Sonum Puri

Sonum Puri

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Sonum Puri

Consultancy Lead

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As a Consultancy Lead at iProspect, Sonum is responsible for

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The Importance of Brand Relevancy in the Attention Economy

It’s no surprise that the most successful brands are also the most relevant brands. In fact, when it comes to key performance indicators, our dedicated Consult team has seen an increasing number of clients prioritise relevancy. By this, we mean brands that are pertinent to a customer by fulfilling a particular need, desire or purpose. Relevancy can be measured by brand strength which is then determined by the unique strategy and goals of an organisation. Brand building is central to influencing relevancy. The companies that put its customers at the centre of their brand, and are able to convert them into brand evangelists by building trust and loyalty, are winning the battle for hearts and minds. The key is getting people to believe in the brand. Apple, the undisputed king of brands, has done that by amassing a global cult following of their products. Brands that remain relevant can create legions of loyal customers and benefit from high customer retention. This further increases profit margins and lowers the amount a business has to spend on marketing and retargeting to achieve the same sales volumes. So, how should brands measure relevancy? It's all about perception, propensity, awareness, quality, attractiveness and interaction. In the attention economy, where everyone is your competitor, the better your brand works, the more likely you are to persuade potential customers to buy into whatever you are selling. Moreover, brand power directly correlates to financial performance. When customers attach a level of quality to a brand, they are willing to pay more for products or services. Brand equity has a direct effect on sales volume because consumers gravitate toward products with great reputations. Apple has an enormous amount of positive brand equity which means that customers are willing to queue for hours and pay a higher price for its products. Unsurprisingly, Interbrand’s annual report ranks Apple at the top of the world’s most valuable brands followed by Google and Microsoft. The power of data Today, more brands (aside from the big tech companies) have access to an abundance of data. This can be leveraged as a competitive advantage to stay relevant to consumers by forging deeper connections that benefit customers by delivering hyper personalised experiences. Brands need to focus on using their data to gain behavioural insights to earn relevance i.e. the interests, hobbies and relationships of the consumer. However, the right data is still largely underutilised. Looking back at a 2014 Forrester survey, the findings revealed that technology execs and decision makers were only analysing 12% of the data they had. Even now, the missing percentage equates to a wealth of consumer behavioural data points that are key to unlocking relevance. Conclusion Relevancy directly contributes to the life or death of a business. This means that brand survival is more crucial than ever before, particularly in a world where companies are vying for the attention of millions of the same customers. A behavioural data driven approach should be applied to brand building and will ensure that the longevity and success of your brand is in place for years to come. Moreover, brands earn and build relevance when they connect all the dots from their data. This also happens when brands understand every touchpoint of the customer journey, behavioural signals and how they accumulate and relate to each other. Brands then have an opportunity to use data in a way that extends experiences and relationships within customers' lives and as a result, every interaction delivers greater business impact. Get in touch with our dedicated Consult team if you have any questions. 0 3 min read

Five Key Questions to Ask When Investing in Consult

Digital marketing is evolving rapidly due in large part to the constant influx of new technologies in the marketplace. Brands today face the daunting prospect of having to navigate through thousands of potential solutions to find the best option within an increasingly complex ecosystem. Alongside this, the pressure to deliver more personalised customer campaigns, while trying to contribute positively to the bottom line, comes with challenges (more competition, regulatory risks and decreasing budgets). The dedicated Consult team at iProspect was created to support brands on this journey. Whether the task is to build future state road maps, mitigate compliance threats or select and implement optimal technologies that will boost media, the Consult team offers relevant solutions for better business performance. iProspect's Head of Consult, Sonum Puri, answers five common Consult questions and offers examples of how the team has helped brands previously. 1. What do Consult do? In a nutshell, we provide advisory services across strategy, design, training and implementation to help organisations enable media and marketing transformations that drive tangible business outcomes. We take the time to gain a full understanding of our client’s business challenges, before building recommendations that cover technology, data strategy, change management, process re-engineering and training. 2. What are some common client challenges? One challenge that clients often face is not having enough relevant customer data to effectively surface insights to improve knowledge of audience segments. On the other side of the spectrum, some brands have too much data and are unable to make sense of it all to derive useful audience insights that can be activated to improve media experiences. Whilst brands might have a clear idea of their strategic marketing objectives, it's also important to understand how to successfully execute them. This could include a new piece of kit such as an ad server or DMP, in which case, brands need support defining the right solution requirements and selecting the best vendor for their business. Increasingly, clients that are undergoing significant changes internally often enlist our teams to help implement processes and training that will make transitions as smooth as possible. 3. How does Consult deliver value for clients? To date, our team has delivered significant value that has translated into real business benefits. One example: we helped a client in the tourism industry become increasingly data-led and customer-focused by identifying a DMP as a critical need. We worked hand-in-hand to: provide a clear business case select and implement the right technology support the initial use case deployment refine the measurement framework redefine ways of working. As a result, the team helped the client save up to 30% during the procurement process, the DMP contributed to 25% of additional marketing revenue uplift and led to a substantial incremental revenue increase in the first year. Additionally, for a pension provider, we redesigned its automated customer email programme (both journey and technical deployment). The client went from selecting individual data groups and redesigning each individual email to automatically sending communications based on certain triggers (e.g. on boarding) and propensity models. The technical deployment included the integration of IBM Watson, detailed propensity models, existing data warehouse and ESP (Silverpop). This was then put into practice with the client’s marketing and data teams to develop content blocks and actionable insights that could be scalable into new customer journeys. The more targeted approach delivered twice the amount of open rates vs benchmark, reduced the time to send a communication by six weeks and proved automation was possible even in a highly-regulated industry. 4. What are the major challenges when it comes to marketing transformation? Challenges are of course unique to individual organisations. However, there are some brilliant basics that can be applied to avoid major pitfalls when it comes to marketing transformation. This includes knowing your customer (both current and potential) to define compelling value propositions and design winning customer journeys. Senior level engagement is imperative to get everyone on board, and there needs to be a strong vision and robust leadership to lead the organisation through the journey. Compliance and regulation are other big considerations and with the advent of GDPR, it is particularly important when it comes to crafting personalised marketing campaigns. You want to ensure the delivery of a fantastic customer experience whilst remaining on the right side of the line. 5. What should brands consider when it comes to investing in marketing technology? This very much depends on the strategic goals of an organisation as investment priorities will differ. Our team remain innovative in our approach, helping clients do more with their existing setup. However, if new investments are required, the team ensure clients make smart decisions. We achieve this by asking the right questions to yield the right results. What is the ultimate goal? There’s an exponential number of technologies out there and by mapping out goals and objectives, businesses can strategically select the most appropriate technologies to include within budget. Are there current tools in place that can do the job? For larger organisations, it is quite common for different departments to have their own budgets and technology, solely for their team's needs. This can be wasteful, especially if a business is paying twice for a tool with duplicate capabilities and overlapping offers. Before buying anything new, it is worth doing an audit of all technology in place before buying more. Who will be using the tech and are the right resources available? Tools will often be purchased and used by certain people, so it is worth involving them in the procurement process as early as possible to get their guidance and ensure they are comfortable using the tools. Upskilling and training are also factors that are important if there are few people in the organisation with knowledge of operating these new tools. What’s the projected ROI? It's a common phrase but it's certainly true here: you get out what you put in. Any new marketing technology purchased should either reduce costs, improve operational efficiencies or increase profit. You should figure out what the value will be to your business and the time it will take to recoup the benefits to justify the cost of buying the product. Do get in touch with our dedicated Consult team to learn more. 0 6 min read

As a Consultancy Lead at iProspect, Sonum is responsible for