Marketing technologies are a necessity for achieving success and growth in the digital age.

However, simply subscribing to a new platform or purchasing new software will not make you an overnight success. Opting into the wrong digital marketing technology can increase costs, hinder productivity, and hurt your bottom line.

B2B marketing technology should primarily aid in making your team more efficient at what they do best. Here are five tips for selecting marketing technology that your brand can use today and for the years to come.

Tip 1 - Choose B2B Marketing Technology That Can Improve Your ROI

First, and perhaps, most importantly, B2B marketers need software that can provide actionable insights.

Brands and marketers alike are well aware of typical strategies for netting new leads.

Design an elegant website.

Run an ad campaign on social media.

Create the perfect landing page.

The problem is that even the best marketing team will face limitations without access to the right metrics. B2B marketers need to know where traffic comes from, who's converting, and what specifically appeals to unique customers.

For that reason, your B2B marketing team requires high-quality, data-driven marketing software for your tech stack above all else. Even if new software comes with a learning curve, any meaningful improvement in your marketing insights is worth considering.

The best B2B marketing technologies should feature built-in analytics tracking for your website, profile, and/or marketing campaigns.

Specifically, sites like LinkedIn allow you to build profiles for free. You can then bridge into creating groups or running targeted ad campaigns that fit accordingly with your budget. You'll have access to a continuous stream of insights around the clock, which ultimately help to improve your bottom line.

Businesses can also find success on other social media platforms, email marketing campaigns, or video marketing. There are numerous affordable options for each that will inform you of daily clicks, traffic sources, engagement, shares, and much more.

Tip 2 - Choose What's Easy and Intuitive to Use

The overall goal when purchasing and using digital marketing technology is to improve efficiency. That hot new tool might work well for some companies, but the benefits are lost if it takes the average team member twice as long to complete a task as it would otherwise.

Ascend2, a research-based marketing company surveyed marketers and found that more than half value ease of use above all other factors. This is unsurprising for several reasons.

First, we want our tools to help us become even more productive than we already are. We're looking to eliminate the tedious aspects of B2B digital marketing so that we can place greater emphasis on those tasks more deserving of our attention.

Second, our team members need to be able to utilize those same tools just as effectively. Ideally, we want to be able to share ideas, creatives, and insights without necessarily possessing the same level of expertise with particular software.

Finally, we want to plan and think about how easy it will be for new team members to adapt to our current marketing technology stack. The more intuitive the toolset is, the less time and resources you need to invest in training, which can impact your bottom line.

Tip 3 - Ease of Integration

This tip effectively goes hand-in-hand with tip 2 but is worth taking note of on its own.

The latest, sexy marketing technologies might boast better ROIs, better insights, and more ease of use, but how does it integrate with your current marketing tech stack?

Any time you look to adopt new technologies, you need to run a cost-benefit analysis of what it will take to integrate your existing data with a new platform.

Does the new software offer open third-party integrations? Is it easy to customize your account and establish those integrations on your own? Will you need to back up data and manually reincorporate it within the new marketing tools?

Some of the newest, most innovative digital marketing solutions are prioritizing ease of integration more than ever. For example, the DashClicks platform offers seamless transitions in the following ways:

• Incorporate all data from any pre-existing CRM
• Incorporate any sales data from any pre-existing sales CRM
• Third-party integrations with popular analytics software
• Third-party integrations with popular campaign software
• Ability to incorporate new apps with an open API call

When choosing new B2B marketing technology, you'll want to look for these types of benefits. This will allow you to take advantage of new apps and features, while still making use of your hard work to date without any additional interruptions to your workflow.

Tip 4 - Invest in Tech That Can Scale

As your B2B marketing company progresses, you'll inevitably look to invest in new marketing technologies.

Because growth is your ultimate goal, you'll want to create a foundation for success by investing in tools that remain relevant as you scale.

This could mean taking advantage of tools and platforms that offer ever-increasing resources and account limits with corresponding price changes. As your team and your customer base grow, you'll be able to make a simple upgrade to your team's account without any interruption to the service.

Continued growth also means experimenting with new marketing channels and resources. You may specialize your efforts in PPC campaigns now but may wish to offer services like web design, report building, or improved CRMs as demands grow.

Platforms like DashClicks, Salesforce, and HubSpot offer these types of expansive platforms so that you can leverage the tools you need when the time comes. Because your company data is already located within that data system, expanding and upgrading becomes simple and intuitive for any user.

Failure to future proof your marketing technology can cause your team to find itself in the same position it's in now. You'll be researching better tech, juggling countless account passwords, and looking for safe ways to transfer existing account data.

Help yourself today by choosing tech that will satisfy your needs both now and in the future. This will keep your team mobile, agile, and allow them to continuously improve their skills within a specific platform over a long period.

Tip 5 - Run a Cost-Benefit Analysis

Finally, choosing the right B2B marketing technology for your team can be as simple as running cost analysis.

There are hundreds of free and paid marketing tools available that can aid your team in every area of digital marketing. While many offer tremendous benefits, that doesn't mean investing in a new tool is the right call at this point.

When looking to cut down on costs and improve profit margins, one of the most commonly recommended suggestions is to eliminate unneeded subscriptions or services. For that reason, you will benefit yourself from closely examining how a particular tool will benefit your team daily before sinking valuable dollars into something unnecessary.

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Even if that new technology would be beneficial, you do not always need to leap today. Make a business goal of incorporating new technology into your marketing strategy by a specific date after you successfully reach certain milestones.

When your business continuously hits its marks and finds itself ready to scale healthily, you can look to invest in new marketing tech provided that it satisfies the other tips mentioned previously in this article.

Implement New B2B Marketing Technology the Right Way

Investing in the right digital marketing technology is simple when you follow these basic guidelines.

Marketing rapidly evolves every day with software creators providing new, specialized solutions to different companies. While those benefits and features may seem appealing, not every piece of new tech or software may be right for your team.

Your priority should always be on that which makes your team more efficient and allows them to attain superior results. If the new tech is not directly aiding with everyday tasks or dilemmas, it's not necessary for your marketing stack.

Follow up by researching the tech to ensure it's user-friendly, allows for simple integration with existing tools, and is capable of scaling with you as you grow. Finally, verify that you can safely enjoy all of these benefits without unnecessarily exhausting your budget.

SME owners require the best digital marketing tools to succeed online.

Whether it be due to a lack of budget or expertise, many SME websites are basic and fail to utilize best practices for digital marketing success.

Websites can be slow to load, are not intuitive to navigate, or lack vital information. Meanwhile, the business listing might feature outdated information, which prompts Google to bury your result where it will never be seen in SERPs.

The fortunate news is that SME owners can remedy all of these issues today with free or low-cost digital marketing tools.

Here’s a quick list of four essential digital marketing apps for small businesses to help you get started.

1. Google Analytics

Analytics drive digital marketing, which is why we listed Google’s free online marketing software first.

Google Analytics allows any user to constantly track data for your website, funnels, or landing pages 24/7. All you have to do is create a free account here and verify ownership of the website you wish to track. After you create your account, you’ll be able to analyze:

• Daily/weekly/monthly website traffic
• Average session duration
• Website traffic sources (how users find you)
• Which pages receive more clicks
• Which pages have high bounce rates
• Common navigation routes users take within the site

In addition to this, you can also utilize this digital marketing tool to set up custom goals for better conversion tracking. You can analyze how often users take specific actions, the success rates for filling out forms, adding items to a cart, making a purchase, etc.

All SME owners require this data if they wish for their websites and campaigns to perform well. Without these essential metrics, you’ll be operating blind and be unable to understand what parts of your marketing efforts are getting results and which require a bit of TLC.

The Google Analytics dashboard is exceptional. It’s intuitive, easy to navigate, and provides everything you need. But, if you want to future proof how your company operates, you may also benefit from additional software such as DashClicks’ Analytics application.

This marketing analytics software is also free for users and allows you to consolidate all of your analytics trackings into one dashboard.

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For example, if you start using GA and expand into Google Ads or Facebook Ads, you can simply log in to one account as opposed to managing three separate accounts for each.

Nevertheless, Google Analytics alone will provide everything an SME owner needs to start entering a competitive space online.

2. A Listings Profile Manager

Online directory listings are essential for SME owners.

These listings allow you to profile your company on countless websites throughout the web. When a user performs a search for businesses within a specific industry, they can identify names, hours, phone numbers, addresses, and more.

Examples of listings websites are Yelp, Yellow Book, and Google My Business. These are some examples of listings we would consider essential, but there are effectively 80+ possible listings sites you can utilize in the USA.

Not only do these sites allow users to discover your SME in new ways, but it’s also an easy way to acquire some high-quality backlinks that point back to your website.

However, if you wanted to leverage all of these listings websites, you would need to actively keep manage those accounts and keep them up to date at all times. This is not a very realistic task, which is why most brands will settle for a handful of essential listings.

DashClicks offers White label business directory software for small businesses that addresses this exact problem. For a small monthly fee, you can syndicate all of your available listings by using one profile.

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Users can complete their business profiles, upload images, and make edits at any time with one account. The software automatically publishes those changes and updates to every available listing in your area. Then, you can easily review the status of each listing at any time within the same dashboard.

Be aware that this digital marketing tool is only available to small businesses in the US, UK, or Australia at this time.

3. A Sales CRM

Once you start increasing your amount of qualified traffic, you need effective tools to aid your sales team in driving conversions.

A sales CRM is not unlike a traditional contact tracking application. However, instead of managing individual user data, a sales CRM focuses on helping sales personnel track all of your deals within your various sales pipelines.

Popular examples of these digital marketing apps for small businesses would be Pipedrive, Salesforce, or DashClicks’ very own Sales CRM System (Deals App). Within your platform of choice, you’ll be able to track:

• Deal status
• Deal values
• Deal stages
• Success/failure rates by sales rep

Certain apps like Deals offer a more seamless experience by connecting your free sales CRM directly with your free Contacts book. Instead of managing leads in one place and your deals in another, you can automatically integrate data from either app at any time. This saves time and offers quick access to any data you need within the same platform.

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Furthermore, Deals allow you to automate every routine task that’s involved in deal management. You won’t need to manually scribe emails, text messages, or generate reports for every prospect that moves on to the next step of the sales journey. You simply drag the deal record to the next stage and the software automatically completes the tasks you have set to automate.

This grants your sales team a better visualization of the entire sales process and affords them more time to focus on strategies that work. You’ll have access to additional sales metrics to analyze each step of the sales journey as well as the performance of each team member.

4. Campaign Management Software

When they graduate beyond your website and listings, SME owners are likely to look toward additional marketing channels that allow them to run customized campaigns.

Here are just a few examples of essential ad campaign platforms SME owners can use depending on their needs:

• Facebook Ads (PPC ads)
• Google Ads (PPC ads)
• CallRail (for phone campaign)
• ClickFunnels (sales funnels & landing pages)

There is no one-size-fits-all solution as each digital marketing platform helps in key areas. Facebook is a low-cost advertising space that allows brands to connect with users on social media. Meanwhile, ClickFunnels will grant you the ability to create elegant landing pages that promote highly-personalized offers to qualified users.

Any of these recommendations are excellent places to begin and will accommodate a large variety of budgets for small business owners. Paid ads are highly common as they allow brands that do not have strong organic results to remain competitive by paying for premium ad space.

These platforms range from being free to sign up (Facebook Ads, Google Ads) to having paid membership plans.

As you begin to leverage these different channels to promote your SME, you’ll further benefit from having an app that can consolidate your campaign tracking into one dashboard. Fortunately, DashClicks provides such a tool with its Lead Management Software or Inbound application.

Inbound is free to use, and SME owners can quickly integrate and track marketing campaigns from:

• Facebook Ads
• ClickFunnels
• CallRail
• Instapage
• Kartra
• PhoneSites
• ManyChat
• Unbounce

After you create your campaigns and integrate them with Inbound, you and your sales team can track all of them simultaneously at once. You’ll also be able to pause or terminate campaigns within the same dashboard.

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The Inbound app is also part of the same free ecosystem as some of the apps described above. This makes it easier for all branches of your team to communicate, leverage vital information, and gain critical insights that make your SME more effective as a whole.

Leverage Free Digital Marketing Apps for Small Businesses Now

Getting your brand started online can prove a challenge, but it’s simultaneously never been easier. There are free, high-quality options of each tool mentioned in this article for SME owners to start using today.

Some of these naturally scale with your unique business budget, while others offer paid subscription plans that grow with your brand as you increase your customer base.

Because all of these digital marketing tools are accessible, there is no excuse to delay any longer. Start exploring some of these key suggestions today, sign up for your free accounts, and find the best way to coordinate them into your existing marketing strategy.

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Welcome to the 6th episode of our Whiteboard Wednesday. Thanks for the overwhelming response. I hope that these sessions will impart immense value and help you increase your income and productivity.

We aim to provide you with deep insights into the processes, strategies, and tips and tricks to succeed as an agency through our Whiteboard Wednesday sessions. Learn how to save time and money, generate more business leads, and keep your customers happy, so they stick with you for a long time.

In this episode of Whiteboard Wednesday, Chad Kodary, the CEO of DashClicks, discusses setting up your sales organization for success.

We will take a deep dive into how to properly structure salaries and bonuses for your sales team to keep them excited and focused.

The Typical Sales Process That Works for the Agencies

Here is the best commission structure for your sales reps and appointment centers. It has worked well in our agency, so we are sharing it here.

“Fronters” and “Closers”

Typically, we refer to sales guys as closers because they are responsible for closing sales deals. The guys who call and approach the prospects are called “fronters.” Fronters are usually appointment setters. They generate interest in your products, devices, or services. So, fronters book calls for the sales reps and fill their calendars.

So, they keep calling people all day long. Besides phone calls, they also send messages and email and receive inbound calls. They handle various streams of leads and filter them so that they may get to the people who are seriously interested and qualified.

They get them on a sales rep calendar, and their job finishes here. Sales reps take it from here as their job is to close the deal. The entire focus of the sales team should be on generating revenue for the organization. They are also concerned about their commission and cash flow, etc.

Source: Ep. 6 ā 05:20

The KPIs of Fronters and Closers

So, the KPI for the sales team is sales, whereas, for the fronters, the KPI is “appointments booked.” However, it isn’t necessary that all appointments booked will convert into sales. All it means is that someone is interested in your offerings and is ready to talk further. Practically, only a fraction of these prospects converts into paying customers.

It also means that you will measure the performance of the fronters on the number of leads generated or appointments booked for the sales reps. While you can evaluate the sales reps’ performance based on closed sales volume.

Here, we would restrict ourselves to discussing how to build commission structures.

The traits required to succeed in these roles are your conversational skills and ability to interact with people.

Planning a Successful Incentive Program

We will try to explain it with a bit of storytelling.

At our agency, DashClicks, we have a designated call center. We use it to prime our sales pump. Once, we were selling our InstaSites tool. With the help of this tool, your agency can build fully functional websites for its clients within a few seconds.

The Sales Script That Works

We use a specific pitch to sell this fantastic tool. It takes weeks of hard work and hassle to render a professional website functional within seconds. So, when we called up prospects, we said that we had gone through their website and found some issues, so we built a free website for them. "We would love to share that with you and send you the link via email or SMS. So, let's know which one would be a better option for you."

We also added, "See the 30-page brand new website that we built for your company (plumbing, locksmith, or real estate company as the case may be)."

It followed a round of some pre-qualifying questions to make sure they were a good fit for our products and services. If the prospect were a good fit, the fronter would book an appointment.

When we started our agency, we used to book five to ten such appointments per day on average.

However, if we hire a person today for this job, they will not be able to replicate that performance and may lose their job. So, you should set your expectations realistically. In my view, a target of two to five booked appointments is logical for someone new to this field. A fronter can easily book 25 appointments a week and around 100 appointments a month at this rate.

Source: Ep. 6 ā 09:42

Generating 100 leads a month is a remarkable achievement. Even the average fronters, who need training, can easily book two appointments a day, making 40 appointments a month.

Such an approach can turn an agency into a successful sales organization. You can make different packages, such as bronze, gold, diamond, etc., for your fronters based on various performance slabs.

Someone who books less than 40 appointments a month is an under-achiever. The figures of 100 and 75 stand for great and medium spots, respectively. Evaluation becomes easy when we have performance slabs. When you pit the fronters against each other based on their performance and commission, the team's overall performance will increase.

Killer Incentive Plans

If you hire VAs (virtual assistants) as the fronters from places like the Philippines, you can also announce bonus packages. For example, if someone hits a package, they get some bonus apart from their payroll that includes salary + commission.

For example, you can promise to pay your fronters one dollar more for each appointment booked above their target slab. In sales, some days are good, but some can be extremely disappointing, so the managers should focus on the averages.

Similarly, if a fronter books 40 leads per month, you can offer them an extra $100 for hitting the bronze package.

So, the commission structure should be exciting enough to prompt the fronters to achieve even more.

How to Encourage Underachievers?

Let's try to understand it with another example. Suppose a fronter hits 75 appointments every month and usually falls in the gold package, but they could book only 74 this month. They can slip into the bronze package by just one number. Don't let them tip over for falling short by just one appointment.

Inform them that they will get $250 as a bonus if they hit the figure of 75. If they hit 100 appointments, they will get $500. You can increase or decrease these numbers according to your product and business, but the best part is that this structure works!

Source: Ep. 6 ā 15:04

Have Realistic Expectations?

Now, let's discuss the commission structure for the sales reps or closers.

If a closer gets 100 leads on their calendar from the fronters at the top of the funnel, we can assume a 30% to 40% no-show rate on an average.

Having realistic expectations will help, and for this, you need to look at historical data. It's important to not set people up for failure based on unrealistic expectations.

A Realistic Commission Structure for the Sales Reps or Closers

For every 100 leads with a 30% no-show rate, you stand a chance to do 70 demos or calls. Now, we can figure out the conversion rate based on historical data, which is 10% in our case. Based on this example, for 70 demos, the conversion rate should be seven.

Source: Ep. 6 ā 16:09

Suppose we are selling InstaSites, our niche website builder tool, for $500. For seven conversions, the revenue we get is $3500 in setup fees. Add the monthly maintenance charges of $50, and it comes to $350 per month for seven conversions. Keep in mind that this is recurring revenue.

In that case, the closer brings you $350 per month from selling those websites. Since this is just an example, you may have products of even higher value.

If your product is valued at $1000, the setup fees it will attract would be $7K for seven conversions. It will be followed by a recurring revenue of $1K per conversion and $7K for seven conversions.

Suppose you sell a package (e.g. SEO package) that costs $399 a month for a six-month contract. You sell this package for a set up fee of $149.75 to local businesses in your area using door-to-door selling. The first month's revenue of this product would be about $400+$150, i.e., $550.

If you sell two such packages in a week, the first month's revenue would be $1100.

Source: Ep. 6 ā 19:08

You should have an exciting salary plus commission structure to encourage and motivate closers.

Pro Tip: Most closers aren't interested in salary. They are more interested in a commission. So, you should plan an exciting commission structure.

So, if you pay $500 a week to a top-level closer, it can be their base salary.

Let's assume that your closer achieves seven deals in a week. It will bring about $3500 in setup fees and $350 in monthly recurring revenue. It means you made almost $4K in sales. You can offer 10% of it for that month as commission to your closer, which would equal $400.

For 20 sales, it would be $800 for that month.

So, the structure goes like this.

$500 a week as base salary + $800 a month in commission

Doesn't it sound enticing?

Source: Ep. 6 ā 20:57

We can combine packages like this and keep our salespeople motivated. You can pay 2% of your Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR) as incentives to these guys.

This incentive payment plan is highly effective, and it keeps both the fronters and the closers engaged and motivated.

You can personalize it according to your revenue streams and profit margin. You can also subscribe to our YouTube channel to be the first to watch these valuable tips every Wednesday.

Please leave your comments below and if you are happy with this session, you can also leave some positive feedback here to encourage us!

See you in the next session of WhiteBoard Wednesday. Have a fantastic day!

Content marketing has become a trend, especially in the highly competitive B2B marketing landscape. More and more companies are now investing in it as it works wonders for all types of businesses and produces better results than most other marketing tactics.

Content marketing is also a proven strategy to grow audience engagement, enhance your brand authority, and drive sales. For many businesses, content marketing works even when other tactics stop working.

Producing consistent & high-quality content can be a game-changer for your business. Here are some of the major benefits of content marketing that you should absolutely consider.

1. It Improves Organic Visibility & Search Traffic

To rank higher on Google, you need to have higher domain authority, and for a higher DA, you need to publish content that can earn quality backlinks. Google also prefers authoritative content and ranks it higher.

To earn Google's love, your content should also meet the E-A-T factor, i.e., Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness.

You can check the overall content quality of the page based on the following factors.

• The Purpose of the Page: Your page should have a beneficial purpose. It should offer value and information that helps users. Let's discuss what it means.

• The Beneficial Purpose: It's a major quality indicator according to Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines (SQEG). According to these guidelines, you should create a page to help users and provide them with the relevant information. In other words, it shouldn't be designed just to make money.

• Expertise, Authoritativeness, and TrustworthinessLet's see how Google determines the E-A-T of a page.

• The E-A-T Factor:
• Ā Expertise: It stands for the expertise of the main content creator. Adding information about the website or the main content creator helps a page rank higher, as Google will consider the creator's credentials while evaluating the content.
• Authoritativeness: It refers to the authoritativeness of the main content creator, the main content itself, and the website.
• Trustworthiness: It refers to the reliability of the main content creator, the main content itself, and the website.
• Quality and Volume of Main ContentBoth the quality and volume of main content are crucial for ranking. You can also create pillar content for this purpose.
• ReputationGoogle also considers the reputation of the website or the author of the main content.

Traffic also increases along with improvement in rankings and search visibility.

To attract tons of traffic, you should do the following:

A. Create quality content

B. Optimize it for the relevant keywords

C. Offer a beneficial purpose to the readers

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The SEO advantage you get through these activities is one of the major benefits of content marketing.

2. It Builds Brand Awareness

Brand awareness defines your customers' level of familiarity with your brand. So, beyond a basic knowledge of your brand and its logo, brand awareness conveys everything that differentiates your brand from others. It also entails why someone should choose your products or services from the different options available on the shelf.

New brands have a long way to go to establish their brand identity. They can start by asserting their presence and getting their "foot in the door."

Pro Tip: Use content to build brand awareness and differentiate your brand from others.

Here are a few steps to build brand awareness.

• Know your audience and analyze their behavior
• Determine your goals and create a content strategy
• Create brand awareness using your blog content
• Create communities and regularly interact with them
• Leverage email marketing to amplify your reach

3. It Increases Brand Affinity

Brand affinity is synonymous with a customer's natural liking for a product or brand. It's the kind of customer relationship every business strives for. It represents the collective feeling that the customer feels while experiencing different brand elements such as content, quality, user experience, website, sales, customer support, etc.

Since it's directly related to the utility, it also conveys that the brand is relevant to the buyers' needs and best suits them.

Forging such affinity adds loyal customers to your brand who are most likely to make a purchase. Content marketing helps you achieve brand affinity if you consistently publish quality content. Remember that your objective shouldn't be limited to assisting the customers. Rather, it should be to delight them.

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4. It Helps You Build Thought-Leadership

Some business leaders go beyond the traditional route and attract the limelight by building thought leadership. Seth Godin, Oprah, Anthony Robbins, Dave Ramsey, and John Assaraf are thought leaders who are highly acclaimed professionals and experts in their respective fields.

As a marketer, people expect you to be an expert in your field so that they can trust your word. Apart from that, thought leadership is not limited to personal branding; it's much more than that. To establish yourself as a thought leader, you must exhibit some social proof. It includes driving traffic to your website, building brand authority, and nurturing and converting leads.

Thought leadership is also used as a strategy by content marketers to build credibility and differentiate themselves from others. When someone is recognized as an expert, people consider them a go-to resource for advice and information in their field. It leads to hundreds of marketing benefits. Therefore, they are expected to create and promote tons of educational content to help others and strengthen their position as a thought leader. They are also supposed to be active in their community and social media.

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Tips to Implement Thought Leadership

• Know your audience well and keep on learning about them
• Be active on various social media platforms
• Publish educational content and distribute it aggressively
• Do thorough and regular competitor analysis
• Create content that adds value and helps people stay on top of trends
• Be original and genuine

5. It Helps You Establish Your Expertise and Brand Authority

You may not be able to achieve brand authority overnight, or even after a lot of time, yet it's essential to succeed as a business. It comes with unmatched benefits. The biggest challenge for a new business is to build trust, which you can easily overcome by building brand authority.

At some point, trust leads to sales. Here are a few tips for building brand authority through content marketing.

• Use your content to answer people's queries in your niche
• Develop case studies and create newsworthy reports and updates
• Collect proof of expertise by promoting reviews and case studies
• Collaborate with other brands with authority
• Leverage the authority of experts, both in-house and freelancers
• Share secrets, strategies, and tips that are not so common

Apart from the above tips, here are other ways to help you build your authority:

• Pick a topic and conduct in-depth research on it
• Increase your knowledge through
• Attending training programs and courses
• Networking
• Attending industry events, seminars, and webinars
• Reading reputed blogs in your niche
• Tracking the latest trends through social media
• Keeping yourself updated through forums and channels like Reddit
• Creating unique content based on the insights gathered

6. It Allows You to Use More Touchpoints to Generate Quality Leads

A viable sales lead requires 6-8 marketing touches, and you need content to create these many touchpoints. Unlike a few decades ago, when a customer had exposure to just the print media or TV, they go through lots of digital content these days before making a decision. So, the path to purchase has become complex. There can be many twists and turns here, and you never know which touchpoint can turn out to be decisive in helping them make the final purchasing decision.

Customers' apathy towards traditional marketing and advertising methods is increasing. Sales methodologies are also changing rapidly. People don't trust advertising completely these days; instead, they prefer to conduct more independent research before getting convinced. Since different people are exposed to different touchpoints, their journey is also not always the same.

Here are some popular brand touchpoints:

• Product reviews
• Videos
• Blog posts
• Ads
• Social media posts
• Business Listings

Content marketing ensures that the prospects pass through the appropriate interactions to determine sales-readiness. At the beginning of the buyer's journey, customers need more informative content to raise their awareness about your products and services. But, this information is often inadequate.

At the next stage, they need detailed information to compare your product with other similar products available in the market.

Pro Tip: Create content according to the different marketing and sales funnel stages.

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7. It Helps You Build and Maintain a Loyal Customer Base

According to MarketingProfs and CMI study, 75% of B2B marketers have successfully used content marketing to build trust and create a loyal customer base.

The ultimate objective is to create a foolproof reputation for your business that makes customers' purchase decisions easier. Content marketing allows you to build a loyal fan base that regularly engages with your content. A powerful content-led brand can achieve its objectives and maintain an existing customer base, all the while adding new customers.

Here are seven steps to building a loyal customer base.

• Define your target audience with vivid detail
• Establish honest dialogue and have an authentic voice
• Maintain high standards of content quality
• Use storytelling wherever possible
• Discover your passion and focus
• Entertain, inform, and engage using your content, don't just sell
• Offer outstanding customer experience and incredible value

8. It Leads to Improved Social Media Engagement & PR

Social media engagement is measured using likes, comments, and shares. The number of followers is always a positive indicator of your success on social media. Ultimately, the engaged audience drives tangible results, sales, mentions, click-throughs, and revenue.

So, what should you do to improve engagement on your website and social media channels? Here are a few tactics to try -

• Use social media analytics and track the sudden ups and downs in engagement
• Define your social media engagement goals such as conversion, changing the customers' perception of your brand, and attracting business leads.
• Know your customer, so you can define the language, tone, and resources that resonate with your audience
• Keep the conversation going
• Show your human side
• Keep your response timeless

Knowing your customer will also help you figure out the right social media channels and brand voice for your campaigns. It also allows you to determine the type and timing of publishing content.

To know more, read the 30 Content Marketing Tactics You Can Try.

9. It Helps You Build a Robust Sales Funnel

Content is not created just for its sake. Every piece of content that we consume is created for a specific purpose. Online content is produced for several objectives such as:

• To achieve a business goal
• To create awareness
• To get sign-ups for a newsletter
• To educate readers about a product
• To help customers make a purchase decision

Even the seemingly funny and silly pieces of content are created to stimulate a specific response. The content we consume online 24x7 is part of a specifically crafted content marketing funnel strategy. The ultimate objective is to attract customers' attention and make them loyal towards a brand.

What is the Content Marketing Funnel?

When a potential customer considers a purchase, he goes through a journey, which we can visualize using the content marketing funnel. It is now an integral part of content marketing strategy formation.

Different content pieces are needed to support the customer journey at different stages. For example, a person who is not yet familiar with your brand will not be interested in a product comparison study.

It can happen at a point when the customer is fully aware of the product and the brand. Good content pushes the customer to the next stage in the sales or marketing funnel.

The four major stages in the content marketing funnel are categorized as follows:

• Awareness
• Evaluation
• Purchase
• Delight

Every customer has a different journey as there can be more touch points involved before someone makes a purchase. This is what creates a diverse customer experience. As each stage has a distinct purpose in this journey, you should present different types of content in those stages.

Here is an overview of how content can be used to match different stages in the overall customer journey ā€” right from discovery to purchase. This customer journey map will help you leverage content marketing to achieve your marketing and sales objectives.

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10. It Helps You Save Money on Your Marketing Strategy

Content doesn't come cheap, so content marketing is considered expensive and beyond the reach of startups and cash-strapped small businesses.

A blog content might cost you around $150 to $3000 a post if you hire freelancers to write it for you. However, hiring a full-time writer will be more cost-effective as you need content regularly.

Content marketing wins the battle over other forms of marketing such as paid ads and traditional marketing in the long term, so investment in high-quality content will always pay you back.

Conclusion

To drive results from content marketing, you should have a well-documented content strategy, and you should audit it periodically. There is no reason for it not to work if you implement it in a wise, timely manner. Regular audits and measurements will ensure that you are working in the right direction. It will also help you discover what works best for your business.

If you are new to content marketing, please go through this Beginner's Guide to Content Marketing.

Further reading:If you want to know how content marketing helps businesses, go through the following articles.

11-Point Content Marketing Checklist Proven to Boost Your Engagement

Ep.3 ā€“ How We Multiply One Piece of Content and Overflow the Web to Get High Valued Incoming Leads

Technology drives business and marketing more than any other time in history.

Brilliant minds develop new software and techniques at a rapid pace. If you hesitate at all as a business owner, you'll find yourself falling behind the competition. Failure to adapt to changing practices can be the difference between forging ahead or watching your brand suffer an untimely failure.

Thankfully, those same technologies are more user-friendly and accessible than ever. Even the average user can leverage powerful marketing automation tools to reliably provide business solutions to clients.

Below, you can learn about 11 new marketing tools that can help in providing business solutions to your clients for little to no cost. And so that there is always room for new tools on your device, read more here about memory cleaners.

Marketing Analytics & Performance Tracking Tools

1. Analytics

Analytics is singlehandedly the most important driver of marketing and business success.

Without a reliable way to track and measure the performance of your advertising and sales efforts, there's simply no way to achieve a desirable ROI.

Many brands are likely already familiar with free online analytics platforms such as Google Analytics. This is in addition to built-in analytics that is featured within popular PPC platforms like Facebook or Google Ads. All of these technologies actively track and measure your website traffic and campaign performance 24/7.

However, not every client has the bandwidth or resources to actively track and manage all of these accounts simultaneously while running a business.

Analytics by DashClicks allows users to seamlessly integrate all of their analytics into one location from the following services:

• Google Analytics
• Google Ads
• Facebook Ads
• CallRail

In addition to these integrations, users can also syndicate all of their online directory listings in one central location. It's as simple as filling out your business profile within the app and instantly submitting your details to every directory available within your geographic location.

Finally, this marketing analytics tool also allows users to add and track a number of keywords for SEO purposes. They'll be able to visualize rankings for these terms over time without any additional input.

The Analytics application is free to all users with full access to all of the aforementioned integrations. The only exclusion is the Listings Manager tool, which requires an additional monthly cost to actively maintain listings with those providers.

Analytics can benefit both marketers and their business clients alike. Learn more about the application by visiting the link here.

2. InstaReports

InstaReports is primarily a client prospecting tool that generates comprehensive marketing reports about a business.

While these reports will help guide your client acquisition, these reports contain valuable, actionable data that can help your clients better understand their digital marketing efforts.

The application utilizes existing contact data you have on file about a specific business. It then locates all information about that business online regarding the following categories:

• Directory listings
• Online reviews
• Social media performance
• Website analytics
• SEO rankings
• Google Ads performance

These are marketing areas in which websites grant readily grant access to the business's online history. We then compare that data to the top-performing businesses within the same industry sector as the business you are targeting.

You can then present this data to a business client to illustrate which areas they are successful in and which require additional attention.

However, instead of leaving your client with a general grade of their activities, the report also contains in-depth suggestions for the following:

• Improving web page loading speeds
• Fixing notable website health errors
• Inaccuracies or errors within listings
• Cost-benefit analysis of targeted keywords
• Suggestions for improvement within social activity
• Suggestions to retrieve more business reviews on popular sites like Google or Yelp

These analytics and error reports give the client actionable data to begin improving their online presence. This will greatly enhance the effectiveness of their marketing and sales efforts over time.

You can learn more about the InstaReports application here.

CRM Marketing Tools

3. Contacts

Contacts is a free CRM software application that allows users to add, track, and communicate with a minimum of 500 unique contacts. That limit can be expanded to a staggering 250,000 contact records with the highest-tier platform plan.

For zero cost, marketers and their clients can leverage these contact records to quickly manage essential notes, reminders, and file attachments about the individual or business. For the starting paid plan, Pro,ā  users can also create segmented lists for private or teamwide use.

Finally, your clients can still take advantage of their existing contact records by importing them into Contacts within seconds. You can utilize the data transfer feature to retrieve data from your current CRM.

Where Contacts truly distinguishes itself from your existing CRM is its ability to seamlessly communicate with an entire ecosystem of sales and marketing applications. Once your contact data is saved, you can automatically call on names, phone numbers, and addresses instantly from any other software within the platform.

You can learn more about your new CRM by visiting the link here.

4. Deals

Deals is a sales CRM and marketing automation tool that allows you to create and manage multiple sales pipelines and deals therein.

With free account signup, your clients will be able to track and manage an unlimited number of deals within a given sales pipeline. Their entire team will maintain a clear visualize of where prospective customers are in a given stage and be able to plan their strategies from there.

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Perhaps the most significant feature of this software is the ability to fully automate several tasks when a customer reaches the next step in the sales process. For example, when a customer moves past the initial point of contact, the system can automatically send out follow-up emails or text messages for nurturing or scheduling appointments.

This alleviates the workload of your sales team, and, instead, allows them to focus on the tasks that will better help them to close deals successfully. Your sales agents can also receive immediate notifications when a customer moves to a certain point in the sales pipeline, ensuring that you're always proactive throughout the sales journey.

The Deals app also monitors your deals in real-time through a dedicated reporting tab that illustrates your deal success rate overall, success rate by stage, and success rate by team member. You can then use this real-time data to guide and refine the entire sales process.

Finally, if you're using existing deal management software like Pipedrive, you can instantly import all of your sales data into the platform without missing a beat.

To learn more about this improved pipeline management app, click here.

Lead Management Marketing Tools

5. Inbound

The Inbound app by DashClicks provides your clients with one convenient place to manage and track all inbound leads from a variety of platforms.

Without much effort, you can quickly log in to the following lead management platforms:

• CallRail
• ClickFunnels
• Facebook Ads
• Instapage
• Kartra
• ManyChat
• PhoneSites
• Unbounce
• Forms by DashClicks

After integrating these third-party accounts, all of your lead data will automatically appear within the Inbound dashboard. Your sales reps will never need to manage login information for those separate accounts and can see everything they need to within the new dashboard.

The software automatically filters all of your leads by integration type and by one of two lead types: form submissions or phone calls. This means you can quickly segment your lead lists with the press of a button.

In addition to this, the Inbound app will automatically filter all of your leads by how freshā  they are. This is vital as studies show your sales reps are 100x more likely to connect with new leads if they contact them within five minutes. Simply filter new leads by freshness and know which leads to contact and which are likely long gone.

Finally, you can set your campaigns to automatically notify the designated sales rep by phone or email of a new lead. This enables your team to be proactive and take advantage of every new lead you obtain. No more missing out on leads because you forgot to check the right platform. Everything is now accessible and manageable with one easy-to-use tool.

If you also would like to track all of your leads in one place, click here to learn more.

Website Management Tools

6. InstaSites

Though your business client will not be the actual user of the InstaSites app, they will receive immediate benefits when you take advantage of it.

The InstaSites software is a website creation tool that allows you to rapidly generate brand-new websites in a few short steps.

Simply select an existing template within the app by sorting through hundreds of unique industries. When you find a website you like, you can select your business client from your list of contacts and automatically inject their unique business data into the relevant web pages. This includes:

• Business name
• Business logo
• Address
• Phone number
• Email
• Google Maps location
• Business hours
• Social links

You can also add custom fields at any time through the drag-and-drop website editor. This feature allows anyone to make professional edits to any website template with zero IT or coding knowledge required. You're free to play with any existing template and create temporary websites for zero cost.

Finally, unlike most templates which contain generic lorem ipsum text, every InstaSite comes preloaded with industry-relevant content, making it easier than ever to present new website solutions to your clients without any additional effort.

When your business client falls in love with their new website, you can purchase it for them at any time. Because the preview build already contains their information, the design and content will be ready to go. After that, simply change the website domain to your liking, and the client will have a beautiful new website moving forward.

Each new website you purchase for a client comes with:

• Monthly web hosting by Amazon Web Services
• SSL Certificate
• 24/7 access to the drag-and-drop website editor

Websites can also support eCommerce for an additional monthly fee. The additional cost is contingent upon the number of product listings you need for the new site.

To start building new websites for free, click here.

7. Sites

The Sites application is a sister app to InstaSites and is where users can manage their brand-new website.

The Sites dashboard contains regularly updated metrics including total visits, click-to-calls, map clicks, and form submissions. It will also display the status of the domain and SSL certificate at all times.

The Sites software contains a full-blown analytics tracking tool. This contains a more detailed breakdown of what you'll find on the dashboard, allowing you to set up custom tracking periods for your website metrics.

You'll also be able to track your website visitors by geolocation, website browser, and operating system, giving you a better examination of where you're obtaining most of your website clicks.

Most importantly, the Sites app grants every website owner full access to the same drag-and-drop editor featured in the InstaSites app mentioned above. That means that your business clients can make any changes necessary to their site without the need for web design knowledge.

The editor is fast, responsive, and will empower your clients to take an active role in their own success. It's easy to upload images, modify the text, add widgets, and store backups of any existing pages. Owning and managing a website has never been easier.

To check out a preview of the Sites app, click here.

Template & Form Builders for Marketing

8. Templates

Successful digital marketing requires teams to frequently complete several easy, yet time-consuming, monotonous tasks. Among these includes the creation of personalized emails and text messages to send to prospects and customers at various stages of the buyer's journey.

The Templates app alleviates this by enabling your team to create hundreds of pre-written templates that you can use for any client. This is made possible by utilizing the Personalize feature. When you utilize this tool to add personalized data, the Templates app will automatically inject the correct data for that contact.

For example, let's say you wish to send out an introductory email to every client that signs up for an offer or promotion. Because the email content will likely be the same for every person, you can write out the subject line and body as necessary.

However, instead of adding details like the person's name, you can utilize Personalize to automatically update the template with the person's name that is receiving the email.

Instead of writing your subject line as:

Thanks for signing up, Bob Smith!

The template on your end would look something like this:

Thanks for signing up, Person Name

Then, whenever you send that email to someone in your contact book, the software pulls the name from the contact book automatically.

In other words, you create one email template that you can suddenly personalize for an unlimited number of recipients. This creates an enormous time-saver and allows your team to focus their energy on more important tasks.

Furthermore, if you have any doubts about the app's ability to correctly inject data, you can utilize the Fallback feature. This essentially allows you to create an additional customized insert that the app will use if there is an error or if you do not have the contact data on file.

To check out more information about the Templates app, click here.

9. Forms

Forms are another invaluable tool that any digital marketer wants on their side. You can utilize a form on your website, on a landing page, in sales funnels, and much more. It's the primary way of obtaining basic lead information online.

However, like website design, the technical knowledge required to create beautiful forms often gates your clients from being able to do this themselves.

The Forms app presents your clients with an intuitive drag-and-drop editor where you can create a full-fledged form in minutes.

For basic forms, all you need to do is grab the information fields and drop them in any order on the main page. You can easily rename any pre-built field at any time for further customization. The app automatically saves your form and provides you with the embed code necessary to add your form to a web page.

The app also presents more in-depth possibilities including timers, date/time selectors, multiple-choice potions, and much more. You can also customize the form style by editing borders, fonts, and colors. The layout menu allows you to alter the page format by creating rows, columns, or wells.

The Forms app automatically stores any form submissions received. Users simply click on the form from the list to review every submission received to date.

Click on over to the Forms page, so that you can see firsthand what's possible.

Project Management Tools

10. Projects

The Projects app is a suggestion that provides an indirect benefit to your client.

Projects allows you, the marketing agency owner, to easily manage a variety of projects for every one of your clients within one application.

Whenever a client signs up for the DashClicks platform, they'll exist as a sub-account beneath your main account. When the client utilizes apps like Analytics or Sites, you'll automatically see that data reflected in your Projects application.

With this, your agency can stay readily informed regarding any activity about your client's activities. You'll have access to the same campaign or website analytics that they do at all times.

In addition to this, you can use Projects to store and share files, create customized notebooks, and make edits to your client's website on their behalf. In short, this allows your client to retain full control over their account, while still granting you immediate access to the knowledge you need to help guide their success.

You manage an unlimited number of projects within the app, making it your go-to solution for client project management. This is significantly easier than managing credentials and logging into accounts for every single client every time a change needs to be made.

Get an idea of what the Projects app is all about by clicking here.

Marketing Dashboard Tools

11. Dashboard

The final marketing tool suggestion on this list is the Dashboard application.

This app, in many ways, is the summation of all other applications discussed in this article. Within Dashboard, you can automatically gather critical insights from every other marketing tool you happen to be using on the platform.

Every user can fully customize their dashboard to their liking with several widgets. There is at least one widget for every other app and you may place these anywhere you like. Each widget contains a degree of customization, which allows you to determine what type of data you want to highlight as well as the period you wish to track.

The Dashboard can serve as a meaningful time save by providing a quick snapshot of the metrics you care about most. You won't need to navigate to other apps and dig through reporting tabs to find out what's going on with your latest marketing campaigns.

Every user can customize Dashboard to their liking. This also means that alternate users logging in to the same account can customize their dashboard without affecting their teammates.

Check out your new dashboard by visiting the link here.

Provide Business Solutions to Clients with These New Marketing Tools

All of these recommended marketing tools provide your client with a host of benefits at zero monthly cost. Compared to most other digital marketing websites, no platform allows businesses to accomplish so much with so little investment.

More importantly, because all of these tools exist on the same platform, they're designed to work together for the greatest impact. Any time spent in one application generally equates to time saved within another. Data in Contacts can be instantly utilized in Deals, InstaSites, Sites, Projects, and Analytics, for example.

Your client needs solutions that allow them to focus on doing what they do best - running their business. By taking advantage of any one of these tools, they'll be able to save money on monthly subscriptions and direct their entire team to one unified system.

To try it out for yourself, be sure to sign up today. Take a look and see if these marketing tools are reliable enough to provide the business solutions your client needs.

The only constant in B2B digital marketing is changing.

As technology improves and customers become more internet savvy, so too must your B2B online marketing strategies. However, change should not occur without purpose, which is why we brought five findings from different sources to influence your next steps.

Check out these five continuing and developing trends that you should consider when developing your new digital marketing plan.

1. B2B Marketers Must Continue to Prioritize LinkedIn

Though it’s not a new trend, LinkedIn continues to be the most important social media platform for B2B marketers.

LinkedIn may not even crack the top 15 of the most-used social platforms, but the website purports that adverts can reach nearly 800 million users. This was at the end of 2021, whereas the site projects to move from 64.7 million users to nearly 67 million in the USA in 2022.

However, what makes LinkedIn so mandatory for B2B marketers is not the audience size, but more so how it naturally connects your content with the right type of audience.

Because of this, LinkedIn postures itself as the most sensible platform for B2B marketers to connect with the right leads. While it is possible to create a successful B2B digital marketing plan for sites like Facebook or YouTube, those sites cater to everyone including your everyday users.

Meanwhile, LinkedIn is a social media platform for professionals. Simply by creating a profile, users give marketers important data such as job titles, employers, coworkers, and the relationships between those users. You can and should leverage this knowledge to target the individuals within those companies that have the power to make or influence decisions.

As a B2B marketer, you’re selling products or services that benefit these specific types of users. Continue to prioritize LinkedIn within your digital marketing strategy and make sure that your ads correctly address a different type of buyer intent.

2. Buyers Want More Digital Interaction

It’s no longer enough to make the initial connection with your prospects online.

Largely thanks to the COVID crisis, many companies are making massive shifts in their day-to-day work culture. More employees than ever now work from home, and more companies are recruiting talent from all over.

Naturally, this makes future meetings or transactions in person much more difficult.

According to a study from McKinsey & Company, almost half of respondents preferred a remote buying experience with B2B suppliers.  Another 22-36% preferred to handle the interaction entirely through digital self-serve means depending on the stage of the relationship:

• Identifying new suppliers: 22%
• Evaluating new suppliers: 22%
• Ordering: 36%
• Reordering: 35%

Furthermore, companies around the globe observed an all-around improvement in sales efficiency after changing to accommodate changing buyer demands.

With this in mind, B2B marketers will want to help brands by providing their audience with a seamless digital sales journey. You can still leave the window open to schedule face-to-face interactions for those who prefer it but grant the option to move from discovery to checkout exclusively through a website or sales page.

3. Audiences Trust and Prefer User-Generated Content

One thing that is a constant between B2B digital marketing and B2C is the value of social proof.

Any brand is technically capable of creating elegant websites, engaging ads, and sexy content. However, a discerning user is not simply going to take your word for it.

What’s more valuable in selling your product is convincing your audience that you deserve their trust. The primary way to accomplish this is to feature content generated from existing or previous customers that happen to be their peers.

This is arguably more important in B2B marketing where the buyer intent of your audience involves a more critical, logical decision-making process. Decision-makers are already in tune with their brand and whether or not your products or services could benefit them. What pushes them over the top is seeing the endorsement of other companies that place their trust in your team.

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The fast and quick way to generate content from users is by asking for testimonials or interviewing clients about their experiences. Not only can their insights be valuable for improving your processes, but the favorable comments can be utilized in promotional content.

You can also offer select customers free products or access to services in exchange for short videos or posts that reflect their thoughts of your brand. This is more along the lines of influencer marketing, where users with their audiences can expose your company to brand-new prospects.

4. Lean in Heavy on the Videos for B2B Digital Marketing

More than 70% of B2B customers complete their buying research with the use of video content.

Video is more popular and engaging for all audiences, but it may be even more true for the busy decision-makers at target companies. Not only do they face responsibilities in the office, but they’re also inundated with advertisements from digital marketers like you.

By taking the time to produce short, effective video content, you offer something more substantial that gets your message across quickly and effectively. Furthermore, an edited video can be repurposed for your website, social media, YouTube, and more.

What’s important is to ensure that the content of your video reflects the buyer’s intent just as you would with written content. B2B buyers don’t rely on emotion as a B2C buyer would. They need to know the facts, the how-to, and the proof that your brand can offer something of value to theirs.

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If you need any further convincing of this trend, a sweeping 92% of digital marketers believe that video is an important part of their B2B digital marketing plan.

At the very least, you’ll need to start producing videos to stay on pace with your competitors. If you want to stand out and start scaling, you’ll need to make quality your utmost priority.

Take advantage of YouTube and LinkedIn for your video content. Facebook and Instagram would be excellent additional channels if you want to extend your outreach even further.

5. More B2B Buyers Expect Personalized Messaging

While the motivation of a B2B buyer differs from B2C, more customers than ever are expecting experiences that resemble a B2C sales journey.

Specifically, a Salesforce study finds that 84% of B2B buyers are more likely to buy from brands that express a clear understanding of their unique goals. While B2C marketers would focus more on making the customer feel a certain way, B2B should focus on showing the customer how their solution will meet their challenges.

Thankfully, as discussed earlier, social platforms like LinkedIn give marketers a leg up in better understanding their prospects from the onset. Couple this data with gathered metrics from your marketing campaigns, and you can start delivering highly-personalized ads that show knowledge of the client’s business.

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Get Ahead with These B2B Digital Marketing Best Practices

While digital marketing continues to be a tumultuous landscape, these statistically-backed guidelines are a great place to start.

Prioritize key platforms that are hot for B2B buyers such as LinkedIn and YouTube. Supplement your static content with plenty of high-quality, highly-personalized videos that directly address buyer needs.

Further, support your marketing content with social proof generated by your existing clients. Testimonials, interviews, or influencer-generated content is a great way to provide information quickly and efficiently.

With consistent effort and close attention to key metrics, you can elevate your B2B digital marketing strategy to the next level.