Tag Archive for: digital marketing

Roll of money with a Paid label

At Digital Storyteller, we like to think of paid advertising as adding fuel to the fire, giving things a little kick. Paid advertising shouldn’t be the whole cake, just an ingredient you add toward the end for some flavor.

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3 best small business marketing ideas so that you can fall in the small portion of startup businesses that don’t fail. Originally posted by Express Text

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3 best small business marketing ideas so that you can fall in the small portion of startup businesses that don’t fail. Originally posted by Express Text

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3 best small business marketing ideas so that you can fall in the small portion of startup businesses that don’t fail. Originally posted by Express Text

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3 best small business marketing ideas so that you can fall in the small portion of startup businesses that don’t fail. Originally posted by Express Text

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3 best small business marketing ideas so that you can fall in the small portion of startup businesses that don’t fail. Originally posted by Express Text

Organic search

3 best small business marketing ideas so that you can fall in the small portion of startup businesses that don’t fail. Originally posted by Express Text

business

As our world becomes more and more fragmented, the economic slowdown is having an unprecedented impact in nearly every country around the world. At the same time, many brands and employers are attempting to put their purpose at the center of everything they do — those with a clear purpose are prospering, while many corporate “dinosaurs” that refuse (or are unable) to adapt are dying off as the rate of change increases.

Organizations of the future need to embrace fully the concepts of empowerment, learning, and balancing technology with the individual if they are to succeed, by using the power of technology and automation to rehumanize — rather than dehumanize — the workplace.

These major changes are being driven by a few important factors in consumer behavior:

Generational gaps are closing in the workplace.

More generations are working together than ever before, with different expectations and attitudes. By 2025, experts expect millennials to make up nearly 75% of the active workforce. Outside of the workplace, life expectancy is continuing to rise and up to two-thirds of babies born in the last year could live to be 100. In the older generations, people are retiring later or not at all. All of these changes mean we now have an environment in which older workers already report facing prejudice at work and millennial executives struggle to gain acceptance from older colleagues.

Flexibility and job changes are more encouraged than ever before.

By 2020, almost 20% of US workers — or 31 million people — will be “contingent” rather than permanent. If that sounds like bad news, consider that 80% of today’s contingent workers appreciate the flexibility. Most of Uber’s growth has come from drivers who use their own cars, and 75% of them have other jobs. (What happens when a job for life becomes a job for a day?)

The model for success isn’t cut and dry anymore.

New, innovative business models are springing up all over the world, many of them rooted digitally in the “sharing economy.” Nearly half of American business leaders think that their current business models will cease to exist within the next five years.

Robots are taking over (sort of).

Artificially-intelligent supplementation devices could replace 33% of jobs by 2025, and Mark Carney, the Governor of the Bank of England stated earlier this year that almost 15m UK jobs could be “hollowed out” with the workforce being replaced by robots: “Alongside its great benefits, every technological revolution mercilessly destroys jobs and livelihoods … well before the new ones emerge.”

While these trends will affect everyone, it is especially pertinent to keep up with these changes as the leader of an organization — this could be the wake-up call you’ve been waiting for.

To thrive in the new era, we must rethink the role that organizations and their workforce play in driving competitive advantage.

Thriving will mean adapting to the changes, facilitating the interconnections between humans, and investing in their uniquely human attributes. If you are struggling to take your company into the digital space, reach out to Digital Storyteller today!

social media

As marketers, we often spend a huge amount of time creating content that is designed specifically for your customers, prospects, and leads. We are writing, analyzing, optimizing, and innovating every day. Sometimes, we’ll spend hours writing a single caption. 

In fact, we usually spend so much time planning and executing the email strategy, we hardly ever connect with other marketers on our teams who manage our blogs and other content, including social and chat, website, video strategy, events, PR, and more. And this isn’t unusual.

Traditionally, marketers focus on the details — they sweat the small stuff and divide to conquer. One marketer may be in charge of improving conversion metrics, while another focuses on SEO and someone else optimizes product pages. You might even have an intern creating some Instagram stories.

But when marketers complete these tasks in isolation, prospects and customers are left with a disconnected experience.

If you want your business to succeed, you need to take a step back and see the bigger picture. How do all your marketing activities connect? What do your customers really experience? And how can you keep your team working towards the same goal? Let’s find out.

The conversion process is longer than you expect.

We like to believe that every customer takes a predictable, linear path from awareness to consideration to purchase. This process starts with an ad, a blog post, a call-to-action, an email newsletter, and then transitions smoothly into a purchase. Done and done.

Of course, some prospects will take this direct route through your marketing funnel, but most take several detours along the way.

By trying to force the customer journey into a linear, step-by-step mold, you risk losing prospects that don’t fit your design. Consumers want information before they buy, and there isn’t a one-size-fits-all method for getting it.

The truth is, the customer journey is messy and can be difficult to predict — everyone’s is a little different. Some customers may look for information about your brand through search, while others may click on an ad, an email, or seek out reviews from friends.

And the journey doesn’t stop there. Marketers shouldn’t stop interacting with customers as soon as they click “buy” — if you want to maintain and nurture unique relationships, you need to continue to interact with customers after you make a sale. That’s why it’s important to build strong bridges between your marketing efforts to build one cohesive brand experience.

Build strong bridges using your HubSpot CRM.

As a marketer, you’re probably used to using multiple tools and point solutions to connect with prospects and customers. Not only is this method inconvenient, but if all your marketing efforts aren’t connected by a customer management solution or CRM, it also creates a disjointed experience for customers. Marketers need to take a step back and see the bigger picture. If you want to build a complete customer experience, focus on connecting your marketing software with the tool that should be at the core of your marketing efforts: your company’s trusty CRM.

CRMs are traditionally considered a tool for sales teams to track leads, prospects, and customers. With them, reps can see every interaction a contact has had with a brand. Everything from calls with a sales rep to website visits is tracked and logged in a contact record.

While you may be familiar with a CRM, you probably aren’t using it to its full potential. Masters of email marketing, live chat, ads, and social media tools they may be, marketers rarely use a CRM for anything other than creating email lists, if at all. Think about it. You probably stress over the last-minute details of a campaign and track its success, but I’m guessing you rarely check to see how your campaigns are influencing individual contacts, or who’s consistently engaging with your marketing efforts.

By putting it at the center of your marketing strategy, you can truly personalize your messaging. You can use any data point or marketing engagement metric to segment contacts beyond lifecycle stages. This allows you to create more targeted, meaningful content and ads and expedite the sales process, helping your entire company grow better. Without a CRM, your personalization efforts are smoke and mirrors at best, and insufficient at worst.

If you’re curious about utilizing the HubSpot platform or setting up your own digital marketing strategy, contact us at Digital Storyteller today!

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Automating your social media can be useful for developing a content plan, so you’re always prepared. As a Hubspot partner, we use their unique automation software to optimize our content and schedule it out weeks in advance — so all you have to do is watch the engagement roll in.

These social media tools are meant to free up your time so you can engage and personally interact with your followers, have authentic conversations, and strategize about what you post and when. So, now that we know more about social media automation, let’s go over how you can use these tools to automate your posts.

1. Look at social listening tools.

Many social media automation tools can be used for social listening. Essentially, social listening is the process of monitoring what people are saying about your brand or industry online.

With automation tools, you can see brand mentions across all platforms in one place. Additionally, you can follow certain keywords, topics, or hashtags to see what’s going on in your industry. Moreover, social media automation tools can be used to follow your competitors. What’s the latest news? What are people talking about?

Ultimately, social listening tools can help you come up with ideas for social media posts or even product ideas.

2. Use chatbots.

Another way to use social media automation tools is to create chatbots. Chatbots can be used with sites like Facebook Messenger to streamline your marketing, provide customer support, and improve the customer experience.

For example, you can create automated replies or suggested replies to customer questions or comments. When a customer asks for your hours, for instance, your chatbot can automatically respond. Additionally, you can use a chatbot to let customers know that you’ll get back to them in a certain amount of time and provide resources.

Ultimately, a social media chatbot should help customers with small issues, but escalate larger issues to a human.

3. Gain valuable insights across several networks.

Most social media automation tools provide analytics that can be helpful to your social media strategy.

For example, after using and connecting these tools to your social platforms, you can use the analytics to determine the best time to post. You can answer questions like, “When does my audience interact more?” and “What’s my engagement rate?”

A large benefit to automation tools is that you can get analytics such as impressions, reach, and engagement on all your social media platforms in one place. These reports make it easier to compare the success of a campaign across different platforms.

4. Produce content curation ideas.

While not all automation tools provide content curation, some of them do. This means that you can choose industries or topics that you think your audience is interested in. Then, the software will curate content that you can share and post on your social media platforms.

Some automation tools might draft a social media post for you, however, those should just be used as a starting point. You should write all your own social media posts. Additionally, using the tactics mentioned above should help you get to know your audience better, facilitating more content ideas.

5. Engage with your audience.

One of the most important benefits of social media automation tools is that they can help you engage with your audience across several platforms in one place.

With this type of software, you can monitor brand mentions, replies, and messages. With all of these gathered in one place, it makes it easier to connect with your audience and helps your team respond in a timely manner.

6. Achieve consistent scheduling.

Consistency is one of the best ways to earn your follower’s trust and improve your online presence. With social media automation tools, you can keep a steady queue of posts. This can help you plan ahead and spend more time on creativity and less time on the tedious posting tasks.

Additionally, you can use this software to schedule posts in bulk. Many automation software can be used to input a spreadsheet of posts and schedule them.

These are just some of the top ways to use social media automation tools. However, a human should still be interacting with the community, and planning creative, exciting content. At Digital Storyteller, we have partnered with Hubspot to schedule, manage, and optimize the content we create in-house. Contact us today to learn what we can do to improve the way you tell your story online.

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Is investing in a marketing tool like HubSpot going to be worth it for your company? As digital marketers, there are many intelligent tools to navigate email marketing, website design, analytics, and more. With HubSpot, everything you need is in one place. It allows your processes to run more smoothly and provides a big picture analysis of how your company’s marketing is performing.

HubSpot is a software that combines marketing, sales, service, and analytics all in one place. Under each of those umbrellas, you are able to utilize the tools you need to be successful.  For example, in the marketing section, there is a place for web design, blogs, email marketing, live chat, web traffic analytics, and more!

As a digital marketing company, this simplifies all of our processes by creating a one-stop-shop for everything we need to know about our clients. Not only does it give us what we need to know, but it also provides the tools necessary to put that knowledge to work. In addition to making our lives a bit simpler, it streamlines processes for our clients, too.

In HubSpot, the “customer lifecycle” can be mimicked virtually. It begins with designing a site that will attract your target market. Once you attract customers, you build sales leads and turn those leads into customer relationships. After successfully connecting with your audience, you can provide excellent customer service and gather data to maximize your marketing efficiency. All of this happens in one place, so there is little room for error between steps. 

There are so many tools within HubSpot, that it can be difficult to navigate as you begin to use it. But if you take the time to learn the intricacies of the software, it will be a huge benefit to your company. It has made our lives simpler at Digital Storyteller as we continue to implement it with our clients.