Social media has become a vital marketing model for a business to maintain a solid digital web presence. Small businesses and start-ups aim to reach their target audience in their limited budget, and social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram (to name a few) help such businesses to boost their social presence through their ads.

Facebook has become one of the best social media platforms for small companies and startups to spread awareness of their brand. It has 2 Million users at present and the most social media website to access worldwide. However, it can be difficult sometimes for the small business owners to know how to use Facebook ads and reach the masses effectively.

Therefore, here are the five strategies to boost your startup's growth with Facebook Ads, so that the marketers can start promoting their products and services to a wider audience.

Facebook Ads to Boost Your Startup's Growth

#1. Tap into Recent Purchasing Behavior among Facebook users

Earlier, Facebook was criticised by advertising analysts as a network with little commercial intent or potential customer insight. It was a place to socialise, not to promote products. But in 2013, Facebook collaborated with data brokers like Epsilon, Acxiom, and Datalogix which have access to trillions of data transactions each year. In fact, Acxiom has started their database which contains information about 500 million active consumers worldwide.

Suddenly, Facebook can keep track of each and every activity of their users on the web. Getting married soon? Love reading murder mysteries? Facebook probably knows! This consumer information gave advertisers the power to reach out beyond their CRM databases. Now, startups can use this data to reach their target audience segment by analysing the thousands of different consumer behaviours on the web.

Individual user database can be tracked, like their purchasing behaviour which includes buyer's profile, food, clothing, health & beauty and more. Facebook helps to give that database and categorise every individual's interest according to which the start-up can structure their product's advertisement accordingly.

#2. Life Events Targeting

Some campaigns are designed and products are advertised based on some significant life events of the users. For example, wedding photographers target the individuals who are recently engaged by showing them some of their most appealing couple images. Likewise, Moving services ads flash in front of you if you've purchased a new house.

Facebook has the data of almost every conceivable life event which the users tend to post on their timelines. These life events set the parameter in a unique way, so that businesses can choose their target audience at that interval of time to advertise their brand on Facebook.

For example, during Diwali festival season, there are lined-up Facebook ads for ethnic clothes, electronic sales and jewellery, so that they can target audience members who are interested in Diwali shopping online.

#3. Nurture Leads & Build Loyalty

Marketers can nurture their leads and build customer loyalty with the help of Facebook Custom Audience. It is an advanced feature that enables you to connect with your existing contacts on Facebook. Customers access your content on the web, and when they look at your Facebook ad, it reinforces your brand and gives your business an opportunity to increase customer value and loyalty.

You can also increase the efficiency of your valuable targeted customer list and avoid inappropriate clicks by listing your qualitative customer.

Custom Audience is created by uploading your user's purchaser/subscriber email list to Facebook. You can also create a Custom Audience based on your site visitors or specific actions taken within your app.

You could target the audience that has visited your website earlier by offering them a discount or a demo of your product. The user is already aware of your brand and was interested in your product, but it didn't get converted. So Facebook ads with the help of Custom Audience list could reach to the people listed on that list and convert these potential customers into leads.

#4. Create Lookalike Audiences

Building a lookalike audience is the next step once you create a custom audience on Facebook. You can mirror your Facebook fan base even if you don't have the email list and contacts of your customers. It allows you to expand beyond your reach and target the people with highly accurate profiles by creating audiences that look like your targets.

Once you have made a decision about the audience, you’d want to replicate; you can expand your business to appeal to a larger audience or something more specific and similar to your original audience. Therefore, with the help of a lookalike audience, you can run ads that are targeting people who are similar to your real customers.

#5. Layer Targeting

You can layer your target customers one upon another by making it more and more precise with the combinations of demographics, behaviour and geolocation to specify your audience. You can build up a creative ad and offer it to your preferred audience by using the combination of such data.

For example, a paying guest company that’s promoting a special discount has an offer for students who have recently moved to the new city, within the age range of 18-25 and their service area location. So the target audience for the paying guest company is the students within the age of 18-25, who are new to the city and looking for a cost efficient place to live.

To display such ads, you need to understand the intent, likelihood and needs of the audience segment. You can use the layer targeting option and get in front of them to spread awareness about your product to that segmented audience.

These are the best 5 Facebook strategies to implement in order to boost your start-up’s growth and generate leads.

Artificial Intelligence is something that excites and frightens people at the same time. AI is something that has provided the world with a level of technology that was only dreamt of a few years ago. From chatbots to self-learning robots, the journey of AI is truly awe-inspiring. AI has been associated with the field of robotics and machinery for a long time now, but for the past few years the technological dominance of AI has been increasing in every area and doesn't seem to be coming to an end. With the advent of AI in the Marketing and Sales field, there has been a tremendous shift in the way things are done.

With the arrival of the new age media and social platforms, marketers have a lot of data and information about their customers and the market scenarios. Artificial Intelligence and machine learning enables marketers to use this information wisely and make better decisions.

From executing autonomous marketing campaigns to mining the content engagement report; AI-powered tools are available in the market to help companies get all these tasks done quickly and efficiently. With companies like HubSpot, Boomtrain, Indico, etc. working to create artificially intelligent tools and functions, marketers are getting better insights about the market and can take better business decisions.

7 Benefits of AI in Marketing: Things You Must Know

Here, we have listed down some of the things that you must know about these artificially intelligent tools and what benefits it can provide to your company.

#1. Delivering Personalised and Relevant Content to Customers

Today, when there is so much competition and everybody is in the race to win the customer's attention, what truly helps is the personalisation. No one wants to read long, uninteresting messages and waste their time. AI-powered tools help companies gather customer data and provide personalised and relevant customers accordingly. Brands can depend on these AI-powered tools to extract relevant information and provide better content to consumers by engaging them on a constant basis. If used wisely, these tools can help bring a new level of profit to companies and increase brand awareness and authority amongst the customers.

#2. Abolishing Marketing Waste

A lot of businesses tend to create mass awareness campaigns and execute expensive marketing stunts to gather the attention of the masses, but nowadays such attacks are not worth the money. With the presence of AI, a company can easily find their target audience and what that particular zone of the public wants. AI helps businesses to narrow down the target group and allows them to design campaigns and marketing stunts accordingly without wasting a hefty amount of money on mass campaigns.

#3. Simulated Assistants and Chatbots

Virtual bots and assistants not only help to get a better understanding of the customer's behaviour, but also generates a certain level of excitement in them. Being new, having these virtual assisted bots can help you to get a lot of attention from the consumers and build an authority amongst people. For example, virtual sales representatives such as Conversica’s sales assistant help to qualify the sales to lead before they’re passed on to human agents.

#4. Changing the Skill Set for Marketers

Although these AI enabled tools are of great help to companies and marketers, and help them understand their customers better, it does have some side effects on the marketers and experts. Marketing is not just about how good of a communicator you are or how good you are in creating new marketing campaigns anymore. AI has changed the game completely and now professionals do need to have an understanding of technology and the relevant tools. A future marketing team must have a business analyst, data scientist, data-driven marketer and the marketing technologist.

#5. Consumers Behaviour is Affected by AI

AI is not only developing for the marketers but also changing the customer’s world. With so many new developments and innovations, experts believe that there will be a time when bots will be doing the research and other tasks for us, including purchases. The first phase of content review will be done by bots and not by humans, and humans will read only the best content after sufficient filtering from the bots.

#6. Quality content is Key

Just adopting cutting-edge technology is not going to work for the company. Companies must understand that AI needs an of ingredients and quality content is the most important thing amongst them. A system is good when it is not just smart algorithmically but also rich in content.

#7. Challenges while Adopting AI

According to a survey, 60 percent of marketing experts admit that they are worried about AI stepping into the marketing world. They’ve stated that it is going to take a lot of time and effort to integrate these new AI tools with the existing technology. Also, training their employees to get them ready for these new devices will also take up a lot of time and resources of the company.

These AI-powered tools are not just changing the face of the marketing industry but also the jobs of marketers. With all the major tasks getting auto

mated, experts fear that this will lead to an overall loss of employment for professionals. For example: earlier we used to turn on our TV to get the news and get informed about the world events, and there were news channels for the purpose of providing news. But, nowadays when we have so many apps and different online platforms to read any news story, we barely use our TV sets for news.

Despite these fears and significant transformations in the marketing world, AI is the next big thing in the world of marketing. The reason why AI has been a hot favorite in every industry is because of the interest it has generated amongst the people. Straight out of the fiction movies, AI has been taking over the world of technology at an incredible rate and has gained the attention of masses. This is one reason why no company want to neglect the presence of Artificial Intelligence and is using every possible thing to get the attention of the masses.

>>Keep your Business in the League with Digital Marketing alongside with Latest Trends in Digital Marketing.

A firm’s website is its gateway to more and new leads. As more and more consumers make decisions based on their online purchase journey, the company’s website becomes more important than ever. It should establish your brand, provide information on your products or services, and ultimately produce leads. As a critical component of your marketing strategy, your website should be changed and optimised as digital, and industry standards evolve, trends shift, or your personas change. However, a site that’s not at its best level or helping your company meet its goals doesn’t necessarily require an entire redesign. Instead, it might need just a website refresh. A website update is a brand-new look for your site.

Call up Your Team Now to Give Your Website Design Update

A refreshed website design is one of the most effective marketing tools for business. So here are six reasons why you must call up your team now to give your website design update:

#1. High Bounce Rate

Bounce rate is the percentage of single-page sessions where a visitor came and left without interacting on the firm’s site. This metric is available on a site’s Google Analytics dashboard. A high bounce rate is typically an indication that the visitor on the site did not find what they were looking for, became bored with the site, or didn’t get a great first impression. The average website’s bounce rate is 45%. A business should aim for under 40% by giving its website a refresh, paying extra attention to the homepage. Ensure it is simple, easy to navigate, and only uses two to three complementing colours.

#2. The site is slow

With an audience finally getting to your website being disappointed when it takes more than two seconds to load, you know it is too slow.

• According to a survey from Akamai, 49% of consumers expect a site to load in two seconds or less.
• Only 51-percent claim to patiently wait for a website to load.

If a site takes more than two seconds to load it might just miss out on leads and sales. No firm can expect a visitor to wait for the website, the world is moving fast and so should the web.

It is always advisable to check a site’s speed manually by opening or browsing it on mobiles, tablets and desktop computers. Your site should load fast on all devices at all locations. You can also use Google’s PageSpeed Insights to check for loading speed and find areas for improvement.

#3. Your Current Website Isn’t Mobile Responsive

With teenagers holding iPhones which cost an average man’s monthly salary, one can quickly notice that humans need mobiles more than food. A firm should develop a website that satisfies today’s multi-screen behaviour. If a site is not mobile optimised, there are huge chances that a business can easily miss out on valuable leads and customers.

A study released by Salesforce found that “83% of mobile users say that a seamless experience across all devices is significant.” People want to be able to access the information when and where they need it, and if a website can’t provide it to them, they’ll look somewhere else.

If you haven’t mobile optimised your site yet, look into a content management system that's responsive (for instance, the HubSpot COS Web Design and Platform). This will get your site up and run faster with little development knowledge needed. Investing in a browser testing software is also recommended to ensure that the website looks consistent on every device.

#4. You Branding is Outdated

Your branding along with your marketing goals should be consistent with your website. Firms which have recently undergone a rebrand should also update their website to accommodate such changes.

But one thing to be kept in mind that rebranding is not just limited to logo or colour scheme, it also includes the tone, format and content on the site. Your company’s identity and reputation should match with your website and should communicate the same to a new visitor.

#5. Your Top Competitors Have Redesigned Their Sites

Finding out if your company’s website is outdated or not is no easy task unless you are a designer.

One way to find out is to check the websites of the firm’s competitors and other similar companies in the industry. Analyse your competitor’s online activities to assess if they have changed their designs or if they look slightly different to you.

Note the text size, colours, and creatives they use. If they recently redesigned and these elements are too different from yours and others in the industry, consider getting suggestions from a professional designer.

Outdated websites are not just limited to aesthetics. They provide an experience to your customers. A fresh design is inviting, let customers know that you are evolving with the times and that your business is booming.

In general, if your website’s current look was created seven years ago, design trends have probably changed enough for your site to look outdated.

#6. Information is not accessible

When potential audience visits your site, they should be able to figure out what to do and where to go quickly. If they’re looking for accurate information, they can find what they’re looking for in a couple of minutes with the website loading in not more than two seconds- hence accessibility and speed are essential. If they are trying to purchase, subscribe, or inquire, they should be able to do it without external help. Otherwise, you need a redesign to make your navigation easier.

If you get way too many enquiries about information that exists on the website, then it means that people are facing difficulty in finding what they need from your site.

Conclusion

A well-designed website is an important and one of the most effective marketing tools a business has at its disposal. Make the most of it by keeping it updated and easy to navigate. If you find any of the above reasons relatable, then a website refresh can be your new best friend.

Your website is meant to bring you business. If it's not doing that, it’s time to determine why not and make necessary changes. Do you think you're in need of a website redesign? Contact us if you are looking for the website redesign

Content Marketing is the new age marketing strategy. It employs the use of content like articles, blogs, videos and photos to engage with potential customers. One of the major platforms that content marketing focuses on is social media. Social media is the largest platform in today’s time since a huge number of people have a social presence and are active on some social media platform. In such a time, using content marketing strategies can help a company grow. This is why we have made a list of 10 things every marketer should know about content marketing.

1. It is the marketing of the future

Every company nowadays is getting inclined towards content marketing. It is 60% cheaper than traditional marketing, appealing to consumers and requires less manpower. People have gotten immune to traditional marketing, with call blocking for spam numbers, ad-blockers on their web browsers for online ads and so on. People want to engage with your company to know more about it, but if – and only if – the consumer is looking for a product/service that you offer.

2. It works best with shareable content

The main strategy of content marketing is to get people talking about your brand through the content that you create. Here, the visitors of your content become the promoters of said content if they find it appealing enough. For them to become promoters and promote your content on social media, the content has to be easily shareable with the click of a button. Generally, any link to a blog or any photo or video is easily shareable. Making good content in such easy-to-digest forms is the heart of all content marketing and social media marketing strategies.

3. It has tangible results

The progress and success of a content marketing campaign can be measured by monitoring social and website traffic. It is not a strategy with no measurable results, as the variation in social media traffic and website are indicators of how many people view your social media posts and follow through to your websites. This helps you manage and tweak your campaigns to get desired results and an understanding of what strategies work and what won't.

4. Social media is the tool to use

Social media is the biggest and most effective tool to be used for promoting the content you post. On an average, most people tend to spend an hour every day on various social media platforms. This makes social mediums the most widespread tool for promoting any content. It has a broad, widespread reach and helps in spreading news swiftly.The widespread use and reach are essential for any campaign to become successful. It also helps campaigns attain success without having a wide follower base.

5. Keep the campaign organic

Keeping the content outreach organic is important. Potential customers don’t want to be bombarded with paid advertisements everywhere. They are more interested if someone they follow or are friends with, shares some piece of content, as they tend to believe more in shared or liked content. Keeping it organic also ensures that the website traffic or social traffic that you get continues even after the campaign is over. This is essential for the growth of a company.

6. It helps build networks

For promoting your content, you need to collaborate with other blogs and/or profiles which have large followings. This helps you widen the scope of potential customers that you can reach. You can achieve a lot by these collaborations as there is mutual benefit in them. People start relating to your product as the one that social media influencers use, which makes them want to try out the products by themselves. Also, via the widespread reach that you achieve, people will also want to invest in your brand, helping you with professional connections for your brand.

7. Interact with people online

Never forget to appreciate positive remarks about your brand or content. Replying to negative reviews or dissatisfied customers is equally important. This habit of replying to customer reviews helps in building brand trust and loyalty, which is an important part of marketing in the competitive world. Brand loyalty helps make your existing customers come back to you for repurchase and also become promoters of your brand and products in their social circles. This is an important aspect of attracting new customers continually – when non-associated people talk good about your brand and are loyal to it.

8. Consistency is key

Be consistent with your posting schedule, and make sure that you are incorporating the company’s vision. Analytics have found that post interaction and website redirects are more from those social profiles that post regularly. Not every piece of content has to be the viral kind, but it has to contain information relevant to your potential customers. Being consistent with the company vision helps maintain a connect between you and your existing customer base. This builds the trust that people have in your brand.

9. Don’t neglect your existing customers

Your existing customers are a big asset for your company. Don’t neglect them in any way. The key to doing that is by running some kind of a loyalty program where you give them some offers on your brand from time to time, or some form of an exclusive first look at your products. This makes them feel like a part of an exclusive community – a community that is interested in and likes your products.

10. Stay in touch with what’s trending

Being ahead of the trending topics on social media is always important. Creating interesting content on the trending topics helps in keeping people invested in your presence on online media. As the trending topics are always hot for conversations both on social media and face-to-face interactions, it helps improve brand recall if you can create good content on those topics. The best promotion for any brand is when people talk about it. It all depends on where you get people talking about you; online or offline.

Today’s business world has undergone a transition from how it functioned in the previous era. Technology has not only contributed to exponential growth graphs, but it has also managed the planning, strategized goal orientation and made the workforce resourceful. Marketing Automation has helped the businesses with its efficient use of technology. Tasks like emails, social media optimization, forms and landing page creation, content generation and other website development and design related activities are managed marketing automation more easily.

What is Marketing Automation?

As it suggests, marketing automation can be categorised as a mechanism to automate multiple basic marketing actions and streamline the workflow with organisational goals and targets. It saves the time as multiple campaigns can be scheduled ahead of its time. Such facility boosts the efficiency and effectiveness of operations and drives ROI.

Suppose, when you log in to Amazon, you will find out your name dynamically inserted around the page which contains all your search history, wish list and suggests you the products accordingly. Even later, you'll find predictive suggestions on your web screen which will force you to think of the product again, and compel you to make the decision to purchase said product. All this personalization of the consumer interest has been possible because of marketing automation software.

Marketing automation is often misunderstood when it comes to how it works. The database it maintains is gigantic and needs personalization for improvements. After buying an automation tool, its adoption needs meticulous attention and extensive effort.

Some necessities to look for while using a Marketing Automation Tool

• Identify the trends and demand benchmarks while initially beginning with an automated workflow.
• Pay close attention to how frequently members get converted and how many responses your emails get.
• Automation metrics can be calculated to keep a track on performance and can help in building fruitful master plans.
• Identify which metrics turn out to be most productive for your business enhancement. This can help in driving traffic (including organic traffic) and improving lead-to-customer conversion rate.

Why is Marketing Automation needed for Lead Nurturing

Adoption of any marketing strategy is possible only if you trust your workforce to implement it effectively. Furthermore, the level of technicality needs to be raised while maintaining the comfort of consumers. Working with an automation software raises the bar for performing difficult tasks, and consequently contributes to the company’s growth which helps in generating leads. For a better understanding of its usefulness, here are two sample workflow situations for a detailed analysis of this discussion.

1. Newly Earned Leads

Imagine you have been successful in converting your potential customer into a lead where the lead downloaded an eBook. His complete profile database (buyer persona) is recorded with the help of marketing automation software, and now you can get the insight of the customer's persona and the kind of content that was consumed. Now all you need is to follow a simple procedure to proceed further:

• Send a confirmation email with an attached eBook.
• Within the next week, send an email with a link to a different and relevant content form.
• When the open rate and click-through rate is good with the lead, invite them to sign up for your newsletter with a CTA within the eBook.
• Make the lead reach your social media accounts with respective links through CTAs or emails.
• Your workforce must plan to send the lead a series of customised emails, depending upon where he lies on the buyer’s journey. The aim is to educate and make him search for solutions through your website.

2. Inactive Leads Earned Long Ago

Segmentation can play a significant role in such cases, where segments can be personalised according to the potential of the conversion.

Analyse the kind of content preferred and disregarded by the potential customers. Considering a case where they have recently attended webinars or personal phone calls and further can be approached in following ways:

• Email them a precise questionnaire for feedback on the webinar.
• Responses will be delivered an immediate confirmation email with brief guidelines to (recent) future events, similar to the one they recently attended.
• The second email can be drafted for those who haven’t replied back within a specified number of hours or days.
• Leads who answered the survey and consumed the content will then get an invitation online for as per their interests.

Marketing automation is the optimisation of software to automate repetitive marketing tasks to save time or perform certain tasks at high scale. It empowers marketers to take concrete, data-driven decisions and serve customers with the most personalised experiences. Therefore, using the above-mentioned tactics will help to build a relationship between the lead and the increase the brand loyalty.

>> Know more about Hubspot and Hubspot India Partners.

Before you begin, recall all the issues and complications you’re undergoing in your business to get them answered right away! But before getting to the core of this problem, you must grasp all the basics.

What is Inbound Marketing?

The term ‘inbound’ relates to shifting towards the center or moving inwards, in order to concentrate all the clutter in one place. ‘Marketing’ refers to the act of promoting goods/services to increase awareness and hence, sales. Inbound marketing is thus the field of promotion which attracts customers to the organization instead of approaching them. It draws people in by getting found by them.

Instead of the traditional method of searching customers by utilizing the ‘sell anyhow’ concept and reaching out to an unknown public, inbound marketing is buyer-centric, cost-efficient and practical. It acts as a magnet to attract potential customers. Not only does it convert interested strangers into fully-fledged customers, but also utilizes their enthusiasm to create promoters. Interested already? What if you’re told that it’s economical with defined planning techniques, and ensures justice to every bit of your money and efforts?

Implementation is not as easy as it seems

The traffic driven on your websites is gathered organically. This clearly indicates that the use of sponsorship in advertisements through paid means is not the inbound way. One can only imagine the depth of research and technical management techniques it requires! SEO, content with context, buyer persona and journey or inbound methodology: these strategies give results not when they’re merely presented, but when they’re aligned and systematically approached.

If you wish to adopt it or couldn’t figure out the best way to go about it, here are seven detailed expert-initiated ways to attain Inbound Marketing success:

1. SMART approach sets realistic goals

Goal setting forms the foundation of a planned strategy. Goals give direction to the workflow, letting them evaluate where they stand and where they need to stand. And while a business can set huge targets to term itself as successful, it should only focus on the aims which can be reached, without shooting too high for more.

An ideal goal setting follows the SMART way:

S- Specific: The goals should be precise, clear and to the point. They must hold the capability to answer the questions of Who, What, Where, When, Why and How. Assuming accountability to all these questions makes your goal complete.

M- Measurable: Your goal should be numeric to give a clear vision. Benchmarks and trends need to be analysed properly for the same.

A- Attainable: Your workforce may not be capable to achieve unrealistically high goals. So, you should confirm whether your company has achieved similar goals in the past before setting such lofty goals. You should also have apt resources for the same.

R- Relevant: The aim should comply with organisational goals and meet the overall as well as primary focus.

T- Timely: Create deadlines to keep track of how much time you need to complete tasks.

2. Recognise the Buyer Personas

Marketing is an art and being successful in it is no rocket science. A successful approach for inbound marketing always considers the target audience it reaches. Buyer personas relate to the detailed information of any prospect, including their personal information, professional backgrounds, future interests, goals and challenges.

Aligning with content-with-context technique and maintaining buyer personas helps you in sending the right type of content to the right kind of people. According to recent surveys, it is noted that 90% of the companies using inbound marketing are well aware of their personas and trigger their interests according to their preferences. While 70% of the successful revenue generating companies have created buyer personas, 56% already have highly-qualified leads registered in their system.

3. Marketing Automation is the key

Since your goals have now escalated as inbound is a new way, digital assets will help you in reducing duplication of tasks, enhancing productivity and improving transparency. High-performing assets bring out the best of this potential. For instance, landing pages and Calls-To-Action act as the spirit of a sale and making them appealing enough is the main task. Specialised Marketing Automation Softwares like Hubspot contribute in designing these elements as well. These tools help in creating customized and personalised content, opportunities of easy conversion, blogging techniques, and mobile-first mechanisms.

4. Reach out to the world

To boost your online visibility – that too organically – there are some defined marketing tactics. Two of the most important tactics are Social Media Marketing and Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

• Social Media Marketing techniques uses social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn etc. to reach the eyes of the target audience. This helps in improving brand image, increases recognizability and – if done right – leads to a drastic boost in driving traffic.

• Search Engine Optimization helps you attain a better ranking that your competition in the results of various search engines. While searching online, a visitor enters keywords which shows a list of links that carry the typed information. SEO optimizes your website by using a set of techniques to make sure you enter the top results organically, i.e., without making additional payments.

5. Make customers reach you

In order to generate leads, you need to gather their information. Create attractive yet relevant content that drives them to you. Try to meet their interests in a way that they are able to find solutions to their doubts, confusions or problems from you. Content innovation is not restricted to simple textual information; it can be framed in different content forms like infographics, eBooks, newsletters, whitepapers, videos, podcasts, case studies and many more. You can build lead intelligence, formulate numerous social media strategies and also create compelling blog content.

6. Nurture your Leads

Inbound techniques always focus on educating and serving leads over having a seller-centric approach. While you try to help them grow, you grow with them and from them. You can act as a magnet over speaker when your approach shifts to buyer-selling perspective. Empower your leads and get discovered by them. Draw people in and create a marketing campaign that people love. But how? Activities like personalised forms, CTAs, emails, automated navigations etc.

7. Close into Customers and further, Promoters

This stands as the ultimate stage of inbound marketing, wherein potential prospects get converted into customers. But thinking beyond selling is what inbound marketing focuses on. Nurturing leads is necessary to gain their loyalty and build trust, which will in turn empower them as promoters of your business. If they like your product or service, they will undoubtedly spread the word about you with more people who may be your future leads. Quality of performance over quantity is appreciated as the main inbound marketing success mantra.

Marketing can be a remarkable tool to accelerate your business growth, but only when it is strategically and smoothly utilized in operations. Attracting strangers, converting them into leads, closing leads to customers and delighting the customers so they act as promoter; the methodology seems convincing to hear, but what about the implementation?

As the journey from converting a stranger to a customer is defined and followed, you need to be distinct in your own unique way in order to stand out in the marketplace from the other competitors. To stimulate your sales, you need to generate the demand of your product or service in the market. After all, prospects will be able to reach you when you become visible to them. You need to engage with them in a way which grabs their attention and interest, making them prefer you over others. That’s where the role of demand generation benchmarks comes into play.

Following are the four benchmarks which will help you ascertain where you stand in the industry:

1. Software companies are equivalent to other industries in terms of visitors, leads, and opportunities in sales

[caption id="attachment_5854" align="aligncenter" width="669"] Image Credit: HubSpot[/caption] [caption id="attachment_5855" align="aligncenter" width="669"] Image Credit: HubSpot[/caption] [caption id="attachment_5856" align="aligncenter" width="669"] Image Credit: HubSpot[/caption]

Observations:

• The charts given above compare software companies and the respondents from all industrial backgrounds.
• A similar distribution of patterns is observed, wherein plotting curves along the graphical information would result in the two curves coinciding with each other in all cases.
• To speculate, there are chances that different industries are observed to have hidden yet similar trends.
• But since reports are formulated from selected samples, the probability of coincidences in the assortment of marketer samples also exists.

Conclusion:

• There is a direct relationship between a company’s overshooting targets and revenue growth with the conversion of leads. As the traffic visiting your website increases, they’re more likely to consume content they’re interested in, get converted into leads and get closed as customers.
• With this survey, marketing is now foreseeable with patterns that recur when diverse plans and methodologies are adopted.
• Companies unaware of lead generation tools, benchmarks and trends are on the losing side when it comes to competition, informed practices and detailed decision-making processes.

2. Inbound marketing methodology and techniques are adopted by software companies over the traditional approach.

In accordance with the report, the software industry has taken a step forward to opt for inbound techniques in their marketing. Strategies like marketing automation, lead generation, workforce management, and content creation – to name a few – are among their priority marketing investments. Appropriate demand generation strategies go hand-in-hand with the application of inbound ways.

[caption id="attachment_5857" align="aligncenter" width="669"] Image Credit: HubSpot[/caption] [caption id="attachment_5858" align="aligncenter" width="669"] Image Credit: HubSpot[/caption]

Observations:

• The survey allowed marketers to select their most and least (three) productive marketing investments in their business workings.
• The aim was to establish business strategy management and set benchmarks after assessing them.
• Standards of external factors like the budget were kept constant and didn’t interfere in their investment criterion.

Conclusion:

Software companies put more time in inbound marketing methodology more than any other industry. Inbound marketing helps in reducing the gap in the performance of various teams in an organization by streamlining efforts and providing a window to all departments. It can be in the form of email marketing, tracking a lead’s journey or tracking content with context. Indeed it is the most effective method of marketing for SAAS.

3. With the per-lead analysis, software industry spends more than any other industry

[caption id="attachment_5859" align="aligncenter" width="669"] Image Credit: HubSpot[/caption]

Observations:

• Competition and Customer Lifetime Values (CLVs) in the software industry is increasing rapidly due to the ease in the user interface, space and time management provided by SaaS.
• The reasons for increased acquisition costs in the software marketplace are mentioned above.
• As reported, software, information tech & services, marketing agencies and financial services invest between $51 and $100 on an average per lead.
• Such services are the highest payers as compared to other enterprising sectors spending between $1 and $50.

Conclusion:

• Marketing investments go futile when leads which are unconvertible or don’t have much potential are tapped up.
• Lead nurturing plays an important role in gaining customer’s trust and loyalty
• Pay attention to buyer-persona segmentation, and track their position in the buyer’s journey before re-contacting them.

4. Click-through rates and opening of emails are observed exponentially better in Software Media

[caption id="attachment_5860" align="aligncenter" width="669"] Image Credit: HubSpot[/caption] [caption id="attachment_5861" align="aligncenter" width="669"] Image Credit: HubSpot[/caption]

Observations:

• Out of all the software companies covered in the survey, 70% of them open emails at a higher rate by 10%.
• Also, almost 80% of them reported a higher clickthrough rate by 1%.
• Demand generation marketing via lead generation tools are the main indicators of such growth.

Conclusion:

The reason behind this success can be quoted due to risen ROIs and revenue generation. By relying on segmentation, marketers in software invest in lead nurturing techniques through inbound schemes, personalised attention and triggering the customer’s enthusiasm for more. Being a software marketer, one must make sure that the cloud management interface is user-friendly, reaches maximum prospects and keeps data secure from malware. Consumers also appreciate the privacy of information and tend to trust more when provided with qualitative and educational services.

The closing final statement is that marketing tactics work for you tremendously, but only when you work after them. Contributing to the personal growth of the workforce and building relationships bring forth exemplary performances. Aligning strategies with organizational goals in mind develop all departments and build a better connection with the audience. Always strive for more!

>>To know about great Marketing Tools for SMB’s.

Marketing automation platform has quickly become the support system of many a company’s primary customer relationship management solutions since it complements and integrates with customer relationship management.

Unlike the industry for enterprise CRM – in which there is a wide diversity of opinions about the perceived value of various marketing software solutions – the market for marketing automation software has a number of close competitors that offer high-quality services.

For a business looking for inbound marketing software to end their marketing woes, there are a lot of options to look out for. The major ones are HubSpot and Pardot, with Marketo and Eloqua not far behind. HubSpot and Pardot – both equally likable – have some significant differences between them that set them apart. Marketers should consider these differences before making their final decision.

Buying A Marketing Automation Platform: Comparison between Hubspot and Pardot

1. Website Hosting

Hubspot users can deliver a more personalised experience to the leads on their websites, as they can consolidate all online marketing efforts into one. Through Hubspot’s Content Management System (CMS), companies can generate smart content, allowing them to modify the content that customers view when they visit the website, depending on their preferences. For example, if a lead returns to the site and we know what industry they are currently working in, we can customize the content they view on the website to refer to that particular industry.

However, Pardot does not offer the service of a Content Management System. Moreover, for companies with their websites hosted on WordPress, Pardot offers a WordPress plugin so users can insert content based on a lead’s details (i.e. industry, location, lead score, etc).

2. Creating Calls-to-Action

One fundamental difference between Pardot and HubSpot when utilising lead generation tools is the ease of use when it comes to calls-to-action.

Call-to-action are the buttons or text-based images that are used to grab the attention of website visitors and direct them to the landing pages for form submission.

In Pardot, if a user wants to create CTAs, then they must be set up outside the software coupled with tracking URLs to measure actions. On the other hand, HubSpot lets users set up and segment various CTAs within the app. This feature could be very beneficial for tracking a user’s journey through the site to see which CTA buttons are performing well.

3. Reporting Tools

Pardot provides a complex life-cycle report showcasing the trickle-down effect of website visitors, prospects, marketing-qualified leads, sales-qualified leads, and customers. Pardot users can measure the average amount of time it takes to convert leads throughout the sales cycle to help identify pain points.

While HubSpot provides comprehensive reports, the platform lacks the same complex view. HubSpot platform allows users to access various reports; navigation on the platform is intuitive and encourages each user to take note of various reports. For example, under the source report, HubSpot users can view which source generates the most website visits and the number of new contacts produced during any given period.

Within the email tool, HubSpot users can access click maps for all the emails sent. The email click map helps HubSpot users to know which links and CTA buttons receive the highest number of clicks. Thus, the email click map provides marketing teams with a deeper understanding of their target audience and the type of content that resonated with them the most. In addition to tracking sales process through HubSpot CRM, the tool gives companies access to track individual contacts that are transacting, as well as view all interactions with emails, the number of website views, and form submissions within each contact’s profile.

Platform Highlights

HubSpot

• User Interface
• Content Generation Tools
• Social Media Integration
• Lists & Workflows
• Lead Scoring
• Reporting

Pardot

• Fast & Clean User Interface
• Organizational Structure
• Tracking & Custom Redirects
• Automation Rules
• Custom Fields & CRM Syncing
• Prospect Activity Breakdown
• Email Deliverability

Room For Improvement:

HubSpot

• Organizational Tools
• Application Speed
• Visitor Activity Details
• Custom Fields & CRM Syncing

Pardot

• Reporting
• Content Creation Tools

Conclusion

HubSpot and Pardot are two different marketing automation platforms; with Hubspot focusing more on the Inbound Marketing. Both are unique in implementation but the firms that are looking for an all-in-one solution to manage their inbound, outbound, social media marketing efforts and websites will find Hubspot as a perfect Inbound Marketing Automation tool.

To sum it up, a business must carefully evaluate the requirements and needs before selecting the inbound marketing software and committing to a platform that will likely become the best tool for their business.

Negative SEOMarketers use various tactics to boost their small businesses. Some of the prominent approaches used these days are SEO, social media, content marketing and others. The integration of these tactics are profitable and give a long-term benefit to SMEs and start-ups. But many websites indulge in the practice of negative SEO, which damages their competitors’ organic search rankings. It occurs when someone makes an attempt to lower a site’s ranking on the search engines.

What is Negative SEO?

If the goal of any business is to achieve the position of Search Engine Result Page (SERPs) for relevant keywords on the search engine, negative SEO is meant to weaken this strategy. The competitors try to damage and manipulate your website’s SEO profile with the help of targeted attacks. Their goal is to classify your site as a spammer on the search engine, which will eventually result in the lowering of your website’s ranking on your search engine.

How to Prevent Negative SEO attacks?

1. Google Webmaster Tools Email Alerts

Google Webmaster Tools is a must for any website owner as they are highly beneficial in preventing a negative SEO attack. You have to set and verify your site, after which you can sign up for the email address with this tool. Google can send you email alerts when:

• Malware is attacking the website
• Your pages are not indexed
• You have server connectivity problems
• You get a manual penalty from Google

2. Protect Your Business Backline

Spammers often try to remove your best backlinks. They contact the website owner of the link by using your name and request the webmaster to remove your sites’ backlink. To prevent such a negative SEO attack, you can do two things:

• The website can communicate with webmasters and use an email address from the domain of your site, instead of using Gmail or anything else of the sort. This way, you can prove that the work for your website is authentic, and you’re not someone else who’s pretending to be you.
• Keep track of your best backlinks. For this, you can use Monitor Backlinks. Go to the list of your backlinks and sort them by page rank or social activity.

3. Keep Track of Your Backlinks Profile

Keeping the backlink profile is an important action that should be taken to prevent spammers from succeeding. More often than not, they will perform negative SEO on your website by redirecting or making low-quality links. It is of vital importance to know when someone is creating links to your site. You can use various tools like Open Site Explorer or Ahrefs from time to time to check if someone is building links or redirecting to your website. Websites like monitorbacklinks.com are one of the many tools that send you an email alert when your site gains or loses valuable backlinks. Once you have created your account on their website, it will require you to add your domain and connect it to your Google Analytics account.

4. Prevent Attacks From Bad Bots

Bad bots are commonly used for malicious objectives such as credential stuffing, DDoS assaults, data theft, price scraping, and unauthorised crawling, among others, resulting in significant financial losses for enterprises. Bots are a significant addition to online fraud/cybercrime, as their sophistication and lethality continue to rise. Therefore, bot attacks must also be avoided to improve web application security. Given the variety of bots and how they attack websites, there is no one-size-fits-all bot prevention solution. However, there are several simple steps you may take to avoid negative SEO attacks from malicious bots, such as:

• An intelligent, comprehensive, and managed WAF is required for efficient protection against bot assaults, including DDoS attacks.
• Bot traffic must be identified and classified using a combination of analytics technologies and human skills.
• To provide successful defence against bots, comprehensive rules for bot management must be created and regularly tweaked with surgical precision by security specialists once they have been found and classified.

5. Duplicate Content

One of the most common techniques that spammers use is called content duplication. They copy the content of your website and post it everywhere they can. If there is duplicate content, then there’s a possibility that your site will be penalised and lose its rankings. Tools like copyscape.com can check your site to see whether your website has a duplicate page or not. You can add your website or the article of your site you want to verify, and it will show you if your content is being published somewhere else without your permission.

5. Monitor Social Media Mentions

Spammers can create fake accounts on social media by using your company or website name. You can remove these profiles by reporting these fake accounts as spam before they start to get followers. You can use the tools like mention.net to monitor who is using your brand name. As soon as your name gets mentioned on any social media platform or website, you have the power to decide whether to take any action or not.

6. Authority Labs

Authority Labs keeps an eye on changes in your keyword rankings via weekly email or historical changes in their dashboard. Not all the decreased rankings can be traced to negative SEO, however, they are still worth investigating so you can work towards reclaiming your rankings.

7. Website Speed

Slow loading rates will harm your rankings, and a longer loading time can cause your server to crash; thus, it is critical to avoid it from happening. One cause of sluggish website speed is competitors' use of automated programmes (bots) to forcefully access or crawl your website, causing your server to slow down. Someone sending thousands of queries per second to your website's server is another reason. Google’s Core Web Vitals – Are You on Top of This Big SEO update? You can access when your website is unavailable by creating an account and configuring email alerts. Using tools like www.pingdom.com, you may keep track of how long it takes for your server to load. If your site is loading slowly or crashing, you can also contact your web developer or hosting company. Slow speeds can be caused by various factors, including WordPress plugins that aren't working properly or software code that isn't up to par. Moreover, a combined Web firewall and content delivery networks can limit the impact of a bot attack.

8. Rival IQ

Rival IQ is a competitor research tool that allows you to monitor your position in the search for keywords that drive traffic to your website. You can also use this tool to see what your competitors are doing to get ahead in search rankings. You will be able to analyse the keywords that drive traffic to their websites, their on-site optimisation, their landing pages, and their paid search strategy with data provided by SEMrush. Negative SEO was not considered a serious threat a decade ago, but it has become a huge source of concern for the millions of websites affected by it. Furthermore, the likelihood of a negative SEO attack has increased dramatically due to the availability of cybercriminals willing to labour for little pay. These unscrupulous approaches and tactics lower a legitimate ranking useless and take control of the search engine. However, it's important to note that not every time your website lags, it's because of terrible SEO. A website's speed is determined by a variety of different factors that work together. If your website is subjected to such attacks, the SEO practices listed above can help your site compete in this safe digital space. All you need to do is keep your website secure and regularly watch it to catch any problems early. The sooner you recognise a problem, the faster you can resolve it. Know more about the Best SEO Techniques to Rank #1 in Search Engines.

Content marketing is the newest trend in marketing. The thought of spending less and gaining more lures everyone. All it requires is good content, right? Well, it’s not that simple. Good content still needs good marketing so that it can reach your target audience. Without successfully spreading the word about your content, it’ll just remain as content and nothing more. You will get no benefits out of it, and it’ll become an ineffective campaign. To ensure a successful campaign, there are factors that you need to analyse, and only then can you build a campaign around them. The analysing bit includes understanding your target audience and medium of marketing, setting a budget to work with and knowing the tools that help in spreading your content. Strategizing after collecting data on these parameters makes for a successful campaign. To stay on top of this with your content marketing strategies, here is a list of 10 things you should know before researching content marketing solutions.

1. It’s not as Simple as Just Making a Video and Posting it Online

There are a lot of factors that come into play, like: How does the content reach new audiences? Who is it meant for? Other such important questions need to be worked on and answered accordingly. Creating the content is only a small part of the entire marketing strategy. You have to be prepared for any engagement after the campaign is launched as well. Therefore, monitoring the traffic on the content and many other factors need to be addressed too.

2. Define Your Content Marketing Objective

Is it brand awareness, lead generation, customer retention, or just customer engagement that improves brand recall? Each strategy has a different requirement. If your goal is to improve your brand awareness in the market, attract more sales and also improve customer retention, no single campaign will do the trick for all your goals. Every strategy works towards particular goals. Either they improve brand awareness, or they promote sales and/or customer retention, so one should identify the appropriate strategy and plan accordingly. If you have more than one goal, plan multiple linked strategies in order to amplify and achieve all your goals in a structured manner.

3. Knowing Your Target Audience

Who you choose to engage with through your content is important in order to mould your strategy. For example, if your target audience is a photographer community, you cannot expect to lure them with content related to cooking. Every particular target audience demographic has different likes and interests that can attract them towards your company. Figuring out these likes and interests are very important. Without that, your strategy is nothing more than a shot in the dark.

4. Study Examples that Match Your Requirements

This includes carefully examining case studies of the marketing campaigns of other companies, case studies of the effects of social media on different marketing campaigns and other such resources. This helps you in understanding what campaigns have been done before, the strategies they used, and – ultimately – what went right and what went wrong. Look for common problems and how different brands solve them.This will help you gather information that can be used to rectify some errors in your strategies, by basically learning from others’ mistakes.

5. Set your Budget

There is no limit to the amount you can spend on a campaign, so it’s important for you to set the budget you want to work with for marketing. This will help you optimise the marketing strategy to be best suited for the budget, giving you better results.

6. Select and Understand the Medium You Want to Use

Every strategy needs to be optimised and moulded according to the social media you are using; whether it be a personal blog, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or any other platform. Always remember, the type of content that will be best suited for Twitter might not provide the same results for Instagram and vice versa. Hence, plan and make your content accordingly.

7. Talk to Experts in the Field

Without talking to a specialist in the field of content marketing, you cannot get a proper understanding of what this form of marketing entails. Getting this in-depth knowledge can help you design better strategies and also help you with problem-solving, in case things don’t go as planned. Thus, having an expert on board – whether in your company or through a third party – is always beneficial to understand these strategies and build better ones.

8. Knowing the Tools of Content Marketing and Social Media Marketing is Important

It’s crucial to identify and understand the tools that can help you spread the word or measure results. There are various methods like social media influencers, collaborations, paid ads and other such methods.

9. Attempting Content Marketing Strategies

A company needs adequate time and services to sufficient research various content marketing strategies that can positively impact their business. However, if this is not a feasible option, then it is better to outsource the work to a digital marketing agency, which will be able to handle this work and provide guaranteed results.

10. The Subject of your Strategy is Essential

If the subject is unclear, or if your audience can’t relate or understand, then your strategy might not be successful. Similarly, the tone of your content should be friendly and appealing in order to make the content engaging. This is an essential aspect of forming an effective content marketing strategy, as people will want to engage with you only when they feel that you are approachable and friendly in nature. If this is not the case, then they will refrain from your content rather than engage with it.

Conclusion

Thus, before you start researching and looking up appropriate marketing strategies, you need to have a good understanding of what your requirements are. This will let you know what you need to learn, what you already know, and all relevant details that will help you understand the different strategies used, and which one will work best for you. It will also help you get a background about the various things you can achieve via content and social media, apart from just marketing your brand.