Category Archives: Branding Strategy

Why Authentic Value Proposition ?

The lingering pandemic, the Ukraine war, supply chain problems and inflation has all types of organizations reviewing their “value” proposition. The idea of an explicit contract in B2B and an implicit contract in B2C used to involve fewer parties. If there was a serious dispute there was arbitration, courts or government regulators who would step in and try to sort things out. No longer true in the world of instant social media. Think of Elon Musk’s Twitter purchase situation.

For everyday business it’s simply keeping your promises to your customers. To be fair, our experience is that Elon Musk is pretty good with Tesla in keeping customer promises. No matter how the Twitter acquisition plays out.

Since marketing is about customer value, it’s important to clarify the idea of value proposition in these challenging times:

Customer Journey,CRM and Advertising Goals

The trouble is that most businesses and their leaders don’t seem to fully appreciate the value of long term customer relationships. “New” customers sound more sexy than “Old” customers. On a lighter note, Tinder sounds more exciting than eHarmony. Our marketing academic audience knows about the 1987 seminal work by Dwyer, Schurr and Oh whereContinue reading “Customer Journey,CRM and Advertising Goals”

Getting the word out: Google Display Ads vs. Facebook Ads

At the early parts of the sales funnel you are trying to build awareness about your brand. Your target market needs to know that you exist. You need to get the word out.Popular choices in digital marketing is to use Google Ads and Facebook Ads that are both great in getting the word out. For this post we stick to Google Display Ads and exclude Google Search Ads. For search ads work better for lower parts of the sales funnel. By the time someone searches for something (eg. ‘Cheap flights to Paris”) you can be sure that the person is now looking for a specific destination. When your search ad pops up that mentions “Cheap flights to Paris” it becomes very likely that the searcher clicks on the ad to check out what your landing page has to offer.

AIDA sales funnel and the buyer’s journey to purchase

Businesses tend to wonder about the effectiveness of their advertising spend in terms of what they actually sold that could be attributed to advertising.To understand how advertising works its useful to look at the hierarchy of effects AIDA sales funnel credited to Advertising Hall of Fame member Elias St. Elmo Louis in 1898. No that was not a typo and check out the history of this kind of thinking called Hierarchy of Effects in the article by Barry (1987).

This post was originally published on April 22, 2014. We have many readers asking about the connection between the AIDA sales model and the Digital Customer Journey or Digital Buyer’s’ Journey. We are delighted to update the original post on March 5, 2021. We hope that this will help all businesses come back after COVID as customers go through their AIDA process online.

AdWords for Engineering Companies: start with B2B Buy-Task thinking

Engineering companies are often unsure as to how digital marketing is relevant for them. Frequently, they rely on the sales-force alone to clinch contracts. This can be challenging without digital marketing support. Engineering companies that are in B2B markets need to think in B2B Buy Task format as they structure their Google AdWords campaigns.

[ Note: This post was originally published on May 20, 2016 and due to the great interest of our dear readers this post is updated on March 3, 2021. We have added an example from aerospace from high tech manufacturing. The earlier example food manufacturing remains. In 2021 though, modern food processing facilities tend to be comparable to aerospace in terms of automation, digitization. We hope that this post will inspire readers from manufacturing to redouble their marketing efforts as we come out of COVID 19. ]

How much should I spend on Google AdWords ?

How much should I spend on Google AdWords? is a question that we get asked very often. Earlier this blog provided a strategy answer.

[ Note: This post was originally published on October 28 , 2014. Due to the great interest of our dear readers and many changes in the digital landscape the post is updated on March 2, 2021]

Since we are happily at the vaccination stage of COVID-19 we can expect that life will return to normal in the not too distant future. However, we all realize that buyer behavior for both consumers(B2C) and businesses (B2B) has changed forever. With the huge adoption of online research and buying with COVID lockdowns and stores closed the public has become far comfortable with online commerce.

Segmenting,Targeting and Postioning vs.Google AdWords Account Stucture

The Segmentation,Targeting and Positioning (STP) topic in Marketing is one of those early marketing topics. Once you have figured out what your market offering (product) provides as “value” to your prospective customers- you need to start figuring out your market segmentation, targeting and positioning(STP). Here is a way to think about STP vs. the Google AdWords Account Structure:

[Note: This post was originally posted on May 7, 2015 and is updated on February 24, 2021 due to the interest of our dear readers. An additional section on “Funny Competitors” is added to cheer up our readers as we come out of the pandemic!]

Why are impressions free in Google AdWords advertising?

Contrast the PPC model to all other traditional advertising  models like TV,Radio,Newspaper, Billboard or even Direct Mail. You pay for impressions (or potential views called Cost per Mille – CPM ) without really knowing if your prospect actually saw your ad.

What Advertising Media should you use? Media by ELM Appeal

If you are an advertiser, then you need to consider how your customer is likely to process the advertising message that you want to give them. The Media by Appeal graphic with this post is a simple way of looking at what media is best for your message

Why comparison of bids is a great B2B Marketing Opportunity

The 4th Step in the B2B Purchasing Process is comparison of bids received. This can be a great B2B Marketing Opportunity for new suppliers trying to get in .

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