Category: Strategy

Core Requisites for Digital Commerce Success

Posted on by annaktaylor
digital technology

 

 

In a constantly evolving business environment, and with ever changing customer behaviors, a team’s intentions must be bold to strategically innovate. The objective is to scale with purpose, capitalize on opportunities, use data effectively, and instigate both engagement and action.

Let us look at the ‘how’.

Research and Data Exploration

First, identify where your target audience spends time and earnestly research the ways they express interest and enthusiasm.  Examine their buying habits and analyze purchasing preferences.

Through a deep dive into customer buying behaviors, along with their information-seeking activities, you’ll capture valuable insights, keywords, and decision-making factors.

Following the research, prioritize your projects, resources, and budget based on the channels that have the attention of your customers.

Core Digital Channels

  • Search Engines
  • Website / Landing Pages
  • Mobile App
  • Digital Ads
  • Blog
  • Email
  • Video
  • Social Media
  • Mobile, Wearable, and IoT Devices
  • Influencers
  • Online and Retail Stores
  • Marketplaces
  • OTT/CTV
  • Resources (eBook, Case Study, Guide)
  • Text, Chat, Voice
  • VR Spaces
  • AI Experiences

With so many potential touch points, your strategy must be data-driven and data-informed. Through the lens of business intelligence, build campaigns that align with buying trends and customer sentiments.

It is also essential to be knowledgeable of challenges across the digital landscape.  Structure your strategies and testing program with an accurate view of these obstacles and hindrances.

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SEO – An Easy Guide to Impact Performance

Posted on by annaktaylor
SEO with cogs

An estimated 97% of mobile searches are done on Google, making it smart to base your strategies on Google’s algorithm, signals, ranking system, and indexing priorities.

With each query, Google looks for the following:

  • How a web page relates to certain concepts
  • The context of the keywords being used
  • Relevancy of the page to the query itself

Additionally, it factors in site speed, mobile responsiveness, and the performance of core web vitals.

Speech tagging and answering questions are among the natural language processes being used by search engines.  Further, the domain rating (DR) will influence your backlink profile, while domain authority (DA) will impact your search engine positioning.

Other ranking factors include:

  • Industry authority
  • User interface framework
  • Crawlability / indexability
  • Quality of content
  • Backlinks
  • Page rendering
  • Mobile experience
  • Site architecture
  • Content clustering and semantic relationships

Your keyword approach must be designed to achieve the right reach, frequency, channels, and marketing mix.

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Strategy Insights for 7 Digital Business Models

Posted on by annaktaylor
Interface technology, the future of user experience.

 

B2C, B2B, D2C, Omnichannel, Social Commerce, Marketplaces – each has distinctive selling strategies and opportunities.  Consider which one (or few) aligns with your business model and objectives.

 

B2C

Often, this is a business with several brands or categories with broad demographics for its prospective customers, aiming for sales volume even if profit margins are tight.

Ecommerce Strategy: A heavy emphasis on promotions, incentive selling, and strong market positioning. Creative campaigns that are compelling and impactful are essential to establish a unique selling proposition and a competitive advantage. The drive is to influence motivation and trigger actions. Discounts, on-site sale events, clearance, exclusive coupons, and flash price drops are used to impel transactions. Generating leads is orchestrated with contextual insight, optimized messaging, personalized experiences, and a cadence of interactions that acquire, enable, and engage.

 

B2B

A business selling products and/or services to other commercial businesses – either in a single sector or several different verticals.

Ecommerce Strategy: There is an emphasis on industry authority, building relationships, and tactical selling based on price points, bulk purchases, recurring orders, or a contractual buying schedule. Content marketing and a highly effective communication style are key to B2B digital sales because it’s here where information is king. The business is a partner to the customer with solution-based services and an optimal product mix.  The company must be prominent in its online placement, reviews, directories, and citations. And build an empire of insights, because the customer is continually seeking knowledge and ideas to strengthen their operation and performance.

 

D2C

Businesses that are innovative, expedient, and principled in their selling of one or multiple product lines where need, interest, and enthusiasm are high motivators for an audience that has been segmented into specific buyer personas.

Ecommerce Strategy: Maintain a focus on agility, iterative experiments, and optimal user experiences throughout the buying journey. Whether solving a problem or sparking an interest, use of rich media and social channels are critical to achieving order placement, repeat business, loyalty, and development of ambassadors. As a business designs its strategy, the pillars must start with mobile and site performance – both of these tower above other reigning factors.

 

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For Ecommerce, Turkey & Tinsel Start in August

Posted on by annaktaylor
Christmas balls and shells on sand with summer sea background

“Before anything else, preparation is the key to success”  – Alexander Graham Bell

For many retailers, the holiday season dominates their sales generation. And as all commerce indicators have shown, online buying will continue to soar – most especially through mobile devices.

To effectively capture new and returning visitors, and expand your market reach, strategic planning and execution must start now.

From organic ranking for unique search terms to multi-channel buying journeys and social story telling, there is a long Santa list of tactical efforts to be ready for 4Q. Here are a few considerations to get your team on the Online Sales Sleigh!

(1) Set your seasonal budget and tactical plan to increase ad spend, promoting the brand’s value and quality, both of which people pay attention to when buying gifts.

(2) Perform comprehensive technology and interface diagnostics of your ecommerce platform and mobile app – identify any weaknesses with core web vitals, site performance, usability, and visual experience.

(3) Further optimize web pages with critical technical SEO – schema markup, unique titles, meta data, tags, core metrics, use of interstitials, crawl errors, internal and external links, etc.

(4) Consider distinctive packaging with a holiday-themed message card inside every shipment.

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Ideation for Innovative Strategies & Problem-Solving [Part 2]

Posted on by annaktaylor
problem solving

 

Part II: Problem-Solving

Talent comes in many forms. One of the most powerful is problem-solving.  It benefits the team (smoother execution), leadership (fewer headaches and distractions), customers (greater service satisfaction) and the bottom line (efficiency reduces costs).

“Problem” is a broad term encompassing an unplanned event, miscommunication, technology jam, team conflict, and trouble in execution. A prominent cause of project failure or delay is the lack of timely, practical, and well-developed solutions to unexpected problems.

People who are skilled in problem-solving have undoubtedly learned from prior experiences. They know how to look at challenges objectively, remove sentiment and emotions from the process, hold themselves fully accountable, and focus solely on a smart solution path.

Insider tip:  Start by changing the word “solve”.  When contending with a problem, replace solve with detection, exploration, modeling, experimentation, and accuracy analysis.

Troubleshooting also requires being unconstrained by allowing others to influence and persuade your thinking.

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Ideation for Innovative Strategies & Problem-Solving [Part 1]

Posted on by annaktaylor
innovation-ideation-strategies

 

Part I: Innovation

Global players and a rapidly changing digital landscape are shifting how companies must operate to be profitable and experience sustainable growth.  Markets are saturated with competition. And the internet as well as social media have entirely altered how businesses engage and interact with their customers.

To achieve tangible results, organizations have to be brave by tackling challenges and transforming their traditional tactics.  It’s smart to partner with digital experts and highly creative contractors to guide your team through the actions, techniques, and practices that will drive positive outcomes and measurable change.

Start by telling the team – “We’re breaking out of the status quo.”

Every strategy must have business alignment, engaged team members, and focused execution. Your aim is to position your company to innovate and pursue effective strategies.

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Two Drivers of Innovative Growth: IT and Marketing

Posted on by annaktaylor
steel cogs team goals plan develop

 

Often departments are structured as silos with very little common ground or joint efforts.  Digital transformation requires intersecting disciplines and removing traditional barriers. The ethos of a company depends upon shared ownership of functional, operational, strategic and innovative capacities.

IT is a company’s heartbeat, overseeing technology and securing scalable internal systems.

Marketing is its persona and customer conduit, designing a value-driven brand experience.

Making headway in your digital presence, engagement and earnings relies on an alignment and synergy between these sources.

At the core of the two branches is data.

  • IT = how data is assembled, structured, stored, secured and dispersed
  • Marketing = how data is utilized, analyzed, modeled, made actionable and measured

Strengthen your Infrastructure and Marketing by developing blended strategies, projects and metrics. And optimize your investment by no longer operating them as cost-centers, but instead as engines for revenue augmentation.

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Profit-Producing Projects – Beyond the Buzzwords

Posted on by annaktaylor
Marketing Strategy Street Sign

 

Marketers have a pivotal role and a fundamental responsibility to contribute to bottom-line numbers. To be an earnings asset, a marketing leader must execute auspicious projects.  

Attaining an optimal ROI requires advanced planning and a rigorous process of framing the initiative.  When creating a campaign, producing new content, generating a channel mix, preparing a go-to-market plan or designing an experience, the team must first tackle the ‘why’.

Finish the statement – We are investing time and resources in this project because ….

Be clear on the answer, which should include the benefit to the company and the value to customers.

Next is alignment. Does the project support business objectives and current priorities?  Is there alignment to the buyer’s reasoning and requisites? There needs to be specific orientations, meaning that you define the project alliance with company objectives and customer intent, and identify the priority association.

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Innovate Your Customer Experience through Digital Transformation

Posted on by annaktaylor
close-up-photo-of-gaming-mouse

 

‘Design Thinking’ is a business methodology – and ultimately an attitude – being used by companies that have embraced digital transformation, re-orienting their strategy towards innovation and experimentation. To be on the front end of this, there are essential changes to how an organization reasons and rationalizes its way of doing business.

Fundamental to Design Thinking and Digital Transformation

  • Be open to new information and uncommon ideas
  • Embrace uncertainties as part of exploring and exploiting opportunities
  • Experiment: hypothesize and employ rapid testing and iterations for validation
  • Understand that trial n’ error actions are constructive
  • Make it a priority to be data-informed for forecasting, identifying patterns and better pathways
  • Socially listen to gauge sentiments and to capture real-time interests, motives and preferences of customers
  • Perform journey mapping across the customer’s ecosystem (not your own)
  • Be channel agnostic
  • Require that customers will benefit from the outcome of every decision

Shifting the collective mindset of a company in order to gain from design thinking can be fraught with obstacles and resistance.  You must be patient and persistent, providing ample time to stir curiosity, foster esteem, inspire cultural growth, and build momentum among team members.

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Art of Persuasion: Optimize Communications and Brand Messaging

Posted on by annaktaylor
black-and-gray-microphone-with-stand

 

A brand’s value is its voice. Authenticity strengthens brand authority. A communication strategy institutes the concrete foundation of customer engagement, trust and loyalty. The style and true essence of your messaging has a significant influence on buyer confidence. What matters is relevancy, precision, compelling expression, vivacity and a positive experience. Detouring outside ‘customary’ content and daring to be expressive and novel are how today’s innovators deviate from the standard bearers. To be resonating requires the art of persuasion.

We are experiencing a major health crisis across the globe which impacts businesses of all sizes and requires clear and constructive messaging.  

 An organization is judged by how it performs in both thriving and volatile moments, placing the greatest weight on how effective they share information, reveal their confidence and character, encourage and motivate, and focus on progress and positive momentum.

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