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.

Today, customer expectations are at an all-time high, and competition is always increasing. The digital era has empowered companies to gather relevant information on their customer's journey. This information includes their mobile app usage, digital clicks, interactions on social media and so much more. This data provides a competitive advantage to companies since it’s easier for them to analyse the weak points and potential gaps in the market. Therefore, data analytics has become one of the most valuable tools across the organization and for marketers.

What is Data Analytics?

It’s the science of examining raw data with the aid of specialized tools and software in order to extract meaningful information about the consumers. Data Analytics technologies and techniques are extensively used in commercial industries to make more informed business decisions. It is also used by researchers to verify or contradict the scientific models, theories and hypotheses.

How data analytics can benefit CMOs

1. Define your demographics

Earlier, marketers had to make the most probable guess regarding the demographics for their ideal market segment, but this is not the case anymore. With data analytics, companies can quickly access the information of their current/target customers. The information includes everything about website visitor information like which websites they go to, how much time they spend on each website, which CTAs they click on, and even the social media platforms used by them.

2. Optimize customer engagement

Data gathered through big-data technology can give us an insight into who our potential customers are, what are their needs, how often do they make a purchase, where are they located and everything else that’s relevant. Companies can also analyse how users interact with their website or their physical store, which can help improve the user experience.

3. Improve customer retention and loyalty

Due to high competition in the market, one of the most important responsibilities for an organization is to improve customer retention and loyalty. You can also track the buying procedure of the customer through data analytics. There are programs like a ‘loyalty card’ that also help you track a customer’s purchase. Data analytics can also track the trending incentives and promotional methods, which are useful for encouraging a customer to make other buying decisions.

4. Optimization and performance

It is important to monitor the impact and return on investment (ROI) of the marketing efforts for which data is collected. This data, with the help of data analytics, can be used by companies to make favourable buys across different channels. It continuously optimizes their marketing efforts by testing, measuring and analysing. By measuring the optimization, the company can improve their performance.

5. Smart Decision making

With more information, it's easier for a team to make quick decisions and it becomes easier for every employee to make informed decisions. That's why every department should have access to data analytics. With the access to vital data, monitoring it effectively would mean that every new idea, direction or project could help in the growth of the business.

6. Better insights through data visualization

Data visualization gives a faster and better way to distinguish current trends. It gives companies the ability to make a quick move. It can help them get a faster insight and make better decisions. Through graphs, charts and other visual aids, the decision-makers can make qualitative choices. This insight can help a team function faster and keep an organization constantly moving.

7. Improved content marketing

Earlier, it was difficult to measure the ROI of a blog post. Now thanks to big-data analytics, marketers can quickly analyse the pieces of content, and find out which one’s the most effective. Even SMEs or start-ups can afford these tools to monitor content scoring, which highlights the most reliable piece of content for higher sales. The sales team, with the help of content analysis, can help in forming predictive analytics which can then be applied to build an effective content model. This model can predict the consumer behaviour and sales.

8. Reputation Management

Companies can monitor their mentions across various websites and social platforms to find reviews and opinions about their organization. Social media tools make it easier to collect and analyse data about the competitors and their marketing strategies as well. This information gives a distinct competitive advantage to the marketers. The aforementioned list throws some light on the current possibilities of data analytics, and how it can be used effectively by marketers. It can be useful for large-scale to small-scale businesses or even by a novice user. Big data and data analytics can become a boon to the companies that can successfully comprehend them, and turn them into valuable and consumable data.

Soon after Hubspot coined the term inbound marketing, it has gained immense popularity and has become an effective way to increase the customer base. It is an innovative way to go about bringing in leads in any business. The primary purpose of inbound marketing website is to nurture its leads, and the business should understand its value by providing them with the content that their potential customers are hunting on the web. Technology has changed the way we market and promote our products and services. Websites have become an important marketing model to maintain a digital presence on the web for any business. An active website helps the marketers for generating the leads.It is a form of marketing which empowers potential customers by creating content that people prefer to utilise. Inbound Marketing Web Design uses the strategies in a way such that a company is visible to its customers. Whether you’re focusing on how to promote or boost your content, Inbound Marketing Web Design does it all. The quality content is produced to attract people towards the product and the company through its website. The three most important pillars of Inbound Marketing while making an impactful web design are:

#1. Content marketing

Content Marketing is used massively in the industry to engage the larger audience. The digital media has widened the scope of it, and even the range of users has also increased. The audience has become very interactive, but the readers want the fresh and accurate information. Content Marketing is not limited to blogging but various other creative means. Videos and Images have played a great role in generating traffic as they are interesting and appealing to the viewers.

#2. Search Engine Optimisation

It is an organic process to of getting traffic from the results on search engine. Though SEO and Content Marketing are two different approaches, but they work together. SEO creates the demand of keywords and content marketing fulfils that demand by using those keywords by using them in their content.

#3. Social media marketing

It is an important pillar which has taken its fair share of hits, but it remains one of the effective strategies for generating new visibility. Throw your content into syndication and the followers will have more reasons to stick around. Social media can generate a steady traffic to your site and build your brand credibility.

How can businesses leverage Inbound Marketing Web Design?

#1. Content

For any business, it is essential to maintain a digital web presence to compete in the market. Where inbound marketing focuses on qualitative content marketing, the website design focuses on how this content can be placed to attract the customers. Inbound marketing targets on its three main pillars i.e. SEO, Content Marketing and Social Media Marketing. The content that they manufacture is of high-quality and customer-centric. Inbound Marketing Web Design converts their potential customers into leads through content management. With the amplification of correct SEO word and their content, it helps to boost the website link on the top of search engine pages which helps the website to get found. The more content any website contains, the more your website will rank on the top of search engine pages. Not just that, the content needs to be upgraded from time to time as per the changing trends as it would help to generate more traffic on the website. A confused web design could confuse the readers, and hence it will make them shift to your competitive web page. Therefore, the structure of the content placement on the website should be focused, making the readers easy to understand the message that your site wants to distribute. While creating a website, additional features like testimonials, informative videos can be attached to the blogs which will help the readers for the better understanding of the content.

#2. Offers

To boost the traffic through inbound marketing web design, it is essential to understand the insights of your customers. The content should have an ample variety for every individual that visits that website, not just the customers so that the new visitors can generate interest and could convert into potential customers in future. When your website offers multiple varieties of content to the readers, it leads to the trio-of-offers which include awareness, consideration stage and decision-making. Awareness: In this juncture, you offer the content to your potential customers through various tactics like blogging, testimonials, videos, imagery, infographics and more. This provides a variety of information to the viewer which creates interest to your website. Consideration stage: After obtaining content from your site, you can offer newsletters, aware them about the webinars on your site, ebooks and more. The potential customer at this stage compares your website with other competitive internet sites, but your site can connect to your potential buyers by providing them high-quality user-centric content. Decision-Making: This is the conversion level of the potential customer into a qualitative lead which the customer makes the decision after the best-provided offer to them.

#3. Problem-solving website

The most common mistake that the traditional site does while creating the content is they overload the website content with their product, their services, their experiences and their progress in the industry. The individuals look for a solution when they use the search engine. The content they need is not something significant to a particular business's experience, but a general overview of the topic, the customers are searching. It gives them up-to-date information from your website, which could help to generate interest in more issues related to it. The website design should symbolise the fact that the content is equipped with to help the readers and solve their problems and guidance. This pattern will assist the prospect to feel safe enough to make a purchase decision.

#4. Personalization

If we take competitive mapping of other progressive web pages, they are providing more personalised content to their users. This attracts the customers as they accurately provided with the content according to the taste of their visitors. As marketers, your website needs to provide a similar experience. One way to do it is to use inbound marketing tools to deliver content in context. You can use tools Hubspot which will incorporate the content in CTAs, landing page and headlines according to the search history of the users to personalise their web content which your website would provide them. Personalisation will result in a long-term relationship between the customers and your website as they will seek for more content on your website according to their interest and your website will be the best platform for them.

#5. Site Speed

Nothing is frustrating for the users more than slow-loading web pages than anything. It has become such a vital part of any website that the search engines rank the website link according to the loading speed of the site. This could lead to slow SEO results too. A full range of development and design techniques and its best practices are required to optimise speed for any website to generate a lead.

#6. White Space

Whitespace is also known as negative space. It is one of those things while designing a website which can make a significant impact. You can insert essential content, videos or pictures on your site to make it look more appealing for the users instead of cluttering it with overloaded content. Where traditional marketing is a one-way conversation, and the marketers are looking for the potential customers, inbound marketing is an ongoing dialogue to communicate with your clients on your website. It is a smarter approach to reach your target audience where instead of outbound marketing methods of purchasing ads, buying email list or hunting down the leads, the inbound website focuses on creating the quality content. By publishing the useful and accurate content and optimising it according to your target persona, the potential customer reaches automatically to the website. So, therefore, the output of that content becomes educational and relevant instead of being interruptive. Hubspot COS Development is an another and best option for growth driven web design.

Today everyone in the world is generating content - either brands are making it for their audience, or there is a lot of user-generated content. The content could be in any form, format, tone & emotion. Content marketing is the kind of marketing that thrives by creating valuable, consumable, shareable content and distributing it through various forms and mediums to reach to potential consumers. To Know more about Definitive Content Marketing Trends 2018. . We have created a list of top 50 tools for content marketing. We’ve also segregated them as per their essential utilities:

SOCIAL MEDIA ANALYTICS TOOLS

• Socialbakers –Socialbakers tools are efficient to deliver data analytics and social media management tools for all sizes for marketing on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Google+, VK and Pinterest. This tool is useful for tracking various metrics & statistics.

• Cision – This Social intelligence tool let users monitor, analyse and engage with keywords across social media platforms which answers all questions relatd to Social media engagement. This tool also provides you with a customizable dashboard to search and analyse the sentiments in a single plate.

• Ahrefs - This SEO powerhouse runs on the largest keyword, backlink, and content indexes as of today. It has 5.4 billion keywords, crawls 4.1 million pages a minute, and finds 5 million new content topics daily! With Ahrefs, you’ll get much more up-to-the-minute SEO data than any other tool can provide.

• CrowdBooster – This tool lets you measure and optimise company's social media marketing, track your social media engagement with critical information like interactions, fan growth, and more and provide powerful analytics.

• Trendspottr – This social media tool uses real-time data to recognise trending topics across social media platforms before they potentially go viral, hence helping marketers to alter/change their content strategy efficiently.

• Simply Measured – Social analytical tool that provides the most comprehensive social media insights across channels to impact on company’s entire marketing funnel. The tool is also beneficial for those who rely heavily on detailed reports, such as a competitor comparison analysis, etc.

WEBSITE ANALYTIC TOOLS

• Alexa – It's a tool used to measure the reach of the site, boosts traffic and revenue. It is an SEO and competitor analysis tool. This web traffic tool also gives traffic data and global rankings for business websites.

• Webtrends – This tool provides analytical intelligence, including customer intelligence and behavioural segmentation, targeting and scoring, and much more. It is also used to map and optimise digital campaigns.

• Mixpanel – Mixpanel is a business analytical tool, which tracks user interactions with the web and mobile applications and provides tools for targeted communications with them. This tool contains the App test and user survey forum. Mixpanel also provides custom reports and measure user engagement and retention.

• Kissmetrics – This is an e-commerce consumer comprehensive tool that offers you the person-centric data in real time, and ties the secret project to public activity once a visitor becomes a customer. Kissmetrics combines behavioural analytics, segmentation and email campaign automation.

• Google Analytics – This tool provides Analytics Solutions for free to measure website, app, digital and offline data to gain customer insights, reports, measure the impact of social media and mobile on website traffic, measure conversion rates, other important consumer insights.

• Parse.ly – This is a web analytics and content optimisation software for online publishers. This tool allows administrators to track the performance of authors or topics, capitalise on web trends.

FUNNEL ANALYTICS TOOLS

• Squeeze CMM – This tool gives the meaningful & deep insights for content performance through content taxonomy. Also, it estimates the ROI of content, generates reports and tracks audience activity.

• Insight Squared – This tool provides Salesforce analytics solutions that enable SMBs to maximise sales and increase team productivity. Also, used for “operating system” for high-growth sales teams. It empowers sales operations leaders to help their team with analytics software for commerce, finance, marketing and support data.

• Bright Funnel – This tool gives a complete picture of marketing's impact on sales with the leading attribution and forecasting solutions for B2B marketers. Bright Funnel allows CMOs to attribute, forecast, and benchmark their demand generation efforts.

SEO ANALYTICS TOOLS

• SEM Rush –It is a competitive intelligence suite for online marketing, from SEO and PPC to social media and video advertising research, it can track keywords for both paid and organic search campaigns.

• Moz – Moz offers an integrated tool for SEO, Inbound Marketing, link building, and content marketing. This application allows users to control social media, handle SEO campaigns, etc.

• BrightEdge – This is an SEO and content performance marketing platform to generate high organic traffic. It helps in creating SEO friendly content.

• GShift – This tool helps in creating a stronger Web presence with all-in-one SEO platform and reporting tools.This software improves the discoverability of your brand on search and social.
• SerpStat – This is an SEO tool used for backlinks analysis, rank tracking, keyword research, competitor analysis and site auditing. SerpStat conducts a thorough competitive analysis based on the SEO performance using domain lookup.

BLOGGING AND CMS TOOLS

• Tumblr – This tool known for its community of content creators. Tumblr is a microblogging place to host over 100mn blogs. One can subscribe it for free and directly use this through Instagram also.

• WordPress – The world’s most famous CMS and blogging software let users create custom themes, add plugins, publish content, moderate comments and most of the websites/Blogs are on WordPress. While the tool is customisable, it is a convenient one too.

• Drupal – This is an open-source CMS, powers millions of websites along with the add-on modules and designs, let companies or individuals tailor a site according to their needs.

• Contentful – This is Content Management platform, helping editors and developers oversee and serve content into mobile and web applications. Contentful is an API-first CMS tool focused on managing the structured content.

Automation Tools

• Pardot – It is a B2B marketing automation tool that helps to create more leads, generate more pipeline, and empower sales to close more deals. It is a lead management tool that lets marketers and sales people move prospects through the sales funnel.

• HubSpot – This is an integrated inbound marketing and sales platform that helps companies attract visitors, convert leads, and close customers. This tool also creates personalised landing pages, emails, web pages and call to actions.

• Act-on – This is a tool of marketing automation, used mostly by medium-sized businesses. It developed an internal sales department to market the software directly to users with $74 million funding raised. The tool is a cloud-based platform which helps marketers organise campaigns, integrate marketing into sales and support systems, and measure results.

• SalesPanda – This is an inbound marketing automation software, which helps you create a robust online presence. SalesPanda also enhances traffic to your website & increases leads.

• Infusionsoft – This is an integrated sales and marketing software solution. The tool is apt for small businesses which combine CRM, marketing automation, e-commerce, and payments solutions with a marketplace of apps, integrations, and partners.

• Marketo – A marketing self-regulation platform that integrates your email, social media, offline events, content, etc., also helps sales and marketing teams prioritise prospects based on demographic and behavioural criteria, measure performance of marketing campaigns.

Personalization

• Monetate – This tool provides big data insights, merchandising, e-commerce personalization, analytics, testing, and expertise that one needs to anticipate. Monetate takes a snapshot of every visitor, create multivariate tests and rules-based product recommendations.

• 40 Nuggets – This is a marketing automation tool for audience analytics. Primarily, it helps you to engage with and tailor content according to each customer.

• Average – This is a real-time web personalization solution that empowers marketers to better engage and convert website visitors without using developers. It personalises content and messages for your audience, by using information such as what they’re searching for, clicking, buying and more.
• Triblio – Create a personalised, multichannel email and web campaign in 60 seconds. Marketers can personalise messaging, content, and calls-to-action for their multichannel campaigns by persona, account and buying stage.

EMAIL MARKETING TOOLS

• iContact – This tool creates HTML emails, signup forms and sends campaigns to customer’s inboxes. The email marketing tool also tracks email campaigns. This email automation tool is useful for campaigns and list segmentations.

• Campaign Monitor – The tool makes it easy for you to create, send, and optimise your email marketing campaigns.

• RapidMail – This tool tracks reports in real time and creates awesome looking emails. RapidMail is an email newsletter software that also delivers statistics and insights needed to grow readership and subscription.

• GetResponse – This tool helps in sending email newsletters, campaigns, online surveys and follow-up autoresponders. With a simple and easy interface, the tool helps in distributing content to increase consumer engagement.

• MailChimp – Mailchimp provides marketing automation for e-commerce businesses and send automated emails, advertise and build the brand.This email marketing software helps to create a better subscriber base, automate and personalise emails.

SALES ENABLEMENT TOOLS

• Docurated – This tool maps the relationships between people and information to deliver contextual content. It helps to create presentations with repurposed content and surfaces users’ most relevant content.

• Savo – Savo provides the insightful, prescriptive platform that delivers the content to sellers within the context of each deal. It helps to benchmark users’ sales enablement process against the industry.

• Postwire – This tool creates a secret place to engage each prospect and client beyond emails, calls and meetings. Also, it enables you to edit posts and share various types of content. It manages relevant content for the sales teams that too in a single platform.

• Jive Software – This tool helps people & organisations work better together. It enables company-wide collaboration in one workspace. Jive Software empowers you to get the collateral out of the door quickly, stay organised, and enable better sales.

• SalesFusion – This tool helps in aligning marketing and sales with lead scoring, marketing automation.It is meant specifically for mid-sized B2B companies.

SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGEMENT AND LISTENING TOOLS

• Tweetdeck – This tool is helpful for calculating the mentions of the brand and their hashtags, managing multiple Twitter accounts, scheduling tweets, and much more, all in a single Twitter platform.

• Hootsuite – This tool lets you manage multiple social media accounts, analyse the social media traffic, collaborate with other team members, schedule messages and tweets. One can schedule the posts on other social channels like LinkedIn and Instagram through this tool.

• Buffer – This tool helps in adding photos, articles, and videos and schedule the posts on social media accounts.

• Keyhole – This tool assists in maintaining real-time dashboard which shows the data of people who posted content with your hashtags. Also, it gives your reports on the number of Retweets and Impressions your campaign is generating.

• Sprout Social – This Social management tool lets multiple users schedule, publish and analyse social media posts across multiple platforms.

• Audiense – Audiense helps you to follow the trends on Twitter and capitalise upon them with a fully functioning Twitter listening and publishing tool.
• Social Mention – A search engine that searches for and analyses real-time aggregated content across 100+ social media platforms. Social Mention is a listing tool for Social Media mentions.

• Meltwater Buzz – Built on the Meltwater platform, the Meltwater Buzz social media SaaS combines monitoring and analytics with engagement to give users a complete lifecycle approach to social media community management.

Share with us your favorite content marketing tools and how effectively you can use them.

Content marketing is one key form of inbound marketing, where you attract customers to your company's website instead of going out in search for them. The customer attention is achieved via creating and sharing content through various formats. This can be done on any of the several social media platforms that exist in today’s online world. With the increase in awareness about the market and amount of information present online, the efficiency and results achieved via inbound marketing strategies is what is making the world take note of content marketing strategies. Traditional marketing methods are still widely used, but the greater return on investments is making people shift over to inbound marketing. Content marketing involves certain steps that achieve specific goals for the promotion of the company. In an ROI driven strategy, the focus is given on all types of content marketing strategies, to improve the overall sales and experience of the company. This, in general, it helps in improving the ROI of your company. This is one of the main reasons, why marketers in general, and even you, should go with agencies that cover all aspects of content marketing, The different types of content marketing elements: Content marketing strategies mainly adopt four major types of content, Social/Viral content: These are the content types which are created to be shared on the various social media platforms and to create a buzz. Such posts are focused on creating brand awareness and is generally focussed on getting views and attracting potential customers. Evergreen content: This is the content that is kept in the form of web pages and is search engine optimized. These pages are meant to be in the top search results for the topic that they cover, improving the reach of your company for potential customers. Link earning content: More the incoming links to your page, better is its visibility. With more links, the online presence of your company expands, bringing a larger visitor base to your site. Lead generating content: This content is created to push the interested visitors to engage with the company and experience the products or enquire about them. This type of content usually has a call-to-action button that gathers vital information like name, email id, contact number etc. of the visitor. These details can later be handed over to the sales team of the company to follow up with.

ROI:

Being ROI driven means to be careful about all the goals achievable by content marketing, for a wholesome development of the company and ultimately driving a better ROI. This implies that an agency should analyse and explore the potential of creating viral content for improving brand awareness and building instant affinity, planning an editorial calendar that pushes evergreen content to improve the searchability of your company and much more. To know more, visit here.

Strategies used by agencies:

The agencies first collect data from various sources like Google Analytics and analyze it. This data tells us about the state of brand awareness, social presence, social traffic, website traffic and other aspects of the company. This is important data for inbound marketing as these show the progress of the existing and previous marketing strategies. Based on this data, agencies can identify which aspect needs to be boosted and the most efficient method to do it. The strategies made this way will help design targeted content marketing strategies, using minimum resources and maximizing output. Wasted efforts would be minimized. These strategies include getting creatives made, creating blogs and tweets, using social media influencers, hosting online and offline events to spread the word etc. Depending on what the product is, a video or a photo or a blog is created. Collaborations with other blogs are made to widen the reach of the blogs. Hosted campaigns are also done on a similar basis with the same goals. Social media influencers are used to spread the word and share content with a large group of people to increase the share of voice. All these activities will be targeted at creating brand awareness, getting social and web traffic, keeping existing customers in the loop and while reaching to the newer potential ones. After this comes monitoring the effects of the applied content strategy on the online traffic on the company. Based on the variation in actual and desired result, the strategy is tweaked. This helps to increase the number of visitors and leads which can be used by the sales and customer care team to convert into sales, improving the ROI of the campaign. For more information refer here.

How does being ROI driven help:

Being ROI driven, one looks at the all-round improvement of the company. You will want to increase your customer base, make existing customers come back for repurchase, improve your social presence and increase brand conversations, increase visitor traffic on your company etc. This would lead to more sales and also improve your ROI. This holistic development is beneficial for the future of the company and helps your company grow in the long run.

Conclusion:

In today's era, the challenges of marketing have increased with the growth of marketing and increasing competition. Everyone is onboard with the latest marketing tricks and methods. In times like this, with the growth of inbound and content marketing, you cannot ignore the importance of inbound marketing in your strategy development process. Inbound marketing is a very organic and efficient way to attract customers who fit your typical buyer personas, without using up too much of your resources. An ROI driven content marketing agency, will not only look at the immediate, small improvements in the online presence of the company, but it will also help to look at the bigger picture, looking into the holistic development of the company. It will do it at all stages and mediums of attracting customers, right from reaching out to strangers and making them aware to converting the interested people into customers. This ensures improvement into the ROI of the campaign and overall sales of the company.

We all must have heard the term Inbound Marketing, but still, we’ll start with the definition of Inbound Marketing. Inbound Marketing is the process using the different forms of pull marketing like blogs, SEO, social media, and others to attract customer’s attention using the relevant and interactive content. Compared to outbound marketing, inbound isn’t about going out and fighting for customer’s attention. It focuses on increasing visibility and structuring a rapport for a brand online.

Inbound Marketing Methodology works in 4 Primary Steps

[caption id="attachment_5647" align="aligncenter" width="792"] Image Source: HubSpot[/caption]

#1. Attract

Every business wants to generate traffic on their sites, but what kind of traffic one wants? There is no benefit of broadcasting the messages and getting irrelevant traffic to your site. We want people who are likely to become leads and happy customers, ultimately. Using Inbound Marketing strategy, we target only the audience that is already searching the web for the relevant information by using engaging and related content in our blogs, social posts, and sites.

#2. Convert

Next step after getting the attention from readers is to turn them into potential leads by gathering their information. Getting their contact information helps companies to connect with them in a better way. To get this information from the website visitors, we need to provide something relevant to them. Providing relevant blogs, eBooks, whitepapers, etc. to customers builds a trust value with them. Different techniques like Call to actions, forms, and landing pages help in converting more visitors into leads.

#3. Close

Once converted into leads, next objective is to turn them into customers. The key here is to make use of the right tools at the right time. There are certain tools like CRM (Customer Relationship Management) that facilitates the sales process by providing the right information to us to engage correctly with customers. Personalized emails hold an important role in the process as it helps in building the direct relationship with the leads and hence, makes leads more likely to purchase your services. Also, choosing the right message is a critical factor in marketing. There are certain marketing automation tools available that lets you send the personalised messages to customers according to their previous responses.

#4. Delight

Inbound marketing is all about providing quality content to our users. Retaining a customer is as important in a business as it generate new customers. Just acquiring a client is not enough, you have to provide quality services which are beyond customer’s expectations. This builds loyalty among the customers and brings credibility to the business. It is important to know what they feel about you and what else they want to improve. A company can capture their customer’s feelings by using surveys, social monitoring, etc. to find out the areas of improvement from their valuable feedback.

By using the above-stated methodology, a company can quickly build its rapport online and attract potential business.

Inbound marketing is beneficial for businesses of every size and field. Especially, the businesses that offer B2B services can benefit immensely from inbound marketing.

Here are some advantages of inbound marketing to B2B technological companies.

• Effectiveness: According to HubSpot inbound innovator, inbound marketing is thrice as efficient as outbound marketing is. Companies are likely to get higher ROI by using inbound marketing strategies as compared to outbound marketing. If used efficiently, inbound marketing generates measurable results for any organisation.
• Pocket-friendly: A well-written blog is worth hundreds of dollars. Inbound marketing strategies use quality content that costs a lot less than the huge outbound marketing campaigns, and these blogs generate better results for companies and have a lasting impact.
• Understanding buyer’s persona: Today’s customers are smart enough to get the complete knowledge of anything they want to buy before making the purchase. Companies need to understand that consumers search for the product online and not them. Therefore, companies have to understand what customers want and then put up their content accordingly to gain the trust and bring credibility to their name. Inbound marketing focuses on creating highly customer-centric content.
• Increases sales efficiency: Inbound Marketing helps companies to automate the sales process and get more work done with minimum resources. Using these automated tools inbound reduces the chances of human error and makes the process smoother and quicker. Doing so, in turn, helps the sales team to get more leads and manage more users effectively. For more insights, click here.
• Higher Return On Investment: Using the right analytics tool, we can tap into the good prospect’s and understand the target audience better. Inbound marketing lets companies enhance their awareness using minimum resources and increase the revenue with minimum investments.

Though it sounds complicated, investing quality time is essential for professionals to understand the strategies. A company can start with researching on the appropriate keywords and analysing the trends and keywords used by people to search for the information related to the enterprise’s services.

Then, planning the content accordingly using the keywords and relevant data will help the companies get more views and readership on the web increasing their authority.

Planning the marketing campaigns according to the trends and by understanding what their customers want will help companies to increase ROI effectively.

With the changing scenarios, all we can predict is that inbound marketing is the future. And, outbound marketing has lost its zest somewhere with the increase in technological aspects of the marketing field and changing buyer behaviour. A lot of companies have already shifted to inbound marketing and started reaping the benefits. So, it’s the right time for any business to start investing their time and efforts in inbound strategies.

So, it’s the right time for any business to start investing their time and efforts in inbound strategies.

Talk to us about your business and we’ll help you uncover the path.

Whenever you have flocked to Google to search for latest marketing trends, you must have come across the term ‘Marketing Automation’. Or, you must have heard your friends and colleagues talking about it. But, what is Marketing Automation? How effective is it? And, why a business must use it or even spend their time and money to read about it? If you are a founder, director, or just a marketing professional, then you would know how hectic work can get. Continuous meetings, double checking your campaigns status, tracking the marketing and sales objective, and so on, the list seems never ending. The task is much more arduous for SME’s who can't ramify the work because of their limited resource strength. This is where marketing automation steps in. Although there is no such definition for marketing automation, we could broadly see it as the use of software to automate marketing processes like customer segmentation, customer data integration, and campaign management. The use of marketing automation makes processes, which are otherwise performed manually, much more efficient. Marketing automation has also become an integral component of customer relationship management. Turning manual processes into digitally automated form, comes with its series of benefits. We’ve summed up the main pain-points that businesses face and explained the respective benefits as follows: [caption id="attachment_5625" align="aligncenter" width="719"] Image Source: business2community[/caption]

1. Automated Reporting

The hardest and most time-consuming part of any marketing campaign is reporting. Marketing automation tools like Marketo and HubSpot make campaign reporting component easy and effortless. To measure the effectiveness of your campaigns by tracking key metrics like content engagement and new leads generated are vital for tracking the ROI from such campaigns.

2. Personalization and customer retention

Customer retention is equally important as going out and generating new leads is. Using these automation tools, helps you get a relevant insight into customer intent and desires. With this information in hand, companies are able to deduce the customers’ needs and decisions and accommodate their behaviour to make relevant actions. Also, by using these tools companies can trigger messages and personalised content according to their audience. Recommended for You: Top 10 Tips to Retain Customers

3. Optimizing Workflows

Any inbound marketing campaign needs forms, CTAs, conversion pages and many other assets to monitor and measure the reach of their campaign. And, tracking all this manually is a tiring and lengthy task with possibilities of human errors. Automation tools automate these activities and also document them in a consumable format, making the process smoother and error free.

4. Revenue Growth

The ultimate goal of any business is to produce sustainable revenue streams and maintaining the streams as well. Though, these automation tools are not cheap, but the benefits and the monetary value they generate easily surpass the investment costs incurred by the company. According to stats, 78% of marketers have stated that automation tools have increased sales and boosted revenues for them. Further insights on the stats can be taken from here

5. Error Elimination

No matter how efficient one is, human beings can still make mistakes and errors in their business documentation. And, there is no room for error in today’s competitive world. Automation tools eliminate the need for human efforts by performing certain tasks thereby bringing efficiency to the system and negating chances of error. Depending on the budget and choice of the software, one can also manage daily tasks like budgeting and planning.

6. Building Awareness

Having an online presence is a necessity for an organisation to build an audience and no brand today wants to take chances with their reputation in the digital world. The amount of effort and time required to recognise, connect and convert the potential audience into leads is too high when done manually. Automation tools come in as a saviour as these tools allow marketers to automate such tasks and to reduce the human efforts, saving up on the time and efforts of the organisations. All these benefits are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the advantages of such marketing tools. With so many automation tools around, choosing one can be a daunting task. So, we have listed the key process for you to choose the right tool for your business.

7. Define your goals

Choosing the right tools entirely depends on what you want to achieve from your business and the growth forecast of your organisation. A company must figure out what exactly their requirements are these tools and how they want to use them.

8. Research about the tools available in the market

Choosing a software just because someone recommended it to you, is the worst business decision you can make. One must do their research before investing their hard-earned money in some tool. The need of a Technology startup may vary from the need of an independent marketer - there are options available in the market to cater different needs for automation by different classes of users. Spend time to understand your need for automation and your business goals and choose wisely accordingly.

9. Go for the free trial

The best thing about these online tools is that most of them come with a free trial. By opting for a free trial, a business manager can test the tool on its productivity and benefits it brings to the business. Usually, these trials are offered for anywhere between 10-14 days, which is a decent time to gauge the capabilities of a tool. Again, it is imperative to analyse the business need and how the automation tool will streamline/add value to the existing processes. >> Know more about Hubspot and Hubspot India Partners. Need help figuring out where to start or have any questions? Comment below!

A report from Forrester Research demonstrates how companies are allocating marketing funds between offline and online campaigns. The report perfectly answers the question of how much of a company’s marketing budget should be allocated to digital channels. In the same breath, it also answers the question as to which online or digital channels will bring the best results for a marketing team.

Some pointers from the report are as follows:

• Companies are expected to allocate 30% of their marketing budget on online campaigns in 2017. Also, that number is expected to grow to 35% in 2018.
• Social media investments hold only about 15% of the total expenditure out of the online budget but are projected to increase by a certain number in few years.

According to the recent CMO Survey, it looks like B2B firms spend somewhere about six to nine percent of their incomes on marketing, with service-oriented businesses marketing being at the lower end and product-oriented businesses at the higher end of the scale. How much a brand can afford to spend on digital marketing depends on some factors like investor funding, current profits and business objectives. However, it can be helpful to consider some marketing budget benchmarks and see how your proposed expenditure compares. Doing this will give you the assessment of whether your budget is in line with your competition and how much more investment you need. It is pivotal to note that the budget represents the total marketing investment, and not just the advertising or media expenditure. The marketing budget includes aspects like marketing teams, customer-relationship management expenses, expenses paid to agencies and other outside teams, advertising expenses, media spend, etc. Firms trying to grow market share will likely be on the high side of the budget size vs. firms planning for modest growth, which can be on the lower side. Moreover, the competitive nature of a certain marketplace will influence where a particular firm falls among the budget sizes.

Which Social Media Channels should B2B companies invest in?

The August 2016 eMarketer report brings a fresh point to this answer. This report forecasted social media penetration through 2020. Some tidbits from the report indicate that Facebook is expected to continue its reign as the supreme leader, with 90% of social media users utilising the platform’s amenities. Instagram is expected to grow, from 32% penetration to 47% by 2020. Pinterest and Twitter will continue to have comparatively low penetration, peaking at around 33% of users by 2020. Digital marketing expenditure, relatively, has consistently grown by double-digit increments year after year. This means businesses are eager to increase their marketing spend. What used to be dedicated to outbound strategies radio, television, and the newspaper is now being dedicated to searching, email, and social. Conclusion - This data indicates that Facebook and Instagram are the best channel investments. However, every company’s target market should be researched thoroughly before formulating general online or digital marketing strategies. Another eMarketer August 2016 report specified that 75% of companies expect to increase their spending on Google Adwords in the next 12 months – that’s more than any other digital channel. Facebook came in second with an expected increase of 69%, hence proving that the leader can always lose the throne. Instagram and Twitter investment increases were 41% and 21%, respectively.

Research

To know how much you need to spend on digital marketing and which social channels you should invest in, you need to understand the landscape of digital marketing in your industry. To fulfil that purpose, you must take out sufficient time to research. Before you do the required research, there are a few things to be kept in mind: Competitor Analysis - To invest in your brand’s digital marketing you need to know your competitors’ marketing budget and the largest portion of their investments. Be it online or offline, an eye on the competitors’ marketing team can help you to build your budget. Analyse which source or medium is bringing them the best results and if doing the same can help you as well. Keyword themes - Identify which keywords are in the pool of your industry and which of them can boost your brand’s organic or paid search. Also, research about their estimated bids. Social communities - Study which social channels and communities your audience frequent and analyse the costs of advertising on such platforms. Social influencers - List out all the social influencers dominant in your industry, their prices and their reputation among the potential consumer base. Costs of content - Your company can do successful digital marketing only if it has a team competent enough to do that. A team with the requisite time and experience to manage the content creation and marketing should be hired if not already. The costs to do that can hence alleviate your marketing budget.

Is your company offline or online?

Businesses who depend more heavily on the digital landscape to generate sales (e.g. an e-commerce business) invest a larger percentage of their marketing budget towards the internet rather that traditional sources of marketing. For more traditional businesses, which rely on digital and offline activity to complete the sales cycle, a healthy mix of marketing strategy is to be expected.

Conclusion

It's not a surprise that digital marketing services are growing, and it's pretty much here to stay. B2B companies are transferring their funds from outbound channels into digital marketing services to optimise results. To determine your perfect budget, assess what type of digital marketing services you want to provide to your customers, understand the complications in your sales process, and ensure you are investing adequate funds in measuring results properly. Don’t ignore the consistent and continual growth of the mobile landscape, and use these B2B budget ranges as a beginning point for the successful provision of your digital marketing service. We need to place ourselves in the shoes of our potential customers and talk in the tone that they will relate to. Platforms like Facebook can boost your business to the next level, which will simply not be the case if you choose to utilise other ineffective measures and/or platforms. So, make sure there’s enough scope in your budget to experiment with various digital marketing services, before you’re left behind by your competition.