Outraged Customers

Please Pick a company that had a history with outraged customers or dissatisfied customers and talk about for about 4 pages. With work cited. 

Please there are three important resources that are provided in the attachment that you need to take your information from. Two Chapters and one podcast.

Listen to this podcast.

https://www.superdatascience.com/podcast/podcast-ecommerce-analytics

Please reflect upon your readings, the information presented by Nick Pape in his podcast, and the Amy’s Baking Company example to complete the following: 

Research: 

• Do some research online to select a company that has had a history of having to respond to dissatisfied/outraged customers. A good example is Delta Airlines.

Explore

• Explore social media channels, like Twitter, to find social media posts from consumers that effectively “call the brand out” for poor customer service, discriminatory behavior, unethical business practices, etc.

Identify

• Identify three examples of customer complaints posted online from customers—that had direct responses from the company you selected–and take screen shots of the online conversations between the two. Then, please paste those photos into a document and briefly answer the following:

  In your opinion, do you think the customer’s complaint was legitimate?
  Regardless of your thoughts on the legitimacy of the complaint, do you think the company responded appropriately? Why or why not?
  Even if you felt the company responded well, provide one suggestion of how you feel the company’s response could be improved.
  It is likely that the interaction was liked, re-posted or shared by other social media users? Please provide the numbers you observe (re-tweets, likes, shares, etc.).
  From the interaction data you observe, what is your interpretation of how the other users not directly involved in the complaint (the court of public opinion) felt about the customer who initially posted the complaint on social media and how the company subsequently responded? Why should businesses care about what the court of public opinion thinks?
  Please screenshot three examples of shared posts from other users justifying your position in question #5 and paste them in the document below your responses.

350

Customer

relationship

management
(CRM)

14

In this chapter, you will learn:
» Why CRM is essential for any business

» The role that customers play in shaping and steering your business

» The difference between applying CRM as a communications strategy or a
core business strategy

» How to collect, store, analyse and update your essential CRM data

» The step-by-step process of putting together your CRM strategy.

Introduction to Retain
By this stage of the book you’ve probably realised that getting your customers’
attention through digital channels is only part of the battle. Holding on to that attention
in order to build a long-term customer relationship is the next essential step.

We’ve covered planning, building and driving traffic to carefully developed digital
assets. The next few chapters deal with methods and tools for retaining the stream
of potential and existing customers by building relationships with them and leading
them to conversions.

The Customer relationship management (CRM) chapter leads to the most arguments
about placement whenever we update this book. A core approach in taking care
of and converting customers, CRM can be a core business strategy as well as an
approach and should be considered at all stages of the customer journey.

Content marketing lays out the building blocks for effectively using content, not
advertising, to reach audiences. With users becoming increasingly blind to adverts
and wary of blatant promotional material, there is a strong need for brands to
provide value in the forms of good content to engage and retain their audience.

Being chosen as a customer’s preferred brand often hinges on how favourably you
are seen by others in the market. Being well represented on Social media, and
implementing a sound Social media strategy, is important for brands marketing
online. Monitoring sentiment around your brand, using online monitoring tools, will
help you to understand how digital communities perceive brands.

Video marketing is another excellent tool for engaging and capturing your audience’s
attention. This tactic has witnessed massive growth, with many users preferring
video to all other forms of content.

To further build and develop relationships with customers, brands use more direct
channels to interact and engage with them. Again, social media plays a big role
here, as do tactics such as email marketing and increasingly mobile tactics. With
the explosion in web access via mobile devices, it’s important to understand these
various channels from a mobile perspective. Mobile marketing is used to create
awareness, drive direct action and build relationships.

Retain › Introduction

352 353

CRM › A CRM model

Customer
relationship
management
(CRM)

A strategy for managing a company’s relationships with current,
potential and lapsed clients. It often makes use of technology to
automate the sales, marketing, customer service and technical
processes of an organisation.

Data mining
The process of analysing data to discover unknown patterns or
connections.

Key
performance
indicator (KPI)

A metric that shows whether an objective is being achieved.

Lapsed Someone who is no longer a customer.

Model
A strategic visual representation of a process that a company
adheres to.

Prospect A potential customer.

Segmentation
The practice of dividing customers into smaller sub-groups based
on shared interests or characteristics.

Stakeholder
A person or organisation with an interest in how a resource is
managed.

Table 1.

14.3 A CRM model
Many companies that practice CRM rely on a simple model to guide them
strategically. In many cases, this sums up exactly what CRM is about. Below is a
simple model that demonstrates this.

Figure 1. A simple CRM model can provide strategic guidance.

As you can see, a good CRM strategy turns strangers into customers, customers
into friends and friends into advocates for your business. One needs to identify the
right touchpoints and messaging to drive a customer further along this funnel.

80%

20%

Marketing

Conversion

Communication

Retain, win-back, cross-sell, up-sell
Advocate

Bonded

Customer

Customer

Prospect

Audience

NOTE

Notice the Pareto
effect, discussed
later in this chapter,
demonstrated in this
model.

CRM › Introduction

14.1 Introduction
Customer relationship management (CRM) has existed since people first started
selling things. The first shopkeeper who stopped to chat with his customers, who
knew them by name and perhaps gave them a small ‘freebie’ for continually using
his services, was practicing a form of customer relationship marketing by making
customers feel special. He was also probably seeing the favourable impact on his
bottom line. It helped that customers were being served directly by the business
owner.

Today, with businesses becoming more digitally remote and with person-to-person
contact becoming more scarce, CRM is more important than ever. We need to
build and maintain relationships with our customers. A faceless company is not
personable or engaging so it has to work harder to fill the gap between attracting
and retaining customers (and their good will). The relationship a customer builds
with a company is often the reason they return. Building those relationships today is
more difficult than ever, in a society where data is protected, customers are smart
and exercise their right to choose and a competitor can be just a click away.

CRM is a customer-focused approach to business based on fostering long-term,
meaningful relationships. CRM is not about immediate profit. It’s about the lifetime
value of a customer, the purchases they will make in future, the positive word of
mouth they will generate on your behalf and the loyalty they will show your brand.
Effective CRM enables businesses to collaborate with customers to inform overall
business strategies, drive business processes, support brand development and
maximise ROI.

There are two approaches to CRM. Either one can apply it as an approach to
communication strategy using personalised and segmented contact, or as a core
business strategy such as loyalty programmes. Which you choose depends on the
size and goals of your business.

There is a truism that a happy customer tells one person, but an unhappy customer
tells ten. With your customers’ voices being heard on blogs, forums, review sites
and social media, they can talk loudly and impact your business easily.

14.2 Key terms and concepts

Term Definition

Churn rate The annual percentage rate at which a business loses customers.

Customer
A person who buys or uses goods or services, with whom a
company should develop a relationship.

Customer-
centric

Placing the customer at the centre of an organisation’s business
planning and execution.

Customer
lifetime value
(CLV)

The profitability of a customer over their entire relationship with the
business. CLV assists with segmentation.

354 355

Figure 3. Examples of touchpoints at each stage in the purchase process.

Pre-purchase or pre-usage covers the various ways brands and prospects interact
before the prospect decides to conduct business with a company. The brand’s goals
here are to:

• Gain customers

• Heighten brand awareness

• Shape brand perceptions or to highlight the benefits it offers over
competitors

• Indicate how the brand provides value and fulfils the needs and wants of
consumers

• Educate consumers about products and services

• Ignite the possibility of a relationship.

Purchase or usage covers the touchpoints at which the customer decides to
purchase a product, use a service or convert according to set criteria and initiates
the brand-customer relationship. The key goals are to:

• Instil confidence

• Deliver value

• Reinforce the purchase decision

• Heighten brand perceptions

• Facilitate ease of purchase

• Reduce post purchase dissonance.

CRM › Understanding customers

14.4 Understanding customers
Customers should be seen as the most important stakeholders in a business.
Without customers purchasing goods or services, most businesses would not have
a revenue stream. It can be difficult to shift from realising this important fact to
implementing it in day-to-day business decisions and strategy.

A successful relationship with a customer is based on meeting or even exceeding
their needs. It is in determining what problems the customer has and in providing
solutions, sometimes before the problem occurs. It depends on continually giving
the customer a reason to transact with your company above any other.

CRM should not only mean implementing customer-centric processes and consider
technology, but embracing customer-driven processes. Through innovations in
digital technologies, enhanced customer engagement, social listening and the
introduction of mass personalisation, the customer can often drive the business.

Figure 2. A customer centred approach keeps the customer as the focus of
all business activities.

14.4.1 Consumer touchpoints
Consumer touchpoints are all the points at which brands touch consumers’ lives
during their relationship. This is the starting point for all CRM, a brand needs to
speak with one voice across all of these touchpoints and deliver a rewarding and
relevant experience every time it interacts with its customers. CRM can drive the
anticipation of customer needs. Touchpoints can be brand initiated, for example, a
brand sending an email newsletter, or customer initiated, for example, the customer
making a purchase in a store or calling a call centre.

A consumer touchpoint can be as simple as a print or banner ad. It can also be as
multifaceted as a conversation between a call centre agent and a customer. It can be
a timely tweet, or an outbound email giving the customer details about their account.
Even statements and bills are touchpoints and need to be managed carefully to
ensure that the brand continues its relationship with the customer successfully.

Customer touchpoints can generally be divided into three spheres or phases, pre-
purchase, purchase and post purchase.

CRM › Understanding customers

CUSTOMER

NOTE

A good CRM
infrastructure must

ensure touchpoints for
dialogue.

356 357

14.5.1 Customer data
A good CRM programme begins with data. Who are my customers and what do they
want? What are their demographic and psychographic needs? Why did they choose
me in the first place? How many of them are active and continue doing business with
me? Why do the others stop? What is the average tenure of a customer?

Figure 4. What do you want to know about your customers?

Often, you will need to research this information. If the company has a database,
conducting surveys, focus groups or dipstick telephonic research can help you get
an idea. Consider that an Audi Q7 driver is vastly different to an Audi A1 driver, for
instance. They both pick the brand for similar reasons, but their motivations behind
choosing the products differ vastly.

Data can give you these insights. It can enable a company to create real value for the
customer and thereby gain true loyalty. There is little point in running a customer
insights survey, looking at the results and saying, “that’s interesting” without putting
into action any changes suggested by the results. Not auctioning noticeable changes
also means customers are less likely to take part in surveys going forward and quite
rightly so, what’s in it for them? Conversely, if you do action changes, customers will
feel increased ownership in the brand and its offering.

The actual technology you use to gather and collate data is also crucial. Remember
that there are many facets to CRM and the quality and accessibility of the data will
have a major impact on how well these processes run.

When looking at data, it is essential to keep in mind the Pareto principle. The Pareto
principle, or 80/20 rule, holds that in many situations approximately 80% of profits
are delivered by 20% of customers. Also keep in mind the traditional view that 20%
of customers are responsible for 80% of problems related to service and supply
(Koch, 2008).

CRM › CRM and data

NOTE

Read more about this
in the Data analytics

chapter.

NOTE

Choosing a CRM
system and
operationalising it in
your business is no
small undertaking.
Cost can be
dramatically impacted
by how well this
system can integrate
with other processes
and tools in your
business. Make sure
to do your homework
before jumping in.

Post-purchase or usage covers all the post-sale interactions between the brand and
customer. Now, the brand wants to:

• Deepen the relationship

• Maximise the customer experience

• Deliver on the brand promise

• Increase brand loyalty

• Remain top of mind

• Invite repeat purchases.

14.4.2 Customer loyalty
The main objective of any CRM strategy should be to gain customer loyalty over
the long term. But what is loyalty? This may mean different things for different
organisations. Ultimately, it is about acquiring and retaining customers who:

• Have a projected lifetime value that makes them a profitable prospect to
your business

• Buy a variety of your products or use your services repeatedly during their
time as a customer

• Share their positive experiences with others

• Provide honest feedback on these products and services as well as their
experiences

• Collaborate with you on ways to improve their experiences.

14.5 CRM and data
Data is central to the success of CRM initiatives. Knowing who your customer is, how
they behave and what they want makes a CRM strategy successful. Data gathering
can begin even before your prospect becomes a customer. Matching a prospect’s
profile to the product or offer is the first step.

But data on its own is meaningless if it is not analysed and acted upon. Through
analysis, data can be turned into insights, which can then inform the various CRM
processes and, indeed, the business itself.

Data should underpin the way each touchpoint is utilised to build loyalty.

Consider the consumer who shops on her store card at a retail outlet. Her
transactions are recorded against her card and she is sent offers that detail the
latest fashion trends and earns points on her card shopping for these. At some point,
her transactional data shows that she has started shopping for baby clothes so she
can now be cross-sold products to do with babies and rewarded with double points
when she buys them. Now she is increasing her spend in the store, cross-shopping
for both herself and her family and being rewarded for this, thus ensuring that the
retail outlet is offering her value and retaining her business.

CRM › Understanding customers
NOTE

Think of a brand that
has extremely loyal

fans, for example,
Apple, Nike or Harley-
Davidson. What do you

think the brand did that
encouraged people
to support them so

vocally?

358 359

range of data collected within the traditional CRM system is dictated by the CRM
objectives. For instance, data could include:

• Demographic details on potential leads, current leads and contacts, such as
contact information, age, gender and income

• Quotes, sales, purchase orders and invoices (transactional data)

• Psychographic data on contacts such as customer values, attitudes and
interests

• Service and support records

• Customer reviews or satisfaction surveys

• Web registration data

• Shipping and fulfilment dates, such as when orders were shipped and
delivered.

Data mining and testing hypotheses

Data mining involves analysing data to discover unknown patterns or connections. It
is usually conducted on large datasets and looks for patterns that are not obvious.
Data is analysed with statistical algorithms that look for correlations. It is used by
businesses to better understand customers and their behaviour and then to use
this data to make more informed business decisions. For instance, women might
traditionally be shopping for nappies during the week. On the weekend, men may
become the primary nappy-shoppers. The things that they choose to purchase on the
weekend, such as beer or chips, might dictate different store layout over a weekend.

Analytics data

Analytics data is generally captured through specialised analytics software packages.
These packages can be used to measure most, if not all, digital marketing campaigns.
Web analytics should always look at the various campaigns being run. For example,
generating high traffic volumes by employing CRM marketing tactics like email
marketing, can prove to be a pointless and costly exercise if the visitors that you drive
to the site are leaving without achieving one or more of your website’s goals.

Social media monitoring data

There are many social media metrics that are important to monitor, measure and
analyse and some of these can provide valuable insights for CRM implementation.
This can cover everything from quantitative data about number of fans and
interactions, to qualitative data about the sentiment towards your brand in the social
space. Social media metrics can also lead you to new prospects.

14.5.3 Collating and organising your data
Typically, you’ll find that a business has:

• One or more databases, such as email, customer, mobile or call-centre
databases, or datasets in silos

• A point of sale system where product purchase data is stored

• Various forms of web data from display or search networks, keyword
research, site analytics, social media, or email marketing

• Social media profiles on sites like Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn, which can
also be considered databases of sorts.

CRM › CRM and data

NOTE

Data mining is
typically performed by
computers, which can
sift through massive
amounts of data and
find tiny but significant
patterns that a human
researcher may
overlook.

NOTE
Read more about this
in the Data analytics
chapter.

Figure 5. The Pareto principle.

This means designing solutions with efforts directed at the 20% of customers who
generate the most profits. To do this, you should segment customers effectively.
High value segments are unique to each business.

You’ll also want to consider the exact data to collect. While this will depend largely
on your business objectives. Here are some considerations.

• Information should be commercially relevant.

• Capture additional contact details from the customer at every organic
interaction such as on purchases, contracts, negotiations, quotes,
conversations.

• Allow your customers to manage their data along with you.

• Capture any information you send out to the customer.

• Consider anything that adds value to the relationship.

• Note any legal implications around capturing and storing data, particularly
web-based behavioural data, as the user’s privacy must always be taken into
account.

14.5.2 Where and how to gather CRM data
CRM data is gathered from a variety of touchpoints. Let’s look at some of the possible
opportunities for CRM data capture and analysis. Each avenue discussed below
collects a range of data from whichever touchpoints the business deems valuable.

Traditional CRM system data

Most traditional CRM systems are used to capture data for sales, support and
marketing purposes. On top of simply creating a central repository for data access,
these systems and their related databases also offer basic analytics. The actual

CRM › CRM and data

360 361

For generic data (like web analytics), you must continuously monitor trends and
note what causes changes over time. This is also useful for monitoring trends and
identifying gaps in data when a business evolves. For instance, if you know that you
generally receive increased website and store visits during December, but your
sales drop, you know that you need to gather more data around your inventory and
in-store environment during that time.

Keeping identifiable data current means you need to facilitate regular dialogue with
contacts on your database. Whether it’s through a call centre, an online prompt or
a quick question at your in-store point of sale, there needs to be a plan for updating
details at regular intervals. You can empower your customers and incentivise them
with programme attractiveness.

14.5.5 Analysing data for marketing
One of the most powerful features of interactions and transactions over the Internet
is that everything is tracked and recorded (see the Data analytics and Conversion
optimisation chapters). This provides a wealth of data that can be analysed to make
business decisions.

For CRM, this means that the customer acquisition source can be recorded and
analysed against sales data. This leads to a very accurate return on investment (ROI)
calculation and indicates where CRM and marketing efforts should be focused.

ROI stands for return on investment – and it’s key to understanding whether
marketing efforts have been successful. Here’s a simple example: Company A sells
accounting software and makes R10 000 on each product it sells. It sends an email
to its customer base, users who have bought a previous version of the software and
might be interested in upgrading. The campaign has an overall cost of R100 000. Of
the 5 000 users who receive the email, 10% decide to buy. That means it cost R200
to acquire each of the 500 customers. The company has made R5 million, an ROI of
50:1.

The key to effective use of technology in CRM is integration. Ensure that all channels
can be tracked and that information is usable to all parties within an organisation.
Knowing where your customers come from, but not what they purchase, is pointless:
these two metrics need to be compared in order to produce actionable insights.

Analysing CRM data can aid marketing initiatives in a variety of ways:

• Campaign analysis: Find out which marketing campaigns are leading to the
best returns so you can refine them and increase ROI

• Personalisation: Customise your communications to each customer

• Event monitoring: Tie offline events, like shows or sales, to your online
interactions and sales

• Predictive modelling: Predict a customer’s future behaviour and meet this
need at the right time.

Improved customer segmentation, including:

• Customer lifetime value (CLV) analysis: Predicting each customer’s lifetime
value and managing each segment appropriately, for example, offering
special deals and discounts.

• Advanced customer profiles: Identifying certain behaviours, such as big
spenders or those who look for bargains by attending sales. This information
can be used to tailor marketing communications accordingly.

CRM › CRM and data
NOTE

Read more about this in
the Data analytics and
Conversion optmisation
chapters.

NOTE

Mobile marketing can
play a key role in offline
events, after all, the
mobile phone is portable
and connected to the
internet, meaning that
users can engage a brand
directly on location.

CRM software can be used to automate lead and sales processes and to collect all
of this customer information in a centralised place, allowing a company to get a
holistic view of the customer; from this, meaningful data insights can emerge.

Figure 6. CRM software can present dashboards for monitoring and
analysing your data.

Organisations can be large and a customer often speaks to several members of
the organisation, depending on the nature of the communication. It would be
extremely frustrating for the customer to have to explain all previous dealings with
the organisation each time and equally frustrating for an organisation not to know
who has spoken previously with a customer and what was dealt with. This could be a
touchpoint at which a company falls down and leaves a less than positive impression
with the customer.

Fortunately, there are many technological options that help to record all this
information in one place. Most of these services can also schedule elements of the
sales process and set reminders where appropriate for follow-up action.

Some notable examples include Salesforce (www.salesforce.com), Genius
(www.genius.com) and Highrise (www.highrisehq.com) from 37signals. Bespoke
technology tailored to business problems can have remarkable results.

14.5.4 Keeping data fresh
Call it what you will, but ‘stale’, ‘outdated’ or ‘unhealthy’ data doesn’t benefit anyone.
Some generic older data can help you assess trends over time, but identifiable
customer data is usually redundant if not up to date. People move house, update
their contact numbers and email addresses and change jobs. They earn more
or less, stop working, start working, have kids and retire. All of these mean that
their needs change and their contactability changes, so maintaining a customer
relationship and delivering relevant communication becomes impossible if your
information is not fresh.

So, how do you keep your data fresh?

CRM › CRM and data
NOTE

Have you ever had a
frustrating service
experience with a

brand? How did you
feel about the brand

afterwards? Large
organisations need
a single view of the

customer to avoid
frustrating them.

NOTE

Consider user adoption
rates and the cost of
time and integration

when making a decision
about which CRM

software to use.

http://www.salesforce.com

http://www.genius.com

http://www.highrisehq.com

362 363

highlight additional products she can use with her new camera. Think about
the value exchange that is necessary for a customer to give you their attention.
Content marketing is a powerful tool here. The costs associated with sending
these emails are the costs of maintaining the relationship with the customer.
When she purchases from you again, these costs can be measured against the
repeat sales likely to be made over the course of the customer’s lifetime.

Assuming that a customer buys a new camera every three years, moves up
from a basic model to a more expensive model, perhaps buys a video recorder
at a certain point. All of these allow a company to calculate a lifetime value and
ensure that their spending on a particular customer is justified.

14.6 The benefits of CRM
At its core, effective CRM promises the following:

• Increased revenue and profitability

• Improved customer satisfaction and loyalty

• Improved service delivery and operational efficiencies

• Decreased acquisition costs, keeping churn low through CRM offsets the
need to spend as much on acquisition of new clients, while retention of
existing ones is cheaper for obvious reasons.

Maintaining good customer relationships is critical to the success of a business.
The cost associated with acquiring a new customer is generally far higher than the
cost of maintaining an existing customer relationship. While an investment in a CRM
communication programme or platform can be large, these costs are often offset
over the increased revenue generated by encouraging repeat business.

14.6.1 Putting a value on CRM
Broadly, CRM can be looked at from:

• A marketing perspective: Understanding your customer segments and
building a relationship with them.

• A cost perspective: Decreasing the amount you spend on customers; it costs
more to attract a new customer than maintain an existing one.

• A sales perspective: Turning the users who know about your service
or product into customers who have made a purchase, in other words,
managing prospects.

• A service perspective: Ensuring that users who have interacted with you are
satisfied and delighted.

Effective CRM can also create a powerful new marketing and referral force for a
company: its happy customers. Delighting customers fosters positive word of mouth.

The first step to any CRM initiative is to understand the value of a customer
relationship to a business.

Relationship value = Revenue generated by customer –
Cost of maintaining/servicing the relationship

CRM › The benefits of CRM

NOTE

See the chapter on
Content marketing
strategy for more on the
importance of offering
customers value.

NOTE

A CRM communication
programme is a cross
functional investment,
which requires leadership
buy in.

CRM › CRM and data

• Customer prioritisation: Target small groups of customers with customised
products and service offerings that are aligned to meet customer needs,
rather than simply generic current offerings. You should craft specialised
retention strategies for customers with the highest CLV.

• Influencers and advocates: Consider the realm of social media, where
influencers are central to the spread of content. Brands are increasingly
prioritising relationship building with social media influencers to build brand
advocates who will help market the business for them. By identifying which
customers are providing the most value and positively influencing others to
become customers, you can focus efforts towards them and increase their
loyalty, creating true brand advocates.

Understanding customer lifetime value

CLV is the profitability of a customer over their entire relationship with the
business. Businesses need to look at long-term customer satisfaction and
relationship management, rather than short-term campaigns and quick wins.
This approach leads to increased value over the entire lifetime of a customer
and means that CLV is a metric central to any CRM initiative.

It’s important to look at your customer base and segment them according to
how often they purchase and how much they spend with your company. Very
often, customers who spend more cost more to acquire, but they might also
stay with the company for longer. Referrals made by a customer can also be
included as part of the revenue generated by the customer.

Figure 7. The customer’s average order value and how often they order are
used to determine their CLV.

The key is to understand these costs and then target your CRM strategies
appropriately. CLV lets you decide what a particular type of customer is really
worth to your business and then lets you decide how much you are willing to
spend to win or retain them.

For example, a potential customer looking to purchase a digital camera is likely
to search on Google for cameras. As a company selling digital cameras, your
excellent search advert and compelling offer attract the potential customer,
who clicks through to your website. Impressed with your product offering, the
user purchases a camera from you and signs up to your email newsletter as
part of the payment process.

Analysing the amount spent on your search campaign against the sales
attributed to the campaign will give the cost per acquisition of each sale. In this
case, this is the cost of acquiring the new customer.

As the user is now signed up to your newsletter, each month you send her
compelling information about products she may be interested in. These
newsletters could be focused on her obvious interest in photography and

NOTE

See this slide show for
more on how to build

an army of influencers
for your brand

http://bit.ly/socialrm

364 365

CRM › The benefits of CRM

Services invoked by the customer

Create and manage systems or capabilities that can be directly invoked by the
customer:

• Web self-service

• Search

• Instant messaging

• Email queries

• Voice over IP (VoIP)

• Browser and application sharing

• Conferencing

• ‘Call me’ capabilities

• Social media support

• Online forums.

CRM loyalty programs

There is a difference between CRM and loyalty programmes; often loyalty
programmes actively seek to maintain customers by rewarding them with a hard
currency, like points. Loyalty programmes are designed to develop and maintain
customer relationships over a sustained period of time by rewarding them for every
interaction with the brand. For instance, you may earn points on a purchase, for
shopping on certain days, completing a survey, or choosing to receive a statement
by email.

Consider South African health insurer Discovery and their Vitality program. It
aims to keep customers healthy by rewarding them for health-related behaviours
like exercising, having regular check-ups, stopping smoking and buying fresh
foods. By doing so, it reduces the burden of ill-heath on the medical aid itself.

Figure 8. An advert for Vitality promising cash back for buying healthy food.

Not all loyalty programmes are created equal. Many brands have embraced them
as a way to improve their sales and consumers have come to believe that they are
simply a way of extorting more money from them.

To create an effective loyalty programme, consider the following:

• Carefully calculate the earning and redemption rates of points: A loyalty
programme needs to give the appearance of real value, while working within
the company’s profit projections.

• Loyalty programmes are about value exchange: You need to find a way to
partner with the customer.

14.6.2 CRM implementations
CRM should infuse every aspect of a business in the same way that marketing
should be integral to everything you do, but it is useful to look at the different ways
CRM is implemented.

Marketing

• Conduct personalised targeting and profiling across a range of marketing
channels such as telemarketing, email marketing, social media marketing
and campaign management projects.

• Place the right mix of a company’s products and services in front of each
customer at the right time.

• Understand what customers do and want, matching that knowledge to
product and service information and measuring success.

Sales

• Ensure the customer receives the correct product.

• Ensure correct sales-related processes are carried out within the
organisation. This could include:

o Client or campaign management

o Sales configuration, for configuring products or pricing

o Call management

o Contact management

o Ad management

o Sales force automation (including territory)

o Account and lead management systems.

• Enable all parties in the transaction to interact with one another.

• Include systems that put sales reps directly in touch with customers at the
point of sale.

Service and service fulfilment

Improve the service you give to current customers through:

• Email response management

• Social media support systems

• Telephony capabilities such as automatic call distribution

• Computer-telephony integration

• Queue/workflow management

• Interactive voice response and predictive dialling.

Include the development of problem resolution systems, workflow automation and
field service dispatch systems.

CRM › The benefits of CRM

366 367

CRM › The benefits of CRM

These digital currencies, both universal cryptocurrencies and loyalty
currencies, are challenging the traditional banking and international monetary
system. Individuals are losing trust in banks and national governments’ roles
in monetary policy.

To learn more about cryptocurrencies visit: blockgeeks.com/guides/what-is-
cryptocurrency

Apps

CRM apps are a great step forward in customer relationship management. They
help to track customer contact info, as well as which members of your team they
interacted with, their emails and positions, as well as the last conversation the
customer had with your company. Larger companies make use of software tools
like Salesforce, but the high price tag, makes the software unattainable for small
businesses and start-ups.

CRM apps like HubSpot CRM, Zoho CRM and Intercom are popular choices. If you’re
looking for a full-featured team CRM, HubSpot works for up to 1 million contacts
and integrates with Gmail or Microsoft Outlook. Google contacts is a nice simple
choice that works inside of Gmail and is ideal for smaller and start-up businesses.
Intercom is a CRM that focuses on what people view on your site, so that you can
track what they are likely to purchase. It links user behaviour to user profiles and
the paid options include chat options allowing you to chat directly with customers
online. Zoho is a great choice if you already use Zoho software.

Apps are making CRM easier by managing your contacts and tracking their
interactions with your brand. They continue to get better and better and brands
should be making use of these useful tools.

Apps for payment services

As well as CRM apps, brands can also develop loyalty apps that enable payment.
Brand specific apps that enable purchases are becoming a preferred means of
payment. Payments through Starbucks’ app have begun to account for more than
50% of Starbuck’s revenue in 2017. Over 60% of millennials are happy to use apps
to purchase products in store, which is changing the landscape of loyalty currencies
and how such currencies are managed by brands (BizCommunity, 2017). More and
more brands are offering payment gateways and even credit and microloans through
their apps. This is impacting on how customers view brands as service providers and
greatly changing how they see banks and traditional monetary institutions.

SMS

SMS is a handy tool for communicating with customers about product delivery and
updating them about specials and promotions. As with all mobile channels you will
have access to your customer exactly where they are at that moment and in a very
personal space. So use this channel responsibly and only when you have permission
to do so. Sending endless SMS can lead to customers removing themselves from
your SMS contact list and could give that customer a negative perception of your
brand.

CRM › The benefits of CRM

• Rewards are key to success: You need to offer value to the customer in a
way that is real and desirable.

• Customer care is important, but it’s a hygiene factor, not a differentiator:
Technology allows for effective real-time conversations.

• Data, a single view of our customer, is central to success: You need to
maintain accurate records in one central place.

• Digital allows for innovation: This can apply to new payment technology,
digital communications channels and more.

• Trust is pivotal to success: Customers need to know that their data is being
protected and that you will honour your commitments. Legal requirements
in your country may demand it.

• Loyalty programmes are not quick wins: Consider up-front how the
programme might come to a close or you risk alienating and disappointing
customers and undoing any positive results.

Loyalty currencies offered as part of the loyalty programme offer huge potential
for brands. Amazon’s loyalty currency, Amazon Coin, is available in eight countries
and already has many customers investing hundreds of millions in the currency
(BizCommunity, 2017).

But any financial rewards offered as part of your loyalty programme need to be
carefully considered and their value proposition evaluated and assessed before
implementation. Pick ‘n Pay, a large grocery store chain in South Africa, drastically
cut the rewards on its Smart Shopper loyalty programme in early 2017. Customers
went from earning R1 for each R100 spent, to earning R1 for each R200 spent. The
initially generous loyalty program and associated loyalty currency was impacting
on the business’ bottom line. Such a radical change in reward levels did not go
down well with customers and the brand did experience some fall out. The impact
of the programme on the business’ operational costs should have been assessed
and addressed earlier, rather than so many years after implementation leaving
customers with a negative experience of the brand (Business Day, 2017).

Where loyalty programmes are built around straightforward points and rewards
systems, they can also become a point of parity. A loyalty programme should
deliver on value that is unique and central to your organisation. You don’t want to be
competing with your competitor on who can provide more points, which essentially
means more discounts and ends up being a competition based on price. The sum of
the parts of your loyalty programme should be difficult for a competitor to replicate.

Cryptocurrencies

Like loyalty currencies, cryptocurrencies, are also based in the digital world
and not tied to a central banking authority. Cryptocurrencies, like Bitcoin,
were developed as a means of facilitating electronic payments online using a
peer-to-peer network that was not managed by a server or central authority.
Essentially, cryptocurrencies are digital money created from code. The data is
encrypted and encoded to signify a single unit of currency. Such currencies are
not secured by people or by trust, but by pure mathematics – making it a much
more secure system that is not impacted by central banks and monetary supply.
It is also almost immune to corruption. As well as Bitcoin, there is Ripple,
Litecoin, Ethereum and Monero, to name a few (Blockgeeks, 2016).

https://blockgeeks.com/guides/what-is-cryptocurrency/

https://blockgeeks.com/guides/what-is-cryptocurrency/

368 369

CRM › Social CRM

14.7 Social CRM
Widespread social media usage means that CRM has to be conducted on social
to deliver an all-round experience for the customer. Not only should social media
be integrated into any existing CRM strategy and looked at from a touchpoint and
channel perspective, but social media can also be used to drive CRM.

Figure 10. Stats on poor customer service cost.

Social media platforms allow customers to easily share their brand experience (good
or bad) with their online social connections, who in turn can share this experience
on. This means a potential word-of-mouth audience of millions could witness a
single user’s brand experience and weigh in on the situation.

Customers place a great deal of value on the opinions of their peers and are more
likely to look favourably on a brand, product or service if a peer has recommended
or praised it.

Figure 11. Influence of Peer-Driven Media.

Brands have realised that they need to leverage this in their CRM strategies and now
understand that communication is not one way (from brand to consumer), or even
two way (between consumer and brand) but multi-directional (brand to consumer,
consumer to brand, consumer to consumer).

The convergence of social media with CRM has been termed social CRM or CRM 2.0
and has developed into a field on its own.

CRM › The benefits of CRM

Live chat

Having the ability to chat to your customers when they are on your site is very useful
in addressing customer queries immediately and can lead to valuable conversions.
Real live customer service agents or sales people can converse directly with
customers addressing any concerns easily and directly, or selling them any products
they may be browsing at that moment. Live chat offers many benefits, including
improved conversions, SEO, reduced average order times, increased awareness of
additional products, efficient management of issues and reduced overhead costs.
Cost per contact is much lower than call centre or in-store customer assistance.

Figure 9. The LiveChat feature on Fedhealth.

Various providers offer live chat functionality to websites, such as Intercom, Pure
Chat, Live Chat, Live Agent and Freshdesk. It is becoming increasingly common
to have live chat on brand sites and customers that expect to find live chat and
don’t, could walk away from your brand. Just like not being on Facebook could be
detrimental to your band, because customers expect all credible businesses to be on
the social network, not having a live chat could also negatively impact on customer’s
perception of your brand as a viable business.

Be wary of using chat bots to address clients on live chat. Customers dislike robotic
responses and want to feel heard and acknowledged by a real person. So, although
chat bots offer great solutions to CRM at large scale, their use should be carefully
considered against customer response and attitude to communicating with a bot.

NOTE

See more about SMS
and Apps as marketing

tools in the Mobile
channels and apps

chapter.

370 371

CRM › Step-by-step guide to implementing a CRM strategy

Social support staff should have access to all the historical data relating to customer
issues such as all the data collected about previous complaints and reference
numbers. These channels make customer support public. In this way, they can
respond directly to the consumer in the social channel that they’ve selected and
escalate the problem appropriately.

14.7.2 Social CRM and online monitoring
Social CRM can also make use of online reputation management and monitoring
tools. Online monitoring, or reputation management, entails knowing what is being
said about your organisation and ensuring that you are present in or leading the
conversation.

By using these tools, brands can rate and sort these mentions based on their
sentiment. This allows them to effectively test the temperature of the online
community’s feeling towards the brand, which can then guide any future action.

14.8 Step-by-step guide to implementing a CRM
strategy

14.8.1 Step 1. Conduct a business needs analysis and
develop a problem statement
A major part of determining where to begin with a CRM implementation is having a
clear understanding of the business needs and where CRM would most benefit the
organisation. CRM touches on sales, marketing, customer service and support both
online and offline. It’s important to review the needs of each business area so that
you can determine your strategy for CRM.

Ideally you should have individual goals for each department and all members
within the organisation should buy in to the strategy in order to drive it successfully,
from the highest rank to the lowest. Implementing successful CRM across the
organisation is a process, with stakeholders making decisions collectively and
sharing their views and needs. Decisions should be based on realistic budgets and
resources and full calculations carried out before any kind of loyalty currency is
decided upon. Remember the Smart Shopper example from Pick n Pay above and
how not carefully considering how rewards may impact on your bottom line could
cause problems later on.

14.8.2 Step 2. Understand customer needs
CRM is about the customer. You might have identified a range of business needs, but
what about the needs of the customer?

Two elements of CRM in particular, service delivery and customer support, are
actually all about meeting the needs of the customer. And what’s the best way of
determining customer needs? By asking them, of course. There are various ways to
find out what customers want, but in all of them, it is important to listen. Use online
monitoring tools and insights from social media to gather a more rounded view of
what your customers think, feel and want. Look at past behaviour, churn rates and
successes. It may be worth doing a detailed data mining exercise to understand
which of your customers is the most valuable and why.

CRM › Social CRM

Figure 12. Peers Recommend Companies and Influence Purchasing.

14.7.1 Social CRM and support
Social customers are increasingly turning to social media channels for support.
With the immediate accessibility offered through mobile devices, they see this as
a convenient channel to communicate with brands. This means that brands need
to respond quickly and transparently to consumers’ questions, gripes and even
compliments. A support query going unanswered on Twitter, for instance, is likely
to cause frustration for the consumer and prompt them to take a situation that is
already visible to other consumers even further, potentially causing a brand crisis.

Figure 13. Social CRM is valuable.

Brands should carefully consider whether all social media channels are appropriate
for them and be prepared for any eventuality. Brands that are well liked will
generally have positive responses on social media, those that receive a mediocre
response from consumers will have a bit of a mixed bag, but those that have a lot of
support issues are likely to experience very large numbers of complaints that need
to be addressed.

372 373

CRM › Tools of the trade

14.9 Tools of the trade
Collaborative CRM tools

Collaborative CRM refers to a process that combines customer data across all facets
of a company. For example, queries regularly submitted to the technical support or
customer service arm of a business can be used to inform product development
and website content. Instead of various departments collecting their own customer
data and using this in isolation, data is collated so that all channels make informed
decisions based on the holistic customer experience.

MindTouch (www.mindtouch.com) is an example of a CRM product that offers
collaborative authoring. This means that multiple users can simultaneously edit
shared documents while maintaining an audit trail and version control.

Social CRM tools

Social CRM tools perform a number of functions, from standardising the collection
of data from social media channels to automatically posting links and accepting
friend requests. These tools can also be used to identify customer sentiment within
social media channels.

BrandsEye (www.brandseye.com) and Simplify360 (www.simplify360.com) are
examples of social CRM listening tools that collect data on brand mentions across
social media channels online, in real time.

Operational CRM tools

Operational CRM tools deal with the most obvious channels that relate to customers:
the front end of a business and its customer service. From a web technology point of
view, operational CRM informs the website a customer sees as well as their entire
online user experience.

Two examples of operational CRM tools are OnContact (www.oncontact.com) and
Zoho CRM (www.zoho.com/crm).

Sales and marketing automation CRM tools

Sales force automation (www.salesforce.com) uses CRM software to manage sales
cycles and to collect customer sales data. The software enables businesses to
track leads, schedule transactions and communications with potential and existing
customers and generate detailed reporting on the sales process.

Marketing automation tools identify current customers and use their response
information to manage email marketing lists. The tools can also identify prospects,
as well as unhappy customers.

HubSpot (www.hubspot.com) offers a marketing automation tool that allows
companies to generate and send behaviour-driven emails.

Analytical CRM tools Analytical CRM tools allow companies to record, save and
investigate customer data to better understand customers through their behaviour.
For instance, data collected about the nature of visits to your website can be used
to make informed decisions about where to focus attention based on customer
behaviour. Past purchasing behaviour of customers can be analysed to predict
future purchasing behaviour. Data can be used to segment customers and tailor
communications. These tools can help target marketing campaigns at customers
and predict future sales and customer spending.

CRM › Step-by-step guide to implementing a CRM strategy

14.8.3 Step 3. Set objectives and measurements of
success
CRM is a long-term commitment and you need to consider a long-term approach.
Depending on the business needs, you may decide to focus on communications
objectives, sales objectives, business objectives, or all three. Objectives and success
measures could include:

• Increasing customer numbers: Sales objective/business objective

• Increasing profitability per customer: Business objective

• Increasing market share: Sales objectives

• Improving responses to campaigns: Communication objective

• Raising customer satisfaction: Business objective

• Improving end-to-end integration of the sales process cycle: Communication
objective.

The metrics you select for measurement will depend on these objectives. There are
numerous metrics that you can choose from when measuring your performance and
the actual metrics you choose are generally referred to as your key performance
indicators (KPIs).

14.8.4 Step 4. Develop your CRM strategy and determine
how you will implement it
Once you’ve identified all of the objectives of your CRM implementation, you will
need to determine how you are actually going to roll it out. What channels will you
use? What touchpoints will you leverage? What data will you need for this?

Next, you need to determine which tools you will use to gather this data and how you
will implement your initiatives across these channels. Don’t forget that you need to
communicate with your internal stakeholders before you launch the initiative to your
external ones.

You will need to make choices based on what is available to you, or what you intend
to embrace. The digital space offers a range of innovative spaces for CRM delivery;
you simply need to get creative in your execution.

14.8.5 Step 5. Choose the right tools
There are lots of excellent CRM tools available, but these are useless without a
clear CRM strategy in place. You can only select your tools once you know what your
objectives are, what touchpoints and channels you are going to utilise and what data
you need to collect and analyse.

CRM systems that gather information on customer preferences and needs, as well
as information on competitors and in the industry in general, let organisations focus
on providing customer solutions instead of simply pushing products.

We’ve outlined a host of options in the Tools of the trade section on the next page.

NOTE
Read more about this
in the Data analytics
chapter.

http://www.mindtouch.com

http://www.brandseye.com

http://www.simplify360.com

http://www.oncontact.com

http://www.zoho.com/crm

http://www.hubspot.com

374 375

CRM › Case study

can derive any real benefit from in the short term. Customers have to build up points and cash-
backs and wait to receive their reward. Many customers have become wary of loyalty programs
and see them as just another way to extort more money from consumers.

Customers need something that offer real benefits and that they are willing to pay US$ 99 a year
for. They want real value immediately and not something they need to wait months or years to
see any benefit from.

14.10.3 The solution

Amazon Prime provides its customers with what they really want and need from the brand. It has
created a program that is designed to meet customer’s need for instant gratification and removed
the stumbling blocks in the purchase process. Prime members receive next day delivery on all
items and do not need any minimum value in their shopping carts to receive free shipping. They
reap the benefits of the program immediately and every time they shop online.

Instead of making these shipping features free, Amazon Prime made the service part of an
exclusive loyalty programme that users had to pay a yearly fee to benefit from. So, in addition to
tapping into instant gratification, Amazon Prime also made use of customers’ want to be involved
in something exclusive, that would set them apart from general customers. As well as shipping
benefits, Amazon Prime users would get access to exclusive deals and discounts, as well as first
option on new products. Prime members get to see and purchase products before they are made
available to other customers.

To ensure they provided perceived real value, Amazon also included access to their entire library
of Amazon Prime videos in the Prime membership. Although the fledging library cannot rival
Netflix, offering the content free enables it to gain an audience to test out content and gain
insights for future content development. This means that the customer receives great value in
the form of online viewing content and the brand gains invaluable input that it can use to fuel
further development.

Figure 15. The highlighted benefits of Amazon Prime on Amazon’s home page.

Amazon Prime is more than a loyalty or a rewards program, it is a privilege program that taps into
customers’ need for feeling important and special, as well as addressing stumbling blocks in the
purchase process and meeting our growing need for instant reward (YourStory, 2017).

CRM › Tools of the trade

KXEN (www.kxen.com) is a popular analytical CRM tool with the ability to forecast
customer behaviour and shed light on customer preferences and spending power.
It also allows you to tailor marketing campaigns to specific customers, segmented
by various demographics.

14.10 Case study: Amazon Prime

14.10.1 One-line summary

Amazon Prime has become one of the largest and best loyalty programmes in recent years,
despite not using point systems and oversimplified projections of loyalty. They provide consumers
real value by addressing their needs for instant gratification and exclusivity, while streamlining
the customer experience and seeing a substantial financial return for the company.

Figure 14. Call to action to sign up for Prime on Amazon’s home page.

14.10.2 The problem

Amazon noticed that shipping was often a stumbling block when it came to completing purchases.
If shipping took too long, users would drop out of the purchase. Similarly, if users purchased
an item that was less than the minimum to receive free shipping they would also abandon the
purchase. They needed to somehow streamline this process, so that customers would complete
their purchases.

They considered a loyalty program that would address these two aspects, but knew that customers
are inundated with loyalty programmes that offer cash-backs and promotions. Every retailer,
bank and service provider all provide some form of loyalty programme that is very similar to all
the others.

Amazon noted that many loyalty programmes fail because they don’t meet the needs of the
customer and promise delayed gratification. They offer customers nothing new nor anything they

http://www.kxen.com

376 377

CRM › Further reading

14.12 Summary
Customer relationship management is the cornerstone of your interactions with customers.
Digital technology makes the process of discovering key insights seamless, effective and very
useful, but CRM cannot be restricted to only digital channels as customer interactions happen
offline too. There are many benefits to implementing a CRM strategy from reduced customer
service costs to happier customers and quicker, more tailored and effective communications.

Naturally, understanding customers is the biggest outcome of CRM and this understanding leads
to meeting their needs much more effectively, which in turn has direct bottom-line benefits for
the brand.

There are many facets to CRM that you should consider before deciding how you will approach it.
The key ones are:

• Brand touchpoints: How do customers interact with the brand and vice versa?

• The tools you need for your business: Operational CRM, analytical CRM, collaborative

• CRM and sales force automation are the main categories.

• What channels are available to you to communicate with your clients?

• Implementations: CRM can be implemented for sales, marketing and customer support
and service fulfilment.

• What are the steps you need to take within your organisation to ensure a successful CRM
strategy?

• What cost are you looking at and what return on investment are you expecting?

• Your long-term aims: CRM is never a short-term solution.

• What are your data capabilities and needs: Are you gathering the correct data, storing it
correctly, updating it constantly and then analysing it for insights?

14.13 Case study questions

1. Why do you think Amazon Prime has been so successful for so many years, when most
other programmes lose their allure?

2. What aspect of loyalty does Prime tap into?

3. What do you think of Amazon’s decision to include their video streaming as part of their
Prime membership?

14.14 Chapter questions

1. How do you think CRM changed or evolved as social media rose to popularity?

2. Why do customers respond so positively to personalised communication?

3. What ethical problems do you think customers might raise with regards to behavioural
tracking?

14.15 Further reading
www.insidecrm.com – This useful website regularly posts white papers and reports breaking down
updates and developments in the field of CRM.

churchofcustomer.com – This useful blog regularly features guest writers and experts in the field of social
media and CRM.

CRM › Case study

14.10.4 The results

Amazon has created a truly extraordinary loyalty programme that users are prepared to pay for.
By providing customers with what they need and streamlining the customer experience, Amazon
has demonstrated that gimmicks and cash backs are not the solution for loyalty programmes.

Amazon Prime saw rapid adoption in the US and still sees a 40% increase in subscriptions year
on year even though the loyalty program is nearly 12 years old. As of early 2017, 60% of Amazon’s
US customers have a Prime membership, with the total number of Prime subscribers hitting
80 million. Prime members also spend nearly double (US$ 1 300) what non-Prime members do
(US$ 700) per year (Business Insider, 2017). The programme has been a huge success for the
brand, with revenue from Prime alone making up US$ 6.4 billion in 2016. The programme is so
successful that revenue from subscriptions alone is nearly enough to cover the largest cost of the
company, its overall shipping costs (Bloomberg, 2017).

Essentially, establishing customer loyalty is about providing users with an experience that is simply
better than anything else, so that users change their purchase behaviour to favouring your brand.
And that is exactly what Amazon has been able to achieve through Prime (LooseThreads, 2017).

14.11 The bigger picture
Managing customer relationships should be built into every marketing tactic and activity
you perform, especially if your organisation has adopted CRM as an ongoing strategy to drive
customer retention.

Successful email marketing is built on two very basic customer needs: privacy and permission.
The very first step in using email to communicate with a customer is gaining their permission.
Data mining and segmenting customer databases allows email marketing to be tailored and
personalised. Email is often the primary point of contact for service-related messages.

Online advertising is a double-edged sword when it comes to CRM. It can be a very effective
acquisition tool for new customers, but intrusive advertising can attract attention for all the
wrong reasons. Effective online advertising speaks to customers’ needs and presents solutions
to them, attracting attention without being overly intrusive. The key is to be relevant and useful
wherever possible.

Search engine optimisation and search advertising start with customer intent. Existing customer
data can indicate where to focus search engine marketing efforts, especially when it comes to
analysing how well a website caters to the intent indicated by a customer’s search term. Social
media marketing is based on customer needs and preferences. It is also a powerful tool for
turning delighted customers (who are expressive online) into advocates for an organisation.
Social media creates new communication channels for an organisation, enabling discussions and
customer service to take place where the customer feels most comfortable.

Effective web development and design starts with understanding and catering for customer
needs and should focus on the experience of the web user. Designing for customers first and
foremost gives web visitors a seamless experience. CRM data can tell you what your customers
need and web experiences can support the customer journey. Web designers and developers can
also create sophisticated customer service portals to manage CRM, such as the Nike+ support
page: nikeplus.nike.com/plus/support.

Through all of the digital marketing tactics, effective analytics is the most useful CRM tool. It
allows each channel to be measured on its merits and the customers acquired by each channel
can be analysed.

http://www.insidecrm.com

http://churchofcustomer.com/

378 379

Figure 7. Smile.io, 2017. blog.smile.io/easy-way-to-calculate-and-increase-customer-lifetime-value

Figure 8. Discovery, 2015. www.discovery.co.za/portal/individual/vitality-newsletter-january-2015

Figure 9. Screenshot. Fedhealth 2017.

Figure 10. CxSocial, 2016. cxsocial.clarabridge.com/top-10-social-customer-service-stats-2016

Figure 11. Edleman. 2016. www.edelman.com/insights/intellectual-property/2016-edelman-trust-
barometer/global-results

Figure 12. Edelman, 2016. www.edelman.com/insights/intellectual-property/2016-edelman-trust-
barometer/global-results

Figure 13. CxSocial, 2016. cxsocial.clarabridge.com/top-10-social-customer-service-stats-2016

Figure 14. Screenshot, Amazon 2017.

Figure 14. Screenshot, Amazon 2017.

CRM › Figure acknowledgementsCRM › Further reading

www.cluetrain.com – Home of the Cluetrain Manifesto, a set of guiding principles geared towards
conducting business in the digital world.

14.16 References
BizCommunity, 2017. Brands to bankers: Are retailers taking over the finance space? [Online]
Available at: www.bizcommunity.com/Article/196/513/168093.html
[Accessed 1 November 2017]

Blockgeeks, 2016. What is cryptocurrency: Everything you to need to know (Ultimate Guide). [Online]
Available at: blockgeeks.com/guides/what-is-cryptocurrency
[Accessed 1 November 2017]

Bloomberg, 2017. Amazon Reveals Some Prime Numbers. [Online]
Available at: www.bloomberg.com/gadfly/articles/2017-02-14/amazon-prime-numbers-a-hint-of-the-
secret-formula
[Accessed 1 November 2017]

Business Day, 2017. Pick n Pay cuts Smart Shopper rewards. [Online]
Available at: www.businesslive.co.za/bd/companies/retail-and-consumer/2017-04-04-pick-n-pay-cuts-
smart-shopper-rewards
[Accessed 1 November 2017]

Business Insider, 2017. Amazon Prime subscribers hit 80 million. [Online]
Available at: www.businessinsider.com/amazon-prime-subscribers-hit-80-million-2017-4
[Accessed 1 November 2017]

Koch, R., 2008. The 80/20 Principle: The Secret of Achieving More with Less. United States: Doubleday.

Loose Threads, 2016. A Prime misunderstanding: explaining amazon Prime’s Success. [Online]
Available at: loosethreads.com/blog/2016/6/19/a-prime-misunderstanding-explaining-amazon-primes-
success
[Accessed 1 November 2017]

YourStory, 2017. Why Amazon Prime stands out where most other loyalty programmes fail? [Online]
Available at: yourstory.com/2017/09/amazon-prime-stands-out-other-loyalty-programs-fail
[Accessed 1 November 2017]

14.17 Figure acknowledgments
Figure 1. Stokes, 2013.

Figure 2. Adapted from Bullhorn. 2016. www.bullhorn.com/uk/blog/2016/01/how-bullhorn-helps-your-
business-conquer-the-age-of-the-customer

Figure 3. Wotsthebigidea, 2017. wotsthebigidea.com/identify-customer-touchpoint

Figure 4. Janrain, 2017. www.janrain.com/product/profile-data-storage

Figure 5. Slideshare, 2011. www.slideshare.net/CommLab/the-8020-rule-the-pareto-principle

Figure 6. CRMdirectory, 2017. www.crmdirectory.org/product/microsoft-dynamics-crm

http://www.cluetrain.com

http://www.bizcommunity.com/Article/196/513/168093.html

https://blockgeeks.com/guides/what-is-cryptocurrency/

https://www.bloomberg.com/gadfly/articles/2017-02-14/amazon-prime-numbers-a-hint-of-the-secret-formula

https://www.bloomberg.com/gadfly/articles/2017-02-14/amazon-prime-numbers-a-hint-of-the-secret-formula

https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/companies/retail-and-consumer/2017-04-04-pick-n-pay-cuts-smart-shopper-rewards/

https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/companies/retail-and-consumer/2017-04-04-pick-n-pay-cuts-smart-shopper-rewards/

http://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-prime-subscribers-hit-80-million-2017-4

https://loosethreads.com/blog/2016/6/19/a-prime-misunderstanding-explaining-amazon-primes-success

https://loosethreads.com/blog/2016/6/19/a-prime-misunderstanding-explaining-amazon-primes-success

https://yourstory.com/2017/09/amazon-prime-stands-out-other-loyalty-programs-fail/

• _GoBack

Content
marketing

strate

gy

15

In this chapter, you will learn:
» To understand the role of content marketing strategy within your

marketing plan

» To be familiar with the steps involved in developing your content
marketing strategy

» To recognise some models for understanding how types of content are
absorbed or experienced by your target audience.

382 383

Substance Workflow

Structure

Content Components People Components

Governance

Core
Strategy

© 2010 Brain Traffic

Content marketing strategy › Defining content marketing

advertiser pushes messages to a captive audience, the focus is on engaging content,
which means that marketers must think like publishers (attracting an audience)
rather than seeing themselves as advertisers (buying an audience) of a product. The
Internet has, in many respects, cut out the middle man. Consumers and brands can
now connect directly through a number of easily accessible online platforms.

The Content Marketing Institute offers the following definition:

Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and
distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly-
defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action (Content
Marketing Institute, 2017).

This definition applies to all the spaces in which you share content both traditional
and digital. This includes printed magazines, booklets and promotional material
as well as your social media space, website, campaigns, competitions and your
company blog. The way in which that information is shared is also important.

Kristina Halvorson suggests the model illustrated below for approaching the
different areas of content marketing strategy.

Figure 1. A model explaining content strategy.

Content components

Substance: Who are you trying to reach and why?

Structure: Where is your content? How is it organised? How do people find your
content?

People components

Workflow: How does your content happen?

Governance: Politics, guidelines and standards that your brand operates in
(Halvorson, 2010).

Content marketing strategy › Introduction

15.1 Introduction
While the phrase ‘content is king’ has been referenced for some time, it is only in
the last decade that content marketing strategy has been solidified into a discipline
of its own. Defining content marketing strategy can be tricky, however, with some
practitioners focusing more on the role it plays in information architecture and
others believing that it should be considered on a campaign by campaign basis.

This chapter looks at content marketing strategy from a holistic perspective, as a
process that includes an understanding of all the content your brand is creating,
those for whom it is intended and to what purpose. Content marketing is important
for positioning your brand in the minds of consumers. As a content marketer, you
need to understand the brand and consumer context and be able to craft appropriate
content based on user receptiveness and channel-appropriateness. You also need to
select the best route to customer in terms of tactics and to understand how content
marketing fits and contributes to your overall marketing strategy. Ultimately this
supports the design of communication that impacts people enough to make them
want to share the content on.

15.2 Key terms and concepts

Term Definition

Algorithm

An algorithm is a mathematical, computational or statistical
method pre-determined to take a number of variables into account
and output a single, quantifiable result that is a function of all the
variables. A good example of a commonly used algorithm is the
one used by Google to determine which pages rank more highly on
SERPs.

Content audit
An examination and evaluation of the existing content which a brand
publishes.

Editor
A person who determines the ultimate content of copy, traditionally
understood to be in the newspaper, magazine or publishing industry
context.

Information
architecture

The way data and content are organised, structured and labelled to
support usability.

Persona

In this context, a character created to define a group of users in
order to speak to them as though they were a unique user. Usually
a hypothetical character created to represent and personify a set of
traits.

Usability
A measure of how easy a system is to use. Sites with excellent
usability fare far better than those that are difficult to use.

Table 1.

15.3 Defining content marketing
Content marketing is an umbrella term which focuses on matching content
(information, inspiration, or entertainment) to your customer needs at whichever
stage they are in the buying cycle or customer journey. Unlike TV, where the

384 385

15.4.2 Market research and consumer personas
The sweet spot for content marketing lies in an intercept between the marketing
goals of a brand, the brand personality as it guides and differentiates that brand in
the marketplace and the consumer motivation for paying any attention to a brand at
all. One device that is used in addressing consumer needs is the development of a
consumer persona.

A persona is a profile that a writer creates to embody the aggregated characteristics
of the target audience for whom he or she is writing. It helps to personalise the
brand. Personas are based on the profile of users of your content. Creating a profile
is all about considering the characteristics of your customers and their needs and
desires. For example, a brand like Philadelphia Cream Cheese could have a couple
of customer personas. A busy father, who works full time, but still wants to provide
healthy and nutritious lunches for his family. Or a young female foodie, who wants
to try new recipes she finds online from international celebrity chefs to impress her
friends at dinner parties. Each of these would require slightly different approaches
when developing content. Both would benefit from videos featuring recipes, but one
would appreciate regular basic options for lunchboxes and the other a celebrity
endorsement or even a celebrity hosted video of finer and more elaborate meals.

It’s important to focus on the motivations of the persona that you may create, rather
than exterior signifiers that lead to the creation of a stereotype. The persona assists
you in segmenting and understanding your target market and is a framework
through which you can guide any content that you create.

15.4.3 Creating content themes
Linked to the brand identity are certain themes or concepts. These are areas of
focus that support the creation of content that match a consumer’s interest. These
themes must be true to the brand essence, not focused directly on sales and should
also speak to the interests of the audience.

Figure 3. Content themes can be considered in line with the brand’s essence and then
situated within the context of the reader.

Content marketing strategy › Strategic building blocks

Theme

Target Audience

CONTENT PLANNING APPROACH

Brand Environmental Context

Brand
Essence POV Execution

As you can see in the above discussion, Halvorson suggests that one consider the
bigger picture of content creation rather than just the product which is the end
result. Content marketing looks at staff, tools, processes and outcomes. The end
goal for these processes isconversion. All content should be created with a strategic
outcome in mind. Such outcomes could include talkability, referral, affinity and
ultimately purchase or increased usage of your product or service.

15.4 Strategic building blocks

15.4.1 Translating your brand essence
The brand essence sums up the unique attributes of a brand and the basis for its
emotional connection with customers. Remember your emotional connection
with your customer is the very things that differentiates your brand from your
competitors. Your brand essence should assist in defining a tone of voice for your
brand and the style in which it engages with its customers. The brand essence can
be a useful guide for ensuring that the content you create (and your marketing
activity) represents the brand appropriately. You can relate this to your brand story.
What is your reason for being? How do you connect that with the interests of your
customers? What is the value you add to your customers’ lives? Is it convenience,
health, status?

Consider a brand like Mercedes Benz. Their essential product is transportation, but
the brand offers so much more than that to its customers. For example, it provides
a sense of safety and security, customers know they are driving a car with the latest
safety technology. But the brand’s most powerful aspect is the sense of achievement
and status that owning a Mercedes Benz provides. The value of the brand is less
about the product itself and transporting passengers and more about the feeling
and status the customer gets by owning the product.

Will It Blend? is a video series by Blendtec which builds on this principle. Blendtec
produce industrial blenders. Their value proposition is that they can blend anything
and their very popular videos demonstrate this.

Figure 2. Blendtec produce a series of entertaining videos focused on blending
objects discussed in popular culture, such as iPhones.

Content marketing strategy › Defining content marketing

386 387

Consider the illustration below:

Figure 5. Different forms of content will support different objectives.

As discussed in the Strategy and context chapter, determining your objectives is
an essential part of your marketing planning and should feed into your content
marketing strategy and ultimately the business strategy. Understanding the journey
your consumers go through as they approach your ultimate sales goal will enable
you to match content formats to their needs. A humorous video may be successful
in initially making potential customers aware of your brand. However, once you have
their attention, a research paper or useful case study could be more effective in
convincing them that you are the best choice in the market.

Price Waterhouse Cooper (PWC) is one of the largest international financial
consulting firms, offering a range of financial services and advice across the globe.
Every year they publish valuable content and guides to assist their customers with
tax and wealth management. You can find the 2017 guide here: www.pwc.com/us/
en/private-company-services/publications/tax-wealth-management-guide.html

There are many examples of online journalism using multimedia to convey
information most effectively to their users. The New York Times has presented a
number of different methods for conveying complex information in an engaging
manner. ‘Snow Fall’ by John Branch is one example: www.nytimes.com/
projects/2012/snow-fall/#/?part=tunnel-creek.

Content marketing strategy › Strategic building blocks

Awareness

Reviews

Articles

Infographics
Press Releases

Calculations

eBooks

Data Sheet
& Price Guide

Checklist

En
te

rta
in

Inspire

Educate Co
nv

in
ce

Purchase

Em
otional

R
ational

Reviews
Inspire
En
te

rta
in

Data Sheet
& Price Guide& Price Guide& Price Guide

Checklist

ArticlesArticlesArticles

InfographicsInfographicsInfographics
Press ReleasesPress ReleasesPress Releases

eBookseBookseBooks

Educate Co
nv
in
ce

Virals

Quizzes

Competitions
Widgets

Celebrity
Endorsements

Games

Community
ForumsBranded Videos

RatingsEvents

Product
Features

Case Studies

Trend ReportsGuides
Reports

and W/pepes Webinars

eNews

Demo
Videos

Interactive
Demos

For Coca-Cola, for example, consumer interests filtered through the brand essence
of ‘Coke brings joy’ could result in the following themes:

Friendship

Sharing is caring

Spreading smiles.

These themes are then used as the basis on which to develop content ideas.

Figure 4. Coca-Cola express their brand essence in all of their communications, as
demonstrated in the Tweet above.

In the above tweet, we can see how a particular content theme was translated into a
question that is focused on relationships and family. It also encourages engagement
from the audience by asking for their input.

Another example which demonstrates this is how Corona brought their brand
essence to life through an interactive documentary. The essence of the brand is
to live the extraordinary and to provide amazing experiences to its customers. The
documentary depicted a group of people from Bulin in China, officially the town
furthest away from any ocean in the world, encountering the ocean for the very first
time. A truly extraordinary and amazing experience, facilitated by Corona. You can
view it here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8ELAv3Ovho.

15.4.4 Matching content formats to objectives
Information can be presented through any number of mediums, which is both an
opportunity and a challenge faced by content marketers. Traditional print distribution
allows for magazines, pamphlets and even events. Digital distribution allows for
videos, images, interactive infographics, GIFs, live photos, live video, cinemagraphs
and any number of other formats. To gain and keep the attention of consumers/
users, it’s sometimes not enough to rely simply on text-based forms of content.
The role of the content marketer is to select the right medium based on overall
objectives, production capabilities and the needs of the audience.

Content marketing strategy › Strategic building blocks

https://www.pwc.com/us/en/private-company-services/publications/tax-wealth-management-guide.html

https://www.pwc.com/us/en/private-company-services/publications/tax-wealth-management-guide.html

388 389

15.5 Content creation

15.5.1 Learning from publishers
Referring to a brand as publisher refers to expanding the function of the marketer or
brand manager and opening up additional opportunities to influence and/or convert.
Rather than focusing on the immediate sale or conversion, a publisher focuses
on value and interest for the user and building a relationship based on supplying
information, inspiration, or entertainment that suits the customer’s needs. Makeup.
com by L’Oreal is an oft-cited example of a brand publishing useful tips and content
that does not link to a product or sales directly, but demonstrates how the brand can
facilitate the lifestyle consumers desire or aspire to. In content marketing a brand
has to give customers more than just the product or service.

15.5.2 Resource planning – thinking like a publisher
Content marketing touches on a number of departments in an organisation.
Marketing, sales, customer service, corporate communications, human resources
and website management teams should all be aware of the content marketing
strategy for a business. Co-ordinating content between these teams can be
challenging if not impossible if turnaround times are tight. This is why it is important
not only to look at where content production should live in your organisation, but
also to map the workflow of content creation, an essential function. Are designers
involved? Where does quality control take place? Where can a piece of content be
adapted and reused on a different distribution channel?

Some organisations opt to have a central role for someone to oversee content;
others build in-house departments. Factors to consider are budget, creative
control, approval and sign off processes, objective perspectives and full-time versus
freelance resources. Whether you are outsourcing to a publishing house, or training
a team in house, the decision must be made and planned for so that workflow can be
mapped to facilitate your strategic needs.

15.5.3 Always on content planning
Given that a large part of the global population is constantly engaging with content
via various digital devices and platforms, it is necessary to consider content creation
in terms of not only short campaign bursts, but ongoing delivery and engagement.
Consider the illustration below.

Figure 7. An always-on-content strategy approach builds relationships
and engagement.

Content marketing strategy › Content creation

Content Frequency // An ‘Always On’ approach

Campaign/
Activation

Campaign/
Activation
Campaign/
Activation

En
ga

ge
m

en
t

Time

Alw
ays

on C
onte

nt S
trate

gy

Rela
tion

ship
s

Figure 6. ‘The New York Times’ is a media brand that has embraced interactive media
features for presenting complex news stories.

The New York Times also often publishes infographics that demonstrate this principle
powerfully.

Because users consume content across multiple screens, multimedia is necessary
to ensure you keep the audience engaged and they do not get bored with your content.
See this infographic on the importance of exploring different types of multimedia
with content marketing: blog.marketingv2.com/the-importance-of-multimedia-
content-in-your-marketing-strategy.

To take advantage of these various forms of content delivery, it is necessary to build
the correct capabilities. But how do you determine what forms of content you need?

15.4.5 The content audit
Once you have established your marketing goals, your brand personality and a
guiding understanding of who you are trying to reach, the content audit is a necessary
but sometimes laborious next step. The content audit involves an audit of all the
existing content supplied by the brand such as the website, white papers, articles,
videos and content shared on social media sites can all be considered.

An assessment can then be made of how well these pieces of content match the
strategic needs of the brand, its audience and the appropriateness to the chosen
channel.

While you can either thoroughly immerse yourself in this process or attempt to get
a more time-efficient overview, the goal is to map what is currently on offer versus
what is needed to achieve the strategic objective. It is important not just to understand
what you have and who accesses it, but also how it is currently organised, through
which channels and how often it is accessed by your audience.

Many practitioners suggest the use of a spreadsheet to achieve this. Content can
be found to be either mismatched to the goals of the organisation, or spot on. Most
importantly, you can establish what is missing. Are your customer needs being
addressed? Where do the opportunities lie?

Content marketing strategy › Strategic building blocks

http://blog.marketingv2.com/the-importance-of-multimedia-content-in-your-marketing-strategy

http://blog.marketingv2.com/the-importance-of-multimedia-content-in-your-marketing-strategy

390 391

15.6 Content channel distribution

15.6.1 Algorithmic curation
Algorithmic curation is a term that refers to the algorithms platforms have created
for dealing with information overload. Various platforms, like Facebook,Twitter and
the search engine Google, use algorithms to filter out the amount of information
that is delivered to users. Each algorithm will use a number of factors to determine
what is actually relevant and interesting to the user doing a search or looking at
their news feed.

One of the factors that influences whether a piece of content is considered relevant
is how much an individual engages with the brand’s presence on that platform over
time. Posts shared by a Facebook Page, for example, may reach only users who
have previously engaged with posts from that page through commenting or liking. It
is therefore important to create content that encourages engagement and sharing.

Increasingly SEO and content marketing have to work together if they are to reach
their audience and achieve their objectives. Without good content, SEO will struggle
and without SEO even good content will not be seen. SEO approaches content
differently to content marketing. SEO wants the content as narrow and focused
as possible, so that they can give the right answer to the right user while users
are searching. It also recognises the need for enjoyable shareable content as this
improves search rankings and earns backlinks. Content marketers, on the other
hand, prefer broader content and focus on the quality and exposing the content
appropriately (Postan, 2016).

Figure 9. Engaging content that ranks highly is achieved when SEO and content
marketing work together.

15.6.2 Understanding channels and platforms
Understanding the channels through which you share content is as important as
the crafting of that content itself. Reaching people effectively will only be achieved
if the medium supports the message and vice versa. Social media, email marketing,
mobile marketing and video marketing are just some disciplines that will form part
of your content creation arsenal. The rest of this book is dedicated to best practice
in communicating effectively through the various digital disciplines available to you.

Content marketing strategy › Content channel distribution

NOTE

For more on aligning
content marketing and
SEO go to this blog
post by Outbrain:
www.outbrain.
com/blog/content-
marketing-and-seo

Content
Marketing

Target audience
valuable content

promotion

niche keywords
on-page factors
technical

SEO

Enagaging
Content

That Ranks
High

SEO

By constantly engaging with audiences, which is well suited to social media, for
example, it is possible to build and maintain a relationship with customers/users.
Consider the image above, where constant engagement is built by a constant
presence and amplified by shorter-term campaigns.

15.5.4 Content models
Your organisation’s content requirements and objectives should determine the
structure of your content teams. Do you have a need for ongoing content creation,
or are there less frequent high-input forms of content that will benefit your
organisation? There are many models which are constantly evolving, so invest
in some research around what will suit your organisation. We have outlined two
approaches below.

Stock and flow

Stock content refers to bigger, beautiful assets that require more investment and
age well, meaning that they will be interesting in six months as well as today. ‘Inside
Chanel’ by Chanel, is an example of this. High-production value documentary type
videos are created and sponsored by the brand to achieve awareness and develop
brand affinity across its target market. You can visit the Chanel channel on YouTube
here: www.youtube.com/user/CHANEL

Figure 8. The Time of Chanel – Inside Chanel. Stock videos created to achieve
awareness and brand affinity.

Flow content has a lower production value and a quicker production and publishing
time frame. Images depicting what is going on at a business on any given day, for
example, freshly baked goods at a bakery, can be placed in this category. Weekly or
even daily blogs as well as event and holiday themed content would all be considered
flow.

Both types of content should be considered for balancing out a content strategy. It
can also be useful to consider destination and distributed content. Content which
you are either sending out to the world through various platforms and networks,
or which pulls your user towards a page on your website or an article on your blog.
Rather than focusing solely on driving users to your owned media spaces, such as
your website, consider how to create content that engages with your target audience
in the spaces and platforms they use online.

Content marketing strategy › Content creation

http://www.outbrain.com/blog/content-marketing-and-seo

http://www.outbrain.com/blog/content-marketing-and-seo

http://www.outbrain.com/blog/content-marketing-and-seo

https://www.youtube.com/user/CHANEL

392 393

Figure 11. A content workflow mapping the development of content.

Persona map

As discussed, the persona map assists content creators in focusing on those for whom
they are in fact creating content and what the motivations of consumers may be.

Figure 12. An example of a persona map.

15.8 Advantages and challenges
Content marketing can position your brand as an expert through the sharing of useful
content in your specific field. It also enables you to reach the customer who has a
fragmented attention span spread across many devices and content touchpoints.

Content marketing strategy › Advantages and challenges

Research

Review

Revise

Approve
Upload
to CMS

Web page
review

Publish Maintenance

Write

Content marketing strategy › Tools of the trade

15.7 Tools of the trade
In order to support the ongoing production of interesting content, it is necessary to
have some planning documents in place. Consider those outlined below.

Brand style guides

This document guides anyone creating content for a brand at any time. What is
the tone of voice and brand personality? How is it best represented visually and
what are the brand colours and fonts? This can be a challenging document to put
together and it usually isn’t the content marketer who is tasked with doing so, but is
essential to aligning brand communications. It is also a document that tends to be
‘live’ as it is constantly updated as the brand and content landscapes evolve and new
conventions need to come into play. Brand style guidelines are also referred to as
Corporate Identity( CI) or Brand Identity (BI).

Content calendars

Content calendars assist the content marketer in planning the content they will
be sharing, across which platforms and when. The more advance planning is
undertaken, the easier it is to react quickly to tactical opportunities.

Figure 10. A content calendar for social media.

Workflow map

A workflow map documents the path a piece of content takes when it is created.
What are the steps in approval, how is it optimised for digital publishing, who has
final sign off? Is it a duplicate of existing content and where else can it be used? A
workflow map assists you in streamlining this process.

394 395

Content marketing strategy › The bigger picture

The campaign included a strong social element. Due to the changing nature of Alex, he could be
played by anyone (male or female) and fans were invited to audition via the brand’s Facebook
application for the role. Those chosen would star in the professionally filmed episodes with real
Hollywood players. Additional audience created content was also shared in the Alex story on the
Facebook page.

Watch this video about this incredible case study:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=qyMQIMeSCVY or the full six episodes as one movie here:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbNP_c0wUxE

15.9.4 The outcome

Over 26 fans were cast in the film as Alex, chosen from over 4 000 contenders. And an additional
50 Alexes were featured on the ‘The Beauty Inside’s Facebook Timeline. The content resonated
with the audience and the social nature of the film sparked engagement and shares.

The results of the campaign were:

• 70 million video views

• 97% YouTube approval rating

• 26 million social interactions

• 40% lift in brand perception for Toshiba

• 66% lift in brand perception for Intel

• Increase in sales of 300% during the event, when compared to previous weeks (Digital
Training Academy, n.d.).

Despite being a few years old, this case study is a great example of how providing content with
strong entertainment value to customers and engaging with them on an emotional and social
level, can have dramatic results.

15.10 The bigger picture
Content is a significant component of many digital marketing disciplines. When creating content,
you should always keep the principles of writing for the web in mind.

Email marketing relies on great content since most people suffer from email fatigue, they will
only stop to read emails that they know are of high quality and that provide excellent content.

Social media marketing also depends on sharing relevant and valuable content with social fans.
While your brand promise may get them to your social page, your ongoing stream of quality
content will encourage them to interact and share, spreading the word about your company. If
your content is great and really resonates with your audience, it could go viral.

Search engine optimisation is strongly influenced by the quality, frequency and value of content.
Not only will search engines favour your site, but others will choose to link in to your content,
creating a valuable referrer for your brand.

Video marketing is a whole new approach to content, in which you create dynamic and shareable
videos specifically tailored to the interests and needs of your audience.

Mobile marketing also requires that you consider the unique requirements of your audiences
across a series of devices. If you understand the role that each device plays in a user’s life and
buying cycle, you structure content according to user purpose and frame of mind.

One of the more powerful benefits, however, is that you can learn a lot about your
target consumer through the content with which they do or do not engage. The
more targeted and ongoing your content, the more data you can gather about how
effectively you are reaching those you need to.

One of the great challenges in content marketing is providing content that is truly
interesting and engaging to the right people with the right mix of subject matter
and brand. Matching content to the required outcome for your strategic purposes
takes dedication and focus. In the context of ongoing content production, it can also
be a challenge to maintain levels of quality over time, which is why process and
quality assurance steps must be put in place. Consider that the goal is not to create
as much content as possible, rather it is to focus on relevance and content that
matches strategic outcomes.

Content marketing strategy › Advantages and challenges

15.9 Case study: Intel and Toshiba

15.9.1 One-line summary

Toshiba and Intel paired up to create an extremely successful social storytelling campaign that
refreshed the ‘Intel inside’ slogan and boosted awareness of the new Ultrabook.

15.9.2 The problem

Intel and Toshiba both wanted to an opportunity to interact and raise awareness with younger
consumers, aged 18–34 years old. They knew they didn’t want a regular ad, but something that
would really engage the audience and get them to interact with the brands.

15.9.3 The solution

An interactive social film called ‘The Beauty inside’. The film starred real Hollywood stars and was
a film about a character called Alex, who wakes up every day as a different person. On the inside
he is the same, but on the outside, he looks like someone different. The story was about the fluid
nature of identity and that despite outside appearances, it is what is inside that counts.

Figure 13. The Beauty Inside campaign for Intel and Toshiba.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbNP_c0wUxE

396 397

Content marketing strategy › Figure acknowledgments

Content Marketing Institute, 2013. What is Content Marketing? [Online]
Available at: contentmarketinginstitute.com/what-is-content-marketing
[Accessed 1 November 2017]

Digital Training Academy, n.d. Content Marketing case study: How Intel and Toshiba got an audience
of 70 million with social storytelling. [Online]
Available at: www.digitaltrainingacademy.com/casestudies/2015/03/content_marketing_case_study_how_
intel_and_toshiba_got_an_audience_of_70_million_with_social_storytelling.php
[Accessed 1 November 2017]

Halvorson, K., 2010. Kristina Halvorson, Content Strategy on Conversation Agent. [Online]
Available at: www.conversationagent.com/2010/12/kristina-halvorson-content-strategy.html
[Accessed 1 November 2017]

Postan, L., 2016. Content Marketing and SEO. [Online]
Available at: www.outbrain.com/blog/content-marketing-and-seo
[Accessed 1 November2017]

Vipat, R., (2013) Digital marketing at Nike. [Online]
Available at: www.slideshare.net/ojasvipat/final-digital-marketing-at-nike
[Accessed 1 November 2017]

15.16 Figure acknowledgments
Figure 1. Adapted with permission, Kristina Halvorsen, 2010.

Figure 2. Screenshot, Blendtec, n.d.

Figure 3. Stokes, 2013.

Figure 4. Screenshot, Twitter 2013.

Figure 5. Adapted from, Bosomworth, 2012.

Figure 6. Screenshot, New York Times, 2013.

Figure 7. Stokes, 2013.

Figure 8. Screenshot, YouTube Inside Chanel, 2017.

Figure 9. Outbrain, 2017. www.outbrain.com/blog/content-marketing-and-se

Figure 10. Small Business Trends, n.d. smallbiztrends.com/social-media-calendar-template-business.

Figure 11. Own image.

Figure 12. UXPin, n.d. www.uxpin.com/studio/blog/the-practical-guide-to-empathy-maps-creating-a-10-
minute-persona

Figure 13. Contently, 2016. contently.com/strategist/2016/01/06/the-new-hollywood-why-brands-are-
making-movies

Content marketing strategy › Summary

15.11 Summary
Content marketing presents a pull mechanism for the marketer rather than a push one. It’s
a gentler approach to traditional advertising and product or price promotions. Brands must
consider their brand identity and the market they are trying to reach in order to create targeted
and valuable brand content that delivers on strategic objectives.

It’s about more than creating a piece of content. Content marketing strategy looks at how you
structure your organisation to create that content and how you match specific types of content
and methods of delivery for achieving strategic outcomes.

These ideas need to resonate with people rather than simply existing across an array of media
with which they are presented.

15.12 Case study questions

1. What is brand storytelling?

2. Why do you think Intel and Toshiba chose this option?

3. What in particular do you think drove the dramatic lift in brand perception for
both brands?

15.13 Chapter questions

1. What is content marketing strategy? How does it compare to business strategy?

2. Why is the customer journey or buying cycle relevant to content marketing strategy?

3. How do you decide what new forms of content your brand needs?

15.14 Further reading
contentstrategy.com – Content strategy for the web.

contentmarketinginstitute.com/blog – the official blog of the Content Marketing Institute

the-cma.com – The Content marketing Association website. News, research and case studies on Content
marketing.

15.15 References
Bosomworth., 2012. Content Matrix. [Online image]
Available at: www.smartinsights.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/content-matrix-550×428
[Accessed 30 January 2018]

Bowman, M., 2017. Video marketing the future of content marketing. [Online]
Available at: www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2017/02/03/video-marketing-the-future-of-
content-marketing/#27eb8d106b53
[Accessed 1 November 2017]

Cognitive Media, n.d. Coca-Cola Content 2020 Part One. [Online]
Available at: www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=LerdMmWjU_E
[Accessed 1 November 2017]

What Is Content Marketing?

http://www.digitaltrainingacademy.com/casestudies/2015/03/content_marketing_case_study_how_intel_and_toshiba_got_an_audience_of_70_million_with_social_storytelling.php

http://www.digitaltrainingacademy.com/casestudies/2015/03/content_marketing_case_study_how_intel_and_toshiba_got_an_audience_of_70_million_with_social_storytelling.php

http://www.conversationagent.com/2010/12/kristina-halvorson-content-strategy.html

http://www.outbrain.com/blog/content-marketing-and-seo

http://contentstrategy.com/

http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/blog/

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