MARKETING
7 Productivity Boosting Platforms/Software for Remote Marketing Teams
Working from home was considered to be a luxury at one point of time, but with the rapid advancement of digital technology, remote working has now become more commonplace. Majority of the businesses today are shifting to a remote working environment. Although there are many perks to remote working, especially for marketers, it does come with its own set of hurdles, primarily communication and collaboration challenges. In such a scenario, it has become important to maintain the same level of efficiency and productivity as you would in an office environment. This is where workflow automation and productivity enhancement tools come in.
Marketing teams can benefit from automation tools for organising their work and balancing various responsibilities remotely. There are many tools available in the market these days, which were developed to address every aspect of a marketing team’s productivity. And while there are numerous options to choose from, the key lies in finding the logo makertool that is best suited for the unique needs of your marketing team. In the following sections, we will provide a list of productivity-boosting platforms/software that will help marketers in –
- Organising tasks.
- Planning posts.
- Improving communication with clients.
- Improving communication internally.
Let’s get straight to the list!
Content creation is the most important aspect of any digital marketing campaign. Without structured effort and proper organisation, however, creating high-quality content becomes difficult. This is where a content creation and workflow management tool like Narrato comes in. Narrato is a content creation, collaboration, and planning platform that essentially brings all your content-related processes to one place. This platform can be used to streamline the entire content workflow, from content creation to task assigning, editing, publishing, and more. Remote marketers would find it especially useful, as it will allow them to –
- Create high-quality content on Narrato’s powerful content editor, which comes with various features like an AI writing assistant, grammar suggestions, plagiarism checks, and more.
- Generate SEO content briefs with keyword suggestions, topic suggestions and other SEO parameters
- Provide both project and topic-specific guidelines to the content team so that the writers have a standard operating procedure they can follow.
- Collaborate with the marketing team more effectively through features like in-line commenting and messaging to share feedback and input with the team members.
- Use WordPress integration to publish a content piece directly to a website or blog.
- Use Narrato content calendar to organise the projects and track their progress with workflow statuses.
Besides this, Narrato also provides a content ordering platform – Narrato Marketplace. This content marketplace gives you access to quality-vetted freelance writers specialised in various areas of content and digital marketing.
Pricing: If you are an individual content creator or are just starting a writing agency, Narrato provides a free plan you can try. The paid plans (with advanced features) start at $8 per user per month. The platform also provides the option of customising your plan according to your needs.
Zumvu is a great online promotion and marketing platform that helps remote marketing teams in maximising their efforts. This marketing automation platform comes with content marketing, SEO, lead generation, and social media automation tools that can be very useful in boosting engagement and driving the growth of a business. Zumvu offers several robust features which can be used to boost your marketing efforts –
- Option to schedule and publish content on blogs, websites, and social media.
- Auto-posting feature for social media (Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, etc.)
- In-built SEO feature to improve the ranking on search engines.
- Integrated review system.
- Review, Call to Action, and Photo Gallery, among other utilities.
Pricing: Zumvu can be used for free if you are just starting out. To avail the premium features, you can upgrade to a paid plan, which starts at $8 per month.
This popular all-in-one project management software comes with a host of powerful features that can give remote marketing teams greater control over their processes. ProofHub allows you to create custom workflows so that task management becomes a breeze. It also allows you to hold real-time discussions with your team using the in-built chat app. Other useful features provided in the software are –
- Online proofing tool
- Custom reports
- Gantt charts
Pricing: ProofHub offers a free trial to its new users. For unlimited projects and users, you can go for the Ultimate Control plan at $89 per month.
Hive is another great platform for remote marketing teams that wish to use social media marketing, SEO, conversion optimization, and digital consultation services. Hive Digital can help marketers in developing and executing a custom digital marketing campaign using empirically proven techniques. Remote marketers can use the following Hive Digital services to streamline the marketing processes –
- Website Analytics
- Paid Advertising
- Social Media Marketing
- Search Engine Optimization
Pricing: The minimum project size with Hive Digital starts at $1000. The average hourly rate for their services is around $150-199 per hour.
This is a great CRM tool for remote marketing teams as it helps in automating several marketing processes. This lead management tool can be used to capture and nurture leads, after which they can be converted into buyers. The biggest advantage of using Close CRM is access to the e-mail marketing feature, which allows users to set up an autoresponder series. This can also be used to get analytical reports on email delivery/open rates. In a recent survey by UpCity, email deliverability was highlighted as an important metric to track.
Close CRM tool is also great for cold calling as it comes with the VOIP calling feature. Other features offered by this tool are –
- Task management
- Multichannel inbox
- SMS tools
- Video tools
- Pipeline management
Pricing: The Close CRM paid plans start from $29 per user per month.
This is the perfect expense tracking and online invoicing tool for remote marketing teams. It essentially allows users to manage all their invoices online using any computer. Using InvoiceBerry, marketers can also save a significant amount of time and effort that is usually spent on creating and sending invoices to clients.
Pricing: InvoiceBerry offers a free trial to all its new users. The paid plans start at $15 per feature per month.
7. Hypercontext – Meetings and Agenda Planning App
Holding productive meetings with your marketing team can be tough when you are working remotely. Hypercontext is a great meeting and agenda planning app, using which you can improve team collaboration. It also allows you to set goals, milestones, and deadlines, so that your marketing team can always stay on target. It comes with a variety of features like –
- Shared online agendas
- Integrated notes from the meetings
- Real-time commenting option
- Next-step tracker
- Suggested questions for setting agendas
- Meeting feedback
Pricing: The Basic plan on Hypercontext can be used for free. The paid plans start from $7 per user per month.
Wrapping Up
With a strong marketing plan and a well-defined process of incorporating these tools, your marketing team will be able to achieve the desired results, even as they continue to work remotely. These workflow automation and productivity enhancement tools are designed to help remote marketers in accomplishing better communication and collaboration with their team members. Besides that, these tools will also help in increasing the efficiency of the marketing processes.
MARKETING
How To Combine PR and Content Marketing Superpowers To Achieve Business Goals
A transformative shift is happening, and it’s not AI.
The aisle between public relations and content marketing is rapidly narrowing. If you’re smart about the convergence, you can forever enhance your brand’s storytelling.
The goals and roles of content marketing and PR overlap more and more. The job descriptions look awfully similar. Shrinking budgets and a shrewd eye for efficiency mean you and your PR pals could face the chopping block if you don’t streamline operations and deliver on the company’s goals (because marketing communications is always first to be axed, right?).
Yikes. Let’s take a big, deep breath. This is not a threat. It’s an opportunity.
Reach across the aisle to PR and streamline content creation, improve distribution strategies, and get back to the heart of what you both are meant to do: Build strong relationships and tell impactful stories.
So, before you panic-post that open-to-work banner on LinkedIn, consider these tips from content marketing, PR, and journalism pros who’ve figured out how to thrive in an increasingly narrowing content ecosystem.
1. See journalists as your audience
Savvy pros know the ability to tell an impactful story — and support it with publish-ready collateral — grounds successful media relationships. And as a content marketer, your skills in storytelling and connecting with audiences, including journalists, naturally support your PR pals’ media outreach.
Strategic storytelling creates content focused on what the audience needs and wants. Sharing content on your blog or social media builds relationships with journalists who source those channels for story ideas, event updates, and subject matter experts.
“Embedding PR strategies in your content marketing pieces informs your audience and can easily be picked up by media,” says Alex Sanchez, chief experience officer at BeWell, New Mexico’s Health Insurance Marketplace. “We have seen reporters do this many times, pulling stories from our blogs and putting them in the nightly news — most of the time without even reaching out to us.”
Acacia James, weekend producer/morning associate producer at WTOP radio in Washington, D.C., says blogs and social media posts are helpful to her work. “If I see a story idea, and I see that they’re willing to share information, it’s easier to contact them — and we can also backlink their content. It’s huge for us to be able to use every avenue.”
Kirby Winn, manager of PR at ImpactLife, says reporters and assignment editors are key consumers of their content. “And I don’t mean a news release that just hit their inbox. They’re going to our blog and consuming our stories, just like any other audience member,” he says. “Our organization has put more focus into content marketing in the past few years — it supports a media pitch so well and highlights the stories we have to tell.”
Storytelling attracts earned media that might not pick up the generic news topic. “It’s one thing to pitch a general story about how we help consumers sign up for low-cost health insurance,” Alex says. “Now, imagine a single mom who just got a plan after years of thinking it was too expensive. She had a terrible car accident, and the $60,000 ER bill that would have ruined her financially was covered. Now that’s a story journalists will want to cover, and that will be relatable to their audience and ours.”
2. Learn the media outlet’s audience
Seventy-three percent of reporters say one-fourth or less of the stories pitched are relevant to their audiences, according to Cision’s 2023 State of the Media Report (registration required).
PR pros are known for building relationships with journalists, while content marketers thrive in building communities around content. Merge these best practices to build desirable content that works for your target audience and the media’s audiences simultaneously.
WTOP’s Acacia James says sources who show they’re ready to share helpful, relevant content often win pitches for coverage. “In radio, we do a lot of research on who is listening to us, and we’re focused on a prototype called ‘Mike and Jen’ — normal, everyday people in Generation X … So when we get press releases and pitches, we ask, ‘How interested will Mike and Jen be in this story?’”
3. Deliver the full content package (and make journalists’ jobs easier)
Cranking out content to their media outlet’s standards has never been tougher for journalists. Newsrooms are significantly understaffed, and anything you can do to make their lives easier will be appreciated and potentially rewarded with coverage. Content marketers are built to think about all the elements to tell the story through multiple mediums and channels.
“Today’s content marketing pretty much provides a package to the media outlet,” says So Young Pak, director of media relations at MedStar Washington Hospital Center. “PR is doing a lot of storytelling work in advance of media publication. We (and content marketing) work together to provide the elements to go with each story — photos, subject matter experts, patients, videos, and data points, if needed.”
At WTOP, the successful content package includes audio. “As a radio station, we are focused on high-quality sound,” Acacia James says. “Savvy sources know to record and send us voice memos, and then we pull cuts from the audio … You will naturally want to do someone a favor if they did you one — like providing helpful soundbites, audio, and newsworthy stories.”
While production value matters to some media, you shouldn’t stress about it. “In the past decade, how we work with reporters has changed. Back in the day, if they couldn’t be there in person, they weren’t going to interview your expert,” says Jason Carlton, an accredited PR professional and manager of marketing and communications at Intermountain Health. “During COVID, we had to switch to virtual interviewing. Now, many journalists are OK with running a Teams or Zoom interview they’ve done with an expert on the news.”
BeWell’s Alex Sanchez agrees. “I’ve heard old school PR folks cringe at the idea of putting up a Zoom video instead of getting traditional video interviews. It doesn’t really matter to consumers. Focus on the story, on the timeliness, and the relevance. Consumers want authenticity, not super stylized, stiff content.”
4. Unite great minds to maximize efficiency
Everyone needs to set aside the debate about which team — PR or content marketing — gets credit for the resulting media coverage.
At MedStar Washington Hospital Center, So Young and colleagues adopt a collaborative mindset on multichannel stories. “We can get the interview and gather information for all the different pieces — blog, audio, video, press release, internal newsletter, or magazine. That way, we’re not trying to figure things out individually, and the subject matter experts only have to have that conversation once,” she says.
Regular, cross-team meetings are essential to understand the best channels for reaching key audiences, including the media. A story that began life as a press release might reap SEO and earned media gold if it’s strategized as a blog, video, and media pitch.
“At Intermountain Health, we have individual teams for media relations, marketing, social media, and hospital communications. That setup works well because it allows us to bring in the people who are the given experts in those areas,” says Intermountain’s Jason Carlton. “Together, we decide if a story is best for the blog, a media pitch, or a mix of channels — that way, we avoid duplicating work and the risk of diluting the story’s impact.”
5. Measure what matters
Cutting through the noise to earn media mentions requires keen attention to metrics. Since content marketing and PR metrics overlap, synthesizing the data in your team meetings can save time while streamlining your storytelling efforts.
“For content marketers, using analytical tools such as GA4 can help measure the effectiveness of their content campaigns and landing pages to determine meaningful KPIs such as organic traffic, keyword rankings, lead generation, and conversion rates,” says John Martino, director of digital marketing for Visiting Angels. “PR teams can use media coverage and social interactions to assess user engagement and brand awareness. A unified and omnichannel approach can help both teams demonstrate their value in enhancing brand visibility, engagement, and overall business success.”
To track your shared goals, launch a shared dashboard that helps tell the combined “story of your stories” to internal and executive teams. Among the metrics to monitor:
- Page views: Obviously, this queen of metrics continues to be important across PR and content marketing. Take your analysis to the next level by evaluating which niche audiences are contributing to these views to further hone your storytelling targets, including media outlets.
- Earned media mentions: Through a media tracker service or good old Google Alerts, you can tally the echo of your content marketing and PR. Look at your site’s referral traffic report to identify media outlets that send traffic to your blog or other web pages.
- Organic search queries: Dive into your analytics platform to surface organic search queries that lead to visitors. Build from those questions to develop stories that further resonate with your audience and your targeted media.
- On-page actions: When visitors show up on your content, what are they doing? What do they click? Where do they go next? Building next-step pathways is your bread and butter in content marketing — and PR can use them as a natural pipeline for media to pick up more stories, angles, and quotes.
But perhaps the biggest metric to track is team satisfaction. Who on the collaborative team had the most fun writing blogs, producing videos, or calling the news stations? Lean into the natural skills and passions of your team members to distribute work properly, maximize the team output, and improve relationships with the media, your audience, and internal teams.
“It’s really trying to understand the problem to solve — the needle to move — and determining a plan that will help them achieve their goal,” Jason says. “If you don’t have those measurable objectives, you’re not going to know whether you made a difference.”
Don’t fear the merger
Whether you deliberately work together or not, content marketing and public relations are tied together. ImpactLife’s Kirby Winn explains, “As soon as we begin to talk about (ourselves) to a reporter who doesn’t know us, they are certainly going to check out our stories.”
But consciously uniting PR and content marketing will ease the challenges you both face. Working together allows you to save time, eliminate duplicate work, and gain free time to tell more stories and drive them into impactful media placements.
HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT:
Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute
MARKETING
Trends in Content Localization – Moz
Multinational fast food chains are one of the best-known examples of recognizing that product menus may sometimes have to change significantly to serve distinct audiences. The above video is just a short run-through of the same business selling smokehouse burgers, kofta, paneer, and rice bowls in an effort to appeal to people in a variety of places. I can’t personally judge the validity of these representations, but what I can see is that, in such cases, you don’t merely localize your content but the products on which your content is founded.
Sometimes, even the branding of businesses is different around the world; what we call Burger King in America is Hungry Jack’s in Australia, Lays potato chips here are Sabritas in Mexico, and DiGiorno frozen pizza is familiar in the US, but Canada knows it as Delissio.
Tales of product tailoring failures often become famous, likely because some of them may seem humorous from a distance, but cultural sensitivity should always be taken seriously. If a brand you are marketing is on its way to becoming a large global seller, the best insurance against reputation damage and revenue loss as a result of cultural insensitivity is to employ regional and cultural experts whose first-hand and lived experiences can steward the organization in acting with awareness and respect.
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