Tag digital advertising

The digital marketing landscape is kicking into high gear for the fall and the holiday selling season. Now is a key time to get informed on the latest in digital marketing trends. Many people believe that digital marketing is still the best adaption for businesses to use. This has been proven by the fact that there are still new digital marketing trends being developed and put into place each month. The following are the most Top 5 most important changes we believe will impact the marketing space.

Instagram Adds New Tools to Improve Content Recommendation

With Instagram’s new Explore feature, you can mark multiple posts as ‘Not Interested’ to streamline your algorithmic Instagram experience. It should enable you to delete a bunch of trash instantly, demonstrating to Instagram that you’re not interested in the topics you selected.
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Also, Instagram is testing the ability for users to opt-out of seeing suggested posts with certain words, phrases, or emojis in the caption.

‘Group Invite Links’ Added to Messenger to Streamline Group Chats

The new feature will allow administrators to share group chat links, which will be beneficial to parents and study groups as we enter the new school year. As Messenger explains: “This highly desired feature will allow users to connect with family, friends, and communities more easily, eliminating the need to search for and add group members individually. With group chat invite links, only the admin can turn the link on or off, and they can ‘approve’ new members.”

A Live Test of the Tweet Editing Option is Now Enabled in the App

All users will be able to see tweet edit histories by clicking on the pencil icon in edited tweets, which will include a notice at the bottom stating that the tweet has been edited. Because of potential misuse, many people are already sounding the alarm about the potential damage that could be caused by edited tweets, edit history will be available for all to view. “For this experiment, Tweets may be edited a few times in the 30 minutes following publication. An icon, timestamp, and label will appear on the edited Tweet to inform readers that it has been altered. Tapping the label will take visitors to the Tweet’s Edit History, which includes previous editions of the original message.”

Twitter Expands Access to the Private Sharing feature ‘Circles’ to All Users

According to Twitter, the overwhelmingly positive response to its new enclosed group tweeting feature, which was first made available to some users in May, has prompted them to provide it to all Android, iOS, and web users. Before you post to Twitter, you will see an option to share your post with either your full followers’ list or your Circle group. You can add or remove members of your Circle at any time, and it can include up to 150 people. You may make any changes you like to your Circle without notifying anyone. A green indicator will alert Circle members that their tweets are only visible to those inside the group.

Google Tests the ‘Browse Place’ Search Feature With Swipeable Cards

To provide users with a more engaging search experience, Google is experimenting with showing place cards that you can swipe through and then click on. In other words, it’s kind of like a new local pack grid view for restaurants.

Keep these upcoming changes in mind when mapping out your marketing plan. Being the first to accommodate these trends could create new opportunities for your business and give you a distinct advantage.

Digital marketing has made tailoring marketing campaigns to specific demographics and interests easier and more lucrative than ever. Presently, device targeting is a key consideration for marketing efforts. Not only should marketers design campaigns that are mobile-friendly, they should design those campaigns as mobile-first. Smartphones dominate the device landscape in the present digital age and to overlooking that usage reality could be a disaster for any digital marketing strategy.

Over the past decade, the relationship between consumers and brands has moved from the physical to the digital at an expeditious pace. Consumers interact with an average of six digital touchpoints when engaging with a brand, whether that be content on social media, payment through wallet, news from SMS, or offers via email, to name but a few. A brand cannot rely on a single source to connect with consumers. Critically, however, all these touchpoints can be directly accessed through a smartphone, making mobile the obvious nucleus of any digital communication strategy.

Andy Gladwin of Cheetah Digital provided some insights to the digital community, to stating how a comprehensive mobile strategy can furnish enterprises with the tools to build more meaningful digital relationships with consumers. This mobile strategy can empower them to gather vast amounts of consumer opt-ins, preference insights, and behavioral data, and unify and harmonize that data in a single, accessible source.

The problem of harmonizing data from multiple sources

“Always Be Collecting Data.” It’s the ABCD of marketing. However, in the data economy, it’s not uncommon to hear marketers lament that they have too much data to analyze, or that the data they have is siloed or in inaccessible formats.

Fifty-three per cent of organizations report that they have only a few of their marketing channels connected. Conflate that with the fact that, on average, marketing departments have a tech stack boasting 12 systems — the vast majority of enterprise brands are using many more. A single, accessible view of the customer seems like a pie-in-the-sky utopia.

As mammoth a task as it appears, centralization is imperative. Andy Gladwin explains:

“Modern enterprises are awash with data, but it’s fragmented from all manner of sources and siloed in disparate systems which are not integrated, nor were designed to be. Having a centralized, single source of truth of the customer serves as a complete, up-to-date record and empowers marketers to build lasting and more meaningful relationships with customers through accurate, timely, and trustworthy data. The closer marketers can get to the utopia of a golden record, the more likely they are to interact with customers through preferred channels with preferred messages.”

To cut the marketing buzzwords, the single source of truth is quite simply a unified customer profile, which includes identifying information about the customer, the channels they use to interact with the organization, their most recent interaction with the organization, and which recent offer they reacted to positively. The single source of truth also encompasses how a customer engages with the organization, including their most recent activity and lifetime value, complemented by a raft of preference and behavioral data.

This is where mobile comes to the fore; connecting brands, consumers, and touchpoints, it is an ecosystem that offers many channels and backed up with the right technology — harmonizing and actioning data.

“Devices have gone from being convenient to connected and, through this period, content has evolved from being relatively basic to incredibly rich. The evolution of the channel ecosystem where engagement has moved from transactional to conversational gives brands more of an opportunity to engage, listen, and influence customer behavior. For too long marketing has been a decidedly one-way affair, with brands seeking to push their message louder and further into more intimate contacts. However, it’s not better marketing, just better targeting. Using mobile to engage in true two-way communications with consumers through legacy and emerging channels will be the next significant paradigm shift.”

Lead generation is one of the primary reasons that businesses conduct digital marketing campaigns. In fact, lead generation is a pillar of many successful businesses, both offline and online. Every marketer running a lead generation campaign struggles with how to best optimize the campaign within a limited budget. Here are 5 tips on how to optimize for lead generation campaigns.

1. Become data-obsessed

As marketers, we have access to a lot of data. But too much data will only lead to more questions than answers. Becoming data-obsessed is not about collecting as much information as possible, it’s about collecting the right, high-quality information to serve your purpose – to better engage your audience, for example.

The first step towards optimizing lead generation activities is to therefore consider what data is being collected and why. There should be two main focuses when collecting data: demographic and behavioral.

Demographic data is important to truly understand the ideal customer profile for your business. This could include what the organization looks like, the size of the business, the industry it operates in, where it is located, and the people within it (your core personas, job roles, seniority levels, interests, and whatever you feel is relevant for better targeting and segmentation).

Behavioral information is also key and this includes what your prospects and customers are doing, how they are engaging with you and your content, what channels they are using, and what topics are resonating with them.

The combination of both demographic and behavioral information becomes extremely powerful. It can be used to take personalization to the next level, and it allows tailoring of communication during the qualification process and beyond to ensure relevant and timely outreach.

2. Grade and score your leads

Not all leads are created equal. Does a lead sit within your target audience and is it right for the business? Is this contact ready to engage with sales or is it too early? The quality of the lead may not always be good enough and this is often the main source of tension between sales and marketing departments. The sales team may feel leads are lacking in quality, while the marketing team say leads are not being qualified or followed up on in an effective, timely manner. Lead scoring and grading can address this and add value.

First, sales and marketing teams must work together on the rules and principles that help to define a “good lead”, and ensure time is being spent targeting those of most value to the business. A lead must be graded directly against what your business’ ideal customer profile looks like. Upon collecting data, it is easier to make a direct comparison of the two, and ensure a focus for both sales and marketing teams on those closest to the ideal profile.

The second element is to score leads on behavioral information. If a prospect views a blog, it shows some engagement. However, if they also visit the pricing page, this demonstrates greater intent and higher scoring, and – if attending webinars – even higher points can be awarded, as it shows commitment.

Grading leads creates opportunities to nurture them in a bid to upgrade their status. Score them and get them to engage until sales-ready, approaching them differently to those who have shown more interest and intent.

3. Work collaboratively with a common language

The relationship between the sales and marketing departments is often not the easiest to manage. The reality is that without a solid understanding between sales and marketing, the ability to generate quality leads is vastly limited. Is there a common understanding and agreement around what constitutes a sales qualified lead, a marketing qualified lead, and an opportunity entering your pipeline?

Both marketing and sales teams must work on building this relationship by having regular meetings to ensure there is a shared agreement on goals and approach, and that a consistent language is used across departments. Without agreed definitions or consistent management of leads through the sales funnel, the business will be held back. The two departments must not simply co-exist. When collaborative working processes are introduced properly, that is when value will truly be created and the quality of leads will increase.

4. Track everything

As a marketer, you should track everything you do. In a number of organizations, marketing is still perceived as a cost, and it’s essential to shift this perception and become known as a revenue generator in your business. Often, marketing budgets are in the firing line when cuts occur, but once you track and demonstrate value it allows the marketing team to be seen as an equal contributor. This will result in more trust and, potentially, access to a larger budget for future activities.

The whole prospect and customer engagement process should be monitored and tracked, from the first click on the website, to the sales funnel, and the final closure. Visibility of when a deal closed and where marketing contributed to initiate or further the engagement and move the opportunity along the sales funnel demonstrates value to your organization and changes perceptions. This can help to fuel better relationships across departments and improve sales figures as teams work together.

5. Test, test, test!

The importance of testing should not be underestimated – refining your activities will maximize their value. For example, using AB testing on email layouts to see the impact on click-through rates can help to optimize the best email format, subject headers, and sender information. The same for landing pages on your website. Again, this comes back to data collection. The more data you collect and the more this is analyzed, the better the return on marketing activities. In fact, testing should be an ongoing process that never stops in any professional lead generation campaign.