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COVID-19 is first and foremost a human crisis, requiring companies to protect their people. Amid this human impact, companies are also coming to terms with the impact of the pandemic on their businesses, in particular small and medium size enterprises.

The pandemic will be hitting small businesses the hardest. The Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB) reported that 42% of surveyed SMEs depend solely on face-to-face contact for the majority of sales. 

COVID-19 might be the game changer that pushes us all into the digital revolution, digitizing services, and forcing us to shift to digital business models.

Although there are many more pressing issues, such as ensuring elderly parents are safe or balancing home schooling, while managing a business and a remote team (I am in the thick of all those things), challenging times also present opportunities.

Here are some concrete strategies to engage your customers via digital channels and potentially create new revenue...

Five short years ago, if you were to ask organizational leaders to define their digital strategy, the answer would either pertain to their digital marketing efforts or be synonymous with IT. Today, “digital” refers to a more all-encompassing approach,  impacting technology choices, customer experience, organizational culture, leadership styles and of course business models. It’s no wonder organizations are struggling to define their digital strategy.

The latest PwC Digital IQ report suggests that in order to keep up with Canada’s growing commitment to innovation, Canadian executives must gain a better understanding of what it means “to be digital”. While 47% of Canadian leaders see “digital” as a holistic strategy, covering technology and innovation related activities as well as cultural and mindset shifts, 30% of them see it mainly as a customer facing activity.

Therein lies the shift. Organizations are still grappling on how to...

Do you receive emails from organizations you follow or from brands you’ve recently bought from that are not at all relevant to your interests? Do they promote products you would never buy or tickets to events that are nowhere near your city? I certainly do.

Understanding ones customers (or members, donors and stakeholders) takes time and effort, but it’s critical to building and nurturing long term relationships and driving greater levels of loyalty.

The key is to strategically leverage the large amount of information being provided on a real time basis, such as email subscriptions, surveys, purchase behaviours, channel preferences, location and age to name a few. Most organizations have a plethora of customer data but it is disparate, fragmented and found in several different systems (e.g. point of sale, email marketing software, mobile applications, survey tools, and so on).

Centralizing this data and getting a global view of it, either in a consumer management...

A doctor, a lawyer and a cop walk into a bar… This classic joke opener is a sure bet because it offers up three different “types” of people that we are likely to recognize or will be able relate to. You could call these characters personas.

In working with marketing, BI and sales teams over the years, I've noticed a regular misuse of the terms segments and personas. Although often used in complementary ways, they are not one and the same. Here’s how I would differentiate:

Market Segments

The purpose of market segmentation is to identify groups of customers (or potential customers) within a market. Markets tend to be geographical or a particular industry vertical.  Once identified, these groups are referred to as segments and allows the organizations to then target particular products, services or marketing messages to those segments over time.

Photo by Jens Johnsson on Unsplashtation

Customer Segments

Customer segments are created primarily to be...