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Tag: marketing strategy

  • Ghost Month Slows Philippine Property Deals and Major Consumer Purchases

    Ghost Month Slows Philippine Property Deals and Major Consumer Purchases

    Philippine consumers are postponing major property purchases and business launches until Ghost Month ends. That pushes transaction volumes into the fourth quarter.

    The seventh lunar month prompts households across the country to delay home handovers, wedding bookings, and commercial openings. Sales inquiries continue. However, buyers hold off on signing binding contracts or moving into finished properties.

    How Cultural Timing Alters Buying Cycles

    This pattern stems from Chinese traditions of ancestor remembrance that remain influential across Southeast Asian commercial centers. Families view big financial commitments as major life transitions. Avoiding perceived risk carries more weight than closing a deal early.

    For retailers and property developers, the slowdown represents delayed demand rather than lost sales. Companies frequently realign marketing budgets and inventory releases. This prevents spending during weeks when buyers intentionally freeze final decisions.

    Aligning Sales Plans with Seasonal Shifts

    Cultural calendars dictate revenue spikes and lulls across other Asian retail sectors as well. Brands routinely adjust operations around the Lunar New Year gift cycle, Ramadan shopping windows, and Christmas retail surges.

    Strategists Josiah Go and Chiqui Escareal-Go will outline consumer decision frameworks for regional operators at the 3rd Marketing Plan Summit on Sept. 22 and 23, focusing on the commercial impact of behavioral timing.

  • Winning the hearts and wallets of today’s tech-savvy customers

    Winning the hearts and wallets of today’s tech-savvy customers

    New-age digital customers are changing, so are the ways to keep them hooked. Today’s customers in Asia, like those elsewhere, expect seamless and consistent omnichannel experiences along with the best quality and price. Thanks to a plethora of touch-points, selling is no longer a linear process and requires a constant connect with customers. Customer engagement now rides heavily on technology, which, in turn, drives each step of the buying decision and beyond.

    As retailers struggle to come up to speed with fast-changing customer behavior, the threat from new-age global digital players has become very real – the disruption has happened in a very short time.

    A big challenge for retailers involves bridging the gap between what they have to offer and what customers want. A Forrester survey shows that while 60% of retailers believe their company provides an exceptional customer experience, only 31% of customers reported having consistently positive experiences.

    Retailers are also struggling to effectively utilize digital capabilities in serving customers. Around 84% retailers in the survey rated themselves over 8 (on a scale of 10) in digital maturity of the services they provide to their customers. But a whopping 51% reported challenges in leveraging those capabilities to provide consistent customer experiences.

    Walk alongside, not behind

     The customer is well and truly the king now. Retailers must adopt a customer-centric approach. An ideal customer-centric approach will ensure that the focus is on enhancing customer experiences while simultaneously understanding customer behavior and attitude.

    The ideal starting point towards this goal is to review the digital customer touch-points and assess whether customer interactions are designed to enhance both customer experiences as well as the organization’s ability to understand customer intent and preferences.

    While the fundamentals of product, price and service are just as relevant as ever, a 360-degree approach to understanding customer interests, attitudes and behaviors is necessary for retailers to meet customer expectations.

     Attention – the first step of the A-I-D-A (Attention, Interest, Desire and Action) model — is being grabbed by retailers who offer exciting technology experiences to customers. The likes of Alibaba and Myer introduced virtual shopping experiences earlier this year, allowing customers to wear headsets and enter virtual stores to browse through products. Several retailers are leveraging personalized products, interactive digital displays, touch-and-go payment applications, body scanners and magic mirrors, all of which have the potential to bridge the gap between the online and the offline worlds, accelerating the promise of a “smart” shopping experience that recognizes and delights the new-age consumer.

    Accelerate towards omnichannel 2.0 with caution

     While the basics of omnichannel retailing must be in place, customers today demand excellence. This means even one part of the experience falling short of expectations can undo the greater experience retailers may have delivered across other channels.

    Checking the box too quickly on omnichannel programs, before ironing out the issues with in-store operations, can lead to poor customer experiences, low adoption rates of these services, and even customer attrition. Retailers must look at their store environments to see where opportunities exist for improving not only digital experiences, but also the interactions and processes that form the key components of the shopper experience.

    Strengthen the purchase beyond purchase

    Buying is no longer a sequence of steps. There is much more back-and-forth, many comparisons, multiple channels and several decision points – all driven by technology. It is important to bring the customer back too. Customers are excited by technology, and technology becomes a companion to customers in their path to purchase and beyond.

    Retailers must design experiences that encourage shoppers to come back. Post-purchase experience is one of the important touch-points that can influence customers and inspire loyalty.  The first 24 hours after a purchase is the ideal time to build trust by delivering more content or asking for feedback. That helps capture emotional highs – both positive and negative – and translate them into better actions. Negative outcomes can be turned into opportunities to connect with customers and positive outcomes can be used to strengthen relationships.

     A big opportunity awaits

    Highly connected customers bring with them very high expectations, settling for nothing less than the best experiences and deals. This creates a lot of opportunities as well as challenges for retailers to gain and retain those customers. Successful retailers will be the ones who leverage technology to engage with customers – well beyond buying – in innovative ways, focus on all touch-points to impress customers and glean insights, and provide a seamless, integrated experience across channels.

     

    by  Singaravelu Ekambaram, Global Delivery Head, Retail and Consumer Goods, Cognizant

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  • Skilled Opinion: Making social media work for SMEs

    Skilled Opinion: Making social media work for SMEs

    In at present’s super-connected, always-on period, companies of just about any measurement can attain markets and clients past their borders with unprecedented ease. For a lot of SMEs, the speedy progress of cross-border e-commerce – tipped to be value USD2 trillion this yr within the B2C area alone based on Bigcommerce – makes the chance too worthwhile to disregard. In accordance with Aaron Levie, the CEO and co-founder of Field, a cloud-based on-line storage firm in San Francisco, “A producing start-up in Boston can join with a beforehand impossible-to-reach provider in China; a advertising company in New York can instantaneously collaborate with a shopper in London; a providers agency in France can have software program developed in India.”

    In lots of respects, know-how acts as the good leveler, opening up international commerce that was as soon as the unique protect of huge multinationals. SMEs on eBay are virtually as more likely to export as giant companies, based on Joshuta P. Meltzer from his ebook Utilizing the Web to Promote Providers Exports by Small- and Medium-Sized Enterprises. Nevertheless, the Seizing Cross-Border Alternative by Forrester Consulting believes that SMEs nonetheless should grapple with challenges that their bigger rivals do not face. Servicing a worldwide buyer base means overcoming issues corresponding to time zones, and language and cultural nuances. Small companies not often have the time or assets to spend money on outsourced customer support help, and a few are discovering it extra environment friendly to serve clients by way of social media platforms: one LinkedIn research from 2014 revealed that 81 % of North American SMEs use social media.

    With out the massive devoted digital and social media workforce that many giant manufacturers have, even this will appear daunting. Nevertheless, a couple of easy ideas can generate outcomes for SMEs that make investments the required effort and time.

    Construct a following. Probably the most finely-honed messages and delightful content material will not have a lot influence if solely two dozen social media “followers” ever get to see it. Corporations that transfer into social media want to make sure that they’ve a enough base of followers for his or her social platforms to be an efficient channel. UK-based on-line gaming firm Betfair.com achieved this by establishing an lively Twitter presence in 2009 with frequent updates on all kinds of sports activities and witty, artistic content material that’s related to its followers (who as we speak quantity virtually 120,000 individuals). Constructing a following might imply subsidiary investments – for instance, in promoting. LinkedIn, Fb and Twitter all permit corporations with small budgets of just some US dollars per day to promote by way of recommended posts, beneficial followers and different means.

    Keep in mind, you are the beginner! Penny Energy, writer of the UK’sDigital Enterprise Britain Manifesto and founder the Digital Youth Academy, says “Should you’d simply moved in to a city or village, you would not open the door of your new native pub and shout that you are a plumber or an architect and other people ought to offer you enterprise. You’d take part with what was happening round you, chat to individuals and allow them to know what you do, in order that they find out about you once they want your service. It is precisely the identical in social media.” Present on-line communities similar to Fb pages, LinkedIn communities or Twitter hashtags within the markets an organization is making an attempt to penetrate might present the footholds it must construct a following amongst clients in new markets.

    This was the expertise of Herschel Provide Co., a Canadian producer of backpacks and outside items. By taking the time to study every social platform, the corporate was far better-positioned to attraction to followers on every. “Totally different social networks appeal to totally different audiences,” says Allison Butala, Herschel Provide’s social media supervisor. “Our Instagram account attracts aspiring photographers; our Pinterest following caters extra in the direction of females; Twitter attracts these concerned about our product releases and information tales. Understanding this, we share related content material and develop distinct communities.”

    High quality, not amount. A couple of thousand followers who’re genuinely gained over by your providing are much more priceless than tons of of hundreds who “appreciated” a Fb web page merely to participate in a promotion. Construct a fame for actual experience by researching the individuals and points which have the most important affect within the markets your organization is concentrating on. Use the tone and method of your standing updates to place your organization as having the identical attributes clients would worth in an actual individual – assume friendliness, approachability or a way of humour. These steps will assist your organization to develop a particular social media “voice” and stand out from the gang, in line with The Guardian article How SMEs could make one of the best use of social media.

    Discover out what works via fixed monitoring. The Guardian articles How SMEs could make the perfect use of social media tells us that there is no substitute for expertise, so you’ll want to make sure you’re monitoring the outcomes of your engagements with social media followers. Various free instruments will make it easier to do that. For instance, Socialmention.com is a web-based platform that gives real-time social media search and evaluation. It could trawl the web for mentions of your small business or merchandise. Instruments like this shortly make it easier to to develop a really feel for what techniques work greatest. Christy Ng, founding father of Malaysian shoe design SME Christy Ng Footwear, has two devoted members of employees to handle the corporate’s presence on Fb, Instagram and Pinterest. “We do all our social media administration in-house – from monitoring and listening, to deciding what content material will probably be partaking for our followers,” she says. “For instance, a variety of content material is footage of our merchandise, as a result of we all know that that is what our clients need to see.”

    Finally, social media shouldn’t be an finish in itself – the actual yardstick of success is how a lot enterprise is coming in. However by studying from the specialists, making a acutely aware dedication to social media as a gross sales or customer support channel and leveraging their inherent flexibility and adaptableness as small organizations, SMEs can get it proper and reap the advantages.