Matthew Kates

About Matthew Kates

Five New Year’s resolutions for marketers

It may not seem all that surprising, but research shows that only 8% of people who make resolutions each January actually achieve them.

However, no matter the success rate, each year we make certain promises to ourselves to be better than we were the year before – both in our personal and business lives.

Some of the most common resolutions for bettering oneself are not all that far off from our brand goals. Read on to learn how marketers can apply the most common new year’s resolutions to 2015 marketing plans. 

Incentivizing your retailers to drive brand advocacy

When brands focus their attention on advocacy strategies, it usually revolves around turning their best customers into brand advocates.  

After all, word of mouth is a powerful force. However, your sales teams and employees are, more often than not, the greatest brand ambassadors for your company.

Who better than the people closest to your product to share your brand message?

The key to cultivating advocacy from the inside out is to ensure your employees feel invested in your brand’s success. There are many ways to convert your employees from passive sales associates to true brand advocates that help ensure the success of a campaign.

Three ways for marketers to capitalize on live events

Summer is the season for live events like concerts, baseball games, music festivals and more.

Previously seen as simply a one-way advertising opportunity, mobile’s ability to facilitate a conversation with consumers has transformed live events into a key component of cross-channel marketing efforts.

This allows for consumers to become part of the event – whether in person or watching it on television. However, just like any program, a campaign built around a live event requires preparation that identifies goals and key messages to ensure it’s a measurable success.

Arguably this summer’s most talked about sporting event is the World Cup.

And, according to a study conducted by Interactive Advertising Bureau on device usage, nearly half of soccer fans worldwide who own smartphones intend to follow the games via their phone.

Why marketers need to prepare for back to school shoppers now

We’re quickly approaching summer, the time of year when students wrap up the school year and head off to camp, the beach, and a number of other fun activities.

But there is no summer vacation for marketers, who need to turn their attention to developing strategies to capture back to school shoppers when the summer ends in a few short months.

However, deciding who to target with your campaigns, parents or students, can be a challenge.

The good news is that, when it comes to back to school, there are more similarities than differences between the groups.

Three ways to boost customer engagement by thinking like a game designer

Gamification is an effective way for marketers to create fun and engaging experiences for consumers.

While game design is certainly a highly technical skill, marketers do not need to be game designers to create customer-facing campaigns that are engaging and impactful.

Instead, by simply thinking like a game designer, marketers can implement strategies that create well-designed, game-like experiences that motivate consumer behavior.

Three game mechanics you should borrow from Candy Crush

Game mechanics are the building blocks of a successful gamification strategy.

These elements make the experience engaging and fun for the consumer. Points, badges and leaderboards are the go-to mechanics marketers often use to make their programs more engaging, but the mechanics marketers can tap go beyond PBLs (as they’re called among game designers). 

Candy Crush, the social game that is more popular than every other game on Facebook, uses a long list of mechanics to create motivating and addictive experience for the user.

And there are a number of lessons marketers can learn from the torrid success of Candy Crush.

How marketers can use iBeacon to add relevance to location-based targeting

While location based marketing is not a new strategy, iBeacon, Apple’s recently introduced Bluetooth LE-based technology that extends location-based services in iOS, offers exciting new opportunities to engage consumers in retail stores and other destinations.

iBeacon uses Bluetooth 4.0 to pick up signals from Bluetooth-enabled phones. With an advanced API software and transmitter hardware that reaches up to 150 feet, the technology allows businesses to precisely estimate a phone-owner’s location, and exchange data and information.

iBeacons are so efficient that even the largest of stores would only need handful of beacons per floor to enable a high degree of positioning accuracy.

How marketers can drive engagement at every phase of the purchase cycle

It’s not just the moment of purchase that matters. To successfully build customer loyalty requires fresh marketing strategies at every phase of the purchase cycle: before, during, and after.

Before deciding to spend their hard-earned money with your brand, consumers receive countless messages that detail product announcements and ways to save money. To break through this noise, a streamlined and efficient engagement strategy is critical.

At the time of purchase, on the other hand, with consumers facing options from dozens of competitors, brands must change the shopping game to aid consumers in making an educated buying decision.

Finally, after a purchase is made, your brand has a choice of either allowing the customer to walk away in anonymity or continue the conversation by creating an identified and meaningful ongoing relationship.

Four ways to increase social engagement in the New Year

Driving quality engagement with your social audience increases loyalty and more effectively guides consumers down the path to purchase.

As such, marketers must place a premium on fostering social relationships that add tangible value and incentives to the customer experience.

But how can marketers identify the most effective ways to break through the flood of status updates, tweets, pins, and posts?

Read on for four strategies that marketers can integrate in 2014 to make sure social conversations with your audience hit the mark.

How marketers can build loyalty during a long purchase cycle

A key element for loyalty programs, especially in industries like retail and restaurants, is product purchase frequency. Frequently purchased products enable members to earn more reward currency and keep the product and the program top of mind.

Does that mean that products without a high rate of purchase frequency can’t implement a successful loyalty program?

They actually can, it just requires a little creative thinking and a different approach.

A look at Facebook Interests, and what this data can do for marketers

Facebook provides an unparalleled amount of real-time, accurate user data. With Facebook, marketers can be flies on the wall, quietly and unobtrusively gaining insight into their consumers by observing the details they share about their lives.

It is the world’s largest unfiltered focus group for brands to listen to, and it’s arguably the richest CRM database for marketers to take advantage of.

Consumers provide large amounts of data through their Facebook activities, enabling marketers to access far more information about who they are than a survey or poll might reveal. And, thanks to the high-frequency of consumer activity on Facebook, all of this wonderfully rich data is consistently kept up to date.

Best of all, the accessibility of consumer data on Facebook means that marketers can utilize it without interfering in their consumers’ lives.

Three ways for marketers to grow, maintain and drive business with mobile CRM

Consumers use their mobile devices to comparison shop, get directions to a business, or make reservations at their favorite restaurant. But often the communication from brands stops there. 

Businesses of all kinds should be better engaging via mobile with their customers. After all, engaged customers are your most valuable asset: optimising engagement can help you outperform the competition.