Disrupting The Game

Category: Digital marketing

  • Out of the bottle: Salesforce’s genie

    Out of the bottle: Salesforce’s genie

    Reinforcing the reality that data is the new oil fuelling our digital world, Salesforce, the behemoth of the enterprise tech space, has blended its AI, Customer Data Platform (CDP) and automation capabilities into a new capability called Genie.

    Announced with characteristic bravado and ambition at the company’s Dreamforce jamboree in San Francisco in September, Genie generalises its CDP capabilities across all its Sales, Service, Marketing and Commerce clouds, as well as its Platform, Tableau, Slack and Mulesoft tools, to enable customer experience orchestration in real time.

    Salesforce, which has overtaken SAP to seize enterprise software application leadership by revenue, says Genie connects with the CDP engine to establish a single customer or group of customers with AI and machine learning and connects that data to Salesforce’s Flow automation.

    Examples include serving ads, content or offers; making sales recommendations based on browser behaviour, pulling up historical sales and service data or reacting to real-time maintenance alerts to quickly solve customer problems or deleting or restricting customer data when they opt out of marketing.

    Users can see exactly how the entire end-to-end process is flowing or stalling, from marketing across to sales, service, compliance, and system-of-record transaction management.

    The rebranding of the CDP to Genie was to “make it fun” and, critically, to help customers and stakeholders embrace and understand the value proposition.

    In summary, Salesforce asserts that data orchestration blended with engagement capabilities and genuine AI, results in a so-called “real-time” CRM. Next level stuff.

    Constellation Research founder Ray Wang was quoted as stating, “to take the CDP to the next level, you really have to do it in a very different way. You have to not just think about the data that’s there, you have to think about how everything’s connected”.

    Salesforce claims large companies run an average of 976 separate applications in their businesses, resulting in data fragmentation and an inconsistent environments where value can not flow smoothly.

    Salesforce’s CDP leader Rahul Auradkar was quoted as saying that the company’s own customers had said that their own downstream customers were expecting far more personalized experiences now and in the future.

    “The power of real time is doing the right thing, at the right time,” said Auradkar.

    Let’s see how that promise, oft touted and promised in the CRM world over the years, is delivered.

    Nothing wrong with the ambition. Everyone agrees we need to create a hyper-personalised relationship with our customers, pooling and harmonizing data into what Forbes calls a “a reconciled, comprehensive customer portrait”.

  • SOS: high impact predictive tool or overrated and over hyped?

    SOS: high impact predictive tool or overrated and over hyped?

    Is the number of times that a brand is typed into Google the new high-impact, predictive business metric?

    Marketing science gurus, Tasman Murray and Ken Roberts, debate Share of Search’s merit, whilst I moderate, in this compelling webinar from the Growth Colony: Australia’s B2B Community.

    Be prepared to resort to Google Translate for the Latin that Tas and Ken inject into their exchanges! #shareofsearch.

    https://youtu.be/PVuaqS0dP5s

  • Slow progress is not good enough

    Slow progress is not good enough

    Now into its second decade, the survey by leading Australian B2B marketing agency Green Hat shows that marketers are achieving only slow progress in digitising and driving commercial outcomes.

    Unfortunately, just 28% of respondents reported having achieved their objectives in the current survey. That’s not good enough. The case for incremental improvement has never been weaker than it is today with the pandemic disrupting our business world forever. Those that not only survive but thrive will be orchestrating leaps forward in the coming months and years, with marketing in the lead.

    Thanks to the pandemic we are all moving rapidly to a digital world, where business, especially business-to-business activity, happens wherever people are.

    Businesses who did not have their digital platform acts together were especially vulnerable during the pandemic-stricken 2020. They struggled to facilitate online commerce efficiently and with the ease. Their vision,  leadership, data, people, process and system silos and deficiencies were exposed by the transparent front door that is their web presence.

    Critically, today’s B2B customers know what good looks like thanks to their own personal commerce experiences with the leading B2C brands. In 2021 all B2B players, must fast forward their digitisation ambitions with their marketers playing decisive roles. 

    Today, no matter what industry you are in, it’s not enough to simply promote your brand and make, market and sell a product or service. You need a digital community marketplace. An integrated, self-service, collaboration environment (web + commerce + marketing automation + CRM + analytics and ERP) where you customers interact, buy (ideally, subscribe), share, engage and learn from one another. 

    In this transformational climate, now, more than ever, we marketers must step up and lead. Marketers have to exercise genuine customer-focused influence and advocacy both horizontally and vertically across their organisations.

    It means, for example, embracing service, supply chain and transaction management as the new marketing. There is little value in assembling and advertising blue sky brand promises if your supply chain is not close to best in class, if your customer service team is an island and your ERP landscape is a patchwork of dinosaur legacy systems with 20th century DNA. 

    The Green Hat report highlights, the despite progress on many fronts, marketing must speed up.

  • The art of exceptional lead management

    The art of exceptional lead management

    Fantastic experience sharing lessons learned, war stories and best practices with Adobe’s Ben Kennedy during our May 20 2020 webinar entitled The Art of Exceptional Lead Management. We are all on the proverbial journey, especially when it comes to the ongoing challenge of getting lead management right, of orchestrating people, processes and marketing tech in the common cause of driving revenue.

  • The platform is now the Salesforce story

    The platform is now the Salesforce story

    Salesforce’s “platform and other” business unit jumped ahead of the core CRM sales and service automation clouds during their FY21 Q1, highlighting how companies are finally getting their digital platform acts together.

    The pandemic is no doubt an accelerator, but the essential truth is that we must all be platform companies today.

    During the his Q1 earnings call, CEO Mark Benioff cited the platform play that new mega customer AT&T is embracing: “every customer touch point: the AT&T truck pulls up to my office or my home, that’s going to be Salesforce; I walk into the AT&T store and that’s going to be Salesforce. I’m getting an email from AT&T and that’s going to be Salesforce; and I’m on the phone with the AT&T call center and that’s going to be Salesforce. We’re going to make sure that they have that Customer 360-enhanced data, and when we’re integrating all that data MuleSoft is going to connect AT&T’s different back-end systems, Tableau is giving them the ability to understand customer preferences and Einstein is going to help them serve more intelligent recommendations and route service cases”.

    AI is a big part of the Salesforce platform story. This good blog post explains how to make AI business use case.

  • Tesla’s Cybertruck (reality ahead of schedule) ignites an earned-media tsunami

    Tesla’s Cybertruck (reality ahead of schedule) ignites an earned-media tsunami

    • Musk CyberTruck tweet

    Tesla’s polarizing Cybertruck is either “the most ridiculous EV ever” conjured up by “electric Jesus” or it is a “stylistically breathtaking” design which will “will set the trend for future pickup designs” as it has “completely changed the vocabulary of the personal truck market” according to the legendary Blade Runner Art Director Syd Mead. Mead’s definition of Science Fiction is “reality ahead of schedule”, a label which can readily be applied to the Cybertruck.

    The armada of YouTubers (fans & haters) and financial analysts (longs & shorts) who cover Tesla’s every move flicked their keyboards into hyper drive immediately after the event on November 21. Excerpts of the launch, in particular vision of the car’s side windows being “unexpectedly” fractured (but not penetrated) by a metal ball thrown by lead Tesla designer Franz von Holzhausen, dominated online, clocking millions of views. Whether engineered, spontaneous, or perhaps both, the video was primed for amplification. In the following hours and days, Tesla keywords spiked into official “breakout” hockey stick territory on Google Trends, blitzing the social media landscape, harvesting massive $$$$ in “earned media”.

    As of Sunday, November 24, Tesla had captured 187,000 pre-orders online, essentially a place in the likely two-year queue in return for a refundable $US 100 deposit. Even if a significant percentage never transition into full orders, the number is impressive. Tesla’s Elon Musk was quick to assert that all this was happening with “no advertising & no paid endorsement”. Anyone serious about marketing automation knows what to do with tens of thousands of people who have paid $US 100 to complete an online form! These people have definitely opted in.

  • Friction-generating “old-school” online forms are well past their use by date

    Friction-generating “old-school” online forms are well past their use by date

    It is supposed to be easy, but all too often completing an online form is an ordeal. English comedian Michael McIntyre explains the challenges and frustrations we typically experience when attempting to complete a form.

    There’s got to be a better way. AI can and should make a difference. Here’s Salesforce’s take:

    The smart chat bot application Drift has coined the phrase “onversational marketing”, which it claims is about meeting the buyer when they are ready, capturing, qualifying and connecting at double-digit conversion rates.

    https://youtu.be/EPPXgQgWfDk
  • Personalize with ease and speed

    Personalize with ease and speed

    The big three B2B organic growth drivers today are personalization, ease and speed according to the Customer Experience consultancy Walker.

    Walker has released a follow-up to their 2013 report Customers 2020, called  Customers 2020: A Progress Report, which endeavors to answer three questions:

    • What customer expectations and trends are still relevant as 2020 approaches?
    • What should B-to-B firms do today to ensure they’re able to win and keep customers in 2020 and beyond?
    • What are the implications for CX professionals?

    Walker says “interactions at every stage of the journey are becoming more complex, presents a striking conundrum for today’s B-to-B firms”.

    The winners are focused on personalization, ease, and speed. According to Walker, these companies have fundamentally changed how they think, act, and collaborate.

    Here is how Walker defines the three imperatives:

    PERSONALIZATION:
    There is no average customer. Customers want to do business with companies that know their individual and company needs and are willing to tailor the experience to meet those needs.
    EASE:
    An explosion of information, connected networks, and more competitive options lead to little patience for complexity. Customers don’t have time on their side and place a real premium on simplicity.
    SPEED:
    The pace of business is accelerating rapidly. Time is of the essence. Customers can’t afford to wait around while their business issues are being considered. They value companies that provide real-time response and proactively anticipate their future needs.

  • Consumer-grade experiences are essential B2B differentiators

    Consumer-grade experiences are essential B2B differentiators

    The imperative for B2B brands to deliver consumer-quality experiences as essential differentiators was a prominent theme at Salesforce’s Connections 2018 conference in Chicago earlier this month.

    The consumerization of B2B companies is a building wave that will upset those who don’t embrace the transition. Salesforce itself is leveraging its recent B2B commerce platform CloudCraze.

    Despite their traditional back-end complexity, B2B companies must attain UX simplicity. B2C consumers have long become accustomed to buying with once click and enjoying rich, engaging content. However, when they go to work they are confronted with legacy, green-screen ERP complexity, no engaging UI and no relevant communication and promotions.

    Ok, B2B transactions can be complex, lengthy and involve a small army of stakeholders, influencers and decision makers, but successfully addressing this complexity must become an opportunity.

    The consumerization of B2B means making the relationship as easy and as efficient as possible. It can typically mean going more direct, often by empowering the distribution channel with data.

    It also means getting the so-called “middle office”, as distinct from the ERP back-end, better connected directly to the customer-facing front end so that configuring, pricing and quoting (CPQ) and contract life cycle management (CLM) flows far more smoothly and effectively than has been the norm for traditional B2B players.

    I like the word flow. Are we, as a B2B organisation, flowing? Are we identifying and removing our internal, self-imposed and self-maintained legacy constraints? Are we acknowledging that the old B2B and B2C distinctions are less and less relevant as next-generation business tech mandates that we converge around H2H, Human-to-Human commerce?

  • Netflix’s formidable customization engine

    Netflix’s formidable customization engine

    Netflix knows they have less than 90 seconds to get you watching a new show. Their algorithm is fine tuned to serve up customized choices and images to make the most of this window. Your individual Netflix home page is unique. It is not one product but 118 million products (their subscriber count as at January 22 2018). Great for relevancy, shaped to your perceptions of what is good, but expanding your horizons? And when translated into the serving up of news and views?