Takeaways from Nike’s marketing strategies

Nike-Jewel-Singapore

I think we can all agree that the slogan “Just Do It” has struck deep within people’s minds. It’s probably not an exaggeration to say that most youngsters and middle-aged peeps can immediately associate the three words to Nike. This goes to show how successful Nike has been over the years.

As such, we have picked up some takeaways from Nike’s marketing strategies for anyone or aspiring business leader to ponder over.

Keep up with social media

At the time of writing, Nike has garnered over 160 million followers on Instagram and close to 9 million followers on Twitter. This is all thanks to its human-centric fun and inspirational posts to retain customers and attract potential ones.

In addition, Nike also actively responds to negative comments to try to moderate the situation. If you want to keep up with social media and uphold a presence over your competitors, be sure to find your content niche and stick to it.

Welcome diversity with open arms
Nike Go FlyEase

Image Credits: Nike

Discrimination will be your downfall if you’re trying to reject diversity or exclude certain types of consumer profiles in the midst of building your business. On the flipside, welcome variety with open arms, and you will gain support from the public.

Just take a look at Nike’s latest release – Nike Go FlyEase. It’s the first-ever hands-free shoe that makes it easy to get in and out so folks who cannot use their hands freely can put on these shoes effortlessly. Just like that, they have reached a new group of customers no one else would have simply thought of.

Steer away from hard-selling

Have you ever been turned off by an advertisement or brand campaign that’s full-on hard-selling? Such brands may be throwing their marketing dollars down the drain because consumers are now annoyed and turning to other alternatives instead.

Rather than purely spotlighting its products, Nike focuses on its athletes and their stories. This is a brilliant marketing move because they are pulling on consumers’ heartstrings. The next time an individual sees a Nike store or online advertisement while shopping, they might instantly recall the brand ambassadors’ personal stories and resonate with the company.

Promote sustainability
Nike Crater Impact

Image Credits: Nike

Not many brands centre their attention on promoting sustainability. But labels who do so, like Nike, win their customers. Since more people are turning their attention to sustainability, the public will likely support eco-friendly products if offered at a competitive price point.

Closer to home, our little red dot will also start a new initiative called the Enterprise Sustainability Programme. It’s an effort to support local companies in building sustainability capabilities and developing products and solutions contributing to the green economy. We believe more details will be released soon!


While the above takeaways from Nike’s marketing strategies are worth a try, they may not be suitable for every business’ growth stage. Depending on your marketing budget and company’s strength, make tweaks where necessary to fully benefit from the above tactics.

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How to score big in networking

networking

Building relationships from scratch is never an easy task. But folks who have to network with strangers for work frequently don’t really have a choice. If that is you, let us share some tips on how to score big in networking.

Be clear on your motives

Have you ever been on the receiving end of an approach and observed how “fake” a person can be? Don’t make the mistake of being labelled as “fake” by the person you intend to know.

Whether you’re keen on connecting with a potential employer, reach a target customer, or simply find out more about an existing project they’re working on, make it known clearly. The last thing you want to achieve is to appear dodgy to the other party.

Put in the effort before your requests

Dian Oved, CEO of a PR and digital marketing company, shares with us a common pitfall. “A new founder will ask me for a celebrity intro for a collaboration, but they haven’t yet built a website, prepared materials, or thought about what they’ll do if the intro is made.”

Before making requests, be sure that you’ve put in the necessary effort. Remember that your networking contact is trading on their reputation to arrange that introduction for you. Make it count.

Learn how to be likeable

While you can’t control someone’s first impression of you, you can learn how to be likeable through the words you say. Generally, people are looking to be inspired and intrigued by your latest venture or your point of view on a common topic.

However, be fully aware that braggers get nowhere. Though it’s applaudable that you take the initiative to speak up, humility is still essential when it comes to networking. There’s a time to share your achievements and a suitable time to listen.

Ask open-ended questions

Do you recall what we wrote at the start of this article? It’s great to start off being clear on your motives, but you want to ask open-ended questions to facilitate the conversation and direction. Just take a look at this example:

A: “Do you know anyone I can speak with as I’m learning more about job opportunities at Google?”

B: “Can you connect me to your ex-colleague, John, at Google? I want to ask him for a job.”

Do you think sentence A or B is a better approach? If you chose A, you’re on the right track. It’s an open-ended question that’s both direct and polite. It also allows your networking acquaintance to use their network to your advantage.

Final thoughts
two men shaking hands

Image Credits: randstadrisesmart.com

Some people may be born with the gift of the tongue, but the truth is that most of us have to go through trials to find the most appropriate way to network. Sometimes, all it takes is a little practice to get there. Don’t give up!

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How To Find A Charity Worth Of Your Donation: Expert’s Advice

Donating money or time to charitable causes is actually a vital part of some of our lives. Donating allows us to help those organizations, which are actually positively impacting the world.

Apart from offering us the feel-good factor and helping the ones who are in need, making charities also help with tax deductions for your business. But at the same time, this giving can also be a confusing and frustrating process.

So, the question is, how will you know which charity is actually doing a great job and which fundraising is actually a scam? So, it is really important to go with a charity that is genuinely worth the donations which you are making.

How To Find A Charity Worth Of Your Donation: Expert’s Advice

So, here in this article, I will offer you some pieces of information that will help you to get the answer to all those questions by yourself. Many of us do make charitable donations, but we do not choose every charity that comes along.

So, how to find a charity worth your donation?

1.     Consider Your Passion

Rather than giving to every charitable organization that asks or turning down all of them, you can let your passion take the responsibility to shortlist them. This is about what is actually vital for you and what are the causes that you will like to support.

There are some people, who know someone, who is or has been suffering from cancer, and this made them donate to charities that are working for cancer patients. I personally think that education is really important.

So, I donate to education funds. These funds provide low-interest loans to those children who can not afford an education. Sometimes, the donation money directly goes for giving basic education to those who can not afford the low-interest loans as well.

When you are thinking of helping underprivileged children, you can blindly trust organizations like the Singapore Children’s Society is a charity organisation dedicated to children. You also can donate to relief funds for any environmental hazards affected families or to those people of catastrophe-stricken countries.

2.     Go Local

It is really great that you are donating to global causes. At the same time, it is also vital to help out your own community. In case you are concerned about the needs in your own community, it will be best to contact local charities and charitable organizations.

You can consider the local food bank and make a considerate amount of donation as per your capacity. The best thing about this is apart from donating cash; you can donate food items as well.

It will give your mind happiness and peace when you will see that your contribution is helping people in your community. You can make donations to any shelter, orphanage, or relief care institution in your locality.

3.     Charity Navigator

Often it becomes really tough to decide whom you should donate. When you are donating to any local institute or organization, it becomes easy for you to track where your money is being spent, and you will be able to check it with your own eyes.

But when you are supporting any national or global cause, it becomes harder to see those donations at work. There are several websites and online platforms that will help you to navigate through different types of charities.

You can go through the reviews, ratings, and also complaints (if any) on those online resources. They will also be able to offer you exact information about the charitable organizations, who are spending how much on which cause.

The Bottom Line

So, when you are going to make a charitable donation next time, consider all these things. You will never want your money to fall into the wrong hands or be wasted by any unfaithful source. So, snake sure that you are donating to a cause that offers you a feeling of peace and serenity; at the same time, you also pick the right places and causes to donate.

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6 Perks Of Using Instagram For Business

As social media usage continues to increase across all demographics, social media marketing has become a viable strategy for businesses. Social media marketing gives companies a way to engage with existing consumers and reach new ones while allowing the businesses to promote their desired tone, culture, and mission. One of the well-known platforms that Singaporeans frequent is Instagram (IG).

With over a billion users worldwide, it would be foolish to skip on the advantages of using Instagram for your business!

#1: CONNECT TO CLIENTS ACROSS MULTIPLE CHANNELS

Using Instagram allows you to connect to multiple channels to increase your engagement. You can put the Instagram button to your website to connect your clients to your profile.

As they scroll through your gallery of IG photos, clients can click through your account and start following you. They are likely to re-connect with you later.

#2: PROMOTE AUDIO-VISUAL CONTENT

As visual content is more attractive than chunky text, Instagram provides a huge opportunity for marketers to showcase their products or services. Instead of sending your brochure through email, you can use photos and videos to create a more compelling message.

Photos give your business a chance to highlight your products, while videos show your services in action. Post your company background and behind-the-scenes videos to help create your brand’s image.

#3: TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THE HIGH ENGAGEMENT

When you post something on Instagram, many of your followers are likely to see it.

Image credits: unsplash.com

In 2016, IG users liked over 4.2 billion posts per day. Posts with at least one hashtag got an average of 12.6% more engagement than posts without hashtags. Imagine the difference in these numbers due to the recent global lockdowns.

#4: RE-USE MARKETING MATERIALS

Instead of shelling out cash to hold another photoshoot, you can re-use your existing marketing materials and post them on IG. Re-use these photos across your channels and select the best images for your ads.

As we are all crunched for money and time, it is best to work smart.

#5: RESEARCH WHAT YOUR CLIENTS LIKE

IG allows you to research and learn what your clients like. Use your content insights to understand the preferences of your clients. This is an important tool that help you create an accurate profile of your typical client.

This way, you will be able to improve your marketing strategy and grow the number of verified leads in time.

#6: LOOK FOR BRAND AMBASSADORS

The word of mouth is a powerful marketing strategy. It helps you to convince potential clients as satisfied clients speak on your behalf.

Image credits: unsplash.com

Keep generating good feedback and building stronger relationships with your loyal clients by selecting some of them as your IG brand ambassadors.

Sources: 1, 2, & 3

 

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Up until relatively recently, the banking industry seemed to be a fairly closed off and cutthroat industry. The various competing national brands jealously guarded their client lists and regarded each client won as a great victory over their adversaries. How could they not take this viewpoint? After all, each client they added to their roster effectively added to their overall deposits, while reducing that of their competitors. Additional deposits meant greater capacity to speculate, invest, generate revenue, and profit, the ultimate goal of every commercial enterprise.

Today, though, times have changed significantly. The rise of banking API architectures powered by advanced banking software, not to mention the seemingly overnight arrival of financial technology (fintech) in its various forms, has forced banks to reconsider how they operate. Banks have been challenged like never before to be agile and adaptable—characteristics that, traditionally, have not exactly been synonymous with the banking industry as a whole.

Projected into the future, the banking industry will soon have to learn to collaborate with one another in order to leverage all the advantages present in our always-connected, digital world. If you’re part of a bank’s leadership team and are still on the fence about whether your organization should engage, here’s what you need to know.

Banking-as-a-Service and the Fintech Revolution

In the past, banks were relatively limited in terms of their own revenue streams, and were almost completely dependent on their various investment products to generate their profits. Because of this, a bank would have traditionally been loath to provide loans to investments it deems risky, even if the potential returns on those loans may be astronomical. Instead, banks have generally preferred to invest in ventures and enterprises that provide a sure, albeit smaller, profit. It’s easy to see the reason for this preference: without any other recourse for revenue generation, each defaulted loan a bank gives would seriously compromise its own capacity to operate further.

This industry-wide baked-in conservatism has allowed the banking industry to flourish, but has also prevented it from becoming agile and responsive to disruptions and external challenges. Recent years have seen a number of these, including the global COVID-19 pandemic, and the disruption brought about by fintech startups. Suddenly, traditional modes of operation were simply unavailable because of the coronavirus. At the same time, many services that banks had offered, such as convenient deposits and bills payments, could be executed from anywhere using mobile apps designed by fintech companies.

Luckily, it seems like banks have been able to successfully pivot towards a strategy of collaboration with fintech companies. Instead of treating them like competitors encroaching on their territory, banks have sought to partner with them to provide services that fintechs would otherwise not have access to. Unlike other industries, financial institutions like banks are heavily regulated. Had fintech companies attempted to offer the services that banks do, they would have become subject to those regulations as well, which would have significantly reduced their time to market and compromised their own organizational agility.

To circumvent this, banks have elected to provide fintech companies access to some of their services, usually for a fee. These services can include deposits, interest payments, offshore transfers, and others that add value to fintech apps. Collectively, this is referred to as banking-as-a-service (BaaS), and it has changed how banks do business dramatically. Instead of being tied to their investment products for revenue generation, banks can now become landlords, collecting rent and access fees in exchange for the services only they can provide. For their part, fintech apps seem content to simply pay for access, allowing them to focus on their core competencies.

How Does This Relate to Bank-to-Bank Collaboration?

Interestingly, many of the strategic lessons learned from the rise of BaaS also apply to potential interbank collaboration. Some corporate banks have become increasingly specialized in the services they provide, scaling up their operations by moving many of their business processes offshore. Unfortunately, smaller banks don’t usually have the bandwidth and resources necessary to build offshore processing facilities in the same way. But by seeking to partner with larger banks that have pre-built facilities, they can increase their market beyond their own borders. The larger banking partner again moves into the role of rent-taker, so this model is beneficial for them as well.

For example, say, a large global bank has established a niche for itself in gemstone financing. Smaller banks who would like to expand into this financial niche could seek to partner with this bank for a fee, gaining access to the larger partner’s years of experience, their product menu designed for the niche, and most importantly, the backend processes of the bank itself.

This assumes that the smaller banks would have already invested in a banking software that could interface with the larger partner’s systems, an undertaking that would have some costs associated with it. However, electing not to upgrade bank systems would not just close out the possibility of interbank collaboration. It would also jeopardize smaller banks’ abilities to collaborate with anyone, a definite no-no in today’s interconnected world. A stage-by-stage digital transformation may give your bank the best of both worlds: immediate access to the most profitable parts of the newly digital banking ecosystem, while also spacing out the capital needed to complete implementation.

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