The blog

The end goal of any Customer Experience program is on the one hand to create business value through acquiring, retaining and growing profitable customers and on the other hand to achieve your business results (either revenues for a company or number of users for a nonprofit organization, for example). In other words, a Customer Experience program is successful if you have created and captured value. Companies need to keep in mind that their Customer Experience efforts have an impact on their business objectives. These objectives need to be linked to marketing objectives as it is important for marketers to measure what matters both for marketing and the business to improve their Customer Experience. In the end, companies that want to grow further into Customer Experience and deliver high quality personalization need to start measuring their Customer Experience efforts.

You hear agile everywhere and it often sounds too good to be true. Therefore, we interviewed an expert in the field who has implemented and worked in several agile environments. She talk about the challenges that come with the transition to an agile way of working.

I struggled, but I had fun while doing it. This is what sums up my Immersion Camp experience.

After a turbulent year in which quarantine, social distancing and lockdown have become part of our daily vocabulary, let’s take a look back at what we have learned as marketers. Which capabilities are crucial to step up and stand tall in times of crisis and to cope with the challenges we have all faced over the last months?

Last week, I attended the UBA Trends Day 2021. For the second consecutive year, UBA organized this annual marketing conference virtually. In addition to a very promising line-up composed of Seth Godin, Katrina Dodd and Martin Lindstrom, two innovation and customer experience evangelists (that I love to follow), Peter Hinssen and Steven Van Belleghem, were co-hosting the event.

“The ocean is rising, but so are we”, “What happens in the Arctic doesn’t stay in the Arctic”, “I’ve seen better cabinets at IKEA”. The sight of young and old raising their voices and signs during climate protests has become a familiar one over the past months. And then there was the #TrashTag challenge that took social media by storm. Initially targeted at bored teens, the action encouraged people to share pictures of littered areas before and after clean-up. As society recognizes the environmental challenges we face, consumers are becoming more mindful of their buying behavior. The #TrashTag challenge.

Digital transformation, what a fancy term! Isn’t it? However, digital transformation is imperative for all businesses, from the smallest to the biggest company. It’s a message that starts to pop up in every keynote, article, studies, podcast and discussion related to how businesses can remain competitive in today’s digital world. But what does it mean concretely? Do you ask yourself questions such as: ‘What are the specific steps to take?’ ‘Do I need to hire a digital expert or a consulting service?’ ‘Where do I stand vs the competition?’ ‘What digital strategy should I adopt?’ ‘Is it really worth it?’ This article aims to help you answer some of these questions and to clearly explain what digital transformation is about.

Research from Richard N. Foster has shown that the average lifespan of companies listed on the S&Ps 500 – the 500 most valuable companies traded on the U.S. stock market – was 61 years back in 1958. Today, the average lies more around 18 years. At this pace, 75% of the companies quoted today on the S&P 500 are set to disappear by 2027. Too big to fail? For FMCG companies, growth is no longer a given. Quick wins have become rarer, markets are becoming saturated, and the world has changed and evolved rapidly thanks to technology. A lot of smaller players have spotted opportunities and started grabbing market share from the big corporations. This triggers the question: How is it possible that small companies, with a fraction of the marketing budget of big FMCG companies, are winning more and more market share and hurting the big guys?

Nowadays you can no longer go around growth hacking (or marketing, but we'll get to that later) – just ask Google. The internet is full of growth hacking articles, tools and tactics. If we take a quick look at the search volume on growth hacking, we see that it’s been getting an increasing amount of attention worldwide since 2012. Worldwide Google trends of the search term 'growth hacking'. The term growth hacking was first introduced by Sean Ellis in 2010. In truth, the practice has been around much longer. It helped companies like DropBox, Uber and AirBnB transition from budding startups to multi-million dollar enterprises in just a few years’ time. Much of it comes down to the use of resource-light and cost-effective tactics and processes of continual ideation, prioritization, testing and analysis – with a continuous focus on the one metric that matters most: growth. The term was first used in the start-up scene, where resources are scarce and where growth is the only way to survive. There’s a misconception, however, that growth hacking is only useful for startups. In fact, every company can benefit from it, although a minimum requirement is your product market fit. Growth hacking requires that you have a product that’s not just good, but that also matches the needs of who you’re selling it to. Once that’s in place, you’re good to go. How to get started with growth hacking? For more practical insights, we sat together with Nicholas D'hondt, growth expert at our new spin-off Upthrust, which answers the need for operational digital marketing talents.

When a company starts, their focus generally lies on attracting new customers. Their marketing efforts are therefore almost 100% focused on customer acquistion. It is at this moment that the value of a real marketing generalist shines through, and they get praised (yes, you should praise your marketing team from time to time, we like that) for being able to create an overall story and strategy which makes sense and brings in new business. However, where this approach makes complete sense in the beginning, chances are that once your company has reached a certain level of maturity, there is less and less value to be won with new customers. Instead, more efforts need to shift towards the existing customer base, and so should your marketing team's competencies.