ARE YOU READY FOR THE DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION?

Digital transformation is the new marketing buzzword that is sweeping global markets. People are using it to describe anything from a responsive website to a social media strategy. However, it is much more than just promoting products and services to the end user. A digital transformation is also an organisational change which impacts employees everyday processes.

When implemented correctly. It can allow businesses to become more efficient due to their data-driven accuracy. Allowing them to reap the rewards and take advantage of new business opportunities.

What is a digital transformation?

A digital transformation is the use of digital capabilities that improve business efficiency, customer value manages risk and highlights new monetisation opportunities.

Why do businesses need a digital transformation?

In an increasingly digital world, adapting and growing digitally is critical to business success. Businesses that don’t embrace the digital transformation risk being left behind. As competitors take advantage of the benefits of operating in a digital world.

Employees want to work for digital leaders. They are continuously scoping out the best digital businesses and opportunities. Highlighting the need for organisations to continually up their digital game to retain and attract them.

From smart technology that enables employees to stay organised to scheduling customer service priorities. Going digital can improve the experience for everyone involved with a business.

Businesses can acquire the profitable rewards for going digital as improving efficiency and productivity within your organisation trickles down to a faster, more pleasant, and improved customer experience.

What does a digital transformation involve?

Cultural Revolution

Digitalisation is no longer just an add-on feature to existing channels, products and services. Implementing a digital transformation strategy must be deep-rooted within the culture of an organisation in order to fulfil the success that it promises. It has the ability to empower staff by improving their capabilities and deliver a more cohesive working environment.

Data Driven

A digital transformation will encourage businesses to become data-driven. Having a whole host of new information about customer purchasing habits, behaviours and attitudes are great, businesses just need to ensure that they employ and train talent who can interpret it and translate it into meaningful data.

Constant Evolution

The most important step to a successful digital strategy is being open to change. Businesses need to be ready and raring to transform their organisation as their customers request it. Analytics need to continuously monitored to measure success, weaknesses and opportunities and then adapted to any emerging patterns.

Contact us and see how we can help you with your digital transformation.

Top Tips to Improve your Internal Marketing Communications!

Communicating with employees is no longer a secondary business practice to external communications. Internal marketing communications is a key business function that inspires and aligns your whole organisation.

REMAIN IN CONTROL

A linchpin in the success of internal marketing communications is that employees should never learn about important company news from an external source. Information is becoming evermore accessible and organisations need to prepare a strategy that matches the external speed at which information is published and make company news, operations announcements and even crises immediately accessible to staff.

Remaining in control of messages around the business will also do wonders for squashing any unwanted rumours. Communicating timely and frequently will slow down that pesky rumour mill and help employees have access to accurate information that cannot be misinterpreted.

INVEST IN SOFTWARE

Here at Amplify, we are proud partners of the internal marketing communication experts – Appspace. Appspace allows for a fast, interactive, and reliable channel to reach all employees, boosting transparency and trust. Our unique privilege allows us to experience the benefits of businesses investing in internal marketing communication software, that allows branded internal communications to be broadcast to all or selected employees in an instant, on any device. This allows your team to be kept informed and engaged by sharing the latest news and announcements, dashboards, reports, live TV, training, town halls and social activities on digital signs.

SET THE GOAL

In life, everyone wants a purpose, and this is no different for internal employees. Employees want to know the goals of an organisation, understand strategy to achieve the goals and be confident that they can contribute to those goals. By incorporating your businesses goals into the internal marketing communications, they will feel valued, listened to, and most important part of the team. A recent global survey of 26,000 LinkedIn members, taken by the research firm Imperative, found that 73% of its participants want a career in which they feel that their job matters.

GET CREATIVE

It’s all good and well putting the information out to your employees, but the biggest challenge is getting them to actually read and eventually engage with it.

As the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words. With that in mind, combine your written communications with exciting and colourful visuals to catch the eye of your employees. After all, we retain 65% of visual communication – as opposed to a mere 10-20% of copy.

In fact, we have recently worked with Google, to produce an internal functional interface and subsequently an external consumer-facing app which was launched to the industry at the worlds largest retail trade association exhibition – The National Retail Federation (NRF) 2018. 

CALL IN THE EXPERTS

To succeed in the marketplace, you need to succeed in the workplace. That starts with engaging employees. Working with an external independent source to help navigate an internal marketing communications strategy, such as an agency will remove any company politics and ensure that those nitty-gritty questions are asked. This neutrality is often the key to unlocking solutions to organisational challenges, underpinning the development of effective internal marketing communications strategies.

Contact us for more information on how Amplify can support with Internal Communications.

Digital Marketing Development and Strategies

Digital Marketing Development and Strategies

Any form of digital marketing is dependent on technology and as we know technology is fast changing and constantly evolving. This should mean your digital marketing strategy and campaigns should also evolve as new technology becomes available. As we have mentioned in previous articles it’s essential to have a digital marketing strategy in place. The strategy enables brands / businesses to identify their target audience and gain a strong knowledge and understanding of the customers behavior in the region. Through this you can identify the best tools to use to reach your consumer and also ensure you achieve maximize ROI.

This blog will provide a brief overview of existing digital marketing strategies available. Digital marketing enables you to target specific markets both business-to-business and business to consumer sectors.

Pull and Push Digital Marketing

Pull digital marketing is when consumers actively seek marketing content for example like you Facebook page, whilst push digital marketing is when brands / businesses send direct messages to the consumer without them actively sourcing the content, for example pop up advertising.

To create a successful digital marketing campaign you can also use online behavioral advertising. This involves collecting data from consumer’s online activity over a period of time. Once you have this information you would deliver advertisements tailored to the users interests or preferences. For example if the consumers is spending time researching a holiday marketers can then create future advertisements of hotels within the same location the consumer has been researching, tailoring to their interests or preferences.

An important consideration today when deciding on a digital marketing strategy is that the digital tools have changed the way you market your products or services to consumers moving away from more traditional forms of marketing.

Re-marketing

As mentioned above Re-marketing plays a huge role in digital marketing. This tool enables marketers to create and publish targeted ads in front of a specific audience, generally called ‘searchers’, the consumer has either searched for particular products or services or visited a website for some purpose.

Game advertising

Depending on your target audience game advertising may be worth considering within your strategy. These advertisements are created within mobile app games or video games. One of the most common examples of in-game advertising is advertising billboards appearing during the game. In-game ads also might appear as brand-name products like cars or clothing that exist as gaming status symbols.

For more information on how to create a successful digital marketing strategy, contact us today!

Is Inbound Marketing Worthwhile?

Is Inbound Marketing Worthwhile?

In this week’s blog we thought it would be useful to explain different aspects of inbound marketing and how these can be achieved.

What is inbound marketing?

  • Content creation and distribution – Brands create and plan targeted content, such as blog posts, white papers and their social media channels and share it with current customers and future ones.
  • Lifecycle marketing – The methodology of inbound marketing follows a cyclical process that converts strangers to leads, leads to customers and customers to promoters of a brand. At each stage of the buyer process, there is an action for marketers to take and KPIs that measure the success.
  • Personalisation – The more tailored your content is, the more valuable it will be to consumers.
  • Multi-channel – You have to approach customers where they already are, whether that is on your website, a search engine or on social media.
  • Integration – You need to integrate all your content, publishing and analytic tools to make sure you are publishing the right content at the right time, in the right place.
  • Focus on getting found – The crucial difference between inbound and outbound marketing is that by creating content of value, you start to earn your reach. You will also earn the customer satisfaction that leads to customers becoming promoters.

The tools used in inbound marketing

  • Blog posts
  • Keywords
  • Social publishing
  • Forms
  • Calls to action
  • Landing pages
  • CRM
  • Email
  • Workflows
  • Surveys
  • Smart content
  • Social monitoring

So where’s the proof that investing time and money in inbound marketing is worthwhile?

  • Companies report gaining 54% more customers through inbound marketing than through outbound (Source: Voltier Digital)
  • On average, a lead gained through inbound costs 62% less than one through outbound (Source: Voltier Digital)
  • In 2014 74% of B2B companies increased their inbound investment compared to last year (Source: State of Inbound report)
  • 80% of small businesses will invest in inbound this year
  • Inbound marketing channels can deliver up to 30 times the campaign conversion rate of traditional outbound direct-mail campaigns (Source: CRM Daily)

If you would like some more information on how Amplify can support you with your inbound marketing, contact us to arrange a meeting with one of our team. 

Amplify Provides Full Range of Marketing Services in Dubai

Amplify Provides Full Range of Marketing Services in Dubai

Following on from our previous blog, which focused on Marketing Strategies and Marketing Planning. We thought it would be useful to feature some popular and alternative types of marketing services in Dubai.

Using technology to support marketing campaigns

Having a good website is key to providing information not just to local consumers but also extending to countries worldwide. Data analytics to support your marketing can be gained from various sources such as online surveys, smart phone applications and social media. Internet marketing is another branch of online marketing, where SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is regarded as an effective method of increasing your website’s presence in organic searches for creating potential customers. Amplify can support clients with all of these options and tailor them according to your requirements and budget. From designing and creating a visually stunning and fully functional website to blog writing services as well as social media management and SEO services.

What is Right-time marketing?

Right-time marketing is an approach to marketing which selects an appropriate time and place for the delivery of a marketing message. An example of this was a 2 weekend Beach Activation that we planned, managed and executed for Banana Boat. Not only were the events successful in marketing the brand and its sun-care products but also educating families on the importance of skin care and protecting against sun damage.

Database Marketing

This is a form of direct marketing which uses a database of consumers or potential customers to create personalised communication to promote a product, brand or service. Following the campaign the data can be analysed to identify success rates.

Rewarding Loyal Customers

Loyalty marketing is based around a strategic plan in which companies reward their existing customers with rewards or incentives. Many coffee shops / restaurants offer loyalty cards where the consumer can collect stamps upon purchases which result in a complimentary purchase at the end. Many companies use this method to grow and retain their existing customers.

Unconventional Guerrilla Marketing

Guerrilla marketing is an advertising strategy in which low-cost unconventional means of marketing are used, for example graffiti or street art, street performers / dancers, often in busy high streets or shopping malls to convey or promote a product or an idea.

Amplify provide’s a full range of marketing services and ideas to support your business, including the examples listed above as well as a huge amount of others. If you are interested in learning about what we can do for your business, get in touch!

Amplify Creative Marketing Agency wins FoodCo Holdings Contract

Amplify Creative Marketing Agency wins FoodCo Holdings Contract

After many months of presentations and meetings we are delighted to officially announce our latest partnership with Food Co Holdings as part of their Business Development Project – Branding and Marketing.

“Agencies were shortlisted for the final round of meetings to discuss proposals and Foodco Holding CEO formed a committee to study all final proposals thoroughly to make the decision.

Selection criteria focused at the following:

  1. Proved track record with success stories in the FMCG industry
  2. Agency team with required expertise on a strategic, technical and operational level
  3. Financial investment required

Committee members were:

CEO, Chief Financial Officer, Business Development Manager, Subsidiaries General Managers, Marketing Manager

The project was awarded to Amplify Marketing Agency FZLLC due to great and intensive experience in FMCG industry with many success stories to tell. Amplify has the required expertise onboard and financial investment was competitive too”

Reema, Marketing Manager

Food Co Holding

The scope of the project for the first year includes:

  • Market Research
  • Marketing Strategy across Trade, Retail & Category management
  • Pricing Strategy & Positioning
  • Annual Marketing Plans with Monthly Activities for BTL, ATL & TTL
  • Branding including Brand Model Development, Architecture & Portfolio Development, Naming Strategy, Brand Guidelines
  • Project Management of all third party contractors and suppliers, working on all activations, executions, production and printing

We are looking forward to sharing some case studies and further information on the project in the coming months – it’s definitely worth looking out for.

In the meantime if you have any marketing needs whether small or large scale – we would love to hear from you!

Strategic Marketing Plan for Small Business’s

The Agency has been inundated with enquiries from a range of different companies in the UAE requiring support with their marketing strategy and marketing planning. We have found the process is much easier once our clients gain a full understanding of the different aspects of marketing services that are available to them. Following this we are able to work with our clients in partnership to identify which marketing areas would best suit their products / services.

So if we take everything back to basics, what is Marketing?

Marketing is a way for companies to communicate their products, services or brands to customers to encourage promotion or sales.

The Marketing Process

Firstly to start the marketing process and create a good marketing strategy, you need to consider the target audience. We support our clients by analysing their market and gaining further knowledge and understanding of their customer’s behaviour. Once we have this information we can then work with the client to assess which types of marketing would suit their requirements.
It can seem quite confusing as there are hundreds of different types of marketing to choose from, more traditional means of communicating with the desired audience through billboard or radio advertising through to more modern forms of marketing via digital forms like social media and smart phones. By using a mixture of both, businesses are able to target the consumer in a more precise and personalised way. Amplify is not only able to provide our clients with the traditional style of a marketing and advertising but also full digital aspects via our digital department. This enables us to provide our clients with full 360 marketing services and plans.

At Amplify we are able to support you with the full marketing planning process and dependent on your requirements create as basic or in-depth plan for your business. We can focus on a specific product or service or look at the company as a whole to create a full marketing strategy to suit your needs and budget.

So what is a Strategic Marketing Plan?

The content of a marketing strategy focuses on the total marketing environment and its impacts on a company, product or service. In particular it will reflect an in depth understanding on what other competition there is and also the target audience. It’s important to have one of these in place before considering anything else, as this will be the foundation to build your long term marketing campaign.

A marketing strategy differs from a marketing tactic in that a strategy will look at long term marketing where as a tactic will just focus on short term. For instance, sending out an e-shot would be tactical, but changing the pricing, or promotional elements would be considered a strategic change.

Over the coming weeks we will be sharing further information on marketing topics as well as usual tips on how we could support your business, in the meantime if you need any further information or would like to speak to us regarding your marketing strategy or any marketing needs…get in touch!

What are the Key Benefits of a Marketing Plan?

A Strategic Marketing Plan keeps your company marketing efforts consistent with the business goals and objectives

An in-depth marketing plan will help your company determine what jobs need to be done and what should be ignored. This will keep your team focused on work that matters—work that enables your company’s goals and objectives to be achieved

A plan keeps your marketing efforts proactive

There’s always new technology, new marketing platforms or a new opportunity which we are always keen to respond to. When you’re constantly reacting to outside forces you’re not in control. So rather than being pushed and pulled in all directions, a plan will protect your business against that trap. A plan will detail your strategies, it will create the path to achieve those strategies and will define the things you need to do to win.

A sound plan makes it easy to evaluate new opportunities

The world around us is always changing so we can assume that new opportunities will present themselves from time to time. It might be a new way of advertising or as big as a new market opening. How do you know if these opportunities are good for you? A plan will prove priceless in these circumstances as it will give you the criteria to evaluate them and determine if they make sense for your company

A marketing plan facilitates measurement

A plan gives you a framework to measure your efforts. One of the great things about all the newer tactics we have at our disposal is they are easily measurable. We can see web site traffic, banner ad clicks, number of followers and email click-throughs. But, all that data on its own does not mean a whole lot. A plan gives you the ability to evaluate all the data and determine if your efforts are moving you towards your corporate goals.

There are many more reasons to develop a marketing plan. The value of a sound strategic marketing plan far outweighs any investment you make to create one and the benefits will last for years.

If you don’t have a strategic marketing plan and would like some further information on marketing strategies, get in touch! We offer a free consultation service and we are sure you will be amazed by our ideas, thoughts and solutions.

Strategic Marketing Planning

Last week was another busy one for Amplify!

The Amplify team have been working on a huge strategic marketing plan for a large manufacturing company in the Middle East. We thought it would be useful to provide you with some information in this weeks blog on how to achieve an effective strategic marketing plan for your business or brand.

So what is a strategic marketing plan?

It’s a process that companies should go through to create and implement effective marketing systems. The plan focuses on marketing and promoting the business to the target audience.

To create an effective strategic marketing plan takes a lot of time, firstly gaining background information on the company / brand, clients and the competition. Companies need to look at identifying promotional opportunities and evaluating the marketing opportunities; research, analyse and identify the target audience; develop a key focus audience for the business to go after and how to achieve the plan; and measuring and evaluating the key results of the marketing efforts of the business.

Planning is one of the most important tasks for a business to succeed.  Whether you are just setting up, launching a new product, rebranding, or just looking to grow your market share – planning is key.

Creating a yearly strategic marketing plan for your company or brand is something you should definitely consider. In-depth planning involves understanding the market and your current business situation and using that knowledge to identify goals and objectives to make progress. We are able to work with you and your business to support you in achieving your marketing goals. Our services cover all aspects detailed in this blog and vary from business to business. We have the knowledge and expertise to work with small independent companies to large corporations.

 Why a Strategic Marketing Plan is key to your business:

So now you know what it is, we thought it would be useful to explain the benefits of having a Strategic Marketing Plan. All companies have fantastic marketing tools available to them. With the explosion of social media, high speed internet and mobile touch devices, the world around us is shrinking and communication to our key audience is evolving. Companies can now access Twitter and Facebook at a click, providing immediate communication channels direct to the customer. The same goes for a corporate blog, email blasts, banner ads and search engine optimisation: they are all quick and easy to do. But how successful are you at doing this? A lot of the ways we communicate with our clients these days tend to be very specialised and focus on the small picture. Twitter, for example, is a 140-character micro-exchange between you and your target audience. It’s a great tool, but one that’s very much about hear and now. A good plan will help your business keep sight of the big picture so you don’t get lost and you don’t miss out on bigger opportunities.

Contact us for more information, we look forward to hearing from you!