Tag: marketing

Sales and Marketing Automation…Let’s Work Together

marketing automation

You’ve heard it many times before and we’ll say it again now, Sales and Marketing need to be on the same page. Marketing automation makes the connection simple because both departments have a shared common database where marketing insight is provided to the Sales team. Thus, making it easier for them to coexist efficiently. This will then allow them focus on more important tasks, like prospect conversion, instead of each other. Sales isn’t worried about unqualified leads because the marketing automation system is only handing them off when they are qualified.

Tracking data through marketing automation has never been easier. With that data you can determine the strengths and weaknesses in your sales funnel, allowing you to make any necessary changes for the better.  You can also track team member efforts within the sales and marketing departments…(hello incentive to do better).

The data you’ve collected (email clicks, content downloads, website visits) gives you insight into what the prospect/customer is thinking and ultimately what interests them. Knowing what they like and dislike gives you the upper hand to customize everything to them, creating a superior experience. In most cases, a customers mind sees experience > price.

With that being said, marketing automation helps sales by bringing them only qualified prospects and marketing will be able to attract new prospects. Win-Win for both departments. If you would like to learn more about marketing automation, please visit our Salesforce page.

Better Experience = More Loyal Customers

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The Benefits of Lead Nurturing

lead nurturing

Why Should I Nurture My Leads?

Lead nurturing requires thoughtful communications, not the copying and pasting of generic sales emails in attempt to receive a reply back. When a lead nurturing program is functional, your prospects are receiving targeted content based upon their actual activities and interests, which ultimately provides them with what they want to see. If a prospect has visited a specific product page of yours for about 5-10 minutes, why shouldn’t an email automatically be sent to that prospect with further information and a notification go out to a sales rep? 

The statistics

26% of today’s marketers receive a 10% – 20% greater response from their lead nurturing campaigns than those who use standardized email campaigns. On top of that, more than a quarter of marketers receive a 20% – 30% greater increase in responses using automatic lead nurturing campaigns in comparison to marketers who do not use a nurturing campaign. (Demand Gen Report, 2015)

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4 Easy Marketing Strategies to Attract the Millennial Generation

millennial marketing

Millennial marketing is an art of its own. Have you been wondering how to market to the millennial generation? Here are our top 4 tips for creating an effective marketing strategy that attracts millennials!

1. Utilize the Social Network Dynamic

Millennials = digital generation. Millennials consume content across multiple channels; utilize this by putting your content on their most active platforms.

2. Make Them Feel Like an Individual

No one likes being labeled as #basic. Recognize your millennial customer for what makes them stand out! Repost their photos with your product and why it makes them stand out from the regular consumer.

3. Don’t Forget About Word-of-Mouth

 “A brand is no longer what we tell the consumer it is—it is what consumers tell each other it is”– Scott Cook, the founder and CEO of Intuit.

If you trust someone, you will generally listen to them and the advice they give you. Create dialogue with market influencers because this will create more talk between them and potentially millennial customers.

4. Talk to Them!

Have you ever talked to a wall? It’s not fun. Don’t let those who want to engage with your brand talk to a wall, talk back to them! Interacting with millennials via social media about your content and their thoughts creates more trust, which gets you one step closer to a brand-loyal customer.

To learn more about marketing strategies, please visit our website.

Goals: Marketing Automation | SMART Framework

marketing goals

Before you finish reading about how to set your Marketing Automation goals for the year, block out some time on your Calendar because it’s time to set goals. Really, you should block out time.  Are you busy this weekend?

It happens all the time. You set time aside for your team to set goals for the week, month, year, etc. but when that time comes around, there’s always something that is a higher priority and the goals meeting gets pushed back. Although there’s nothing wrong with that, it means business is going great! It does becomes a problem when it’s mid February and you don’t have your yearly goals set. 

Once your goal setting meeting begins, where do you start? Do you have a personal goal-setting model? Have you been using a proven model that the organization has been using for decades? Are you just “winging it?” (If it’s the last option, you should probably block out your whole next week). 

One of the more popular, proven models that work for a wide range of companies is the SMART Goal Setting Framework Model. We’d like you to hear about this framework from our favorite Marketing Automation System, Pardot: Setting Marketing Automation Goals. If you would like to learn more about marketing automation, please visit our Salesforce page.

9 Content Marketing Blogs You Must Subscribe To

Top Content Marketing Blogs

1.Content Marketing Institute

 

Content Marketing Institute

The Content Marketing Institute blog is the ultimate place to go if you want to jumpstart your content marketing strategy. The blog is run by Joe Pulizzi (@JoePulizzi), author of the must-read book Content Inc and one of the founding fathers of Content Marketing. CMI offers a huge variety of resources from detailed research reports and whitepapers to podcasts and webinars. You can easily sift through the different topics on their blog and find how-to guides for whatever your marketing campaign needs.

Twitter: (@CMIcontent)

2. Convince and Convert

 

Convince & Convert

 

Named the #1 Content Marketing Blog in the World by Content Marketing Institute, Convince and Convert focus on what brands can do in order to deliver remarkable customer experiences. This blog specializes in explaining the “why” behind content marketing best practices. Convince and Convert is run by Jay Baer (@JayBaer), a New York Times best-selling author of 5 books, and a social media icon.

Twitter:(@convince)

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What Is Disturbing Your Marketing Content Workflow?

You don’t collaborate

When all the pressure of content generation is put on one person, it is possible to publish topics unspecific to your customers’ needs. Eliminate these problems by collaborating on topics with every department, not just marketing. Regularly brainstorming new content allows all levels of the organization to be involved.

Don’t limit the creator or content within the workflow!

Your workflow isn’t  specific enough

Content workflow has many steps, be sure to specify all responsibilities to reduce the chance of content breaking up along the way. Having a well-documented marketing workflow with strict assignments not only helps with accountability but also reduces the creation of duplicate/irrelevant content.

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Pardot’s New Feature Roundup – July 2016

Check out what’s new in Pardot this month.

No Automatic Line Breaks in Text Emails

Before, words in the text editor would get cut off after a certain number of characters in one line. Now, Pardot allows for more characters and the line breaks are no longer automatic, allowing you to choose where your lines break.

New Table Action: Pause Automation Rules and Drip Programs

From your Automation Rule and Drip Program overview pages, you are now able to pause multiple automations from the table at one time. Before, you were only able to pause the automations one at a time.

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