Welcome back to The Hubcast, folks: A weekly podcast all about HubSpot news, tips, and tricks. Please also note the extensive show notes below, including some new HubSpot video tutorials ...
The post Hubcast 121: 2017 Predictions For Live Video, Marketing, & Social Media appeared first on The Sales Lion by Marcus Sheridan.
Author: Janet Dulsky
The new year is upon us which means that it’s time to make our New Year’s resolutions. If you’re like me, you dread making New Year’s resolutions. I always have such high hopes on January 1st, but then I find myself falling back into my old habits by the middle of the month and completely abandoning my good intentions by the end of January.
This year, I’m going to make it easier on myself. Rather than focusing on new resolutions, I’m focusing on applying the lessons I learned from the previous year. 2016 was a crazy year in a lot of ways…an election year (in the U.S.) has a way of doing that. One big learning I took away from the year is to market what your brand is, not what it isn’t.
This is relevant to all marketers. We’re the caretakers of our company brand, and we make choices every day about how to tell our brand story. We often get pressure from our sales teams to talk about our brand relative to the competition. While there is certainly a time and place for competitive comparison, on a day-to-day basis, here are three reasons you want to talk about what your company is, not what it isn’t:
By its very definition, a brand must be something. Heidi Cohen, speaker, professor, and journalist who runs Actionable Marketing Guide, put together a great list of brand definitions from 30 marketers and visionary leaders. A few of my favorites include:
You might notice that none of these definitions talk about a brand as “not our competitor.” The dictionary defines the word negative as “consisting in or characterized by the absence rather than the presence of distinguishing features.” So, when we define our brand by what we’re not relative to our competition (e.g. “Our software isn’t slow, like [fill in the blank]”), we tell our customers and prospects nothing about our company and leave an absence, rather than a presence, in their minds. Your brand then becomes like the body outline at a crime scene. Completely empty.
If you don’t tell people about your brand, someone else—likely your competitors—will fill in the blanks. We saw this firsthand during the election, with opposing candidates using the other’s positions on key issues to portray each other in a negative light. Unfortunately, many of those descriptions stuck because there was nothing else in people’s minds about the candidates with which to push back. You’ve heard the expression that “nature abhors a vacuum” and, as a result, nature fills voids. So do people. Everything you say and do should reflect and support your brand message about who you are. That way, when a competitor fills the airways with FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt), your company will be like Teflon…those messages won’t stick!
The perspectives that people have about your company is based on what you say about your company and what they have experienced with your company—what you say and what you do. Even if you don’t tell people what your brand is, they will fill the void and create an image in their mind based on what they’ve heard and witnessed. You’re just leaving that image to chance if you’re not staking a claim to what your brand represents and following through with that brand promise through all touch points.
For example, I shop at Costco, which comes with the territory when you’re raising two, constantly hungry, teenage boys. Costco says it is “a membership warehouse club, dedicated to bringing our members the best possible prices on quality brand-name merchandise.” And guess what? I believe implicitly that the products I buy at Costco are a good value. Why? Because over the years, in most cases, my experience with the products I buy there is that they are good quality for the price I pay. This is not to say that I haven’t bought things that were not up to par, but because my consistent experiences with Costco products have mostly been good, that is my perception of their brand.
Brand image is critical to your organization’s success because it not only puts your reputation at stake, but it also influences purchases. To drive this point home, Invesp created an interesting infographic that shows how branding influences purchasing decisions. And let’s not forget that brand is just as important for B2B customers as it is for consumer marketers. In fact, McKinsey conducted a B2B branding survey which found that brand influences 20% of the B2B purchase decision. So, make sure you’re talking about what your company is and that you’re filling in the blanks (not your competitors), and you will build a positive image of your brand in the mind of your potential and existing customers.
What did you learn in 2016 that you’re going to use in 2017? Share in the comments below!
The Biggest Lesson I Learned in 2016: Talk About Who You Are, Not Who You Aren’t was posted at Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership. | http://blog.marketo.com
The post The Biggest Lesson I Learned in 2016: Talk About Who You Are, Not Who You Aren’t appeared first on Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership.
Thanks for having me on the show. So I am on the customer happiness team at Wistia. One of the things I am focusing on right now is building our voice of the customer program. That's aggregating all the customer feedback ...
The post Wistia: Cost, Competitors, Community, & More [VIDEO & PODCAST] One Last Tool appeared first on The Sales Lion by Marcus Sheridan.
Author: Tanya Chu
If you didn’t have much time to delve into your lead scoring this year, it’s not too late to make the business case to do so in 2017! How you structure (and restructure) your lead scoring can give you insights into how your marketing strategy is performing. Even if you already have a lead scoring system in place, it’s a good idea to re-evaluate it as your organization and its needs change.
Here are four ways that lead scoring can make you a smarter marketer:
The demographic score measures how well your prospects fit your target audience. Some of them include:
The demographic score is an incredibly important data-driven metric because it tells you the quality of your lead database at the top-of-the-funnel. Just by tracking the average demographic score on a weekly basis, you can gauge whether your database is becoming richer with the prospects that you are trying to attract or not. If the average is continuously going down, perhaps it’s time for you to consider a data vendor to help boost your dataset or take a random sample to see who you’re really attracting with your marketing initiatives.
As you learn more about your prospects and customers, you can develop more tailored campaigns. For example, if you see that director-level prospects tend to sign up for your webinars, then consider creating a webinar track with content targeted specifically for directors. In another example, if you are marketing to your existing customer base, knowing the job function of who is engaging with your content and actively participating in your programs can help you find or create the right content for your cross-sell and upsell efforts. Knowing the overall demographics of your database is also an excellent way to map out nurture tracks to address different interests.
I think it’s safe to say that we’ve all purchased something online before. Most people do their research before purchasing a product, scouring the web for similar products from different brands, comparing pricing and quality, and checking out customer testimonials and demos. These are buying intent behaviors. Other behaviors, like downloading checklists or cheatsheets, signal engagement and curiosity. Behavioral scoring is the categorization of all these behaviors.
At Marketo, we have an organized matrix that pares down all behaviors with respect to different marketing channels and the success level attained, and it is always being updated and tweaked to accommodate for new marketing campaigns. This global matrix keeps our behavior scoring unified across our global offices. Our demand generation team then uses this behavior score in their accelerator programs as a proxy to segment out who they want to send mid-stage versus late-stage material to. Relevancy and timing is key in getting that prospect to fast track to conversion and purchase.
Account-based marketing has been huge among B2B organizations, and this shift to account-centric engagement applies to scoring as well. Just as you can score individual leads demographically and behaviorally, you can score accounts based on what you see happening among the group of leads as a sum to check for sales-readiness.
Another neat idea is implementing predictive account scoring, which can be part of the overall account score. For example, if you have analyzed your existing customer base, you can project these insights onto your prospect base to see what accounts may have a greater propensity to purchase. In another use case, account scoring can be used in a whitespace exercise to see what accounts you may be missing in your current database.
Lead scoring shouldn’t exist only in the marketing realm. Sales needs to be involved in understanding how the lead score is generated and what the thresholds are for marketing qualified leads. One way to validate your lead scoring engine is by bucketing lead scores into tiers and tracking the conversion rates for each tier of lead scores into closed business. This could shed light on if demographic scoring is overemphasized or if certain behaviors do not need to be scored so high. Then, if your confidence level is pretty high in understanding how lead score correlates to closed-won deals, vetted scores can be used to check sales pipeline estimates and the likelihood of new revenue.
You should also find ways to correlate the lead score to won revenue to reinforce to sales that scoring does work and tune up aspects of leads scoring every quarter. One aspect is understanding the weighting, which I alluded to earlier. Is demographic score driving a high lead score, or is behavior? Should account score trump both these scores with the biggest weighting? Take these into consideration as you discuss with sales what they are seeing in the leads that are being delivered to them.
Lead scoring is a never-ending ongoing process so forge ahead in 2017! And if you’re leveraging an advanced marketing automation, one of the most powerful aspects about it is its flexibility with handling changing business needs and scoring models that reflect them.
Check out our ebook on 4 Steps to Developing a Winning Lead Scoring Model to get started, or refresh, your lead scoring engine.
4 Ways Lead Scoring Can Reinforce Your Marketing Strategy and Grow Your Revenue [Ebook] was posted at Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership. | http://blog.marketo.com
The post 4 Ways Lead Scoring Can Reinforce Your Marketing Strategy and Grow Your Revenue [Ebook] appeared first on Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership.
"We’ve long dreamed of talking computers," noted Barry Briggs, consultant and former CTO for Microsoft, where he helped lead the company’s transition to the cloud and is generally known as a pioneer in the computing industry. What Briggs is referring to is advent of talking devices and conversational interfaces which are just now beginning to reshape how we use computers, and more importantly how we interact with data.
Formerly, according to Briggs, talking computers (such as ELIZA) were more or less a trick. "After a time, because of the program’s simplicity, the novelty wears off," he said.
However, things are advancing so fast that conversational Star Trek style computer and device interaction is foreshadowing a transformative societal shift. Briggs said in January 2014, "The limitations are really gone. We have built software for decades now thinking about what are the limitations that the hardware or the amount of storage for the network place upon us. Those limitations don't exist anymore."
Fast forward to today Briggs writes:
"Because of the nearly limitless computing and storage capacity in the cloud, and because of great advances in AI, machine learning, speech recognition, and data storage and analytics, Weizenbaum’s primitive ELIZA program has evolved into something far more magical and useful," says Briggs. "Perhaps, even, we’re at the advent of the next big shift in computing, fueled by artificial intelligence and built around a behavior that is most natural to humans: conversations."
Briggs sees bots at the advent of this conversational shift. "Want a pizza? Just ask Domino’s chatbot. Or PizzaHut’s chatbot. Need to get somewhere? Ask Uber."
He wonders, "Can bots become the new UI?"
"For business, the transformation of conversational computing is just beginning. As bots are connected to corporate databases, for example, they’ll simplify tasks from onsite repairs to scheduling meetings into simple conversational actions like, “What parts do I need to fix this?” or “What time is Customer X available next Monday?”
Eventually, by taking advantage of the massive data storage and mining capabilities available in the cloud, bots will get to know you, providing intelligent suggestions like, “While you’re on site with the customer, I’d suggest examining the engine gearbox, I’m seeing some early failures in other installs,” and learning from previous experiences: “Did the fix I suggested last time help?”
We’ve come a long way from Weizenbaum’s ELIZA. What started as a bit of sleight-of-hand programming has turned into an entirely new, intuitive and efficient way of interacting with computers. Conversational bots built on cloud-based artificial intelligence enable new frontiers in customer intimacy, simplify access to information, and help businesses and consumers make more informed decisions – quicker."
Read the full article at the Microsoft Transform Blog...
The post The Conversational Computer Revolution is Upon Us appeared first on WebProNews.
Author: Zach French
“You went to law school?” I get this question all the time, especially during my interview with Marketo last November. Yes, I graduated from law school and yes, I am now a sales development rep (SDR) selling software.
So how does a legal education set you up to be successful in sales? I didn’t have to look far to find ways to apply the analytical and strategic thinking I learned in law school. In fact, it translates almost seamlessly to B2B sales.
The critical thinking I’m referring to is the approach used in the IRAC method, which stands for issue, rule, application, and conclusion. It’s used by almost every single law school student and lawyer in writing out legal briefs, which are used to convince a judge to rule in your client’s favor. Similarly, in sales, you must come up with a strategy that puts you in the best position to win a deal. In this blog, I’ll explain how you can apply the IRAC method to your presentations and conversations to scale your sales process:
In law, the issue is a clear and concise statement of the question of law or fact in dispute. In both criminal and civil court, the defendant’s liability is based on the prosecutor or plaintiff’s attempt to prove a relevant cause of action (e.g. murder or breach of contract), which requires certain factors or elements to be met through evidence. The issue most often arises out of a dispute over a specific factor or element of the cause of action. The best issue statements are both informative and persuasive.
In sales, the successful identification of the issue(s) a prospect is facing derives from a few investigative/discovery calls. By asking the right questions, we can usually unearth an issue relevant to the particular prospect or client. It is imperative that all contributing “factors or elements” are uncovered during these calls. Typically, they stem from dissatisfaction or pain with the current solution, specific departmental goals they failed to hit, or even issues later in the sales process regarding implementation. And the investigative phase doesn’t end with your own acknowledgment of its existence—the prospect/client needs to know that you understand their issue(s). So, restate the issues as you see them and confirm that there is nothing additional to add.
Once you know an issue exists, you must find the rule/answer that is most relevant to that issue.
In law, the rule usually comes in the form of a statute (written, codified law) or precedent (previous cases discussing similar issues). Statutes are intended to be taken at their face value and read for their literal and policy meaning as explained by our legislative law makers. The influence of precedent is determined first by the level of court (supreme, superior, etc.), then by relevance.
For example, if you are arguing over a state issue, you shouldn’t use the U.S. Supreme Court because their rulings are only relevant to federal issues. Instead, use the highest ranking state court, which is the State Supreme Court. As far as relevance, you don’t want to use precedent that discusses one element of a cause of action to prove your conclusion on another element. Without finding the most relevant governing rule, an entire argument can be thrown out by the court.
In sales, the rule will derive out of specific functionality, services, or satisfied customers who previously experienced similar issues. Applying the example above, you won’t want to use case studies or a reference calls from an enterprise customer to convince a 1-2 person marketing team they will be successful. Relevance is king. You want to make sure you provide prospects with information showing how similar companies have overcome similar issues using your product, including the hard data. The business model, use case, and any other contextual similarities make the case study or referral call that much stronger. Since you’ve already broken down the issue based on the elements and factors, you can narrow down the relevant rules more accurately.
Next comes the big question: how does the rule apply to the issue at hand?
In law, application is when you explain why the rule is applicable to the specific set of facts. This is the most important part of the legal brief as well as the sales cycle, yet it is often overlooked. You must explain your selection process for the rule (e.g. state court for state law) and why it is relevant. For example, “in Smith v. Smith, the issue in dispute was element/factor number one to prove the cause of action, the same as that in dispute today.” The ruling is relevant because those set of facts are similar enough to the facts at-hand for the court’s reasoning to apply. If there are differences or counter-arguments, it is equally important to address and dispel them.
In sales, if you can’t demonstrate exactly how your product solves their particular issue, then you will fail to differentiate it from others. For example, you could set the stage with “AB Software was struggling with similar issues because they were using a similar solution.” Then, explain how your product or feature helped them achieve certain results that the prospect/client is also looking to achieve. Always remember to explain why. Maybe it’s a similar business model for a company moving from a similar solution. Maybe it’s a unique use case, but a similar goal or issue. Sometimes, it may even be sheer volume and how your product can handle higher capacities than others. It could be a service issue or trouble with onboarding and implementation.
Think outside the box here, because a direct alignment may not always be clear. Understand relevant terminology and positions to most clearly communicate the application of your rule to their issue.
In law, your conclusion will refer back to your issue and state that it is a matter of fact or law to close up your argument. This means that it is either clearly written or can be applied closely enough to similar facts supporting your conclusion. Ideally, in sales, your prospect or client has already come to the same conclusion, so take this time to summarize exactly why your product is the best solution for them in two to three sentences.
Overall, effectively applying the IRAC method to sales depends on clearly understanding the facts at hand. Recognize that your target audience is not the same—not every school needs to boost admissions and not every asset manager needs more clients. Maybe the school wants to boost donations through alumni engagement. Maybe the asset manager simply needs to provide a more diverse set of investment opportunities by building relationships with other advisors. Never assume you know the answer to every question.
Take some time to think analytically and strategize. Ask more questions so that you can provide more relevant answers. This model is scalable and repeatable, so if you can find a way to make it work with your style of sales, the sky is the limit.
What other lessons have you learned from different professions that apply to sales? I’d love to hear in the comments below.
How to Leverage an Analytical Legal Strategy to Close More Deals was posted at Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership. | http://blog.marketo.com
The post How to Leverage an Analytical Legal Strategy to Close More Deals appeared first on Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership.
Amazon had a record Christmas and its own Alexa devices, Echo Dot, Fire TV Stick, Fire tablet and Amazon Echo, lead the way. Sales were up over last year's holiday season an amazing 9 times.
"Echo and Echo Dot were the best-selling products across Amazon this year, and we’re thrilled that millions of new customers will be introduced to Alexa as a result. Despite our best efforts and ramped-up production, we still had trouble keeping them in stock. From turning on Christmas lights and playing holiday music to shopping for gifts and asking for help with cookie recipes, Alexa continues to get smarter every day," commented Jeff Wilke, CEO Worldwide Consumer, Amazon. “We couldn’t have made this holiday season possible for customers without the dedication and hard work of our customer service, transportation, and fulfillment associates along with our carrier partners – it’s amazing to see the teams come together to serve customers during the holidays. On behalf of Amazonians all around the world, we wish everyone happy holidays and the very best for the coming year.”
Prime was huge for Amazon this season, with over 1 billion items shipped for free to Prime Members worldwide. Another interesting tidbit is that Amazon recorded its fastest shipped item on Christmas Eve at 13 minutes from order to delivery that was most likely a last minute gift for a loved one. The order included a Tile Slim Item Finder and a Tile Mate Key Finder.
The last Prime Now order delivered in time for the holiday was delivered at 11:59 p.m. on December 24, 2016 to a Prime member in Irvine, California. The order included a Heated Mattress Pad, NyQuil and Afrin Nasal Spray.
Here is Amazon's full release of holiday shopping data points:
Holidays with Alexa:
Amazon Prime:
Mobile Shopping:
Amazon Operations:
Amazon Digital Media:
Holiday Fun Facts:
Holiday Best Sellers (Amazon.com only):
The post Best Christmas Sales Ever for Amazon and Its Own Devices Lead the Way appeared first on WebProNews.
"Today we are going to talk about two things," said Sean McGaughran, Engineering and Technology Recruiter at Google. "One, we are going to talk about some common Google myths and busts them and two, we are going to talk about how Google actually hires."
"Let's get right into some myth busting," says Rachel Bonds, Business Recruiter and Talent Guru. "The first myth is about only hiring people from Ivey League institutions. That's not true. We hire people from all sorts of backgrounds, colleges and even people who haven't attended college. We are really looking to hire a diverse set of candidates from all sorts of experiences and your GPA is only taken into consideration if you graduated recently from school."
"The second big myth we hear a lot is about brain teasers," she said. "We won't be asking you crazy questions about how many golf balls fit into the Empire State Building. We really spend that time getting to know you and we try to limit it to about four interviews during the course of your process, not a multitude of conversations. So it's not impossible to get hired at Google!"
"The first step in getting hired is really to get us your application," notes Shadan Deleveaux, also a Business Recruiter at Google. "Our career site has some great tips on putting together a powerful and compelling resume. For example, your resume should be concise, generally less than two pages. Also, you really want to make sure that it has no errors or mistakes. Read it top to bottom, bottom to top. Have a friend take a look at it for you. Pay extra special attention to it. Finally, you want to make sure that your bullet points on your resume convey impact. Don't just list the things you did at your current job, but really how you impacted that role. It's one of the things that we care about a lot here at Google."
"Perfect, because living, breathing human beings just like us actually look at your resume, thoughtful trained professionals who can help connect you with some great opportunities right here at Google," added McGaughran.
"Once your resume is reviewed you may hear back from a recruiter," added Bonds. "If you don't after a couple of months you can assume that that role has likely been filled. But if you do the next step is a phone conversation with a recruiter like one of us. We'll want to learn more about your experience, your background and your potential fit with the role. From there, you may have an additional phone interview with another relevant Googler for that team. On the technical side that may include a coding interview. On the business side it may include a conversation that's more specific to the role."
"Now comes the exciting and slightly nerve racking on-site interviews, where you get a chance to come on-site and interview with between 4-5 interviewers," said McGaughran. "If you are interviewing for a technical role, typically those interviews will revolve around data structure, coding algorithms and if you are interviewing for a non-technical position there are often more structured interview questions. You will often have a couple more minutes to chat with the interviewer, get to know them a little bit, talk about the roll and also have an opportunity for some breaks in between to grab a water or snack. Sometimes you will have an opportunity to have a lunch with another member of the team or even a hiring manager."
"If you make it past that point in the process your packet goes to our hiring committee, which is really just a team of Googlers that take a look at your packet," added Deleveaux. "Your packet is nothing more than your interviews, your resume and any work samples you may have submitted to us. It the hiring committee signs off on it, it then goes to one of our senior level Googlers for a final round of approval for an extra set of objective eyes. If that senior level Googler signs off on it, that's when you get a call from your recruiter saying... congratulations, here's your offer!"
The post The Myths and Truths About How Google Hires appeared first on WebProNews.
YouTube Rewind 2016 is YouTube's epic year-end celebration of the videos, people, music and moves that made 2016 on YouTube. Starting with an intro video of the event, the 5 Rewind videos on YouTube have generated an astounding 228 million views since they were posted a couple weeks ago.
This illustrates the massive ability of YouTube to accumulate larger than Super Bowl sized world-wide audiences. No wonder advertisers see their future advertising primarily focused at online video!
YouTube Rewind 2016: Behind the Scenes | #YouTubeRewind (5,688,493 views)
YouTube Rewind: The Ultimate 2016 Challenge | #YouTubeRewind (167,064,949 views)
YouTube Rewind 2016: Epic Group Running Man Challenge in 360° #YouTubeRewind (1,870,665 views)
YouTube Rewind 2016: Unboxing the Cube in 360° #YouTubeRewind (1,041,470 views)
Get Ready for YouTube Rewind 2016 | #RewindisComing (53,302,095 views)
The post YouTube Rewind 2016 Videos Have Generated 228 Million Views in Just 2 Weeks! appeared first on WebProNews.
Google is in the middle of its annual Code-In contest and it's more popular than ever with 930 teenagers from 60 countries completing 3,503 tasks with 17 open source organizations. "The number of students successfully completing tasks has almost met the total number of students from the 2015 contest already," said Stephanie Taylor, Google Code-in Program Manager in a blog post on the Google Open Source Blog. This is the 7th year of Google Code-in.
Tasks that the students have completed include:
Check it out: Google Code-in Website
Google Code-in is a way for Google to inspire young students to enter the field of software development. "Don't wait until they are university students," said Taylor in a talk at GSoC (Google Summer of Code) earlier this year in Singapore. "Let's get them excited about open source when they are 13, 14, 15 years old. So Google Code-in was born."
Google Code-in is an online global contest for 13-17 year old students around the world.
"Students, there is still plenty of time to get started with Google Code-in," said Taylor. "New tasks are being added daily to the contest site — there are over 1,500 tasks available for students to choose from right now! If you don’t see something that interests you today, check back again every couple of days for new tasks."
She says that the last day to register for the contest and claim a task is Friday, January 13, 2017 with all work being due on Monday, January 16, 2017 at 9:00 am PT.
The post Google Code-in for Teens is Wildly Successful appeared first on WebProNews.
The Google Agency Blog over the holiday's shared the results of the #TheYouTubeAd of 2016 contest, in association with The Webby Awards.
Category: #TheYouTubeAd That Goes Straight To The Heart
Winner: Budweiser | Chicago Cubs 2016 World Series Champions | Harry Caray’s Last Call | Fly The W (VaynerMedia, MediaCom)
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Category: #TheYouTubeAd That’s Your Guilty Pleasure
Winner: Dear Kitten: Beginnings // Presented by Buzzfeed & Friskies (Buzzfeed)
Category: #TheYouTubeAd That Puts Stars In Your Eyes
Winner: Best Fiends - WARNING: Don’t Download Best Fiends (Best Fiends In House)
Category: #TheYouTubeAd That Knows No Limits
Winner: #Pokemon20: Pokémon Super Bowl Commercial (Omelet, MediaCom)
Category: #TheYouTubeAd That Takes A Stand
Winner: The Unseen | It Can Wait | AT&T (BBDO, Hearts & Science)
Category: #TheYouTubeAd That Says It In Six
Winner: Old Spice | Sweat | #smellegendary (Wieden+Kennedy)
The post Top YouTube Ads of 2016! appeared first on WebProNews.
Author: Vyoma Kapur
As the winter holiday festivities are slowly coming to an end in the U.S., it’s time to finally rest, relax, and recharge with your loved ones. Throughout this season, you’ve probably seen, heard, and experienced thousands of holiday campaigns and messages designed to influence specific actions (whether you realized it or not).
There are plenty of creative ways for marketers to leverage the holiday season to drive their business objectives across the customer lifecycle–gaining mindshare, acquiring new customers, retaining and selling more to existing customers, and bolstering loyalty. As we have always maintained, holiday marketing isn’t just limited to the retail and travel industries, and it’s not just reserved for winter holidays. Marketers across all industries such as consumer technology, higher education, and financial services can benefit from strategic holiday marketing throughout the year.
Let’s take a look at six holiday campaigns that drive the customer journey and what you can learn from them:
At this early stage, your goal as a marketer is to make your brand both known and relevant to your potential and existing customers. Whether they’ve engaged with you or not before, it’s important to keep your brand top-of-mind as they encounter other campaigns from all sorts of companies.
For the holidays, tie your content and campaigns into the same theme. For example, this digital ad from Bath and Beyond, a home goods retailer, spreads holiday ‘cheer’ across the web, raising awareness about both their brand and products with a consistent theme and message.
Once buyers are familiar with your brand, how do you earn their business? Offer your audience educational, useful, or entertaining content to pique their interest and build trust. By listening to their behaviors and responding with targeted, relevant messaging with a marketing automation platform, you can offer them value at the right time and in the right place (email, social, SMS, etc.) to nudge them closer to conversion. Jenny Craig, a weight management and nutrition company, provides their audience with tips on how to meet their health goals while not compromising the holiday fun–a concern that often comes up during the holidays.
Campaigns focused on acquiring and converting new customers have been in abundance this holiday season, similar to previous seasons. As consumers are shopping online more than ever, check out (below) how Visa promotes online payments on its website for both potential and existing customers. According to NPD, the average online holiday spend per buyer last year reached $418 from November 1 through December 26—an increase of $74 from 2014.
However, be careful not to focus your strategy and resources solely on acquiring new customers and driving them to purchase once. Think beyond the initial purchase and strategize how you’ll not only retain your new customers but grow their lifetime value and loyalty to your brand.
To retain customers in today’s competitive landscape, it’s important to continue offering them something of value and foster their loyalty. The holidays are a perfect time to show you value your existing customers, whether it’s by explicitly saying it or giving them special offers.
Bank of America’s email shows their customers their appreciation for their business:
Uber, a ride-sharing app, partnered with Hotels.com to offer existing customers a $30 discount for their loyalty:
Leverage the holidays for customer marketing by speaking to their needs around the season. You can do this by tracking their behaviors and interests, developing personas and segmenting your customer base, and then mapping your products or services to each segment. Below, Geico provides an answer to a strong, but often under-addressed need for consumers to protect their identities as they shop and share their details with multiple merchants.
Harness the power of your customer evangelists during the holiday season to drive referrals and recommendations. Another example from Uber shows us how this season is ripe with opportunities for marketers. Most consumers likely don’t think of ride sharing when shopping for their family and friends, yet Uber packaged and promoted its services for anyone looking for a unique but thoughtful gift.
What are some of the most impactful campaigns you’ve seen this season? I would love to hear about them, so please feel free to comment below!
6 Holiday Campaigns That Drive the Customer Journey was posted at Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership. | http://blog.marketo.com
The post 6 Holiday Campaigns That Drive the Customer Journey appeared first on Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership.
Author: Patrick Groover
Many organizations employ a wide variety of tactics when it comes to their marketing strategies. Thankfully, a modern marketing automation platform provides enough flexibility to achieve the same outcomes in many different ways.
That being said, while it is possible to take many paths to achieve your objectives, some configurations present a healthier approach than others.
Like most things in life, quality comes in many sizes, shapes, and formats. One team’s definition of healthy may look drastically different than another team’s as initiatives often are unique to a specific organization. Therefore, to define healthy, it is important to look at the principles or leading indicators that highlight whether the sales ends are justified by the marketing means.
As a general rule-of-thumb, healthy strategies leverage balanced communications to deliver results and maximize the use of everyone’s time, both the audience’s and brand’s. A healthy program is customer-appreciated–timely, value-adding, and relevant. Equally important, healthy initiatives are internally supported–efficient, repeatable, and sustainable.
Program health can be measured based on both qualitative and quantitative metrics. For example, a good quantitative metric to track is the amount of time being spent on each campaign or marketing activity compared to the overall ROI. Qualitative metrics include things like employee satisfaction and customer satisfaction.
In this blog, I’ll explain three ways that you can get the most of your marketing automation platform for a healthy, sustainable strategy and how you can measure them:
Your relationships with potential and existing customers are like muscles—properly exercised, they can lead to strong and powerful revenue outcomes. In the same way, overusing and straining them can lead to opt-outs and irritated customers.
As you’re assessing your campaigns, the first question you should ask is “Does this communication provide value to my audience?”
Many times, it can be tempting to overcommunicate when you’re leveraging a marketing automation platform due to the scale at which you can run programs. To overcome this temptation, it’s important to target specific outcomes and objectives within each program. Instead of aiming to send out a weekly or monthly message, define your relationship or education objectives–this is often supported by writing out a value-adding statement while planning your communications.
For example:
Applying this to real-world scenarios for a subscription management company:
By targeting specific outcomes and objectives, you’ll be able to clarify the value that you’ll deliver through automated communications. In the scenarios above, the subscription management company wants to educate their audience on available subscriptions and raise awareness about the information within various publications. The value-adding objective is to present relevant content to their audience and highlight information that the contact may not have otherwise known was available through these publications.
Adding value at each touch point is a great way to ultimately deliver on your goals for driving conversions and revenue. By linking together value-adding communication objectives, you can develop an overall nurturing path for each contact. In the example above, the subscription summary page could include a call-to-action to sign-up for the listed publication.
Ideas for measurement: Track unsubscribes, click-through activity, and program successes. The goal is to gauge whether your audience is interacting with your content or potentially avoiding communication. Qualitative customer surveys and internal discussions on content relevance can uncover areas for improvement.
Do your nurture streams or campaign workflows look like a bunch of spaghetti? Do they feel overly complex in their logic? If so, it may be time to take a look at the events, constraints, and logic being used to automate your communications.
With a marketing automation platform, you can leverage information in a number of ways. By listening for behaviors, rather than programming if/then statements for every interaction, you can simplify the process for placing the most relevant information in front of each audience segment based on their interests. This also increases the likelihood that your audience will see content that resonates the most with them.
One example of this is a welcome series for new customers. Rather than stringing together multiple send-wait-send emails and evaluation steps, you can set up a communication series that are based on whether customers exhibit a new or desired behavior. Not only is this a healthier approach, it’s also a great way to avoid overwhelming them and ensuring that your most important messages are consistently connecting with the right audiences.
Here are a few ways you can evaluate this aspect of your marketing automation:
Of course, if you are running up against a wall when it comes to the available triggers, filters, and logic within your current marketing automation platform, it may be time to consider more sophisticated systems. There is a big difference in design logic from platform-to-platform, and the right logic will make it far easier to implement campaigns based on the objectives and responses you hope to achieve.
Ideas for measurement: The average time spent building out nurturing workflows is a great metric to start with. Qualitative monitoring might include a discussion of daily workload, system ease-of-use, and best practices for automating customer interactions.
A final concept for getting the most of your marketing strategy is scalability. Many marketers have come to terms with the daily grind of developing programs, and as such, they may not realize that many repetitive activities can be consolidated. The right marketing automation platform will reduce the number of times that any type of program or content needs to be produced from scratch.
Common examples of repetitive activities:
Features like dynamic content and the ability to clone whole campaigns (with all associated assets) can free up the much-needed time to support your strategic initiatives. Efficiencies designing, implementing, and executing campaigns will allow you to focus more on monitoring results and optimizing.
Another common area where repetitive activities are abound is reporting. If you’re spending hours and hours compiling data to deliver status updates, your marketing automation platform may have untapped, out-of-the-box settings that can visualize results without a heavy amount of manual intervention. Creating an inventory of your marketing reports and a process for delivering updates may result in greater efficiencies.
Ideas for measurement: Excellent quantitative measure include the number of hours spent building reports and reconfiguring or rebuilding previously developed workflows and content. Tying this information to a general survey that evaluates perspectives on the amount of repetitive work is a good way to track qualitative satisfaction with the current systems, processes, and tasks.
The new year is right around the corner, and many of us are planning out what it will look like for our organizations. One of the best things we can do is to pause and reflect on the items that are working and those that can be streamlined. A great way to rally your team to success in the new year is to ask them to participate in the evaluation process and help determine if there are any areas within your marketing strategy that could be streamlined going forward. Of course, it may time to consider a more advanced marketing automation platform if your current solution does not support these capabilities.
What other tips do you have for a healthier marketing strategy? As always, please feel free to share your comments below.
A 3-Point Health Check for Your Marketing Strategy was posted at Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership. | http://blog.marketo.com
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The Google Cloud Team posted a fun poem for all of us techno nerds. "2016 is winding down, and we wanted to take this chance to thank you, our loyal readers, and wish you happy holidays," wrote Alex Barrett, Editor of the Google Cloud Platform Blog. "As a little gift to you, here’s a poem, courtesy of Mary Koes, a product manager on the Stackdriver team channeling the Clement Clarke Moore classic."
Twas the night before Christmas and all through the Cloud
Not a creature was deploying; it wasn't allowed.
The servers were all hosted in GCP or AWS
And Stackdriver was monitoring them so no one was stressed.
The engineers were nestled all snug in their beds
While visions of dashboards danced in their heads.
When then from my nightstand, there arose such a clatter,
I silenced my phone and checked what was the matter.
Elevated error rates and latency through the roof?
At this rate our error budget soon would go poof!
The Director OOO, the CTO on vacation,
Who would I find still manning their workstation?
Dutifully, I opened the incident channel on Slack
And couldn't believe when someone answered back.
SClaus was the user name of this tireless engineer.
I wasn't aware that this guy even worked here.
He wrote, "Wait while I check your Stackdriver yule Logs . . .
Yep, it seems the errors are all coming from your blogs."
Then in Error Reporting, he found the root cause
"Quota is updated. All fixed. :-)" typed SClaus.
Who this merry DevOps elf was, I never shall know.
For before we did our postmortem, away did he go.
Just before vanishing, he took time to write,
"Merry monitoring to all and to all a silent night!"
Happy holidays everyone, and see you in 2017!
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