Tag: marketing

Best Marketing Automation Software

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Marketing campaigns get more complex by the day. 

Which… is great news for the consumer experience but a nightmare for you as a marketing manager handling thousands of moving parts (and countless employees) on a daily basis. 

To put it lightly, there’s a lot going on behind the scenes. 

Especially complex technical challenges that most consumers and employees will never see or fully understand. 

But thankfully more and more automation tools are popping up to make your life a bit easier.

However, that means choosing the best marketing automation software for your business and team is harder than its ever been. 

From enterprise-grade solutions to the most affordable options, my team and I have researched, tested, and used just about every software you can imagine. And I can honestly say… that’s not an exaggeration. 

But the good news is that I narrowed it down to my top six recommendations, reviewed them, and developed an all-inclusive list of what to consider when making your final decision. 

The top 6 options for marketing automation software

  1. Freshmarketer – best for small to midsize businesses
  2. Pardot by Salesforce – best for B2B companies
  3. ActiveCampaign – best for email marketing automation
  4. Acoustic – best for enterprise multi-channel marketing automation
  5. HubSpot – best for sales, customer service, and marketing automation
  6. Act-On – best for marketing agencies

How to choose the best marketing automation software for you

I stand behind all of my top recommendations. However, choosing the right one for you isn’t always easy because it depends on various factors. 

So, before we dive in, let’s talk about how to narrow things down and find the best marketing automation software for your business. 

Type of business

B2B businesses have different marketing needs than D2C companies. 

Furthermore, marketing agencies present a new set of marketing automation challenges. Because of that, specialized software may be necessary to meet your specific needs at a reasonable price point. 

The size of your business matters too. Large companies run complex, massive-scale campaigns and have bigger pockets. So, small business tools aren’t a good match.

However, smaller companies will probably find enterprise-grade features confusing and wildly out of budget, which is why those small business tools exist in the first place. 

So, pay attention to who the software is built for when making your final decision. 

Number of contacts

Most pricing plans depend on the number of contacts or leads you have. The larger your list, the more you need to pay to maintain it and stay in touch with them. 

If you have tens or hundreds of thousands of contacts, enterprise-grade solutions are probably more cost-effective. However, that’s not the case if you have a few hundred or even a few thousand leads on your list. 

Just be sure to keep this in mind and remember that specific plans may limit the maximum number of contacts you can have. 

And if you hit those limits, you’ll need to upgrade to a higher plan or pay an extra fee.

Your marketing channels

Different marketing automation software supports various marketing channels. 

And there’s no one-size-fits-all solution. 

From SMS and email marketing to social media and push notifications, it’s crucial to choose a software that handles everything you need.

Smaller businesses with simple campaigns may not utilize a wide range of channels and can get away using a more affordable tool. 

However, large businesses with complex campaigns spanning numerous channels need something more robust to manage all the moving parts. 

Furthermore, some software includes varying channels in different pricing tiers. So, you may start on one level and need to move up to gain access to more marketing channels. Or you may need to move to (or integrate) a new tool altogether. 

It may help to map out your upcoming campaigns and decide which channels you plan to use.

Automation features

Automation is at the heart of every tool on this list. But some offer more advanced automation features than others. 

Do you need to score leads and prospects? Maybe you want to combine SMS, email marketing, and Facebook ads in the same customer journey. Or perhaps you need the ability to send hyper-targeted emails on autopilot. 

Regardless of the complexity of your campaigns, don’t forget to consider:

  • Split A/B testing
  • Automated email campaigns
  • Event and website tracking
  • Contact management
  • Visual customer journey mapping
  • Automated segmentation and personalization
  • Prospect and lead scoring
  • Dynamic content
  • Transactional emails
  • AI-powered recommendations
  • Action and logic-based triggers
  • Reporting and analytics

You may not need all of them, and some tools don’t include them. So it’s critical to understand what you need (and don’t need) before making your decision.

Additional features

It’s not uncommon for marketing automation software to include a handful of features typically found in a CRM tool, like live chat or customer support capabilities. 

Before making a final decision, it’s essential to understand which additional features you need to fill the gap between marketing and sales or customer service. 

You may already have these systems in place. So, you won’t need these additional features. But if you don’t, you might be able to save money, hassle, and time by choosing a software that includes everything you’re missing under one roof. 

Hubspot is an excellent example of this. 

It includes customer service, sales, and marketing automation tools in a centralized location to streamline data movement and foster automation across your entire business. 

The different types of marketing automation software

Marketing comes in all shapes, sizes, and complexities. 

From physical mailers and print campaigns to social media and email marketing, the best marketing automation software helps you build, automate, and optimize all types of marketing campaigns. 

Marketing automation software is often confused with customer relationship management (CRM). However, the two aren’t the same or interchangeable. 

CRM software focuses on sales activities, while marketing automation software focuses on marketing tasks. Going further, marketing automation software is for generating, nurturing, and qualifying leads. 

On the other hand, CRM software is to close the sale and foster communications or relationships after the sale. 

In a perfect world, the two systems play well together and create a seamless flow of data from your marketing team to your sales team.

Taking things further, there are numerous subsets of marketing automation software, including:

  • Email marketing
  • Social media marketing
  • Advertising management
  • SMS marketing
  • Live chat

Each different tool is powerful on its own. But true marketing automation software lets you create and optimize customer journeys across marketing platforms for varying complexity campaigns. 

#1 – Freshmarketer Review — The best marketing automation software for small to midsize businesses

Around here, we’re big fans of Freshworks (if you couldn’t tell). 

Freshmarketer is their intelligent marketing automation platform built to help small to midsize businesses save time, attract the right people, nurture their audiences, and make more money. 

It’s my #1 recommendation for most users—and for a good reason.

From awareness to retention, you get all the automation features you need to gain more leads, turn those leads into customers, and keep those customers around for life. All while doing less work with better results. 

Plus, you don’t need any technical skills or a dedicated support team to get started. And it takes about a minute to get up and running. 

You also get access to incredible features like:

  • Email campaigns and contact management
  • Visual drag and drop customer journey builder
  • Website, form, and offline event tracking
  • Conversion rate optimization tools
  • A/B and split testing
  • Advanced personalization
  • Dynamic heat maps
  • Audience segmentation
  • Real-time funnel analytics

Furthermore, the software seamlessly integrates with Freshworks’ other tools, so it’s an excellent choice if you currently use or plan to use any of their business software. 

You can try Freshmarketer on their limited free forever plan or a 21-day free trial of their paid plans, which are incredibly affordable and accessible for businesses of all sizes. However, they depend on the number of contacts you have, so keep that in mind. 

Their plans include:

  • Sprout — Free for up to 500 contacts with limited features
  • Garden — $49 per month for 1,000 contacts (ideal for growing teams)
  • Estate — $99 per month for 1,000 contacts (best for large teams)

Just remember the cost for each plan goes up after you max out your 1,000 contacts. 

#2 – Pardot by Salesforce Review — The best marketing automation software for B2B businesses

As a B2B business, you market to other companies, which presents a unique set of marketing challenges. As such, you need a marketing automation tool built for the job. 

Pardot exists to help B2B companies build relationships and turn those relationships into revenue. Plus, it’s a fantastic marketing automation software built around the world’s #1 CRM. 

So, you know you’re in good hands. 

From lead generation to sales alignment, the software offers a wide range of features, including:

  • Dynamic content and data-based personalization
  • Lead-nurturing email automations
  • Prospect and lead scoring
  • Visual multi-part automation creator
  • Advanced segmentation
  • Landing page builder
  • Smart forms + drag and drop builder
  • Social media scheduling, profiling, and analytics
  • Lead activity tracking
  • Campaign performance reporting
  • Lifecycle and funnel reporting
  • Pardot Einstein for lead and behavior scoring

Furthermore, over 2.8+ million worldwide users rely on Pardot for their marketing automation needs, making it one of the most popular platforms on this list. 

But it is a bit expensive, so it’s best suited for larger businesses. Their paid plans include:

  • Growth — $1,250/month for up to 10,000 contacts and basic features
  • Plus — $2,500/month for up to 10,000 contacts with deeper automation + analytics
  • Advanced — $4,000/month for up to 10,000 contacts with AI and all features
  • Premium — $15,000/month for up to 75,000 contacts with supercharge features

They also offer a few add-ons that come free in the Premium plan. Those add-ons include Salesforce Engage ($50/user per month), Analytics Plus ($3,000/month), and Engagement History ($300/year). 

All plans and add-ons are billed on an annual basis. 

#3 – ActiveCampaign Review — The best for email marketing automations

Email is one of the most important aspects of digital marketing. All the tools on this list include email marketing in one form or another, but ActiveCampaign specializes in it. 

So, it’s an excellent option if you want to hone in and focus on improving your email marketing strategy. It’s also a super affordable tool that includes numerous automation features for leads anywhere in your funnel.

With that said, they also offer omnichannel automation, including instant messaging and SMS, live chat, and Facebook. 

So, you’re not limited to just email marketing automation with ActiveCampaign. 

Their most popular features cover leads at every point in the funnel, including:

  • Engage – Automation maps, site tracking, and subscription forms
  • Nurture – List segmenting, dynamic/predictive content, and event tracking
  • Convert – Contact and lead scoring, split actions, and win probabilities
  • Support – Predictive sending, SMS, A/B split testing, and ecommerce 

You can also set up numerous types of emails like autoresponders, targeted or triggered emails, broadcasts, scheduled emails, and automated funnels. 

And you can design those emails using their intuitive drag and drop designer, or start from one of their 25+ pre-made mobile-responsive design templates. 

Whether you’re just getting started or interested in scaling and optimizing your email marketing strategy, ActiveCampaign is an excellent choice. They offer everything you need to capture, nurture, and close leads at scale. 

ActiveCampaign offers four plans, with the price of each starting at:

  1. Lite — $9 per month with up to three users
  2. Plus — $49 per month with up to 25 users
  3. Professional — $129 per month with up to 50 users
  4. Enterprise — $229 per month with unlimited users

Each tier includes more advanced features, and pricing is based on the size of your list, starting for up to 500 contacts. 

So, keep in mind that you will have to pay more than the prices above as your list grows. 

#4 – Acoustic Review — The best enterprise-grade multi-channel marketing automation software

Acoustic offers an array of marketing automation products for centralized cross-platform multi-channel marketing. From personalization and email campaigns to web content management and experience management, they offer something for everyone. 

Acoustic Campaign is their marketing automation tool, encompassing mobile apps, push notifications, SMS, group chats, social media, ads, email, print campaigns, and more. 

You can also combine this with Acoustic Personalization and Acoustic Analytics for a powerful combination of campaign management, data, and using that data to deliver the right message at the right time. 

With Acoustic Campaign, you get access to powerful features, including:

  • Drag and drop campaign builder
  • Action, logic, and AI-recommended triggers
  • Seamless mobile and digital channel campaigns
  • Lead management and scoring
  • Split A/B testing
  • Customer journey mapping
  • Planning and budgeting
  • One-to-one ads and lookalike audiences
  • Advanced personalization
  • Reporting and analytics

Furthermore, they have a community forum where you can publicly ask questions. They also provide an online academy packed full of educational videos and training so you can get the most of your custom automation package. 

Note: Acoustic is built for moderate to large volume campaigns with countless moving parts. So, it’s perfect for businesses managing complicated campaigns across numerous channels. 

But it’s overkill for a lot of businesses and anyone running single-channel campaigns. 

Pricing isn’t available online, and you have to schedule a consultation to learn more. So, keep in mind that you won’t be able to sign up and get started immediately. 

#5 – Hubspot Review — The best sales, customer service, and marketing automation software

If you’re looking for an easy way to automate your sales, customer service, and marketing processes, Hubspot Growth Suite is an excellent and affordable solution. 

And the best part? Hubspot goes beyond automating your business processes. It also helps integrate and optimize different departments in one centralized location, thus streamlining your entire business’s workflow. 

This means teams don’t have to jump from software to software to get the information they need, and you can automate the data transfer process from one team to the next. 

However, their marketing automation capabilities are powerful on their own, with features like:

  • Blog post and SEO planning
  • Ad tracking and management
  • Social media management
  • AI-powered live chat
  • Email marketing
  • Forms and landing pages
  • Revenue attribution reporting
  • Visual workflow builder
  • Account-based marketing
  • A/B split testing
  • Predictive lead scoring

Hubspot offers basic features, like emails, landing pages, forms, and live chat capabilities for unlimited users absolutely free. So, you can try it out without spending a penny. 

Alternatively, you can sign up for a free demo to see all of their advanced features in action. 

The Growth Suite (sales, marketing, CRM, and customer service) starts at $50 per month for two users and up to 1,000 contacts, making it extremely affordable for most businesses. 

But they also have advanced plans for larger and more complex campaigns, including:

  1. Professional — $1,275 per month for advanced features
  2. Enterprise — $4,200 per month for all features

Each 1,000 contacts after your initial 1,000 cost $16.67 per month. And you can add more users to your sales and service hubs for $8.33 per user/month. 

Plus, if you’re a current member or alumni of Hubspot’s approved incubator, accelerator, or Venture Capital partners with a round of Series A funding under your belt, you can get up to 90% off your first year. 

#6 – Act-On Review — The best marketing automation software for marketing agencies

As a marketing agency, you handle marketing campaigns for several clients (if not hundreds of them) at any given time. As such, you need marketing automation software with the ability to manage everything, including your own marketing campaigns, in one place. 

And Act-On offers the perfect solution. 

Their scalable software features unique child and parent campaign capabilities, meaning you can easily manage and handle all of your client accounts from a single Act-On login. 

Plus, you can completely brand and customize everything to deliver custom reports to clients in just a few clicks. 

With Act-On, you can learn more about your clients’ audiences to personalize and tailor their message to match. Not only does this make their life easier, but it also means your team can work less to produce better results. 

When you sign up, you get access to powerful marketing features, including:

  • Automated engagement programs
  • Website and landing page tracking
  • Customer/prospect scoring
  • Behavior and demographic segmentation
  • Pre-built email, form, and landing page templates
  • Interactive reporting dashboards

Plus, you can build custom real-time analytic dashboards for internal and external use, so you and your clients always know what’s going on. 

Furthermore, you can use this information to improve customer ROI, build better technology stacks, and optimize entire marketing campaigns on behalf of your clients. From lead gathering and nurturing to transferring contact information to sales, you’re in good hands. 

Sign up for a free demo to learn more and get started today!

Wrapping things up

Freshmarketer is my top recommendation for most businesses. It’s built for small to midsize companies interested in automating their marketing processes to grow their businesses and save time. 

Plus, it’s affordable, easy to use, and packed full of powerful automation features. 

However, it’s not the perfect solution for everyone. So, don’t forget to use the criteria we talked about as you sort through finding the best marketing automation software for you and your team. 

What are your favorite marketing automation tools?

The post Best Marketing Automation Software appeared first on Neil Patel.

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How Pinterest Story Pins Can Improve Your Marketing

Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat tend to dominate the social media marketing discussion. Pinterest, it seems, is tired of being underestimated.

They’ve recently launched a new feature that has the opportunity to change the world of Pinterest marketing. So, what is it, and what do you need to know about the latest Pinterest feature?

Whether you’re a seasoned Pinterest veteran or new to the social media platform, Pinterest Story Pins offer an exciting opportunity to interact with your audience and gain more exposure for your brand.

Story Pins allow you to offer more value to your followers, inspire action, and, more importantly, drive traffic to your website.

This new feature will soon be commonplace on the platform, so here are some tips to help you get the most out of Pinterest Story Pins.

What Are Pinterest Story Pins?

Story Pins are the latest feature from Pinterest that allows brands to create the “inspirational” content your followers want. As opposed to a regular pin, which is just the one image or video with a description and link, Story Pins allow you to incorporate multiple pages of images, videos, text, and links.

Made up of between five and 20 slides, Pinterest Story Pins give you the chance to tell a story and engage your audience in much greater depth. Unlike Instagram and Facebook stories, they don’t expire after a set period of time.

Story Pins also allow users to publish unique content directly in Pinterest, rather than just distribute content published elsewhere.

This provides the perfect platform to showcase content that’s longer and more in-depth than your regular pins and leads people to your website content.

Here’s an example of a Story Pin for a luggage review:

Pintereststorypinexample1

They can also be used for travel guides, like this one from Edinburgh Insider Guide:

pinterest story pins example2

For businesses, Story Pins represent an excellent opportunity to showcase expertise and engage people with valuable content.

With the ability to include more multimedia, more text, and more links, you can grab people’s attention, get them engaged, and then get them clicking to your website.

Who Can Use Pinterest Story Pins?

Pinterest Story Pins are still gradually rolling out, so it’s not available in all countries yet.

Many creators in the US were invited to get an early look at the Story Pin feature, but if you don’t have access yet, you can submit a request on the Pinterest website.

pinterest story pins screenshot from website

The request takes a few seconds to fill out, and you will find out if you can get access to Pinterest Story Pins in five to seven working days.

Early access will allow you to look at this exciting new feature and understand how it can work for your business before everyone else starts seeing the benefits, so it’s well worth the effort.

Once you’ve been granted access to Story Pins on Pinterest, then you’re free to get your creative juices flowing and see just what great content you can fit into 20 pages!

How to Prepare Your Business for the Rollout of Pinterest Story Pins

While you’re waiting to hear back from your request to unlock the Story Pins feature, there are plenty of things you can be doing to get ready. Story Pins might be a new feature to Pinterest, but at the end of the day, it’s still Pinterest, so you have a good idea of what works and what doesn’t.

Before you jump headfirst into Story Pins for Pinterest, make sure you’ve got a clear plan of how you will use them. Here’s how to get started.

Understand Your Audience

Pinterest allows you to reach a vast audience, but this is only valuable if you’re reaching the right people with the right message. If you’re going to engage the right people, you need to understand what your audience looks like, and what kind of content they want.

If you have an established business, you already have access to a massive audience data, so make the most of your analytics. Use your Pinterest analytics, other social analytics, and your website data to better understand your audience and the content they’re looking for.

Before you get started with your Pinterest Story Pins, make sure you can answer these six questions about your audience:

  1. Who are they?
  2. What are their greatest difficulties/problems/desires?
  3. Where do they find the information they need?
  4. What are the benefits of your product for them?
  5. What negatively draws their attention?
  6. Who do they trust?

Get Your Multimedia Ready

With Story Pins, Pinterest actively encourages fresh new content, so give them what they’re looking for by getting all your images and videos ready. Low-quality multimedia doesn’t do well on Pinterest (or any social platform,) so make sure you’re investing in high-quality photos and videos.

Keep your audience in mind when you’re shooting your images and video and giving them something that will inspire them into action.

You’ve got so much freedom now that you can use up to 20 slides, so use your creativity to make your new Story Pins stand out.

Make Use of Pinterest Analytics

Pinterest has ramped up their analytics in recent years, and you can find extremely helpful insights here. Story Pins might be a new feature, but the things that made your old pins successful in the past are still working today.

Use Pinterest Analytics to find out which pins have been successful for you in the past.

To view analytics, sign in to your Pinterest Business account, and click on Analytics.

pinterest story pins how to see analytics

From there, you’ll be able to see which Pins get the most views and engagement.

pinterest story pins analytics example1

Once you see what Pins are most popular, think of ways to successfully transition them into Story Pins. For example, can you turn a DIY post into a Story Pin with detailed instructions?

This is a great way to expand on some of your most popular content and give it a chance to reach a broader audience.

It might be your first time using Pinterest Story Pins, but you can make sure you hit the ground running by leveraging content that is already working well.

Why Should Your Business Use Pinterest Story Pins?

Pinterest Story Pins are still in their infancy, which means there’s not a great deal of data to act upon at the moment.

However, similar features have been a huge hit on other social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram, with millions of active daily users. Pinterest has put a lot of effort into creating its own version.

This suggests Pinterest will push the story feature (like Instagram did) and ensure Story Pins get a lot of attention.

Aside from the fact that Pinterest is invested in Story Pins —  they’ve been trialing them in different markets for over a year now — these new pins seem to have plenty of business benefits.

With regular pins, you don’t have much time to earn someone’s click – your image, video, or a short piece of text have to do all the hard work for you. However, with a story pin, you’ve got so much to keep your audience engaged with.

You can also include multiple links, which gives you a much better chance of driving your audience to your website. From here, you control the customer journey, and you’re in an excellent position to achieve your goals.

Long story short: You want to get clicks to your website, and to do this, you need to engage your followers with valuable content; Story Pins are an excellent opportunity to do this.

When Should You Use Pinterest Story Pins?

Regular Pinterest pins are ideal for traditional Pinterest content like recipes and DIY tips. However, Story Pins are a brilliant resource for “how-to guides,” which you can do in any niche.

For example, a story on “How to Create Perfect Pinterest Story Pins” is ideal, with videos and text showing the steps to create engaging Story Pins.

This is an excellent opportunity to rework some of your blog posts and turn them into easy to consume social posts. If you’ve got how-to guides, recipes, list posts, longer DIY guides, travel tips, or even detailed reviews, then you have the makings of a great Pinterest Story Pin.

You’re still going to want to produce regular pins, with short, snappy, actionable messages, but use Story Pins to go into more detail.

Story Pins are like a bridge between your regular pins and your full-blown content, and it’s a great way to push your audience over to your website to consume more content.

How to Create a Pinterest Story Pin

You’re all ready for Pinterest Story Pins, you’ve narrowed down your audience, got your creatives ready, and you’ve just been granted access, so how do you create your first story pin?

From your Pinterest business account, you can create Story Pins on desktop or mobile.

Create Pinterest Story Pins On Desktop

  1. Click the Create button in the top left-hand corner and select Create Story Pin.
  2. Add up to 20 images or videos.
  3. Design your pages. You can change the layout, add text overlay, adjust/resize your image, and add more pages.
  4. Add extra text to help inspire your audience.
  5. Select your story pin title, choose which board you’re going to pin to, and add tags to help people find your pin.
  6. Click publish.

Create Pinterest Story Pins On Mobile

  1. Click the + button at the bottom of the screen and select Story Pin.
  2. Decide what your pin is about; choose from “recipe,” “crafts + DIY,” or “something else.”
  3. Select your photos and videos from your library.
  4. Get creative with your design by selecting your cover photo, resizing images, and adding text overlay to bring your Story Pin to life.
  5. Add the finishing touches by coming up with a title for your Story Pin, choosing which board to pin to, adding extra details, and making your story pin discoverable with tags.
  6. Click publish.

What Makes a Successful Pinterest Story Pin?

A successful Pinterest Story Pin is all about engagement. Pinterest stories give you the ability to hold people’s attention for longer, giving you more time to inspire them to take the action you want them to take.

Your Pinterest analytics will give you a lot of insights into how your Story Pins are performing, but so can your website. You want your pins to do well on Pinterest and get lots of impressions and link clicks, but we can track this further and see how people interact with our website when they come from Pinterest.

If you’re creating amazing Story Pins that inspire people with your message, it should result in people clicking to your site and spending a good amount of time engaging with the content.

Track this in your Google Analytics by going to Acquisitions, then Social Channels, and Clicking on Pinterest.

pinterest story pins how to check traffic

Through a combination of your Pinterest analytics and your website data, you can get a good feel for how well your new Story Pins are performing.

Tips on Creating Pinterest Story Pins

The big aim with Story Pins is engagement, but how exactly can you go about achieving this? You have the opportunity to grab people’s attention and hold it, but there are several things your Story Pins need to accomplish this:

  • Have high-quality visuals
  • Draw people in with catchy titles
  • Deliver on people’s expectations
  • Go more in-depth than the average pin
  • Supplement visuals with helpful text
  • Ooze creativity
  • Inspire action

You’re telling a story through your Story Pins, and like any good story, there are lots of different aspects that need to come together. By combining great visuals with catchy titles, informative text, and plenty of creativity, your pins are going to stand out and encourage your audience to take the actions you want them to take.

Conclusion

Pinterest Story Pins are a great new feature to help businesses engage better with their target audience. Although the new feature is still rolling out, you can request access and get ahead of the competition.

With Story Pins, you have another way to grab people’s attention and get them engaging with your content. In many ways, they’re even more effective at doing this than regular pins, so make sure you’re taking advantage of it.  

Pinterest is the latest social media platform to bring out a story feature, and the chances are this format is very much here to stay. Story pins will become a big part of the Pinterest platform, so you might as well start mastering them now by giving your followers the fantastic, in-depth content they’re looking for.

Have you started to use Pinterest Story Pins yet?

The post How Pinterest Story Pins Can Improve Your Marketing appeared first on Neil Patel.

How To Create A Marketing Calendar That Will Streamline Your Campaigns

If you’ve ever led a marketing team, you know it’s easy to get overwhelmed by tasks and plans. Numerous blog posts, social media marketing campaigns, and emails crowd your pipeline. But distractions and urgent issues get in the way, and when you check the clock, several hours have passed. It happens all the time: you miss …

The post How To Create A Marketing Calendar That Will Streamline Your Campaigns first appeared on Online Web Store Site.

How To Create A Marketing Calendar That Will Streamline Your Campaigns

If you’ve ever led a marketing team, you know it’s easy to get overwhelmed by tasks and plans.

Numerous blog posts, social media marketing campaigns, and emails crowd your pipeline. But distractions and urgent issues get in the way, and when you check the clock, several hours have passed.

It happens all the time: you miss one deadline and end up missing more. The result is a half-baked campaign that fails to hit your goals.

Without a concrete schedule, this becomes an inevitable cycle.

To solve this problem, consider using a marketing calendar.

Why Use a Marketing Calendar?

In my experience, you need a marketing calendar to get a full overview of your team’s deliverables, deadlines, and tasks.

Recent research in an article by Evinex states that marketers who record their strategies are 538% more likely to complete tasks on time. Consider goal-setting as well, as 81% of people who set goals do achieve them.

I’ve worked on plenty of marketing campaigns, and I can tell you that it’s easier to hit your goals when you can streamline your tasks and manage deadlines.

So today, I’ll show you how to create your marketing calendar.

Step 1: Understand Your Customers

Every task in your marketing calendar should revolve around attracting your target audience. Your marketing efforts’ ultimate purpose is to reach the most customers and get them past the sales funnel.

For example, if you’re offering video games to students, you’ll want to launch aggressive marketing campaigns during school breaks. Similarly, if you’re targeting employed adults, you’ll want to post content during normal break times, after work hours, and or weekends.

Here are questions to consider when planning the activities in your marketing calendar:

  • What does my audience need?
  • What are their interests?
  • When is the best time to engage with them?
  • How will they interact with my content?
  • Are they more likely to sign-up for your program or service during a specific period or season of the year?

You have to think long term to reach the most number of consumers for your marketing campaigns. 

Step 2: Identify Marketing Calendar Responsibilities

Every member of your marketing team has a role to fill. Their responsibilities are often based on their skills, which will determine their tasks in your marketing calendar.

Here are some typical marketing roles:

  • Marketing Specialist
  • Social Media Manager
  • Search Engine Optimization Specialist
  • Email Marketing Manager
  • Web Content Writer
  • Web Producer
  • Product Manager
  • Marketing Analyst
  • Advertising Coordinator

Here an example of how to make it work for you.

  1. Web Content writer: works on blog posts, guest posts, social media copy, and landing pages.
  2. Social Media Manager: responds to social media messages, schedules posts, and plans social media marketing campaigns.
  3. Email Marketing Manager: builds customer segments, oversees email marketing campaigns, and develops contact strategies.

Since most marketers on your team work on different content types or areas, you may want to organize their tasks through other marketing calendars and templates.

Here are common types of marketing calendars to consider:

  • Content marketing calendar: With this all-purpose calendar, you get full visibility of your entire marketing strategy. This calendar includes your team’s marketing functions, content marketing campaigns, podcast series, SEO tasks, etc.
  • Editorial calendar: Use this to streamline the production and publication schedule of blogs or articles.
  • Social media calendar: If your business is active in several social media platforms, you’ll want to plan posts and organize tasks. This calendar lets you track high-performing posts and determine the best times to post throughout the week.
  • Email marketing calendar:  Use this to plan, organize, and schedule the content you’ll share with your subscribers.

The specific goal of each calendar is to organize and schedule your marketing initiatives.

Unlike your marketing plan, which lists down your deliverables, a marketing calendar shows when your team can expect to work on a task. Marketers may use several types of calendars to track related activities in one document.

Step 3: Determine Marketing Calendar Content Quantity and Publication Frequency

Most successful websites have a specific quantity and frequency for publishing content.

It would be best to plot out the content you must create per week or month. Then, once you’ve determined how often you will promote, consider your marketing budget and your team’s capabilities.

The types of content which you can publish per week include:

  • Blog posts
  • Case studies
  • Videos
  • Podcasts
  • Social media posts

A good tip is to finish a consistent number of deliverables each week.

For instance, you can host a podcast episode on Tuesdays and post a long-form blog post every Thursday. Meanwhile, you may aggregate the results of your social media campaigns every Friday.

marketing calendar example

Yes, it can be challenging to plan and fulfill different types of marketing content. But a consistent weekly plan enables your team to establish a routine and consistently finish their tasks.  

Step 4: Identify Marketing Calendar Themes

For B2C retailers, core themes of marketing campaigns revolve around specific seasons or dates. A millennial fashion brand could regularly promote back-to-school outfits near the end of the summer.

In contrast, B2B brands could focus on their industry’s opportunities and challenges. Due to the pandemic, some businesses may want to cover topics such as “digital transformation,” “future of work,” and “long-term impacts of a recession.”

Now get a spreadsheet and list potential themes that are specific to your industry. Set a meeting and invite your team to brainstorm topics relevant to your target market.

Now use Ubersuggest to find out the search volume of each keyword. Themes with a high search volume are likely to be relevant topics that your target audience searches for.

For this example, I used Ubersuggest to research the phrase “digital transformation.”

using ubersuggest to build a marketing calendar

I discovered the topic has a pretty high search volume and a moderate SEO difficulty, so it is a good theme to keep in mind.

using ubersuggest to build a marketing calendar graph

I highly recommend having various themes and topics to cover each month, especially for brands catering to different buyer personas.

In the long-run, this will help you establish a variety and keep posts fresh.

Step 5: Creating a Marketing Calendar Backlog

Next, it’s time to create a marketing calendar backlog.

Think of content projects and marketing deliverables. During the process, you may discover some tasks are better suited for execution at a later date.

Having a content backlog ensures you can document all the ideas for your next campaigns, podcasts, or blog posts.

Here’s an example in Google Sheets to create a content backlog, but you can use other software and apps too.

The document should include the type of content, topic or headline, priority level, and deadline for each content idea.

marketing calendar example

Coschedule has a useful marketing project prioritization matrix for identifying tasks with the most significant impact on your marketing goals.

They suggest using a “10x versus 10% framework,” which goes like this:

  • 10x ideas are relevant to a significant portion of your target consumers. These ideas are likely to increase your results by at least 10x.
  • 10% of ideas refer to projects with minimal or almost no impact on your marketing results.

Let’s see how you can put this theory into action:

  • Step 1: Create an X/Y chart and place “Value” in the vertical Y-axis and “Target Audience” in the horizontal X-axis.
  • Step 2: List down each idea in a sticky note and place them on the X/Y chart. The most valuable projects are placed on the top, while projects relevant to most people are on the right side.

The most prioritized content should be situated on the top right corner of the chart.

Step 6: Create a Marketing Calendar

While there are many calendar tools and software in the market, we’ll use Trello for this article as an example.

A Trello kanban board usually consists of tasks that are organized into lists. 

using trello to build a marketing calendar

However, Trello also has a calendar view that gives users a complete overview of their tasks and deadlines per month.

Here’s how it’s done:

First, create a Trello board.

Hover to the Menu Bar and click “Power-Ups.”

trello card example marketing calendar

On the “Essential Power-Ups” section, add the “Calendar” to visualize Trello cards in a calendar format.

using trello to build a marketing calendar options

To create a task, click a date, and choose the “Add Card” button.

add card in trello marketing calendar

Then type the name, deadline, and task description.

You can open up the tool again and complete the following fields:

trello card example to build a marketing calendar
  • Card description: provides more in-depth information about the task.
  • Comments: gives feedback to team members. You can @mention your team member so they will receive a notification.
  • Add members: lets users assign tasks to members of the Trello board.
  • Add checklist: adds subtasks for activities that require several stages to accomplish.
  • Add due date: adds deadlines to cards.
  • Add attachments: attaches files from Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, and Box.

Trello calendars provide a complete overview of your marketing team’s activities and deadlines. By monitoring deadlines, marketers can set priorities and accurately determine the time it takes to complete each task.

Note: Mark vacations and holidays. These events could impact the schedule for your marketing content.

Step 7: Updating Your Marketing Calendar

Planning your marketing initiatives often involve a multi-step process. Prior to publication, most marketing content starts with a draft and requires reviews from superiors.

Here’s how it’s done in Trello with a sample account.

First, a deliverable gets written on the Content Backlog of your Google Sheet. Content with a high level of priority is the first one to get assigned to an author. When a content creator claims a task, the status of the deliverable becomes “In Progress.”

using spreadsheets in progress to build a marketing calendar

Next, return to Trello and create a card for the task. Add a due date, description, comments, and assign it to a member of your team.

blog post trello card example in building a marketing calendar

Trello lets you sort cards into “Lists.” The title of each list can be based on the current status of the task, which includes:

  • Open: a task still needs a deadline, description, due date, and other additional information before it gets assigned.
  • In Progress: a task has been assigned, and your colleague is working on it.
  • In Review: a task has been completed, but it still needs to be reviewed by your organization’s superiors.
  • Completed: the task is done.

If your colleague is working on the task, set the status to “In Progress.”

After submitting the draft, you can classify it as “In Review.”

trello card example in marketing calendar

In this phase, a superior will check the article to make edits or ask revisions. If there are significant changes, the card returns to the “In Progress” column with a new due date.

Once the task receives approval, then the card can be transferred to the “Closed” column.

You can also de-clutter the Trello board by archiving cards upon publication of the post. This removes them from the list.

Step 8: Plan Ahead 

Now that you’ve launched a marketing calendar, you’re ready to plan your projects for the upcoming weeks or months.

Holiday marketing campaigns take months or weeks to plan.

For instance, the entire bundle of holidays for the end of the year include Hanukkah, Thanksgiving, Cyber Monday, Black Friday, and Christmas. Many marketers may begin holiday planning as early as August to prepare for the influx of customers during their busiest time.

There’s no need to come up with specific content to publish yet. Just be aware of the main marketing campaigns and tweak the plan as you see fit.

Aside from preparing for upcoming campaigns, a calendar will help you set a realistic amount of projects. You can create content weeks in advance to hit your marketing goals during peak sales time. Your team won’t be stressed out with a practical schedule or be forced to downsize the campaign due to missed deadlines.

Conclusion

If you want to build a marketing campaign, you need an elaborate plan to succeed.

A marketing calendar lets you determine how far in advance you need to begin your marketing campaigns and the amount of time you have to fulfill them. Setting up tasks and deadlines is the only way to streamline your campaigns and make sure your team is on track to hit their goals.

How will you use your marketing calendar?

The post How To Create A Marketing Calendar That Will Streamline Your Campaigns appeared first on Neil Patel.

Digital Marketing Consulting

66% of Americans check their phone 160 times a day. That’s a lot.

When we’re not on our phones, we might be browsing the web on a laptop, playing a multiplayer game online, watching Netflix on a Smart TV and so on… The point is, we’re bound to a digital world which means that every business needs some form of online presence these days. 

The trouble is digital marketing trends change all the time. How are you supposed to keep up?

Furthermore, you can give digital marketing your best attempt but who’s to say that your competitors won’t one-up you? Because people are always coming up with new, more effective marketing tactics.

But, don’t fret. A digital marketing consultant can help you upgrade your online strategy.

5 Ways a Digital Marketing Consultant Can Help Grow Your Business

A digital marketing consultant will help you grow your business through strategy and planning. This is important as marketers who make the effort to plan campaigns and projects are 356% more likely to report success.

Here’s what a digital marketing consultant can do for you:

1. Develop an Effective Digital Marketing Strategy

A consultant can put together a detailed, actionable digital marketing strategy based on your business objectives. They’ll do this by conducting in-depth analyses of your current position and target audience.

This will likely begin with a SWOT analysis which assesses Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. It will provide great insight into how you run your business, the efficacy of your marketing, your position in the competitive market and more.

Audience research will likely result in creating buyer personas. The consultant will figure out how best to reach your audience through digital marketing, including their preferred marketing channels.

With all of this information a consultant can determine the best overarching strategies, platforms to target and define a set list of tasks that will help you grow your business.

2. Create a High-Converting Sales Strategy

Want to increase sales or generate more leads? A digital marketing consultant can also help you with your advertising strategy.

Paid ads drive traffic and increase sales. For every $1 spent on Google ads you get $2 in revenue.

Google isn’t the only advertising channel available to you, however. A consultant will determine which advertising channel will get you the best ROI, whether that’s Google, native advertising, paid social media ads, video ads or other placements.

They will also determine the other aspects that contribute to a successful campaign, such as audience segmentation, keywords, duration and budget.

A consultant can plan impactful ad campaigns for you from start to finish.

3. Establish Useful KPIs

You may already have an idea of what your marketing goals are. But how will you know if you’re making progress towards those goals?

A digital marketing consultant will guide you on which key performance indicators and metrics you should track according to your specific objectives and strategies.

They’ll help you create a system by which you can measure and report on the performance of your projects. They can also direct you to the right analytics tools and software.

This will help you keep track of business growth and make changes where necessary.

4. Suggest Innovative Ideas

Another awesome thing about working with a digital marketing consultant is that they have a fresh, unbiased perspective on your strategy.

As experts in the field of digital marketing, they’re up-to-date on the latest trends. So, they’re able to come up with cutting-edge ideas that’ll drive growth for your business.

For example, some of the latest digital marketing trends are:

  • The rise of programmatic advertising
  • The introduction of visual search
  • The shift towards interactive content

If you’re looking to do something unique as in the above examples to gain a competitive edge then a digital marketing consultant could be a massive help.

5. Drive Growth on Multiple Channels

An omnichannel approach to digital marketing is necessary these days. One reason is that people come into contact with your brand at multiple touchpoints before making a purchase. Furthermore, you can reach more people that prefer or use different channels.

The best digital marketing consultants are experienced in a range of platforms and marketing activities from SEO to email marketing to social media. 

Therefore, they can help you create consistent campaigns that get results across multiple marketing channels, with particular emphasis on the channels that make most sense for your target audience.

How to Get Started with Digital Marketing Consulting

If you want to get the most value from working with a digital marketing consultant, there are a couple of things you need to do to prepare:

1. Set Clear Expectations

Any digital marketing consultant worth their salt will do their best to make you happy. But, that can only happen if you set clear expectations from the beginning.

After an initial consultation, you’ll work with a consultant over one or more sessions per month or order their time by the hour. Discuss what you expect to achieve and in what number of sessions. Then the consultant can do their best to make that happen. 

To give you an example, you might say that by session six you hope to have increased blog traffic by 10%. If you need it, a consultant can help you set realistic expectations.

Other expectations you may want to share:

  • Which tasks you want them to prioritize
  • Your preferred method of communication
  • How often you wish to receive updates

2. Share Access

There are certain assets and accounts a digital marketing consultant will need access to in order to do their job. This is why it’s important to work with a consultant that you can trust.

Firstly, they’ll want to view any existing reports and data. You’ll need to provide access to your Google Analytics, social media accounts (to view social analytics) and other relevant accounts. 

Furthermore, you’ll need to share relevant documentation related to your business. For example, this might be existing audience research, market analysis, branding guidelines, your mission statement and the like.

Naturally, you should only divulge what you’re comfortable with and what you feel is relevant. The purpose of sharing these things is simply so that the consultant can learn as much about your operations as possible to make informed, strategic decisions.

Measuring the ROI of Digital Marketing Consulting Services

ROI refers to the profit you gain in relation to the cost of your investment. To calculate ROI, you might use a formula, such as this one from HubSpot:

Let’s break down what each of these terms means:

  • Number of leads – how many leads did the campaign produce?
  • Lead-to-customer rate – how many of those leads became customers?
  • Average sales price – what is the average product price?
  • Cost or ad spend – what were your costs? This includes ad spend or the cost of creating content, as well as the digital marketing consultant fee.

When calculating ROI, bear in mind that there are variables to consider. Let’s say for example that a campaign generates a lot of leads, but an ineffective sales team or lead nurturing strategy could fail to turn those leads into customers. This will, of course, impact ROI. There may even be other, wider variables, such as the state of the economy.

Furthermore, what you gain from digital marketing campaigns depends on your objectives. In some cases, it’s better to think of what you’ve gained or achieved in relation to your goals rather than placing the emphasis on monetary values.

Sometimes, you should measure the ROI of digital marketing consulting services according to key performance indicators. Have they helped you succeed in generating brand awareness, increasing rankings, improving click-through-rates of emails etc?

All in all, just remember that ROI doesn’t necessarily mean dollar amounts. You may make huge gains in other areas of your business that will result in sales later, help you retain customers, gain authority for your brand and so on.

5 Point Checklist for Finding the Right Digital Marketing Consultant

Hiring a digital marketing consultant is an investment in the future of your business. This one act has the potential to skyrocket your marketing performance.

Thus, it’s vital you find the right one. Here are the qualities you need to look out for:

1. The Right Expertise

Choose a digital marketing consultant with the expertise that matches your needs. If you’re looking for something specific e.g. content marketing make sure it’s one of their main specialities.

It’d also be beneficial to find a consultant with experience and expertise in your industry. Research what kind of clients they’ve worked with in the past. Let’s say you run an e-commerce store, you’ll need to look for consultants with a great track record of driving growth for online stores.

Also, check out the size and type of business they usually work with. It’s another indicator as to whether they can help you specifically.

2. Able to Deliver

Do their strategies get results? Are they able to deliver on your KPIs and help you reach your milestones?

There are a few ways you can work this out. You can look for case studies when researching a consultancy online. Or ask for relevant examples of successful campaigns when you interview a consultant.

You can also look at their ability to market themselves as a consultant or firm. If they have a strong online presence and a great client roster, then they’re able to produce the same results for your biz.

3. Credible

Did you know that I’m an excellent figure skater…

Just kidding.

The point I’m making here is that anybody can make any claim they like. You have to find proof that a digital marketing consultant is actually credible.

Can anybody vouch for them? Find reviews, testimonials and write-ups from trustworthy third parties online.

Accreditations also prove that a consultant is capable of doing what they say they can. Examples include Google and HubSpot certifications.

4. Knowledgeable

One key responsibility of a digital marketing consultant is to educate and prepare you for continued success. Furthermore, they need to be able to answer your questions and give you solid advice while you work together.

This means they need an in-depth knowledge of digital marketing best practices. So, it pays to work with a consultant that has lots of hands-on experience.

Furthermore, they need to be up-to-date on the latest trends and be confident in their knowledge of where digital marketing is headed in the years to come. That’s why I set up Neil Patel Digital with a group of highly-knowledgeable industry thought leaders:

5. On Your Wavelength

Do you  and the digital marketing consultant share the same vision when it comes to growing your business?

When researching consultants try to gain an understanding of their values and their approach. Get to know them and ask the right questions, such as:

  • How have you helped clients like me in the past?
  • How familiar are you with my industry?
  • Do you have any preliminary ideas for my strategy?
  • How much will you involve us in the process?
  • What happens when a strategy doesn’t work?

Their answers should help you assess whether they’re the right choice for you.

Conclusion

There are many reasons you may want to hire a digital marketing consultant. For instance, if you struggle to keep up with advancements in digital marketing. Or you just can’t seem to edge past your competitors.

A digital marketing expert can help you come up with marketing and sales strategies that drive growth. They’ll bring fresh ideas and help you dominate multiple channels. 

As long as you find a good one that is. 

When it comes to choosing a consultant to work with, find somebody that’s a good fit for you specifically, i.e. they get what you’re trying to do and have the relevant experience and expertise to meet your needs.

The post Digital Marketing Consulting appeared first on Neil Patel.

How to Choose The Right Content Marketing Agency

Content marketers who blog regularly receive 55 percent more website visitors and 67 percent more leads than those who don’t. Organizations that prioritize content marketing receive 13X more ROI than those that don’t.  

It’s no secret that content marketing works. 

What’s difficult is showing up day after day, with fresh content your readers find educational and valuable. After a while, the content marketing arms race can become a grind. If you have the right content marketing agency, growth is easier. It’s simple to create content that’s focused, helpful, and profitable. 

Know your content marketing goals and desired outcomes

Research from the Content Marketing Institute shows 80 percent of B2B marketers use metrics to measure their content performance, 65 percent have set KPIs, and 43 percent measure their content marketing ROI. 

Do you? 

If you’re not sure about your goals and desired outcomes, content marketing can become an expensive black hole. Successful content marketing starts with setting goals and objectives. The metrics and KPIs you use depends on a few different factors — the size and location of your business, your industry, and your circumstances. Here’s a list of the top six metrics marketers have used to measure their content marketing performance in the last 12 months. 

  1. Email engagement (e.g., opens, clicks, downloads)
  2. Website traffic (e.g., page views, unique visitors, backlinks, conversions) 
  3. Social media metrics (e.g., shares, follows, views, likes)
  4. Conversions (e.g., traffic to leads, traffic to subscribers, leads to sales)
  5. Subscriber counts (e.g., # of follows, growth, unsubscribes)
  6. Search rankings 

What should your goals and desired outcomes be? 

When it comes to content marketing, there really isn’t a shortage of metrics. If you wanted to, you could track 50+ metrics around your business. That’s not helpful if you’re focused on vanity metrics that don’t help you grow. You’ll probably want to focus your attention on the metrics that are directly tied to your revenue. 

This is why goals and outcomes are so important. 

If you’re aware of the goals and outcomes you want, you have a better sense of the metrics you need to track. These metrics show you whether you’re getting close to your goal or not. 

Here’s an example. 

If you’re running a SaaS business, you’d be focused on improving the five must-have metrics. 

  • Increasing monthly recurring revenue (MRR)
  • Decreasing user churn rates
  • Decreasing cost per acquisition
  • Increasing average revenue per customer
  • Increasing Customer lifetime value

If you’re focused on these goals, your content marketing metrics would be directly tied to these as well. If you’re a SaaS business, you’d prioritize content marketing metrics like traffic, subscriber counts, and conversions. These would have the biggest impact on your SaaS business. 

  1. What specifically do I need to stay in business? (e.g., $75K per mo., 300 basic customers, churn rate of 4.7% or less)
  2. Which areas of my business cost me money? (e.g., low return on ad spend, high acquisition costs, high churn rates)
  3. Where are my most/least profitable customers coming from? 
  4. Which content produces the most revenue? 

Start with the core metrics in your business. Ask yourself these four questions to get a better idea of your core metrics. You can always add more metrics if you need more data. 

9 Characteristics That Make a Great Content Marketing Agency

Clutch.co lists more than 13,873 content marketing agencies on its website. New agencies are added every day. How do you know that the agency you choose is a good fit? What kind of characteristics make a great content marketing agency?  

You need to know what you’re looking for in an agency. 

Here’s a list of the qualities and characteristics you need to find the right agency for your business. 

  1. A good reputation: Good reviews and testimonials are a good start. If you’re looking for an agency, they should have a portfolio of well-written content as well as online reviews, case studies, or references they can provide. You’ll want to go deeper; the agency you choose should have a portfolio of relevant content you can review. They should also have a good reputation with journalists, publishers, and influencers. If you run into any red flags here, they’ll need to explain why. 
  2. No ethical grey areas: Your agency should have a hard-line stance against obvious issues like plagiarism, inaccurate or misleading content, or material that’s socially inappropriate. But they should also have a clear stance against ethically murky issues like pay-for-play, paid links, or undisclosed conflicts of interest. When exposed, these unethical moves do permanent damage to your business, even if your agency did this with another client. 
  3. Project management skills: Content marketing depends on deadlines. If you’re working with journalists, partners, or influencers, you’ll need an agency that can provide you with on-time and in-budget content delivery. An editorial calendar can be difficult to manage; your agency should be able to handle these details for you. Ask them to show you their project management process.
  4. Clear goal setting: Your agency should be comfortable working with your goals and objectives. They should understand your business well enough to be able to track and manage the key metrics and KPIs you need to grow. The right agency should be able to show you how each metric fits with your goals and outcomes.
  5. Consistent ROI: Experienced agencies create content that meets your goals consistently. Their content development keeps you, the client, ahead of your competitors. It’s pretty easy to verify ROI; ask for case studies in the references that go along with them.
  6. Subject matter expertise: Your agency should have experience creating content in the same industry or space. They should have in-depth knowledge and experience with your industry, business, product, or service. If they don’t have the expertise you need, they should be able to demonstrate that they have experience with a similar topic or niche.
  7. A stable team of content creators: Good content marketing agencies have a list of reliable writers on their team, stable writers are skilled at writing, grammar, logical consistency, and storytelling. These writers should be specialists who have the subject matter expertise or experience you need.
  8. Match your voice, tone, and style: Experienced agencies shouldn’t have a problem matching their client’s brand voice. It should be easy for them to create content that sounds like something their clients would say, using the tone and style their client already uses.
  9. Write for people and search engines: Agency content pieces should be created to attract the right visitor at the right time, whether you’re speaking to a cold audience, subscribers, customers, followers, fans, or a combination. 

This is a lot for clients to handle on their own. That’s why 84 percent of marketers outsource their content creation activities. 

How to work with a content marketing agency

You’ll want to make sure that you give your content marketing agency the tools they need to work hard for you. 

  • Usernames and passwords. You can use tools like LastPass to handle credentials management for your agency. 
  • Work-related content. The content your agency needs to work. This includes items like marketing materials, brand and style guides, photos, and media.
  • Legal content. The list of do’s and don’ts your content needs to follow — terms of use, privacy policy, return/exchange policies, warranty and guarantee information, and intellectual property details.
  • Case studies and accolades. Your case studies, awards, recognition, PR (positive or negative), testimonials, praise, review profiles — any recognition you’ve received in your business. 
  • Good feedback. In the beginning, your agency will need lots of input from you. A good agency will ask lots of questions about your business. They’ll need consistent feedback from you to create the kind of content you need. 

Here are some tips you can use to keep your relationship with your agency healthy and successful.

Give your agency a point-of-contact

Make sure they assign a dedicated account manager or point-of-contact to your account. Verify that your agency has access to a point-of-contact in your business and decision-makers when necessary. Make sure you both know when and how to reach each other.

Set your expectations upfront

Your agency needs to know how to work with you. Do you want your agency to be hands-on, or would you prefer that they focus on the work? Make sure your agency knows what your expectations are—ask them to verify that your expectations are realistic and achievable.

Outline your approval process

Are you an influencer or decision-maker? If you don’t have the power to make important decisions on behalf of your company, you want to let your agency know that ahead of time. They’ll probably need access to a decision-maker at some point. If you’re not a decision-maker, give your agency the chance to earn buy-in from them. This will keep the agency/client relationship stable.

Ask your agency for feedback

Sometimes agencies are nervous about offending their clients. Ask your agency for feedback on your feedback. Find out ahead of time whether your thoughts were helpful or clear. Ask your agency about how you can provide better feedback during your next meeting.

How to Find the Right Content Marketing Agency For You 

If you’d prefer to do your research from scratch, you can use ratings and review websites like Clutch.co, G2, or TopSEOs to create a list of content marketing agencies. Use the criteria I mentioned above to create a list of agencies you can interview. 

To make things easier for you, we’ve created a list of the best content marketing agencies of 2020. 

8 Top Content Marketing Agencies

1. NP Digital – Best for Immediate and Consistent Revenue Growth

NP Digital is my content marketing agency. I focus our agency on revenue and the metrics that increase revenue. Our focus with content marketing is helping clients build a business that produces traffic, leads, and revenue. Most agencies separate services like technical SEO, link building, or conversion optimization. We keep SEO and content marketing as a package deal. 

2. Seer Interactive – Best for Big Data Search and Content

Seer Interactive doesn’t trust their gut; they use their data warehouse and tools to look across millions of keywords instantly. Using big data, they look for new, hidden, and unexpected customer trends in competitive industries. They’re one of the few agencies with a big query environment of 202 million SERP records. 

3. Distilled – Best for Technical SEO

As an agency, Distilled builds its content marketing campaigns around technical SEO. All of the services they offer are oriented around search. Distilled created an Optimization Delivery Network (ODN) that allows clients to make changes to their site and run SEO split tests. 

4. Fractl – Best for In-Depth, Research-Heavy Content

Fractl is a research-heavy, data-driven content marketing agency. They focus on rapid organic growth via a combination of content marketing, data journalism, digital PR, and SEO. They have deep knowledge in specific industries, and they publish original research in journals and well-known publications. 

5. Column Five – Best for Data and Content Visualization

As a content marketing agency, Column Five is focused on the creative side of content development — storytelling, design, data visualization, interactive motion graphics, and exhibition design. Creativity is the priority; their agency uses a mix of organic and paid distribution to promote client content.  

8. Single Grain – Best for Conversion-Driven Content Marketing

Single Grain uses its content marketing and conversion optimization services to boost client conversions. They’re focused on rapid and consistent growth for each of their clients. 

9. The Content Bureau – Best for B2B Content Marketing

These B2B content marketing specialists are woman-owned, 90 percent female, and fully remote. They’re focused almost exclusively on clients in the tech, VC, and financial sectors, focusing their attention on global corporations that need consistent, year-over-year growth.  

10. Web Profits – Best for SaaS Content Marketing

Webprofits focuses exclusively on SaaS content marketing and advertising. These SaaS specialists use their experience as SaaS business owners to build other SaaS clients. They work with large and small clients, including Rackspace and Shopify.  

Conclusion

It can be tough to show up day after day with fresh content for your customers. The right content marketing agency makes content development simple and straightforward. Choosing the right content marketing agency isn’t rocket science; you just have to ask the right questions. 

It starts with your goals and outcomes. 

If you’re aware of the goals and outcomes you want, you’ll know which metrics you need to track to reach those goals. With the right goals and metrics, you’ll be able to find, vet, and choose the right content marketing agency — you’ll have the team you need to generate more revenue for your business. 

The post How to Choose The Right Content Marketing Agency appeared first on Neil Patel.

How Marketing Siloing May Be Ruining Your Business

According to Investopedia, a silo mentality is “a reluctance to share information with employees of different divisions in the same company… reducing the organization’s efficiency.”

In other words, if different people or teams in your company aren’t on the same page about everything that’s going on, they might end up doing a worse job.

Silos can make your company seem less innovative and damage your employee engagement, resulting in lowered productivity.

They could also make your marketing less effective. 

What is Marketing Siloing?

When it comes to marketing, “working in silos” usually means that everyone in the marketing department keeps to themselves.

The SEO people only think about SEO, designers about design, developers about development…you get the picture. Like actual silos, they’re separated and don’t interact. Why does this matter? Because it’s bad for business.

Why Are Marketing Silos Detrimental to Your Bottom Line?

There are many reasons why marketing silos can cause a ripple effect in your business that goes beyond ineffective communication.

Silos Waste Time

When your marketing is siloed, your team can end up accidentally wasting a lot of time by not coordinating with each other.

Picture this…

You own a company that makes dog food, and your content marketing strategist is trying to generate a few content ideas about pet care for your blog. They go to my keyword research tool, Ubersuggest, to get some inspiration:

keyword research example when describing marketing siloing

But what they don’t realize is that the SEO team already did a bunch of research about this topic last week, and could easily have shared it with them. No one on the SEO team thought to tell the marketing team about their research, and no one on the marketing team thought to ask.

Because of marketing siloing, your content marketer has now spent their entire day doing something that’s already been done.

Here’s another example:

You have a freelance copywriter writing for your new website and a UX specialist working on the design. They’re working separately.

marketing siloing wireframes example

When they present you with the final deliverables, none of the copy fits into the wireframes. At all.
Your copywriter now has to redo all their work, annoying them and costing you more money.

The whole thing could have been avoided if you had just asked the copywriter and UX specialist to work together.

Silos Prevent You From Getting the Best Marketing Results

In addition to wasting time and money, marketing siloing prevents you from getting killer results.

Your customers expect your marketing to be consistent across channels—it’s how they know they’re on a legitimate site for your company. That’s why it’s so important to have an integrated marketing strategy. If your marketing department is siloed, your campaigns—and even basic things like font choices and colors—will look inconsistent. Silos can also create confusing situations and missed opportunities. 

For example, let’s say you’re launching a new content marketing campaign. Your content team pours a bunch of money into hiring freelance writers, graphic designers, and videographers to create lots of awesome content for your website.

And then…

No one knows what happened. The content is really high-quality and perfectly optimized for SEO. You’re getting tons of additional traffic, but no conversions. What gives?

Turns out, the tone of the content is all wrong. It’s written in a way none of your ideal clients can understand or relate to. 

Know who could have told you that? The sales and customer service teams. After all, they know your clients pretty well.

Once again, siloing leads to a marketing fail.

(By the way, if you’re trying to get more conversions for your website, there’s more to it than just creating content. In the video below, I share seven cool hacks that can help improve your conversion rate.)

Silos Demotivate Your Employees

Another terrible thing about marketing siloing is that it demotivates your employees.

Here’s how:

It’s easy to get excited about something when you see the bigger picture. But the larger your business gets, the more removed every individual becomes from your company’s overall mission—because they may not even know who is making decisions, let alone why.

Think about the way freelancers and consultants see their business. They’re responsible for doing everything themselves, so it seems like a real win when they get results.

The same goes for small teams—when something goes well, everybody celebrates. People feel like their job is making a difference.

When you’re running a larger company, it’s harder to keep this dynamic going.

Suppose your SEO person sits around all day copying and pasting keywords into a spreadsheet without seeing how this impacts the company’s marketing strategy. They’re likely to start thinking their job is pointless. After a while, they’ll probably start to look for another one.Losing talent is expensive. You don’t want your best people to leave because of an easily-solved problem like marketing siloing.

For employees at mid-size or larger companies, getting together with co-workers to bounce around ideas can be motivating, especially when those co-workers aren’t the same ones they see every day.

It makes everyone feel like they’re working towards the same goals.

How to Tell If Your Marketing is Siloed

By now, you should be pretty convinced that marketing siloing is not a good thing: it’s something that can hurt your business.

But how can you know if you have a silo problem?

When you’re “in the trenches” day in and day out, it can be hard to take a step back and think about what’s going on at the macro level in your company. And if you’re making the higher-level decisions, you may not know what your employees are experiencing.

If you’re worried about marketing siloing, take a look to see if you notice any of these things:

Your Marketing Employees Don’t Talk to Each Other

Have you noticed that your employees only talk to a few of their co-workers?

Maybe they don’t leave their desks and just chat with the people next to them. Or perhaps they have one or two friends in their department and don’t talk to anyone else.

If this is something you’ve seen at your company, marketing siloing might be an issue for you.

Your Marketers Don’t Understand What Their Colleagues Are Doing

Another way to see if your marketing department is siloed is to ask your marketers what their co-workers are doing.

Ask your designers what the dev team is up to in relation to their projects. See if your SEO team knows anything about paid ads. Check if your content marketers are working with your social media people on writing consistent content across verticals.

If the answer people keep on giving you is “I have no idea,” they’re working in silos.  

Your Marketing Team Doesn’t Work with Other Teams

Even if your marketers are pretty good at working with other marketing team members, that doesn’t mean they’re good at working with other teams.

Marketers need to know what other teams are doing—even when their jobs seem unrelated.

If your marketing team doesn’t understand your business from a big-picture perspective, they could be making major mistakes that cause your marketing campaigns to fail.

How to Get Rid of Marketing Siloing Right Now

Let’s say you’ve decided that your business has an issue with marketing siloing. What are you supposed to do about it?

You have to take action to deal with the siloing.

When creating a plan to tackle marketing siloing, the first thing you’ll want to do is talk to your managers.

Siloing often starts at the higher levels of a business. If your marketing department is divided into several teams, meet with your team leads separately to see what their goals are.

If the team leads aren’t working together and their goals seem unrelated to one another, that’s a problem. You should call a meeting with them to come up with a way to do things better.

Here are some of the things you can include in your de-siloing plan:

Have a Marketing Master Plan

Having one central marketing plan that everyone has to follow is essential for your company. If you don’t already have one, that’s the first place to start.
If you’ve been running your marketing in a “throw things at the wall and see what sticks” type of way, it’s time to nip that in the bud and get serious about your strategy.

What does this mean? Well, first, you should have one or more buyer personas that show who your customers are and what they care about.

Next, you need to know what your competition is doing. Do some competitor analysis and try to understand what they’re doing that works and how you can use that information to get ahead of them.

Don’t copy their strategies, though. You’re not the same as your competitors; instead, you’ll want to show you’re better. More on that in my video below:

Once you’ve covered these things, you can create a multichannel marketing plan to help you get the results you need.

You’ll want to define your main goals and KPIs and make sure you’re hitting them. Make it clear that everyone needs to be involved in that process. 

Meet, Talk, and Train Together

If you already have a marketing plan in place, but you still feel like you’re dealing with marketing silos, how can you get everyone in your company to get on board as a cohesive team?

If folks in your company don’t see the big picture, maybe it’s because they’re not talking to each other enough.

Make sure to plan regular meetings for your marketing department where your marketers can present what they’re working on and tell others about their wins and roadblocks. Even a 15 or 30-minute weekly meeting does wonders for team connection and communication.

Another thing to look at is the collaboration software you’re using.

If people are divided into different groups in your internal chat software or project management tools, make sure some company-wide channels are open, too. These will let everyone talk with each other.

Ensure that all your marketers have access to training, even in fields that are different from theirs. Maybe your SEOs want to learn more about web development, or perhaps your developers want to know more about copywriting. Let them learn!

Training your employees not only helps them get better at their job, but it also shows you care about helping them advance in their career—in turn, making them more engaged at work. 

Identify and Deal with Culture Problems

If you still can’t figure out why your marketers aren’t working together, maybe your company has a culture problem.

Maybe one of your managers has trouble controlling their temper and has a history of blowing up at people. Everyone tries to avoid them, so communication breaks down.

Or maybe you’re paying your lead SEO twice as much as your head of content marketing, and the content marketer isn’t happy about it. Since the content marketer resents the SEO, they’ve stopped talking to them and just do things on their own.

Once you root out these problems, you can deal with them.

Restructure Your Marketing Team(s)

If you’ve already tried fixing culture problems and giving your marketers more opportunities to communicate, but you’re still having problems, it’s time to consider taking more significant steps to deal with your marketing siloing.

Maybe what you need is a full overhaul of your org chart.

organizational chart to fix marketing siloing

If you have several small, siloed teams, consider merging them into one larger unit with a few different “sub-units.”

Put these bigger teams together in the office to talk to each other about their current projects.

Or you could keep the hierarchy you have now, but move people around in a way that makes them feel less isolated.

Follow Through Over Time

No matter what you choose to do to deal with marketing siloing, the most important thing is that you follow through with it.

Don’t just go on an “anti-silo crusade” for a few months and then forget about it, letting things go back to the way they were before. Make sure your commitment is permanent.

Conclusion

Marketing siloing is one of the main things that can sabotage your marketing campaigns. Luckily, once you realize your company has a silo problem, you can often deal with it pretty quickly—as long as you have an organized plan.

Your employees will feel relieved that you’re taking the initiative. They will benefit from better communication between departments and individual employees.

Did I miss any ways to deal with marketing siloing? Let me know in the comments. 

The post How Marketing Siloing May Be Ruining Your Business appeared first on Neil Patel.