SigmaWay Blog

With the marketers trying to woo customers with all their grit, it's customer data that has proved to be their friend indeed. Data driven marketing increases the ROI to many fold. This is now a well-documented fact. Larisa Bedgood (author) in an article in the blog Datamentors talks about the following 3 ways to extract more revenue from data driven marketing:

• Break Down the Silos

• A 360-degree customer view

• Personalized experience is what customers want. 

For an extensive account of these 3 keys to higher ROI hit the link http://www.datamentors.com/blog/3-ways-data-driven-marketing-drives-higher-roi

Data is collected through various paid, owned and earned media channels. Currently, B2B companies have started to emerge which is indeed a good news for marketers. Forward-looking media companies are investing to furnish superior quality prospects and performance data in order to generate new customers. They are as follows:

1. Data as the new media and marketing currency - Media companies uses data in association to their content and customer's marketing assets.
2. Behavioral prospect data and signal intent - It helps to figure out the best opportunities by encouraging prospects in a more targeted manner.
3. Company content consumption data for account-based marketing - It aims to target companies that B2B marketers finds ideal for their product.

Read more at: http://www.business2community.com/big-data/your-best-marketing-data-provider-may-be-right-underneath-your-nose-01264168

19000 students across 340 countries around the world have chosen GOOGLE as their top choice when asked where they wanted to work according to a study. The other companies where they also liked to work in the ascending order were Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft and Apple. This particular study was conducted by Piazza, a discussion platform used by several students and teachers around the world. Pizza has been doing a great work in the market for recruiters and is an attractive tool. Piazza has also stated that women and men have different opinions in choosing their workplace. Hence, such a software helps the companies know how students see the world right now.

Read more at : http://techcrunch.com/2015/06/29/where-computer-science-engineering-and-math-majors-want-to-work/?ncid=rss&cps=gravity_1730_-7001745546600563025#.mzgrdo:U5OR

Is your CRM system making you work but isn't working out for your company then here are some tips that will come handy. Oliver Lopez, founder and CEO of Structsales, in his blogpost on Hubspot Blogs puts down 5 points thinking along which one can make for a great CRM system for their organization.

• The relationship between sales process and CRM 

• Find your key performance indicators

• Give Reps clear and compelling guideline

• Link sales process to buying process

• What you need in CRM 

For more takeaways from this piece of information follow the link http://blog.hubspot.com/sales/how-to-make-crm-work-for-your-organization-and-not-the-other-way-around

How to make my content impressive and engaging- This is one question that haunts every brand now and then. With standard formatted blogpost becoming too common and dry to consume, the appetite for more creative and engaging content is increasing. Sylvia Jensen, marketing director at Oracle Marketing Cloud, shares 12 awesome ways to keep your brand message relevant and at the same time makes it stand out from the noise. Some of our picks are:

• Framing a quiz, it will be more engaging

• Examine a case study

• Explore different charts

• Put things in a comic strip

• Write a guide or glossary

For more, have a look at http://www.business2community.com/content-marketing/12-awesome-content-marketing-ideas-arent-blog-posts-01258747

As more and more data pours in, marketers need to keep adjusting their strategies to be updated in this dynamic ecosystem of information. Thomas Begin, vice president of strategy in Targetbase, in his special guest feature in Inside Bigdata talks about the analysis paralysis in times when many organizations are turning to consumer centric strategies. He points out the major lags in this transformation:

• Inadequate internal collaboration

• The inability to act quickly

• More focus on reporting rather than action. 

To have a look at the recommended solution to these lags follow the link http://insidebigdata.com/2015/05/05/keeping-big-data-small-to-create-engagement/

Marketing automation is software and tactics that enable companies to nurture prospects with highly personalized and useful content that helps convert prospects to customers and turn customers into delighted customers. It therefore makes for a highly profitable investment when it comes to adding value to the existing CRM solution. Eric Scott Johnston, analyst with Studio B, in an article on Inside-CRM blog talks about the takeaways from automated content marketing:

• Improve lead quality by reducing the number of unqualified leads.

• Develop great customer insights

• and finally when all things fall in place, companies retain their customers. 

For more on this piece follow the link  http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/insidecrm/3-ways-automated-content-marketing-can-benefit-your-crm-solution-67854 

The concept of agile marketing is taken from software development. The goals are to improve the speed, predictability, transparency and adaptability in the marketing functions. Tim Matthews (VP of marketing @Incapsula_com and author of The Professional Marketer) in his article in business2community.com mentioned about the six lessons he learned while managing agile marketing teams at two companies. They are as follows:

1.  Set the right cadence.

2. Take a break.

3. Insist on metrics.

4. Prioritize realistically.

5. Don't allow overly aggressive goals.

 6. Set the work volume competition.

Read more at: http://www.business2community.com/marketing/six-lessons-learned-managing-agile-marketing-teams-01250732

Marketing automation a newly developed idea in marketing industry, deals with concepts of data tracking for lead, automate personal marketing activities and generate detailed reports for marketing activities. It embraces three major approaches namely lead tracking, automated execution and closed-loop reporting. At initial stages, foremost entity to consider in marketing automation is to show its value to the people dealing with checks in your company. With its involvement, few beneficiary impacts that it had generated includes, more lead output with same budget, empowered marketers to build and promote cross-channel online campaigns for user satisfaction, helped in financial justification of tracking and reports on ROI leading to no further complications in qualification or handling them onto sales, thus a smoother approach to marketing solutions.

To know more about marketing automation, please follow the link:http://www.business2community.com/marketing-automation/what-is-marketing-automation-01247668

Currently consumers are distracted by visual storytelling which enables the marketers to cut through the clutter thereby engaging customers over a wide range of digital channels. Data visualization tools acts as a way for the marketing leaders to generate optimal results from their organization's visual storytelling. It helps the marketers to determine the types of media that generated the highest engagement levels with different customers. It further enables to spot key consumer trends by segments and to project the best media type which would generate desired results. The use of visual storytelling combined with visualization of data will continue to gain much more importance because it makes the visual story more realistic with more prospective customers.

Read more at: http://www.tibco.com/blog/2015/06/08/2015-the-year-of-visual-storytelling/

Content marketing involves the creation and sharing of media and publishing content in order to acquire and retain customers. This information can be presented in a variety of formats, including news, whitepapers, e-books, photos etc. It is hard, time consuming and expensive. Angela Hausman (marketing professor at Howard University) in her article in business2community.com, discussed about the steps to create a successful content marketing plan. They are:

• Start with goals.
• Audit existing content and determine where the holes are.
• Develop your business.
• Target customers.
• The Sales funnel.
• Understand your purpose.
• Develop an editorial calendar.
• Develop content.
• Promote your content.
• Measure.
• Optimize.
• Rinse, repeat.

To know more about the steps required for creating a successful content marketing plan, please follow the link: http://www.business2community.com/content-marketing/12-steps-how-to-build-a-successful-content-marketing-plan-01 

Nowadays the basic motive is substantial growth of the app thereby providing value to the end user. This can be equally simple or difficult depending on the analytics and marketing platform one chooses.  However it might often seem that a system of point solutions offers the best of each system, although it limits our capability to: 

*  Create a new user acquisition strategy.

*  Collect the most accurate data about the users.

*   Use of analytics to drive marketing.

*  Track the success of app messaging.

*  Tackle issues such as user abandonment and churn ratios.

The basic things which can be done with Integrated App Analytics and Marketing are:

1. Sophisticated user attribution.

2. Personalized app marketing.

3. Remarketing to users outside of the app.

4. Omni-channel app marketing.

5.  Predicting churns.

Read more at: http://www.business2community.com/mobile-apps/5-things-you-can-only-do-with-integrated-app-analytics-marketing-01244986                                                                                                                     

Though underestimated at times, social media marketing is fast becoming a vital necessity for success of business. Due to complexity of the nature of data analysis and increasing number of social media platforms available, the task of adopting the best social strategy may appear confusing. For more productive use of social media for marketing, the author suggests the following: 1) Creating outstanding and attractive content like images, text documents, etc. 2) Adopting social marketing instead of impersonal digital marketing.  3) Developing two way communication channels with the customers.4) Doing proper research. 5) Monitoring social media 6) Being genuine Read more:-  http://www.business2community.com/social-media/key-to-mastering-social-media-marketing-01248568

Focused market research is imperative for building of brands and foundation for market research is laid down by market intelligence. In broad terms, market intelligence collates three types of information- business, market and competitive. For distribution of information, social media is playing a huge role. Thus integration of marketing intelligence with social media monitoring and digital space opens up many channels of opportunities to address specific business issues and enhance performance significantly. However, this requires intense understanding and customization of data. Also, digitization of field resources poses certain challenges. On a concluding note, the authors, Stephen Dale and Melissa Chue are of opinion that market intelligence should ultimately serve as be the backbone of any organization and more investment should be made to expand digital resources and data. Read more:- http://www.marketing-interactive.com/events/intelligence-bedrock-good-market-research/

The only possible way to ensure public safety and act against the financial ruin or loss of the company's reputation is to know how and when to respond. The timing of a crisis cannot be predicted with certainty but crisis management plays a crucial role to ensure that the company stands in the wake of an unexpected and unfortunate mishap.

Steps to be followed for management of crisis are :

• Messaging is a fickle art - A humble dosage of humanity and being transparent is the best policy. It is important to provide the information about the issue to the public in a polite manner.
• Restoring and rebuilding your reputation through media - Working with the media is the best way for restoring people's trust.

For further details on crisis management, please follow the link :

http://www.business2community.com/crisis-management/need-crisis-management-01239230 

Maximizing ROI has become the ultimate goal for Marketers. Increasing visibility, likes, followers and tweets seems to be the major indicators. Daniel Newman, author of The Millennial CEO and a Forbes contributor, in an article in Forbes term these indicators as vanity metrics which distract marketers from the actual story. Rather than measuring likes, focus should be on how many of the likes were converted into new customer and other measures which go beyond customer acquisition and sales that will help discern their real growth story. 

He lists out 7 things that marketers should measure: 

• Top of funnel conversions

• Engagement

• Customer satisfaction

• Customer Retention 

• Employee satisfaction 

• Employee retention 

• Attributable Revenue

For more on this, follow the link http://www.forbes.com/sites/danielnewman/2015/05/12/7-things-marketers-should-measure-big-data-can-help/

An idea can also be marketable just like any product or service and if executable properly, then can also be as valuable. Skilled people who sells idea often are called earn buy-in, which helps in increasing funds. A good salesperson specifies about the product they are selling to solve customer's pains. Likewise, by knowing an idea well enough, one should establish a stronger bond between what they are selling and what audience needs through conversation. To know more read the article at: http://www.cmswire.com/cms/social-business/the-art-of-selling-an-idea-029138.php 

The increasing importance of digital marketing is forcing every organization to use digital marketing. Here are some tips for organizations which are planning to use digital marketing:

·         Hire someone who has knowledge about digital marketing or learn how to use digital marketing.

·         There are various ways to analyze digital marketing, but some of them may suit you or some not. It is important to keep on trying new ways.

·         The best type of digital advertising reaches its audience by consent. Maintain a link between consistent efforts and spamming.

·         Try to make your advertising, mobile-friendly because mobile revolution is the next revolution.

·         There are various tools that allow for a do-it-yourself approach and leverage content across platforms.

Read more at: http://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/051215/dos-donts-digital-marketing.asp

Millennials are the young adult between the age group of 18-34 years and according to reports total buying power will fetch $1.3trillion annually.  Millennials are diverse in terms of attitude, behavior and language, due to which marketers are facing problem in targeting them. According to Sujan Patel (Entrepreneur and Marketer, VP of Marketing at When I Work), there are some common characteristics shared by all of them. He discussed some tips on targeting millennials, they are:
• You should have an attractive mobile marketing
• Target social groups, instead of life stages
• Be relevant and engaging
To know more about these tips, please follow this link: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/246199

In this competitive world, most of the organizations are struggling to attract customers. They are advertising on TV, newspaper, billboards. But, they are not getting success.  Here are some successful marketing strategies used to target the right customer at the right place and at the right time are:

·         Content marketing is one of the most powerful marketing strategies. This includes articles on website, e-newsletters, videos and articles on other website.

·         Make advertisement look visually good by adding pictures. According to a recent survey by Hubspot A/B, images used in tweets increase clicks by 36%, increase retweets by 41%, increase in leads by 55%, and increase visit by 31%.

·         Use responsive design, website technology for detecting the customer’s device and providing reformatted website according to the screen size.

·         For transparency, use social media marketing.

·         And at last, try to relate with target customers.

To know please follow this link:  http://www.business2community.com/online-marketing/competitors-arent-01222954