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.

YouTube is the number one video streaming website on the planet.

The USA alone provides roughly 240 million users, while the platform contains over 2 billion total users from around the globe.

It's not only a premier platform for entertainment, education, and news but also serves as a vital resource in any digital marketer's arsenal. However, just like static or dynamic image ads, YouTube ad video sizes must meet specific parameters to get results.

This article will entail not only the recommended YouTube video sizes, but also provide concrete guidelines for resolution, dimensions, frame rate, and aspect ratio. With these rules, you'll be able to create engaging YouTube ads that help your campaign get results.

What is the Best YouTube Ad Video Size?

The best video size to provide to YouTube users is the highest resolution your current equipment can record.

The maximum resolution that YouTube and most displays will support is 4K or 2160p. That comes out to a 3840 x 2160 pixel image. This will provide the greatest possible image quality to users with the proper screen and a speedy internet connection.

If users do not have a 4K-ready device or find themselves experiencing poor load times, YouTube can auto-detect these issues and downscale your video automatically for a better viewing experience. This setting will also help users save on mobile data if they have a limited budget.

With this in mind, advertisers should be looking for the video size minimum rather than the ceiling.

The minimum YouTube video resolution you want to aim for is 1080p. This equates to 1920 x 1080 pixels, the modern-day standard for most affordable displays. It will also prompt YouTube to automatically render your ad in the best video quality without negatively impacting users that can't readily play the content.

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Users also can manually change the video quality at any time. You do this by:

• Hovering over the YouTube video
• Clicking the gear icon in the bottom-right corner
• Click Quality
• Select the desired resolution

Note - If the video you uploaded supports it, users can also use this function to switch between 60 FPS or the standard frame rate, which we will discuss later in this article.

1080p is the standard for high-definition video and will provide the best visuals while still loading quickly on most devices.

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The floor is much lower, however. YouTube technically supports video files with resolutions as low as 240p. While there's a chance that lower-quality videos can work on smaller screens like a mobile device, most high-tech screens will end up blurring the image regardless of the display size.

For this reason, if you're unable to shoot in at least 720p, standard HD, you're better off avoiding video content until you can upgrade your equipment.

Regarding the size of the YouTube ad video file, the platform will readily accept uploads as large as 128 GB. However, the video must also not exceed 12 hours in length. As long as your video ad does not exceed this limit, you're free to add content to your YouTube account.

As a final note, you will not be able to upload videos this large by default with a new account. You must go through the process of verifying your YouTube account to gain access to new limit maximums. In the meantime, your video must be shorter than 15 minutes.

You can learn how to verify your YouTube account here.

What Video File Types Does YouTube Support?

YouTube currently accepts the following video file formats for ads and general content:

• .MOV
• .MPEG-1
• .MPEG-2
• .MPEG4
• .MP4
• .MPG
• .AVI
• .WMV
• .MPEGPS
• .FLV
• 3GPP
• WebM
• DNxHR
• ProRes
• CineForm
• HEVC (h265)

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However, YouTube/Google recommends utilizing the MP4 format whenever possible. This stands for MPE-4 Part 14 and is the international standard for video files. MP4 offers strong file compression, allowing for better storage and quicker file uploads without losing video quality.

MP4 is also usable across a wide variety of devices. If your team is working with a variety of operating systems, this will be ideal as opposed to using a strictly Mac format like MOV. For Mac users managing cross-platform video projects, understanding the progression of Mac operating systems in order can help ensure compatibility across different systems. If you would like to convert your MOV files to a format more suitable for social posts or email previews, you can check out Adobe's MOV to GIF converter.

What is the Best Frame Rate for YouTube Video Ads?

All video playback is essentially a rapid series of images. Compare this to old picture flipbooks that would appear to play out in motion when the pages flip by fast enough.

With this in mind, the frame rate describes how many of those individual images/frames appear every second. If you have too few frames, the video ends up looking like a slideshow. A high FPS does have its uses in certain cases, but this will rarely if ever be a factor for advertisement content.

Examples of when you want to use higher frame rates (60 FPS or higher) would be for things like sports, video game gameplay, or racing. Essentially, anything that is visually busy and contains a lot of important detail can benefit from the higher frame rate.

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Furthermore, the average display seldom supports anything above 60 FPS as a 60Hz refresh rate is the most common. Those that look to use something higher such as 120 FPS are typically enthusiasts and have a specific reason for wanting that high of a frame rate.

The question remains - what is the best frame rate for YouTube?

YouTube recommends using at least 24 FPS for uploaded video content.

This is the industry standard for film and television that the human eye is accustomed to seeing. Anything slower appears stilted and choppy, making for an unpleasant viewing experience.

As discussed above, going beyond 24 FPS is supported and can be useful depending on what you are using to record as well as the content of the video. In such cases, you would want to encode the video in a frame rate that's as close to the source as possible.

However, higher frame rates do not come free. Each additional frame means more data, a larger file size, and more data required to playback the video. Exercise caution when choosing to use video with higher resolutions and higher frame rates and make the call that's right for the video you're sharing.

Is Aspect Ratio Important for YouTube Ad Video Size?

The standard aspect ratio for video is 16:9. This is the widescreen format and the one most commonly supported by modern devices. While some popular devices like the MacBook utilize a 16:10 display, the difference in video quality is negligible.

Aspect ratio describes the ratio of width to height for a displayed image. A 16:9 aspect ratio means that the image is 16 units wide and 9 units high. You should always utilize this when uploading content to YouTube.

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If you utilize other social media apps like Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok, you may also be familiar with the 9:16 format. This flips the standard format to prioritize display on devices with taller screens like a mobile phones. It creates the black bar effect on either side of the video.

There is a trend for using this format on platforms like YouTube, as well. For now, however, we would recommend using the standard 16:9 for YouTube and using the 9:16 for other Video Streaming platform if you happen to use them for brand promotion.

Summary of Recommended YouTube Video Sizes & Specs

To quickly summarize everything we’ve discussed regarding your YouTube video ads, use the following specifications:

• 1080p is the standard, though YouTube supports up to 2160p
• 16:9 aspect ratio (though 9:16 is becoming a popular trend)
• 24 FPS (unless your content calls for more frames)
• The file cannot exceed 128 GB
• Video length cannot exceed 12 hours
• Supported file types:
• MOV
• .MPEG-1
• .MPEG-2
• .MPEG4
• .MP4
• .MPG
• .AVI
• .WMV
• .MPEGPS
• .FLV
• 3GPP
• WebM
• DNxHR
• ProRes
• CineForm
• HEVC (h265)

YouTube continues to be the premier video playback platform on the internet. As long as your team has the resources available to create video advertisements, you should make the effort to promote your brand on the website to reach more audiences. Lastly, to optimize your digital marketing efforts, don't overlook the potential of platforms like TikTok. Get likes from reliable sites and build brand credibility.

Simply stick to the guidelines above to ensure that your creatives never go to waste. Thankfully, most technology readily shoots video according to these parameters and YouTube readily accepts a majority of common video file types. If necessary, you can utilize a video file type converter to quickly change an existing video into a format that the platform supports.

Welcome to the 5th episode of our Whiteboard Wednesday. Thanks for the overwhelming response. I'm hopeful that these sessions will soon become the go-to resource for everything related to digital marketing and SEO agency business.

We aim to provide you deep insights into the processes, strategies, and business tips and tricks to succeed as an agency. 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 the most prominent challenge every marketer faces; how to get your website ranked higher in Google search results.

Your survival as an agency or an online business depends mainly on the following factors:

• The Traffic you attract
• The Leads you generate
• The Quality Of Your Services
• The Quality Of Your Customer Support
• Your ability to help your clients increase conversion
• Your website’s keyword optimization
• How well your website answers customers’ queries

But at the core of all these is your website's Google ranking. If you rank higher on Google SERPs, you can thrive and achieve most of your business objectives.

Here are some of the ideas and tactics to rank your website on top that we at DashClicks use to promote our own site!

Create a Website and Optimize It

The first step is to create a website.

However, a single-page website developed using ClickFunnels landing pages builder will not work. It's tough, if not impossible, to rank high with a one or two-page website.

To rank high in search results, create a website with multiple pages. It should also have a focus keyword for each page.

Pro Tip: Create a multiple-page website with a focus keyword for each page. It will help you rank your website faster.

Let's discuss the architecture of a website. When we hit the URL of a website, we reach the home page of a website. We then see that it has many other pages such as the About Us page, Services page, Blog page, and a Contact Us page. Pages like service pages sit above many other pages and are dedicated to the business's specific services.

It's observed that most of the web pages are dedicated to services.

Let's map them out.

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If you go deeper into the architecture, you can further branch out the services page into several subcategories such as SEO, Social, Google Ads, Facebook Ads, Content, & Website Development, etc.

Create a separate page for each service. Each page should have a focus keyword to help it rank.

If you have a local business serving the local market, then you need to start with and focus on local keywords. Stay away from national keywords in that case. Local keywords will help you generate local traffic, whereas to rank with national keywords, you need to have a complete website with a high brand authority. For Example, if your agency is based in Fort Lauderdale, you need to focus on keywords like “SEO services in Fort Lauderdale” and its variations.

Some of its variations can be as follows:

• Google Ads company in Fort Lauderdale
• Content marketing agency in Fort Lauderdale
• Fort Lauderdale content marketing agency
• Fort Lauderdale website designer
• Fort Lauderdale website company

With a single-page website, you can't achieve ranking for these keyword variations.

Pages such as the services page will include the list of all the services, but if you want to visit a page dedicated to a specific service such as SEO, you need to click the SEO service page link on the services page.

Use Your Blog to Achieve High Ranking

However, the blog section is a different story altogether. There can be numerous blog posts in this section, and each post will appear on a separate page with a unique URL extension. So, whenever a new blog post is published, it goes to the next page in this section.

At DashClicks, we have published about 200 blog posts in the past 12 months. It's a potent exercise from an SEO point of view as each of these pages is floating on the web, and search engines are noticing it. And the number of such articles is increasing every week.

These pages are keyword optimized and follow search engine guidelines related to content. The content on the website is created to address users' queries. In our case, agencies and SEO professionals are our audience.

We develop SaaS-based tools and platforms for the agencies. So, we create lots of content to help agencies in project management and scale their business.

The title of the blog posts and the focus keywords help increase the overall ranking and visibility of the website. We will also convert this Whiteboard Wednesday video that we are shooting into a blog post. We'll embed the video at the top of the blog post.

What should be the ideal frequency of publishing the blog posts?

We at DashClicks recommend publishing at least one blog post every week.

Pro Tip: Focus on the quality and not the quantity of the blog posts you publish.

Focus On Engagement and Quality

A blog post that people love, engage with, and share with their family, friends, and coworkers is remarkably better than a substandard post. A low-quality post can affect your rankings negatively.

When your audience likes your blog post, they share it with their contacts and online communities they are a part of and make it go viral. It increases both the traffic on your site and its domain authority.

Attract More Traffic to Improve Your CTA Performance

You automatically increase your CTA performance by attracting more traffic, such as signups, phone calls, and form submissions.

If you plan to start an agency business and don't have a professional website, you can purchase an agency website from our dashboard.

Use DashClicks Platform to Minimize Time and Effort

To get a content-ready agency website developed for conversion, go to DashClicks.com and create your free account. You don't need a credit card to sign up and create an account.

We highly recommend a professional-grade agency website. It would cost you only $97. Here are some other features of the agency website you can get from DashClicks.

1. The content is already written for you by our fulfillment teams.
2. All the web pages are already built
3. The website has an average of 20-25 web pages

It saves you tons of time as you don't have to worry about developing its structure.

The next step is to attract traffic to your website and optimize it.

How to Optimize Your Website?

As emphasized above, each page should have a focus keyword. You should also include some of its variations.

Pro Tip: To find your focus keyword for a page and figure out the search volume, you can use a tool such as Google Keyword Planner. Target the keywords with a search volume of more than 50 per month.

So, next, make a list of all such keywords and their variations. If used judiciously throughout the website, such keywords can divert volumes of traffic to your website.

The keywords should be evenly spread out on the web page, and there shouldn't be any spamming.

The agency website we make for you using the InstaSites tool is already structured. You can go to the DashClicks dashboard, plug in your location, and enter your business details. Now, go to the Sites app at the bottom, and you'll find about ten pre-built websites for you. You can choose one of these sites as they all come with similar web pages and structures.

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This website is optimized with local keywords, which means you don't need to do local SEO on it. As soon as you enter your location, the InstaSites software picks it up and optimizes your website with the most popular local keywords. As a result, you start ranking on those local terms quickly, and your site becomes more visible in local searches. It's known as on-page SEO.

Similarly, directory listing is a crucial part of local SEO. DashClicks offers this premium service by listing your website in over 70+ online business directories, giving your website a powerful local SEO boost.

Sometimes, the ranking of a website gets stuck at position 7th or 8th on the first search result page. It's considered good otherwise, but a survey reveals that about 80% of people click on the first result on Google. People are significantly less likely to click if a website doesn't rank among the top three slots.

So, you need to be in one of the top three slots to get noticed, and to achieve these top positions, you need to run backlink campaigns. Creating good backlinks always helps, and you should do it aggressively. It includes getting listed in all the prominent directories with your website links.

It would help if you have high-authority links to your website. These will make your website rank on top. Another tactic is to write as many blogs as you can. As you publish more blogs, you increase your page authority on those pages. Page Authority is a Moz metric that indicates the ability of a particular web page to rank on search engine result pages (SERPs). Increased PA increases your site's domain authority over time.

So, to boost the SEO of your website, you need to pay attention to the following factors:

1. On-Page SEO
2. Off-page SEO

On-Page SEO includes writing Meta tags, Meta titles, and Meta Descriptions. It's a way to tell Google what the page and the website are all about. These text snippets describe your web page's content and help your website rank according to specific categories on search engines.

Your meta tag can be a snippet like "SEO company in Fort Lauderdale," and your description may include keywords such as "looking for an SEO company in Fort Lauderdale, etc."

This description tells Google that your SEO company specializes in localized SEO services in the Fort Lauderdale area.

Pro Tip: Your text snippets should be catchy and clever. The Example given above is just for reference. However, you can be even more creative about writing meta titles, tags and descriptions.

Pro Tip: Don't expect quick results even with these tactics. It requires perseverance, and you need to spend a couple of hours each week on such activities to actually see some results.

You can speed things up with our agency website tool available inside your DashClicks dashboard. It might take weeks to develop a website, look for freelancers, and get it built according to your needs.

However, with the DashClicks Agency Website tool, you can do it within seconds using just a single button. You can activate one of the ten pre-built templates instantly. Everything else is already set up, including content, structure, and graphics.

How Much Would an Instant Website Cost?

You need to pay a one-time fee followed by $97 every month. It includes hosting access to the DashClicks dashboard, the SSL certificate, and other valuable features.

If you already have an SEO-optimized website and don't want to avail our agency website feature, you can buy an SEO subscription for your agency.

You can get our white-label fulfillment services at a wholesale rate. These services include packages for maintaining the blog section of a company. Different packages are available based on the frequency of the blogs published every month.

Our white label SEO packages include off-page SEO, on-page SEO, keyword research, and backlink services. Our SEO packages start from a reasonable fee of $197 a month.

By paying this small amount, you can do away with all the hassles and tasks you need to perform for your SEO projects, including publishing blog posts. This way, it helps you scale your business while taking away the everyday grind.

I hope you liked and enjoyed this session. We will see you soon in the next session of Whiteboard Wednesday.

Please let us know in the comments if you have any questions for my team or me.

If you think CRM is just another work tool and a way to keep track of your sales team's targets, you are wrong. Selecting the right CRM software and scaling your business through it are the two most crucial things ensuring the success of your enterprise.

The right CRM is a prerequisite for boosting sales. According to a Martech Zone study conducted in 2020, 50% of sales teams boosted their productivity using mobile CRM.

A CRM tool will help you manage data and automate follow-ups. It will also help you run better-optimized campaigns by maintaining a high degree of accuracy and giving you crucial sales stats. With dynamic reporting, DashClicks' white-label platform will simplify your business and help boost your sales and productivity.

Here we will discuss how you can use your CRM software to maximize sales and growth for your agency.

We will also share the features you should look for when choosing CRM software for your agency. After going through this article, if you feel your CRM is not offering these features, it's time to switch to a better CRM software.

1. Improve Lead Generation Process

CRM is a crucial source of customer information, providing you with a 360° view of the customer data, including leads. All you need to do is to integrate it with marketing automation software. It will boost your sales effectiveness. A CRM system will also help you identify the hottest leads and target them. It will immensely help your sales team by minimizing their frustration and wastage of time. Improved sales processes increase the overall enterprise productivity.

CRM competently monitors form fills and hence informs you about the fresh leads. The data you gather from CRM also helps in lead nurturing. According to The Annuitas Group, nurtured leads make 47% higher order value purchases than non-nurtured leads.

You can prioritize your current leads in your CRM software.

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You can easily differentiate the best quality leads from not-so-good leads and appropriately allocate the resources. You can also set reminders for follow-ups with those prospects. The CRM goes one step ahead and allows you to tag your teammates to take care of the leads to complete the sales.

2. Improve Customer Service

Customer data holds enormous power, and harnessing that power can significantly improve the customer experience. It will also help you keep your customer journey personalized and offer tailored services to match their needs. Timely support can dramatically improve the overall customer experience.

Data-driven customer support heavily relies on available information to help you deliver efficient and personalized customer service. Modern CRM systems use this information to issue customer support tickets for timely action.

A CRM system will also record all the customer interactions, purchases, and significant customer issues. It helps the customer service representatives quickly understand their problems and resolve them on priority.

Your customers may judge your brand on various parameters and experiences, including handling their complaints. So, you need to take their complaints and issues seriously and resolve them promptly. You can link your website to your CRM software to provide better customer service.

Chat support is an excellent way of offering great customer support to your website visitors. Some of the complaints can be resolved on the spot, whereas for specific issues, you need to divert the user to the relevant department.

However, most customer service requests and interactions are related to inquiries for a new sale or basic information about products and services. The chat option can also be used for lead capturing so that the sales team can act on it.

You can also tap into the real-time information provided by the CRM to provide an enhanced customer experience, especially during the complaint resolution on call. Your ability to handle grievances helps you build your brand image, build trust, and bring stability to your business.

3. Increase Sales Opportunities

You can get strong buying intent signals if you have access to customer data. This data can be easily transferred from your CRM to other cross-functional teams, especially the sales team. It helps you identify many sales opportunities and quicken the process by acting on these signals without any delays. For example, if a customer constantly asks about a particular product or its features, it reflects a strong buying intent. You can instantly identify it and communicate it to the sales team.

You can boost sales and increase revenue by using CRM software. The built-in tools of a CRM will help you better manage customer relationships and promote engagement. You can identify decision-makers and influencers to boost your sales.

According to a Demand Metric survey, 78% of the customers feel a bond with a brand that uses custom content and personalized interactions. So, personalization is the key to success for companies. A robust CRM software helps you handle personalization on a massive scale so that you can push your revenues with more certainty and consistency. The software also enables you to recognize and grab the best sales opportunities and further expand them. The sales team receives extensive data about customer interactions and history. These insights can multiply their sales many times over by helping you in the following ways:

1. Boost engagement and establish rapport with your customers
2. Establish regular communication through updates and custom content
3. Identify and explore customer needs and personalize their buyer journey
4. Don’t miss the opportunities to cross-sell or upsell
5. Launch well-times referral programs

Various studies reveal that retaining a customer is comparatively cheaper and more accessible than acquiring a customer. Therefore, customer retention is pivotal to your success as a business and revenue growth.

The right CRM software can help you boost conversion rates and minimize the cost of sales through customer data.

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4. Create a Standardized Sales Process

Rather than shooting in the dark, your CRM can help you build a detailed blueprint for closing sales deals that your sales team can bank on.

The objective is to decrease the sales cycle and maximize the value of each transaction. When you have a pre-defined sales process to follow, you can access vital data to review your performance and analyze different sales methods.

When you have access to the customer data, you can quickly identify the reasons for lackluster sales performance. You'll also find methods to resolve these issues and prompt the sales team to deliver their best performance.

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Standardized processes also help sales managers make accurate sales forecasts and suitable marketing and promotion plans for the future. It gives you better control of your business and ensures profitability. It also helps you efficiently train new sales recruits to start performing better by learning customer insights.

5. Review Your Marketing Strategy and Improve Campaigns

A CRM system records customer data and also includes information about how the customers found your business. So, you can easily track the best marketing channels with the highest ROI.

Your marketing team may use the CRM data containing customer history and their previous interactions with your brand to study their buying behavior. They will also be better positioned to answer their prospects' FAQs and address their concerns.

Furthermore, content marketers can use these insights to create relevant content for their prospects in other sales funnel stages.

6. Improve Team Coordination

We have already discussed how CRM can be a game-changer for the sales department, but it's not limited only to sales. The customer data provided by CRM software can be tremendously helpful for marketing and customer service. You gain many valuable insights and information during customers' interactions with your business. If your marketing department is proactive and alert, they can capitalize on this info.

For example, during the COVID-19 lockdown and following work-from-home culture in 2020, businesses registered high demand for frozen but nourishing food, sanitizers, masks, ergonomic chairs and tables, business-grade laptops, tablets, office stationery, printers, exercise equipment, inverters and batteries, and casual clothes. Most people were working from home, and smart businesses made massive money because of the rising demand for the products that people needed to make their work-from-home lives easy.

For example, suppose your audience starts showing interest in a specific product, such as ergonomic chairs. In that case, marketing can start their advertising blitzkrieg, and procurement teams can focus on sourcing quality office furniture. When all units come together, businesses flourish beyond your imagination.

So, you can integrate your CRM with cross-functional teams. As a result, every department will benefit. If you share CRM data with production, finance, marketing, and sales, you can connect inventory with purchasing to ensure uninterrupted supply and maintain the required stock. Similarly, you can connect sales with finance and automate the ordering process. You can also differentiate the profitable parts of your business from the non-profitable parts.

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7. Use CRM Data to See the Big Picture and Current Trends

The Reports and Analysis section of your CRM offers immense value to the managers of different departments. If sales managers get proper access to the analytics data and track each stage in the sales funnel, they can get hold of their sales process and scale it as they want.

Analytics data also provides you with crucial information about your customers, so you may identify loyal customers and the ones you should focus on for your marketing efforts. It also gives you insights into how to bridge gaps and improve sales.

8. Accelerate the Sales Lifecycle

Is your sales team performing up to the mark, consistently meeting their targets? Are you able to swiftly move your prospects through the sales funnel? What information and clarity do the prospects need to move ahead in the funnel?

You can get all such information through the dashboards built into a white-label platform such as DashClicks. DashClicks' InstaReports tell you what's working and what's not. These reports also suggest you the strategies you can implement for improvement.

Through InstaReports, you'll also get to know where the prospects are drifting out of the sales funnel and abandoning the sales process midway. It will help you take the corrective measure for the issues in the sales funnel.

9. Predict Buying Behavior

Move over old-fashioned bar charts and dashboards; sophisticated CRMs are now armed with machine learning and AI. These tools provide you the insights to help you track your sales performance and predict the trends that might modify the buying behavior overnight.

The most significant benefit of using advanced analytics is that it provides insight into the prospects who are more likely to buy based on their interactions and previous buying behavior. It helps you divert your resources in the right direction. It will also help you ensure that the accurate inventory is maintained to meet the demand.

If you can accurately predict buying behavior or surge in demand, you will be able to fulfill orders faster and spot negative demand patterns before they hit your business.

10. Automate Processes

It's crucial to create a sales cycle for your business and implement it in your CRM. Automated workflows immensely help your processes, so have it everywhere! Similarly, automated follow-ups will save you a lot of time and person-hours. However, you should set it at a controlled frequency to avoid annoying your customer. You can also set automated reminders for your team.

Automation is sweeping the industry faster than you can imagine. The sudden rise of automation is primarily because we have limited resources and tons of tasks to execute to survive in the market in the present times. It gives you a distinctive edge over your competition.

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According to a Gartner Research study, businesses that automated lead management experienced a 10% or more increase in revenue in less than nine months.

11. Get Crucial Alerts

Without CRM software, you can't manage your business processes as swiftly as you need to. The alert function in a CRM will notify your team members of the tasks they need to perform. Sometimes there are important events that need to be taken care of by the marketers, and the CRM can send alerts to your team about that. If the delivery has missed a shipment or a lead turns negative, the CRM software will inform your team.

Lead Management through Deals App

Sales and lead management can be a nightmare for businesses. To make your life easy, DashClicks has launched a powerful app named Deals. This application is available via the DashClicks' white-label platform.

This app allows you to create a variety of sales pipelines so that you can visualize the entire sales process and monitor various deals. It splits the sales process into small parts and steps to make it more manageable. This way, you will make various sales tasks easy to execute and track progress at a granular basis. With the Deals App, you can hold your sales personnel accountable if they are not performing up to the mark.

Navigating the Deals Application

Go to the Deals application, and click the tab My Deals. You can use this interface to have a look at your latest sales pipeline and also your active deals. First-timers won't find any active deals. Now, have a look at how this page shows numerous stages in your sales pipelines.

Click on the table view and you'll be able to see lists of your deals followed by various columns containing relevant information.

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Let's have a look at the list view. You can find all the stages of your sales listed here in vertical order. Click on any of the stages to expand the view and find the sales deals that fall under that stage.

You can search for a specific deal through the search field located next to the toggle button. You can export all of this information through the Export button. You can also create a new sales deal and add, edit, or reorder a sales pipeline through the App.

Deal Automation

Go to the Deal Automations button, which is the most powerful feature in this App. Your sales team will probably commit mistakes while working a pipeline and completing repetitive tasks such as sending follow-up emails or text messages.

You can automate these tedious tasks at various stages of the sales funnel with The Deal Automations feature of the Deals App. Currently, the platform allows Email and SMS automation. Apart from that, it also allows you to create instant websites through its InstaSites feature and generate reports for your clients with its InstaReports feature. These are the two of our most powerful prospecting tools.

Utilize the Deal Automations feature, save time and decrease your workload. There are lots of helpful articles that will make you a digital marketing pro in very little time. Here is a list of the automation features that the DashClicks platform offers.

• InstaSite Automation
• SMS Automation
• Email Automation
• InstaReport Automation

To know more about this app, click this link.

Conclusion

It's obvious now that CRM is a blessing for businesses to boost sales and your organization's overall growth. But, how can you implement it? Companies with a long sales cycle and those struggling with client communication must undoubtedly be ready to embrace CRM software.

It will prevent you from losing sales opportunities and getting caught in a messy situation while organizing your processes. It becomes even more crucial if you run a startup and lead generation is your top priority. But, when you grow and your customer data increases manifold, you start missing free opportunities coming your way.

A robust CRM will not let you miss out on those opportunities and help you meet the demands of growth.

When you access DashClicks' white-label platform, it brings you all the benefits a robust CRM software can provide. Our CRM system tracks incoming leads coming from the campaign we manage. We follow leads through call tracking, website form submissions, and ClickFunnels form fills (if we run the campaign).