Most Popular MarketingSherpa B2C Articles and Case Studies of 2017

We took a look at some of our own analytics, and here are the articles and case studies that were most popular with subscribers in 2017.

The Future of Advertising: What Wharton learned from 200 marketing leaders

Advertising has changed drastically over the last 50 years as consumers have become more informed and have a higher expectation from brands. Because of this, we as marketers have transformed as well, from pushy salespeople to product and brand advocates focused on communicating value to our customers.

So, if that much of a change has occurred thus far, what does the future of advertising look like? And how do we marketers prepare so we don’t get left behind?

In search of answers to these questions, Catharine Hays, Executive Director, The Future of Advertising Program at The Wharton School, organized a group of 200 advertising, marketing and academic leaders at organizations ranging from Facebook and Google to Tsinghua University and NPR. Hays used insights and research from this who’s who of the advertising and marketing industry to inform the publication of her book, Beyond Advertising: Creating value through all customer touchpoints, with co-author Jerry Wind, Director, SEI Center for Advanced Studies in Management. In the book, she provides a perfect summation of the challenges facing our industry and how advertising may evolve in the future.

“One of the things that came through in our research is ‘beyond customer first.’ It’s almost as if you have to get the pendulum to swing from ‘us first’ — our bottom line, efficiency, effectiveness — to ‘customer first’ and the other way,” Catharine said in an interview with Daniel Burstein, Senior Director of Content and Marketing, MarketingSherpa. Read the full article here to see what other insights Hays’ research has informed.

Five Questions to Ask to Understand Customer Motivation

If you don’t understand what is motivating your customer to purchase your product or service, how can you guide them up the funnel? Motivation is arguably the most important factor in understanding your customer and driving conversions.

In looking at the MECLABS Institute (our parent research organization) Conversion Heuristic, you can see just how important motivation is to conversion, having the highest coefficient (4) attached to its variable (m).

Read the full article to understand the impact motivation has on the other elements of the Conversion Heuristic (value, incentive, friction and anxiety), and five questions you can ask to gain a better understanding of your customers’ motivations.

How Marketers Can Use Behavioral Economics to Guide Customer Decision Making and Drive ROI

To be a customer-first marketer, you must understand your customers’ needs, motivations and, most importantly, their behaviors. The most effective way to gain this understanding is to put yourself in the customers’ shoes.

Kelly Peters, CEO and co-founder of BEworks, understands that getting into the consumer mindset is a challenge for marketers to overcome. But, by building a process and walking through it from the customer’s point of view, you’re able to better understand why they behave in a certain way.

“What are the decisions we’re expecting people to make? And what are the enablers and barriers to those decisions? And once you start to slog through the weeds, you’re going to start to find, ‘this is where we’re overwhelming people,’” she said.

Watch Peters’ session from MarketingSherpa Summit to learn how BEworks is leveraging recent insights gained from behavioral data to drive ROI in real-world marketing scenarios.

Ecommerce Chart: Star ratings’ impact on purchase probability

Medill Northwestern University’s Spiegel Research Center conducted a study of 22 product categories to determine how star ratings in customer reviews effected the likelihood a customer would make a purchase.

“Reviews work as long as they're credible. Retailers should not suppress negative reviews because it damages the credibility of the review ecosystem. The retailer's interest is in providing useful information to the buyers who come to that website,” said Edward Malthouse, professor at Medill Northwestern and the Research Director of the Spiegel Center.

“Fix the product, fix the customer experience. Don't worry about fixing or rigging the customer review environment. Fix the way in which it works and good things will happen,” said Tom Collinger, the Executive Director of the Spiegel Research Center.

Read the full analysis in the article Ecommerce Chart: Star ratings’ impact on purchase probability

B2C Marketing: How Avocados from Mexico’s Super Bowl campaign got 2 billion interactions before the game even started

When talking about Super Bowl advertising, Avocados from Mexico is a relatively small organization. In order to capitalize on such a large investment, Ivonne Kinser, Director of Digital Marketing, Avocados from Mexico, and her team knew they would have to create a campaign that enabled the brand to stand out on the busiest advertising day of the year.

“One of the objectives is to increase the reach of our Super Bowl spot because, as you can imagine, it's a big investment, especially for a brand like ours,” said Kinser. “We leverage the digital platforms to amplify as much as possible the content of the Super Bowl spot, but also to increase the engagement.”

Read how Avocados from Mexico drove 3.2 billion overall interactions by developing an interactive web app that supported a digital story, sweepstakes and conversation leading up to a coveted TV spot on Super Bowl Sunday.

Related Resources

MarketingSherpa Case Studies – 1,602 and counting

B2C Marketing 2016: How marketers changed their messaging to drive conversion – A look back at last year

Sherpa Summit 2017 Takeaways: The five best B2C tactics for customer-centric marketing