Mediaboss Marketing

Pricefx also received Sales and Marketing Technology Product of the Year Award

MUNICH & CHICAGO, August 15, 2022--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Pricefx, the global leader in cloud pricing software, today announced that it has been selected as winner of the "Best Price Optimization Solution" award in the fifth annual MarTech Breakthrough Awards. The award was given by MarTech Breakthrough, a leading market intelligence organization that recognizes the top companies, technologies and products in the global marketing, sales and advertising technology industry today.

Pricefx offers an award-winning cloud-based pricing platform that helps companies maximize margins, increase profits and close better deals. Using a data-driven pricing strategy, Pricefx customers can future-proof their financial planning and market position with insightful and measurable analysis. Pricefxs industry-leading pricing solutions help businesses analyze, optimize and manage their data to outmaneuver the competition. The company recently recorded the best quarter in its history, with notable new customers such as Aeromexico, Cigars International, J. M. Huber Corp., Southwire Corp. and United Electronics.

The mission of the MarTech Breakthrough Awards is to honor excellence and recognize the innovation, hard work and success in a range of marketing, sales and advertising technology related categories, including marketing automation, market research and customer experience, AdTech, SalesTech, marketing analytics, content and social marketing, mobile marketing and many more. This years program attracted more than 2,950 nominations from over 18 different countries throughout the world.

"Pricing is a top lever for achieving profitable growth, especially with major hurdles affecting the market including a struggling supply chain, shortages, inflationary pressures, labor challenges and more," said James Johnson, Managing Director at MarTech Breakthrough. "Helping clients maneuver through these obstacles, Pricefx customers can future-proof their financial planning and market position with insightful and measurable analysis based on reliable data. We extend our sincere congratulations to the entire Pricefx team on being our choice for Best Price Optimization Solution in 2022."

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Pricefx was also named a winner for the third time in the Sales and Marketing Technology Product of the Year Award, from the Business Intelligence Group. It is the only pricing software recognized in the award. The awards program, also known as The Sammys, recognize the technologies and organizations helping to solve the challenges companies have connecting and collaborating with prospects and customers.

"We are honored to be recognized as an industry leader in price optimization and appreciate the judges who recognized our accomplishments," said Marcin Cichon, Chief Executive Officer for Pricefx. "We are proud of the work weve done for our customers, especially during a time of challenging economic conditions. We have set out to help our customers accurately plan the pricing opportunities, discover potential for growth, and hardcode profitability into every decision."

Follow PricefxLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/price-f-x-/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/price_fx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6EtgsU9MKMXu88Y992iAYQ

About PricefxPricefx is the global leader in SaaS pricing software, offering a comprehensive suite of solutions that are fast to implement, flexible to configure and customize, and friendly to learn and use. Based on cloud-native architecture, Pricefx delivers a complete price optimization and management platform that provides the industrys fastest time-to-value and lowest total cost of ownership. Its innovative solution works for B2B and B2C enterprises of any size, in any industry, in any part of the world. Pricefxs business model is entirely based on the satisfaction and loyalty of its customers. For enterprises facing pricing challenges, Pricefx is the cloud pricing optimization, management, and CPQ platform to dynamically Plan, Price and Profit.

For more information, please visit http://www.pricefx.com.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220815005165/en/

Contacts

Media: Cathy SummersSummers PR for Pricefxcathy@summers-pr.com +1 (415) 483-0480

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Pricefx Recognized for Pricing Software Innovation in 5th Annual MarTech Breakthrough Awards Program - Yahoo Finance

Influencer marketing has grown from a $1.7 billion industry in 2016 to a projected $16.4 billion in 2022. Its little wonder, then, that influencer marketing has become an indispensable part of the PR and crisis management approach for most brands.

Here are five ways to make PR and influencer marketing work for your brand during a crisis.

Data from IZEA shows that 62% of consumers trust influencers more than they do celebrities.Therefore, in addition to being so instrumental when building your brand, influencers can also help you rebuild the brand by winning back some of the trust lost after a PR crisis.

Starbucks suffered a substantial backlash in 2018 when two Black men sitting in a store were arrested without probable cause. For the Black community, this signified a breach of trust.

Starbucks closed down more than 8,000 stores to conduct racial bias training. The CEO, Kevin Johnson, also apologized to the two customers personally. Starbucks offered to pay their college tuition.

The friendly faces of our Seattle SODO 8 store partners (employees), who helped lead the Black History Month coffee tastings. Photo courtesy of Adrienne Hairston.

Posted by Starbucks onWednesday, February 27, 2019

It didnt stop there, however. Starbucks also ramped up its influencer marketing efforts, collaborating with personalities like Jordan Fisher to expand the reach and inclusivity of their campaigns.

With this arsenal of influencers who promoted Starbucks products and other genius moves, the brand regained its trust among the Black community, which now forms around 8% of its partners.

Brand awareness is essential, especially for small businesses and emerging brands. Brand awareness is also vital in managing a crisis, especially if it was the companys own product that damaged the brands reputation.

Video game maker, CD Projekt Red, suffered an embarrassing PR crisis in 2020 when there were significant recalls of its Cyberpunk 2077 game due to bugs. CD Projekt Red had spent nearly 10 years and almost a whopping $300 million developing the game.

The bugs affected consoles such as PlayStation and Xbox One. Sony pulled the game from the PlayStore for close to six months and CD Projekt Red paid back millions in customer refunds. It was a total mess.

Once the game was cleaned up, CD Projekt Red enlisted social media influencers to bring fresh brand awareness of the improved product. Its influencers included big-name gamers such as Alanah Pearce, Cohh Carnage and Jesse Cox.

Since the PR and influencer marketing campaign and its re-release, Cyberpunk 2077 has sold more than 18 million copies, with a 7/10 user score on Metacritic.

An essential part of PR crisis management is the ability to gauge public perception of your brand in real time. Social listening tools such as Sprout Social make this possible and efficient, so you can take control of a crisis situation before it spirals. When you know what people are saying about you, you can find ways to change the narrative in your favor if needed.

Coca-Cola knows a thing or two about shifting convos away from a crisis. In July 2021, football star Cristiano Ronaldo snubbed the companys drinks during a presser for the Euro 2020 competition.

Negative searches about Coca-Cola dominated the internet. Coca-Cola had nearly $4 billion wiped off its equity valuation.

In the immediate aftermath, Coca-Cola introduced the One Coke Away From Each Other and #RealMagic campaigns, partnering with micro-influencers, gamers and athletes alike.

With this successful campaign, Coca-Cola was able to quickly shift the conversation away from the PR embarrassment they faced just a few weeks prior.

Influencers can help rally support for your cause which may have been deemed controversial.

In 2018, Nike teamed up with Colin Kaepernick for an ad with the tagline Believe in something, even if it means sacrificing everything. Before the collaboration, Kaepernick, then a professional US football player, had received backlash from some Americans after repeatedly refusing to stand for the national anthem in protest of police brutality. He ended up losing his position in the National Football League.

Nike ended up taking some heat for the controversial ad, but instead of backpedaling, the brand used influencer marketing to drown out the noise made by the few who accused Nike of collaborating with someone they believed to be anti-American. One of those influencers was Casey Neistat, a famous YouTuber:

Caseys Tweet in support of Nikes ad garnered over 12,000 retweets and 72,000 likes. It certainly earned Nike credibility points, cementing its reputation as a brand that stands up for what it believes in.

The relationship between search and social media is tough to ignore. When a PR crisis hits, the first inclination for anyone interested is to Google your company/brand name and news. The echo-chamber effect might exacerbate negative searches about your brand.

Influencers can boost your visibility on their networks, helping improve search results for your brand.

High-end sporting goods maker Peloton endured significant criticism in December 2019 when one of its viral ads was termed sexist and dystopian. The ad was parodied, stocks took a hit and negative searches for Peloton dominated the SERPs for weeks.

By leveraging the power of influencers, Peloton was able to seal any further leaks from its ship in its Connected Fitness strategy.

Peloton partnered with trainers and fitness enthusiasts with a high engagement rate to promote different products and its classes.

As a result, Peloton survived the crisisthe companys revenues more than doubled to $1.82 billion in 2020, from $714 million in 201.9 Their users also increased, from 1.4 million in 2019 to 3.1 million in 2020. Its true that much of the jump here was likely due to the pandemic and more people investing in fitness at home. But in a way, influencers may have also played some role in helping Peloton manage its online reputation and be top of mind for consumers when gyms were no longer an option.

Marketers shouldnt hesitate to look outside their own organizations to mitigate a crisis. Used the right way, influencers can sway public opinion in their favor, however bad the crisis is.

Influencers can do this in many ways with their huge following. They can help your brand weather the storm by improving trust and awareness about your brand, building on audience engagement, and boosting positive search traffic. Prospective influencers can also help rally support for your cause and promote your improved products.

All you need to do is take the time to research the right influencer for your brand. With PR and influencer marketing combined, you have a powerful tool that will help you weather any crisis and ensure you remain in the good graces of your customers and the public in general.

Ready to level up your crisis communications strategy? Grab our template to document your crisis management plan in three steps.

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How can PR and influencer marketing work together in a crisis? - Sprout Social

Before we look into this data from CoSchedule, a quick disclaimer.

Yes, the best time to post is relative to your unique audience, so it may well be that none of this data is specifically useful to you in your planning. If you know your audience, and when theyre most active, thats more specifically applicable to your brand, as opposed to generalized overviews like this.

No, this info is not prescriptive. Reports like this are not designed to establish definitive rules, as such, and the days and times here are not intended as absolute guide markers for your strategy. Instead, they provide some additional insight into when people are currently active in each app, which could assist in your planning, if you were looking to experiment, as another way to potentially maximize your efforts.

With these notes in mind, the team from CoSchedule recently released their analysis of the best times to post to each social media app, based on insights from more than 37 million posts, from more than 30,000 organizations.

The study looked at when these organizations are seeing the most engagement with their posts (i.e. Likes, comments, shares), and from this, CoSchedule has come up with an overview of the best times and days to post to each platform.

That could provide some helpful pointers for your planning or at the least, some food for thought for your experiments.

You can read CoSchedules full overview here, or check out the infographic summary below.

Continued here:
The Best Times to Post on Social Media in 2022 [Infographic] - Social Media Today

Another new report on teen social media usage, and another confirmation that TikTok is the dominant platform of the moment among the youth, while Facebook continues its downward slide in the broader relevance stakes.

Thats according to the latest data from Pew Research, which surveyed over 1,300 US teens and their parents between April and May this year, in order to glean more insight into which platforms are the main focus for young audiences, and how much time theyre spending in each app.

As explained by Pew:

[The survey] of American teenagers ages 13 to 17 finds TikTok is now a top social media platform for teens, with some 67% of teens saying they ever use TikTok, and 16% of all teens saying they use it almost constantly. Meanwhile, the share of teens who say they use Facebook, a dominant social media platform among teens in the Centers 2014-15 survey, has plummeted from 71% then to 32% today.

As you can see in this chart, YouTube still leads the way among teen users, with 95% of all teens regularly using the app. But TikTok is now the clear second in line, while Facebooks popularity has fallen off in the teen popularity stakes.

Thats no big surprise. Metas own internal research has shown that both Facebook and Instagram have seen declines among younger audiences of late, which has seen Meta put more of a focus on developing tools for younger audiences specifically. Thats why were now seeing a bigger push on Reels and Stories, which has definitely seen Reels usage increase, but its also seen the company go too hard on some elements, which it recently scaled back after poor user response.

Theres no doubt that TikTok is adding new levels of pressure on Metas development teams, and these stats further underline just how significant the platform has become, and highlight the scope of the challenge that Meta now has in keeping Facebook relevant, as younger users continue to turn away from the app in big numbers.

Because while older users will definitely keep Facebook going, it's younger audiences that dictate the next big trends and shifts. And while Meta doesnt necessarily need Facebook to be a top priority in this respect, it does need its metaverse push to take hold with the youth, in order to maximize adoption and resonance.

Part of the companys Meta re-brand is about distancing these two elements, so that even if Facebook itself isnt popular anymore, its VR tools can be viewed as separate. But inevitably, they will be linked, and its in Metas best interests to maintain Facebooks youth appeal, as best it can, to help usher in the next stage.

Which will be a challenge, based on these new figures.

The same trend is also reflected in the usage stats, with YouTube, TikTok and Snapchat seeing far more regular engagement than Facebook.

Of course, Instagram is still up there, and its still a popular platform in many respects. But the numbers for Facebook are pretty bleak:

Then again, Twitter is also pretty far down this chart, and really, it does seem that these legacy social media networks are losing their appeal with younger audiences, as video platforms gain more attention, and alter user attention spans and habitual behaviors in entirely new ways.

Thats why we now see so much replication between apps, because its not just that youngsters are spending more time on TikTok, its that the rapid-fire nature of media consumption in the app is changing expectations and approaches entirely, which renders other, more traditional content formats obsolete in some respects

In other words, the popularity of TikTok is essentially forcing other apps to play catch-up, because its evolving how people view what content should be. Those that dont look to move into line with these trends will eventually lose out so really, its likely less of a conscious choice to copy TikTok and other popular apps, as it is a necessary shift to keep up with changing user behaviors.

In terms of gender split, Pews data also shows that female users are more aligned with TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat, while male teens are more connected to Twitch, Reddit and YouTube.

These are some important demographic insights for your marketing planning, which could help to dictate your holiday campaigns and experiments to see what results you get.

Also, social media is now seen as a need for many:

That, in itself, is likely cause for concern, but the data underlines the critical, connective role that social media now plays in our modern interactive process, and conversely, why its now such a powerful medium for promotion and connection.

Its an interesting snapshot of the current market, and how young users align themselves with different social media apps. Which, again, could be great for your planning, and if you are looking to reach young audiences, you should definitely be taking note of these stats.

You can check out Pew Researchs full Teens, Social Media and Technology 2022 report here.

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New Report on Teen Social Media Use Underlines the Rise of TikTok, and the Fall of Facebook - Social Media Today

The complex branding challenges of higher education institutions in emerging countries can seem unmanageable. First, services and degree programmes offered by universities seem to be identical, making it hard to stand out. Second, universities in emerging countries often suffer from a lack of formal communication methods to connect the value of their brand to their target audience.

But building a brand for higher education institutions in emerging countries neednt be a nightmare especially if you know how to use social media marketing to develop brand credibility and brand equity. In this research, emerging countries are considered to be countries that are on a path towards prosperity with economic development, low per capita income and high potential for growth, such as Vietnam, Thailand and Tunisia.

We examined students perceptions of marketing on social media based on two communication methods: user-generated content and institution-generated content to develop brand credibility and brand equity, using data from a survey with 936 undergraduates, from two emerging countries, Sri Lanka and Vietnam. Here we present advice based on our findings.

To create and exchange information about the university brands with prospective students, social media marketing is developed in two forms: user-generated content and institution-generated content.

User-generated content refers to the media content created by students, staff, alumni and other stakeholders for the educational institution that can be shared directly or repurposed. It could be them capturing their personal journeys, the university campus, graduation ceremonies, festivals or simply sharing memories.

Institution-generated content is the media content created by university marketing team on official brand pages and social media channels.

Although these two forms of content are equally important, students are highly reliant on and follow user-generated content as it is not designed to serve a commercial purpose. Authentic and entertaining, user-generated content makes a big impact on institutions brands because it presents an authentic view of campus life.

User-generated content motivated prospective students in Sri Lanka and Vietnam to develop positive feelings towards an institution, our research showed, due to the collectivist culture in these countries.

Peer-to-peer marketing of this nature is not new, but institutions still miss opportunities to pivot their content strategies towards authentic, student voices. Here are some easy ways to encourage students to create more content and build a positive brand value for their university.

Brand equity refers to the value endowed by the institutional brand, which helps to mitigate risks, such as fewer applicants or student attrition, and differentiates a university from its competitors.

By building credibility, a university will increase its brand equity, our study shows. To make enrolment decisions, prospective students are dependent on universities providing accurate and truthful information. They want to know that the institution they apply to will deliver on its promises. As institutions increasingly use social media to share, communicate and collaborate with current and potential students, they must ensure that the information shared is trustworthy. To address these challenges, universities can:

These strategies to help develop an institutions brand equity should be used in combination in order to engage potential students and encourage an enrolment decision.

This insight is based on a recently published study: Higher education institutes brand equity in emerging markets: Impact of social media marketing and brand credibility in Q1-ranked Journal of Marketing Communications.

Charitha Harshani Perera is a lecturer in the Faculty of Business and Law at Northumbria University.

Rajkishore Nayak is an associate professor, and Long Thang Van Nguyen is a senior lecturer in the School of Communication and Design at RMIT University, Vietnam.

If you found this interesting and want advice and insight from academics and university staff delivered directly to your inbox each week,sign up for the THECampus newsletter.

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University social media marketing tips | THE Campus Learn, Share, Connect - Times Higher Education