Sales & Marketing ROI Podcast: Episode #52
How to Become the Market Leader Online - Click the link below to listen to the podcast.
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Executive Summary
Organizations looking to have market leadership online will need to be innovative, content curators, connected to the conversation, and obsessed with customer experience. To move towards market leadership organizations should consider:
- Dedicating resources to finding and evaluating channels and platforms consumers are on
- Focusing on creating partnerships with content creators or technology companies
- Tailoring their tone to become increasingly humanized we companies seek to people within companies rather than corporate
- Developing a digital strategy to continue to flourish and grow
- Online market leaders are typical to dominate in the platforms of search, social media, and digital advertising.
An Online Leader Focuses on Innovation, Customer Service, and Content
A marketing leader is able to help a brand transcend time and culture, enabling people from a wide range of demographics to relish a company's product or service. Leading your industry in marketing often boils down to these qualities:
- Innovative and Adoptive: The organization is able to take a great idea that works and diffuse it to the rest of their organization
- Be Content Curators: Organizations must marry marketing and entertainment together to provide value to a wide range of consumers
- Customer Experience Focused: The leaders understand the customer journey and how the digital experience can be a wow factor for the brand
- Connected to the Conversation: The organization is part of the conversation wherever it is happening (social media, hybrid social networks, transient content platforms)
Without all of these factors an organization will suffer the following maladies:
- Innovation Siloed: Innovation is expensive and for a team to capture the most return the great idea and "eureka" concept needs to be leveraged across the company
- Problems When Advertisement Isn't Content: Advertisement that isn't content quickly becomes noise and with the endless alerts and phone vibrations, customers are finding new ways to block them out
- Customer Experience Negligence: A product and service go hand in hand, even though some companies only see themselves as a product
- Problems Without Persona: When individuals purchase products/services only based on utility, once that need is gone the brand is less enduring
- Not Being Part of the Conversation: This means the corporations are less aware of the needs of consumers
Become a Leader by Finding New Channels, Partnerships, Message Tone, and a Digital Strategy
Getting your company to marketing leadership requires honesty, empathy, and creativity. Getting to marketing leadership in your industry can be helped significantly by incorporating the following principles, enabling an organization to address industry concerns, meeting customer needs, and providing a fresh new message.
- Dedicate Resources to Finding New Channels: Digital communities are popping up regularly and without a regular exploratory team to identify and qualify these opportunities, companies continue to miss out on new customers entering the market. This means possible new arenas, like MMORPGs and distributed social networks like Wechat.
- Create Partnerships with Content Creators and Digital Technologies: Celebrity endorsement is giving way to online digital personalities who have regular and extensive followings. This allows a company to actually reach across geographies by working with Youtube Vloggers, for example, or product sponsorships like Netflix. As consumers increasingly rely on digital platforms to make choices and purchases, organizations must consider how to enter emerging marketplaces.
- Corporations Learn to Speak Human: Corporations usually tone their content with professional jargon and a very rigid tone of professionalism. Yet what makes Ted Talks great is the amount of emotion and humanity they leverage. Another way to visualize this is that B2B marketing is ultimately about people talking to people.
- Create Digital Strategy: Identify where your big bets are going to be, including SEO, Social Media, emerging platforms, and custom apps. Consider how the execution can be handled internally or by a marketing service company.
Platforms to be a Market Leader Online: Search, Social Media, and Digital Advertising
The marketing leader has a number of arenas in which to compete with other competitors. Here are the top 3 avenues in which companies compete with to connect with people who may be interested in their business:
- Search is now the road that leads to your digital store front: in the past 10 years, more and more people have gone online to research their next purchase or even where to go eat. Companies need to invest in their search engine optimization efforts to stay competitive.
- Social media is a new avenue in which customer relationships are being built: social media presents a new channel for companies to connect with people's hopes, dreams, and daily cravings. Organizations can use this platform to help them distinguish their brand while also expressing itself.
- Digital advertising is here to stay: whether it be on mobile or the desktop wherever our eyes go, that is where companies are trying to make a connection with their customers.
Lead in Online Search by Giving People the Best Content
Getting your team to the top of its online search game is part art and science. It requires understanding to the issues facing people who are looking to make good decisions along with having the right facts to guide them. Here are strategies to being an online search leader:
- Have the best content: Providing the best content in search is one way to bring people to your digital store or website
- Share and get your content recognized: have reputable sites link to your content
- Get focused on improving site metrics: using tools like Moz and Google Webmaster tools to improve the way how search engines rank and understand your website
AMEX not only provides stellar content for people looking to learn more about financial management but also helps hosts conversations with industry professionals who are the segment of people they serve.
Online Leader in Financial Services by Hosting Online and Social Media Conversations
American Express (AMEX) put its money where its mouth was, investing in an online community called Open Forum for business professionals, positioning itself as the service provider of choice to a network of companies rather than just one. AMEX is one of the most recognized brands in corporate credit cards, spreading its product worldwide with over 50,000 employees based on recent estimates by the AIA Guide to New York City. Open Forum is now a high-quality point of content that not only brings in potential clients, and AMEX doesn't event have to spend money getting people to write for their forum. AMEX is the financial services leader in online presence by not only joining the online conversation but also providing a permanent meeting place for it. Open Forum provides insights, inspiration, and connections to grow a business.
Source: Amex Open Forum
Here is how AMEX become a Digital Leader in Financial Services over many years:
- AMEX saw the value of using digital platforms, from innovating using Facebook messenger bots to creating its own Open Forum, recognizing that technology is going to drive payments which is fundamental to AMEX's business
- AMEX appointed a VP of Digital Strategy, Dave Wolf, to execute a key component of its digital strategy
- AMEX's approach is customer experience focused in that it is aiming to create a seamless AMEX experience with retailers and even services like AirBNB
Leader in Digital Advertising by Telling Great Stories
Digital advertising is sometimes seen as the scourge of the internet but ads done well are welcomed and can inspire and amuse those who weren't looking for a distraction but are glad they found one. Digital advertising in itself has become entertainment rather than simply highly edited video shorts or banners that trumpet the excellence of a product or service. Here are some ways to excel in digital advertising
- Amuse rather than annoy: most ads on YouTube get skipped in under 5 seconds while some ad's or shorts are so amusing you can't help but finish them
- Take a Cue from Move trailers: some advertisements have become so sophisticated and well done they look like they're from a movie, find the right tone and genre for your product or service
- Tell a great story: commercials that tell a story about believable characters facing incredible odds is a narrative that never goes out of fashion. Companies can use this approach to connect to people in new ways to better understand and recognize their aspirations.
This next real world example pits the big bad plight of city traffic congestion against the startup darling from silicone valley.
Online Leader in the Transportation Industry by Focusing on Customer and Employee Experience
Uber is one of the catalysts of the gig economy, allowing freelance drivers to start a business ferrying customers from A to B. Uber's digital strategy is at the core of its business with its trademark mobile app. This was a departure from the typical public and taxi industry and created a new industry standard as customers can rate their drivers. Uber is now a global force and leading the way into a network of self-driving autonomous cars. Its vision is the safe and efficient transport of individuals on a massive scale as quoted in the video above. UBER also stands out in the search platform because it has essentially created a hub for city travel by car.
Uber's Online Leadership
- They created a business model that reflected the digital reality that consumers are immersed in while solving the problem of low-cost, flexible transportation
- Uber pioneered and disrupted an industry while managing endless regulatory authorities, setting the course while engaging the keepers of the high seas
- Uber focuses on the experience not only for customers but also for its employees because for drivers this line is blurred
- Uber also has a fantastic vision aligning itself to not only getting people safely around but also to fight traffic congestion
Despite the myriad of stories being released about the issues at UBER being human means making mistakes and learning from them. What will help UBER continue to be a leader in this arena is not what has happened but what they will do now recognizing the issues within their culture.
Lead on Social Media by Treating Others and Being Human
Social media is where people are spending their time receiving referrals or accolades of great customer service. Yet curating content and reaching your audience on this platform requires a different approach to the other platforms.
- Find where your audience is: consumers typically tend to stay on Instagram or Facebook with business users leaning towards LinkedIn and Twitter.
- Create content rather than commercials: teams that seek to inform and inspire are often the ones that stand out on their social media platforms
- Be part of the conversation: online leaders often speak to issues that they feel inclined towards including Nike and Air BnB having critiqued the US' travel ban on targeted countries
Taco Bell takes its goods to the people along with ditching the corporate stiffed neck tone to embrace its place as a friendly food vendor.
Online Leader in Food Service Industry: Going Where the People Are in a New Way
Taco Bell is a well-known brand serving tex-mex food and its patron mascot is a talking Chihuahua dog that has graced TV and internet company promotions. Taco Bell
has won awards for its social media and mobile campaigns. Its earnings top just shy of $2B while also employing over 175,000 employees. Yet this company doesn't let its size or scale hold it back in being the leader in the digital landscape. Taco Bell has been able to win over its key demographic by using social media to help engage and create a brand that exudes experience.
Here is how Taco Bell became the digital leader as mentioned in Policy.Mic:
- They Use Their Influence to Help Greater Causes: Taco Bell uses its platform to also support World Hunger Relief
- They Focus on a Specific Niche: Taco Bell focuses its use of social media in reaching millennials
- Taco Bell Finds Personalized Ways to Connect with Influencers: From handwritten notes and gifts to Halloween costumes, Taco Bell knows how to connect with its niche influencers
- Doesn't Take Themselves too Seriously: Taco Bell knows its a taco shop and isn't afraid to poke fun at themselves
- They Know How to Use Images: The tex-mex chain uses photos and unique vantage points to help create a message
Market Leaders Empowered by Digital Agencies
One of the common threads between many of the market leaders we've featured in this article is that they each employ the work and talents of a digital agency. Some have multiple agencies helping improve branding and digital presence. Market leaders know that there is always room for more creativity. This is because marketing leaders know that no one has a monopoly on creativity and empathy, there's plenty to go around.
We are a team of marketing specialists consisting of a Marketing Strategist, Traffic & Web Technology Expert, Conversion Expert, Writer, Editor, and Graphic Designer. Beyond our service we help companies tell their brand story so that it resonates with consumers and employees, leading to market leadership. Partner with us today to turn digital strategy into real results, great partnerships create market leadership: contact us for a free strategy session.
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(If You Meet All Of The Below Criteria We Might Be A Good Fit For Your Business)
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Become The Leader In Your Market
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