Holistic Marketing Management, Volume 9, Issue 2, Year 2019

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Editorial Board of “Holistic Marketing Management” (A refereed journal published four times annually by the School of Management-Marketing of the Romanian-American University) Editor-in-Chief Theodor Valentin PURCĂREA

Bernd HALLIER

John SAEE

John L. STANTON

Léon F. WEGNEZ

William PERTTULA Levent ALTINAY

Andrew KILNER Dana ZADRAZILOVA Riccardo BELTRAMO Sinisa ZARIC Gabriela SABĂU Hélène NIKOLOPOULOU Vasa LÁSZLÓ Peter STARCHON John MURRAY Kamil PÍCHA

Holistic Marketing Management

President of European Retail Academy; President of EuCVoT, Member of the Astana Economic Scientists Club; Former Managing Director EHI Retail Institute, Germany, Chairman of the Advisory Board of EuroShop, Chairman of the Board of the Orgainvent, Trustee of EHI Retail Institute at GLOBALG.A.P. President - Association of Global Management Studies (USA); Editor-in-Chief, Journal of Entrepreneurship and Sustainability Issues & Former Editor-in-Chief, Journal of Management Systems, USA; Australian Graduate School of Entrepreneurship, the Faculty of Business and Enterprise, Swinburne University of Technology; Member of France’s National Academy of Scientific Research (CNRS); Director - ESB International Teaching and Research Exchanges, Reutlingen University, Germany Professor of Food Marketing, Erivan K. Haub School of Business, Saint Joseph’s University Philadelphia, USA; Director, Institute of Food Products Marketing, Editor, Journal of Food Products Marketing; Hall of Fame of the European Retail Academy, Honored Personality 2016 Secretary General, International Association of the Distributive Trade, AIDA Brussels; Member of France’s Academy of Commercial Sciences; Doctor Honoris Causa of NUPSPA (SNSPA) Bucharest; Hall of Fame of the European Retail Academy, Honored Personality 2015; Administrator Secretary General of the Diplomatic Club of Belgium Internet Marketing Professor, College of Business, San Francisco State University, USA Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship, Research Area Leader, Oxford School of Hospitality Management, Faculty of Business, Oxford Brookes University, UK First MBA Director at the Rennes Graduate School of Business in France; Director of RAFME Research into Management Excellence; PhD (Cambridge), MBA (City, London) Faculty of International Economic Relations, University of Economics, Prague, Czech Republic University of Turin, Italy University of Belgrade, Yugoslavia Memorial University, Grenfell Campus, Corner Brook, Canada University of Lille 3, France Szent Istvan University, Hungary Comenius University in Bratislava, Slovakia Faculty of Business, Dublin Institute of Technology, Ireland Faculty of Economics, University of South Bohemia in Ceske Budejovice 1

Irena JINDRICHOVSKA Norbert HAYDAM Constantin ROŞCA Hans ZWAGA Roxana CODITA Dumitru MIRON Valeriu IOAN-FRANC Iacob CĂTOIU Virgil BALAURE Gheorghe ORZAN Luigi DUMITRESCU Marius D. POP Petru FILIP

Ion VOICU SUCALA Virgil POPA Alexandru NEDELEA Olguța Anca ORZAN Ana-Maria PREDA Ovidiu FOLCUȚ Doinița CIOCÎRLAN Marius Dan DALOTĂ Mihai PAPUC Gheorghe ILIESCU Costel NEGRICEA Alexandru IONESCU Tudor EDU Olga POTECEA Oana PREDA Nicoleta DUMITRU Monica Paula RAȚIU Elisabeta Andreea BUDACIA

Deputy Head of Department of Business Economics, University of Economics and Management, Prague, Czech Republic Faculty of Business, Marketing Department, Cape Peninsula University of Technology, South Africa President of Romanian Scientific Society of Management - SSMAR Kemi-Tornio University of Applied Sciences, Finland Technische Universität München, TUM School of Management Academy of Economic Studies in Bucharest National Institute for Economic Research, Romanian Academy; Romanian Marketing Association; Romanian Distribution Committee Academy of Economic Studies in Bucharest Academy of Economic Studies in Bucharest Academy of Economic Studies in Bucharest Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca Dimitrie Cantemir University, Bucharest Technical University of Cluj-Napoca, Management and Economic Engineering Department; University of Glasgow, UK, College of Social Sciences, School of Social & Political Sciences; Managing Editor, Review of Management and Economic Engineering Valahia University of Târgovişte Ştefan cel Mare University of Suceava Carol Davila University of Medicine and Pharmacy Bucharest Romanian-American University Romanian-American University Romanian-American University Romanian-American University Romanian-American University Romanian-American University Romanian-American University Romanian-American University Romanian-American University Romanian-American University Romanian-American University Romanian-American University Romanian-American University Romanian-American University

Associate Editors Diana SOCA Irina PURCĂREA Dan SMEDESCU Art Designer Director Alexandru BEJAN

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“Holistic Marketing Management” (A refereed journal published four times annually by the School of Management-Marketing of the Romanian-American University)

Volume 9, Issue 2, Year 2019

Contents

Theodor Valentin PURCĂREA - Modern Marketing within the Context of the Significant Disruption, and Marketers’ Future Challenges including CX Success ……………........................................................4 Costel Iliuță NEGRICEA - “Marketing Science and Inspirations”, Delivering the Experiences Readers Want …………………………………………………….10 Ioan Matei PURCĂREA - Digital Marketing Trends Transforming Marketing. Digital Marketing to Patients……………………………………………...14 Bernd HALLIER (by courtesy of) - Forum Art Business (FAB): Castle Ambiente, Paper Art, Art and the Expression of Sorrow…………………………………..22 Theodor PURCĂREA - The Future of Marketing. Enabling Personalization and Focusing on the Content Experience at Scale……………………………………..26

The responsibility for the contents of the scientific and the authenticity of the published materials and opinions expressed rests with the author.

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Editorial: Modern Marketing within the Context of the Significant Disruption, and Marketers’ Future Challenges including CX Success

Five years ago, we wrote about “Marketing’s Continuous Rise and Shine”, (Purcarea, 2014) underlining that the face of the marketing function is struggling to keep pace with major changes, by assuming its strategic and systemic leading role. We showed how marketing is challenged: to be more and more creative and accountable, more real-time offering personalized, content delivered across channels, and to engage CEOs and the top leadership to valorize the ability of the marketing function to help drive organizational change, focusing on what is important to customers, consumers and users, within the rise of social media, big-data analytics, and smart mobile devices; to reinforce and embed ROI thinking in the daily marketing approach, focusing on demonstrating how marketing is creating and capturing customer value, mastering the latest technology, assimilating vast quantities of data and making the right balance between creativity and analytics, engaging and delighting their more connected and empowered than ever before customers, creating a vision for an exceptional customer experience (CX), stimulating a more collaborative working relationship, considering digital marketing makeover as the number one transformational project, better understanding that the content is the fuel for company lead generation and nurturing programs, acting with speed and agility in addressing key customer needs and expectations, and innovating so as to exploit the change as an opportunity.

We kept in mind, of course, what McKinsey’s representatives argued sixteen years ago: for a better branding, marketers need to go more scientifically, pushing marketing to new frontiers, by combining a forward-looking market segmentation (spotting meaningful trends, determining probable impact on the customer landscape and the likely profitability of the resulting segments, understanding the future economic potential of each segment) with a better understanding of customers and a brand’s identity (increasing the precision of defining and delivering the brand by using sophisticated analytic tools, identifying with great accuracy the attributes which distinguish the brand and the touchpoints through which these attributes should be delivered, determining those touchpoints correlating best with the brand’s essence, assessing the statistical relationship between these touchpoints, and forming the groupings which correlate best with the desired brand positioning), the core of efficient brand building being precisely targeting what customers care about (and better communicating the pathway modeling analyses internally so as to determine brand advocacy). (Aufreiter et al., 2003) Today we can better understand how – within the context of a significant disruption (characterized by better targeting, segmentation, personalization, and analytics in the digital era, where mobile is something common, and there is a clear evidence of the consumer loyalty’s decline because of closer competition) – modern marketing knew a monumental shift, being forced to find out the proper response to it, CMOs being involved in better contributing (not only Holistic Marketing Management

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by better building brands, improving end-to-end CX, and growing loyalty, but also by effectively managing their P&L, by better ROMI, by implementing agile marketing and talent management which balances creativity and analytics/so-called “whole-brain talent”, inspiring across the Csuite accordingly) to grow the business by delivering the right experiences to consumers.

(Cvetanovski & Heller, 2019) McKinsey’s recent researches revealed: the role of CMO in supporting the integration of data and creativity at the level of the driving the growth accordingly, and the need of better building his relationships with the CEO (who is responsible for the company’s growth, his support for the marketing investment being essential), the CFO (the gatekeeper for the marketing budget, who is looking toward the CMOs to help him translate marketing metrics into the business objectives), and the CHRO (with regard to the complex endeavor of attracting and retaining top marketing talent); the importance of the interaction model between the proactive engaged CMO and the board hiring and guiding effectively the entire C-suite; that one of the most effective ways of modernizing traditional marketers (comfortable in a certain way of working) is agile marketing (proving the ability to rapidly test and learn, working in partnership with the technology organization); while brands are facing less consumer loyalty, there is a real need of creative ideas (data and creativity being treated as equal partners) generating emotional connections with consumers and adequate way of engaging them; that sources of value that didn’t exist before are unlocked by the investments (which increase) in data and marketing technology, CX, media, and creative, the challenge being to can forecast ROI (also considering the increasing shift toward insourcing, mainly in relation to creative and content, but despite this rise of insourcing agencies are trying to reestablish trust with their clients, including by investing in or cocreating the intellectual property of some of them); the major implications on marketing because of General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR): marketers’ need of requiring consumers’ explicit consent (a limitation of their ability to use the data), marketers are forced to rethink the value exchange with them, and the problem of far less third-party data available in regulated markets; over the next two to five years, marketers will face big challenges such as: building in the growth leadership mind-set, making measurement of ROMI a priority within the context of the proliferation of different channels/touchpoints, the execution of creative across all of these, and making a move from doing analytics to becoming data driven, so as to deliver the accountability confirming the creation the performance-oriented culture.

And as to the successful alignment of sales and marketing content is considered key, allow us to cite from the recent Bigtincan’s guide to acquiring more buyers and keeping your best customers: “Content in context: it’s today’s corporate currency. Armed with smartphones and tablets, today’s empowered buyers are insatiably consuming content at their convenience, and that includes researching products and services and making buying decisions. Of the main components of sales enablement, content is the connective tissue that binds them all together…

Determining what content to create and offer at each stage of the buyer’s journey is fraught with uncertainty now that the buyer is in the driver’s seat. The only way to deliver content in the proper context is to do so with purpose and direction and repeatable processes… In the era of Holistic Marketing Management

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the empowered buyer, closing sales has become more challenging… Learning to Sell While Not Selling… Sales and Marketing can provide analytics and input on what works most effectively for its content marketing and dynamic sales training programs… Although every company’s martech stack is unique, most organizations share similar base configurations”. (Bigtincan, 2019) And just take a look at the figure below:

Figure no. 1: A representation of a typical technology environment for an enterprise that has implemented a sales enablement strategy, Bigtincan: The #1 Sales Enablement Platform Source: What is sales enablement? A guide to acquiring more buyers and keeping your best customers, Bigtincan: The #1 Sales Enablement Platform, pp. 61 (work cited)

It is worth mentioning that as shown in the above figure from this Bigtincan’s guide, the most enterprise martech stacks include at a minimum the following systems: Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system, Marketing automation system, Content Management System (CMS), Learning Management System (LMS), and Sales Enablement Automation (SEA) platform.

On the other hand, let’s remember that three years ago, in 2016, we showed that marketers really care about their marketing technology stack within the framework of developing a marketing capabilities platform, and this while struggling to improve CX and focusing on the customer technology stack, marketing channels evolving with time shaped by the evolution of technology and media. (Purcarea, 2016) While a year later, in 2017, we underlined: the clear pressure for marketers of proving their impact on company’s revenue, better understanding what technology drives company’s go-to-market strategy, and the relation between revenue relationship models and CX, knowing that customers are driving up revenue risk which is serving to accelerate companies’ CX initiatives, the modern CMO being seen now as the voice of Holistic Marketing Management

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the customer in the organization; (Purcarea, 2017) “Marketing’s Renaissance by Committing to Improve CX”; (Purcarea, 2017) “CMOs at the confluence of AI, CX, and Growth”. (Purcarea, 2017) In 2018 we approached the topic of “An increase of marketers’ focus on insight and action, adequately approaching the marketing stack”, (Purcarea, 2018) while in March 2019 we focused on “Modern Marketing, CX, CRM, Customer Trust and Identity”. (Purcarea, 2019) This year, the reputed Peter Fader, Professor of Marketing at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, approached the topic of “3 steps to boost your Customer Experience strategy and make it truly customer-centric”, arguing that as it isn’t always clear which metrics are best to measure, it is necessary to correct the problems with CX measurement practices (he explained firstly how CX is measured across two dimensions in the well-known Forrester’s CX Index: CX Quality and Customer Loyalty), making the resulting strategies more customercentric, and in this respect he recommended three steps: to maintain the heterogeneity of CX metrics, to analyze CX metrics against other factors, such as switching costs (see the figure below, where he and Sarah E. Toms, Executive Director and Cofounder of Wharton Interactive simplified the concept of switching costs as defined by Investopedia, showing customers classified by switching costs and a CX metric), and to deploy CX tactics with precision to gain maximum returns. (Fader, 2019)

Figure no. 2: Customers classified by switching costs and a CX metric (Step 2), Fader, P. & Toms, E.S. Source: Fader, P. (2019). CX Metrics Aren’t Customer-Centric, But Should Be. Learn How, CustomerThink, February 28 (work cited)

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Professor Fader (and his colleague) pledge for running targeted experiments in order to measure the effectiveness of various CX tactics, rather than engaging with customers generally, because there should be no such thing as an average customer metric (as there is not an average customer). This interesting article received two remarkable comments (from Andrew Rudin and Michael Lowenstein) worthing to be analyzed.

Also at the beginning of this year, Nancy Parra, Content Manager at AskNicely: NPS Software - Real time Customer Feedback, reminded us of the 2013 research study by Walker which predicted that by 2020 CX will overtake price and product as the main differentiator for brands, and showed that AskNicely’s 2018 NPS Benchmark Study validated that prediction, founding also that more retention and better growth are discovered by forward-looking companies strategically stepping away from price wars to concentrate on CX metrics. (Parra, 2019) She took a look at different CX metrics (Net Promoter Score/NPS; Customer Effort Score/CES; Customer Satisfaction Score/CSAT; Five Star Reviews; Churn) and at what these common CX metrics are measuring (loyalty, satisfaction or quality: NPS or CES are measuring loyalty, CSAT measuring satisfaction, and 5 Star Reviews is measuring quality).

So, marketers have to know what they are doing with CX improvement, because paraphrasing Dr. W. Edwards Deming we can say that if marketers can’t measure what they are doing as a process, they don’t know what they are doing. And paraphrasing the (Romanian -) American Dr. Joseph Guran we can add that marketers must keep in mind that all CX improvement happens project by project and in no other way.

Allow us to end by recalling a principal research study of Customer Think (and sponsored by Verint) – entitled “What Drives CX Success?” – which revealed (on the basis of both input of CX leaders and an evaluation of over 200 CX initiatives) significant conclusions: CX vision must extend beyond fixing problems; CX initiatives need a business case; CX programs must extend beyond legacy Voice of Customer sources and CX metrics; the need to invest in CX talent and technology; the need of a strong customer-centric culture. (Whiting, 2019)

Theodor Valentin Purcărea Editor-in-Chief

References Aufreiter, A.N., Elzinga, D. and Gordon, W.J. (2003). Better branding, McKinsey Quarterly, November. Retrieved from https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/marketing-andsales/our-insights/better-branding Holistic Marketing Management

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Cvetanovski, B. and and Heller, J. (2019). How to unlock marketing-led growth: Data, creativity, and credibility, Episode of the McKinsey Podcast moderated by London, S., June. Retrieved from https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/marketing-and-sales/our-insights/how-tounlock-marketing-led-growth-data-creativity-and-credibility?

Fader, P. (2019). CX Metrics Aren’t Customer-Centric, But Should Be. Learn How, CustomerThink, February 28. Retrieved from http://customerthink.com/cx-metrics-arentcustomer-centric-but-should-be-learn-how/?

Parra, N. (2019). Customer Experience Metrics: Understanding CSAT, CES, NPS, and 5-Star, AskNicely, 10 January. Retrieved from https://www.asknicely.com/blog/customer-experiencemetrics-understanding-csat-ces-nps-5-star Purcarea, T. (2014). Marketing’s Continuous Rise and Shine, Holistic Marketing Management, September, Volume 4, Issue 3, pp. 06-25 Purcarea, T. (2016). The practice of marketing under the pressure of continuously updating the marketing capabilities platform, Holistic Marketing Management, September, Volume 6, Issue 3, pp. 27-41 Purcarea, T. (2017). Marketing’s progress beyond its heritage functions: New Marketing, New CMO, and the Revenue Potential, Holistic Marketing Management, June, Volume 7, Issue 2, pp.

18-28 Purcarea, T. (2017). Marketing’s Renaissance by Committing to Improve CX, Holistic Marketing Management, September, Volume 7, Issue 3, pp. 30-47 Purcarea, T. (2017). CMOs at the confluence of AI, CX, and Growth, Holistic Marketing Management, December, Volume 7, Issue 4, pp. 37-48 Purcarea, T. ( 2018). An increase of marketers’ focus on insight and action, adequately approaching the marketing stack, Holistic Marketing Management, December, Volume 8, Issue 4, pp. 23-32 Purcarea, T. (2019). Modern Marketing, CX, CRM, Customer Trust and Identity, Holistic Marketing Management, March, Volume 9, Issue 1, pp. 42-55 Whiting, T. (2019). 5 ways to prepare for a new era of Customer Experience, Customer Experience Update, March 25. Retrieved from http://www.customerexperienceupdate.com/edition/weekly-marketing-brands-2019-03-23? *** What is sales enablement? A guide to acquiring more buyers and keeping your best customers, Bigtincan: The #1 Sales Enablement Platform, pp. 28-29, 42, 57, 60-63. Retrieved from https://go.bigtincan.com/download-essential-guide-sales-enablement-2019

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“Marketing Science and Inspirations”, Delivering the Experiences Readers Want Costel Iliuță NEGRICEA Dean of the RAU School of Management-Marketing

JEL Classification: Y30 As creating and keeping a reader is a normal purpose for each journal, the “Marketing Science and Inspirations” Journal – a true brand of the Comenius University in Bratislava, Slovakia – is continuing to successfully mix science and inspirations, conserving the memorable connection with its competent readers. It is well-known that: our Partner Journal delivers the experiences readers want by always providing high-quality content, keeping them engaged, and works hard to ensure that it is a good match for new readers too; consistent with its vocation, “Marketing Science and Inspirations” confirms with each issue the ability to treat readers well, like savvy customers.

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We were again happy to receive by post the Issue 1, Volume XIV, 2019 of our Partner Journal „Marketing Science and Inspirations”, Comenius University in Bratislava, Slovakia.

The new issue of this well-known academic journal addressed to academics and practitioners covered as usual a wide range of interesting topics in the marketing research field: • “Characteristics of Slovak consumers generations”. The author Samuel Smolka analyzed the typologies of different consumers’ generations (intensely debated in marketing, very much emphasis being placed on them), their specific features and characteristics, which they profiled. He showed that the knowledge of consumers’ generations (one of the assumptions about good segmentation) is a key identifier in reaching out to both the current and potential consumers. As the preferences of each generation affect its purchasing behavior, marketers are struggling to beneficiate and to influence them thorough better knowledge of the addressed generation, including taking account of the specifics related to the country developments (specific products, characteristics and behavior). The article offer a comprehensive picture of most commonly used typologies in the Slovak Republic, of the accuracy of the generations’ characteristics, and whether and why these characteristics are intergenerational.

• “Promotion of products in retro-designed packaging”. The authors Iveta Broučková, Eva Jaderná and Alena Srbová showed how retailers follow the trend of retro marketing and offer traditional products in retro-designed packaging to attract customers, this trend for retro marketing and packaging being something that re-occurs at regular intervals over successive time periods. The authors analyze consumer reactions (e.g. noticing, locating) to the promotion of products in retro-designed packaging, describing the case of Lidl retail chain promoting the products in retro-designed packaging (which is to be introduced as a best practice in the Czech market).

• “Perception of product placement usage by Slovak consumers”. The authors Michal Budinský and Janka Táborecká-Petrovičová demonstrate that: many of the increasing number of companies which have used in recent years a product placement as a specific form of advertisement for promotion of their products experienced very quickly different positive effects accompanied with this specific tool; the brand image improvement of promoted product was one of these effects. In order to identify changes in consumer brand image perception in case of product placement usage the authors examined product placement knowledge and likeness of its usage among consumers or differences between classical advertisement and product placement.

They also realized a primary research with regard to consumers’ opinions about if the product placement usage influences their perception of brand image (impacting consumer behaviour), applying the binomial test and proving that more than 50% of Slovak consumers prevail positive brand image perception connected to product placement usage. Their research results also proved correlations between brand image perception and purchase intention.

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• “Shopping styles of young generation”. The author Dana Vokounová focused on verifying the modified CSI instrument and identifying the dominant shopping style of young people. With the view to assess the construct validity and reliability she used factor analysis with varimax rotation and Cronbach’s alpha coefficients, the results of this analysis indicating that the tested instrument is not fully applicable to young Slovak people (only 26 out of 44 items loaded onto seven factors exhibited acceptable validity and reliability). The author concluded (on the basis of the average scores and results of the t-test) that there are three dominant shopping styles typical for young people: Quality conscious, Impulse driven and Price conscious, showing accordingly that: high quality products, incentives in the stores and low price are important driving shopping forces for young people; novelty-fashion is not a priority for young-adult consumers (what was a surprise); Quality conscious is the dominant shopping style of men, who are not at all hedonistic shoppers; Price conscious, Impulse driven and Quality conscious are the three shopping styles typical for women.

• “The utilization of multimedia research laboratories in practice. Part II”. The authors Romana Čočková, Peter Štarchoň and Lucia Vilčeková emphasized are continuing to emphasize the importance of the innovations in the teaching of subjects focused on the active participation of university students on real projects (within the liaison to cooperation with the subjects of economic practice), and this on the basis of the utilization of the potential of multimedia research laboratories (within the context of the new approaches in teaching such as design thinking). They demonstrated how current trends in higher education emphasize changes in teaching oriented on increasing the employability of graduates in the labour market, as well as in the creative economy which includes marketing, marketing communication and advertising.

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The „Marketing Science and Inspirations” Journal also includes other sections such as: “Marketing Briefs” (Pavel Štrach – “Deploying hybrid warfare strategies: Demarketing and communications denial”); “Captured us” (“Czechs and advertising 2019”); “Reviews” (Magdaléna Samuhelová – “Gregor, Miloš a Vejvodová, Petra: Best book about fake news, disinformation and manipulation!!!”); “Dictionary of Useful Marketing Terms” (Dagmar Weberová).

We remember with pleasure that the Editor-in-Chief of the „Marketing Science and Inspirations” Journal is Professor Peter Starchon, Faculty of Management, Comenius University in Bratislava, Slovakia, who is also a Member of the Editorial Board of the “Holistic Marketing Management” Journal and of the “Romanian Distribution Committee Magazine”. It is also our honor and pleasure to remember both the significant meeting in Koln, Germany, in 2011, on the occasion of the working meeting of the European Retail Academy (ERA), and the different significant moments when the ERA President, Prof. Dr. Bernd Hallier (also a Member of both above mentioned Editorial Boards), visited the Romanian-American University.

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Digital Marketing Trends Transforming Marketing. Digital Marketing to Patients Ioan Matei PURCĂREA Abstract Keeping up with the ever-evolving digital marketing trends is the right attitude today, and marketers are running with new vehicles of innovation to meet the high expectations of today’s smarter customers expressed across all the digital interactions, by providing a superior and seamless CX across their customer journey. Digital marketers are aware of the role of CX in advancing digital transformation and are challenged to create experiences which resonate in the current distracted age. They are also aware that we are all patients evolving from care recipients to active participants, that digital marketing is facing healthcare’s reshaping in multiple ways determined including by how the patient segments access healthcare, and that digital marketing must increase brand awareness and foster brand loyalty. That is why digital marketers need to implement adequate healthcare marketing strategies so as to improve patient experience in the new healthcare world. There is no doubt that marketers need to be truly digital customer focused and to build deep digital customer relationships accordingly.

Keywords: Digital Marketing Trends; Digital Experience (DX); Digital CX; Healthcare Digital Marketing; Digital Customer Relationships JEL Classification: D83; I10; L86; M15; M31; M37; O33

Enabling the future of marketing Keeping up with the ever-evolving digital marketing trends is the right attitude today, businesses trying to thrive needing to adapt to these faster evolving changes and to act accordingly. Artificial Intelligence (AI, with its ability of analyzing consumer behavior and search patterns, and of utilizing date from greatly impressed of social media platforms and blog posts), Mobilification (the prospective and current customers’ engagement by using a mobile strategy is already an usual thing for digital marketers), Personalized Content (going beyond the standard, and targeting prospective customers), Chatbots (ensuring instant gratification), More Video (a true boom), Pansexual Marketing (gender neutral digital marketing), are such digital marketing trends we can’t omit. (TFC Marketing, 2019) Other opinions underlined, for instance, that: among millennials, Instagram is going to dominate Facebook which is still the no. 1 social media platform; Linkedin will continue to be helpful for B2B marketers, driving social traffic to their websites and blogs; Micro-influencers (with social media following fewer than 10000 people) are trusted and cost-effective influencers, delivering engagement and driving social buzz, being brand relevant and advocating for it; Search engine optimization(SEO) is continuing to help in the long run as the best source of traffic; Pay-Per-Click (PPC), an important tool for Holistic Marketing Management

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every digital marketer, is benefitting from many updates and will continue to help increase the conversion rate; Email marketing will continue to remain a sustainable platform to reach customers; Personalization of content will continue to attract more customers (user experience being key); Voice Search trend is challenging SEO marketers to start prepare their websites accordingly; the evolution of Programmatic advertising will reduce the cost of campaigns, saving also a lot of time etc. (Digital Vimal, 2019) Coming back to the first highlighted digital marketing trend we can’t omit, allow us to show that on June 6, this year, we received an email from eMarketer Marketing Technology (eMarketer, New York) having this subject: “How AI Is Transforming Marketing”. The key role played by AI in both integrating data and generating insight was underlined here, enabling marketers to scale limitlessly while never losing an insight. We were invited to download a whitepaper from Datorama, A Salesforce Company, in order to learn: “How AI is enabling the future of marketing. Key ways AI drives growth by enhancing performance, impact, and customer loyalty. Why machine learning and AI are extremely complementary to marketing”. On the other hand, at the beginning of this year, the Drift’s (the Conversational Marketing Platform) 2018 State of Chatbots Report attracted our attention, by underlining, among other aspects, the following: (Drift, 2019) in order to simulate how humans communicate many chatbots (computer programs designed to simulate conversation with human users, to a great extent over the internet) rely on AI (machine learning and NLP); the predicted use cases for Chatbots identified by respondents to their survey were as follows: getting a quick answer in an emergency (37%), resolving a complaint or problem (35%), getting detailed answers or explanations (35%), finding a human customer service assistant (34%), making a reservation (e.g. restaurant or hotel; 33%), paying a bill (29%), buying a basic item (27%), getting ideas and inspiration for purchases (22%), adding yourself to a mailing list or news service (22%), communicating with multiple brands using one program (18%), none of these things (13%), buying an expensive item (14%); the potential benefits of Chatbots expected by customers to enjoy: 24 hour service (64%), getting an instant response (55%), answers to simple questions (55%), easy communication (51%), complaints resolved quickly (43%), a good customer experience (43%), detailed / expert answers (37%), answers to complex questions (35%), friendliness and approachability (32%), none of these (8%); the potential blockers to using Chatbots: I’d prefer to deal with a real-life assistant (43%), I’d worry about it making a mistake (30%), If I could only access it through Facebook (27%), I’d prefer to use a normal website (26%), If it wasn’t able to “chat” in a friendly manner (24%), Nothing would stop me from using a chatbot (15%), Other (3%). We can see the benefits (beyond their limitations) of using Chatbots (which are providing the real-time, on-demand approach, also opening the way of delivering a better online CX) in communicating with customers and potential customers, businesses having this opportunity to deliver a level of real-time service with the help of Chatbots in combination with online chat (which scored in the above mentioned survey the firsthighest when it came to those respondents expecting instant responses). Without forgetting to also mention that according to this report Chatbots have outperformed apps in five benefits Holistic Marketing Management

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categories (quick answers to simple questions, getting 24-hour service, quick answers to complex questions, ability to easily register a complaint, getting detailed / expert answers).

At the beginning of March this year, on the Blog of Hubspot it was argued that AIpowered Chatbots (by leveraging machine learning and NLP) can respond to customers’ questions in a human way, not only by understanding the intent behind their requests, but also by accounting for each customer’s entire conversation history when it interacts with them. Within this framework a list of the best AI chatbots for this year (Watson Assistant; Bold360; Rulai; LivePerson; Inbenta; Ada; Vergic) was advanced, recommendable for a company wanting to upgrade the currently used standard Chatbot. (Chi, 2019) There is no doubt that AI – as confirmed by the latest Salesforce Research (which surveyed 7,037 global consumers and business buyers) introduced in their “State of the Connected Customer” report – is one of the new vehicles of innovation (together with mobile and cloud platforms) sought continually by companies competing for winning today’s smarter customers created by the connected world. As Simon Mulcahy, Salesforce CMO, highlighted from the very beginning: “… customers, consumers, patients, and citizens are supremely empowered with more information and choice than ever before, making it an even greater endeavor to sustain loyalty”. And with regard to patients we recall that an article published by Health Tech Insider at the end of 2017 and entitled “AI detects disease from smartphone behavior” revealed that by using machine learning and AI a company like Mindstrong Health has a measurement approach called “digital phenotyping” (using three kinds of signals from a smartphone) and makes assessments based on smartphone use. (Houston, 2017) But we will refer later at healthcare digital marketing.

Developing an adequate understanding of the digital experience (DX) Recognized as a customer-need driven initiative, the digital experience (DX being provided by mobile apps, websites and smart devices) uses digital technologies and provides a specific interaction between a single user (customer, partner or employee) and an organization.

On the other hand, the sum of all digital interactions which a person has with an organization represents a customer digital experience (DCX) going beyond individual touchpoints and considering an improvement (of the user interface, of the mobile responsiveness and design, of the communication methods, of delivering real time data etc.) across all these digital interactions.

(Liferay, N.D.) Five years ago, in the major report of Cognizant’s Center for the Future of Work in partnership with leading market research firm Oxford Economics (which surveyed 300 senior executives with responsibility for consumer data and analytics in April 2014) it was underlined that: to survive and thrive in digital terra incognita it is necessary to take stark strategic decisions; CX is most of the time an experience at all hardly; there is a clearly focus on product and service innovation, enabled by digital interactions and Code Halo-style approaches; in five Holistic Marketing Management

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or 10 years (2019-2024) customers’ expectations are going to be quite unlike those of today (November 2014); to compete in this new Code Halo era it is of great importance to interact digitally with customers and prospects. Also in November 2014, a FitForCommerce White Paper made possible by the support of Oracle Retail argued that the total digital customer experience is driven by the collision of marketing and commerce disciplines, five key components making up this experience: content and commerce; customers and context; digital and physical convergence; brand and commerce convergence; scalability. A year later, in September 2015, A Trend Study for Germany, France and the UK – made by Pierre Audoin Consultants (PAC), A CXP Group Company, Sponsor of the study being Adobe – and entitled “Holistic Customer Experience in the Digital Age” revealed (as a part of the analyst conclusion - Nicole Dufft , Independent Vice President, Digital Enterprise) among other aspects that in this age of the empowered customer (the digital age) companies must be able to provide a superior and seamless CX across all touchpoints.

In October last year, on the occasion of a podcast for Worthix, the reputed digital analyst Brian Solis argued that the number one driver for advanced digital transformation is CX, defined by him as “the sum of all engagements a customer has with your company throughout the life cycle” (considering all the moments, not just one; from here the importance of recreating click paths with regard to the way of getting someone from A to B), where experience is “an emotional/sensory reaction to a moment” (which can be measured by customer’s reaction and take away with him). (Solis, 2018) Very recently, on the occasion of a SAP’s Tech Unknown podcast, Solis showed that – within the context of digital distraction affecting employees, customers, and business leaders – we’re all human beings, having a human emotional and physical reaction to a moment (including those offered with the help of: Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Pinterest etc.), accelerating our brains and becoming narcissistic, much more demanding, anxious, and impatient, trying to run through our journey (which is needing to compensate for delivering value, relief, and utility) as best we can, but needing to be in control of our life. (Solis, 2018) And businesses are challenged accordingly to create CX which attract, earn and reward attention, creating experiences which resonate in the current distracted age, all these on the basis of the significant data available.

And all these also make us recall another article published by Health Tech Insider in October 2017 and entitled “Emotion-aware AI enhances digital interaction”, which concluded that: “advances in emotion-aware digital tech have exciting potentials for medicine and healthcare”. (Brown, 2017) Digital Marketing to Patients… We are all Patients Last year, a Privcap Media Report (Q1 2018, sponsored by Ernst & Young) entitled “The Consumerization of Healthcare” started from the fact that U.S. healthcare system is taking a page from retail: “The U.S. healthcare system is undergoing consumerization – a fundamental move toward a value-based market in which providers are more responsive to their patients. In this Holistic Marketing Management

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evolving market, healthcare “products” are delivered directly to patients, and patients are evolving from care recipients to participants who play an active role in managing their own health”. This Report revealed among other aspects that: “Marketing to patients is more about modifying behavior than selling services… It’s more about messaging – conveying information to patients that will modify their behavior and bring a better outcome, for them and the provider”.

It is largely recognized McKinsey & Company’s preoccupation for Healthcare Systems and Services Practice. Twelve years ago, in 2007 McKinsey inaugurated its annual Consumer Health Insights (CHI) Survey, which provides not only information on the opinions, preferences, and behaviors of thousands of US consumers, but also on the environmental factors influencing these consumers’ healthcare choices. The 2018 McKinsey CHI Survey (which identified six consumer segments with differing needs: healthy convenience seeker, disadvantaged disconnected user, busy convenience user, loyal informed consumer, engaged traditionalist, and constrained chronic care consumer) revealed, for example, that: there are three areas considered by respondents as especially important – claims submissions, cost information, and provider performance data – many of them reporting low satisfaction levels; consumers continue to use emergency rooms for nonemergency conditions, while fewer consumers are visiting primary care physicians; consumers want digital solutions, those interested in primary care physicians leveraging digital more; consumers are also seeking greater value and convenience; there is an increased use of digital tools (online medical visits, activity trackers, electronic health records, online scheduling, digital appointment reminders etc.), what confirms consumers’ openness to innovation. (Cordina et al., 2019) The context is clear: healthcare is reshaped today in multiple ways (by emerging technologies such as: connected and cognitive devices, electroceuticals, targeted and personalized medicine, robotics, 3D printing, big data and analytics, artificial intelligence, blockchain, and robotic process automation) determined by how the above mentioned consumers segments access healthcare, how and which providers deliver it, and what health outcomes it achieves. (Singhal and Carlton, 2019) One way to make the difference in a brand’s success is through emotional connection, but as the emotional connection and impetus to act may manifest differently for different people, it is important to find out the right balance of rational information with emotional impact. (Asbaty, 2019) As marketing was defined by Philip Kotler as the art of brand building, there is no doubt about the continuous evolution of the healthcare marketing on the way of achieving brand’s success.

The challenge of increased patient choice is driving the opportunity for brand in healthcare, health systems’ brands needing to be broader and more purpose-oriented, better understanding their audience, knowing what patients want from them, permeating every facet of the experience (patients and employees), and impacting both digital and physical experiences, implementing a brand strategy with forward-leaning orientation, looking at the future of healthcare. (Lagasse, 2018) Today, between the healthcare services offered by similar brands Holistic Marketing Management

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there are no so big differences within the context of shifting performance metrics to value-based assessments like patient satisfaction, and of putting emphasis on prevention over treatment, healthcare brands struggling to align with their customers’ needs and expectations by focusing on: adequately positioning (so as to create a unique impression in patient’s mind); refreshing their visual identity; compelling, engaging, and useful content; digital marketing, as one of the most valuable ways of engaging with their audience and improve patients’ engagement, increasing brand awareness and fostering brand loyalty; a consistent and cohesive across every touchpoint customer experience (CX). (Lischer, N.D.) Healthcare digital marketing experts recommend healthcare marketing strategies such as: generating educational content (by infusing targeted keyword into the content, using informational blogs or articles posted on social media sites etc.); making analytics a top priority (so as to generate more patient leads and higher ROMI); investing in targeted marketing strategies (by better segmenting, targeting and positioning, including with the help of the proper digital platforms); enhancing the user experience (making it convenient and seamless by ensuring patients’ access to the information they need in order to make informed decisions and having their questions quick and adequately answered); innovating (by helping patients’ online searches, for instance ensuring voice search capabilities) etc. (Mine Health, 2018) As an improved patient experience is considered today as being key to successful healthcare business, healthcare providers are increasing the adoption of digital tactics for healthcare marketing: website optimization for local searches, rich content based on patient driven data, capturing local prospects using social media, proactive online reputation management (being well-known the impact of online reviews), optimizing ROI by regular data tracking etc. (Prasad, 2019) Conclusions In our last issue we underlined marketers’ need of better understanding customers’ behaviors and of optimizing content and CX, using innovations in digital media, technology, and data. We also highlighted companies’ need of adapting continuously their digital strategy in accordance with the evolution of today’s digital landscape. (Purcarea, 2019) The Beryl Institute defines the patient experience as “the sum of all interactions, shaped by an organization’s culture, that influence patient perceptions across the continuum of care”.

Three years ago, the President of this reputed institute, Jason A. Wolf, PhD, argued that: “in a new healthcare world, technology does not equate to complexity, but rather accessibility, immediacy, choice, well-being, sustainability and ultimately viability”. (Wolf, 2016) Starting from these above mentioned aspects allow us to end by paraphrasing four reputed experts: ● with the advent of new technology, to be effective, digital marketing strategies must spell out what the target markets are, how they are segmented and what the value proposition is for each key segment – paraphrasing Professor Malcolm McDonald; (McDonald, 2017) Holistic Marketing Management

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● to be truly digital customer focused, digital marketers need to center on the most fundamental elements of a firm: decision-making power, digital marketing performance metrics and brand promise – paraphrasing John Hagel, Co-Chairman for Deloitte LLP’s Center for the Edge; (Hagel, 2017) ● to build deep digital customer relationships, digital marketers need to provide competitively differentiating digital CX that deliver value at the critical points in the digital customer’s relationship with the brand – paraphrasing Ernan Roman, President of ERDM Corp, and Scott Emmons, former Head of the Innovation Lab at the Neiman Marcus Group. (Roman and Emmons, 2019)

References Asbaty, C. (2019). Helping a Health Brand Matter By Creating Emotion, OgilvyHealth, May 23. Retrieved from https://www.ogilvy.com/feed/helping-a-health-brand-matter-by-creating-emotion/ Brown, B. (2017). Emotion-Aware AI Enhances Digital Interaction, Health Tech Insider, October 27.

Retrieved from https://healthtechinsider.com/2017/10/27/emotion-aware-ai-enhances-digitalinteraction/ Chi, C. (2019). 7 of the Best AI Chatbots for 2019, Hubspot, March 04. Retrieved from https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/best-ai-chatbot Cordina, J., Qian, M. and Sanfilippo, L. (2019). Healthcare consumerism today: Accelerating the consumer experience, Executive Summary, McKinsey & Company, April. Retrieved from https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/healthcare-systems-and-services/our-insights/healthcareconsumerism-today-accelerating-the-consumer-experience Hagel, J. (2017). Tests for Customer Focused Companies, The Marketing Journal, February 23. Retrieved from http://www.marketingjournal.org/tests-for-customer-focused-companies-john-hagel/ Houston, K. (2017). AI Detects Disease from Smartphone Behavior, Health Tech Insider, December 13.

Retrieved from https://healthtechinsider.com/2017/12/13/ai-detects-disease-smartphone-behavior/ Lagasse, J. (2018). Why branding in healthcare is more important than ever, and how to connect with consumers, Healthcare Finance News, Nov 08. Retrieved from https://www.healthcarefinancenews.com/news/why-branding-healthcare-more-important-ever-andhow-connect-consumers Lischer, B. (N.D.). Healthcare Branding: 5 Ways to Make Your Company Stand Out, Ignyte Branding.

Retrieved from http://www.ignytebrands.com/healthcare-branding-ways-to-stand-out/ McDonald, M. (2017). Market Segmentation: Still the Bedrock of Commercial Success, The Marketing Journal, October 11. Retrieved from http://www.marketingjournal.org/market-segmentation-still-thebedrock-of-commercial-success-malcolm-mcdonald/ Prasad, A. (2019). 5 Best Healthcare Digital Marketing Practices That Assure Success, GMR Web Team, February 5. Retrieved from https://www.gmrwebteam.com/blog/healthcare-digital-marketing Purcarea, I.M. (2019). Digital Customers, Digital Marketers, and Keeping up with Trends in Today’s Digital World, Holistic Marketing Management, March 2019, Volume 9, Issue 1, pp. 28-37 Holistic Marketing Management

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Roman, E. and Emmons, S. (2019). Achieving Customer Experience Excellence at 7 Critical Life-Cycle Points, The Marketing Journal, March 10. Retrieved from http://www.marketingjournal.org/achievingcustomer-experience-excellence-at-7-critical-life-cycle-points-ernan-roman-and-scott-emmons/ Singhal, S. and Carlton, S. (2019). The era of exponential improvement in healthcare? Executive Summary, McKinsey & Company, May. Retrieved from https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/healthcare-systems-and-services/our-insights/the-era-ofexponential-improvement-in-healthcare Solis, B. (2018). Designing The Future Of Customer Experience, October 11. Retrieved from https://www.briansolis.com/2018/10/designing-the-future-of-customer-experience/ Solis, B. (2019). Customer Experience In The Age Of Digital Distraction, June 4. Retrieved from https://www.briansolis.com/2019/06/customer-experience-in-the-age-of-digital-distraction/ Wolf, A.J. (2016). The Role of Technology in Patient Experience: Insights and Trends, The Beryl Institute.

Retrieved from https://c.ymcdn.com/sites/theberylinstitute.siteym.com/resource/download/20160317_151727_29530/Technology%20White%20Paper.pdf *** Digital Marketing Trends You Can’t Ignore, TFC Marketing, January 3rd, 2019. Retrieved from https://www.tfc.marketing/digital-marketing-trends-you-cant-ignore/ *** 13 Digital marketing trends you must be aware of in 2019, Digital Vimal, Jan 2, 2019. Retrieved from https://digitalvimal.in/13-digital-marketing-trends-you-must-be-aware-of-in-2019/ *** The 2018 State of Chatbots Report: How Chatbots Are Reshaping Online Experiences, Drift, SurveyMonkey Audience, Salesforce, & myclever, January, 2019. Retrieved from 2018-state-of-chatbotsreport.pdf *** State of the Connected Customer, Salesforce Research. Retrieved from state-of-connectedcustomer.pdf *** What is a Digital Experience? Liferay. Retrieved from https://www.liferay.com/resources/l/digitalexperience *** Putting the Experience in Digital Customer Experience, Cognizant in partnership with Oxford Economics, November 2014. Retrieved from https://www.cognizant.com/InsightsWhitepapers/puttingthe-experience-in-digital-customer-experience-codex1180.pdf *** 5 Keys to the Digital Experience Equation: Leveraging customers, context and content to deliver the optimal digital experience, FitForCommerce White Paper Series, Oracle, November 2014. Retrieved from https://www.oracle.com/assets/retail-5-keys-digital-experience-wp-2397695.pdf *** Holistic Customer Experience in the Digital Age, A Trend Study for Germany, France and the UK. PAC, A CXP Group Company, Sponsor of the study: Adobe, September 2015. Retrived from https://blogs.adobe.com/digitaleurope/files/2015/09/StudyHolisticCXAdobe.pdf *** The Consumerization of Healthcare, Privcap Media Report, Q1 2018, sponsored by Ernst & Young.

Retrieved from https://www.privcap.com/wpcontent/uploads/2018/01/2018.Report.EY_.Healthcare.Consumerization.pdf

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Forum Art Business (FAB): Castle Ambiente, Paper Art, Art and the Expression of Sorrow Bernd HALLIER

Prof. Dr. Bernd Hallier and RAU Rector Ovidiu Folcuţ Prof. Dr. Bernd Hallier, President of the European Retail Academy (ERA) is a distinguished Member of the Editorial Board of our “Holistic Marketing Management” Journal (he is also an Honorary Member of the Romanian Scientific Society of Management - SSMAR). Professor Bernd Hallier has participated to a series of Round Tables and Public Lectures (The intertwine of Culture and Trade; Introduction of the European Retail Academy; Branding: the successful example of EuroShop; Evolution Tornado Retail; the Global House of Harmony; Lifelong-Learning; Environmental Retail Management) organized at the Romanian-American University. The agenda of the productive meeting between Professor Ovidiu Folcuţ, Rector of the Romanian-American University (RAU) and Professor Bernd Hallier, on the occasion of his last visit in Romania, included significant items of discussion, such as: the international transfer of know-how between business and universities, bringing more transparency on retail-research and retail-education; the actual need of anticipating skill needs in the commerce sector, taking into account the attention to be paid to the evaluation of philosophies offered by the steady upgrade of retail-technologies; the developing cooperation between Germany and Eastern markets.

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Castle Ambiente The Water-Castle of Satzvey near the city of Cologne/Germany was mentioned first in the year 1368. In 1977 the owner-family Count F.J.Graf Beissel von Gymnich started to use the ambiente to organize annually historical events (More: YouTube video).

Since 2012 the family even created an event company/GmbH which is nowadays responsible for great public events with fights of horsemen and medieval markets as well as for private marriage-parties.

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Paper Art Finland and the German area of “Bergisches Land� in North Rhine Westfalia are well known for its paper production. The city of Paimio/Finland and Odenthal/Germany are even twin-cities.

Now both cities celebrate their friendship by a new paper-art-sculpture from Wolfgang Heuwinkel. It combines the tree with the cellulose: in this case the tree is even coming from Finland.

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Mourning Part of the education to become an art-therapist are modules about mourning by selfreflection and palliative workshops for students as shown for example in the YouTube of the Alanus University in Alfter/Germany (YouTube).

Another example for mourning is the painting of the Belgian artist Jean Wegnez, who remembers by this picture his sister-in-law Professor Jacqueline Wegnez and her plays at the piano - and who died in 2018.

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The future of marketing. Enabling personalization and focusing on the content experience at scale Theodor Purcarea Abstract Optimizing company’s customer understanding in order to build more profitable relationships is a real challenge, and as marketers are preoccupied about customer insight and the creation of customer value accordingly, they need to consider the many lessons to learn from the various innovative players, better understanding the marketing’s goal of delivering adequate CX which is delivering value to the business, and the roles of both personalization at scale and MarTech within this context, connecting MarTech stack utilization to value. And as in the current landscape of performance-driven world the message matters more than the medium, marketers also need to help their customers think through their journeys, creating on a consistent basis unique and engaging content resonating with customers, and confirming that content marketing is building value over time, a proper content strategy being driven by data, measurable goals, and optimization to deliver a higher ROI. In what concerns content and demand B2B marketers, recent research revealed that they are both challenged to combine significant things if necessary.

It is also well-known that business buyers are expecting brands to anticipate their needs and deliver personalized experiences, customer data being considered the key to this level of personalization. There is clear evidence not only that more and more B2B buyers are expecting the same buying experience as B2C customers, and of the benefits brought by the personalized content experiences, but also that marketers must focus on the content experience at scale, implementing the content experience framework.

Keywords: Customer first strategy; CX; Personalization at scale; Personalized content experience; Content experience framework JEL Classification: L86; M31; O33

Learning from consumer packaged goods (CPG) in approaching a customer first strategy.

Connecting data across systems in order to create a single customer view and taking control of company’s marketing data In our last issue we focused on the relation between modern marketing, CX, CRM, customer trust and identity, witnessing the redefinition of the customer relationship with data so as to deliver value and contextually relevant CX, while applying best practices for data-driven marketing. We also highlighted the well-known preoccupations for a completely unified view of customer data, unlocking the data needed for personalization at scale and improving the ability to achieve true cross-channel engagement. (Purcarea, 2019) Two years ago, we also made reference Holistic Marketing Management

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to the McKinsey’s representatives who were asking business leaders the right questions with regard to what is to do to be customer first in the digital age (thinking about customer journeys rather than just touchpoints; creating a 360-degree view of the customer which everyone in the business agrees on and can access; truly understanding why customers are doing what they’re doing; ensuring relevant communications and interactions with customers; having the right people on the teams, and the processes and guidelines to support them), developing the necessary two-way conversation with customers. (Gandhi et al., 2017) As optimizing company’s customer understanding in order to build more profitable relationships is a real challenge, the so-called “The 1-Day Catalyst”, Denyse Drummond-Dunn, is continuing to pledge for taking into account the fundamentals of a customer first strategy for every industry, including for the hospitality industry (known as receiving the most comments online), by learning from CPG industries, and ensuring this way a continued growth.

(Drummond-Dunn, 2019) She recommended considering the following aspects: moving from a return on investment (ROI)/return on relationships (ROR) to a return on engagement (ROE, keeping fans coming back); building relationships with strangers (having similar lifestyles to company’s current customers) who could potentially become clients (by using customer cocreation); better understanding what is the best value (that is more important than price) for customers expecting recognition at every touchpoint, offering them the possibility to express their options; successfully innovating by considering more emotional and relational ways to ensure customer satisfaction; surprising and delighting customers by constantly upgrading company’s products and services, considering that loyalty is now much more short-term; dialoguing, not just communicating (and avoiding this way to disappoint company’s most engaged customers).

That is why the representatives of the reputed Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University pledge for true customer insight and the creation of customer value accordingly, developing a sound marketing strategy on the basis of: (Hennessy & Lecinski, 2019) talking to the end user (see for example “Channel Memberships” launched recently by YouTube); spending more time with the customer (frequent face-to-face contact and surveying, monitoring social media by using listening and sentiment tools); watching consumers as they attempt to buy company’s product, helping them think through their journeys or their projects; watching these consumers using company’s product or receiving its service and making them better or developing new ones; engaging end users as product designers, considering them as partners in company’s product development, and stimulating a close relationship with them.

They are also showing that are many lessons to learn from the innovative smaller players.

Also recently, in May 2019, McKinsey’s representatives underlined the marketing’s goal of delivering adequate customer experiences which are delivering value to the business (this being considered the true prize of modern marketing), and the role of personalization in achieving this goal by acting accordingly along the entire customer journey in today’s Omni channel world. (Flavin & Heller, 2019) Within this context, among other aspects, a simple and Holistic Marketing Management

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effective organizing framework was presented to guide the solutions architecture and operating model (see the figure below):

Figure no. 1: The solutions architecture and operating model should be guided by a simple and effective organizing framework, McKinsey Source: Flavin, S. and Heller, J. (2019). A technology blueprint for personalization at scale, McKinsey, May, p. 3 (work cited)

According to these McKinsey’s representatives, in order to enable personalization at scale it is necessary to have a clear picture of the necessary data and marketing technology (Martech) stack, considering the current need of Marketing and IT leaders to develop a shared vision about how these data can be made available across channels (see the figure below):

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Figure no. 2: The data and martech stack to enable personalization at scale, McKinsey Source: Flavin, S. and Heller, J. (2019). A technology blueprint for personalization at scale, McKinsey, May, p. 7 (work cited)

It is also interesting to note, within this framework, that according to the Marketing & Ad Tech Trends 2019 Roundup (curated by eMarketer, and sponsored and presented by Criteo), the purpose of much of MarTech (which become central to marketing activities) is still to facilitate customer-data-driven marketing. Among different aspects, this Roundup revealed that: failing to connect data across systems in order to create a single customer view (despite the fact that customer data platforms, CDPs, gained a strong foothold in marketing tech stacks, data integration is still very much a work in progress) represent a top obstacle, and in order to create a holistic view of the customer journey across channels it is necessary to unlock more of the data across systems; one of the biggest roadblocks preventing marketing professionals worldwide from implementing real-time analytics are the legacy systems (36%, followed by: data silos 3%, organizational silos - 29%, multichannel complexity - 26%, insufficient budget/funding 22%; legacy processes - 21%), as shown by Harvard Business Review Analytic Services; the dots between everywhere consumers go (desktop, mobile web, in-app, in-store, social media etc.) are connected with the help of data, which also drives relevance.

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Let’s recall what Chief Marketing Technologist Blog by Scott Brinker highlighted two years ago (introducing a guest post by Doug Kessler entitled “The rise of the marketing data lake”): (Kessler, 2017) fighting against data fragmentation and finding ways to unite the whole marketing stack at the data layer is the single most important imperative for every marketing operations team; marketing operations’ improvement involves a marketing data lake (see the differences between a data lake and a data warehouse in the table below) in order to capture more data from more sources and really take control of company’s marketing data (combining easier data sources for easy analysis, ensuring the basis for a single view of the customer, staying agile, and making company’s data more reliable). Very recently, Scott Brinker pointed out that when it’s disconnected from value martech stack utilization is a misguided metric (he started from considering the three overlapping aspects of martech, see the figure below).

(Brinker, 2019)

Table no. 1: The differences between a data lake and a data warehouse DATA WAREHOUSE

DATA LAKE

Data types

Structured

Unstructured or multi-structured

Database schema

Schema-on-write

Schema-on-read

Cost

Expensive storage

Low-cost storage

Ideal for

Penny-perfect, super-secure financial reporting

Agile marketing analytics and decision-making

Agility

Difficult to add new reports and queries

Easy to add new reports and queries

Source: The Marketing Data Lake by Franz Aman and Anish Jariwala, cited by Chief Marketing Technologist (work cited)

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Figure no. 3: Three points about the utilization view of martech stacks (Brinker, S.) Source: Adapted from Brinker, S. (2019). Martech stack utilization is a misguided metric (when it’s disconnected from value), Chief Marketing Technologist, May 27(work cited)

On the other hand, while bridging the gap between marketing and technology, marketers should keep in mind what a world-class database marketer, Stephen H. Yu, explained recently with regard to how to throw away data if it doesn’t generate any value. (Yu, 2019) In his opinion, this cleanup job should be done in phases: goal-setting; required type of predictions in accordance with the marketing goals; doing the full inventory, categorizing by data types (Personally Identifiable Data, Order/Transaction Data, Item/SKU-Level Data, Promotion/ Response History, Life-to-Date/Past “X” Months Summary Data, Customer Status Flags,Surveys/Product Registration, Customer Communication History Data, Online Behavior, Social Media etc.); data acquired from third-party data sources, how are they stored, assessed, and updated; data refinement processes.

A better content marketing plan reflecting that the message matters more than the medium. Comprehending how to measure content marketing, and deduce which buyerpersona-building method is right for each company/brand Helping customers think through their journeys or their projects also involves adequately approaching the company’s marketing messages, by creating the right content, which is trusted and believed by people wanting to learn more through it, without being interrupted or interfered with traditional advertising. (Stelzner, 2019) Considered a strategic part of a larger marketing mix, content (videos, blog posts, white papers, eBooks, podcasts, webinars, SlideShare presentations etc.) should resonate with customers, reaching them where they are gathering, and making them care about them by better understanding what brands care about. Company’s messaging strategy needs to confirm the capability of knowing what to say, how to say it, and to whom it is saying it and why (while creating content on a consistent basis).

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As it was shown in the latest years, content marketing (which is considered the future of marketing) needs to work together with Search Engine Optimization (SEO, which cannot live without valuable content providing adequate solutions and adequately answering users’ questions) so as to create synergy and maximize results, content marketing being useless without valuable SEO. (Postan, 2016) And within the new landscape of today’s performance-driven world, where people are reached on mobile, SEO professionals need to look for ways to utilize unique and engaging content. (Elharar, 2017) There is no doubt that content marketing is a strategic asset which builds value over time, and as marketing and advertising campaigns are not an investment, but a short-term expense of improving the performance of the business (ROI being considered the wrong metric for campaign-oriented marketing and advertising), generating the well-known long-term effects – content marketing impacting the general brand awareness: social media reach, brand mentions, media mentions, branded searches (Patel, 2018) – of brand building. (Rose, 2019) When measuring content marketing, it is necessary to confirm the double ability with regard to treat both each individual asset (as an expense helping meeting short-term business objectives in time), and the content platform and the by it created audience (as a long-term asset building increasing value over time).

On the other hand, the reputed Bryan Eisenberg (who underlined, among other aspects, that: (i-SCOOP, N.D.) the length of content has changed; there is a real need of continuing to focus on developing great content and make it easy to share, including in Email marketing which is the mule of Internet marketing) attracted our attention on how the so-called “personas” (understood as target customers who exist in the minds of company’s team) are evolving as company’s data around them evolves as well, being recommendable to deduce which buyerpersona-building method is right for each company/brand. (Agius, 2019) When their prospective customers need it, content and demand B2B marketers are challenged to combine three things At the end of May this year, Paul Heald, CEO of BrightTALK, expressed the opinion that when it comes to B2B marketing authentic connections (not only information) are really challenging, and among buyers wanting making the right choice being high anxiety. Heald underlined what a recent Demand Gen report revealed (buyers are spending more time to make the right choices and are needing approval from internal spending committees), and remembered that both specialized groups of the large marketing teams, content marketers (focusing on telling brands’ stories in powerful ways) and demand marketers (working to build the best possible audience for these stories), are challenged, when their prospective customers need it, to combine three things: personal empathy, reliable information and sales representatives intervention.

(Heald, 2019)

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With regard to the content marketing ROI, it is interesting to note that a study (released in October last year) by the Content Marketing Institute, MarketingProfs and SEO platform Conductor revealed, for instance, that only 49% of B2B marketers in North America measure their content marketing ROI. (Benes, 2019) As eMarketer showed, a study by Spiceworks revealed that among the most commonly tracked metrics when measuring content’s performance are clickthrough rates, qualified leads and content downloads. While a study by SiriusDecisions, released in March this year, revealed the following ranking of the content performance-related metrics used by the companies of B2B marketers worldwide currently: 57% - page views, 56% qualified leads, 52% - unique visitors, 50% - downloads, 47% - SEO rankings, and 44% average session duration.

On the other hand, it is worth mentioning that according to another Spiceworks report (the survey was conducted among 352 marketers from B2B technology companies of various sizes in North America and Europe, in October last year) the content type anticipated by respondents as to be used the most to drive leads were the webinars (50% of respondents plan to use them), while the content type anticipated by them as to be used the most to drive brand awareness (54% of respondents) and product awareness (62% of respondents) were the blog posts. (Nanji, 2019) Allow us to also mention within this framework that at the beginning of March this year Pardot B2B Marketing Automation by Salesforce introduced their e-book entitled “B2B Marketing Trends: Insights from the Frontlines of B2B Marketing”, underlining among other aspects the following: business buyers are expecting brands to anticipate their needs and deliver personalized experiences (customer data being considered the key to this level of personalization); B2B buyers are engaged by marketing and sales alignment; Account-Based Marketing (ABM) delivers consistently higher ROI than any other marketing method (ABM accounting for 28% of total user marketing budgets); as business buyers are expecting “Amazonlike” personalized CX, B2B marketers are adopting AI at high speed; intelligent B2B marketing decisions are driven by data which informs creative messaging, enables personalized CX through AI, and allows companies to measure their performance; business buyers are now savvier and more connected than ever. (Fultz, 2019) And indeed, in today’s digital age content marketing is a must-have, a proper content strategy being driven by data, measurable goals, and optimization to deliver a higher ROI, as argued by Michael Brenner in April this year. (Brenner, 2019) Instead of conclusions: Personalized content must be done the right way As Joe Lazauskas, Head of content at Contently and co-author of The Storytelling Edge, did say at Content Marketing World 2018 (being interviewed by Jonathan Crossfield, Chief consulting editor of the Chief Content Officer magazine), the city of our mind is illuminated by stories for which we are programmed, our brain lighting up when we’re hearing them, making us remember and care. That is why content marketing works, content’s pieces needing to be super

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tailored to customers’ concerns, to have inside information, and to speak in a really understandable voice so as to make possible the connection with them. (Crossfield, 2019) On the other hand, as recently argued by Larry Lubin, President of BlueRush, only it delivers value to the audience is a personalized content successful, and this within the context of the so-called “personalization paradox”: (Lubin, 2019) despite the fact that 86% of consumers admit they are concerned about their data privacy (data being defined by GDPR as a person’s “physical, physiological, genetic, mental, economic, cultural and social identity”), up to 72% of consumers will only engage with personalized marketing messages (according to a new report from SmarterHQ). Lubin defined the five stages of personalization (as shown in the figure below), underlining that: the most effective touchpoints are created by brands in the stages 4 (“One to few”) and 5 (“One to one”); if there are deficiencies in transparency and disregard for boundaries then personalization becomes a problem; personalized content must be done the right way.

Table no. 2: The five stages of personalization

Source: Lubin, L. (2019). How to Make Your Content Personalized but Not Creepy, Content Marketing Institute, May 8 (work cited)

During a last year webinar Paige Gerber (Uberflip’s Director of Content Experience) and Chris Handy (Drift’s Customer Marketing Team Lead) showed that: B2B marketers are focused every day on tactics, but strategies are the foundation, and content is bringing to life the most effective marketing strategies: inbound marketing, demand generation, account-based marketing, sales enablement); according to Google, 80% of B2B buyers expect the same buying experience as B2C customers; content experience must be considered across all marketing programs; personalized content experiences lead to more engagement, better conversations, Holistic Marketing Management

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more quality and more customers; there is clear evidence that experience matters (7 x conversion on gated content, 8 x your content reach, 60% increase in engagement); marketers must focus on the content experience at scale, implementing the content experience framework: centralize content (videos, blogs, eBooks, infographics, slide decks), organize content (audit content, tag content, organize by context, build navigation, define recommendations), personalize experiences (resource center, nurture campaigns, ABM campaigns, prospect outreach, knowledge base) distribute content (email, organic, social, paid advertising, direct mail), generate results (capture leads, score leads, drive engagement, gather insights, prove ROI). (Gerber & Handy, 2018) While at the beginning of this year some words of Gary Vaynerchuk (Chairman of VaynerX, CEO of Vayne) attracted our attention: (Agius, 2019) “… Even though you’re selling to businesses, you’re targeting human decision makers. And humans will respond to your content. It doesn’t matter if you don’t have a team. Think about how you can create as much content with the resources you have.” And finally, just take a look at his “Content Pyramid”:

Figure no. 4: The Content Pyramid, Gary Vaynerchuk Source: GaryVee Content Strategy in Vaynerchuk, G. (2019). 4 Key B2B Marketing Strategies for 2019, January 5 (work cited)

References Agius, A. (2019). Buyer Personas: One Method Doesn’t Fit All, Content Marketing Institute, May 20. Retrived from https://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2019/05/method-buyer-personas/

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Benes, R. (2019). How Are B2B Marketers Measuring Their Content-Driven Campaigns? eMarketer , May 14. Retrieved from https://www.emarketer.com/content/how-are-b2bmarketers-measuring-their-content-driven-campaigns?

Brenner, M. (2019). B2B Content Marketing Tactics for 2019, Concured, April 8. Retrieved from https://www.concured.com/blog/b2b-content-marketing-tactics-for-2019 Brinker, S. (2019). Martech stack utilization is a misguided metric (when it’s disconnected from value), Chief Marketing Technologist, May 27. Retrieved from https://chiefmartec.com/2019/05/martech-stack-utilization-misguided-metric-disconnectedvalue/ Crossfield, J. (2019). The Neuroscience of Storytelling, Content Marketing Institute, April 25.

Retrieved from https://contentmarketinginstitute.com/cco-digital/april-2019/storytellingneuroscience-joe-lazauskas/ Drummond-Dunn, D. (2019). Fundamentals of a Customer First Strategy For Every Industry, CustomerThink, May 22. Retrieved from http://customerthink.com/fundamentals-of-acustomer-first-strategy-for-every-industry/?

Elharar, N. (2017). How to Get Started with Performance Marketing, Outbrain, March 13.

Retrieved from https://www.outbrain.com/blog/performance-marketing/ Flavin, S. and Heller, J. (2019). A technology blueprint for personalization at scale, McKinsey, May. Retrieved from https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/marketing-and-sales/ourinsights/a-technology-blueprint-for-personalization-at-scale Fultz, E. (2019). Introducing B2B Marketing Trends: Insights from the Frontlines of B2B Marketing, Pardot B2B Marketing Automation by Salesforce, March 4. Retrieved from https://www.pardot.com/blog/introducing-b2b-marketing-trends-insights-from-the-frontlinesof-b2b-marketing/ Gandhi, P., Gordon, J., Perrey, J. and Serra, S. (2017). Five questions brands need to answer to be customer first in the digital age, McKinsey & Company, Marketing & Sales July. Retrieved from https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/marketing-and-sales/our-insights/fivequestions-brands-need-to-answer-to-be-customer-first-in-the-digital-age Gerber, P. and Handy, C. (2018). The New Playbook for Personalizing Content Experiences at Scale, Uberflip, September 27. Retrieved from https://hub.uberflip.com/slideshare/the-newplaybook-for-personalizing-content-experiences-at-scale Heald, P. (2019). The Demand Marketer’s Dilemma: Achieving Authenticity, at Scale, Target Marketing Magazine, May 30. Retrieved from https://www.targetmarketingmag.com/article/the-demand-marketers-dilemma-achievingauthenticity-at-scale/ Hennessy, J., Lecinski, J. (2019). 5 Ways to Know Your Customer Better Than Your Competitors Do, Kellogg Insight, Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, May 1.

Retrieved from https://insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu/article/5-ways-to-know-yourcustomer-better-than-your-competitors-do?

Kessler, D. (2017). The rise of the marketing data lake, Chief Marketing Technologist, March 9.

Retrieved from https://chiefmartec.com/2017/03/rise-marketing-data-lake/ Lubin, L. (2019). How to Make Your Content Personalized but Not Creepy, Content Marketing Institute, May 8. Retrieved from https://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2019/05/contentpersonalized-creepy/ Holistic Marketing Management

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Nanji, A. (2019). B2B Tech Marketing in 2019: Budget, Content, and Strategy Trends, MarketingProfs, March 4. Retrieved from https://www.marketingprofs.com/charts/2019/40684/b2b-tech-marketing-in-2019-budgetcontent-and-strategy-trends Patel, S. (2018). How to Know If Your Content Impacts Brand Awareness [Tools], Content Marketing Institute, September 7. Retrieved from https://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2018/09/brand-awareness-tools/ Postan, L. (2016). Content Marketing and SEO, Outbrain, September 19. Retrieved from https://www.outbrain.com/blog/content-marketing-and-seo/ Purcarea, T. (2019). Modern Marketing, CX, CRM, Customer Trust and Identity, Holistic Marketing Management, March 2019, Volume 9, Issue 1, pp. 42-55 Rose, R. (2019). Will the Real ROI In Content Please Stand Up, Content Marketing Institute, May 22. Retrieved from https://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2019/05/real-roi-content/ Stelzner, M. (2019). How to Create Content That Attracts Customers, Social Media Examiner, May 31. Retrieved from https://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/how-to-create-content-thatattracts-customers-melanie-deziel/?

Vaynerchuk, G. (2019). 4 Key B2B Marketing Strategies for 2019, January 5. Retrieved from https://www.garyvaynerchuk.com/the-best-b2b-marketing-strategy-for-2019/*** 5 Top Digital Healthcare Marketing Strategies For 2019, Mine Health, November 23, 2018. Retrieved from https://www.healthworkscollective.com/5-top-digital-healthcare-marketing-strategies-for2019/ Yu, H.S. (2019). How Marketers Can Throw Away Data, Without Regrets, Target Marketing, May 30. Retrieved from https://www.targetmarketingmag.com/post/how-marketers-can-throwaway-data-without-regrets/ *** Marketing & Ad Tech Trends 2019 Roundup, curated by eMarketer, and sponsored and presented by Criteo, pp. 4, 10, 12-13. Retrieved from eMarketer_Roundup_Advertising_Marketing_Trends_2019_final *** Harvard Business Review Analytic Services, “Real-Time Analytics: The Key to Unlocking Customer Insights & Driving the Customer Experience� in conjunction with SAS, Intel and Accenture Applied Intelligence, July 8, 2018 *** Bryan Eisenberg on content, conversion and customer-centricity, https://www.iscoop.eu/bryan-eisenberg-content-conversion-customer-centricity/ *** https://www.thestorytellingedge.com/

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