The Step Change Blog

Value is in the eye of the beholder. In a world teeming with new product offerings, a critical question we need to ask today is: in a sea of undifferentiated offerings, how do we make our product or service stand out so people will buy from us?

Many CEOs in Australia are under pressure to execute a winning digital transformation strategy. But why are so many organisations failing? 

There’s no getting around it. Today’s consumers hold the power to dictate business outcomes. But with more businesses struggling with their digital transformation initiatives, how can taking a customer-led approach to transformation lead to better results? 

Even with the best ideas to market, many challenger businesses are struggling to get their business from the ground up. But if you’re lucky enough to be one of the very few startups that receive Venture Capital funding, the next step is knowing how to maintain your competitive edge for the next funding round.

The biggest hindrance to transformation and innovation in the workplace is blame culture. Throughout most times, many do not realise that an atmosphere of blame can be deeply rooted in leadership.

To take the next step in transforming the customer experience and growing your business, having a clear visual of the customer journey is crucial.

It’s easy to say your business is customer-centric; in fact, many businesses would claim they are putting their customers at the heart of what they do. 

Modern customers are savvy and sceptical. Businesses can no longer win because of their scale, professionalism, and history. It’s those that put the customer’s best interest at heart who perform better and win.

In the past, customers often trusted banks on the basis of their scale, professionalism, and history. Today, customers are more likely to measure the trustworthiness of a bank based on their customer service and support. Customer-centricity is likely to be the key to winning over customers again.

Are you a challenger brand looking for the right marketing strategy that can help you stand out from market leaders in your industry?  We take a look at challenger brand marketing and how adopting a challenger mindset in your category can set you up to win. 

Many retailers today are struggling to deliver the seamless online experience that customers want with a limited marketing budget. How can content marketing help them bridge this gap and improve the customer experience? 

In the wake of the Royal Commission, where the reputation of financial services institutions is at an all-time low, marketing leaders have been asking themselves: “How can I convince our clients to trust us now? Where can we spend our marketing dollars in a way that will yield a positive return?”

Retailers are killing value. With consumers having more choices than ever before, mistakes that retailers make can be costly.

In the age of new retail, are your digital marketing strategies still relevant? The line between multiple devices and channels are blurring. To win customers, retail brands need to be able to follow and understand the customer journey throughout multiple touchpoints.

You can quite easily take all of that ‘big data’ collected on your ecommerce website and use it to fuel your email marketing campaigns. By implementing a number of simple triggers, you can create an automated sales-converting machine. Yes, we’re still talking about email.

Local area marketing is a big boost for local brands mainly because Google uses a searcher’s location to promote relevant local businesses.

Digital transformation has accelerated the game for healthcare. Patients now have more options and methods to monitor their health online or seek care. For healthcare brands, the clear path to success today is in establishing a solid online presence and effectively implementing mobile-first digital marketing strategies that get you front and centre to patients who are online.

Many e-commerce brands have used the power of great content marketing to their advantage and have seen amazing results. In this article, we highlight 10 brands we’ve noticed so far that understand e-commerce content marketing and know how to do it right.

In the financial services industry, converting leads to customers is vital. But with the speed of change in the marketing and technology space and in the wake of the Banking Royal Commission, marketing leaders in the finance industry are overwhelmed by the challenge of managing a genuine experience with their target customers, thus improving lead conversion.

Standing out as a brand in a noisy market is next to impossible. If you’re not Amazon or Google or Apple, then your brand could drown in the sea of brands trying to win the war for attention. That is unless you adopt the challenger mindset.

Challenger brands don’t spend the money that market leaders do for promotion, R&D, or operations. So how do successful challengers outperform market leaders even with scarce resources?

Your mission and core beliefs alone won’t be enough to rally more sponsors and build stronger advocacy. With the strength of NFPs being donations and volunteers, how can you appeal to people’s emotions and intellect? With limited resources, what’s the best way to get your audience to care for your cause and give back?

What is the future of healthcare and work? Are robots stealing our jobs? What is the future of work?

UPDATED as of 03 July 2020.

Boards are essential for strategic success, but for them to add greater value into your strategy, they need to be involved. That means going beyond the yearly off-site strategic planning.

How did Australia’s fastest-growing brands get to where they are? In this article, we look at some of today’s rising stars and the marketing strategy that helped drive them to the top.  

As your business strives for growth, having the right strategy in place paves the road to success. But what does it take to deliver the best strategy? And how do you ensure you create a strong strategic plan that you can fully implement from start to finish?

UPDATED: As of 25 August 2022

Should brands aim to be different or distinctive? What is the difference between the two, and how do these strategies add value to the branding equation? We take a closer look at shared evidence and form our own conclusions on why distinctiveness stumps differentiation.

Here’s a recap on the biggest takeaways from last month’s Step Change Open Haus event, How to Build a Customer-Centric Culture.

As a startup agency that began with just two people, Step Change has come a long way in becoming a strategically led marketing agency celebrating its 10th year.  

Many brands aim for differentiation in their growth strategy. But is being different all it really takes to stand out?