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Why Marketers Should Explore These 4 Emerging Technology Trends

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By Claudia Ratterman
Marketers should explore four emerging tech trends and how they impact customer data management and consumer privacy.

For brands, the pandemic’s initial disruptions are easing, if not absent, while spiralling inflation, talent scarcity and lingering supply chain challenges continue to contest marketers’ best laid plans.

Against this conflicting backdrop, marketers seek to balance between tried-and-true, personalized campaigns with novel digital experiences that differentiate their brands.

In contrast to the new customer acquisition strategies of 2021 and early 2022, the rest of this year and next will emphasize a more comprehensive view of the customer to unify cross-functional data to improve customer experience (CX), drive conversions and ensure retention.

New to this year’s Gartner Hype Cycle for Digital Marketing are four key technologies that will help marketers with this renewed focus of integrating customer data to drive innovation: generative AI, emotion AI, digital twin of a customer and customer data ethics.

Here’s how digital marketing leaders can incorporate these crucial technologies into their strategies.

Generative AI: Determine Initial Marketing Use Cases

Generative AI is a disruptive technology that impacts content development, CX enhancement and the generation of synthetic data. It learns from existing artifacts to generate new, realistic artifacts (e.g., video, speech) that reflect the characteristics of the training data without repetition.

In spite of third-party data depreciation, enterprises are still charged with both delivering a strong CX and influencing customer decisions. Generative AI can help marketers identify the core characteristics of customers to then target them with custom content in a privacy-compliant way.

In fact by 2025, Gartner expects 30% of outbound marketing messages from large organizations will be synthetically generated.

We see generative AI take hold in digital commerce; for example, where brands can generate human images for customers to try on clothes or makeup virtually. Avatars and virtual influencers can also engage customers on social media and in the metaverse to provide customer support.

Obstacles in digital marketers’ use of generative AI include potential government hurdles that seek to limit associated research, or the unfortunate reality of the technology being used for deepfakes, fraud and disinformation.

What can digital marketers do? Start by investigating how generative AI techniques benefit your industry and determine initial marketing use cases where you can rely on purchased capabilities or partnerships. Document the opportunities synthetic data could bring in terms of facilitating data monetization and lowering the cost of data acquisition.

Emotion AI: Explore Vendor Capabilities

Emotion AI uses computer vision, audio/voice input and more to translate behavioural attributes into human emotions, helping marketers better personalize digital communications. This is part of a larger trend we call “influence engineering,” which seeks to automate elements of digital experience that guide user choices at scale by learning and applying techniques of behavioural science.

Emotions play a key role in all phases of customer journeys. Access to emotion data delivers insights into motivational drivers that help them test and refine content, tailor digital experiences and build deeper connections between people and brands.

By 2024, 30% of marketers will use emotion AI, up from less than 5% today. Yet privacy concerns remain an obstacle to rapid adoption of many use cases, especially in live situations (versus lab/research environments). Hesitation around the manipulative power of emotion-aware algorithms and potential bias are prevalent, too. To avoid bias when using facial expression analysis, models must be retrained in different geographies to detect nuances due to different cultural backgrounds.

What can digital marketers do? Review vendors’ emotion AI capabilities and use cases carefully in order to enhance customer analytics and behavioural profiling. Appoint responsibility for data privacy in your organization to a chief data privacy officer or equivalent and ensure they work with your chosen vendor to avoid user backlash due to sensitive data being collected.

Digital Twin of a Customer (DToCs): Run Pilots, Establish Trust

A DToC is a dynamic virtual representation of a customer that simulates and learns to emulate and anticipate behavior. DToCs help data-rich organizations provide a more personalized, curated CX to customers, many of whose buying habits have changed due to inflation.

DToC can both transform and disrupt: Privacy and cyber-risk concerns may lengthen the time it takes DToCs to mature. Plus, it’s challenging for organizations to embark on customer data ethics initiatives, which are essential to the success of DToC projects.

What can digital marketers do? Begin by running a pilot and comparing results with and without a DToC and define the benefits to customers and establish trust. Explain how they can control, or cancel, data usage, and eventually integrate DToCs with existing marketing technology systems for maximum utility.

Customer Data Ethics: Be Transparent

Customer data ethics aligns business practices with moral and ethical policies that reflect a company’s values. The need for such arises from the often unintended social and environmental consequences of using customer data to maximize profits.

It’s clear that AI is a growing force within marketing as techniques for marketing automation and personalization. The public — and marketers — increasingly recognize the tendency of these techniques to amplify biases in customer data used to train them. As organizations expand their focus on privacy and Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) issues, addressing the ethical challenges of algorithmic marketing practices becomes imperative to keep company practices and values aligned.

What can digital marketers do? Go beyond mere compliance and treat customer data ethics as an ethos that your company publicly shares with all stakeholders. Operationalize the ethical evaluation of all automated decision making and tailor global brand or corporate frameworks to specific geographies, audiences and societies. Establishing and monitoring long-term metrics that tie customer data ethics to economic factors (e.g., ESG ratings and brand equity measures) will ensure the most value is realized.

Conclusion: Determine Value for Emerging Marketing Technology Trends

While investment in such technologies continues apace, digital marketing leaders still grapple with the challenges associated with these powerful yet immature technologies. AI and machine learning (ML) are highly dependent on access to customer data, yet only 14% of organizations have achieved a 360-degree view of the customer. Furthermore, consumer and regulatory concerns about their ethical implications may erode trust among customers.

Digital marketers must take a critical look at each of these technology trends to determine what value they bring to their organizations, especially within the confines of economic headwinds.

By Claudia Ratterman

Claudia Ratterman is a Director Analyst for Gartner for Marketers, based in Los Angeles. She has over 14 years of experience building Social Media Marketing Strategies for billion-dollar brands such as Disney, Tide, Pampers, Olay and Amgen.

Sourced from CMSWIRE

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Why Being Specific Is the Key to Successful Marketing (and How to Do It)

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The more specific your message is, the greater impact it will have on your intended audience. Here’s why.

As an entrepreneur or business owner, it’s easy to think your marketing salvation lies in the next quick tip or hack. You think to yourself, “If I just have the right tool, script or template, I can start winning.” But in reality, quick hacks only get you so far without the right marketing strategy or framework in place. You need a system to put them into, otherwise it’s nothing more than a mismatched collection of random techniques.

In building a marketing framework for your business, it’s important that you have a firm understanding of what makes successful marketing. And in this article, I’m going to discuss what I believe to be one of the defining pillars: specificity.

The “what” and “why” of specificity in marketing

If you’ve been around the marketing world much, or if you’ve taken a business class in the past couple of decades, then you’re probably familiar with the AIDA marketing principles. It’s an acronym that stands for Attention → Interest → Desire → Action. In order to move people through a sales funnel, you have to first grab their attention, then get them interested, then create desire, and finally, take action.

Most business owners and marketers focus on the “action” piece of the puzzle, but they ignore the “attention” component. The reality is that if you don’t grab a prospect’s attention — which is increasingly difficult to do in today’s noisy marketing landscape — you’ll never have the opportunity to move them to action.

The question is, how do you grab attention? While there are numerous ways to get a prospect’s attention, being specific with your messaging is a must. Here are some of the other benefits of emphasizing specificity:

  • Builds credibility: When your messaging is specific, prospects start to realize that you’re an expert in helping people like them. This enhances your credibility and gives you the perception of being the go-to business, product or service.
  • Persuades: Specificity typically involves the use of proof, data and statistics. As a result, your messaging is more clear and persuasive.
  • Increases conversion rates: Studies show that something as simple as optimizing your headline to be more specific can boost conversion rates. This holds true regardless of the industry or niche.

Unfortunately, most brands take a generic approach. In doing so, they miss out on the opportunity to grab attention and move people through their conversion funnels. If you can avoid this mistake, you can dramatically increase your chances of being successful.

The goal of successful marketing is to deliver the right message to the right person at the right time. Here are four ways you can leverage the power of specificity to accomplish this:

1. Choose a specific niche

If you’re targeting everyone, you’re targeting no one in particular. With very few exceptions, it’s usually a bad idea to go after anyone and everyone. Unless you’re selling toothpaste, bananas or batteries, you’re better off picking a target audience and pursuing them.

When you have a niche, it becomes easier to tailor your messaging. You no longer have to account for everyone. You can get into the mind of your prospect and start pressing into specific desires, frustrations, pain points and goals.

2. Create a USP

With a niche in mind, develop a Unique Sales Proposition (USP) that clearly conveys how you help your target audience achieve their desires and overcome their pain points.

A good USP follows this formula: “I help [NICHE] achieve [DESIRE] without [PAIN POINT].” You don’t have to follow this script word for word, but it gives you a good general feel for which elements need to be included.

3. Death to the stock photo

If you’re still using stock photos on your website and in your marketing messages, please stop! Stock photos scream “generic” louder than almost anything else. It doesn’t cost that much to have professional pictures taken or to create your own graphics using a tool like Canva.com.

You can give your entire website a makeover by simply hiring a professional photographer to come out to your business for three or four hours one day and take pictures. Swap out stock photos with images of actual team members and customers. It’ll change the entire look of your website.

4. Improve your headlines

Finally, write better headlines. Research from Marketing Experiments shows that optimizing your headlines for greater specificity can improve your conversion rate by 73% or more. In the study, researchers tested the following five headlines against a control headline:

  1. Dental Plans for $8.33 a month. Acceptance Guaranteed.
  2. Over 55,000 Dental Care Providers. Acceptance Guaranteed.
  3. Dental Care Coverage. Best Price Guaranteed.
  4. Low Cost Dental Care for the Uninsured.
  5. Best Price Dental Care – Without Insurance.

Guess which headlines performed the best? Headline 1 showed a lift of 72.76% in conversions, while Headline 2 got a bump of 26.41%. The other three headlines all had a negative impact on conversions.

The moral of the story is to get specific with headlines. Whether it’s numbers, descriptive adjectives or compelling verbs, specificity sells!

Nobody likes generic marketing. If a prospect sees your marketing messages and doesn’t immediately think it’s intended for them, you have a problem. Get crystal clear on who your audience is, and then make a point to tailor every element of your marketing campaign to them.

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Sourced from Entrepreneur

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Storyboard18 | The Great Skill Reset: How are companies hiring for marketing and brand roles these days?

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By Saumya Tewari

Marketing has become more customer-centric, the skill sets in demand today include ‘analytics’, ‘data’, ‘statistics and ‘systems thinking’.

The marketing and brand management function in companies across various industries is witnessing a significant change in the way their roles are evolving. In the wake of the pandemic, as rapid digitization has taken over various industries, there has been an evolution of the traditional marketing roles as well.

With marketers of today wearing multiple hats, companies are now tweaking the way they hire candidates. There is a willingness to hire from new-age industries, look for unique skills and pick candidates who will bring innovative thinking to the table.

Experts that Storyboard18 spoke to share that as marketing becomes more customer-centric, the skill sets in demand today include ‘analytics’, ‘data’, ‘statistics’ and ‘systems thinking’.

Customer-centricity matters 

Mercedes-Benz India, which launched direct-to-customer business model ‘Retail of the Future’ (ROTF) in 2021, highlights that this model provides real time customer data that enables the company to sharpen its campaigns and CRM initiatives.

“This has led to our marketing efforts evolving from traditional mass market campaigns to targeted, one-to-one customer focused, customized initiatives,” says Santosh Iyer, vice president – sales & marketing, Mercedes-Benz India. He says, “Today, we have ‘Customer Journey Managers’ as opposed to ‘Brand Managers’. The ‘Customer Journey Managers’ now play a key role in curating end-to-end customer experiences which align with the luxury quotient associated with the brand,”

Customer centricity scores high for fast moving consumer goods firm Nestlé India as well. The company, which sells products such as Maggi, Nescafe and Kit Kat, emphasizes that its hiring function is led by customer understanding and centricity along with the ability to leverage data-centric approach to finding consumer first solutions.

“The core aspect of consumer-centric approach still remains crucial and is at the center of our selection strategy. With the changing media habits of our consumers, we are keen on exploring talent who are exposed to omnichannel approach to brand design and digital to understand the new-age consumer deeply,” says Anurag Patnaik, director- human resources, Nestlé India.

Entrepreneurial mindset, agility in demand

Companies are also looking to hire candidates who would take ownership of products or services they work on. They live, breathe and understand the products/services they work on and take full ownership even if things go south.

“It’s equally important to see that the candidate just does not fit the role but also has a potential to grow in it as well over time. We also look out for traits that are important to ensure that the candidate can fit into the PepsiCo culture based on attributes like ownership, being consumer centric, etc.,” says a PepsiCo India spokesperson.

Mercedes’ Iyer also emphasises the company’s focus on hiring candidates who display ownership. “There is a clear focus on candidates to have an entrepreneurial mindset as marketing extends beyond traditional domains and incumbents need to add value in business,” he adds.

Agility is another trait that companies mentioned as a desired trait.

“The biggest challenge that pandemic has posed is to deal with uncertainties. Hence, to get talent from diverse backgrounds who have a strong ability to deal with business uncertainties with utmost agility is key,” adds a PepsiCo India’s spokesperson.

Upskilling is critical

Digital skill set is a pre-requisite for all companies today and emphasis is being given for candidates who are passionate about customer experience. Companies are also investing in upskilling their existing workforce as well.

Mercedes-Benz, for instance, has tied up with LinkedIn Learning to provide an access platform for people to upskill themselves.

Iyer tells us how it works. “Managers plan each individual’s growth trajectory by strategically mapping courses which will help them transition to the future of marketing, Data, Martech.” he adds, “From the organization standpoint, it is essential that the candidates are also upskilled in the future of mobility, Industry 4.0 and marketing luxury EVs.”

While the fundamentals of how a solid marketing engine works hasn’t changed, the various parts of the marketing machine need to be upgraded in a fast-evolving consumer and media landscape. And as some of the country’s biggest brands look to switch gears, they are on the look out for talent that will fit in the new engine.

What top marketers are looking for in the next-gen marketer

– Skill sets in demand today include ‘analytics’, ‘data’, ‘statistics and ‘systems thinking’.

– ‘Customer Journey Managers’ as opposed to ‘Brand Managers’

– Ability to leverage a data-centric approach to finding consumer first solutions

– Talent who are exposed to omnichannel approach to brand design and digital to understand the new-age consumer deeply

– Candidates who would take ownership of products or services they work on

– People with an entrepreneurial mindset

– Candidates who are passionate about customer experience

– Agility and attitude to learn and upskill

Feature Image Credit: Adeolu Eletu via Unsplash

By Saumya Tewari

Assistant Editor of Storyboard. Storyboard is Network18’s flagship platform focussed on the advertising & marketing community and a leading source of news and analyses on the business of brands.

Sourced from Money Control

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Top 10 Tips to Improve Your Website Traffic

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By Erik Emanuelli

Are you looking for ways to increase your website traffic? If so, you’re in the right place!

In this post, we will discuss tips that will help drive more visitors to your site.

Traffic is essential for any business – without it, your website won’t be able to generate sales or leads.

1. Have a Business Blog

A business blog is one of the best ways to generate traffic to your website.

By creating quality content relevant to your target audience, you will be able to attract readers interested in what you have to say.

Not only will this help you increase traffic, but it will also help you build relationships with potential customers.

Here are a few tips for creating a successful business blog:

  • Write quality content that is interesting and informative
  • Use keyword-rich titles that will help your posts rank in search engines
  • Promote your blog articles through social media and email marketing
  • Engage with your readers by responding to comments and questions

2. Create Engaging Visuals

People are visual creatures and are more likely to remember something if an image accompanies it.

When you create blog posts, include images, infographics, or videos to help your readers understand and remember your content.

In addition to using visuals in your blog posts, you can also use them in your email marketing and social media campaigns.

By creating engaging visuals, you will be able to increase traffic to your website as well as improve your conversion rate.

Here are a few tips for creating engaging visuals:

  • Use high-quality images that are relevant to your content
  • Make sure your visuals are attention-grabbing and easy to understand
  • Include a call-to-action with each visual
  • Test different visuals to see what works best for your audience
  • Use a mixture of visuals in your marketing campaigns

3. Leverage the Power of Video

Video is one of the most powerful tools you can use to generate traffic to your website.

People love watching videos and are likelier to watch a video than read a blog post or article.

In addition, videos are more likely to be shared on social media than other types of content.

If you want to increase traffic to your website, start creating videos that are relevant to your target audience.

Here are a few tips for creating successful videos:

  • Create videos that are informative and entertaining
  • Keep your videos short and to the point
  • Optimize your videos for search engines
  • Promote your videos through social media and email marketing
  • Post them on platforms like YouTube and Vimeo
  • Engage with your viewers by responding to comments and questions

4. Target Long-Tail Keywords

If you want to generate traffic from search engines, you need to target the right keywords.

Most businesses make the mistake of targeting short-tail keywords that are highly competitive.

While there is nothing wrong with targeting these keywords, you will have a much easier time ranking for long-tail keywords.

Long-tail keywords are longer and more specific, making them less competitive.

For example, if you sell shoes, a short-tail keyword would be “shoes.”

A long-tail keyword would be “women’s size 11 black dress shoes.”

Here are a few tips for targeting long-tail keywords:

  • Use keyword research tools like Google AdWords Keyword Planner and Moz Keyword Explorer
  • Identify what your target audience is searching for
  • Create content that is relevant to your target keywords
  • Include your target keywords in your title, meta tags, and header
  • Use keyword-rich titles that will help your posts rank in search engines

5. Build Backlinks

Backlinks are links from other websites to your website.

They are an essential ranking factor in search engines and can also help you generate traffic.

The more backlinks you have, the higher your website will rank in search results.

In addition, backlinks can help you build relationships with other webmasters and influencers.

Start building backlinks if you want to generate traffic and improve your search engine ranking.

Here are a few tips for building backlinks:

  • Identify websites that are relevant to your niche
  • Reach out to webmasters and ask for links
  • Create informative and engaging content that other webmasters will want to link to
  • Submit your website to directories and web listings
  • Participate in forums and discussion groups

6. Use Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing is a type of marketing that focuses on using influencers to promote your brand.

An influencer is someone with a large following on social media or another online platform.

They can help you generate traffic, leads, and sales.

To use influencer marketing, start by identifying relevant influencers in your industry.

Then reach out to them and ask if they would be interested in promoting your brand.

Here are a few tips for using influencer marketing:

  • Identify relevant influencers in your industry
  • Reach out to them and ask if they would be interested in promoting your brand
  • Create content that is shareable and relevant to their audience
  • Offer them something in return for promoting your brand
  • Monitor your results and adjust your strategy as needed

7. Build an Email List

Email marketing is a great way to generate traffic and leads.

Email marketing lets you stay in touch with your target audience and promote your brand.

In addition, email marketing can help you build relationships with your customers and prospects.

If you want to use email marketing to generate traffic, start by building an email list.

To build an email list, you must collect your target audience’s email addresses.

There are a few ways to do this:

  • Use sign-up forms on your website and blog
  • Include a call-to-action in your emails
  • Offer something of value in exchange for email addresses
  • Be sure to include a call-to-action in your emails so that your recipients know what you want them to do.
  • Make sure your emails are informative and engaging.

8. Use Guest Blogging

Guest blogging is great for generating website traffic, building relationships, and improving your search engine ranking.

When you guest blog, you write an article for another website in your industry.

This gives you exposure to their audience and can help you build relationships with other webmasters.

In addition, guest blogging can help you generate traffic and improve your search engine ranking.

Here are a few tips for using guest blogging:

  • Identify websites that accept guest blogs
  • Reach out to them and pitch your ideas
  • Write informative and engaging articles
  • Include a call-to-action in your bio

9. Use Social Media

Social media is great for generating traffic, building relationships, and improving your search engine ranking.

When you use social media, you can connect with your target audience and promote your brand.

In addition, social media can help you build relationships with other webmasters and influencers.

Here are a few tips for using social media:

  • Identify the social media platforms that are relevant to your niche
  • Create informative and engaging content
  • Engage with other users on the platform
  • Include links to your website in your profile
  • Monitor your results and adjust your strategy as needed
  • Use hashtags to reach a wider audience
  • Participate in groups and forums
  • Use social media ads

10. Track, Analyse, and Repeat

The most essential part of any traffic-building strategy is to track your results.

You need to know what is working and what is not.

Without tracking, you will not be able to improve your results.

There are a few things you should track:

  • website traffic
  • leads
  • sales
  • conversions

To track your results, you need to use web analytics tools.

Many web analytics tools are available, but Google Analytics is the most popular.

Once you have set up tracking, you need to analyse your results.

Look at your web traffic and see where it is coming from.

Then look at your leads and sales.

Finally, look at your conversion rate.

Once you have analysed your results, you need to adjust your strategy.

Make changes to your website, content, and marketing campaigns.

Then track your results again and repeat the process.

Final Words

Website traffic is essential if you want to succeed online.

There are many ways to get more visitors, but not all of them are effective.

To build traffic that converts, you need to focus on creating shareable content, building relationships, and tracking your results.

Following these tips can generate the traffic you need to succeed.

What are your favourite traffic-building strategies? Let us know in the comments below.

By Erik Emanuelli

Erik Emanuelli is an online marketer who has been blogging since 2010. Be sure to check his website for free SEO resources.

Sourced from readwrite

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How to Grow a Business: 15 Strategies to Start Using Now

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By Joe Martin

Starting a business is hard, but learning how to grow a business that’s already up and running is a challenge all of its own. So what’s the secret to success? Just like when you were first starting out, the secret to scaling is having a solid business plan and strong fundamentals.

What are the First Steps for Your New Business?

Beginning from scratch can be daunting, especially when you’re not sure about the first steps that must be taken. That’s why we created this guide to demystify the process of scaling and growing your business.

1. Research the Market

Scaling your business demands that you know the current market conditions inside and out. You need to know:

  • Whether there are enough potential customers
  • Who your ideal customers are
  • Where they’re located
  • How much they are willing to pay for your product or service

Start by establishing clear goals for the project, and then figure out which research methods will work best in helping you achieve those goals. Of course, your marketing will vary differently based on who you are as a business. For example, law firm marketing is very different than HVAC marketing, but they all start with researching your audience and knowing how to connect them to your business.

2. Analyse Your Product

To scale your business, you need to know what makes your product stand out from the crowd. If you can’t think of anything, you have some work to do before you scale.

Think about:

  • What does your product do?
  • How does it help your customers?
  • How does it compare with competitors?
  • Why should someone choose yours over theirs?

That last question is critical. Your unique selling point (USP) isn’t in your product itself but in how you market it or how it’s delivered.

3. Perform a Competitor Analysis

Competitor analysis is one of the most important things you can do to grow your business. To scale effectively, you need to know how others in your industry — your competitors, in particular — are faring.

A competitor analysis can help you gauge what’s working and what’s not in your market. It can help you spot opportunities and challenges before they arise or, even better, provide you with an advantage over others who don’t know as much as you do. Those who do it well can avoid blind spots and make wiser long-term decisions that benefit their business.

4. Build a Customized Sales Funnel

You likely already have some kind of sales funnel, but is it customized to your business’s needs? Developing a detailed customer journey helps you do just that. It’s a map of each customer’s steps before purchasing from your e-commerce store. The more information you have about where customers are coming from, what they’re doing on your site, and what ultimately persuades them to convert, the better prepared you’ll be for growth.

This can also help with your marketing and how you understand where your customers are coming from.

5. Employ a CRM System

Having an effective customer relationship management (CRM) system in place can help you keep all your data and relationships organized and accessible at any time, from anywhere — an essential tool when scaling.

CRM systems are extremely useful for managing contacts because they allow you to organize and analyse your customer data. This makes it easier to understand a customer’s history with your business. It also allows you to take advantage of automation to personalize how you do business with them. Most CRM systems offer automation features that let you set up rules and triggers based on specific events or actions, such as immediately after the customer makes a purchase.

6. Grow Your List

Your list is the core of your business, whether you know it or not. The people are most interested in what you do and are likely to buy from you. The more people on your list, the more money you can make. Scale your list to scale your business.

How? There are quite a few strategies you could apply to grow your business:

  • Offer a freebie, something so good that people will be willing to give up their email address for it.
  • Write a guest post to get in front of new audiences and gain authority by being featured on other blogs.
  • Write articles for high-traffic sites like ReadWrite, Medium, and LinkedIn Pulse — ending with a link back to your sign-up page, of course.

7. Establish a Customer Loyalty System

A customer loyalty system is a marketing strategy designed to encourage customers to continue to shop at or use the services of a business associated with the program. Customers typically receive points, which can be redeemed for rewards. Loyalty programs are used by small and large businesses alike, including both brick-and-mortar and online retailers.

8. Look for Partners

You should always be on the lookout for partnerships with companies that can help your business grow. If you’re new to e-commerce, that means looking for ways to get more people to hear about your products.

It’s important to choose partners who can play a role in growing your business. Pick partners with a broader distribution channel than your own, for example. Also, consider what kind of brand awareness a partnership would bring you.

9. License Related Products or Services

If partnering with another business isn’t on the table, you can nevertheless either license your products out or license someone else’s products. The point here is to increase awareness of your brand. Licensing helps you get the word out about your business while even making a little money in the process.

The economic benefits of licensing can result in significant revenue and profit growth. The cost of sales, marketing, and distribution can be shared with your partner while you also gain access to new markets and consumer bases. Whether you are a well-established business or a startup, licensing is an intelligent way to grow your business.

10. Diversify Your Product Offerings

Adding new product lines is an effective way to grow your business. It allows you to reach new customers, expand into new markets, and increase your brand awareness. Diversifying your product line is good for your business and good for your profit margins, and the customer experience you offer.

Businesses that rely on a single product or service are susceptible to market changes or unexpected events. By having multiple revenue streams in different markets and industries, your business becomes less vulnerable to such events and more capable of withstanding unforeseen challenges in the future.

11. Automate Everything That Makes Sense

It’s challenging to handle the entire scope of your business effectively. That’s why automation is so popular in the current business environment. It’s one of the best ways to take care of many tasks at once, letting you focus on more pressing issues.

The key is to automate everything that makes sense to grow your business while ensuring you don’t sacrifice quality. The easiest way to get started with automation is by using a scheduling tool to manage your social media accounts. For example, you can use the tool to schedule a week’s worth of posts in 10 minutes. Another easy task to automate is email marketing.

12. Hire New, Specialized People to Help You

When you’re just starting out, you do it all. You build a product or service, market it, sell it, and support it. But as your business grows, you need to focus on your main strengths and hire new people to help you scale.

This doesn’t always mean hiring someone full-time. Instead, you can bring on board specialized personnel, or teams, who can help you complete specific tasks. Scorpion, for instance, often helps new and emerging businesses scale up their presence on various social media platforms, improve their SEO, or get a grip on multiple other mission-critical tasks.

13. Improve Your Customer Service Offerings

Customer service is the backbone of any business. It’s a crucial element for increasing sales and gaining customer loyalty. As your business grows, so must your customer service capabilities.

Handling customer service takes time, effort, and dedication. The best customer service takes advantage of the internet and social networking platforms already part of your business. Your customers are likely to be online and will have access to the same tools you do. Ensure that your customers have an easy way to reach you when they need help.

14. Develop Passive Income Sources

As a business owner, you need to make the most of your time — and there are only so many hours in the day. So while it’s probably impossible to generate 100% passive income, it is possible to develop a strategy to generate additional revenue streams that require less effort from you.

There are a variety of ways you can generate passive income as an entrepreneur, but all of them tie into one thing: selling products or services that require little upkeep after the sale, such as:

  • Expanding into new products or services
  • Creating and selling informational products
  • Selling physical products online

15. Become a Thought Leader in Your Field

Thought leadership is a marketing strategy that focuses on creating and sharing content that shows that you are knowledgeable, credible, and trustworthy. It aims to inform and educate audiences to win their trust, and it can be a great way to grow your business.

Specifically, you can use thought leadership to differentiate yourself from your competitors and build your own authority. This can be done through social media, blogging (including guest blog posts), speaking at events, and even writing books to attract new customers.

Growing Your Business Is Exciting

These strategies won’t transform your business overnight, but even implementing a few of them can yield impressive results. And the sooner you do that, the sooner you’ll watch your business become what you’ve always dreamed it would be.

Inner Image Credit: Provided by the Author; Thank you!

Top Image Credit: by fauxels; Pexels; Thank you!

By Joe Martin

VP of Marketing

Joe Martin is currently the VP of marketing at Scorpion, a leading provider of technology and marketing to help small businesses grow. Formerly he was CloudApp’s GM and CMO and a Head of Marketing at Adobe. With over 15 years of experience in the industry and tech that makes it run, he provides strategic guidance on how to build and use the right stack and marketing for businesses to grow. Joe believes marketers need smart training and leadership to scale company growth. Connect with Joe on LinkedIn and follow him on Twitter @joeDmarti.

Sourced from readwrite

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Three trends that will have your marketing department humming

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By Liz Carter

As technology transforms and industries shift, important new marketing trends are beginning to emerge.

Change is in the air. Of course, most things are in a constant state of change, but technology and digital transformation are driving bigger changes at a faster pace. This is impacting marketing departments across every industry. In response, three exciting trends are emerging that will help your marketing team run like a well-oiled machine, even as circumstances shift.

TREND #1: RENEWED FOCUS ON AGILITY 

Markets are experiencing disruption, business structures are changing, customer needs are evolving, and your competitor’s product features are advancing at breakneck speeds. Many organizations are struggling to keep up with the pace of business today.

Development teams faced this reality years ago and responded by implementing agile methodologies that dramatically accelerated product development. But doing so created challenges in other areas. If adjacent departments aren’t equally agile, they can create bottlenecks. Today, marketing organizations are looking to boost agility by building flexible teams that help organizations turn on a dime.

But an agile team isn’t built overnight. Two key components are required: a company culture that supports and embraces change, and technologies that support collaboration, enable communication, and help teams adapt to new situations. These technologies are widely available, and most organizations have implemented them.

At my company, we’ve experienced several structural changes over the years, including an acquisition followed by a spinout to private equity and a shift to virtual events and digital campaigns—exactly the types of changes that require a marketing team that’s ready to pivot at a moment’s notice.

When organizations experience structural changes, customers worry. Our biggest challenge was helping our customers understand how our new business structure would—or would not—impact them. Overnight, our focus shifted, and we realized how important flexibility really is.

A FEW POINTERS ON DEVELOPING AGILITY

Increased agility comes with experience, so practice working together as a team to address challenges. This is best done in times of relative calm and not during a crisis. Start by ensuring you can internally communicate the changes taking place and the reasons for them.

Secondly, focus on process. Help teams understand how the changes will impact the projects they’re working on and allow them to set a new course that realigns their efforts with the latest corporate strategy.

Finally, promote cross-functional collaboration by bringing teams together for regular meetings that ensure everyone knows what everyone else is working on.

Most of all, train your teams to anticipate change as a constant and to understand that through change comes opportunity.

TREND #2: MARKETING AUTOMATION 2.0 

The introduction of automation transformed marketing. Data collection, analytics, and streamlined processes allowed us to approach potential customers with greater precision. But automation is no longer delivering the necessary results.

Modern marketing teams are now shifting to tools that provide data insights and metrics across entire accounts. Casting a wider net with a greater degree of personalization allows us to better understand the people we’re marketing to and helps elicit the desired response.

Today, my team and I are seeing more participants in the buying cycle. There may be 10 or more people from the same company visiting our website and becoming involved in the decision-making process. To capitalize, we’re shifting from a qualified lead to a qualified account made up of multiple individuals engaged in a buying cycle.

My team has also started moving to tools that offer more information about an organization’s combined journeys across our site to identify what they’re researching and why. And we’re rethinking how leads are scored and how entire teams should be approached with the most effective messages.

The more we understand engagement across an entire account, the more relevant the content we serve them will be—and the more context and data we can provide our sales teams.

TREND #3: THE RISE OF SHORT FORM VIDEO CONTENT

My team at ServiceMax recently performed a website analysis that showed two of the top three most viewed assets on our website are videos. Along with analyst reports, videos are driving the most downloads and the most form fills—important in building a healthy sales funnel.

It’s clear that as people get busier and attention spans shorten, videos are the answer. They are easier to consume, and people seem more willing to click on them versus long form articles where they tend to just scan headlines and subtitles. Videos also provide more control over the content, as it can be very challenging to get everything you want to convey into a subtitle.

CHANGE ISN’T LIMITED TO MARKETING

In many ways, the world seems to have entered a state of rapid evolution. While it’s difficult to see exactly when or how we will emerge from this process, it’s clear there will be some new form of normal. Until then, our focus is on identifying changing situations early, understanding the potential impact of those changes, and quickly and effectively adapting to them. It’s time to prepare ourselves, our teams, and our organizations to operate adeptly, even as the sands are shifting under our feet.

Feature Image Credit: Rawpixel.com / AdobeStock 

By Liz Carter

Sourced from Fast Company

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Marketing Specialist Cody Cruz Knows How to Make Things Go Viral

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By Amir Bakian

The goal of marketing is to attract an audience and get them to purchase your product or service. In today’s world, this requires a different approach than traditional marketing techniques from years ago. Many factors go into finding the right target market and understanding what they want, which Cody Cruz knows how to do very well. A marketing specialist with a lengthy portfolio of successfully making projects go viral, Cruz specializes in branding, social media, and digital marketing strategies for businesses looking to expand their customer base. He has experience in online media, advertising, communications, and digital strategy, which he believes are crucial for business owners in today’s environment.

Cruz is the founder and CEO of Viral Press Agency, a digital marketing agency that specializes in social media management, content creation, talent management, voiceovers, and digital marketing. His clients include many celebrities, athletes, and other high-profile customers in other industries. Over the years, Cruz has built a vast network to provide immediate exposure for brands and businesses. As the marketing and tech landscape continues evolving, Viral Press Agency is well-prepared to take its clients’ brands to greater levels through a multifaceted approach.

With more people throughout the world turning to the internet for information and entertainment, Cruzbelieves that should be the starting point for all business owners. It is often said that content is king, so content creation is a core component business owners should incorporate into their marketing strategies. However, in this case, quality will matter more than quantity. People’s attention spans are becoming increasingly shorter, which is why you need riveting content with the potential to go viral. But how do you do that? According to Cruz, you need to understand your audience to get their attention. An expert in that area, Cruz has a knack for understanding what will attract an audience with minimal effort from his clients.

Cruz’s success comes from understanding the needs of his clients’ target markets and their competition. He then uses these insights to build winning social media strategies that will help businesses get more customers through paid and organic means. Cruz ensures customer satisfaction by connecting his clients with the right tools, websites, content, and influencers so they can build powerful brands. From content creation to management, Cruz and his team can place their clients’ names at the top of the minds of their audiences. Sometimes, Cruz has found success in helping his clients reach new heights with their companies through innovative advertising techniques such as videos or infographics that attract a broader demographic.

Social media management is another skill Cruz leverages to help his clients. He is renowned for building brands on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other social media platforms, as well as generating buzz for events like trade shows or conferences. Cruz’s well-executed social media strategies have helped countless businesses grow from a grassroots level to become global giants. His mission is to expand his reach, helping even more startups scale and achieve the highest level of success. Cruz’s work has been featured in publications such as LA Wire, NY Weekly, London Daily Post, Yahoo Finance, Business Insider, California Herald, Influencive, Disrupt, and Fox 34, among others.

By Amir Bakian

Sourced from The Village Voice

 

 

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5 Tips For Growing Your Social Media Accounts Organically

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By Jerry Balworth

Social media is a great tool to help business owners expand their online presence, publish informative and authoritative content, and, most importantly, engage with their customers. Having a strong social media strategy can grow your business exponentially.

Using an organic approach to help grow your social media accounts results in authentic engagement and true consumer loyalty.

But first, to grow your social media accounts, you need to master your social media strategy.

Whether you’ve recently started your own business or work in-house, here are 5 top tips to organically grow your social media accounts.

Consistent & Captivating Content

Creating content is one of the most important aspects of growing your social media account. Users tend to gravitate towards consistency. This includes consistency in the type of content shared and the frequency with which it is posted.

You will find that social media users are more likely to engage with a post if they know the type of message or branding experience they are signing up for.

Your content has got to be consistent; it has to be exciting! Whilst consistency is key; you should remember the old age saying quality over quantity.

Planning, identifying and researching one’s target audience and keeping an eye on the competitors are just a few ways to create meaningful content.

Engage & Acknowledge Your Followers

Would you keep talking to someone who never returned your messages? Probably not. The same works for customers.

Users will not want to communicate with you or follow your brand on social media if they receive no benefit. That’s why it’s crucial to interact with your followers on social media.

If you want to create a social media presence, you must turn your accounts into a community. That isn’t to say if someone comments on one of your posts, you must respond, but at the very least, you should like it.

You may also use posts to ask and answer questions and acknowledge and share user-generated content to show your appreciation to your followers and customers. Engaging with your followers will help you develop authentic relationships and boost your social media presence.

Establish Your Niche

I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase “jack of all trades, master of none” before. This is true not only in business but also in content marketing.

Defining your niche is preferable so that even your customers know your values, which helps you stand out.

Monitor Your Competitors

Other successful competitors’ social media accounts can be great blueprints for beginners. Keep an eye on accounts that have a similar audience target as you. Have a look at what is working for them? What type of posts generates the most engagement for them?

When looking to increase growth organically, there are many challenges to getting your business off the ground. However, studying what has worked and, most importantly, why it works can help you understand the best ways to grow your account.

Choosing The Right Social Media Platform

It is very tempting to be active on all social media platforms, but do all platforms benefit your business?

Knowing which social media platform works best for your business is essential. For example, Instagram/Facebook may be a good platform if you own a clothing business or sell jewellery products. Still, if you are offering a service, it may be best to use Linkedin due to its professional audience.

Another tip is to focus on the platform that delivers the best results. Although this is not something you would necessarily know when you first start using social media, you may need to give it a few months to monitor results. But once you’ve identified the platform for you, you can determine what needs to be done to organically push your social media account.

Ultimately have fun with it; social media should be used to spread positive messages and show your brand’s personality. Using these five tips, you lay the groundwork in terms of strategy, but if you find something that works, stick with it. Don’t be afraid to get involved in the conversation.

By Jerry Balworth

Sourced from Talk Business

 

 

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How brands can stand out in the customer experience economy

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By Morgan Mitchell

Online customer experience is changing like never before. So, brands need to decide: adapt or die, writes BOSCO™’s Morgan Mitchell.

The new customer experience economy is set to be the making or the breaking of not just newer brands but established ones too. Since 2020, the customer experience (CX) online has evolved dramatically. The need for a winning online CX is essential for success and is proving to be one of the most important and fundamental elements of marketing in today’s digital landscape.

With 81% of retailers increasing their investment in CX over the past two years, what does that mean for brands, consumers and the long-term relationship between the two?

The BOSCO™ index measures the online footprint of brands and benchmarks how effective they are with their paid and organic media channels. Using third-party data, BOSCO™ generates a score between 0-1,000 to determine how successful brands are in the digital space.

What is online CX and what does it include?

Online CX refers to the digital customer experience of your brand. It includes every stage of the consumer buying journey, including pre-purchase, purchase and post-purchase.

Online CX is a huge part of brand perception as it encompasses every interaction a customer has with you digitally. That could be from first finding your Instagram page to using your online chat function to troubleshoot an order problem. While that may sound overwhelming, online CX is really just about providing a persona to your brand and carrying this through every customer-facing element of the business. And as we’re sure you know, consistency is key.

Why is online CX changing?

Unsurprisingly by now, the online and digital space is changing. Major steps have been brought forward by the Covid-19 pandemic as the world moved solely online as a result of international lockdowns. The need for online customer support skyrocketed and brands that previously didn’t have a digital-first approach scrambled to catch up.

Plus, it’s getting even more difficult for brands to retain consumers. 94% of sales and marketing professionals say that their business is effective at nurturing newer relationships during the ‘interaction’ and ‘awareness’ stage of the buyer journey. But that all changes at the advocacy stage, where professionals feel they are only 77% effective. What that tells us is that it’s harder to sustain long-term consumer relationships. This is where online CX comes into play.

So, how are brands adapting and strategizing to fit this new customer experience economy? What can we learn from these insights and consumer behaviour patterns?

Instant messaging & online chat functions

As the pandemic hit in 2020, consumers moved their lives entirely online in a way that hadn’t been seen before. We couldn’t pop into a shop to see a product, make a return, or just speak to an employee. Phone lines became jammed, so consumers turned instead to online messaging.

Since then, brands and retailers alike have amped-up their online messaging capabilities. Whether that be a live chat function on their site or through their social media, messaging became the go-to way to interact with brands online. In fact, between 2019 and 2020, social messaging rose in popularity by 110% – that’s huge.

Implement an omnichannel CX approach

Businesses fail to form meaningful, positive relationships with consumers when processes become tricky to navigate. For example, support tickets are passed from department to department without proper follow-up.

Let’s put that into context. A consumer messages you on social media with a complaint. The social team pass this on to customer service where the consumer has to explain the issue again. This then gets passed on to a complaints department and once again, the consumer must explain the problem. This could go on and on, meanwhile, the consumer is becoming more and more annoyed at the lack of communication within your business.

Instead, an integrated omnichannel CX system is seamless. Agents can easily transfer customer messages between apps and departments without the need to start from the beginning every time. This creates an easy, problem-free interaction that solves problems quickly, efficiently and, most importantly, leaves the consumer with a positive experience.

It’s not just about problem-solving either. Great online CX is more about being proactive rather than reactive. A great example of omnichannel CX is Zara’s (BOSCO™ score: 731) use of ‘Store Mode’ in its app. This allows users to only see products available in their local Zara store which they can then buy online and pick up in that store on the same day. This real-time shopping perfectly blends both online and offline channels using GPS and QR technology to its advantage.

Be open and responsive to feedback

When it comes to consumer feedback, there tends to be only two options: incredibly positive or incredibly negative. No one bothers to leave feedback or a review for an average experience, but they have plenty to say when everything has either gone right or wrong.

Being open to and receiving feedback is a huge part of uncovering valuable insights into your consumer base. While you may think your online CX is bulletproof, your consumers are the people who can really put that to the test. What they have to say is a massive part of the digital evolution of your brand. Plus, that open-ended communication helps you to build that relationship further and patch up damaged ones. Often, your next clever CX move will be the result of real-time feedback directly from the consumers themselves.

Uber (BOSCO™ score: 738) is a leading example of using customer insights to improve its online CX. The business makes around 22,000 tweaks to its app every month to customize it in every city it operates in. It does this using incident and reliability reports to tailor how the app operates based on where its user is. This eliminates data problems early and lets users know it is listening and adapting.

The key to digital transformation

Standing out in the digital space isn’t easy, and with the rapidly changing online CX expectations of consumers, brands need to fast decide their strategy.

The first step is to stay up to date with changes and developments as they happen. Take note of other brands that are adapting their online CX well and look at how you can implement something similar. With 58% of consumers expecting more from services than they did pre-pandemic, the need for integrated, omnichannel CX with room for personalization is key to digital transformation.

BOSCO™ is an AI learning platform that integrates your cross-channel digital marketing data into one personalized dashboard. The data allows marketers to make better digital marketing spend decisions with the help of data-driven insights, forecasting and mapping tools. Unlock your BOSCO™ score, today.

By Morgan Mitchell

Sourced from The Drum

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9 Ways HubSpot Can Benefit Your Marketing Career

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By Saffron Clacy

HubSpot is one of the best CRM software on the market. Here are some ways you can use it in your marketing career.

HubSpot has been known for being the best customer relationship management platform on the market for businesses of all sizes, but what specifically can the company offer your marketing career?

If you aspire to work in the marketing field or want to start your projects, you’ll want to invest time into a good program to manage customer databases for companies you work for, as well as for your use. Here are some HubSpot features that will help your career get off to a great start.

1. Customer Relationship Management

HubSpot has one of the top CRM platforms above all others, so whether you end up growing a team during your career or choose to work solo, you can guarantee all of your important records will be managed effectively!

Add members of your team to the platform to boost productivity —such as calls or meetings— important information on contacts, companies, deals, and more. Know more about your audience by tracking their patterns, which will overall transform into a collaborative and supportive online workspace!

2. Social Media Management

Not only can you use HubSpot to craft amazing emails, but their social media marketing tools as well. HubSpot can be especially useful to you if you intend on managing your own social media brand! Increase your brand awareness to the public, obtain leads —and hopefully conversions—build relationships with your social media audience, and delve into competitor research.

Instead of spending a fortune on independent programs, you can use the HubSpot social media software to connect your accounts, schedule a bulk collection of posts ahead of time, design images with Canva build into HubSpot, customize the publishing schedule, build social media campaigns with their premium templates, publishing platform, analytics, and more.

3. WordPress Integration

If you’re at that point in your career where you’d like to build a solid website but have no idea how to optimize it, HubSpot has a great tool for it. Integrate WordPress into your HubSpot account, then you can have access to all of their amazing features.

After setting everything up, you can add call-to-action buttons to your site to encourage clicks, create custom forms for potential clients to fill out, set up an email automation feature when people agree to subscribe to emails, and effectively manage your website analytics! Know exactly how many people are accessing your page, and all the nitty-gritty details along with it.

4. Search Engine Optimization

Learning the basics of SEO usually becomes a normality at some point in your marketing career, but with the HubSpot SEO Marketing Software, this can make the process way more simple. It offers advice on what you can do to rank your content higher, assistance with content strategy, accurate reports on your Google ranking, and support at every corner with your blogs, landing pages, emails, and more.

If you’re looking for a system that has the entire package, you need to implement this into your marketing strategy. Furthermore, if you’re still worried due to being an SEO novice, check out the best websites to learn SEO!

5. Sales Tool

Are you working on building a business alongside your career, but do not know sales? HubSpot can show you how. Marketing is important, but so is managing your sales with a platform that can manage them.

The HubSpot Sales Hub Enterprise allows you to take part in sales engagement tools, monitor internal business permissions, manage payments, have access to sales data, analytics, and the overall activity and progress of a business. With these tools at hand, all of your sales information can be stored and managed with ease.

6. Email Marketing Tools

HubSpot has a range of tools in their Marketing Hub. These can be used to build an email list, store and manage contact data such as location or phone numbers, create innovative email campaigns, design forms people can use to sign up to emails, and so much more.

Choose from custom templates, build categorized lists, upload your current clients, and more. In using this feature, you can slowly build up a list of loyal customers that you can manage with a few clicks of the button! If you’re looking to learn the basics of email campaigns, here’s how to leverage email marketing with this boot camp course.

7. Reliable Analytics

With numbers, they need to be accurate, and HubSpot offers precise analytics that can be a big help in your marketing journey. If you decide to send out an email, there are statistics you can always refer back to tweak your strategy.

Check out the number of clicks, the percentage of people who opened your email, the number of emails that didn’t send, and even whether your customers opened your email on Firefox. With solid statistics to keep track of, HubSpot will be your best asset when it comes to those digits.

8. Customized Database

Two Men Using Computer at Work

How good are your organizational skills? This is one of the most important things when climbing up the marketing ladder, and HubSpot has everything you need if you struggle to keep track.

With the database system, you can add in contacts manually or using an Excel spreadsheet, create numerous records, email or call contacts, see communication history, and even integrate Gmail or Outlook to make sure you’re sending to the right people! Don’t stress about that one company that hasn’t received a newsletter yet, you can easily filter their details at the click of a button,

9. High-Quality Customer Service

Employees on Phone Workplace

When starting your marketing career, you need a trustworthy support network! Not only does HubSpot have proven marketing features that work, but their customer service is one you can always rely on.

Easily contact the support team by clicking the chat box via their website, type in your problem, and you’ll receive a friendly support specialist in a matter of minutes. HubSpot is fast, reliable, and goes as far as recording videos on Loom to give you a hands-on demonstration to help you. The effort put into customer satisfaction is phenomenal, and knowing you have a support network will decrease your career anxiety.

Exceed in Your Marketing Career

Working in the field as a solo marketing entrepreneur or employee means you need the right programs to push you forward. HubSpot is professional, easy to use, and will ultimately be the key to your success in the world of business.

All aspects of marketing will benefit from the program, whether it’s content marketing, mobile marketing, direct to consumer, social media marketing, or email marketing. Your stakes are higher with a reputable platform on your side every step of the way.

By Saffron Clacy

Saffron has been freelancing for over five years, specializing in the copywriting and creative writing industry. She is based in Melbourne, Australia. More From Saffron Clacy

Sourced from MUO

 

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