Interview with marketing and corporate communication strategist Karim Maged
Karim Maged is a marketing and corporate communication strategist with expertise in branding and public relations. With over 10 years of extensive knowledge and experience in the area of story-telling, social media and emerging digital communication tools and techniques, Karim offers visionary and holistic approach to developing marketing and communication strategies that are both effective and efficient. For Karim, it’s more of a lifestyle, not just a career. Karim will soon publish his e-book and launch his blog for he aspires that every business leader to grasp the importance of corporate communication and its disciplines for the success of every business.
How useful/important do you think corporate communication is nowadays and what is the main challenge?
Organisations started to embrace corporate communication as a must-have after facing many obstacles in delivering their messages internally and externally. A study by Gallup showed that disengaged employees cost organizations USD450-550 Billion a year due to ineffective communication. This happens due to gaps between the different companies structures and results in getting the employees to lose their sense of belonging and ownership towards their companies. The main challenge is perfectly explained in George Bernard Shaw’s quote "The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.”
How do you think organizations can overcome such challenges?
As I mentioned in my article, employees should be well-informed of every business practice. Let them be engaged, let them know that they re of value and their participation matters. Always set a clear goal, and let them know what you exactly expect from them. Always encourage the practice of sharing ideas and award those who deserve to be awarded. Make sure you involve them in reaching the company’s vision through achieving its mission while embracing its core values.
What is the most important thing in marketing and communication?
There are plenty of answers to that question, but to name one crucial component, I would say “Content”. You have heard before that content is king, but how to create and distribute it is as important.
How can companies use their content to attract more customers?
Content needs to be targeted and personalized, the idea of a one-size-fits-all must be changed. Companies need to offer value with their content, something that could be of benefit to the receivers and encourage them to engage with it.
From your experience, what do you consider the best marketing and communication strategies to be?
There are more than 52 types of marketing and communication. Unfortunately, there is no magic recipe for good marketing. Every audience/consumer should have a customized approach and this is because people’s priorities are and will always be different.
How can corporates utilize the use of digital platforms with their content?
I believe this is a very important matter to address. Many focus their efforts on finding a platform the creating a content to go with it, while I believe that you should create a content that could be used on most if not all digital platforms e.g., videos. My advice is to focus on the content not, the platform.
What changed from before to now in communication?
Companies used to address its audience in one-way communication approach, nowadays there is a two-way communication process where everyone is entitled to give a feedback that will ultimately affect their business.
What are the new marketing trends that will continue to flourish in 2018 and beyond?
Digital transformation is definitely changing the whole game, the way people are getting their information are not different from how they sued to get it before. I believe that videos will continue to dominate, if a picture could say a thousand words, a video could do millions. There are a 72hours of videos upload every day, imagine that! But I would say that live videos will be very beneficial since it offers real-time engagement.
Also, AR and AI will play an important role in the new digital era.
Another thing is Big Data, now marketers are really getting to understand the real value of data in marketing as it helps to spot the needs of your customers.
Many things will make an impact as IOT, Content Marketing, Experiential Marketing and more.
