Category: Writing

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What B2B Buyers Want From Tech Vendors Right Now
55 percent of B2B buyers say it’s appropriate for marketing efforts to continue during these challenging times, and 53 percent are presently in the market for B2B products and services, with most of those having recent new purchasing interests, according to newly-released survey data. MarketingProfs

Programmatic Ad Spend Down 9% Since Beginning of 2020, Driven by Travel and Auto
Amidst an overall fall of 9 percent in April, ad spending for the technology vertical and the education and training segment were up 70 percent and 63 percent for the year, with streaming ad spend also up by some 18 percent, according to recently-released report data. Adweek

Exclusive: New York Times phasing out all 3rd-party advertising data
The New York Times has begun eliminating all third-party advertising targeting information, and by July the firm will instead use a fully-proprietary platform, the company recently announced. Axios

Google’s digital-ad dominance is harming marketers and publishers, says new study
Digital marketers and publishers have been hurt as a result of Google’s online advertising dominance, according to a new study, with display ads the primary focus of the Omidyar Network and Public Knowledge report. AdAge

Reddit Launches New, 12-Week Online Advertising School Program
Social news and discussion platform Reddit has launched a three-month online community-driven advertising school program, led by director-level-or-above instructors covering 12 marketing topics, the firm recently announced. Social Media Today

Polls Return to Messenger From Facebook. After a year’s absence Facebook Messenger polls have been brought back
Digital marketers lamenting the elimination of Facebook’s Messenger polls a year ago got good news recently, as the social media giant announced that it has brought the polling option back for group chats. Adweek

Pandemic hastens shift in ad buying to mobile, study says
During an overall drop in ad spending, mobile ad spend has fared the best, as its 15 percent decrease was less than the 25 percent seen for desktop ad buying, according to recently-released study data. Mobile Marketer

Facebook Launches New App Called ‘CatchUp’ to Facilitate Group Phone Chats
Facebook recently released a tool to help bring online conversations to real-time phone communications, with the lanch of CatchUp, becomming Facebook’s sixth new app release in the past half year, the firm announced. Social Media Today

Enterprise Companies Struggle with Customer Experience Tasks
Real-time insights, personalization, and consistent data formatting are the top three customer experience (CX) challenges for enterprise firms, according to recently-released study data. MarketingCharts

LinkedIn Publishes New Guide to Key Content Trends Amid COVID-19
LinkedIn (client) has released new information about trending content on the Microsoft-owned platform, with top trending hashtags and other information of interest to digital marketers, the firm announced. Social Media Today

ON THE LIGHTER SIDE:

A lighthearted look at “the new normal” by Marketoonist Tom Fishburne — Marketoonist

Whoooaaa Duuuuude: Why We Stretch Words in Tweets and Texts — Wired

TOPRANK MARKETING & CLIENTS IN THE NEWS:

• Lee Odden — 20 Marketing Experts on Content that Helps Sales Reps Sell – Part 3 — Modus
• Nick Nelson — 10 Ways to Improve Your Business While Working Remotely — Small Business Trends
• Lee Odden — Klear interviews Lee Odden — John Gaylor
• Lee Odden — Stop the Sales Drop: Marketing Shifts For Stronger Growth — Marketing Insider Group
• Lee Odden — PIMtalk with Lee Odden: PIM, SEO, Content Marketing and B2B influencers [Video] — PIMTalk Podcast
• Lee Odden — 5 Smart Tips for Managing the WFH Transition in Marketing — monday.com (client)
• Ashley Zeckman — Ashley Zeckman: 5 Essential Questions to Guide Your B2B Influencer Marketing Strategy — Content Marketing World
• Lee Odden — “Stop the Sales Drop” Launches Sales and Marketing Peer Group — Business Wire
• Lee Odden — How to boost SEO flow like a pro during COVID-19 — PR Daily
• Lee Odden — Interview with Lee Odden – Breaking Free of Status Quo Marketing Tactics — Stop the Sales Drop
• Lee Odden — Marketing Through Uncertain Times – 15 Experts Share Insights — Insight Brief
• Lee Odden — Empathetic content marketing falls flat without authenticity [Video] — Search Engine Land
• Lee Odden — How to measure content KPIs during COVID [Video] — Search Engine Land
• Lee Odden — How to evaluate content marketing opportunities during COVID [Video] — Search Engine Land
• Lee Odden — What’s Trending: Fortify the Fundamentals — LinkedIn (client)

Have you come across your own top B2B content marketing or digital advertising stories from the past week of news? Please let us know in the comments below.

Thank you for joining us this week, and we hope that you will return again next Friday for more of the most relevant B2B and digital marketing industry news. In the meantime, you can follow us at @toprank on Twitter for even more timely daily news. Also, don’t miss the full video summary on our TopRank Marketing TV YouTube Channel.

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Many thanks to our friend Scott Monty for the awesome show intro. Be sure to check out his amazing newsletter Timeless and Timely.

Tim Washer is contributing creative direction to the show and he’s has worked for Conan O’Brien, John Oliver, among others. He helps corporations build more creative cultures.

The post How technology enables new customer conversations appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.

https://econsultancy.com/a-day-in-the-life-of-chris-george-svp-product-management-somo/

Please describe your job: What do you do?

I’m the SVP of Product Management at Somo. I help to lead an extremely talented team of product managers who are focused on building great products that help a wide range of clients and partners across diverse industries realise their digital ambitions at pace and scale.

How has your typical day been impacted in the short term by the pandemic?

Quite significantly. Aside from the obvious physical implications determined by social distancing, there are a number of associated considerations for the team (and business) as a whole. Ensuring that they stay connected, informed, and most importantly positive, is a big part of my day at the moment. Somo has offices in London, Bristol, Washington D.C, Charleston SC and Medelliín, Colombia, so we are used to working remotely across distributed teams. We were able to transition to the entire company working remotely relatively smoothly in just a few hours.

What are your favourite tools and techniques to help you get your work done at the moment?

Zoom fatigue is real! Back-to-back virtual meetings mean there is none of that extra time in-between the meetings as you walk from one meeting room to another in a physical context. We’re promoting the use of Speedy Meetings through Google Calendar that automatically builds in time between meetings, which can serve as a reminder to go take a short break, make a coffee or just walk around the house! We are also utilising Miro to run virtual workshops/whiteboard sessions which has been working really effectively.

Which companies have impressed you since the outbreak?

It’s been kind of interesting to see the way that different companies and indeed industries have changed their approach (or not!). What has been amazing to see and truly impressive is the way so many small businesses have adapted and wrapped around the needs of communities at a local level, supporting those most in need.

What changes are you making to help your brand connect with how people are feeling and experiencing the pandemic?

Mainly with lots of outreach on various channels focused around doing the right thing for both customers and staff in their time of need. Our marketing team is doing a great job of finding nuggets of advice or wisdom, from various walks of life, both internally and externally and sharing them with a wider audience. Outside of connecting with the Somo brand, we are doing a lot of work internally to make sure that our staff are still connected to our mission and values, and that we are doing all we can to support them day-to-day. Our culture is a cornerstone of life at Somo and maintaining it for both teams and clients while working remotely requires more energy and forethought than ever.

What trends have you seen in the last few weeks in your sector?

At a macro level, the most obvious trend is the acceleration of digital transformation requirements across industries, which we are beginning to see the early stages of. On a more granular level, we are seeing companies accelerating their ‘move to cloud roadmaps’ and kicking-off or fine-tuning work-from-home programs for much bigger teams.

What advice would you give a marketer right now?

Empathy needs to be put before everything else at the moment. There is a lot of uncertainty everywhere from markets and industries to individuals and society as a whole. More than anything, I believe the message needs to be ‘How can we help you?’ before anything else.

What does long term planning and strategy look like now at your brand?

Covid-19 has emphasised the need for companies to be able to react extremely quickly to unforeseen circumstances. Something of this scale also exposes the fallibility of both short-term and long-term planning. At Somo, we foresee an acceleration of digital transformation programs globally, led by ‘the new normal’ that is a direct result of the pandemic. The challenge is how companies respond to these opportunities with innovative products and services in a new, largely undefined global landscape.

For more on digital transformation, visit Econsultancy’s DT hub page.

The post A day in the life of… Chris George, SVP Product Management, Somo appeared first on Econsultancy.

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By Brooke B. Sellas, {grow} Contributing Columnist

When marketers think about the customer journey, they typically have used the well-known AIDA model:

• A = attract
• I = interest
• D = desire
• A = action

This model seems helpful as it provides focus on each area of the customer journey.

However, I think there’s a different way of looking at the customer journey. And surprise, surprise, it involves conversations.

The Basic Customer Journey

For now, let’s stick with AIDA. I have a few criticisms of this model.

For starters, there’s nothing that occurs after an action takes place. And as marketers, we know how important customer retention and loyalty is.

In fact, the majority of actions taken by users on social media when it comes to reaching out to a brand involve experience (aka they’ve already interacted with your brand) and for customer service issues (aka they’re already a customer).

Source: Sprout Social

That means that on social media, nearly 96 percent of people contact a brand beyond AIDA, assuming they’re already a customer.

Most would-be customers don’t reach out to brands on social media “just because.” And even when they do, brands are doing a poor job with responsiveness.

For instance, 40 percent of consumers said they expect brands to respond within the first hour of connecting through social media, while 79 percent expect a response in the first 24 hours.

The biggest thing missing when brands manage the customer journey? Conversations.

Conversations and the Customer Journey

Thinking of social media and the critical conversations on those channels, let’s create a new AIDA model. You’ve probably heard the term “conversational marketing” — and that’s at the heart of this model.

Think of conversational marketing as having real-time conversations with your would-be or actual customers. It’s that simple. (you do this, right?!)

This the model we’ve developed at B Squared Media:

The model is still pretty simple. Each part of the customer journey allows for conversations between you and your would-be (or actual) customers. And if we think about customer experience, that’s what sets the superior brands apart.

Everyone knows when they’re dealing with a customer-centric brand. It shows. You can feel it.

Sure, you can go really deep and crazy with customer experience, but you can also focus on conversations. Conversations are the ignored, low-hanging fruit of almost every business.

Let’s take a deep dive into each area.

ATTRACT

Every relationship begins with attraction.

Whether it’s content marketing on your website, on your social channels, or through advertising, this is where you’re drawing potential customers in. And trust me, if your content is good, they’re going to be leaving comments (or complaints!).

Questions to ponder …

• What kinds of conversations are coming your way in the attraction phase?
• What is the overall sentiment (positive, neutral, negative) of those mentions?
• Are you responding to every mention? Why or why not?
• How fast are you responding? Is it fast enough?

It all starts here. Content comes first but it should be followed by conversation if it’s good.

Remember, as Mark Schaefer says, content is only valuable if it moves. You’ll know this by gauging the response you get on social and other sites.

CONVERT

Once you add someone to your list or they join your community, how do you keep their interest? I/Interest = C/Convert.

For starters, you should have more content that’s only for your subscribers. You can see it’s listed in the image as things like,

• Personalized emails
• Exclusive/Premium content
• Coupons and offers

Think of each piece of content as the start of a conversation. And again, if the conversation is interesting, you’ll see a response.

Now, this may happen on social — like in a members-only group — or off social, like through email or maybe even a membership site. You don’t have to get all fancy.

One of the biggest success stories Mark and I have seen is through Dana Malstaff and her BossMom Facebook Group. The key is to make her customers feel truly valued through free content — CONVERSATION — in her Facebook Group.

The conversations that happen here give Dana and her team insight into creating more content that moves, ideas for development, and she’s even figured out how to monetize her Facebook Group.

That’s a truly inspiring ‘CONVERT’ example!

CLOSE

Just like Dana, you’re going to want to monetize your community at some point. We all have to turn leads into customers. Or maybe your sales team does that for you.

I am the entire sales team at my company. Disclaimer: I absolutely love sales! You may not.

However, sales are just like marketing in that conversations are crucial in this part of the customer journey.

My conversational workflows are very simple. I have templates for all of my sales follow-up and input everything into my CRM (Nimble CRM, which also happens to be great for social selling).

For example, I follow up three times and each template has specific conversational goals. If I don’t hear back, I move on. That’s what works for me but you’ll have to find your own sales sweet spot.

Essentially, it boils down to three things:

• Are you interested? (I’ve already qualified them)
• When do you want to start?
• OR, what’s the hold-up?

Some companies even have bots that do the pre-qualifying for them. They’ll even set up the pitch meeting! Check out Drift if that’s something you think you’d like a robot to do for you.

DELIGHT

Finally, my favorite part. Truth be told, I think nearly any brand should be able to easily get through A, C & C.

D is where most people fail … and where there’s the most opportunity.

How are you delighting your customers?

If we refer back to the ‘why consumers message a brand on social media’ image, we know that 60% of social media users will be telling you how you’re doing. Are you paying attention? Are you responding to those mentions?

What we typically see is that this falls into two categories:

• No, we are not paying attention to these mentions about an experience or customer service.
• Yes, we are paying attention to mentions about an experience or customer service BUT only when they’re positive.

Obviously, “no” is bad. Very bad. Don’t be bad. In fact, my question to you is this: why are you using social media if you aren’t doing the absolute basic most 101 thing, which is responding to every mention?

Yes is better but still pretty awful. When people complain, they are giving you insight into EXACTLY what they want. They are telling you EXACTLY what is wrong with your product/service/brand.

This is the stuff that big brands pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for, and here your customers are offering it up for FREE.

Just by listening to these conversations with our social listening tool, we’ve uncovered technical bugs, website issues, and product failures. All of these were fixed fairly easily and quickly and lead to DELIGHT. We use social listening to inform our Customer Care strategies, which also inform our loyalty programs and help us work with advocates and influencers.

The conversations in this part of the customer journey are dripping with insights. Swoon-worthy, real-world, actionable insights!

I’ll let you in on a little secret. All of the marketing buzzwords (influencers! loyalty! revenue!) live inside of customer care efforts and for some reason, most brands are completely overlooking this part of the journey.

Where Will You Take The Customer Journey Conversation?

Finally, I think we all have a little homework. Where will you take the conversation after reading this?

If you’re new to this, start with A. If you’re somewhere in the middle, focus on the Cs. And if you’re doing alright, be honest with yourself about your customer care efforts. How can you improve the conversation there?

My advice would be for ALL of us to focus on D. Think about it: when you have super customer retention, it eases the front of the customer journey. You don’t have to try as hard or often. You don’t have to spend as much to attract because your loyal customers and advocates are doing it for you.

Hmmm. Maybe D should be first! Something to ponder … 😉

Brooke B. Sellas is the Founder  & CEO of B Squared Media, an award-winning done-for-you social media management, advertising, and customer care agency. She’s also Mark Schaefer’s Co-host on the top-rated Marketing Companion Podcast. Brooke’s marketing mantra is “Think Conversation, Not Campaign” so be sure to give her a shout on Twitter!

The post Why “conversations” are the low-hanging fruit of any customer journey appeared first on Schaefer Marketing Solutions: We Help Businesses {grow}.