Key Components for Your Marketing Stack

Published on: 19 March 2021 Last Updated on: 27 December 2024

It’s clear to see that marketing is one of the most important aspects of any business. You can have the best products and services on the planet, but if you don’t market them effectively and get people interested and aware of what you have to offer, your business won’t be able to grow, develop, and fulfill its true potential.

This is where marketing comes in, and in today’s technological world, marketing is more evolved and in-depth than ever before. The average company has many components making up its ‘marketing stack‘ – a term used to refer to the group of technological tools and innovations used by companies in their marketing campaigns and activities.

Stacks can vary from one business to the next, and the exact tools you use will depend on your company’s own needs and aims, but, in general, there are certain components that are absolutely key in order to create, distribute, and evaluate your marketing strategies. This guide will look at some of those essential items.

Email Marketing:

In the past, marketing efforts were mostly conducted via print ads or on TV for the bigger brands, but in today’s world, the digital space is where you’ll bring in a lot of your leads and customers, with email marketing being one of the most effective forms of them all. They’re affordable, accessible, and highly effective for boosting sales and building brand awareness, and there are various email marketing tools you can choose to strengthen this aspect of your stack.

Many email marketing tools are focused on automation and integration. They’re able to automatically send out personal, timely messages to your customers and potential leads, saving you a lot of time in the process, as well as integrating with other leading apps and services, allowing you to sync data seamlessly across platforms and track the effectiveness of your campaigns. In short, they can help you build, send, and monitor your email marketing efforts much more easily.

Along with email marketing, social media marketing is one of the most effective and efficient methods available to modern-day brands. There are countless users on platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, and you can grow your brand on a global scale by conducting the very best social media marketing campaigns. Again, various tools can assist with this, designed to save you time and make your campaigns stronger.

There are certain tools that can help you distribute marketing content easily across social media platforms, for example, as well as other services that can assist you with managing and launching campaigns in the first place. Some platforms offer seamless integration with the major platforms like Twitter and Facebook, letting you create and manage content and then track how well your posts and pages perform.

Customer Relationship Management:

Customer relationship management, often shortened to CRM, is another major aspect of marketing in today’s world. It’s all about controlling and managing the way you interact with customers throughout their journey, and CRM software is able to handle most of this management behind the scenes, reducing the risks of human error or bias and giving you the information and tools you need to engage with customers in the most efficient ways.

CRM tools for marketing can help with everything from lead generation and management to marketing automation, analysis of sales data, keeping track of contact and company profiles, email tracking, event tracking, sales management, and so much more. This kind of software can seem a little complex at first, but once you get to grips with it, the advantages are almost limitless.

Analytics and Evaluation:

A big part of marketing that can sometimes be overlooked is the process of analyzing and evaluating the success, or lack thereof, of your campaigns and looking for ways to make improvements. Businesses that want to grow and evolve should never simply settle with the status quo; you always need to be looking for ways to take your marketing game further, and analytics tools can help with this.

Analytics tools often appear as features of some of the other tools mentioned above on the list; for example, an email marketing platform might come with an analytics section to show you the engagement levels of your campaigns. However, dedicated analytics tools go a lot further than this and offer much more widespread application, letting you track conversions, leads, customer experiences, and more across your site, social media accounts, and other campaigns.

Are We Forgetting Something?

While this article covers some essential tools for a marketing stack—email, social media, CRM, and analytics—there is one crucial area that we of often overlook –

Personalization!

As more consumers are craving a tailored experience, businesses that fail to integrate personalized marketing into their strategy are risking a failure to launch.

Why Personalization Matters

Customers today expect brands to speak directly to them. Gone are the days of blanket emails and generic social media posts. Personalized marketing allows you to target individual customer preferences, making your campaigns more impactful and driving higher engagement rates.

But here’s the catch!

Not many businesses have mastered this yet. They often focus on the tools themselves but fail to fully leverage the data these tools provide for creating personalized experiences.

How to Implement Personalization

Start small by segmenting your audience in your email marketing tools, then create content that resonates with their specific needs. This is an attempt to make your audience feel special upon choosing your brand!

You can also use CRM to track customer behaviors and personalize touchpoints at various stages of their journey. Add personalization to your social media efforts by customizing ads based on user preferences and past interactions.

Lastly, analytics tools can give you the data needed to tweak your personalized marketing efforts further.

These are just some of the major components that should be included in your marketing stack to improve the effectiveness and potential of your campaigns. Explore your options today and build a stack you can rely on.

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Content Rally wrapped around an online publication where you can publish your own intellectuals. It is a publishing platform designed to make great stories by content creators. This is your era, your place to be online. So come forward share your views, thoughts and ideas via Content Rally.

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4 points to consider when creating a Great Content Marketing Strategy

The proverbial ‘holy grail’ of digital marketing is a slow but steady increase in your organic traffic, on a day-to-day basis. The key issue is not the fact that one is able to generate numerous hits on the website itself (important though they may be) but the fact that these hits will eventually be converted into actual sales. In this case, a suitably high conversion rate (resulting in actual earning of revenue) is of near-absolute and paramount importance, especially when it comes to the creation of an entirely self-sustaining and viable online business entity. Yes, the seminal importance of generating leads can never really be overlooked, but the far more critical objective of eventually making these sales remains crucial to the success of just about any business at hand. 4 Keypoints To Remember While Creating A Great Content Marketing Strategy For successfully doing content marketing you will go to need to follow some basic strategy. Your goal is to attract as many as possible audiences to your website. More audiences mean more potential customers. If your content is not going to attract audiences to your website. Your content marketing is not going to be successful. For doing this Here are the four key tips for you and along with this enhance your content marketing strategy. 1. Attracting The Relevant Traffic : It is pertinent to note that most such successes are only possible if the website in question is also able to attract the relevant traffic, in the very first place. This is precisely why many hits right at the initial stage, is of such supreme importance. As a matter of fact, the more such hits, the more the potential for the actual kind of leads that will almost inevitably lead to outright sales, either online or even offline (as the case may be). This can of course, only happen with the website itself is also able to ensure that the ‘just right’ traffic not only comes to the site but also stays there for a long enough period of time to enter the ‘web marketing funnel’ (that is, the process that leads an individual to not just the site itself, but also converts him or her into becoming a long-term customer. This entire process is colloquially known as a ‘marketing funnel’). This is the part where a highly effective content marketing strategy can easily come into the picture. That is, the kind of strategy which will be able to deliver both a sustained and an impactful message to the overall target audience. But in such a manner that it will also help them come to a suitably favorable purchase decision. Let us see just what such a strategy actually entails: 2. Understanding the target market : Here, it is very important, to understand that just about any content generation strategy has to come from the point of view of the target audience itself. The more important points and salient features of this aspect include the psychographics as well as the demographics of the audience that the enterprising content marketer is targeting. For example, if a website retails sports-shoes in the city of London, it would hardly make sense to pepper the website with articles on the Vietnam War (for instance). Here the key point to understand and learn is that one has to ‘tailor-make’ the content to fit in with the audience’s very own likes and dislikes, per se. (An interview with an Olympic hockey, for example, will be able to generate a lot more interest in the products on offer, then if the site owner and marketer were to just simply pick up random news items.) Similarly, if you are a heavy equipment dealer and sell used cab-over trucks and dozers, the content on your website should be relevant to the target market. 3. The seminal importance of creating great headlines : When it comes to understanding the importance of the ‘ubiquitous’ headline, the odds are that many if not most, such ‘digital marketing content specialists’ just simply love to write entire reams and reams of their very favorite articles without ever really understanding the gist of their work. In other words, they just simply fail to realize the fact that it is not the long-winded content that really catches the eye, but rather the headline, itself. If the headline is eye-catching enough, then the odds are that it will also vividly capture the imagination of the reader who will, in turn, be so hooked that he will have no choice but to read the whole thing. And once he does that, it will be easy enough for him to slide into the marketing funnel without even realizing it at all. This is why all content writers should almost always opt to go for a truly eye-catching headline if they possibly can. 4. Express and articulate your ideas very clearly : It is an axiomatic enough of an assumption that any article that converts is a winning article! This is why the web content writer should always avoid writing a lot of complicated stuff as well as long-winded and extended sentences that basically look like absolutely indigestible paragraphs, in their own right. Here, the need of the hour is to keep all such writings, both clear and concise. Albeit, having said that it is important to understand that your writings should be highly effective Here, the best policy and practice is to typically use short, concise and fairly simple words that even a child would be able to understand. In fact, the content writer should try to cut out all unnecessary words, if he possibly can. The point to remember here is that being clear is always much better than merely ‘showing off’ one’s own knowledge. Conclusion : In 2021 Content Marketing is the biggest medium by which you are going to convey your message to your audiences. Ultimately, the quantity and the quality of content on your site will easily go a very long way indeed, in effectively ensuring that you can also retain the core interest of your own target market in a manner that will be calculated to generate not just a single sale, but rather to create repeat customers, again and again. Read Also : How To Monitor The SEO Health Of Your Website Best SEO Tools For Ranking The Website Get A Return On Investment With Your SEO

5 Creative Ways to Improve Lead Quality with Multi-Step forms

A majority of companies who execute lead generation often complain about the quality of leads that they get from lead generation forms. Problems range from not getting enough people to type in the leads to people getting confused about the leads. While Landing Page forms that help in lead generation are still one of the best ways to improve sales and queries, optimization of the same remains a major concern. In this article, we help companies devise the best lead generation form. We also look at why digital marketing experts prefer certain key steps when creating multi-step forms. Therefore, if you are a company, or a digital marketing expert looking to maximize the potential for lead generation, you should pay attention to this article. Lead Generation through Multi-Level Forms: Why is it important? Every digital business has to complete a cycle, which eventually culminates in the last goal- generating sales and revenues. Brands try to use SEO, Social Media Marketing, Google AdWords and other marketing strategies to reach their target audience. A brand wants people to be directed by using the above-mentioned strategies to their website or landing page. The multi-level form is the final step of getting the information and reaching out to the customer to satisfy his query. You can have multi-step forms on social media platforms, but getting the customer to a brand’s website or landing page is still the desired goal. This not only helps in keeping, increasing, and maintaining a database, it also adds to the health of the website. Even though there are many other strategies and ways, which are being tried out by brands, yet the multi-step forms for lead generation continues to be a digital marketing favorite. 5 creative ways to improve lead quality with multi-step forms: The List 1. Always place Multi-Level forms above the Fold- Statistics show that forms or CTAs placed above the fold generate over 200% more results than the ones, which are placed somewhere else on the page. In other words, above the fold section on a page is considered a prime real estate in digital marketing terms. The aim should always be to capture the attention of the viewer or user as soon as possible. 2. The Call-To-Action should always be simple and direct- Brands and agencies tend to cramp too many CTAs in one simple form. The aim is to make it as clear as possible to the target audiences. By leaving, no stone unturned when it comes to removing confusion, brands can encourage more people to sign up for the forms. Have one clear and direct CTA is a landing page best practice. 3. Be honest and disclose the Privacy Concerns- Every user who is visiting a digital platform wants all their privacy concerns should be respected at all times. Nobody wants to be bombarded with promotional material all the time. Your multi-step form should always be honest in disclosing what the user is getting into. Factors like unsubscribe at any time, or a link to how their data is going to be used should have a link. 4. Keep the messaging short and sweet on the multi-level forms- Have you ever come across forms, which have ten tabs and long text boxes? Do you know what their success rate is? The answer is very poor! Do not make your target audience work extra. Give them the offer, and ask them to fill as few tabs and sections as possible. This is just digital behavior. If some information is not required for, do not place it on the form. 5. Focus on the Design, Colours and Image elements- Capturing attention is something, which most landing pages and multi-level aim for. This means that in addition to the messaging, it is important to focus on the design elements of the multi-level form. Colors, images, text box size, and the entire user experience needs to be factored in when creating the form. The better the design, the better will be the lead generation. Conclusion If you are following the five points mentioned above when creating the landing page, you can rest assured that you will improve your digital marketing performance. Can you think of some other ways to help and improve the health of your multi-level form? Let us know your suggestions in the comments section below. Read Also: 5 Types of Digital Marketing 5 Unusual Social Media Tips That No One Will Know About 5 Traditional Marketing Techniques That Still Work

Your Ultimate Guide To Creating SMS Marketing Campaigns

Every marketer would tell you that there are reasons why text marketing continues to become a mainstay in marketing agencies. In fact, both conventional and modern companies highly rely on their efficacy when it comes to reaching out to their target audience. Because when you think about it, every person checks their text message inbox every time they receive a ping. Leveraging communication strategies like an effective SMS marketing campaign allows you to grow your brand more, target more audiences, and even build closer relationships with prospects. There are a lot of things that SMS marketing can help you with in terms of achieving business goals. But before you partake in this marketing tactic, it’s important to understand the concept behind this marketing practice. Use this guide to make successful SMS marketing campaigns. What Is SMS Marketing? It’s crucial to understand first the concept behind this old but gold marketing strategy. SMS marketing refers to a short message service you send to your customers to build relationships with them. It’s important for text marketers to communicate with their target audiences in a respectful and compliant manner. No matter what your business goals are, SMS marketing puts you one step ahead of achieving them. For instance, you can drive more leads, introduce new products, lead them to check your website, and so on. The ideas that you can do with this marketing method are limitless. Compared to email or push notification marketing, SMS marketing has several advantages. For instance, every person who receives an incoming message in their phone inbox will surely take the time to check and read them one by one. While some people might check their emails at least once a day regarding text message inboxes, people often check them as soon as they receive a message. Your message can be concise and clear with SMS marketing. There’s no need for lengthy advertising messages. With brief sentences that can take up less than 160 characters of the SMS limit, you can already deliver what you want to say to your prospects. Choosing The Right SMS Marketing Tool Now, it’s time to understand the tool to use for this marketing strategy. With the advent of technology, there is now text marketing software at your disposal. For one, you can take advantage of Drop Cowboy Ringless Voicemail service and some other brands that offer reliable text messaging as marketing services. Text message delivery depends on the tools and services you choose. Such software comes with pricing plans that fit your marketing budget and goals. Unlike any other conventional marketing promotions like print ads, TV ads, and billboards, this marketing campaign is priced reasonably better. Also, consider partnering with the best SMS marketing service provider to automate your text messages to your target recipients. How To Maximize On SMS Marketing Campaigns As mentioned, a high percentage of people open text messages every time they receive one. By sending promotional messages via SMS, you ensure your customers will read them because they will arrive directly in their inboxes. Check out these ideas in which you can maximize your SMS marketing campaigns. 1. Limited-Time Promotions You can use an SMS marketing strategy to encourage your customers to avail of coupons and discounts or even redeem incentives or gifts. Offering these incentives for a limited time makes them even more effective. Announcing that the campaign only runs on a promo period is an effective call-to-action strategy so your customers won’t miss out on such opportunities. It’s one effective strategy to get your business to high ranks. Considering SMS marketing's high open rate, it’s the most effective way to communicate time-sensitive offers with customers. As a result, you ensure your customers don't pass up a good deal. This yield win-win situations for both the customers and your brand. They get discounted rates, and you could convert your sales funnel more effectively. 2. Reminding Customers One good purpose for SMS marketing is when you could send notifications regarding the recent actions of your customers. For instance, whether they checked your website, changed passwords, or linked different payment modes, an SMS notification will be sent to inform them that the activity is successful. Sending notification messages is essential for many businesses, and they’ve realized how effective it is in retaining customers. By relaying notifications about their recent purchase or online activities, the customers will grow their trust in your brand. It could lead to continuous patronage. Also, they will feel at ease by getting reminders of how your brand is already dealing with their orders or purchases. Receiving reminders is valuable, especially for customers who are always busy with other things and obligations. Make sure your brand is always at the top of your customer's minds. It’s a job that SMS is best suited for. With SMS marketing, you can remind your customers about everything from their most recently liked products to the purchased ones that are going to arrive soon. 3. Order Updates And Confirmation An SMS is also useful for customers to receive updates regarding their orders. Once they make a purchase, a message will be sent regarding the successful transaction. It ensures peace of mind for the customer. Also, the confirmation messages sent via SMS will allow them to use them as proof or evidence regarding their purchase. If products don’t arrive as planned, they can refer to the SMS notification. 4. New Product Release And Launches SMS advertising is also useful for announcing new product releases. It’s the most cost-effective way for marketers to advertise new product launching. Without paying for the expensive talents of celebrities to promote new products, a large number of users will discover your new product offering through the message they can read in their SMS inbox. Using this method will generate buzz and interest, and you could even entice old customers to come back and check out what's new. You can also use SMS campaigns to drive traffic to your website or storefront. Thus, you can simply include a link they can visit to check your new product or any offers. 5. Send Welcome Messages Send your customer a welcome message once they subscribe to your SMS marketing campaign. Companies must start building relationships with their customers. As a result, you will be able to communicate with them right away, as they will know they have been subscribed. It also alerts them to expect a few messages from your end every now and then. There’s no need for lengthy or complex welcome messages. Sometimes short but sweet thank you message about their subscription are already enough for your customers to remember your business. 6. Customer Service Tool SMS is not limited to being a marketing tool; it’s also a customer support tool. In this era where customer service should be at the forefront of any business, SMS strategy can be used to ensure customer satisfaction. It’s imperative that your work processes are as transparent as possible, and you can achieve this by constantly sending them SMS in case necessary. After all, a text message is the easiest way to communicate with pre-sale customers and post-sale tech support. 7. Collect Customer Feedback It’s essential for businesses to receive customer feedback to determine what they are doing well and what they need to improve. And it’s something that’s being offered with SMS marketing. You can send out surveys through SMS, and customers can answer them timely and convenient. There are many ways to create survey forms for them to easily fill out. The key is to attach the link to your SMS. Another option is to ask customers to rate you using a ranking system that’s easy for them to use. 8. Announce VIP Programs By offering a VIP program, you can encourage loyalty among your subscribers and customers. If you want to make your VIP customers feel special, offer them VIP-only discounts. This sense of exclusivity allows your customers to treat your brand with more respect and value. Also, use this program for customers to gain early access to sales and other promotions. One way for them to qualify for your VIP list is to encourage them to fill out a signup link. However, since it’s VIP, make it seems more challenging for them to enter this list. The harder it feels to qualify, the more special and valued they would feel. Tips To Apply Effective SMS Marketing Strategies Applying SMS marketing strategies require effective implementations. When done right, they can produce the best outcomes for your business. Here are some tips to apply effective SMS marketing strategies for your brand: 1. Ensure That Your Customers Opted In Your customers probably already provide you with their phone numbers. However, one common courtesy is to get their approval to start receiving SMS from your brand. Mass texting them without their consent is ethically wrong and will only lead to adverse effects on the customer. Ensure to get your customer’s clear opt-in before starting to send out text message campaigns. Your website or other online channels can allow customers to opt-in to receive text messages. However, you should get a text confirmation before you send them anything. There are ways to get their opt-in consent. One is to make them reply Yes or No to your single SMS regarding SMS subscription. Another way is through your website. They can press a CTA button regarding their receiving SMS messages from your brand. When the user clicks the link in the offer, they can fill out the subscription form and enter their number so they can start receiving your SMS campaigns. 2. Take Time To Introduce Yourself A good practice is to take the time to introduce your brand in any of your SMS campaigns. Chances are your customers don’t know where the messages are coming from. Failing to include your company name or brand name on the message will only forfeit its purpose. Hence, it’s important to include your company or brand name in that short message that you’re sending. 3. Make Messages Fun And Short It’s common for people to use SMS messages to communicate with friends and family informally. Texting should remain fun in your SMS campaign in the same way as a fun communication tool between people. Be friendly and personal with customers to build trust. Use local trending words that are popular with your target audience for the time being. It ensures to catch their interest and make them read your text message completely. The maximum number of characters in an SMS message is 160. With an opt-out option and the need to identify yourself, that's not much to work with. Don't waste any characters, and go straight to the point of what you want to say. 4. Don’t Forget To Use Target Keywords To encourage users to connect with you, you should select contextually relevant keywords alongside simple messages and shortcodes. Using such keywords will allow them to easily remember anything about your brand or company. If they want to research you online, they can use the same keywords found on your SMS. 5. Give An Option For Customers To Opt Out All marketing communications should follow these standards and rules. Much like getting their buy-in, you should also give them the option to opt out and unsubscribe from your SMS campaigns. You are more likely to lose customers if you constantly text them when they do not want to hear from you. Your messages should come with the unsubscribe option, so your customers can freely opt out anytime they want. There are some viable reasons for them to do this. But it doesn’t entirely mean that they won’t be good prospects for you in the future. It’s just that not everyone prefers to get this kind of information via text. SMS open rates tend to be much higher than those for email, so you should also expect a higher unsubscribe rate. After a message is sent, unsubscribes may spike and treat it as a normal occurrence. 6. Be More Informative Than Promotional You should be extremely considerate of your buyers' inboxes since promotional SMS messages can easily be turned off. Therefore, staying informative and interactive is best, and not focusing too much on sounding sales or promotional. A good rule of thumb is to focus most of your communication on order, whether a status update or a request for feedback. Schedule your promotional messages and send them at least only twice a week at a minimum. No one wants to keep receiving promotional messages that are obvious that they want to make money from you. Conclusion You can increase engagement with your target audience by using SMS marketing. Keeping your customers' attention is easier if you market to them where they are most active. Therefore, if your target audience is always in their phone’s SMS inbox, it’s worth considering SMS marketing as part of your marketing mix. Use this guide and wait for results to reflect your bottom line soon. Read Also: Calling Out – How Telemarketing Allows You to Reach a Wider Audience How To Move Your Career In Social Media Marketing Up A Gear? Best Marketing Strategies For Lawyers In Houston

Key Components for Your Marketing Stack

Email Marketing:

Customer Relationship Management:

Analytics and Evaluation:

Are We Forgetting Something?

Why Personalization Matters

How to Implement Personalization

Crucial Role of Content Marketing in Local Business

Never Launch An E-commerce Platform Without Testing – Here Is Why

Content Rally

Content Rally wrapped around an online publication where you can publish your own intellectuals. It is a publishing platform designed to make great stories by content creators. This is your era, your place to be online. So come forward share your views, thoughts and ideas via Content Rally.

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Key Components for Your Marketing Stack

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Social Media Marketing:

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Why Personalization Matters

How to Implement Personalization

Share this Article

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Content Rally wrapped around an online publication where you can publish your own intellectuals. It is a publishing platform designed to make great stories by content creators. This is your era, your place to be online. So come forward share your views, thoughts and ideas via Content Rally.

Leave a Reply

Popular

Follow Us

Recent

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