The Blog: Retail

Just under 80% of both mid- and fiber-tier respondents believe that their home internet service is a “basic amenity,” viewed on par with running water or electricity. From smart televisions to smart thermostats, the number of household electronics that require an internet connection is growing.

Marketing your company, or its products or services, can be a stressful job. There is a lot at stake, and every move you make as a marketer is scrutinized by, well, everyone.

Most of us have had an experience at some point or another when a brand’s customer service has wowed us and turned a negative experience into a positive one. For me, a standout was the time I was rush-shipped a new sound machine for our infant daughter after it suddenly stopped working in the middle of the night.

Reimagining brand stories. Creating relevant communication plans. Intersecting with customers in digital and purposeful media. These components help Trone craft insightful messages that will convert telecom prospects into customers and customers into advocates.

Storytelling is an attainable marketing strategy for companies of any size, even the most hyperlocal. Because a compelling brand narrative is built on the strength of imagination and creativity—not wallet size.

Add another aspect to your role: social. The new job of telecommunications marketers is to make customers feel not only good, but smart and heard. When asked if telecom providers use social media in an effective way to engage them, only five percent of customers strongly agreed while twenty percent moderately agreed.

Pet Age recently reported that retailers are ignoring customers’ social media requests. In fact, retailers failed to respond to more than 80 percent of consumer questions and requests on social media in the last year, most notably during the holiday season. That includes pet retailers, too.

You’ve heard it before—a smart digital marketing plan can play an important role in awareness advertising. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But for a local telecom, digital marketing can make your company seem ever-present (a big plus when you are a local carrier) but it can also help you strategically pinpoint potential users. And this isn’t theory.

So you’re driving a ton of traffic to your website. Fantastic. You can tell from your analytics that people are engaged. They’re viewing multiple pages per visit and spending a lot of time digging around. Great. How about conversions? Maybe you’ve got a 5% conversion rate. Splendid. But flip that on its head.

Millennial consumers are bilingual. When it comes to shopping online, they speak the languages of trust and efficiency. Brands must weave these two ideas together to create a website experience that is candid and efficient enough for Millennials to actually stick around.

A Google or Bing search has always relied on entering text on the keyboard. But now, the exponential rise of the Voice Search cannot be ignored.

“In the old days of Virtual Reality,” is not a phrase that many people can use. But there was a first wave of VR, and some of the challenges we faced then are only now being overcome.