Creating Single Vision of a customer – The Digital DNA

We talk about unified platform, data driven marketing, big data and so on, unfortunately, when we look at feasibility of such practices among brands, its far-fetched reality and just a board room discussion. Just the way we have clutter in customer segment so is the IT platforms in many of the organization, which are a sheer tick mark in terms of investments or legacies which have not been reviewed with changing trends, but not seen from one vision point of view.

For example, today if we have to perceive the persona of a customer from the company’s prospective, he would be seen through different filters such as CRM, Loyalty, Social Analytic, web analytic, BI tools drawing different persona of the same customer instead of building one customer persona, resulting in irrelevant & multiple campaigns, promotions targeting the same customers, most of the time irrelevant and not hitting the ROI mark.

The crux is customer centricity, not in terms of a single department, but in terms of the entire company looking at it. A persona is a result of collation of various signals from different sources; offline & online modes. It is matter of drawing a strategic view to draw those visions, because they translate the investment pattern into technologies which help you to optimize, predict and monetize in terms of understanding the right behavior, customer segment, place to target and offer.

Just as time & tide waits for none, so is the customer today, it doesn’t take time to become irrelevant to them, with irrelevant messages which flows in from various sources where he/she are in at the time of display. For instance, the FB ads or any other form of displays, excepting contextual mapping, how many time do you even look at it, forget click “know more”, the answer is majority of you ignore or don’t even see it.

The digital DNA, is just not building websites and creating brand presence across various online vehicle, it is more to understand your customers by delivering the right content at right time. The time has come where in your brand should deliver the experience by making the customer feel  special, through knowing or predicting who he/she needs and innovating your offering to them.

Industrialization brought in masses with economy in scale whereas digitization is going to bring in personalization with understanding customer behavioral signals. As said by Marcel Proust “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new lands but seeing with new eyes”. Implementing the right unified platform which integrates applications of business technology & Information technology holds the key of success. The digital empowerment today is going to fade data silos in organization, in a vision of building one single customer persona.

 

Subliminal Moment of Truth – Redefining engagement with captive minds through Mobile technology

An Empty mind is marketer’s paradise, is so true, ultimately every modern marketing strategy today while being written is on the shifts seen in consumer behavior cycle starting from  impulses through desire to demand, and what is phenomenal, is that, such basis have always brought in solutions which become the part of a business paradigm. Let’s see, how some of them have revolutionized marketing strategies; Moment of Truths by P&G, which talked on showcasing the product (first moment of truth) went on the bring in the visual merchandising & packaging as one of the prime component of retail strategy; followed by experiences on consumption (Second Moment of Truth) to become feedback for product improvement & innovation, testimonials for the artifacts to encourage prospects in the process of being lead. Then came the era of searches, as the searches started growing in prominence, the resonance was reflected  in Google’s Zero Moment of Truth, theory on searches, solutions are quite evident in terms of presence in terms websites, audio-visual aids on various platforms, ad words, usage of keywords with what the prospects search, to reflect in the top search ranking.

In all the paradigm mentioned above, we see reflection of the buying behavior, what comes more appealing is that engaging customer at the right time, right place & with right messaging, no doubt the phrase of ‘rights’ looks so simple but it isn’t. We have been seeing through the Great social Media revolution, which is now been used by every business to engage their prospects, but it’s still not clear on time & place. The right time, in many cases are engaging an empty mind or idle mind of an individual, and direct them to what you want. As a marketing professional, when we question on our efforts being enough on engaging our prospects, down some where answer is,’ no’.

Thanks, to the all-round development in technology in past 5 years, what is seen, the opportunity in engaging people are growing through the horizon. Smarter, lighter & customer centric application have enabled the growth in dependence on personal devices, to an extent that today you have avenues to reach your prospect, through them. You just need to be smarter and have customer centric attitude in you.

Empty mind or in other words captive minds are huge potential today, if I would have to talk on the same couple of years back, people would have stared at my thoughts, but today, it isn’t the scenario. Have you actually seen how an ideal individual spends his day, lets look at the balanced media diet, courtesy Steven Leckart in Wired Magazine issue 17.08  shows an illustration of time spent by individual on various sources of entertainment like starting from Television, social media, micro blogging, gaming and so on.

What comes across is that, smart devices are becoming more and more prominence in an individual’s life and in some cases they accompany the individual with the source of entertainment, the relation of smart devices with sources of entertainment is of symbiotic nature. Hence, it is very important for any brand today to be present to capitalize on the empty mind or idle mind, and have mobility options in their strategy. The challenge here is if you could engage that state of mind creating an impact on the subconscious mind, you have An Empty mind, which is marketer’s paradise.

With this, I am tabling across, today, a paradigm of engaging, captive minds or idle minds or an empty mind, which is the Subliminal moment of truth, in other words, it is engagement of that state of mind, where an individual has nothing scheduled and looking for sources, any activity involved in engaging that state would result in greater engagement with the brand, leading to other Moment of truth mention above. Subliminal Moment of Truth, brings in relevance of integrated messaging through various modes & Mobility Components (Smart Devices), in some form or other in terms of applications, mobile advertisements, campaigns which goes in your marketing strategy to engage prospects. Hence, it is very important for any brand, to have their mobile strategy in place, to engage such idle minds. To give you an example, Click on the link An Empty Mind is Marketer’s Paradise – Leveraging Airports To Enhance the Customer Base, is an perspective to engage people using an interactive mobile app, which would lead to Moment of Truth, and more over creates a deeper impression in the mind, which goes to become talked topic. Check the video which stress on the growing dependence on mobile devices.

Thanks to company like Google, Apple, Samsung, Microsoft who have been continuously innovating and emerging thought leaders in the mobility, their every release sets a new paradigm for marketers to engage with their prospects. Subliminal Moment of truth, gains more momentum when you check the statistics of the usage of mobile in one of interesting info-graphics shared by Sarah Kessler in an article in Mashable.com on Mobile Marketing,  indicates the internet usage on mobile would overtake desktop by 2014, Mobile tags provide more product information like comparison shopping offers than traditional barcodes, 86% of mobile internet users are using their devices which watching TV (Opportunity for marketers to engage), 29% of mobile users are open to scanning a mobile tag (interesting applications could increase brand engagement), 91% of mobile internet access to socialize (integrated approach with digital media could have a far reaching effects). Interestingly to note  how people use their mobile phones; 61% for gaming, 55% for weather, 50% for maps/ search, 49% for social networking, 42% for music, 36% for news, 33% for entertainment, 25% for dining and 21% for videos. Aren’t these statistic enough to show how the paradigm of Subliminal Moment of Truth i.e engaging empty or idle mind through mobile application is possible. In fact, if you don’t have the mobile strategy for your product you have missed on something.

You Could reach me on adarsh.pete@gmail.com or connect with me on  linkedin

Loyalty Avatars – Gamification Technique to Redefine Loyalty Programs

As customer engagement evolves through the social media & mobile technology, more & more brands are aspiring with customer centrism. Technology has been at it’s best in the recent time with web 2.0, which has evolved a new paradigm changing the codes & architecture of once CRM & now social CRM. One of sequential of CRM is Loyalty Program, a program to entice shopper to the brand, build in a much required dosage of adrenaline through the veins of buying decision of a shopper, to make them loyal. But what we see now is that, these programs are done to death, monotonous, daunting & cumbersome, which are not fairing as it is expected.

The trends started from driving consumption in the same category, went on to cross category, not necessarily the same brand through strategic alliance to benefit shoppers with wide range of products & services. Take the hot example of Kingfisher Airlines, there are cards like American Express who have tied up with other brands, to convert the loyalty points into miles to fly, the question here is are these “wow” and has it boasted the much required usage. No doubt these program are meant to engage and encourage usage, unfortunately not every plan flies.

We have also seen professional bodies, coming into existence whose day job is management of Loyalty programs; they on behalf of brands manage in their name & build alliance across categories in segments to boast usage collaboratively. But the very customer engagement goes missing in these programs. If we rig and use a crystal to granularity, we would see a fine phrase in loyalty programs called customer engagement, where one of the principles of engagement is aspirations.

Understanding customer aspiration is the key to any program and cherry in the icing would be to have understood trending behavior. For example “Gaming” there are hundreds of infographics which talks on how gaming is been engaging people online & once such statistics which pinned me down is 57% of the people who played games had never used gaming before, isn’t this rising your eyebrows. Well if that is the case, have you thought even Loyalty programs could be influenced with gaming.

If Farmville had to be popular in India, it was because every one of us had the aspiration of farming, but in reality knowing the difficulty, limits them to venture, but when they found virtual people jumped, across the globe, to a extent of day talks on what was the cultivation in their farm, isn’t it astounding. Then why not try the same principle of aspiration in your Loyalty programs using gaming methodology.

Creating an Avatar

This is how you do it, Loyalty Avatars, which are your shopper’s aspiration in terms of superheroes, personality, film characters, relevant personalities, brands & so on. Helping your shoppers in understanding the Virtual Avatar they want to be and helping them to recreate in virtual world through the consumption of your product. Every quantity the shopper buys goes closer to that of what he wants to be. There by you allow quantity, consumption across your product range & to top it, point to brag among his friend, moreover you build a close connect and wall of fame.

Virtual Environment through real life actions 

Now that you have the avatar ready, let the avatar face some challenges, you model an environment of constraints & challenges in terms of activity related to the consumption or to the character or in the virtual interface  for it, thus creating season & campaign calendar for yourselves. And in the process you have built a community which engages, fans to applaud leading to the second moment of truth, reviews boasting your product and before you realize you have them talking on product ideas which have a ready target audience.

Thanks to technology enhancement, we have tools & applications which help you to engage & such ideas are not farfetched but opportunity which knocks only once, one who adopts first has first mover advantage. This concept is ideal synchronization of the social world (engagement), gaming (environment) & mobile technology (reach). The words in brackets explain the impact of each activity. If you are into the Consumer Product Group (CPG) or FMCG or eCommerce or Multi-retail outlets this works so well, limiting yourselves to just the branding merchandise of your promotion is hampering your engagement.

Use this concept in synchronization of the trending like social world (engagement), gaming (environment) & mobile technology (reach). While I was on customer engagement through the social media, I found an interesting application using facebook, by a company Adepto which calls its products as Trolly, they have an interesting feature where they gamify the way the customer shares the purchases, this methodology not only helps in engaging them but also shares in the network there by creating ripples and excitement. This application is a clue to what can be done. Check the video

These are just the clues what I call Grey Munchies for you to think a loud and engage your consumers. Customer engagement is the key in today’s worlds as shoppers’ are informed, social & mobile device savvy, if you are not there, you have lost your game.

Tips of the trade

• Brands adopt the recent trends such as social media just not to gain fans, but engaging them too.
• Innovation, Relevance & Reach is the new mantra
• Adopt gaming to create excitements
• Not to forget mobile technology while you lay your plan in integration.

You Could reach me on adarsh.pete@gmail.com or connect with me on  linkedin

An Empty Mind is Marketer’s Paradise – Leveraging Airports To Enhance the Customer Base

Facebook has over 250 million mobile user, advertiser expense for location-based services would set to approach $ 10 billion dollar by 2016, The rise of tablets allows airlines to come out with interactive apps to book tickets, a tweet which said around 30 airports in US would be able to access through free wify, HTML  5  is set to revolutionize the standardization and features for mobile devices. Does it ring the bell, if not check?

Millions of passengers use airports annually across the world either on one way or round trip, at an average people would be spending anywhere between 3 hrs – 8 hrs after check-in of their luggage, any idea, what happens? What have been emerging more appealing than the duty-free shops, window shopping & youthful staff around, is the world of internet, running through their smart devices, which could keep him occupied with things which would keep him away in his / her normal routine life. His / Her tablet or laptop or smart phone is the only device left after checking.

What could be true is using this captivated time, which I call a subliminal mind, of an individual, which is with clutter of prospective running in the mind, whether read a magazine or go around window shopping or check in the duty-free or stare at hanging advertisement banners or chat with the fellow passenger and what is very predominant among the clutter is use his/her phone, either with the bandwidth what his service provider has or the free wify in the airport. Have we thought, what an opportunity it throws for eCommerce platform, then imagine a digital display on your device, while you enter the airport premise, which says

“You are now in world of ABC eCommerce, kindly download the app on to your device”

This app, enables every passenger who have the Bluetooth on, to get the app, which helps him to gain the limited access, which is sponsored or in alliance with service provider at the airport. This access gains authentication (resolving the security issue), and starts the interaction with your prospect, who was cluttered all this while and you have channelized him to what you want, you are accessing him to posts in his social networking site and list of guided things.

“Lets’ do window shopping”

A feature, which is the lonely passenger’s friend, using the GPS navigation or equivalent technology, you are guiding him through the airport, helping to window shop, through your searches and comparative pricing with online on your site, in a way that you are showing the benefits with you and helping him to capture munchies while he is on board.

“Check the QR code, Hi, You have a surprise”     

Features which could allow you to identify the sponsored QR codes to entitle discounts on your online stores and free buys, to make the experience more exciting, eCommerce could use augmented reality, to click him pictures across to cherish his memories, all this happening under your umbrella of access, allowing you to be where his posts are.

“Do you want us to connect to your friends through Facebook”

What could be the next logical step once you are through with you checklist, start conversation with your friends, tweet on the services, link networks, share picture which are branded with you.

“Check what your favorite airline has for you to offer”   

These are what eCommerce platform leverage on, is channeling the airline’s loyalty program to your site, allowing passenger to shop, leverage on promotions. This would get a connect with your customer, understand the taste and what brings you closer to your customer centric strategy.

“How about you munch on what you saw, searched, connected, while you are on board”

Once you are about to go on the airplane mode, the application allows you mull the activities, and allows you now to create post, write remarks, check what you have been looking as fads, are they trending, which could be brought in your decision process, and once you are online, allows you to update on your platform, as one of the engagement.

eCommerce today has enormous potential, thanks to technology advancements, tablets & smart phone, it is up to  the player to decide, to explore the new segments to be in and get the user base by being as close as possible with the customers . The above narrative, is just an example to how customer engagement could be taken to a different alter all together, through the shopping online, writing reviews on the products (good adrenaline dosage for people), as this is the time when people have their thinking hats on and allowing you to be in the subliminal mind, which would definitely give you ROI, if not immediate, then future definitely.

You Could reach me on adarsh.pete@gmail.com or connect me linkedin

Tips for eCommerce

• Airports throw enormous opportunity to build customer engagement and footfalls
• It is just not important to be there in terms display banners, but makes more sense if you could relate your online experience  through mobile & tablet apps, which brings consumers closer to the platform
• The Narrative is a good example of an App.
• Especially Player who operate in the Travel & Leisure category, have you tried this, then check this stats which says, trials for the new ebookers.com website showed that 70% of hotel booking made through the new mobile website were for same day Check-In.

Changing Faces Of eCommerce: Technology & Business Models

eCommerce or eRetailing, is just getting more and more exciting with the advent of new technology which are smarter, lighter and advanced, to convert every experience closer to reality. Every platform today can boast one new feature, a new innovation and optimized technique to entice their shopper. The trick is to bridge the gap arising from the real life shopping, reduce the rejection on delivery and increase process efficiency.  While I was writing on Augmented reality & Social Commerce, in one of my posts, I considered them as a boon to the eCommerce, but as I started researching for new technology which could overcome the biggest challenge in the fashion category, in the eCommerce model, where the rejects after delivery is as high as 30%, purely because of the nature of the buying behavior & size match, I came across a cool technology and methodology, which is as hilarious as:

Technology : Webcam Measurements for Buying Clothes Online

Like any other Success story, the technology UPcload, also started through addressing the pain area after self actualization & returning the delivery of the online shopped cloth, by the founders, purely because of the mismatch of size. They found an opportunity and brought a solution through two years of effort, which is now spreading as a wildfire, with it’s originality & fabulous methodology of scanning the body online through a webcam & holding a CD. UPcload uses your webcam, and here is the clever part—a CD or DVD—and a whole load of image processing, to work out your exact measurements. You stand in front of your webcam, in reasonably tight-fitting clothes, holding the CD in front of your navel. The system takes your picture and then runs it through object recognition processing. Since the system knows how big a CD is, it can work out your relative body dimensions. This technology is here to bring the much required revolution while shopping for your fashion line merchandise.

The discussion with Asaf Moses, Founder of UPcload, was totally a visionary one, he is set to change the online shopping experience and has been very optimistic with the soft launch in Germany & set to open shops in US now. UPcload has started seeing it’s adaptability from various leading platform and he quotes “It means we can suggest clothing ideas to people that they may never have thought of before. The program is using your body shape to suggest genuinely new ideas to people rather than simply suggesting on the basis of your historic buying pattern. It is like having your best friend with you.”

Such, inventions, innovation & explorations would only, make the online shopping experience more exciting & realistic. This would strategically be very beneficial for fashionable clothing line, especially when it comes to experimentation of new trends, fads in the fashion line. With this technology we would see more and more people experimenting. Also, such technology would make certain lines more accessible & open to the broader market base, using body shape, it  would enable to see yourself with new trends & even more, going forward you could ask your friends  through social networking sites. This business model would work more or less in the similar way to PayPal for financial transaction; a user could actually create his or her profile through their site and save it online, and use measurement while shopping online.

Takes for eCommerce Industry

• Measurement technology would change the online buying experience of the shopper and reduce the rejects 

• Increase experimentation leading to move on perception on trends to trial, with the blend of social commerce, would only increase the market base by cross-Category  adaptation in the fashion apparel category.

Business Model: Orderwithme.com ‘s Changing sourcing Model

Success stories are always born from the opportunity of gaps, and so is another example, which was the winner of TechCrunch DISRUPT in Bejing, Orderwithme.com.

During the founder Jonathan’s  education days in China, he was fascinated with the cost arbitrage to US, he went on to set up a shop in United States, sourcing Bags & other accessories from china, soon he found himself sailing on the ugly side of the sail, not because of the cost, but the quantity. The question here is, do you have so many customers to exhaust your procurement, which soon would be a dead investment in terms of inventory. He found an opportunity, in the entire sail where he was not alone & there were many small retailers, which his new platform could cater too, in sourcing through group buying. This model is now the version 2.0 when compared with alibaba.com, which too is sourcing model from china.

Orderwithme.com, found opportunity in sourcing for all the small retailers in United States through group buying, hand picking goods for their customers, walk through the journey of procurement & selection, quality evaluation & many more attributes, making the sourcing site the most effective platform for it’s small customer & adding the flavor of personalization. The value in the model is creating a platform where various small retailers could queue the order for the bulk pick up from china, as like the founder, not everybody would be able to relinquish the quantity procured, even though you have the cost advantage.

The Learning from the model is their personalized touch which makes every customer of their feel of being in China and procuring goods, through Video, high definition pictures on the journey of purchasing and Account manager who liaison with their customers, understanding the requirement & taking care of the order.

You Could reach me on adarsh.pete@gmail.com or connect me linkedin

Takes for eCommerce Industry

• Enhancing the online shopping experience with more digital aids like the high definition videos & pictures, which could bridge the decision making process of the real life

Decoding Google’s Zero Moment Of Truth (ZMOT) to eCommerce Sustainability & Continuous Engagement

Let’s slice E-commerce, an online store or retail which enables shoppers to be where they are and by using the power spell WWW.ABCD.COM , they could have products and services of their choice underneath their eyeballs, ready for the consumption, although not immediate but gradual.  On the flip side, the biggest challenge which e-commerce faces today is the perception, in terms of acceptance on feeling the product to virtually seeing and ordering.

Though, the internet penetration have been fairly a primary deterrent for the success of e-commerce across the geographies where they have not gained prominence, but with advent of 3G services, e-commerce is slowly seeing it’s acceptance, but where it still sees it’s roadblock is on the perceptions. Perception is all in the minds, generally through one’s experience or word of mouth. These are those strong impulses, which could drive a shopper for immediate consumption which is a gradual one or not. To top it, shoppers love to feel the product, look at it, have a face to converse & bargain and shoulder on in case of bad experience or clarification. Last but not the least to pick freshest one in the rack, which in case of e-commerce is just the virtual and the thought keeps lingering, ‘hope I have got the freshest piece’.  Perception generally relies on the positioning strategy or the business model of the e-commerce led marketer.

What goes beyond perception is sustainability, how to have the shoppers think about us in their buying decision process is a challenge and being where consumers are interacting & engaged is innovativeness. Usually, when marketers are working on these thoughts, the first approach is to be in there on the informative sites, social media, branded merchandise and prime sponsorships to grab as many eyeball as possible, as the low hanging fruits in their checklist, this gives them the much-needed spikes but could this be sustained for a long run in front of the giants, who have been in the industry for ages & have built-in fats which could sustain by shedding in terms of big bang activity. The answer would be “no”.

The answer lies in theory of Moment of Truths, what once Proctor & Gamble defined First Moment of truth, as one of the science of shopping, which concentrated on the display of products in the store, then came Second Moment of Truth which was on the consumption of the product. These two truths are more or less very well followed by the marketers across the brands in positioning and displaying. What is now coming in might with the adaptation of new mobile devices, which are changing the consumer line of thought, buying behavior and a trend which is far emerging in terms of product knowledge among the shopper even before he decides on the products.

The shoppers today are far well versed with knowledge on what they want to buy, where they want to buy, what is the best deal available while they are in the process of buying a product. Google defines this as Zero Moment of Truth, ZMOT. In the words of Jim Lecinski, Managing director, U.S. Sales & Service,  Google, It’s a new decision-making moment that takes place a hundred million times a day on mobile phones, laptops and wired devices of all kinds. It’s a moment where marketing happens, where information happens, and where consumers make choices that affect the success and failure of nearly every brand in the world. At Google, we call this the Zero Moment Of Truth, or simply ZMOT

The Zero Moment Of Truth, is a paradigm which focuses on the buying decision process, this is when shopper is deciding on the product, in parallel, checking where & how to buy (which is what format to go with), and if you are not here you have lost an opportunity. Lets’ try to dig into the science and understand what ZMOT has in store while buying decision process is happening, both online and offline, for e-commerce, which could work towards getting shoppers.

When we look at the buying behavior of a shopper after having a desire to buy a product, he has different ways today to gather more information, either he gets on to his mobile device like Laptop, iPad, smart phone or get on to stand alone PC, hit the search button, the best in today’s world what people say is ‘Google’. Your favorite search engine is able to throw loads of information from the product details, availability, location, feedback to reviews; they are so intrinsic that no brand can actually neglect any of these details, if they want to win their shoppers’ heart. So in the case e-commerce, not only the site would have to be optimized to the search engine but it would have to be calibrated for various devices from the smart phones to other smart devices, making it friendly for the shopper to view the information. The last thing you would want is the opportunity loss for unfriendliness in viewing the product.

Being in the minds of the shoppers, would mean 6^th sense of your product prospect, what I mean is understanding the key word definition used or related phrase from the ad copy to the attributes of the product, being reflected in your site so as to bring you there when the prospect, enters queries in your ‘Google’ world. There are shoppers who would have the desire to buy, but wouldn’t be remembering the product, they would either vaguely remember the attributes or message from ads and would have entered the query, if you would have reflected in top 5, that is an opportunity win.

ZMOT for e-commerce, just doesn’t mean the ad words, it could also mean understanding your footprint’s queries either in terms of review, feedbacks, comparison, product details, Q&A, ratings & so on, which could act as a differentiation and comes out while the query have been run on Google, by the prospects. What you have done using ZMOT analysis is you have not only made your e-commerce site more shopper friendly but also search engine too, apart from the SEO tools.

The other way to look at ZMOT strategy, is to understand the Socio-economic environment of the products you are selling, to capitalize on queries regarding the event which wouldn’t have been related directly to your product on the site, but subtly conveys the message what you are trying to sell. Let me give you an example, the people leaving in India are seeing a big movement on Jan Lokpal Bill, an anti corruption movement, by the Social Activist Anna Hazare, during the movement there were lot of silent protest which were happening with people printing posters, messages on T-shirts & caps and so on, if any agency wanted to capitalize on them, they could have had customized the offerings as per the movement to be in the search results which would have had the query on the movement.

 Zero Moment Of Truth is just not online, this principle could be used on Offline too, and being where your shoppers are is the secret for sustainability of unique & continuous engagement with your users. Using the online strength, an e-commerce Marketer could either device a mobile application on any of the widely used platform, enabling the smart device user to evaluate his product of the choice through it.  The other way of being in smarter devices would be through the service provider; this would enhance the opportunity prospects for the marketer. These work as a double-edged sword, on one hand the application icon sits on to the shoppers smart device home page, increasing your chances for continuous engagement, as he could evaluate deals, which could look lucrative for him while he is on the store or on information gathering phase and on other hand the recall is made significantly.

This application need not be just restricted to mobile devices but could be made an add-on to the social networking platforms, enabling the users to view their queries, share, engage with their network and compare brands, making it even more lucrative. The application strategy would be incomplete, without social networking, looking at the prominence which it has in our daily lives; these systems would also encourage fans on their pages. These moves help to play on perception and move the users slowly to the e-commerce platform and increase confidence on it

To Know more on Zero Moment Of Truth, click http://www.zeromomentoftruth.com/

You could reach me on adarsh.pete@gmail.com or connect me on Linkedin

Viral Demand Gen Engine

Couple of years of back nobody could have even thought how Web 2.0 would sweep through everyone’s life, to become the Numero-Uno. There are appealing statistics which comprehend the fact of visit an individual would make during a day, which reinstate the position.

The rate at which this methodology has precipitated into the ecosystem is quite commendable and what we are seeing is just the tip of the iceberg, where the way players are exploring, beneficiaries experimenting and end users relishing the engagement are just the right things at the right place. When we look at the players today they use Create, innovate and embed as their drivers for exploration.

Networking is never been so intrinsic, where engagement being more extrinsic it leads to roots which go on to develop applications, widgets, feedback mechanism, share, likes, streams, +1 and status updates. Social Media today has become the face for their respective brands, more importantly the interactive one, which no doubt comforts the consumer and also benefits by providing the right kind of feedbacks, inputs and updates leading towards service / product optimization & in some cases a new product idea. As we all know Dell has been heavily working on the social media tactic  to use thousand and odd status update to shortlist few best ideas, which finally go to make some of the successful Dell products.

Never the less, Web 2.0 is been a true revolutionary for marketers and the best to happen for any Brand, in terms of adding a face, connecting with prospects and consumer but on other hand it poses challenges on engaging with the fans (prospects & Consumers), extent of insights and last but not the least, the most dreaded of all the issues, handling demanding, unsatisfied consumers who could derail the engagement with negative updates and comments. Among the reputed brands there are some which use the later as a model to resolve problems of the customers and also channel for service & support.

If I would have to think, how Web 2.0 would be in the coming days,  it could be like the hosted services of the leading enterprise products, where every individual has their own page which has all their information on an application which would give insights on their skill up gradation, finances, Career and so on. In fact there are android applications which are getting developed to control house hold appliances through the mobile, which could be synced to it. Thereby making the social networking site the most used and depended site.

Social Media today is an evolving strategy towards engaging customers, virtual product visualization and the most important where every brand would like to use such an optimized, targeted, measurable, seamless methodology to run a viral demand gen engine, which helps them to generate a fully matured lead which has been influenced, informed and  endorsed.

The Viral Demand Gen Engine works on an integrated model of Engagement and Virtual Product Visualization engine, powering the viral through engaging fans (prospects & consumers) either in view of product conceptualization, optimization, improvisation, development or even to the extent of sampling & testing. The model gets more appreciated when these insights are used to reach the targeted audience through blog sphere and for deeper pockets, micro blogging (in the form of mobile apps eg twitter). The strength here is it could be in terms of consumer endorsements, which is powerful than any other media, which is one of the KPI in all the reputed companies. Or the combination of different web application, widgets and blogging to create a good appealing visualization. Exhibit 1 Below demonstrates the Viral demand Gen Engine.

WATCH THIS BLOG FOR MORE TO COME ON ENGAGEMENT ENGINE, FOLLOWED WITH VIRTUAL PRODUCT VISUALIZATION ENGINE AND UPDATES

Gaming,the Biggest Social Engagement Model, could be the Lab for Consumer Behavior

Have you ever seen the social gamer playing through the farm ville, god! That is more than an addiction which I have been through. You scratch your head and heart if you are not able to harvest at the right time, strategize the crops which yield more level scores and the most awesome thing, use a calculator to find out the profit margin out of every harvest. The best out of the entire activity is we are captive, focused and more over show a behavioral trend, which could be related or grouped to categorical insight, which means, without my knowledge, but based on my impulse and reaction during the involvement. What do you think this could lead to; Consumer Gaming Intelligence.

Let’s counter the statistics 1,739,025, followers on the Facebook for Zynga alone, which also is a game changer in the social gaming experience. Any methodology parameter we bring in for the evaluation, they stand at par, engagement model, user experience, tactics and more over the consistency, which keeps the eyeball and the grey matter glued, tingling the stimuli to visit the site more than just once. May be for more statistic we could ask Zynga, including this in this section, would be more of a marketing pitch than trying to drive a point. The insights coming out through the game would be a good inference to a Consumer Gaming intelligence, which is waiting for us to study Consumer Behavior.

Gaming Behavioral Laboratory– Let’s see how we could adopt, when put more science into the technique, gaming studio could be developed which acts as a behavioral lab to draw inferences which are corollary of the shopper behavior. What would make a difference to boast the precision is introducing strategic scenarios, like the real life shopping environment which would allow the excitement among the players and keep the momentum up through their visits and post visits. These scenarios help to gather the behavioral trends in the consumers. Their logic, could interpret decision inputs, expectations and wish list they have, more over how they react in a scenario could give a good input for the strategy formulation.

I don’t say this answer the questions, could we predict consumer behavior, but we could start drawing parallels, which could help us in drawing the behavioral trends. This would bring in more science and to top of all, gaming is the best engagement model in the social media, apart from the done to death contest.

Engagement model Every marketing subject matter expert tests his grey matter to the fullest when it comes to engagement consistency, which is still a Pandora’s Box waiting to be unearthed. There is no science which suggests this should be the tactic for engagement and substantiate through web analytics, which shows spike and plateau. But gaming is one of the applications which increase the visitor frequency on to the site, the beauty is, on the spirit of the game and its level, networks you to people who have one thing common that is gaming. Isn’t that interest for you and your brand to make it a purely global phenomenon, through the social media.

Just having a page or a group wouldn’t make a difference, in your Social Media Strategy, translating your position statement through related applications and games would spike your engagement, and more so we would be able to crack what is called “Consumer Gaming Intelligence”, so what are you waiting for…

What is your retail footprint strategy going to be?

The retail industry today have grown up the growth matrix, fairly well, categorizing themselves in two broad buckets of the BCG Model (Boston consulting Group) i.e. cash cow and dogs. The once who were in the quadrants of Niche and Visionaries moved into the state of leaders today, reaped through the benefits of the first mover advantage  and expanding themselves in leaps and bounds.

The changing market dynamics also went in their favors, both in terms of the consumption pattern and disposable income. While some argue that recession depleted the disposable income with compromising consumption pattern, some used this in their sides, through negotiation on the rentals and various input costs into long term contracts, which marked up their margin, boasting the profitability of the retail outlet. This not only helped visionaries and niche player to increase their presence in terms of square feet but also made them venture into new formats, as a part of the expansion drive.

When we look at the Tier one cities today there is a burst in the retail format, every suburb today would boast on minimum of two formats and when cumulated to the city, we would question on the footprints. This has shown growth in the capacity matching demands of different consumption pattern, in developing the formats from creating landmarks to multi brand outlets to niche to entertainment destination, in addressing wide spectrum. These trends are leading every retailer today to an edge, where they would like to boast on the footprints, and get maximum eyeballs for their advertisers.

Shopper Ambassador–Blend Emotions to create association– The crux is not to bring in an USP for the format to draw the attention, but to bring in an attribute of association in the eyes of the consumers, a sense of they being brand ambassador, would make a difference. The most commonly adopted technique, which is done to death, is having a road show or promotional events in the common arena of the space, which ends up as a nuisance for the shopper. These would have to go beyond just the in store entertainment to level where in the shopper feels comfortable and binds a sense of association with the store. The best example to this would be having a CSR touch, where we go beyond the collection drive; have few volunteers from the shoppers to the sponsored NGO or activities where shopper are involved with the beneficiaries directly.

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Bring in more of a personal touch for the shopper when he is in the retail outlet. Usually we see a consumer once he enters the arena feels lost, reasons could be, one he doesn’t find what he is looking and two, nobody to guide him. In both these case a retailer would answer that they have people around, but most of the time these people are not themselves aware on the assortments.

• What would be required are customer engagement people who smartly interact with the customer, when they enter and depart, this gives such a nice feeling about the store.
• If it is a chain, there should be uniformity in store design, service levels and customer engagement; usually these are negated by the retailers. This brings in a lot of difference in the customer experience.

This would help them not only to gain the confidence but would bring in a new wave of associating with the consumers.

The community driver –Focal to your retail format- The trend usually followed in the retailing is more of a push formula, which is driven by the marketing calendar and sales figures. This paradigm shift needs to happen from the push to pull, which has a farfetched impact in creating a strong loyalty. The retail brand today just can’t fill it’s appetite of footprints through Multi-Brand and Multi-category, which would be a very short termed strategy, to be a winner in the long term they would have to gain confidence of the consumers, through a community with the focal point of its brand.

This would mean going beyond the normal way of associating with the consumer to create a platform, where in consumer would interact with the brand, network with fellow shoppers, and express their taste creating an ecosystem which is conducive for both retailer and shopper. This would create a strong bonding and also lead to process improvisation and build a shopper friendly retail. The entire essence is to bring in prominence for the shopper. The platform would be a face to the outlet and channel of communication, the loyalty program could revolve around this platform. The other benefit which could come out is that retail being the focal point shoppers might use it as a medium to network and meet their fellow shoppers at the outlet.

The Influencers- spokesperson among the shoppers -This would open a new Pandora box in the footprint strategy, where influencers among the shoppers could be identified who could help in promotions and are the spokesperson in their network of social networking site which is like hitting the gold mine and has greater precision than the advertising. The methodology would help in creating spokesperson to influence their community and to comprehend the fact is the way today we are closely hooked to social networking site, to share, hear and review. The challenge here would be how creative we could become to efficiently drive our messaging through and fro with these guys in the most subtle manner, keeping the focal point around the retail and outlet as a vehicle to meet physically.

Localization – bringing the local flavor into the city>suburb>locality strategy- The retail industry would have to go through more refinement then what we are seeing now. The science has just started and it would need more and more people to jump in to reform it. The methodology, as pointed out earlier in this paper, which is followed as a trend today is generic where in the drive comes from the retail marketing calendar, which is more of a push then a pull. This would have to be reversed to create the need what we are looking. No doubt today all format of the same flagship operates in the same way across the nationwide presence, which negates the regional flavor in terms of fads, styles and taste. If these would have to change, then every retail flagship would have to treat each of their city and its suburb stores as SBU. Bringing in the region based flavors & preference, which should also reflect in their merchandise apart from promotions and advertisement. Stressing on market research, customer segmentation, buying pattern & consumption study in relation to the growing disposable income with type of viewership in terms of entertainment options, which translates into types of category could be brought in the subtle way which might become the prime consumption pattern in the future. To give an example, a retail format could strategies their merchandise into different buckets such as fads, local flavors, looked upon merchandise, promotional stuff and so on. In turn we would see a dramatic shift in the loyalties among the consumers. Also it would make a lot of sense to have a regional partner while running the store, in a hybrid franchise model, which would change the industry looks and also would improve the supply chain.

Customer Engagement Model is the key in retaining the customers, which many retailers fail to understand and end up in push formula, but increasing competition in format, retailers would have to think on their Retail Footprint Strategy.