There is no shortage of digital marketing tools and strategies available to boost web traffic and increase your ROI. But, what if there was a method that allowed your business to obtain highly-qualified traffic, drive conversions, and rapidly scale with almost no risk and little upfront cost?

Enter affiliate marketing. This method of utilizing external partners to promote your brand can help businesses of any size discover new sales opportunities without sinking too much of your time and resources into the effort. Searches for affiliate marketing programs continue to rise on Google, suggesting that the opportunity to leverage this marketing tactic is readily available. SuperMetrics reports that the top affiliate networks are boasting a total affiliate count in the 6-figure area, with the Amazon Associates program featuring over 900,000 partners.

If you're interested in boosting your bottom line for less than the cost of traditional marketing methods, continue reading to learn the nine ways affiliate marketing can help your business thrive.

What is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing is the act of utilizing external partners to advertise your products or services in exchange for a commission on each sale. These partners are generally individuals who have previously used your products themselves or currently subscribe to your services. Their understanding of your products or services allows them to naturally demonstrate the merits of your brand to their audience to help you gain additional sales.

The fine details of how these partnerships work depend on either a base standard set by the original company or by negotiating agreed-upon rates with the affiliate partner. Regardless of these terms, companies offer the affiliate a built-in incentive through a commission that actively encourages them to promote your company and get results.

How to Do Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing will not require you a significant amount of time or resources to begin deploying. When creating an affiliate marketing plan, you'll want to focus on a few primary details that will dictate how this program will operate for both you and your partners. Establishing clear guidelines for how you expect your program to benefit both parties will help in alleviating potential issues down the line.

1. Determine Where You Want to Establish Your Affiliations

First, you will want to determine the individuals you wish to utilize as affiliates. Some brands prefer to be highly selective about whom they choose to be affiliated with and will only partner with notable, established names in the industry. These individuals generally have a high level of rapport with audiences in that field, but also possess strong marketing skills in a particular area. The person or company will then clearly define that they are affiliated with the original brand and actively promote products or services on their behalf.

Another common way of implementing affiliate marketing is by utilizing the audience that already benefits from your services. Because they are active users, they provide a much more natural way of marketing your brand with authenticity as they are not actually employed by or directly involved with your company. Examples of this include popular websites such as the eBay Partner Network, Fiverr Affiliates, and even DashClicks itself.

This should not be confused with influencer marketing, which is generally a one-time partnership and payment for a specific promotion. There is no program tied to those arrangements and the form of payment is typically determined between the influencer and the company per interaction.

2. Determine How You Will Calculate and Reimburse Commissions

The second key factor is to determine exactly how much of a commission each partner will receive for each new conversion. These terms must be clearly defined to ensure that your partners are treated fairly and to protect yourself from any harm to your reputation should a disagreement between you and your affiliate arise.

Some companies opt to utilize a flat rate for all commissions earned. Common affiliate commissions start at around 5% of the total sale value but can scale to as much as 30%. Other affiliate programs are commensurate with performance and promise higher returns for those that can outperform their fellow affiliates. Companies may also throw in additional benefits for affiliates such as partner benefits or exclusive discounts toward their services.

As an example, DashClicks utilizes an affiliate program called 'DashConnect' that is entirely based on performance. Affiliate performance is tracked monthly and scales with the number of account referrals and signups we receive as a result of that partnership. In our program, we provide 20% on every new referral. For every 20 new referrals, that commission percentage rises by 10%. In this way, we encourage affiliates to perform their very best by rewarding them with higher commission rates than they would receive for a mediocre monthly performance.

3. Create a Way for Affiliates to Track Performance

Finally, it will be highly beneficial for your team to create a way for affiliates to keep track of their monthly performance. We recommend adding an affiliate center somewhere on your site that features up-to-date reporting on monthly and yearly commission totals, expected payments, and the commission made to date.

Some companies, DashClicks included, also implement an affiliate scoreboard that promotes a bit of friendly competition between the active affiliates. Simply seeing the revenue earned by other affiliates can act as motivation and inspire your partners to realize what's possible. The motivation for additional income can go a long way in promoting effective marketing.

You also do not necessarily need to openly disclose your terms for public viewing. Determine which approach works best for you and keep track of how many affiliate requests or signups you receive and adjust accordingly.

Next, let's take a look at the advantages of affiliate marketing that go well beyond the additional ROI.

Nine Advantages of Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is quite beneficial, and that's why affiliate marketing spending in the U.S alone is estimated to touch $8.2 billion by 2022. One primary reason it's becoming so popular is that it's a low-risk way to promote and sell your products.

Here we've created a list of nine significant advantages of affiliate marketing:-

1. You Can Leverage a Partner's Connections for More Sales

Individuals that sign up for or apply for your affiliate marketing program likely have their own established connections in the industry. These individuals might already have a built-in following on social media or through a popular blog that you can leverage for advertisements of your brand. This allows you to tap into new audiences quickly without extending your company's resources.

2. Affiliate Marketing Boosts Your Social Proof

Social proof is powerful and necessary if you want your brand to succeed and scale online. Even if the presentation of your website and various marketing channels are superb, consumers are savvy and rightfully skeptical of the quality and authenticity of your products or services. A strong way to combat this is to manage your online reputation by allowing customers to share reviews and testimonials about their experience with your company.

Affiliates function in a similar way to an everyday customer review or interaction. Because they are not actually employed by or directly invested in your success, customers are more likely to see their promotion of your brand as a vote of confidence. The affiliate's reputation hinges on whom they choose to affiliate with, which logically indicates that the brand they are promoting provides a worthwhile service to the community.

You gain this boost in social proof without needing to perform any additional work yourself. The affiliate understands what your company offers, speaks honestly to its merits, and advises the audience to spend their hard-earned dollars with your brand over the competitor.

3. It Can Reduce Your Marketing Costs

While affiliate marketing won't eliminate the need for other marketing methods like SEO or paid ad campaigns, it can reduce your marketing costs overall. This will depend entirely upon the performance of the affiliates you currently partner with and market your brand.

Affiliate marketing is one of the few marketing strategies that require little to no investment upfront. You also only pay out whenever the marketing venture leads to actual conversion. Furthermore, your company retains total control over the percentages that will be provided to affiliates upon a successful sale. Compare this to paid search campaigns which can vary in spending depending on the competitiveness of the keywords you are currently targeting.

4. It Offers Highly-Targeted Marketing and a Better ROI

Affiliate marketing virtually guarantees that your new web traffic is highly qualified and will show a greater likelihood to convert. Other marketing methods require time, resources, and budget to effectively startup. If you begin publishing paid ads on social media, for example, you will need to dedicate several weeks to discovery simply to acquire a basis for your target audience. Then, you will likely need to implement tools such as landing pages, which can further qualify your leads by income level, location, and other relevant factors.

Because your affiliates work for commission, there's a far greater likelihood that the traffic they push to your products or services has already been pre-qualified. Those affiliates are making the effort to discern the relevant details about their leads and filter out the low-quality ones for you. This saves you and your team time as you no longer need to make connections with those that were never going to result in a new sale for your company.

Also, because you are only paying your affiliates upon a successful sale, affiliate marketing generates a much higher ROI. You will receive more leads that are worthwhile, close more sales, and pay much less overall than you might otherwise through traditional marketing methods.

5. There's Little to No Risk

Because you only need to spend from your marketing budget when you close a deal, there's virtually zero risk in trying out affiliate marketing. It takes a certain type of individual to work hard for a commission, so you will find that those who apply for your affiliate program are generally more motivated to work hard for a mutual benefit.

There is a slight possibility of risk if an affiliate misleads a customer or falsely advertises your goods.Ā  However, your affiliates will never be definitively associated with your brand and only act as third parties promoting a product or service that they happen to endorse. Consumers are intelligent and understand that the words and actions taken by a third party are not necessarily a reflection of the original brand.

You can seek to avoid this time of problem by qualifying the individuals that apply to become affiliates. Because there is no employment contract, you can sever ties with an affiliate at a moment's notice as long as you're up-to-date on the agreed-upon commission.

6. You Can Scale Your Business Faster

For the reasons discussed above such as low costs and better targeting, affiliate marketing can be a powerful tool to help a small business scale faster than otherwise possible. Even a brand-new business can leverage affiliate marketing so long as they have a group of dedicated individuals that are ready to spread the word about your offerings. Set your commission at a rate that's feasible for your company and watch as new leads come to your door with no additional effort.

The best scaling strategies see businesses increasing their earnings and social reach while spending as little as possible to do so. Affiliate marketing checks all of these boxes and expects payment only for closed sales, not vanity metrics such as page clicks or ad impressions.

7. Affiliate Marketing Will Boost Your SEO

Affiliates that utilize digital marketing strategies to promote your brand will offer you SEO benefits that can reinforce your existing ranking strategies. When someone talks about your brand on their blog or their social media page, they are almost always providing links to their audience that direct back to your website. These are known as backlinks and are incredibly valuable when they come from Google-trusted sources.

This helps your website SEO in several ways. First, any quality pages that link back to a page on your domain can be seen as passing a vote of confidence that the content on your domain is authentic and trustworthy. The more high-quality backlinks you have, the more confident Google can be that your business offers the content it promises.

Secondly, it can boost your SEO by promoting additional traffic and boosting your reputation. Google is not only interested in the quality of your content, but also how your previous and current customers feel about your brand. When you have multiple domains boasting the quality of your products or services, this will have a positive compound effect on your reputation. More users will be likely to follow links to your website, which means that Google will be more likely to place your domain higher in a list of relevant search results.

8. Your Affiliate Program Runs Itself (Mostly)

Unlike your in-house marketing efforts, affiliate marketing runs itself as your registered affiliates will be doing the majority of the work for you. The idea is that by the time a new lead comes to your site through an affiliate, they've already been convinced to make a purchase. If they're not quite ready to pull the trigger, they've still already been nurtured and possess a strong interest in what your brand has to offer. At this point, you simply need to rely on your sales team to do what they do best.

Aside from this, you simply need to reimburse your affiliates for their monthly commission earned. You can utilize basic tools to help you keep track of conversions by affiliate by providing each one with their unique signup code. Customers use that affiliate's code when signing up or making a purchase, and it adds a tally to their scoreboard. At the end of the month, simply calculate the percentage owed based on the number of closed deals, and you're all set.

9. Learn from Affiliate Marketing Strategies

Last, but not least, working with partners allows you to gain valuable feedback in regards to what strategies best help your brand attract new audiences and drive conversions.

Digital marketing is an industry largely driven by analytical feedback. You use tools like Google Analytics to monitor website activity, A/B test, and gain valuable feedback on how to improve your content. Likewise, paid ad platforms constantly gather intel regarding audience behaviors, so that you can segment your audience for microtargeting to drive conversions. However, you need to invest the resources necessary to learn, discover, and convert.

With affiliate marketing, you're allowing your partners the freedom to market your brand according to their abilities. For example, if you have an affiliate that boasts a particularly strong following on their blog and consistently provides your team new sales every month, you can potentially learn a lot from their content marketing strategies. This is especially valuable as their content is already tailored to support your unique products and services.

This can apply to all marketing channels including social media networking and posting, PPC ads, email marketing, and content marketing. It's an opportunity to invest in valuable, long-term partnerships that can help define how you market your business for years to come.

Explore the Advantages of Affiliate Marketing Today!

While affiliate marketing by no means eliminates the need for traditional marketing strategies, the business advantages it provides cannot be denied. You can boost your website traffic, build your social following, and drive sales thanks to the low cost, minimal risk, and the ability to autopilot itself.

The only drawback is that it may take time for you to establish your brand and connect with high-performing partners. Thankfully, this pain point is mitigated by the fact that you only need to pay your affiliates when the customer pays you. With this in mind, there are very few downsides to starting your affiliate marketing program for your company.

Start strategizing with your team today to formulate the rules and guidelines for your own affiliate marketing program. In doing so, you'll be in the company of some of the most successful businesses and marketing firms around the globe.

As the demand for a multipurpose content solution rises, more marketers than ever are jumping on the headless CMS bandwagon. However, this is one marketing trend that demonstrably lives up to the hype and aims to remedy several problems that plague content creators within the workflow, presentation, and delivery.

If you're not up to speed on the latest CMS for marketers, we're here to help. In this article, we're going to instruct you on how to define a headless CMS, how it compares to the traditional model and the pros and cons of deploying this technology for use by your marketing team.

What is a CMS?

A CMS, also known as a Content Management System, is software that allows you to write, read, and edit website content without the need for coding and web development knowledge. Before we had CMS solutions, all websites needed to be developed and styled by implementing HTML and CSS code within a text editor. This would become particularly cumbersome for marketers that simply want to create and add content to a website without interacting with the code and accidentally breaking features on the website.

If you work in business or marketing, you are almost certainly already using a traditional CMS. The most popular example of this is WordPress, which allows users to create beautiful websites quickly by selecting a pre-built template as a starting point. You can then use the intuitive tools within the software to add text, images, video, and optimize your SEO data for search engines.

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You get to take advantage of the simplified tools, while the software automatically implements the HTML and CSS for you. Your team can quickly add content in the backend and the CMS readies that content for front-end presentation on the website only.

What is a Headless CMS System?

A headless CMS system is software that allows you to create and deliver your content to any platform or device utilizing API, Application Programming Interface. This allows your team to rapidly repurpose your content for iOS, Android, eCommerce solutions, and more in addition to just your website.

The content repository, or the backend, is where your CMS allows you to create and ready content for publishing. The head, or the frontend, is where that content is displayed on the world wide web. With traditional CMS systems, the body is inextricably tied to the head, which happens to be your website. A headless CMS severs the head along with the typical restrictions and allows developers to utilize API for rapid content presentation across numerous platforms.

With a headless CMS, all of your content can be published to your website, eCommerce centers, Android applications, and iOS applications from the same backend. Examples of this include popular shopping websites like Amazon. With their customized, headless eCommerce solution, they can repurpose the same content to buyers whether they are shopping from a desktop computer or the Amazon mobile app without the need for additional systems. The buyer can also seamlessly add an item to their cart when browsing on a pc and seamlessly resume the checkout process from the mobile app at a later time. If your brand aims to provide this level of multipurpose functionality to its customers, then a headless CMS provides the tools you need.

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What is a Decoupled CMS System?

A decoupled CMS sometimes referred to as Hybrid CMS, is a content repository that decouples the body from the head, or the front-end delivery system. While this sounds similar to the headless CMS, the decoupled CMS still has its unique front-end for presentation built into its overall systems. This is compared to the open, API-first technology that a headless system utilizes.

Decoupled CMS systems are appearing as the need for multichannel marketing solutions becomes undeniable. You'll still have access to the typical head, meaning pre-built templates and tools, but these are not necessary for creating and distributing your content online. The headless system does not feature front-end presentation or preview options.

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5 Headless CMS Advantages Over a Traditional CMS

There are several advantages of using headless CMS', but the main advantage is its flexibility in website design. Front-end developers can easily extract required data from the CMS and use it the way they want. So, instead of going ahead with the restrictions associated with traditional CMS, businesses prefer to use a headless CMS to design more extensive and unique websites. Here are some of the advantages of using a headless CMS:-

1. Reuse Content Across Channels for Rapid Scaling

While it can be confusing and difficult to absorb the technical jargon surrounding a CMS, the advantages of using a headless CMS are a little less so.

The primary benefit of utilizing a headless CMS is that it removes the restrictions that content creators and developers face when utilizing a traditional CMS. Because your content is not limited to website presentation, you can use the backend repository to create material for multiple channels all at once.

Previously, you would need to start fresh and create brand-new content for each new marketing channel. This was because your original website content would be bound to the website code. Headless CMS systems are different because they place API first. In other words, you only need to create content once and can rapidly present it across every other platform or device a customer might be using to explore your brand.

Your ability to reduce the amount of time and effort required to create omnichannel content also allows your brand to scale with greater ease. Instead of relying on a static system, your entire marketing team suddenly becomes more agile and can meet every customer wherever they are on their customer journey. You can ensure that your content is seamless and uniform regardless of the device or platform being used to interact with your brand.

2. Your Web Developers Have More Freedom for Creativity

Many people like small business owners understand the need for a strong website but do not have the knowledge or ability to develop something on their own. This CMS simplifies the process and allows you to build something great without those skills. However, that same ease-of-use comes with proprietary development restrictions that will prevent you from exploring new ways to improve your content.

The headless CMS system removes the shackles restraining your web development team. They can develop with any type of platform or integration in mind. After they are finished with their project, they simply connect their code to the new channel via a webhook, which uses an HTTP request to call for the information from the repository.

Being able to program for any type of channel gives you the ultimate freedom to explore your options when it comes to business marketing. The downside is that a headless CMS system expects that you and your team fully understand how to create and implement your own code as the traditional assistive tools will not be available. This makes it more ideal for those who know to make all of the moving parts work in harmony.

3. A Headless CMS Will Future Proof Your Business

That same freedom of development discussed above is what will ensure that your brand is future-proof. New platforms and technologies are being developed all the time, which allow marketers to better create engaging content and connect with new audiences. Because the headless CMS system works through an API, you'll be able to hook into any new platform with ease.

What's more, is that content created in a headless CMS requires minimal to no changes to implement within new channels. Your creations will remain evergreen and save you time and money in the long term.

4. Improved Workflows Among Teams

Because a headless CMS system removes the confines and restrictions you might typically face, it allows for greater collaboration between the various departments of your marketing team. It no longer takes additional effort to recreate, modify, or repurpose content, but instead allows teams to explore new opportunities to strategize and deploy high-quality content to greater effect.

Furthermore, these teams will be able to work within the same system. This makes it much easier for your experts to view, interact with, and collaborate on new projects. Your creative materials are no longer confined to separate repositories with unique restrictions but can be rapidly shared and modified by whoever is interacting with them.

5. Your Content is Better Secured and Protected

Because the repository and the publishing platform are separated, your content is better secured and protected than ever. When these two items are connected, it means that when something negatively impacts one side, it is guaranteed to have an impact on the other. For example, if your CMS application is experiencing technical difficulties, it will have no impact on how your content is presented through connected web applications.

Likewise, utilizing a headless CMS means that your company is the only point of access for the original content source. This means that you have full authority and control to implement any security procedures and protocols necessary to protect your data. This is compared to relying on an external CMS system that sets its own requirements as to what protocols may or may not be set in place to put your content online.

Which CMS Should My Company Use?

While the benefits of utilizing a headless CMS are abundant, it may not be what your company needs right now. You also may not have the proper resources to truly take advantage of what a headless CMS offers over the monolithic, standard model.

You may want to stick with the standard CMS system if:

• You’re a small brand that utilizes a small website with basic features offered by a template
• You don’t have the resources necessary to leverage the benefits of a headless CMS
• You’d rather utilize a selection of pre-built templates
• You want to have access to community support within the platform

However, you’ll want to switch to the headless CMS system if:

• You need to repurpose content across multiple channels in addition to your website
• You need to deliver content to multiple platforms including your website, iOS, and Android from the same backend
• You have plans to start scaling your brand and your content creation efforts
• You want to give your developers more freedom in how they choose to present content
• You want more control over the security of your content

Remember, there is also an in-between with the decoupled CMS if you find yourself unsure of which solution best aligns with your marketing plans. If you plan for your website to be the core focus of your efforts but want to explore some additional API offerings, you can look into systems now offered by WordPress or Drupal.

Conclusion - Headless CMS for Marketers is the Way of the Future

With the growing demand for solutions that can ease the process of multichannel marketing, the headless CMS is the clear winner for creating and distributing your content. The impact is so apparent that sites like WordPress that previously offered a monolithic CMS now offered a decoupled solution that allows users to integrate with new APIs.

Instead of restricting yourself to the rules of your website, developers will be able to write and create code that can rapidly be repurposed to other existing platforms. It also future-proofs your content creation efforts by providing the open solution you need to integrate with future tools that are yet to exist or yet to be fully realized. This allows your brand to be agile and rapidly scale to accommodate new technologies as they become available and necessary for a successful marketing strategy.

It's also an effective way to ensure that the various arms of your marketing efforts promote brand consistency across the board. Because you can push your content to multiple sources from one repository, your teams will be able to better coordinate, communicate, and develop strategies. It's that much easier to ensure your marketing efforts single harmoniously without sacrificing quality on any channel.

If you're ready to grow your brand and want to prepare your business for an all-encompassing digital future, it might be time to start exploring headless CMS options for your content creation and content delivery needs.

The rise of artificial intelligence and AI tools now allow virtually every person to create media and content without training or skills. With these smart, automated technologies, you can put together content that contends with the most talented artists and content creators on the internet.

Virtually every industry is continuously looking for new ways to integrate and utilize artificial intelligence to work more efficiently and provide more engaging experiences. First-pass copy editing can now be done automatically. The right software can auto-correct images and videos for sharper, clearer images.

As a marketer or business owner, this enables you to take complete control over your branding, content creation, and ad creation. Below, we're going to list out nine cutting-edge AI tools for media creation that can elevate your game and optimize your team's production.

AI Tools for Writing

1. Quillbot

Do you find yourself coming up with great thoughts for your written material, but can't come up with the best way to say it? Quillbot is an AI-driven writing tool that reads your on-page text and automatically paraphrases it for more concise reading. This is invaluable for those who wish to feature on pieces, but do not write on a regular basis. It can also help any writer by analyzing the body of text and changing lines to avoid repetition.

The key component of Quillbot is its AI-powered thesaurus. The tool features a Synonymsā  gauge that you can adjust to varying degrees. By leaving this gauge off, the tool will look for ways to rearrange the words as-is to read in a way that's closer to natural speaking. As you move the gauge forward, the AI will look for opportunities to replace words for found synonyms. Turning this feature all the way up will prompt it to replace a variety of words and phrases throughout the text.

In addition to the synonym tool, Quillbot also provides you with a built-in grammar checker. This is one of the longest-standing forms of AI as it automatically detects errors in grammar and punctuation so that you can patch your writing up on the fly.

Finally, Quillbot offers different writing modes that will affect what types of writing suggestions the AI will offer. For example, you can set the tool to Formal mode for assistance in ensuring your content appears sophisticated and professional. It currently offers the following modes:

• Standard
• Fluency
• Creative
• Formal
• Shorten
• Expand

Only the Standard and Fluency modes are available to free users. Free members can paraphrase up to 700 characters at a time and can utilize extensions for both Google Chrome and Google Docs. There is a premium membership that will cost you $14.95 monthly or $79.95 annually ($6.67/month value). This gives you full access to the platform including its new Citation Generator tool that's still in beta.

2. Articoolo

Articoolo is one of many new AI-driven writing assistants that can generate fresh, original content for you to use in seconds. While it won't deliver you a full, completed article, its ability to extract valuable material and sentiments instantly can drastically reduce the amount of time it takes for a writer to create engaging content.

It works by asking you to enter your topic. Similar to search engine logic, the AI will understand your query and begin to pull facts, quotes, and sentiments that are relevant to the topic you entered. The information it pulls is also complete with high-volume, relevant keywords that will help to make your content more SEO-friendly. It then continues to search for more content related to its findings before producing usable text. Finally, it will automatically check the content rendered for accuracy and readability.

This tool effectively eliminates the issues of both writer's block and the time it takes to research topics. The content it provides you is checked for plagiarism violations and only leaves you with material that you can safely use. This will save you hours of labor and numerous dollars you'd otherwise spend to see the job done properly. The latest addition to the software even helps you find images to supplement your text.

Articoolo is currently only available to paid members. You can currently pay-per-use or subscribe monthly for the following benefits:

Monthly

• $29 per month – 30 articles
• $49 per month – 100 articles
• $99 per month – 250 articles

Pay-Per-Use

• $19 – 10 Articles
• $75 – 50 Articles
• $99 – 100 Articles

3. Grammarly

Grammarly is a staple tool for many content writers and for great reason. It offers a healthy portion of its features to users for free to assist in creating better content across the internet.

Grammarly is a writing assistant that automatically checks your written content for errors in real-time. It regularly scans for punctuation issues and grammar errors. However, it also checks for more in-depth issues such as wordiness, clarity, repetition, and tone. It automatically compares your content to other high-quality content on the internet and issues a real-time score for the text on the page. A score of 100 indicates that your content is free of errors and of high quality.

While reading your content, the AI will inform you of how it interprets your tone. It can actually determine if you're writing a professional article based on the material provided and let you know if your tone sounds shaky or unconfident. Other tones it can identify are playful, humorous, or casual. If you want to shift your tone to be more consistent in one direction, Grammarly will automatically provide suggestions that change the way your content reads.

One of the most useful aspects of Grammarly is that you can integrate it into a wide variety of software that you already use. The AI tool can be integrated into Google Chrome, Google Docs, Slack, Facebook Messenger, Gmail, and various social media platforms. By turning your free plugin on, Grammarly will stay on top of any text you enter at any time.

While the basic suggestions are available to anyone who downloads, advanced suggestions and analytics are only available to paid members. You can get Grammarly Premium for one user at $12 per month. Grammarly Business will cost you $12.50 per month per member and will allow you to share writing suggestions across a team of up to 149 people.

AI Tools for Podcasting

4. Auphonic

Auphonic makes the process of recording, producing, and transcribing any audio recording swift and simple. The platform starts out free and allows you to record and process up to two hours of audio. It offers additional paid plans that range from $11 to $99 per month based on the hours of recording you need to save and edit.

Recording audio is a tricky process, especially for those who are unaware of what can impact the quality of the file. Auphonic largely eliminates these issues by using AI-driven technology that can intelligently identify the timestamps where peaking occurs and automatically level the audio balance between speakers and any additional sound effects. It can also identify any unwanted noise such as hissing or humming and filter it out entirely.

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While an automated tool won't be a cure-all when it comes to a low-quality recording, it does an excellent job of alleviating issues that require time, expertise, and precision to remedy. It can accept a wide variety of audio files including MP3, MP4, FLAC, and more.

Even more impressively, the software features an automated speech recognition tool that can successfully identify up to eighty unique spoken languages and transcribe the entire podcast in a matter of minutes. This saves you the hassle of paying an individual to listen to your entire recording and transcribe it manually. You can produce a beautiful transcript that provides more accessible content engagement for all of your users regardless of how they prefer to experience it.

AI Tools for Image and Video

5. Synthesia

Synthesia is one of the most popular AI video creation and editing tools that exist. There was a time where recording and creating video content seemed to be a daunting and wildly expensive task. Today, many of us carry mobile devices that feature high-quality recording equipment capable of forming the foundation for quality video content.

Synthesia even further simplifies the process by allowing you to create full-length videos from a script alone. The AI will read through your script and present it in a video format using a synthetic or real voice of your choosing. You can select from a variety of avatars based on real human beings to represent your team. You can also create and upload custom avatars based on your appearance.

The avatar then reads and presents your scripts in a lifelike appearance that's indistinguishable from a real actor. The audio portion supports up to 57 worldwide languages in both female and male voice settings. With the Enterprise plan, you can even record your voice for use in any of your videos. Choose a custom background, select an audio recording as background music, add some complementary images, and your brand-new video is ready to go in no time at all.

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Synthesia offers only two plans. A personal plan is $30 per month and gives you up to 10 video credits per month along with customization features, pre-built templates, and the ability to import PowerPoints. There is a Corporate-level plan that uses custom pricing and offers all of the personal features plus priority support, additional customizations, and premium services.

6. Raw Shorts

Raw Shorts is another AI-driven platform that allows you to create animated videos from your text. Its smart processing tools will read through your entire script, identify key focal points and topics, and draw up a storyboard based on its findings. It then will begin a search for free, stock media assets and place them throughout the storyboard in the relevant places. Finally, it uses a pre-recorded voice setting to narrate your presentation.

With the bulk of the work completed, you can then work with the first draft of your video to customize elements with the intuitive drag-and-drop editor. No video or audio editing knowledge is necessary. With your plan, you'll have access to an enormous free content library that allows you to add a variety of colorful images or videos to your animated presentation.

If using the AI video maker isn't what you need, you can also begin with a variety of pre-built video templates to get you started. Simply plug your script into the template, look for some relevant assets in the library, and you'll have a video to tell your story in a fraction of the time it would take to create and produce a video from scratch.

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Raw Shorts offers a free trial that gives you 5 non-premium exports limited to 480p resolution. To gain 1080p HD for your videos, you'll need to upgrade to the Essential plan at $39 per month. This will grant you 25 exports, third-party transfer rights, and 10 licensed clips per month. Finally, the Business plan at $59 per month gives you 50 videos and 20 licensed clips per month.

7. Adobe Premiere Pro

It should be no surprise that an Adobe product makes a list of high-quality video and photo editing software. Adobe Premiere Pro is one of the most widely used and accepted AI tools for creating and exporting high-quality videos and stories. Premiere is such a high-quality product due to its versatility for both beginners and veteran video editors alike.

Premiere is unlike the script-reading software mentioned above and instead focuses on providing powerful tools for raw video editing. It utilizes AI technology to automatically assist with common edits such as color correction, reframing, and object removal. It can also automatically scan the scene and detect opportunities to add cuts when appropriate. The premiere will handle the tasks for you with your approval.

The tool simplifies all aspects of video editing including audio effects, photo transformation, scene morphing, and adding powerful scene effects with the touch of a button. There is a reason that Adobe Premiere Pro is considered the industry standard for creating short films, YouTube videos, social media stories, and much more. While some features may require a bit of experience to get the hang of, Adobe offers comprehensive and easy-to-follow tutorials so that you can get the most out of the media creation tool.

You can benefit from a free trial, but all implementations of Adobe Premiere Pro require a paid membership. Its pricing is highly customized and offers plans for individuals, businesses, and educators. A basic Premiere Pro plan for an individual will run you $20.99 per month. However, you can get the entire Creative Cloud including Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Premiere Pro, and Acrobat for $52.99 per month.

8. Designs.AI

Designs.AI is a multi-use platform that enables the creation of logos, mockups, videos, social media graphics, and voiceovers. It boasts the ability to create high-quality banners or logos for your company or brand in just two minutes with no expertise.

It utilizes an intuitive, drag-and-drop editor where you can drag shapes, colors, fonts, and assets to create image and video files. You can also utilize the AI tool by providing it with information relevant to your brand. It then takes just a few seconds to create a completely unique logo that fits the tone of your company. If you're unsatisfied with the first draft, you can continue using the editor to play around with colors and icons until you get things to where you like them. You can use this process to create an entire folder of assets to use as you'd like around the web.

It also features tools similar to the ones mentioned above such as an automated video maker from text scripts and an automated speechmaker. You can translate your script to over 20 languages, adjust the pitch to match your tone, and add the voice to any of your PowerPoint or video presentations.

Designs.AI gives access to basic tools with a free trial, but you'll need to pay $29 per month for permanent access to the basic tools a marketer needs. There is also a professional plan at $69 per month that gives an entire team full access to highly-advanced editing tools that you can use to create high-quality content for your entire brand at the highest level.

9. KinetiX

KinetiX is an impressive tool that promises to convert your content into 3D animated videos. Though the platform is still technically in beta, you're free to try it for yourself at any time. You can review their guides to learn how to film your content in a way that produces optimal results.

The AI creates and edits your material using tools like Blender and aya to create high-quality, lifelike animations. You upload your file to the platform, optimize your output by instructing the AI on what you want for your animation, and allow the tool to perform the work. The process can take up to 30 minutes, but the result will leave you with a fully-animated 3D character that can help tell your story and share your content in a new, dynamic fashion.

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The Starter package allows you to try things out by offering one minute of 3D extraction for personal use only. If you want to use it for commercial use, as most of you reading likely will be, you'll need to upgrade to the Creative Plan at 15ā‚¬ (roughly $17.50) per month.

These AI Tools for Media Creation Will Change the Way You Do Business

It was a slow beginning for artificial intelligence, but AI tools now pervade nearly every aspect of everything we want to accomplish. Its impact on the creative world is profound as it now enables those who are less educated or less artistically inclined to create beautiful, dynamic forms of media with minimal input or time investment.

Personal users and businesses alike can now leverage the power of technology to make use of our ideas as input and output high-quality images, videos, or audio files in seconds. While the output might not be our final product in some cases, having a well-painted canvas to work from can save us countless hours of labor and save us even more in monthly spending.

Video, audio, and image editing experts can also benefit from the AI tools by allowing them to handle routine, laborious tasks while giving you more opportunities to flex your creative muscles. This leaves you with better quality media to sell your brand while spending only a fraction of your usual time to do so.

Every successful marketing campaign is driven by real-time data and analysis. However, it quickly can become a nightmare to track your data across a variety of accounts, platforms, and tools employed by your business or marketing agency.

Microsoft's Power BI application promises to alleviate this exact issue and simplify the process of marketing data collection and reporting. By downloading their free application, you can start integrating all of your information sources in one place for either you, a small team, or your entire organization.

What is Power BI?

Power BI is a collection and visualization software that allows you to integrate and gather data from a variety of local and online sources to create robust and dynamic reports. The software provides users with the ability to import analytics from roughly 150 unique data sources to create clear visualizations and powerful insights to guide your business activity.

While many of these sources are integral to a successful marketing campaign, it can be difficult for the untrained individual to necessarily make sense of the figures available. When you use Power BI, you can create a central goal for your report, draw in data from the relevant sources, and outline them in a way that allows for a clear understanding for both your team and your clients.

Power BI exists across three different services including the desktop application (free for all Windows users), the cloud service (for paid members only), and the mobile application for reviewing reports on the go. The desktop application is all you truly need for creating new reports, but the cloud service allows you to quickly share your projects with everyone else in your network.

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For paid plans, the cloud service will run you $9.99/month and grant you 10GB of storage and up to eight data source refreshes per day. Their Premium plan costs $20.00/month per user, grants 100TB of shared storage, 48 refreshes per day, and offers additional modeling and visualization tools including advanced AI and dataflows. Finally, Microsoft offers an enterprise-level plan at $4,995/month for the entire organization. You get access tool on the platform, maximum benefits, and the ability to share seamlessly across your entire team. You can learn more about pricing and benefits here.

Finally, Power BI can draw in data for your reports from a variety of sources including:

• Microsoft Excel
• PDF, CSV, Text
• IBM Product Suite
• Azure
• Amazon Redshift
• Salesforce Products
• Google Analytics
• Adobe Analytics
• LinkedIn
• Twilio
• Quickbooks
• Zendesk
• Zoho
• And much more (nearly 150 sources in total)

How Can I Use Power BI?

Getting started with Power BI is effortless. Simply head over to this link and click the “Download Free” button. On newer Windows machines, this will provide a notice asking you if you would like to open the Microsoft Store on your desktop. Do so, then click to download the application.

If you wish to start out with a paid membership or upgrade your existing plan, you’ll need to navigate to the pricing link given above in the previous section. Click “Buy Now” and follow the steps on the screen to purchase your monthly subscription. You will require a Power BI account, which can quickly be created so long as you have an existing email associated with a Microsoft account. A Microsoft account is free and can be used to log in to a variety of applications and services both locally and online.

After you download the desktop application, you’re ready to get moving. Additional features may or may not be available depending upon your active monthly plan. There is currently no free trial available to test out the additional features only offered with paid subscriptions.

How to Create Marketing Reports with Power BI?

Microsoft's Power BI is relatively straightforward, so let's dive in and know the critical steps to creating marketing reports using Power BI.

Let's begin with how to import data in Power BI:

1. How to Import Data in Power BI

With Power BI installed and open on your computer, you should have your first untitled blank report open by default. The screen should appear something like this:

To get started, you will need to import data from at least one source. You can select from one of the pictured sources or click on “Get data from another source.” For future reference, you can also import additional data by clicking on “Get data” in the top menu pictured below:

After clicking this button, you’ll receive a list of common data sources, but can access more by clicking “more.” This will provide you with the full list of possible services you can connect with Power BI for your reports. You only need to connect one source but have the ability to connect as many as you would like.

2. Create and Manage Relationships Between Data

After you integrate the data for your report into Power BI, you need to establish relationships between data points. These relationships form the basis of how you want to model your data for presentation. You can do this in one of two ways. The first is to select the “Modeling” tab from the top menu. From there, you can select “Manage Relationships” to start pairing related metrics. You can also quickly create new columns and tables to perform automated calculations based on the data you select.

The second is to select the Model button from the left-side menu. This looks like three modules with lines running through to indicate their connection.

In this menu, you can verify that the characteristic attributed to the metric is correct and easily connect or disconnect two or more properties. To create a relationship, drag and any fields you want to connect between two adjacent tables. To delete relationships, right-click and select “Delete.”

Power BI offers many tools and options for modeling your data, which you can learn more about by taking Microsoft's free, quick training course here. The entire module takes roughly an hour and provides examples and practice problems to verify your knowledge of the platform. Ensuring that you understand how to model your data appropriately is the foundation for creating dynamic and impressive reports for your team and clients. There are few more Power BI courses available online to exile your career in Power BI as a marketer.

3. Choose a Visualization for Your Data

A visualization option is an image or graph that takes your data, the relationships, and presents it in an easily digestible manner for your audience. Examples of visualization options include tables, pie charts, bar graphs, line charts, or waterfall charts. You can find the list of visualizations within one of the collapsible menus on the right side of the screen.

You can get access to additional visualizations with paid plans. Users can also import custom visualization files from trusted developers. If you want to learn more about how you can start creating your own visuals for Power BI, check out this tutorial from Microsoft here.

4. Further Testing and Customization

After importing your data, establishing relationships, implementing visualizations, and adding notes, you can make additional customizations to finalize your report. Head over to the “View” tab to select from a variety of colorful themes that can enhance and personalize your presentation. You can even test how your reports view on mobile devices to ensure that your team or clients receive the best experience no matter where they interact with your report.

This menu also allows you to create custom filters and bookmarks that users can interact with as they move through your report. This can highly key data points that you want to stand out and help users more readily find the metrics that are most pertinent to their needs.

The “Insert” tab also features customization options that may prove useful in certain scenarios. From here, you can add text boxes, create custom buttons to trigger events or change pages, or add images to augment your visualizations. There is also a “Smart Narrative” option that utilizes AI technology to automatically write summaries for you based on the data in a selected visual.

5. Exporting Your Data

When your report is ready to share, you can just as easily export your data as you imported it. Simply move over to “File” and select “Export” from the list of options. You can save your custom report as either a Power BI file to be used exclusively in this application or as a general PDF that can be viewed with a variety of software.

If you’re on a cloud-based plan and wish to share your work with your team, you can select “Publish” to push your report to Power BI services. Any users that operate in the same workspace will be able to discover and view any new reports that come from your desktop.

Use Cases for Power BI in Marketing

Now that we've covered the basics of how to create a customized report in Power BI, let's consider how this tool can augment and improve our marketing services.

As we know, the work of a marketer in 2021 is powered by and driven by automation and analytics. If you research any guides or tutorials on how to improve your SEO, PPC campaigns, enhance your website, and so on, you'll be pointed to a wide variety of analytics tools and software that automatically track user activity and gather data in real-time. As you may have noticed, nearly all of these resources are featured as possible connectors within Power BI. As a result, you'll have an easy time creating reports for the following:

Track Your ROI for Keywords and Organic Search

Google Analytics houses much of the data that is relevant to your SEO and organic search campaigns. You can track important data such as your ranked keywords, daily web traffic, search volume, page clicks, and much more. By integrating your Google Analytics data into Power BI, you can quickly compile select data points into tables and graphs to create beautiful, dynamic reports.

Not only will this simplify the process of choosing which data to analyze for your team, but your personalized reports will make your agency look like you're on top of the game when presenting to your clients. You no longer need to worry about scrambling to gather or access the relevant data, as you can save models as templates and reuse them for monthly reporting.

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Compare Results for Paid Advertising Campaigns

Likewise, you can integrate a variety of online services into Power BI that you may be using to create PPC campaigns and launch new landing pages. Your Power BI reports can focus on a variety of focal points. This could include the numbers behind your A/B testing to help you push for a specific creative or page variation or your average ROI between an existing campaign and past campaigns.

Because there is no limit to the number of connectors you can have in place for a given report, you could even create a report that compares the ROI for organic marketing efforts versus paid ones. These types of reports can provide valuable insights such as which strategies deserve more focus and get results. However, it can also highlight problem areas that require more attention. Without the ability to gather these metrics in one easy-to-read visualization, even the best marketing team can fall guilty of letting these issues spiral before they become unmanageable.

Be Better Prepared for Client Presentations

No matter how well your team prepares for a weekly or monthly presentation with your clients, their minds inevitably operate on a different wavelength than your team. As a result, you find yourself dealing with awkward moments when a question arises that you don't have the answer to. You know you have the analytics available, but it takes time to sort and process the data to come up with an expert response.

By integrating all of your data into Power BI and modeling the relationships upfront, you can more readily sort through your client's analytics in a dynamic manner. You won't need to have your team dedicate as much time understanding the data as your new reporting software has already completed that work for you. As a result, you can provide more valuable insights than normal in real-time. This helps your team appear one step ahead and allows you to tackle problems with your clients in real-time and formulate a game plan for the days and weeks ahead.

Sell Clients on Additional Services

Marketing analytics does not only benefit active services but can be used as case studies to reinforce your sales efforts. When you're able to connect analytics regarding a client's organic or paid marketing efforts, you can compare it to other reports you have for clients that are receiving improved results with the additional services you're attempting to sell.

Power BI makes it easy for you to delete relationships and remove metrics that might reveal private or sensitive data that would harm the privacy of your customers. Utilize the tools available to compare the relevant metrics, and allow the numbers to make the argument of how certain tools, strategies, or services might get the desired results at an additional expense. This is a powerful way of converting both existing customers and prospective clients.

Power BI for Marketers - Improve Your Reporting Efforts!

All of your agency's marketing efforts are driven by analytics and reporting tools. It's not enough to simply gather a list of figures, but you need to ensure that your reports outline the data in a manner that guides your team's strategy. Power BI offers a complete package solution by allowing you to integrate nearly 150 unique data sources that your marketing team is already using to get the job done.

Even with the free plan, your connected data sources will refresh up to a minimum of eight times per day, granting you more than enough leeway to ensure that your reporting is always correct and up-to-date. If you're a much larger business that demands even more data and reporting options for a wide array of clients, you can share Power BI between several users on your team for a slightly upgraded fee per person.

With zero cost to entry and how simple it is to connect your data, there's no reason not to experiment with Power BI and determine if it's a good fit. However, because this is a Microsoft product, it will only really be of benefit to teams using PCs. Don't worry if you're a Mac family, as there are a variety of alternatives available online if Power BI doesn't suit all of your marketing needs.

If you work in marketing or digital sales, you need to utilize marketing funnels. It is an entirely automated process that effectively functions as an around-the-clock sales device for your agency or business. The funnel provides carefully curated content that nurtures your prospects as opposed to cold selling.

Because the sales funnel is now such a staple, experts provide us with numerous options to more efficiently create, test, and manage our funnels. Here's a list of 9 AI marketing funnel tools that will revolutionize the way you market your brand online.

1. DashClicks

DashClicks is a SaaS (software as a service) platform that promises a complete package of solutions for digital marketing agencies. Included in this is a complete CRM for tracking your leads, deals, and existing customers. You can also use software applications included in every subscription to quickly build websites and landing pages with their drag-and-drop web builder.

A huge benefit that DashClicks offers over other platforms is its Inbound software application that offers integration with other marketing platforms including:

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

Even if you prefer to utilize one of these other platforms for your initial funnel build, DashClicks allows you to instantly integrate your campaigns from any of these platforms. After integrating your sales funnel, you'll be able to automatically create new contacts from leads, create new deals from every interaction, and create automated actions such as email follow-ups depending on where the contact lies within your sales pipeline.

DashClicks offers three tiers of paid plans, but you can access the basics you need for your new funnel campaign with the free plan. This includes 500 contact records with a data import utility, one Inbound campaign with built-in reporting and lead freshness tracking, analytics tools, a customized dashboard with a white-labeled domain, and much more. Their paid plans range from $97/month for their Pro plan to $597/month for their highest-tier plan.

Image Source: DashClicks Leads CRM Dashboard

The major benefit of this platform is your ability to get all of the automated tools you need to enhance your funnel performance all within one account under one subscription. In addition to these marketing funnel tools, you'll get everything an agency could ever need including a form builder, 50-250GB of file storage, reputation management tools, dedicated support, and much more. They even provide a dedicated fulfillment store including website page creation and content marketing at additional costs, so that you can rely on a team of experts to build your new sales funnel for you.

2. SendPulse

SendPulse is a multi-channel marketing automation platform that optimizes communication with customers through email, SMS, web push, and messenger bots. SendPulse combines these channels to improve customer reach and engagement. Pricing starts at $6.40/month for a subscription plan. Also, you can pay for each email separately at a rate of $32 per 10,000 emails on a pay-as-you-go plan. There’s also a full featured 7-day free trial.

The free plan of SendPulse offers an opportunity for smaller businesses to start with their marketing and automation or to test out the platform’s basic functionalities before subscribing. Features include:

• Sending 15,000 emails to 500 subscribers each month.
• Basic automation with 5 flows and 1 event.
• 3 chatbots with 10,000 messages per month.
• CRM with 5 users, 2 sales pipelines and 2 boards.
• Intuitive visual builders for emails, websites, forms and workflows.
• 1 website or bio link page.
• Pop-ups.
• Unlimited web-push notifications for 10,000 subscribers.
• Sending 12,000 transactional emails per month.
• Template libraries for emails, websites, forms and workflows.
• Detailed statistics reports and analytics.

However, even if SendPulse's free plan generously allows for a good number of emails, bots and subscriber count, users are limited in their ability to add more without upgrading their plan. Additionally, many advanced premium features are not included which may limit marketing strategies.

SendPulse’s paid platform offers far more extensive features and capabilities. Paying users can enjoy the advantages of multi-channel marketing with unlimited numbers of emails and higher subscriber limits. The platform also provides access to advanced marketing automation, where users can automate marketing campaigns across multiple channels based on user behavior. Additionally, there’s the opportunity to use advanced segmentation, behavioral variables and event tracking for improved personalization of marketing efforts. This robust nature of the SendPulse paid platform makes it a reliable tool for growing businesses and marketing teams to communicate and engage with their customers more effectively.

3. ClickFunnels

ClickFunnels is one of the most popular sales funnel management tools among marketers and for great reason. This is a sales platform dedicated exclusively to building beautiful landing pages, collecting and tracking new signups, and seamlessly integrating payment solutions for immediate transactions.

Within the ClickFunnels platform, someone with zero HTML or CSS knowledge can quickly create multi-step sales marketing funnels that automatically walk prospects through the sales process. You can begin building from a variety of pre-existing templates or start from a completely blank page for full personalization. It also provides the option to create pop-ups with varying triggers, built-in timers, email marketing followup, and even SMS messaging with an additional integration.

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The basic ClickFunnels plan begins at $97/month and includes an unlimited contact book with the ability to create up to twenty unique marketing funnels. They offer two additional plans at $297/month and $2,497/month that offer unlimited campaigns, unlimited website pages, and email. The most expensive plan will also get you access to twenty-seven unique payment integrations, and the ability to use up to twenty-seven custom domains.

ClickFunnels also offers the powerful benefit of including built-in A/B testing tools, which allow you to test out new content and features within the same sales funnel. You can automatically pivot traffic to the best-performing pages and make optimizations as you go.

Finally, the platform offers all users access to support options and training tools. You can quickly access a library of resources for any particular issue you're facing with your sales funnel. Alternatively, you can quickly connect to a live chat and speak with an agent that will walk you through the solution for your sales funnel issues.

4. Systeme.io

Systeme.io is a powerful choice for marketing funnels due to the number of features being offered for no cost. Their free plan grants you the ability to create three sales funnels with up to ten total steps, a blog, a membership site, and much more. You'll gain the ability to send unlimited emails, unlimited file storage space, and the ability to add up to 2,000 contacts.

Systeme's free plan also grants you the following features, but limits them to just 1 per item:

• Automation Rules
• Workflows
• Tags
• Email Campaigns
• 1-Click Upsells
• A/B Tests
• Order Bumps
• Custom Domains

If you're looking to explore different options for your marketing funnels, Systeme.io offers all of the essentials to get started and then some. If you require a larger contact list or wish to create even more marketing funnels with these AI tools, you can upgrade to a paid plan which ranges from $27/month to $97/month. The most expensive plan grants you 15,000 contacts total as well as unlimited access to all other features.

In addition to the no limits offered with the highest-tier plan, you can migrate existing sales funnels into the Systeme.io platform. Finally, a team representative will meet with you one-on-one to coach you through all of the features and tools available to ensure that your marketing funnels are a success.

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While that covers the core features offered for marketing funnels, Systeme offers more with your membership plan including a drag-and-drop website builder that requires no coding knowledge. Rather than pay for additional memberships from other platforms, you can quickly create a beautiful website for your business or agency in addition to your next sales funnel. Within this membership site, you can create online courses for your members and easily regulate webpage access by membership tier.

5. HubSpot's Marketing Hub

HubSpot is one of the largest platforms available for marketing, sales, and customer service. It offers a vast number of free tools for anyone that signs up and furthers those benefits for subscribers. Rather than simply scaling membership fees behind certain limits, HubSpot tailors each of its plans to better suit the size and scope of a business with its Starter, Professional, and Enterprise plans. These range from $45/month to $3,200/month for large-scale operations.

Before we look at the paid plans, we'll go over the vast offerings you can get access to at no cost at all. Simply sign up for a free membership and gain access to the following:

• Create up to 20 landing pages
• 2,000 email sends per month
• Simple website audiences for any 2 supported integrations
• Create standalone, pop-up, embedded, and collected forms
• Segment submissions into 5 active lists or 1,000 static lists
• 1 automated form follow-up email
• 10 custom properties
• Basic live chat and chatbot
• Ad retargeting
• Ability to work through the HubSpot mobile app

This free membership grants marketers access to several new tools generally not offered by platforms without a monthly subscription. The caveat is that nearly all of these features will come with HubSpot branding. You cannot customize your branding or place your landing pages on a custom domain. Nevertheless, it's great for your basic needs and allows you to test out the platform with zero investment.

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If you're ready to upgrade and take ownership of your marketing funnels, you can do so with their Starter plan. You'll gain five times the number of contacts, access to more lists, reporting dashboard, email reply tracking, three automated emails, and 1,000 custom properties.

The biggest selling point for HubSpot is the ability to not only create and manage sales funnels, but to manage all other aspects of your business including sales, operations, and customer service all from one platform. The company takes the approach of offering each Hub as a separate membership so that business owners can select only the services they need to get the job done.

Its Sales Hub also starts at $45/month and can take the leads gained from your landing pages and begin the process of auto-creating contacts from submissions and assigning them to a sales representative and their own respective deal in a sales pipeline. Additional subscriptions will also grant you the ability to create and automate tasks, integrate payments, create custom goals, host videos and documents, and much more. While the vast array of tools available is impressive, some platforms offer similar tools for less of a cost overall.

6. Wishpond

Wishpond is an increasingly popular platform that focuses primarily on digital advertising, landing pages, and marketing funnel creation. While it does offer some basic features through its free version, those members will be limited to just 200 leads total, which doesn't amount to very much even for a smaller-sized business.

Its paid memberships range from $44/month to $199/month with the ability to expand your total lead contact list to one million upon request. That paid membership will grant you access to all of the essential tools you need to get the job done. This includes a drag-and-drop web builder for landing page creation, an online form builder for easy lead collection, email marketing, automated follow-ups, payment integration, and appointment scheduling.

Wishpond is also built for integration with Shopify stores, making it an excellent solution for eCommerce businesses. Its built-in reporting software not only tracks the quality of leads but provides day-to-day breakdowns of order activity. You'll also be able to set up additional email and SMS triggers based upon rules set by you and your team when actions are taken on your landing pages or website.

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While Wishpond offers the core features you need for marketing funnels and presents them well, its main drawback is that other platforms offer these same features for less. Platforms asking for more generally offer more core features to support your campaigns. In addition to this, there is currently no way to manage or post from social accounts directly from the platform.

If those issues aren't a dealbreaker, then Wishpond is a platform we can recommend due to its clean user interface and intuitive marketing funnel tools.

7. Instapage

Instapage is one that we would consider a direct competitor to ClickFunnels as both platforms are fully dedicated to the marketing funnel. However, while ClickFunnels provides a variety of solutions for different aspects of the sales process, Instapage promises a more in-depth landing page builder that might be more attractive to certain businesses.

For many business owners and marketers, the basics are all that's needed to get the job done. This is in no small part because your average business person will not know anything at all, or at least beyond the basics, of HTML or CSS coding and formatting. However, these simple web builders generally only feature very basic templates and lock their additional template library behind the most expensive plans.

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Instapage provides users with the best of both worlds by granting them the same ease of use as other building platforms, but without sacrificing the vast number of options. This includes hundreds of templates and layouts to work from, thousands of fonts, color schemes, and a built-in stock photo library. For those more technically inclined, Instapage still also supports third-party HTML, CSS, and Java.

Like ClickFunnels, you'll be able to conveniently A/B test various aspects of your funnel in real-time to get the most conversions possible. You'll be able to view reports of activity-based upon your content and make the necessary changes to improve underperforming areas.

If a dynamic builder is a high priority, then we highly recommend Instapage over other competitors. The downside is that you will still need to make use of other tools to manage other aspects of the marketing funnel and sales process. Instapage's primary concern is to help you deliver beautiful landing pages that perform and not much else.

8. Exceed.ai

Exceed.ai is a virtual sales assistant that can assist in qualifying the leads that you funnel through your landing pages. In the past, your team would need to contact every lead to determine which were worth pursuing. Now with the help of automated AI, you can eliminate that tedious work by having your leads speak with this sales assistant first.

The platform currently does not list public plans but instead shifts its pricing to the size and scope of your business. The AI is used for both marketing and sales and will communicate with all of your visitors as though it were a real person operating on your team.

This AI tool utilizes information provided by your company to assist in answering general questions from leads, gathering CRM data from your existing prospects, and providing a determination to the individual as to whether or not they qualify for the offer listed by your marketing funnel. For example, if the lead must meet a certain income quota to qualify for your offer, the AI chatbot will inform users that they do not qualify and eliminate the task from your plate entirely.

Image Source: Exceed.ai

Likewise, the AI assistant can continue the marketing and sales process by performing basic tasks such as scheduling appointments on your calendar. All of this collected data then appears in your CRM. If you are utilizing automation tools in conjunction, those leads and appointments will automatically be assigned to your sales representatives.

9. Akkio

Last, but not least, in our list of AI tools for successful marketing funnels is Akio - an automated conversion prediction software that converts your existing conversion data into an accurate prediction model.

Similar to Exceed's virtual assistant, Akkio provides what they call augmented lead scoring that compiles your historical marketing and deals data into a spreadsheet, and utilizes AI processing to predict future results. As with all predictive models, the tool becomes increasingly accurate as you feed it with more data to analyze. As a result, Akkio promises to combat the issue of customer churn, so that you can focus your resources on the leads that are most likely to convert.

Rather than dedicating staff to manually read spreadsheet after spreadsheet of lead data, experiment with Akkio at only $50/month to determine if this AI tool works for your marketing funnel needs. They also offer a free trial and a 20% discount for those who elect to pay in a lump sum annually.

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Utilize AI Tools for Successful Marketing Funnels

Artificial intelligence has forever changed the way we handle marketing and continues to improve with each passing day. The internet is filled with a variety of software and platforms that can assist businesses and marketing agencies with every aspect of funnel marketing from landing page construction, to lead qualification, and to appointment scheduling.

Each platform listed provides you with high-quality features you can use to get started with building your next marketing funnel. Depending on your needs and the tools currently used by your team, these recommendations can serve either all-in-one solutions or specific tools for hyper-focused purposes. Additional tools such as Facebook Ads, Exceed, and Akkio serve to augment the qualifying and nurturing aspects of your marketing funnel so that you can maximize your conversions and ROI.

Regardless of which tools your business chooses, it's important to note the power of the marketing funnel and how it can boost your profits. Investing in these tools will grant you a foundation for success that will serve you well into the future as AI continues to advance and change the way we advertise.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, eCommerce sales grew by a staggering 31.73% in 2020 from the previous year. While global circumstances were a direct influence, online sales continued to grow another 9.1% by Q2 of 2021. A Statista study also reported that nearly 10% of surveyed buyers made an online purchase for the first time during this period. In 2024. 37% people are making 3 to 5 online purchases each month.

While online shopping was already a growing business, it's grown apparent over the past two years that digital sales are a vital component of a successful business strategy. Whether you're new to the eCommerce world or looking to develop a lasting strategy, we've got you covered.

Below, we're going to outline tips you can use as a simple strategy to scale your eCommerce business now and start prepping for the busy 2021 holiday season.

How to Scale Your eCommerce Business for the Holidays?

Growing a business is a bit different from scaling a business. When you grow your business, you invest in the resources, so the business grows in size, but you don't necessarily make any profit.

On the flip side, when you scale a business, you boost revenue without adding any resources. The overheads remain the same in this case. For an eCommerce business, it's crucial to find ways to increase sales and revenue.

Here are some innovative ways to scale your eCommerce business, especially during the Christmas and holiday season ahead, without spending a fortune on your resources.

1. Work on Your Brand Reputation and Social Proof

Your reputation whether it be through direct interactions or through word-of-mouth references accounts for a lot. This applies to eCommerce sales just as much as it does to brick-and-mortar businesses. Nearly every consumer (92%, to be exact) looks for some form of nonpaid and nonsponsored referral or recommendation before committing to a purchase.

Consumers are fairly self-aware of what types of products and services they are interested in buying. You can even begin to identify the intent to purchase from the types of keywords used to locate web pages through search results. At this point, your average person is merely looking for the support and validation they need to confirm that committing to the transaction is the correct choice. Whether or not they know the person recommending the brand seems to be irrelevant.

If you're looking for a minimal to no-cost investment that can help you scale your eCommerce business, look into boosting your brand reputation online. This can be done through a variety of methods. You should begin by collecting and posting previous customer reviews and opinions throughout your website and eCommerce store. Having reviews listed on every product or service page about that particular item is effective in helping customers make a purchasing decision. They may not fully trust your self-advertising, but they'll trust another buyer that has no stake in your business success.

Another method, one that we highly recommend, is to ensure that your business is listed on online directories. Directories are sites such as Yelp, Google My Business, and Bing Places. Local listings should be a part of any local business strategy, but they can help your eCommerce store as well by boosting your site's SEO value.

Individuals surfing the web can discover businesses through these online directories by searching for specific keywords, products, or industries. Your listing shares your website, physical location (if you have one), contact details, hours, products, services, and much more. Search engines like Google will recognize this information and compare it to the information listed on your business website. As long as your directory profiles are up-to-date, optimized, and contain the same accurate information listed on your site, it can build trust and boost your SEO efforts. The better your SEO value, the higher ranked your eCommerce business will be in SERPs.

Stay on top of these reputation management tools and take action to respond to customer reviews both positive or negative. Interacting with customers indicates a proactive response from your business and demonstrates that you care about the buyer experience. Taking the time to understand and remedy issues expressed by customers can also help to influence these customers, or the directories, in removing negative reviews from your reputation. By cultivating a 5-star status for your store, more visitors will be inclined to become customers.

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2. Analyze Your Inbound Marketing Strategies

Many marketing agencies make a fortune off of promising X amount of new traffic to your eCommerce store. However, what many business owners fail to realize is that web traffic by itself is simply a vanity metric. If you receive one hundred new visitors, but all of them quickly bounce away from your site, then the metric amounts to very little. While earning that traffic is part of the equation, your inbound marketing needs to lead to conversions.

The best way to gain a critical analysis of your website, the user experience, and the content you provide is to utilize free tools such as Google Analytics and Google Search Console. These will help you to quickly analyze and identify any existing issues with your website. While improving your site to be fast and responsive on all platforms is on the technical side, Analytics will allow you to test out a variety of content on your core business pages and product pages.

Ensure that the type of content on the page matches the intent of the user. For example, someone arriving at your home page or about page is generally looking to gain information and learn about your brand but is not at the stage yet where they're committed to making a purchase. On the other hand, your product pages should supply key information about a product, but the viewer is much closer to adding an item to their cart and completing the transaction.

Google Analytics can also assist you in A/B testing any content that you share on a given page. This will allow you to freely experiment with alterations in headlines, call-to-actions, images, or video content, while naturally directing traffic to the better-performing version. This is key for scaling as it allows you to extract better results from the traffic you're receiving without wasting more of your advertising budget.

Finally, any strong SEO strategy should also involve the addition of a blog on your website. While blogs are common on general, informational websites, eCommerce stores make the mistake of thinking that a blog doesn't fit into their marketing plan. Blog articles further assist your customers in learning more about your industry, products, and services, and, ultimately, make your brand a trustworthy authority. At the same time, SEO-optimized blog content contributes to your keyword and overall search rankings, which effectively pulls more, better-qualified visitors to your eCommerce store.

Investing in SEO and content creation is one of the lowest-costing, most effective long-term marketing strategies for your business. Stay ahead of your eCommerce competitors by developing a strategy, continuously testing your content, and regularly updating your website with high-quality material.

3. Improve Customer Service with Live Chat Automation

A scaling, growing business equates to a higher volume of customers. A higher volume of customers means more questions, inquiries, and general issues that may arise. Because scaling involves growth with minimal additional costs or spending, you need solutions that can help you stem the inevitable tide of incoming customer service pressures.

That's where smart automation enters the scene. Chatbots are no longer a new invention either, and a large share of initial interactions you have with businesses online are handled by automation. While not all customers will be ready to settle for a robot as opposed to humans, many businesses already found a place for automation within their customer service plan.

The top use cases reported by business owners for chatbots included providing quick answers to inquiries at 37% while resolving complaints, problems, or questions was around 35%. Your chatbot is able to instantly greet customers, identify the nature of the inquiry, and direct the individual to the right resources. Many basic interactions can be resolved with a response pulled from a content library based upon frequently asked questions. Even if the customer still requires human interaction, the chatbot effectively funnels out simple problems and quells the effects of customer churn.

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Integrating advanced technology into your eCommerce strategies can drastically reshape operations. For example, using ai for dropshipping is revolutionizing how businesses manage backend processes such as inventory management, marketing automation, and customer service efficiency. By adopting AI technology, eCommerce entrepreneurs can anticipate demand peaks and trends by analyzing historical data patterns with precision. This not only streamlines order fulfillment but also enhances personalized customer experiences—a critical component in light of increasing competition each holiday season.

As you integrate these tools, don't overlook the importance of a well-functioning eCommerce platform. For example, hiring specialists such as Shopify or WooCommerce developers ensures your site delivers a seamless and engaging shopping experience. This includes customizing features to improve user interaction, streamlining the checkout process, and ensuring the platform runs smoothly during high-traffic periods.

However, while automation may help your task management, does it positively impact your customers? A study suggests that an overwhelming 84% of customers base their purchasing decisions on their takeaways with customer service. A great experience might sway their decision to buy from you, but a negative interaction will almost definitely push them away.

Be mindful of how you use chatbots and automation. While technology seems to be slowly taking over this department, many people still quickly reach frustration points when they don't receive human interaction. Use the chatbot to identify issues and direct the user where they need to be. Ensure that your sales and support teams are well-trained and prepared to deal with issues and that they respond swiftly. Finally, ensure that you have enough personnel on your team to deal with the rise of customer issues as you begin to scale.

4. Apply to Become a Google Trusted Store

While there are a variety of sites that support your brand's reputation with reviews, none might be more valuable than Google Customer Reviews. This is because customer reviews and testimonials can appear right beside the search result for these stores without needing to ever click on a link. Not all eCommerce stores receive this benefit, and you must apply to Google to see if you are eligible to receive this certification.

To do this, you will need to find the Google Merchant Programs located in the settings of Google Merchant Center. This is where you can find a variety of business shopping programs such as Shopping ads and Local inventory ads. Simply select Enable, and Google will provide you with a survey you will need to embed on your website.

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Users will then have the option to participate in the survey when they visit your website. These questions will help Google learn what customers think about the service you provide and determine whether or not your operation is up to standards. The entire process can take up to three months, but you'll be rewarded with a Google Customer Reviews badge that you can then post on your site as social proof.

From a marketing perspective, this badge serves a similar function to licenses or certifications granted by external organizations. Because the badge granter has no affiliation with or motivation to promote your brand, customers are more likely to trust the badge provider, and, in turn, your eCommerce store as a result. Compare this to an online store that has no badges, certifications, website security, and poor customer reviews.

If you are unsuccessful in obtaining your badge, you will then have an indication that aspects of your service must be improved. In either scenario, applying is completely free and the feedback you receive for your eCommerce store is invaluable.

5. Boost Your Reach with PPC Campaigns

While pay-per-click advertisements are not a zero-cost marketing solution, they do provide you with considerable control over your budget and what you spend per month. Facebook advertising generally provides the cheapest solutions, while granting a wide reach, but Google and Amazon shopping ads are also highly effective at targeting buyers that already plan to buy. Partnering with an Amazon PPC agency can further optimize your campaigns, ensuring you’re getting the most value out of your ad spend.

To get the most out of your PPC campaigns, you'll need to ensure that you're tracking shopping results in either Google Analytics or in the Facebook Ads center via the Pixel. This will notify you of where your buyers are coming from, what they're buying, and your overall ROI for the ad spend.

Google also provides you with the ability to purchase ad extensions that create rich snippets for products or services within search engine results pages. These snippets provide you with additional opportunities to create intrigue and sell your goods. Competitor comparison extensions can allow your product result to appear next to your direct competition and highlight your superior prices or features with ease.

Finally, use the Ad Center on the platform you're using to keep a close eye on what you're paying per click for your right amazon keywords research chosen. Google Ads can especially become quite competitive, leaving you bidding and paying far too much for premium advertising if you're not careful. In these instances, it's essential to work closely with your SEO experts and determine which keywords might provide an effective, alternative strategy. Longtail keywords especially are overlooked due to their low search volume but are effective at targeting consumers with strong buyer intent.

6. Boost Customer Retention with Customer Accounts & Rewards

Every quality eCommerce store features the option to checkout as a guest or login with an account. This serves several purposes, but a primary one is to encourage customers to commit to shopping with your brand.

This may initially seem counterintuitive as adding more steps between a buyer and a purchase generally lowers conversion rates. However, those that create accounts are more likely to convert than those shopping as guests. This means that the returning traffic you receive is of a higher quality than the unnamed traffic that might visit your store.

However, you never want to bar users from making a purchase from your store without an account as this just equates to a lost sale. Instead, consider prompting users to make an account after making a purchase. They're likely to already feel strongly about their decision and you can take advantage of the opportunity by listing out the benefits your business provides with an account. You might consider offering member benefits such as free shopping over X dollars spent or guaranteed monthly discounts.

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You can also provide a one-time signup coupon or offer as an incentive to get the account created. With the email in your store's system, you'll be able to maximize your marketing efforts and create targeted email campaigns that are unique to that buyer's interests and needs. This is the best way for an eCommerce brand to get even more out of customer's that already decided that they enjoy your store.

Making an account isn't a guarantee that they will return, however. Work with your team to create solutions that actively reward your customers and make them feel positive about returning to and continuing to buy from your brand. This can include regular promotions for account owners and early-bird access to sales or new products. Some brands also offer a point reward system for every dollar spent that they can convert into discounts down the line.

7. Find Ways to Reduce Shipping Costs

A significant challenge that's unique to eCommerce stores as opposed to brick-and-mortar is the logistics expenses. While physical locations still deal with shipments, your store is responsible for safely packing, transporting, and delivering every item to and from your warehouse. The problem is that shipping costs were already climbing and the state of the world in 2020-2021 has significantly compounded the problem. Reports indicate that these inflated costs are here to stay.

An effective way of dealing with this is to outsource your product distribution to a company that specializes in logistics. While you'll still need to pay regular premiums for their services, they'll likely be able to save you money in the long-term that you would be spending on supplies, the labor of packing yourself, and shipping costs. Using asset management software can further streamline your operations and reduce overall expenses.

The costs continue to climb when dealing with international shipping as a result of customs, additional taxes, and foreign regulations. What's worse is that unless you're an expert in international freight, shipping, and inventory management, mistakes can result in delays that not only hurt you financially but hurt your reputation with the customers that are waiting on their goods. Thankfully, these shipping providers understand your plight and generally offer special rates to businesses that provide an expected amount of business every month.

By reducing logistics complexities and improving shipping efficiencies, businesses can save significant costs. For eCommerce owners aiming for seamless management through technology, explore the best logistics management tools to streamline operations. Identifying the right software ensures not just operational efficiency but also enhances customer satisfaction by timely and accurate delivery tracking.

Using advanced methods to manage eCommerce logistics can help significantly cut costs. By tapping into AI consulting for logistics optimization, businesses can enhance their operational efficiency and tackle the increasing shipping expenses tied to online sales. These improvements grant businesses a competitive edge, enabling seamless service delivery crucial for scaling.

By managing your logistics costs, particularly the cost of pallet racking systems, you can significantly improve your storage efficiency and business profitability. These racking systems are essential for effectively handling inventory which directly impacts scaling and operational processes.

An alternative way to combat rising shipping costs is to work it into the price of the product. Customers that are seasoned in shopping online generally expect to pay a bit more for the convenience of having an item delivered to their home. With the right marketing, you can promise a quality product to your customers with the convenience of fast, reliable shipping. With the cost worked into the product instead of a hefty, added charge, your audience is likely to find this to be a great deal. Just be mindful to do your research and do not inflate costs to a point where you're no longer competitive with your rivals.

8. Utilize Opportunities to Upsell and Cross-Sell

Your marketing strategy works and the customer is in the process of moving the item from their cart to a shipping package. Since the intent to spend is already there, there's no better opportunity to encourage the buyer to add on just one more thing.

Salespeople have been utilizing strategies to upsell and cross-sell for an eternity and the strategy should be no different when it comes to your eCommerce store. Cross-selling is simply suggesting products that add to or enhance the item they've already selected. This is generally reserved for items that are of a similar price or cheaper than the item they want. It's an easy psychological trick as if someone, for example, is already spending $20, then an additional $5 on the same credit charge is no real issue.

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Alternatively, the upsell is a final opportunity to upgrade the customer's original purchase to a more expensive model or variation. The same concept applies here in that the buyer has already overcome the struggle with the purchasing decision. Because they're committed to spending a certain sum of money, it's easier to justify spending a bit more on a product that's superior, but similar to the one that they selected on their own.

The key to a strong upsell or cross-sell is to present the opportunity without being singlyĀ overly assertive with the customer. Simply adding an upgrade option and a brief description to a cart before payment is one example of a strategy that works without getting in the way of an otherwise clean checkout process. You take advantage of the chance to sell, while the customer still feels empowered to make their own decisions.

As with any sale, a strong value proposition will speak for itself. Do not overly rely on the additional sales, but welcome them and look for opportunities to improve these conversion rates whenever you can.

Conclusion - Start Scaling Your eCommerce Business Now to Be Ready for the Holidays!

Whether you're prepared or not, online shopping is the way of the future. More shoppers than ever are making online purchases for the first time and the forecast shows no signs of this trend slowing. While it hasn't entirely replaced the need for brick-and-mortar stores, online sales present a powerful, cost-effective way to scale your sales and reach customers all around the world.

However, eCommerce is a highly competitive world for this same reason. With this in mind, you need to give your store every advantage available to compete against not only smaller stores but against juggernaut distributors like Amazon. Collaborating with an ecommerce website development company Elogic can provide the necessary support to streamline operations and boost site functionality, ensuring a competitive edge as you scale. Start by building up your reputation online by listing yourself only as many directories as possible. Keep your details up to date and work with those who leave reviews to resolve issues and maintain a sterling reputation.

Take advantage of advertising platforms such as Facebook, Google, Amazon, and others to feature your products on web pages and search results at the budget that you set. The more intelligence you gather about your audience, the better you can refine your advertisements to target a variety of persons at different stages of the buyer's journey. Platforms like Google can even award your eCommerce store with a trusted store brand so long as you provide excellent service that meets their standards.

Maximize the ROI gained from those that click your ads and visit your website by ensuring that you utilize SEO best practices at all times. Not only does this involve mapping out keywords for your web pages and creating dynamic sales content, but it also involves adding a regularly updated blog to your website. This blog can focus on the news, product updates, or serve as an educational resource for your customers to learn more about your industry. Frequent, high-quality content boosts your SEO, and, therefore, boosts your overall search rankings over time.

Finally, maximize the returns you get on the sales you are receiving by upgrading to a more efficient, cost-effective logistics process. Leave these processes to experts that can reduce costs and offer discounts to businesses like yours that deal in high volume. When customers are ready to purchase items for those partners to ship, take advantage of opportunities to upsell and cross-sell additional goods that can improve your results and assist with scaling.

With dedicated practice and the use of powerful analytics tools to test your strategies and content, your eCommerce store will inevitably scale and grant you the additional profits every business is looking for during the holidays and beyond.