Home > Resources > Articles > Social Media Tactics for Small Businesses in 2022

SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING

Social Media Tactics for Small Businesses in 2022

Sagar Srivastav | January 6, 2022

Social Media Tactics
Social media marketing is a vast marketing method that has been evolving. Marketers are highly focused on making it better and achieving their business objectives. As a result, micro and large businesses are investing in it and experiencing positive results.

Why is Social Media Essential for Small Businesses?

According to Neal Schaffer, nearly 79% of internet users in the U.S. are on social media. Implementing social media has numerous advantages. Social media establishes the brand as a thought leader by convincing the audience to take the necessary steps. It helps businesses find diverse audiences worldwide. In addition, you can utilize content intelligence to attract your audience and deliver relevant content to them. Social media assist businesses in finding quality leads, making connections with prospects, enhancing sales and ROI, and reaching maximum people quickly.

Social Media Best Practices

Here are the most valuable tips that will certainly help your brand scale. Let’s comprehend.

Create Monthly Social Media Calendar

Creating a monthly social media calendar simplifies your approach. It is made up of timing, days, posts, themes, promotional steps, content type, and innovative ideas. You can certainly systemize your social media marketing strategy by creating a monthly calendar that avoids last-minute hassle.

While creating a monthly social media calendar, you have to make sure that your calendar matches your expectations and assists in persuading your audience.

Promote UGC

UGC is organic content that encourages customers to share their thoughts or opinions. It attracts users by building credibility amongst them and delivering relevant content. Users find it connecting and attractive, so they participate in it.

You can generate polls, contests, host events, implement hashtag strategies, utilize influencers, introduce offers, and give credits, etc.

Cross Promotion

Social media cross-promotion is advantageous for sharing relevant and quality content as efficiently as possible across various platforms. It allows you to tailor your content according to the channel you want to attract your audience. In addition, it helps in finding quality leads and reaching diverse people at once.

Video Marketing

Creating videos for social media platforms is an essential strategy as it makes you stand out from other competitors by establishing a brand image amongst the audience. By creating video content, you can efficiently inform, educate, or entertain your audience in a minimalistic way.

Go Live

Going live helps your business inactively engage with the audience. For example, you can conduct Q&A on social media platforms to resolve your customers’ queries. It makes your marketing approach more result-driven and enhances your interaction with the audience.

Use Meme Marketing

Meme marketing is a trending marketing method that enables businesses to create unique humor. People wait for memes from their favorite brands. It establishes brand recognition by attracting a target audience.

Respond to Feedback


If you make customers unhappy in the physical world, they might each tell six friends. If you make customers unhappy on the Internet, they can each tell 6,000 friends."

Jeff Bezos, Founder of Amazon

Utilizing different social media platforms is challenging as you have to maintain each channel properly. Businesses receive various inquiries, but they don't take the necessary steps. One of the essential steps of social media marketing is following feedback and resolving customer queries in real-time. Solving customers’ queries in real-time helps them finding what they are looking for and making their journey easier. Once you respond feedbacks in real-time, you attract your audience. It creates credibility amongst your prospects and converts them into long-term customers.

A Different Form of Content

There are different kinds of content, such as infographics, GIFs, images, AMAs, and others. Businesses utilize the content for various purposes. Executing additional content for social media platforms enhances reaching different audiences. It creates variations in your advertising methods and woos your audience to take further steps.

Performance Evaluation

Once you implement social media marketing tactics, the second most important step is to evaluate the performance of each channel. You can analyze the performance in terms of strategy, planning, content, promotions, feedback, conversions, CTR, etc. These steps will surely help you make your social media marketing strategies more influential.

Follow the Trends

Some trends engage the audience's attention and encourage them to learn more about the brand. Therefore, you should research daily, follow the relevant directions for your business, and help in conveying your message to the audience. You can implement paid advertising, augmented reality, programmatic advertising, follow micro-influencers, local targeting, and execute ephemeral content as they are beneficial social media trends. Trends allows you to find relevant audiences and attract them quickly.

Airbnb

Airbnb needs no introduction. The brand implemented an innovative social media campaign. They posted UGC photos, which were quite attractive, and started a movement, "Don't just go there, live there.” They enhanced the customers’ attention and encouraged them to post other UGC content. Consequently, each post received high engagement, likes, and comments.

Final Thought


I use social media as an idea generator, trend mapper, and strategic compass for all of our online business ventures."

Paul Barron, Futurist

Social media marketing creates multiple opportunities for small businesses by minimizing business risk and saving time and money. Implementing the above tactics will surely assist your company in reaching business outcomes.

Frequently Asked Questions


What is social media marketing?

Social media marketing is a marketing method that allows businesses to make strong connections with customers via different channels, such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, and so on.

What are the challenges in social media marketing?

There are different challenges in social media marketing, for instance, finding relevant channels, creating persuasive content, responsive designs, and implementing appropriate automating tools.

Which social media platforms are highly beneficial?

Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp are the most used social media channels globally.

Spotlight

Mediaworks Online Marketing

Mediaworks is one of the leading online marketing agencies in the UK. We are a young, vibrant, dedicated, client-focused business. We specialise in organic search engine optimisation that drives leads, sales and brand visibility for our clients, but we are also experts in pay-per-click, online reputation management, conversion rate optimisation and content marketing...

OTHER ARTICLES
CRM

How Can a CRM Strategy Enhance Your Business?

Article | March 10, 2022

In the B2B domain, relationship management plays a key role in business growth. As compared to B2C, B2B relationship management is complex. B2B sales cycles are longer, business is catered to key accounts, which are retained through regular contact, and there are multiple decision-makers who make purchase decisions. Seamless co-operation can happen only when a powerful tool like cloud-based CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software collects crucial data and assists the management strategy. 74% of respondents say that CRM solutions give them better access to customer data, which is crucial to offering personalized services to accounts. (Source: Resco) What is a B2B CRM Strategy? A Customer Relationship Management (CRM) strategy helps improve the conversion rate, retain customers better, and capture more leads. A B2B CRM strategy is used to sell services or products to accounts and has complex sales processes, fewer leads, and a longer sales cycle as opposed to B2C’s simple sales processes, more leads, and shorter sales cycle. A customer relationship strategy includes listing methods to oversee an influx in profits and an increase in sales. It helps in detecting shortcomings in your B2B CRM process and comes up with advanced solutions using critical data to enhance your management. To execute this strategy, you should choose an efficient cloud-based CRM software that is securely hosted on the servers of your CRM provider. You can access it over the internet from anywhere. With the help of good CRM software, you can manage your contacts, gain insights into your customers, understand and fulfill their needs at every stage of the sales cycle. Types of CRM Strategies for Business There are three types of CRM strategies for businesses. You can choose an appropriate strategy based on your business goals and objectives. Collaborative CRM This type of strategy focuses on breaking the silos between the sales, marketing, and customer service teams. These teams may not be in the same geographical location, use different channels to connect with the customer, and have different skills and specialities. Such differences make it hard for these teams to come together and work towards the same goal - an outstanding customer experience. Sharing information between these teams throughout the customer journey is vital for an optimum customer experience. Operational CRM Businesses use operational CRM for streamlining customer relationships using tools to understand and handle complete customer journeys, even those with multiple touch points. It also supports marketing automation, service and sales automation so that employees don’t have to manually carry out all the campaigns. Instead, they can allot more time to carry out activities that need human interaction. Analytical CRM New B2B marketing strategies include digital tools and platforms. A big chunk of customer data that is gathered through these tools and other channels may not be used accurately without a feature-rich platform that analyzes customer behavior. Through analytical CRM, you can get a detailed analysis of the data. It helps with customer retention and solving customers’ problems swiftly. Role of CRM in Business Strategy The main role of CRM is to enable teams that handle customers with relevant customer data so that they can offer an optimum customer experience (CX). So, a CRM strategy example would be a business strategy that focuses on customer satisfaction. “The C-suite plays a fundamental role in giving appropriate weight to CRM across the business, thereby ensuring that it is executed appropriately across all layers of the business and all the way down to the customer.” - Anders Lindholm, Managing Partner of Boyden Italy. CRM helps C-level executives to: Understand their customers better Retain their customers with impressive CX Bring in new customers Increase their revenue Manage customers economically Using CRM in business is also necessary if you want to achieve business growth through consumer-centric ideas. Let us take a look at the role of CRM in business strategy in detail: Provides Reliable Reports Businesses procure actionable customer data from social media, Google Analytics, apps, and business software. However, it becomes useless if it is unorganized. CRM organizes this data and collates it for better understanding. It can also categorize the customers into leads, sales, or opportunities. AI-based marketing automation is also possible using CRM. Allows Drip Campaigning Implementing drip campaigns to target a specific audience cluster with an interest in a niche product is easy because of the dynamic content that CRM provides. These drip campaigns are triggered by specific actions and send out emails to get in touch with the audience. They can be used to convert leads throughout the sales funnel. Enhances CX Through the data it collects, CRM provides insight into the issues and needs of the customers. This makes it easier for a customer service team to tackle issues that customers face. They don’t have to spend time or energy digging for information because they have all the data they need on their CRM dashboards. A quicker resolution time and higher customer satisfaction translate to an improved bottom line. Cross-department Data Accessibility CRM data can be accessed across departments that may not necessarily be in the same location. This kind of accessibility makes it easier for all departments to optimize their processes. Provides Business Insights Companies easily track business intelligence metrics that help them understand which campaigns are generating leads and how much time it takes to follow up with leads. They can also gauge salesperson performance, business KPIs (closed cases, average call time, average user rating), customer sales, and product sales, up-selling and cross-selling data. Aligns Core Teams All the teams that come into contact with customers are used to working in silos. That doesn't mean that CRM data won't help them. It can show them how to focus their goals and efforts on getting, nurturing, and converting leads, as well as giving customers a great experience. Creating an Effective CRM Strategy To create an effective CRM strategy, follow these steps: Identify your position in the market Know your product or service Define goals and vision Determine the ICP and target audience Map the customer’s journey Create a 360° CX experience Choose a good CRM software Sync everything with your CRM software Measure the performance of your strategy using KPIs British Airways’ Volume Requests Increased after Using CRM British Airways set a great example of a CRM strategy using Teradata CRM. Their volume requests increased by 150%. They automated campaigns and customer communications for their integrated warehouse through Teradata and saw amazing results. Conclusion The role of CRM is crucial in your business strategy. Adopting the best CRM strategy can bring you outstanding results and help you focus on your customers closely. FAQ Which companies offer CRM software solutions? Companies like Salesforce, Oracle, Zendesk, Microsoft, Hubspot, and Agile offer CRM software solutions. How can a CRM strategy help you scale your business? CRM can help you offer an enhanced customer experience, analyze customer behavior, bring your core performance teams together, and automate your marketing campaigns. How can you measure the success of your CRM strategy? Upsell rate, close rate, average value of deals, duration of sales cycle, and length of pipeline stages are some of the important KPIs to measure the success of your CRM strategy.

Read More
CHANNEL PARTNERSHIPS

Words of Wisdom: 5 Inspiring Quotes from Women Leaders

Article | March 8, 2022

“It is within everyone’s grasp to be a CEO.” – Martha Stewart, Founder, CEO, Martha Stewart Living OmniMedia From the 1970s to the present day, women haven’t stopped dreaming about and chasing the goal of successful entrepreneurship, building healthy communities, and uplifting other women in their pursuit of excellence. Women who are not afraid to take on challenges, vow to break stereotypes, have an exemplary sense of duty, and have the ambition to reach new heights, make femininity a force to be reckoned with. On International Women’s Day 2022, we are celebrating inspiring women who have made a difference in their industry. Take a minute to read through the conversations we’ve had with them. Know Your Most Powerful Asset “Your most powerful audience is your employees. They are your greatest point of social proof.”- Kate Bradley Chernis, Founder and CEO at Lately What You Should Focus On “Rather than focusing on strategy, planning and creativity, many marketers instead spend the majority of their time cleaning and analyzing data.” – Yogeeta Chainani, Co-Founder and CPO at Swaarm There Is No End to Learning “Be a sponge and listen as much as you can. Go to those optional meetings. The more you learn and are exposed to early on, the better.”- Elizabeth Irvine, VP of Marketing at MarketMuse Time Management Is the Key to Success “Plenty of people never thought they would end up where they did, but almost all of them had discipline, rigor, and a deep learning mentality. Be flexible with your goals but really clear on how you spend your day/week/life.” – Kady S, SVP Global Head of Marketing at Klaviyo Carve Your Niche “If you have a topic you know no one else is talking about and that’s important to your clients, put your focus there.” - Amanda Sexton, Founder at FocusWorks Marketing

Read More
MARKETING STRATEGY

7 Crucial Channel Marketing Strategy Best Practices

Article | February 28, 2022

Tracey Noonan and Danielle Vilagie started Wicked Good Cupcakes after taking a cake-decorating class together and enjoying it immensely. Wicked Good Cupcakes wanted to serve customers out of town. They came up with the ‘portable cupcake in a jar’ concept to safely ship their cupcakes. They hired C Squared Social, a digital agency, to run their online campaigns so they could generate new leads and increase their reach. C Squared, in turn, partnered with Facebook Business Partner Zapier. Zapier used Facebook’s innovative lead ad functions to stitch together CRM, email marketing, and team messaging tools. This was done to capture every opportunity for Wicked Good Cupcakes. Through its channel partner Zapier, Facebook facilitated an end customer with a 94% lower average cost per lead, a 24% contact response rate from leads, and a 48x increase in leads in just 3.5 months from the launch of the campaign. This is the power of channel partnership. But how did Zapier know what features from Facebook’s marketing offerings it could use to deliver amazing results for Wicked Good Cupcakes? It’s because Facebook has vetted Zapier to advertise, sell, and engage end customers with Facebook’s offerings. Facebook did this by using effective to-partner marketing. Let us now explore channel partner marketing in detail. What is Channel Partner Marketing? Channel partners are intermediaries between your product and the end customer. Channel partner marketing uses methods to promote products or services to channel partners or to end customers through channel partners. This kind of marketing considers the manufacturer’s expectations, requirements, and goals, channel partners, and their audiences. In a recent interview with Media 7, Sam O’Brien, CMO at Affise, talked about partner marketing. Partner market has huge growth at the moment. It's really taken off, and still, it seems quite complex to people. We're giving companies a faster way to start Partner Marketing. Find the partners you want to work with, or the publishers, or creators, or affiliates, to promote your business.” Sam O’Brien, CMO at Affise If you use an effective partner marketing strategy, you want to make sure that everyone involved in a channel partnership is happy. Why Should Channel Partner Marketing be a Priority? 54% of companies say partnerships drive more than 20% of total company revenue. (Source: Partnerize). To drive revenue, marketing is important. Here are some of the reasons why channel partners should make channel partner marketing a priority: The way customers or businesses zero-in on a product or service has changed. When it comes to technology products or other professional services, audiences rely on finding the best alternative online. This intensifies the competition for channel partners. They need to beat regional, national, non-traditional, online, and local competitors to land a sale. Marketing technology has also evolved dramatically. It is a dynamic mix of thought leadership, search authority, and expert lead generation to create measurable results. Channel partners need to focus on marketing and invest effort, resources, and time to keep up with the changing trends, or fall short in the market. Benefits of an Effective Channel Marketing Strategy Let us look at what an effective channel marketing strategy can do for your business: Gain access to your partners’ audiences. Channel partner marketing is affordable as compared to other forms of marketing. Present value-added offerings (your partner’s) to your existing audience. Access a bigger team that works for your success. Use the unique resources that your partners have. Increase trust in your brand by collaborating with the right partners. Enhance your distribution channels with the help of your partners. Look into These Factors Before Creating a Channel Marketing Strategy A good channel partnership can help you scale your business. To enhance the results of your partnership, creating an effective channel marketing strategy is crucial. Here are things you should take into consideration before you create a strategy: Solid C-Suite Commitment Help your channel partners grow their businesses! There is no better way to form long-lasting partnerships. To make this happen, you need to invest your time in getting C-Suite buy-in in advance so that you can secure their commitment and resources to develop and implement your partner marketing strategy. Smooth On-boarding Welcome your partners to your channel program with proactive communication and engagement. Creating a welcome kit as your first touchpoint could be a great idea. The contents of this kit can be based on the solutions you provide and your business model. Be a no-hassle channel partner. Identify Pain Points For existing partners, identify their pain points like low partner engagement, abandoned campaigns, unutilized market development fund (MDF), ineffective campaigns, and metric measurement challenges. Other difficulties may arise, such as communication, effective lead scoring, and qualifying them. Your partner marketing strategy should offer solutions to these problems. Focus on Your Content Amplify your brand with high-quality content. Generate interest and maintain mindshare using content marketing pieces like blogs, flyers, data sheets, case studies, e-books, whitepapers, videos, webinars and more. Automate your social and digital campaigns using content platforms, and create a content factory that can be managed using channel marketing management software. Help partners by providing them with marketing agency assistance so they can use good content to market your products. Partner Marketing Strategy: 7 Crucial Channel Marketing Strategy Best Practices Now that we have established what goes into a partner marketing plan, let us look at seven best practices that can make your channel marketing strategy successful: Align Marketing and Channel Objectives You can define the success of your partnership using factors like active, new, engaged partners, and channel revenue. They should be the foundation of your partner marketing plan. This way, you can align your marketing and channel goals and invest in your partnership resources better. Tracking the dollars invested in marketing and enhancing partner production gives an insight into where to invest. When there are partnerships that go across countries, working together well with the local channel manager and big business sellers is the key to success and output. Decide Baselines & Metrics For your channel marketing campaign, establish appropriate baselines and chase improvements in relative performance because campaign-level ROI measurements can be challenging. Metrics like partner adoption of created assets and content, and partner metrics in lead generation can be tracked using PRM tools. Email metrics and leads generated are other metrics that can help you measure the success of your partner marketing plan. The ultimate metric should be the end-user satisfaction rate because it directly translates to a low churn rate. Become a Revenue Marketer Invest your time in customizing and spinning your high-quality, professional-level content assets for your sales organization and channel partners. This can help you tap into the potential ROI of each of your content pieces. Over time, it can add up significantly to your marketing performance. Impactful content is greatly enhanced by channel marketing. If you use it to target partners, you can gain partner mind share and create revenue opportunities that you might have otherwise missed. You can pair this type of soft marketing with the hard marketing that the C-Suite prefers. Map Partner Performance Ensure that you map individual partner performance in your assessments to get insights into what is working in your partner program and which partner strengths you can bank on and focus. Check how many deals are closing through the channel, and how many new opportunities are coming through your partners. If a partner isn’t doing much for the program, that partner is probably draining your resources. Take notice of your new partners’ performance in your channel marketing campaign over a set period to see what they are doing for you and the partner revenue. Keep Your ‘To’ and ‘Through’ Sorted When you look at your to-partners’ side, you aim to drive leads, and market qualified leads from a marketing and sales angle. You are also considering the cost per lead, what the partner did convert or lose, and why the partner came to you or why they didn’t. As for the through angle, your only point of analysis is the customer engagement and the satisfaction the partner has achieved through the partnership. Ensure you know why some partners are more successful than others, how many campaigns run through your platform, and how many of your partners are active on your PRM platform. Once you know what you need to look at from both angles, you are sorted and can run your marketing strategy effectively. Embed Engagement into Your Program Engagement is key to any partner alliance. Embedding engagement through to-partner marketing can enhance the channel partnership program. You need to plan, train, and gather feedback on your ‘to’ and ‘through’ channel marketing tactics. Some ways to embed engagement into the channel partnership programs are: Creating bundled marketing campaigns with product training to improve lead follow-up Co-partner marketing to drive thought leadership Transparent to-partner communications Partner advisory councils that focus on sales and marketing Quarterly feedback surveys to enhance partner marketing processes Executive sponsorship for key partners. Constantly Enhance Your Strategy Seek improvement in your channel marketing strategy by referring to your baselines and other KPIs. Measuring the baseline engagements will not only help you improve your strategy but it will also shed light on potential issues that may impede progress and growth. Keep an eye on what the partner revenue numbers look like, what kind of demand generation content they are leveraging, the webinars or events they are attending, and if they are mentioning you on their social media. Any big dips in numbers or engagement will help you redirect your efforts to what is causing the sudden shift. Wrapping It Up A channel partnership is a give and get kind of association. To get the most out of it, you need to focus on marketing strategies that target your partners and your end customers. Enhance your partnership by planning, reaffirming partnership goals, revamping your marketing strategy from time to time, and earning partner mindshare. FAQ What is channel marketing? Channel marketing includes to-channel marketing and through-channel marketing. To-channel marketing means recruiting and engaging sales partners, distributors, and their networks. Through-channel marketing means you market your products and services to end customers through your sales channel. What factors should you consider before creating a partner marketing strategy? Consider factors like abandoned campaigns, under-utilized MDF, ineffective campaigns, low partner engagement, and lack of visibility, measurement issues, lead qualifying and scoring, effective communication with end customers, and delivering professional marketing information to end customers. How can you improve your channel marketing strategy? Establish baselines to measure the success, look at partner revenue, demand generation content downloads, and partner social media mentions and find out the areas that need your attention. Revamp your strategy based on these insights.

Read More
MARKETING ANALYTICS

Hyper-personalization ROI and Digital Marketing

Article | February 24, 2022

Organizations talk a lot about their offerings and how their products are better than their competitors. The companies and service providers keep talking about their business models to promote themselves everywhere possible. "All noise," nothing tangible! We start approaching our prospects from every channel we possess in this process. Ever thought how boring it could be for your prospects to see the same jargon everywhere? Trust me, if your competitors see your branding campaigns for three months, they surely know you as a company. So now it's time to take it to the next level. And here's where marketing needs to think of ROI. What is ROI? Return Rate on Investment (ROI) measures the total monetary value of its investment versus its cost. Client acquisition strategies enable brands to quantify the worth of each customer by calculating the return on investment (ROI) each customer generates for the business. To compete effectively in today's marketplace, businesses must embrace a hyper-personalized marketing strategy that incorporates data, advanced analytics, and artificial intelligence technology throughout the customer journey and generates new levels of industry-specific customer insights and action. Diving deeper into the prospects that have shown interest, you can always make a better impact while simultaneously running your branding campaigns on a lite mode for them. The process starts with a simple progress chart where you visualize your accounts and the stages they are in - real-time, which helps your sales team drive higher conversions in the case of a B2B setup. Whereas in an online scenario, you can create loyalty buckets and treat your customers as they'd like to be treated. For example, in a D2C scenario, you must give your frequent buyer better discounts and higher loyalty points so that they never think about ditching you. No matter which business, the playbook needs to be set upright. In today's game, we have tools that tell us what the prime need of our customers is and being a marketer of that specific domain, and one must identify the best options to make their playbook efficient and ROI driven. Hyper-personalization is the latest and advanced method in the world of marketing will soon be a new normal, and the one who adapts it first will turn out to enjoy the larger share of the pie. The term "hyper-personalization" refers to the process of customizing product offerings and digital information on an individual basis. Hyper-personalization, which is tailored to a customer's tastes, requirements, and expectations, combines big data and artificial intelligence technologies to create customized experiences. This is accomplished by using data, analytics, artificial intelligence, and automation to provide customized and targeted experiences. How Hyper-personalization ROI Helps Business Businesses can use hyper-personalization to send highly contextualized communications to specific customers at the proper time and place and via the appropriate channel. As digital marketing becomes more competitive, hyper-personalized marketing enables firms to engage customers meaningfully, strengthen existing relationships, develop new ones, and enhance customer experience. With highly tailored marketing messages and service offerings, hyper-personalization helps the organization maintain a smooth outflow of business. When brands are able to implement an analytics-driven hyper-personalization strategy, their outsourcing of business becomes highly efficient, and the customer relationship develops to be sealed over time. Hyper customization utilizes automation and intelligent insights to provide customized content to each unique user. Times change, and the modus operandi for each aspect of life needs some shapeshift. A personalized approach is not an invention. It has been happening since ancient times and the reign of kings. But since every customer has now become a king, marketers need to rethink modes and methods to maximize ROI. "As we live in a world where only the strongest survive." Businesses must embrace a hyper-personalized marketing approach that includes data, advanced analytics, and artificial intelligence technologies across the customer journey and generates unprecedented levels of industry-specific customer insights and action to compete effectively in today's economy. In the case of a B2B setup, the process begins with a basic progress chart that allows you to see your accounts and the stages they are in in real time, which really aids your sales staff in driving higher conversions. In an online setting, on the other hand, you can construct loyalty buckets and treat your consumers the way they want to be treated. In a D2C scenario, for example, you must provide better discounts and higher loyalty points to your frequent buyers so that they never consider leaving you. Regardless of the industry, the playbook must be properly set up. We now have technologies that inform us what our customers' primary needs are, and as a marketer in that domain, one must discover the best solutions to make their playbook efficient and ROI-driven.

Read More
CRM

How Can a CRM Strategy Enhance Your Business?

Article | March 10, 2022

In the B2B domain, relationship management plays a key role in business growth. As compared to B2C, B2B relationship management is complex. B2B sales cycles are longer, business is catered to key accounts, which are retained through regular contact, and there are multiple decision-makers who make purchase decisions. Seamless co-operation can happen only when a powerful tool like cloud-based CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software collects crucial data and assists the management strategy. 74% of respondents say that CRM solutions give them better access to customer data, which is crucial to offering personalized services to accounts. (Source: Resco) What is a B2B CRM Strategy? A Customer Relationship Management (CRM) strategy helps improve the conversion rate, retain customers better, and capture more leads. A B2B CRM strategy is used to sell services or products to accounts and has complex sales processes, fewer leads, and a longer sales cycle as opposed to B2C’s simple sales processes, more leads, and shorter sales cycle. A customer relationship strategy includes listing methods to oversee an influx in profits and an increase in sales. It helps in detecting shortcomings in your B2B CRM process and comes up with advanced solutions using critical data to enhance your management. To execute this strategy, you should choose an efficient cloud-based CRM software that is securely hosted on the servers of your CRM provider. You can access it over the internet from anywhere. With the help of good CRM software, you can manage your contacts, gain insights into your customers, understand and fulfill their needs at every stage of the sales cycle. Types of CRM Strategies for Business There are three types of CRM strategies for businesses. You can choose an appropriate strategy based on your business goals and objectives. Collaborative CRM This type of strategy focuses on breaking the silos between the sales, marketing, and customer service teams. These teams may not be in the same geographical location, use different channels to connect with the customer, and have different skills and specialities. Such differences make it hard for these teams to come together and work towards the same goal - an outstanding customer experience. Sharing information between these teams throughout the customer journey is vital for an optimum customer experience. Operational CRM Businesses use operational CRM for streamlining customer relationships using tools to understand and handle complete customer journeys, even those with multiple touch points. It also supports marketing automation, service and sales automation so that employees don’t have to manually carry out all the campaigns. Instead, they can allot more time to carry out activities that need human interaction. Analytical CRM New B2B marketing strategies include digital tools and platforms. A big chunk of customer data that is gathered through these tools and other channels may not be used accurately without a feature-rich platform that analyzes customer behavior. Through analytical CRM, you can get a detailed analysis of the data. It helps with customer retention and solving customers’ problems swiftly. Role of CRM in Business Strategy The main role of CRM is to enable teams that handle customers with relevant customer data so that they can offer an optimum customer experience (CX). So, a CRM strategy example would be a business strategy that focuses on customer satisfaction. “The C-suite plays a fundamental role in giving appropriate weight to CRM across the business, thereby ensuring that it is executed appropriately across all layers of the business and all the way down to the customer.” - Anders Lindholm, Managing Partner of Boyden Italy. CRM helps C-level executives to: Understand their customers better Retain their customers with impressive CX Bring in new customers Increase their revenue Manage customers economically Using CRM in business is also necessary if you want to achieve business growth through consumer-centric ideas. Let us take a look at the role of CRM in business strategy in detail: Provides Reliable Reports Businesses procure actionable customer data from social media, Google Analytics, apps, and business software. However, it becomes useless if it is unorganized. CRM organizes this data and collates it for better understanding. It can also categorize the customers into leads, sales, or opportunities. AI-based marketing automation is also possible using CRM. Allows Drip Campaigning Implementing drip campaigns to target a specific audience cluster with an interest in a niche product is easy because of the dynamic content that CRM provides. These drip campaigns are triggered by specific actions and send out emails to get in touch with the audience. They can be used to convert leads throughout the sales funnel. Enhances CX Through the data it collects, CRM provides insight into the issues and needs of the customers. This makes it easier for a customer service team to tackle issues that customers face. They don’t have to spend time or energy digging for information because they have all the data they need on their CRM dashboards. A quicker resolution time and higher customer satisfaction translate to an improved bottom line. Cross-department Data Accessibility CRM data can be accessed across departments that may not necessarily be in the same location. This kind of accessibility makes it easier for all departments to optimize their processes. Provides Business Insights Companies easily track business intelligence metrics that help them understand which campaigns are generating leads and how much time it takes to follow up with leads. They can also gauge salesperson performance, business KPIs (closed cases, average call time, average user rating), customer sales, and product sales, up-selling and cross-selling data. Aligns Core Teams All the teams that come into contact with customers are used to working in silos. That doesn't mean that CRM data won't help them. It can show them how to focus their goals and efforts on getting, nurturing, and converting leads, as well as giving customers a great experience. Creating an Effective CRM Strategy To create an effective CRM strategy, follow these steps: Identify your position in the market Know your product or service Define goals and vision Determine the ICP and target audience Map the customer’s journey Create a 360° CX experience Choose a good CRM software Sync everything with your CRM software Measure the performance of your strategy using KPIs British Airways’ Volume Requests Increased after Using CRM British Airways set a great example of a CRM strategy using Teradata CRM. Their volume requests increased by 150%. They automated campaigns and customer communications for their integrated warehouse through Teradata and saw amazing results. Conclusion The role of CRM is crucial in your business strategy. Adopting the best CRM strategy can bring you outstanding results and help you focus on your customers closely. FAQ Which companies offer CRM software solutions? Companies like Salesforce, Oracle, Zendesk, Microsoft, Hubspot, and Agile offer CRM software solutions. How can a CRM strategy help you scale your business? CRM can help you offer an enhanced customer experience, analyze customer behavior, bring your core performance teams together, and automate your marketing campaigns. How can you measure the success of your CRM strategy? Upsell rate, close rate, average value of deals, duration of sales cycle, and length of pipeline stages are some of the important KPIs to measure the success of your CRM strategy.

Read More
CHANNEL PARTNERSHIPS

Words of Wisdom: 5 Inspiring Quotes from Women Leaders

Article | March 8, 2022

“It is within everyone’s grasp to be a CEO.” – Martha Stewart, Founder, CEO, Martha Stewart Living OmniMedia From the 1970s to the present day, women haven’t stopped dreaming about and chasing the goal of successful entrepreneurship, building healthy communities, and uplifting other women in their pursuit of excellence. Women who are not afraid to take on challenges, vow to break stereotypes, have an exemplary sense of duty, and have the ambition to reach new heights, make femininity a force to be reckoned with. On International Women’s Day 2022, we are celebrating inspiring women who have made a difference in their industry. Take a minute to read through the conversations we’ve had with them. Know Your Most Powerful Asset “Your most powerful audience is your employees. They are your greatest point of social proof.”- Kate Bradley Chernis, Founder and CEO at Lately What You Should Focus On “Rather than focusing on strategy, planning and creativity, many marketers instead spend the majority of their time cleaning and analyzing data.” – Yogeeta Chainani, Co-Founder and CPO at Swaarm There Is No End to Learning “Be a sponge and listen as much as you can. Go to those optional meetings. The more you learn and are exposed to early on, the better.”- Elizabeth Irvine, VP of Marketing at MarketMuse Time Management Is the Key to Success “Plenty of people never thought they would end up where they did, but almost all of them had discipline, rigor, and a deep learning mentality. Be flexible with your goals but really clear on how you spend your day/week/life.” – Kady S, SVP Global Head of Marketing at Klaviyo Carve Your Niche “If you have a topic you know no one else is talking about and that’s important to your clients, put your focus there.” - Amanda Sexton, Founder at FocusWorks Marketing

Read More
MARKETING STRATEGY

7 Crucial Channel Marketing Strategy Best Practices

Article | February 28, 2022

Tracey Noonan and Danielle Vilagie started Wicked Good Cupcakes after taking a cake-decorating class together and enjoying it immensely. Wicked Good Cupcakes wanted to serve customers out of town. They came up with the ‘portable cupcake in a jar’ concept to safely ship their cupcakes. They hired C Squared Social, a digital agency, to run their online campaigns so they could generate new leads and increase their reach. C Squared, in turn, partnered with Facebook Business Partner Zapier. Zapier used Facebook’s innovative lead ad functions to stitch together CRM, email marketing, and team messaging tools. This was done to capture every opportunity for Wicked Good Cupcakes. Through its channel partner Zapier, Facebook facilitated an end customer with a 94% lower average cost per lead, a 24% contact response rate from leads, and a 48x increase in leads in just 3.5 months from the launch of the campaign. This is the power of channel partnership. But how did Zapier know what features from Facebook’s marketing offerings it could use to deliver amazing results for Wicked Good Cupcakes? It’s because Facebook has vetted Zapier to advertise, sell, and engage end customers with Facebook’s offerings. Facebook did this by using effective to-partner marketing. Let us now explore channel partner marketing in detail. What is Channel Partner Marketing? Channel partners are intermediaries between your product and the end customer. Channel partner marketing uses methods to promote products or services to channel partners or to end customers through channel partners. This kind of marketing considers the manufacturer’s expectations, requirements, and goals, channel partners, and their audiences. In a recent interview with Media 7, Sam O’Brien, CMO at Affise, talked about partner marketing. Partner market has huge growth at the moment. It's really taken off, and still, it seems quite complex to people. We're giving companies a faster way to start Partner Marketing. Find the partners you want to work with, or the publishers, or creators, or affiliates, to promote your business.” Sam O’Brien, CMO at Affise If you use an effective partner marketing strategy, you want to make sure that everyone involved in a channel partnership is happy. Why Should Channel Partner Marketing be a Priority? 54% of companies say partnerships drive more than 20% of total company revenue. (Source: Partnerize). To drive revenue, marketing is important. Here are some of the reasons why channel partners should make channel partner marketing a priority: The way customers or businesses zero-in on a product or service has changed. When it comes to technology products or other professional services, audiences rely on finding the best alternative online. This intensifies the competition for channel partners. They need to beat regional, national, non-traditional, online, and local competitors to land a sale. Marketing technology has also evolved dramatically. It is a dynamic mix of thought leadership, search authority, and expert lead generation to create measurable results. Channel partners need to focus on marketing and invest effort, resources, and time to keep up with the changing trends, or fall short in the market. Benefits of an Effective Channel Marketing Strategy Let us look at what an effective channel marketing strategy can do for your business: Gain access to your partners’ audiences. Channel partner marketing is affordable as compared to other forms of marketing. Present value-added offerings (your partner’s) to your existing audience. Access a bigger team that works for your success. Use the unique resources that your partners have. Increase trust in your brand by collaborating with the right partners. Enhance your distribution channels with the help of your partners. Look into These Factors Before Creating a Channel Marketing Strategy A good channel partnership can help you scale your business. To enhance the results of your partnership, creating an effective channel marketing strategy is crucial. Here are things you should take into consideration before you create a strategy: Solid C-Suite Commitment Help your channel partners grow their businesses! There is no better way to form long-lasting partnerships. To make this happen, you need to invest your time in getting C-Suite buy-in in advance so that you can secure their commitment and resources to develop and implement your partner marketing strategy. Smooth On-boarding Welcome your partners to your channel program with proactive communication and engagement. Creating a welcome kit as your first touchpoint could be a great idea. The contents of this kit can be based on the solutions you provide and your business model. Be a no-hassle channel partner. Identify Pain Points For existing partners, identify their pain points like low partner engagement, abandoned campaigns, unutilized market development fund (MDF), ineffective campaigns, and metric measurement challenges. Other difficulties may arise, such as communication, effective lead scoring, and qualifying them. Your partner marketing strategy should offer solutions to these problems. Focus on Your Content Amplify your brand with high-quality content. Generate interest and maintain mindshare using content marketing pieces like blogs, flyers, data sheets, case studies, e-books, whitepapers, videos, webinars and more. Automate your social and digital campaigns using content platforms, and create a content factory that can be managed using channel marketing management software. Help partners by providing them with marketing agency assistance so they can use good content to market your products. Partner Marketing Strategy: 7 Crucial Channel Marketing Strategy Best Practices Now that we have established what goes into a partner marketing plan, let us look at seven best practices that can make your channel marketing strategy successful: Align Marketing and Channel Objectives You can define the success of your partnership using factors like active, new, engaged partners, and channel revenue. They should be the foundation of your partner marketing plan. This way, you can align your marketing and channel goals and invest in your partnership resources better. Tracking the dollars invested in marketing and enhancing partner production gives an insight into where to invest. When there are partnerships that go across countries, working together well with the local channel manager and big business sellers is the key to success and output. Decide Baselines & Metrics For your channel marketing campaign, establish appropriate baselines and chase improvements in relative performance because campaign-level ROI measurements can be challenging. Metrics like partner adoption of created assets and content, and partner metrics in lead generation can be tracked using PRM tools. Email metrics and leads generated are other metrics that can help you measure the success of your partner marketing plan. The ultimate metric should be the end-user satisfaction rate because it directly translates to a low churn rate. Become a Revenue Marketer Invest your time in customizing and spinning your high-quality, professional-level content assets for your sales organization and channel partners. This can help you tap into the potential ROI of each of your content pieces. Over time, it can add up significantly to your marketing performance. Impactful content is greatly enhanced by channel marketing. If you use it to target partners, you can gain partner mind share and create revenue opportunities that you might have otherwise missed. You can pair this type of soft marketing with the hard marketing that the C-Suite prefers. Map Partner Performance Ensure that you map individual partner performance in your assessments to get insights into what is working in your partner program and which partner strengths you can bank on and focus. Check how many deals are closing through the channel, and how many new opportunities are coming through your partners. If a partner isn’t doing much for the program, that partner is probably draining your resources. Take notice of your new partners’ performance in your channel marketing campaign over a set period to see what they are doing for you and the partner revenue. Keep Your ‘To’ and ‘Through’ Sorted When you look at your to-partners’ side, you aim to drive leads, and market qualified leads from a marketing and sales angle. You are also considering the cost per lead, what the partner did convert or lose, and why the partner came to you or why they didn’t. As for the through angle, your only point of analysis is the customer engagement and the satisfaction the partner has achieved through the partnership. Ensure you know why some partners are more successful than others, how many campaigns run through your platform, and how many of your partners are active on your PRM platform. Once you know what you need to look at from both angles, you are sorted and can run your marketing strategy effectively. Embed Engagement into Your Program Engagement is key to any partner alliance. Embedding engagement through to-partner marketing can enhance the channel partnership program. You need to plan, train, and gather feedback on your ‘to’ and ‘through’ channel marketing tactics. Some ways to embed engagement into the channel partnership programs are: Creating bundled marketing campaigns with product training to improve lead follow-up Co-partner marketing to drive thought leadership Transparent to-partner communications Partner advisory councils that focus on sales and marketing Quarterly feedback surveys to enhance partner marketing processes Executive sponsorship for key partners. Constantly Enhance Your Strategy Seek improvement in your channel marketing strategy by referring to your baselines and other KPIs. Measuring the baseline engagements will not only help you improve your strategy but it will also shed light on potential issues that may impede progress and growth. Keep an eye on what the partner revenue numbers look like, what kind of demand generation content they are leveraging, the webinars or events they are attending, and if they are mentioning you on their social media. Any big dips in numbers or engagement will help you redirect your efforts to what is causing the sudden shift. Wrapping It Up A channel partnership is a give and get kind of association. To get the most out of it, you need to focus on marketing strategies that target your partners and your end customers. Enhance your partnership by planning, reaffirming partnership goals, revamping your marketing strategy from time to time, and earning partner mindshare. FAQ What is channel marketing? Channel marketing includes to-channel marketing and through-channel marketing. To-channel marketing means recruiting and engaging sales partners, distributors, and their networks. Through-channel marketing means you market your products and services to end customers through your sales channel. What factors should you consider before creating a partner marketing strategy? Consider factors like abandoned campaigns, under-utilized MDF, ineffective campaigns, low partner engagement, and lack of visibility, measurement issues, lead qualifying and scoring, effective communication with end customers, and delivering professional marketing information to end customers. How can you improve your channel marketing strategy? Establish baselines to measure the success, look at partner revenue, demand generation content downloads, and partner social media mentions and find out the areas that need your attention. Revamp your strategy based on these insights.

Read More
MARKETING ANALYTICS

Hyper-personalization ROI and Digital Marketing

Article | February 24, 2022

Organizations talk a lot about their offerings and how their products are better than their competitors. The companies and service providers keep talking about their business models to promote themselves everywhere possible. "All noise," nothing tangible! We start approaching our prospects from every channel we possess in this process. Ever thought how boring it could be for your prospects to see the same jargon everywhere? Trust me, if your competitors see your branding campaigns for three months, they surely know you as a company. So now it's time to take it to the next level. And here's where marketing needs to think of ROI. What is ROI? Return Rate on Investment (ROI) measures the total monetary value of its investment versus its cost. Client acquisition strategies enable brands to quantify the worth of each customer by calculating the return on investment (ROI) each customer generates for the business. To compete effectively in today's marketplace, businesses must embrace a hyper-personalized marketing strategy that incorporates data, advanced analytics, and artificial intelligence technology throughout the customer journey and generates new levels of industry-specific customer insights and action. Diving deeper into the prospects that have shown interest, you can always make a better impact while simultaneously running your branding campaigns on a lite mode for them. The process starts with a simple progress chart where you visualize your accounts and the stages they are in - real-time, which helps your sales team drive higher conversions in the case of a B2B setup. Whereas in an online scenario, you can create loyalty buckets and treat your customers as they'd like to be treated. For example, in a D2C scenario, you must give your frequent buyer better discounts and higher loyalty points so that they never think about ditching you. No matter which business, the playbook needs to be set upright. In today's game, we have tools that tell us what the prime need of our customers is and being a marketer of that specific domain, and one must identify the best options to make their playbook efficient and ROI driven. Hyper-personalization is the latest and advanced method in the world of marketing will soon be a new normal, and the one who adapts it first will turn out to enjoy the larger share of the pie. The term "hyper-personalization" refers to the process of customizing product offerings and digital information on an individual basis. Hyper-personalization, which is tailored to a customer's tastes, requirements, and expectations, combines big data and artificial intelligence technologies to create customized experiences. This is accomplished by using data, analytics, artificial intelligence, and automation to provide customized and targeted experiences. How Hyper-personalization ROI Helps Business Businesses can use hyper-personalization to send highly contextualized communications to specific customers at the proper time and place and via the appropriate channel. As digital marketing becomes more competitive, hyper-personalized marketing enables firms to engage customers meaningfully, strengthen existing relationships, develop new ones, and enhance customer experience. With highly tailored marketing messages and service offerings, hyper-personalization helps the organization maintain a smooth outflow of business. When brands are able to implement an analytics-driven hyper-personalization strategy, their outsourcing of business becomes highly efficient, and the customer relationship develops to be sealed over time. Hyper customization utilizes automation and intelligent insights to provide customized content to each unique user. Times change, and the modus operandi for each aspect of life needs some shapeshift. A personalized approach is not an invention. It has been happening since ancient times and the reign of kings. But since every customer has now become a king, marketers need to rethink modes and methods to maximize ROI. "As we live in a world where only the strongest survive." Businesses must embrace a hyper-personalized marketing approach that includes data, advanced analytics, and artificial intelligence technologies across the customer journey and generates unprecedented levels of industry-specific customer insights and action to compete effectively in today's economy. In the case of a B2B setup, the process begins with a basic progress chart that allows you to see your accounts and the stages they are in in real time, which really aids your sales staff in driving higher conversions. In an online setting, on the other hand, you can construct loyalty buckets and treat your consumers the way they want to be treated. In a D2C scenario, for example, you must provide better discounts and higher loyalty points to your frequent buyers so that they never consider leaving you. Regardless of the industry, the playbook must be properly set up. We now have technologies that inform us what our customers' primary needs are, and as a marketer in that domain, one must discover the best solutions to make their playbook efficient and ROI-driven.

Read More
MORE ARTICLES

Spotlight

Mediaworks Online Marketing

Mediaworks is one of the leading online marketing agencies in the UK. We are a young, vibrant, dedicated, client-focused business. We specialise in organic search engine optimisation that drives leads, sales and brand visibility for our clients, but we are also experts in pay-per-click, online reputation management, conversion rate optimisation and content marketing...

Events