MARKETING
8 Ways To Get Started
Today, most marketing teams are focused on driving traffic toward websites in hopes that this traffic then converts into qualified leads for sales reps to close. But that’s only half the battle.
Getting more out of existing traffic and leads (versus entirely new traffic) can propel companies toward long-term, sustainable growth. That’s where conversion rate optimization (CRO) comes in. In this guide, you’ll learn about the power of CRO, why your business should focus on improving your conversion rate, and how to get started.
Conversion Rate Optimization
Conversion rate optimization, or CRO, is the process of enhancing your website to increase the number of leads you generate. CRO is achieved through content enhancements, split testing, and workflow improvements. Conversion rate optimization results in highly-qualified leads, increased revenue, and lower acquisition costs.
What is a conversion rate?
A conversion rate is the percentage of visitors who complete a desired action, like completing a web form, signing up for a service, or purchasing a product.
A high conversion rate means your website is well-designed, formatted effectively, and appealing to your target audience. A low conversion rate could be the result of a variety of factors related to either website performance or design. Slow load times, a broken form, or copy that doesn’t convey the value of the offer are common reasons for a poor conversion rate.
What is a good conversion rate?
A “good” conversion rate depends on your industry, niche, goals, traffic channel, and audience demographics, among other factors. For example, the average conversion rate of ecommerce sites globally was 2.17% in the third quarter of 2020, which was down from 2.37% the previous year. The ecommerce conversion rate in the US was higher, however, at 2.57%.
The average not only differs by year and by country — it also differs by niche. For example, the average conversion rate of ecommerce sites in the food and beverage sector is 5.5% whereas the average in the hair care sector is 3.5%.
If your conversion rate is lower than you’d like — maybe it’s below average in your industry, or lower than your top competitors, or simply underperforming against your own goals — then it’s time to optimize.
Conversions can happen all over your website: on your homepage, pricing page, blog, landing pages, and more. To maximize the potential of converting website visitors into paying customers, you should optimize each location.
Before we take a look at the benefits of CRO, let’s walk through how to calculate your site’s conversion rate. That way, you’ll have a better understanding of how much time and resources to invest in a CRO strategy.
How to Calculate Conversion Rate
Conversion rate is calculated by dividing the number of conversions by the number of visitors and multiplying that number by 100 to get a percentage.
As long as you know how you’re defining a conversion, then calculating your conversion rate is easy. You just plug in two values and multiply by 100.
Let’s say you’re defining a conversion as a newsletter opt-in, and you have an opt-in form on every single page of your website. In that case, you’d divide the total number of newsletter form submissions by the total number of website visitors and multiply it by 100. So if you had 500 submissions and 20,000 visitors last quarter, then your conversion rate would be 2.5%.
You can repeat this process for every conversion opportunity on your site. Just make sure to only count the number of visitors on the webpages where the offer is listed. For example, if you want to calculate the conversion rate of your ebook offer, then you’d divide the total number of downloads by the number of people who visited webpages where the ebook offer is listed.
Alternatively, you can calculate your website’s overall conversion rate by dividing the total number of conversions for every conversion opportunity on your site by the total number of visitors on your site.
Where to Implement a CRO Strategy
Here are four areas of your website that have the potential to largely benefit from conversion rate optimization.
1. Homepage
Homepages are prime candidates for CRO. In addition to making a first impression on visitors, the homepage is also an opportunity to retain those visitors and guide them further into your website.
You can do this by emphasizing links to product information, offering a free signup button, or even incorporating a chatbot that solicits questions from visitors at any point during their browsing experience.
2. Pricing Page
A website’s pricing page can be the make-or-break point for many website visitors. CRO can help a pricing page convert visitors into customers by modifying the pricing intervals (e.g. price-per-year vs. price-per-month), describing the product features associated with each price, including a phone number for visitors to call for a price quote, or adding a simple pop-up form.
Hotjar, for example, added a simple email opt-in popup form on its pricing page and got over 400 new leads in just three weeks.
3. Blog
A blog is a massive conversion opportunity for a website. In addition to publishing thoughtful and helpful content about your industry, a blog can use CRO to convert readers into leads.
This process often includes adding calls-to-action (CTA) throughout an article or inviting readers to learn more about a topic by submitting their email address in exchange for an ebook or industry report.
4. Landing Pages
Since landing pages are inherently designed for people to take an action, it makes sense that they have the highest average conversion rate of all signup forms at 24%. An event landing page, for example, can be optimized with a video of last year’s event to encourage visitors to register this year. A landing page that’s offering a free resource can be optimized with preview content from that resource to encourage visitors to download it.
Now that you know where you can optimize for conversions, you may be wondering how you know when your business is ready to start the process.
CRO Formulas
The short answer: CRO is important for any business online. That’s because, no matter how established or large your company is, you want to convert your website visitors into qualified leads, customers, and brand advocates — and you want to do so in the most effective, impactful, and reliable way.
With conversion rate optimization, you’ll get more out of your existing website traffic while ensuring you’re targeting qualified leads.
Although this is a straightforward concept, setting a conversion goal isn’t as easy as saying, “This page converted 50 people this month, so we want to convert 100 people next month.”
Featured resource: 8-Week Conversion Rate Optimization Planner
You don’t just want 50 more conversions from a webpage. Instead, you want 50 more conversions for every X amount of people who visit it. (This is your conversion rate — the percentage of people who convert on your website based on how many people have touched it).
To provide a better understanding of where you stand at any point in time in regards to conversion rate, here are three commonly-used formulas your business can use to understand, analyze, and improve.
CRO Calculation 1: Conversion Rate
As we mentioned earlier, to calculate conversion rate, you must divide your number of conversions (or leads generated) by your number of visitors (or web traffic), and then multiply that number by 100 to get the percentage.
Leads Generated ÷ Website Traffic x 100 = Conversion Rate %
CRO Calculation 2: Number of Net New Customers
To calculate your number of net new customers, you’ll want to divide your net revenue goal by your average sales price.
New Revenue Goal ÷ Average Sales Price = Number of New Customers
CRO Calculation 3: Lead Goal
And lastly, to calculate your lead goal, take your number of new customers and divide it by your lead-to-customer close rate (which is your total number of leads divided by total number of customers) percentage.
Number of New Customers ÷ Lead-to-Customer Close Rate % = Lead Goal
Here’s an example of these formulas in action:
If your website has 10,000 visitors per month that generate 100 leads — and subsequently, 10 customers each month — the website visitor-to-lead conversion rate would be 1%.
What if you wanted to generate 20 customers each month?
You could try to get 20,000 visitors to your website and hope that the quality of your traffic doesn’t decrease — although, that’s a risk you’ll likely want to avoid. Rather, you could obtain more leads from your existing traffic by optimizing your conversion rate. This is less risky and is more likely to produce better results for your bottom line.
For instance, if you increase your conversion rate from 1% to 2%, you’d double your leads and your customers. The following table is proof of this — you can see the positive impact that results from increasing your website’s conversion rate:
|
COMPANY |
A |
B |
C |
|
Monthly Site Traffic |
10,000 |
10,000 |
10,000 |
|
Conversion Rate |
1% |
2% |
3% |
|
Leads Generated |
100 |
200 |
300 |
|
New Customers |
10 |
20 |
30 |
Notice the drastic increases in the number of leads generated and net new customers when you boost your conversion rate.
Not only that, but it’s clear that generating more website traffic isn’t necessarily the right approach when trying to improve your conversion rate — in fact, this chart shows you that you can grow your business substantially without increasing traffic at all.
Hard to believe? Think about this way: Pretend you were trying to fill up a leaky bucket. If you pour more water into the bucket, you won’t fix the root cause of the issue — instead, you’ll end up with a lot of water that’s wasted (not to mention, a bucket that will never fill up all the way).
Are you ready to take the first steps toward CRO at your company? Review the strategies below and start experimenting.
Conversion Rate Optimization Strategies
Here are some applicable conversion rate optimization marketing strategies to test and implement at your company.
1. Create text-based CTAs within blog posts.
While it’s considered a best practice to include CTAs in a blog post, they sometimes fail to entice visitors to take your desired course of action. Why?
Banner blindness is a real phenomenon related to people becoming accustomed to ignoring banner-like information on websites. This lack of attention coupled with the fact site visitors don’t always read all the way to the bottom of a blog post (rather, they “snack” on content), means a different approach is required.
That’s where the text-based CTA comes in handy. Here at HubSpot, we ran a test with text-based CTAs — a standalone line of text linked to a landing page and styled as an H3 or an H4 — to see if they would convert more traffic into leads than regular CTAs located at the bottom of a web page.
In HubSpot’s limited test of 10 blog posts, regular end-of-post banner CTAs contributed an average of just 6% of leads that the blog posts generated, whereas up to 93% of a post’s leads came from the anchor-text CTA alone.
2. Add lead flows on your blog.
A lead flow is another conversion rate optimization element you can include on your site. Lead flows are high-converting pop-ups designed to attract attention and offer value.
You can select from a slide-in box, drop-down banner, or pop-up box, depending on your offer. We experimented with the slide-in box on the HubSpot Blog back in 2016 and it achieved a 192% higher clickthrough rate and 27% more submissions than a regular CTA at the bottom of a blog post.
3. Run tests on your landing pages.
Landing pages are an important part of the modern marketer’s toolkit and, as mentioned earlier, integral to conversion rate optimization.
That’s because a landing page is where a website visitor becomes a lead or an existing lead engages more deeply with your brand. To optimize a landing page, run A/B tests to identify your best design and content features for audience members.
For instance, with A/B testing you can quickly and easily test different versions of your website copy, content offers, images, form questions, and web pages to determine what your target audience and leads respond to best.
Thanks to A/B testing, China Expat Health was able to increase their lead conversion rate by 79%. One of the most impactful changes was swapping out the headline “Health Insurance in China” for “Save Up to 32% on Your Health Insurance in China,” which immediately conveyed a value proposition to visitors. This proposition was then supported by customer testimonials.
Get everything you need to start effectively A/B Testing your website today.
4. Help leads to immediately become a marketing-qualified lead.
Sometimes visitors want to get right down to business, skip parts of the typical buyer’s journey, and immediately speak with a sales rep (rather than be nurtured).
There are specific actions you should encourage these high-intent visitors to complete so they can easily become marketing qualified leads (MQLs) — and they can take action through a combination of thoughtfully designed web pages, compelling and clear copy, and smart CTAs.
For instance, at HubSpot, we discovered that visitors who sign up for product demos convert at higher rates than visitors who sign up for free product trials. So, we optimized our website and conversion paths for people booking demos or meetings with a sales rep.
Admittedly, this depends on your product and sales process, but our best advice is to run a series of tests to find out what generates the most customers. Then, optimize for that process. The key here is to look for ways to remove friction from your sales process.
5. Build workflows to enable your team.
There are a number of automated workflows you can create to enable your team with the help of marketing automation software.
For example, with marketing automation, it’s possible to send automatic emails with workflows. Then, leads can book meetings with reps in one click. Meanwhile, reps receive notifications when leads take high-intent actions such as view the pricing page on your website.
Or, if you work in ecommerce, you can send an email to people who abandon their shopping cart as a reminder. According to research from Moosend, abandoned cart emails can be very effective. They have a high open rate of 45%. Of the emails that are opened, 21% are clicked. Half of the people who clicked make a purchase.
Here’s an example of an abandoned cart email by the Dollar Shave Club.
6. Add messages to high-converting web pages.
Use live chat software to chat with your website visitors in real-time and offer support and guidance as needed. To increase conversions, add these messaging features to your high-performing web pages — such as your pricing and product pages — so leads get the information they want in real-time.
You can also make your messaging and chat bots action-based. For example, if someone has spent more than a minute on the page, you may want to automatically offer to help and answer any questions they may have (again, a live chat tool, like HubSpot, makes this easy).
7. Optimize high-performing blog posts.
Again, publishing blog articles opens the door to a big opportunity for conversions. Even more so if you already have existing blog content on your site — in fact, at HubSpot, the majority of our monthly blog views and leads come from posts published over a month ago.
To get started optimizing your blog content, identify your posts with the highest levels of web traffic but low conversion rates. (Possible causes of this issue may be related to SEO, the content offer you are promoting, or your CTA.)
In one instance, we at HubSpot added an inbound press release template offer to a blog post about press releases — as a result, we saw conversions for that post increase by 240%.
Additionally, look at your blog posts with high conversion rates. You want to drive more qualified website traffic to those posts and you can do so by optimizing the content for the search engine results page (SERP) or updating it as needed to ensure it’s fresh and relevant.
8. Leverage retargeting to re-engage website visitors.
It doesn’t matter what your key conversion metric is: The cold, hard truth is that most people on your website don’t take the action you want them to. By leveraging retargeting on Facebook and other platforms, you can re-engage people who left your website.
Retargeting works by tracking visitors to your website and serving them online ads as they visit other sites around the web. This is particularly impactful when you retarget people who visited your highest-converting web pages.
The normal inbound rules still apply here — you need well-crafted copy, engaging visuals, and a compelling offer for retargeting to work.
Take United’s retargeting campaign for example. Using insights from previous ad campaigns, United focused on reaching people who had viewed their ads and were already considering booking a vacation. To this select audience, they promoted a 15-second video ending in a call-to-action.
If viewers felt inspired enough to book their vacation, all they had to do was click on the CTA to be taken straight to the United website. This proved to be a huge success. In just one month, 52% of conversions attributed to YouTube were click-through conversions directly from the ad.
(If you’re a HubSpot customer, take a look at how the AdRoll integration can improve your conversion efforts.)
Now, let’s talk about how you can get started with CRO at your company.
How to Get Started with Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)
Maybe you’re wondering, “Where do I start with CRO?”
Enter: PIE framework. Before starting a CRO project, prioritize your efforts by ranking each element on Potential, Importance, and Ease.
Use the PIE framework to answer the following questions for every strategy outlined in the previous section. Then, assign a score between one and 10 (one being the lowest and 10 being the highest) to each strategy.
- How much total improvement can this project offer?
- How valuable will this improvement be?
- How complicated or difficult will it be to implement this improvement?
Once you’ve assigned a score for each strategy, add up the numbers and divide the total by three — this gives a score that shows what project will have the greatest impact. Then, work on the projects with the highest scores first.
The PIE framework isn’t perfect, but it’s easy to understand, systematic, and offers a starting point for CRO collaboration and communication among colleagues.
We’ve covered a lot about conversion rate optimization, but not everything. If you still have questions, then check out the answers to some of the most frequently asked questions below.
What is the purpose of a conversion rate optimization?
The purpose of conversion rate optimization (CRO) is to improve the likelihood of visitors taking a desired action on a webpage.
What is a CRO strategy?
A CRO strategy is designed to convert more of your visitors into paying customers. While each CRO strategy will vary company by company, the general steps will not. You have to identify key metrics and your target audience. Then you have to collect user feedback and other data to decide what you’re going to test. Finally, you’ll run A/B tests to improve different pages and parts of your site for conversion.
What are CRO tools?
CRO tools are designed to simplify or automate the process of optimizing your conversion rate. They might help with lead capture, research, analytics, mouse tracking and heat maps, feedback, or running experiments.
What is a CRO test?
A CRO test involves adding, re-arranging, and redesigning elements on your website in order to maximize your conversions. Different CRO tests might focus on optimizing the copy, design, or placement of your CTAs, or the length of your headlines, among other elements.
Begin Using CRO
There are many best practices out there when it comes to CRO but, ultimately, you need to find out what your customers respond to, and what drives results for your business.
Keep these three follow-up actions in mind when getting started with CRO today:
- Use the three formulas to start the CRO conversation.
- Experiment with CRO strategies to discover what works for your business.
- Leverage the PIE framework to help prioritize your strategy.
Editor’s note: This post was originally published in January 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.
Source link
MARKETING
Ecommerce evolution: Blurring the lines between B2B and B2C
Understanding convergence
B2B and B2C ecommerce are two distinct models of online selling. B2B ecommerce is between businesses, such as wholesalers, distributors, and manufacturers. B2C ecommerce refers to transactions between businesses like retailers and consumer brands, directly to individual shoppers.
However, in recent years, the boundaries between these two models have started to fade. This is known as the convergence between B2B and B2C ecommerce and how they are becoming more similar and integrated.
Source: White Paper: The evolution of the B2B Consumer Buyer (ClientPoint, Jan 2024)
What’s driving this change?
Ever increasing customer expectations
Customers today expect the same level of convenience, speed, and personalization in their B2B transactions as they do in their B2C interactions. B2B buyers are increasingly influenced by their B2C experiences. They want research, compare, and purchase products online, seamlessly transitioning between devices and channels. They also prefer to research and purchase online, using multiple devices and channels.
Forrester, 68% of buyers prefer to research on their own, online . Customers today expect the same level of convenience, speed, and personalization in their B2B transactions as they do in their B2C interactions. B2B buyers are increasingly influenced by their B2C experiences. They want research, compare, and purchase products online, seamlessly transitioning between devices and channels. They also prefer to research and purchase online, using multiple devices and channels
Technology and omnichannel strategies
Technology enables B2B and B2C ecommerce platforms to offer more features and functionalities, such as mobile optimization, chatbots, AI, and augmented reality. Omnichannel strategies allow B2B and B2C ecommerce businesses to provide a seamless and consistent customer experience across different touchpoints, such as websites, social media, email, and physical stores.
However, with every great leap forward comes its own set of challenges. The convergence of B2B and B2C markets means increased competition. Businesses now not only have to compete with their traditional rivals, but also with new entrants and disruptors from different sectors. For example, Amazon Business, a B2B ecommerce platform, has become a major threat to many B2B ecommerce businesses, as it offers a wide range of products, low prices, and fast delivery
“Amazon Business has proven that B2B ecommerce can leverage popular B2C-like functionality” argues Joe Albrecht, CEO / Managing Partner, Xngage. . With features like Subscribe-and-Save (auto-replenishment), one-click buying, and curated assortments by job role or work location, they make it easy for B2B buyers to go to their website and never leave. Plus, with exceptional customer service and promotional incentives like Amazon Business Prime Days, they have created a reinforcing loyalty loop.
And yet, according to Barron’s, Amazon Business is only expected to capture 1.5% of the $5.7 Trillion addressable business market by 2025. If other B2B companies can truly become digital-first organizations, they can compete and win in this fragmented space, too.”
If other B2B companies can truly become digital-first organizations, they can also compete and win in this fragmented space
Joe AlbrechtCEO/Managing Partner, XNGAGE
Increasing complexity
Another challenge is the increased complexity and cost of managing a converging ecommerce business. Businesses have to deal with different customer segments, requirements, and expectations, which may require different strategies, processes, and systems. For instance, B2B ecommerce businesses may have to handle more complex transactions, such as bulk orders, contract negotiations, and invoicing, while B2C ecommerce businesses may have to handle more customer service, returns, and loyalty programs. Moreover, B2B and B2C ecommerce businesses must invest in technology and infrastructure to support their convergence efforts, which may increase their operational and maintenance costs.
How to win
Here are a few ways companies can get ahead of the game:
Adopt B2C-like features in B2B platforms
User-friendly design, easy navigation, product reviews, personalization, recommendations, and ratings can help B2B ecommerce businesses to attract and retain more customers, as well as to increase their conversion and retention rates.
According to McKinsey, ecommerce businesses that offer B2C-like features like personalization can increase their revenues by 15% and reduce their costs by 20%. You can do this through personalization of your website with tools like Product Recommendations that help suggest related products to increase sales.
Focus on personalization and customer experience
B2B and B2C ecommerce businesses need to understand their customers’ needs, preferences, and behaviors, and tailor their offerings and interactions accordingly. Personalization and customer experience can help B2B and B2C ecommerce businesses to increase customer satisfaction, loyalty, and advocacy, as well as to improve their brand reputation and competitive advantage. According to a Salesforce report, 88% of customers say that the experience a company provides is as important as its products or services.
Market based on customer insights
Data and analytics can help B2B and B2C ecommerce businesses to gain insights into their customers, markets, competitors, and performance, and to optimize their strategies and operations accordingly. Data and analytics can also help B2B and B2C ecommerce businesses to identify new opportunities, trends, and innovations, and to anticipate and respond to customer needs and expectations. According to McKinsey, data-driven organizations are 23 times more likely to acquire customers, six times more likely to retain customers, and 19 times more likely to be profitable.
What’s next?
The convergence of B2B and B2C ecommerce is not a temporary phenomenon, but a long-term trend that will continue to shape the future of ecommerce. According to Statista, the global B2B ecommerce market is expected to reach $20.9 trillion by 2027, surpassing the B2C ecommerce market, which is expected to reach $10.5 trillion by 2027. Moreover, the report predicts that the convergence of B2B and B2C ecommerce will create new business models, such as B2B2C, B2A (business to anyone), and C2B (consumer to business).
Therefore, B2B and B2C ecommerce businesses need to prepare for the converging ecommerce landscape and take advantage of the opportunities and challenges it presents. Here are some recommendations for B2B and B2C ecommerce businesses to navigate the converging landscape:
- Conduct a thorough analysis of your customers, competitors, and market, and identify the gaps and opportunities for convergence.
- Develop a clear vision and strategy for convergence, and align your goals, objectives, and metrics with it.
- Invest in technology and infrastructure that can support your convergence efforts, such as cloud, mobile, AI, and omnichannel platforms.
- Implement B2C-like features in your B2B platforms, and vice versa, to enhance your customer experience and satisfaction.
- Personalize your offerings and interactions with your customers, and provide them with relevant and valuable content and solutions.
- Leverage data and analytics to optimize your performance and decision making, and to innovate and differentiate your business.
- Collaborate and partner with other B2B and B2C ecommerce businesses, as well as with other stakeholders, such as suppliers, distributors, and customers, to create value and synergy.
- Monitor and evaluate your convergence efforts, and adapt and improve them as needed.
By following these recommendations, B2B and B2C ecommerce businesses can bridge the gap between their models and create a more integrated and seamless ecommerce experience for their customers and themselves.
MARKETING
Streamlining Processes for Increased Efficiency and Results
How can businesses succeed nowadays when technology rules? With competition getting tougher and customers changing their preferences often, it’s a challenge. But using marketing automation can help make things easier and get better results. And in the future, it’s going to be even more important for all kinds of businesses.
So, let’s discuss how businesses can leverage marketing automation to stay ahead and thrive.
Benefits of automation marketing automation to boost your efforts
First, let’s explore the benefits of marketing automation to supercharge your efforts:
Marketing automation simplifies repetitive tasks, saving time and effort.
With automated workflows, processes become more efficient, leading to better productivity. For instance, automation not only streamlines tasks like email campaigns but also optimizes website speed, ensuring a seamless user experience. A faster website not only enhances customer satisfaction but also positively impacts search engine rankings, driving more organic traffic and ultimately boosting conversions.
Automation allows for precise targeting, reaching the right audience with personalized messages.
With automated workflows, processes become more efficient, leading to better productivity. A great example of automated workflow is Pipedrive & WhatsApp Integration in which an automated welcome message pops up on their WhatsApp
within seconds once a potential customer expresses interest in your business.
Increases ROI
By optimizing campaigns and reducing manual labor, automation can significantly improve return on investment.
Leveraging automation enables businesses to scale their marketing efforts effectively, driving growth and success. Additionally, incorporating lead scoring into automated marketing processes can streamline the identification of high-potential prospects, further optimizing resource allocation and maximizing conversion rates.
Harnessing the power of marketing automation can revolutionize your marketing strategy, leading to increased efficiency, higher returns, and sustainable growth in today’s competitive market. So, why wait? Start automating your marketing efforts today and propel your business to new heights, moreover if you have just learned ways on how to create an online business
How marketing automation can simplify operations and increase efficiency
Understanding the Change
Marketing automation has evolved significantly over time, from basic email marketing campaigns to sophisticated platforms that can manage entire marketing strategies. This progress has been fueled by advances in technology, particularly artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, making automation smarter and more adaptable.
One of the main reasons for this shift is the vast amount of data available to marketers today. From understanding customer demographics to analyzing behavior, the sheer volume of data is staggering. Marketing automation platforms use this data to create highly personalized and targeted campaigns, allowing businesses to connect with their audience on a deeper level.
The Emergence of AI-Powered Automation
In the future, AI-powered automation will play an even bigger role in marketing strategies. AI algorithms can analyze huge amounts of data in real-time, helping marketers identify trends, predict consumer behavior, and optimize campaigns as they go. This agility and responsiveness are crucial in today’s fast-moving digital world, where opportunities come and go in the blink of an eye. For example, we’re witnessing the rise of AI-based tools from AI website builders, to AI logo generators and even more, showing that we’re competing with time and efficiency.
Combining AI-powered automation with WordPress management services streamlines marketing efforts, enabling quick adaptation to changing trends and efficient management of online presence.
Moreover, AI can take care of routine tasks like content creation, scheduling, and testing, giving marketers more time to focus on strategic activities. By automating these repetitive tasks, businesses can work more efficiently, leading to better outcomes. AI can create social media ads tailored to specific demographics and preferences, ensuring that the content resonates with the target audience. With the help of an AI ad maker tool, businesses can efficiently produce high-quality advertisements that drive engagement and conversions across various social media platforms.
Personalization on a Large Scale
Personalization has always been important in marketing, and automation is making it possible on a larger scale. By using AI and machine learning, marketers can create tailored experiences for each customer based on their preferences, behaviors, and past interactions with the brand.
This level of personalization not only boosts customer satisfaction but also increases engagement and loyalty. When consumers feel understood and valued, they are more likely to become loyal customers and brand advocates. As automation technology continues to evolve, we can expect personalization to become even more advanced, enabling businesses to forge deeper connections with their audience. As your company has tiny homes for sale California, personalized experiences will ensure each customer finds their perfect fit, fostering lasting connections.
Integration Across Channels
Another trend shaping the future of marketing automation is the integration of multiple channels into a cohesive strategy. Today’s consumers interact with brands across various touchpoints, from social media and email to websites and mobile apps. Marketing automation platforms that can seamlessly integrate these channels and deliver consistent messaging will have a competitive edge. When creating a comparison website it’s important to ensure that the platform effectively aggregates data from diverse sources and presents it in a user-friendly manner, empowering consumers to make informed decisions.
Omni-channel integration not only betters the customer experience but also provides marketers with a comprehensive view of the customer journey. By tracking interactions across channels, businesses can gain valuable insights into how consumers engage with their brand, allowing them to refine their marketing strategies for maximum impact. Lastly, integrating SEO services into omni-channel strategies boosts visibility and helps businesses better understand and engage with their customers across different platforms.
The Human Element
While automation offers many benefits, it’s crucial not to overlook the human aspect of marketing. Despite advances in AI and machine learning, there are still elements of marketing that require human creativity, empathy, and strategic thinking.
Successful marketing automation strikes a balance between technology and human expertise. By using automation to handle routine tasks and data analysis, marketers can focus on what they do best – storytelling, building relationships, and driving innovation.
Conclusion
The future of marketing automation looks promising, offering improved efficiency and results for businesses of all sizes.
As AI continues to advance and consumer expectations change, automation will play an increasingly vital role in keeping businesses competitive.
By embracing automation technologies, marketers can simplify processes, deliver more personalized experiences, and ultimately, achieve their business goals more effectively than ever before.
MARKETING
Will Google Buy HubSpot? | Content Marketing Institute
Google + HubSpot. Is it a thing?
This week, a flurry of news came down about Google’s consideration of purchasing HubSpot.
The prospect dismayed some. It delighted others.
But is it likely? Is it even possible? What would it mean for marketers? What does the consideration even mean for marketers?
Well, we asked CMI’s chief strategy advisor, Robert Rose, for his take. Watch this video or read on:
Why Alphabet may want HubSpot
Alphabet, the parent company of Google, apparently is contemplating the acquisition of inbound marketing giant HubSpot.
The potential price could be in the range of $30 billion to $40 billion. That would make Alphabet’s largest acquisition by far. The current deal holding that title happened in 2011 when it acquired Motorola Mobility for more than $12 billion. It later sold it to Lenovo for less than $3 billion.
If the HubSpot deal happens, it would not be in character with what the classic evil villain has been doing for the past 20 years.
At first glance, you might think the deal would make no sense. Why would Google want to spend three times as much as it’s ever spent to get into the inbound marketing — the CRM and marketing automation business?
At a second glance, it makes a ton of sense.
I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I and others at CMI spend a lot of time discussing privacy, owned media, and the deprecation of the third-party cookie. I just talked about it two weeks ago. It’s really happening.
All that oxygen being sucked out of the ad tech space presents a compelling case that Alphabet should diversify from third-party data and classic surveillance-based marketing.
Yes, this potential acquisition is about data. HubSpot would give Alphabet the keys to the kingdom of 205,000 business customers — and their customers’ data that almost certainly numbers in the tens of millions. Alphabet would also gain access to the content, marketing, and sales information those customers consumed.
Conversely, the deal would provide an immediate tip of the spear for HubSpot clients to create more targeted programs in the Alphabet ecosystem and upload their data to drive even more personalized experiences on their own properties and connect them to the Google Workspace infrastructure.
When you add in the idea of Gemini, you can start to see how Google might monetize its generative AI tool beyond figuring out how to use it on ads on search results pages.
What acquisition could mean for HubSpot customers
I may be stretching here but imagine this world. As a Hubspoogle customer, you can access an interface that prioritizes your owned media data (e.g., your website, your e-commerce catalog, blog) when Google’s Gemini answers a question).
Recent reports also say Google may put up a paywall around the new premium features of its artificial intelligence-powered Search Generative Experience. Imagine this as the new gating for marketing. In other words, users can subscribe to Google’s AI for free, but Hubspoogle customers can access that data and use it to create targeted offers.
The acquisition of HubSpot would immediately make Google Workspace a more robust competitor to Microsoft 365 Office for small- and medium-sized businesses as they would receive the ADDED capability of inbound marketing.
But in the world of rented land where Google is the landlord, the government will take notice of the acquisition. But — and it’s a big but, I cannot lie (yes, I just did that). The big but is whether this acquisition dance can happen without going afoul of regulatory issues.
Some analysts say it should be no problem. Others say, “Yeah, it wouldn’t go.” Either way, would anybody touch it in an election year? That’s a whole other story.
What marketers should realize
So, what’s my takeaway?
It’s a remote chance that Google will jump on this hard, but stranger things have happened. It would be an exciting disruption in the market.
The sure bet is this. The acquisition conversation — as if you needed more data points — says getting good at owned media to attract and build audiences and using that first-party data to provide better communication and collaboration with your customers are a must.
It’s just a matter of time until Google makes a move. They might just be testing the waters now, but they will move here. But no matter what they do, if you have your customer data house in order, you’ll be primed for success.
HANDPICKED RELATED CONTENT:
Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute
Roundel Media Studio: What to Expect From Target’s New Self-Service Platform
Google Limits News Links In California Over Proposed ‘Link Tax’ Law
Daily Search Forum Recap: April 12, 2024
Google Core Update Volatility, Helpful Content Update Gone, Dangerous Google Search Results & Google Ads Confusion
10 Paid Search & PPC Planning Best Practices
Google Unplugs “Notes on Search” Experiment
2 Ways to Take Back the Power in Your Business: Part 2
5 Psychological Tactics to Write Better Emails
Weekend Google Core Ranking Volatility
Critical Display Error in Brand Safety Metrics On Twitter/X Corrected
-
MARKETING7 days agoRoundel Media Studio: What to Expect From Target’s New Self-Service Platform
-
SEO6 days agoGoogle Limits News Links In California Over Proposed ‘Link Tax’ Law
-
SEARCHENGINES6 days ago
Daily Search Forum Recap: April 12, 2024
-
SEARCHENGINES5 days agoGoogle Core Update Volatility, Helpful Content Update Gone, Dangerous Google Search Results & Google Ads Confusion
-
SEO5 days ago10 Paid Search & PPC Planning Best Practices
-
SEO7 days agoGoogle Unplugs “Notes on Search” Experiment
-
MARKETING6 days ago2 Ways to Take Back the Power in Your Business: Part 2
-
MARKETING4 days ago5 Psychological Tactics to Write Better Emails
You must be logged in to post a comment Login