Yet, we’re now seeing another shift in marketing, the rise of hyper-personalization. With advances in AI and data analytics, companies can now gather and analyze large amounts of customer data to create highly personalized and targeted marketing campaigns. For marketers, this means a deeper dive into data analysis and strategy to reach customers more personally and effectively than ever. 

The evolution of marketing personalization   

Before we dive into the benefits of hyper-personalization, let’s look at how personalized marketing has evolved over time.  

Traditional marketing personalization involved segmenting customers into broad categories based on factors such as age, gender, and location. This approach was effective in targeting large groups of people with similar characteristics, but it lacked the personal touch that today’s consumers crave. 

With the rise of social media and data-driven methods, marketers gained the ability to gather detailed insights about their customers. This opened the door to personalized marketing, where businesses could use insights from activities like web browsing and past purchases to create messages that resonate with audiences. 

And the evidence supports the effectiveness of personalization. McKinsey reports that 77% of B2B companies using personalized experiences see an increase in market share. Moreover, a recent SmarterHQ study reveals that 72% of consumers only interact with marketing materials customized to their unique interests.  

But, as our world becomes more digitally connected, consumers expect even more personal touches to their buying experience. And that’s where hyper-personalization comes in.  

Understanding hyper-personalization  

Hyper-personalization takes personalized marketing to the next level. With the power of predictive analytics, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and real-time data, we can finely tune marketing strategies to align with the preferences, behaviors, and needs of each individual. 

This marketing strategy goes beyond sorting customers into large groups. It zooms in on every individual, turning massive amounts of data from online activity into highly personalized interactions. By using advanced algorithms and AI, every click, search, and purchase is analyzed, uncovering unique patterns and preferences for each consumer.  

This careful, individualized approach enhances the customer experience, significantly boosting engagement and conversion rates. It marks a new era in personalized marketing. 

The role of technology in hyper-personalization    

The primary driver behind hyper-personalization’s rise is the advancement in technology. This makes it possible to sift through vast amounts of data quickly and accurately. Without this, it would be impossible for businesses to personalize their marketing strategies on such a granular level. 

1. Artificial intelligence and machine learning  

Artificial intelligence and machine learning are at the core of hyper-personalization. These technologies enable businesses to analyze huge volumes of data in real-time, identify patterns, and make predictions about individual consumer behavior. This allows businesses to create targeted and personalized messages across different channels. It’s one thing to know your audience is looking for solutions you can provide; it’s another to communicate this in a way that resonates. AI and machine learning step in here, enabling the creation of targeted messages that speak directly to the individual. This level of personal engagement boosts the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns, making every message count. The depth and agility provided by these technologies foster a marketing environment that is not just dynamic but also deeply connected to the individual needs and expectations of the customer. 

2. Real time data analytics 

Real-time data analytics allow marketers to track customer behavior and preferences in the moment. By monitoring customer interactions with a website or app, businesses can adjust their messaging and offers in real-time to create a more personalized experience. By leveraging real-time data analytics, companies can observe the immediate impact of their strategies and swiftly pivot to enhance customer engagement. This isn’t just about pushing out offers; it’s about nurturing a two-way conversation with customers, where their actions guide the business’s responses. Whether it’s adjusting email marketing campaigns, fine-tuning ad placements, or tweaking the user interface for better online experiences, the agility afforded by real-time insights can significantly boost marketing effectiveness.

3. Predictive analytics 

Predictive analytics use machine learning and statistical algorithms to forecast future outcomes based on historical data. In terms of hyper-personalization, this means that businesses can anticipate customer needs and preferences, allowing for highly targeted marketing campaigns that resonate with each individual. By leveraging predictive analytics, businesses can sift through vast amounts of data to identify potential future behaviors of their customers. This isn’t just about guessing what a customer might like based on past purchases; it’s an advanced, nuanced approach that considers a multitude of factors, including browsing patterns, interaction rates, and even social media activity.

4. Natural Language Processing (NLP)  

NLP is an AI-powered technology that allows computers to understand and interpret human language. This enables businesses to gather insights from customer feedback and interactions on social media, email, and other channels. By understanding the tone, sentiment, and context of customer communications, marketers can personalize messaging further. 

5. Big Data technologies  

Hyper-personalization relies on the analysis of large quantities of data. Big Data technologies, such as Apache Hadoop and MongoDB, make it possible to process and analyze this data quickly and efficiently. This allows marketers to create highly personalized campaigns based on real-time insights. 

Hyper-personalization in practice 

Here are five clear examples of how hyper-personalization improves marketing efforts: 

1. Recommendation engines  

E-commerce giants like Amazon and Netflix are known for their highly personalized recommendation engines. By analyzing customers’ past purchases, browsing history, and interactions with the platform, these companies can suggest products or content that aligns with each customer’s interests. But it’s not just e-commerce giants that can benefit from recommendation engines. With advances in technology and data analysis, businesses of all sizes can now harness the power of personalized recommendations to enhance their 

2. Dynamic content personalization 

Businesses can use dynamic content personalization to tailor website or app content based on a customer’s past interactions with the brand. For example, if a customer has shown interest in certain products or services, those items can be highlighted prominently on their next visit to the site.  

3. Personalized email marketing 

Using data from past purchases, website interactions, and demographic information, businesses can create highly personalized email campaigns that speak directly to each individual’s interests and needs. It’s also about timing. Sending these tailored messages at just the right moment can significantly boost engagement rates. Whether it’s a birthday discount, a seasonal offer that aligns with past buying behavior, or a gentle nudge to revisit an abandoned cart, the impact is profound.

To sum up, personalized email marketing is much more than a trend; it’s a robust strategy that can turbo-charge customer engagement and drive results. By focusing on the individual, businesses can craft email campaigns that are not only effective but also enjoyable for customers to receive.

4. Location-based marketing 

By using location data from a customer’s mobile device, businesses can create hyper-targeted marketing messages and offers based on their current location. For example, a retail store could send a personalized discount offer to customers close to their physical storefront. It opens up a dialogue between the brand and its customers, enabling richer, more personal engagement. By understanding where their customers are and how they move throughout the day, businesses can optimize their marketing strategies to align with the customer’s lifestyle and routine.

5. Personalized retargeting ads  

Retargeting ads use data from a customer’s online behavior to show them relevant ads as they browse the web. With hyper-personalization, these retargeting ads can be tailored even further based on individual preferences and interests. 

The future of hyper-personalization  

As technology continues to advance, we can expect hyper-personalization to become an even more dominant force in the marketing world. With consumers expecting personalized experiences at every touchpoint, businesses that don’t adopt this strategy risk falling behind their competitors.  

Moreover, hyper-personalization offers many benefits beyond increased engagement and conversion rates. It means businesses can craft marketing campaigns tailored not just to current customer preferences but also to foresee and meet their needs and desires in real-time. This predictive capability will allow companies to stay one step ahead, offering products and services that consumers may not yet realize they want. This enhances customer satisfaction and loyalty. 

With hyper-personalization becoming increasingly important in email campaigns, it’s essential to have a reliable and efficient tool to personalize your business emails. Exclaimer makes it easy for businesses to implement hyper-personalization in their email marketing efforts. 

This article was brought to you by Exclaimer 

The post The Rise of Hyper-Personalization in Marketing appeared first on RevGenius.

In this blog, we’ll break down everything you need to know about third-party cookies, how their phase-out will affect your marketing strategy, and alternative tactics to continue reaching your target audience.

What are third-party cookies?

Third-party cookies are small text files created by websites other than the one a user is currently visiting. These cookies are stored in a user’s browser and track their online activities across different websites. They allow advertisers to collect information about users’ behavior, such as pages visited, products purchased, and ads clicked, to create targeted ad campaigns. 

For example, if you visit an online shopping site and browse for shoes, that information can be captured by third-party cookies and used to show you shoe ads on other websites you visit.

What’s happening to third-party cookies?

With the rise of data breaches and misuse of personal information, consumers have become wary and protective of their data. They demand greater control over their personal data, expect their consent to be respected, and want their online experiences to be more personalized and meaningful.

As a result, major web browsers have implemented measures to limit or block third-party cookies. In 2019, Apple’s Safari browser took the lead by blocking third-party cookies by default, followed by Mozilla Firefox. Google Chrome, currently dominating the web browser market, plans to phase out third-party cookies by the third quarter of 2024.

This phase-out will have major implications for marketers, affecting advertising, analytics, personalization, and privacy efforts. There will be challenges in tracking users across websites, limiting the precision of targeted ads. Additionally, tracking and attributing conversions will become more complex.

Data privacy considerations relating to third-party cookies

The topic of third-party cookies has gained significant attention in the field of data privacy, sparking discussions on user rights and corporate accountability. These tracking technologies, often embedded invisibly on websites, collect detailed information about users’ online behaviors, preferences, and activities, raising significant privacy concerns. Their widespread use has sparked a vigorous debate among stakeholders about the ethics of data collection and usage, emphasizing the need for a delicate balance between personalized user experiences and the protection of personal data. As a result, intense debates surrounding data ethics have emerged, leading to the implementation of stricter regulations to protect consumers’ personal information.

The role of GDPR

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) addresses the use of third-party cookies to safeguard individual privacy within the European Union. Under GDPR, organizations must obtain explicit, informed consent from users before processing their data, including the use of third-party cookies.

Imagine a scenario where an online bookstore uses third-party cookies to gather insights on a visitor’s reading interests and previous purchases. According to GDPR regulations, the bookstore must clearly explain how the visitor’s data is collected, its purpose, and who it’s shared with. Visitors then have the right to give or withhold consent, granting them autonomy over their digital footprint. Noncompliance with GDPR requirements can result in substantial fines and harm the company’s reputation.

Understanding PECR

The Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations (PECR) is a UK law that stands alongside GDPR. It sets specific rules for electronic communications, including email marketing and the use of third-party cookies. By mandate, PECR requires that users must not only be informed about the use of third-party cookies but also must provide their consent before these cookies can be placed on their devices.

The use of Google Analytics without third-party cookies

Google Analytics is one of the most widely used web analytics tools that rely on third-party cookies to track user behavior. As Google Chrome phases out support for third-party cookies, Google has announced its intentions to use alternative technologies such as machine learning algorithms and first-party data to fill in the gaps.

The launch of Google Analytics 4 (GA4) in July 2023 aims to uphold user privacy while still providing valuable insights. GA4 takes a privacy-first tracking approach, using machine learning to fill in data gaps instead of relying on third-party cookies. This ensures businesses can gain a comprehensive view of the customer journey across devices while complying with new privacy regulations.

Exploring the alternatives to third-party cookies in marketing

While phasing out third-party cookies may seem daunting, it opens up an opportunity for marketers to forge a new path in the digital landscape. Here are some alternative approaches to keep your marketing efforts resilient and privacy-compliant:

First-party data

First-party data refers to information obtained directly from your audience. It includes interactions on your website, purchase history, and email subscriptions. Unlike third-party cookies, this data requires transparency and incentives to obtain, using relevant and personalized touchpoints in your marketing strategies. However, the collection of such data doesn’t come by default. It necessitates a foundation of trust and transparency with your audience. Your customers share their data with the understanding that it elevates their experience, making each interaction more personalized and more meaningful.

Contextual advertising

Contextual advertising is the practice of placing ads based on the content of a webpage. Instead of tracking user behavior, contextual targeting relies on keywords, demographics, and website categories to display relevant ads. While it may seem less precise than third-party cookies, contextual advertising avoids privacy concerns and can still deliver effective results.

AI and machine learning 

Artificial intelligence and machine learning can identify patterns in consumer behavior and use that data to create targeted marketing campaigns. By leveraging predictive analytics and customer behavior models derived from on-site interactions, personalized experiences that were once dependent on cookies can be replicated without privacy concerns.

Content-driven strategies 

Content plays a vital role, not only in supporting your strategy to gather first-party data, but also in capturing zero-party data. This refers to data that customers willingly share with a business, encompassing their preferences, purchase intentions, and personal contexts. Interactive content, such as surveys and quizzes on your website or social platforms, serves as an effective means to collect zero-party data. These tools do more than just entertain; they’re strategic means to an end. By engaging users in a meaningful way, they encourage them to share information directly. This act of sharing isn’t just beneficial; it’s a clear indicator of trust and a willingness to engage with your brand on a deeper level. Interactive content isn’t just a means to collect data; it’s a way to enhance user experience, adding value and deepening engagement. Each quiz taken or survey completed is an opportunity for your audience to reflect on their preferences and see themselves in your products or services. In return, you gain authentic insights that can guide your content strategy, product development, and marketing campaigns, ensuring they are as effective and efficient as possible.

One-to-one communications

One-to-one communication is the best way to foster trust. By transforming every email your business sends into a targeted marketing campaign, you enable hyper-personalized one-to-one communication without compromising user privacy. Email signatures provide an opportunity to build brand loyalty, nurture relationships with your audience, and convey important information.

In a world where third-party cookies are becoming obsolete, Exclaimer emerges as the ultimate ally for marketers. It equips you with the necessary tools to effortlessly incorporate dynamic content such as promotions, social links, and legal disclaimers into your email signatures. This innovative approach not only enhances your marketing efforts but also ensures compliance with privacy regulations, instilling trust and dependability in your brand.

This article was brought to you by Exclaimer.

The post Navigating the World of Third-Party Cookies and Email Signatures appeared first on RevGenius.

Catch the full discussion here:

So what are the 4 things you need to double down on in 2024?

1. Next-level Customer Advocacy 
2. Brand Authenticity 
3. Saying Less Things But Better (And More Often)
4. Playing Offense in Marketing 

Let’s get into what these are about.

Trend #1: Next-level Customer Advocacy 

Idea: Transforming customers into your star promoters 

One of the 2024 trends is investing in customer relationships and amplifying their voices. This isn’t just about gathering testimonials or producing videos but building robust customer advocacy programs by proactively promoting customers. One of the ideas is to feature them in podcasts and publications that align with their industries and roles. It’s a shift towards integrating customers more dynamically within marketing strategies, positioning them at the forefront and making them the stars of the content efforts. 

Execution

Create a program around customer advocacy. Map out customers, industries, and use cases. Look for industry connections and use your network. Jess Cook, the Head of Comms & Content at Island started out with the notion of educating a broader audience about their product and letting the customers naturally advocate for it. They found it more effective to let customers speak about their experiences, which has helped Island connect with broader markets more authentically. How do you measure success? By looking at: branded search, long-tail search and attribution – checked during discovery calls and via the form. 

Trend #2 Cultivating Brand Authenticity 

2024 will be a pivotal year for brand building, especially within the B2B sector. Companies need to establish authentic, distinct identities more than ever. With ‘sea of sameness’, and decreasing trust in SaaS content, brands must differentiate themselves meaningfully. Only 12% of buyers consider software companies as trustworthy information sources, with many expressing that much of the content they encounter feels too similar and lacks credibility. Building brand trust is key to get ahead. 

There are two main factors driving this trend. 

• First, the struggle for differentiation has led brands to experiment creatively, although this often results in copycat strategies so visible on Linkedin 
• Second, the significant trust buyers place in independent reviews over company-produced content suggests a shift towards more authentic engagement strategies.

To overcome these challenges, brands need to focus on creating a strong brand identity that goes beyond just logos and colors. This means making sure that everything the company does is in line with its core values and the promises it makes to its customers. (Read more about Andy Raski’s “Promised Land” strategy here.)

Consistency across all areas, from customer service to sales, is key. It is about understanding why your company exists, whom it serves, and the unique value it promises to deliver.

It’s worth looking at companies like Drift, Gong, and HubSpot that have shown that focusing on these aspects can really make a company stand out. Building a brand requires revisiting your company’s core values and mission—essentially why you do what you do. This often involves internal workshops and discussions, led by marketing leaders. Creating content that’s consistent and “on brand” will amplify the efforts. 

Trend #3: Saying Less Things But Better (And More Often)

It’s interesting that companies find consistent messaging boring while they should probably look for strategic balance: advocating for saying fewer things more effectively while introducing new actions to reinforce these messages.

With Google seemingly rewarding high-quality, high-value content, it’s super important to have a clear and unique POV in both product development and marketing – which becomes even more crucial in the AI-dominated content reality.

Output becomes easier, volume becomes easier – the quality becomes more important

Trend #4: Playing Offense vs. Defense

Justin Simon focused on differentiation. From his experience at Metadata, Justin learned that even minor differentiations can significantly impact a company’s visibility and success. He advised companies to adopt a proactive approach, deliberately choosing to differ from the norm – even if just a little bit. 

Practical insights

Content mapping:  Build a master list of topic ideas and come back to them on a regular basis. Having that tracking in place helps you have conversations with leaders and decision-makers. It will be your go-to resource to check what worked and resonated. Plus it’s super helpful when you hire external contractors. 

No-content-treadmill policy: Focus on building one cornerstone piece of content that you can later turn into various content formats (e.g.  webinars / newsletters / social posts). Focus on the major POVs of your company — share specific ideas, use cases, and “how-tos”. Leverage your team’s network for distribution and then repurpose and recycle. Turn videos into articles and articles into video clips. 

Social proofing:  Instead of creating an article, post your idea on Linkedin and check if it resonates first. Measure the engagement but don’t get fixated on metrics. Sometimes few comments mean more than thousands of likes. Any kind of reaction – positive or negative – will tell you something. You don’t have to go viral to check what’s resonating with your audience. 

Distributing & Repurposing: How can we find more creative ways of repurposing? Remember to update old content, optimize what’s already out there, sprinkle old articles with new ideas. Repurposing is not just reskinning — you should be reusing the idea but create content native to the given platform. It has to be newsworthy to pop up on the feed.

You can never go wrong updating old content

Bonus: Essential Tech Tools for Content Marketers

Our speakers mentioned their favorite tools that make their (content) life easier. Check out the list, and make sure to try them! 

• Otter, Fathom
• Audiopen
• Descript and Capsule for video editing
• ChatGPT (build it with your use voice and tone of your brand) 
• Notion
• Asana
• Lavender + Grammarly
• Letterdrop 
• Airtable 
• Zapier
• Miro or Whimsical
• Copy.ai
• Dovetail 
• Snag it
• We would also add: Castmagic to the mix! 

If you wanna learn more about content marketing, make sure to check out our RevCon session on Content Distribution! 

The post Top 4 Content Marketing Trends for 2024 appeared first on RevGenius.

Watch or read our conversation with: Brianna Doe, Co-Founder @ Verbatim, Katie Penner, Head of Sender Relations at Sendoso, Jess Ramos, Sr. Data Analyst at Crunchbase (and an influencer after hours!), hosted by Jared Robin.

What is Influencer Marketing? 

Brianna Doe: Influencer marketing is when a content creator who’s built up an audience that trusts them and engages with them, partners with a brand to promote their products or services. 

Think of product unboxings, launches, co-created content and sponsored posts. But the thing is, in this day and age, we’re saturated with ads — they’re all of our social media feeds and we don’t really look at them anymore. 

With influencer marketing, you’re able to break through that. 

If you partner with the right people that have built trust with your target audience, they’re able to help you build trust and credibility for your brand as well, a lot quicker than a paid campaign. 

Influencer marketing is a great way to speak directly to your audience.

X Factor — Trust 

Jess Ramos: I am very protective of my audience because I want to make sure I’m showing them things that are relevant and interesting to them, but also reputable. 

The trust factor is huge.

If brands can find people that have the target audience they need, it makes the connection even stronger.

Creative Freedom vs. The Script

Jess Ramos: I love when brands give me creative freedom. I have had companies before come to me and give me a commercialized looking graphic and say: “Post this. We want you to talk about these exact bullet points” and those posts performed the worst because they don’t align with my regular content. 

Katie Penner: Creators have built this intense emotional connection with their audiences and they know more than anyone what’s going to resonate. I think it’s so silly that brands are providing scripts and sometimes not even caring if that creator is a user of their service or platform. It’s very transactional.

Influencers or Creators?

Katie Penner: I like calling them creators because that’s truly what they are. For me an influencer is someone that is just posting and not really giving back to the community. I think creators are more collaborative and offer help to the community, they are determined to upliftt others. 

Brianna Doe:  You can be a content creator and not be an influencer, but you can’t really be an influencer and not be a content creator. I think the thing that makes them different is an influencer does participate in brand partnerships and leverages their online community. A content creator, on the other hand, might not. They might also focus on user generated content that’s free for brands to use. 

Your Playbook For a Successful Influencer Marketing Campaign 

Brianna Doe: One of my most successful influencer campaigns was with a brand that provided me with a context of the whole project, the brief with basic information and then – creative freedom – because they knew I would do what’s gonna resonate with my audience best.

They were really focused on building a long-term partnership and to build trust with my audience.

Knowing that I didn’t have to worry so much about negotiating every time I post, I was able to just focus on the content and make sure that we were aligned on their goals. 

The longer term you can think about your partnerships, the more success you’ll start to see, not just with your audience, but with the influencers that you work with, with the content that you’re creating and with the overall strategy.

When you do set up influencer marketing campaigns or programs, make sure everything else is optimized. If you have a content creator driving traffic to a site where you’re not capturing anybody’s information, you’re not able to continue nurturing them, so you’re probably not going to see the results you want. And instead of blaming it on the content creator, it’s important to make sure all of this is in line before you actually launch.

Checklist for the influencer campaign:

• Creative brief (not a script!)
• Clear goals 
• Long-term relationship with the audience AND with the content creator 
• Creative freedom but providing helpful context 
• Overall long-term strategy 
• Optimization of all the touch points 

One Post Anti-Policy 

Jess Ross: When the campaign is just one post, it puts so much pressure on it because you want it to go viral, to get thousands of likes and views for that client, but that’s not always possible. Over the course of five months for example, my brand becomes a lot more associated with the company. People see me posting about them, so the it  becomes familiar. 

Jared Robin: You’re getting more posts, you’re getting recalibrations, you communicate with the influencers or creators that you’re partnering with. You’re getting feedback on brand messaging too. 

Katie Penner: Paying an influencer for one post is like having a one step sequence. It takes time to tell a full story and to bring up features and your experiences with the product. 

Be Clear About the Goals and Expectations  

Jess Ramos: The influencer is not a salesperson. There’s only so much influencers can do. We’re sitting at the top of the funnel. We’re helping bring brand awareness and trust. We’re driving clicks, free trials. But what happens beyond that is out of our control. If we’re bringing people to your website and maybe converting them to a trial or to put in their info, we can’t really do a whole lot beyond that.

I’ve talked to companies that want to get people to sign up for free demos, which are one of my least favorite CTAs. Just because it’s a big ask to get someone to sign up for a meeting. It’s important to find a balance between meeting your business goals, but also giving the influencer a CTA that makes sense and that they can really work with their audience.

Brianna Doe: Make sure you know your goals ahead of time. If you’re trying to define success in the middle of the campaign, it’s going to be a lot more difficult, if not impossible. Make sure to understand if you’re looking to drive brand awareness, free trials,  or you’re trying to capture people’s information or get them to an event. Understand what success is and then just get the metrics that will quantify that. 

Make sure you have tracking in place for whatever metric it is and communicate that to the influencers. It’s really important to make sure you have all this dialed in before you start the actual campaign or engage with the influencer.

Influencers Campaigns Gone Wrong

Jess Ramos: One difficult campaign I worked on was with a B2B company that had an unlimited budget. They got every influencer anywhere close to their target industry and worked with them. Long-term the campaign just fizzled out because it was tons of people all posting the same thing few times a week on LinkedIn. So anybody who follows influencers in this specific domain would see their posts every day. 

They got everyone they could instead of finding a few trusted people to work with. And then they also just oversaturated the market to the point where consumers and businesses got so tired of seeing these posts. The engagement dropped to 20 likes per post. 

Brianna Doe: We had one client who wanted a really fast turnaround time for the campaign. We handled everything we were supposed to: sourcing the influencers, negotiating, getting the contracts in place. And then the company just went silent for a while. There was no communication. Influencers were waiting for updates. They were waiting for their posts to get approved. 

Teams are lean right now. People don’t allocate a ton of resources to influencer marketing in the B2B space. So make sure you start small, with a few content creators, maybe even one. Then build accordingly or scale. Communication should always be a priority.

Brands’ Homework BEFORE Launching Influencers Campaign 

Katie Penner: When you don’t do that homework, you can get caught up in being affiliated with someone that maybe isn’t the best representation of your brand. It’s important to provide the creators with free access to your platform so that they can become genuine fans of what you’re offering — that will definitely come through in the posts that they’re creating. 

Buyers don’t want to hear from you or your company anymore. They are going to their communities, they’re going to the people that they trust, to the creators that they follow. 

You should get to know the creators that you might want to work with also. Make sure that they would be a good fit to represent your brand before even looking at their followers’ count. Our “creator community” is actually pretty small. 

The Combo of Paid Marketing and Influencer Campaigns 

Brianna Doe: On average, people need to see your brand’s name between 7 to 13 times for the linkage. 

So if you can incorporate both the paid marketing and influencers campaigns into the strategy, you’re going to hit it from both ends. You have influencers that people trust talking about your product, giving it validity, and then you can do remarketing at the same time with paid advertising. So they’re seeing it on their feed in multiple different formats. I love the combo of paid marketing and influencers campaigns. 

Katie Penner:  We ran a paid ad recently that was one of Tim Davidson’s posts about how he used to use gifting at Sendoso in his ads. And we generated multiple demo requests from that ad alone. 

No Budget? 

Brianna Doe: Everyone has their own rules here and boundaries they’re comfortable with. I think my time is valuable and people aren’t just paying for the piece of content I’m making for them. You’re paying for all the time someone invested building up their platform, building up their trust and getting access to that audience. Being a content creator is a ton of work, and to get to the level to where you have even 50k followers on one platform is difficult, so I do believe that it should be compensated. I think you can do a lot with a smaller amount of money if you go with smaller creators. Still, there needs to be some kind of budget in place.

I would advise any marketer or brand that wants to start approaching influencers for free content campaigns to really dig into why they want to do that. If it’s a budget concern — partner with smaller creators or potentially hold off on influencer marketing. Focus on other channels and make sure you have at least some sort of budget to be able to engage with people. 

Jared Robin: I think influencers are being underpaid. No matter what you’re doing, you should have a bulleted list of benefits ready.  Some may want to get speaking engagements, others — introductions. That’s going to create a much better bond and trust with whoever you’re working with. And that’s collaboration. 

Behind the Sendoso Influencer Campaign 

Katie Penner: I absolutely think that creators should be paid. We also do some other things, like LinkedIn takeovers with gifting — campaigns that are free but with our influencer program, 

I got a set budget. Then we launched a waitlist landing page where people could sign up. Thankfully I already knew many of these people and was able to go through the list and choose those that I know would really shine and bring out our brand. 

You just have to be pretty selective with your budget and mix big creators with the smaller ones. That’s what worked for us.

Metrics Rundown 

Jess Ramos: If the company is looking for brand awareness, then they want to get their name out there. They want others to know that I’m working with their brand which means focusing on impressions, views, post engagement and comments. If the main goal is to drive free trials or clicks, then the brand wants people to visit their website. I communicate that clearly — I can make that the main goal, but it’s probably going to hurt impressions because I’m going to have to do a post that is more catered to.

If you’re interested in watching the whole show, check it out here. If you wanna partner with RevGenius on events like this, let us know! 

The post B2B Influencer Marketing: X Factor, Sneak Peek Behind the Sendoso Campaign and the One Post Rule appeared first on RevGenius.

This blog post will look into the top 2024 marketing trends for boosting engagement. You can then reshape your marketing strategy to better reach your target audiences.

1. The use of generative AI will increase dramatically

Generative AI is set to become the marketing trend of 2024. Marketers are already seeing how this technology enhances both creativity and efficiency. By streamlining content creation, generative AI boosts a marketing team’s productivity and efficiency.

A report by McKinsey indicates that 69% of businesses are now using AI to generate creative content. Deloitte reports that generative AI users are saving an average of 11.4 working hours per week. This enables them to focus on higher-value or more strategic tasks. And research by Capgemini states that 78% of organizations using AI marketing have seen customer satisfaction scores increase by at least 10%. Generative AI is already revolutionizing content production with advanced algorithms and machine learning techniques. With its ability to generate high-quality content at scale, this technology is a game-changer. As we move into 2024, the adoption of generative AI will change the very nature of content creation. 

The dynamic capabilities of generative AI enable marketers to personalize content at an unprecedented level, tailoring messages to individual preferences and behaviors. This level of personalization enhances customer engagement and fosters stronger connections between brands and their audience. 

Also, Generative AI’s data-driven insights empower marketers to make more informed decisions, refining strategies based on real-time feedback. As organizations continue to harness the power of AI, we can anticipate a shift towards more targeted and effective marketing campaigns. 

2. Real time data and AI will drive hyper-personalization

Hyper-personalization is like personalization on steroids. While personalization works with past customer data, hyper-personalization uses real-time data and AI to deliver even more relevant content. It’s all about delivering the right content, at the right time, to the right person.

According to Epsilon, 80% of consumers are more likely to buy from a company that offers personalized experiences. And a research by Instapage showed that businesses implementing hyper-personalization experience significant growth. Around 88% of U.S. marketers reported seeing measurable improvements from personalization techniques, with more than half reporting a lift greater than 10%. Hyper-personalization allows for more targeted and effective communication, leading to higher conversion rates. By tailoring content to individual preferences, behaviors, and demographics, marketers can create more engaging and relevant experiences for each consumer. 

With hyper-personalization, companies can deliver more relevant and valuable audience experiences. This enhances customer engagement, leading to long-lasting relationships and brand loyalty. Businesses that leverage hyper-personalization can ensure they stand out in a crowded marketplace.

3. Sustainable marketing will become more important than ever

In 2024, sustainable marketing will play a more important role in business. As consumers become more aware of their environmental impact, businesses must adapt by embracing sustainable marketing strategies. It is not a trend, but a critical motion for brands looking to build trust and resonate with an environmentally conscious audience. 

A study by the Boston Consulting Group revealed that 75% of consumers would switch to brands showing a high level of environmental responsibility. This is even if it means paying an extra premium. According to Accenture, 63% of global consumers prefer to support companies that align with their values. This includes environmental stewardship. Brands that demonstrate a genuine commitment to eco-friendly practices not only contribute to a healthier planet but also differentiate themselves positively in a crowded marketplace. 

By integrating sustainability into your marketing strategy, you don’t just align your brand with eco-conscious values. You also tap into a large consumer base looking to support brands that share their values. By highlighting your sustainable initiatives, you can build a strong connection with your target audience.

4. The influencer generation will become more sophisticated

The influencer generation is a term that signifies the impact influencers have on shaping trends and culture. In 2024, influencer marketing will continue to evolve, using new technologies and strategies to create even more authentic connections between brands and their target audiences.

According to Influencer Marketing Hub, the influencer marketing industry is projected to reach $13.8 billion in 2024. This has more than doubled in size in only two years. Moreover, Business Insider reported that 67% of brands spent more on influencer marketing in 2023 than ever before. This will increase in 2024. In fact, the average business is planning to use 20% of their budget on influencer marketing.

This is why brands must be attentive to trends in influencer marketing. With the ability to leverage the authentic voice and reach of influencers, brands can create campaigns that resonate with consumers on a personal level. This ultimately drives greater brand awareness, loyalty, and business success.

5. Social media will be increasingly used as search engines

Social media platforms are rapidly evolving into the search engines of the future. Among these platforms, TikTok and Instagram stand out as the frontrunners. With their user-friendly interfaces and engaging content, they’ve become trusted sources of information. This is particularly true among younger demographics such as Gen Z.

Similarly, LinkedIn has transformed into a prominent search engine for business professionals. Whether it’s finding potential clients, uncovering job prospects, or staying updated with the latest industry trends, LinkedIn has become an indispensable tool for professionals looking to thrive in the digital age.

According to Hootsuite, 71% of consumers use social media platforms for inspiration when they’re looking to make a purchase. Furthermore, a study by Sprout Social revealed that 55% of consumers bought directly through social media channels in 2023. This showcases the growing importance of social media for sales and marketing purposes.

With the increasing importance of social media as search engines, marketers have a golden opportunity to better harness these platforms. In 2024, brands must focus on creating engaging and shareable content on social media to stay ahead of the curve.

6. Business email will continue to be an engagement platform

In 2024, business email will continue to be a great channel for boosting engagement. It enables businesses to connect with a broad audience, personalize communication, and measure performance metrics. By leveraging email, businesses can establish strong customer connections and boost engagement.

According to the Radicati Group, the average office worker receives about 121 business emails daily. So, there are plenty of opportunities to leverage business email as a marketing channel. This can be particularly effective when used in conjunction with email signatures, a component that’s instrumental in boosting marketing engagement.

Our own research found that 68% of businesses see email signatures as a necessary part of their branding efforts. Additionally, a professional email signature can lead to increased website traffic, social media engagement and drive conversions by promoting specific campaigns or calls-to-action.

Business emails will continue to be an effective marketing tool in 2024, so organizations of all sizes should optimize this channel to its full potential. Embracing the power of business emails is a surefire way for organizations to stay ahead in the competitive market and achieve their marketing goals.

Looking ahead to 2024

Even though we’re making an educated guess by looking at current shifts and advancements, nothing about the future is set in stone. Yet one thing remains clear; businesses must keep adapting to remain competitive. The rapidly changing landscape of the tech industry demands a proactive approach in anticipating and responding to emerging trends. This includes embracing sustainability and tech innovations while ramping up personalization efforts. 

The post Revolutionizing Engagement: 6 Marketing Trends to Watch in 2024 appeared first on RevGenius.

Dive in! 

The way we consume content is undergoing a profound transformation. Gone are the days when SEO-driven blog posts dominated the marketing scene, and the pursuit of high search engine rankings was the primary focus. Instead, modern audiences are now turning to a diverse range of content formats and platforms to satisfy their informational and entertainment needs. 

From the rise of engaging podcasts during daily commutes to the scrolling of bite-sized, visually captivating short-form videos, and the active participation in live streams on platforms like LinkedIn, consumers are redefining their preferences and behaviors. In this era of content abundance, it has become imperative for businesses to adapt their strategies to cater to these evolving consumption patterns. 

This blog will delve into these transformative shifts, shedding light on how they are reshaping the landscape of content marketing. We will also emphasize the critical importance of building an owned audience and nurturing authentic relationships as the central pillars of a successful modern marketing strategy.

Being where your audience is matters more than ever.

It’s not merely about gaining likes, followers, or fleeting attention; the true goal is to convert these engaged audiences into dedicated subscribers of your owned content. This strategy ensures that your brand’s message consistently reaches those who value it most, without algorithms standing in the way. 

By actively connecting with your audience on their chosen platforms and then guiding them towards becoming subscribers, you can establish a more profound and lasting connection, providing the foundation for sustainable growth. 

The Ever-Changing Landscape of Content Consumption

The way people consume content today is vastly different from even just a few years ago. Traditional content marketing strategies often revolved around keyword optimization for search engines, with a primary goal of driving organic traffic to websites. However, as the digital ecosystem has evolved, so have consumer preferences.

Content Diversity

Consumers are no longer limited to text-based content. They engage with podcasts during their commutes, watch short videos on platforms like TikTok, and participate in live streams on social media. 

User-Centric Approach

The focus is shifting from creating content solely for the purpose of pleasing algorithms to creating content that genuinely resonates with human audiences. This means understanding what your target audience wants to read, watch, or listen to and delivering content that meets those needs.

Be Where Your Audience Is

To succeed in today’s content landscape, it’s essential to meet your audience where they already spend their time. We say that often but what does it really mean? 

Audience Engagement

Platforms like LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram, and others have thriving communities of users. Engaging with your audience on these platforms allows you to connect with them on a more personal level. This engagement can lead to stronger brand loyalty and higher conversion rates.

Subscriber Conversion 

The goal should be to convert your audience on these platforms into subscribers of your owned content. Subscribers are more likely to engage with your brand consistently and become long-term customers.

Platform Limitations

Relying solely on platforms for content distribution means subjecting your reach to their algorithms. These algorithms can change, and they prioritize their interests over yours. Building an owned audience gives you more control and autonomy over your content distribution.

The Power of Algorithms

Platform algorithms are designed to prioritize content that aligns with the platform’s objectives, such as keeping users engaged on the platform for longer periods. This often means that your content’s reach is controlled by these algorithms, which can be unpredictable.

Throttled Reach

Depending solely on platforms for content distribution can result in a throttled reach, where your content is only shown to a fraction of your audience. This can be frustrating, especially when you have valuable content to share.

Owned Content Control

An owned content strategy allows you to break free from these algorithmic constraints. You have control over how and when your content is distributed, ensuring that it reaches your audience effectively.

The Power of Owned Content Strategy

Search marketing remains valuable, but an owned content strategy is gaining prominence for several reasons:

Audience-Centric Content

Owned media enables you to curate content that directly caters to your audience’s needs and preferences. You’re not bound by the limitations of keyword optimization; instead, you can create content that genuinely resonates.

Loyalty and Engagement 

By nurturing an owned audience, you build a community of loyal followers who engage with your brand consistently. This engagement can translate into higher customer retention and advocacy.

Long-Term Value 

Owned content has long-term value. Unlike paid advertising that stops when your budget runs out, owned content continues to provide value over time, driving organic traffic and engagement.

 Authentic Relationships at Scale: Playbook

Building authentic relationships with your audience should be at the heart of your content marketing strategy. What should you take into consideration?

Putting Yourself Out There

Authenticity is about being open, honest, and genuine. Share your journey, your challenges, and your successes with your audience. This transparency helps build trust and a sense of connection.

Competition Perspective

 While it’s essential to be aware of your competitors, don’t let their actions dictate your strategy entirely. Focus on delivering value to your audience, rather than constantly reacting to the competition. Stay original and true to your mission!

Thought Leadership

By positioning yourself as a thought leader in your industry, you can attract like-minded individuals who share your vision. Thought leadership can set you apart from competitors and establish your brand as an authority.

Conclusion

The evolution of content marketing demands a strategic shift towards building authentic connections with your audience. Embrace the changing content consumption landscape, be where your audience is, and prioritize an owned content strategy. 

Remember that algorithms can impact your reach, so focus on nurturing your owned audience. And most importantly, don’t let competition overshadow your commitment to delivering value and fostering meaningful relationships. As Anthony Kennada puts it, your mission is to serve your audience and help them along in their journey, and in doing so, you’ll pave the way for your own success. We like that a lot! 

The post Why Owned Media is Content Marketing 2.0 appeared first on RevGenius.

Debunking Content Marketing Myths

The Weekly Publishing Myth

We all can agree that after the launch of AI tools, we are overwhelmed with information, and thus, the spotlight has shifted to ‘what you publish’ rather than ‘how often you publish.’ 

If your content lacks substance, no amount of regular publishing will salvage your brand’s reputation. Quality, therefore, supersedes quantity in winning your audience’s trust and engagement.

The Perfection Paradox

Jess introduced a new concept that we fell in love with: the Minimum Viable Piece of Content (MVC). 

As the landscape evolves faster than brands can publish, waiting for content to reach ‘perfection’ is the same as missing the bus. 

This doesn’t mean you should compromise on quality; instead, adopt a ‘release, refine, repeat’ methodology.

In other words, deploy your MVC, gather feedback, and then iterate for improvement.

The 2023 Content Strategy: Hits and Misses

Unique and Original Content Stands Out

If everybody can create content, how do you distinguish your brand from the rest?

Brands must become storytellers, tell tales out of data and position narratives that offer unique perspectives to their audience. Telling the same story everyone else is telling won’t help you stand out; innovating on how you narrate that story will.

Avoid Over-Polishing Content

Authenticity is the currency of the age we live in. If you are creating content, the best approach is to strike a critical balance between professionalism and genuineness. 

While your content should be well-researched and expertly written, it should also bear the marks of human imperfections — making it relatable and engaging to your audience.

Promote Team’s Personal Branding

Every team member is your brand ambassador if empowered correctly. By promoting the unique stories, skills, and insights of team members, a company can create a multidimensional and authentic brand image.

Striking the Right Balance: Production and Distribution

As we create more and more content, the “distribution First ” approach is what separates your content from the rest.

It shifts the narrative from not just creating content but understanding where it will land and how it will be consumed. Tailoring your content for specific platforms or audience segments can amplify its impact by at least 5X.

Audit Existing Content First

Before you jump into creating new content, pause and examine what you already possess. An audit can find golden, untapped potential you didn’t know existed — pieces that can be updated or repurposed.

Align Content with Overall Strategy

At the end of the day, the overall goal of the brand is to increase sales and revenue. Thus, the content should reflect that as well.

Each piece of content should be a part of the wheel of your brand’s overarching narrative, this means blogs, video, or tweet should echo the brand’s ethos, ensuring a consistent message across all platforms.

AI: The Future of Content Marketing

AI will not take your job, but a person using AI can definitely do.

Instead of denying, the best way to understand more about AI and how it can help you is by experimenting with it.

Use AI to Reduce Human Efforts

The infusion of AI into content marketing can make your job a lot easier. 

It can sift through mountains of data to find actionable insights, helping brands to focus their strategies and optimize engagement.

Generate Drafts and Insights

Advanced AI tools can now assist in the creation process, offering templates or even entire drafts based on a set of guidelines. 

However, it’s not about replacing human creativity but assisting it, creating a synergy between machine efficiency and human insight.

Human Oversight for Quality

Though AI can do a lot, it can’t replace the human touch necessary for emotional resonance. 

Machines provide the analytics and insights, but the job of crafting a compelling story lies with the humans behind the screen.

The Evolution of Content Formats

Over time, as content evolves, so does the format. Experiment with different formats to understand which one works the best for you and your brand. Remember, each brand is different, which means what works for your competitors may not work for you.

Here are some interesting ones to explore.

Interactive Content

Interactive elements like quizzes, polls, and interactive infographics aren’t just frills; they’re essential tools for engagement. They offer users a voice, a stake in the content, and provide brands with invaluable data for future content strategies.

Long-Form Content

While platforms like TikTok prioritize brevity, long-form content still holds significant value. Detailed guides, whitepapers, and in-depth articles allow a brand to flex its intellectual muscle, positioning it as an authority in its domain.

Harnessing Social Media Platforms for Content Promotion

2023 saw a huge surge in the importance of niche online communities. 

Platforms like Twitter (or X), LinkedIn, and Reddit have groups dedicated to specific interests, offering brands a laser-focused audience segment. 

Brands should identify and engage with these micro-communities that align with their industry or values, build meaningful interactions and deepen their consumer relationships.

• Creating content on these platforms
• Live streaming on platforms and doing a QnA
• Interacting with the audiences, sharing behind-the-scenes glimpses, and more can build a relationship of trust and transparency.

Engaging with the audience in real-time helps in addressing their queries immediately, creating a stronger bond.

Personalization is the King

When creating content, we have to see the other side of the story a.k.a the customer side and understand how they want to consume your content.

Brands tend to make the mistake of relying solely on data instead of asking the users, and this is where we must change.

Content for Individuals

With AI and machine learning tools becoming more sophisticated, there’s an increased capacity for content personalization. We are in the “Era of Hyper-Personalization,” where content will be tailored to individual user preferences, browsing history, and even mood.

It’s not about creating content for the masses anymore; it’s about creating content for the individual.

Segmentation for Better Engagement

Understanding the diverse sections of your audience allows for a more targeted content approach. 

For instance, millennials might resonate more with video content on platforms like TikTok and Instagram Reels, while professionals might prefer a well-written article on LinkedIn.

Sustainability and Content Marketing

2023 marks a year where consumers are more conscientious than ever. They’re not just looking for products but also for brands that stand for a cause. 

Whether it’s environmental conservation or social justice, brands that have a clear and genuine stance on issues can create more meaningful content that resonates with a conscientious audience.

Transparency in Content Creation

The audience is sharp; they can discern genuine content from pure marketing gimmicks. Justin advises brands to be transparent about their content creation processes. 

This could mean being open about where they source their materials for products or how they ensure ethical practices in their operations. 

Such transparency can be a treasure trove of content that not only promotes but educates the audience.

Wrapping Up

As 2023 looms large, the content marketing space will continue to see a lot of transformations and innovations.  For the time being (well, until AI takes over completely in a terminator style), the focus will be on authenticity, strategic distribution, and the integration of technology to refine and streamline efforts. 

Brands need to remain agile, ready to adapt at the drop of a hat. AI offers incredibly sophisticated tools, but the soul of content marketing remains rooted in human connection and storytelling.

The post Content Marketing Playbook in a Nutshell appeared first on RevGenius.

Webinar Key Takeaways

• The shift from the “How economy” to the “Who economy” is a crucial change in today’s digital age, where people are seeking trust and relationships over information.
• Building relationships and trust with your audience is essential for organic growth and long-term success.
• In the “Who economy,” businesses need to focus on understanding their audience and their unique needs, engaging with them through social media and email, and providing valuable content.
• Businesses should be transparent, honest, and show their personality to build trust and establish a strong brand identity.
• Organic growth takes time, and consistency in efforts is essential to achieve success.

It all begins with a shift in the way buyers make their decisions in the digital world. Over the past 10 years, we’ve noticed a transition from the “how economy” to the “who economy” — where the emphasis is on the individuals and influencers rather than the methods or processes. 

Switching From “What” to “Who”

Buyers don’t ask that much anymore because there’s just too many answers. It’s harder to find what you need, so people have switched to asking who. In a way, it’s almost like a return to the pre-digital age.

Whom do I trust? Whom do I know? Whom do I like? Who has the best reputation? Who’s the best person to solve this problem? What’s the best company? 

That’s where the Who economy comes in. It’s a game that’s much more about relationships, trust, reputation, and less about information and education. And that’s a big shift.

Building Relationships With Your Audience

We don’t just want to sell people something; we want to build a relationship with them. So we are focused on creating content that is valuable to them, that answers their questions, and that helps them solve their problems. We also make sure to engage with them, whether it’s through social media or through email. We want to make sure that they know we were there for them.

Building Reputation

Another thing is focusing on reputation. We need to make sure that we are known as a trustworthy and reliable company. We do this by being transparent, by being honest, and by delivering on our promises. This helps us build trust with our audience, and as a result, they are more likely to choose us over our competitors.

You can watch  to the whole episode here.

Interested in creating content like this with us? Let us know! 

The post Recap: Growth Playbook and The Rise of the Who Economy appeared first on RevGenius.

How to view content through the lens of conversion copywriting? And what it means for your startup’s growth through organic channels?

In this post you’ll uncover three approaches that will help you revamp your content strategy to convert your best prospects into customers.

Getting Traffic Doesn’t Mean Getting Prospects

I’ve had conversations with many prospects and mentees who can’t quite decide what to prioritize: bringing in more organic traffic to fill up their pipeline or optimizing for conversions first. As a conversion copywriter, I feel conversion should be treated as the primary goal. 

But the elephant in the room is assuming that all traffic is created equal and as long as enough prospects land on the website, they’ll convert.

Is it a reasonable assumption, though?

What if you end up attracting traffic that doesn’t convert and bounces right off the page? That’s an extreme example, but not too implausible. The missing link is making sure there’s an alignment between “traffic-centered” content and “conversion-focused” copy.

You don’t need to attract everyone. What you need is to target the right prospects that: 

• fit your ICP profile
• are looking for a way to solve a problem that your product is trying to solve
• have a budget to invest in solving that problem

Because everything, from content to web copy, is meant to contribute to the ultimate business goal — getting the right-fit customers for you.

Content *Is* Your Conversion Copy

For the purposes of this post, let’s say content is anything created outside of key website pages  and is meant to attract traffic and convert it into prospects, and eventually, customers. This includes not only blog posts, but also buyer enablement content hosted on the website – like assessments, guides, or reports.

We often assume that it’s the TOFU content that brings in traffic, but this may not always be the case. Nurturing sequences and educational series can equally contribute to the customer journey. 

In many cases, content does not answer the questions customers are asking because it focuses on a totally different set of KPIs.

Questions like “What are our competitors writing about?” and “What are the keywords we need to compete on?” are not the wrong questions. But they shift the focus from “What do our best customers need from us to become our customers?” to keywords and competitors’ content strategy, reducing your field of vision.

To step outside of this narrow segment, consider focusing on your ICP’s journey from prospect to customer – and finding inspiration there. If you have a bigger picture in mind, you can find out almost anything, from favorite online channels to pain points and unanswered questions, and save your sales team weeks of time.

Going Wide, Talking to Prospects Who Don’t Care, and Other Frequently Made Content Mistakes

As conversion copywriters, we should be aware of the different stages of awareness and remember that different audience segments may require completely different approaches.

Here are some of the content-related mistakes that may be affecting your conversion rates, broken down by your audience’s stage of awareness.

Problem-aware content

• Not considering alternative solutions that are outside of direct competition
• Starting with 101 content that brings in low-value prospects
• Focusing only on content to turn unaware prospects into product-aware prospects
• Building a general, keyword-led content funnel and missing opportunities to be the only blog that addresses relevant topics for a specific audience

Solution-aware content

• Not addressing ICP beliefs about the industry (if most of your ICPs believe that the problem you’re solving is actually unsolvable or not a problem at all, there’s not much you can do unless they change their minds)
• Not addressing concerns prospects might have at this stage of awareness (“Is this going to be too hard to do?” oir “Can I just keep doing the same thing, so I don’t have to learn so much new stuff?”)
• Ignoring prospects’ objectives at this stage and their objections or narratives about the industry
• Driving straight to the primary conversion goal without adding product-aware content to the mix

Product-aware content

• Focus exclusively on features (ignoring “What’s in it for me?” for different segments)
• Short, “we are the hero of the story” case studies
• Not having “This is not right for you, if…” content that helps bad-fit prospects self-segment themselves out
• Ignoring enterprise-scale concerns like “Can we really implement it?” or “What if my team doesn’t buy into this product?”

As you can see, in most cases, it’s not only about getting eyeballs on the content, but also about writing persuasive content to help prospects overcome beliefs and objections that are preventing them from converting. This is where you truly have to understand your audience to get this right. 

Shifting to Conversion-Focused Content

It’s not about having a lot of content on your website. Rather, it’s about aligning your content strategy with your business conversion goals:

• Focus on the topics of interest for your best customers – based on their stages of awareness
• Create transitions between stages of awareness to drive towards conversions
• Optimize your offers for each piece of content, from “Why should I read it?” to “Why would I give you my email address in exchange for this information?”

To be more specific, it means the following:

1. Connecting content to buyer journey for each stage of awareness:

• Connecting content to prospects’ goals and aspirations
• Addressing objections, hesitations, unanswered questions at every stage of the journey
• Aligning micro-conversions with journey steps (TOFU content + “Schedule your demo” will not get as many conversions as TOFU content + something that prospects actually need to solve to move forward)

      2. Creating transitions from one stage of awareness to the next:

• Adding nurturing sequences for interactive content
• Creating welcome sequences with self-segmentation for newsletter subscribers
• Mapping out content clusters based on Jobs to be Done, not keywords
• Developing post-webinar drip campaigns, and more

      3. Optimizing offers for each piece of content:

• Giving readers reasons to read any piece of content
• Encouraging them to explore additional content
• Incentivizing them to sign up for your newsletter (“Get product updates and new posts” just isn’t that compelling)
• Answering “What’s in it for me?” question to encourage lead magnet downloads or self-assessment completion

A quick note for bootstrapped startups and marketing departments of one just: you don’t need a multi-post, well-thought-out, amazingly planned strategy to see results (although it wouldn’t hurt). To get started, you need the right content.

Investing time and effort into one long-form post that would serve as a sales page in disguise can be more effective than 5 shorter, informational posts.

In one of my projects, this is exactly what we did, getting a 16% increase in free trial signups in the first 3 months after publishing this blog post. You can read about it here.

The key to unlocking those conversion numbers was not in adding more informational content, it was in structuring the narrative to follow the stages of awareness, and addressing the (previously hidden) beliefs about the industry and the product.

None of that would have been possible without conducting customer research, mapping out the stages of awareness, and running a content audit to identify opportunities for conversion rate increases.

Optimizing Existing Content to Drive Conversions

If you already have a vast library of content pieces, you can optimize them to help you get better-fit traffic and more prospects, and continue filling content gaps if most of your content was focused on just one stage of awareness.

Here are the steps to achieve this goal, from the initial info to content optimization goals:

• Map out buyer journey
• Audit content for gaps
• Find content optimization opportunities
• Prioritize content
• Execute

The key step here is connecting prospects’ needs at each stage of their journey to content. Not all of that has to be educational – in some cases, you have to address the beliefs and objections that stop prospects from moving forward.

For such cases, quizzes, self-evaluations, or other self-segmentation types of interactive content can help you move prospects forward and reduce the number of unqualified leads on your call.

Ultimately, decisions around which new pieces of content to prioritize and which to optimize depends on your audience, business goals, and GTM strategy. The starting point, however, is the same: understanding your buyers.

Mapping Out Buyer Journey

The matrix doesn’t include unaware (why would you write content for the folks that don’t realize they have a problem?) and most-aware (in this case, buyer enablement content and signup pages are more relevant).

Your focus should be on determining which topics are relevant for each stage of awareness and how they can help you achieve your business goals, moving prospects from one stage to the next.

Auditing Content for Gaps

The next step is to bridge the gaps between your different content segments and eliminate the obstacles.

For example, if you have been relying on TOFU content to bring in traffic, but there’s no next obvious step that’s aligned with prospects’ needs, you will have a hard time converting that traffic into trials or demos.

This table also forces you to determine what your conversion goals are – for each stage of awareness and for each piece of content (they may not be the same).

If you only fill out the count columns, it’ll be a quick way to determine if there’s an obvious gap that makes it difficult for prospects to see a reason to convert. To dig in deeper, also add descriptions and primary & secondary CTAs and conversion rates.

Finding Content Optimization Opportunities

Content gap audit can help you understand what to prioritize in terms of creating new content. But what about existing content pieces?

This is when we’re digging in to focus on content optimization across stages of awareness.

An important column in this case is whether or not a particular piece of content has a follow-up email sequence or the next-step content that readers are meant to consume.

An excellent example is a gated content + nurturing sequence combo; could also be an assessment + assessment results or a nurture sequence for educational content.

The final column is for evaluating content relevance to this particular stage of the buyers’ journey – that’ll help you prioritize your content optimization efforts and create an optimization plan.

Prioritizing Content and Executing

At this point, you have achieved the following:

• You understand your best ICPs’ buyer journey and their needs across stages of awareness
• You have identified content gaps and possible reasons for low conversion rates across different stages of awareness
• You know which blog posts across stages of awareness are the most relevant and how they fit your own business goals
• You have specific conversion goals for each piece of content and for each stage of awareness
• You have started creating plans for additional pieces of content to bridge those gaps

But, as always, there’ll be too little time and too much content to produce. Where should you invest your time and effort?

This is the tip I’ve learned at Spryng during an awesome workshop run by Ben Labay and Tatiana Morozova. As a rule of thumb:

• The fewer touchpoints there are to get to the ultimate conversion goal, the higher the priority
• The higher the probability of improving sales KPIs thanks to content, the higher the priority
• The higher the relevance to your best ICPs, the higher the priority (Why write how-to articles, if you don’t want to attract the DIY crowd that *may* be ready to convert in 3-5 years?)

As more startups need to use their resources wisely, investing time and effort into a more strategic approach to content will help startups avoid wasting resources on content that generates bad-fit traffic or results in bounces, and make sure that the content they produce contributes to growth.

Don’t forget! Discover the top GTM strategies from B2B experts at RevCon: our must-attend annual conference on October 18-19, 2023! 

The post Boosting Organic Traffic Conversions: A Startup Guide appeared first on RevGenius.

Usually, everyone wants to know whether marketing brings in enough quality leads to support the sales targets. To answer this question, sales, marketing, and customer success must work together. I’m including CS here because even though not every customer is an advocate, with marketing support and customer success involvement, more customers become advocates (“advocates” are defined as referenceable customers). Following these best practices will improve marketing efforts’ efficiency and ease the planning and budgeting processes.

• Staff up for the number of leads needed and be ready to pivot
  • Secure monthly program budgets
• Ensure messaging continuity between pre-sales, sales, marketing, and customer success
• Differentiate between Channel Diagnostics vs. Channel Forecast
• Secure a budget for large investments needed

Based on Part 1, you’ll be able to determine how many SDRs and Account Executives you need and have a good idea of the number of the required leads, which will be derived from the conversion rates, sales cycle, and average deal size. With these calculations, it is easy to start moving up from the bottom of the funnel to the top using simple math. 

Mapping Lead Requirements to Channels 

Once you have the number of leads needed, the marketing director sits down to figure out which channel will produce that number of leads, using rough percentages as a starting point to allocate budget. Typically, you’ll want a channel manager dedicated as an FTE for any channel producing 50% or more of the leads you expect, depending on your specific business.

The goal here, though, is to map the lead requirements to channels and allow the channel managers to build detailed monthly program plans to hit those targets. Those plans should include monthly program budgets as well. Whatever the least number of people (be reasonable) required to execute these programs is the number of marketing people you should budget to hire. To optimize program costs while achieving the desired number of leads, budget for the appropriate combination of channels each month.

Be Ready to Pivot

Discovering that a channel you believed would be wildly successful turns out to be disappointing requires the ability to pivot: adapt and change direction. Having hiring managers with experience in diverse channels is crucial to ensuring a smooth transition and avoiding skill set gaps. To bridge such gaps, you have two options: provide training or make new hires. However, it’s unrealistic to expect someone with zero experience in social channels to generate a substantial number of leads if their expertise lies primarily in areas like paid digital ads.

Ensure Cohesive and Consistent Communication with Prospects 

When marketing starts interacting with prospects, they are usually the first contact the prospect has, unless it is cold outreach. This is a typical process and there isn’t anything wrong with it as long as the marketing team/systems know to stop interacting with the prospect when a pre-sales person puts them into an automated cadence or sequence. This is a common mistake and it ends up with prospects getting emails from your marketing system and the SDRs at the same time. It should be orchestrated in a proper way — for example then the lead doesn’t respond to an SDR and after a certain time they are removed from the prospecting system and moved back into a nurture stream that is then managed by the marketing automation system.  

To ensure consistent and cohesive communication with customers, it is important to consider the use cases of prospecting automation software for customer success. In some cases, marketing activities like sending newsletters and product updates may not be aligned with customer success efforts. This can lead to customers receiving multiple emails within a short span of time, lacking a sense of continuity. To address this, it is crucial to map out the entire journey from prospect to customer and eventually to advocate. By doing so, you can identify the systems involved in communicating with the end user and orchestrate the messaging at each stage. This ensures that the communication remains consistent and aligned throughout the customer’s experience.

Channel Diagnostics vs. Channel Forecasting

When diagnosing a channel, you want to know the conversion rate for that channel and any sub-channels (an example would be a social channel, but a sub-channel would be Facebook vs. Instagram). You also want to know the conversion rate of each person responsible for working and closing those leads. Calculating the channel and sub-channels is pretty straightforward if you have an attribution system in place. When it comes to calculating conversions for people, it’s more useful to ignore channels in the initial analysis and find out what leads each account representative is closing the most of and then move on to which channel sourced the lead.  At the end of the analysis, you should be able to tell which channels close at the highest rate with each sales representative. This will allow you to provide feedback to create a performance-based routing system, whereby the leads the representatives are most likely to close will be routed mostly to them. I say mostly because you also want your lead follow up time to be extremely quick and sometimes that means routing a lead to someone that is available rather than an expert. Tools like Chilipiper can make this performance-based routing easy to set up and maintain, assuming you regularly use channel diagnostics. When you are Channel forecasting, it’s recommended to use the blended conversion rate from the top level channel to forecast the number of leads expected. This differs from channel diagnostics because you are more worried about predicting what leads will come in than figuring out how to increase your conversion rates. The topics are similar, but separate and each approach is a bit unique.  

Remember:  if you are trying to increase conversion rates, you need all the details you can get, but if you are forecasting, you can use top-level channels and historical data.

The next section will cover channel diagnostics and forecasting in much more detail following three main questions: 

• Which channels are performing best?
• Who is closing the best leads?
• What do we consider best?

Determining which channels are performing best has a lot to do with your specific business model and attribution system you’ve got in place.  As marketing has become more and more scientific and less and less of an art, we’re finding that attribution systems like first touch and last touch are not enough to truly explain the prospects journey.  Now, we have software like Segment that can capture all marketing interactions. Even if the browser was reset, the interactions are still captured. You can see the full marketing interactions across the prospect journey, even past the website and into the product but it’s difficult to set it up correctly.  This is why companies like Clari have had so much success. They endeavor to show this journey in a useful way and it appears they are pretty good at it. Clari is also vastly easier to implement than Segment, which has trade offs that are use case limitations.

Regular Analysis 

However you choose to analyze your data, it’s important to know which channel is performing best and who is closing those deals. Keep in mind that this will probably change over time. It’s helpful to be prepared to do this analysis regularly and update your lead routing accordingly. If you find it takes a lot of manual work to calculate this, consider re-designing the process / systems to support automation. 

Marketing and Sales On the Same Page 

What Sales calls the best lead versus what marketing calls the best lead is rarely the same thing. It usually changes from person to person!  To get ahead of this, showing the analysis of the best performing channels will be extremely useful to help your team fine tune their performance. Instead of showing one channel’s conversion or one person’s conversions, you show them combined and that changes the conversation from fairness of lead distribution to the one about education and improving conversion rates. If a sales representative consistently excels at closing leads from webinars, it might be worth having an enablement person work closely with them. The goal is to determine if their success can be taught and replicated across the rest of the sales team or if it’s simply a personal style that cannot be easily trained. 

If the successful approach can be taught, it’s worth considering setting up a training program based on it. However, if it’s more of a personal style, it’s best to accept it as it is and focus on finding other areas for improvement within the team.

Company-Wide Investments Included in the Marketing Plan 

Another area that is commonly overlooked is not the monthly marketing program budget, which we’ve covered, but the bigger investments that are required as business enters different stages of growth. For instance, if your company is pivoting into a PLG motion, there will be significant investment to dial in the right ICP from a marketing perspective alone (apart from the internal software that has to be done as well, but that is budgeted under R&D and beyond the scope of this series). Or maybe you’re making a big splash in a new industry and “the event” each year is $125k, however, the revenue for this segment won’t support such a large expenditure. That’s where you have a few guiding principles that will help facilitate this process:

• Match business cycle to expenditure
• Attribution vs Execution
• Large Investment / Event Reviews

When a company decides to break into a new portion of the market, either going upstream or to a different vertical, the investment associated with this should be matched to the expected business cycle.  

For example, if your company offers services only the United States and it took it 3 years to get a decent brand presence in that region, then when another region is to be opened, all larger investment expenditures should be capitalized over the number of years expected to receive benefit; in this instance a guess of 3 years would be reasonable.  

This might sound picky, but if this isn’t followed, the marketing budget may get bloated during the first year of any new company pivot because the revenue obtained from those expenditures takes much longer to realize than a year.  

To implement this process, you would nominate a C-level (CMO) to take on managing the capital expenditure approval process and be accountable should the investment turn out to be poor. That said, replacing a marketing team once a year due to the lack of performance in one area, in my opinion, is not matching the performance to the business cycle. Perhaps, if the plan fails in the middle of year 2, it could be best to look at marketing employees’ performance and consider an improvement plan. Any time before that is likely premature to tell if a strategy is working.  

Marketing departments should not be held to the same monthly or quarterly standard that sales is, but rather to a yearly or bi-yearly standard to match performance to business cycle.

Tracking Attribution for Major Investments 

We’ve talked about best practices for attribution, but specifically when we are talking about attribution for big investments, such as large industry events, then execution is never an excuse for the  lack of attribution. Meaning, what commonly happens is a marketing team secures budget for a large event, everybody gets crazy excited, the event happens and a “ton” of prospects were touched on and business created, but a solid attribution program and process for tracking wasn’t put in place.  In short, execution was chosen over attribution. This translates into finance believing the event was not successful and that’s hardly ever entirely true.  

From the operational perspective, it’s truly worth figuring out how you want to track interactions at larger events. With QR codes becoming common, OCR being available on phones, and voice to text translation, there’s no reason why you couldn’t be talking to people and tracking as much as possible without a ton of administrative overhead.  

For instance, it is important to know if you are talking to a net new lead or if a company is currently in your pipeline. The attributions for those are different (new leads are first touch, while current leads are technically multi-touch; the first being creating pipeline, while the latter moves the current pipeline along faster, increasing velocity).  

Keep in mind, without this admin work, subsequent approvals for the same event are highly unlikely if there are any issues with sales targets.  This event and the sales targets not being hit may not be causal or even correlated, but they will be looked at as if they are and the budget cut without the proper attribution. Your team is better off talking to less people and having more quality conversations than a shotgun approach where no attribution is completed and no tracking or review can be provided.

If the attribution process is laid out and executed as planned, an event review becomes extremely easy to compile. In this review, it’s very easy to put together and should not be time intensive, but it should be looked at as the business case for your next year’s budget to the same event (assuming your company was successful at the event and they were the right personas, etc).   

The review should include all numbers from the bowtie:  

• New Prospects
• Current Pipeline
• Customers

How many prospects did you meet that were new?  How many of those turned into meetings?  How many meetings turned into a proof of concepts or a full demo?  And finally, how many of those turned into customers?  

On the flip side of pipeline creation, how many prospects did you meet that were currently in the pipeline and how did you accelerate them faster through the sales stages? Increasing sales velocity at events is a key metric for marketing to show value in an event review. 

Finally, how many customers did you meet and did you move that customer closer to be an advocate? 

With these 3 areas laid out, the only expectation that needs to be set is when you will provide this report back to sales, marketing, customer success and finance.  This depends on the business cycle and you may have to phase out the presentation if the cycle extends beyond a year.  For instance, if your tracking shows it takes about 2 months after an event for a new prospect to show up in the system as qualified in some way, then you’d only provide the new prospect portion of the review after 2 months have passed.  If the sales cycle from qualified to close in another 9 months, then you’d use weighted pipeline values to project revenue until you have 9 months of closing time providing the accurate number.  

For increasing sales velocity and converting customers to advocates, however, this time frame could be much shorter. That said, compiling the completed report to marketing, sales, customer success and finance should make sure that the business cycle was matched to the business outcomes.  This process secures the necessary marketing budget in each year of a plan without removing larger, necessary investments. 

Successful Annual Planning Formula 

When combining the best practices recommended, marketing teams should find it easier to have the right number of channel managers, be able to forecast and diagnose channels, and secure the appropriate budget to execute each year. The reason budgeting this way is so important is marketing programs and events are the most common place to cut budget when attempting to make an operating plan “work.”  Even so, the plan may mathematically work, but without matching the business cycle to outcomes, it will fail. Additionally, as this pitfall continues it prevents marketing teams from having enough staff, programs or investments each year to provide the leads the sales team needs to hit their targets. Wasn’t that the first question asked: is marketing producing enough quality leads?

In our next part, we’ll be tackling Customer Success and best practices around planning.

Don’t forget! Discover the top GTM strategies from B2B experts at RevCon: our must-attend annual conference on October 18-19, 2023! 

Video of building a plan from scratch for all departments:

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