Marketing Trends

Ushering a company through a rebrand is a daunting enough task. Now try walking that tight-rope when your company is pivoting from a non-profit impact-driven organization to a for-profit company focused on making sure its clients receive accurate data to power their A.I. Sounds challenging, right? A.I. has become something of a buzzword in marketing circles, the technology has merits if you understand what it needs to make it successful.

“There is an idea that without that data artificial intelligence wouldn't exist. There's synthetic data creation, and there's now models that can train off of very little data. But at the highest level, A.I. just doesn't exist without training data. And quite honestly, trading data at this point, doesn't exist without a massive human workforce. And that workforce is often overlooked.”

Those are the words of Heather Gadonniex, the VP of Marketing and Strategic Partnerships at Sama. She is a marketing and data expert with a mission to deliver actionable data to power marketers’ ambitious A.I. goals. On this episode of Marketing Trends, Heather discusses why marketers need to know where their data is coming from in order to know how to properly use their datasets. She also shares stories on how she helped Sama pivot from a non-profit organization into the world of for-profit business, the challenges of their rebrand and the importance of impact.

Main Takeaways:

• What Matters: There are a few core things that really matter in any business: personnel, culture, revenue and impact. Those four pillars all require different departments being in alignment with each other. Without any kind of alignment between your product teams, marketing teams, or sales stakeholders, you don’t have the ability to grow, scale or make the most impact that an organization can have in the marketplace because you’re not all focused on the same goals.
• Data 101: A.I. will continue to be one of the most important tools moving forward, but marketers must understand not just how to enable those insights to power your business, but where that third party data is coming from. Is the data set that the company is providing trained on your data or is it coming from another data set? The answer to those questions will impact the predictions you receive from your tech stack.
• How to Train Your Data: There’s this notion that A.I. and machine learning are going to replace marketing jobs in the future. However, that is simply not the case. What is often overlooked with new marketing technologies is the training data that goes into these tech stacks. At the highest levels, A.I. doesn’t exist without training data, which does not exist without a physical workforce behind it.

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Marketing Trends podcast is brought to you by Salesforce. Discover marketing built on the world’s number one CRM: Salesforce. Put your customer at the center of every interaction. Automate engagement with each customer. And build your marketing strategy around the entire customer journey. Salesforce. We bring marketing and engagement together. Learn more at salesforce.com/marketing.

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There’s nothing more frustrating than putting hours of time and money into a project only to watch it lay dormant. And yet, we see this happening constantly with brand landing pages and websites — the online face of the company — left neglected and forgotten for long stretches. So how can marketers break the mold and turn their websites into a long-lasting and user-friendly experience? That’s a question that Anne Stefanyk says her clients come to her with daily.

“The website has become a marketing decision more so than an IT decision. 80% of our clients tend to be Director of Marketing or CMOs. And what happens is they come to us and they say, ‘We need a real specialist to make sure that our website works. We need to be making sure that not only are we getting leads, but we're getting qualified leads, and we're moving them through the sales funnel as fast as possible.’”

Anne is the CEO and Founder of Kanopi Studios, a web agency designed around helping marketers create beautiful websites through adaptive execution and on this episode of Marketing Trends, Anne discusses specific growth strategies for how marketers can turn their websites into ROI machines. Plus she explains why search engines and search functions continue to be an undervalued asset and she details common mistakes she sees on most websites the marketers listening might want to check for.

Main Takeaways:

• Continuous Improvement: You will never find a savvy marketer who will tell you that you can build a website and simply leave it static. Instead, they are continuously monitoring and maintaining their overall website experiences to make sure that it is meeting user expectations, which change more frequently than ever before.
• The Three Cs: A successful website growth strategy starts with deploying the following strategy: Connect, Communicate, and then convert. One of the most common components of a failed website’s growth strategy is missing dialogue. Institute a conversational chat function that can learn and adapt to your users, but most importantly one that opens the experience up to more personalization efforts down the road.
• Through the Side Door: Marketers need to think of their website as a guided tour of their brand. Guests want to be shown around and they want you to make that process easy for them. Most times, guests won’t find your site through your homepage, but rather through search. SEO should be doing the work for you. Users that access your site through search are 200% more likely to convert on sales. Make sure you deploy a successful search strategy, but also you empower your site to have a search function as well.

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Marketing Trends podcast is brought to you by Salesforce. Discover marketing built on the world’s number one CRM: Salesforce. Put your customer at the center of every interaction. Automate engagement with each customer. And build your marketing strategy around the entire customer journey. Salesforce. We bring marketing and engagement together. Learn more at salesforce.com/marketing.

To learn more or subscribe to our weekly newsletter, visit MarketingTrends.com.

No two generations are ever the same, but there has never been a generation that has demanded so much of a marketing department’s attention quite like Generation Z. On this episode of Marketing Trends, Kamal Bhandal, the Vice President of Global Marketing and Consumer Marketing for Align Technology, discusses how marketing teams are shifting their attention to connect with a younger generation and meet their needs. Plus she talks about why authenticity and storytelling are at the heart of their efforts to connect with that group.

Main Takeaways

• Demanding Attention: Generation Z is demanding the attention of marketers everywhere and forcing marketing departments to up their game when it comes to creativity. In order to appeal to a younger audience, marketers need to improve their creativity levels by telling authentic and different stories. If you can’t connect with Generation Z from an authenticity standpoint, you won’t be able to speak to them effectively.
• Experimentation Breeds Success: Focus your efforts on trying new things. If your data is telling you your messaging isn’t working, it’s time to invest your resources into something new. Feel free to expand your horizons to understand what works for your brand and what doesn't.
• Consuming That Content: Media consumption has changed and as a result, content production strategies need to be adjusted as well. As consumers are spending more time with their devices, you should be experimenting with new ways to reach them where they are.

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Marketing Trends podcast is brought to you by Salesforce. Discover marketing built on the world’s number one CRM: Salesforce. Put your customer at the center of every interaction. Automate engagement with each customer. And build your marketing strategy around the entire customer journey. Salesforce. We bring marketing and engagement together. Learn more at salesforce.com/marketing.

To learn more or subscribe to our weekly newsletter, visit MarketingTrends.com.

The backbone of digital marketing is data. But how marketers use that data is what separates those who have success versus those who struggle. Richard Jones is the CMO of Cheetah Digital, and on this episode of Marketing Trends, Richard discusses why data is the fuel that keeps pushing the needle forward. Plus he touches on the importance of digital marketing and how brands can build meaningful relationships with their customers.

Main Takeaways

• Respect My Privacy!: Companies need to be aware that the relationship between brand and consumer is a fragile one. Understand that consumers will give you information when they feel there is a return for it and when they know that what they provide will be protected. If that trust is broken, the relationship with the brand is strained.
• Staying Loyal: Rewards and loyalty programs have always been built on data. Loyalty programs need to be used to establish a direct relationship between a brand and the consumer to form a better understanding of its customer.
• Data, Data and More Data: Grow your databases and invest in those databases. When you invest in growing your databases, you commit to expanding consumer relationships and building better customer journeys.

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Marketing Trends podcast is brought to you by Salesforce. Discover marketing built on the world’s number one CRM: Salesforce. Put your customer at the center of every interaction. Automate engagement with each customer. And build your marketing strategy around the entire customer journey. Salesforce. We bring marketing and engagement together. Learn more at salesforce.com/marketing.

To learn more or subscribe to our weekly newsletter, visit MarketingTrends.com.

While it may seem like we are further apart than we’ve ever been before, we have actually never been more connected than we are today. That’s a lesson that Heather Craft and her team at Hotwire Global have learned first-hand. With offices around the world, Craft and her team have had to rely on internal communication strategies to keep their clients satisfied. How have they done that? On this episode of Marketing Trends, Heather breaks down exactly how her team stays connected, and why those strategies are important. Plus, she explains why the relationship between employee and brand has never been more important.

Main Takeaways

• Inter-Communication Rises in Need: In order to be the best in this department, you need to have a fundamental understanding of the information that the client needs, but you also need to grasp that you won’t have all those answers. Understand your strengths, then rely on your internal team to fill-in the gaps where you don’t have the answers.
• Let Me Tell You a Story: The ability to tell a compelling and engaging story has always been at the intersection of where PR and marketing meet. As the two become more interwoven, you need to make sure the stories you are telling are consistent across all channels, not just one.
• Employee Meet Brand, Brand Meet Employee: The relationship between the employee and the brand they work for is more important than ever. Oftentimes, this relationship has been at the lower part of the pecking order, but as employees seek to work for companies they can align their values with and respect, the significance of this relationship has grown in need.

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Marketing Trends podcast is brought to you by Salesforce. Discover marketing built on the world’s number one CRM: Salesforce. Put your customer at the center of every interaction. Automate engagement with each customer. And build your marketing strategy around the entire customer journey. Salesforce. We bring marketing and engagement together. Learn more at salesforce.com/marketing.

To learn more or subscribe to our weekly newsletter, visit MarketingTrends.com.