Connected Marketing

 

Adapting to compete in our evolving economy, consumer goods companies are adopting digital media approaches to differentiate themselves, increase customer loyalty, and reduce costs. Customers engaged in a digital lifestyle are focused on interactivity and valuable online experiences. Their marketplace expectations, brand preferences, and purchasing patterns are all highly influenced by social networking, user-generated content, and information-rich online interactions. To leverage e-commerce as a fast growing revenue channel and reach this new generation of shoppers, product manufacturers and their retail partners must engage consumers with personal, interactive social experiences. Whether on the retailer site, your own brand-based site, or any other customer touch point, we’ll provide solutions that are fully integrated with the rest of the digital marketing experience, quickly and easily accommodating the creation of multichannel customer experiences through mobile devices, the desktop and in-store.

 

Connected Marketing solutions can also help consumer goods companies manage the trade promotion complexities.  The cost of trade promotion average 17 percent of revenue and the funds are often dispersed throughout the sales organization.  This makes it a challenge to manage, monitor and track the expenses.  As more trade-promotion tactics become digital, increased visibility, accountability and compliance become possible.

 

Microsoft solutions for Connected Marketing help consumer goods companies build more personal, relevant, and engaging relationships with empowered shoppers. These solutions offer a more compelling ROI model for marketing resources and targeted branding strategies in several key areas.

 

Microsoft advertising solutions empower consumer goods companies to better connect with consumers and shoppers across multiple touch points, from PCs to mobile devices, through Web, in-store, and in-the-living-room experiences. Microsoft has created the most robust digital environment available with a full spectrum of offerings, including online advertising, search, instant messaging, e-mail, online communities, media partnerships, mobile phones, MP3 players, and interactive game consoles.

 

Microsoft Solutions for Mobility enable consumer goods companies to engage with consumers in meaningful and creative ways via mobile phones and to measure the effectiveness of those engagements. With Microsoft Tag, companies can use colorful, two-dimensional tags to turn mobile phones into "sell" phones that assist in the promotion and sale of products.

 

Microsoft and our partner ecosystem give companies the tools such as the Digital Asset Management features in Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 to efficiently collaborate and access digital media assets, from work in progress to the preparation and delivery of content.

 

Microsoft solutions for Marketing Analytics provide a comprehensive platform for aggregating, managing, and analyzing large amounts of data, allowing you to effectively measure brand loyalty, awareness, affinity, and the success of individual marketing elements. The Microsoft platform is based on a client-servers-services infrastructure including rich functionality on the desktop, mobile devices, and browser-based Web tools-that provides broader reach within organizations.

 

Microsoft provides a complete platform for building a fully functioning campaign and corporate Web sites. Software from Microsoft gives consumer goods companies the ability to harness the new capabilities in Web 2.0 and e-commerce systems to implement and manage powerful online consumer experiences.  These include several role-specific capabilities, including business tolls for managing content and product catalogs, extensive inventory functions for merchandisers, and comprehensive personalization options for marketers. Companies can grow their brand more effectively with these solutions which improve customer engagement across digital advertising, online communities, consumer devices, search, and Web-based consumer content.

 

Cloud service solutions leverage Microsoft-hosted services to easily and cost-effectively deliver an enhanced customer experience. Using cloud-based capabilities within Connected Marketing solutions, sellers can offer integrated management and reporting across all channels of customer interaction. Consumer buying behavior can be tracked on each channel independently and across all of the channels as a whole. Promotions can be personalized and targeted to specific channels. And integrated management and reporting provide a single view of inventory and customer orders.