Saul Medeiors Affiliate Marketing

Monday, April 22, 2019

The asset management industry isn’t what it used to be. In the face of continued growth, the market has become increasingly crowded and fiercely competitive. But while competition has increased, differentiation among investment offerings has diminished.

What’s more, there’s been a fundamental shift in the relationship between clients and brands. In today’s customer-centric business climate, investors expect firms to provide them with modern, highly personalized experiences—wherever they are, and on any device they choose.

Consider these statistics:

64% of customers say customer experience is more important than price in buying decisions (Forrester).
70% of buying experiences are based on how customers feel they are being understood (McKinsey).
79% of customers only consider brands that show they understand and care about them (Wunderman).
80% of high-net-worth investors under 40 say they would leave their firm if it fails to provide an integrated channel experience (Frost & Sullivan).

Today’s evolving industry landscape has introduced unexpected challenges for asset management firms—and marketing leaders are under pressure to keep up.

Two Essential Elements of a Modern Marketing Strategy

An asset management marketing team has two central functions: to help recruit and retain advisors and to help acquire and retain clients.

In a crowded market where customer expectations have changed, that’s easier said than done. Indeed, as firms struggle to differentiate themselves, marketers are quickly learning that traditional acquisition and retention strategies are no longer effective.

Today, firms that can build deep, long-term relationships with their target audiences—and deliver truly meaningful experiences—will rise above the competition. The keys to building those relationships are aggregating your customer data and then acting on that information in a timely fashion.

Five Tactics for Creating Clear Differentiation

Here are five ways marketers can deliver superior value to clients—to improve acquisition and retention:

1) Get Personal

Today’s investors expect their communications with asset managers to be personalized and highly relevant to their needs. The challenge, of course, is achieving this level of service at scale; traditional batch and blast emails simply won’t work.

Through the use of demographic and behavioral data, segmentation, and lead scoring, firms can gain the rich, 360-degree customer view they need to deliver the personalized messaging clients expect.

2) Facilitate Communication

Modern clients—regardless of age—have become digitally savvy. They’ve grown accustomed to getting answers and access to information on the go, across multiple devices. The problem is, many asset management firms developed their various touch points in silos, thereby creating a disjointed and sometimes disorienting customer experience.

Delivering connected communications requires an omnichannel approach. The right automation solution should allow teams to deliver seamless conversations—as clients (and advisors) move from their phones to their laptops to their tablets, and beyond—all from a single platform.

3) Build Trust

Asset management is a high-stakes service and building client trust is crucial. While providing a personal touch is central to creating meaningful relationships, steps must be taken to safeguard client privacy.

Asset management firms must adhere to strict regulations surrounding marketing investment management and the handling of client funds. Indeed, compliance is a fundamental concern. Marketing leaders must ensure that their systems—and their marketing teams—are always up to date on new rules and regulations.

A trusted engagement platform, with high-security standards, will enable marketers to deliver personalized experiences, across multiple touch points—with a keen eye on privacy and regulatory compliance.

4) Find Truth

Historically, the asset management industry has been cautious about new MarTech trends. As a result, many marketing teams are still operating on outdated, disparate systems, including their CRM solutions.

Building and nurturing meaningful client relationships requires a single source of data truth. By creating a centralized repository of data and insights, marketers can move from a reactive acquisition and retention strategy—to a proactive one. A single source of truth will also help brands deliver consistent messaging across sales and marketing.

An automated marketing solution that easily integrates with CRM platforms—as well as multiple solution partners and open APIs—is essential. By gathering multiple data points in one location, it will provide the single source of truth marketers need to create the personalized experiences clients demand.

5) Prove ROI

For many marketing leaders, creating a strong marketing strategy is only half the battle. The next step is to prove their efforts are yielding real results for their institutions.

Marketing teams must be able to effectively measure—and continuously improve—the impact of their programs.

A fully optimized marketing engagement platform—one that puts all marketing data into a single view—will enable more robust reporting. Indeed, it will empower teams to move way beyond click-through rates—to measure multi-touch attribution, pipeline, and true ROI.

The post 5 Strategies to Address New Challenges in Asset Management Marketing appeared first on Marketo Marketing Blog - Best Practices and Thought Leadership.

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Sunday, April 21, 2019

Event Marketers Are Ignoring the Power of Video—Here’s How to Catch Up

Video ads are one of the most potent tools in a marketing arsenal. So why do so many event marketers ignore it?

According to a 2018 Animoto report on social video trends, 93% of business score new customers from video marketing on social media. Eventbrite research shows that 94% of event creators who use video say it’s effective. While both reports highlight the power of video marketing, they also note that less than half of event marketers actually use this effective tool.

That’s a lot of business to leave sitting on the table.

Video clearly is engaging ticket buyers, but many event marketers are too intimidated to use the medium. After all, video is one of the most daunting types of content to produce. Your skills as an event organizer may not include filming and editing a promotional video—but it’s worthwhile to learn these few basics.

Create event videos that drive buzz

In an increasingly video-driven advertising space, focus your efforts on three essential videos—two before the event and one after:

A ticket launch video that builds buzz, encourages registrations, and establishes your event as the place to be this year.
A reminder video that answers attendees’ most frequently asked questions leading up to the event.
A memorable recap video that offers nostalgia for attendees and serves as a strong marketing asset for your next event.

If you only have the bandwidth to create one video, prioritize based on your brand’s goals. If you want to drive ticket sales, create a launch video. If you want to improve your attendance rate and engage attendees, create an FAQ video. If your goal is creating clips you can use to promote your next event, create a recap video.

When you release these videos certainly matters, but you must also create something that effectively engages your audience. The following three strategies will help you make videos that are informative and compelling:

1. Make the CTA your MVP

Your CTA (call to action) is key because it shows viewers how to take the next step (buying tickets, for example). But how can a CTA call viewers to action if they don’t actually see it?

Although placing your CTA at the end of a video feels natural, many viewers won’t stick around for the entire video. To ensure audiences see your CTA, place it in the middle of your video.

Beyond perfecting the timing of your CTA, you also need to give viewers clear instructions in terms of what they should do. Instead of saying “Buy tickets,” use clear and specific language: “Swipe up to RSVP” or “Click the link in our Facebook event.” People aren’t going to take the next step if they don’t know how, so make your CTA as clear as possible.

2. Use size to strategize your Facebook spend

It’s counterintuitive, but smaller events mean you should put more funding toward Facebook video ads. At 2.27 billion users, according to NBC News, Facebook holds plenty of reach and is ripe for event marketing. Facebook also has more robust ad targeting, support for video, and searchability for events than any other social platform.

Prioritize Facebook in your budget, keeping your event’s size as the key decision maker when allocating funds. Gather any location, demographic, or other important information about your audience, and then tailor your Facebook campaign to that base. Once you’ve homed in on your target, deduce your exact spend and plan the rollout and execution of each piece. By figuring everything out beforehand, your campaign’s resources will stretch further and your ROI will be more concrete.

3. Promote across online channels

Facebook is incredibly powerful, but a powerful video strategy requires more layers. Not everyone in your audience will be active on Facebook—and even if they are, a multichannel approach keeps them thinking about your event as they’re browsing online.

Use video across these digital platforms:

Your website: It’s easy to embed promotional videos on your homepage. The Animoto report I mentioned earlier suggests that 86% of businesses engage their audiences through this platform.
YouTube: As the second-largest search engine, upload your videos here to build your audience without much additional effort.
Email marketing: Animoto reports including the word “video” in an email subject line increases its open rate by 19%. This method offers low-hanging fruit for increased viewership, helps with viewer engagement, and simplifies connecting with attendees post-purchase and post-event.

There’s no better way for your audience to feel the buzz surrounding your event than video. Event organizers might lag behind other industries when it comes to video marketing, but that doesn’t mean it needs to remain the case. Use these marketing tips to take the mystery out of video—and drive sales.

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How SEO Can Drive Your Marketing Initiatives

Today’s modern marketing department encompasses a variety of roles that blend expertise in both traditional and digital mediums. Hiring for SEO related roles, in particular, has increased by over 40% in the last year.

Companies are injecting more dollars than ever into organic search and content marketing. This strategic shift calls on SEO and marketing teams to move in concert in order to achieve mutual campaign KPIs. Crossing the collaborative divide requires an equally mindful transition towards consistent communication, project management processes, and teambuilding.

Issues with integration

Making two cross-discipline teams work cohesively can be a challenge. About 75% of cross-functional teams fail. In order to mitigate the risk of a poorly-executed campaign, it’s vital to integrate the day-to-day functions of both marketing and SEO teams. To do that, it helps to take a look at some of the common barriers to success.

Lack of communication, specifically pertaining to goals
No clear method for measuring ROI
Siloed mentality or lack of flexibility
Gaps in technology adoption

It’s incredibly difficult to strive towards a goal that isn’t clearly defined. Expecting teams with different skill sets to work within ill-defined project parameters is even harder. Scope creep becomes a real issue, alongside a general lack of confidence in project deliverables and team cooperation.

Measuring the impact of a product can also be adversely affected by a lack of clarity. If a project doesn’t have a clear, standardized system for measuring ROI, it becomes difficult for each team to understand the impact of their work and fairly attribute responsibility. This is difficult in any cross-functional scenario, but in the marketing world, where ROI has been historically difficult to measure, it can prove disastrous.

Too often, separate teams become siloed, isolated from the larger department by their specialized skill set. Breaking down creative silos means that valuable information is shared more freely across teams, and the resulting output is more dynamic, which is an extraordinarily valuable thing in the world of marketing. Adapting to current trends in SEO and marketing, as well as being able to execute on them within a joint strategy means being receptive to change.

One barrier to entry for cross-discipline collaboration is a technology adoption gap. Although MarTech software applications accounted for nearly 30% of a CMO’s budget in 2018, certain aspects of technical SEO might be harder to conceptualize and fit under a unified marketing umbrella. Implementing standardized technology tools aimed at promoting collaboration and data analysis is a cornerstone of modern marketing strategy.

Impact on revenue

Successful inter-departmental collaboration can be tied to revenue and positive brand impact. Over 90% of Google traffic is observed on the first page, meaning if you are ranking on the second, third, or tenth page, your marketing efforts are unlikely to be seen.

Social media marketing and content strategy have long been the territory of traditional marketers. Hybridized digital marketers and SEO strategists can help drive marketing objectives centered around the most compelling and technical aspects, bringing to the table a unique understanding of how organic search helps drive brand visibility.

Cross-functional communication provides more visibility into emerging trends, ROI modeling, and organizational needs that can inform marketing spends and strategic focus. Nurturing a basic understanding of the relationship between a brand and its customers also helps marketers and SEO experts alike create smarter strategies and drive more profitable results.

Best practices for fostering collaboration

Fortunately, creating a culture of collaboration doesn’t have to be such a heavy lift. SEO strategists and marketers have similar core competencies. Given the right tools and processes, SEO efforts can help drive marketing objectives and vice versa:

Collaboration tools
Workflow processes
Education and employee engagement

Collaborative tools and software platforms are hitting the market with increasing regularity. Implementing these tools can positively impact the way SEO and marketing teams work together as well as conduct day-to-day job functions. From project management platforms like Asana or Basecamp, to collaborative meeting tools like Slack and Google Hangouts, using a standardized set of tools helps empower organizations with distinct departments and enables remote workers to create compelling campaigns in real-time. This also helps teams establish workflow processes that break large-scale projects down into smaller tasks, allowing them to keep a close eye on potential bottlenecks at all stages of the project management life cycle.

Breaking down organizational silos can do a lot towards creating a shared sense of expertise and a shared vocabulary. Defining project objectives and metrics to track against helps improve the collaboration between SEO and marketing teams since all stakeholders will understand how their efforts and area of expertise play into a shared outcome. Not every marketing objective will be SEO focused, but it’s still important to get stakeholders in the room to talk about keyword targets and opportunities, as well as conduct training sessions.

Keeping employees engaged is one of the best ways to keep collaboration productive and consistent. Scheduling regular standing meetings to go over progress towards objectives, and providing avenues for professional development, certification, and mentoring help cement team building efforts that drive success.

SEO strategy for results

Marketing teams need to be thinking about SEO, and SEO teams need to be thinking about marketing. With more companies throwing their weight behind organic search and adjacent forms of marketing, both teams will be working towards common KPIs. The marketing strategies of the future incorporate a more holistic approach to brand strategy, and companies that are able to foster cross-functional collaboration are setting themselves up to be more able to respond to the changing market.

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Don’t Call It a Comeback: Drip Campaigns Have Been Here for Years

I know what you’re thinking: Drip campaigns? They’re about as relevant as Michael Bolton.

But here’s the thing about Michael Bolton: He’s always relevant!

Truth is, the concepts behind drip campaigns—sending communications to customers and prospects on a regular basis—remain as relevant today as ever. The difference is that marketing automation has made this process much more sophisticated.

Now, instead of scheduling the same series of emails to go to the same people on the same day each week, you can send your audience valuable personalized communications based on actions they took, content they engaged with, or segments they fit.

So, while the idea of traditional drip marketing may sound out of date, there are still plenty of key areas where it can come in handy.

Who should be using them? And when?

Great questions!

Email drip campaigns are perfect for new companies with few prospects or businesses with small marketing departments. They’re also ideal for marketers just starting out their careers.

That’s because they’re generally cost-effective and easy to set up and run. They focus on what’s happening in the moment, so there’s limited long-term planning involved. And not many people are required to execute them.

Essentially, all you need to do is create communications, determine a cadence, and send out your messages. This gives you an opportunity to regularly connect with prospects and educate them enough to make a purchase.

Drip marketing can be particularly effective when you’re:

Reengaging a cold sales lead: Did a once-promising prospect suddenly abandon you at the one-yard line? Using a series of drip emails, you can educate them on how your product can help solve their problems, reinforce their desire to buy, and nudge them toward the end zone.
Providing thought leadership: Not quite sure what your prospects are interested in or where they are in the buying cycle? Staying in touch by providing always-on thought leadership content through an email drip campaign can help you get answers. Plus, it can make sure your brand stays top of mind for your prospects.
Delivering customer newsletters: Looking for more cross-sell and upsell opportunities? Drip emails—in the form of customer newsletters—can do the trick. By delivering fresh insights on an ongoing basis, you can highlight customer pain points and introduce readers to new products that can help them overcome their issues.

If nothing else, drip marketing offers your business a great way to regularly remind people why they connected with your brand in the first place.

What drip campaigns are all about

Regardless of how you use them, the most important thing to remember is that drip campaigns are all about building relationships and nurturing leads. To do that, your communications must provide constant value.

Your audience should trust that you’re going to deliver what you promised. Your messages should be relevant to your readers’ needs. The experiences you deliver should be consistent across multiple channels. And your campaigns should be continually tested and optimized so they pack the most punch.

Fail to do all of that and you’ll have to deal with “Unsubscribe” getting the most clicks in your emails.

Download What Is Lead Nurturing? to learn more.