The multichannel funnel will give clear indications on how customers interact in different channels during the buying cycle. To understand more about the process we will first look at the customer buying cycle.

The internet channel closed the gap between the manufacturer and the customers their by now manufacturer can remove lot of parties in the distribution channel. A typical example here is DELL, they removed most of the retailers in their distribution channel and saved a lot of cost. With the help of social media the gap become even more closer, manufacturer can now communicate directly with the customers and convert them. Customers have the flexibility to communicate directly with companies even after sales. The main thing to remind here is social media is just an enabler so it is very important to make it right and communicate right message to the customer through social media.

It is very important to understand which channels are playing their roles in customer buying process. The internet helps customers to do research by reading reviews, asking opinions in various social media and other internet channels. They can easily come up with list of potential options with their criteria such as where to buy, which brand to buy, which site suites their requirement etc. The channels may vary according to the products, customers requirement, and customers attitudes. For example a life time product like refrigerator may require good after sales support so it would be a primary requirement for a customer, others might be looking for discounts so they might go to affiliate sites to get a discount. So according to the products, channels like search engines, social media, affiliates, review sites, may play some role in the customer decision process.

What Multichannel funnel trying to achieve is helping us to understand how customers are using various marketing channels during their buying process. It would be good to read my previous  post about understanding e-commerce channels to learn more about different channel effects and KPI’s in ecommerce marketing. Often paid search marketing, organic search marketing play some important role in educating about the brand but if customers prefer to get discounts they may go to an affiliate site. Although search engine marketing plays a critical role in brand awareness but the last conversion came from an affiliate channel the credit for conversion will go to the affiliate which is not good to optimise your marketing campaign. To understand more about how multichannel funnel work it is would be good to watch the video provided below.

In the figure below you can see that display ads and paid search played a big part in the brand awareness which later became a direct visit at the buying stage.

Now let us do some optimisation for your marketing campaign in Google Analytics. If you have affiliate channel in your marketing campaign make sure to add new digital media channel for each affiliates that can help to pin point which affiliate is giving return. Google Analytics by default provide most of the media channel but affiliates sites often show as referral, it might be good to add your affiliate in the analytics. This can be done by editing channel groupings in the Google  Analytics.

Add a new custom channel by adding relevant regular expression on the source where conversion / traffic come from.

That is it you are done, keep an eye on this and see who is performing and rearrange your marketing budget / activities according to the result.

If you like the post don’t forget to share it with your friends. That is a motivation for me to write more!

One of the main reason for considering macroeconomic impact on digital marketing plan is that, the organisation may not be able to control the macro economic factors. But if the factors are considered properly the decision making of where and when to invest become much more easier which will avoid potential risk also. One of the good analytical tool to understand macro-economic impact is the PEST tool referred to political, environmental, social and technological factors that affect your campaign.

A tool to jolt down PEST factors is mind map. I often use mindmeister for mind mapping. Another traditional handy tool for marketers is post its.

Some examples of macro economic factors that should be considered during while making digital strategy are given below. The macro economic factors will solely depend on your product or service.

1) Weather impact on your product or services. This is quite important because in countries like UK, Canada, Germany etc during the winter season customers often prefer to shop online more than visiting a shop.

It is very  important to analyse your existing campaign and weather impact on consumers buying. I will write a separate post on how to analyse weather impact on product purchase. When ever you decide a digital plan you should be validated with data. The high accountability of online transactions can help in this regard.

2) Festival seasonal impacts, some of the product might have very good online sales during the festive season.

3) Currency stability, if you are offering services in different countries how you are minimising the risk of changing currency value.

4) How well you are coping your campaign with advertising guidelines in your countries? There are several strict guidelines in the UK decided by Advertising Standard Authority. This is especially very important if you are working with alcoholic brands.

5) This year when the VAT rate increased to 20% there was difficulty in online sales for companies according to RSM Tenon; however, there was an increase in online sales before year ending. Lot of companies capitalised the market, for instance John Lewis benefited a lot according to BBC.

If you like the post please share it your friends. I will be writing how to use Pearson coefficient to understand customer buying behaviour and weather in my next post so keep tuning in to iamaceo.

1) How to do Scenario Planning?

2) How to improve cash flow in your organisation?

3) Total Quality Management (TQM)

4) Marketing Healthcare services

5) Multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA)

6) The Power of an MBA

7) ROI calculator for SEO consultants.

But there was  one thing in common to all of the above media , and that was that the marketer talked and the  consumer (audience) listened.  And  so for ages corporates talked  , they were a  part of this one sided conversation . They talked and initially it was  interesting listening to them, it was novel for some time,  creativity  and maybe not that  much of relevance and of-course repetition defined the uptake of the message. We as consumers were hammered with, what to buy when to buy , where to buy it from,  why we needed  something, and we listened , we bought and felt happy. But then things  changed  , there were quite a few fraudulent  claims of utility , of price of quality . And at the same time along came the choice of not listening , the ability to ignore or forward the disruptive corporate messages in the form of TIVO ;s , the spatial continuum was altered, this was specially in relation to television, the thirty second spots were loosing their effectiveness.  At the same time this new wave crossed the world, the wave of getting connected, of talking to each other  , of uniting to  make a difference.  A fight for what they loved and what they loathed, and at  such a time though i cant say that conventional media faded away , however i would say the social wave gained importance.

Any corporate now who at-least is not tuned into the social media space is surely moving towards extinction.   People have found a voice and they are having conversations,  they are connected with other people as well as with brands. They are talking about their day to day lives  , about the products they use, about the products they are satisfied  with , about what they hate. And its time to listen .

they said that the  information age was upone us long tim back , but truly i  think its only now that we are ready for it.

Why

1) look around you , and you will see  people on mobile phones, computers and accessing the web almost every waking minute of their lives.  interacting with some or the other social media platform.  Now its easy to be connected 24 / 7 look at the Iphones  , the blackberry’s and the  i pads.  And this is just the beginning.

2) The social media space is exploding Infact according to recent report  (Nielsen, Global Faces & Networked Places, 2009) 2/3rds of the worlds global population is in the social media space ,  visiting social sites is the 4th most popular online activity ahead of emailing and lastly believe this the social sites usage is growing three time faster than the overall internet usage,

3) Its not just one social media platform that skews these numbers .  facebook if it were a country would be the fourth most populated  in terms of sheer numbers, 13hours of video that is uploaded per minute on you tube  from across the globe,  13000000 the number  of articles available on Wikipedia. 1382% the  increase in twitter usage from jan to feb 2009 .

Now  should we  take social media seriously.   Well now that  ihae gotten your attention , lets lok at how we could use this abundant resource.

Marketers have always been creative and here are a few usages that i have come across

1) for Market research – segmentation , likes dislikes etc etc

2) Beta testing of products

3) Customer service, Complaint management  and CRM  initiatves

4) Branding , branding and some more Branding

5) Customer feedback and Product innovation

6) Generating  Loyalty – the tribe

7) Sales promotions

8) Competitor intelligence gathering

(happy if you could add a  few more usages  here )

I think the Social media space is in actuality appropriate for almost all of the marketing functions , and its useful in almost throughout the product life cycle.  I agree that its not appropriate for all brands as a purely promotional or advertising tool, however none the less its important for the company to atleast observe whats happening in the social media space  in context to their brand and products.  It  keeps a company’s ear to the ground ,  and thus makes it better prepared to respond.

So whatever you do buy your damn senior executives an I pad and tell them to go play . See you there.

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The question as to whether one should indulge in such media as twitter and facebook , or  for that matter of fact  even youtube is now obsolete. I feel that its  only the organizations which are entrenched  in their pasts  and  highly resilient to change  would  refuse to use these tools and  maybe in the future they would see the need for change.

That is not the question that i intend to answer or raise through this post , the questions of today are how to create tribes around your brand ,  or product. Apple has its local communities of apple users who are proud  of their products and loyal to the company to the core, similarly big brands like Harley Davison has its bunch of HOGs  who follow and celebrate the company and its products , they understand the core values at the heart of the Harley and  are entrenched inits culture, they form their own support networks which further  promote and advocate for the product. The question which comes to my mind is how applicable are these communities to the small scale corporates  , or even businesses.  How difficult would it be for a local restaurant or coffee shop to create its followers to advice people in the community as to what are the best dishes to be tried in the place advocates promoting the joint on facebook and twitter ans so and so forth .  How difficult would it be for mom and  pop stores to  develop and foster a community of users.

Another  question  which would be applicable to all such communities which exist  is whats next, do we eat into these communities through repeatedly exposing them to our sellings and discounts.  It is but natural for a marketer once he has created a community to bombard it with sales promotions and  so on and so forth , is this what they are looking for. If not then what is the purpose of creating these communities, should we let them thrive  forming networks within them to form a stronger community and  have limited engagement with them, just to give you an example a  recent membership into a  club has seen me  adding to their followers on facebook and yet every weekend  I am bombarded with the  info of whos the Dj playing there, I dont intend to take any action till im ready , but the constant invasion of my privacy makes me rethink if being a part of this community is something more than what  i bargained for . So the question here my friends is how do we retain these comunities at the same time make the most of them.

A third question that comes to my mind is

specifically in regards to the use of twitter, is twitter the right tool for every corporate, for an  organization on the move  ,example a movie theater or a Event organizer it makes sense as it would be of interest  as to whats happening in the organization , maybe even for the days special menu of a restaurant , but for organizations which are more static do we use twitter effectively and if not then how can we  , do we need to post things on it on a daily  / hourly basis or should it be used sparingly.

Just  some questions of a mind that at times wonders

Intangibility -  Inability to see,  feel, taste, or get an idea about the  service in addition to this these health care  services have further credence qualities  in nature that is even after experiencing the service it is difficult to make a  judgment about how the service was. Ex. For a patient to make a judgment on how good his operation was, or how informative a consultation with a GP was.

Inseparability - Another characteristic of the service is that it is inseparable from the consumer/ client. An operation is not possible without the individual patient being present; it is not possible to guide a patient to his room without him actually being present there at the reception. Another aspect of this is that the individual buying in the service is not only influencing how the service is meted out but is also judging the process by which the service is being provided. Thus it’s not only the final outcome which becomes of importance but also how the service is being provided.

Variability – now comes in the question of what happens when the client himself is involved in the provision of the service or the service delivery process, he / she brings in variability to the process . In addition to this as the service is being provided by a n employee with his or her own basic personality characteristics brings in variation to the process. Thus variability is inevitable in a service provision.

Perishability - the last and one of the most significant dissatisfiers for the health care industry is caused by this characteristic. The Service cannot be stored; you can’t store health checkups ready to be meted out for your customer. Not in the absolute sense atleast. Thus with variations in demands we at times find ourselves less prepared , and  our customers find themselves being shortchanged for the cost they are paying for the services. This is something which happens very often with public health systems of various countries, I guess the long waiting lists  in the NHS are evidence enough .

Only once we have understood these basic characteristics of health care marketing can we be in a position to move forward towards what would be the plausible ways of marketing them.

Though these seem to be very common sense kind of deductions  , but you would be surprised how often the overzealous marketer can fall into traps of overpromise and under delivery due to neglecting these simple  characteristics.

I have seen many a Hospital loose an important corporate account because of inability to deliver what was promised, because of inability to manage crowds within the hospital because of trying to customize a service beyond its limit of elasticity and thus making a complete mess of it.

In my next post we would be talking about the new role of the Healthcare marketer in the new decade as an integrator combining these considerations , in providing health care services .

To elucidate, personal branding is the process of identifying your unique values & characteristics which you can bring into the team and also to the organization. After identifying your uniqueness, communicate it in a professionally memorable & consistent manner in all your thoughts and actions, present it online & offline to all your current and prospective stakeholders.

In fact, many are still unclear about the way to achieve personal brand.

4 Simple Steps

Personal branding can be done in may ways, from my point of view you should be more towards creating buzz about yourself both offline and online.

1) Create a personal blog and write about your unique strengths regularly. Suppose if you are good at “Strategy”, write your strategic points from your point of experience and perspective. It can a strategic advice to companies, governments etc.You can also write about different strategic and its related articles.

2) Create a good social network profile. I prefer LinkedIn as a good social network profile. There are certain tips which can be applied while creating  / updating your profile.

3) Get in touch with respective communities. This is very important, because this is the place where you can network. Try to attend all possible events organized by them. If you are introvert, try to network slowly, once you start proper networking you will be an extrovert.

4) Try to take seminars and presentations when ever you get a chance, try to present your own thoughts this will give you a better stand for you from others.