That’s the most important question marketers are asking today. With social distancing, self-isolating, and remote working becoming the new normal, there's been a shift in the market from the supply and demand side, due to which there’s a shift in the marketing paradigm. For brands and marketers navigating the COVID-19 crisis, simply reaching the customer has become a challenge.

Furthermore, according to a Survey Monkey survey, 92% of Americans are worried about the impact of the corona-virus on the national economy. All these factors can influence business prospects and further cements the need of a crisis road-map.

To help marketers and their business steer through these uncertain times, 11 leading marketers share tips on how to be relevant to customers in this time, how they plan to work through this crisis, and how to keep up the momentum.

Here’s what they had to say:

1. Reassure Your Customers About How Your Company is Responding to the Pandemic
Mark Lieberman, President and CEO, Viamedia

“Stay relevant to the consumer’s needs today that means reassuring them about how your company/brand is responding to the pandemic.

“Apply a calming, reassuring tone with a positive message (as a welcome reprieve from the seemingly 24/7 negative news).

“Use video with strong, warm, embracing visuals. After all, TV is the best medium for site, sounds and e-motion.”

2. Move Your Brand Online to Stay Connected to Your Customers
Andrew Walker, CEO, Shift7 Digital

“First, an overall theme to your strategy: KEEP GOING! Moving your brand even more online will keep you connected to your customers and enable a unified customer experience. Three key areas to focus on: your story, website and data. Second, revisit your current content marketing and keyword strategy. Leverage keyword research and social listening tools for topics that provide insight into specific information they are seeking. Check your PPC, too. Keywords targeted yesterday may not be the most relevant today, as search volume and term trends could be fluctuating.”

3. Refresh Customer Experience (CX) Strategies to Relook at End-to-End Sales Processes
Richard Blatcher, Director of industry marketing & business intelligence, PROS

"COVID-19 has created unprecedented disruption and uncertainty of when things will improve, meaning marketers must pivot their strategy in three crucial ways. Marketers should refresh their customer experience and look at their end-to-end sales processes to ensure they’re able to respond with agility, engage across different sales channels and optimize processes.”

4. Focus on Strengthening Your Relationship With Your Customers
Tony Kavanagh, CMO of Insightly

“First, you must communicate regularly. Customers today want a relationship with the companies with whom they do business and to go beyond the transaction to a more engaging, human place. If you do not already have a regular cadence of communication to your customers, now is the time to build one. Second, shelve the 'hard sell.’ COVID-19 is an unprecedented pandemic. Be empathetic. Focus on strengthening your relationship with your customers but for reasons that are genuine and thoughtful, ask how they are doing, exchange life stories of caution and triumph.”

5. Infuse Empathy in Your Marketing Communications
Tara Kelly, president and CEO, SPLICE Software

“Marketers, now more than ever, need to ensure they are using empathy in their marketing communications. Without that, communication is seen as “taking advantage of the situation”, and no one wants that label. Marketing technology can still support the automated distribution of messages and provides invaluable insights to how people are engaging with new messaging.”

James JC Ramey, CEO at DeviceBits

“Empathy is likely the key part of staying or connecting with customers and prospects. Marketers should be working with the organization to understand how they are shifting in customer experience from, for example, phone support to self-service. Marketers should keep in “high touch” with their customers during this time. Keeping in contact with empathy and new innovative programs will create loyalty and a happier customer base as we exit this current challenge.”

6. Implement an Agile Strategic Pricing Model to Improve Margins
Richard Blatcher, director of industry marketing & business intelligence, PROS

“Focusing on short-term strategic planning by implementing tools to enable valuable insight gains from vast amounts of customer and market data will enable marketers to make rapid changes, protecting revenue.

“Marketers must also implement an agile strategic pricing model, which is the most effective way to quickly improve margins. Working in real-time and offering products or services at the most profitable price is imperative for short-term profitability."

Learn More: Your 2020 Crisis Marketing Strategy: Marketing Communication and the Coronavirus (COVID-19)

7. Reflect on Your Company Values During this Lockdown & Refocus Your Engagement Strategies
Tricia Binder, co-founder and president, Muros

“At Muros, staying top of mind is all about creativity. While keeping creativity and authenticity at their core, marketers should consider the following tactic to pivot their strategies. More than ever, we have time to reflect on our values and mission. For us, that’s getting more art seen and supporting the artist community. Refocusing can get you thinking about new, relevant ways, to engage your customers, employees or clients in these uncertain times.”

8. Avoid the Hard Sell and Reaffirm Your Commitment to the Long Run
Mark Lieberman, President and CEO, Viamedia

“Tailor messages to be consumer-focused top-of-mind, as most are shopping “in the moment of fear and anxiety – e.g., I don’t have enough toilet paper. Ask is your message relevant now, today, and tomorrow? Step back from the hard sell and provide messaging that reaffirms your commitment to be there over the long term and through thick and thin. Almost everyone is at home, so video advertising has never been able to be more impactful and serve as the cornerstone to connecting communities. And remember, that many people will mute the TV, especially when it is on 24/7. So, the video imagery is key.

“Today digital and now linear TV advertising decisions are based increasingly on data, we like to say, “Data is the new creative.” Transaction speeds, cost efficiency and flexibility are more crucial at a time of rapidly developing events such as COVID-19. Access to linear TV programmatically will be the next wave, combining automation and data.”

9. Use Marketing Technology to Stay Connected to Customers When Working Remotely
Andrew Walker, CEO, Shift7 Digital

“Further enable your work-from-home marketing, sales and customer service teams through cohesive customer 360-degree views and data via your customer data platform. Help sales continue pipeline growth by feeding customer behavioral insights via your marketing automation system, while also implementing a well-designed lead scoring program to help them prioritize efforts.”

James JC Ramey, CEO at DeviceBits

“Marketing technology plans a huge role during this time. Brands can roll out new programs, innovative approaches and products but without getting the message to the customers, they will have low adoption and frustrated customers. Marketers can show how their brand is here during this challenge and can best deliver the customer value to consume. Marketing technology will drive the shift that we are seeing in every business through what has traditionally been lagging. Things like self-service, chatbots and asynchronous messaging will now take a front seat in the technology roadmap.”

10. Help Your Customers Navigate the Situation and Pivot as Necessary
Tony Kavanagh, CMO of Insightly

“Lastly, be helpful. The recently announced stimulus bill in the US is incredibly important, but many businesses don't know what this means for them or how it benefits them. Do the research on their behalf and help your customers understand exactly the steps to take to avail of what could be a lifeline for them and their families. All the above can be helpful and is necessary in times like these for pivoting marketing strategies.”

1. Control for visual attention

If you don’t think about how you manage attention on your site, users are going to have a rough time trying to find what they need. The elements on your pages are not of equal importance – why should they have equal visual weight?

You should drive visual attention to the elements that matter most.

Here are some things you can use:

• Size – make the important elements larger without making them so large that the web site becomes tacky
• Shape – if your template allows for irregular shapes, use irregular shapes like rounded corners on your calls-to-action (CTA). Irregular shapes attract more attention than straight lines
• Color contrast – your theme should largely be one color, and the CTAs should have a high contrast with that primary color to attract more attention

2. Have a clear call-to-action

Every page should be intended for a specific kind of user intent.

• People who are researching a product should go to your educational pages rather than your product details
• Users looking for options should be driven to your category pages
• Visitors who are near the bottom of the funnel but not ready to pull the trigger should go to your trial pages

The CTAs on those pages should match the objectives of the user. You need to think carefully about your buttons:

• CTAs should complete an “I want to” statement (e.g. “I want to … complete order/download trial”)
• CTAs should be adjusted to the stage of the customer journey (don’t immediately give people in the

3. Format copy for scannability

Humans are satisficers.

That is, on the web, we are not likely to seriously weigh options and then decide on a plan of attack. Rather, we are likely to examine one option, and if it’s good enough that we don’t see serious issues, we plow ahead without examining the other options.

What that means for web sites is that people scan a lot, read very little, and upon finding a good enough option, they’ll proceed to click without thinking if the other options you provide are a better fit for what they need. You need to have a web site that supports that behavior.

Your web site needs bullet points, bolded headlines and sub-headlines, and good grouping, so it’s easy to scan.

4. Make your content easy to read

Everyone prefers simple language on the web, even experts and specialists. That means you need to make sure your content is written the right way:

• Avoid jargon where possible
• 5th grade reading ability is the sweet spot. Use tools that implement Flesch–Kincaid readability tests. Then, refine your content until you get at least close to 5th-grade-readable-content
• If you have an international audience, limit the use of idioms

5. Limit choices

We can only use our short-term memory to remember 5-9 things. So, if you have a category list that spans 13 items, for example, you need to trim the options even at the cost of asking the users to make one more click.

Deep content where people need to make easy clicks are better for web usability than fewer, more difficult clicks.

If you make sure you don’t put a strain on the user’s memory load, your visitors will thank you.

6. Get users to trust you

If people don’t trust you, they won’t buy from you. There are proven techniques to increase visitor trust:

• Put trust symbols above the fold – a lot of companies have trust symbols, but lower on the page. Don’t make that mistake – if people can’t see your trust symbols easily, they might as well be invisible
• Borrow trust – use your media mentions, and display logos of large companies who have bought your goods and services to increase trust
• Social proof – if you have a large enough customer base, display the number of customers on your pages to take advantage of the bandwagon effect

7. If you have ads, make sure the headlines line up

For people running search ads, one of the most common mistakes is not aligning the content of the link on the ad to the headline of the page the ad goes to.

The headline needs to match the ad so you deliver on your promises. This means more work creating landing pages, but you’ll give your landing pages a higher shot at making visitors convert.

8. Make your pages focused

Outside your web site (on a Google result page, etc.), you need to be loud and compete for attention. Once people are on your web site, you need to quiet down and get people to focus on what they need:

• Limit the use of visual distractions, especially stock images
• Avoid moving elements like rotating banners

9. Earn the right to ask for information

Establish a relationship before you ask for information. When your business relies on signups as part of the conversion path, you can’t afford to be a greedy marketer. You need to stop sending people to 15-field forms before they’ve had the chance to get to know you:

• Ensure you have a ready set of loss leader PDFs or trials that you can “trade” for user information
• Users are not likely to give you information until you provide value, so don’t bombard them with signup forms immediately

10. Nudge users to convert using scarcity

If people are just about ready to convert, but they need a final nudge to act now, your pages can include the following elements:

• Limited time offers – this can make people act sooner rather than later
• Stock availability – for those items where the scarcity can make people act on that same visit

 

Improve Website Conversion Rate with Best Practices

Don’t rely on tests for everything. Your site needs to be sound before you run your tests. If your pages are terrible, your champion and challenger pages will both suck. And you’ll just find the more viable of two bad pages.

If you follow best practices, then run your tests, you’d be more likely to make your site succeed.

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There’s no doubt about it: retargeting works.

Kimberly-Clark, a global leader in selling paper products, reported 50-60% conversion rates from their retargeting efforts.

It makes sense to sell to consumers who have already expressed interest in your product than pitching to someone who is not familiar with the brand.

To understand how retargeting (sometimes called remarketing) works, Retargeter sums it up in a simple illustration.

 

When a potential customer browses your site, a cookie will be installed in his browser. This will ‘follow’ them as they browse on other sites and allow ad platforms to serve very specific ads – your site, or the product or service that they were looking at. This web retargeting strategy provides a way to re-engage anonymous users and is also called pixel-based marketing.

Another way to do this is through list-based or email remarketing. Advertisers provide their platforms with a list of email addresses (for example, those who abandoned their carts) so users can see ads of the same products the next time they browse on the internet.

These two are examples of how you can implement retargeting. Other retargeting techniques include retargeting on social media (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter), mobile apps, dynamic retargeting (personalized ads up to the specific product/service level), and search retargeting (retargeting based on keywords a customer used to search instead of website visits).

Advertisers can choose to get the services of a ‘middle man’ (Adroll, Retargeter, Perfect Audience, etc) or to go directly to the exchanges (Google, Facebook, Twitter) to run their own retargeting campaigns.

Here’s an illustration from Sitescout on the process of how advertisers can run retargeting campaigns through platforms:

 

Both have their own advantages and disadvantages in terms of cost, manageability, and extent of reach. To help you understand different retargeting platforms, here’s a list of 9 retargeting/remarketing services:

1. Google AdWords Remarketing

 

Let’s start with what the search engine giant has to offer. Google makes it easy for advertisers with existing Adwords account to start with a remarketing campaign. With Adwords’ retargeting solution, you can re-engage your audience when they visit sites part of the Google Display Network/Google Adsense, browse on YouTube, and use Android apps. Google offers CPM (Cost Per Thousand Impressions), CPC (Cost per Click), and CPA (Cost per Acquisition) pricing models.

First, you’ll have to create a remarketing list to define who should be shown the ads: are you looking at all visitors of your site or visitors of specific pages only? Next, create the new campaign and tag your site for remarketing. If you have a mobile site, you can also implement remarketing for your app.

Google offers different ways to remarket:

• Static/normal remarketing - refers to the standard way of following customers on the web using a cookie after the visitor viewed a web page. Then the customer gets a banner ad on a third-party website with a static offer.
• Dynamic remarketing - allows marketers to show ads up to the specific product level which the customer visited previously. Then the customer gets a banner on a third-party website, but in this case with dynamic banner, which contains visited products or items on visited pages.
• Search Ads (RLSA) - Remarketing lists for search ads uses search keywords as parameters for remarketing. For example, marketers can use the keyword ‘hotel in Amsterdam’ so when someone goes on a search engine and uses that keyword, Google can serve them with your ad.
• Video remarketing - Video remarketing works on YouTube. If you wish to reach out to previous viewers of your video or those who subscribed to your channel, use the video remarketing solution.
• Email-list remarketing (Customer Match) - Upload a list of your customers’ emails. Once customers sign in to their Gmail account, they will see your ads.

Visit this page to view extensive instructions for setting up an AdWords remarketing campaign.

There are no additional costs for minimum spend and set-up fee to start retargeting with Adwords. You have access to a 24/7 support too in case you have questions. Google Adwords is a good place to start for businesses new in advertising and still testing the waters for remarketing.

Here’s a sample remarketing ad done on Google Adwords. If a customer visits a third-party website, they will get Dynamic ads with products they viewed.

Details:

Pricing: Free setup. No minimum spend required. Charges on CPM, CPC, or CPA

Services: Standard, Dynamic, Mobile Apps, Search Ads, Video, and email list remarketing

Network: Google Display Network, YouTube, Mobile Apps

2. Adroll

 

If you’re ready to take remarketing to the next level, it’s time to evaluate Adroll. Adroll has access to advertising partners such as Google, Facebook Exchange, Yahoo, Bing, and Twitter. That makes up for about 95% of the web; imagine the size of audience you can reach on the platform.

Adroll offers CPM pricing model and as stated on their support page, the company believes that CPM paired with a no minimum spend model maximizes the benefits for the advertiser. They recommend starting with a budget of $25 and from there, you can start gauging how much you will need for your campaigns.

Advertisers on Adroll cite their user interface as a big plus. It is simple to use and advertisers can easily do customer segmentation, ad management, and report generation on the dashboard. remarketing retargeting services.

To learn more about how to create campaigns on Adroll, visit this page. Adroll also provides online and phone support and once you start spending more than a specified amount ($5K), you’ll be provided with a personal account manager plus access to additional capabilities for A/B testing.

Details:

Pricing: Free setup. No minimum spend required. Charges on CPM

Services: Web, Twitter, Mobile, Facebook, CRM, Instagram, dynamic, email marketing, and AdRoll Prospecting

Network: Google, Yahoo, Bing, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, AdBrite, OpenX Market, RightMedia, Appnexus, etc.

3. ReTargeter

 

Built in 2009, ReTargeter is a fairly new player in the industry yet they have already gained traction with clients such as Zendesk and Hireology. ReTargeter has a wide portfolio of remarketing solutions for sites with bigger volume. Choose from web, Facebook, CRM, Audience, Search, and Dynamic Retargeting solutions.

For sites with less than 40,000 unique visits in a month, advertisers can avail of Site Retargeting or Retargeting for Facebook services. For websites with more than that number of visits, they can also avail of CRM Retargeting solutions, a Custom Audience tool, as well as the services of a dedicated account manager.

Packages start at $500/month for Site and Facebook Retargeting. What’s good about ReTargeter is that they have a variety of strategies to choose from. For example, you can use their CRM retargeting service for your contact/list-based remarketing goals while running a Facebook Retargeting campaign.

Audience retargeting uses demographics, geographic information, interests, and contextual data to pinpoint your brand’s users. It can be quite costly starting at $2500/month but a more targeted approach brings in more conversions.

Here’s how you can keep track of conversions on ReTargeter’s dashboard:

 

For a comprehensive guideline on how to create campaigns, visit this link to Retargeter’s FAQ.

Retargeter is ideal for websites with high volume of visits and who are looking to explore a mix of remarketing strategies.

Details:

Pricing: DIY packages starts at $500/month for Facebook and Web Retargeting. Managed Service includes additional packages that start from $1000 to $5000/month minimum

Services: Web, Facebook, CRM, Audience, Search, and Dynamic Retargeting

Network: Google, Yahoo, Bing, Twitter, Facebook, OpenX, Rubicon, etc

4. Facebook Retargeting with Custom Audiences

With more than 1 billion people active on Facebook, the advertising possibilities are endless.

If you’re already running your Facebook Ads but there’s still room for more conversions, consider setting up Custom Audiences on Facebook. Create a Facebook pixel, put it on your website, and build your custom audience.

Custom Audiences allows for flexibility too as you can create a separate list for audiences who have visited a particular page on your website or a more inclusive ‘website visitor’ category. Your list will be ready for use as soon as the pixel identifies 20 or more customers. remarketing retargeting services.

Aside from website visitors, you can also create one based on your email subscription list and mobile app users.

Facebook Ads also allows creating a list of Lookalike audiences. It will help brands to reach out to new customers who are similar to your existing audiences. After collecting a list of visitors, create an ad, apply it to your custom audience and start re-engaging customers.

One of Facebook Ads main selling point with Custom Audiences is that it can generate more results than Google AdWords and it costs cheaper. This is according to a guide published by AdEspresso. Here are other success stories:

 

Look at how Custom Audiences work:

 

Details:

Pricing: No minimum spend. Charges per CPC/CPM.

Services: Facebook Retargeting (in-app and browser, newsfeed and right section ads)

Network: Facebook

5. Perfect Audience

Have you just started your business? If you’re running a small-to-medium scale business and are looking to explore remarketing techniques to increase your sales, find your right match in Perfect Audience, just like the way others such as American Apparel and 99designs did. These online sellers reported an increase in revenue and lower CPA (cost per action).

Perfect Audience offers solutions for Mobile, Dynamic, Web, and Facebook Retargeting. In terms of audience segmenting, the platform offers diverse choices, from website and specific page visitors, users who clicked on a JavaScript event, and mailing list subscribers who opened your mail.

For display retargeting, Perfect Audience also has access to other ad networks aside from Google Display Network.

To reach out to a new group of clients, consider teaming up with your brand partners. Perfect Audience’s Partner Retargeting solution serves ads to your partner’s audience list. It’s the best way to highlight your brand partnership and it will open opportunities to gain new customers too.

Once you’ve identified which sites are performing well and which ones are getting poor conversions, you can choose to use the domain blacklisting functionality. By doing this, you can make sure that you are getting your advertising money’s worth.

Details:

Pricing: Free 14-day trial. Free setup. No minimum spend required. Charges per CPM

Services: Mobile App, Cross-Device, Display, Partner, Dynamic Product, Hubspot, Twitter, Facebook Exchange, and News Feed Remarketing

Network: Google, Yahoo, Bing, OpenX, Rubicon, Facebook, Hubspot, Twitter, Appnexus, Pubmatic

6. SiteScout

Retargeting is one of the features in Sitescout’s long list of advertising DSP (Demand-side Platform) solutions.

Create an audience list, get the pixel, and include it on your site’s landing page. The list will be populated once someone visits the landing page. Sitescout recommends having at least 1000 on the list before running a retargeting campaign. It will depend on how much traffic your site gets before you can populate a large enough audience list. You may want to employ other marketing techniques to drive customers to your site. Alternatively, you can use your conversion list as an audience list.

For mobile retargeting campaigns, your audience list will be based on Device IDs. Either upload a list or run SiteScout’s Audience Capture tool on your mobile app to start collecting device IDs.

Sitescout serves ads in numerous networks.

Details:

Pricing: Free to sign up but requires 500USD minimum deposit. Charges per CPM but has an auto-optimization feature where you can set CPC or CPA goals.

Services: Mobile and Web Retargeting

Network: Google, Yahoo, Bing, OpenX, Rubicon, Appnexus, Pubmatic, etc.

7. Exact Drive

Exact Drive is a self-serve advertising platform that offers web, Facebook, and Search Retargeting.

The company, on their extensive write-up on retargeting, shared insights on how advertisers can further improve remarketing campaigns. Some of the points that need to be considered include proper audience segmentation, customized ads creation, and first-party data utilization. Aside from these, Exact Drive also recommends strategies such as giving your audience a good landing page and experimenting with your ads.

Exact Drive has a strong portfolio when it comes to search retargeting, with some of the known names in the industry as their clients.

Use search retargeting to maximize your SEM efforts. The solution works by keeping track of search keywords to detect potential customers. Unlike standard retargeting where you are re-engaging customers who have previously visited your site, this solution will enable you to introduce your brand to new customers who have shown interest in your brand’s field. remarketing retargeting services.

In terms of support, Exact Drive has a Support Center containing helpful links so you can easily create your own campaigns. For more questions, they offer email ticket support and for those with more than $5K spend, a dedicated account manager.

Details:

Pricing: Advertisers with more than $5000 USD spent each month get more features such as dedicated account manager and monthly customized reports. Pricing models are CPM and CPC. Visit their pricing page here for more details.

Services: Facebook, Dynamic, Standard, and Search Retargeting

Network: Facebook, Google, Yahoo, Bing, Hubspot, etc

8. Twitter

Does your brand have an active following on Twitter? Are you already using Twitter Ads? To maximize your reach on the social media platform, consider running a remarketing campaign.

Twitter cites success stories from Hubspot, Krossover, and New Relic with increased engagement and conversion rates as well as a decrease in CPA (cost per customer acquisition).

To use Twitter for web retargeting, start by installing a Twitter website tag on your page. Once a user checks their Twitter account, they will see your ad on their feed. Here’s a sample of a promoted tweet:

Social Media Examiner discusses another way to use Twitter’s Tailored Audiences capability. Start by finding Twitter usernames of people who meet your target audience criteria. Next, do an automated search of your main list of users’ followers as well as whom they follow. This way you will be able to expand your list with a bigger group of users who have the same interests. remarketing retargeting services.

After collecting Twitter usernames, SME suggests to further segment your audience into smaller groups such as according to location or weather. Once you’ve finalized your audience list, start creating customized ads for each group and run the campaign.

Take note that Twitter users have the option to opt-out of ads. Add more usernames on your list just in case.

Details:

Pricing: No minimum spend. Price depends on your budget and bid. For an estimate, check this post from Penna Powers

Services: Twitter Retargeting (followers, conversions, video view, tweet engagement, app engagement)

Network: Twitter

9. Criteo

This Paris-born retargeting company is the go-to provider of big names such as Lenovo, Sony, and BMW.

Reach out to your customers regardless of the device they are using with Criteo’s cross-device advertising solution covering desktop and mobile sites as well as social media. For web retargeting services, Criteo has a direct relationship with publishers and purchases inventory with CPM pricing. As of writing, the company has 16,000 publishers and they ensure advertisers of a high-quality inventory.

Advertisers commend how Criteo prices CPC, taking the majority of the risk as they buy CPM-based from publishers. Here’s how CPC bids look like on Criteo’s dashboard:

Along with their retargeting services, Criteo also offers supplemental services such as Kinetic Design, which combines your own branding with personalized content sure to catch your users’ attention. The solution comes with a dedicated creative team.

If there’s anything that you need to know about running campaigns, check the knowledgebase or you may reach out to the support team via email ticket support. remarketing retargeting services.

Details:

Pricing: Charges CPC

Services: Dynamic, Email, Facebook, Instagram, Mobile App Retargeting

Network: Google, Facebook, Instagram, individual publishers, etc

credit: https://www.adwordsrobot.com/en/blog/9-remarketing-retargeting-services-which-drive-your-online-sales

9 Remarketing/Retargeting Services which Drive your Online Sales

By now, most of us are familiar with the trendy term account-based marketing (ABM). At its core, ABM is used to nurture specific high-value accounts and reach stakeholders in a personalized manner, with the primary goal of generating more revenue and retention.

The focus is on the quality of engagements with your targeted accounts, but there’s nothing fundamentally new about the concept of ABM. For decades, highly profitable enterprises have been executing high-touch marketing programs and finding creative new ways to drive engagement with their brand.

Done well, its ROI is high — so it’s no wonder the popularity of ABM continues to grow. Recent research shows 56% of marketing departments plan to boost their resources (e.g., time, budget, personnel) to support an ABM strategy in 2018. Only 11% of marketing departments said they don’t plan to put any resources toward ABM this year.

At the same time, more than 50% of marketers said they need more education and best practices to improve or launch their ABM strategy and effectively set and measure KPIs.

Some of the demand for more education stems from confusion around ABM. As with any hot marketing trend, misinformation is rampant, and current myths about ABM’s purpose — and what it takes to execute it successfully — are everywhere.

We’re going to do our part to end the confusion and bust some of most common ABM myths.

Myth #1: ABM should only be used to grow existing accounts

ABM is about selling to a targeted list of high-value accounts, both existing and new. But regardless of whether the target is a current customer or a prospect, a comprehensive go-to market strategy — created in collaboration between sales and marketing — is necessary to yield success.

There’s no one-size-fits-all approach.

What you do to engage each account can vary greatly depending on the brand. ABM allows you to focus on a narrower set of accounts that are crucial to driving your business forward, but it still requires a significant amount of creativity and personalization to influence both existing and prospect accounts. Bottom line: Don’t confuse account-based marketingwith selling.

The goal of ABM isn’t to simply sell products – it’s to influence the right stakeholders from the right accounts.

Myth #2: A successful ABM strategy requires a specialized team

Hiring a specialized team isn’t necessary, but creating a specialized approach is. You can leverage your existing marketing team to drive results in a new way. Chances are, someone on your marketing team is already targeting the accounts you selected for your ABM strategy.

But now, you can take a strategic approach and dedicate more time and resources to engage them in new, more effective ways.

Your strategy might include gathering customer insights for each account, or activating top sales reps to engage the executives in your targeted accounts. Ultimately, while the approach may be different, your existing marketing team can execute your ABM strategy, so long as they collaborate closely with sales.

In fact, alignment with the sales team is a must-have for any organization to successfully run an ABM program.

Myth #3: ABM success can’t be measured

ABM is about driving higher growth from your targeted list of accounts. The easiest way to measure success is to align with your sales team and determine which campaigns or tactics are driving the most growth.

For example, you can measure the number of meetings you set up with your ABM accounts, new contacts you’ve developed, or opportunities you’ve influenced.

At the very least, you can measure success by comparing growth of the accounts targeted through your ABM program to other accounts not targeted through ABM. And once you’ve reached your ABM goals, the momentum doesn’t stop there. It continues through nurturing relationships with the stakeholders in your targeted accounts so they become evangelists for your business and references for new prospects.

Myth #4: It’s only useful to deploy ABM if you’re going after large enterprises

False again! When ABM emerged, many marketers believed it was only worthwhile (from an ROI perspective) to target large accounts, because only those accounts could spend enough to justify the ABM investment.

However, ABM helps you target segments that you believe are most likely to convert and grow your business the fastest. If that’s the mid-market, then target those accounts. Businesses don’t have to be a certain size — in terms of revenue or employees — to drive your ABM strategy forward. But keep in mind that your marketing investment per account needs to make sense in the context of your potential return.

At the end of the day, ABM isn’t a new B2B marketing strategy, but we’re applying new terms and technologies to make it more effective. As marketing technology continues to evolve, there will be even more new, innovative ways for sales and marketing teams to execute successful ABM strategies.

Don’t let misperceptions limit your scope when using this approach to cultivate new and existing accounts.

- by Sanjay Castelino

Choosing a holiday can be difficult, there is literally a world of choices to pick from. What if technology could help you pick?

We are not talking about AI that suggests you options based on popular destinations for people your age, or based on previous holidays. A new tool being introduced by online travel company ebookers.com uses facial recognition and multisensory displays to suggest travel destination based on user reactions to being shown different options.

The SenseSational online tool works by showing the user video of various stages of the travel journey, and tracks their facial reactions and where their gaze. Recording this user data than allows it to calculate the findings and present the user with a set of personalised destinations to consider.

“New technology is revolutionising the travel sector and enabling our digital world to become a personalised, multi-sensory immersion that provides travellers with the vital ‘try before you buy’ experience,” explains Mark McKenna, Commercial Director at ebookers.com.

Travel in the digital age

Social media has changed the way that people share their travel experiences and plan where they want to go. Sites like Instagram are filled with a constant stream of real-time imagery and video content that lets people show how they have pushed their boundaries.

With SenseSational, ebooker.com is looking to tap into this key feature of the digital age. By seeing how consumers react to images and videos of different kinds of trips, the company should be able to provide better, more targeted services to its customers.

“SenseSational mimics this emotive storytelling and analyses the way we engage with certain textures, tastes and sounds, giving us an insight into how technology will continue to shape the consumer journey and help us form completely tailored travel experiences, engaging our senses every step of the way,” explains McKenna.

- by Colm Hebblethwaite

As businesses evolved from the mass-producing factories of the Industrial Age to the global, consumer-savvy forces they are today, so too have the techniques they’ve used to promote their products and services.

During the early half of the 20th century, companies believed it was necessary to show customers what they need but didn’t yet own - introducing us to the traveling encyclopedia sales rep cliche we’re all familiar with today.

But, as time continued and technology improved, consumers reacted less to hard sells and more to brands that seemed to understand their individual needs.

Eventually, marketing morphed into much of what we see today - data-driven analytics that create a narrow, personalized understanding of each customer to create targeted campaigns - while sales seemed to lag behind.

Consumers, including the clients of B2B products and services, want to build personal relationships with the brands they use. Despite being separate from marketing within an organization, sales teams have found great success using traditional marketing techniques to achieve the personal, long-lasting relationships that their clients want.

Data-driven sales process

Until recently, sales reps would reach out to prospects at the beginning of the sales process with the generic marketing materials handed out to all employees at an organization.

But, as SaaS subscription models became increasingly more popular, sales reps found that these tired concepts didn’t work when trying to establish relationships that would help retain clients year after year.

One trend that sales has successfully adopted from marketing is using data analytics to better understand the customer. Now, when a sales rep fires off a pitch to a prospect, the rep immediately receives data about their behavior - What was the open rate for a particular subject line? How many people moved to the next step after reading this email?

As prospects continue through the sales process, or as existing clients work with the company, the sales rep is able to gather more information about their behavior to create a true understanding of their needs. By analyzing the data, reps are able to understand what methods worked with their customers and know how to recreate this success in the future.

Customer relationship management in sales

Marketing teams learned early on that a strong relationship with a customer is key to their returning to the company’s products or services.

From this understanding sprang forth tactics like customer relationship management that allowed these kinds of relationships to grow. Marketing teams use the customer data they have to craft valuable offerings and targeted campaigns for their customers.

For sales, understanding the motivations and drives behind a potential lead’s actions through data analytics allows the sales rep to send similar targeted campaigns.

No more emails beginning with “To Whom It May Concern,” - now, sales reps are able to provide their prospects with enriching and useful information specific to any questions that they may have regarding the product or service.

Sales and marketing alignment

Although they still provide different functions for the company, marketing and sales stand to learn a great deal from each other as technology and consumer preferences continue to change.

With sales teams being called upon more often to close deals with recurring clients, it is more important than ever that they embrace customer relationship management and data analytics in order to provide the best customer experience possible.

The siloed business model is becoming increasingly ineffective, and this trend points to an emerging trend of overall sales and marketing alignment. Companies are finding that when a technique successfully works for one department or team, the actions can and should be adapted across the organization in order to reap similar rewards.

While sales and marketing are the first aspects of business to embrace this, we can expect to see this more as business models continue to innovate and change.

- by Chris Rothstein

 

When I first began my career, I’d hear people say things like “business is business,” which they would use as an excuse for treating people badly. Today, more people are realizing that business is actually just people, which completely shifts the paradigm. Your approach should shift with it.

Marketing has traditionally been segmented into two categories -- business to business and business to consumer – also known as B2B and B2C.

Even these names imply an impersonal, transactional approach to customer relationships – and that’s exactly what we saw. Fortunately, business thinking is evolving and there’s a better approach – human to human (H2H).

H2H starts to say:

“I'm not a business and you are not a business or a customer. We’re both human and we're going to have a conversation about something which will hopefully benefit both of us.”

Think of H2H as simply talking to someone, communicating the same way you would if they were standing in front of you. In a conversation, you share information that needs sharing and you can expect some immediate feedback. And while technology often feels less personal – think spam emails and robo-calls – it’s now giving us the opportunity to turn that around and be more human.

Human conversation

Imagine I go into a restaurant and receive poor service.  I might fill out a comment card and, based on my experience, I expect that comment card just to go into a void. I never actually expect the company to talk back to me.

Today, we have online review pages, and many restaurants have Facebook pages or Twitter accounts. If I leave a message there for a company, I’m much more likely to get a direct response. Since the restaurant can see who I am on social media, they can provide a personal, immediate response. And that response shouldn’t be pro forma marketing-speak. It’s more like a conversation with a friend who you let down. Offer to make it up somehow. Sorry you had a bad experience. What can I do to make it up to you?  Can we offer you a discount on your next visit, or a refund for part of your meal? That’s treating the customer as a human.

Too many companies still haven’t figured this out, and it’s worse among companies marketing to businesses. They have all the same channels as consumer marketers – email, social media, phone, along with ample data about their customers, but much of the language they use is still purely transactional.

There’s little or no attempt to understand the person they're talking to, or where they fit it into the purchasing process. They treat every person as if they were the decision maker, so most of what they're sending falls on deaf ears. They are in the company’s customer database, but they're the wrong people. They've moved to a new job or even to a new company. And on top of all that, every single email those customers receive is an attempt to sell to them.

This results, all too often then, with the wrong message, being sent to the wrong person, through the wrong channel, in the wrong tone and at the wrong time.  Hardly a great H2H experience!

Instead of sending constant sales pitches, how about trying to establish a relationship with your potential customer? Start by understanding the person's role at the company. Once you know what he or she does, you might decide to send relevant content about industry trends and best practices in their area of expertise.

Remember:  they’re a human. And you wouldn’t just walk up to an unfamiliar human on the street and say: You’ve got to download this thing, here’s what it costs. You need to build trust with that person first.

Human understanding

Today, familiarity and trust can be created more quickly using data and information that is readily available. At FullContact, we research prospective customers using internal tools that help us understand them as individuals – as humans.

Let’s say we find that a prospect is a fan of the Green Bay Packers and that they also graduated from UC Berkeley – as did Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers. As a way to introduce ourselves, we might send her a care package through the mail, which includes some fun Aaron Rodgers paraphernalia. We are a company with great insights on humans.

We like to get to know our potential customers as humans as well. We think this gift demonstrates both of those things.

As you might imagine, we get some interesting responses. Some people are a little surprised that we can actually get that much data about them. Other people think it’s fantastic that we took the time to understand who they are, and they want to discuss how that approach might help their company.

Forward thinking companies are getting much better at relating to their own customer as a person as opposed to a number. And as people become more aware of how companies can use their data to deliver better service, they will come to expect more out of their relationships with those companies.

But collectively, we're still at a very early stage on the journey to meaningful H2H customer communications.

To get there, we need to think differently about each interaction we have with a customer. Every web comment, every email, every Tweet about a product is an opportunity to engage with a customer on a one‑to-one level. It’s time to retire B2B and B2C and embrace H2H.

Your customers will be glad you did.

- by Scott Axcell

For marketers, Gartner’s prediction that 8.4 billion connected things will be in use this year means two things. Firstly, they will have access to a treasure trove of data. Secondly, the omni-channel nature of this data means it’s likely information will be held across multiple isolated platforms, making it hard to find true insight gems.

And with the May 2018 GDPR deadline fast approaching, making such huge volumes of fragmented data manageable — and compliant — on time will be no mean feat.

But the challenge isn’t insurmountable. It is possible for marketers to reorder their data and transform it onto a controllable, single store of insight using technology already at hand.

What’s more, embracing the GDPR’s mission to quell consumer distrust and protect online privacy could deliver valuable rewards for businesses; especially those that take an early lead on championing transparent data usage.

So how can these issues be tackled to ensure GDPR readiness?

Connect the dots

At present, consumer data is often siloed on several levels. For instance, data from website visits is kept separately to social, mobile data, and email insight.

And it doesn’t end there: offline data is also frequently stored separately to digital data, so in-store purchase information and catalogue orders have their own datasets too. But to understand consumers and serve relevant, timely messages — as well as keep data practices in check — it is crucial to link all activity.

This sounds like a tough task, but in fact, the data within multiple silos can be connected to form a data hub using models such as Unified Data Hub (UDH) or data-centric web services. This enables marketers to achieve a single view across datasets that allows for the creation of centralised segments and can be easily adapted over time to accommodate new tools as further engagement channels are introduced.

Admittedly key entity data can be complex, depending on the type of business, but once integrated it offers an efficient and effective means of joining-up the consumer journey, regardless of the devices involved along the way.

Ensure compliance

Bringing data together is one thing, but to achieve full GDPR adherence there are many other factors marketers will need to consider; such as when, where and how they are using, and storing, data.

To help them on their way, here are a few of the core processes they must follow to get a firm hold on first-party data and keep brand-customer relations strong.

Obtain consent

All businesses involved in collecting personal data (defined as any data that can be used to identify individuals, from economic to social information) need to obtain clear consent to do so. Requests for consent need to be simply worded and explain how data will be used.

Be transparent with data

Once consent is given, businesses can only use the data in question for the purpose originally stated. Furthermore, they should not hold data longer than is necessary and must delete personal information if requested by the user and if it is not essential to their services.

Report security breaches

The GDPR stipulates that any breach of data security must be reported to the local data protection authority within 72 hours of discovery.

Implement ‘privacy by design’

Businesses are obliged to implement ‘privacy by design’; in other words the construction of all systems, projects, and procedures must include privacy protection measures.

No-one would question that customer data is a valuable asset for all businesses. But the vast amount of data being generated, and its fragmentation, can hamper marketing efforts, in addition to making data compliance difficult.

Yet by connecting information in a universal data hub and bridging silo gaps, marketers can effectively store and analyse customer data insights, using technology already at their fingertips.

And taking that leap towards GDPR compliance can do a lot for retaining consumer trust and enhancing communications – it’s simple, it’s effective; it’s the way to stay ahead.

- by Lindsay McEwan

Marketing agility has become a buzzword in the industry; the ability to adapt quickly in response to customer behaviour, market conditions or a change of business direction.

Achieving this requires organisations to fundamentally change the way that they work, challenging traditional campaign cycles and processes that felt comfortable and adopting new ones that, quite frankly, will, at first, feel wrong.

Experience is now the product

The evolution is being driven by competition - no sector is free from disruption - but also by the customer, in what has become the experience age. Consumers no longer want products; they want to buy into brands that have purpose and to feel some kind of affinity with this purpose.

They also want to be able to engage with the brand, not just before they buy, but throughout the entire lifecycle as users and owners. This engagement is driven by them, at times that suit them and via their channel of choice, and they expect a seamless and personal experience.

Servicing this expectation requires a fundamental shift where organisations genuinely put the customer experience at the top of the agenda. The implementation of a customer experience platform is a step in the right direction but you can’t give someone a car without teaching them how to drive it.

Getting real value from that platform for the customer and the business will require change across the board, in thinking, ways of working and culture.

A fundamental and cultural shift

Digital projects tend to focus on a technology change, such as platform migration, or a finished deliverable; a new website, for instance. Very rarely are businesses free enough from the constraints of time and budget to be able to prioritise the adoption of new ways of working over ‘finishing’.

And this, in itself, perpetuates old ways of working; spending all the budget up front on the big launch and leaving little or no resource for creating the tools and techniques to support rapid future change.

It’s useful to draw some parallels between the evolution of software development and the current agile trend in marketing. Big waterfall projects are similar to the big campaigns that marketing teams often still rely on. Plan and design everything, get it right on paper, then commit to a big spend to build it and launch it with a bang.

Nobody wants to do that in software anymore, as they realise that no amount of cleverness at the design stage will be worth anything if you’re not creating what your customers need. And nothing is more real than the purchasing behaviour of actual customers to determine that. So launch something small, quickly and then iterate.

Once you are able to change and adapt rapidly, then you can start to understand the data and analytics to optimise your experiences going forwards and respond to outside influences.

Data and Insight

To be truly agile, marketing teams need to embrace data to ensure that behavioural insight captured on a customer experience platform is turned into actionable insight and business results. Capturing the data is where technology comes into its own; helping to collate information across touch points and identify what is and isn’t working well.

Turning data into insight itself can bring with it a whole new set of challenges. Who owns the data? Is it the right data? Is it going to answer the questions that need answering? Data that lives in a silo doesn’t help when it comes to looking holistically at the customer journey.  So organisations may find that they have to refocus and restructure to really make sense of the data and use it to drive agile practices.

A new way of working requires new roles

While putting customer experience on the C-suite agenda will help drive organisations towards a new agile way of working, change must be driven throughout the organisation. There’s so much talk of ‘breaking down silos’ but this is easier said than done.

The introduction of new roles can however catalyse necessary change and help to embed customer experience into the DNA of a business.

We are already seeing the emergence of Journey Managers, Experience Managers and Chief Customer Officers - roles which simply didn’t exist a few years ago. These arterial roles are agile by design; you can’t silo them because they span the whole business and customer journey.

Great customer experience comes down to the ability to sustain relevant conversations, at the right time on the right device. And that means having the right people on board and the right processes in place.

Technology Adoption

Change is hard and it is often easier to stick to old, familiar ways of working than to embrace new ones. Investing in and building new technology solutions is hard enough. But getting a large organisation to successfully leverage and use new technology is even more critical.

An organisation can spend what they like on technology, but without investing in adoption, they simply cannot expect to change working practices and become more agile overnight.

Adoption is about people, not technology. Put yourself in their shoes, understand their mind-set and don’t expect them to feel as positive about the new technology as you do. Not only is change hard, it is not always desired.

Training should be bespoke to different teams and relevant to their specific needs and concerns. Organisations with a truly customer-centric view should realise that their employees are internal customers and personalise their journey to agile in a way that is appropriate to them.

Turning this new marketing buzzword into reality is not an overnight process. It changes projects from outsource-able, ‘do it for us’ activities into business transformation or change programmes. The latter are significantly more challenging to get right, particularly in big companies, requiring technology investment, organisational and culture change and plenty of training.

However, in the experience age there isn’t a sector that is free from disruption and therefore, there isn’t an organisation that can afford to stand still.

An agile organisation will be better equipped to respond quickly and efficiently to change, to engage with their customers with relevant content on their terms and to deliver value back to the business and the customer from significant investment in technology. And let’s face it, delivering that value is all that really matters in the end.

- by Miro Walker