Artificial intelligence (AI) is no longer a thing of fantasy. It is real and, while it isn’t going to take over the world any time soon (at least I hope not), your brand can have added value by using AI.
AI’s biggest benefit is in gathering information. It takes into consideration customer preferences and can allow your brand to offer a more personalized shopping experience. This, in turn, will help you reach your target audience. What does this person like? Who else would like this product? These are the questions that AI will help your brand answer.
Businesses also use artificial intelligence to increase productivity and operational efficiencies while avoiding mistakes and human error. A customer experience agency called Servion predicts artificial intelligence will power 95% of customer interactions before 2026.
The future of marketing in a world with AI is endless. You can use artificial intelligence for social listening, or identifying how the world is talking about your brand, which could in turn help you to change your brand strategy. With the use of AI for things like data collection, targeted advertising and analyzing customer behavior, you can devote more of your time to the more personable side of business.
Despite artificial intelligence being a great boon to business, there are times when human beings just cannot be beat. Artificial intelligence is just that: artificial. No amount of technology can compete with the insight and individuality that comes with real people. Brands should be warm and inviting, and when customers want to speak to someone about a complaint or a question about a product, they should be met with an authentic human interaction.
This is where you can use artificial intelligence to your advantage. With AI collecting data, creating graphics and analyzing how the public views your brand, you can dedicate your time to ensuring an authentic human connection with your customers. Whether it is by doing community outreach or just spending a little more time talking with a potential customer, you can establish a relationship that will make your brand a more appealing option compared to those that have traded human connection for the ease of AI.
An even balance between artificial intelligence and real, human interaction is key to bringing value to your brand. Work smarter and not harder but remember to utilize genuine human connection when the need arises.
One of the questions in B2B go-to-market strategies is: What is the right price point for our offer? This post provides a high-level overview of standard pricing research techniques that can identify the market’s willingness to pay for your solution.
For most vendors, internal and secondary data set the foundation for pricing strategy. This includes building cost models and looking at competitor pricing. In some cases, these data are sufficient to inform price point decisions. In many cases, product marketers want feedback from the marketplace to avoid common pricing mistakes, such as: their pricing does not leave money on the table; priced too high for important buyer segment; or lead to significant competitive disadvantage.
Conducting pricing research provides insights to help product marketers further refine pricing strategies and find the right price point. Isurus recommends looking at pricing through three lenses: What the market pays today; a pricing exercise called the Gabor Granger method which explores willingness to pay, and a pricing analysis called the Van Westendorp pricing sensitivity meter which helps identify the optimal price point.
What the market pays today
What companies pay today for their existing solution provides an important reference point for understanding how much the market is willing to invest in solutions like yours. It reflects the relative importance of the job-to-be done in the solution category and indicates the market’s relative perception of the ROI of the solutions they use.
When B2B buyers evaluate new vendors/product, they use their current cost to anchor judgments about how affordable or expensive are the alternative solutions. The “right” price point is subjective. Knowing this starting point helps put your solution in context – will it be perceived a premium product, a good deal, in line with everyone else. It also helps inform other components of the go-to-market plan. For example, a product priced higher than the average current solution will need marketing and sales messages that show value for the extra investment.
In addition, in some B2B sectors competitor pricing is opaque. Price lists aren’t published, or list prices are negotiated in the sales process. Asking B2B buyers what they currently pay may be the only meaningful source of competitive pricing data available.
One important guideline to keep in mind: When asking B2B buyers what they pay, don’t apply an artificial level of precision to the data. B2B buyers are human and people often understate what they pay. They think about the main license costs but omit fees for enhancements and add-ons. Their data are accurate when treated as a scope-of-magnitude estimate, and you should then use judgement and inference to refine it from there.
The next step to identify the right price point is to collect direct feedback on your pricing. There are some advanced trade-off modeling techniques such as conjoint that can help refine costs. However, for most B2B offerings, two standard and straightforward pricing research methodologies provide the insights needed.
Willingness to Pay: Gabor Granger Method
The Gabor Granger method is a common approach to identifying the market’s price tolerance. In the simplest design the first step is to identify three price points for your solution/service: The lowest you can realistically price your offer at and still make a profit, the price-point you think is a realistic price, and a stretch price point, the most you feel you could charge for your offer.
Once these three price points are selected, ask the market to rate its willingness to pay for an offer like yours at each price point, starting with your stretch price point. Those unlikely to purchase at your highest price point are presented your realistic price and again asked their willingness to pay. Those still unwilling to invest at that price point are asked about their willingness to pay at the lowest price point. Adding additional price points along the continuum (e.g., asking about four or five price points instead of three) helps identify nuances along the continuum.
The results are used to plot demand curves and calculate price elasticity.
Demand curves and price elasticity calculations are needed to identify the right price point.
The analysis provides two insights into the marketplace’s willingness to pay. The first is an estimate of the percent of the market that would be willing to invest at any given price point. The second is where pricing elasticity is flat – an increase or decrease in price has minimal influence on willingness to pay. In the example above, moving from $1,000 to $1,250 has minimal impact on the percent of the market willing to pay for the solution. The vendor would be leaving money on the table if they priced the solution at $1,000.
Optimal Price Point: Van Westendorp Price Sensitivity Meter
The second standard pricing methodology Isurus uses is the Van Westendorp Price Sensitivity Meter (PSM) which focuses on price expectations and acceptability rather than willingness to pay. In the context of a specific offer, the PSM explores the price point in four scenarios: When it is a bargain, getting expensive, so cheap it raises quality concerns, and prohibitively expensive.
The resulting data are plotted to calculate the optimal price range in terms of acceptance to the broadest percentage of the market. Prices above this price range will be acceptable to an increasingly narrow slice of prospects.
PSM explores price point in four scenarios to identify the right price point.
Isurus typically combines the Gabor Granger method and Van Westendorp in a study to mitigate the challenges associated with accurately measuring price elasticity. It is also important to note that both approaches assume that the audience is familiar enough with the products or product category to make reasonably informed judgements on the value of the solution and their company’s willingness to pay.
Insights and Use Cases
The data provided by types of questions will inform your pricing and go-to-market strategies by identifying:
How your pricing compares to competitors and the market’s expectations
Which market segments to avoid and which segments are most likely to find your pricing acceptable
Potential ways to optimize your price point to gain market share or skim the market
The sales and market challenge you face: Will you need to educate your buyers to help them justify the cost?
The framework outlined above can be explored qualitatively or quantitatively and managed internally or with the help of an external research firm. The Product Marketing Alliance also has some good recommendations for how to create an effective pricing strategy.
Since the dawn of civilization, humans have been social animals. What first manifested as a basic shared language has since evolved into subcultures on a multitude of social media platforms. The human impulse to know and be known has driven social media into the awe-inspiring network it is today.
When the first social media site was launched in 1997, it was nowhere near the expansive behemoth we know it to be. Six Degrees, credited as the first social media platform, was meant as a way of direct electronic communication. It wasn’t until we started getting to the 2000s that sites began to fill out their own separate niches.
In 2002, LinkedIn came into existence to fulfill a professional niche with a purpose of connecting users with businesses and potential employers. LinkedIn is still the seventh most popular social media site among adults in the USA.
In the decades since, social media has evolved into a source of entertainment and news, a new form of marketing and a retail platform. Sites like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram and TikTok rose in popularity and have stayed there since their conception. TikTok is even the most downloaded app in the US.
The creation of mobile phones has only added to the popularity of social media. In fact, 90% of the US population actively uses social media as of 2023 according to Pew Research. In case you aren’t someone who likes percentages, that’s 302.35 million social media users.
Brands, universities, sports teams and just about everyone else in between are using social media as a creative outlet to tell consumers what their organization is about.
Social media has changed the game in every way possible. No one could have predicted the way social media has evolved since its creation, nor will we be able to predict how it will continue to evolve.
Video marketing is a trend that must be taken advantage of. The third ranked social commerce platform is the app TikTok, which reached one billion users only four years after its creation – for reference, it took Facebook twice that amount of time to reach that many followers, and Facebook is the top social commerce platform.
But social media can be intimidating, especially when there are already so many brands that get thousands of likes on every video. Here are five video ideas to boost engagement.
#1: Tutorial videos
Short, helpful tutorials are an effective way to release educational content about your product. TikTok has video length options up to 10 minutes in length if you want to give a more in-depth tutorial but remember that most users’ attention spans don’t last that long.
Use tutorials to highlight your product in a non-judgmental way for users who didn’t know how to use it and add in tools and tricks that users may not have known about.
Get creative with your tutorials as well! Don’t be afraid to get silly with your video – you want it to stand out against the rest!
EZ Home, a TikTok influencer who posts DIY and tool reviews, has many videos like this one giving tutorials on how to fix sinks, locks, lights and more.
#2: Partner with influencers and content creators
There are thousands of influencers across social media platforms that want to pair with brands just like yours. Reach out first and ask if an influencer would be interested in receiving a free product to display in one of their videos. You can repost those videos on your own channels.
RIDGID Tools partnered with the influencer Plumbing Sk8er on TikTok and was featured in his recent video when they sent him a new SeeSnake Mini Pro Camera
#3: Show your product being used
Show off your product! Grab viewers’ interest and make it irresistible to them. Find fun and creative ways to show off your product to entice people to buy it. Two popular ways that brands are doing this are by creating videos of them testing their products in comparison to competitors and sharing before-and-after videos.
RRBuildings, a construction influencer, posts videos on TikTok for his 1.7 million followers. Many of his videos, such as this one, show him using a product and demonstrating how it helps make his job as easy as possible.
#4: Participate in trends and challenges
Pay attention to what is trending across platforms and find a way to jump on it. Brands that participate in trends that regular accounts are doing come across as relatable and have a better chance of resonating with their audience.
A popular trend across all forms of social media are compilation videos of satisfying actions. One account on YouTube, Technical Mamaji, posts videos of construction workers doing their job in satisfying ways, amassing 16,000 views.
#5: Share educational content
Use your platform to teach your audience about something related to your brand or products. You can make your educational content humorous still and, while you shouldn’t strictly stick to educational videos, they are a clever way to vary your videos to increase engagement.
See this video by She’s a Tiny Plumber on TikTok. She uses the duet feature to react to a leak repair, and she explains each step in a comprehensible way while keeping it light and humorous.
Feeling inspired yet? Start making your own video content to get the most out of your brand!
Implemented by the Manufacturing Institute, National Manufacturing Day takes place on the first Friday of every October and this year it’s October 6th. Manufacturing Day is part of the Manufacturing Institute’s initiative to inspire the next generation, diversify the workforce and positively shift perceptions about the manufacturing industry.
In celebration, thousands of manufacturers across the U.S. host events to showcase the realities of modern manufacturing and address labor shortages in the industry that are open to students, parents and/or educators.
Manufacturing Day is a chance for manufacturers to emphasize their work and their workers and to inspire a future generation of skilled workers.
In marketing, there’s a lot of different forms of marketing as it keeps evolving. However, traditional marketing is not going away.
The following is a guest post from our friends over at Long & Short of It, masters of ideation, customer insights and market research. They like to say they “dig and find lots of data and then turn it into actionable insights.” Following is their guest post.
The reputation you have with your customers is critical.
That should not come as new news to anyone running a business. How your customers perceive your products and services has a direct impact on future sales and it directly affects prospects consideration. The online community can be both a huge boost as well as a land-mine. Anyone with access to the internet, so basically everyone, can impact how you are perceived. So, what to do?
If you have read any of our articles, there is often one common theme in there, have a plan. It’s better to proactively manage your reputation than to let the social media world run it for you and be in a reactionary mode, especially if there are negative comments.
Assess where you are now
Start with an assessment of where you are today by taking a fresh look at your social media accounts. Understand where your customers are and that’s where you want to be. Depending on the size of your company and the resources you have, you may not need to be everywhere. For example, in our company, and given our target audience, we don’t need to be on TikTok. Then take the time to read the comments and the level of engagement your audience has with your posts. Get a good sense of what people are generally saying and how much is positive, negative, or just neutral.
Engage and boost
This is where the heavier lifting comes into play. It’s increasingly important to engage with your target audience online and this applies to B2B as much as it does in B2C companies. Are you posting regularly? How often you need to varies by the type of company and the channel. For some it might be a few times per week and for others at least once every two weeks. Your marketing team or agency can help determine the proper cadence.
Stay on top of the questions or comments
Try to respond to customer questions within 24 hours if possible. If someone states something incorrectly, it is appropriate to provide the correct answer. If someone says something negative, don’t react until you can assess the validity of the statement and provide a professional response. And given that anyone can say anything, not all comments necessitate a response. Ensure you have a trusted person responsible to answer questions with clear guidelines to help them understand when to escalate or bring in specific expertise.
Content matters
Finally, review what you are posting. Don’t always make it a sales push, but look to educate, inform, and at times, entertain – just be sure to keep it in your brand voice. Be sensitive to the medium you are using. With LinkedIn for example, keep it primarily business oriented. It’s fine to let your personal or company brand personality come through, but it’s probably best to avoid touchy societal topics
Take the time to assess where you are, continuously engage with your target audience and never stop generating content that matters to your target audience. Your brand reputation is critical to maintain, and as Warren Buffet once said, “It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.”
