Building customer loyalty is hard, but it is one of the most important things for your business. To increase customer loyalty, it can cost nearly seven times more to acquire new customers than to keep existing customers.

There’s a lot of information on how you can build customer loyalty and retain more customers, so instead of reinventing the wheel, here a few strategies you can incorporate into you business:

Let Customers Know What You Are Doing For Them
This can be done via a quick informal phone call or a friendly email newsletter – either way, you want to subtlety let your customers know about all the work you have been doing for them. For example, you may have spent part of your weekend fixing up a few problems for a customer – you can hint about this when you follow up the next week. It’s important to realize you are not being cocky here; you are simple letting them know you value their business and are willing to go the extra mile for them.

Pass On Information
If you read an article, see a new book, or hear about an organization that a customer might be interested in, drop a note, share the information on social networks or make a quick call to let them know.

Strive To Empower And Educate Your Customers
“Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime.”

Become your customers go to adviser on all things relating to your industry. For instance, if you’re in IT, be their IT Guy. Help them with choosing the best mobile plan; let them know about upcoming compliance regulations. Go the extra mile.

Make Customer Retention A Priority
This may seem pretty obvious, but I’m serious. Make a commitment to put customer retention at the top of the list. If you spent as much time building customer loyalty and retaining customers, as you did acquiring new customers, you’d have the world’s best advocates and a 100% retention rate.

Understand The True Purpose Of Marketing
Effective marketing is about building trust and developing relationships. Too many times people think marketing is just to push a bunch of advertisements and they will come. Well, it’s not that easy. The purpose of marketing is to ‘create and maintain a strong feeling with customers so they are mentally predisposed to continually choose and recommend you’. Building customer loyalty is about building trust and developing relationships – it’s all interlinked.

Focus On Integrity, Which Leads To Trust And Loyalty
Integrity involves fundamental behaviors such as keeping your word, being honest, providing a consistent level of service, and being reliable. Businesses that demonstrate a high degree of integrity are seen as trustworthy.

Building trust requires businesses to continually put customer’s interests ahead of their own. Customers will see this, and you will earn their trust and go a great distance to building customer loyalty.

Create Enlightening Experiences
A successful business is about more than just selling stuff. It’s about selling experiences. Focus on making the customers feel good, and do this by not charging for every add-on. Customers want to walk away with an experience, an experience that will keep them coming back for more, and telling their friends about it. This will go a long way to building customer loyalty.

When You Do Wrong, Make It Right
Resolving customer complaints is the best way to build customer loyalty. By handling complaints in a professional manner, you earn the opportunity to fix the problem and regain customer trust. In doing so, you engage your customer on an emotional level. Providing you resolve the problem, your customer now has a very unique experience with you, and you have shown first hand your willingness to recognize the problem and go out your way to ensure it is fixed and won’t happen again. Customers love this.

Yanique Grant is the Founder, President and CEO of Professional Training & Occupational Services Ltd

This Emphasis On Expanding The Availability Of The Product Was Key To O Ur Successful Bid To Secure The Highly Coveted Rights.

“What our vision is, is to distribute and present that content in ways that it hasn’t been done in previous times to a much wider audience. So, by way of example, when I say that I mean that, you know, content like the Premier League and other premium content like that has only been available to a smaller percentage of the market, not the wide market, because of how it was broadcast. Our vision is to increase that viewership by allowing it to be broadcast on a combination of traditional media. By broadcasting on traditional media that doesn’t require any premium service or premium access as well as on premium services.

In addition to that, you know, we are building our own digital media offering and our own architecture behind that. So, the way that we will offer it to the public, We think will not only drive uptake in digital media, but also drive the audience on digital media.

“We believe VertiCast is ideally suited to show Premier League matches across the Caribbean and fans will benefit from VertiCast’s broad distribution plan across multiple platforms. VertiCast will help us to maximise reach and viewership and to further grow the Premier League fan-base in the region.” Paul Molnar, Premier League Chief Media Officer

We’re definitely not moving away from pay-TV or our premium services. What we’re looking to do is compliment the way it’s done currently. So, we just think that combination of traditional media alongside pay-TV, cable and trying and structuring a way on digital media that allows for the average person to view the Premier League and you know that doesn’t take place as much as it should right now. And we think we have come up with some ways that we can do that. We have certain dynamics here in the market that precludes us from broadcasting it or making returns on it like they do in the UK or in Europe or the US, right? We don’t quite have the distribution infrastructure that they have there. We don’t quite have the economy that they have there. We don’t have the fanatical fan base that they have there. So, you know, we have figured out ways that we think we could enhance what’s currently being done.

“VertiCast is a vertically integrated media company that will incorporate broadcast across all media platforms into multiple markets in the Caribbean. A regional media entity with the intention to broadcasting over traditional media, cable television and digital media via streaming and mobile via partnerships and on its own channels.”

Within the media industry as you know, everything is founded on strong content. Obviously, the ways of distribution have diversified and increased over time. But the first step is always to make sure you have the right content. The announcement we made this week about the Premier League rights is a step in the direction for us to make sure that we first have the, you know, the most in-demand content.

I think for too many years, we have been looking at broadcasts in silos. That is, you know, there is free to air and then separately there is pay TVs that’s cable and then separately there is radio and then separately there is digital media, right. And, as you said, a lot of the traditional media or even the cable media has been reluctant to get into the digital media. How am I going to make a return on that in isolation? Our view is that you can’t do it in isolation. You have to treat it almost as a convergence of media, and how do you make one compliment the other? And that is our approach. Our approach is that we’re not going to operate in silos. We’re going to seek to have traditional media benefit off of digital media, and vice versa digital media benefit from traditional media.

A major emphasis of ours is going to be to continue working with local producers, the IPPs (Intellectual Property Producers) around the region, and when I say work with them, it doesn’t mean you know, we say to you okay, come in and present your content that will decide if we show it or not, or we’re going to rent your airtime. A major emphasis of ours is going to be IPPs typically don’t have enough production resources to really complete their content packages.

What we will do is we will work with a lot of the IPPs by providing them with certain resources that they can then utilise to complete their productions and content packages. So that it becomes a certain quality that then can be broadcast on our platforms. So, so we will spend a lot of time working to curate local content and helping producers to curate local content.”

VertiCast is aiming to serve content to a market of nearly 45 million people in over 26 countries including the English-speaking Caribbean, the Dominican Republic, and parts of South America. The multi-platform company has reportedly secured support from major content providers which the company will rollout over the next couple of weeks.

Oliver McIntosh President And CEO VertiCast Media Group Ltd

Source: https://www.guardian.co.tt/news/verticast-scores-with-6.2.1474802.b89743134b

It is a common practice for both television stations in Jamaica to carry product promotion features in their morning shows. In most cases, the promotion is formatted as a regular interview feature with some incorporating product displays and demonstrations. On a general level it is a good idea to get one’s brand and product integrated in the morning shows the way it is done. On the other hand, I have serious doubt that the intended effect of the promotions is generally realized.

A regular approach of the brand representatives is to overwhelm the interviewer and by extension television audience with their knowledge of the product. They make very strong points about what the products can do and how they are used. Very little is said about who the product is intended for and the precise problems that are being uniquely solved for this target market. Interestingly this has been the approach to product promotion in Jamaica for last thirty years.

The fact is, things and times have changed. There is presently an 18 to 34-year-old cohort that are behaving in ways distinctly different from that same age demography twenty years ago. Not only are they the largest generation by population size, which has tremendous influence on their role as leading consumers today, but the environment in which they were raised has cultivated an entirely new approach to their values and way of life.

These 783,000 individuals grew up in an age of technology and global connections. They have an unlimited access to diverse knowledge, ideas and experiences. What is the relevance of this to the point of how products should be promoted to them? It matters in that this is a generation of ideas and personal choice. This generation of individuals is demonstrably independent and assertive. They relish making their own decisions and customizing things to suit their values, and desires.

Local companies seem not to be taking note of the emergence of this highly influential consumer group. If they have, then their marketing strategies do not confirm it. It is very important that local marketers move quickly to acquaint themselves with their behaviour and interests. All this must take place in the context of the huge role that the Internet and social media play in their lives making them primarily about social status and sharing their personal information with others.

Given the emergence of this new generation of consumers, brands can no longer be just about creating a positive brand experience. They must create a positive and shareable brand experience that facilitates the social sharing of their consumers. This means brands need to give consumers a platform to spread the word about their products. This is particularly so since the new generation of consumers have a network size that is as much as 4 times that of any generation before them.

This takes me to my initial point based on my observation of how product promotions are being done with the focus being on what the product is and what it can do. This new 18 – 34 year-olds seem to be deeply rooted in internal feelings. They are big on feelings relating to such values as loyalty, happiness and authenticity. Their motivation to do things is based on how it will make them feel rather than what the product can do.

A new Guinness international campaign appears to get it right as it seems to be directed at the viewers’ emotions in their feel-good “friendship” television commercial. This 60-second spot feature six friends playing wheel chair basketball. A twist at the end reveals that only one of them actually needs the wheel chair while his friends all get up from their wheel chairs and walk to a bar for a post basketball stout. The commercial inspires the loyalty and enjoyment of friendship with and added value Guinness stout.

Rather than telling the audience what their product is, Guinness captures an intimate moment between friends while being sure to keep their product at the center of it all. There is clear evidence that this approach of marketing to emotion was a great success with the spot receiving over 7 million views on YouTube in a month. The lesson here is, get this generation to feel good and they will want to share your brand with everyone they know. That’s marketing that feels good and goes viral.BM

By Ronald Sutherland

Acquisition of Visual Vibe.Com Limited by iCreate Limited
iCreate Limited (“iCreate”) is pleased to announced that the Company has signed an Agreement for Sale of Shares dated June 28, 2022 for the acquisition of 100% of the shares in Visual Vibe.Com Limited (“Visual Vibe”). Visual Vibe has been the leading video board advertising company in Jamaica over the past fifteen (15) years and continues to provide quality service to its clients. Pursuant to the said Agreement, iCreate has paid the requisite deposit and the transaction is expected to be completed within the coming months. iCreate will also be funding this acquisition by way of a pending Rights Issue.

The acquisition of Visual Vibes by iCreate fits squarely within its Merger and Acquisition strategy towards building out its vision as the leader within the creative and digital economies in Jamaica and the wider Caribbean region. This acquisition comes on the heels of the Company’s successful holding of its Extraordinary General Meeting on May 27, 2022.

iCreate’s stock price hit an all time high of 3-dollars in April, following several big announcements. They’ve acquired a majority stake in E-Commerce Company, GetPaid….

And been approved by the Development Bank of Jamaica as a Business Development Organization. And we hear they have some more big news coming up! Founder and CEO Tyrone Wilson will join us!

“Visual Vibe is the largest digital outdoor advertising company in Jamaica. It was started in 2006 by businessman Ali McNab. The company has a very strong revenue stream, very strong profit and a very strong free cash flow, even through the pandemic. We are very excited about that because it will bring us to having a very solid company and help us along the way to being the GraceKennedy of creative companies in Jamaica, and help to provide strong returns to shareholders. Visual Vibe has some very good locations in terms of billboard spaces. The big screen in the middle of Half-Way-Tree where Jamaicans gather to watch Olympics and World Championship is a Visual Vibe board. With a location like that owned by iCreate with our content creation capabilities, will give us the opportunity to use it for some unique content to engage people there and across Jamaica at the other locations. So our focus from day one will be developing a content strategy that will bring eyeballs to the screens on a consistent basis.”

Tyrone Wilson, CEO of iCreate

Kimala Bennett Chief Executive Officer of the Limners and Bards Limited has released the following unaudited financial statements for the six months ended April 30, 2022.

Revenue for the six-months was $781.7 million, up 26.3% compared to $619.0 million for the corresponding period last year. The revenue growth is attributable to increases in the company’s core business, media placement (up $149.6 million or 53.4%) and advertising agency (up $16.1 million or 71.3%). Production was down $9.5 million or 6.0%.

Gross profit increased by $72.3 million or 35.7% over the corresponding six – month period in the prior year. Gross profit margin was at 35.2% compared to the 32.7% in the prior period.

Net profit increased by $9.5 million or 8.5% to $123.1 million for the six months compared to $113.5 million in the corresponding period in the prior year. The increase in net profit is attributable to increased revenue and gross profit. This result is impacted by the $1.9 million loss recorded by Scope over this period. While Scope recorded a loss for the six months, we expect a profitable return at the end of the year.

We continue to execute on our strategy for growth and profitability while anticipating the needs of our clients given the shift in digital marketing trends.

The net profit includes Finance income of $0.4 million compared to $15.0 million recorded in the corresponding period of the previous year.

Administration expenses have increased by $46.8 million, or 46.6% in comparison to the previous six– months period. These increases are primarily attributable to staff costs (due to increase work volume), repairs and maintenance of production equipment and depreciation and amortization costs.

The Consolidated balance sheet shows total assets increasing by $266.9 million or 37.3% to $981.7million compared to $714.8 million in the corresponding period last year.

Current assets increased by $222.3 million primarily because of increases in receivables ($158.8 million). Cash and cash equivalent also increased by $76.6 million reflecting a high liquidity position. The increase in receivables is mainly due to increase in revenue.

We continue to have tight monitoring and controls over the receivables.
We are pleased with the Company’s performance for this six-month period and expect continued growth for 2022.

Kimala Bennett Chief Executive Officer of the Limners and Bards Limited

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