MarketStar Blog

In the case of retail, the customer is king. With today’s digital and social outlets, customers influence, motivate, and sway other customers based on personal experience and opinion more than ever before. This infographic pulls out key stats from our Transforming Retail in the Age of the Customer eBook, highlighting what matters most in a world of educated customers.

CES is the land of dreams for early adopters, geeks and of course consumer electronics companies looking to ply their wares.  On a side note, we learned it isn’t a comfortable environment for movie directors.

Handling the customer journey in 2014 is extremely complex. People expect information to be available instantly on the go that too free of cost. Marketers are now challenged in terms of producing content that will satisfy their customer’s insatiable thirst for information. Moreover,22% of average consumers want to interact with brands throughout their buying journey. There are some crucial points for marketers to observe while marketing to their audience in 2014.

Did you know that increasing your customer retention rates by as little as 5% can increase your profits by as much as 95%! Do you still wonder if you need to invest time and resources into crafting a post-sales strategy for your business?

Anticipation of the latest gadgets, newest technology, and highest innovation kicks off the new year at CES, held January 7 – January 10 in Las Vegas. While it may seem as though the 150K attendees, (from 150 countries!), are similar, the truth is, they can be bucketed into five fictional snapshot personas:

In 2013, Google unveiled its new search algorithm called Hummingbird, revolutionizing how search queries are interpreted. Unlike traditional algorithms that matched keywords to websites, Hummingbird focuses on understanding the intent behind a search query. For example, if you type “Which is the place closest to me where I can watch gravity,” a traditional search engine might focus on the keyword “gravity.” 

Marketing Automation has seen the highest growth rate in the past five years, and it has changed from being a system to automate emails to being a sophisticated system for attracting, nurturing, engaging and retaining customers. In the year 2014, the most noteworthy development is how the focus of Marketing Automation has now drifted from the power and speed of automation to the necessity of personalization and relationship-building. 

We’re getting social on whole new level at MarketStar. It’s been a full month since the Grand Opening of our social intranet for all our employees in the U.S. and Canada. More than 2,000 employees now use MarketStar Connect daily as a way to collaborate, connect, and communicate. As the Social Community Manager, it’s exciting to see the innovative ways our teams are using social technology to be more efficient and effective for our clients.

Product demos, if done right, have the ability to shorten sales cycles, generate qualified leads, and drive conversions. For some companies, a snazzy product demo could mean getting noticed by prospects, target audiences, and sometimes even bigger giants in the same industry.