In a move to help SMBs — as well as drive up its verified business listings — Google has launched #SmallThanks Hub, an online resource that creates customized digital marketing content and printed materials based on Google reviews. [Source: Search Engine Land]
People can now enter virtual reality through their traditional Facebook News Feeds. The social network has debuted examples of brands that have developed VR apps that people can interact with through Facebook’s standard site and mobile apps. Facebook has labeled these VR-enabled posts as “360 experiences.” [Source: Marketing Land]
Twitter is testing a new feature called Bookmarks, which allows users to privately save tweets for later. [Source: The Verge]
Google is beefing up its mobile shopping experience to prepare for the holidays, now showing buying guides for broad categories like “sewing machine” and “coffee grinder” searches and adding more product-related information for specific product searches. [Source: Search Engine Land]
WhatsApp might be the world’s biggest messaging service but it may have just been overshadowed by Facebook Messenger. WhatsApp is getting some major competition from Facebook Messenger as the service reveals new 4K photo sharing and peer-to-peer money transfers. [Source: Daily Express]
Twitter Moments is all set to get a refreshing new look. The company is currently trying to move away from the horizontal listings of curated topics on common themes like Sports, Entertainment, and News. [Source: Logicserve Digital]
Facebook, Google, Bing and Twitter have all agreed to be part of a non-partisan effort called The Trust project which is aimed at enlightening users about the difference between reliable journalism and fake news. [Source: The Drum]
Google has rolled out version 12.2 of the AdWords Editor. It brings a nice number of new features including Gmail asset-based ads, full support for promotion and video extensions and a new budget-type option for video ads. [Source: Search Engine Land]
Pinterest rolled out several new features designed to make it easier for people to find products to purchase through its platform, from QR-like codes for brands to append to product packaging to an influx of shoppable pins to its first mashup of visual and text search. [Source: Marketing Land]
Facebook has copied so many features from Snapchat now that it’s gone beyond a joke. But hey, here’s another one to add to the list. Facebook Messenger now includes a Snapchat-style “streak” feature. [Source: Fortune]
Expert Opinion:
- Focus on Customer Lifetime Value for long-term success
In the fast-paced digital space, it has become critical for brands to think beyond short-term gains and instead focus on maximizing the Customer Lifetime Value (CLV).
Simply put, CLV is the prediction of the net profit attributed to the entire future relationship with a customer. It means, how much money one can actually make from a client not just from ‘a particular transaction’ but from a series of experiences we are able to provide over time. New age marketers are increasingly seen moving from immediate returns on ad spends to long-term, company-wide growth to measure the success of their campaigns. One of the key areas focused on by them is prioritizing CLV.
While this sounds easy and the focus on this type of an approach is growing, a lot of factors make it challenging to evaluate CLV. Customer journey has been transforming over time; it is split across multiple platforms & devices, and also from online to offline and vice-versa. Brands need to figure out how to tackle the problem areas and design a way to calculate the lifetime value. And like Pareto’s Principle, that specifies an unequal relationship between inputs and outputs, recent customer lifecycle studies suggest that 80% of your results will come from 20% of your efforts.
Some of the key benefits of CLV are:
- Improved marketing that focusses on your customer
- Saves time and money as you do not waste any efforts on the customers less likely to convert
- Encourages brands to use multiple marketing approaches
- Helps in better customer profiling and segmentation
- Boosts brand loyalty
Focusing on CLV not only helps the brands reach out to their most valuable customers but also to build better relationships with them. Various tools are available these days that can analyze the insights from the data available and deliver customized messages and experiences to the users. This also helps marketers in designing effective communication strategies for new and existing customers. Also, consumers are now preferring experiences from brands, so brand loyalty is not the only way to retain consumers. Customers that relate to a brand basis the experience they offer are more likely to help you continue climbing up the ladder.
Brands should focus on understanding their audience and the best approach to communicate with them. It is essential to reach out to the right set of consumers that can provide the most value. Brands that drive CLV for the right audience are sure to achieve long-term success in today’s dynamic environment.
Here is a “Fast Four” – Practical strategies to help improve your CLV:
- Focus on building a long-term relationship – remember it’s not just about that one click, transaction or view
- Brand Loyalty will remain important – however, the service experience will play a key role in retaining the client
- Look for opportunities to up-sell and cross-sell – it’s far easier to get an existing customer to buy more than a new acquisition
- Use multiple touch points to deliver superior customer service – the client is not just there for you to reach when he comes to you. There are more than enough opportunities to engage with him in his own backyard
– Balaji Vaidyanathan, Deputy Head – Marketing, Franklin Templeton Investments
