CSTMR

Best of the Week: Issue 14

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Hulk SMASH!

Growth isn’t about doing one pushup and then kicking backing on the couch to watch your muscles expand. As any fitness freak will tell you, successful growth involves a plan – a coordinated, step-by-step approach to get you from a 98-pound weakling to The Incredible Hulk. The same rules apply to business, as growth guru Andy Johns of Facebook, Quora and Twitter fame explains.

You gotta be wrong to be Wright

Edison estimated that he failed 1000 times before his success with the light bulb, and during the Wright Brothers first attempt, the friendly skies weren’t so friendly. Our most popular tweet from last week points to the value in experimentation…

#growthhacking isn’t really about hacking things. It’s about experimenting with various activities to drive growth. http://t.co/P2YGSwQlaG

— CSTMR Inc. (@cstmrinc) June 30, 2015

It’s all explained in this colorful infographic.

Don’t FAQ this up

There are hundreds, even thousands, of different sales techniques in the world of marketing. But only some are as fun – or as effective – as directly engaging customer questions, however offbeat they may be. Trash the static FAQ page and answer inquiries directly – be it via forums, blog comments, or social media – and watch your conversions go through the roof. After all, one does not simply sell a banana bunker.

The frontier of E-haggling?

The time-honored tradition of haggling as we know it may change in India. The normally cash-driven south Asian economy is rapidly becoming a new frontier for Google, Amazon and other Internet enterprises looking to foster a revolution in transactions.

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Best of the Week: Issue 13

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Kickstart from the heart

The crowdfunding craze saw 19% of the $16.2 billion raised in 2014 going to socially conscious causes. If you’re in the biz to do good things rather than boost your bottom line, then this guide accompanied by a funky infographic will help you generate funds from people with big hearts. It might just be what you need to kickstart your campaign into gear.

Something’s fishy

Whether you’re a minnow in a sea of sharks or a giant blue whale in a small pond, the launch of a new app usually comes with a huge spike in interest followed by sudden apathy. In fact, more than three-quarters of users tune out within the first three days of installing a new app, according to adtech whiz Andrew Chen. He offers sage advice for user retention: get your hooks in while they’re fresh.

CSI: Your startup

The best entrepreneurs are the ones who have failed and failed again, rather than those who saw success from the get-go. It’s because they’ve sharpened their business-management skills with years of positive and negative experiences. If your startup fell flat on its face and you’re left scratching your head, an effective postmortem will help you plan better the next time around.

Phoning it in

Many have lamented the death of real social interaction as an unfortunate side effect of social media technology and more. The reports may be greatly exaggerated, though. A new study finds that phone calls represent as much as half of the inquiries leading to purchase, compared with just 2% of sales coming from clicks. Here’s how to boost your ROI by encouraging potential customers to pick up the phone.

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Best of the Week: Issue 12

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Hollywood Goes FinTech

Unless you’re one of those avowed Luddites who just won’t let go of your old bank passbook, you’re well aware of the FinTech revolution currently seizing the financial industry by its nether regions. FinTech firms raised more than $8 billion year to date – at an average of $18.5 million per deal — and now the cool kids are getting in on the action. Among them is Oscar-winning actor and self-proclaimed musician Jared Leto. Read about the biggest FinTech funding rounds so far this year.

Chase-ing Silicon Valley

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon ominously declared, “Silicon Valley is coming.” His message is clear: the FinTech onslaught is inevitable. It’s time for banks to get in the game or go extinct. It might be too late, though. The banks have been sleeping on new tech for too long.

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Welcome to the CSTMR Blog

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We’re seasoned marketing experts with deep experience and vast networks in fintech and financial services, so most of the marketing and growth strategies we’ll discuss are focused on the fintech sector, but the principles behind them can be applied to any industry. Anyone who wants to acquire and retain new customers, build their brand and grow revenues, from C-level executives to marketing and social media managers, will benefit from these insights.

We hope you’ll read on and join us regularly for insights and motivation.  Enjoy!

What you can expect

At CSTMR, we help fintech and financial service companies attract new customers, keep them and grow revenues. The goals are simple, but the strategies, tactics and techniques for achieving these goals are not. That’s why we’ll cover different parts of those tactics, techniques and strategies in each blog post.

We’re not like other blogs that simply regurgitate other sites content and provide little context and real world perspective. We know you’re in the trenches and don’t have time to evaluate 20 different blogs to learn the best ways to accelerate your customer acquisition or retention strategies. On the CSTMR blog, we’ve got this covered. You can expect to read about the areas of marketing, product, design/UX and sales that really matter like:

  • Strategies and techniques to acquire new customers, faster
  • Product, Design and UX to improve engagement and optimize conversions
  • Getting the most from paid media (search, display, social, content and yes, direct mail and DRTV)
  • Ongoing customer engagement & retention
  • Marketing automation and what really works
  • Revenue growth through partner and channel development
    And much more

Meet The Team

Our goal is to use our combined 50 years of in-the-trenches marketing experience to give you the strategies and insights for your next growth breakthrough.

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Best of The Week : Issue 11

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Boom! And then, boom again!: Like the dot-com boom — and Web 2.0 revolution that followed — fintech is carving its place into business history as one of the most disruptive developments in financial management ever.

Demand for the massive change is headed by a new generation of consumer. With online access to everything in the palm of their hand, the kids of the baby-boom generation (millenials) are now old enough to think about money. They want quick and easy services without hurting their wallets.

Everything old is new again: Think you’re too old to learn new things? Not true for established brands that think they have their markets cornered. Like the emerging millennial generation and its unique habits, there’s always something new to pick up — such as growth hacking.

Roll Tide, but its gonna cost you: Lastly,

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Best of the Week: Issue 10

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We’re going to need a bigger door: If you’re a fintech or financial services company, you may find the big boys on Wall Street are going to come knocking as fintech/finserv acquisitions heat up. It turns out that if someone is going to eat Wall Street’s lunch, Wall Street at least wants to be the ones paying for it.

It’s not who you know, but who knows you: To attract investors and potential suitors, it helps if you have a few customers (and employees and relatives don’t count). The rest of this week’s “Best of” show that just because your marketing is working at attracting and converting customers in one area doesn’t mean that you can let off the gas elsewhere.

A new study finds a compounded increase in paid advertising click-throughs for companies already leading the organic search field. Two other pieces offer tips on maximizing the impact of email and mobile marketing strategies through effective analytics and apps,

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Best of the Week: Issue 9

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This week’s “Best Of” emphasizes the importance of studying user experience at the marketing side, and the growing expansion of mobile wallet services across borders. We also look at successful methods of marketing experiments to boost one’s understanding of the market, plus strong words from an experienced marketer who debunks growth hacking as a revolutionary practice. Finally, a new study finds that Mark Zuckerberg’s ongoing project still leads the way as the go-to social-media channel for brands worldwide.

Why Every Marketer Needs UX Experience

A user experience (UX) knowledge base and mindset are essential ingredients in any successful marketer’s tool chest. Optimizing your service for successful conversion as well as maximizing your brand experience and perception in the public psyche are among the reasons for the importance of utilizing UX in your overall marketing strategy. Read More

How To Run Better Marketing Experiments: A Growth Strategy

This comprehensive step-by-step process will assist individuals and teams in learning what works and what doesn’t in an overall marketing strategy.

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Best of the Week: Issue 8

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This week’s “Best of” includes data on optimum Facebook post frequency, and insight into the weaknesses of archaic marketing department structure. With mobile searches finally surpassing desktop searches, Google is rolling a variety of new ad formats meant to target the growing mobile user base. And finally, to settle the inevitable agitation of constant change, we found a great article on creating a mindset for growth. It grounds us in what truly matters for growth, no matter what tactics and technologies go extinct.

REPORT: How Many Posts per Week Should Facebook Pages Average?

In response to the penalizing algorithm updates, Facebook marketers are getting maximum organic post reach by maintaining optimum post frequency. There is solid data to support this one, and the results are clear. Less is more. Read More

Is Your Marketing Department Structured for the Last Century?

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Selling Ice to Inuits: Insights that Incite

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“It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.”

Just a few short years ago, this old adage served as the mantra for many very successful salespeople. Relationships formed the cornerstone of the sales process, and with enough charm and personal energy, the best salespeople could ‘sell ice to an Inuit.’

Fast forward to today, when your average Inuit can quickly check real-time ice prices on their phone, search the web for ice inventory data in their local area, and order their favorite brand of ice to be delivered right to their door in a matter of hours. In this modern environment, vim and vigor will only take a salesperson so far against the incoming tide of readily available competitive data.

According to research on the changing nature of the sales process by Matt Dixon and Brent Adamson of The Corporate Executive Board (The Challenger Sale, Dixon & Adamson, 2011), customers used to raise their hands as potential buyers about 30% of the way through the sales process. At that point in time, a company had the opportunity to shape the purchasing criteria through their relationship marketing and sales efforts.

However, in the current environment, where customers have access to a wealth of information from a variety of sources, they don’t need to reach out to you in order to help them make a decision. In fact, by the time that you even know someone is interested in your products or services, they are likely closer to 60% of the way through the decision-making process. That means they have already done their initial research, selected the criteria that is most important to them, set their expectations, and found several vendors that at least meet their minimum required level of service.

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Conversion Optimization

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Convert more traffic, from sign-ups to sales hand-offs to online purchases. We audit conversion paths and analytics, define positioning/messaging strategy, run A/B and usability testing, and more to maximize your conversion and engagement outcomes.

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We're a Financial and Fintech Marketing Agency based in the thriving tech centers of Austin, Texas and San Francisco, California and work with great companies throughout the U.S., North America, and Globe.

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