this demand in a new and innovative ways. The Internet is an interactive medium. It allows for the exchange of currency, but more than that, it allows for the exchange of value.

Once you have a clear sense of what the business challenge or objective is, and you have defined how your marketing strategy will work towards fulfilling it. There are different building blocks for marketing strategy, which will help you structure a marketing strategy – both online and offline – that addresses your core challenges.

Porter’s five forces analysis
Porter’s five forces analysis is a business tool that helps determine the competitive intensity and attractiveness of a market. The Internet’s low barrier to entry means that many new businesses are appearing online, providing near-infinite choices for customers. This makes it important to consider new factors when devising a marketing strategy.

The four P’s
The four P’s contains of four components, which are Products, Price, Placement and Promotion. Each of these will help you structure the components that make up a brand’s offering, differentiators and marketing. They have been fundamentally changed by the Internet and need to be looked at the context offered by digitally connected media and from the perspective of the consumer. How your brand is positioned in the mind of your consumer will ultimately determine your success.

SWOT analysis
Also the SWOT analysis contains of four components, which are Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. This is the ideal way to understand your business and your market. Studying the external threats to your business, and see how learning from these can help you overcome internal weaknesses. This should tie back to your business and marketing objectives. A SWOT analysis is part of a situational analysis and identifies the key issues that direct the marketing strategy.

Crafting a digital marketing strategy
A strategy needs to cover the questions of who you are, what you are offering and to whom, as well as why and how you are doing so. This contains of several things; the context, value exchange, objectives, tactics, and targets.
For the context there are several questions you need to ask yourself:  What is the context in which you are operating (PESTLE factors) and how is this likely to change in the future? 
Who are you, why does your brand matter and what makes your brand useful and valuable? Who are your customers, and what needs, wants and desires do they have? Who are your competitors? 
Thorough market research one will reveal the answers to these questions.

If the marked situations have been examined, the second step is an examination of your value proposition or promise. What unique value has your organization that is can add to that market. It is important to identify the supporting value-adds to the brand that is unique to the digital landscape. What extras can you offer your customers?

When setting your digital marketing goals, there are four key aspects to consider: Objectives, tactics, key performance indicators, and targets. The objectives are about what you are trying to achieve. Then the tactics, which are not the same as objectives, tactics are the specific tools or approaches you will use to meet your objectives. You will need the KPI’s to measure these objectives, for example, with numbers and measurements.
Finally the targets, which are the specific values that are set for your PKI’s to reach within a specific time period.

With all these steps, you will achieve a perfect digital marketing strategy for your organization to be a success in the future.

By Irene de Groot

Source: Stookes, Rob and the minds of Quirk (2018). EMarketing: the essential guide to marketing in a digital world (5th ed). Quirk eMarketing (Pty) ltd. (Ed.).

 

 

 

Content marketing 

Content marketing is a marketing technique of creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire, and engage a clearly and understood target audience which the objective of driving profitable customer action. Content marketing is decisive for your online success. Also in 2018, having control of the high quality of your content, but how do you jump over your competitors? In other words, which quality content is indispensable for your website in 2018?

Quality first

Quality is essential for your content, in every form. Search engines are increasingly looking for quality content. So, follow Google’s guidelines and understand why your website is unique to visitors. Write especially for your visitors and also a little bit for Google. B2B marketing experts also call quality content an important factor in the success of an organization.

What does your target group want?

If a potential customer enters your website in his or her search. He of she needs to know in one glance that you are, what you do and why he or she should choose you. It makes sense that you want to offer the best thing for your customers, but a visitor has to be convinced. You offer the solution to the problem of your target group; show it in a customer-oriented way. A person who ends up on your website is already interested. You want to attract this visitor and convince them with the special qualities of your organization. Make your website stand out.

Personalized content

If you want to convince visitors on this personalized level, your website must be reliable and transparent. Let employees tell their story on your website through live streaming, because that creates considerable more confidence than an advertising message ‘from the organization’. Furthermore, make sure people can easily log in with their social media accounts, because that improves their personal customer journey. However, do not constantly try to follow the latest trends, but always stay true to the vision of your organization and the needs of your target group. Also write out your content strategy, because that increases the change of success.

Focus on conversion

Text and image are your content, but of course you also have to use them well. Your website is the link between the visitor’s request and the offer of your organization. What purpose do you have exactly with your website? If you want people to request a quote, you ensure that buttons such as ‘contact’ and ‘request quotation’ stand out. In this way, focusing on the conversion of your website ensures a good user experience. User friendliness plays an important role in the assessment of your visitors and therefore in the appreciation that Google has for your website. In addition to quality content, it is therefore also important to have a website that serves your purpose in a functional way. This way your website gets higher in the rankings and you attract those attracted customers purposefully.

By Irene de Groot

Source: Stookes, Rob and the minds of Quirk (2018). EMarketing: the essential guide to marketing in a digital world (5th ed). Quirk eMarketing (Pty) ltd. (Ed.).

 

 

 

This blog will adress email strategy and planning as key to its success. How to grow a datable and exploring of creative execution of emails. When and how to deploy emails, and how email analytics can be used to track and measure campaigns. Email marketing is a tool for customer relationship management. Used effectively, it can deliver one of the highest returns on investment of any digital marketing activity. Email marketing can be used as tool to help you achieve your business and website goals, and should be considered in line with your overall business, marketing and digital strategy. Promotional emails have immediate goals concerning purchases, downloads or requests. Newsletters tend to focus on longer term goals and usually geared at creating and retaining long term relationships with its readers. Running a successful email campaign requires a business to have a genuine option database. This list of subscribers who have agreed to allow a company to send them emails with marketing messages is the most valuable asset of an email campaign. They have made information gathering more accessible, but don’t be tempted to ask for more than required. Because the more information askes to require, the less likely they are to sign up. Parts of a good email should be sender information first, following a subject line to inform recipients, a header, personalised greeting to create some sort of personality with the greeting, a body, a footer and at the bottom, a small unsubscribe link to always give your customers the option to unsubscribe. Email content that is relevant and valuable to readers is vital to ensuring the success of an email marketing campaign. Valuable content is informative and should address the problems and needs of readers. It is important to realise that the reader determines the value of the content, not the publisher.

There are two important highlights to writing for email marketing;

1. Email links. It is important to consider that any links you include in your email copy will lead readers away from your email. You’ll want to keep these to a minimum, and include only when it is a requirement or service feature.
2. Subject line. Many users decide whether or not to open an email based on their first point of contact – the subject line.

The technology of email marketing allows for mass customisation – it is one-to-one marketing on a macro scale. Even simple personalisation or customisation can see improved results, for example across demographics or purchase history.

Key measurables for understanding the performance of email include; Number of emails delivered, number of bounces, number of unique emails opened, unsubscribes, Pass-on rate, clickthrough rates and conversion.

Advantages of email marketing are the high return on investment it can give. However, with the increasing numbers of companies and individuals using email marketing, many customers are email fatigues. It requires ingenuity, focus and dedication to maintain an email database and consistently deliver useful quality emails that will be read. It does not take much for email to be marked as spam, and it can be difficult to recover from being branded as a spammer by communities.

By Mayke Johannes

Source: Stookes, Rob and the minds of Quirk (2018). EMarketing: the essential guide to marketing in a digital world (5th ed). Quirk eMarketing (Pty) ltd. (Ed.).

How can you create a dynamical and effective social media strategy?!

Some of our major point of discussion are on how to deal with difficult customers, how to map out social media plans and how social media has transformed almost every facet of the online world. It is about learning how to use social media channels strategically. The foundation of a successful social media strategy, will be flexible and dynamic and therefore the foundations won’t change.

Social media channels are communication channels that can be used to solve business, marketing and communication challenges. Organisations need to incorporate social media into their marketing strategies, as more time is spent by consumers online. Unlike other options, social media offers brands an effective two-way communication and real time broadcast channel. Therefore it is becoming a highly effective public communications tool for businesses, governments and other organisations. Social media platforms are built around communities, this feature can be used to build and maintain a community around, or supported by, your organisation. It is not only participating but also actively lead and guide conversations around your company. Social media is used as customer service channel, for queries about problems or questions. It is even becoming collaborative, with customers helping each other and so, reducing the reliance on the organisations support. Brands can also use social media in two ways to manage their online reputations. Firstly, monitoring what customers and fans are saying to identify issues proactively. Secondly, as a way of communicating by getting two sides of the story. Social media platforms and communities are also sales generators , applications can even allow transactions or lead generation within the environment. Social media is also a major player when it comes to search engine optimisation. It provides additional assets that can be optimised so that a brand owns the results page for searches for their brand. It can be a powerful insight and research asset when judged in the right context. This data can be very valuable as it is both qualitative as quantitative, but must therefore be treated wisely. Planning is the foundation of success when it comes to creating a social media strategy.

A well-known and used method to approaching social media strategically follows 7 major guideline steps. The listening and understanding of the landscaoe of the potential social spaces. The analysis of all the gathered data. Objective setting of the desired outcome for your strategy, which should be made according to the SMART guidelines. The creation of an action plan on how, what and when to execute your objectives. Implementing your action plan, by setting up platform, alerting stakeholders, monitoring mentions and responding to messages. Finalizing it with tracking, analysing and optimising of your implemented strategy. Good documentation and processes are the foundations of social media success. As well as a privacy policy and terms and conditions, it is a good idea to establish guidelines for the community you manage. It helps set the tone, and is useful to refer to should members behave undesirably. Content plans help you to plan your community conversations, but more than that, they are also useful, centralised planning documents that ensure that communications are integrated. Planning the conversations helps to keep momentum, especially in the early days of building a community. The use of social media has equipped consumers with a voice and a platform, and the ability to amplify their views and truly inform their decision making. Brands that are successful in communicating with their audiences are constantly on the lookout for opportunities to propel their brand forwards, and are keeping their eyes peeled for risks that may threaten their reputation. Criticism need not necessarily only come from customers, but it is important to be aware of it. Respondence should be quick and formal. And if it involves false information, it should be corrected in a polite manner. If the criticism is true, it should be dealt with as such. Responding involves recognising that customers hold the upper hand in the relationship. Therefore, be transparent, be honest and treat the person as you would like to be treated. And remember at all times it is engaging in a conversation, not a dictation. Recovering from an online brand attack is by following five steps concerning; being prepared, acting immediately, looking at the falsity or trueness of the attacks and making sure the negative pages are kept out of the search engines. Social media strategies should always account for the risks and challenges of interaction, and should incorporate a protocol for dealing with these risks.

By Mayke Johannes

Source: Stookes, Rob and the minds of Quirk (2018). EMarketing: the essential guide to marketing in a digital world (5th ed). Quirk eMarketing (Pty) ltd. (Ed.).

Chapter 8   Customer relationship management

What is customer relationship management? Customer relationship management (CRM) are strategies and technologies that companies use to manage and analyze customer interactions and data throughout the customer lifecycle, with the goal of improving customer service relationships and assisting in customer retention and driving sales growth. A key function for any business is to manage your customer relationship. A solid frame work is necessary for an effective CRM otherwise, service delivery lacks consistency and valuable relationships may suffer. That’s why developing a solid customer relationship management plan is a top priority.

But even the best and biggest companies have challenges with the CRM. Like Booking.com the CRM was a great plan but still there were some points that Booking could improve like, the platform for asking questions is difficult to find and the emails bonded and advocate customers received were full of not valuable discounts as a result that the customers got irritated from. How do the companies these days handle the upcoming social media within the CRM?

These days the social media side of the CRM strategy is really important for the companies. With the growing platforms and customers that are highly focused on their platforms. Therefore the companies need to focus on social media and it’s platforms like, Facebook, Instagram and twitter. With the digital marketing it is possible for consumers to engage with brands across a multitude of channels. The customers expect of the companies to be active, interactive, transparent and have information on demand for the customers this all because of social media.

How do I recognise CRM in the daily life? At first I didn’t know that this were strategies of companies to keep you interested and loyal to them. I have two examples of CRM that I experienced since I know what CRM is.

1. The H&M post card.

I often go shopping online on the website of H&M it is an easy website with a lot of clothes that I like. Let say I shopped with them 2 times last month. I am always really happy with the services and with the clothes. Nothing to complain about.

I shopped and waited for my order. When I received my package there was a post card in side that said: You are the best customer ever, thanks for shopping with us. For next time shopping 10% off on your whole shipment. I saw it and I thought that is so nice! I immediately went online and used my 10% off. I also told my mom that I received it and she said: “o that’s great”

This is an example of an offline CRM strategy.

1.  The Hunkemöller

The Hunkemöller is a store who sells bras, well since I am a girl I buy these once in a while and mostly by Hunkemöller in the online store, I signed up for the newsletter and I receive them but not that often that is great. The last time I bought from the online store I received an email with the question if I wore the right bra and if I didn’t know that there was a special bra fitting day in the Hunkemöller in Amsterdam, and if you went there you got an 50% off of your new bra you bought that day. I thought that this was a really clever strategy because, bras are expensive and everyone likes to know what size you got.

By Amber van der Poel

Source: Stookes, Rob and the minds of Quirk (2018). EMarketing: the essential guide to marketing in a digital world (5th ed). Quirk eMarketing (Pty) ltd. (Ed.).

Social media may be today’s the most important marketing channel. Social media is all about the ways in which we create, connect and share content online, and can be used as an integral part of an online marketing campaign. Before there was social media all marketing and advertisements went offline by postcards, newspapers, email or flyers.

Now that the companies have to keep up with their audience they all have online and offline marketing. For example, the biggest change has been I think, that the newspapers went online to also reach the customers online. But there is not only social media for companies and advertisement. The biggest personal social media platform worldwide is Facebook with more than 1 billion subscribers. (guilty I am one of them) But then again also companies use Facebook for advertisements, promotions and competitions.

There are many social media platforms companies use to promote and sell their product, the most popular platforms are, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram.

Twitter, twitter is an interesting marketing tool, Twitter is often used for the rapid customer service and advertisement. For example, if Justin Bieber posts a new song the fans will retweet it and the song becomes popular.

Instagram, Instagram is often used as a competition platform and is used for promotions. For example, when a cosmetic company wants to do a promotion they often appear on Instagram with a nice photo and a contest to win one of their new products.

Daily life social media platforms used for marketing and advertisement. To begin, I am a social media addict. I sometimes spend more than 5 or 6 hours on all kinds of social media. What do I use? I use everything that is known. Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube and we can go on a little while. When I am on these platforms I see all kinds of advertisement, some interesting and others really annoying. The most advertisements I see are on Facebook, and Instagram mostly about clothing or make-up. However, I sometimes buy things that come from an advertisement on Facebook.

By Amber van der Poel

Source: Stookes, Rob and the minds of Quirk (2018). EMarketing: the essential guide to marketing in a digital world (5th ed). Quirk eMarketing (Pty) ltd. (Ed.).