In a world that’s evolving faster than ever before, traditional leadership styles are no longer feasible. Leading teams and organizations in the modern business environment requires continuous learning and adaptation to the evolving landscape, new technologies, and shifting customer preferences. 

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We are living in exponential times. Before, people talked about a VUCA world that is volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous, but now it’s VUCA on steroids. What I mean by that is the pace of change is increasing – and increasing at an ever-increasing rate. So that change, that incredible acceleration of pace, is what is added to that VUCA world.

Put yourself deep inside the situation as we are experiencing it right now. What does it feel like to be in that world? What do you think others are going through in that world? And think about how do you feel in that particular set of circumstances, and what does it mean for leadership, moving ahead?

The post Leading in a Changing World appeared first on GetSmarter Blog.

For your brand to successfully market its products and connect with your consumers, it’s essential to define your target audience. Gathering and interpreting information about your intended consumers on their income level, age, gender, and other demographics, will help underline your brand’s positioning and inform your overall marketing strategy.

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A consumer is anyone who buys a product or service so that they or others can consume it. The keyword here is “consumer”, which means they are going to use it for personal consumption.

So, we all consume products and services from food to banking, but imagine you are at the mall and picture the wide range of consumers that you might see. For example, you may see teenagers hanging out at the movies, a businesswoman buying a wrap for her lunch break, while a gamer is looking at new technologies. These are all consumers occupying the same space, but with different wants and needs when it comes to their purchasing behaviour. This is an important consideration for brands if they are to be successful. Knowing as much about the group they are trying to appeal to is paramount if that brand is going to connect. However, not everyone in that market is the same.

Different consumer groups

Most marketers are concerned with the group of consumers they are trying to appeal to. These groups are often known as segments. For example, a group of consumers who are able to buy a Ferrari is very different to a group who are able to afford base-level cell phones. 

One of the main ways to group consumers is through demographics. In South Africa, perhaps the biggest factor to consider when defining consumer groups is income. In a country which has the biggest inequality in the world, there are vast differences between consumer groups. For example, the richest 5 per cent of South African households earn 20 times more than the poorest 10 per cent. This is important as there is no point in targeting consumers who simply cannot afford your product or service. 

Other ways consumers can be grouped are numerous. Gender is just one of the ways. Some products are designed or aimed specifically at one gender; sanitary pads is an obvious example. Geography is another example. If your product or service only services certain geographies, there’s no point researching outside of that, unless your intention is to expand.

Lots of marketers talk about life stages. Someone who is a pensioner is unlikely to behave in the same way as a 20 year old. A common life stage breakdown is youth, those 18 to 24, singles or committed couples, moving on to young families, then to older families, then we hear about empty-nesters and retired. 

Then we have those who use a product or service versus those who don’t. If you want to find out views of a certain type of motorbike, there’s no point asking people who don’t ride motorbikes or have no intention of ever riding one. 

Besides demographics, consumers are also commonly grouped according to attitudes and lifestyle preferences. For example, an organic brand may be trying to appeal to people who embrace the idea of organic food and believe it is important. Or DSTV may be keen to appeal to people who love sport. Cape Union Mart positions its brand around adventure and will attempt to appeal to consumers who love the outdoors.

With any market research, it’s important to consider the group of consumers that you want to talk to. This will ensure that the research is focused and that way you can save a lot of time and money.

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Social media has made it easier for brands to reach and connect with large audiences. But, despite the enormous value that it holds for marketers, brands must consider social media as one component of a larger, integrated digital marketing strategy.

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How exactly does a social media strategy fit into an overall marketing strategy? Unlike any other communication methodology that has come before, social media marketing has changed the fundamental nature of the relationship between brand and consumer. Social media has allowed brands to form and nurture relationships with their consumers in a genuine, real-time manner. 

This two-way exchange has forced marketers to think and operate differently in the social space. However, social media is usually just one component of an overall digital strategy that could include email marketing, online reputation management, public relations, pay-per-click advertising, or search engine optimisation. 

However, social media marketing is not a solo act. It’s best thought of as part of a band. That’s right: a band. A digital strategy is usually just one component of an overall marketing strategy that could include print advertising, radio broadcasting, and in-store promotions. Bearing this in mind, it’s clear that an integrated strategy, reflecting overall brand identity, is a necessity.

How social media feeds into a larger marketing strategy

A brand can run competitions and giveaways online using its social media platforms, which then result in an offline prize. For example, by hosting a selfie competition on an Instagram account, which then results in the winning photo being used in a more traditional marketing campaign, such as a magazine ad or in a brochure.

Events

Events. Using your social media platform as the method of inviting customers to events is far easier and more effective than handing out flyers or paying for printed ads. Sharing updates leading up to the event, posting behind-the-scenes videos, help create anticipation and a buzz around the event.

Advertising

Advertising. Most social media platforms now offer a wide variety of advertising options, such as boosted posts, sponsored stories, promoted tweets, etc. These ads can act as a key vehicle for traffic to places like your website, online shopping pages, and mailer subscription forms.

Market research

Market research could be the most untapped advantage of social media engagement. Information and feedback received from your customers on social media can have a huge effect on your business decisions. For example, if a popular milkshake brand asks their Facebook fans to come up with a new flavour, all other marketing channels like TV ads, mailers, and billboards will eventually reflect these market research results. 

Irrespective of the size of your brand or business, it’s critical to ensure that your social media marketing efforts are enhancing and complementing your overall marketing strategies.

The post Why Social Media Marketing Is Vital for Your Marketing Strategy appeared first on GetSmarter Blog.

How do you know whether or not your product is successful? Many measurements can be used to evaluate how well a product has performed, including sales volumes, engagement rates, and loyalty figures. These results will help decide the way forward for your product.

Discover more ways to determine a product’s success with Siphiwe Dlamini, Convenor on the Product Management online short course from the University of Cape Town.

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Product managers use performance management to evaluate the success of the product in the market. This informs the approach they will take in the next stages of the product’s life cycle. There are many ways to evaluate the success of a product and many key performance indicators that can be used.

Product performance can be measured by considering the sales funnel. This is a system that
leads customers through the process of purchasing a product. When a metric gets positive
results, it is an indicator that the product fits the market. If you’re finding that not many
customers are engaging with the sales funnel, or if overall sales are low, you should consider
the product-market fit. This is the first point to consider when evaluating the success of your
product, and it may need to be adjusted before the product can reach its full potential in the
marketplace.

Product activation metrics are also key indicators of the success of your product. By observing
how customers engage with your product on a daily basis, you can see whether it creates
interest within the target segment. More engagement generally shows that marketing is
directed at the correct target market. This is a positive indication for the future success of your
product. If you notice the activation rates are low, a way to solve this problem is by optimising
your user experience on the platform.

Another metric to consider is the customer retention number. This provides insight into the
rate of continued interest in the product. It shows whether customers are finding value in
what you’re offering. This can be determined by looking at the number of repeat site visits
and satisfaction ratings left by customers after viewing or purchasing the product.

Although there are different strategies that can be used to track product performance, these
metrics can help to assist initial success of your product in the market.

The post Tracking Marketing Performance: A Few Key Metrics appeared first on GetSmarter Blog.

One of the biggest misconceptions about social media advertising is that it’s a free marketing tool. However, because algorithms now determine what content appears in individuals’ newsfeeds, brands can no longer rely on organic reach to get their message to their targeted audience. Instead, paid advertising boosts a brand’s presence on social media by putting brands back in control of the strategic placement of their content.

Find out more about leveraging social media advertising tools with Kiara Havenga, Head Tutor on the Social Media Marketing online short course from the University of Cape Town.

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In case you haven’t noticed yet, social media is no longer a free ride. There is far too much competition out there amongst brands and businesses for any social media platform to afford to give you a free ride. Organic reach has declined steeply, and algorithms now rule the roost. You’ve now got to pay to play and to win on social media. 

Algorithms are what every social media platform runs on these days. They have led to a lot of changes in social media in the last few years, and they continue to change constantly. Due to the giant that it’s become, Facebook is probably the biggest example of a social media platform using algorithms to great effects. According to Facebook, they want to show people content that they actually care about. Opting for a chronological timeline simply meant far too much spam for their users. Enter algorithms. Currently, Facebook makes use of many factors that decide what content lands in its users’ timelines and in what order. And this long list of factors changes and grows all the time. 

So, what does this mean for your social media presence as a brand or business? Simply put, unless you’re paying to promote it, you’re lucky if your content is reaching in the vicinity of 5 per cent of your audience on Facebook and much less than that on Twitter. The good news is that even though social media is now a pay-to-play arena, it’s definitely where you want to be spending your money. So, apart from the fact that social media platforms are filled with hundreds of millions of active consumers 24/7, social networks gather such a large amount of user information enabling you to target your audience in a wider variety of ways than any other online or offline platforms. 

Lastly, in case you haven’t noticed, we’re living in the midst of a mobile revolution with people checking social content multiple times a day on their smartphone, allowing your ads to reach consumers frequently. There is no doubt that having a budget set aside for monthly paid advertising on your social media platforms is key.

One thing I want to emphasise is the fact that a bigger budget doesn’t necessarily mean a bigger reach or higher engagement. You need to spend your money wisely, and this means being strategic with ad placements, targeting, and formats. It means creating content that drives engagement. 

To conclude, it’s a huge misconception that social media marketing is free. So, if you’re not paying-to-play now, you’ll find yourself quickly falling behind your competition. The beauty of social media advertising is that you’re in the driver’s seat. Choose your audience, determine your budget, and go full speed ahead.

The post The Effectiveness of Paid Ads on Social Media appeared first on GetSmarter Blog.

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Imagine you’re organising a dinner party. You have to decide what’s on the menu. Before deciding, you have to consider who you’re inviting, and if they have any dietary requirements. Is anyone allergic to nuts? What if there are vegetarians? 

The same process happens before marketing a product. The customer needs to be considered first.

Think about your target market when planning your marketing strategy. Part of marketing is the process of promoting and selling your product to a customer. Having an exciting marketing campaign is essential for success in the marketplace.

Nando’s is a proudly South African food chain that has a very unique marketing strategy. They have achieved global success and are growing every year. Nando’s target customers are people between the ages of 18 and 35 who enjoy casual dining experience. They offer good service, and delicious and affordable food. 

Nando’s set themself apart from their competitors by using a unique online marketing strategy. They use direct marketing on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter to make frequent contact with their customers. They also use platforms to offer seasonal promotions and deals which increases awareness and value to customers.

Due to its South African heritage, Nando’s focuses on current affairs and politics in a creative way. This promotes interest and humour in their marketing, and they’re always quick to respond to recent events. This is a powerful tool to create memorable, conversation-starting advertisements. 

A lot can be learned from Nando’s marketing strategy. They’ve closed the gap between their brand and their customers by showing that they can relate to their problems or frustrations. This brings people together through humour and understanding, which promotes their brand image and company goals.

It is important to understand how this forms a significant part of your overall marketing strategy. A marketing strategy is ongoing and focuses on how the brand can reach its market potential over time. A go-to-market strategy focuses on bringing new products or services into the market. This is a product-driven approach – the components that guide this will be unique to the product being developed.

The purpose of a go-to-market strategy is to make sure that the product successfully reaches the target market and provides value.

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Research shows that we’ve reached a tipping point in the proportion of leadership roles held by women worldwide, and there’s now a window of opportunity.² In 2017, only 25 percent of leadership roles were held by women, and in both 2019 and 2020, the number stayed static at 29 percent. In 2021, the number grew to 31 percent. If the trend holds, women will hold more than one-third of all senior leadership roles in the next few years.

This growth will immediately benefit businesses across all industries thanks to the leadership traits that women bring to the workplace. Large-scale scientific studies show that women score higher than men on measures of competence, humility and integrity.³ “Women are naturally endowed with emotional intelligence skills,” says Emma Seppälä, Faculty Director of the Yale School of Management Executive Education Women’s Leadership Program. “Organizations gain a tremendous amount by having women in leadership.”

The benefits of empathetic female leadership don’t end there. Here are four reasons to accelerate the recruitment and development of women in senior leadership roles:

1. Women build more diverse, inclusive teams and profitable companies

Diversity has never been more important in business. It addresses social inequalities, provides new perspectives and ideas, and future-proofs business growth and profits. It also increases productivity, creativity, performance, staff retention, and collaboration.⁴ Diverse teams are six times more likely to be innovative and 21 percent more likely to experience above-average profitability.⁵

These benefits are primarily due to diverse teams bringing in fresh perspectives that help overcome obstacles and manage change more effectively. “Having additional diversity of perspectives in leadership teams is critical in terms of which problems we identify, what approaches we use to understand, to analyze, and then to work through those problems,” says Rodrigo Canales, Co-Convener for the Women’s Leadership Program from the Yale School of Management Executive Education, in this video.

2. Women in leadership handle change better and take fewer risks

Harvard Business Review used a linguistic analysis of changes in company documents for 163 multinational companies over 13 years to explore how the firms’ top management teams changed their strategic approach to innovation after hiring female executives. The result: organizations became more open to change and less vulnerable to risk-seeking.⁶

It also revealed that the female-led companies gradually shifted from a knowledge-buying strategy focused on mergers and acquisitions (M&As) to a knowledge-building strategy focused on internal research and development, which is a more collaborative approach.

Both shifts suggest that adding women to the C-suite doesn’t simply bring new perspectives and ideas to the top management team – it shifts how the entire team thinks and reacts to disruption and innovation.

In a separate study of male and female business leaders and their pandemic leadership decisions, women were rated more positively on 13 of the 19 leadership competencies.⁷ Men were rated more positively on just one competency, but the difference was not statistically significant. The gap between the sexes was even larger than previous leadership studies from the same research firm, highlighting that women tend to perform better in a crisis.

“With 21st-century problems being so complex, most organizations have started to recognize that what they really need is a variety of leaders with a variety of styles, able to approach problems from different perspectives, able to bring different things to their teams as leaders,” explains Kathryn Bishop, Programme Director of the Oxford Women’s Leadership Development Programme, in this video.

3. Women-led companies attract more talent and have better reputations

The inclusive and diverse workplaces that female leaders create work as an effective recruiting tool, especially among younger generations. A survey by recruitment firm Glassdoor shows that 76 percent of job seekers said a diverse workforce was important when evaluating companies and job offers.⁸

Within these younger generations, female millennials especially look for employers with a strong record on diversity. A survey showed that the employer policy on diversity and workforce inclusion was important to 86 percent of the female millennial respondents.⁹ The inclusive, diverse teams that women leaders create not only improve a firm’s ability to recruit from a broader talent pool, but it also enhances its reputation, creating a virtuous loop. This has a tangible return on investment across all aspects of the business, including the ability to overcome industry challenges.¹⁰

“The benefits of gender diversity or any type of diversity are that people come from different backgrounds, they pool their collective experiences and thought differences, and get to a much healthier and productive outcome for whatever problem they’re trying to solve,” says Amy McHale, Assistant Dean for Master’s Programs at the Martin J Whitman School of Management at Syracuse University in the Women as Business Leaders online short course.

4. Women are leading sustainability

The drive towards sustainability is being led by women. From Jane Goodall to Greta Thunberg, there are countless examples of high-profile women making positive changes. “Female leadership is vital to managing climate change,” says Emma Howard Boyd, chair of the Environment Agency.¹¹

GetSmarter’s research supports this. The global GetSmarter 2021 Sustainability Report reveals that women lead more sustainable lifestyles across the board. According to the United Nations, putting women and girls at the center of economies will fundamentally drive better and more sustainable development outcomes for all, support a more rapid recovery, and place the world back on a footing to achieve the global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).¹²

“Many of the structural inequalities facing women have been further deepened as a result of the pandemic,” says Zoë Arden, fellow and leadership consultant at the University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL) and Course Convener for the Women Leading Change: Shaping Our Future online short course, in this video. “There is a unique opportunity to shape these transformations in a way that is systemic, inclusive, and addresses gender inequalities.”

Start the transformation

Research shows more women take a transformative, holistic approach to leadership: one which includes balancing financial and performance results with goals of increasing diversity on teams, building an inclusive culture, and driving positive change.

Invest in growing the women in your company and reap the benefits through female-focused leadership programs.

The post Why the Workplace Needs Women in Leadership appeared first on GetSmarter Blog.

How will financial decisions change over the next few years? With global trends moving towards more sustainable capitalism, new business models and initiatives such as impact investing, the integration of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors, and positive screening, will be at the forefront of sustainable finance.

Find out more with David Blood, Guest Lecturer on the Sustainable Finance online short course from the University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL).

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We think the next five years are going to be the most significant, the most important years of our career. The challenges around the climate crisis, the challenges around poverty and equality, ensuring that we have a just transition, these are very, very significant and we’re running out of time. We believe that the world will move towards more sustainable footings, that we’ll have more sustainable capitalism. I think the pandemic will be helpful in that regard, as people begin to realise that we need to think differently, as we address challenges and challenges that we might not have foreseen. Though, I guess pandemics have been foreseen for quite some time, but the same is true for climate. So, we see that sustainability and ESG will be mainstream across capital markets around the world.

We believe that impact will become a driver of allocation of capital in the months and years ahead. And we see that while there will be naysayers and that there will be setbacks, for sure, we see over the course of the next five to 10 years, a different approach, a different way of deploying capital, a way that ultimately takes into consideration return, risk, and impact.

There are probably three challenges that we need to address over the course of the next five years. One is to continue to establish that sustainability and ESG are part of your fiduciary duty. We would like to see that extended to impact as part of your fiduciary duty over the course of the next three to five, 10 years as well.

We believe that measuring impact is critically important. Initiatives like the Impact Management Project, initiatives like SASB and TCFD are going to be critical to establish measurement and establish reporting of impact.

And the last issue that we need to address is the challenges of composing indexes. Clearly, as we get better in terms of reporting on impact, we’ll have more tools to understand the creation and construction of indices, but that will be a critical part of achieving more sustainable investing and a better usage of ESG, because indexes are so critical to the allocation of capital. And right now, if we’re just simply allocating without regard to understanding the challenges of, say, decarbonisation, then we’re not going to achieve what we need to achieve in terms of managing risks and opportunities in our index portfolios as we go forward.

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Time is running out to take action on climate change. To achieve our global Sustainable Development Goals, rapid innovation is more important than ever. The good news though, is that we are seeing significant advances in innovation and technology, which are being utilised in exciting, sustainable, and profitable ways.

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We’ve only got a decade to really act on climate. The decade of action on not just climate, but also the Sustainable Development Goals, to really hit those goals by 2030. So, we’re going to need rapid innovation, breakthrough innovation to do things in new ways. We’re also, in parallel, going to need dematerialisation. We need to use the resources a lot better, because we’re currently using, last time I saw, something like three or four planets worth of resources.

The Fourth Industrial Revolution that we are now entering in the last few years, needs to be a revolution that is digital, dematerialised, and really changes the way we think about growth to make it sure that it’s better growth, better climate, so that we can make sure that people can survive and prosper in a world that also meets everyone’s needs, not just the needs of the few.

One of the big advances we’ve seen in innovation and technology is with autonomous vehicles. Now, if you’d have asked scientists and innovators in 2010 when they thought autonomous vehicles would be likely, they may have answered 2030, 2040, or beyond. But what happened is, we saw the individual technology advances that we saw with sensors, GPS, things like Google Earth, and all of those technologies – advanced cameras – came together to be used together in what’s known as combinatorial advances. So you combine technologies to make a step change in what you’re able to do, and obviously AI is a key aspect of that because it can help the system learn.

So, for example, on a Tesla car, if there’s a pothole or a roadblock, that car can send that message to the network of cars to say: “Watch out, there’s something here; go a different route.” That could never have been done before. And even one driver knowing it isn’t that useful, it’s very useful for a million drivers if everyone is on a system, to be able to say: “Let’s avoid this route, let’s avoid that blockage in the road.”

So, what we’re seeing is, scientists are working on individual innovations and technology capabilities, and they’re now combining those, and that’s why we talk about artificial intelligence, blockchain, and the Internet of Things being the gearbox of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

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Modern agriculture has come at a significant ecological cost. This is why it has never been more imperative to ensure our methods of food production are not only less harmful to the environment, but also more practical and sustainable. 

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Modern agriculture has this dilemma where it is inherently degrading of the natural environment. That degradation relates to the dependence of modern agriculture on this external energy subsidy. So we’re able to break free of carrying capacity limits or natural constraints that would normally limit production. By using fertilisers, by using chemicals to suppress diseases and pests, we’ve been able to break free of that and get enormous productivity and growth in agriculture. And the term the “green revolution” kind of describes all of that. But there is this degradation that I referred to that goes hand in hand with that. So while we can acknowledge the enormous success of modern agriculture to produce the food that this growing global population has required, that productivity has come at an enormous ecological cost. So while agriculture is increasing its productivity, the very foundation upon which it stands is eroding and degrading. And the long-term ability of this system to sustain itself is in question.

So I think, to start with, if we look at farm level, I see three key innovations that need to be driven. First is fundamentally decoupling farming systems from their dependence on these external energy and material inputs. The second is about restoration and conservation of the key ecological functions and structures and processes that supply critical ecosystem services to the farm. And thirdly, is a transition back to fundamentally more diversified farming systems. So those are the aspects at farm level, but we acknowledge that farms sit within the bigger food system and if we look at that bigger system, we have to acknowledge that they are… a huge element of them, is the logistical chains that link primary production to the end consumers that can often be many thousands of miles apart. And they are very energy-demanding, very polluting systems. So at that level of the industry we’re looking at innovation that takes these systems from being these large global systems to more local food systems, where food production and food consumption are more closely matched regionally and locally.

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