Entanglement Marketing

Today, August 20th,  I am in Zermatt, Switzerland. Hoping to do some summerskiing. It is summer in the village, but winter is still present up in the mountains here, 3883 meters high there is lot's of snow. However today is cloudy and windy and lifts are closed. So I grabbed a book and started reading about “Entangled Marketing” and watching the people go by in their electric mini cars, with the Matterhorn at the background. Tomorrow I will go to enjoy summerskiing, tomorrow the weather will be great! This post is a combination of items from the book, some personal opinions and some examples I found at the web. Enjoy reading!

I gave the book a view at the Matterhorn,
during my stay here..(but the Matterhorn is
sometimes "entangled" with clouds as today :).

I bought this book since I believe, that the way of marketing brands or building brands, is changing rapidly. It’s no more just some display advertisements or an always on PPC strategy, there are many other possibilities. In fact more sustainable possibilities as well.
I never could find a word for it, but now I have read this book, I know what it is called: “Entangled Marketing”, moving beyond engagement. Engagement is no longer enough. As a brand you have to go beyond engagement. And that you do with "Entangled Marketing"!.

The authors describe the word entanglement as "the quintessential quantum effect". In the sub atomic world, a pair of entangled particles never let go of one another.
It’s a perfect metaphor for what business management would like to see happen in our digital environment. What if the brand entity and the customer entity could be entangled in an enduring, supportive relationship? One to one is yesterday’s news, it is time to take the “to” out of one to one. 

The book describes a few examples, for example about John Hancock insurances, who entangles the insured person by giving the customer a fitbit and rewarding him for his healthy lifestyle, or the company“Chick-fil-A” who organises special entanglement for the animal toy’s children often take with them to a restaurant. They even let those toys of the children sleep over in the restaurant and share all kind of pictures of the adventures the child’s animal toy had during its sleepover! Great for the kids, and thus great for parents, who keep on returning to the restaurant. I found a video about this sleepover and experience:

Back in the old days, in the analog era, the direct marketing business model, selling directly to the consumer or a business consumer, represented about 10% of the economy. The vast majority of the companies did not know much about the behaviour of people buying their product or getting their service.
Now in the online era, marketers have so much data, they know what the customer wants before the customer knows he or she needs it.
Think about Spotify, Netflix or Dollar shave club and all those subscription services from nowadays. This is the way forward. The still rapidly growing world of connecting services and products (IoT), will only speed things up. It makes sure you can entangle consumers with your brand.

Cross bordere ecommerce: centralise or localise digital marketing activities

In cross border e-commerce, often the question is asked: "what can I centralise and what can I decentralise if I do cross border ecommerce"?

Cross border ecommerce wisdom

The question really depends at your strategy, your products or services, the size and structure of your company, your financial capabilities and of course the countries where you are active, or want to expand to.

There are nowadays companies who can fully fulfil every aspect of your cross border e-commerce activities,

Having said that, I have described per e-commerce channel, my view at localisation versus /decentralisation and how I think it is most effective.
To make it easy I introduce here the Alex -localisation-centralisation -*- meter!

Stars and Alex a good combination

SEA (search engine advertising)

Search engine advertising, can be centralised, there are nowadays some really good global search engine agency's who really can help you with your international sea strategy and execution. Since a large part of SEA (like advertising description, product insertion, stock information) can be automated if you have a good product feed and ICT landscape it is easy to optimise via a central agency. 

In terms of localisation/centralisation, I give this activity * localisation star and ***** centralisation stars.

SEO (search engine optimization)

There are two important aspects in SEO, technical SEO and content SEO.
Technical SEO is best to centralise. The reason is, that almost all search engines in the world, more or less require the same technical adjustments and often companies have one generic website system.

In terms of localisation/centralisation, I give this activity * localisation star and ***** centralisation stars.

Content SEO is a different story. Of course there are also agency's who say that they can deliver content SEO per country, but sometimes they just translate texts that in other countries might have important keywords, but in the country aimed at, might not so important. Besides that content SEO is also often, to be ahead of trends, to produce content that will be important in a few months time. Often this knowledge is only known by real local people, not by just translating.
Then there is of course the -not completely undisputed- linkbuilding activity where people pay others to get a link.
I personally am not so much in favour of this activity, I see more value in creating real valuable interactive content, that will be highly shared and linked to.
But if you do this paid linkbuilding activity, it is best done by locals.

In terms of localisation/centralisation, I give this activity *** localisation stars and **centralisation stars.

Social Media Advertising
Social Media Advertising, is just like SEA pretty  easy to centralise, however the trend is more and more to adjust your advertisement to organic social behaviour or into geotargeting at for example local events. This makes social media advertising in my opinion still centralisable, but just a little bit less then SEA. Localisation/Centralisation **/***

In terms of localisation/centralisation, I give this activity ** localisation stars and *** centralisation stars.

Social Media Content production
The organic social media results, so the general posts we make, can in my opinion best be done as a hub and spoke model. Centralised but with local flavours. Social media needs to be authentic and there are many local interests that differ per country or even per region. It is advisable to centralise the social media tooling (including social media reporting tools), but to keep local access for local posts and local influencers.
Many cases are known where international companies use local influencers in their local social media strategy.

In terms of localisation/centralisation, I give this activity **** localisations star and *** centralisation stars.

Website Optimization
If one of your company's main activities is selling via your website, it is best to centralise all technical issues but when acquiring these tools or building these technical adjustments, keep in mind what local offices or agency's can do at your website.
Think about for example:

• Local access for A/B testing purposes, locals know much better how their customer group or target group is behaving and what their interests are.
• Local CMS access for writing content, in order to have more valuable content, faster. 
• Local access for SEO purposes (adjusting product titles/meta description)
• Local access but with guidelines for image uploading
• Local payment methods
• Local checkout flows 
• Etc.

Optimising a website for the highest conversion and traffic possible, always involves local knowledge.

Also take in mind, that your template must be flexible. Many global company's have different templates for the different regions they service.
This is of course related to culture and user behaviour. You can still be one brand, even if you have different layouts in different country's or regions. Read more about that here.
I will write more about website localisation in a future post, someday :)

In terms of localisation/centralisation, I give this activity **** localisation stars and ** centralisation stars.