Here are The Marketing Automation Alert’s best marketing automation-related articles curated today, Tuesday, 3/26/13. Receive a daily summary of The Marketing Automation Alert directly to your inbox. Subscribe here (your privacy is protected). If you find this valuable, please share by using the links below:
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Featured Marketing Automation Article
Lead-To-Revenue Management Fosters Marketing/Sales Alignment | Forrester Blogs
From blogs.forrester.com – Today, 11:51 AM
Excerpt…
In our study, we found that companies who have implemented a marketing automation solution (a proxy for a more managed process) reported significantly higher levels of collaboration between sales and marketing, across a number of different dimensions.
The marketing automation adopters had a 13% collaboration advantage (54% to 41%) in defining and executing field programs. This makes sense. The ability to track the revenue impact of marketing programs can finally put an end to spirited debates over “trade show vs. tele-prospecting” and “white paper syndication vs. golf-outing.”
Fifty-seven percent of the marketing automation adopters reported strong collaboration in capturing insight from customers and prospects, compared to 41% of those who are not automated. By providing insight into the prospect’s behavior and experience across all channels (website, campaigns and social) your sales force can have better conversations, engage in a meaningful way, and close more deals, faster.
Administering Leads and Lead Pipelines posted a positive collaborative advantage of 12 percent. Just as you suspected, there is a better tool than Excel to distribute and manage the follow-up on tradeshow leads!
iNeoMarketing‘s insight:
Make no mistake: MARKETING AUTOMATION FORCES ALIGNMENT, COMMUNICATION AND ATTTRIBUTION. It’s damn near impossible not to benefit from MA in this fashion. The aforementioned is a snippet to the whole post, and we encourage you to click through.
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Optimize Your Videos for Search and Social – Social Media Explorer
From www.socialmediaexplorer.com – Today, 11:43 AM
A handy how-to guide for optimizing video content for search engines and for social media from Social Media Explorer’s Jason Falls.
Introduction…
Thus, the term and practice of “Social Search,” has emerged. Now, in addition to traffic, links and directory listings, your web content’s search engine rankings can also be affected by “Like”s, ReTweets, +1s on and so on. These social signals add a layer of human verification that a link or piece of content are worth seeing. The more social proof a given piece of content has, the better chance it has of ranking higher than competing content, provided all other entires in the algorithm for each are the same.
Like written content, video can be optimized for search. But it can also be optimized for social. While the two tactics are similar, there are some subtle differences, too. To understand them, we first need to understand the two audiences you’re optimizing for.
iNeoMarketing‘s insight:
Atop the adjacent post, we’ve scooped this one. Again, we would be short selling the value by summarizing the content: you really need to click through for the value this article offers if this is one of your challenges.
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Optimizing Videos for Search: A Complete Guide – ClickZ
From www.clickz.com – Today, 11:39 AM
Nine guidelines to follow for your video SEO success gained from personal experience, industry collaboration, experimentation, and reverse engineering. Part one in a two-part series.
Introduction…
Whether you host your company videos on your brand’s website or upload to YouTube will have dramatically different search results with Google. Each platform has its distinct benefits to the marketer, with distinct optimization strategies and tactics to follow in order to rank well, and maximize search visibility and conversions.
Google’s diverse search landscape contains several different search algorithms, including Google Search, Google Video Search, and YouTube; each offers different ways of showing video results. This presents some hefty challenges for search marketing professionals. This two-part series on video search will present insights and tips gained from our own experiences, industry collaboration, experimentation, and reverse engineering – first on Google Search for video (here) and next time on optimizing video for YouTube.
iNeoMarketing‘s insight:
Way too much detail to summarize, and we would be selling this great information short. If this is on your hit list, you must click through to read the detail. Another great resource.
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7 B2B Advertising Opportunities You Are Probably Missing – B2B Digital Marketing
From b2bdigital.net – Today, 11:27 AM
Excerpted…
Today, B2B marketers have many new options available. Below are 7 options and potential providers for each one.
- Search Retargeting. Search retargeting allows you to buy display ads targeted to people that have searched for your keywords. You can also include competitors’ products that may be restricted in traditional search. Providers: Simpli.fi, Chango, Fetchback.
- InText Ads. Buy your keywords in the text of articles on news and content sites. Providers: Vibrant Media, Kontera.
- Retargeting. One of the oldest targeting tactics in B2C, retargeting is still underutilized by B2B marketers even though it is generally one of the most cost effective tactics. Providers: AdRoll, Fetchback, Retargeter.
- CRM Retargeting. Retargeting doesn’t have to stop with your site traffic. With CRM retargeting, one of the newer options included in this list, you can target people in your email database across the web. Providers: Retargeter, LiveRamp.
- Audience Targeting. Bizo has established themselves as the leading provider of B2B audience data, here are the segments they have available.
- Company Targeting. Do you have a list of specific target companies or accounts? Cherry pick your targets and deliver ads only to people at those companies. Providers: Bizo, Demandbase, Neustar.
- LinkedIn Data Targeting. Through a new partnership, LinkedIn can now sell ads across the web targeting using their own profile data. LinkedIn is the gold standard for B2B data, making this one of the most interesting new offerings in my opinion. This is really a type of audience targeting, above, but it is separate here because self-reported LinkedIn data is different from typical audience data.
iNeoMarketing‘s insight:
TREMENDOUS resource! Bookmark this, click through and review the article carefully, and explore these options!
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PPC Performance Metrics: Bing Ads vs. Google AdWords – Website Magazine
From www.websitemagazine.com – Today, 11:17 AM
Summary…
Key findings from the report include:
**Google AdWords was shown to be the leader in impressions and click-through rates. In fact, AdWords delivered significantly higher impressions in five of the six categories studied.
**In addition, average click-through rates on AdWords campaigns were 2-5 times higher than those on Yahoo! Bing in all categories studied during the period.
**At the same time, the Yahoo! Bing Network was found to have costs-per-click that were 1-3 times lower than AdWords, as well as brand impressions that were 76 to 90 percent less expensive on average than AdWords.
**In addition, there was less competition for top positions on its results pages, with 36 percent fewer advertisers on Yahoo! Bing than on AdWords in the studied verticals.
iNeoMarketing‘s insight:
A summary of the AdGooroo report scooped adjacent to this scoop. First two bullet points above tell you all you need to know…for now.
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The Essential Cheat Sheet for Social Media Cover Photo Dimensions [+ Pre-Sized Templates] – HubSpot
From blog.hubspot.com – Today, 11:19 AM
This handy cheat sheet and templates give you the dimensions for designing optimized cover photos for Facebook, Twitter, Google+, YouTube, and LinkedIn.
iNeoMarketing‘s insight:
THANK YOU HUBSPOT. We love posts that make our lives easier.
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4 Common Lead Nurturing Mistakes B2B Marketers Make – G2M Solutions
From www.g2msolutions.com.au – Today, 10:52 AM
Avoid these 4 common mistakes that B2B marketers make when it comes to nurturing their leads.
Condensed…
Here are the top 4 mistakes that B2B marketers should avoid when it comes to nurturing their leads:
1. Campaign goals aren’t SMART
Brainstorm goals that are:
- Specific: simple
- Measurable: manageable
- Attainable: achievable
- Relevant: results-oriented
- Timely: time-oriented
2. Campaigns are not targeted to persona
Do you even know who your personas are? To know them well, you need to understand their:
- Business challenges
- Their business goals (KPIs or MBOs)
- Career goals
- Role and responsibilities
- Company culture
- Favourite internet destinations
- Personal background
3. Campaigns are not targeted to buying stage
There are basically 3 stages that your buyer goes through:
- Awareness: There’s a problem and I need to conduct some research on it.
- Consideration: There’s a solution for my problem out there, but I need to establish my organisation’s buying criteria.
- Decision: It’s time to evaluate vendors because I’m ready to buy.
Putting yourself in your buyer’s shoes can be as simple as asking yourself the following questions:
- What do they think now?
- What do they need at this stage?
- What do we want them to think?
- How do we sell the next step?
4. Timing of campaigns is off
B2B marketers make one of the following mistakes when it comes to nurture campaign timing:
Too eager to batch and blast? People have tons to look at in their inbox so pull it back to 1-2 emails a month. Anything more than this can serve to annoy your prospects (and you really don’t want to do that).
Too scared of coming off as spammy? You have no reason to fear hitting the ‘send’ button if what you’re sending your prospects is truly useful to them at the stage they’re at in their journey.
In the end the best policy in striking the balance between “too often” and “not enough” is to look at your analytics and listen to what your buyers are telling you. Every industry and job role has a different appetite for information.
iNeoMarketing‘s insight:
Excellent article, covering the basic errors made when configuring marketing automation for lead nurturing. Take the extra step and avoid these avoidable issues. Click through for details.
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FREE REPORT: Yahoo! Bing PPC Performance Metrics – AdGooroo
From succeed.adgooroo.com – Today, 11:07 AM
“In this valuable new report, AdGooroo analyzes U.S. paid search performance on Yahoo! Bing as well as Google AdWords across six verticals: Retail, Financial Services, Travel, Education, Computer & Internet, and Business to Business. View side-by-side comparisons of the two search engines for:
- Impressions
- Clickthrough Rate (CTR)
- Cost Per Click (CPC)
- Cost Per Thousand Impressions (CPM)
- Competition
- And more”
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Savings Fuel New Digital Spending – eMarketer
From www.emarketer.com – Today, 10:31 AM
In the US, total marketing budgets account for an average 10.4% of revenues, a study has found, of which an average of 2.5% of revenues are spent on digital marketing.
Excerpt…
For 2013, marketers are expecting to increase overall marketing budgets by an average of 6%, Gartner found. Although a range of sectors will be increasing advertising spending, increases are expected to be largest in media and retail, and smallest in “high-tech” and manufacturing industries.
According to Gartner, much of that increase in digital spending will come from marketers reinvesting cost savings. When asked how they were funding their digital marketing programs, 41% answered that they were saving money by replacing traditional tactics with digital tactics, and that this savings was funding further investment. Another 28% responded that they decreased traditional marketing budgets to free up funds for digital.
iNeoMarketing‘s insight:
We’re curious as to how the savings are being reinvested. Our recommendation: reinvest in the renovation of marketing staff towards marketing technology training and hiring.
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3 Reasons to Grow Your LinkedIn Network – Jill Konrath
From www.youtube.com – Today, 10:35 AM
Are you using your LinkedIn network to connect with all your customers? Why not? BONUS: Get the FREE ebooK: Cracking the LinkedIn Sales Code at http://bit.ly...
iNeoMarketing‘s insight:
Take a minute to review. We’ve previously posted about Jill’s eBook, and encourage a review by you.
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JPL – Social Media Marketing for B2B Companies [INFOGRAPHIC]
From www.jplcreative.com – Today, 9:56 AM
Social media marketing is increasingly important for B2B companies because it has the potential to impact purchase decisions significantly.
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Grow Revenue With Big Data: Get Sales and Marketing on the Same Page [Infographic] – Profs
From www.marketingprofs.com – Today, 9:58 AM
Sales – To meet revenue goals, Sales and Marketing should work together. Unfortunately, they often don’t. Why is that? Check out this infographic to learn about reasons for the clash…
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