What is a Testimonial in 2021?

A very old-fashioned term that some may think has been replaced by online “Reviews” and “Likes”. But testimonials are still relevant and used by many companies.

Difference to Customer Reviews

While Testimonials are controlled by the company, customer reviews appear on third-party sites such as Facebook, Linkedin, Tripadvisor, and Employment Sites, and the company has little control over the reviews.

What’s in a name

For companies with a long history, using the word “Testimonials” on their website is part of their image of long history and stability. For others, another word might be preferable such as “Customer Reviews” or “Customer Comments”. One company even called them “Love Letters from our Customers.” It depends on the company’s style.

Benefits of Testimonials

The benefits of testimonials, if implemented correctly, are:

1. Assist in establishing trust with the customer.
2. Helps customers in their decision.
3. The customer can see the product will be successful for them.
4. The customer knows the benefits and pitfalls of the product.

Software for Managing Testimonials

There are a number of Reputation Management Platforms that can help a company control Testimonials as well as Customer Reviews.

These include Repuso, GetMoreReviews, or RapidReviews.

Influencer Marketing Description

Influencer marketing software is important for companies that invest heavily in influencer marketing. The software provides the ability to automate your influencer discovery process providing audience demographics on different platforms, assists in managing your relationship with influencers, and provides reports with campaign data and ROI.

Social media platforms (including Instagram, Tiktok, Facebook, Linkedin) have contributors who influence buying decisions either because of their trusted authority, expertise, or the relationship they have built with their audience.

There are a large number of influencers and the software can help identify suitable influencers. And, with the trend to have many smaller influencers, the software will allow better reporting for testing and for managing the relationship with many influencers.

Problems with Influencer Marketing

Some of the problems of managing Influercer Marketing are:

1. Some companies have a narrow list of sources of influencers. It should not just be Facebook, Instagram, and Youtube.
2. An influencer of today, may not be the influencer of tomorrow.
3. To find good influencers requires more than looking at some keywords and number of followers.
4. Finding the right influencer is manually intensive and has to be repeatedly checked.
5. Some companies are not sure where to start.

Solutions

There is a range of influencer marketing software that will assist your company to get the best ROI on its influencer marketing.

Influencer Marketing Software should provide:

• ability to research influencers on a wide range of platforms
• information that enables you to select a suitable influencer for your company
• ability to manage communications with the influencers you select
• ability to determine your ROI on each influencer that you use.

Featured Marketing Influencer Software

First-Party is the data collected by your company directly from customers, visitors to your company’s website, or your company’s social media followers.

What is the Power of First-Party Data?

First-Party data will enable your company to build long-term relationships with your customers. The data will be the most accurate of all data sources giving your company unique insights to your customer’s needs.

Integrate First-Party Data into your Sales and Marketing software.

It is important every piece of information is automatically sucked into your marketing and sales software tools. including your CRMs.

Respect and Guard Your Company’s First-Party Data.

Your company’s customers expect their data to be secure and their privacy safeguarded. This is reinforced by the many privacy laws each country has introduced. As part of this respect, make sure your customers are aware of what data you are collecting, and the uses you have for the data. You need to get acceptance from your cusdtomers.

User-Generated Content (UGC) is content – whether it is text, audio, video, or images – posted to social media or websites by users. It is different to company or brand-created material although brands can curate and repost user-generated content.

Types of  User-Generated Content

Ten types of user-generated content:

1. Reviews of Products
2. Comments 
3. Photos uploaded to social media that use your business page or branded hashtag.
4. Tweets to your brand or about your brand.
5. Contests
6. Showcase social media material about the brand or product
7. Requested reviews and testimonials

Benefits of User-generated Content

UGC has the following benefits:

1. Builds trust with potential customers
2. Improves customer satisfaction
3. Raises brand or product awareness in a wider community
4. Improves brand or products SEO rankings
5. Helps with website engagement

Problems of  User-Generated Content 

1. Managing negative reviews
2. Copyright when re-using posted material
3. Ensuring retain authenticity
4. Stopping legal and privacy issues.

Interest Examples of  User-Generated Content 

1. Toyota leveraged UGC for their “Feeling the Streets” Facebook ad campaign and was able to increase their total ad engagement by 440%
2. Tourism Queensland ran a campaign encouraging users to apply for the “best job in the world” and be a caretaker for a tropical island, with the aim to increase social activity and exposure. More than 35,000 people created video applications, resulting in $368 million worth of media coverage, 8.4 million unique website visits, and 55 million page views.
3. Nike has had many great UGC campaigns. One was an app where runners could track their activity and which was linked to social media so users could share their results increasing brand visibility.
4. During the Xmas season, Starbucks runs the #RedCupContest allowing its customers to share their customized coffee cups and win a Starbucks gift card.

Stats on User-Generated Content 

USG has the following interesting statistics: 

1. 28% higher engagement rate
2. 84% of millennials impacted 
3. 90 percent more time on websites with UGC
4. 73% increase in email click-through-rates
5. 79% of people say UGC highly impacts their purchasing decisions,
6. 90% of consumers say authenticity is important when deciding which brands
7. 50% drop in cost-per-click than average. UGC-based ads get 4x higher click-through rates and a
8. 80% of brands say that their community-building efforts have resulted in increased traffic
9. 88% of consumers trust online reviews written by other consumers as much as they trust recommendations from their personal contacts
10. 70% of consumers will read UGC reviews or ratings before buying
11.  29% increase in web conversions when websites featured user-generated content.
12. 73% more positive comments with Ads featuring UGC
13. 25% of search results for the biggest brands are linked to ugc
14. But …. Gen Z and millennial generations watch more user-generated content than Gen X and Boomer generations. 

Software to manage User-Generated Content

User-generated content (UGC) platforms help brands collect visual product or company mentions from social media and other sources to repurpose for marketing efforts, 

Examples Are

 https://www.pixlee.com/home                                  

Gamification software is any tool or platform used for applying game mechanics to non-game contexts in order to engage people either for sales, training, employee loyalty or entertainment.

Gamification software can be used by Marketing to apply game concepts such as badges, achievements, points, leaderboards to engage customers. It can improve customer loyalty, advocacy, and engagement. Gamification software can be used to track and reward customers for sharing content, making purchases or other activities.

Gamification software can also be used to promote sound competition in sales teams and even provide motivation. It can also be used be with other marketing tools such as loyalty management or brand advocacy software.

There are different types of retargeting:

Pixel-based retargeting is a way to re-display your material to any anonymous site visitor. This is probably the most common type of retargeting. When someone comes to your website, an unobtrusive piece of JavaScript (often referred to as a pixel) is placed on their browser.

List-based retargeting works after you already have someone’s contact information in your database. You can also use lists of your existing contacts for certain types of retargeting ads. The way that works is you upload a list of the email addresses to a retargeting campaign (usually on a social network like Facebook or Twitter), and the platform will identify users on that network who have those addresses and serve retargeting ads just to them.

Dynamic retargeting will show prospects ads featuring the exact items they viewed or left in shopping carts. The more data you collect on your customers, the more focused your retargeting ads can be.

Problems with Ad Serving and Retargeting Platforms

1. Google Changes. The top problem are the changes by Google to prevent advertisers and ad networks from connecting browser cookies to websites they are not managing. While there are other browsers, Chrome has 63.8% of the market so it will have a large impact.
2. Irritating customers. Customers are very sophisticated about ads and too many ads at the wrong time can irritate customers.
3. Re-Using the same Boring Ad Repeatedly. Like irritation, boredom leads to a lower ROI.
4. Not Being Focussed Enough. Lack of focus can lead to additional costs and a low ROI.
5. Cookie Window Too Short or Too Long. The standard length is usually 30 days but for B2B customers the decision time is usually much longer.

Solutions

The problems can be aleviated by carefuly planning and monitoring to see which criteria are the best to use.

Systems

The follow are some of the systems that provide assistance in managing retargeting.

We all know what customer reviews are. But in marketing, it means those on-line reviews from customers on third-party sites such as Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin, Tripadvisor and many more. 

Reviews on your website that you control and seek out are usually called testimonials

Customer Review Problems

The main problems include:

1. No strategy to manage customer reviews.
2. There are a huge no of sites where reviews appear. 
3. Negative Reviews are not addressed.

Customer Review Solutions

Strategy – Ensure your company has a strategy, processes and people to handle customer reviews.

Selected Sites – Focus on a selected set of sites only – don’t try to cover every site. Focus on those with the potential to drive the best leads.  Check Google search to see what comes up when you search using keywords related to your product to identify sites to monitor and review. 

Customers – Ask friendly customers to give you a review on a specific site.  Survey existing customers and those with a positive review follow up and ask them to put their comments on a specific link – provide them with the link. 

Negative Reviews – Respond to negative reviews on selected sites.  If a genuine complaint, make sure the complaint goes to the right person for action and ensure the action is noted as a comment on the review. If misinformation, correct the information as a comment on the review.. Otherwise, if a Karen review, then ignore, as the bad review will sink to the bottom.

Tip:  Google+ doesn’t have a lot of reviews but, surprise – surprise, those reviews come to the top.

Software for Management of Customer Reviews

There are a number of Reputation Management Platforms that can help a company control Testimonials as well as Customer Reviews.

These include Repuso, GetMoreReviews, or RapidReviews.

It is most unlikely that the Russians will escalate the current conflict into a full out cyber war. But it is something that cannot be ruled out.

The types of cyber attack the Russians are known for include:

• DDOS attacks – Denial of service attacks on banks, energy and communication companies infrastructure and supply chains.
• Wiper attacks – Malware which deletes data.
• Dissemination of false information
• Ransomware.

Types of cyber attacks

Most cyber attacks have been one-off against individual countries mainly at government and banking systems. It has not been confirmed that all or any of these were organised by Russia and most are individuals. But there is a belief that Russia indirectly supported them.

• 2007 – Estonia – spam attacks that took a number of sites down
• 2008 – Georgia – first recorded cyber attacks coinciding with armed conflict
• 2009 – Kyrgyzstan – DDOS took nation offline
• 2014 – Ukraine – cyber weapon called the Snake disrupted Ukraine gov systems
• 2014 – Ukraine – cyber DDOS attack against Presidential election
• 2015 – USA – White House computers hacked
• 2016 – Poland – 3 year disinformation campaign
• 2016 – UK – Brexit referendum – govt voter registration site attacked
• 2015 – France – malicious software took down networks of a TV station
• 2018 – South Korea – cyber attacks against Winter Olympics
• 2018 – USA – penetrated energy, water, gov and aviation facilities collecting info
• 2020 – USA – Solarwinds attack against government agencies
• 2021 – USA – Ransomware took down US fuel pipeline
• 2022 – Ukraine – attacks against government and bank websites
• 2022 – Unknown  – HermeticWiper – wiper malware which removes  data

What you need to do:

• Reset your mind and the mind of your staff to think about cyber security
• Review your cyber security protection and make sure your firewalls and virus protection are secure 
• Look at your business supply chain and identify where any weaknesses may break it
• Review your business continuity plans
• For individuals and small business, two-factor authentication will be important in preventing 

Definitions: 

DDOS: Distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks are designed to knock a website offline by flooding it with huge amounts of requests until it crashes.

Wiper:           Malware designed to delete data.  Example Hermetic Wiper.

CRMs used to be expensive and largely unavailable, but along with the rise of the internet, they have rocketed to become the largest tech market of the decade. Every business, whether a start-up or freelancer or global corporation, needs a system that collects data to improve efficiency. 

However, it’s vital to choose the right CRM for your company – it’s a big investment that will help define your success. So what exactly should you look out for? 

1. Compatibility with existing software. Whether you’re adding your CRM to a Mac or Windows PC, it’s important to check that the new software is compatible with what you already have. 
2. Ensure it meets your needs. Not all businesses face the same challenges. What data are you hoping to collect, and which features will make that possible? For example, would you like to create more leads, or simply become more efficient overall? 
3. Find the right price. Due to the rise in popularity and importance of CRMs, the market is extremely competitive, resulting in lower prices overall. Available models range in price from free to $3000 per month. When choosing your CRM, make sure to pick one that is within your budget and has the specific features you need. 
4. Ease of use. Before you’re sold on a CRM, it’s vital to check that the program is easy to master. Employees may fail to fill out or skip using a complex program, and you’ll lose data integrity. Whether you’re a freelancer or an HR Manager, trying to figure out a complex CRM will only slow you down and cost you money. 
5. Provider support. Look out for providers that offer training and implementation and teach you how to use the system to meet your exact needs. This will save a lot of time and will ensure that you’re taking full advantage of your purchase. 
6. Customer support. Will the provider look after you once you’ve invested in their CRM? It’s a good idea to look into this before making the leap. For example, when and how often are they available, and how will you be able to reach them? Are they reliable? 
7. The trial before purchasing. The most fail-safe way to prove that a system is right for you is to ask for a demonstration or trial it yourself. Making decisions based on reviews is not the best option, as business needs are diverse. What didn’t work for one person might be exactly what you’re after. Ask as many questions as you can, and shop around before simply buying the most popular software.
8. Mobile phone access. Let’s face it: if it’s on your phone, you’ll be more involved. It’s a good idea to invest in a system that can be displayed on mobile as business waits for no one. Unfortunately, some of the cheaper plans don’t have this feature, so if you prefer round-the-clock access to your data then you may have to spend a little more. 
9. Metric reports. Having a solid grasp of your metrics is vital to making the right business decisions. Make sure that the CRM you land on provides in-depth reporting on your data. 
10. Social CRM features. As social media platforms have become important for lead generation, consider if you require the capability to interact with your social platforms via CRM. 

When it comes to finding a CRM that will optimize your business results, it’s important to consider the points listed above. With so many models on the market, you’re almost guaranteed to find the perfect match.

What are the questions when preparing a new Marketing Strategy?

1. History

It’s always important to go back and have look at how the last Marketing Strategy went – successes and failures. The most important is for the last year but given the drama of 2020, it would be wise to look at previous 5 years to get a picture of what might happen in 2021.

2. Goals

Next look at the goals for the next year. Increase in sales, of course. But will there be a revamp of products – will there be new products, will older products be discarded. What about ROI. What about extending reach of your client base or are marketing channels to be revised.

Once these have decided at a general top level, the detail can be examined. Looking at the detail may lead to a change in goals.

3. Products

What are the new products that are coming down the line. Do you need more new products. What new products can be developed in the coming year? Are there new vertical products that would support you’re existing base.

What products need to be retired? What are no long making a positive ROI. But be careful to ensure that a losing product is not actually support another winning product. Sometimes it is just better to modify a low or negative ROI, because it brings in customers that then are up sold to another product.

What current successful products need to be refreshed to ensure they continue with their positive ROIs.

4. Know Your Customers

Get full pictures of your exemplar customer. Know what are your exemplar likes and dislikes, how they like their stories told, where they hangout in social media, what shapes their buying decisions.

What types of experiences are you providing your clients. Do they want to keep coming back. What are your costs of obtaining customers from different marketing channels and what additional products do they acquire at what cost.

5. Marketing Channels

For the next year, where are you going to focus your limited budget (it’s always limited no matter how much your budget).

Are you going to extend your channels include more social media or reduce them. Are you going to change the type of influencers you use. Are you going to change to micro-influencers or try different influencers.

Are you going to change your approach in print, video, streaming, TV, email. Where will the advertising funds be focused.

6. Competition

Have a look at your competition. Identify the changes in their trends and where they are likely to head in the coming year. Where are their weaknesses that you can take advantage of and what strengths of your competition can you learn from.

7. A/B Preliminary Test

As part of creating your next marketing plan, do a small about of prototype testing on some way-out and eccentric ideas. They may lead you to a new approach.

8. Plan

You then need to get your plan together and identify what, when and where you want to do things.

9. Budget

And, last of all, when you have the basic strategy put together your budget for the strategy. This will, of course, lead to some changes in the strategy when full costing is done.

10. Refining

Now the long process of refining the plan starts with showing stakeholders the strategy and absorbing their changes. And, of course, when the budget round finally finishes and you know how big is your portion, the process of modifying the strategy to meet the funds available begins. Then its the final approval by all.

Project Management can feel like it is art rather than science and that people skills are the most important. However, the following need to be considered when looking for the keys to good project management.

Factors to be considered are:

• Project Management Tools
• Staff Relationships
• Mentorship of team members
• Stakeholder management
• Problem fixing
• Recovering from missed deadlines

Do You Need a Project Management Tool?

It takes time to use a project management tool. Some tools are complex and difficult to use. So why bother. Particularly if it is a small project. How does project management fit with agile.

However, a small effort returns enormous benefits. And yes even agile needs project management. It is just uses a different approach.

Which Project Management Tool?

There are so many tools to use. There is Asana, Monday.com, Trello, Jira, Microsoft Project or even Google Sheets. Each one has its advantage

There is a new tool available:

Forwardslash

Forwardslash is a new simple tool that makes it easier to create a project plan and manage staff.

Forwardslash

To create a project, you just select Create a New Project – add a name and start adding tasks.

It is easy to develop a plan.

Is There Really a Need for Data Cleansing?

The importance of clean data cannot be understated. Unfortunately, cleaning data is difficult to get on the agenda and to be allocated budget. Experian reports that on average companies data is only around 75% clean. This is costing significantly both in reputation and money. For example, in this day of strict privacy, having dispersed sources of data where the user may have consented at one point but not another, may lead to breaches of Privacy Laws.

The ROI on putting in place some data cleansing functions will be positive if the right steps are taken. But, it is only when senior executives call for “trusted” data that the problem can be seriously addressed.

What Types of Data Problems are There?

There are 5 types of data problems:

1. Incomplete Data.
2. Duplicate Data
3. Inaccurate data.
4. Inconsistent data
5. Outdated data

How Are Data Corruption Issues Prevented?

Solving each type of data problem needs a different approach. But let’s look at prevention. 

One of the best approaches is having a Single Source of Truth (SSOT) but this is an architectural solution that can only be addressed by a large IT Department change in strategy.  This ensures all – well as many as possible – use the same source of data for common data such as client data, address data and contact information. The data duplication, inaccurate data, inconsistent and outdated data cleansing still need to be done but it will be in one place and less of it. In the meantime, the following can be done. 

Another important tool in prevention is having standard approaches across all systems to ensure formats, rules and metadata are the same for the same type of data.

Reporting on Data Cleansing Problems

You will need to do data profiling providing adequate analysis reporting to identify data problems enabling measurement, visualisation and data profiling. Managers need to understand where the problems are located. Once problems are identified steps can be taken to fix the problems

How Are Data Cleansing Problems Fixed?

Whether it is incomplete, duplicate, inaccurate, inconsistent or outdata data problems that need to be tackled, there are many problems to assist in cleaning. 

For data duplication, this is perhaps the easiest because the tools allow selection of some fields to compare and identify duplicates.  Then making a decision on which of the duplicates is to be removed or merged with other data. This problem will require some manual intervention and oversight.

With outdated data, in some cases purging data after a certain date may be appropriate but usually not feasible.  Sometimes, these can be tackled by going to more up-to-date sources on the web and running updates. 

Inaccurate, incomplete and inconsistent data all need to be identified first. Then the decision can be made on the approach. One approach is to use externally sourced data, to update and improve the data. The other is to examine the data and apply a series of standards edits e.g. remove spaces and padding that is not needed, fix spelling mistakes, hot-deck (copy same data from other valid sources), fixing capitalization.  Once problems are identified manual intervention can allow you to do bulk updates.

Magic Quadrant for Data Quality Solutions

The solutions for cleansing data quality are improving. The Gartner Magic Quadrant for Data Quality shows the top programs.

Data Cleansing Software List

There is now significant software and processes to help companies clean up their data including the following:

has been with us since the 50s but come into full force in 2001 with the creation of a formal methodology for software development.

Content Problems

Amount of Content: There is so much content, that grabbing and keeping the customer’s attention is difficult. What is the key to standing out and keeping customers engaged? Content is now the heart of inbounding marketing but how to keep the heart beating when there is a need to produce constant content or sink in the mire of the internet.

Inconsistency: Because content is churned out by different departments the information in different content can clash.

Credibility: Some content can damage brand and product credibility by throwing words into a mixer and then laying them out without any focus.

Coldness: Some articles are so painfully full of facts without any emotion or human connectivity. They lead the viewer uninterested and, even worse, bored.

Improving Content

One of the key ways to improve content is to add images. But just plonking down some random images will not help. The key is to use storytelling structure to tie your product details, images, and information together in a way that attracts attention and then remains in the customer’s mind.

1. Strategy. A long term picture needs to be set up with a base story structure.
2. Brand Story. At the top, there needs to be the brand story from which all other stories flow.
3. Content Stories. Each content needs to have a story around a relatable person, put the interesting elements at the start, some type of conflict is required to keep the reader engaged, the story needs to be authentic. And, as a bonus, if possible use a little bit of appropriate humor.

Software for Content Storytelling

One of the options for improving your content storytelling is the application Shorthand.

Shorthand is a digital storytelling platform for teams in marketing, communications, and media. Build stunning, interactive stories for the web without relying on a team of developers.

See the video below.

Daily companies are churning out content. The content is dispersed into many channels, social media, web pages, brochures, and many other vehicles including internal company usages. With so much content, it is hard to manage and ensure that it is not inconsistent or out of date. With remote work, the need to use systems to control content has become even more important.

According to Gartner, “there is increased focus on three trends that are present across organizations, regardless of industry:

• Tackling content sprawl: Organizations have a multitude of content repositories, and with the increasing prevalence of SaaS, more silos materialize on a regular basis.
• Delivering digital business transformation: CSP technology is in demand to underpin new operations and processes that utilize content as a key component in innovative ways.
• Modernizing work: Users’ expectations have changed for good, due to the ubiquity of compelling user experiences in consumer applications.”

The impact of Content Sprawl

There are a number of issues that are obvious. The following table shows the main reasons why customers unfollow brands. Content sprawl doesn’t figure explicitly in the list but it is behind many of the problems listed.

Tackling Content Sprawl

Processes and Standards: Most companies will have processes and standards to try to prevent content sprawl. It is important it is on the management list to monitor and responsibility for the management of content is recognized and assigned.

Co-ordination: To ensure customers are getting the same message and the brands of the company are protected, co-ordination is the key. It is necessary to ensure all marketing, sales, web, and social media teams have a clear picture of the brand values and the product functions and features.

Audits: Audits of public content will be essential. It is important any out-of-date or inconsistent content can be either removed for fixed quickly.

Target Persona: Building sets of the persona of the company’s targets is important. This may vary with each campaign but as well there needs to be a standard persona that encompasses all sets.

Systems that assist Sales Content Management

Steps to Building Trust

1.  Professional certificates, awards, or thank-you letters help build trust in your product or service. In some areas such as education, law, and medicine, they are simply essential.

2. Establish that your credibility by explaining the benefit that you give to your customers.

3. Ensure that the advertisement matches that the landing page. Trust will be built if the two match and are consistent.

4. Images that explain your product will be important. When planning and selecting your images keep in mind that these must reflect stability and reliability.

5. Providing names, addresses, emails and phone to enable the customer to contact your directly will increase the customer’s confidence particularly if your brand is not well-known.

6. Real Customer recommendations and reviews will convince the customer of reliability and the ability to deliver.

7. There are easy to use landing page software which will help you put together a landing page quickly which meets all the above requirements.

Landing Page Software

Data Management Platforms (DMP) are changing and will be able to extend their capabilities to take account of the new technologies introduced by Google in the next couple of years.

There will be a change to analysing aggregating and de-identified data. This is similar to other sources such as Facebook. Google’s intention for the Privacy Sandbox  is to “Create a thriving web ecosystem that is respectful of users and private by default.”

Demand-side platforms, supply-side platforms, customer data platforms (CDPs), onboarders and data marketplaces will increase and thrive in the new environment. All these functions may be absorbed by DMPs.

Which means when deciding on a DPM, there are new questions to asking including:

1. What alternate solution is the DMP providing for the demise of cookies?
2. Does the DMP have look-alike functionality?
3. What are the second and third-party sources used by the DMP?
4. Does the DMP have cross-device identity management allowing stitching profiles across all environments.
5. Does your DMP stitch the user journey?
6. Has the DMP a solution to Wall Gardens? The rise of companies protecting their data has made marketing all that much harder. Even Google, Facebook and Amazon have walled gardens.
7. Is a Data Cleaning Room a feature of the DMP. This will allow a peak into the walled gardens to see how the ads of Google are performing.
8. Match rate testing is essential to enable ROI to be established accurately.

Benefits of DMPs

Digital media is growing more complex and DMPs have now become essential in the management of customer data. It allows the unification of data from many systems providing a cohesive view of customers. The DMPs enable you to have a long-term view of customers with consistent and continuous analysis and reporting. As well, these tools will help you identify new customers using audience extension and look-alike techniques. DMPs provide unique insights into your clients.

Problems of DMPs

With the change by Google to block third-party cookies in Chrome, some have felt this will impact DMPs severely. But the work of DMPs is to consolidate all data – first-party, second-party, and third-party data. As well, Google and other search engines are bringing in new technology that will replace cookies over the next year and DMPs will be able to take advantage of this change to continue to collect third-party data.

Solutions

There is a range of software with different features. Some of the platforms are listed below.

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They allow marketing software businesses to meet with senior executives during a sublime lunch at a top restaurant.

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1. Problem Identification

A company must first identify that they have a problem that needs to be fixed. There are many ways this can happen. Some of the ways that problems are identified are continuous improvement programs, annual budget capital analysis, consultant reports, audit reports, and management meetings.

2. Research Problem

The company will have set paths for researching the problem depending on the type of problem. For software expenditure, teams are usually set up to analyze the problem, scope the problem, detail the high-level requirements, identify and meet with stakeholders, prepare a rough budget, obtain capital and operational budgets and obtain senior management approval to proceed.

3. Solution Options Exploration

The next step will involve researching and evaluating solutions that fit with the company’s existing infrastructure and budget.

4. Requirements, RFP, and Tenders

Then detailed requirements will be put together with system architectural documents so that RFPs or tenders can be issued. Where possible, providing presentations on your product at this stage will allow the client to understand the benefits of software and what they are seeking.

5. Supplier Selection

Then there is what feels like the real meat of the sales task. Preparing the response to RFP or Tender, presentations, holding events. And many, many meetings to discuss and demonstrate your product with a wide range of people. And, of course, you will be the successful winner.

Implementation

Implementation is an important part of Sales. Ensuring the customer understands your product and implementation problems are minimized, will be essential in upselling other products and for recommendations that may give to other potential clients.

Your company will be burning money unless they take into account the new digital marketing trends. The pandemic has changed the world and has brought forward changes that would have taken a decade. There is no going back and the many changes of 2021 are here to stay.

1. Digital Events

2. 5G

5G will start to have an impact. Mobile has now become the chief means of communication. Google is now making mobile 100% of its display of websites – websites must look good on mobile. The demand for increased capacity can now start to be met and will start to impact digital marketing in 2021.

3. Social Media Continued Growth

Social media have increased the ability for the consumer to purchase on their platforms and this area will continue to grow. These platforms will require new learnings and approaches but will be vital for many brands. It will not just be brand awareness but actually selling on the social media platform. Facebook Shop where a shop can be created in both Facebook and Instagram will initially rule for small businesses but even large companies will use platforms like these.

4. Consumer Data Improved

Better Use of Consumer Data. Consumers are tired of being given a host of ads related to a purchase they have already completed. They want ads directed at what they want now and or even what they may want in the future. For example, if they have just bought a car they don’t want to continually see more car ads, they will want accessories for the car, trips they can take in the car, accident reducing tools. And in twelve months, they will want to see cheaper alternatives for insurance. These are the coming challenges that need to be addressed. Customer Development Platforms (CDP) will come to the fore this year. It will become more critical to be able to manage customer data and stop the fragmentation.

5. Social Media Channel Reduction

Reducing and consolidating the use of social media channels. Each social media platform is developing a personality and a target audience. Selecting and find the right set of social media will be key.

6. Community Caring

The tone has changed. The pandemic has changed the focus from personal flamboyance to community caring. Caring about those impacted severely by 2021 will become a focus and brands will need to show their caring side on digital media.

7. Still Working from Home

Working from Home will continue to rule and lead to a need for new approaches both for B2B and B2C. There will be many new approaches develop over this year with the continued use of working from home not just Zoom and Microsoft Teams. That will be just the start.

How do you choose the number?

Influencers can be a very effective way to reach a targetted audience. But making decisions about which influencer to choose, large or small, and how many to choose is difficult. More than 70% of campaigns use influencers to some extent and most use multiple influencers.

A marketing strategy for influencers needs to be developed. There will need to be testing to see what works for your company’s brand. Factors that will influence your choices are:

1. What are your niches?
2. The best approach for that niche – brand ambassador, gifting, blogging ads, video ads.
3. The type of adds – video,
4. Which influencers will your company be able to build a relationship?
5. How much compensation are you willing to pay.?
6. Detail what you want from the advertising and your expectations of the influencer.
7. Document guidelines for the influencer to follow.
8. Create a standard influencer agreement template.
9. Expected ROI.

List all the sizes and types of influences and look at what is best for your company. The trend at the moment is to have many smaller influencers and spread the risk. But this may not suit your company and selecting one or two brand ambassadors would be more effecdtive.

What are the different sizes of influencers?

STIM has identified five groups of followers:

• Nano-influencers: 1,000-10,000 followers.
• Micro-influencers: 10,000-50,000 followers.
• Mid-tier influencers: 50,000-500,000 followers.
• Macro-influencers: 500,000-1 million followers.
• Mega-Influencers: 1 million+ followers.

Types of Influencer Collaboration.

There are a number of ways to collaborate with influencers:

1. Sponsored Social Media Content – your company provides content
2. Gifting – your company provides gifts
3. Brand Ambassador – the influencer commits to your brand long-term
4. Takeover – the influencer appears on your social media accounts
5. Sponsored Blog Posts – influencer blogs on standard websites
6. Guest Blogging -your company blogs on their website.
7. Video content – such as Youtube and Tiktok.

Costs of Influencers

The costing will varying significantly. Gifting, for example, can just the cost of providing the gift – but with no guarantee the gift will even be mentioned. Some indicative pricing is:

• 10,000 followers could charge $20 per post.
• 100,000 followers could charge $200 per post.
• 1,000,000 followers could charge $2000 per post.

Influencer Marketing Software

Software that you help you through the maze includes:

A large proportion of the ads on browsers are third party cookies. Rather than just blocking cookies, Google is planning a phased approach with new tools for advertisers without causing the current irritation to browser users.

At this stage, it is unclear what the full impact of the loss of cookies will be. And any changes will be gradual.

At this point, the only thing that can be done is to be aware. Trackita will monitor changes and keep you up-to-date.

Ad Serving and Retargeting Platforms enable you to remind your customers of your products and services if your customers leave your website without buying. These platforms also allow your company to show visitors relevant ads when they visit other sites. Retargeting works with apps and searches as well as website banner ads. These will adjust as Google makes releases.

What is ABM?

Account-based marketing (ABM) targets key accounts focussing on specific companies.

Get the ABM Strategy in place

The first step is for the Executive to agree that an ABM approach is one of the approaches in the Marketing Strategy and then look at the ways it will be done.

Get Sales and Marketing Communicating on ABM

A process for ensuring and measuring ABM needs to be identified that does not put an onerous load on Sales but allows Marketing to assess success. Sales feel they own accounts and particularly the key accounts and they will need to see outcomes from any additional efforts.

Audit the CRM data regularly

The company’s CRM data will need to be accurate. The third step is an audit needs to be done and a process for cleaning the data regularly. Otherwise, there will be time and costs wasted.

Set Up ABM Metrics

Executive, Sales, and Marketing all need to agree on a set of AMB Metrics and regularly review the metrics.

Software

The fifth step is to assess your company’s Sales and Marketing tools and determine if additional ABM software is required. The list of ABM software includes: