Guest post by Gib Bassett (@gibbassett), gib.bassett@oracle.com “Businesses today must invest in experiences because that’s what people want.” – Brian Solis So says Brian in this recent post. He goes on to qualify this statement further, saying people today simply don’t care about products, services or offers. What they desire and what they respond to with regularity are superior experiences. I don’t think this is limited to Millennials either – we are all being conditioned to have affinities for businesses…
State of Mobile Commerce: An Evening in San Francisco with Criteo
I recently had the opportunity to co-host an event in San Francisco with Jonathan Wolf of Criteo to discuss the past and future of retail and mobile commerce. That evening celebrated the release of the company’s quarterly State of Mobile Commerce Report, based on its pool of online shopping data covering more than a billion transactions totaling over $130Bn of annual sales. That evening, we would entertain some of the most interesting people documenting or contributing to the future of ecommerce,…
Internet of Things is Here: What’s Your IoT Strategy?
The Internet of Things (IoT) is so much more than smart refrigerator that tell you when you need to go to the grocery store, wearables that track your steps or the smart watches you’re thinking about not getting. It’s the nervous system that sends and tracks important information between things, places and people. From smarter industrial applications to cities to health care to home automation to automobiles and everything in between, IoT is changing not only your personal life, but…
Completely Rethinking Marketing Is Essential in Today’s Customer-Centric World
Guest post by Fred Studer (@fredstuder), Chief Marketing Officer at NetSuite As my friend Brian Solis says, “This is a time to question everything.” Let’s start with marketing, because it’s overdue for a revolution. Today’s customers are in the driver’s seat – it’s a buyer’s market and the buyers are better informed than ever. Prior to making a purchase today, customers research and compare products assiduously while tapping into both the opinions of people they know directly and reviews from…
How the Next Five Years Will Revolutionize Business
Earlier in the year, I spent some time with Jason Ankeny. He was, at the time, writing an article for Entrepreneur on “the next five years” of business for the print edition. He assembled a pretty stellar cast to serve as his panel and I was more than excited to join in. Ankeny set up the discussion this way… The period between 2015 and 2020 is poised to redefine virtually every facet of how we live and work. It probably…
Embracing the Audience: 5 Tips on Customer-Based Marketing
After I presented at the Digital Media Summit in Toronto, Sylvia Ng, VP of Growth and Analytics at ScribbleLive, asked for an interview to discuss challenges and opportunities ahead for digital marketers. Following is her summary of our conversation. I wanted to share it with you here… In the midst of endless blogs, podcasts, tweets, instagrams, and snapchats, how does a brand or business get noticed? Creating a truly effective marketing campaign is about understanding your brand, and more importantly,…
No One Will Remember Your Failures; Everyone Will Remember Your Success
No one will remember your failures, but everyone will remember your success. If they do bring up your failures and not your successes, question the value they bring into your world and move forward. We live in a time when disruption is happening to us or it can happen because of us. Sometimes the past holds us back and sometimes we let fear undermine our ideal future. But, this is the time to change the future. Think about it…what would…
The Expertise Gap is Real and Employees Need Your Attention Now
The biggest challenge is not in the understanding or expertise associated with new technology. We can learn that. The biggest problem is our inability to recognize that the experience we have today is not the experience we need going forward. A notable separation exists between the expertise people have or are learning and the jobs companies need to hire for in an increasingly digital economy. This means that current employees possess expertise to perform jobs that are losing prominence in…
Working for More Than a Living
Special guest post by Tom Rath, author of Are You Fully Charged?: The 3 Keys to Energizing Your Work and Life The concept of bringing people together in groups, tribes, or organizations is based on the fundamental premise that human beings can do more collectively than they can in isolation. Hundreds of years ago, people banded together for the sake of sharing food and shelter and keeping their family safe. The basic assumption was that the association gained by joining a…
When You Share Experiences You Help Strangers Make Decisions
Whether you realize it or not, when you share an experience you have, whether it’s through a post, review, video, image, rant, praise, etc., it helps a stranger make a decision about what to do next. Customers aren’t following the customer journey you designed because they’re too busy hacking it. No matter how much journey work you do, no matter how creative your marketing, no matter how responsive your website is, no matter how much technology you invest in, customers…
