Marketing 4.0: Moving from Traditional to Digital (Part 3)

Marketing 4.0: Moving from Traditional to Digital (Part 3)

Concept Synthesis and Local Application:

I am currently the Director for Finance and Accounting Operations at AIG Shared Services Philippines (ROHQ). I used to be an OFW in Libya for 3 years as a Chief Accountant for two large construction firms. Because of the civil war, I was repatriated back to the Philippines and joined AIG back in 2011. It has been 6 years now and my career with AIG and the role has expanded from being a Manager to now a Director for my organization composed of over 200+ people with 15 Managers managing a combination of Gen X, Y and mostly millennial generations of F&A staff. I can consider my digital journey as something experiential and felt like taking the Digital marketing course will really compliment my strong finance and accounting background. With the hope of applying whatever I learned from taking this course.

Part 3: Tactical Marketing Applications in the Digital Economy

8 Human-Centric Marketing for Brand Attraction

1.      Understanding Humans Using Digital Anthropology

Digital Anthropology focuses on the relationship between humanity and digital technology, the interaction between human and technology as well as how humans behave in the context of technology and how humans use technology to interact with each other. In the context of human-centric marketing, digital anthropology provides a powerful way of discovering the human’s latent anxieties and desires that brands should address. Social listening, netnography and emphatic research are some of the most common digital anthropology tools used to uncover these. In my (AIG) company’s industry, the latest trend is the use of “InsureTech” or insurance technologies that actually aims to understand the interaction between the technology and human and the interactions the technology brings to humans. Customer conversations are being captured as great inputs to its own market research process in aid of capturing not just the compliments to the products or services they bought with us but gather complaints and negative sentiments or the experience over-all as well.

2.      Building the 6 Attributes of Human-Centric Brands

Physicality, intellectuality, sociability, emotionality, personability, and morality are the attributes of human-centric brands. These are powerful traits that influence customers as their friends, without necessarily overpowering them. On Physicality, customers tend to be attracted with the physical attributes on initial contact and one that is as tangible as the company’s logo. On intellectuality, customers tend to build connection with products that are innovative and products that are not previously conceived like Uber or AirBnB. On sociability, customers advocate products that are able to engage them through healthy conversations through the different communications media and responsive to customer’s inquiries and complaints. On emotionality, brands that evoke emotions can drive favorable customer actions. The emotional connection is always felt by the customer naturally. On personability, the brands should know both its strength and weaknesses or flaws and brave enough to embrace the weaknesses and improve. On morality, the brands should naturally show or demonstrate its ethical standards and strong integrity in all its positioning and strategies/business model as their key differentiator.

3.      Summary: When Brands Become Humans

More and more, brands are adopting human qualities to attract customers in the human-centric era. This requires unlocking customers' latent anxieties and desires through social listening, netnography, and emphatic research. To effectively address these anxieties and desires, marketers should build the human side of their brands. The brands should be physically attractive; intellectually compelling, socially engaging, and emotionally appealing while at the same time demonstrate strong personability and morality. AIG as a brand always live up to its culture – both mission and vision and core values. It maintains a strong position in terms of branding its product as displaying the good human qualities that is attractive, compelling, engaging and appealing to its target customers.

a.       What are the deepest anxieties and desires of your customers?

In the insurance industry, our customers’ biggest/deepest anxiety is really the fear of the future. With AIG’s mission, we aim to reduce the fear of the future and empower them. The products that AIG offers aim to bridge the gap between the uncertain future and the present by continuously assuring them that we will be partners in the journey of life with the promise that we will be there during their need, e.g. speedy processing of insurance claims. It has been the reputation of the company to make difficult promises but keep and honor them always. For example during the 2008 Global financial crises, AIG was bailed-out by US Federal government but barely right after four years, AIG was able to repay the government with both the principal and the interest of the loan, as it promised.

b.      Does your brand possess human qualities? What can you do to make it more human?

AIG possess these human qualities and attributes - Physicality, intellectuality, sociability, emotionality, personability, and morality. On Physicality, as tangible as the company’s logo, the company connects with its customers. On intellectuality, innovative and products that are not previously conceived like cyber insurance is now in the market. On sociability, AIG engage their customers through healthy conversations through the different communications media and responsive to customer’s inquiries and complaints. On emotionality, AIG evoke emotions that can drive favorable customer actions by appealing to their security needs or their needs in the future. The emotional connection is always felt by the customer naturally. On personability, AIG is brave enough to embrace its flaws/weaknesses and improve based on the feedback it gets from its customers. On morality, AIG demonstrates its ethical standards and strong integrity in its positioning and strategies/business model as their key differentiator. To make AIG more human, it should aim to continuously improve/develop itself, just as humans aim to be better than what they were in the past through the constant learning and development process.

 

9 Content Marketing for Brand Curiosity (Initiating Conversations with Powerful Storytelling)

1.      Content is the New Ad, #Hashtag is the New Tagline

Content marketing shifts the role of marketers from brand promoters to storytellers, where hashtags has replaced the traditional taglines. In today’s world of internet connectivity, the challenge is how to keep your customers who are exposed to different influences – family, friends, or community opinions on your brands. Nowadays when customers are also exposed to user-generated content they find more credible and significantly more appealing, it gives them options or variety in whatever, whenever they intend to consume it. Content marketing is regarded as more effective as well as most cost-efficient but must also be complimented by traditional advertising or marketing. Advertising differs from content as the latter aims to provide its customers information to use for their own personal and professional objectives. With content, the shift is on the focus from brands and it’s equity to the customers and to what it values.

2.      Step-by-Step Content Marketing

Content marketing involves content production and distribution. But before marketers even engage with the production and distribution, proper pre-production and post-distribution activities should be done as well as due diligence to achieve the optimal results. Distribution of content should be done using the best mix of channels. On Step1. Goal Setting, without a clearly defined goals, whether (a) sales-related goals or (b) brand-related goals, marketers will tend to get lost when they deep dive into content and distribution. On Step2. Audience mapping, defining a specific audience will help in sharper and deeper content creation, which in turn contributes to the brand’s effective storytelling. On Step3.  Content Ideation and planning, it involves critical decision as to (a) relevant themes – connecting the brand’s stories to customer’s anxiety and desires, (b) suitable formats – consider multiple formats to ensure content visibility and accessibility. E.g. press releases, articles, newsletters, white papers, case studies, and even books, and (c) solid content-marketing narrative – often episodic, with different small story arcs that support the overall storyline. On Step4. Content Creation, the most important step which is a continuous and demanding process that requires precision and consistency, enormous commitment in terms of resources – time, budget, etc. in order to create entertaining and compelling stories. On Step5. Content Distribution, marketers need to ensure their content reach or be discovered by their intended audience through proper distribution through the media channels :(a) owned, (b) paid and (c) earned media. On Step6. Content Amplification, once content reach the intended audience groups, key is to secure and build a win/win situation with the influencers, as they have the power and influence to make a content go viral. On Step7. Content Marketing Evaluation, post-distribution step that evaluates the achievement of its sales-related and brand-related goals as well as other useful metrics that measure whether the content is visible (aware), relatable (appeal), searchable (ask), actionable (act), and shareable (advocate).On Step8. Content Marketing Improvement, since content is dynamic, periodic improvements of content marketing is essential by looking at the performance and evaluation of (a) content theme, (b) content format, and (c) distribution channel, through a persistent and consistent implementation of the content marketing plan.

3.      Summary: Creating Conversations with Content

More and more marketers are making the shift from advertising to content marketing. A mindset shift is required. Instead of delivering value-proposition messages, marketers should be distributing content that is useful and valuable for the customers. In developing content marketing, marketers often focus on content production and content distribution. However, good content marketing also requires proper pre-production and post-distribution activities. Therefore, there are eight major steps of content marketing that marketers should follow in order to initiate customer conversations. Marketers should listen to conversations taking place about their content. This can be overwhelming at times considering the magnitude of the conversations and the number of media involved. Thus, marketers must carefully select the conversations in which they want to participate.

a.       What is the content that you think will be valuable to your customers?

I always think the content that will be regarded as valuable to AIG’s customers is about two things (1) the uncertainty of the future and (2) the security and reliability that customers can get out of its partnership with the brand, having a great reputation of making difficult promises and integrity in keeping them. In AIG’s mission, reducing the fear of the future is the main ingredient of its brand positioning which is appealing to its targeted audience. AIG must capitalize on this by using this storyline to create content that will focus on these things. Together, it must listen to conversations taking place about the content and use this as leverage to influence outcomes in the execution of their overall content marketing plan. Collaboration is always a part of the strategy in order to solve our client’s problem as embodied in the company’s vision/mission and culture.

b.      How can the content tell a story about your brand?

The content should appeal to millennials making up almost 3 quarters of the entire Insurance population/customers. Millennials expect instant results as they tap through their smartphones. If they can deposit a check or book a flight in seconds, they expect insurers to provide the same: instant quote, policy issuance, and claims submission all through a mobile app. Insurers need to evolve to deliver on millennial expectations, just like most industries have already done. That means using digital technology to create simple, easy user interfaces (UIs) and processes. Answering the question how the content tells the story about the AIG brand, the answer starts with flexibility of the content created as part of the digital branding. Digital tools require two key components: (1) a simple, easy-to-use UI and (2) a flexible back end. Both elements can provide instant approvals and exceptional customer experience. Impressive UI layers and mobile aps don’t offer much value unless the processes themselves are digital. Real transformation begins deep within the process layer and data core processing systems.

c.       How do you plan to execute your content-marketing strategy?

AIG’s content marketing strategy should undergo careful planning in order to execute it properly. This means it should undergo pre-production, production, distribution and post-distribution planning steps in order to execute the plans properly. While in the process of executing the plans, the company should listen to customer conversations happening simultaneously and adopt and adjust accordingly, and be flexible and persistent enough to follow through. Modern marketers also need to compliment the traditional marketing strategy with its digital content marketing strategy in order to win the hearts/minds of insurance customers with the aim to converting them into advocates of the brand.

10 Omnichannel Marketing for Brand Commitment (Integrating Traditional and Digital Media and Experiences)

1.      The Rise of Omnichannel Marketing

The trends on (a) mobile commerce, (b) webrooming, (c) showrooming and (d) channel analytics are important for marketers to understand given that they enhance and integrate brands’ sales and communication channels to deliver a holistic omnichannel experience. On mobile commerce, the speed of delivery is often as important as the product or the service itself. It is of the closest proximity and most convenient to reach the customers. On webrooming, is about bringing the simplicity and immediacy of webrooming experience into offline shopping experience and allows offline channels to engage customers with the relevant digital content that facilitates purchase decisions. On showrooming, is about bringing the compelling benefits of offline shopping to online channels or utilizing the human-to-human connections while shopping online. On big data analytics, is about capturing the data and interpreting the data in such a way that it helps the company anticipate the next move of the customer, anticipate future customer demands and manage their inventories.

2.      Step-by-Step Omnichannel Marketing

On Step 1: Map All Possible Touchpoints and Channels across the Customer Path – the overlapping touchpoint roles (direct and indirect customer interaction) and channels (online and offline, communication and sales channels) to ensure that customers undergo a seamless and coherent experience from end to end across the customer’s path. More touchpoints and channels lead to more market coverage for the brand but will also mean more complex design for a coherent omnichannel marketing strategy. The key is finding the right balance between the right market coverage and simplicity of the omnichannel marketing strategy. On Step 2: Identify the Most Critical Touchpoints and Channels – is about planning and identifying the most critical touchpoints and channels in which the company will commit its limited resources in creating a seamless and consistent experience across touchpoints and channels that matters the most or in essence will give the most benefit for the company. On Step 3: Improve and Integrate the Most Critical Touchpoints and Channels – is about getting the most out of the identified most critical touchpoints and channels and unifying the objectives to deliver the best customer experience while getting the most output or sales from the omnichannel marketing.

3.      Summary: Integrating the Best of Online and Offline Channels

Customers hop from one channel to another and expect a seamless and consistent experience. To address this new reality, marketers are integrating online and offline channels in an attempt to drive customers all the way on their path to purchase. Marketers should aim to combine the best of both worlds—the immediacy of online channels and the intimacy of offline channels. To effectively do this, marketers should focus on the touchpoints and channels that really matter and engage employees in the organization to support the omnichannel marketing strategy. AIG has integrated the best of online and offline channels and have optimized the output/sales from its omnichannel marketing strategy.

a.       What are the most important customer touchpoints and channels for your business?

Due to the nature of the product which is insurance, important in terms of the customer touchpoints for AIG are the touchpoints across the customer’s path from aware stage – learning about the products, act stage – purchasing the product, using the product and servicing/claims filing and advocate stage – in which customers freely recommend the products to others. In terms of the channel – both communication and sales channel, the contact center is key to the business. In our business, most of the interactions between the company and the customers happen through our contact center operations where we receive multitude of calls from inquiry to customer complaints or kudos to the overall experience in procuring any of the life and non-life insurance being offered by the company. Also sales force and e-commerce websites are key to reaching out to more customers through education and offering of new lines of business or securing new business.

b.      Have you aligned the channels to support a seamless and consistent experience?

AIG has carefully thought the alignment of both the (a) sales and (b) communication channel. Most interactions happen between our contact center and the customers. Although sales force and e-commerce websites are contributory to the over-all consistent customer experience, most  critical are the handling of customers inquiries and complaints by our well-trained contact center agents and is key not just to maintaining them but to providing the best customer experience that will differentiate us from our competitors in a highly competitive insurance industry.

11 Engagement Marketing for Brand Affinity (Harnessing the Power of Mobile Apps, Social CRM and Gamification)

1.      Enhancing Digital Experiences with Mobile Apps

As customers rely heavily on smartphones to perform different activities, the more it becomes a focal point for every company to invest in leveraging Mobile Apps (as a customer engagement tactic) to enhance the digital experience of its customers. Of course this will require careful planning to ensure that the company will engage its customers through the mobile or smartphone Apps. The mobile apps work in different ways such as (a) it can be launched as media for content, (b) can be launched as self-service channels through which customers access their account information or make transactions, and (c) can be integrated to the core product or experience. With the mobile apps, customers now have access to brands in their pockets which give them convenience mostly. At the same time, companies can make cost savings by having the most effective and efficient customer interface. To develop a good mobile app, marketers must go through several steps. The first thing they must do is to determine the use cases—that is, the objectives that customers aim to achieve by using the app. The next step is to design the key functionalities and the user interface. Finally, marketers need to think about the back-end supports that are required to make the user experience flawless. As with AIG customers, who are mostly millennials and who can deposit a check or book a flight in seconds, they expect insurers to provide the same: instant quote, policy issuance, and claims submission all through a mobile app. Insurers need to evolve to deliver on millennial expectations, just like most industries have already done. That means using digital technology to create simple, easy user interfaces (UIs) and processes through carefully planned mobile apps that will enhance the customer experience.

2.      Providing Solutions with Social CRM

Connecting to customers through social media has become one of the key areas the companies must focus on. As customers experience positive social customer care tends to become advocates. In such context, social CRM (as a customer engagement tactic)—the use of social media to manage brand interactions with the customers and build long-term relationships—will be an essential tool for customer engagement. Its purpose is to; (a) listen to the voice of the customer, (b) involve in the general conversation and (c) handle complaints that potentially lead to brand crises. For AIG, Social CRM is centrally managed by our dedicated call center team. They are the ones initiating, listening and joining in the customer conversations to hear the voice of the customers and hear their sentiments and complaints. Their role is critical to addressing the most pressing issues with our customers which mostly are in the customer claims processing. Any unnecessary delays will have a huge effect in the customer retention metrics of the company which is their primary concern or focal point. In a tightly-contested insurance industry where the product is also the service, key to translating customers to advocates is to maintain the overall positive customer experience through the use of an effective social CRM.

3.      Driving Desired Behavior with Gamification

Another key customer engagement tactic is Gamification which uses gratification (instant or accumulated) or through a tiering/point or rewards system. First of all, gamification takes advantage of human desires to achieve higher goals and to be recognized for their achievements. Some customers are motivated by rewards, and some are motivated by self-actualization. As with games, there is also a certain level of addiction involved in pursuing higher tiers. Thus, customers have continuous interactions with the companies, creating stronger affinity. Key area of gamification is collecting customer data which are useful for customization and personalization of customers’ needs and behavioral patterns. As for my company-AIG, this is one area that the company has not tapped yet. In the insurance business, it is not common to offer such concept of gamification through a tiering or rewards system. In order to tap this customer engagement tactic, a careful and deliberate planning has to take place to ensure success.

4.      Summary: Mobile Apps, Social CRM and Gamification

Mobile apps, Social CRM and Gamification are some of the most useful customer engagement tactics that companies can employ. But just like any other marketing techniques, it needs careful planning before the actual execution. Key success factors in the implementation of the tactics are to measure both the efficiency and effectiveness of its plan of action for these techniques. In the digital era where increasing customer engagement has become critical not just to maintaining but to widening any brands’ market share, use of these three popular techniques will be a game-changer.

a.       How can mobile apps, social CRM, and gamification help you engage your customers?

For Mobile Apps - AIG customers who are mostly millennials and who can deposit a check or book a flight in seconds, they expect insurers to provide the same: instant quote, policy issuance, and claims submission all through a mobile app. Insurers need to evolve to deliver on millennial expectations, just like most industries have already done. That means using digital technology to create simple, easy user interfaces (UIs) and processes through carefully planned mobile apps that will enhance the customer experience. As with Social CRM which is centrally managed by our dedicated call center team. They are the ones initiating, listening and joining in the customer conversations to hear the voice of the customers and hear their sentiments and complaints. Their role is critical to addressing the most pressing issues with our customers which mostly are in the customer claims processing. Any unnecessary delays will have a huge effect in the customer retention metrics of the company which is their primary concern or focal point. In a tightly-contested insurance industry where the product is also the service, key to translating customers to advocates is to maintain the overall positive customer experience through the use of an effective social CRM. Gamification on the other hand has not been tapped but in general for the insurance industry, this is something normal. If the gamification as a customer engagement technique will be tapped, a careful planning must be done to optimize the results out of it.

b.      What are the challenges of executing customer engagement programs in your business?

The common challenges in executing customer engagement programs in the insurance business/industry are the following; (a) Customer engagement is not strategic, (b) No defined customer engagement process, (c) Focus is usually not on the customer (it’s an internal process), (d) Reward system have no customer engagement metrics, and (e) Not all functions or people in the organization think customer engagement is their job. In addition to setting and executing strategy through people, today’s leaders must also focus on creating a culture where customer engagement is embraced, measured, acknowledged, and is the subject of non-stop continuous improvement. The customer engagement aspect should always be embedded in the culture of the company rather than it being just a program – one that has a start and end. Execution should come as natural as the blowing of the wind for companies who have embraced customer engagement as something core to its identity or culture or as a key differentiator in an insurance industry that offers very tight competition.

Epilogue: Getting to Wow (Enjoy, Experience, Engage)

1.      What is a “WOW?”

A WoW moment is something (a) surprising, (b) personal and (c) contagious. For companies, WoW moment will advocate and spread the good news to many others. This is what drives customers to advocacy in the customer path. Instead of leaving the Wow factors to chance, companies and brands can influence it by designing strategy, infrastructure, processes, and train people to deliver WoW across the customer path. Winning, securing and maintaining advocates of the WoW experience will secure not just the market share in the industry where the company operates but assure it of free advertisers that will fight for the brand being advocates and not merely customers.

2.      Enjoy, Experience, Engage: Wow!

Key to securing the WoW factor is for companies and brands to ensure the customer's point of view of (a) enjoyment, (b) experience, and (c) engagement are secured. Ultimately goal is to secure the highest level of customer engagement and enable them to self-actualize, and design life-transforming personalization on top of the customer experience that addresses individual customer's anxieties and desires.

3.      Are you ready to WOW?

Winning companies and brands are those that do not leave WOW moments to chance. They create WOW by design. They productively guide customers from awareness to advocacy. They creatively step up customer interactions from enjoyment to experience to engagement. But in order to do this, customer engagement aspect should always be embedded in the culture of the company (something natural) as a WoW factor rather than it being just a program – one that has a start and end. Execution should come as natural as the blowing of the wind for companies who have embraced customer engagement as something core to its identity or culture or as a key differentiator in an insurance industry that offers very tight competition.