In this series of profiles, we'll be putting the spotlight on some of the wonderful speakers who will be featured at The Social Shake-Up this June.
Lauren Harper started her career as a Community Manager for a business community site, then moved over to Eloqua to manage their social communities. She is now the head of social strategy for the Oracle Marketing Cloud. We're excited to hear her speak in Atlanta next week! Lauren agreed to answer a few questions to tide us over until then.
What are some of the newest trends you're seeing in cross-channel marketing?
The key to cross-channel marketing is engaging your audiences on the channel they prefer - email, mobile, social, text, or web - with the information they need at the exact time they need it in their customer journey. So that requires aligning content in context, listening and learning, and personalizing their digital experience with data. Once you move from impersonal transactions to meaningful conversations, you turn prospects into customers and customers into advocates. That's what Modern Marketing is all about.
How are brands listening to consumer feedback? How are they responding?
Brands are using social listening, monitoring online behaviors, capturing Digital Body Language, soliciting preferences, and using progressive profiling. They can respond using social, email, text, or through nurturing programs. But there's no universal model. The technologies used must align with their business processes, customer personas, and use cases - which are unique to nearly every type of company - so they can directly focus on delivering their main value proposition and brand promise.
How does community engagement differ for B2B vs. B2C?
While people love to distinguish between B2B and B2C, innovative companies are borrowing marketing tactics from the other side to achieve success. B2B can apply B2C techniques such as 1:1 interactions, smarter use of data, and personalization. B2C can learn how to nurture the considered purchase - especially for high-ticket items - by aligning content and timing to online behaviors. Community engagement for B2B and B2C depends on the company and industry. Some do both. A good example is pharmaceuticals where there are separate communities for consumers and physicians. But the key is engagement. Some create a traditional forum for customers to share information and others even use the community to generate content - such as testimonial stories - that can be used as a powerful marketing tool where engagement breeds engagement.
Our thanks to Lauren for taking the time to answer these questions. Don't miss out on seeing her and a host of other experts from leading brands, up close and personal, this June - register for The Social Shake-Up today.