Imagine if you could see into the minds of your target audiences and uncover their needs, values, concerns and desires. Fortunately, behavioral marketing allows us to explore those characteristics and the actions that are innate to human nature. This helps marketers develop better targeted and more effective messaging that resonates with your audiences.
Category: Marketing
How to Get Better Results from Your Advertising Campaign
Advertising can be one of the most effective channels for building brand awareness, generating leads and making more sales. That said, it also can be one of the most expensive tactics and is often a challenge to get right. At the core, B2B marketers are faced with the task of balancing brand and transparency with concise and attention-grabbing calls to action. Before starting your next advertising campaign, here’s a six-step guide to help you maximize your advertising effectiveness.
The Role of Marketing in Supply Chain Management
Between KPIs, ROIs and CRMs, the acronyms we use in marketing seem to be endless. One acronym you may not consider right away in marketing is SCM, or supply chain management. And yet, SCM’s connection to marketing is more pivotal than first meets the eye.
Increase Success With These 5 Must-Have Marketing Skills
Marketing’s role has expanded in recent years. Not only does it encompass addressing a company’s vision, brand, and strategies but also the content a company creates and distributes along with its interactions with prospects, customers and stakeholders on all levels. As marketing evolves and its practices become more diverse, the areas within it grow more specialized. There are experts in niches such as social media, public relations, SEO, trade shows, media outreach, influencer marketing, print advertising and digital marketing. However, technical know-how only accounts for a portion of the necessary marketing skills to become a good marketer.
Why You Need a Strategic Approach to Marketing Communications
Contrary to popular belief, strategy is not the same as planning. Ideally, planning involves the identification of growth strategies based on goals, but does not ensure it. On the other hand, a strategic approach starts with a collaborative dialogue and decision-making process about “how” the company will achieve its goals.
How to Find the Best Marketing Webinars
Savvy marketing professionals are lifelong learners. They know the trends, technologies and advancements in their industry. They don’t want to part of the crowd; they seek to be two steps ahead, ready to anticipate changing marketplace needs. In addition to reading, attending tradeshows, engaging in meaningful dialogues with peers and others, participating in marketing webinars is a valuable tool for staying at the forefront of innovation.
Which Platforms are the Best for B2B Advertising?
In the past, traditional advertising outlets were limited to radio, TV, print publications and outdoor signage. With the new economy, however, savvy marketers add digital outlets to the mix. As a result of the multitude of advertising platforms available today, it’s important to know which ones to choose based on the likelihood of attracting the greatest response from prospects and customers.
Why Marketing Transparency and Honesty Are Important
In marketing, new trends, evolving technologies and the ability to tap into customer preferences require marketers to continually refine their methodologies. But methodologies alone don’t separate winners and losers. In a saturated marketplace, it’s equally important to demonstrate the behaviors and values that customers and prospects expect and demand from your company and its products or services. The two most important are honesty and transparency.
Are Your Emails Going Directly to the Spam Folder?
Emails are one of the most relied-upon and widespread forms of business communications. In fact, 59 percent of B2B marketers say email is their most effective channel for generating revenue. But nothing hurts a company’s marketing efforts more than having emails wind up in the spam folder where subscribers won’t receive their information, offers and announcements. Whether you’re sending a monthly newsletter, building a drip campaign or distributing promotional content, your emails need to comply with regulations to avoid the dreaded spam folder.
How Marketing Departments Separate Themselves from the Pack
Marketing is often referred to as the face of the business. As such, a well-established team that shares a commitment to being the best it can be has the ability to outshine and outperform the competition. To maximize performance, here are 12 vital goals all marketing departments should strive to achieve.
How to Define and Calculate ROI
With an average of 11.3 percent of a B2B organization’s budget allocated to marketing, ensuring a return on investment (ROI) is a constant challenge for marketers. Without a doubt, marketing impacts the bottom line. But are marketers quantifying their contributions to the business in ways that are meaningful and valuable?
5 Localization Strategies to Enrich Marketing
When General Motors released the Chevy Nova in the 1970s, it performed poorly in South American countries. One reason was due to the name, which loosely translates to “no va” or “doesn’t go” in Spanish. Although since proven to be an urban legend, the story gained popularity as a cautionary tale about understanding foreign markets and cultures before entering them. With the proliferation of digital communication, today’s global marketplace is even bigger, but selling globally still requires time, research and consideration of cultures, languages and buyer personas. This process is known as localization, and if your company works internationally, it needs to be a well-thought-out part of your marketing strategy.
How to Harness User-Generated Content in B2B Marketing
User-generated content (UGC) is defined as any type of content created by users of an online platform, whether they are individual consumers or business representatives. This type of content results in others promoting your brand rather than your brand promoting itself. Content can range from product images, blogs, tweets, videos, reviews and other social media posts.
The Top 4 Market Research Challenges
Understanding the needs and market research challenges of your target market is vital to the long-term success of any business. Logically, that knowledge should come from facts, not fiction and be based on extensive research and the careful analysis of the data collected. But market research is only effective when utilized in context and via informed and proven processes.
The Evolution of B2B Marketing
For decades, B2B marketing techniques relied on the same basic principles as consumer marketing. But over the last 20 years, B2B marketing has gone through an evolution and emerged as its own discipline with unique strategies, practices and metrics of success. The way marketing and business has changed over the years mimics the ways our values change as a society. If we compare the two, we discover greater insights into why we make the purchase decisions we do.
A Critical Guide to Marketing Segmentation
As marketers, nothing is more important than interacting with your target market. We’ve discussed ways to identify, interact with and grow a specified target market and communicate with an interactive audience, but the next step, segmenting the audience, is just as important. Segmentation ensures your content and outreach are relevant to your prospects and clients.
Why Is Gamification Becoming a New Marketing Priority?
When we think of “gamers” we often picture teenagers, headphone-clad in a dim room, palming a controller for hours on end. According to a 2017 study, however, 64% of the general US population consider themselves “gamers.” Video game technology and usage have grown exponentially since its inception in the 1970s. As a result, video game technology has infiltrated sectors far beyond the entertainment industry.
How to Cultivate a Successful Marketing Team
Marketing is a rapidly changing and evolving discipline. New technologies, social and behavioral norms, digital marketplaces, business trends, global and cultural influences and communication methods change almost every day. Yet, we expect marketers to not only keep up with the pace, but also count on them to be experts too. While this is a tall order, it is possible to develop high-performing, agile marketing departments.
How to Build a Niche Market
No business can be all things to all people. The more narrowly you can define your target market, the better. This process is known as creating a niche and is a key to success for businesses of all sizes. Niche marketing concentrates marketing efforts on a specific and well-defined segment of the population—the ones whose profiles most closely match your existing customers’ needs.
How to Capitalize on Multicultural Marketing Opportunities
Not long ago, prospects and customers were a more homogenous group, often located in the communities and surrounding areas in which they lived and worked. Today, with the advances in technology and the growth of a multicultural population, companies are expanding their marketing outreach dramatically, both in terms of geography and customer profiles (including age, gender, race and socioeconomic background).
The Top 10 Posts Our Readers Liked in 2018
Happy New Year! Now that the winter holidays are over, most of us are ready to forge ahead and make 2019 even more successful than 2018. During this transition, we tend to reflect on how we did last year, what we learned, what changes and improvements we need to make and what new knowledge we need to acquire.
How to Set Realistic Marketing Expectations
It’s natural for companies to expect immediate return on any investment. The truth is, building a business takes time and patience. Marketing is an essential element to generating business, but unrealistic marketing expectations are common. Setting the bar too high and establishing unrealistic deadlines can result in disappointment and failure. To avoid unrealistic marketing expectations, follow these guidelines to set achievable goals.
9 Tips to Boost Engagement in Your Email Campaigns
Despite the constant parade of new communication apps and technologies, email is still a messaging mainstay. In fact, 86% of professionals prefer to use email when communicating for business purposes. While there are a variety of factors that impact the success of email campaigns, here are some best practices to help you generate the higher response and engagement rates you seek.
50 Marketing Terms You Need to Know
Like with most industries, marketing is filled with jargon. To stay relevant, it’s important to understand today’s industry lingo and buzzwords. The following is a collection of marketing terms to help you brush up on your language and perhaps introduce you to a few new marketing terms.
