By using the marketing techniques of influencers, you can boost your engagement, build trust, and attract more loyal buyers.

Learn seven marketing tips from top influencer marketers for engaging and converting your buyers through content marketing.

Key Takeaways:

• Influencers attract consumers by being authentic and personable.
• Consumers want content tailored to their needs and focused on their benefits.
• Engaging content inspires, educates, and connects.

Influencer Marketing Trends

How much more popular are influencers than brands? 

According to one survey, 61% of consumers trust influencer recommendations over the 38% who trust brand content. Consumers also engage more with influencer marketing content.

So, what is their secret? Can brands generate the same response?

A 2021 research study examined why consumers follow influencers on Instagram and identified four primary reasons:

• Authenticity
• Consumerism
• Creative inspiration
• Envy

Brands can generate a similar response by tapping into these four pillars.

7 Marketing Tips from Influencer Marketing Trends

Use these seven content marketing strategies based on how influencers create content and why consumers follow it. These marketing tips can increase your content marketing engagement and conversions.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1XHzcnH6J4

1. Be Authentic

Businesses generate trust by being authentic with their followers and subscribers. As you create social media posts, blog content, and website copy, be transparent and real with your followers to generate similar trust.

Authenticity begins by having set values, beliefs, and motives. Then, stay consistent with these values.

Influencers remain authentic by giving their followers a glimpse of their lives behind the camera, such as their morning routine, lunch break, or a short clip of them at work. These snapshots of ordinary life make them more believable and transparent, helping consumers connect with them better.

Brands can give similar transparency by sharing behind-the-scenes content, showing the people behind their work, and sharing their mission and values.

2. Promote Consumer-Focused Benefits

Customers follow influencers and brands in search of new items to purchase. This consumerism comes from customers’ belief that purchasing goods improves their personal gratification.

A brand can cater to this by promoting products based on their benefits to customers looking for products that will benefit them and increase their happiness. Keeping content marketing customer-centric tells customers what benefits come from the products rather than just listing features.

For example, a smartwatch company that understands current healthcare trends could promote its watch by highlighting its telehealth tracking benefits rather than just listing its features.

3. Provide Creative Inspiration

Most brands understand the importance of educating customers so they know the full benefits of their products and services. However, content marketing should also inspire.

For example, Target uses its social media to inspire customers by showing creative ways to use products and promoting causes through the brand.

Even B2B businesses should aim to inspire buyers. For instance, showing use cases or templates could spark your buyers’ creativity when using your software.

4. Motivate Others

While envy motivates consumers to follow influencers, does it also work with brands? Envy marketing produces mixed results. When used correctly, it can motivate buyers to respond. However, it can backfire if employed through unpopular celebrities or seemingly unfair circumstances.

Instead, focus on motivational marketing to ensure your envy marketing elicits a positive response. Influencers use motivational marketing not just to make followers envious of their looks, possessions, and life but share tips on how others are deserving and can achieve the same lifestyle as well.

Motivational marketing builds a bridge rather than dangling unattainable goals to increase purchasing behavior. B2B motivational marketing includes sharing realistic expectations for business growth and revenue, as well as steps for achieving these goals, rather than making extreme marketing claims.

5. Connect with Your Audience

Influencers engage personally with their audience, creating close connections. They respond to comments, give shoutouts to followers and loyal fans, and engage through live video. All these strategies also work in brand marketing.

Image from Influencer Marketing Hub

B2B brands can offer similar engagement. However, instead of focusing on social media channels like Instagram and Facebook, they might encourage engagement through LinkedIn posts, live webinars, and shareable blog posts.

Collecting and analyzing audience data can help you know what your audience responds to most so you can create audience-centric content they’re most likely to respond to.

6. Create a Consistent Voice

The key to marketing success is a consistent brand voice. Your voice defines who you are, and that’s who your customers will connect with. Customers will have an easier time connecting with a brand that constantly sounds and looks the same because they can get to know the brand and the people behind it.

A consistent voice also helps influencers and brands become more recognizable. For example, MrBeast, a famous YouTuber with 154 million subscribers, consistently goes viral and attracts a large audience by sticking to a consistent format, voice, and structure that generate the most engagement.

Build your voice based on your audience and a formula you tested and know works. A B2B SaaS company will have a formal voice with a hint of personality. But if you’re a B2C ecommerce brand, use more humor and a casual voice to connect and build relationships.

7. Regularly Create Quality Content

Could you build a close relationship with someone you only saw four times a year? It would be challenging. The same is true for brands. The more often you share content on your website, social media, and third-party platforms, the more opportunities your audience has to get to know you and connect.

Regularly posting fresh, quality content also improves your visibility. It boosts your rankings in search engines, keeps you at the top of social media news feeds, and increases customer touchpoints, making them more likely to interact with your content.

Influencers recommend posting anywhere from several times a day to several times a week. While each influencer has a different schedule, consistency is key to building relationships.

Turn Your Brand into an Influencer

An influencer is more than an individual with a strong following. Brands can also become influencers by building an engaged community through consistent, quality content. You'll see greater brand loyalty and conversions by transforming your marketing into brand influencer marketing.

The post 7 Marketing Tips Brands Can Learn from Influencers appeared first on RELEVANCE.

While the video was meant to be funny, it held the truth about the direction of digital marketing trends. But just how much truth?

Truth: people are increasing their video consumption.

False: Images, written content, and other formats aren’t relevant anymore.

While video is everywhere in digital marketing, it can never replace your other content marketing strategies.

Learn how to find a balanced marketing strategy that leverages the popularity of video while rounding out your marketing with other media formats.

Key Takeaways:

• Video is crucial to content marketing strategies in 2023.
• Video is the most engaging content format.
• Written content is more effective for SEO and lead generation.
• A well-rounded marketing strategy incorporates video and written content together.

Benefits of Incorporating Video in Marketing

According to HubSpot’s The State of Video Marketing in 2023 playbook, video has become part of 81% of company marketing budgets. Of those marketers, the top benefits they saw from using video include:

• Increasing brand awareness
• Sharing products
• Educating their audience
• Improving customer service and trust

Marketers who use video also saw a boost in their revenue and sales.

Image from Marketing Insider Group

What makes video so effective in marketing?

Because video involves more senses than other media formats – it’s more immersive. Your audience isn’t just reading or listening to information. They’re watching, hearing, and reading, which holds someone’s attention longer and evokes a stronger emotional response. Being able to engage your audience also builds trust and loyalty with them.

Additionally, using so many senses allows marketers to share more information in less time. For example, showing a diagram of the buyer’s journey alongside a verbal description takes a few seconds versus reading a paragraph describing the same process.

Image from HubSpot

When Video Can’t Replace Other Content

With all the benefits of video, it’s still not the golden ticket to marketing. You need other marketing formats to stay on top of digital marketing trends. Most importantly, you should devote a large portion of your budget to written content.

Here are four ways written content performs better than video:

Written Content Ranks Better for SEO

While video can boost your content’s ranking, you need written content to rank in search engine results. In 2023, search engine algorithms can’t search through videos like it does written content to identify its topic and show it in relevant searches.

So, if you want your video content to appear in search results or drive relevant traffic, you’ll still need those quality blog posts, well-written web pages, and optimized video descriptions.

Written Content Generates More Leads

The best format for lead generation depends on your audience. A Gen Z clothing brand will probably see the most leads from short-form video content. However, if you’re a B2B business, you’ll generate more leads through blog posts.

Research your audience and understand what format they’re engaging with before deciding the best way to capture relevant leads, as many leads still prefer written content.

Written Content Is a Smaller Format

Written content takes less storage space than video content.

Your media’s size impacts your website load speed and which devices can view it.

A simple yet powerful text blog post minimally impacts your website’s load time, and audiences can view it even with a spotty internet connection. A text post also takes less space when your readers download or share it in email.

Written Content Costs Less to Create

An effective marketing campaign relies on regularly published content.

Written content costs less and takes less time to create, which means you can build a more regular content calendar. Regularly published content will appear in more search results, target more lead pain points, and open more conversion opportunities.

More content also is vital to building authority and increasing brand awareness. Making a name in your industry is crucial as the Google algorithm is shifting more toward prioritizing authority and expert pieces than simply those with relevant keywords.

4 Ways to Integrate Video into Your Digital Marketing Strategy

Are you ready to supercharge your marketing strategy? Use these tips to combine all your content formats to maximize your exposure and results.

Video Marketing Explained from Start to Finish

1. Embed Video in Your Blog Posts

Having marketing videos in your content improves your SEO. So, consider embedding a YouTube video in your next blog post. It doesn’t have to be one you created yourself. Embedding relevant videos from third parties that aren’t competitors can boost the engagement of your content too.

Video can also clarify data-heavy content by providing visuals that explain complex concepts. That way, you can provide more information in less space.

2. Use Video Throughout Your Website

Video on static and landing pages boosts your website engagement, ranking, and conversion. Some popular places to use video include:

• Demos on landing pages and product pages
• Company bios on the home page or about page
• Case study videos and testimonies

3. Share Video on Social Media

You can use video, images, and text to mix up your social media strategy. If you’re sharing videos on your social media, I recommend sticking with your company’s videos so any traffic from clicking on the video returns to your website or video channel.

Even if you use video on social media, you’ll need a small written blurb to help the post show up on relevant feeds and entice readers to watch the video. The blurb is also where you’ll post any links to landing pages.

4. Record Live Video and Post It Later

Live video allows you to interact with your audience in real time on channels like social media or through webinars. Live video is optimal for Q&A sessions, announcements, or interactive seminars.

Once the live video is over, you can keep seeing returns from the investment by saving a video recording. Then, you can use that video in your blogs, social media posts, and other content to continue bringing in leads.

Digital Marketing Needs All Forms of Media

Video may be rising in popularity, but the world needs variety. So, your audience will never only consume video content. There will always be a place for written content, images, audio, and every media in between.

Before going all-in with video or cutting your other marketing budgets, ensure you’re investing in a well-rounded digital marketing strategy for maximum results.

The post Digital Marketing Trends: Is Video Replacing Other Media? appeared first on RELEVANCE.

Most marketing teams and content creators already knew the concept of Google E-A-T (expertise, authority, trustworthiness). However, on December 15, 2022, Google announced its latest formula update, adding an extra "E" to the acronym. This new "E" stands for experience. 

This is a minor update. Google stated that this latest update shouldn't impact your processes if you've followed the original E-A-T guidelines closely. Today, we'll look closely at how this change affects your content strategy and why it matters. 

Key Takeaways

• Google accounts for more than 84% of the global search market, making it one of the most popular search engines in the world. Chances are your audience is spending their time searching for information here.

• Google now processes over 3.5 billion daily searches, which makes paying attention to Google's ranking guidelines critical for your SEO strategy.

• Google considers hundreds of factors when ranking pages, but following the E-E-A-T guidelines will help you pass some of the most important signals. 

What is Google E-E-A-T?

The latest update to the Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines now requires content writers to demonstrate personal experience with the topics they’re writing on. 

Experience is determined based on the "extent to which the content creator has the necessary first-hand or life experience for the topic."

Without it, the overall authoritativeness of your content and expertise on the subject matter comes into question. The result? Readers may lose trust in your brand.

Does This Change What Google Deems the Most Important Component of Online Writing? 

At one point, demonstrating expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness all shared equal importance when determining the quality of a website's content. Google has stated that establishing trust is the "most important" member of the E-E-A-T formula. 

Source: Google Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines

To establish trust, you must be able to check off all the boxes in demonstrating experience, expertise, and authoritativeness. 

Source: Google Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines

5 Ways Google E-E-A-T Can Impact Your Content Marketing Strategy

This change in Google's guidelines shouldn't impact your SEO and content marketing strategy all that much. However, adding “experience” into the mix will set you apart from competitors that are still trying to write for the search engines and not their audience.

Here are five ways that implementing Google E-E-A-T into your content marketing strategy can help you establish a trustworthy relationship with your audience. It can also increase the value your content provides to your market:

1. Proves that Genuine Experience Brings in Genuinely Interested Audiences 

One of the biggest challenges marketers face today is standing out among the increasing competition. Common strategies used to rank higher in search engines, such as having an SEO strategy and a content syndication strategy, can help find your intended audience.

However, that's only half the battle. Once you've captured their attention, it's time to prove why your content is so valuable. By implementing the updated Google E-E-A-T guidelines into your content, you’ll be sharing your first-hand experience and expertise on a topic with your market. 

For example, say you run a marketing company trying to convince potential clients that you can help them improve their social media strategy. By creating content that implements your first-hand experience in creating social media strategies for others (which you can prove through customer testimonials or case studies), you're showing – not telling – your audience what you can do. 

When done correctly, your content will be so valuable that your intended audience will be eager to share it with others. This will also help Google determine that your content is authoritative enough to rank higher in search results and help you create a trusted relationship with your audience. This cycle will continue to build momentum and bring in more traffic that’s genuinely interested in what you have to offer.

2. Ensures You're Sharing Authentic Content with Real Value

In a day when AI content creation is taking over the industry, generic content that only covers the basics may flood readers. While these AI tools are excellent for generating ideas, it’s up to the writer to expand on these ideas by providing their unique experience to the reader. This will give your content the expert and authoritative voice to give your audience the information they need and help you build trust, credibility, and customer value.

You can share personal stories backed by screenshots of you doing the work you claim to have expertise in. Or, you can include a client testimonial that backs up your experience working with them.

3. Allows Your Audience to Get a Deeper Insight

One thing that some content creators are finding troublesome is that proving experience is more complex than it used to be. However, this simply isn't true. 

For example, many different content formats are designed to demonstrate examples of personal experience and authority, including: 

• Case studies
• Infographics
• Research reports
• Webinars
• Whitepapers

These content formats rely on the experience of contributors to prove their expertise and build trustworthiness.

4. Helps You Build More Authentic Relationships with Your Audience

Studies show that over 80% of consumers believe trust is essential when building authentic relationships. With another 62% of consumers saying that brands need to care more about them (and 60% saying they would buy more if they felt cared for), implementing the updated Google E-E-A-T guidelines has never been more critical. 

Remember, Google now deems trust the most crucial factor in search. To do that, you’ll need to build your expertise and authority based on your personal experiences. 

5. Allows You to Become a Trusted Expert in your Industry/Niche 

When implementing all the steps in the Google E-E-A-T formula, you’re going above and beyond to prove you’re an industry expert. That's because you've proven to the search engine giant that you've taken the necessary steps to meet the needs of your audience.

Source: Google

Google E-E-A-T is Simpler Than You Think

Following Google E-E-A-T lets you build trust and credibility for your website. It allows you to become an industry expert and assures your audience that you’re experienced and knowledgeable. If you follow the Google E-E-A-T guidelines, you can ensure that you’re providing your audience with quality content.

The post Google E-E-A-T: What Changes Were Actually Made? appeared first on RELEVANCE.

When optimizing your website to ensure it ranks well in search engine results, your domain authority can significantly impact it. Your domain authority can improve, resulting in more traffic and better search engine rankings. However, when done wrong, it can be challenging to recover from.

However, before diving into how to improve your domain authority, let's first understand what it is and just how important it is to the success of your website.

Key Takeaways

• Domain authority was first created by the software company Moz.
• Your domain authority is a ranking between 1-100 that tells others where you stand amongst competitors.
• Building your domain authority takes time, but it is well worth the effort when done right.

What Is Your Domain Authority?

Domain authority is a metric used by search engines to measure the quality of a website and its content. It's a measure of the trustworthiness of a website and how likely people are to use it for their search queries.

The concept of domain authority was first created by Moz, a company that provides SEO and analytics software for websites. This metric is one of the most widely used to rate a domain's rankability in search engines. Essentially, it's a score between 1-100, giving you insight into things such as:

• How likely is it that a user will click on your website in search results?
• How trustworthy is your website?
• What is the overall strength of your domain amongst other websites?
• Are there insights into your organic traffic?

For instance, the higher your domain authority score, the more likely people will find your website in search results because you've established yourself as a trustworthy website by meeting the many requirements of Moz and the big search engines.

Moz uses over 40 factors to determine a website's domain authority, including:

• total number of backlinks;
• quality of backlinks;
• overall SEO performance;
• root domain (the highest hierarchical point in your website's structure ex: relevance.com);
• social singles; and
• the quality of your content.

Domain Authority Report for Relevance Source: Moz.

Just How Important Is Your Websites Domain Authority?

Your website's domain authority is critical. It can directly affect the visibility of your website on search engines and the ability of visitors to find your content. Increasing domain authority scores is crucial for gaining organic traffic and more leads.

A good domain authority score can give you an advantage over your competitors and help you stay ahead in search engine rankings. Search engines often prioritize sites that meet requirements shared by those required to receive a higher authority score.

Finally, domain authority can help you build credibility and trust with potential customers, as having a higher domain authority score implies that your website is well-established and reliable.

Is domain authority a Google ranking factor?

Since having a high domain authority is often associated with high search engine rankings, it is natural to assume that domain authority is a Google ranking factor. However, that's not the case. Google explicitly states that domain authority is not a ranking factor.

John Mueller, a Webmaster Trends Analyst at Google, tweeted out the following information about domain authority:

Google does not use domain authority as a ranking factor. Source: John Mueller/Twitter.

So, if it is not a ranking factor, why is domain authority so crucial for those looking to rank higher in the SERPs?

The answer is simple: Google's ranking guidelines share several vital requirements for websites that wish to rank well and measure a site's overall domain authority.

For example, a trusted and reputable site providing only the most relevant information to its users often has a high DA. These are key factors that Google looks for when it ranks a website based on its E-A-T criteria.

Google E-A-T Update. Source: WordStream.

5 Tips for Increasing Your Website's Overall Domain Authority

Your website's domain authority is vital to its visibility and search ranking. The higher your website's domain authority, the more likely it will appear in search engine results. Here are five tips to help you improve your website's domain authority.

1. Improve on-page SEO.

On-page SEO involves optimizing the content on every page of your website for search engines so that it is as visible and relevant as possible. Such optimization includes using relevant keywords, optimizing images and videos, using meta tags, and more.

On-page SEO is essential to improving your website's domain authority since it helps search engines understand what the page is about and determine how valuable it is to users.

Optimizing your website pages for search engines can ensure that your website is as visible and relevant as possible, leading to higher search rankings and stronger domain authority.

2. Improve off-page SEO.

Off-page SEO optimizes your website beyond the webpage itself. It SEO includes link-building, social media promotion, and other forms of external marketing.

Off-page SEO helps to establish your website as an authority in its niche and improves its overall domain authority. Link building, in particular, is an integral part of off-page SEO since it helps to show search engines that other websites are linking to your website, which can lead to higher domain authority.

3. Improve technical SEO.

Technical SEO entails optimizing your website's code and structure so that search engines can easily crawl and index it. Optimizing your website's navigation and performance, ensuring that all the pages are correctly linked together, and ensuring that your website is secure is part of technical SEO.

Technical SEO is important when improving your website's domain authority since it helps search engine crawlers easily discover and understand your website.

Additionally, ensuring that your website is secure with an SSL certificate helps improve your website's trustworthiness, which is another key factor for determining domain authority.

4. Improve page speed.

Page speed is another important factor in domain authority, as it affects the user experience on your website. Users may become frustrated and leave if your website is slow to load, resulting in lower engagement and fewer conversions.

A slow-loading website can also hurt your search engine rankings, as Google prefers websites that load quickly. Improving your website's page speed can help you to improve your domain authority by providing a better user experience and boosting your search engine rankings.

5. Build a backlink strategy.

A backlink strategy is essential in improving your website's domain authority. The number and quality of your website's backlinks can significantly affect your domain authority score. As such, building authoritative backlinks from reliable and relevant sources is essential.

This strategy can include building relationships with influencers and industry experts, creating content that other websites will want to link to, and using social media platforms to promote your content.

Remaining Relevant with a High Domain Authority

Keeping your website's domain authority high is essential for maintaining a strong online presence and staying competitive.

It is important to consistently work on building and increasing domain authority by optimizing the areas discussed above. Doing so will help ensure that your website remains relevant and ranks well in search engine results.

With the right strategies, you can improve your website's domain authority and remain competitive in your industry.

The post 5 Tips for Increasing Your Site's Domain Authority appeared first on RELEVANCE.

So consider this. What are you doing to make yours even better? Which marketing bloggers should you be emulating? What are the pros doing? Above all, how can you help your growth marketing efforts?

If you want to be the best, you need to read the best. As a result, finding the best of your peers and competition is how you stay on top of the game. Firstly, understanding how they utilize style, tone, and overall structure to benefit their business traffic will help you do the same for yours.

So who are the top ten to follow in 2022?

1. Neil Patel

Neil Patel is a New York Times best selling author dubbed a top influencer by the Wall Street Journal. He was recognized as a top 100 entrepreneur under the age of 30 by President Obama and under 35 by the United Nations. His specialties are online ad creation, content marketing, and SEO rankings.

2. Steve Kearns

Steve Kearns leads blog and social media marketing strategy on behalf of LinkedIn's Marketing Solutions business. Moreover, his team runs Linkedin’s “This Week in Marketing” newsletter, providing advice on relevant B2B content marketing to its subscribers.

3. Michelle Ngome

Michelle Ngome is a fractional diversity marketing consultant that guides businesses on inclusive content marketing in the B2B space. As a result, her blog focuses on diversity, equity, and inclusive practices in the marketing sphere.

4. Tequia Burt

Tequia Burt is the EIC of Linkedin’s Marketing Solutions Blog. She has spent her career perfecting her craft with multiple major businesses, like B2B Marketing USA and Spirituality and Health Magazine. Nowadays she writes about effective marketing practices on LinkedIn’s blog.

5. Matt Marshall

Matt Marshall is the founder of VentureBeat.com, an excellent tech blog that discusses brands, the metaverse, and cybersecurity. In the same vein, this blog is used to drive traffic to his major event, Transform, which is an informational summit about AI and technology.

6. John Doherty

John Doherty is a B2B marketing consultant specializing in growing businesses through blog optimization. He has articles on blog maintenance, major platforms, and business prioritization.

7. Ileane Smith

Ileane Smith is a blogger specializing in digital media creation and live streaming. With 11k YouTube subscribers, her site aims to help individuals and businesses grow their audiences through created content and specialized distribution methods.

8. Ann Handley

Ann Handley is a blogger, digital marketing pioneer, and Wall Street Journal best-selling author. In addition, her company MarketingProfs is a top rated B2B training and consulting resource for companies looking to up their content marketing skills.

9. Ryan Robinson

Ryan Robinson is one of those content marketing bloggers specializing in large-scale content marketing and profitable blog management. Consequently, he has been featured in HubSpot and Forbes and uses his platform to simplify blog creation strategies for the public.

10. Adam Enfoy

Adam Enfroy is an entrepreneur blogger with over 500,000 monthly readers. Enfoy looks to teach new entrepreneurs how to maintain blogs and utilize software to elevate their business profits. Most importantly, his more recent articles highlight the best SEO practices for start-ups.

There’s a few things you can learn from the big marketing bloggers that dominate the industry. They all use similar formats and write interesting, informative pieces for their readers.

Quick Takeaways

• Blogging is crucial to improving site traffic and revenue to your product or service.
• By maintaining a blog, you can have a direct line of communication to your current and prospective clients.
• Studying the most successful blogs help you improve yours.

Here’s four ways to up your blog writing game.

1. Write the perfect blog posts.

Obviously, right? However, marketing bloggers know that a solid foundation is crucial to success. As a result, to have the best chance at visibility, you have to follow a quality strategy — consistently.

While the mass text and message you’re trying to convey is important, it isn’t just the “meat” of the article you need to worry about — it’s the little details too. Things like:

• tagging similar high-traffic sites;
• featuring a relevant video; and
• adding bulleted lists...like this one!

Likewise, get the small techniques together to improve the big picture.

Source: Neil Patel.

2. Craft a winning content strategy.

Crafting your own unique winning content strategy is necessary to your blog’s success. Moreover, a content strategy is a holistic approach to delivering information to audiences, those for whom you already have a customer profile. On the other hand, it is different from content marketing, which is the general execution of your strategy.

There’s multiple steps to creating your content strategy, like creating a content calendar, establishing your brand voice, and setting your metrics.

Consequently, creating your key metrics is a driving force behind how you create your strategy. Metrics include things like:

• traffic;
• conversions;
• engagement;
• SEO performance; and
• authority.

When you have created a measurable way to see how your blog is doing, it becomes easier to see where you are performing well. Likewise, you'll discover which areas of your blog require improvement.

3. Maintain a social media presence.

Making sure your blog is optimized for search engine ranking is important to getting and keeping readership. However, it's not the only way to get your post in front of consumers.

Enter social media.

Source: Marketing Charts.

All successful marketing bloggers share in common large social media presences across multiple platforms. Consequently, many of them have created vast networks of content that promote their other content, maximizing the attention they have of their viewer.

Neil Patel creates crash course videos on his YouTube page aimed at helping clients improve their marketing efforts. Likewise, in all of his posts and his videos, he mentions his blog, Twitter, Instagram, and his website — directing the viewer there to his blog where he directs them to his YouTube page.

Getting the idea yet?

In short, crafting an efficient cycle of promotion through social media channels is important to blog traffic generation.

Consequently, this method of stretching your content helps maximize your budget as well. Why create a video and let it fade into oblivion on YouTube? When you recraft your content effectively you reach more prospects in a cheap efficient way.

4. Ask the pros for guest posts.

Finally, you know what everyone could use more of?

Credibility.

As a result, contracting experts in your field for guest articles can help your blog in several ways:

• Brings their fans and followers to your website.
• Provide credibility to everything you publish.
• Write diverse (but niche) articles.

Some might say "We can’t afford an authentic guest writer, it probably wouldn’t even be worth it.” However, budgeting the extra money as part of your marketing plan can be an extremely valuable investment for your blog.

For example, think about it this way.

If you were concerned you were sick and wanted to research opinions on different illnesses, would you go look at a blog with a random medical professional’s opinion, or a respected specialist? In short, you would be looking for the opinions of the most respected doctors in the field.

Obviously, marketing is a little different from medicine. However, the fact is that influencer and specialist opinions have a huge effect on the credibility of your blogger. Consequently, with their large audience and important titles, a partnership is valuable for both sides.

Wrap Up

You have the references, you have the budget, you have the facts. As a result, it’s time for you to take your blog from good to great.

However, if you still are having trouble or looking for advice, you can check out more content marketing resources here on Relevance.com.

The post 10 Marketing Bloggers You Need to Follow in 2022 appeared first on RELEVANCE.

Consequently, the internal costs associated with social media marketing, marketing automation, email marketing, or any other marketing function are why many companies opt to outsource content marketing for enhanced success.

With nearly 5 billion people online and more than 4.5 billion using social media, it's no wonder most companies use content marketing to reach their prospective customers. Harnessing the expertise of a marketing agency for outsourced marketing is becoming more of a necessity than a "nice-to-have."

The internet has empowered today's consumers to conduct their own research on products and brands they want to patronize. As a result, they're more discerning in their solutions to their problems. They know what professional content looks like when they see it. A one-shot blog post no longer cuts the mustard. An effective marketing plan has become absolutely essential and outsourcing content creation has become commonplace.

However, outsourcing content writing and content marketing allow companies to hire a writer to create tailored articles directed at specific audiences to ensure a higher likelihood of conversions.

But marketing agencies are really expensive, right? Well, not necessarily. Outsourcing marketing can actually save your company money even as it leads to an increase in sales. Keep reading to learn why, when, and how small businesses, SaaS companies, and companies of all sizes should outsource content development and content marketing to make the most of this impactful digital strategy.

Key Takeaways

• Outsourcing content marketing allows you to benefit from the content creation expertise of a third-party marketing firm while freeing you up to focus on other aspects of your business.
• From saving you money to increasing productivity, there are many benefits to outsourcing your content marketing to an agency or other content partner to create quality content.
• When you're ready to outsource your content marketing, you can do so by following five simple steps that will help to ensure overall outsource marketing success.

What Does it Mean to Outsource Content Marketing?

Content marketing involves writing and publishing relevant, useful, and engaging content that resonates with an audience's needs. Businesses employ a content writer or content writing services to create blog content, attract a certain following, generate interest in a brand and its products, and convince people to convert to customers.

However, to create meaningful content, companies must know who their audience is, what their needs are, and how those people prefer to receive information. Delivering the right message to the right people at the right time is key to content marketing success. It represents the ultimate marketing goal for any marketing department.

Content outsourcing can include any of the following online marketing staples:

• email campaigns;
• social media posts;
• blog articles;
• website content;
• infographics; and
• white papers.

While many companies choose to write their content, most businesses prefer to outsource their content marketing to content agencies and freelancers. They must trust an external freelance writer, marketer, or content marketing agency to create material for their brand.

This company, writer, freelancer, or another marketing team will learn about your business. Any digital marketing agency worth its salt will seek to gain an understanding of your goals.

The marketing professional will then write content that resonates with your audience and helps drive marketing strategy success. Additionally, by outsourcing content marketing to an agency, companies can benefit from the expertise of a third-party team. Outsourcing marketing frees you up to focus on other aspects of your business.

The video linked directly below provides further detail about how to go about outsourcing your content marketing.

4 Reasons to Outsource Content Marketing

Size, budget, and marketing needs determine whether outsourcing your content marketing is right for your business.

It's important for any business owner to identify particular challenges that third-party agency writers can solve. Here are four reasons to outsource content marketing and how to recognize when it's time to consider making the move to an external marketing expert, agency, or another marketing firm for outsourced content.

1. Save money.

Growing a business requires significant expenses. That's why 70% of companies outsource tasks to reduce overall costs. By delegating your content marketing to a third-party company, you save the cost of hiring a full-time employee to write your blog post. Through outsourced marketing, you can focus more attention on your sales team. Content outsourcing and marketing also eliminates visible and hidden onboarding costs that average $4,425 per employee.

If you don't have the resources to hire a full-time staff member, it's time to consider outsourcing your content marketing to an agency or other external marketing department. Step one, then, is to compare the cost of hiring a full-time employee against that of engaging with an outsource content writing team. Outsourcing digital marketing is not something you ought to do on a whim.

2. Save time.

Maybe you have several terrific ideas for effective content, but you simply don't have the time to put everything into action. Perhaps writing isn't in your wheelhouse or you don't want to add marketing responsibilities to your work week. This is just one example of where outsourced marketing can represent a solid investment.

Hiring an outside writer or agency to take over your digital marketing services reduces your workload and frees up your time to focus on other job responsibilities. If you're feeling overwhelmed or having trouble getting everything done, you may need to outsource your content marketing.

3. Gain access to more talent.

If you don't have enough people in your marketing department to write your content, or you simply don't have a qualified writer to effectively communicate your ideas to your audience, outsourcing to an agency may be a viable option. Outsourcing content creation gives you access to a wider agency talent pool with various skills, training, expertise, and experience. Oftentimes marketing dollars can even be reallocated to outsourced sales, further improving your bottom line.

Choosing an agency with the necessary background to write meaningful and relevant content for your specific audience cuts down on project completion time. It allows your outsourced marketing team to publish expert content that is effective and efficient.

4. Increase productivity.

When your marketing department must multi-task, their stress levels rise. Distractions actually impair brain function.

Not only does this diminish efficiency, but it also impedes your marketing campaign productivity. When you outsource content writing, you relieve your staff's workload and allow them to give undivided attention to specific tasks.

Outsourcing to a digital marketing service helps your team complete projects sooner. They can tackle new projects more quickly, boosting overall business productivity. If workers are spread too thin, outsourced content creation is a viable solution. In fact, an outsourced marketing department might positively reshape the way you do business.

Outsource Content Marketing in 5 Steps

You can make the shift to outsourced marketing in five easy steps if you feel content outsourcing is right for you.

Step 1: Identify tasks to outsource.

Assess your content marketing plan and determine what projects you should outsource. Maybe all content writing needs to be delegated to a third-party writer. Or maybe you have in-house experts who could tackle some of your topics. Whether it's individual assignments, social media posts, or content marketing in general, you must first identify which tasks you want to outsource.

Step 2: Consider ROI.

Identify which areas of your content marketing efforts are costing your business money, time, and resources. This step alone might help you make your marketing outsource evaluation.

You can resource any part of your strategy with low ROI to a professional writer who can quickly and easily complete the task. Make the most of your outsource content writing investment by ensuring your content marketing plans are full of high ROI tasks.

Step 3: Give clear instructions for content creation.

When you assign content creation to a third-party marketing service, it's imperative that you give clear instructions to your content creator about what you want and what goals you're trying to achieve with your marketing effort.

If you're unclear, the writer at that marketing firm may deliver content irrelevant to your audience and must be rewritten. This takes more agency time and may cost more money, negating the benefits of outsourcing to a content writing agency in the first place. Avoid confusion by providing clear expectations to your content agency for outsourcing marketing from the get-go.

Step 4: Supply helpful content writing resources.

An outsourced marketing writer armed with plenty of helpful resources is more likely to succeed at their inbound marketing task, whether that's blog writing, visual content, or other high quality content.

Prior to beginning content production, supply your agency writing team with any information that would be useful in broadening their knowledge of your company, your audience, or the topic of the assignment. The less an agency writer has to research on their own, the lower the chances of the designated content team delivering erroneous or mistaken information as part of your outsourced marketing package.

Step 5: Track progress.

It's important to know whether your hired writers are hitting the mark with great content for your audience. This is where marketing technology (such as Google Analytics) can lend a hand as you make an outsourced marketing decision. Marketing agencies will be quick to ask you for these numbers at your first meeting. Don't attempt to build your marketing plan or brand awareness strategy without them!

Track the progress of your outsourced content with metrics that reveal click-through rates, engagement, and how long people remain on your blog post or web pages to read your content. From these results, you'll be able to tell whether your readers are finding your content useful, which marketing materials are resonating, and what areas need improvement.

Outsource Your Content Marketing Strategy

Outsourcing your content marketing strategy can be difficult at first. Any outsourced marketing should not be viewed as a cure-all. Marketing agencies will need your advice and partnership to generate quality content. However, once you start the outsourced marketing process, you'll see content is just another piece of your marketing activity puzzle to solve.

Struggling to start with your own content strategy? Thinking you might benefit from outsourced marketing services? Outsourcing content creation might be a solid first step in the right direction. Maybe you do need to look into a growth marketing agency to help pick up some of your public relations slack. We're here to help!

Image Credit: Lukas; Pexels. Video Credit: Jason Whaling. (2019, September 23). Stop Working So Hard To Make Content! (How To Outsource Content Creation) [Video]. YouTube.

The post Why, When, and How to Outsource Content Marketing for Small Business appeared first on RELEVANCE.

However, with the advent of digital, social, and mobile technologies, a new demand for a positive customer experience, and the impact of a global pandemic, the CMO role has had to adapt. 

In today’s economy, CMOs must create customer-centric digital marketing strategies that reach a wide audience. 

Today’s discerning consumers are less impressed by low prices and are more concerned about user experience. 

In fact, 88% of shoppers won’t return to a site after a negative experience. As a result, CMOs must now collaborate with all departments to help develop deeper connections with customers and drive growth across the company. 

Read on for a close analysis of the evolution of the CMO role now that companies must focus on providing a positive customer experience with less face-to-face contact.

Key Takeaways

• Marketing has changed from a focused effort of promoting products to a customer-centric approach of creating a positive experience in a digital world.
• CMOs must rely on data and insights to make decisions that lead internal departments toward a successful outcome.
• Companies must adopt a culture of collaboration where everyone is responsible for marketing.

Marketing Has Changed

Digital marketing has become the most effective way to reach prospects and retain current customers. Today, about two-thirds of shoppers learn about products through social media. 

Every day, Google fields 5.6 billion searches from people looking for solutions to their problems. To boost online visibility, companies must appear at the top of search engine ranking placements. 

This means a CMO must now understand search engine optimization (SEO) and how to create compelling content that resonates with users and earns high SERPs. 

Marketing has changed drastically and, as seen in the following video, will continue to do so:

Source: Neil Patel on YouTube

Today’s CMO is responsible for more than simply developing marketing strategies to sell products. They must now build brand recognition, develop their company’s reputation, and create positive experiences that attract customers and keep them returning for future purchases. 

Since many sales teams aren’t meeting customers in person, the CMO role is more complex than ever before. They must adapt to the demands of the market to reach their company’s goals, set themselves apart from the competition, and help drive continued success.

5 Ways the CMO Role Must Evolve

In order to keep up with the demands of today’s consumers, capture market share, and stand out from the competition in a post-pandemic restructure, the CMO role must now evolve. Here are five ways this position must adjust to succeed.

1. Adapt to a Digital World

The CMO role must now have a strong understanding of digital marketing strategies and how to maximize the various opportunities in each channel. Know what information your customers want to receive and how they prefer to digest information. Digital programs include:

• Content Marketing
• Marketing Automation
• Video content
• Website SEO
• Social media posts
• Pay-per-click advertising

To make the most out of these platforms, CMOs must first conduct in-depth research to understand which tactics would be most valuable to your audience. Then you must know when to deliver quality content and campaigns for maximum impact. 

For a CMO who has focused primarily on traditional advertising, transitioning to a digital world is essential to meet today’s demands and stay current in your industry.

2. Understand the Post-Pandemic Consumer

Consumer behavior is typically somewhat predictable.  In the face of a global pandemic, however, everything changes. Overall spending dropped across all industries due to business and restaurant closures. Concerns about household income caused many to cut spending as they budgeted for the unknown. 

From a marketer’s perspective, more people were watching video content than ever before. Businesses had to find new and creative ways to reach consumers and try to earn their business.

As we rebuild from the pandemic, it falls to the CMO to understand the concerns, needs, and shopping behaviors of the post-pandemic consumer. 

Today’s CMO must act as the growth driver for the company and use innovation to provide market direction, shape business models, and generate new revenue streams. 

The post-pandemic CMO must gather insights from real-time data to help guide others to make daring decisions.

3. Address Concerns Surrounding Cybersecurity

Because the evolving CMO role is so involved in the technological aspects of business, they now must address concerns surrounding cybersecurity. The more personal information that’s gathered for research and sales purposes, the more opportunities there are for data breaches. 

Today’s CMO must follow best practices to ensure the safety of user information and protect the reputation of their business. 

The CMO plays a large role in addressing a company’s cybersecurity. They vet data-handling vendors and train their team to appropriately handle sensitive information. They work with IT departments to ensure protection systems are in place to safeguard against security attacks. 

CMOs communicate with customers about how their data is secured. Cybersecurity is a major issue for digital consumers. It’s up to the CMO to build confidence in customer loyalty and revenue generation. 

4. Differentiate Your Brand through Engagement

In today’s highly competitive marketplace, brand differentiation is essential to success. Any company can offer products and services at competitive prices, but only you can provide your unique customer experience. 

To set yourself apart from the competition through positive customer experience, the CMO role must engage with customers on a deeper level. Connecting online through social media, offering a chat feature on your website’s home page, and delivering custom content that is relevant to the needs of your audience are ways to build trust and develop a rapport with your following. 

CMOs must understand how to apply the insight they get from audience analytics to their marketing strategies. Understanding the preferences and desires of customers can help you reach them with valuable, dependable information they want to receive and share. 

The CMO role must facilitate communications that build a foundation for a lasting relationship that leads to more reach, and increased conversions, and sets you apart from your competitors.

5. Lead the Cultural Shift Within the Company

Marketing is no longer confined to one department, but it is interwoven throughout the company. Everyone is responsible for the education, service, and promotion needed to acquire new business and retain current customers. 

This idea requires a cultural shift within the organization, and it’s the CMO role that must act as the collaborator to lead this charge within the company.

From digital capabilities to a broader scope of marketing aims, today’s businesses must design a culture that drives overall success. It can’t simply focus on marketing but must also encompass all aspects of the business. 

As a collaborator, the CMO role must cultivate a sense of responsibility among all departments to play a part in the success of the company’s marketing efforts, and thus, the company’s overall success.

Master Your Evolving CMO Role

Relevance provides insights to help companies with custom SEO, coordinated digital PR, and content development strategies.

Contact Relevance today to gain the information you need to master your CMO role.

The post How Will the CMO Role Evolve Now? appeared first on RELEVANCE.

Businesses need to move quickly to respond to these changes. Otherwise, they risk losing loyalty and sales.

Let’s unpack the changes that COVID triggered and look at what you can do to ensure your organization is still enabling a journey customers want to take.

Key Takeaways:

• The customer journey is different than it was pre-2020 and brands need to adapt.
• A lot of these changes were already underway. The pandemic simply accelerated them.
• To offer the post-pandemic experience customers are looking for, businesses need to increase digital, self-service, and no-contact options.

5 Ways the Customer Journey Has Changed

The restrictions and obstacles created by the pandemic forced both companies and consumers to adapt.

• Retail businesses started offering delivery or curbside pickup.
• Offices sent employees home to work, increasing the percentage of Americans working remotely from 22% to 42%.
• A larger number of consumers started using digital shopping, contactless payments, and subscriptions for the first time or more frequently than they did before the pandemic.

Here are some of the key ways these shifts have changed the customer journey for the foreseeable future.

1. Digital shopping is now the norm

From March 2019 to March 2020, the portion of retail-oriented online credit and debit card purchases jumped from 19% to 30%. This new level of digital shopping has held steady throughout 2020 and 2021, indicating a long-term, or even permanent, shift.

To give consumers what they want, make sure your online buying experience is simple and straightforward. You can also up the convenience level even more with alternative buying options. For example, you could offer subscriptions, which allow consumers to put their digital purchases on autopilot.

2. Consumers are trying innovative ways to buy for the first time

An important indicator of how commonplace digital shopping has become is the percentage of households ordering groceries online instead of going to the store.

The shift to digital shopping for clothing, household goods, and other items has been going up for years, but pre-COVID, few people had even tried online grocery delivery – as of 2019, 81% of households never ordered online. By 2021, 36% of households had tried out online grocery shopping, and 64% never had.

People also tried out subscription services during the pandemic, many for the first time. Because of the rise in interest in subscriptions, experts predict that 75% of direct-to-consumer brands will have a subscription offering by 2023.

3. Consumers now expect contactless payments

Another change is the way people pay. Before the pandemic, consumers were starting to use tap-to-pay transactions with their smartphones or contactless credit cards. However, adoption wasn’t widespread.

Between 2020 and 2021, contactless transactions grew by 30%. Even more telling – nearly half of consumers won’t shop at a store that doesn’t offer a contactless option.

As Guido Sacchi, chief information officer at payment software company Global Payments, says consumers today are looking for “less personal, more digital.”

4. They want more self-service options

Self-service is another customer journey trend that is accelerating post-pandemic. As people started using more digital options, they became more used to researching products and services, buying, and even resolving issues independently.

Self-service buying also resolves a lot of the friction points consumers have when it comes to shopping in person, such as congestion, long lines, and product availability problems.

The bottom line is, consumers want to resolve issues by themselves, and they want to be able to make purchase decisions on their terms, whether that’s on the go with their mobile phone or sitting on their living room couch.

This is why it’s important for brands to offer a wealth of useful information online through knowledge bases and other content marketing channels. The goal is to enable the customer to move as far along the buyer’s journey as possible without having to walk into a store, call your business, or reach out for contact in another way.

5. Data privacy is a bigger priority

More digital, self-service touchpoints and fewer in-person interactions all offer greater convenience. But they also push more activity online, which has made consumers more focused on data privacy.

In PwC's December 2021 Global Consumer Insights Pulse Survey, 59% of respondents said they have become more protective of their data privacy over the past 6 months. Also, nearly half of respondents said that how well a brand protects their personal data impacts their level of trust in that brand.

With consumers looking for more digital experiences, brands need to go the extra mile to assure customers that their data is safe when they are signing up for a newsletter, making a purchase, or sharing personal information in order to use a service.

How to Adapt to the New Customer Journey

After 2 years of disruption, the way consumers interact with brands has changed. People want more digital experiences, more convenience, and more peace of mind that immersing in an increasingly digital customer journey is safe.

To keep up with these evolving preferences, there are a few steps businesses can take.

One, build your digital presence to enable and accelerate the buyer journey. The more cohesive, helpful, and on-brand your website, blog posts, social media pages, online videos, ebooks, and other content, the more comfortable your target audience will be interacting with your brand.

Two, look at what you can do to enable your customers to browse, learn, and shop on their terms. The more tools you put at their fingertips – knowledge libraries, apps, online communities – the more they can solve problems, dig deeper, and satisfy their quest for solutions independently.

And third, prioritize trust. You can do this through transparency when it comes to how you handle personal data and by consistently expressing your authentic brand voice in all of your content.

More of the customer journey is digital, but that doesn’t mean consumers don’t still want a human experience. It just might happen more online.

First Image by McKinsey; Second Image by Gallup; Third Image by PWC; Thanks!

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But here we are, nearly two years later, and we're still waiting for the end.

The reality is, despite all the drama about the inevitable death of cookies and the demise of media companies slow to adapt, the cookie transition is turning out to be a lot milder than anyone anticipated.

First, third-party cookies are still on the table. And second, first-party cookies were never going away, leaving savvy marketing teams with far more than a plate of crumbs.

That means if you can manage a marketing strategy that makes consumers want to share their information with you, then your brand will come out the other side of this cookie transition stronger than before.

Let's look at why we're not actually moving into a post-cookie world but rather a world with fewer cookies, and what marketers should be doing right now to adapt.

Key Takeaways:

• We're not living in a post-cookie world, at least not until Google actually bans third-party cookies.
• Even when that happens, marketers can build brand awareness and share brand messaging with the help of first-party cookies.
• Marketers still need to adapt by relying less on third-party cookies, but this won't be a problem for content-focused brands.

Why Third-Party Cookies Aren't Going Away Anytime Soon

While some browsers, such as Firefox and Safari, have already phased out third-party cookies, Google is keeping them around for a while longer on its browser. It may be one company, but because of its size, what Google decides always matters. Google Chrome accounts for more than half of the web browser market.

Earlier this year, Google announced plans to delay its third-party cookie ban on Chrome. Instead of a target date of early 2022, now the plan is to phase out third-party cookies over a three-month period in late 2023.

Google's reasoning? The company wants to “avoid jeopardizing the business models of many web publishers which support freely available content.” The extra time could also help with “providing privacy-preserving technology [to help] ensure that cookies are not replaced with alternative forms of individual tracking and to discourage the rise of covert approaches like fingerprinting.”

It's possible Google’s own rising ad revenue figured into their "post-cookie world" decision as well — Google earns billions a year from digital advertising revenue.

Advertising Revenue of Google from 2001 to 2020

Either way, Google has put the brakes on the end of third-party cookies, which means everyone in the digital advertising ecosystem has more time to get ready for the changes. One way marketers can adapt is by focusing on first-party cookies.

First-Party Cookies vs. Third-Party Cookies

Brands use cookies to track website visitors. It's cookies that make it possible to track where website visitors go online, and then to use this data to deliver targeted ads and a better user experience (UX) when they revisit your website.

In theory, cookies benefit everyone — marketers, advertisers, publishers, and consumers. After all, they enable brands to deliver more personalized experiences.

But, in practice, third-party cookies have a privacy problem that piqued our collective interest in a post-cookie world. This is because, with third-party cookies, websites other than the one a web user is visiting are using the cookies. This means the user doesn't have control over how their data is used.

How Third-Party Cookies Work

A third party, such as an advertiser, generates the cookie (tracking code) when someone visits your website. Then, this cookie is placed on the web visitor's computer. When the web visitor searches the web, the cookie tracks their actions and sends the data to the third party that created the cookie.

How First-Party Cookies Work

With first-party cookies, things are different. The website, the first party, generates the cookies when a consumer visits. Then, the website stores the cookies and uses them to keep track of an individual’s search preferences. These include things like language, device preference, and password info. They also help a brand better understand visitor behavior. This information can then be used to deliver a more personalized digital experience.

Which Cookies Are Better?

Google says that first-party cookies are vital. The bottom line is, brands use first-party cookies to directly improve UX. And, as a better customer experience is a critical goal in digital marketing, you can count on first-party cookies in the long run.

Third-party cookies, while they made it easy to create targeted digital ads, don't offer that much value to the consumer. So, don't count on them sticking around.

However, it doesn't look like there will ever be a true post-cookie world. Only an end to the rampant use of third-party cookies to track people as they browse the web.

So, what does that mean for marketers moving forward?

Make Brand Trust a Priority

Whether your advertising strategies rely heavily on third-party cookies right now or not, one thing remains the same – the less your marketing strategy depends on third-party cookies, the more control you have over how well you understand your buyers.

A lot of marketers are using this transition time as a wake-up call. The days of leaning too much into tech solutions to personalize and engage the customer are over. And the truth is, digital ads never work as a sustainable marketing strategy anyway. Now is the time to focus on earning trust with your target audience through content.

By building trust, you can look forward to a stronger relationship with customers:

• Site visitors will be more willing to share their information with you, which means they’ll be more likely to opt-in to your first-party cookies.
• When customers trust your brand, they’ll also share information in other ways, such as sharing their email address when signing up for your newsletter, giving demographic data in exchange for a content download, or filling out an online customer survey detailing their purchasing preferences.

So, how can you start building trust with your customers in a post-cookie world?

By creating content that offers them value. Give your customers the insights, advice, and guidance that can help them in their life and work through high-quality blog posts, videos, ebooks, infographics, white papers, and other helpful content.

This is the route many successful brands are taking to build customer relationships. And it's how you can keep growing in a post-third-party cookie world.

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With a pipeline filled with high-quality marketing leads, you can streamline your sales efforts and achieve a better marketing ROI. The problem is, it’s challenging to acquire warm leads. In fact, the majority of B2B brand marketers believe high-quality leads are extremely difficult to generate.

But that’s changing as marketing technology keeps evolving. With leading-edge AI-powered platforms, one of the biggest challenges in marketing has become easy to achieve. Let’s look at why continuing to focus on low-quality leads is a big mistake and how martech-savvy companies are utilizing AI.

Here's How B2B Brands are Using AI to Generate High-Quality Leads.

Key Takeaways:

• Only 53% of B2B marketers are using marketing qualified lead metrics to measure content performance.
• Spending too much energy on low-quality leads can sink your marketing ROI.
• Fortunately, marketing software keeps getting better, and some of the leading AI-powered tools are helping brands tackle this age-old challenge and generate more high-quality leads.
• With quality data combined with advanced AI, your organization can focus on high-quality leads and drive more revenue for every dollar spent on marketing.

Don’t Fall for Low-Quality Leads

Let’s face it – it’s easy to get wrapped up in metrics. Watching traffic, social media engagement, and website engagement increase is satisfying. Using these as key performance indicators can also help marketing leaders justify a growing budget.

While there’s nothing wrong with tracking engagement metrics in itself, there is a problem if you’re not putting enough emphasis on figuring out who you’re working so hard to build connections with.

• Spending time on low-quality leads is expensive.
• It wastes sales’ valuable time.
• And it distracts marketing from the primary goal: reaching the right people on the right channels at the right time.

According to the Content Marketing Institute’s 2021 B2B Content Marketing Report, 90% of B2B marketers are tracking website traffic to gauge marketing content performance. Only about half are looking at marketing qualified lead metrics.

While generating low-quality leads is cheaper and easier upfront, this isn’t a smart strategy. High-quality leads have higher conversion rates and a shorter buying cycle.

Also, having too many low-quality leads impacts the conversion rate at each stage of the sales funnel. As a result, the final outcome is starkly different for a company that focuses on all leads rather than laser-focusing on high-quality leads.

Sirius Decisions research found that the number of closed deals for every 1,000 high-quality leads per year is 5 times greater than the number of deals closed from low-quality leads. And when you factor in the cumulative effects, low-quality leads can cost as much as 10 times more.

So what can marketers do to generate more high-quality leads?

Use clean data and AI and automate as much of your marketing as possible.

It All Starts with Good-Quality Data

Artificial intelligence can digest data and determine what leads are worth pursuing. The most advanced platforms can even design marketing campaigns that will figure out whether the people who interact with your emails, ads, and online content are likely to buy a product. If they are, the technology automatically sends the prospect’s contact information to sales.

But if you want your AI to provide accurate, spot-on analysis and predictions, you need to input good-quality data.

1. Clean data is complete – you should have complete and accurate contact info for your leads, as well as the full buying history for your customers.
2. It’s current – if you’re using both old data and recent updates, you have to qualify the data by engagement date and ensure your technology isn’t viewing old and new information equally.
3. It’s manageable – With both first-party and third-party data, you may have problems such as duplicate data sets. Or, your system might discard correct data in favor of incorrect data.

Once you tighten up your database and data management methods, you can count on gold-standard output from your AI marketing software.

What Today’s B2B Brand Marketing Platforms Can Do with AI

With AI, you can derive deep value from your data. Of B2B marketing organizations today, 53% are using some form of marketing automation, and 37% plan to implement it in the near future.

The bottom line is, AI and machine learning allow you to hone in on what matters. Even with increasing complexity. It also helps your company reduce the noise you may be sending leads who aren’t interested right now, but who may be in the future.

For example, you can identify what customers want in real-time. You can also understand the nuances of every individual customer’s intent, and you can do this at scale. This would all be impossible without AI-powered platforms.

Using AI to generate high-quality leads is not a new concept, but the level of sophistication is.

Oracle Fusion Marketing uses AI to score leads at the account level, predict when buyers are warm, and then sends the contact information to sales. It personalizes content to ensure leads are getting a consistent experience across channels.

Adobe’s Marketo has a feature – Predictive Audiences – that suggests marketing segments to use in campaigns for event marketing. It also suggests solutions when registration numbers aren’t on target.

Salesforce’s B2B automation tool is Pardot Einstein. This AI-powered tool automatically prioritizes leads for you, shows you where to focus efforts, and scores leads based on your company’s conversion patterns.

Marketing that Focuses on High-Quality Leads Is a Win for All

The whole idea behind high-quality leads is to invest resources in people who are on the path to purchase. Not on cold prospects who aren’t actually interested in your product or service.

Pouring energy into low-quality leads is a waste of time for your marketing and sales teams. But more importantly, it could also harm your brand image and diminish the likeliness of a future sale. You could be turning away potential customers by blasting them with too much marketing content they don’t need right now. That’s not a great way to build trust in your brand.

With AI, you know when to reach out. And you know when to stay quiet. With better technology, we finally have the opportunity to pull off messaging elegance – not overkill. Let’s take advantage of it.

First Image by Mikhail Nilov from Pexels; Second Image by Content Marketing Institute; Third Image by Soma Metrics; Thanks!

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