Thursday, April 30, 2020

Best Marketing Automation Software

Marketing automation software helps businesses streamline marketing processes.

By automating marketing tasks, it’s much easier to generate leads, build customer relationships, and drive conversions at scale. As your business grows, it’s impossible to manage every single lead and customer manually. But marketing automation software moves customers through your sales funnel with ease.

Marketing automation software provides leads with a consistent experience across multiple digital marketing channels.

By leveraging marketing automation software, you can personalize the customer experience by providing the most accurate information and promotions to customers with different needs.

While the terms are often used interchangeably, it’s important to understand that marketing automation software is not the same as email marketing software or CRM software.

Marketing automation is a component of customer relationship management, and email can be a component of marketing automation—but the three are not one in the same.

The Top 6 Best Marketing Automation Software

After conducting extensive research, I’ve narrowed down the top marketing automation solutions on the market today. Here’s an in-depth review of each one on our list:

#1 – HubSpot — Best Overall Marketing Automation Software

• Visual automations editor
• Starts at $50 per month
• $800 for full automation features
• Up to 90% off for startups
Request a free demo

HubSpot is one of the most well-known names in the marketing world. This inbound marketing software has everything you need to automate dozens of tasks at scale.

With HubSpot, you’re able to customize sophisticated and highly targeted workflows using a visual editor. You can use this tool for simple follow-up messages or even complex campaigns with multiple touch-points throughout the customer journey.

HubSpot makes it easy for you to automate your emails with drip campaigns. Just choose from dozens of pre-set triggers, conditions, or customer actions.

The HubSpot Marketing Hub starts at $50 per month. However, that package doesn’t give you the full automation benefits.

Pricing for marketing automation features from HubSpot starts at $800 per month, billed annually.

It’s a bit pricey, especially for smaller businesses with lower budgets. But when you buy a product from HubSpot, you’re getting more than just software. You’ll also benefit from HubSpot’s exceptional customer support team.

If you’re a startup, you might be eligible for up to 90% off through the HubSpot for Startups Program. Contact the HubSpot sales team to request a free demo.

#2 – ActiveCampaign — Best For Small Business

• Starts at $49 per month
• Trusted by 90,000+ businesses
• Easy to use
• 14 day free trial
Start for free

More than 90,000 businesses trust ActiveCampaign for marketing automation. It’s arguably the best visual automation builder with drag-and-drop functionality on the market today.

ActiveCampaign makes it easy for anyone, regardless of technical skill level, to set up both simple and complex marketing automations.

From site tracking to event tracking, attribution, split actions, and automation goals, ActiveCampaign has it all.

ActiveCampaign takes a complex subject and simplifies it with an easy to use dashboard and management tools, which is why it’s our top pick for small businesses.

Pricing for ActiveCampaign Plus with CRM and sales automation starts at $49 per month. The price is based on the number of contacts in your list.

This subscription comes with email marketing, lead scoring, ecommerce integrations, and more.

If you want advanced features such as customer attribution, path to purchase, split automations, and machine learning capabilities like predictive sending, predictive content, and win probably, you’ll need to upgrade to ActiveCampaign Professional. This package starts at $129 per month.

At both of these price points, ActiveCampaign is an affordable option for small businesses. Try it free for 14 days.

#3 – GetResponse — Best Features For Marketing Automation

• Starts at $15 per month
• $49 for advanced automations
• Lots of features
• 30 day free trial
Get started for free

GetResponse is a powerful and affordable marketing automation solution that’s used by small businesses and large organizations alike. Over 350,000 businesses across the globe use this software to automate marketing processes.

From capturing new leads to generating sales, recovering abandoned carts, and driving engagement from your site traffic, GetResponse has tools to meet your needs.

It’s easy to set up an automated customer journey by applying conditions, actions, and filters that will automatically trigger users through a pre-defined journey based on their behavior.

You’ll benefit from advanced segmentation and lead scoring, which will ultimately improve the effectiveness of your campaigns.

GetResponse is a top choice for ecommerce sites. It helps you understand your customers’ buying habits, browsing behavior, targets abandoned shopping carts and automatically recommends relevant products.

Pricing for GetResponse starts at $15 per month. This comes with basic automation features like welcome emails, drip campaigns, click and open followups, and contact tagging.

To get the most out of GetResponse marketing automation, you’ll need to sign up for the Plus package, starting at $49 per month. The upgrade gives you custom workflows, the automation builder tool, lead scoring, abandoned cart recovery, site tracking, event tracking, and automated segmentation. However, you’ll be limited to just five custom workflows at this rate.

For those of you who need more than five workflows, you’ll have to upgrade to GetResponse Professional, which starts at $99 per month.

It’s worth noting that the feature-rich automation software from GetResponse can be a bit difficult to navigate through. For anyone who is just looking for simple automation tools, you might find GetResponse to be a little overwhelming.

But if you’re looking for as many automation features as possible at an affordable price point, look no further than GetResponse. Try it free for 30 days.

#4 – OptinMonster — Best For Landing Page Lead Generation

• Starts at $9 per month
• Best for lead generation
• Automated landing page campaigns
• 14 day money back guarantee
Try it risk-free

OptinMonster is a bit different compared to some of the other options on our list. This software is not really a full-service or all-inclusive marketing automation solution.

It’s a lead generation and customer acquisition tool for your website that leverages marketing automation to grow your email list, reduce cart abandonment, and increase sales. More than one million websites use OptinMonster, making it one of the most popular solutions on the market today.

OptinMonster has tools to help you design high-converting landing pages, popups, and website campaigns designed to generate leads.

Then you can create automated and campaigns for website visitors based on their behavior and actions.

For example, you can create campaigns for new vs. returning visitors. Trigger a popup or offer based on the amount of time that visitor has spent on the site or the number of pages they’ve viewed.

You’ll also be able to automatically trigger landing page campaigns based on user behavior, such as exit intent.

OptinMonster is undoubtedly one of the best lead generation tools on the web. But it lacks in other areas of marketing automation. You’ll need to integrate OptinMonster with your email or CRM software—it does not offer these features.

But with prices starting as low as $9 per month, it’s a cheap add-on to your existing solution.

Try OptinMonster risk-free 14 days. If you’re unhappy for any reason, you’ll get a 100% refund; no questions asked.

#5 – Salesforce Pardot — Best For B2B Marketing

• Starts at $1,250 per month
• Best for B2Bs
• ROI reporting
• Advanced automations
Request a free demo

Salesforce is one of the most reputable and well known CRM solutions on the market today. So it’s no surprise to see Salesforce Pardot rank so high on our list of the best marketing automation software.

With that said, Salesforce Pardot is not for everyone. This software is made specifically for B2B organizations.

Top features include streamlined lead management, smart lead generation, email marketing, and sales integration. Salesforce Pardot leverages the power of AI to improve your marketing efforts and sales strategy. You’ll also benefit from insightful ROI reporting to determine what campaigns are working and which ones need improvement.

Here’s a quick look at the Salesforce Pardot pricing options:

With plans starting at $1,250 per month, this software obviously isn’t the cheapest option on our list. But with that said, this type of pricing is expected for a B2B solution of this caliber.

Pardot makes it easy for you to create data-driven campaigns with a powerful and flexible visual builder. Simply map out each touchpoint in your funnel to improve the customer experience and identify gaps in the process.

Salesforce Pardot gives you detailed reports and analytics so you can improve automation campaigns based on real results as opposed to guesswork.

For B2B organizations seeking marketing automation software, Salesforce Pardot is second to none. The biggest drawback is the price, especially considering that you need to commit to a one-year contract. But you won’t have to worry about performance. Salesforce Pardot has everything you could possibly need and more in terms of software in this category.

Contact the Salesforce Pardot sales team to request a free demo.

#6 – ConvertKit — Best Marketing Automation Software For Beginners

• Starts at $29 per month
• Simple visual editor
• Pre-built automation templates
• 14 day free trial
Start for free

ConvertKit is one of the simplest marketing automation solutions that you’ll find. For those of you who are new to using marketing automation tools, this choice should be toward the top of your list.

ConvertKit is branded as an email marketing software, but its marketing automation features are much more advanced than just basic email functionality.

This tool makes it easy for you to create powerful automation funnels based on a subscriber’s action. It ensures that you send targeted content to the right audience at the perfect time.

Unlike other marketing automation tools on our list, ConvertKit is simple. You can set up basic automation rules that trigger a specific campaign, without having to go through complex workflows and settings. The visual editor is easy for anyone to use, even if you have zero experience with marketing automation.

Whether you’re running a content site, ecommerce business, or selling SaaS, ConvertKit has the marketing automation tools that you need to succeed.

One of the best parts about ConvertKit is the pre-built automations, so you don’t have to start from scratch. For example, they have automations for hosting a webinar, launching a new product, and surveying your subscribers.

For new businesses, ConvertKit does a free forever plan for up to 500 subscribers. But that doesn’t come with any of the visual automation funnels.

To access all of the features and benefits of ConvertKit, paid plans start at just $29 per month. You can get two months for free if you sign up for an annual contract. Try it free for 14 days.

How to Find the Best Marketing Automation Software For Your Business

For the most part, there is no “best for everyone” solution. The best marketing automation software for you will depend on your specific needs.

Finding the right marketing automation software for your business can be challenging if you don’t know where to look. Here’s an overview of the methodology I used to pick the options on our list. Take these factors into consideration when evaluating the needs of your business.

Business Size and Type

Most marketing automation software is geared toward specific businesses. SMBs and enterprises will have very different needs.

Smaller businesses and beginners should lean toward ActiveCampaign or ConvertKit, whereas a solution like HubSpot is better for mid to large-sized organizations.

If you’re in the B2B space, Salesforce Pardot is the best option for your situation.

For those of you who are running an ecommerce business, make sure that the solution you’re considering has ecommerce features and automations for sales built-in. The tool should also integrate with whatever ecommerce platform you’re using to power your website.

Automation Setup

Your marketing campaigns will only be as good as the initial setup.

Regardless of the platform you’re using, you’ll have to create rules that will trigger a specific campaign or sequence. These are based on user actions, such as opening an email, subscribing on a certain landing page, returning to your website, or abandoning their shopping cart.

The best marketing automation tools allow you to set up advanced automations for multiple actions throughout the customer journey. Visual automation editors make this easy for you to set up.

But with that said, some of those editors are definitely easier to use than others. The best way to figure out how easy it is to set up an automation sequence is by starting a free trial or requesting a free demo.

CRM and Email

Not every marketing automation software is an all-inclusive marketing solution. You need to determine if the tool you’re considering is a one-stop-shop for your needs.

Lots of the options on our list as double CRM software and email marketing software. So you can handle everything from a single dashboard. However, other solutions won’t be as advanced.

For example, OptinMonster is perfect for generating leads on landing pages using marketing automation. But you can’t use that platform to send emails or manage subscribers. You’ll need to integrate it with your existing email marketing software or CRM software.

Features

Choose email automation software based on features that align with your goals.

Exactly what are you trying to accomplish? Is it lead generation? Sales? Conversions? Is the software advanced enough to scale with you as your needs change?

The best marketing automation solutions have advanced features for things like lead scoring, event tracking, sales integration, and more.

It’s worth noting that lots of solutions will advertise lots of features, but don’t actually offer all of those features with every plan. So look carefully at the plan you’re interested in. Don’t assume that it comes with every feature advertised on the software’s homepage.

If you’re looking for something simple, sometimes too many features can be overwhelming. It’s not worth paying extra for advanced features that you’ll never use.

Price

In most cases, the price for marketing automation software is based on the number of customers, subscribers, or leads in your contact list.

But with that said, there is a wide range of price points in this space.

Basic entry-level plans typically start around $30-$100+ per month. Prices on the lower end of that range might not come with all of the advanced marketing automation features that you’re looking for.

Top of the line marketing automation software for mid to large-sized businesses and B2B organizations starts around $800-$1,200+ per month.

In some instances, you can save money by committing to an annual contract. In other cases, an annual contract will be your only option. Month-to-month pricing isn’t available for every solution.

Conclusion

Marketing automation software can dramatically improve your marketing processes as your business scales.

What’s the best marketing automation software for your company? It depends on what you’re looking for.

We ranked HubSpot as the best overall because of its powerful features and benefits. But its high price point is definitely aimed at mid to large-sized organizations and businesses with substantial marketing budgets. However, startups can get up to 90% a HubSpot plan.

Smaller businesses and beginners should lean towards options like ActiveCampaign, GetResponse, or ConvertKit. Salesforce Pardot is the best choice for B2B companies. Any business can consider using OptinMonster as an add-on for landing page lead generation.

Regardless of your business size, type, or needs, you can use this guide to find the best marketing automation software.



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How personalization helps marketers humanize their brand and break though the noise

Aprimo CMO says marketers are currently struggling with what he calls “digital sameness” — where everyone is doing the same thing online.

Please visit Marketing Land for the full article.


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Google removed 2.7 billion bad ads, nearly 1 million ad accounts in 2019

This year,the company says it has removed “tens of millions” of COVID-19 related ads.

Please visit Marketing Land for the full article.


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5 Examples of Effective B2B Content Marketing in Times of Crisis

Woman wearing facemark image.

Woman wearing facemark image. There has been no greater disruption to business in the modern era than the COVID-19 pandemic. For many, it seems as though the world has stopped turning. For marketers, it seems as though now is the worst time to try to promote anything. But as our CEO, Lee Odden, said, “While there will be a period of adjustment, these changes do not mean the work stops. It doesn’t mean companies don’t need information, solutions, support, products and services.” And he couldn’t be more right. Your audience may even have a greater need now for your solutions or expertise. They’re trying to navigate through this uncertain time, too. And they’re looking for help now more than ever before. To help you answer those calls for help and know what types of content are successful in times of crisis, I’ve gathered five examples of effective B2B content marketing during the COVID-19 pandemic.

#1 - HealthcareSource

Healthcare workers have always been essential. And with a pandemic afoot, they’ve become the most essential. As a result, hospitals and healthcare providers need to ensure they’re fully staffed, but that’s easier said than done. Declining revenues have led to job cuts. Doctors catching the virus has led to job growth. Hiring for healthcare is undergoing constant fluctuations. As a proven talent management software for healthcare providers, HealthcareSource saw that they were in a unique position to help. Through a long, thoughtful blog post, loaded with examples from healthcare systems around the world, HealthcareSource created a great resource to help healthcare organizations manage their hiring, onboarding, and talent acquisition strategies. They also created an on-demand webinar with in-depth tactics on how to manage these constant fluctuations in job demand and supply. Healthcare Source Screenshot

#2 - Zoom

Zoom, a favorite video conferencing tool for any organization, has seen their number of daily active users jump from only 10 million to over 200 million in just three months. They’ve grown from hosting business meetings to hosting virtual classes, happy hours among friends, family game nights, and more for hundreds of millions of people. COVID-19 and social distancing have invariably helped grow their user base. However, that comes with its own set of challenges. They now have to train hundreds of millions of people on how to use Zoom, how to adjust their mic settings, how to ensure their Zoom is secure and private. They’re users needed support, fast. So they created an in-depth COVID-19 resource with every relevant training users could need. But what makes this resource even more helpful is that they segmented it based on use-cases. Need help while working remotely? You have your own section. Need help teaching your class? You have your own section, too. It’s a great example of how tailoring content for each audience segment creates a better experience; help is easier to find and the experience feels more personalized.   Zoom Screenshot [bctt tweet="“Tailoring content for each audience segment creates a better experience.” — Anne Leuman @annieleuman" username="toprank"]

#3 - monday.com*

Lockdown. Quarantine. Social distancing. Between those three mandates, it’s clear to see why the number of people working remotely is reaching unprecedented heights. For monday.com, a work operating system provider, this presented an interesting opportunity. They saw that teams needed help transitioning to a remote work environment with the least amount of friction. They needed help ensuring they had the right technology, process, and structures to make remote work successful. They needed help knowing how to best use monday.com remotely instead of in a physical office. To ease the remote work transition, monday.com created a new page on their website educating others on how to use their software for remote work. This new page helps existing clients and potential prospects on how monday.com can help ease the challenges of working remotely. They also made the smart decision of adding this page to their main site navigation, making it extremely easy for visitors to access. In addition to this new product page, the team at monday.com also created a custom video and content hub to ensure their users can get answers to all of their questions. monday.com Screenshot *monday.com is a TopRank Marketing client.

#4 - Slack

Slack was already a popular piece of software for any business, helping streamline team communications and collaboration. With more workers at home, I’m sure businesses — including our own — have become even more reliant on Slack to carry the burden of all text communication between teams. And while they could have taken a page from Zoom or monday.com and created dedicated resources to help train new users or customers who may be relying on Slack a bit more during this time, they didn’t. They saw a different opportunity to help their audience. During a crisis, the value of information skyrockets. Business leaders want to know; what’s happening to the economy? Will their market be impacted? How is this affecting their workforce? Slack created a report to help answer those questions, especially as it relates to remote workers and the challenges they face. They recognized that key decision makers in their target audience desired more information to help them solve top challenges like transitioning to remote work, improving their employee experience, and more. With this report, they were able to provide those insights, helping their audience optimize how they work together during a pandemic. Slack Screenshot

#5 - Dropbox

Do you know what distributed work is? I didn’t know what it was, either. And this is where Dropbox’s latest content marketing really shines. Dropbox saw that while most of the world was focusing on transitioning to remote work, they really needed to focus on distributed work. Organizations sorely needed to be educated on the difference between the two and how they require different strategies. As Dropbox points out, “remote work is a discipline for the individual worker, but distributed work is a discipline for the entire organization.” That’s a very important distinction to make as organizations attempt to navigate social distancing and still get the work done. Their thought leadership content around distributed work is truly eye-opening. Positioned high up on their blog and given its own content hub, their distributed work content is a must-read for any organization operating remotely during this time. And it all happened because they recognized a key, relevant term that not many were focusing on. Dropbox Screenshot

Be Helpful. Be Successful.

The true key to success in B2B content marketing is to always come from a place of empathy. The more you’re able to understand and empathize with your target audience, the more likely you are to surface content opportunities that help them overcome their pain points and challenges. And helping them = success. That doesn’t change even in times of crisis. In fact, it becomes all the more important. Use the B2B content marketing examples above as a guide when creating your own content and remember to be empathetic to their needs. If you want to help your audience during this time, learn how to build trust with your audience through authentic content.

The post 5 Examples of Effective B2B Content Marketing in Times of Crisis appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®.



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Wednesday, April 29, 2020

How to build a martech stack for this era — and whatever comes next

Acoustic’s head of product marketing said his company made major pivots at the start of last month. This is how he built a martech stack that allowed for such massive shifts.

Please visit Marketing Land for the full article.


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Microsoft Advertising UI: What’s new (so far)

Love it or hate it, the double sidebar makes context switching a lot easier as you move between ad accounts or from other search engines.

Please visit Marketing Land for the full article.


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Facebook expands test for in-stream ads on Live

Advertisers concerned with brand safety can choose to exclude ads from appearing in Live content.

Please visit Marketing Land for the full article.


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10 Expert Tips for Marketing During a Crisis

A crisis can turn things upside down for everyone. It can put many people and businesses into tough spots where they have to prioritize and concentrate on what’s really important and what will help them pull through a period of anxiety and uncertainty.

During such a time, marketers can keep marketing, but effective messaging tries to be human, helpful, and mindful. They need to watch their tone and their approach, which might not be easy, but they should be reaching out to customers and seeing how they can help. There are also other areas marketers can look at improving and refining, such as SEO, their strategy, content, and overall planning.

To provide insights into how marketers should operate during a difficult time, we put together these ten expert tips to show you how to be resilient, sensitive, and productive during a crisis.

  1. Do not capitalize on the crisis.

The “unapologetic truth teller in marketing,Katie Martell, says that this crisis is a chance for marketers to act with competence and ethics. You should try not to take advantage of the crisis in any way. Instead, look at it as an opportunity to help your customers, your team, and your community.

  1. Do smart, responsible, and emphatic marketing.

When it comes to marketing, context matters! Asher Rumack, Director of Brand & Content Strategy at Column Five, stresses the importance of marketers addressing a crisis with empathy and tact. This means maybe altering your campaigns, deadlines, and tone, as you  should strive to be positive, helpful, and informative.

  1. Understand, anticipate, and go above and beyond to fulfill customer needs.

During a crisis, the customer experience becomes more important than ever, according to Vandita Grover, a freelance contributor for MarTechAdvisor. With technology and a digital presence, marketers can still reach their customers and provide solutions and information that can help with at least some of their problems.

  1. Double down on SEO efforts.

Lee Odden of TopRank Marketing believes that customer empathy should be at the forefront of marketing during any time and especially during a crisis. Part of this is providing solutions and answers that customers need, and SEO remains a frequently used channel for information discovery. Marketers can make their content as relevant and easy to find as possible for audiences, and SEO allows people to discover information on their own terms rather than as the result of unemphatic or even opportunistic marketing.

  1. Act with a purpose on social media.

Put people first with your social media marketing and not brands or logos, says Jay Baer of Convince & Convert. Post with a purpose and listen harder to discover what opportunities out there exist where you can lend a hand.

  1. Build a more solid foundation.

Digital marketing pioneer Ann Handley suggests slowing down now to speed up later. Now is the time to build momentum for what truly matters long term. You have a chance to deepen relationships, redefine often confusing marketing roles, and see how you can help your community, company, and industry in both the long and short term.

  1. What you do now will define who you are later.

Matt Heinz, B2B marketing and sales expert, wants people to know that we will all get through this! However, some of the ways in which people are now reorganizing their lives and careers will become part of the new normal. Some of the pivots you make now will help you become more efficient, effective, and useful in the future.

  1. Get creative.

A crisis requires marketers have to think up and propose new ways to engage with customers, Justin Gray, CEO of LeadMD feels. To justify a new approach (and the budget to do so), build a solid business case, connect business objectives to marketing outcomes, align with sales, and create the right benchmarks. Above everything though, you have to be realistic and honest in how you go about achieving your goals. Without honesty or being realistic, you can't have trust, which is essential to innovation and convincing people to invest in you and your plans.

  1.  Use this time to align with your sales team.

Your sales team will have the best insights into what is going with customers and how you can help them. Use this opportunity to better align with your sales team, suggests Tom Cunniff, of Cunniff Consulting, and Mike Cucka, of Brand Evident.

  1. Reject the notion of business as usual.

Freelance B2B writer Sharon Hurley Hall wants marketers to acknowledge that things have changed that this isbusiness unusual.” This means you should continue marketing but not doing in a tone-deaf and insensitive manner. You should also be reaching out to clients if only to check in with them and see how you can help, to stay top of mind to them and build goodwill for when things get closer back to normal. It’s also a chance to identify new opportunities that you might not be able to pursue now but for later. 

                                                                                               

Want more advice on how to deal with crises? Check out these related posts:

 

 

 

 



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Here’s to Empathy in Business

Here’s to Empathy in Business written by Jenna Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Marketing Podcast with Minter Dial

Minter Dial

In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, I interview Minter Dial a professional speaker, history fanatic, and president and founder of Digitalproof Consultancy, a strategic firm providing digital and brand consulting to clients. He is also an award-winning author, including his latest book Heartificial Empathy, Putting Heart into Business and Artificial Intelligence that won the Book Excellence Award 2019 and was shortlisted for the Business Book Awards 2019.

Minter Dial is the producer of the award-winning book and film The Last Ring Home and co-author of Futureproof that won the Business Book Award 2018.

Minter Dial is a self-proclaimed itinerant bohemian in search of experiences and interesting people. As a metier, he relishes being an energetic speaker on leadership, brand and digital strategy with a specialization in digital transformation.

Questions I ask Minter Dial:

  • What are the overarching ideas of empathy and artificial intelligence being blended?
  • How does empathy relate to business?
  • How do we ultimately connect this idea to AI?

What you’ll learn if you give a listen:

  • Where empathy needs to start in a business
  • How empathy affects employees and customers.
  • The two items that will gage our ability to connect AI to empathy

Key takeaways from the episode and more about Minter Dial:

Like this show? Click on over and give us a review on iTunes, please!

Zephyr logoThis episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast is brought to you by Zephyr.

Zephyr is a modern, cloud-based CMS that’s licensed only to agencies. The system is lightweight, easy to use, and incredibly fast. And with an array of beautiful themes to choose from, you can get your clients’ websites up-and-running quickly and with less effort. Or, if you’d rather build a custom site, Zephyr includes agency services to be your plug-and-play dev shop.

Zephyr is passionate about helping agencies create great websites for their clients. To learn more, go to Zephyrcms.com.



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Why B2B Marketers Should Give a DAM: Top Tips on Digital Asset Management

Businesswoman at wall of digital assets image.

Businesswoman at wall of digital assets image. Why should B2B marketers give a DAM? When that DAM is digital asset management, you’re looking at a system that will improve all forms of online marketing, whether it's B2B influencers, social, search, content, video or always-on marketing. It's also one of the top investments an organization can make for successfully leveraging a digital environment that will only expand with more data in the coming years. It’s no wonder the global DAM market was valued at $3.4 billion in 2019, and is expected to reach $8.5 billion by 2025, according to report data from IMARC.

Just What Are Digital Assets?

Robot with magnifying glass looking at file folders image. As we explored in our introduction to DAM technology, “Why Digital Asset Management Matters in B2B Marketing,” digital assets are simply any computer files, stored anywhere — whether on your phone, tablet, desktop, network, or in the cloud. DAM software runs either on a local computer network or in the cloud, and is built to pull in and make it easy to organize an unlimited number of files — all those digital assets that organizations create and use daily. The more complex your marketing strategies and organization are, the greater the benefits of DAM will be, especially when accumulated over time. The pandemic has also brought to light weaknesses for some organizations, as remote workers place additional strains on systems not necessarily designed for unified online access to digital asset libraries. Let’s look at how adding a DAM system to your mix can help improve six major forms of digital marketing. [bctt tweet="“The more complex your marketing strategies and organization are, the greater the benefits of digital asset management (DAM) will be, especially over time.” — Lane R. Ellis @lanerellis" username="toprank"]

1 — Use DAM to Augment Your Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing campaigns, especially in the B2B realm, can involve many people and projects, often with a variety of images, document files, videos, and other digital assets. Tracking multiple versions of files — with varieties specifically created for each social media platform involved in a campaign — can get complicated, and many firms either use a cobbled together make-shift approach that may be known only to one or a few people in the organization, or end up bouncing around from one software solution to another. A good DAM database, however, can be used company-wide and is expandable enough to accommodate any change in file types, for as long as the DAM is supported by its developers. The best DAM solutions also offer transparent and robust import and especially export routines, so that organizations aren’t locked-in to one DAM environment with their digital assets held hostage, unable to easily migrate to other solutions if needed. Influencer marketing benefits from DAM through increased efficiency and time savings, which ultimately make influencers happy and better able to share co-created content.

2 — Expand Your Content Marketing With DAM

The type of savvy content management offered by DAM systems could save marketing teams 13 days annually per staff member, according to report data from Canto. The same research found that 41 percent of marketers said that digital filing inefficiencies had caused delayed project releases, and 54 percent noted that they experienced frustration with inefficient filing systems. By its very nature content marketing involves vast quantities of content in all its various digital forms, and a powerful DAM system enhances content marketing by making it easy to find all the digital assets a business has ever created, both for current campaigns and when gathering past performance and return on investment (ROI) data. Brands such as Under Armour use DAM systems to manage over 12 terabytes of content including more than half a millions digital assets for some 7,000 products that change seasonally, a task that while possible without using a DAM, really shows off the benefits of a solid organizational and archival solution.

3 — Make a Move to DAM to Improve Your Video Marketing

As with static digital assets, a good DAM system easily ingests and organizes video content, putting it at the fingertips of each person in an organization who needs it, from video editor to social media manager to corporate executives. Digital video has remained a leading performer for marketers, with 92 percent saying it's an important part of their marketing strategy (HubSpot), and with the arrival of the global health crisis initial reports have shown that more video than ever is being viewed, including 5.5 percent higher video view rates on Twitter. One of the many benefits a top-notch DAM solution offers is the ability to find otherwise hidden static content in your organization's archives that can work well in creating video marketing, oftentimes also avoiding time-consuming efforts to re-do work that has already been completed but can't easily be found.

4 — DAM Shines in Always-On Marketing Environments

Always-on marketing replaces on-again off-again campaigns with a fluid ongoing effort, continually cultivating and carefully building efforts that allow businesses to seamlessly adapt their marketing efforts, rather than playing catch-up, stopping a campaign, and waiting to build a new one. For B2B marketers, the shift to always-on is swiftly advancing, and in always-on marketing DAM shines brightly, as it removes many of the bottlenecks slowing down traditional marketing by offering easy and swift access to a firm’s digital asset archive. We recently launched a new ongoing series for B2B brands looking to explore the many benefits of always-on influence, as our CEO Lee Odden took a close at in "Always On Influence: Definition and Why B2B Brands Need it to Succeed." Marketing technology also thrives when DAM is involved, and MarTech Advisor recently took a look at 10 of the major players in the DAM market. [bctt tweet="“Always On Influencer Marketing is a strategic approach to creating communities of trusted experts that is relationship and content focused.” @LeeOdden" username="toprank"]

5 — Search Marketers Find Success with DAM

Search marketers also benefit from a powerful DAM system, being able to systematically find search campaign assets, analytics data contained in spreadsheets or other formats, in ways that help make more data-informed search marketing efforts a snap. In a way the so-called findability of search marketing goes hand-in-hand with a smart DAM solution, as both are centered around finding things — whether in the form of search engine query answers or finding a file you know you have but haven't been able to successfully locate until the arrival of a DAM system.

6 — B2B Marketers Get Social with DAM

Social media marketers too can gain advantages by using a DAM workflow, easily accessing digital assets destined for a variety of social platforms, whether they involve static or video content, advertising copy in text documents, or social analytics data in any number of file formats. Social media marketing is also enhanced by DAM through time savings, but also by the extra insight it can bring helping to open up an organization's digital asset library. Re-purposing content on social platforms can take on an entirely new and all-encompassing level when every digital asset can easily come in to play and be combined in relevant new ways, thanks to a powerful DAM system.

Invest in Your Firm’s Long-Term Success Using DAM

Whether you specialize in B2B influencer marketing, social, search, content, video or always-on efforts — or a combination of these primary digital marketing practices — finding and implementing the right digital asset management system is an investment in the long-term success of your organization. Finally, to help you learn more about DAM solutions for marketers, including a list of many of the top providers, have a look at our article exploring the subject.

The post Why B2B Marketers Should Give a DAM: Top Tips on Digital Asset Management appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®.



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Tuesday, April 28, 2020

Anchor launches a video conference-to-podcast conversion tool

The Spotify-owned company’s new tool may help businesses get more out of their webinars and online conference content.

Please visit Marketing Land for the full article.


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