A marketer's guide to advanced automation

A Marketer’s Guide to Advanced Automation

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Using marketing automation solutions can greatly improve your marketing capabilities. Automation saves time on repetitive, mundane tasks, giving you more time to focus on more pressing matters. Additionally, automation helps improve the customer experience by making client data better organized and easier to access. However, using basic automation will no longer provide you with a huge advantage over your competition. Few companies exist that do not employ some kind of automation solution. If you want a real advantage, you need to begin using more advanced automation tools. The following are some of the advanced automation tactics that you should think about adopting:

1. Advanced Email Segmentation

Basic email segmentation, which involves sectioning your email list based on things like gender or information pertinent to your products and services, is quite common. However, the use of advanced email segmentation personalizes your marketing even more. Advanced email segmentation allows you to segment your email list even further based on things like content opened, location, engagement with your brand, the device used, their stage of the buyer’s journey, and more.

2. Date-Based Automation

advanced automation emailing

Many companies use action-based automation to deliver certain emails. For example, if a customer makes a purchase on your e-commerce page, you might automatically deliver a thank you email to their inbox. Many businesses use this basic form of action-based email automation. Another form of email automation worth using is date-based automation. Date-based automation tools allow you to automatically send off certain emails to certain recipients on specified dates. For example, if your opt-in form asks for a birthdate, use date-based automation to automatically send an email wishing a happy birthday to your leads and customers when their birthday comes around.

3. Lead Scoring

Lead scoring hasn’t quite caught on with the average marketer because it can take some time to set up. However, lead scoring helps make it easier to identify the quality of your leads. This, in turn, prevents your marketing and sales team from engaging with uninterested leads. It also helps prevent your marketing and sales teams from missing out on leads that were ready to convert. The way lead scoring works is simple. For every action a lead takes, or for every piece of information they provide, they are automatically assigned points. These actions or bits of information can be worth different values. For example, downloading an eBook might be worth more than liking a blog post on social media. Certain actions or information can be worth negative points as well.

You’ll have to decide at what point the total of their score determines that they are an MQL (marketing qualified lead) or a SQL (sales qualified lead). As you can imagine, having scores on all your leads can be incredibly helpful; however, your marketing and sales teams will have to work together to come up with a scoring system.

Learn more about how marketing automation can benefit you: How Marketing Automation Can Improve Your Lead Nurturing Process

4. Personalized Offers

Using an advanced automation eCommerce recommendation tool, you can automatically create dynamic emails that suggest relevant products to customers based on their past behavior. Some of these behaviors may include what they purchase, how much they spend, and how often they make purchases. The email is only generated after assessing the customer and it can go a long way towards increasing sales.

5. Chatbots

People often have basic questions when exploring a new website. A chat feature allows them to ask these questions without having to call or email you. Unfortunately, you may not have the resources to personally engage with visitors on your website 24/7 via the chat feature. That’s why you should consider implementing chatbots. Chatbots can be programmed to answer the most common questions automatically so that you don’t need a human to engage directly with every visitor. Even social channels such as Facebook are beginning to implement automated chat features.

Automation doesn’t just help make time-consuming tasks less time-consuming to do. It organizes valuable data, making it easier for you to improve your ability to engage with customers. Automation can even help improve the customer experience directly. Any business that’s looking to grow should go beyond the basics of automation and implement these advanced automation tactics into their marketing strategy.

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types of digital marketing strategies

Types of Digital Marketing Strategies Your Business Should Use

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If you have a website for your business, then there’s a good chance you’re familiar with SEO (search engine optimization). You know how the use of keywords can help increase your site’s exposure on search engines. However, when it comes to digital marketing, SEO is not the only valid strategy. In fact, there are many types of digital marketing tactics that you should consider employing in order to boost awareness of your brand and bring in more web traffic. The following are a few examples of different types of digital marketing to consider implementing into your marketing strategy:

Social Media Marketing

By creating a social media marketing strategy, you have the opportunity of reaching more people to expand your audience. Of course, you will need to do more than just set up some social media pages. First, you need to figure out where your target audience can be found. Different people use different social media channels, after all. For example, you’re probably not going to find an audience over the age of 60 on Snapchat. In addition to setting up a social page, you’ll need to post content, engage with relevant content posted by others, interact directly with users, and more. Social media is a great way to not only engage directly with your audience, but also to listen to what they have to say.

PPC Advertising

If you’re a smaller business owner with limited resources, the idea of PPC advertising may not appeal to you at first glance. After all, it stands for “pay per click.” While creating a website doesn’t cost much–and neither does running a social media page or posting content to a blog–eventually, you’re going to need to invest money into those strategies in order to expand your company’s reach. However, PPC advertising is something you have to put money into right away. Yet it’s something you should strongly consider doing because of how cost-effective PPC advertising is.

The way PPC ads work is you create an ad based around a keyword. You then bid on that keyword. Depending on your bid, your ad may show up on the results of someone who performed a search using your keyword. What makes these PPC ads so effective is that even though they show up and the user sees them, you don’t have to pay for them unless they click on the ad — and the amount you pay is the amount you bid. You’re basically only paying for results. You can run PPC ads on most search engines, although Google Adwords is the most popular. Social channels, such as Facebook, also offer PPC advertising.

Email Marketing

Email marketing is one of the oldest types of digital marketing. It’s still around because of how effective it is. It has also evolved significantly over the years. Email marketing is a great way to build relationships with your leads and nurture them through the sales funnel. The data you collect from your email marketing efforts can be incredibly insightful as well. For example, you can track email open rates, click-through-rates, and more to identify what kind of content your recipients care most about and what types of calls-to-action are working. Email marketing also helps you maintain the relationships you’ve built with existing customers, turning them into brand evangelists.

Content Marketing

Last, but not least, is content marketing. Without content, none of your other digital marketing strategies are even possible. Content is king, as they often say. You need to create content that is relevant to your audience and that is helpful — not overly promotional. Content helps inform your audience about their problems and needs as well as introduce them to potential solutions. Common types of content that can be posted on your blog, your website, your social pages, in your emails, and more, include articles, images, videos, infographics, eBooks, white papers, and much more.

These four strategies along with SEO make up the five main types of digital marketing strategies you can implement. However, these strategies are incredibly broad. Each strategy can include hundreds of different tactics, if not more. Not to mention that for each type of digital marketing strategy to be as effective as possible, they need to work together. For example, social media marketing depends heavily on content marketing, while content marketing depends heavily on SEO. If your current focus is on SEO, consider implementing these other types of digital marketing strategies as well.

Integrating Social Media & SEO Efforts For Enhanced Search Engine Results

Mobile Marketing Automation

The Benefits of Mobile Marketing Automation

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According to the Pew Research Center, around 81 percent of adults in the U.S. have a smartphone. First off, if your online presence isn’t optimized for mobile use at this point, this is something you need to update immediately. Secondly, consumers who have smartphones are easier to reach because people tend to have their smartphones on them at all times. There are many ways you can reach them, including through text, the web, email, and in-app messaging. As a result, you need to implement a mobile marketing strategy. However, mobile marketing can take up a lot of resources, which is why you’ll want to consider mobile marketing automation. The following are six mobile marketing automation benefits you should know about:

1. Improve Accountability

Marketing automation allows you to see the overall effectiveness of your marketing and sales departments by providing birds-eye view reporting of your pipeline. This makes it easy to pinpoint issues, and to determine what is causing them. Not only does this mean that it’s easier to hold your marketing and sales personnel accountable, but it allows you to address bottlenecks in your pipeline.

2. Reduce Staffing Costs

You can automate many of your mobile marketing campaigns based on certain triggers, such as actions taken by your leads. One of the advantages of being able to do this (besides saving a significant amount of time) is that a single employee can handle tasks that would normally take dozens of employees to complete. Since you won’t have to hire more employees to handle time-consuming tasks, you’ll save a lot of money on staffing.

3. Increase Revenue

You can set up specific messaging based on actions that your leads or customers take. If a client purchases a specific software solution, you can use automation to automatically send recommendations for additional, services that are related to their purchase. This can help to increase up-sells and cross-sells. Not only can this increase short-term revenue, but effective follow-ups help increase the lifetime value of your B2B customers.

4. Improve Effectiveness

Mobile marketing automation will help improve the effectiveness of your mobile marketing efforts in numerous ways. It can help you reach leads at the right time, and help personalize interactions to improve your chances of converting.

5. Reduce Repetitiveness

Without automation, your staff would spend a lot of their time on mundane tasks. When tasks are mundane and repetitive, your staff will be more likely to make errors. Automation prevents these errors from occurring. Additionally, repetitive tasks can be incredibly boring and are not creatively fulfilling. Allowing your staff to focus their time on more important aspects of marketing will make them more productive. This is true especially when their tasks actually require them to take full use of their creative abilities.
These are five reasons you should consider implementing mobile marketing automation. Because of how prevalent mobile use is these days, mobile marketing is a must. The best way to engage with your audience effectively is through the use of mobile marketing automation.

 

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earned media vs paid media

Understanding the Difference Between Earned Media vs. Paid Media And Embracing The PESO Model

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When it comes to digital marketing, there are four main types of media. The first, owned media, is relatively obvious. Owned media refers to the media that you own, such as your website, your blog, or your social media pages. Then there’s paid media, which often comes to mind first. However, you could argue that earned media is just as important. The following is a breakdown of earned media vs paid media as well as the importance of following the PESO model, which implements all forms of media for a more balanced digital marketing strategy.

Earned Media vs Paid Media

Paid media consists of the marketing elements that you pay for. Traditionally, paid media consisted of things like TV commercials and magazine ads. However, these days, they also include PPC (per-per-click) ads, social media ads, and display ads. To get the most out of your paid media, you have to plan your marketing strategy carefully and make sure that you’re targeting the right audience. However, paid media can be quite effective at helping to increase brand exposure and web traffic. earned media vs paid media

Earned media is essentially a form of marketing that you do not pay for and do not own. Customers and brand advocates generate earned media. In a way, it’s like a digital form of “word-of-mouth.” Earned media can include having reviews written by customers as well as professional product review sites or having news stories published about your company. Any kind of publicity that you didn’t pay for is earned media. Earned media is an excellent way to increase brand recognition even though you don’t have direct control over it; however, earned media is also free.

What Is The PESO Model?

Earned media and paid media are not the only types of media you should be concerned with. Owned media, which includes marketing elements that you have direct ownership and full control over (such as your website and your business blog) as well as shared media, which is the media you earn through social media engagement (shares, likes, and comments), both play an important part in helping to grow your brand. The mistake many businesses make is to focus more on one type of media than the other.

Similar Article: Using The Right Media Mix During Each Stage Of The Buyer’s Journeys

Gini Dietrich stressed the importance of integrating all four forms of media with her PESO (paid, earned, shared, owned) model. By implementing the PESO model, you integrate all four forms of media to strengthen your ability to attract leads and convert customers. For example, the use of paid media and shared media can help draw the attention of prospects. Earned media helps to establish the credibility of your brand so that those prospects trust you. Owned media, such as eBooks or whitepapers, help showcase the value of your brand.

While knowing the difference between earned media vs. paid media is important, it’s also important that you don’t value paid media over earned media or vice versa. They, along with shared media and owned media, play an important part in helping to grow your brand. Finding the right balance can take some time, but as long as you keep the PESO model in mind as you create your marketing strategy, you’ll end up having a more balanced and effective marketing campaign.

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chatbot examples

Chatbot Examples: How Businesses are Successfully Using Chatbots

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Businesses are constantly looking for ways to engage with their audience in any way they can. The more you engage with them, the more effectively you can nurture them. It’s one of the reasons why companies are beginning to implement chatbots more and more. Chatbots are a form of artificial intelligence (AI) that engage with website users via a messenger. Chatbots use data such as user information and behavior to personalize interactions. They are a great way to keep visitors engaged as they navigate your site by answering basic questions and providing assistance any hours of the day. Considering how popular online messengers are in general (Facebook Messenger alone has more than 1.2 billion monthly users), it should come as no surprise that chatbots are a form of customer service people appreciate. The following are some chatbot examples.

Types of Chatbots

When it comes to implementing a chatbot, it’s important to know that there two main types to choose from: a simple chatbot and a smart chatbot. The following is a brief rundown of their differences:

  • Simple Chatbots – Simple chatbots work by implementing a series of commands written by the developer based on pre-written keywords. Basically, the chatbot will only understand a user query if it contains one of these pre-written keywords. If a user engages with the chatbot but doesn’t use any of these keywords, it will automatically respond with something like “I do not understand.” It’s a very basic chatbot, but it can still be useful for answering simple questions.
  • Smart Chatbots – Smart chatbots use AI to communicate to users. Instead of replying to user queries and responses with pre-prepared answers, a smart chatbot will respond with appropriate suggestions on the topic. The words of the user will also be recorded for additional data.

How Major Brands Use Chatbots

Now that you have a better understanding of what chatbots are, the following are a few examples of how some of the more well-known companies have adapted chatbots and why they have been so effective for them:

  • Adobe – The Adobe chatbot helps users troubleshoot issues by responding to questions with links to pages that contain the solutions. It’s a no-frills chatbot, but it’s one that users can rely on when they have questions or issues.
  • Arsenal FC – The London based Arsenal soccer team has a chatbot that provides users with real-time updates about ongoing games. It is useful for anyone who can’t catch the game on TV. Their chatbot also provides information about upcoming games, team line-ups, and team-related news.
  • Universal Studios – The chatbot used by Universal Studios in hugely helpful in a number of ways. First, it can provide a significant amount of information while users are at one of their parks, such as where the nearest restroom is or what the wait times are for certain rides in real time. It also gives users the chance to speak with a human representative if the chatbot can’t provide the answer they’re looking for.
  • Dominos – Dominos lets its customers order food through its chatbot. It’s like someone is taking their order over text. The chatbot asks customers what they want and will follow up with specific questions about customization options. It’s particularly customer-friendly because customers don’t have to download or sign-up for anything. The chatbot can also save your preferences for future orders.

These few successful chatbot examples show just how helpful using chatbots can be, especially when it comes to improving your customer service.

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Brand Ambassador Programs

How Businesses Are Using Brand Ambassador Programs To Increase Brand Awareness And Trust

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Generating brand awareness and building brand trust are two major marketing goals all businesses have. One of the most effective ways to achieve these goals is by encouraging loyal customers to increase brand awareness and trust on your behalf. This is because positive word-of-mouth can be incredibly powerful, and because consumers tend to trust one another when it comes to brand recommendations. As a result, many businesses have established brand ambassador programs in order to turn their loyal customers into official ambassadors.

What are Brand Ambassadors?

Brand ambassadors are consumers who work closely with you to advocate your brand. Companies generally choose loyal customers who already have a history recommending your brand, and also have some online influence. Someone with tens of thousands of followers on Instagram is going to be more effective as a brand ambassador than someone who only has LinkedIn and a handful of connections.

Having brand ambassadors can influence their followers by recommending your products or services, incite conversations about your brand, and create content on your behalf. For example, a brand ambassador on Instagram might post a picture wearing a jacket your company sells.

To take advantage of brand ambassadors, you’ll want to establish a brand ambassador program. You’ll need to do a lot of research to identify individuals who will make good brand ambassadors. Consider making the program membership exclusive. People are more likely to take their brand ambassadorship seriously if they know that not just anyone can be one of your brand ambassadors. Additionally, you’ll need to provide some sort of compensation, whether you actually pay them or you give them free products. Many companies will provide their brand ambassadors with new products before they’re even available to the masses.

Examples of Successful Brand Ambassador Programs

The following are some of the most successful brand ambassador programs launched by some of the biggest companies:

• Red Bull – Red Bull’s brand ambassador program is called the Wings Team. They focus on students who have an exciting lifestyle to turn their brand into a lifestyle brand. Because their ambassadors are students, they are able to reach a college audience much more effectively.
• Lululemon – Lululemon essentially uses its brand ambassador program to sponsor local athletes, yoga instructors, and influencers. They provide incentive by partnering with their ambassadors to support their local philanthropic projects and initiatives.
• American Express – American Express has a brand ambassador program filled with social media influencers. They target travel and lifestyle influencers in particular since they showcase a luxurious lifestyle — one that obviously benefits from the extensive use of a credit card. They not only showcase the use of their American Express credit cards, but the rewards that they can obtain from their regular use as well.

Even the biggest companies in the world recognize the value of a brand ambassador. If you have loyal customers, then you should encourage them to become brand ambassadors by implementing a brand ambassador program. Use these three examples as an inspiration to set up your own brand ambassador program today.

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Artificial Intelligence Pros and Cons

Considering The Pros and Cons of Using Artificial Intelligence In Marketing

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Artificial Intelligence (AI) is becoming more and more prominent across all industries. The uses of AI range from manufacturing incredibly complex microchips, to driving unmanned vehicles. However, it’s also used in a more behind-the-scenes capacity. For example, businesses use AI tools to help collect and analyze customer data as well as to engage with customers and prospects on their website and social media channels. It’s important to understand that there are artificial intelligence pros and cons. The following are a few of the artificial intelligence pros and cons that you should keep in mind:

The Pros Of Artificial Intelligence

These are just a few of the benefits of using AI:

  • Personalize interactions – AI tools can collect user information and behaviors of a customer or lead to execute specific actions. For example, if a customer buys a product, AI can automatically send them an email not only thanking them for their purchase but recommending a similar product. A good example of this is Netflix. Netflix uses a complex algorithm to personalize their user experience by recommending movies and shows based on their watch history. You can also use AI to send leads dynamic content that’s based on their specific behavior and information.
  • Improve marketing efficiency – The use of AI can help eliminate mundane, time-consuming tasks, freeing up time that your marketing and sales teams can use to focus on more important matters. Additionally, AI tools allow you to collect vast amounts of data that you would never be able to manually sort and analyze. This means that by using AI, you can make faster and better decisions based on accurate, real-time information.
  • Reduce costs – Not only does saving time help reduce costs, but it can also save money on staffing. For example, the use of chatbots means that you don’t need as many customer representatives on standby. The use of AI can also help eliminate errors. Humans are more likely to make mistakes when performing repetitive tasks due to boredom. AI tools eliminate the risk of error in tasks such as these.

The Cons Of Artificial Intelligence

The following are some of the current drawbacks of AI:

  • Many customers still prefer human interaction – Chatbots can help provide people with answers to basic questions. You can even personalize interactions to some extent. But no customer is going to mistake a chatbot for an actual human. Many customers will prefer to speak to an actual human instead of a chatbot.
  • Fewer jobs – Because you may not need as big of a staff due to the use of AI, it means you won’t be employing as many people as you would have otherwise. Just keep in mind that even though AI has cost people some jobs, in the long term, it has and will create more jobs as well.
  • AI can only make logic-based decisions – There have been cases where companies have performed actions that seemed callous as a result of AI. For example, Uber operates on an AI tool that determines how much rates will be based on supply and demand. When there’s a big demand, rates go up. When a shooting and hostage situation occurred in Sydney, Australia, a few years back, people in the area tried to leave via Ubers. Uber received bad press because their rates went up automatically — making them seem cold-hearted.

These are a few artificial intelligence pros and cons to keep in mind. As you can see, the use of AI can greatly benefit your marketing strategy; however, it’s important not to over-rely on your AI tools as there are still some limitations as well.

 

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Customer Benefits

What Are the Real Customer Benefits of AI?

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Artificial Intelligence (AI) is becoming more prevalent in the technology of today, from virtual assistants, such as Alexa and Siri, to Google’s self-driving cars. AI also sorts through massive amounts of data for businesses of all sizes. This technology can also eliminate repetitive tasks. Thought the benefits of using AI are apparent for business, it may not be as obvious as to how the customer benefits. The following are a few ways that the use of AI can help your customers:

Improve Customer Service

As much as you would like to have somebody waiting to speak with every person that comes to your website, that’s going to be impossible to do. A queue of users could build up waiting to speak with someone, which could harm their customer service experience. Not to mention that people will visit your site after business hours as well. Chatbots address the questions and concerns of your customers immediately. Chatbots can be programmed to answer basic questions, thereby preventing users from abandoning your site or waiting for a response.

Personalize Your Interactions

Not only can you segment your email list by the information that users have submitted to you, but you can further personalize emails through dynamic content, ensuring that the content users receive will be tailored to their specific needs and actions. You can even personalize interactions through your live chat or chatbots feature by tracking user behavior.

Help Customers Find What They Need

You can trigger certain product or service recommendations based on users’ purchase history or what they’re looking for. AI helps your customers discover relevant products or services they may not have known about.

Improve Customer Experience

There are AI tools that can not only collect user feedback so that you can identify ways in which you can improve their experience, but that can also track user behavior to identify problem areas on your site (for example, maybe a significant amount of people are abandoning their shopping cart without checking out). You can use this information to improve your customer experience.

The use of AI is growing in all facets of life. AI can be especially useful when it comes to providing customer benefits. These are just a few of the ways you can benefit your customers through the use of AI.

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marketing trends

What’s Trending in Marketing for July 2019

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Staying current on recent marketing trends is an excellent way to reflect and verify whether your marketing efforts are harmonious with what’s going on in today’s ever-evolving marketplace. We’re aware that keeping up with these trends can often be difficult given the abundance of information thrown at us every day. The following articles come from popular marketing blogs. They highlight current marketing trends that we think are worth paying attention to:

Noteworthy Marketing News

Microsoft Just Dealt A Blow To Google’s Ad Blocking Plans

Google announced their plans to restrict ad blocking Chrome extensions. This means that ad blockers, like uBlock origin, won’t work on the Google Chrome browser. This update will come in the upcoming months and some Chrome users have made it clear that they’ll move to another browser if Google carries out that plan. Microsoft has responded by reaching out to their users to see if they’d like Ad Blockers built into the new version of the Microsoft Edge browser. You can learn more about this story on Forbes.

Instagram advertisers can now convert organic influencer posts into ads

Instagram confirmed in March that it’s testing a new ad format. It’s going to be possible for brands to create ads using organic posts from the influencers they have relationships with. Marketing Land writes, “Before brands can use influencer posts as ads, the content creator must grant their business partners (the brands they have relationships with) access to promote their posts. Once the creator — or influencer — has done this via their Advanced Settings page, brands will see the influencer’s posts in the Ads Manager under “Existing Posts” and can run the content as an ad within the Instagram newsfeed or Stories format.”

Comcast partners with Charter, Cox to advance targeted advertising

Comcast launched an advertising strategy that will target audiences better in an effort to lure more advertisers away from digital platforms like Facebook and Google. The initiative is called “On Addressability” and the aim is to target advertisements to certain households based on their interests. So far, this has only been done on a small scale in TV advertising. TV is the best way to reach a lot of people at once, but it lacks the big data that digital platforms use. Learn more about this story at Yahoo.

Improving Your Marketing Program

Emotional Advertising: How Brands Use Feelings to Get People to Buy

Informing your audience is important. You want potential buyers to understand what their problem is, and how your products or services can solve that problem. Unfortunately, people don’t generally make purchases based on information alone. It turns out that people are more prone to making emotional purchases than informed purchases. It’s why commercials consist of much more than an explanation of a product’s use. Instead they use emotional advertising to target the viewer. It’s effective, and it’s why connecting with your audience on an emotional level will benefit your marketing strategy.

Simple Ways that Small Businesses Can Use Data to Build Better Customer Relationships

In this day and age, it’s pretty difficult for consumers to not be inundated with dozens of advertisements. As such, targeting your audience has become more important than ever, especially when it comes to running a smaller business. The most effective way to target your audience is to make use of the consumer data that you have access to. Knowing how to use the data you have can go a long way towards building customer relationships.

However, having consumer data is a lot different than knowing how to make it actionable, which can make the data you have very intimidating. The following are the three steps that you should take to so that you can leverage your data to build strong customer relationships.

What Are Behavioral Biometrics and How Do They Fit Into Marketing?

Companies often hold focus groups in order to get direct feedback about products, services, and even website experiences. The only drawback to such focus groups is that people often aren’t sure how to articulate what they feel about certain things. However, new biometric technology, such as eye-tracking software, has made it easier to determine exactly how someone feels about a website experience at any given moment–and they can allow you to do so without holding a focus group.

Recent Marketing Reports, Updates, and Trends

Almost 70% of digital ad spending going to Google, Facebook, Amazon, says analyst firm

Google, Facebook, and Amazon are collecting more than 2/3rds of all digital ad spending. Between the 3 companies, this is about $73 billion. Amazon owns 38% of e-commerce, which is down from almost 50% a year ago.

These numbers matter greatly as the Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice will begin antitrust investigation of Facebook, Google, and Amazon in the upcoming 12-18 months. More about this story can be found on Marketing Land.

Political Ad Spending Will Approach $10 Billion in 2020, New Forecast Predicts

A new report predicts that spending on political advertisements will reach a new high in 2020. According to the forecast, political ad spending will total $9.9 billion in 2020. In 2016, $6.3 billion was spent on political ads. Political ad spending in 2018 accounted for 2% of total digital ad spending in the US and it’s projected to increase to 2.2% in 2020. Learn more about this story on WSJ.

Survey finds 89% of marketers seeing increased sales using location data

700 U.S. based mobile marketers from 536 consumer brands and 164 agencies took part in this 2019 survey. The survey found that about 9 in 10 marketers plan to use location data in the future to increase sales. However, of those surveyed, only 24% are using or plan to use location data for store visitation or offline measurement.

This report shows that location data is becoming a popular horizontal tool for audience segmentation and targeting across channels. Learn more about this report at Marketing Land.

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What’s Trending in Marketing for June 2019

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Staying current on recent marketing trends is an excellent way to reflect and verify whether your marketing efforts are harmonious with what’s going on in today’s ever-evolving marketplace. We’re aware that keeping up with these trends can often be difficult given the abundance of information thrown at us every day. The following articles come from popular marketing blogs. They highlight current marketing trends that we think are worth paying attention to:

Noteworthy Marketing News

Spotify tests interactive ads that listen for your voice

Spotify is testing interactive ads that can be controlled by users voices. The idea allows a user to say “play now” when hearing a voice controlled ad, which would then take them to the piece of relevant content. Two ads are currently running, one for Unilever’s Axe products and the other for a Spotify podcast called Stay Free: The Story of the Clash. Saying the key phrase during whichever ad is playing will direct you to an Axe-branded playlist or to the advertised podcast. This is just one way digital content allows for the development of new ways for consumers to interact with advertising content. You can read more about this story on The Verge.

LinkedIn refreshes Sales Navigator homepage to put focus on alerts

This is a change to increase Ease of Access when using LinkedIn Sales Navigator. The big news with this latest update to the Sales Navigator platform is that the homepage shift. It is transforming from a newsfeed format to focus on alerts.  Knowing the full-breadth of features offered by LinkedIn Sales Navigator helps marketing teams contribute added value to their sales organization. These insights allow companies to take full advantage of their social media advertising platform and investment. Learn more about this update at Martech Today.

Facebook is getting a redesign

The main takeaway from the new Facebook redesign is that groups will continue to dominate the Facebook marketing space. This is an interesting redesign that comes off the heels of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announcing how a lot of users have started using groups and more private ways for sharing content.

Social Report writes, “But this is no new trend. We’ve been huge proponents of Facebook groups since Facebook changed its algorithm to prioritize content from groups and other “content that matters” on the Newsfeed last year.When Facebook changed its algorithm, it plummeted organic reach for Facebook pages. At the same time, however, Facebook gave groups more organic reach—even if they’re run by a brand. This groups-focused redesign shows us that Facebook is continuing its commitment to Facebook groups, and that we’ll continue to see the platform prioritize content from them indefinitely”.

Improving Your Marketing Program

Developing the Perfect Omni-Channel Marketing Strategy

The buyer’s journey has changed a lot over the years. This is a result of the consumer’s ability to explore multiple channels online and to engage in multiple ways. There is no distinct path that takes them from point A to point B in order to make a purchase. While one customer might begin doing research through a search engine like Google, another might ask their followers questions on social media to identify solutions to their problems, while yet another might stumble on an ad for one of your products in a magazine. Basically, every buyer’s journey is unique.

As such, it’s important that you have a presence on multiple channels. You should integrate all of your channels, processes, and strategies to help nurture any stage of their buyer’s journey. This is omni-channel marketing. The following are a number of tips that you should consider implementing that will help you strengthen your omni-channel marketing strategy.

Factors That Influence Consumer Purchasing Decisions: Rethinking the Marketing Funnel

In order to continue attracting your target audience, you need to keep up with the wants and needs of customers. This can be a real challenge if you don’t understand the factors that influence consumer purchasing decisions. Those factors are a lot different than what they used to be, which means that the customer journey has changed a lot as well. This updated journey is referred to by many as the consumer decision journey (CDJ). What makes the CDJ so different than traditional marketing funnels is that each consumer’s CDJ is unique. Keeping that in mind, the following are three of the biggest factors that influence consumer purchasing decisions in today’s digital age.

How to Outshine Your Competition with Effective E-Commerce Website Marketing 

While not all businesses have an e-commerce page, many do. If you’re selling products or services online, make sure you have an e-commerce marketing strategy in place. If you don’t, it’s going to be difficult to stand out from all the other e-commerce sites out there. Through the use of digital marketing strategies, you can build awareness of your e-commerce page to generate more traffic. Thereby, you can improve your chances of closing sales. The following are a number of e-commerce marketing tips that will help you do just that.

Recent Marketing Reports, Updates, and Trends

Mobile to become the preferred platform for video ads by end of 2019

A new report from PubMatic stated nearly 50% of video ads were viewed on mobile devices0. That is up from from 40% in 2018. Video ads are expected to exceed $29 Billion globally according to this same report. This trend follows the amount of content being consumed on mobile devices versus any other device. With 5G on the horizon, content accessibility will only drive increased impressions and ad dollars. More about this story can be found on Marketing Land.

Universal Measurement Standard for video

For years, media companies have tried to develop a universal standard that allows advertisers to compare video metrics across all visual media. The Media Rating Council is getting closer to implementing a single standard for measuring video across all platforms. A standard metric allows marketers to have an effective tool to independently prove how effective ad performance.

Sarah Fisher from Axios writes, “Last week, the MRC finished collecting dozens of comments in response to its long-awaited draft proposal for the new cross-media audience measurement standard, which imposes stricter rules for digital companies reporting video impressions and stricter rules for how TV report commercial viewership.”

Time spent on Facebook, Snapchat remains flat, but Instagram sees growth

A recent study from eMarketer looked at some of the key players in social media. It’s findings offer an interesting glimpse into what 2019 holds for Facebook, Snapchat, and Instagram. eMarketer reports the average amount of time people will spend each day on Facebook this year will remain unchanged from last year at 38-minutes. That number is expected to drop to 37-minutes per day by next year. This is a downgrade from the figures eMarketer released during the third quarter of 2018.

Overall, eMarketer reports the average amount of time people spent per day on social networks in the U.S. dropped by nearly 1.5 minutes last year. That number will remain “virtually” unchanged this year according to eMarketer’s forecasts. Learn more about this study at Marketing Land.

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