Wish to design a better product or service for your customers? Consider the art and science of user story mapping.
If storytelling is the secret to great content marketing, then the story-mapping of your user’s journey could be the formula to great products and services.
To do well in content marketing, you need to know who your most valuable customers are. These high value clients are the ones most likely to make repeat purchases and stay loyal to your company.
Chances are that these individuals are highly engaged Transformational Consumers. At least according to Tara-Nicholle Nelson in her wonderfully insightful book The Transformational Consumer.
Imagine living in your customer’s house. You dig into their wardrobe. You raid their fridge. You may even sleep on their beds.
And you do it all with their permission—of course! What you’ll observe as an ethnographic market researcher there could ignite your next big business idea.
I walk a thin line in my role as a content marketer and media literacy advocate.
On one hand, I am excited about the possibilities which digital and social technologies can bring. On the flip side, I’m mindful of the dangers of digital addiction and how technologies can be used for nefarious purposes.
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What is the simplest definition of marketing?
According to the Business Dictionary, it is the management process by which goods and services move from concept to the customer, while involving the 4 Ps: product, price, place, and promotion. For services, this may be expanded to include other Ps like people, process, and physical evidence.
Katy Perry’s Prism isn’t getting off to a colourful start (courtesy of The Katy Perry Wiki)
Katy Perry is a global mega-star.
Her music videos on YouTube generate hundreds of million views (over 201 million for “Roar”). Her Facebook fan page has almost 60 million “likes”. Over 47 million followers worship her on Twitter. Her hits (like “Fireworks” and “Teenage Dream”) are so well known that anybody from school kids to grandparents are humming along to their melodies.
You don’t have to be a mad scientist to benefit from experiments (courtesy of Cliparts.co)
Imagine that you’re an entrepreneur tasked to start a new business. Or perhaps launch a new product.
How would you go about doing it?
Do you know that your five senses (sight, sound, scent, taste and touch) play a major role in what you buy?
While marketers go gaga over social technologies and their impact on digital commerce, it is often our physical perceptions of a product which influence buying decisions.
Let your customers “own” your brand (courtesy of Thaeger)
In a world overflowing with “me-too” goods and services, consumers are seeking ways to assert their individuality. In an overcrowded marketplace teaming with repetition and homogeneity, they crave personalised products and experiences that reflect their individual identities.
This phenomenon of personal expression is catalysed by the rise of social technologies and networks such as blogs, forums, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and other community channels.
Serial entrepreneur and billionaire Lynda Resnick’s book “Rubies in the Orchard” provides a fascinating glimpse into the marketing strategies behind brands like POM Wonderful, FIJI Water, Teleflora and the Franklin Mint. Part autobiography and part business book, the highly readable tome chronicled how Lynda rose from rags to riches and deployed her marketing smarts to seed and grow four highly successful businesses.
Written in a witty and conversational fashion, Rubies in the Orchard presents an in-depth glimpse into four very different industries. In the section on Teleflora, Lynda described how marketing is “all about listening. You want to be the equivalent of a good friend”. She then described how an attribute can be a Unique Selling Proposition (USP) based on the following: