Burning Questions
Jul
How to Market Your Software Company in 5 Steps
jerry9789 0 comments Brand Surveys and Testing, Brandview World, Burning Questions
According to Investopedia, only 80% of startups survived after one year, with reasons for failure ranging from money running out, being in the wrong market, lack of research, bad partnerships, ineffective marketing, and not being an expert in the industry. As a counterpoint, they cite activities such as setting goals, accurate research, loving the work, and not quitting as ways a small business can avoid failing.
Is it really that simple? Maybe not, but here at Cascade Strategies we believe it’s at least reducible to a clear step-by-step process. Here are our ideas — 5 steps on how to market your software company effectively.
1. Identify brand, goals and what makes your company unique
The first step in marketing a software (or company in general) is to determine your strategy by identifying and building around your goals. In addition to generating revenue, are you planning to establish a niche in your market? Is it also in your plans to continually develop your software through organic user feedback? You will also need to come up with a brand that not only aligns with the goals you come up with, but also helps you stand out from the competition. With thousands of software companies in the market, you’ll need to highlight what makes your software unique and what new or different property you bring to the table. A clear identity not only makes your brand more recognizable, but also makes it more strongly connected to the values you represent, leading to the formation and promotion of your reputation.
2. Identify target audience, especially the decision maker
Part of a marketing strategy is recognizing not only who you should be selling to but also who will most likely convert to a loyal customer. Through demographics, psychographics and segmentation, you’ll be able to form or identify your ideal customer and thus focus your marketing efforts on this particular client type. However, it works a little differently with Software as a Service (SaaS), since you will often need to appeal to a specific decision maker at a company (i.e., a specific title) who will have the strongest hand in choosing your particular software over competitors. You can confront this problem by not only flaunting what your software does best but also extolling the benefits it brings to the workplace in terms of productivity and efficiency.
3. Create a strong online presence (website, social media, SEO, email marketing, influencer marketing, video marketing)
As a software company, it’s vital that online marketing be part of your strategy. You can utilize traditional marketing, but online marketing offers more advantages when it comes to product promotion and customer engagement. For starters, it’s more cost effective and gets faster results. Webfx.com goes into detail regarding the advantages online or digital marketing possesses over traditional channels here.
Your website will need to be optimized for both SEO (so you rank in search pages) and function (so you effectively represent the quality of your brand). A slow or glitchy software company website won’t bode well for the performance of the product you’re selling. Keep your websites and social media pages up-to-date and active as much as possible to make them welcoming and inviting for customer interaction and feedback. Try to maintain your online presence on more than one social media page. Teamdeck said it best on the importance of social media: If a company doesn’t exist on social media, it looks suspicious.
Collaborate with influencers with similar values who have a following matching your intended audience. Reputable influencers can greatly help boost product sales and trust by lending their credibility to your offering. And don’t forget coming up with relevant and appealing videos: the essential message of lengthy prose literature can be delivered just as effectively and in lesser time with a well-made video.
4. Personalize or be relatable (origin story, client success stories, face-to-face meetings, events or interactions, what common problem you want to solve and how your product solves it)
Software companies can run the risk of employing too much technical jargon in their marketing, so why not try the more personable, relatable approach? Develop a simple but well-written account of how your company started or an entertaining retelling of the original question or dilemma that you sought to resolve through the development of your software. Even better if this question or dilemma can be framed in a common or everyday situation that most people can relate to.
Client success stories are just as effective as direct customer testimonials might be in similar situations. Potential customers might be encouraged to use or continue to use your product knowing it can be instrumental in the resolution of the problems they’re facing. But these are not the only places where you can be relatable. Face-to-face meetings or events to promote your product or engage with your customers can bring your company out of any cold, impersonal impression they might otherwise have.
5. Let prospective clients experience your product (demos, Freemium, free trial/limited time offers)
And to tie into the last point, personal events also present the opportunity for demos. Just imagine all those prospects you can convert by giving them firsthand experience with your product while offering them real-time assistance with any questions or problems they might have. Live demos are one of the best ways to show off what your software does best while forming a connection to a prospective client. Of course, you’re not only limited to demos, as you can also let customers experience your product with free trial/limited time offers and Freemium subscriptions. The latter allows prospects to enjoy some basic features of your software without the time pressure of the former. This way, they’re able to get a good feel for how they can benefit from your software and perhaps edge closer to a Premium subscription to unlock more features.
Copyright Mohamed_hassan (Pixabay)
These 5 steps should help get you out the door in creating a good marketing strategy for your software company. But as pointed out by feedough.com, once people start using your software, you need to keep them engaged so they renew their subscription and recommend it to others. Maintain the relationships you form with your customers by continually following these outlined steps, making reasonable adjustments every now and then as the market and trends shift.
Some further reading:
https://www.webfx.com/industries/tech/software/
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/7-effective-marketing-strategies-software-companies-shahmeer-khan
https://teamdeck.io/toolbox/marketing-strategy-for-a-software-house-what-should-it-include/
https://www.feedough.com/software-marketing-strategy/
https://blog.tmetric.com/7-marketing-strategies-for-software-development-companies/
Jun
Kyle Byers of Exploding Topics has written recently about nine key trends in the CPG industry. We’d like to focus on those nine trends below, add one of our own, and talk about how market research has responded to these trends.
From food and drinks to apparel and cosmetics, consumer packaged goods (CPG) are a vital part of everyday life for most consumers and households. Since these products are mostly disposable, there is a regular need and consistent demand for replenishment or replacement, forming the basis for a competitive environment for all brands.
The CPG market has significantly and steadily grown despite the competition and even more so with the COVID-19 pandemic. It was valued at $2.06 trillion in 2021 and with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 3.5%, it is estimated to reach $2.8 trillion by 2030.
In addition to the pandemic, new technologies and consumption habits have contributed to the rapidly changing face of the CPG industry. From direct to consumer (DTC) to sustainability to product personalization, we’ll take a closer look at 10 of the most important trends impacting the CPG industry right now.
1. Legacy CPG Companies Join DTC
DTC online sales growth in 2022 is estimated at $138.03 billion, so you can understand why CPG industry stalwarts couldn’t ignore the DTC wave any longer, joining the trend three ways. First by acquiring competitors, like Unilever who counts Dollar Shave Club, Schmidt’s Naturals and UK-based Graze among its many DTC acquisitions since 2015. Second, they are launching entirely new brands, like Procter & Gamble’s EC30 which is an eco-oriented brand of dissolvable, solid-form soaps and cleaning products. And thirdly, by launching DTC sites like PepsiCo’s PantryShop.com and Snacks.com. These sites went up during the Coronavirus pandemic and PepsiCo nearly doubled their DTC sales in Q3 2020.
2. CPG Startups Emerge to Make Their Mark
Without a middleman and the need for retail shelf space, the DTC business model fosters competition. Many DTC startups use a subscription model to generate steady and recurring revenue, allowing them to take a bite out of the market at the expense of traditional CPG brands. For example, Gillette saw its 70% share of the US razor market go down under 50% within a decade due to competition from Dollar Shave Club and Harrys.
3. More Retailers Launch Private Label Brands
Availability issues during the pandemic have partly contributed to the popularity of private-label products. With 65% of shoppers saying they’ll switch brands if prices are too high, being an affordable alternative also helps private-label brands gain ground in the market. Think Amazon’s private-label clothing brand Goodthreads, which is competing against big brands H&M, Levi’s, and Uniqlo. Better margins and direct control over product development have also convinced retailers like Walmart and Kroger to launch their own consumer brands.
4. Faster and Easier Delivery Than Ever Before
With the pandemic pushing e-commerce into overdrive, access to faster and easier delivery options is becoming a key point in purchasing decisions, according to 68% of shoppers in a recent survey. 85% of online shoppers say they will search for someplace else if the delivery time is too long, while 30% of consumers expect same-day delivery. This need for speed has given rise to dedicated fast-delivery CPG retailers like GoPuff who are offering to deliver not in days or even hours but in minutes.
Copyright Pixabay (Pexels)
5. Focus on The Omni-Channel CPG Shopping Experience
More and more CPG brands and retailers are pushing for omni-channel shopping, allowing a smooth and seamless purchasing experience across different devices, or even between in-store and online. To illustrate: Sephora enhanced in-store experience by letting customers access their online shopping lists called “Loves” on large screens inside stores with the help of in-store tablets. Compared to single-channel brands, CPG companies that utilize at least three retail channels have shown a 287% higher purchase rate.
6. Expanded Omni-Channel CPG Marketing
CPG companies are also leveling up their marketing with a more omni-channel approach. TV ads, product placements, PR, and digital marketing methods like PPC ads, which have proven their effectiveness time and time again, are now joined by the new kid on the block: influencer marketing. Even with as few as 1,000 social media followers, “micro” and “nano” influencers are able to deliver results for CPG brands tapping into these smaller, more focused niche experts.
7. Sustainability and Clear Brand Values Are More Important Than Ever
Another thing that the pandemic accelerated is the rise of green consumerism. Many consumers, mainly Gen Z, now avoid brands that don’t align with their stance on the environment and other sustainability issues. 53% of Internet users have expressed intentions to switch products or services if a company violates their personal values or they weren’t sustainability-focused.
8. Self-Care Product Demand Is Rising
The pandemic also brought to the fore holistic self-care, where consumers use multiple products to optimize their health and wellness. Skincare products are now outselling makeup, thanks to millennials who spend more on self-care than any previous generation, and CPG brands like CeraVe and DRMTLGY who have jumped at this opportunity.
Products containing cannabidiol, also known as CBD, were not legal nationwide in the US until 2018. Now, CBD products are a rapidly growing part of the self-care category, with sales at $4.6 billion in 2020 and expected growth of over $16 billion in 2026.
9. Growing Popularity of Product Personalization
Offering a personalized experience through product quizzes can boost e-commerce conversion rates while building direct, one-to-one relationships with customers. This was the goal behind beauty brand Tatcha offering personalization via its Ritual Finder tool.
In fact, 71% of consumers expect personalized interactions according to McKinsey. Conversely, 76% get frustrated when they don’t get them. 60% of consumers say they’ll become repeat customers after a personalized shopping experience.
Copyright Polina Tankilevitch
10. Gen Z Is Becoming a Major Part Of The Consumer Market
We’ve hinted this earlier, but this trend is just as impactful as the others, especially with the $143 billion of spending power that allows Gen Z to make up 40% of the entire global consumer market. With the shift to digital commerce, companies need to find creative and effective ways to tap into this massive demographic group and understand their buying patterns, especially with regard to social media. Did you know that 97% of Gen Z purchasing decisions are heavily influenced by social media, with 48% of consumers now likely to purchase directly from TikTok?
How Market Research Has Responded to These Trends
Based on these trends, we can assume the CPG market is moving into a personalized and multi-channel direction where leading brands are recognized not only for their competitive price points but also for their value propositions. There are four key ways in which the Market Research industry has responded to these trends and provided newer and more incisive tools for understanding consumer behavior.
1. The Shift from Perceptual Research to Transactional Research
Pandemic restrictions have long been lifted and brick-and-mortar locations have reopened, but there’s no denying that consumers have embraced e-commerce and the convenience it offers. Consumers will still appreciate the opportunity to test products in person with in-store shopping, but when there isn’t such a necessity, e-commerce becomes the go-to sales channel. This is especially true for those who have already established loyalty to a particular brand. Following this trend, there’s been a seismic shift away from perceptual research dealing with the in-store experience to customer research dealing mainly with degree of satisfaction at certain touchpoints in the e-commerce funnel.
Brand and Insights Managers increasingly seek hard metrics to support specific e-commerce initiatives, including product depictions on small and large screens, comparative text descriptions, active displays involving motion, sound, and animation, features such as reviews, promotion codes, side-by-side comparisons, visual try-it-on-yourself options, and options for shipping, group discounts, buy-now-pay-later offers, and repeat-purchase and subscription-purchase offers. While perceptual research can guide them in a general way, the degree-of-satisfaction metrics at these touchpoints in the shopping experience deliver more hard value to the decision maker who is tasked with determining the effectiveness of e-commerce marketing methods.
2. From Qualitative to Quantitative Methodologies
Another development is the shift away from common qualitative methodologies to quantitative methodologies. For example, years ago there was much more exploration of the spatial shopping experience via in-person focus groups, shop-alongs, visual diaries, ethnographies, and the like. A good deal of that has transitioned to quantitative research using direct metrics such as scalar degree-of-satisfaction measures delivered via web and text.
Fundamentally, the need-to-know among contemporary Brand Managers and Insights Managers is not so much “how does my brand’s expression attract consumers?” as it is “how satisfied are consumers with their experiences with my brand?” The first concern was well served by a variety of qualitative methodologies. While it’s still an active concern, it has declined somewhat, while the second concern has become white-hot. Quantitative methodologies on the whole do a better job of serving this second concern than qualitative methodologies do, especially given that brand “experiences” in the current day are less spatial and more virtual. This makes it easier to ask a consumer a transactional question such as “how did it go for you?” while the consumer’s mind is still fresh on the subject.
3. Less Packaging Research
There was a 30-year fascination – even obsession in some cases – with intriguing methodologies in packaging research, pioneered by big packaged goods companies like P&G, PepsiCo, Unilever, etc. These included eye tracking, neurometrics, GSR measurement, EKG measurement, facial coding, Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality simulations, million-dollar “cave” immersive environments, and more. These methodologies are still very much alive, but their application is different. At one time they were widely applied to virtually any inquiry associated with packaging or any stage in the PLM journey: product ideation, prototyping, functional testing, price/value research, comparative attribute research, virtual or physical shelf testing, test marketing, advertising, and even compliance. Now the applications are more narrowly focused on specific research outcomes, and maybe that’s a good thing.
For example, the fragrance people still love biometric methods, and the website testing people still love eye tracking. The people doing that research have specific research outcomes in mind, and these outcomes are often metric rather than perceptual. Are psychic arousals produced by certain aromas? Where do the eyes go when looking at a web page? These questions can be answered metrically via the biometric data. And these are experimental venues where the brain-body response can legitimately be expected to be driven by environmental stimuli – at least enough to be measured by instruments.
As a result, there’s less packaging research in the packaged goods business. The truth is that there’s less keen interest among Brand and Insights Managers in whether the packaging is compelling in a spatial retail environment. There’s more interest in the transaction itself. Brand and Insights Managers want to learn less about the motivations and behaviors involved in wanting the product and more about the motivations and behaviors involved in buying the product.
4. Systems as a Source of Insight
There is also now a greater focus on systems as a source of insight. For years, market research was the primary source of brand insight, so humans were involved by definition. Now the dominant sentiment is that insights come from machines, and humans tend the machines.
Marketing decision-makers are often heavily engaged in the determination of which analytics platform(s) will be implemented at their company, installing the platform and training users, maintaining the security of that platform, licensing issues, system upgrades, patches, maintenance advisories, hardware issues, and more. None of this has anything to do with deriving insights for the brand.
Copyright PhotoMIX-Company
The thought pattern here is that this time is well spent because insights arise from machines, not human effort. A human-focused effort to produce brand insights is still occasionally used, but it’s sort of like a landline phone: interesting but not contemporary.
Brand and Insights Managers in the current day have a passing interest in human-focused market research when the machines cannot produce the insight or do a poor job of it. An example would be the development of a vibrant persona for the brand, or a comprehensive market segmentation scheme involving all competitive brands. Systems and platforms can actually do this (including AI-assisted systems and platforms), but their outcomes are invariably suboptimal. The systems are recursive, and they therefore regurgitate the best-available summarizations of the data inputs they receive. Since they don’t have the intuitive, interpretive, and synthesis-building power of the human brain (especially the right brain), they cannot extrapolate to the level of excellence in their outcomes. In other words, they render mediocrity permanent.
It takes a brain strain – a smart person or two striving with higher intuitive/interpretive layers of thinking and understanding to discover solutions that cannot be reached by simply summarizing human experience on a topic – to produce excellence in these outcomes. The greater unanswered question is whether Brand and Insight Managers want excellence. These managers may be a little more system- and process-driven in their thinking, and they therefore may prefer a large volume of mediocre solutions rather than a single solution at the level of excellence.
How We Approach These Issues at Cascade Strategies
There’s currently a raging debate about the appropriateness and utility of applying AI instruments, especially ChatGPT, to marketing questions typically answered by market research and discussed in this article. Our point of view on this topic can be summarized by the term “Appropriate Use.”
Clearly, there’s big first-party data involved with these CPG trends, especially with DTC. While AI-powered analysis and interpretation of this big data can efficiently and quickly produce objective and accurate results, there is a space that AI is unable to touch and thus falls short of effectively leveraging data to make informed decisions. This area is where the intuitive, interpretive, and synthesis-building capacities of the right brain excel. Here data-driven decision-making could potentially access a different yet extraordinary set of insights, themes and recommendations anchored by human values and experience.
But sophisticated solutions at this level – the level of excellence – might remain undiscovered since machines don’t have the ability to relate to the data on an intuitive and interpretive level. A more enlightened “Appropriate Use” concept, which elevates the role of human inspiration and agency, could lead to more innovative and creative ideas about how CPG companies can optimize operations, forecast sales, develop products, enhance marketing strategies, focus on the most profit-optimal consumers, and develop the most compelling messages for those consumers.
For 33 years Cascade Strategies has demonstrated the capacity to maintain this kind of machine-versus-man balance for leading worldwide companies and thus produce excellence in thinking and outcomes. Please see examples of our higher thinking for clients at https://cascadestrategies.com.
Jun
Great Research Can Help Assisted Living Facilities Attract the Right Clients
jerry9789 0 comments Brand Surveys and Testing, Brandview World, Burning Questions
Is your loved one’s home not as clean and tidy as before? Do they have an empty refrigerator or is it filled with spoiled food? Frequent bruises? Same clothes every day? Do they appear to become forgetful, depressed or exhibiting strange or inappropriate behaviors?
These are just some questions that HelpGuide.org has gathered when looking for signs that an older adult might need assisted living. And when these questions start crossing the minds of their loved ones, they are likely at the point they’ll begin discussing and considering this option with them.
How to properly brand your ALF
As a healthcare professional specializing in assisted living, how do you ensure that you clearly brand yourself, the services you offer and the demographic that you’re serving? How do you differentiate yourself from retirement communities designed for seniors who can generally care for themselves or nursing homes with round-the-clock medical care and supervision? How do you reach out to the right audience, the active and social older adults needing help with daily living?
The first step towards attracting the attention of the right people is making a distinction from the other types of senior living. According to Forbes.com, assisted living facilities can be freestanding communities but also part of a retirement community, nursing homes or hospitals, so it’s certainly understandable why some would be confused and lump these services together. Hence the importance of highlighting that you cater to older adults who — while independent — need assistance doing laundry, cooking, cleaning, going to the bathroom, managing medicines, or even traveling to appointments.
As noted by HelpGuide.org, assisted living offers the safety and security of 24-hour supervision. However, you will need to point out that help requires a phone call since assisted living encourages privacy and independence. In fact, some good assisted living facilities can develop a personalized plan that keeps in mind the needs, challenges and disabilities of an older adult, while still allowing enough freedom for them to do as they please with their time.
You’ll also need to be clear about the type of assisted living facility that’ll be hosting the client. Will they be moving into a residential type that’s either a converted home, apartment complex or even a renovated school? Or do you offer apartment-style living with scaled down kitchens? And if you just provide bedrooms, do they need to share a room or have the option to pay for their own at a higher cost? Does your facility host a group dining area and common areas for socialization and recreation?
How market research can help you attract the right clientele
These are critical questions that can be answered by well-designed and executed market research. And there are even more questions that you’ll discover as you develop your brand and identify how to best reach out to your ideal clients.
Copyright Marcus Aurelius (Pexels)
You’ll need to be ready to answer questions about staffing, or proactively make information like this readily available for anyone looking into their options for assisted living. How many staff do you employ that are responsible for residents’ care? How many of them are working at any given time? Do you have enough members to cover one that goes on leave? Is staffing different at night? What are their duties? Do they interact with residents? Do you have registered nurses on site? Are they able to handle or trained for emergencies?
The same goes for questions about the facility. What is the housekeeping schedule? How do you ensure the safety and security of residents? Are the bathrooms easy to access and do they have grab bars? In case of an emergency, how do residents contact the staff? How good and nutritious is the food? Can you provide information on menu options? Can a resident eat at their room? What hobbies or activities are offered onsite? Is there transportation available? What amenities are included?
More importantly, people looking into assisted living facilities are most likely going to value an environment that seems friendly, safe, and comfortable. The facility is also expected to be clean and well-maintained. And while what feels like home is subjective, being able to answer as many questions or provide pertinent information as you can puts you closer to the ideal resident.
Copyright Cottonbro Studio
Otherwise, you can help those that weren’t a good fit at the very least to understand better what they are looking for or what they need to help them in their search to find the best facility for them. They might even realize that another type of senior living might be better for them.
How Cascade Strategies can help
Cascade Strategies has been helping healthcare companies sort out issues like these for over 30 years. Thanks to an array of services such as Brand Development Research and Segmentation Studies, we are able to help healthcare companies make their brand stand out and become more profitable in addition to enlightening them on their customer types and how to best address their needs. Please see our website and case histories.
Here are some suggestions for further reading:
https://www.helpguide.org/articles/senior-housing/assisted-living-facilities.htm
https://www.seniorliving.org/assisted-living/
https://www.forbes.com/health/senior-living/how-to-find-the-best-assisted-living-facility/
Jun
Appropriate Use of AI
jerry9789 0 comments artificial intelligence, Brand Surveys and Testing, Brandview World, Burning Questions
The Rise Of AI
Believe it or not, Artificial Intelligence has existed for more than 50 years. But as the European Parliament pointed out, it wasn’t until recent advances in computing power, algorithm and data availability accelerated breakthroughs in AI technologies in modern times. 2022 alone made AI relatively mainstream with the sudden popularity of OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
But that’s not to say that AI hasn’t already been incorporated in our daily lives- from web searches to online shopping and advertising, from digital assistants on your smartphones to self-driving vehicles, from cybersecurity to the fight against disinformation on social media, AI-powered applications have been employed to enable automation and increase productivity.
The Woes Of AI
However, the rise of AI also brings concerns and worries over its expanding use across industries and day-to-day activities. Perceived negative socio-political effects, the threat of AI-powered processes taking over human employment, the advent of intelligent machines capable of evolving past their programming and human supervision- that last one is mostly inspired by the realm of science fiction but a plausible possibility nonetheless. A more grounded and present-day concern, however, is the overreliance and misuse of Artificial Intelligence.
Copyright geralt (Pixabay)
Sure, AI is able to perform a variety of simple and complex tasks by simulating human intelligence, efficiently and quickly producing objective and accurate results. However, there are some activities requiring discernment, abstraction and creativity, where AI’s approximation of human thinking falls short. Cognitive exercises like these not only need high-level thinking but also involve value judgments honed and subjected by human experience.
The Expedia Group Case Study
This brings us to our case study for the Expedia Group, whose brand has around a million hospitality partners. Their goal is to increase engagement with their partners. For five years, Expedia grouped their lodging partners, which at the time were mostly chain hotels, with a segmentation model that helped guide their partner sales teams on how they should prioritize spending their time. This “advice” Expedia provides comes through marketing, in-product or through the partner’s account manager. When a partner takes advantage of Expedia’s advice, they usually receive the booking over their competitor.
Copyright geralt (Pixabay)
Now you can imagine that Expedia has thousands of advices or recommendations to give their partners. So how does Expedia determine which recommendation will most likely push their partner to act accordingly and produce optimal revenue?
If you answered “Use AI,” you’re on the right track. With thousands of possible decisions, Expedia just wants AI to filter the bad choices and boil it down to a few but good recommendations optimizing revenue. Expedia wants to use AI to help with decisions, but it doesn’t want AI to make that decision for them or their partners.
Copyright Seanbatty (Pixabay)
But now things are different- Expedia’s partners have grown to also include independent hotels and vacation rentals. So what if Expedia adds additional dimensions to the model allowing them to target partners with recommendations that would be best for their way of thinking and feeling, as well as appeal to their primary motivations as a property?
So that’s exactly where Cascade Strategies stepped in. We followed a disciplined process where — just to name a few things we’ve performed — we interviewed 1200 partners and prospects across 10 countries in 4 regions, converted emotional factors into numeric values and used advanced forms of Machine Learning to arrive at optimal segmentation solutions. Through this five-step disciplined process, we built them a psychographic segmentation formed into subgroups based on patterns of thinking, feeling and perceiving to explain and predict behavior.
Copyright Pavel Danilyuk
It “conceived the game anew” for Expedia Group (in a way suggested by Eric Schmidt and company in their book The Age of AI: And Our Human Future). Now seeing their partners in a different light, they needed to evolve their communications to reflect the new way they view them with the end goal of targeting which segment with which offer. The messages they would deploy should be very action-oriented based on what compels each segment.
Cascade Strategies then created an application called Scenario Analyzer to make this easy for people at Expedia. Its users could just ask the Scenario Analyzer what’s the optimal decision for certain input conditions. Basically, a marketer selects a target group and a region then the Scenario Analyzer answers by saying “You could do any of these six things and you’d make some money. It’s your call.”
If the partner does nothing, Expedia still makes about $1.5 million from these partners during a 90-day period, which is part of their regular business momentum. However, if the partner acts on the top-ranked recommendation which carries the message “Maximize your revenue potential by driving more groups or corporate business to your property,” it would result in about $140,000 more during the same period, which is about a 1% gain. While we couldn’t reach all partners with the same message, causing us to lower our expectations a little, we did slightly better than we expected to do in the end.
The “Appropriate Use” of AI
So what did we did do? We made “Appropriate Use” of AI. It neither made the decision nor guaranteed the money. It warded off the worst ideas and told us which recommendation was best in comparative terms.
Many people in marketing are treating AI as the next cool thing, so they want to jam it in wherever they can, whether it’s helpful or not. “Appropriate Use” stands against that, saying the best way to apply AI to marketing is for Decision Support to remain under human discretion and judgment, instead of letting AI actually make choices.
We think AI can at times be a very poor decision maker but a very good advisor. And we’re not alone as many others share our concern; to illustrate, 61% of Europeans look favorably at AI and robots while 88% say these technologies require careful management.
Another example to consider when thinking about just how important human intervention is when it comes to the “Appropriate Use” of AI is the topic of health care. As noted by frontiersin.org, the legal and regulatory framework may not be well-developed for the practice of medicine and public health in some parts of the world. Throwing artificial intelligence into the mix without careful and thoughtful planning might underscore or aggravate existing health disparities among different demographic groups.
And this is part of the reason why we believe in shaping AI with human values, including the dignity and moral agency of humans. The “defining future technology” that is AI is already proving to be a powerful tool for providing solutions and achieving goals, but it can only unlock levels of excellence, innovation and integrity when guided appropriately by human values and experience.
Other interesting reads:
https://www.wgu.edu/blog/what-ai-technology-how-used2003.html#close
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/a/artificial-intelligence-ai.asp
Jun
How Great Research Produces Great Campaigns
jerry9789 0 comments artificial intelligence, Brand Surveys and Testing, Brandview World, Burning Questions
Can AI Produce Your Marketing Campaign?
If you were given the task of developing a global communications campaign for a technical products company, would you let ChatGPT do it?
You might, especially if you noted that ChatGPT could churn out dozens of ads like the one above without paying art directors, copywriters, media professionals, or users of a Demand Side Platform.
But we wouldn’t. This is because it’s hard for AI to produce at the level of excellence, and excellence is what should be sought.
Seeking Excellence in Marketing Campaigns
The ad below is part of an award-winning and profitable “Mentor” campaign for HP. To arrive at this level, HP had to commission very perceptive researchers to spend time with worldwide HP engineers as well as engineers from other companies.
The researchers stretched the intuitive, interpretive, and synthesis-building capacities of their right brains to arrive at a subtle insight that AI would have great difficulty seeing: that HP engineers showed greater qualities of “mentorship” than other engineers. They thought it was important not only to conduct their own technical work, but to impart to others (typically younger people) what they were doing and why what they were doing was important.
It would be very hard indeed to stretch an AI chatbot (or other AI engine) to that deeper level of understanding about what a truly extraordinary ad should do to express the true meaning of a brand to people.
An example from the world of sunglasses
If you were given the job of developing a campaign for a line of sunglasses, you could probably get ChatGPT to produce a large number of ads like the following at little or no cost (with the exception of the cost of the talent).
But AI-produced ads fall short of excellence. AI simply cannot do the incisive interpretive work that humans can do to produce something better.
Researchers working for the Gargoyles brand of sunglasses spent time with those who preferred this brand and made a discovery about them that AI engines would have great difficulty seeing: that many Gargoyles wearers were upward strivers who were at first destined to fail, then turned things around with drive, verve, and strenuous effort.
They had a “storyline of life” worth admiring. To gain this insight, the researchers had to stretch the intuitive and interpretive powers of their brains. They could not simply rely on a summarization of prior human experience in producing ads about sunglasses.
Higher powers AI cannot reach
AI cannot stretch to this level of excellence. It cannot see broader levels of human experience that may be required to produce excellence, such as “how could sunglasses have anything to do with striving?” or “how could a life story of struggling ever be associated with sunglasses?” Hell, generative AI wouldn’t even think to inquire about a storyline of life. But humans can do that when their right brains are performing at a very high level.
The researchers in this case had to sweat the details a little more, spend quality time pondering the higher thematic levels, and drive their brains well beyond summarization to a more sublime expression of the true meaning of a brand to people.
This is the kind of work Cascade Strategies does on a daily basis. Please have a look at some other examples of higher thinking for clients at https://cascadestrategies.com.
People are catching on and speaking out
More people are seeing the chasm between the summarization of human experience that AI can provide and the excellence provided by the greater intuitive powers of the human brain, and they are speaking out about it. One example is Po-Shen Loh, a charismatic math coach who directly confronts AI, challenging his students to attack complex math problems at higher levels of understanding and interpretation than AI could ever provide.
But there are even more people who are discovering this excellence gap, and their voices will grow stronger.
Jun
How Great Research Helps Tech Companies
jerry9789 0 comments artificial intelligence, Brand Surveys and Testing, Brandview World, Burning Questions
How Well do you Understand Your Customers’ Needs?
As a Tech Company, how well do you know your customers? In most cases, identifying who has an affinity for your brand and focusing on the needs of that customer type can spell success for your products, especially the launch of your new offerings.
Sure, you might think you can have AI go over your customer database and hope it’s able to recognize customers and prospects most likely to purchase your product. However, AI shortcuts are unable to approach the intuitive and interpretive power of human thinking, let alone the kind performing at a high and excellent level.
The Story of HP Test & Measurement
The case of Hewlett Packard’s “Mentor” campaign is instructive. HP commissioned our researchers to spend quality time with worldwide HP engineers as well as engineers from other companies, learning about their daily lives – how they think, feel, and behave. The researchers stretched the intuitive, interpretive, and synthesis-building capacities of their right brains to arrive at a subtle insight that AI would have great difficulty seeing: that HP engineers showed greater qualities of “mentorship” than other engineers.
The result was a highly successful, award-winning global campaign. Conversion rates soared as HP logged higher equipment sales in virtually every world region. The campaign also produced significant financial gains for HP and won an ADDY Award for creativity.
The Squaresoft Video Games Story
We also conducted primary market research for Squaresoft Video Games to determine affinities for their products. They had been sending out about 200,000 mail pieces per month to key metros across the US. By giving us extracts of their file of purchases of similar games, we appended characteristics and modeled affinities for prospective buyers.
We called those most likely to respond “Videobrats.” The model reduced the number of markets to 4 key metros which had the highest concentration of “Videobrats,” concentrating their marketing on high-affinity households in these markets.
Our researchers spent a great deal of time with Videobrats in these markets, exploring their daily lives, discovering how they think, how they interact with others, and how they spend time with entertainment and gaming software. This hard work produced a key set of insights that could be perceived only through the intuitive and interpretive power of the human mind. It’s not something AI could touch.
The result was a campaign of extraordinary power and great marketplace success. Squaresoft reported dramatically increased sales of the two game titles in the specific geographies in question, ranging from 20% to 200%. Not only that, the “Videobrats” campaign won the KPMG Award of Merit for ROI performance and the Ernst & Young Most Effective Marketing Campaign Award.
The Lessons for Marketing in the Tech Sector
Many people conducting marketing campaigns in the tech sector believe you just need to tell people on the web what you have (e.g., software, hardware, systems), and the magic of internet targeting will take care of the rest. They’re wrong. It’s as important in tech as in any other category to tell people why they should want the software, hardware, or systems from your brand instead of another brand. That requires you to express something about what psychologically or emotionally binds your customers to your brand.
Discovering the root of these deeper connections requires more complex layers of understanding and perception than AI can provide at present. Hard-working humans driving their minds to higher levels of interpretation and synthesis can do it.
When market research is used not just as a means to an end but as a way to gain a deeper understanding, Tech Companies are able to produce outstanding results because they are able to come up with inspired and creative solutions addressing the needs of those who value their brand the most. AI is unable to unlock these sophisticated types of solutions because it’s unable to relate on an intuitive and interpretive level the same way excellent human thinking does.
If you’d like to see this kind of magic brought to life for your brand, please reach out to us here.
May
How Great Research Helps Financial Services Companies
jerry9789 0 comments artificial intelligence, Brand Surveys and Testing, Brandview World, Burning Questions
From maintaining loyalty and fostering customer relationships to focusing marketing messages on the most profit-optimal consumer, great research is helping Financial Services companies identify not only their best customers and prospects but also their needs and why they prefer their brand over others. This is done through a high-quality segmentation study and persona development, which break a company’s market into different groups so that different strategies for marketing to these groups can be leveraged. The main reason a company wants to complete market segmentation research is so they can gain actionable insights, like how to sell more of their product or services.
Take for example, Banner Bank for whom Cascade Strategies developed a brand model which identified “Strivers” as the primary segment they should focus on. The bank initiated special promotions and appeals featuring the products of greatest interest to Strivers. A Striver-specific ROI program was developed to measure the degree of program success. Modeled indices were used to set Striver product targets by branch. After 2 years of activity, Banner Bank exceeded all key Striver product targets system-wide.
Read about our approach to high-quality brand development research here.
Another example is the case of Capital One where they needed help trying to identify the “persona” or psychographic type most interested in adopting a certain mobile app for personal investing. We conducted in-person depth interviews with “mobile-minded consumers.” We also conducted an unpacking session with Capital One staff where individual staff members were given assignments to review videos and be prepared to discuss key traits and behaviors of respondents, such as outlooks, investing styles, goals, worries, needs, plans, and so forth.
We identified that the “Empath” is the most interested in adopting a certain mobile app for personal investing. The “Empath” persona is fairly immersed in pragmatic thinking and probably best understands the possibilities for “thinking” or guidance apps, allowing Capital One to focus their brand campaign effort on the needs of this psychographic type. The net result was a highly successful new product introduction.
Read about our approach to segmentation studies and the development of brand personas here.
Copyright Cottonbro Studio
“But wait, can’t AI do this?” you may ask. While there is a faddish and hype-driven tendency to turn quickly to AI for short-cuts in market research, AI cannot yet fully replicate the deep interpretive and intuitive skills of the human brain, especially the right brain (the nonrational side). Moreover, effective AI deployment requires human supervision and involvement as final arbiter of how the outcomes will be leveraged.
As you can see, market research results as good as the examples above come from human-centered thinking, the kind that allows brands to break past ordinary bounds and achieve true excellence. It’s this kind of extraordinary thinking that Cascade Strategies has consistently provided a long list of US and international clients for 33 years.
Feel free to reach out to us to discuss your needs at https://cascadestrategies.com/contact-us/
May
Five Ways AI Can Help Telecom Companies Improve Their Marketing
jerry9789 0 comments artificial intelligence, Burning Questions
By moving away from business-driven marketing towards customer-centric, data-driven, and highly customized efforts, companies like telecom operators can thrive in these rapidly changing times. Here are five examples of how telecom companies can benefit from utilizing Artificial Intelligence in their marketing:
1. Increase in Product Marketing
With the millions of customer data they’ve collected, telcos can leverage AI to create targeted marketing campaigns via text, email, online ads, etc. This helps them gain a more real-time picture of their users’ experiences, thanks to sharper insights, suggestions, and trend recognition. Critical marketing knowledge and understanding of their user base are also enhanced by incorporating machine learning apps and algorithms into their product.
2. Improved Campaign Performance
Personalization as a strategy has proven through time its helpfulness in boosting several types of marketing campaigns. Integrating AI into the mix can rapidly grow its scale and capacity.
Ad targeting becomes more efficient with AI identifying the most appropriate customers for specific ads based on secured information on buying history and user preferences.
And by also automating user journeys, marketers are able to decrease the time and costs of sales targets and conversions.
3. Addressing Customer Service Issues Better
AI allows telcos to respond quickly to customer experience concerns by gathering data and identifying where the user journey fails, fostering customer satisfaction. Various AI-powered software analyzing customer feedback also improves customer support efforts by finding more appropriate, more empathetic solutions.
Front-end customer service employees can also get holistically educated about various issues and scenarios through AI training. Here the AI takes on the role of a customer. AI training also helps businesses cut back on major labor and time costs.
4. Improved Digital Marketing and Customer Engagement
Cloud-based products offer well-integrated data insights and marketing intelligence, machine learning and analytic technologies with recommendations, multi-dimensional visualizations of complex data, and free-form user analysis.
Such products solve problems by allowing users to easily integrate disparate data sources, breaking down traditional silos and enabling insight-driven decision-making.
5. Notifications Sent at More Appropriate Times
AI is also being used to boost push campaign engagement by determining the best time of day to send notifications to consumers, preferably the time they are most open to brand interactions.
With the enormous data and complexities handled in industries, telcos must use AI in staying ahead of competitors. It’s just simpler to address problems and automate solutions, run daily operations more efficiently, and provide better customer service and satisfaction. In the long run, telcos continuing their development along this path are more likely to emerge as undisputed winners.
Apr
How healthcare people can help underserved populations
jerry9789 0 comments Brand Surveys and Testing, Brandview World, Burning Questions
There’s no shortage of knowledge about the healthcare needs of underserved communities in the US such as the Hispanic, Black, American Indian/Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander subpopulations. What may be lacking are workable and effective efforts to address these needs.
There are two main parts of this problem:
- Communication issues
- Lack of practical programs.
Communication issues
The recently-released National Healthcare Quality and Disparities Report points out that certain racial and ethnic groups that coincide with the underserved subpopulations are the most severely uninsured. See Figure 1. (Please note that the term American Indian/Alaska Native is shortened to AI/AN, and the term Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander is shortened to NHPI.)
These disparities should not exist by definition, largely because of the availability of Medicare, Medicaid, and low-cost or no-cost insurance from state insurance exchanges. As the report points out, they exist largely due to communication and access issues. Many members of the underserved communities either have coverage but avoid seeking care or don’t know they’re eligible for coverage in the first place.
Avoiding treatment
Having coverage and avoiding care is a solvable problem, if healthcare organizations and the society in general have the will to do so. People in the underserved communities often miss planned appointments for certain medical purposes such as wellness exams, follow-up appointments, and scheduled appointments for priority services such as prenatal care and maternal wellness, causing them in the latter case to pay a high price in terms of maternal morbidity and neonatal health. (See “Lack of Practical Programs” below.) Some of this is due to language barriers, transportation issues, or unease in the interaction with healthcare personnel; but a great deal is due to a misunderstanding of the extent of their coverage, especially what remains due from the patient in the form of copayments, deductibles, etc.
Healthcare organizations can ease these problems by providing more and better-trained navigators as well as interpreters and translation services. They can build more outreach programs to the underserved to make them aware that in many cases they have little or nothing to pay for wellness services and planned care for medical purposes such as behavioral conditions, substance use treatment, chronic conditions, routine wellness care, and priority areas such as the above-mentioned prenatal care.
Not knowing about eligibility
The same potential remedy applies to lack of awareness of eligibility. Members of the underserved communities often don’t know that they’re eligible for coverage in the first place, and this leads to avoidance of treatment as well. More and better-trained health navigators supported by outreach programs can also go a long way toward alleviating this part of the problem.
Lack of practical programs
If communication with the underserved can be improved, it stands to reason that well-structured programs must be established to accommodate them. In other words, they have to have a place to go. Not enough imaginative or careful thought has been put into the development of these programs for underserved communities. Programs, personnel, and training are lacking in the areas of behavioral health, substance use treatment, dental care, prenatal/postpartum care, and more.
While the AHRQ report clearly identifies significant disparities in each of these areas for underserved communities, nowhere is the disparity more painful than in the area of prenatal care. See Figure 2.
The AHRQ data show that the level of care is well below acceptable levels for each of the four main underserved communities. This has unfortunately led to higher rates of maternal morbidity among these members of the underserved communities due to such conditions as eclampsia/preeclampsia, severe postpartum hemorrhage, venous thromboembolism, and other complications of pregnancy and childbirth.
While this is just one significant area of disparity in quality of care for the underserved, it appropriately points out the need for practical programs. Health care organizations can respond with energy and creativity by developing doula/monitrice services, transportation services, language/interpretive services, and structured prenatal and postpartum care services in tandem with the improved communication and health-navigator programs mentioned above. There’s also evidence that the provision of team-based, interprofessional, central location care centers can often lead to improved medical outcomes for underserved populations.
Information-gathering is an important first step
Clearly, different approaches will be required based on geographic, cultural, linguistic, and sociodemographic issues that pertain to your organization, but the journey always begins by gathering information. Cascade Strategies has a great deal of expertise and experience in helping healthcare companies assemble this knowledge, and we stand ready to assist you. Please tell us about your information needs at contact Cascade Strategies, and we’ll be pleased to serve your needs.
Mar
What if every US citizen had a dollar for every good decision made by the president and lost a dollar for every bad decision? How much would Americans have in their “Decision Account” now? What about a half-good decision? Would Americans’ Decision Account be credited for 50 cents? Clearly, the whole matter hinges on what is defined as a good or bad decision.
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