CB Gersch’s Post

Lifecycle is retention, retention is not lifecycle 👇🏻

The Nuanced Differences Between F&B Marketing and Conventional Marketing. Being in the Food and Beverage space for more than 17 years. People frequently ask me, What is F&B Marketing? Isn't it the same? I believe that the world of marketing is vast and varied, adapting to the specific needs and quirks of each industry it touches. Let’s delve into what sets these two apart. Sensory Engagement F&B Marketing: It's all about tantalizing the senses. Whether it's a vivid image of a sizzling steak or the sound of fizz from a freshly opened soda, F&B marketing leverages our inherent reactions to food stimuli. The industry often uses sensory triggers in its promotions to evoke cravings and desires. Conventional Marketing: While evoking emotional reactions is still crucial, it doesn't typically hinge on sensory cues in the same visceral way. A car advertisement, for instance, might focus more on feelings of freedom or the prestige of ownership. Immediate Gratification vs. Long-term Investment F&B Marketing: Food and drink are immediate needs. When someone sees a mouth-watering ad for a burger, they might be driven to purchase it that very day, if not that hour. Conventional Marketing: Products like electronics, cars, or services might require a more extended contemplative purchasing cycle. These products often demand considerable research and comparison before a decision is made. Trend Sensitivity F&B Marketing: Highly susceptible to trends. Today’s gluten-free or vegan craze might be replaced by another trend tomorrow. F&B marketers must be nimble and adapt quickly. Conventional Marketing: While still trend-sensitive in sectors like fashion or tech, other industries might enjoy more stability, allowing for long-term campaign planning without the need for rapid pivots. Experiential Opportunities F&B Marketing: The industry provides ample opportunities for experiential marketing. Pop-up restaurants, tasting events, or interactive cook-offs can deeply engage consumers. Conventional Marketing: Though experiential marketing is also utilized here, the experiences might be different in nature, such as test drives for cars or tech showcases for gadgets. 𝐋𝐨𝐲𝐚𝐥𝐭𝐲 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐑𝐞𝐩𝐞𝐚𝐭 𝐁𝐮𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐬 F&B Marketing: Given the frequency with which people eat and drink, there's a significant emphasis on building customer loyalty and encouraging repeat visits or purchases. Conventional Marketing: While customer retention is still crucial, some products, due to their nature (like durable goods), don't require repeat purchases as often. In conclusion, while the foundational principles of marketing remain consistent understanding your audience, offering value, and building brand trust the tactics and strategies can differ widely between industries. F&B marketing, with its unique challenges and opportunities, showcases the importance of industry-specific expertise in crafting effective marketing campaigns.

Trade shows account for 40% of B2B marketing budgets. And for many organizations, this hefty spend pays off, helping to drive brand awareness, attract new customers and engage with current ones face-to-face. But to justify that large spend, event marketers need to drive booth traffic and collect high-quality qualified leads. One tried and true method for attracting attention is to offer visitors some sort of giveaway. But even this seemingly simple tactic is regularly a source of headaches for marketers - who spend hours behind the scenes creating and managing the sweepstakes. Shipping physical prizes to and from trade shows is risky, as is traveling with/being accountable for gift cards, iPads, other pricey physical items. Regulatory requirements drive a lot of back and forth between marketing and legal departments to build sound terms and conditions for each sweepstakes. Money is wasted when prizes are over-purchased and winners fail to claim them. Drawing a winner, notifying them, and delivering the prize is a labor-intensive process. Plus, prizes are never one-size-fits-all and many people won't bother entering sweepstakes if they don’t want the offer. This is why we developed Trade Show Prize Co (TSPC), an end-to-end sweepstakes management platform that takes the pain out of running live event giveaways. TSPC will help anyone tasked with running sweepstakes do so efficiently, compliantly, and at a fraction of the cost — all while building brand awareness and offering a better customer gifting experience. Here’s what our platform offers: Sweepstakes Management: Flawlessly create, execute, and monitor your sweepstakes from start to finish in our simple and straightforward platform. Prize Marketplace: Choose from 100+ e-gift cards from top retailers and charitable organizations. Lead Scanner & Database: Scan and manage your giveaway entrants in the platform’s database and easily export leads to your CRM. Random Winner Selection: When it comes time to draw your big winner, use our randomizer to do so fairly and in a matter of seconds.  Built-In Compliance: We offer editable terms and conditions and require entrants accept sweepstakes terms before entering. We then easily generate proof of compliance for legal teams. Frictionless Prize Fulfillment: Tracking down winners, collecting addresses, and shipping prizes is tedious and time consuming.  That’s why our team handles fulfillment on your behalf. Think TSPC could spare your team the time and frustration associated with running event sweepstakes? We thought so. Learn more and take advantage of our introductory pricing offer!

Continual improvement is the key to a long-term retention marketing strategy. Unlike acquisition, you're not competing against other brands for consumer attention. In retention, you're trying to beat your personal best. Here's how to build a process of continual improvement 👇 1. Know your key metrics for long-term success Start by identifying the key metrics that are most relevant to your retention efforts in the LONG-TERM. In other words, how will you know if your retention strategy worked perfectly in the next 18-36 months? It's probably not your email open rate or even your opt-in rate. It's higher level business metrics like: - Repeat purchase rate - Time between purchases - LTV - First purchase AOV 2. Get Your Data Track this data weekly or monthly & get as much historical data as you can. You want to be able to see how these metrics trend over time, over different seasons & track how different initiatives affect them Remember, there's no SINGLE thing you can do to move the needle directly. Not with these metrics. There's no "one thing" you can do to 2x LTV. And sometimes, you'll move it 2 steps forward, then 1 step back. 3. Find The Key Levers Because there's no "one thing" that affects these metrics, you want to start finding all the different factors that might affect the metrics. How does seasonality affect it? What about promotions? Or new product launches? Or a new ad? The goal here isn't to find a single answer for "what works" ... But to get an idea of what levers you can pull to affect each of your key metrics and also what DOESN'T have an impact. 4. Gather Context Another way to approach this is to take a look at some of the big strategic initiatives or events that has happened and see how they affected your key metrics Did certain retention campaigns lead to lower churn rates? Did a particular type of email campaign lead to a surge in customer engagement? How did launching your loyalty program affect repurchase rates? 5. Develop Hypotheses & Tests Once you know your key metrics, have the data, the factors that affect it, and context from previous initiatives... It's time to put all of that to use to create new hypotheses on how to improve those metrics. This is important to remember... The goal isn't to find the right "answer"... it's to ask better questions It's to develop better GUESSES that you can test, see the results & refine your hypotheses even more... Until you understand your customer better than anyone. Want to do more retention marketing for your DTC brand? Follow me @jjesschan to learn how to think, plan + execute a Retention Ecosystem for your brand. Or reach out to our team @longplaybrands to get it all done for you

Marketing Executive (UAE National) Job Description : Kitopi is the world’s leading tech-powered multi-brand restaurant. With a mission to satisfy the world’s appetite, Kitopi operates a portfolio of both invested and franchised F&B brands, serving as enablers in the food market by helping brands to grow and scale, both in the delivery and dine-in space.Launched in Dubai, UAE in January 2018, Kitopi has grown to become one of the greatest success stories in the cloud kitchen and food tech space. In July 2021, Kitopi announced its $415 million Series C funding round, led by the world’s largest technology-focused investment fund, Softbank Group Corp’s Vision Fund 2. This investment catapulted Kitopi to the prestigious Unicorn status, making it the fastest Unicorn to have emerged from the MENA region.As a leading food-tech business, Kitopi’s growth has been largely fueled by its innovative and scalable software solutions. Kitopi’s kitchens are powered by its proprietary Smart Kitchen Operating System (SKOS) - an in-house suite of applications that optimizes cloud kitchen operations in real-time. As part of its growth roadmap, technological innovation, data science, artificial intelligence, and robotics will take center stage as Kitopi continues to reinvent the food industry as we know it today.With over 4,000 employees, Kitopi currently operates 200+ locations across the UAE, KSA, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Qatar, and runs its engineering hub in Krakow, Poland, its robotics hub in Denmark, and its global customer experience center in Dubai, UAE.What You'll DoEstablish and identify a brand guidebook for your brand. Develop a brand vision and marketing communications strategies for your brand focused on building brand awareness and equity, as well as driving sales through various ordering channels.Prepare annual marketing calendar including required marketing budgets and measure marketing initiatives against these budgets throughout the year. Marketing initiatives to also include offline/dine-in activation campaigns, events, and offline activation strategies.Capture the local market by continuously building/promoting the brand image through local store marketing initiatives.Prepare strategies for the launch of new products/promotions and implement them throughout the complete customer journey.Track and stay on top of market trends.Lead PR and influencer partnerships for your brand and build ongoing relationships with the media.Liaise with creative, social, media, PR, and events departments to manage and build brand creative assets and ensure timely execution of your planned initiatives. Analyze customer feedback, ratings, and reviews and share insights with the wider team.Provide input into pricing strategy.Optimize brand packaging design.Analyze marketing initiative effectiveness on a regular basis with reports to be shared with key stakeholders. Lead/track your digital and OOH/mass media campaigns.What Are We Looking For?Bachelor's de

Yesterday, I posted a framework for thinking about how to structure B2B Brand Marketing initiatives. Today, I thought I'd offer a few examples from my first Tech CMO role in the cloud hosting industry. For those not familiar with hosted infrastructure, it's revenue model is nearly identical to enterprise SaaS: subscription-based revenue measured by MRR/ACV and churn, sales-led motion plus inbound lead generation, 6-18 month sales cycles. Our PE-backed company was a SMB player ($150MM ARR) and I inherited a fragmented marketing team focused on demand capture with PPC accounting for 75% of the $6MM budget (because the CFO could model it). The C-suite wanted to move upmarket to compete against Rackspace, Hybris, and other medium enterprise players while avoiding AWS and Azure -- but we lacked the enterprise marketing and selling skills to compete. I had to balance appeasing the short-term lead pipeline, while reallocating marketing budget to build missing functions (Brand, Product, Analyst Relations, Customer Marketing, etc.) and split the focus to Brand + Demand. The brand marketing playbook included testing enterprise marketing approaches to building a know/like/trust relationship with ICPs such as bespoke events, Tech influencers, ICP Communities, and more. ICP COMMUNITIES My first Tech community play was to personally join Spiceworks and commit marketing budget to sponsoring meetups, developer contests, funding CE hours (and more) for IT and Dev pro's in our ICP segments (eCommerce, online gaming, etc.) to build brand awareness and affinity. I also committed personal time to engage in forum Q&A to gain community influencer points and exposure. BESPOKE EVENTS My next move was to pick an ICP segment (eCommerce) and region (UK) to launch a multi-city tour of peer idea exchanges. We called it "eCommerce Futures" and the first event was launched at the British Library (London) whereby we invited eCommerce executives from the Top 100 British e-commerce brands to a one-day VIP idea exchange and captured valuable content (video panels, C-level interviews between sessions, etc.) to further associate our brand as a forward-thinking vendor. I partnered with Intel and Dell (since we bought lots of their servers) to co-fund the event and we shared the attendee list and post-event content. Additional UK cities were planned with a 2-hour lunch & learn format in key city markets that our UK sales team had identified as having high ICP density. We leveraged our Forrester and IDC subscriptions to fund analysts as guest speakers to add further value. The goal was not lead generation, but naturally, leads were a byproduct of the relationship building. PARTNERS/ECOSYSTEMS The next step was to leverage agencies, VARs and consultancies in ICP-rich city markets to host social/educational events -- beginning with our top e-commerce partner in Toronto. Together we developed a series of meetups to simply introduce our companies and give back. More to come.

Reach the Right Customers with Age-Gating Are your marketing efforts truly reaching the intended audience? As a small business owner, you know how crucial connecting with the right customers is. However, ensuring that your messages are delivered to the appropriate audience, especially in industries subject to strict regulations, can be a significant challenge. This is where Pointse's advanced age-gating system comes into play, revolutionizing how you approach SMS marketing. Imagine you own a boutique winery. You’ve crafted the perfect promotional campaign for a new wine release, and you're excited to share it with your customers. You know SMS marketing has the highest open rates, but there's a catch—you need to make sure that only individuals of legal drinking age receive your messages. The last thing you want is to inadvertently send your promotional texts to underage customers, risking legal repercussions and damaging your brand’s reputation. Here’s how Pointse can transform your marketing strategy: Simplified Compliance: Navigating the maze of SHAFT regulations can be daunting for any business owner. Pointse’s age-gating system simplifies this process, automatically verifying the age of recipients and ensuring that your SMS campaigns are compliant with all relevant laws. This not only protects your business from potential legal issues but also demonstrates your commitment to responsible marketing. Enhanced Targeting: Effective marketing is all about reaching the right audience with the right message. By using Pointse’s age-gating technology, you can be confident that your promotional texts are being delivered to the correct demographic. This precision targeting increases the relevance of your messages, leading to higher engagement rates and more meaningful customer interactions. Increased Engagement: When your messages resonate with the right audience, engagement naturally follows. By ensuring your SMS campaigns are seen by the appropriate age group, Pointse helps you build stronger relationships with your customers. Engaged customers are more likely to respond positively to your promotions, driving repeat business and fostering loyalty. Business Growth: At the end of the day, effective marketing drives business growth. With Pointse’s age-gating system, you can execute SMS campaigns with confidence, knowing that you’re reaching your target audience in a compliant and efficient manner. This allows you to focus on what matters most—growing your business and serving your customers. Let’s go back to our boutique winery. Thanks to Pointse, your carefully crafted promotional SMS about the new wine release reaches only those who can legally enjoy it. The result? Higher engagement, increased sales, and a stronger, more compliant marketing strategy. #AgeGating #SMSMarketing #Pointse #SmallBusinessGrowth #CustomerEngagement #Compliance #MarketingInnovation #BusinessGrowth #smallbusinessinus

Navigating the ever-evolving landscape of marketing can be overwhelming, but fret not! Whether you're running a cozy bakery, a bustling restaurant, or any other retail food business, I’ve compiled some actionable marketing tips and highlighted the crucial channels you should focus on to elevate foot traffic, attract more customers, and skyrocket your revenue! 1. Leverage Social Media to Whet Appetites: Instagram & Facebook: Your food is not just nourishment; it's art! Utilize these visual platforms to showcase mouth-watering pictures and videos of your culinary delights. Remember, consistency is key! Instagram Stories & Reels: Tap into these features to share behind-the-scenes glimpses, happy customer reviews, and limited-time offers. Social Media Ads: Invest in targeted advertising to reach your local audience and promote special deals or new menu items. 2. Optimize Your Google My Business Listing: Ensure that your business information is accurate and up-to-date. Encourage satisfied customers to leave positive reviews, and respond promptly to all reviews, good or bad. 3. Employ Email Marketing Strategically: Build a subscriber list and send out regular newsletters featuring menu updates, exclusive discounts, and upcoming events. Personalize your emails for a more authentic connection. 4. Partner with Local Businesses and Influencers: Form partnerships with nearby businesses for cross-promotions. Collaborate with local food bloggers or influencers to expand your reach. 🎉 5. Host Events and Promotions: Organize themed nights, happy hours, or tasting events to create buzz and draw in a crowd. Ensure you promote these events effectively on all your channels. 6. Encourage User-Generated Content: Create a unique hashtag for your business and encourage customers to share their experiences and photos using the hashtag. This not only provides you with authentic content but also extends your reach to their followers. 7. Invest in Attractive Signage and Outdoor Displays: Your storefront is your first impression. Make it count with eye-catching signs and displays that capture attention and pique curiosity. 8. Implement a Loyalty Program: Reward your regulars with a loyalty program. This not only encourages repeat business but also turns your customers into brand ambassadors. 9. Optimize Your Website and Ensure Mobile Responsiveness: A user-friendly website that looks great on both desktop and mobile is essential. Include a clear menu, contact information, and online reservation/ordering options if applicable. 10. Focus on Customer Experience: - Ultimately, the best marketing is a happy customer. Ensure that every touchpoint, from the ambiance and service to the quality of your food, contributes to a positive and memorable experience. #MarketingTips #RetailMarketing #FoodBusiness #RestaurantMarketing #BakeryMarketing #IncreaseFootTraffic #BoostRevenue #CustomerExperience #LocalMarketing #FoodEntrepreneurs #Restaurateurs

Why it's time to stop chasing leads and build a memorable brand As someone who spent a decade in the trenches of marketing publications, I know a thing or two about advertising and marketing practices. And one article that recently caught my eye is a must-read for all B2B marketers: "It’s time to fight the ‘lead gen lie’ in B2B marketing" https://lnkd.in/gh-ZKits Many marketers ended 2023 cautiously optimistic about bouncing back budgets. But before we get swept away by that optimism, let's face the harsh reality: we're still spending too little on brand. Recent data paints a worrying picture. While 30 per cent of budgets seem dedicated to brand awareness, a closer look reveals 20 per cent goes to demand generation and another 15 per cent to account-based marketing – effectively more lead generation in disguise. That's a whopping 70 per cent chasing a measly 5 per cent of the market who's actively buying at any given time. It's time for a paradigm shift. B2B brands would be far wiser to invest in memorable brand awareness campaigns that tap into emotions and take risks. We also need to prioritise customer success teams, who become walking brand ambassadors. Studies show that emotional connections create lasting memories. And with 95 per cent of your buyers not ready to buy right now, fostering those long-term memories is crucial. So, be brave! Take a risk! If people don't have a chance to love or even hate your brand, it's probably too safe. Remember MailChimp's 'Email is Dead' exhibit? Risky, but undeniably memorable. That's the kind of brand awareness we need in B2B. But here's the secret: brand awareness and lead gen aren't rivals, they're teammates. Call it 'Brand Gen'. Brand awareness campaigns prime audiences for lead-gen efforts later. Think of it like offense and defense – both crucial for the win. And the best part? Strong brands lead to more profit. They command premium prices and attract loyal customers, freeing you from the shackles of price wars. This doesn't mean ditching lead gen entirely. But by prioritising brand building first, you'll create a solid foundation for long-term growth, attract the right customers, and command loyalty that goes beyond price. It's time to stop chasing leads and start building brands people love. What are you waiting for? #B2Bmarketing #branding #leadgeneration #brandgen #customercentricity HRKatha Abdulla M. M. Deepti Javali Raj Nayak Prasanna Singh