by Marketing | Dec 31, 2017 | Commercial, Strategy
It’s the holiday season and we’re in the mood for gift giving! Usually, I talk about the things that marketers can do to better connect with sales, but in the spirit of the holidays, I’d also like to offer some gift ideas for our beloved sales teams (we know you’re shopping for us after all). So here goes – it’s not an exhaustive list, but I promise your marketing teams will be pleased!
SHARE YOUR FEEDBACK
Ahhh feedback, it’s the gift that keeps on giving, and as your marketing team, it’s at the top of our wish list every year. Who knows our customers better than our sales team? Whether it’s objections you encounter frequently, or technical questions that just keep popping up, if you spot a trend, tell us! Better yet, join us in our planning meeting when we’re getting ready to lay out the themes and foundations for the content we’ll be building in the new quarter, and let us know what you see most, what you think it means, and what your accounts are telling you. The more we know, the more we can design content and campaigns that really do resonate with the customer, resulting in bigger wins for you.
TELL US ABOUT KEY ACCOUNTS
Got an account worth a ton? Want to make them feel special? Let us know! Now this gift comes with a caveat – it might depend a little bit on what kind of team set up you have, but we know the importance of high-value accounts, and we know that a little targeted marketing goes a long way. For accounts worth the most, we can do branded content, themed to the right industry and vertical, or create a special experience at an event. Every little bit helps, so if you’ve got some special accounts, make sure you keep us in the loop.
REGIFT COLD LEADS
You get a ton of leads, but sometimes they aren’t quite ready yet. It happens to everyone, but instead of abandoning cold leads, send them back to marketing! It’s a bit like a gift receipt, if this one isn’t ready to buy, then send those leads on back and we’ll nurture them back to a sales-ready state. This way you’ll get them when they’re hot and everyone will be happy. This is one gift that can also help sales out, since you won’t have to worry about keeping up with a lead that’s been put back on marketing’s radar for nurturing. If your marketing team has a marketing automation platform, it’s as easy as click, add, and done. We can build custom nurtures for any kind of cold lead, whether it’s a “Call me back in Q1 when we’ve got budget,” or a “We’re still deciding,” or even a “I’m not the one who’ll make the final decision,” your marketing team is equipped with the right nurture campaign to warm up those cold leads.
The holiday season brings parties, dinners, presents… and the end of Q4, and at this time of year, sales and marketing teams need to work together to finish of the fiscal year on a high note. Opening up those lines of communication and sharing metrics, as well as exchanging ‘gifts’ like these can really bring in the new year right. So what are you waiting for? Get gifting and high-five a marketer at your next office Christmas party!
Reference: Pardot Blog – 3 Gifts Sales Can Give Their Marketing Teams
by Marketing | Oct 27, 2017 | Digital Marketing, SEO, Strategy
Amazon continues to excel! With the purchase of Whole Foods and the growth of Amazon Prime, companies with products need to have a presence and promote themselves on Amazon. Here are the pros and cons of using Amazon, but also how you need to start your digital marketing plan.
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by Marketing | Jun 19, 2017 | Content, Digital Marketing, Strategy
I am reading tons of posts about how email is NOT dying, how 2017 is the year of email marketing, and how email is still a HUGE tool for business. Really? I have so many damn emails in my inbox from companies I’ve never subscribed to I blanket delete them all the time. If I only received email from the places I actually subscribed, reading them would be very manageable and meaningful. Today, we all skim emails by subject line, then by sender – just like Google search results. We’re looking for the right topic, then the credibility somewhere in between the lines. But those alone won’t guarantee a meaningful click-thru. There’s still something missing…
As you know, email marketing it’s a numbers game, which is great, I love analytics, but now they are diluted and we’re relying on them too much. Even with all that, I still don’t buy it. I don’t buy that email marketing is more effective than it was 5 or 10 years ago (or even 1). What we’re missing in all this is a new variable, not just a percent or number that shows a perceived value from a campaign. We need something deeper and I’m calling it the Interest Quotient.
The Interest Quotient is a non-linear measurement that is individually unique for each person. How do you measure that? I don’t know, my formula below is a crude generalization. The Quotient though is indicative of the one thing that sparks interest at a given time. There is a common thread despite the uniqueness – it is that there is a deeper Interest in a topic that highlights that message above all the junk. Here’s the most rudimentary formula I could come up with – though I haven’t calculated in any quantum entanglement theories just yet (I’m kidding).
Interest Quotient = (Subject + Sender) * Credibility / Depth of Interest
Start simple every day – Follow these rules on your email campaigns:
- Refine your list, sending to smaller lists is fine.
- Group your lists – don’t send one to all. Keep the segmented by interest, response, lead value, or customer.
- Have depth to your message. It starts with Subject, then Sender and a high dose of credibility
- Make friends with your lists – Like a good manager, know what moves and motivates each list, like a person.
Want to know more? Why not give me a call and we’ll discuss your ideas.
There’s infinite number of great ideas in each person.
Tom Smidt (tom.smidt@icita.net)
720.232.0917
by Marketing | May 11, 2017 | Content, Digital Marketing, Non-Profit Strategy, Strategy
Here at iCita we support Salesforce and Pardot for our clients. So I want to share some great information passed on by the Pardot team. Here are three simple, but very important questions when building a landing page.
What’s in it for me?
Bounce rates on landing pages can be very high, so capturing a visitor’s attention quickly is crucial. The easiest way to grab a visitor’s attention is to offer them something of value, such as an informative white paper or a free product trial. The value proposition should clearly explain the benefits of taking whatever action you are asking visitors to take.
How do I get it?
Landing pages are used to get a visitor to take a certain action. Usually this will be filling out a form or visiting a particular page on your site. Whatever the goal, make your intentions clear with a direct and compelling call to action. If a user has to complete a form to obtain a whitepaper, make the form short, prominently displayed on the page and easy to complete. You want to streamline the process as much as possible to improve conversion rates.
Why should I trust you?
Most visitors feel some degree of hesitation when it comes to turning their information over to a total stranger — especially a company that could potentially flood their inbox with emails for the foreseeable future. Add some social credibility to your landing pages with a short client list or customer testimonials. This will help build credibility and trust with the visitor and increase conversion rates.
Reference the page here: http://www.pardot.com/blog/3-questions-landing-page-answer/
by Marketing | Jan 7, 2017 | Digital Marketing, Non-Profit Strategy, Strategy
Select one marketing activity that you think will give your business the biggest
incremental uplift in leads and sales in 2017.
While you keep busy with your daily activities this new year, let these top 5 marketing techniques stew in your subconscious to bring you more success in 2017.
These are the top five of 15 top-rated digital marketing techniques of 2017. They reiterate the need to stay focused on what works while embracing what’s new.
- Content Marketing: 40% more businesses are using a strategic content approach in marketing and are starting to measure Content Marketing ROI.
- Big Data: Larger businesses used data analytics but now smaller companies are increasing sales through website personalization and predictiv analytics.
- Marketing Automation: CRM, Behavioural email marketing and web personalisation.
- Mobile Marketing: Mobile advertising, site development and applications. For ecommerce, there is still a lag in online conversions, so people are still gravitating to their latop to buy instead of their smartphone.
- Social Media Marketing: The growth of many networks has slowed, but the audience and segementation is extremely successful in advertising.
Happy New Year!
by Marketing | Oct 2, 2016 | Content, Strategy, Websites
1. 301 Redirects
Sometimes content is repurposed or gets moved to fit the new navigation structure of a site. If you have an existing site and you are changing the URL structure with your new site, you’ll want to make sure you’ve mapped the old URLs to the new ones.
The Screaming Frog spider mentioned earlier can be run on both the old site and the new. An Excel spreadsheet is a great way to document this effort. Column A has the old URL, and you place the new URL in Column B. Each row represents a redirect from old to new. On launch day, it’s time to execute.
2. Title Tags/Meta Data
This may sound like old news to some, but this easy-to-fix mistake happens every day. Make sure every page has a title tag, and make sure they are unique.
Also make sure each has a meta description. Although these snippets used in search aren’t necessarily a ranking signal, they will help a searcher decide whether to click-through or not.
3. XML Sitemaps/HTML Sitemap
Make sure your new website has an accurate site map in both XML and HTML format. You can upload your sitemap to Search Console, however most CMSs such as WordPress will automatically build a sitemap for you.
4. Analytics
Make sure Google Analytics or the analytics package you’re using, is set up and ready to go from day one so you can measure and analyse traffic to your site.
5. Structured markup
If you’re using Schema markup or any other structured data, is it rendering correctly in SERPs? You can check any errors and how to fix them in the structured markup section of Search Console.
6. Accelerated Mobile Pages
If you’re using Google’s AMP project to provide mobile searchers with faster loading web pages, you need to make sure these are rendering properly. Here’s a guide to implementing Google AMP on your website.
7. Social media integration
Do the social media icons on the site go to the correct pages? Do you have the right buttons and social plugins installed for what you are trying to accomplish and what you want the user to be able to do? (For example, does it ‘share a post’ rather than ‘Like’ your page on Facebook.)
8. SERP Display
Are the search engines displaying your pages correctly in the search engine results pages? Did you write proper meta descriptions, but they aren’t being used? Thoroughly investigate your visibility in Search Console.
9. PPC Setup
Make sure if you’re running any PPC campaigns that they’re set up and ready to go with the site launch. To avoid a lapse in service, if you have a Google PPC rep, you can set and pause all your campaigns to the new URLs prior to launch, and instead of the ads getting disapproved, your rep can approve them manually.
A part of the article posted on ClickZ here.
