In News

12 Must-Have Skills for B2B Content Marketers

August 12, 2019 No Comments

By Joshua Nite

Scene from a dinner party:

“So, Josh, what do you do?”

“I’m in marketing.”

“Oh, like Mad Men? Ad campaigns and stuff?”

“No, it’s content marketing.”

“Oh, like the Wendy’s Twitter account?”

“…Sure… like that.”

I’ve had variations on the above conversation more times than I can count. I’ll usually leave it at “Wendy’s Twitter account” in the interest of changing the subject. No one has the patience for, “I write business-to-business content designed to help people do their jobs better, which also builds affinity for a client brand, with the end goal of influencing purchase decisions.”

So most people think I just write fun stuff all day, that it’s a purely creative job. But my fellow B2B marketers know better. Content marketing requires an incredibly diverse set of skills, and “innate writing ability” isn’t even the most important one.

Most people think I just write fun stuff all day, that it’s a purely creative job. But as my fellow #B2B marketers know, #contentmarketing requires a diverse set of skills. @NiteWrites Click To Tweet

Here’s my list of must-have B2B content marketing skills. If you’re looking to get into the career, fill out your team, or, say, hire a marketing agency, keep these in mind.

12 Must-Have B2B Content Marketing Skills

This list is divided into two categories: The “hard skills” that you learn through instruction, and the soft skills that rely more on personal development and human interaction.

Four Hard Skills

#1 – Search Engine Optimization
You don’t have to be a SemRushin’, Google Analytics wizard to be a content creator and strategist. But creating great content does require a solid understanding of modern SEO practices. You should know how to understand search intent, dig into ambiguous keywords, and create best-answer content that meets search demand.

#2 – Social Media Marketing
You may have a dedicated social media person or team, but content marketers should still know how to create compelling B2B social posts that attract attention without breaking the brand voice. You should be up to date on what type of content performs best on each platform.

#3 – Influencer Marketing
Content marketers should know how to co-create content with influencers. That means writing a framework that allows for collaboration, asking the right questions to guide influencer responses, and even conducting intelligent interviews. Content marketers’ expertise makes all the difference in the resulting content feeling cohesive and compelling.

#4 – Measurement
Measurement is what turns content into content marketing. Content marketers should be able to strategize, create goals and metrics that match them, track progress, and ultimately optimize over time.

Eight Soft Skills

#1 – Empathy
The heart and soul of any content marketing is empathy. You have to be able to take the customer’s perspective and make a human connection. Empathy is even more important in B2B content, because it keeps the content focused on people.

It’s easy to lose the human connection when you’re writing about container-based software-as-a-service platforms. That empathy for the people, the buyer, the end user, should be what drives the content.

That empathy for the people, the buyer, the end user, should be what drives the content. @NiteWrites Click To Tweet

#2 – Creativity
I would argue B2B content requires even more creativity than B2C. The difference is having to work within strict limitations. Big B2B brands have whole departments concerned with brand reputation, brand voice, standards and practices, approved image libraries and fonts… Content creators have to produce something eye-catching and meaningful without breaking any of these limitations. And they have to know when it makes sense to push the boundaries.

#3 – Communication
The success of B2B content depends on explaining complex concepts in simple terms. You may know all the ins and outs of your solution, but odds are your audience won’t. Clear, jargon-free, conversational writing that offers value is the only way to succeed.

#4 – Organization
This skill is important for any B2B marketer, but especially if you work at an agency. We’re working on a dozen different clients at any one time, each with multiple assets in various stages of development. Without organizational skills, it would be impossible to get everything done on time (even with a dedicated project manager on staff).

#5 – Motivation
I read recently about a man who had been on the payroll of a major corporation for over a year without ever doing any work. Seriously. Somewhere between restructuring and management turnover, he simply got separated from responsibility without losing his salary.

via GIPHY

That won’t ever happen for a B2B content marketer. There’s nowhere to hide: We’re responsible for concrete, quantifiable, and quality deliverables. There’s no such thing as slacking off, and there’s no such thing as writer’s block. The ability to push past obstacles, buckle down and get the work done is vital.

#6 – Confidence
Part of the job description is defending and explaining your work to stakeholders. For an agency, that includes account managers and clients. For a marketing department, that might include the executive suite, too. B2B content marketers need the (justified) confidence to advocate for content and approach they know will be effective.

#7 – Humility
The flip-side of confidence is the ability to put the content ahead of one’s individual ego. B2B content is bound to go through layers of review, with each stakeholder adding their own critique and suggestions. Humility means that you can take in constructive criticism and apply it with an eye toward producing the best content possible. While confidence is key, knowing your way doesn’t have to be the only way is equally important.

#8 – Collaboration
Finally, B2B content marketing is a team sport. It’s not about making a name for yourself — you have blog posts for that. It’s about partnering across areas of specialty to create something stunning. I found that my content got even better when I involved the design team from the start, for example. Working closely with design, SEO, influencer and social specialists only makes the work better. Here’s a shot of the gang I get to work with every day:

B2B Content Marketing Is a Game of Skill

I’ll admit it: Before I got into the field, I thought content marketing was just getting paid to write all day. Now I know there’s a lot more to the job than just filling buckets with prose. Content marketers are writers, strategizers, empathizers, collaborators, and so much more.

By Joshua Nite

Sourced from TopRank Marketing

In News

96% of top level marketers believe that tech is driving in-house. Why?

March 27, 2019 No Comments

Sourced from Banner Flow

In our recent State of In-housing report, 96% of top-level marketers believed that tech was driving the in-house movement.

Yet what is it about advertising technology that has enabled the in-house revolution in marketing?

Well, we have it figured out.

Here are our top 3 reasons:

1. Efficiency is fuelling change

Greater efficiency is a top 5 reason for brands moving their marketing in-house.

In fact, efficiency is the ‘it’ word of ad tech. All providers promise streamlined workflows, efficient processes, and enhanced productivity – something that not all agencies can deliver.

With improved workflows, brands are questioning why they should pay an external agency to do the same work they can do in-house, often a lower cost. For top-level decision makers, the adoption of ad tech is a natural choice for marketers looking to move their processes in-house.

This is not a feeling exclusive to Europe either. In a 2018 survey by the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) 12% of US respondents claimed greater speed as a key reason for moving operation in-house.

For Ville Heijari, CMO at Rovio (an early-adopter to the in-house movement) ad tech has been an essential addition: ‘We use workflow automation tools, campaign automation, and various tools that enable us to increase the speed of delivering more versions, variation and experiments with digital campaigns.’

How do you select ad tech for efficiency?

With so many solutions out there to choose from, it’s important you select the right product. A product that will not only solve existing inefficiencies but present opportunities for future growth.

Take Shutterstock for example. Their existing online production was too slow, taking weeks instead of days. Now, they not only produce advertising quickly, but they have also created some truly exceptional ads. Thanks to added analytics and optimisation features from the Bannerflow CMP.

Whatever aspect of your digital marketing you choose to make more efficient, it’s important you pick a product that will create efficiency throughout your campaign processes. Otherwise, why bother?

Scaling into different versions is easy with Bannerflow’s intuitive tool.

2. Creativity is driven by effective ad tech

For 51% of respondents, lack of time is ranked as the main blocker to creativity.

Therefore, it must follow that with increased efficiency there is greater creativity?

Nowhere is ad tech’s influence more obvious than with the introduction of Dynamic Creative Optimisation (DCO) into the online advertising space. This technology, when combined with a CMP, is the perfect combination of efficiency and creativity. Allowing you to produce the right ads, at the right time, for the right person.

Be warned though, for 22% of brands from the in-housing report believed technology to be a barrier to creativity. For Lara Izlan, Director of Programmatic Trading and Innovation at AutoTrader, the pressure to adopt ad tech too fast can lead to: ‘an ad tech infrastructure that is overly complex’.

How to choose the right ad tech for creativity?

With the right product, beautiful and eye-catching designs don’t have to take weeks off your designer’s life.

In fact, if you choose a platform with a workable interface, a comprehensive onboarding programme, and an engaged customer success team your ad tech will aid, not hinder your design team.

Indeed, for Icelandic telecommunications company NOVA, increased in-house efficiency has led to some truly innovative online advertising. With the widgets provided in the Bannerflow platform making their designers want to be creative.

3. Transparency comes as standard

9 out of 10 marketers are concerned with the transparency level of media agencies.

Problems surrounding transparency have been plaguing agencies for a number of years, on a number of issues – particularly in regards to media buying. Programmatic media buying has frequently been labelled as the ‘black box’ of digital marketing. Agencies have been taking advantage of clients ignorance to take full control of clients budgets – with little or no accountability.

Ad tech has emerged as a solution to this problem. Allowing brands such as Electrolux, Philips, and Lucozade to take full control of their media buying strategy, in-house.

The right technology can provide accountability over budgets, analytics, and optimisation. As well as help tackle issues surrounding fraud, viewability, header bidding, and yield optimisation.

Although Raluca Efford, Head of Digital and Social Media Marketing at Direct Line, has her own opinion: ‘When trading desks were first set up in 2008/09 they were there to enhance transparency for clients. Since then, they have become more and more complex and have become the ‘black box’ technology that they wanted to mitigate against.’

What does transparency mean for ad tech?

In terms of media buying, it is important to choose a tool that doesn’t over complicate the process. Having your analytics in one place, and the ability to optimise in real-time will vastly improve your campaign performance.

What is more, with the Bannerflow media buyer, you have full accountability over where your money is being spent – even on third-party integrations.

The Bannerflow analyse and optimise feature.

Conclusion

Ad tech presents a great opportunity for brands looking to take control and bring marketing in-house.

Efficiency, creativity, and transparency are all clear benefits of an age where technology holds sway. Yet, in this oversaturated market it is important to choose a solution that will clearly deliver on these objections.

Bannerflow’s easy to use creative management platform (CMP) allows you to build, scale, publish, analyse and optimise in one. To discover more about our product get in touch with us.

Or, if you want discover more findings from our State of In-housing report you can read the full report here.

Sourced from Banner Flow

In News

5 Ways Marketers Can Prioritize Creativity In 2019

February 25, 2019 No Comments

By Kristin Burnham

Data has been ruling the roost for years. It’s no wonder why, either: Data has made personalization easy and effective, enabled informed decision-making based on concrete intelligence, clarified the customer journey, and led to a better understanding of ROI.

But now that having data and a single customer view are table stakes, a keen focus on both the data and creativity is what will help brand marketers standout among the competition.

Here are five ways you can breathe new creative life into your marketing organization.

1. Teach Creativity
Sometimes the best way to infuse creativity into an organization is by bringing in outside perspectives, said Becky Wang, author of “Creativity and Data Marketing” and co-founder of marketing consultancy Crossbeat. She suggested tapping a brand, design, or innovation agency to workshop inductive reasoning skills, which focus on making broad generalizations from specific observations—in other words, drawing conclusions from data.

“Part of it is just shaking up the culture because I think people learn by models—they have to be shown how to think about things differently,” Wang said. “People think that when you look at data, it will give you the answer because that’s what they want when they look at it. At best, data gives you direction.”

2. Test New Ideas
One step that high-performing marketing and advertising organizations take that others don’t do enough of is testing new ideas, said Nate Shetterley, global group director of data and design at marketing consultancy Fjord. If you’re optimizing around one individual, segment, or persona, for example, add an alternative to understand how people are moving.

“When you have a message that’s working, sub in message B, C, or D to test something new,” he said. “This looks like a complex version of A/B testing, but that’s where you have an opportunity to bring in a more creative approach.”

Testing new ideas can also stem from adopting an alternative mindset, Wang added. For example, think about what it would be like if you started the business you’re in today. This exercise could be as simple as running Facebook ads or market surveys that direct to a website that polls users about a potential product, she said.

“Data shows you the success or failure of something you’ve been doing, and it’s easy to get stuck in this loop,” Wang explained. “Think about what could happen if you did things differently, and then experiment with that. If you just imagined what it would be like if you created your business again today, you would probably notice that there was a plethora of decisions that didn’t come from the data.”

3. Resurrect The Human Element
The danger of going all in on data with no creativity counterbalance is that it strips the humanity out of marketing and advertising, said Adobe’s executive creative director, Steve Gustavson. If you ask someone how she feels about a product, for example, she will likely tell you a different story than what the data said if you’re just viewing her online consumption behaviors.

“I think what can get lost is that there are human beings in the process making the decisions of what’s said, how it’s said, and what gets built,” Gustavson said. “Once you strip the humanity out of that, suddenly nothing you do will be long-lasting. You need to figure out how to blend [data and creativity] to get a fully rounded view of the customer. Quantitative data can only tell you a piece of that.”

Marketers tend to fall into this trap when they focus on optimizing an algorithm to get the best answer, Shetterley added. When you tinker with numbers and tools to achieve the highest percentage, you extract yourself far away from the humans on the other side.

“When you’re focused on what it means to be more human, you’re more empathetic and ethical because in the end, you’re dealing with human beings and not just optimizing an algorithm,” he said. “That analytical approach blended with the human end keeps us on track.”

4. Teach Marketers Data Science
Consider the word “model.” To a data scientist, it could refer to an analytical model. In design, it’s a conceptual model or prototype. To the general public, it’s someone famous on a catwalk. That’s why it’s important for marketers to speak the language of a data scientist, Shetterley said.

Fjord created an internal program called “Data for Designers,” which taught the basics around how data scientists viewed the world in order to bridge the gap between how data-minded professionals and creative marketers think. The result was better collaboration, understanding, and burgeoning creativity.

“It’s almost like meeting someone from another country: You learn a little of their language so you can understand each other a bit better, which lends itself to working together more productively,” Shetterley said.

5. Teach Data Scientists Marketing
The flip side of that is equally important, Gustavson and Shetterley agreed. Gustavson suggested that organizations consider bringing more creativity into non creative disciplines such as data science.

And there are already organizations that are doing this. For example, the counterpart to Fjord’s “Data for Designers” program is an internal curriculum that teaches visual design to engineers, Shetterley said. Its goal is to surface more creativity and improve their ability to tell stories with data.

“What’s important is that some how we meet in the middle,” Gustavson said, emphasizing the importance of upskilling both creatives and data scientists.

This article is part of our series about 2019 trends, predictions, and new opportunities. Click here for more.

By Kristin Burnham

Sourced from CMO

In News

5 Bad Habits Marketers Should Drop in 2019

January 7, 2019 No Comments

By Albizu Garcia

Habits are hard to break – especially the bad ones. In marketing, bad habits manifest in a number of different ways, but five of them, in particular, can cost hours of productivity, not to mention lost opportunities, if they become part of the pattern of a marketer’s daily routine.

Audit your marketing team’s practices against this list of bad habits. If you’re doing any of them, replace them with more effective, efficient practices, and start strong in the New Year.

1. Getting bogged down by the data

Google Analytics has become an invaluable tool for marketers to track how their campaigns perform, as well as to see how much traffic their website receives. However, organizing and analyzing data becomes a problem when using every website’s native analytic tools, as the information may not always align. Data from Google Analytics, scheduling tools, and all of the social media channels may differ depending on when the data is collected.

Trying to use multiple tools can lead to inconsistency and misrepresented data. In 2019, ensure that the marketing team doesn’t fall into this trap – it’s important to focus on a few analytics tools to maintain consistency.

Figure out which KPIs are most helpful in tracking performance and forget about the rest.

2. Having too many or too few CTAs

Effective content should be clear in its message and include clear calls-to-action (CTAs). Not having a CTA will likely result in a user losing interest and clicking off of the page, while alternatively, having too many CTAs can lead to confusion and end with the same results. This can have a negative effect on bounce rate and the average time people spend on your site, both of which are essential to Google rankings.

By adding clear CTAs to your content, marketers can guide how users interact with their website, leading to longer engagement and higher rates of conversion. In 2019, marketers should make sure to include clearly defined CTAs – ideally one per page.

3. Posting erratically on social media

An erratic social media strategy is a big no-no, and a bad habit that marketers need to leave in 2018. Having a consistent social media strategy and planned content, will help marketers avoid scattered posting.

For smaller brands without a strong following, posting should likely be limited to once or twice a day across all social media platforms. Too many updates over a short period of time, without user engagement, can have a negative effect on reach and visibility. Consistently posting 1-2 times a day, with the aim of educating and entertaining, rather than selling, will help grow an interested audience organically. Taking on the mindset of “quality over quantity” on social media can help achieve higher growth and increased engagement.

Using scheduling tools to organize and plan social media content is another option marketers can, and should, incorporate to break out of the pitfall of a messy social media strategy in the upcoming year.

4. Mass emailing random people

There’s no place for mass emailing non-subscribers in 2019.

This is the online equivalent of junk mail, and it can have a detrimental effect on branding. Successful marketing should be concentrated around creating a dialogue between a company and its customers. Bombarding uninterested customers with outbound marketing techniques is outdated and ineffective. And since the EU’s GDPR laws came into effect May 2018, it’s also illegal.

Email campaigns should solely focus on an address book of contacts that have clearly subscribed. A well-put-together newsletter that’s sent out at the same time and day to an already intrigued customer base will garner more engagement and interaction. Furthermore, effective content marketing which offers consumers something in return for signing up will see an increased amount of subscribers.

In 2019, marketers should avoid sending mass emails to a general audience, and focus on sending intriguing emails, with clear CTAs to encourage conversion from already interested consumers.

5. Not adding to the marketing toolbox

Marketers can get into a loop and end up using the same tools over and over again. As marketing is ever-changing, updating your marketing “toolbox” is necessary to stay competitive – otherwise, you run the risk of leaving your current audience disinterested, missing out on new customers, and ultimately, resulting in stagnation.

Maintaining brand identity is important, but so is avoiding repetition. Unique and fresh approaches can keep a trusted brand interesting. For example, blog posts that would have formerly been made up of text and pictures could be supplemented with embedded video or infographics.

The beginning of a new year is the perfect time to learn new skills and to test new tools so that the entire marketing team stays ahead of the curve. Start by banishing these common bad habits now and ensure the team has the right tools and practices in place to achieve your 2019 goals.

By Albizu Garcia

Follow Albizu Garcia on Twitter

Sourced from Social Media Today

In News

How To Decide If You Should Keep Your Agency

November 8, 2018 No Comments

By Avi Dan

This is the Age of Disruption and the marketing ecosystem is being transformed daily by technology and disintermediation. Marketers and agencies are trying to adjust to the new forces that shape the marketplace, but transformation is not easy. The future is about marrying data-based creativity with technology, entertainment, and influencer marketing, which means marketers will have to make sure they have staff on board that can handle it. Data is no longer the by-product of innovation but is the innovation itself. Ad agencies are especially inadequately prepared for the realities of what’s coming and continue to cling to their TV commercials.

When it comes to hiring an agency, I believe that the traditional model is obsolete. Agencies today need to update their skills and develop up-to-the-minute expertise. Any Procurement and Marketing team, or a search consultant worth their salt should ask the following questions….

How tech literate are you?

Gaps in technology services and skillsets leave agencies less than fully relevant. Have they developed platforms that bring business, brand, design, operations and technology together which and create a seamless omnichannel experiences? Most agencies ignore investment in this, creating a vacuum that is happily occupied by the consulting firm.

Are you a cross-channel data expert?

For most agencies, data-driven marketing is tactical rather than strategic and transformative. You’d like to know how they leverage data from myriad sources across paid, owned and earned channels, and also be able at creating real-time dynamic ads, delivered through hyper-relevant targeting.

Do you think beyond screens?

By 2020, 30% of web browsing will be done without screens, and these interactions will be controlled by voice, gesture, or neural prosthetics. Some 100 million consumers will shop via AR. Context will take center stage and will have to be integrated seamlessly with real-world locations 3D modelling and game design.

Do you collaborate with machines?

Now that micro targeting is becoming more common, the need for content has exploded. As machines are increasingly used to generate and place assets, the roles of agencies need to evolve from just concepting, to including curating and iterating. Advertisers should be looking for agency partners that can create personalized marketing.

Do you understand eCommerce?

As more brands, both B2C and B2B, put emphasis on selling their products and services online, commercialization and the branding model of communications is evolving. There is more emphasis on customer lifetime value model and subscriptions for meals, clothes, cars or razor blades.

Do you create branded Entertainment?

As audiences migrate to commercial-free streaming platforms, more brands are looking to engage customers with original programming. This requires a fundamental reboot from traditional marketing and content marketing. Whereas traditional brands focus on positioning their brands in the minds of their customers, entertainment positions brands in the lives of their customers.

Do you understand influencer marketing?

As traditional advertising is becoming less impactful, and social media becomes prime platforms, always-on influencer campaigns are evolving from a tactic to a mainstay of the brand’s marketing strategy. But the growth of influencer marketing requires agencies must learn how to measure ROI of these campaigns.

Are you blockchain-enabled?

Kidding and over-hyping aside, blockchain is around the corner. Ad-blocking software has over 200 million users and counting, but blockchain technology could make these tools obsolete. Blockchain will allow consumers to decide what to watch, and hopefully, give advertisers a modern, sophisticated means to producing high quality leads.

Are you ready for the Amazon disruption?

If Google disrupted discovery, Facebook disrupted social, and Amazon’s data-enabled dynamic pricing is the biggest disruption ever in the marketing ecosystem. It threatens every brand and can commoditize markets at will. Brands will need to adopt custom-tailored strategies specifically applied for this fast moving, algorithm-enhanced and complex platform.

An agency that is not is not the solution is an agency that is the problem. Historically, smart agencies always used new platforms, from radio to TV, to change consumer behavior. As these platforms are becoming more complex, marketers I speak are becoming more frustrated that many agencies haven’t adapted and are falling behind as innovative resource.

Feature Image Credit: Getty

By Avi Dan

I am the founder of agency search consulting firm, Avidan Strategies. I have more than 30 years of leadership experience with Madison Avenue agencies, managing iconic brands for companies like Procter & Gamble, Kraft Foods, Bristol-Myers, General Motors, Pfizer, Mars, Th…MORE

Avi Dan is CEO of Avidan Strategies. It improves agency partnerships, and manage agency search and compensation

Sourced from Forbes

In News

Can you sell products on social media?

September 20, 2018 No Comments

By Pierre DeBois

Marketers may have once doubted the possibility of doing so, but there’s no doubt today that retailer interest in social commerce is rising, and has been rising steadily over the years as social became an important part of the mobile nexus, along with the willingness to make purchases via mobile. For example, Business Insider reported last year that the top 500 retailers earned $3.3 billion from social shopping in 2014, a 26 percent increase over 2013.

The result? Consumer interest in products and services is leading to sales, as customers are becoming more comfortable using their phones for online purchases or to complete purchases in-store. How then should marketers and retailers think about marketing for each social media platform? Here are a few observations that can strengthen your strategy development.

Facebook

The largest social media platform has been refining user options for expressing themselves—from emoticons to live video. Marketers can best leverage Facebook through video by using Facebook Live to speak with business page followers. Many businesses of all scales, such as The Bassline Group in Chicago, use video to connect with customers regularly.

Here are some ideas for Facebook Live content:

Product launches and demonstrations: Comments from followers can provide feedback that can become valuable insights when a new product is being revealed.
Customer service sessions: Troubleshooting problems with devices or products can incorporate responses from followers, treating it as as face-to-face with a real person.
Q&A sessions: Q & A sessions offer opportunities to build customer rapport and trust. Marketers can invite experts to help answer product or service questions from your customers.

Many of these ideas can be conducted through a video platform. Using Facebook Live from a mobile device requires the Pages Manager App.

Facebook is also a dominant advertising platform among social media platforms. Ads enhance strategy in conveying messages to customers, and Facebook ads have been effective in reach, especially in mobile. Marketers should look to use Facebook ads as a means to connect to customers on the go.

Marketers can also look forward to more Facebook refinements, and for good reason. Marketing Land reported that Facebook will reach maximum News Feed ad load during 2017. This means Facebook must experiment with new ways to deliver ads and other marketing features to continue its revenue growth.

Twitter

Twitter has always been a means for connecting to people outside of a customer base. Past social media strategies have suggested that Facebook pages tend to attract customers familiar with your brand, while Twitter profiles tend to attract people who are seeking your products and services, consequently discovering your business.

Twitter has striven to provide features that deepen engagement. Industry analysts have been critical of recent trends that suggest waning user interest in Twitter. Brands interested in immersive advertising experiences have demanded more segmentation features. In response Twitter has introduced ad groups, a campaign feature that customizes according to segment. It has revised its analytics dashboard to improve campaign measurement.

Marketers should also consider Twitter as an opportunity to provide customer service. According to Twitter, an Applied Marketing Science study confirmed that customer service on Twitter influences sales. Providing customer service through social channels like Twitter can be a fast way to connect to customers and let them know that their needs are indeed heard. But marketers must verify that customers are comfortable using Twitter before initiating or expanding customer service resources.

Pinterest

Pinterest has become a search engine, according to Marketing Land. Users pin Pinterest images after discovering products, services, and brands they like the most. This planning reflects the potential of future purchases.

Marketers can strategize on this behavior by creating a preview board in Pinterest—teaser images and ideas that let followers know about what’s to come. YouTube videos can also be embedded in a pin—at the top of this article is one I made for a presentation as an example. Cultivating a preview board keeps users engaged and builds a following that eventually leads to sales.

Instagram

Retailers and brands are discovering how inspirational posts on Instagram can raise branding impact. New tools, such as Instagram Analytics, are starting to help marketers manage that impact. These tools are meant to leverage the best aspect of Instagram—presenting unique images and video that show how a product or service is used among consumers, or reflect the quality of a product.

The content can range from lifestyle associations, such as hiking with Timberland boots, or showing how boots are manufactured to exacting standards. Overall, images should augment the imaginative connection customers have with brands.

Supplementing Social Media Strategy With Analytic Tools Is Now A Must

No matter what combination of social media is used, marketers should also examine advanced dashboards options that blend social media data into a central graph. Options run the gamut from Supermetrics—a service that lets you pull data from an Excel sheet into Google Data Studio and then into a dashboard. R programming models can also be used to predict trends. These tools can determine which platforms are best in referring traffic to retailers’ websites and apps.

Can you sell products in social media? Customer response appears to make that answer an emphatic “Yes!” But it is up to marketers to make sure they listen to how that yes is expressed, and use that knowledge to inform their social strategy.

By Pierre DeBois

Sourced from DMN Data. Strategy. Technology.

In News

Consumers say they don’t care about personalisation — but that doesn’t mean marketers shouldn’t do it

August 14, 2018 No Comments

By Sylvia Jensen

A recent survey of UK consumers by Acquia revealed lacklustre demand for personalised experiences. Sylvia Jensen, VP EMEA marketing at Acquia, argues that these findings shouldn’t dissuade marketers from investing in personalisation.

What do consumers care about most when it comes to digital experiences? Engaging content? Effective social media? Personalisation? That was a question we at Acquia asked recently of consumers in a survey, and the results were, in some ways, surprising, and in other ways, completely understandable. Actually, when it comes to digital experiences, consumers say they value simplicity above all — saying all they want is just a brand website that’s quick and easy to navigate. Personalised experiences fall way down the list of consumers desires.

Personalisation works

Our initial reaction to consumers’ lacklustre opinion of personalisation was that of surprise. Certainly, from a business point of view, personalisation is paramount to success, and multiple studies have shown that it’s key to driving brand loyalty and repeat sales. McKinsey believes effective personalisation can lift revenue growth by as much as 15%. Econsultancy concluded through research that 93% of companies see an uplift in conversion rates from personalisation. And Gartner predicts that by 2020, personalisation technology that recognises customer intent will enable digital businesses to increase profits by up to 15%.

So, if businesses believe in it, why don’t consumers? Our argument is that while consumers may say they don’t care about personalisation, marketers must not take that to mean that personalisation efforts are futile. Part of the reason consumers told us they don’t care about personalisation is almost certainly down to the fact that it’s much subtler than a website that’s easier to navigate. Arguably, the best kind of personalisation is when the customer doesn’t even know they’re getting a tailored experience. So, it’s understandable that consumers don’t list it as a top priority.

Having said all that, the whole marketing industry is going through an incredible change at the moment, thanks in part to GDPR and thanks in part to scandals like Cambridge Analytica and Facebook. Consumer awareness around data collection and personalisation is increasing, and now is the time for brands to hammer home the message that they’re using customer data to improve the experience for customers through personalisation rather than anything sinister.

But getting personalisation right is still a massive challenge

The trouble, though, is that brands are finding personalisation to be a huge challenge. Previous Acquia research found that 48% of large businesses struggle with personalisation because they don’t know anything about their website visitors. 45% say they don’t have the budget for it, and more worrying still, a third (34%) say they don’t have the support of their board of directors. We conducted that research more than a year ago, and then took the opportunity to ask how things were getting on again at our inaugural Acquia Engage Europe event in June 2018, which saw the heads of digital at major world brands like Virgin Sport, Hiscox, Warner Music and Stage Entertainment come together to share their experiences with digital. It turns out, everybody’s still finding it difficult. Only 11% of attendees had the confidence to say they weren’t struggling with personalisation.

Why personalisation is difficult

When you’re a big brand that operates in multiple regions, cultures and languages, and you have different business units in each region working towards their own objectives with their own level of autonomy, it’s no wonder personalisation is difficult. This kind of global structure makes executing on even the most basic of marketing principles difficult, let alone the newest and hottest trends like personalisation.

And quite often as you grow as a business, your technology infrastructure takes a while to catch up. The number of times we at Acquia have spoken to big businesses operating on small-business technology is huge. And it’s the technology that was once fit for smaller businesses that’s holding back from taking advantage of the biggest marketing trends like personalisation.

My recommendation — a global platform to manage a global brand before crawling, walking and running with personalisation

Before doing anything, you need to make sure you have the right infrastructure in place. Using a single content management system that enables you to manage a brand at a global level while giving each specific region the autonomy they need to succeed is key. This kind of setup will help you maintain a consistent brand in multiple regions, enable you to spin up new sites quickly, and help you to manage content much more easily.

Once that’s in place, your next step is to read our recent blog on how to crawl, walk and run with personalisation… No-one’s every said it would be easy, but it’s an approach we take with clients to help them beat their competition that works.

By Sylvia Jensen

Sourced from Digital Doughnut

In News

Google Starts To Give Marketers More Access To Data

July 26, 2018 No Comments

By Laurie Sullivan

After years of holding the data close to its vest, Google has begun to give advertisers more data to help them make better decisions and run successful campaigns. Earlier this month, Google confirmed that it would run a small-scale rollout of an Insights analytics report in Google My Business that shows business owners the most popular search keywords that people use to find listings.

On Friday Google announced that the Search Analytics API found in the Search Console now allows advertisers to retrieve 25,000 rows of data per request, up from 5,000 rows previously. Marketers can query all their search analytics data without exceeding their quota by running a daily query for one day’s worth of data.

Marketers need to choose the information requested, such as search types — web, image and video — along with the dimensions such as page, query, country, or device and whether to group results by page or property.

Along with the news, Google published a guide to take marketers through data retrieval. It includes an overview and describes how to group results by page or property and the dos and don’ts for the process, as well as defaults and nuances of how the queries work.

Google also notes that impressions, clicks, position, and click-through rates are calculated differently when grouping results by page rather than by property.

Earlier this week, Google announced the integration of Hotel Ads into the Google Ads platform with the introduction of a new type of campaign and a new dashboard for managing hotel price feeds.

Although Hotel Ads have been around for about eight years — initially in sponsored listings in Google Maps and then in Google Search — they were managed in a separate ad platform.

Now all the data resides in one place. Overall, it means marketers gain more data from one dashboard to support campaigns across the board.

By Laurie Sullivan

Sourced from MediaPost

In News

Why brands favor a ‘hybrid’ in-house marketing approach

July 24, 2018 No Comments

By Shareen Pathak

In-house agencies are all the rage, but most marketers still struggle with taking their advertising and media entirely within their four walls — leading to more brands favoring a “hybrid” approach.

Marketers of all types have made it a mission to talk more directly to their customers, take media planning and strategy, if not the actual buying to their own teams and overall, do more themselves. That means agencies are now doing far less big-picture planning and more execution.

For example, Marriott chief marketing officer Karin Timpone recently launched a new unit, part of the marketing team, called “global marketing optimization” group, which handles everything from overall customer strategy, media and marketing, as well as performance and media buying. This is new, and the group is in charge of also a new media group that handles all global media buying.

The brand also works with Publicis, which created a dedicated team called Marriott One Media to service the account earlier this year. The agency group handles execution while strategy and planning is done internally.

There’s also more media buying done internally, especially at the local-individual-hotel-property level, mostly in search. The brand’s internal agency also is working directly with platforms, like Facebook, on how to buy media there that Timpone said “couldn’t have been done with an external agency partner.” Once the plan is set, the agency can come back and put Facebook in the overall plan — more executional, rather than strategic. “The strategies of what you need for our business, you can’t ever farm that out,” she said.

Timpone declined to say how many people work inside that group but said it was born out of an understanding that marketers needed to be much more in control of their customer journeys than they have been in the past.

In-house agencies, while touted by some like JP Morgan Chase CMO Kristin Lemkau as being more efficient, are also difficult to create: They have expensive startup costs and require a high level of internal buy-in. Plus, agencies still remain, according to CMOs, a place for expertise on new trends and new technologies, which are too difficult for an internal team to stay on top of.

At Northwestern Mutual, chief marketing officer Aditi Gokhale said she isn’t a big believer in outsourcing everything to agencies. “But frankly, from an efficiency perspective, it’s not super efficient to build out a big in-house agency either.”

What’s changed at NM, said Gokhale, is that she and her team now define media and media spend. “The agency doesn’t define it for me, which historically they have,” she said. “I take control of it, the agency executes.”

Ann Billock, partner at Ark Advisors, which advises CMOs about agency partnerships, said that most brands are now using a “hybrid” approach because creating teams in-house is expensive — and talent is often an issue. As Digiday has reported previously, everything from cultural fit issues, to brand marketing talent needing to adapt to a different way of working, to finding people outside the coastal cities can be an issue.

Companies struggle especially to recruit media-buying experts for the client side, with 62 percent of marketers in a recent Digiday survey saying hiring talent is a challenge for bringing media buying in-house. One hurdle when recruiting media buyers for the client side is convincing them that there’s a path for career progression.

That’s what’s creating a movement where more brands are doing more in-house, but few are entirely eschewing agencies. Marc Speichert, chief digital officer at GSK, who said he doesn’t have plans to take everything in-house, said that what is happening is a clearer understanding of the marketer’s internal capabilities and how to increase them — and expect very different things from its agencies. “We have to make sure we push hard,” Speichert said. “As we elevated our own internal capabilities, we are asking much tougher questions of agencies. We have much higher expectations.”

“The most effective partnerships happen when the brand teams do, indeed, handle the strategy but recognize that the brand strategy still needs to be translated into a communications strategy by the agency,” said Billock.

By Shareen Pathak

Sourced from DIGIDAY UK

In News

B2B Marketing Has Evolved Into Something Beautiful, And It’s Time For Marketers To Adapt

June 29, 2018 No Comments

By John Gerzema

When I started out (around the time Duran Duran roamed the planet), business-to-business (B2B) marketing was confined to the domain of the literal. The customer was deemed rational and analytical, so the messaging was bland and unimaginative. B2B meant “boring-to-boring.” All the communications felt like PowerPoint presentations. We spoke in the native language of sales collateral and trade show jargon. And a bulk of the work seemed dependent on sales teams’ connections and cold calling target clients.

Yet, over the past decade, we’ve seen B2B marketing evolve into “business-to-beautiful” marketing — marketing that illuminates the beautiful stories behind businesses today, expressing their visions and values in society. Suddenly, some of the best work is aimed at procurement executives through thought leadership, branded content, social media and content marketing strategies that drive a wonderful overhead appeal to shareholders and lovers of great narratives.

The shift was inevitable, in my opinion, given the rise of the internet and social media. What we’ve realized through social is that businesses are inherently emotional beings, they are creations of our imaginations, rivers of human growth and determiners of where we build our future communities. B2B marketing is no longer isolated in the ivory tower, creating empires unknown by the general public. Instead, “B2Beautiful” marketing has made the connection between B2B storytelling and our human growth potential. These B2Beautiful stories captivate our imaginations and trigger emotional resonance — key ingredients in building that residual stickiness factor in an attention-deficit world.

My company, The Harris Poll, recently released the Reputation Quotient study (registration required), which reports that contemporary drivers are found in today’s consumer desires, and many of the storytelling strategies employed by B2C marketers are becoming increasingly applicable to B2B marketing.

We see brilliant examples of brands implementing B2Beautiful campaigns today and engaging communities even in functional, low-interest categories. Maersk, for instance, is humanizing logistics services by personifying its giant cargo ships and documenting their travels through stunning visual images on Instagram. Cisco’s award-winning documentary, The Network Effect, highlights telecom development stories, while companies such as Salesforce and The Mosaic Company have created engaging podcasts. The Mosaic Company’s podcast, “The Great Yield Mystery,” featured a dramatic audio play about two farmers trying to understand why their harvest came short — it even offered listeners clues to solve the mystery and win prizes.

These companies understand that brands are stories in and of themselves and every aspect of who they are — from their work culture, logistics, products and services, to how they think and operate behind the scenes — is essential to creating an effective B2Beautiful marketing strategy. Their strategies provide five crucial takeaways that marketers should keep in mind while creating B2Beautiful marketing, regardless of if you’re a startup or a large corporation.

1. Pinpoint Your Story

Use your mission and objectives to frame your values and use those components to create your story. Interestingly, The Harris Poll’s RQ survey also shows that there is a new market opportunity for B2B companies to take action on social issues. A new class of what we call “humanity brands” — companies that stand up for what they believe in and walk their talk. These brands are solving social ills, despite their political affiliation.

Successful B2Beautiful marketing, especially in the age of consumer activism, involves being able to identify issues that resonate with your brand and weave them into your story.

2. Weaponize Your Culture

A 2015 FORTUNE Knowledge Group report showed that corporate culture is incredibly important to building B2B relationships. Furthermore, 59% of executives surveyed rated knowing what a company stands for as more important when choosing a partner to work with, ranking higher than market dominance and innovation.

Depending on its mission, each company’s culture is unique. Once you know who you are and what you stand for as a company, you can then find engaging ways to share those convictions through the right media platforms. WeWork, for instance, uses its Instagram account to showcase their offices around the world, with photos of workers doing yoga or wearing stormtrooper helmets. They are motivating people around their motto to “make a life, not just a living.”

3. Don’t Be Constrained By Your Category

At its core, B2Beautiful marketing involves building emotional equity. Every story you set out to tell about your company should be crafted to evoke empathy. This is how you inspire B2B buyers, (who, by the way, are consumers just like you and me) to be emotionally invested in your brand.

Some of the most emotionally engaging and brilliant work is coming from a few of the lowest-interest categories. In fact, it’s there where the biggest white space is found.

4. Diversify Your Channels And Forms Of Content

As a 21st-century business, there are key owned-media platforms that are imperative for B2Beautiful marketing — a blog for brand storytelling, social media platforms (LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, etc.) and a newsletter. However, in addition to those channels, there are other platforms such as podcasts, videos, infographics and even gifs.

Work with creative partners to determine the right channels to use, depending on the stories you want to tell about the company, its products and services and core truths.

5. Ensure Your Strategy Is Buyer-Focused

We still are selling, after all, so be mindful of your target audience (B2B buyers) when you create your B2Beautiful marketing. What are their needs? Not just the tangible ones in terms of products or services, but also their values, triggers and unmet needs. What are their goals and how can you help them meet those goals?

Think about how your services amplify their missions, visions and values. Through your strategy, you can even educate buyers on ways to better connect with the end consumer and build substantial relationships that grow over time.

In the coming years, B2B marketing will, inevitably, continue to evolve in this direction. Therefore, it is important for marketers to adapt to these rules in order to differentiate their brands and remain attractive and relevant in the eyes of buyers.

By John Gerzema

CEO of The Harris Poll (Harris Insights & Analytics), a public opinion, corporate & brand reputation firm. NYT bestselling author.

Sourced from Forbes