7 Tips To Improve Your SMB Social Media Presence Posted on September 29, 2020August 12, 2022 by Natalie Slyman As small business owners, your time is stretched pretty thin. There’s a lot of things you have to get done to keep your business running successfully, and social media tends to take a backseat. It’s quite alright to neglect social media for a couple of days, but if you aren’t careful, a couple of days turn into weeks, then months. Next thing you know, it’s been a year since you posted and you’re feeling pretty defeated. When you neglect publishing, you create a domino effect of despair that begins every time you look at your followers. And when you do post, you’re not getting any likes or comments, making you feel like you’re just posting content into a void. Well, you are not alone. Many companies out there are failing to increase their social following or even reach their target audience. But, when you consider that one billion people are on Facebook alone, it becomes clear just how important social media can be for your business. Rather than put in extra time and effort to build up your network, take a step back, and analyze the precise areas that you could be taking wrong turns. Like many things related to business, it is about prioritizing and working smarter, not harder. Let’s dive into seven tips that will help any small business improve their social media presence and lay the groundwork for building a strong, engaged community. 1. Find Your Ideal Platforms It’s important for small businesses to be present on the social platforms that their audience is using. Deciding on the right platforms will depend mostly on your demographic, your type of business, and which social platforms are the most popular. About 33 percent of Instagram users are between the ages of 25 and 34. So, if that age group is your ideal customer, then obviously, Instagram is going to be a medium you prioritize. If you have a particularly visual business, like an interior design firm or an advertising agency, then opting for Pinterest makes a lot of sense. But, don’t just create a Pinterest account because you think you need to. Make sure that the visual component makes sense for your company, and double-check to see what demographic is using Pinterest to ensure it aligns with your audience. In the instance of Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, these platforms are all extremely popular, so it sort of goes without saying that you should be present on them. 2. Provide Valuable Content Having a presence on social media means you need content to post about. You must come up with a social media calendar that will be filled with content that will appeal to your target audience. For each platform, complete your profile in its entirety and start posting, even before you have the followers. Share things like: Blog posts Videos Useful content from other brands Infographics Team photos Use the power of storytelling to your advantage and consider trends and current issues. It’s important that you fill your feed with content that attracts followers, so think of creative ideas to engage your audience. New visitors will be looking at your feed to see what you have been publishing, and one or two posts will not be enough to get that new audience to hit the “follow” button. 3. Follow Real People and Businesses While you can easily buy likes, I definitely don’t recommend it. The whole point of social media is to be more transparent and to give a peek into your business. If your following and your likes are from fake, purchased accounts, people will see it for what it is: a sad ploy to make your brand look popular. You want a social media account that will bring you tangible results rather than something which is purely for show. To do that, you need to follow real people, brands, and accounts that will build up your list of followers. Oftentimes when you follow an account, they’ll follow you back, so you want to show them that you’re legit and not being followed by a bunch of bots or fake accounts. To find real, quality accounts to follow, search keywords and hashtags related to your industry. Search each platform for people who are relevant or have an interest in your industry, and check out who your competitors are following. Seek out influencers on LinkedIn, share their content, and join groups of like-minded individuals to add to your inner circle. Always make sure you provide value to the conversation before reaching out and making connections. For example, with Twitter, you are given suggestions for individuals to follow and can easily see the relationships that others have. Make the most of these kinds of tools. 4. Cross-Promote Your Networks If you want to go the extra mile with building up your social media accounts, then look into cross-promoting your accounts. Share your Facebook account on Twitter and vice-versa. This doesn’t have to be obvious, either. You can simply share a link to one of your Facebook posts on your Twitter feed with a short descriptor. We do this when we want to share a lengthy post but are limited by Twitter’s character count. Some other important tips for cross-promotion include advertising your social media accounts in all of your newsletters, on your business cards, at the bottom of your emails, and in print marketing. Add social media links and follow buttons on your website, blog, and email newsletter. In all likelihood, your current Facebook fans will also follow you on Twitter and Instagram as they obviously already like what you have to say. 5. Post Regularly To keep your social media presence strong, you must post regularly. The more you post, the more opportunities you have for your posts to be shared by your followers. But also, posting more frequently means you’ll rise to the top of your followers’ feeds, keeping you top of mind and ever-present. Share information from others amongst your original, valuable content. Answer questions and help your readers out; even go so far as to ask them what kind of information would be most helpful to them. You can use Twitter or Instagram Stories polls for these kinds of tactics. Just don’t publish too frequently. Keep a healthy balance and stay accountable by creating a social media calendar to track all your social posts for the week. 6. Engage With Followers Over and above posting content, you need to connect with your fans directly. It may take a while, and it depends on the platform, as some encourage more chattiness than others, but if someone comments on your posts, take the time to reply. It’s such an easy thing to do, and providing that one-on-one interaction with your audience goes a long way. If you’re worried about now seeing comments or interactions quickly, turn your notifications on, or set a reminder to check comments. Being responsive will gain you new followers and a whole lot of respect from them as well. Audiences love to connect with brands, so going out of your way to do so will really impress them. Continuously thank everyone for connecting with you and always attempt to open up a conversation with those who tag you or mention you online. 7. Partner With Another Brand It is worth considering partnering up with another brand or company and taking advantage of someone else’s network to grow your connections. Obviously, you want it to be a non-competitor and a brand with a similar audience as yours. So, source organizations and come up with a promotion that would benefit all involved. As each company will be promoting the content to their audience, everyone stands to gain new followers from the joint marketing effort. Some brands pull together on hosting webinars, while others join forces on pop-up shops and street sales. Whatever makes sense for your business to explore, do it, and involve a like-minded company or another local business to double down on the benefits. Then, share the social promo efforts so you can tag each other, get the word out to your networks, and see your followers grow. Dedicate a few minutes each day to developing and posting on your social media. Over the span of a month, you should be able to see a real difference in both the number of followers you acquire and the level of engagement you create.
How to Use Tagging to Better Segment Your Contacts Posted on September 24, 2020September 18, 2020 by Tegan Arnold The beauty of personalization is that it shows your leads that you know who they are. It shows them that you understand their issues, needs, and how your product or service fits within that equation. What’s even better is that it doesn’t require a ton of work on your end. You don’t need to individually research each prospect in your database to determine what their knowledge level is and what they need to make their lives easier. All you need to do is employ the right marketing automation tool. You need a tool that will provide you with the right capabilities without all the unnecessary bells and whistles that you won’t end up using. You need a small business CRM that allows you to track your prospects’ behavior so you can determine various factors, like: Where they are in the buyer’s journey What content they engage with the most What actions they’re taking on your website Which of your emails they’re opening and clicking on What CTAs are driving them to action It also doesn’t hurt to have a tool with tagging capabilities, so you can take that information, label, and segment your leads based on whatever organizational approach works for you. Tagging is a simple way to filter your leads and customers into lists so you can target them with content that will be most relevant to them. Luckily, with BenchmarkONE, you can create tags for your contacts using various different approaches. Let’s dive into how you can use tagging to segment your contacts for better, more effective, personalized outreach. Different Ways to Use Tagging to Segment Contacts By Behavior Knowing where your prospects visited on your site gives you information on what they are looking for. This can help you determine what sort of content you should send them. In BenchmarkONE, you can set it up so that if a prospect visits a specific page, you can automatically tag them based on applicable information. So, for example, if you run a dance studio and someone clicks on your ballet training courses, you can set it up so an automatic “ballet” tag is added to their contact profile. This tells you that they’re specifically interested in information regarding ballet, so you’ll know to send them any related content, discounts on your ballet classes, or ballet course schedules. You can even take it one step further by setting up a rule to automatically send an email about ballet courses or offers to any prospect who clicks on a ballet-related resource on your website. The same capabilities can be used based on email and purchase activity. You can set up tags so that if your prospects click on a particular piece of content from one of your emails, or if they purchase something on your site, they’ll be automatically sent similar content or information on related products. It’s an easy way to provide them with exactly what they need without them having to dig around on your site to find it. By How They Converted The process of converting a site visitor to a lead is an important one. The more leads you have, the bigger your selling pool is. And the bigger your selling pool, the higher your probability of converting more leads to customers is. Where am I getting with this? Well, by identifying how your visitors are converting, you tap into the lead sources that are most effective. You can determine if certain channels are generating more conversions over others, and it can help you identify where you should focus more of your efforts. It can also help you more easily identify what content these lead sources crave. Here are some tags you could use for this tactic: Opt-in – Leads who signed up for your email campaigns. Form – Leads who downloaded a piece of gated content. Purchases – For leads that make a purchase. I recommend getting more specific by adding a dash and the name of the particular product they purchased. Sales – Leads that were sourced by your sales team. Marketing – Leads that were converted from inbound marketing tactics. Social Media – If you’re running any social campaigns, you can tag people that convert from them. By Marketing Personas It doesn’t hurt to go the obvious route and create tags based on your buyer personas. After all, you spend a lot of time putting together your marketing plan, which includes thoroughly outlining your ideal buyers, so you might as well put that information to use as much as possible. Think about how you’re segmenting your personas and what sort of characteristics you’re using to define them. Things like: Region Industry Where they are in the buyer’s journey Awareness Consideration Decision Job title Gender Age Setting up tags based on marketing persona characteristics is also a good way to determine if you’re accurate about who your ideal buyer is. If you’re finding that certain tags aren’t being used, it could tell you that you are targeting a demographic that doesn’t actually align with your product or service. Make sure you consult with your marketing team to determine any characteristics you should include or omit. It also doesn’t hurt to consult with your customer support team, as they know your existing customers best and can help you uncover any areas you’re overlooking. By Business Type In the previous point, we mentioned using tags to segment your prospects based on industry. A related yet broader approach could be to use tags based on the type of business they’re affiliated with. Perhaps you’re a marketing company, or you offer a service that is used by a wide variety of different companies. If so, this approach makes sense for you, as it will allow you to determine which prospects are tied to a small business, an agency, or other firms. Here are some examples: Small business Agency SaaS Design agency Big Data Non-Profit This may be an especially helpful approach if you’re just starting out. Over time, you may want to get more specific by tying in descriptors to give the tags more context. Tips For Effective Tagging Automate, Automate, Automate! Instead of manually tagging all your leads, set up automatic tagging so you don’t even have to think about it. That way, if a lead performs a certain action, they’ll automatically be tagged with the appropriate label. It frees up time so you can focus on your other array of necessary tasks. You can also score your tags so that if a certain action is done more than once, they receive a higher score, which can help you determine who your more qualified leads are. Don’t Do It On The Fly. While you may think of new tags to create in the moment, it’s best to plan your tags in advance so you can create them in your platform ahead of time. This will ensure nothing falls through the cracks and that when it comes time to tag a new lead, you can do so quickly and easily by grabbing a tag that already exists. Routinely Audit. Make sure you check-in routinely to evaluate your tags. As your business grows, some tags will become non-applicable and make room for new tags that are more accurate for your needs and customer behavior. You can always archive old tags instead of deleting, in case you aren’t sure if you should totally remove it or not. I hope this blog post has made you a solid believer in the power of tagging and what it can do for your list segmentation. Remember, personalization is extremely important for effective lead nurture, and tagging your leads appropriately is the best way to go about it.
Embrace Your Small Business Brand Individualism Posted on September 23, 2020September 18, 2020 by Natalie Slyman From your product to your team, your small business brand is one of a kind — so celebrate it! Embracing your individualism is a great way to inspire a proud and positive company culture, and it can also be an effective marketing tactic. From the inside out, acknowledging what makes your brand special and unique can only be a good thing, so invest in strategies that amplify your individualism and honor all that makes you, well, you. Brand individualism isn’t just a gimmicky marketing phrase. Consumers expect individuality from the brands they work with, perceiving them not just as for-profit enterprises but also as extensions of their community and world view. It’s important that your brand individuality is something that you can be proud of, and that you’re purposeful in sharing it with your audience. Put individualism to work to help your brand stand out. Here’s what you need to know to take center stage and shine through all the big business competition. Why Your Brand Individualism Matters Today’s brand-consumer relationships look a lot more personal than they used to. More than ever, shoppers are looking to make an almost human-like connection with the brands they purchase from, with notably higher expectations in terms of brand value and personality. Ultimately, your brand has to stand out in the right ways if you want to compete. Of course, brand individualism isn’t just about separating yourself from the pack. There are a lot of big benefits to putting your individuality front and center, including: Culture. Happy employees are crucial for happy customers. Positive brand individualism can’t be faked; it requires on-the-ground productivity, equality, and collaboration, all of which benefit your team and overall small business culture. Trust. Individualism leads to trustworthiness, which is one of the top deciding factors in whether a purchase happens or not, and is crucial if you’re going to be in it for the long haul. When your individual brand is out in the open, be it in the content you create, advertisements, or social engagement, you’re laying your cards out on the table. People admire businesses that don’t appear to have a hidden agenda; therefore, trust grows and thrives. Likeability. Individualism makes your brand more likable by giving it a relatable voice. And while being liked isn’t a necessity for being successful (just ask the cable industry), it certainly helps — especially for small businesses. Brand individualism speaks to your ability to provide not only a great product or service but a great experience. As for how you show it off, keep reading to learn where you should start. How To Let Your Individualism Shine Your brand individualism isn’t just something that you talk about — it’s something that you live. To truly invest in your brand as an individual and form those key connections with your audience, you’ll need to funnel your resources in a couple of specific ways. Company Culture The culture of your company is important. While consumers likely aren’t going to be digging into your salary and benefits packages, how you treat your employees relates to your values as a brand and your individualism. What do you bring to the table in terms of company culture? And is it in line with the message that you’re putting out there to your audience? It’s worth putting time and money into a great culture, and it’s a great way not just to talk the talk but walk the walk when it comes to individualism. Social Branding Brand individualism requires that your voice remains consistent across marketing channels. For that reason, your social media strategy should include branding driven toward engaging with your audience on a more human-to-human level. While your tone may differ depending on the channel, the overall story you tell about your brand should remain true to who you are and who you want to be. Connecting the Dots In terms of brand individualism, company culture and social branding aren’t siloed efforts. Instead, they’re more like two parts of a whole, contributing both separately and together to the individual persona that your brand puts out there. It makes sense then to merge them when you can, using one to elevate and enhance the other. Some ideas for tying the two together: Use a CRM. A small business CRM allows you to tap into who your customers really are. You can define them based on job occupation, industry, what actions they take on your website, and what content they engage with most. You’ll get a better understanding of the types of things that matter most to them, so you can dig deeper into ways your individual brand can appeal to your ideal audience on a wider scale. Highlight your team in posts. Don’t just give a voice to individualism — give it a face. Use unique social media ideas to bring the humans behind your brand to the forefront so that potential customers know real people working hard for them. Create opportunities to stand out. Look for ways to illuminate your commitment to your company’s values, whether through employee programs, volunteer opportunities, or non-profit work. While you should be doing these things anyway as part of a responsible business and member of your community, you should also be utilizing branding as a way to spread the word about your efforts. When you showcase your company’s values, you exhibit the type of brand individualism that inspires consumers to engage. Look for all the things you’re doing right when it comes to your brand’s identity, as well as for how you’re tying it into your marketing. From there, you can identify areas where you might be able to improve on your individual culture and branding, with the goal of ensuring both your business and your reputation stay golden.
What Marketing Automation Can Do For School Marketing Posted on September 22, 2020October 1, 2020 by Natalie Slyman Did you know that automated email marketing campaigns are among the top three tactics used by email marketers to improve performance? We know as school recruiters and communicators, getting your school front-and-center and seen as the best option for students is difficult. One of your job’s biggest demands is ensuring families are engaged and informed on what sets your institution apart. And it’s also one of the most challenging. But balancing that task with so many of the other items on your plate doesn’t have to be a struggle. In fact, marketing automation was created to make life easier for marketers, no matter what it is they’re marketing. So, if you haven’t fully embraced marketing automation, or you aren’t sure how using it can help you be better at your school recruitment efforts, keep reading. 8 Benefits of Using Marketing Automation Your marketing automation tool doesn’t just help with your marketing efforts. It can enable various tasks on your to-do list. Here we’ve broken down exactly how having a marketing automation software can benefit you, making using one a no-brainer. 1. Saves Time Who has time to send individual emails to every prospect? The beauty of marketing automation is that you can easily create email templates that can be cloned and used again and again, saving you tons of time. You can also organize lead nurture campaigns so you can be sending emails without actually spending the time sending them. Also, with BenchmarkONE’s built-in CRM, your email recipients are organized for you with automatic tagging capabilities. So instead of going through each individual contact to determine what content and information you should send them, they’ll be organized into segments for you so you can designate the right content based on their needs. 2. Maintains Organization Like most busy people, you probably find yourself doing a few projects or tasks at once. There are probably numerous times in which you’re working on one project, only to get interrupted with another. I’m a firm believer in doing whatever you have to do to get the job done; however, those kinds of interruptions are a nightmare for your organization. As I mentioned before, marketing automation organizes your contacts for you, so you don’t have to. But that’s just one aspect of organization it affords you. You can also create tasks for yourself and tie them to contacts, so the next time you get interrupted, you’ll still have a reminder about that follow-up email you need to send, or that promo campaign you need to create. 3. Instills Accountability When you have access to performance metrics, you can easily decipher which tactics are working and which are falling flat. Your marketing automation software shows you what actions your contacts are taking so you can see which landing pages are converting and which emails you send are the most engaging. Having this kind of information will keep you and your marketing efforts accountable, so you can continue to be successful. And with BenchmarkONE’s task capabilities, you can make sure the right people are assigned the right duties. This keeps your outreach consistent, so your contacts are getting everything they need in a timely manner. 4. Creates Polished Communication Remember those email templates I mentioned? Instead of hiring a designer to create beautiful email designs, which is both time-consuming and costly, use a marketing automation tool that has pre-made HTML templates at your disposal. But just because they’re pre-designed doesn’t mean they aren’t customizable. You can adjust the designs, so they are on-brand, using the colors of your choice and swapping in your shool logo where needed. So, instead of starting from scratch with email design, you can use something beautiful and clean that’s already put together for you. It’s important that your emails look nice, as they are a form of representation for your educational institution. Having polished communication that is professional looking and appealing to the eye only builds up the school messaging, and can ultimately lead to increased responses. 5. Provides a Clearer Marketing Process Sometimes it takes a few tries to get your marketing process in a good place. The way you create emails, formulate, and organize your lists, and how you manage your campaigns all require a few tries before getting it right. However, with marketing automation, you’re able to have a clearer view of the customer journey your contacts are taking. You can see what pages of your website they’re engaging with the most and which emails they click-through on. With a clearer understanding of the process they’re taking, your campaigns will be more informed and provide better nurture. 6. Enables Personalization When you more fully understand the journey your customers are taking, you become more and more aware that not every person who visits your website has the same level of knowledge. It’s important that if you want to effectively market your school to your prospects, that you not only know where they are in their journey but also how much they know about your institution. Knowing this information helps you personalize your outreach so you can show them you understand their needs and questions, and that you have what they need to break down those barriers. Personalization leads to more engagement from your prospects. In 2019, 72 percent of consumers engaged more with content that was personalized to them. And since marketing automation makes personalization super easy, you don’t have to do a ton of digging on your prospects to understand who they are and what they need. 7. Achieves Goals Be creating efficiencies in your lead organization and nurture strategies, you’re able to increase the volume of those efforts. Not only that, but you’re also gaining more perspective on what actually makes your leads respond more and why. When you’re able to pull back the curtain and dive deeper into your prospects’ behavior patterns, you’re going to make better marketing and recruitment efforts. Pair this knowledge with consistent, automated outreach, and you’re bound to reach the various recruitment goals you’ve set for yourself. 8. Offers Analytics and Reporting What makes us better marketers is knowing what works and what doesn’t. Your marketing automation tool offers you tons of insight into the performance metrics of your outreach so you can determine which emails resonate and which need to be scraped for a new approach. With marketing automation, you can access things like open rates, click-through-rates unsubscribe rates, and bounce rates. If numbers aren’t where you want them to be, you can try A/B testing to switch up your CTAs, subject lines, and other components of your emails to see what works better and leads to improvements. Bottom line: having access to your analytics uncovers potential problems so you can make adjustments quickly. There’s no doubt about it, marketing automation offers you insight into your prospects, the tools to better nurture them, and it can enable you to get more tasks done quicker. So what are you waiting for? Sign up for a tool that fits your needs today.
20+ CRM Stats You Need to Know for 2021 Posted on September 17, 2020September 15, 2020 by Allie Wolff An immensely competitive space in B2B and SaaS is customer relationship management (CRM) software. It’s one of the most defining forms of technology in the past decade. In fact, 91 percent of companies with more than 11 employees now use CRM software. Why? Everything is consumer-centric, and the modern business needs a tool to manage high expectations. The entire infrastructure of sales and marketing has shifted, and buyers are now self-educating. In fact, most consumers begin their product research with one or more search engines before heading to a particular website. There is no longer a need to “sell” your product or service the way we once used to. This means, brands that understand the customer best, and use that insight when compiling their marketing plans, are the most successful with their marketing and sales strategies. A key tool to bridge the gap between your labor force and creating a memorable experience is an effective CRM platform with a centralized system. However, 18 percent of salespeople still don’t know what a CRM tool is. Check out these current CRM stats. They make a solid case for integrating this technology today, or at the very latest, in 2021. General CRM Stats The CRM market is the fastest growing in software today. It’s expected to reach $80 billion by 2025. Sixty-five percent of people consider “ease of use” to be the most important requirement when selecting a CRM solution. In 2018, 13 percent of companies said that investing in a CRM system was a top sales priority. Stats on the Advantages of a CRM Using a customer relationship management tool improves business in a variety of facets. Consider some of these CRM stats: Eighty-seven percent of people say that the biggest benefit of a CRM is improved sales. A CRM is a top tool for creating personalized interactions with customers. Seventy-three percent of marketers use their CRM tool for a shared view of prospects across other departments. Sales Strategy CRM Stats Out of all departments, sales have benefited the most from CRM adoption. Check out some of these figures to see why: According to 48 percent of companies surveyed in 2018, improving the online sales funnel was one of their top sales priorities. Another was investing in a CRM. The average adoption of CRMs among sales professionals is 73 percent. Sixty-four percent of sales professionals use CRM applications. Adoption has grown 113 percent since 2016 and 28 percent since 2017. In 2018, 46 percent of sales teams reported widespread use of CRM programs. In the past few years, CRM stats have pointed to areas for sales to focus on improving, which are important to keep in mind for 2021. These areas include: Converting customers Closing more deals Improving sales funnel efficiency Driving lead generation Getting more responses from prospects We should also call out sales enablement and how important it is to a high-performing marketing strategy. But in order to create sales enablement content, it helps to have a CRM tool to track customer pain points, activities, and their journey through the funnel. These types of insights can then be used to create better content that will move your leads through the funnel faster. Mobile CRM Stats Companies that use a mobile CRM solution are seeing far higher adoption rates. Consider the numbers: In 2019, the global mobile CRM market grew 11 percent to $15 billion worldwide. Sixty-five percent of companies using mobile CRM are achieving their sales quotas. Compared to 22% of reps using a non-mobile CRM. Fifty percent of teams have improved their productivity using a CRM platform. Due to the mass introduction of CRM solutions with the cloud, 2019 saw a major increase in mobile adoption of CRM technologies. In 2008, only 12 percent of businesses used a cloud-based CRM, which increased to 87% in 2019. CRM and Multiple Devices Thirteen percent of companies state that using sales technologies in daily tasks is more difficult than it was two or three years ago. A CRM simplifies the process and connects all channels, especially when you are running content on multiple devices. In fact, 81 percent of CRM software users access their information on multiple devices, like laptops, desktops, smartphones, and tablets. The Future of CRM Development Thirty-one percent of companies say that engaging multiple stakeholders/decision-makers in a buying process is tougher than a couple of years ago. These CRM stats are important because it’s critical information your company can use to make the right choice in 2021. 2020 is the year of the customer, which means you’ll be behind the curve if you still don’t have a CRM in place by 2021. The investment in a CRM tool demonstrates a company’s interest in retaining clients, creating efficiencies, and improving the customer journey and support. It’s time to empower your employees and customers with an omnichannel, multi-market solution that puts you ahead of the game.
What Dynamic Content Can Do for Your Email Marketing Strategy Posted on September 16, 2020December 14, 2020 by Natalie Slyman It may not be obvious, but as marketers, it’s our job to be creative. We have to constantly think of new ways to generate leads, convert those leads, and keep prospects engaged so that we’re the first company they think of when they’re ready for a solution. We try various different methods, like social media campaigns or pop-ups. But one thing that has proven to have the highest ROI is email marketing. When looking for new, creative email marketing tactics, our go-to is to examine what others are using. But what about the creative tactics they aren’t? Dynamic content is the least-used email marketing tactic, coming in behind automation, mobile-optimization, contact segmentation, and personalization as a must-do strategy. And yet, 65 percent of email marketers say that dynamic content is their most effective tool for personalization. What gives? In this blog post, we’re going to bat for dynamic content to help explain why this tactic is one you definitely shouldn’t be skipping over. We’ll cover what it is, how it works, and, most importantly, why implementing it in your email marketing strategy can give you a major edge. Let’s get to it. What Is Dynamic Content? Dynamic content refers to any type of digital content that changes based on the user. Factors that might affect a change include user data or preferences, user characteristics, or on-site user behaviors. So from there, it’s easy to see how intricately linked this type of content is with the notion of personalization and an optimal user experience. But before we get into making a case for dynamic content, it’s imperative that we discuss the different forms of dynamic content that are out there. There are three primary types of dynamic content: Outreach This type of dynamic content is generally associated with email campaigns. It allows you to personalize your emails for more tailored, effective outreach. An example of what this might look like is opting for different subject lines, body content, and call to actions to ensure the message is highly relevant to its particular recipient. Engagement Engagement-focused dynamic content lives on your site and helps you do things like streamline a user’s search process or provide targeted recommendations and pop-ups based on their particular needs. This ensures that your site is optimized based on where a user is in the customer journey, instead of trying for a one-size-fits-all approach. Conversion Dynamic content can also help you increase conversion rates with banners, forms, and other on-site display content geared toward specific users. And once again, because it’s based on a user’s unique data and behaviors, it’s inherently more effective than just throwing content at the wall and seeing what connects. By definition, something is dynamic if it changes in relation to outside forces. In marketing, those outside forces are key data points that can make a huge difference in who converts and who doesn’t. Making dynamic content part of your overall marketing plan will open up a lot of opportunities that you otherwise wouldn’t be able to capitalize on. The Benefits of Dynamic Content We’ve outlined these a bit already, but it’s worth elaborating on the various ways that dynamic content gives your emails a leg up. More Personalized Experiences Even if you’re segmenting your contacts, you’re still going to have some email recipients who engage with your content more than others. With dynamic content, you ensure that your message is even more relevant to its end reader, with content based on more than just where they are in the funnel. There’s a lot that you can personalize with dynamic content. And because it’s based on specific user data, you’ve got a pretty good idea of how well it will connect. Everything from your subject lines to the progression of your drip campaigns becomes highly targeted, in turn, meeting evolving consumer expectations around personalization and offering an all-around better experience. A User-Friendly Approach Your readers are busy, and they don’t necessarily have time to sift through your content and find what applies to them. To be successful, your emails need to get right to the point. Dynamic emails let your recipients skip that step, simplifying the experience and making it innately more user-friendly. When you send batch and blast emails, you’re including content that doesn’t cater to everyone on the list you’re sending them to. That means that there are recipients who are needing to wade through your emails to decipher if there’s anything in there that they need or can use. It’s a huge time suck, and your prospects will take note of that. What’s more, it will influence whether or not they open the next email you send them or click on the CTAs you want them to. Dynamic content avoids giving your leads a headache, so you can create a more user-friendly email marketing approach and see more positive conversions because you’re giving people what they actually want. Increased KPIs As I mentioned in the previous point, the more you personalize, the more you convert. Eighty-two percent of online shoppers who have opted into promotional emails say they’re more likely to make a purchase if the email is personalized to their preferences and purchase history. And just personalizing email subject lines alone is enough to increase your open rates by 26 percent. Each year our email marketing goals get more aggressive. And in order to meet our goals, we have to be thinking about what our subscribers want from us. We need to continue to provide them with value if we expect those clicks to increase or those conversion percentages to climb. Dynamic content has proven to be the solution that drives value in our email marketing efforts. Marketing Automation and Dynamic Content Achieving these benefits can be huge for your email marketing ROI — and it doesn’t require quite as much work as you might assume. Dynamic content is based on data tracking throughout the customer lifecycle, which is done through things like marketing automation software and on-site widgets. Integrate your data, your contacts, and your email system, and you’re already well on your way. When choosing a marketing automation software, make sure you evaluate the features they offer to determine if they align with what you need, and pay extra special attention to if dynamic content is on the list. Schedule a free demo of their software so you can see first-hand what it looks like, if it will help you achieve your goals, and if it offers the level of personalization that will be beneficial to your customers. Every company needs an edge. By allowing you to maximize your personalization efforts, dynamic content provides you with that competitive advantage, giving you a streamlined method to better connect and engage with your audience. From there, you can bring a dynamic strategy to your website, too, for an experience that’s totally customized for the benefit of both user and brand. After all, it’s the creative thing to do, and as marketers, “creative” is our middle name.
7 Articles To Get Your Content Seen This Year Posted on September 15, 2020September 24, 2020 by Natalie Slyman Everywhere we turn, there’s content. Since there are tons of different types of content, it’s quite literally all over the place. It’s on social media, it’s in our inboxes, it’s on our televisions. We can’t escape it. But, then why are your blog post analytics under-delivering? And why is your site traffic down? If you’re experiencing low content engagement and disappointing analytics results, it could be that you aren’t doing enough to distribute your content effectively. Distribution is one of the steps of the content creation process that seems to get overlooked, but it could be one of the most important. In order to make your content stand out among all the rest being created and shared, you need to be thinking outside the box and looking for new ways to get eyes on it. We’ve written a few blog posts that share tips for effective content distribution, so you don’t have to continue beating your head against a wall. See below for our quick round-up. 1. 5 Places You Should Be Repurposing Your Blog Content That You Haven’t Thought Of We don’t often consider repurposing our content once we’ve published it. But the truth is, you spend a lot of time creating even one piece of content, and it should be used to its fullest potential. Read this blog post for content syndication recommendations and ways you can repurpose your best-performing content for the most return as possible. 2. 4 Tricks For Creating More Shareable Content The way your article is shared and engaged with shouldn’t be an afterthought. In this blog post, we dive into how you should be thinking of your content’s sharability before and while you’re putting it together. So, next time you create a blog article or a whitepaper, make sure you’re considering some of the tips in this blog post at each stage of the creation process. 3. A Complete Guide to Sharing Content Sharing is caring. In this blog article, we break down the best ways to share your content on various social media platforms, like Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit. We offer some tips for getting creative on these platforms, as well as what kinds of posts tend to perform better and at what time you should make your posts so that the most eyes see them. 4. How to Get the Most Out of Every Blog Post You Create Think you’ve exhausted your options for your blog posts? Think again. This article dives into every single thing you can do to get the most out of each blog post. Some of these tips are more obvious, while others are ones you should be testing out months (maybe even years) after your blog posts have been published. 5. 5 Guaranteed Ways to Generate Leads with Social Media Your social media followers want to see high-quality content. After all, it’s one of the reasons they’re following you. So, when you share the content you worked so hard to create on your social channels, you’re not only giving the people what they crave, but you’re creating an opportunity for you to generate more leads. It’s a win-win! 6. 5 Expert Tips for Optimizing Your Content We’re always looking for ways to make our articles more engaging and informative, and that often means adding in different media and images. But did you know that doing so without taking the proper measures can be negatively affecting your search results and user experience? This blog post offers up tips to address this, as well as four others you’ll want to heed before hitting the publish button. 7. 6 Ways to Distribute Your Content (That You Haven’t Already Tried) Maybe you think you have content distribution down pat. Well, not to throw shade, but you probably don’t. Which leads me to our final article, which focuses on distribution tactics that you probably haven’t tried or even thought of. We examine some ways you can share your content that are unique but oh-so effective. There you have it, folks, seven articles that will help you get the most out of your content, share it better, rank higher, and create a more positive user experience. You can never be too careful when it comes to getting more eyes on your content, and each avenue should be explored to determine if you’re doing all you can. Good luck getting your content out there and in front of the right people at the right time.
BenchmarkONE’s Latest Feature: Outlook Add-in Posted on September 10, 2020October 1, 2020 by Jonathan Herrick We’re excited to announce our latest feature: BenchmarkONE’s Outlook Add-in! Now our users can effortlessly integrate their Outlook account with BenchmarkONE for increased productivity and efficiency. The Outlook Add-in allows users to bring the power of BenchmarkONE’s CRM directly into their Outlook inbox, saving time and avoiding issues that come with bouncing between applications. Create New Contacts from Outlook As easy as one, two, three, you can create a new contact in BenchmarkONE from your Outlook inbox while keeping your entire contact database accessible. Adding contacts on the fly means that your subscriber list grows and none of those valuable contacts fall through the cracks. You can keep your important prospects and customers up-to-date, and you’ll be able to quickly search for and communicate with specific BenchmarkONE contacts right from inside your Outlook email account. Stay Organized with Easy CRM Access Need to quickly gather valuable data like contact details, contact activity, notes, or tasks? No problem! Everything you need for targeted outreach is available on the spot. You’ll be able to see if a contact opened your previous email, letting you know the perfect time for a follow-up. Don’t worry about key information getting lost in your Outlook inbox either. Create follow-up tasks, leave additional notes and add new tags painlessly for a more organized sales process. With BenchmarkONE’s new Outlook Add-in, you can eliminate unnecessary steps and ensure your sales process is humming with your contacts at your fingertips anytime you need them.
Branding Your SMB On a Budget Posted on September 9, 2020September 8, 2020 by Allie Wolff Did you know that solid branding can actually make your small business money? Presenting a consistent brand identity across all platforms and channels can increase your revenue by 23 percent. Small businesses can be fragile. As a business owner, your success rides on many factors, but if something like branding can make a difference for your bottom line, then it makes sense to prioritize it. But we know what you’re thinking. As a small business owner, you don’t have tons of room in your marketing budget to hire an agency or freelancer that will help you establish your branding components. Luckily, you don’t have to spend an arm and a leg in order to define your brand and make it consistent across channels. Follow the steps below to create a beautiful brand look and feel without dipping any deeper into your budget than you want to. 1. Know Your Buyers Like content and messaging, your branding’s success depends on its ability to appeal to the right audience. For that to happen, you need to know precisely who you’re trying to appeal to and what they find appealing in the first place. Create buyer personas so you can really zero in on your audience and their preferences, then use those personas to help drive an effective branding strategy. One of the most effective ways to build your personas is to look at your existing customers. Who is already using your product or buying your services? Identify the following details: Job title Region Company industry Company size Who they report to Job functions Daily struggles Figuring out each point will help you more fully understand your buyers so you can get to the root of what influences their decision making. Knowing that will inform how you want to present your brand and how you want to market your products to them. 2. Figure Out Your Brand Identity This may sound like you’re hammering out the entire process in one step, but your brand identity is different from your actual branding. It involves thinking of things you‘ve never thought about and involves a lot more than just logo design, color schemes, and fonts. To solidify your brand identity, you want to focus on the kind of feel your brand will evoke instead of the physical representation. This step is one that shouldn’t be done quickly; rather, it requires a lot of thought and research. Have a meeting with your company — or just important stakeholders and your marketing team — and work together to list the various elements that define your brand. Dive into things like: What characteristics would you use to describe your brand? What sort of values does your brand stand for? What is your brand’s mission statement? What are the overall goals that define your brand? What do you want your company to provide your clients, prospects, employees, and community? How do you want your brand to fit within your industry’s space? Together, these variables will help you hone in on what you’re trying to deliver to the world with your brand identity, as well as how branding fits into your broader objectives. 3. Get Creative Get ready, because now we’ve reached the design stage of our branding journey. Unless you have access to an in-house designer, this is the stage that will require an investment. In this step, you’ll establish the core design components of your brand identity, including a color palette, fonts, and logo iterations. These features will be used throughout your marketing materials to make it easy for your audience to spot your brand, so it’s extremely important to like the direction you land on. If you have to hire an agency for this, make sure you’re very clear about budgetary constraints. You could also consider working with design students, who may be willing to offer you a cheaper price for the experience and portfolio boost. Whatever route you choose to go with, provide the designer with your succinct brand identity so it can be used to inform their direction. And make sure they provide you with mock-ups of their ideas so you can see what they will look like on your sales materials, marketing content, website, and social media accounts. Also, expect a few rounds of back and forth here. A designer or outsourced agency rarely nails your branding on the first try. You’re going to have feedback on their designs, and what originally is presented to you may not look anything like what you end up with. But keep in mind that the more back and forth you encounter, the higher the bill will be for that outsourced design resource. 4. Create Brand Guidelines It’s important to be specific about your branding guidelines so that your team has clear directives to follow and any potential partners you bring on later do as well. Outline exactly what fonts should be used for your logo, as well as spacing parameters and any other logo specs that will be important to adhere to. Build a board of exact brand colors and any words or phrases you do or do not want to be associated with your brand. Consider web guidelines for your brand, too, and be as specific as possible. Compile all of this information into a brand style guide so you can easily share it with outside agencies and new team members over time. Some companies create a page on their website where 5. Create Content Your content marketing strategy is inherently wrapped up in your branding strategy and includes your blog posts, white papers, webinars, social strategy, and email marketing. Create a documented marketing plan for your content that establishes the following: The goals you want your content to achieve. The kinds of content you’ll produce. How you’ll be using your content and your distribution strategy. An editorial calendar. Ways you’ll measure success from your content. Content guidelines and rules. Your content strategy should actually be a component of your overall marketing plan, so make sure it gets in the weeds. The way you put your content together and the topics you address play a huge role in contributing to your branding. And make sure you stick to your editorial calendar so you can maintain consistency with your presence and voice, perpetuating your brand identity. 6. Build Up Your Social Media Your social media is an extension of your company. And since you’ll be (hopefully) generating a lot of traffic to those pages, they’re an excellent place to propagate your branding efforts. Make sure you use your logo and colors to brand your social channels and keep them consistent with your website and other materials. Also, make sure you grow your following so you can reach a wider audience and drive more traffic to your website and certain landing pages. The last thing you want is to spend all this time putting together branding and for it to go unnoticed. Use a social media calendar that, similar to your content plan, is optimized to always keep your presence consistent and on-brand. 7. Sharpen Your Customer and Client Service You can’t put forth great branding without great service, so make sure you focus on how to deliver the highest quality service to your leads, customers, and clients. Establish a process for onboarding new clients effectively so that they’re set up for success from the get-go. And provide adequate training for your teams, so they’re prepared to handle even the largest of obstacles. Doing this brings your brand strategy off the page and into the real world — and it’s just as important to your perceived image as your logo. 8. Dedicate Time to Top-of-the-Funnel Content Top-of-the-funnel content is content that focuses on casting a wide net and getting your name and brand out there to more people. It’s essential that your branding is in place so that people can familiarize themselves with your company more easily. The type of content at this stage of the funnel includes press mentions, guest-contributed articles, awards, press releases, features, videos, and speaking engagements. These are all ways that you can reach a broader audience with your brand. And since many of these audience members may be unfamiliar with who you are, it’s important that you focus your top-of-the-funnel content efforts toward spreading awareness and showing off who and what your company is all about. Any content you create, partner on, or otherwise engage with should align with your company values and mission. If you stray off course, you’ll confuse your audience and muddy up your brand, both of which can waste time and effort you’ve put in previously. Branding isn’t a difficult feat, and it certainly doesn’t have to be an expensive one. Almost all of the steps above don’t require any financial input — just hard work and an eye on the larger picture. And what you can gain is more than worth that investment.