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- 25 Mar
How to Build Sales Tools That Actually Work
- Mar 25, 2017
- Dan Hoff
- 0
- B2B Marketing, Content Marketing, Conversion Strategies, Lead Generation, Sales Enablement
by Mark Yeager
Salespeople spend a whopping 30 hours per month searching for and creating marketing collateral. This is according to the American Marketing Association. And that’s a lot of time to spend on something they really shouldn’t have to do, isn’t it?
Isn’t This What Marketing Should Be Doing?
But, where are all those materials that are constantly being created by the marketing department? Well, for the most part, they are there. But it goes unused. It seems that some 60-70% of content produced by B2B marketing departments is unused, Sirius Decisions has found.
That means that companies are wasting massive amounts of time and resources on materials that are not exactly what sales teams need. Or, Sales simply doesn’t know that they’re there. So what can be done to provide Sales the effective tools it needs?
Here’s a look at the core of the problem and how to fix it on MarketingProfs.com
NOTE: A Free Registration pop up opens on this site. Registration is not required to read the article.
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- 24 Mar
New Data On Facebook Ad Benchmarks for YOUR Industry
- Mar 24, 2017
- Dan Hoff
- 0
- Facebook, Facebook Advertising, Social Media, Social Media Marketing, Social Selling
by Mark Irvine
Facebook is one of the fastest growing ad networks. In fact, the number of advertisers using Facebook has more than doubled in the last 18 months. And that translates to over 2 million advertisers who started advertising on Facebook in the past 2 years
A Strange and Confusing New World Awaits
However, if you are new to the platform, you may have found that it can be easy to get overwhelmed. That may be because Facebook has nearly countless ad targeting options to explore, and performance differs for every client. Just like on AdWords, performance can differ across different industries on Facebook, so what numbers should you be looking to beat in your industry?
WordStream has dug into their data to find out. Check out the Facebook ad performance benchmarks at WordStream.com
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- 23 Mar
Are Most Tech Startups Destined to Fail
- Mar 23, 2017
- Dan Hoff
- 0
- #Startup Marketing, Conversion Strategies, Lead Generation, Marketing for Small Business
by Dan Hoff
There are only two sources of wisdom. One can learn from those who applied wisdom and succeeded or from those who ignored wisdom and failed. – Plato
Depending upon who you happen to listen to, the failure rate for technology startups is anywhere between 90% and 63%. And that is typically within the first 4 years of their founding. Even on the low end, this makes you wonder. Why anyone would consider going out on their own to start their own business.
However, if you’re going to do it and you know that the odds are against you, wouldn’t you want to know what are the reasons for such a high failure rate?
And, wouldn’t it put you a bit ahead of the game if you knew what could be done to reduce the risk and improve the odds of success?
The answer to these questions are fairly simple. To see what they are, read the full article right here on Dan Hoff Marketing
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- 23 Mar
What is Guerrill Marketing? And How Can It Work For Your Brand?
- Mar 23, 2017
- admin
- 0
- Guerrilla Marketing, Inbound Marketing, Lead Generation, Marketing Strategies
Guerrilla marketing isn’t some sort of marketing combat. After all, that would be highly disruptive. And that would violate the whole methodology of inbound marketing. As a fact, it’s actually a very unconventional form of inbound marketing. It raises brand awareness among large audiences, without interrupting them.
What Is Guerrilla Marketing? What Is It Good For?
Because it’s so unconventional, however, it’s not the easiest concept to explain. Guerrilla marketing is often best understood when it’s observed. So that’s how we’re going to approach its best practices and takeaways. We’ll start with some basics around where it came from and how it works. Then follow by an examination of how it’s been carried out successfully.
So read on at HubSpot.com to discover the answers to the questions of what is guerrilla marketing and how can it work for your brand.
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- 22 Mar
A Beginner’s Guide to Publishing on LinkedIn
- Mar 22, 2017
- Dan Hoff
- 0
- B2B Marketing, Content Marketing, Lead Generation, Linked In
by Carly Stec
It is always great to have a formula when you want something to come out right. And the great thing about formulas is that they provide us with a starting point.
The More Things Change, . . . The More Different They Become
Now, over the past year or two, you’ve probably noticed something a little different about your LinkedIn notifications. LinkedIn announced in February 2014 that they’d be opening up their publishing platform to the public. And for marketers, this instantly transformed the professional network into a more interesting destination to explore.
Well, while many have seen immense success with the new platform, others have remained on the sidelines. Many were unsure how to break onto the map. And, in all likelihood, they lacked a clear formula for how to approach this unfamiliar territory. So to help resolve this, Carly Stec at HubSpot has put together a guide to publishing on LinkedIn at HubSpot.com
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- 21 Mar
What Are Teens’ Primary News Sources?
- Mar 21, 2017
- Dan Hoff
- 0
- Generational Marketing, Marketing to Teens, Social Media, Social Media Marketing
from MarketingCharts.com
More US teens say they get their news from social networking sites and family than from any other source. This according to a study from Common Sense Media, which interviewed almost 600 teens aged 13-18. Teens rely on teachers or other adults, friends, and websites or apps to a lesser degree. With around one-third having used those as sources for news the day prior to the survey.
What Are Teens’ Primary News Sources? Really?
Teens shared that they also prefer getting their news from social networking sites (34%). Family, as a source of news, was only preferred by one-fifth of respondents, followed by TV (17%). Respondents Thy least preferred turning to teachers or other adults (4%), radio (3%) and newspapers (1%) to find out what’s going on in the world.
To see more of the data and insights, read the full article at MarketingCharts.com
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- 20 Mar
Business Email Read Rates and Unread Delete Rates, by Industry, Q1-Q4 2016
- Mar 20, 2017
- Dan Hoff
- 0
- B2B Marketing, Demand Generation, Email Marketing, Lead Generation
by Ayaz Nanji
It seems that 13% of emails sent by businesses in 2016 were deleted by their recipients. While that may not seem too worrisome, that was without being opened or read.
An Impressive Data Sampling
This was according to recent research from Return Path, a company specializing in email deliverability. Their report was based on their internal email data from 17,000 of their commercial senders. It also included 2.5 million consumer panelists and spanned over 5 billion commercial email messages received in 2016.
Not surprisingly, what they found was that emails deleted without being read in 2016 varied widely by industry. But there were a number of surprises revealed as well. To see the data and insights, and to gain access to the original report, read the full article at MarketingProfs.com
NOTE: A Free Registration pop up opens on this site. Registration is not required to read the article.
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- 18 Mar
20 YouTube Tricks, Hacks & Features You’ll Want to Know About
- Mar 18, 2017
- admin
- 0
- Facebook, Social Media Marketing, Twitter, Video Marketing, YouTube
When people talk about today’s most popular social sharing websites, YouTube often gets left out of the conversation in favor of sites like Facebook and Twitter. But don’t be fooled. YouTube has a lot going for it.
Soooo Many Features, So Little Time . . .
After all, there are a ton of cool things you can do with YouTube that you might not know about. For example, did you know that YouTube automatically creates a written transcript for your videos. And that polishing those transcripts can help you get your videos found more easily in search? Or that you can use YouTube to easily create a photo slideshow. And you can even set it to music using its royalty-free audio library?
Mind-blowing stuff, isn’t it people. To help you make the most out of the still very popular platform, HubSpot has put together a list of 20 of the lesser-known hacks, tips, and features YouTube has to offer. So read the full article at HubSpot.com for all of them.
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- 18 Mar
Here’s How Marketers Fared Last Year in the Metrics That Impact Email Deliverability
- Mar 18, 2017
- Dan Hoff
- 0
- Conversion Strategies, Demand Generation, Email Marketing, Lead Generation, Website Conversion Strategies
from MarketingCharts.com
Close to one-third of US marketing emails fail to reach the inbox. This was according to an analysis released last year by Return Path. With deliverability having such an impact on email marketing success, Return Path has dug deep into its data [download available]. From this, they have been able to provide a host of new benchmarks across several metrics that can act as indicators for sender reputation.
The Definition of Good versus Evil . . . for Email that is
In this report, they have defined positive indicators of email reputation. Those include metrics such as read and forwarded messages, along with messages replied to and those marked as “not spam”. Such actions act as indicators of subscriber engagement. And these are actively tracked by several mailbox providers. Negative indicators include messages marked as spam along with messages deleted before reading.
To see more on this report and some highlights across these indicators, read the full article at MarketingCharts.com
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- 17 Mar
How to Turn Cold Facebook Traffic into Red Hot Leads
- Mar 17, 2017
- Dan Hoff
- 0
- Facebook Advertising, Google AdWords, Lead Generation, Social Media Marketing
If you are looking for success in Facebook advertising, the thing to remember is that Facebook is cold traffic. With nearly two billion people using it, it’s not the same as Google AdWords. There, when someone navigates to the search engine, types in “cheap smartphones phoenix”, and is served up an appropriate ad with organic results. That’s warm traffic. We know why they came there.
You’re Getting Warmer . . .
On Facebook however, we don’t know why the visitors came to the platform. They might be updating their status. They may be looking at photos from friends and family. Or they may simply be checking the news. Or simply killing time. The good news? You can turn cold Facebook traffic into red hot leads if you use ads the right way.
To learn how it is done right, read the full article at KISSmetrics.com
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- 17 Mar
Most Purchases Are Made While Shopping Around, Not From Loyalty
- Mar 17, 2017
- Dan Hoff
- 0
- Brand Marketing, Conversion Strategies, Lead Generation, Loyalty Marketing
from MarketingCharts.com
Do consumers tend to make the same brand choices time after time. Or do mostly shop around with successive purchases? Recent research from McKinsey comes to a troubling conclusion. It seems that few purchases are loyalty-driven. And the myriad new ways for consumers to judge brands and comparison shop doesn’t seem poised to change that.
Ooops! Well, We May Need to Re-Think Our Approach Now
To arrive at this conclusion, McKinsey dug into its CDJ database, which it says covers more than 125,000 consumers shopping for more than 350 brands. After analyzing the data, it found that of 30 categories, just 3 were primarily loyalty-driven.
So, what does this mean for your brand? For more of the data and additional insights, read the full article at MarketingCharts.com
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- 16 Mar
YouTube Ads for Beginners: How to Launch & Optimize a YouTube Video Advertising Campaign
by Jami Oetting
You’ve spent months perfecting the script, storyboarding, finding the right talent, shooting, and editing. The end result? A blockbuster brand or product video.
Building it in the Hopes They Will Come is Not a Marketing Strategy
But, with all that time invested, you can’t stop at just embedding the video on a homepage. And sharing it on social media and hoping someone watches just isn’t enough. You need to be proactive about gaining the attention of prospects and those unfamiliar with your brand.
Running a series of YouTube ads is one way to make sure more of your target audience finds the video content you’ve produced. But where and how to start? Here is the YouTube Ads for Beginners: How to Launch & Optimize a YouTube Video Advertising Campaign to help you out at HubSpot.com
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- 15 Mar
Email Marketing Benchmarks: 4Q16 Average Open, Click, and Bounce Rates
- Mar 15, 2017
- Dan Hoff
- 0
- Digital Marketing, Email Marketing, Lead Generation, Marketing for Small Business
by Ayaz Nanji
So, how did email marketing perform last year? To answer that question, Experian asked their marketing clients, comparing 4Q15 and 3Q16 key metrics. What they found was that the volume of email sent by marketers in the fourth quarter of 2016 rose 14% compared with the fourth quarter of 2015.
Size Matters, . . . for Some but Not Others
Though email volume grew across the board, the size of the increase varied significantly by industry. For example, travel brands sent 29.6% more emails in 4Q16 than in 4Q15, on average, whereas business products/services firms sent only 2.7% more emails.
For more of the data and insights, read the full article at MarketingProfs.com
NOTE: A Free Registration pop up opens on this site. Registration is not required to read the article.
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- 14 Mar
How Account-Based Marketing and Selling via LinkedIn Can Drive Revenue
- Mar 14, 2017
- Dan Hoff
- 0
- Account Based Marketing, B2B Marketing, Conversion Strategies, LinkedIn, Social Media Marketing
Many social media and social selling experts say volume is the key. They claim that to succeed on social media platforms, including LinkedIn, is a numbers game. However, that type of shotgun approach may be better when you have a lower-cost offering and need as many leads as possible to get a return on your social media investment.
If You Aim at The Target, Chances Increase You’ll Hit it
But when your offering supposes a hefty investment on the part of the buyer this may not be the case. Especially when you have a complex sales process. That means that you’d better be sure you’re focusing on specific audiences and that you are being relevant. A targeted, account-based marketing approach is key in this case.
Here are some real-life examples of how an account-based marketing and selling approach on LinkedIn can drive not just reach and awareness but also demand and revenue, at MarketingProfs.com
NOTE: A Free Registration pop up opens on this site. Registration is not required to read the article.
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- 13 Mar
The Beginner’s Guide to Small Business Marketing Online
- Mar 13, 2017
- Dan Hoff
- 0
- Digital Marketing, Lead Generation, Marketing for Small Business, Online Marketing
According to Forbes, 80-90% of consumers research purchases online before buying. That means whether you’re launching a new business or already have one, having an strong online presence for your brand is extremely important.
Digital Marketing is Critical to Success
Today, digital marketing is no longer a luxury. It is now a must-have. And it is central for promoting your products or services and has become critical to your business’ overall success.
However if you’re a small business owner with little experience in online marketing, this whole “online marketing” marketing thing might sound like a foreign language. But, have no fear. In this post, you can learn how to build and optimize your marketing strategy using inbound marketing, setting you up to attract new clients and ultimately grow your business at HubSpot.com
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- 11 Mar
Q4 Email Performance, By Time of Day
- Mar 11, 2017
- Dan Hoff
- 0
- Conversion Strategies, Email Marketing, Lead Generation
from MarketingChats.com
The best time of day to send email during Q4 – at least when comparing transactions to volume – was between 4PM and 8PM. This was according to a new study [download available] from Experian Marketing Services. More specifically, mailings in this time frame resulted in 21.1% of transactions relative to 14.8% of volume.
That Was Then, This is Now
The results are interesting in light of the previous year’s data. Last year, it was the 12AM-4AM time frame that resulted in a disproportionately high share of transactions compared to send volume. This time around, that period was the least effective. It’s interesting to note that this early day-part seems to have become much more popular from one year to the next.
To see all of the data, more insights and to download the original report, read the full article at MarketingChats.com
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- 10 Mar
The Top Digital Channels for Generating B2B Leads
- Mar 10, 2017
- Dan Hoff
- 0
- Content Marketing, Email Marketing, Lead Generation, LinkedIn, Social Media Marketing
by Ayaz Nanji
B2B marketers say email, organic search, whitepapers, and webinars work. And, most say that LinkedIn is also in the mix as the most effective digital channels/tactics for generating leads. This was according to recent research from DemandWave.
So, Who Did They Ask?
The report was based on data from a survey conducted in November and December 2016. The sampling included 179 B2B marketers in the U.S. And, respondents to the survey worked for firms in a range of industries. The largest share in the study came from the software (39%) and business services (17%) verticals.
Surprisingly, the most applied digital channels currently used by B2B marketers are social media, and email. Now, to see all the top digital channels and best types of content for generating B2B leads are, read the full article at MarketingProfs.com
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- 09 Mar
7 Little-Known Lead Generation Ideas Revealed
- Mar 09, 2017
- Dan Hoff
- 0
- Generational Marketing, Lead Generation, Marketing to Millennials, Social Media
by Dan Stelter
What tactics, strategies, and techniques can you use to generate more leads for your business?
Sometimes Raw Emotions Like “Fear” Can Work
One suggestion comes from a recent study from Citizen Relations Canada. They found that 68% of Canadian millennials have bought because of a “fear of missing out” (FOMO) marketing approach. And, additionally they discovered that 45% couldn’t go longer than 12 hours without checking their favorite social media platforms.
So that means that FOMO is powerful indeed. In fact, so are urgency, scarcity, exclusivity, surprise, and social proof. But those are not the only ones. Here are 7 lesser known lead generation marketing ideas you may not know of at WordStream.com.
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- 08 Mar
Engagement Secret Sauce: Learn From Social Networks to Attract and Keep Audiences for Yourself
Social networks have become an uphill battle for marketers. They’re literally addictive to consumers, who now spend 40+ minutes on social media every day. But for marketers, who now face a sea of competing content and little to no unpaid reach, social networks are simply no longer the most effective way to reach those consumers. So a growing number of marketers are beginning to rethink social networks, and many are driving traffic to their own websites and mobile apps instead.
Bringing your audience home has huge advantages. Consumers who want to stay in touch with your brand are nearly three times more likely to visit your website than to engage with you on Facebook. And the more time a consumer spends on your properties—whether shopping, discovering, or researching products—translates into a longer, stronger relationship between that consumer and your brand, according to a study from Kantar Media. So how do you make your own properties as captivating as a social network? Here are four ways they do it, and how you can, too…
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- 07 Mar
What Consumers Expect of Local Businesses on Facebook
by Ayaz Nanji
Nearly three-quarters (73%) of US consumers say Facebook is the most important social media platform for local businesses to have a presence on, according to a recent report from G/O Digital.
The report was based on data from a survey of 1,000 social media users in the United States. Some 12% of respondents say Google+ is the most important social network for local businesses to have a presence on; Twitter is third (3%), followed by LinkedIn (2%), and Instagram (less than 1%).