b2c marketing

Product makers have pushed tech smarts beyond our phones and PCs into gear and gadgets, but many smart, connected products are not so smart. Whether it’s the latest connected harvester or a new smart speaker, the user experience often falls short of rising expectations. Adding sensors and remote control using internet-of-things (IoT) tech in products […]

A detailed analysis of how consumers are using social media in the customer lifecycle and an intriguing option for brands.

The global economy is in recession: US Q1 GDP declined 4.8%, and the eurozone’s contraction set a record. As far as the advertising triopoly and the social networks are concerned, however, advertising in Q1 surpassed bleak expectations and usage is booming — but not all is how it appears to be. Advertisers: The Pandemic’s True […]

Measuring marketing performance is not just a tongue twister; it’s hard work. Channel-specific metrics cause headaches, and reporting is a hodgepodge of data sources and dashboards from multiple martech and measurement tools. It’s even harder to align marketing performance metrics with customer-focused business objectives, but marketers can no longer pat themselves on the back for […]

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) recently sued to block Edgewell’s acquisition of shaving direct-to-consumer (DTC) company Harry’s, fearing industry consolidation since Edgewell owns the Schick and Wilkinson blade brands. It’s a disappointment to Harry’s founders and VC investors, to be sure, and perhaps even a deterrent to further VC investment in DTC disruptor companies. But […]

The Q4 2019 earnings reports are in for Facebook, Snap Inc., and Twitter. Here are our top takeaways for marketers: Facebook, Inc. Last year, we at Forrester argued that despite the number and extremity of Facebook’s scandals, they wouldn’t doom the company in the short term. So far, that’s held up, as the user base […]

Marketers, we have a personalization problem. No, it’s not your vision — most of you aspire to deliver more anticipatory and individualized experiences — it’s your execution. Across industries, marketers struggle to create memorable, or even useful, moments with their customers. For example, only 5% of US consumers say that email offers are well timed […]

If marketers don't learn to adjust processes to the rapidly changing data landscape, they risk fines and consumer alienation.

“The Forrester Wave™: Social Suites, Q4 2019“ is live! We’re particularly excited about this report because it represents a culmination of years of Forrester research on social technologies. Since 2015, we’ve covered five distinct social tech categories: Social listening platforms aggregate and analyze social conversations. Social adtech buys, manages, and optimizes social ads. Word-of-mouth platforms identify and […]

While 2018 was a challenging year for global social media advertising amid the implementation of GDPR, privacy scandals, and brand safety concerns, Forrester forecasts that social will remain the fastest-growing digital advertising channel globally over the next five years. This growth will be driven by increasing revenue per user and will be fastest in Asia […]

Consumers are connected, empowered, and experimental. And loyalty programs aren’t as effective at driving emotional loyalty as marketers would like: Less than half of consumers agree that programs make them feel more loyal to a brand. This reality makes loyalty harder than ever to earn. Brands need strategic guidance to make the most of their […]

One of our 2019 B2C marketing predictions is that enterprise marketing technology will meld with customer experience (CX) investments to deliver the relevancy and consistency that consumers crave from brands. Real-time interaction management (RTIM) provides critical capabilities that enable marketers to realize their CX ambitions. Forrester defines RTIM as: Enterprise marketing technology that delivers contextually […]

Marketers have been using behavioral economics to understand and exploit the irrationality of consumers long before the golden age of advertising. By employing simple marketing tactics such as “buy now, pay later,” inflated value pricing, or decoy alternatives, marketers have been able to effectively steer or, in some cases, manipulate customers to buy products or […]

You’re hearing with increasing frequency that social listening platforms (SLPs) are incorporating artificial intelligence and that AI may eventually unburden humans from heavy social data management and analysis. The reality: This is exaggerated. You still need a hefty amount of human involvement to set the rules, train the data, and maintain the platform. In researching […]

After more than two years of loyalty program limbo and “will it or won’t it” debates, Marriott unveiled the name of its unified loyalty program: Bonvoy. This final step in the world’s largest hospitality merger brings together over 100 million members, billions of records, and 6,700 properties in over 130 countries. For Marriott, the stakes […]

Customers demand that marketing coordinate with sales, service, and commerce to deliver better experiences. That’s why enterprise marketing technology (martech) is melding with customer experience (CX) to deliver consistency and relevance (see Forrester’s “Predictions 2019: B2C Marketing” report). Martech is a direct line to consumer touchpoints, and marketers should embrace and leverage it to drive […]

“I get knocked down, but I get up again.” — Chumbawamba   Halfway through the 20-year-long age of the customer, empowered consumers are more informed about their purchases, demand data privacy, and dictate the experiences that they want. Brands have been beaten down with every misstep, many of which snowballed into broad PR crises: United Airlines, Wells Fargo, Starbucks, […]

What bubble? The size of the influencer market on Instagram alone is set to grow $2.38 billion next year. Accordingly, our Forrester Analytics data shows that 75% of marketers have already implemented or are planning to implement a solution to manage this market in 2018, and seventeen percent of B2C marketers consider influencers one of […]

Points and discounts are the hallmark of most loyalty programs, and our data shows that they are usually pretty successful in incentivizing purchase behavior: Nearly half of US online 18–35-year-olds admit that programs influence what they buy and how much they spend. But loyalty isn’t just about the purchase — or at least it shouldn’t be. […]