As more businesses embrace digital marketing strategies to generate leads, the need for digital marketing software is becoming increasingly necessary.
Digital marketing software takes over mundane tasks that bog us down, helping improve operational efficiency and overall performance.
They also help target ideal audiences, generate analytical data for review, run campaigns and other promotional tactics to drive sales.
Customers enjoy prompt and excellent service while marketers have the time to focus on building relationships.
We’ll explore some of the best digital marketing software along with several other digital marketing strategies brands can implement for efficiency and growth.
1. Marketing Automation
As the name suggests, marketing automation software automatically executes marketing tasks such as sending emails, text messages, and variable content.
It also helps in new customer onboarding, collecting data, lead scoring, growing your database, and communication workflows.
Examples of marketing automation platforms include Marketo, ActiveCampaign, HubSpot, Sendinblue, ConvertKit, and Constant Contact.
Before you choose a platform, it’s important to document your current capabilities, limitations, and the features/functionalities you would like to have.
Critically assess how well the software meets these needs.
Other points to consider as you choose marketing automation software include:
- Number of users and scalability. The software should seamlessly accommodate more users as your business grows without becoming prohibitive cost wise.
- Some automation tools have in-built CRM systems with advanced tagging capabilities, while others integrate with existing CRM systems and other tools. Choose the one that works best for your organization.
- Ease of use. You want software with a manageable learning curve, hands-on support, and ready-made guides. If you have to put in tons of hours in training or spend top dollar for consultant fees, then it’s a no-no.
- The automation platform should be spam compliant and stay updated when new industry regulations are set up.
- Choose software that allows you to personalize content and hyper-segment lists to ensure you deliver highly tailored content, increasing engagement.
- Go for a platform that provides in-depth data analysis on all leads. It will help you track performance and personalize future offers for higher conversion.
2. Chatbot Marketing
In the digital world, speed pretty much determines how long customers stay on your site.
If your sales teams take too long to respond, leads are likely to jump to a competitor’s page to see if they will receive faster responses.
Chatbot marketing may help keep that from happening.
Chatbots offer fast and effective communication with your visitors by answering questions or suggesting solutions based on previously collected data.
Through data mining, the bots can understand the lead’s preferences and serve appropriate answers or content.
B2B chatbots can also qualify leads, nurture leads through sending emails or messages, and even schedule meetings for your staff.
They can take care of the monotonous tasks so you can concentrate on other business strategies.
Here’s how to choose a suitable chatbot platform:
- List down your use cases. Is it customer service and support, demand generation, sales acceleration or buyer enablement?
- Beware of the pricing. What is it based on? The number of site visitors, or accounts under management?
- Integrations. Systems that speak to each other perform better together and make for accurate reporting. Chatbot systems that integrate with existing workflows maximize performance.
- Building audiences and personalization. Can interactions be personalized based on search keywords, behavior patterns or account firmographics, etc?
- Does the chatbot have routing features where leads can be routed to the right rep in real-time? Is there a fallback option if that rep can’t be reached?
Since the chatbot is in its infancy, monitor its performance to ensure everything works smoothly.
3. Cold Calling
Even with the changing nature of B2B communication, cold calling remains an effective strategy for generating leads, creating awareness and maximizing growth.
Statistics show at least 82 percent of buyers set up meetings with sellers who call them up. Buyers want to hear from sellers. You just need to be smart about the calling tactic.
Here are some practices to consider:
- Use an updated and relevant list of prospects. Data decay is real and it can render your list useless. People change jobs and positions and company needs keep changing—what was necessary yesterday may not be needed in six months.
- Call the right people. A great way to ensure success is to call prospects whose profiles match companies that are already in your books. They may experience similar challenges and will likely appreciate your solutions.
- Be prepared. Be informed about the company you’re calling and have a general understanding of their industry and their struggles.
- Plan what you’ll say but keep in mind that this needs to be a two-way conversation, not a robotic speech. Keep a calling guide handy to direct the conversation, but work towards a natural conversation.
- Keep a record of all the calls made along with notes about them. It will provide insight about the prospects and help you modify your approach for greater success.
4. Content Marketing
Content marketing provides an avenue to lure customers and prospects to your business without being pushy.
You deliver information to audiences that positively influences them to buy from you.
Content marketing includes blog posts, thought leadership articles, social media posts, white papers, newsletters, infographics, and reports among others.
Here are benefits of content marketing for businesses:
- Lead generation. Publishing valuable and relevant content improves the likelihood of being found by prospects who may explore your services and the value you can add.
- Improves visibility. Search engines thrive on valuable indexed content. As you host search engine optimized content on your site, you’ll improve your rankings and the easier it will be for searchers to find you.
- Saves your time. While content creation always feels tedious, it saves you time later. Any time your prospects ask for detailed information or product demos, you’ll have them handy to send out.
- Improves customer retention. As you share personalized and relevant content with existing customers, they will feel compelled to engage with you improving long-term customer retention.
- Helps build a community. As you share content regularly, your website and social channels become a hub for customers and prospects to interact. The sense of community improves conversion, loyalty, and retention.
5. Social Media Automation
Here we’re considering tools that tackle the time-consuming tasks needed to maintain a professional presence.
Tasks like scheduling posts, triaging customer queries, and generating analytical reports can be automated.
Done right, automation can ease social pages management and let you focus on other strategic work.
Even as you automate your social media, considerations the following:
- Copy and pasting messages across social platforms creates the impression of being out-of-touch or downright sloppy. Modify your message to suit the audiences on the different platforms.
- Use analytics to establish when your ideal audiences are online and schedule the posts to appear then.
- Here we don’t set and forget. Batch-scheduling posts is great but you should keep a close ear on what’s happening within the company and around the world. Poorly timed posts can be embarrassing and make your company look tactless.
- Avoid automating responses. Using bots to leave comments, like posts, or follow/unfollow brands and people, can easily ruin your online reputation. You don’t want to come across as fake or lazy in the eyes of potential customers.