Product Documents

By: Johnathan Dane Posted: January 18, 2016 | Digital Marketing Have you ever been so good at something that that everyone looked at you jealously while binging on Ben & Jerry’s? In this blog, I’ll share some effective AdWords Display tricks with you that not many people know about. These are the tricks that you can implement today. But before we get into how you can create your own AdWords Display Network plan, you need to understand the key difference between AdWords Search and AdWords Display. AdWords Search Network: You’re limited to bidding on keywords with a finite amount of ad spots. This means that your competition can make your ad clicks pretty expensive, pretty fast. AdWords Display Network: You have almost limitless ad space across various websites, along with the ability to advertise both image and text ads in different sizes. Now, we’re ready to jump in. These are the five AdWords Display hacks you won’t find outlined in user manuals: 1. The Competitor Email Subscriber Hack aka Gmail Sponsored Promotions Your competitor’s hard work can actually pay off for your company. In fact, you can advertise directly to their prospects when they open your competitor’s emails. With Gmail Sponsored Promotions (GSP), you can target competitor domains as keywords. By doing this, Gmail will look for emails from competitors you target, and if the email recipient is in their Gmail account, your ad will show up. Some people think that because GSP is an AdWords Display channel, the intent behind the GSP visitors would be the same as regular Display visitors—low time on site and high bounce rates—since people aren’t actively looking for what you’re offering, like on the Search Network. On the contrary, not only do the GSP visitors hang around longer than many Search visitors, but you’ll find that some stick around for 2-4x the average time on your site. Check out the average time on site from a GSP campaign within Google Analytics: GSP conversions can actually be the cheapest of all AdWords campaigns. Just take a look at the example below at the cost per converted click for GSP vs. other campaigns. So what makes GSP ads so powerful? You’re paying an AdWords Display style cost-per-click that has almost as high of an intent as an expensive Search click. Since your ad recipients are interested in what your competitors have to say, they’ll most likely be interested in you too. You’re stealing away market share from your competitors, one conversion at a time, since your competitors are hoping that their email leads to a conversion for themselves. You’re going to find that it works tremendously well for high-ticket industries that have longer sales cycles, but also great for small-ticket items too. This is because some high ticket industries pay over $50-$100 per click on the Search Network, but only $0.20 with GSP ads. 2. Supersize It, Please: Use Display Layers To Improve Your Display Targeting This next AdWords Display hack is as much a money maker as it is a mouth drooler. Consider for a second that all of your AdWords Display targeting options are one big, fat, juicy burger (if you’re vegan, please substitute for a veggie patty).Each layer of this ‘display burger’ is a different targeting option, and the more layers you add, the more specific your targeting burger gets. . Placements: Actual URLs you want to target. You can use a tool like WhatRunsWhere.com to see where your current competitors are having their Display ads show and target those directly as well.Contextual: This is just a fancy word for keyword targeting. Give Google the keywords, and it will find “relevant” placements for your ads (heavy air quotes on the relevant part).Interests: This is people-based targeting and is considered a stronger way to understand your audience’ browsing behaviors across different sites.There are two types of interest layers you can target: Affinity Audiences: People who have long-term interests, like gardening. In-Market Audiences: People whose browsing behavior shows that they’re ready to buy. Topics: This is a group of websites that relate to a similar topic.Demographics: This is where you get target age, gender, and parental status.Geo/Languages: This includes geographic targeting (country, state, city, radius, etc.) and the language of your targeted audience.You may find that the more layers you add to your burger, the lower the volume, but the better your performance is. Your layers will have different results, and sometimes, simply targeting a direct placement will yield the best results. 3. The Automatic Money Making Robot In the world of AdWords programmatic advertising, the Display Campaign Optimizer is one of my favorite tools when it comes to making money (and impressing people on the dance floor). Display Campaign Optimizer (DCO) takes the targeting criteria from your regular layer targeting (remember the burger earlier?) and uses that info to find new nooks and crannies based off your goal cost per acquisition (CPA) bid that you set.Let’s say you that you want conversions at $5. DCO would then go out and find placements and mobile apps that help you hit that goal. Some placements and mobile apps might be more expensive than others, and if that continues, the DCO would automatically exclude those placements and mobile apps and go after others.A few other things to consider when it comes to Do’s and Don’ts of DCO: Do gradually rotate in new creatives. Do change your CPA bid in small increments. Do use target CPA to control traffic volumes. Do create new ad groups for thematically different ad creatives. Don’t make full ad swaps. Don’t change the target CPA constantly. Don’t remove high performing placements. Don’t test a ton of radically different landing pages. The reason why you want to be careful with big changes is because the DCO uses your ad and landing page info, along with historical performance, to improve its baseline of performance. If you shake things up too often, then it won’t be able continually improve or backtrack to what worked before.Once you find automatic placements and apps that work for you, you can extract them into new campaigns and bid on those to get more volume. But there’s a catch. DCO operates off of browsing behavior signals where it can see the path a visitor has taken prior to the placement where they see your ad. This means that if you extract a specific placement and bid on it, then the performance might not be the same as it was in the DCO campaign. While there’s not much you can do about that, you can still use layer targeting on top of that specific placement to try to replicate the results. 4. The Smallest, But Most Powerful: Mobile App Ads Mobile apps are a huge deal these days. Just take a look at Snapchat and Uber. And then there’s things like the iPhone Blower, which isn’t worth much, but is full  of advertising potential. This is because most of the free apps have high usage rates. With high usage rates come high ad-click rates, and with high ad-click rates, come high conversion volume. And there are literally millions of apps out there that are part of the Google AdWords universe where you can buy ad placements directly in a specific app.You can use your own targeted demographics to find a pool of apps to target or if you use DCO to your advantage (which I hope you do), then targeting mobile apps by themselves will be insanely easy because the robot finds the apps that perform the best for you. Not to mention that it feels like Christmas every time you see the new mobile apps the DCO robot has found in theAutomatic Placements report!Here’s where your Automatic Placements report is located inside AdWord s: Once you find mobile apps that are performing well, you then want to find their unique package names so you can target them individually.Both iTunes and Google naming conventions.iTunes apps have numeric package names that can be found in their iTunes URLs  Play apps have different package : Google Play apps have alphabetic package names that can be found in their Google Play URLs: So now that you know where inside the AdWords Display world to go fish, let’s make sure you have the best bait possible to not just get the clicks, but the conversions too. 5. Your Army of Mini Conversion Baits If you know the big difference between the AdWords Display and Search Networks, then you know that your visitors are in different stages of the buying cycle.Display visitors might not even know they need your solution until you generate their awareness first, whereas Search visitors could be looking for exactly what you have to offer and buy something today. So how do you get your Display visitors to get their foot in your door?It’s relatively simple. All you have to do is test your bait. If a Display visitor sees your ad, but they’re not ready for a free consultation (or whatever other call-to-action you use on the Search Network), then you need to give them something that’s a different—a low threat offer.These mini baits/offers could be a lot of different things, and you’ve likely seen them before. Here are a few examples, all of which you can mix and match: Coupon Checklist/Cheasheet Quiz Video/Video Course Tools Calendar Podcast/Interview Consultation Tickets Live Demo Email Course Swipe File Infographic/Gifographic Free Quote White Paper eBook Industry Stats Case Study This almost goes without saying, but make sure your new Display visitors taken some kind of opt-in approach before they can get what you promised. If you don’t, then you can’t really nurture them to become paying customers in the future. Here’s What You Should Do Next Even though we only covered a small part of what’s possible with the AdWords Display Network, you now have five easy-to-use and actionable ways to expand and grow your conversion volume. Aside from continuously testing, be relentless in tracking everything directly to revenue. You may find odd nooks and crannies that you never thought would make sense to target, but once you have the complete revenue picture, you’ll be excited to continue fishing and expand your AdWords Display targeting portfolio. Happy fishing! What other AdWords Display hacks do you know of? Share them in the comments section below.

  The marketing world has undergone a dramatic shift: digital now touches nearly every customer interaction. Marketing has become a technology-powered discipline, with the two areas so interwoven that chief marketing officers are projected to spend more on technology than chief information officers by 2017. The rise of digital has led to the emergence and explosion of marketing technology (MarTech) applications and platforms. Marketers can now collect and analyze large and disparate volumes of data—and make their insights actionable with a degree of precision just years ago was only a dream. This gives more power to the CMO, who constantly aims to address the basic question of marketing: how to engage and acquire customers for the long term by making engagement and acquisition more attainable and measurable. The best way to do this? Assemble and integrate a collection of complementary marketing applications – commonly referred to as a MarTech stack. MarTech To The CMO—“We’re Here To Help” There are so many facets in marketing that engagement and measurement can best be accomplished by tapping into data from a multitude of different channels. Think of some of the latest developments, from social listening to video engagement to chat analysis, which produce a treasure chest of customer and prospect data that, when combined, offer insights far greater than a single application could offer. As the channels continue to multiply, there is no shortage of MarTech companies offering the latest acquisition, engagement, retention and measurement tools. In fact, the number of MarTech companies has doubled in the last year to the point where there now are over 2,000 firms vying for the attention of CMOs.  Many marketers are still in the early stages of understanding the value that an extensive marketing stack can deliver. Others are leveraging the value that a rich set of complementary solutions can yield when integrated and working together. Companies including Citrix, New Relic, and Computer Associates are developing valuable marketing stacks with dozens of applications that share data with one another. But they are in the minority—just 9% of marketers have a complete, fully utilized MarTech stack, according to a study from Ascend2. The pace of adoption is bound to accelerate for the simple reason that marketers who harness the value of a well-considered marketing stack will out-perform their rivals and capture market share. Leading marketers will make sense of the vast amounts of data they acquire and figure out how to act on that information. A good MarTech stack can help you get closer to prospects and customers by obtaining information about what they are doing in the digital and offline worlds. For example, it is now possible to seamlessly combine information from a customer or prospect who completes a variety of online and offline actions - visits your website to learn about a new product, watches an online video, attends your annual event and the sessions related to their interests, tweets about their experience, and contacts your call center. This information coupled with an engagement automation platform will improve personalization, relevance, and timeliness leading to improved engagement, conversions, and ROI. Come together, right now It is imperative to develop a technology ecosystem that supports your company objectives—be they acquiring new business, retaining existing customers, or increasing your average revenue per customer. There are a lot of technology applications that can be implemented throughout the customer lifecycle to drive outcomes you desire (check out a fine piece by ChiefMartec.com CEO Scott Brinker on the MarTech landscape). Interestingly, the companies that are leading the investment in, and deriving results from, deep marketing stacks most often don’t come from the ranks of the Fortune 1000. Instead, it’s often emerging, rapidly growing businesses that are leveraging the available toolsets to build broad marketing stacks, sometimes involving more than 20 applications. And they are seeing the benefits. In a recent interview Bill Macaitis, CMO of Slack, emphasized the importance the right technology stack to create and deliver a great customer experience. Today’s CMOs need people within marketing who can think creatively about how to use software and data-science to improve results. People who are knowledgeable about both software and data increasingly have opportunities in marketing. In fact, in an “Ask The CMO” article, Barbara Messing, CMO at TripAdvisor, admits that very few of her acquisition team members come from a traditional marketing background; instead she has many more data scientists. A recent HBR study sponsored by Marketo described marketing technology as essential to creating agile and fluid structures and driving customer engagement. That’s because agile and fluid organizations are highly innovative. These teams understand that they can gain better insights into the unique relationships and connections with their customers and prospects by embracing technology. It boils down to this: The better your marketing technology stack, the more it will help you know how best to acquire, engage, and satisfy your customer.

Setting up the right statuses is really important for reporting. It allows you to conduct better analysis and make the right decisions. It is important that you define the statuses for your program as well as what success means to you. In the example above we have an invitation for a boat event. The statuses are: invited, registered, no show and attended. For this particular case Success is based on attendance. Other businesses decide to chose registration as a success, specially those businesses who are in the lead generation game. If you have not defined the statuses of that particular program you can always do it at a later stage. You need to go to Admin / Tags / Channels. You also need to create the campaigns that will define the different program statuses. This as an example of the campaigns that I created for one of my customers. This is an example of one of the campaigns that defines a change in Program Status. We are defining REGISTERED as program status. When our form is filled (Smart List) the flow is change program status to registered. For event programs it is particularly important that you define Program Statuses.  This will also give you other options for setting up campaigns such as email reminders for people who were invited but they haven't registered yet.

By Sanjay Dholakia We’ve talked a lot about the fact that the rise of digital, social, and mobile has changed how every organization engages with its constituents. Taking this a step further, one thing that’s clear after reading the latest from our Mashable “Ask the CMO” series is that there are some industries more than others whose marketing approach has experienced compounded change driven from other dimensions. Healthcare in the United States, for example, is fundamentally shifting before our very eyes. The advent of the internet, its impact on information availability, and finally the Affordable Care Act have dramatically shifted the nature of patient-provider interactions presenting a slew of new challenges for marketers in the field. In this fascinating interview with David A. Feinberg, vice president of marketing and CMO of New York-Presbyterian Hospital, you’ll learn how one organization is reacting to and leading this shift from a provider perspective. He’s quick to point out that all this change has not only affected the structure of his marketing organization, but the very purpose of his strategies. It’s certainly been a big focus for us here at Marketo; how do we help marketers everywhere from Boston Children’s Hospital to the entire Kindred Healthcare system connect with patients in unprecedented ways that better serve their health? From the rise of consumer power to industry consolidation, read on for key trends in healthcare marketing. And of course, have a very healthy and happy New Year! The following interview originally appeared on Mashable. Thanks to the Internet, we're now able to instantly secure the information we need to make decisions in our lives. These can be mundane choices—like choosing a restaurant, or picking a gym to join to keep those New Year's resolutions alive—or important determinations, like selecting a specific doctor or hospital to receive care from. Today, hospitals, many of which have dozens of centers, thousands of employees and many more patients, know that access to healthcare information is one of the most important services they can provide. To learn how hospitals are innovating and communicating with patients in the Information Age, we spoke to David A. Feinberg, the vice president of marketing and CMO of NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, the largest hospital by number of beds in the U.S., according to Becker's Hospital Review. Feinberg discusses the biggest trends in hospital marketing, how the structure and purpose of marketing has changed in the past two decades and much more. Q&A with David A. Feinberg, Vice President, Marketing and Chief Marketing Officer at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital 1. If you could give one piece of advice to your younger self that pertains to your career in marketing, what would it be? I would give the same piece of advice I received early on: Don't be afraid to fail. Remember that everyone who you think is a success has also experienced failure. At the same time, learn from your mistakes, and don't make the same mistake twice. 2. What's the most unexpectedly important skill from your past that you've found plays into your success? Growing up, my father ran a shoe store in a small town in Pennsylvania. One day he showed me, in detail, how to properly stock the shoes. There was a science to it. I should have been paying more attention to his instructions. When it came time for me to stock the shoes myself, I did it completely wrong. The times when my father yelled were few and far between, so when he yelled at me for a job not-so-well-done, it made me realize the importance of listening carefully. The lesson has stayed with me. I always remember that how you do something—the process and attention to detail—is as important as doing the job. 3. What are the three biggest trends that you see in healthcare marketing today? The first trend is the importance and influence of the consumer. Patients are taking charge of their healthcare in ways that we could not have imagined even a few years ago. We are challenged to adjust our systems to empower our patients while still providing the best care; we want to help them make choices that are both medically correct and right for their individual needs. The second trend is the consolidation and expansion of healthcare institutions and the way organizations are coming together. Consolidation creates challenges and opportunities. Large organizations need to have a strong brand with a cohesive message that stands out. The final trend is the variety of ways that patients get information. There was a time when the majority of information was physician-focused. Now, people get information from multiple sources, like the Internet and from friends and family. (Physicians, of course, are still a main resource). Patients are able to drive their own healthcare through access to information on medications, procedures and their medical team. The challenge becomes making information useful to patients and helping them make the best decisions. It is incumbent on respected healthcare institutions to make sure people are able to decipher the information all around them and to provide accurate, timely and useful information for patients to utilize. 4. When CEO Steven Corwin took over at NewYork-Presbyterian, he announced his plans to put patients first. What does that mean, and how has the marketing department contributed to that effort? The meaning is simple: It means the driving force behind all of our activities is focused on patient needs. The patient and their loved ones come before the needs of the doctor and the institution. Dr. Corwin challenged us to think about what is right for the patient and that is where our success is. Having that focus makes us better at what we do and allows us to provide the best care. From a marketing standpoint, we look at what we do and let the patient drive how we do it. In our ad campaign, the language is totally unscripted. All of the words come directly from the patient and really showcase what is meaningful to them. We hope they create a positive impression; we know they are inspiring and helpful to those who see them. People have connected with the ads, often giving themselves the courage to get the medical care they need. We're very proud of that. 5. David, you've been with NYP for nearly 20 years. How is your marketing department structured today, and how has it evolved over the past two decades? When I first joined NYP, there was a different vision for marketing. We were going to be a department that was hired out to various internal departments to help with individual projects. We quickly realized this model was not going to achieve our strategic objectives. The job of the marketing team changed, becoming a more rounded department and creating an overall branding strategy that has become a driving force throughout the hospital. Over the years, the marketing department has expanded alongside the hospital. For example, we've created a coordinated branding effort that includes messaging, the hospital's website and signage. Most recently, we've been coordinating the branding as we expand our network and bring new hospitals into the NYP family. In order to keep everything cohesive, we (including the public affairs team, the social media team and the internal communications team) work as a team across the institution to achieve a common goal. 6. How does NYP use technology for its marketing initiatives? How does it measure ROI, and how has that changed since you first started your career in healthcare? When I started, the measurements were very basic and included only transactions and reputation. Today, we are moving towards a more complete picture of how we impact the organization and the results we can achieve. I'd be exaggerating if I said we have it completely figured it out, but we are getting better. We are analyzing types of reputation and looking to link our marketing activities with patient volume and revenue. 7. Brand loyalty is extremely important in healthcare. Patients want to be able to trust and build a relationship with a hospital, whether they're tapping into emergency services, specialists, preventative care, etc. How does NYP ensure that its communication with patients reflects their different needs, and how do you continue to build the relationship even after their treatment has ended? We work hard to provide the information patients need in the way they need it. We just completed a video project that we're proud of. It describes what it is like to have a child at our facility. It sounds basic, but knowing what to expect is so important for new parents. When patients feel they are cared for—beyond their immediate medical health—it goes such a long way. In addition, we have a robust and well-developed system, a patient portal called myNYP, for patients to get their information digitally and in real time. Patients can sign on and get all of the information they need about their medications, procedures, doctors and what to do when they leave the hospital. The information can be accessed any time and on any kind of device. One of the things that distinguishes NYP is our ability to provide complete care, meaning the care does not stop when the patient leaves the hospital; it continues beyond our walls. 8. With more people consuming health content and finding doctors on their mobile devices, health care professionals can no longer rely solely on word-of-mouth and traditional mediums. How does NYP make sure it has a digital presence? How do you make sure your conversations with current and potential patients are consistent across all channels—email, advertising, social, etc. It's a challenge across the board, so let me give you a few examples. We are in the process of re-imagining our website as an integrated digital platform built around patient needs, both current and future. Everything about the site is looked at through the eyes of our patients and families, and it will be device and platform agnostic. No matter how patients want access, it will adapt to their needs. Additionally, we have a relationship with one of the largest providers of digital physician information, allowing us to make sure we have the most up-to-date data on our doctors. Patients can connect to their doctors, allowing them to get the care they need. This is a digital tool that can be used across all platforms. 9. The "Amazing Things" campaign was applauded by the medical and advertising community. Can you give an overview and talk about the immediate results of that campaign? What were the main things NewYork-Presbyterian learned from it? Where do I begin! Of course we are very proud of the campaign. It is unique in that it is totally about the patients—unscripted and totally real. We have gotten a tremendous response. When our caregivers tell people they work for NYP, the first thing they hear is how much other people love the advertisements. People may love the ads, but they really love what the ads say. They say so much in such a simple way; it is a reinforcement of something I learned long ago: The quality of the advertisement is the inverse of the complexity of its execution. Our campaign exemplifies this completely. It is so simple and so real, and that has proven to be very impactful.

By: Mike Tomita Posted: January 8, 2016 | Modern Marketing Since the news first broke about Disney’s acquisition of Lucasfilm in 2012, there has been a ton of speculation around whether Disney will be able to carry on the Star Wars legacy. Our questions were answered as Disney closed out the year by releasing Star Wars: The Force Awakens globally, and since then, it has been breaking box office records from left to right. While George Lucas is much to credit for building the massive Star Wars fan base, Disney continued his legacy by catering to the fans and giving them what they want. In a recent interview with Charlie Rose, Lucas shared that, while it wasn’t what he wanted, Disney wanted to make something for the fans—a retro movie. And they did just that. By keeping certain elements consistent with the prequels and adding their unique Disney-esque touches, Disney succeeded in carrying on the legacy and impressing critics, earning a 93% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. While it’s unlikely you’ll be directing a box-office hit anytime soon, there is a valuable lesson you can learn from this handover: your audience should always come first, whether it is a theater full of fans or your targeted prospects. It’s important to cater your messaging to them to give them the best experience possible because, at the end of the day, it’s their dollars that are feeding your bank. From my perspective, these are some of the key elements that Disney incorporated for the fans that contributed to the success of the new Star Wars movie, and can help you build your brand: (Warning: This blog contains SPOILERS) 1. Consistency Granted that this is the seventh installment in the Star Wars saga, so Disney had to build on the story that George Lucas had created. Since The Force Awakens occurs after the events of the original Star Wars trilogy, they had the advantage of bringing back the original characters and actors that established the fanatic legacy that Star Wars enjoys today. However, that advantage came with the peril of tarnishing the “happily ever after” ending that was implied at the end of the last Star movie, Return of the Jedi. When we last saw our heroes, the Rebels had just blown up the second Death Star and defeated The Empire, Han and Leia were young and in love, and Luke led his father (SPOILER ALERT: Darth Vader) to redemption, finally becoming a true Jedi in the process. Skip ahead a few decades and the events of the original trilogy are now a half-believed legend. Luke is a just a rumor of a broken man who ran away, Han and Leia are split up and trying to forget the pain of their alienated son by going back to old habits, and The Empire is back in a big way (now rebranded as The First Order). Did Disney just ruin the original Star Wars trilogy? In my opinion, no. What they did do is create believable continuity between the conflicts of the past and present. After all, who wants to watch a Star Wars movie about a universe where everything is going great? It would just be a boring movie about political debates and teen angst (*cough* the prequel trilogy). In The Force Awakens, Disney brings back the basics with the good versus evil theme that defined the original films. In the new movie, the ultimate villain, Darth Vader, still looms large even from beyond the grave. This time, instead of Luke Skywalker trying to resist the temptations of the dark side and ending up twisted and evil like this father, Han and Leia’s son Kylo Ren is struggling to live up to his grandfather’s terrible legacy as a master of the dark side and fights against the good within himself. Aside from telling a continuous story, Disney also paralleled key visuals into their movie that the old ones shared. This includes everything from the style of the opening crawls to familiar characters and scenes. Take a look at the opening crawls from Star Wars Episode VII (latest installment) and Star Wars Episode IV: Or what about when Han boarded the Millennium Falcon, blaster in hand with the same scoundrel grin he has always had (queue Star Wars theme song), backed-up by his sidekick Chewbacca who hasn’t changed one bit (and who we still can’t understand). Marketing Lesson: Consistency is critical because it’s a solid element that allows fans to connect with you, associating new messages with all the feelings they already affiliate with your brand. And with such a huge fan base like Star Wars’, this is definitely a key thing to incorporate. In fact, when these consistent elements appeared on screen at my showing, the audience even clapped and cheered it on. 2. Innovation While Disney had to keep certain things the same, they also needed to add their own flavor to show that they can not only reproduce the same type of film, but contribute to it. Just take a look at BB-8, Disney’s take on an R2-D2 type of robot. R2-D2’s machinery has aged and is pretty old-age, but BB-8’s is much more innovative with its spherical shape that allows it to move swiftly. Even its noises have changed, sounding much more high-tech than R2-D2 static, satellite-sounding noises. Personally, I think one of the best decisions that Disney, or J.J. Abrams, made was learning from the mistakes of the prequel trilogy and not overusing technology for the sake of technology. Just because something is old doesn’t make it obsolete (think light sabers or The Millennium Falcon). For The Force Awakens, they went back to the basics like shooting on real film, building sets on location, and utilizing practical effects and costumes. CGI (Computer Generated Imagery) is definitely used, but it is used appropriately and doesn’t pull the viewer out of the story, which is what special effects are for and why the revolutionary techniques used in the originally trilogy were so effective—because they served the story and weren’t added just for spectacle. The new film has improved greatly on the types of special effects that were pioneered by George Lucas and his team when they created the first films and combined with today’s state-of-the-art CGI. This blending of new and old is exactly what the new film is about and carrying that over to how the movie is made, looked, and felt is a big part of its well-received success. The first trilogy had no CGI. The prequel trilogy had WAY too much. This trilogy has started off with just the right amount. Marketing Lesson: From the evolution of the droids, to the streamlined Stormtrooper uniforms, to the very methods used to bring the story to life, Disney has mixed the right amount of the past with the present to create an innovative evolution of a familiar universe. Take a cue from them and give your audience something new to keep them hooked. Otherwise, it’s just the same old, same old. 3. Adaptation The times they are a-changin’. The last Star Wars movie was released in 2005, which means it was filmed at least a year before that. Being that a decade has passed since the last film, Disney had to adapt to our current culture. So what does this entail? For one, did you notice that the main protagonist in this film is a female? While women like Princess Leia or Queen Amidala certainly took the stage before, the spotlight was typically on the main characters—be it Luke Skywalker or Obi-Wan Kenobi. This time, Rey is the star of the show, and we watch her confidence grow as she overcames her fears to take down the dark force. When we first saw Rey, she had been left on the planet Jakku on her own, scavenging and selling things to survive, and certainly doesn’t fit a typical heroine stereotype. Even Finn’s commander is a female and perhaps the first female Stormtrooper ever. Not to mention that we get our first black Stormtrooper played by John Boyega. This was such a controversial casting decision that the hashtag #BlackStormtrooper was born to handle the debate. Again, this is a sign of Disney not only adapting to the times, but doing it in a way that felt natural in the Star Wars mythology. Long gone are the days of clone troopers and faceless minions. These modern Stormtroopers are tragic militants, stolen from their families as children, and indoctrinated in the beliefs of The First Order. Some have doubts, some do not, but we finally we get to see one of the faces behind the mask. And he just happens to be reminiscent of another likeable hero who started off working against the Rebels, in both character and color—Lando Calrissian. Like Lando, Finn’s is just another well-developed character who continues the theme of redemption that runs throughout the Star Wars storyline. Marketing Lesson: As Disney has proven, it’s important to keep up with new technology, emerging trends, and cultural norms to offer your audience new, engaging products and content. But this doesn’t mean you have to reinvent the wheel each time. Go through your existing archives and recycle successful, old assets by tweaking it to make it more current. Do, or do not. There is no try. Disney did it. J.J. Abrams did it. And you can do it. Whether or not Disney’s take on Star Wars matched George Lucas’ vision, The Force Awakens is a successful continuation of the Star Wars story that resonates with the fans. Disney’s careful treatment of the core elements that made Star Wars such a beloved franchise provides the generation that grew up with Star Wars that familiar feeling of seeing old friends again, while its updates resonate with the current generation of fans-to-be to carry on the Star Wars legacy for years to come. With strategic marketing through consistent and innovative branding, adapting to new generations of people and technology, you too can awaken your fans and build a brand that carries on for ages. Here’s to your legacy! http://events.marketo.com/summit/2016/

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By Sanjay Dholakia, Marketo CMO These days, it’s like I blink and six months are gone. That’s certainly how it felt for me this year—2015 was a whirlwind. Every year around this time, I like to sit down and reflect on the last 12 months, not only to remember that they actually happened, but to think about what I’ve learned as a marketer, and—more specifically — as a CMO. You’re probably thinking, what’s the meta takeaway? What’s the one thing that I should carry with me as I round out my marketing plans for the year ahead? You, my fellow marketer, will discover that the following findings boil down to one common theme: We are truly in a new era of marketing—the era of engagement marketing. This year, a number of key changes came into focus for all of us—contextual changes and imperatives for us to fundamentally reimagine how we connect with our potential and current customers and how we set up our organizations for success. For our organizations to connect with today’s always-on digital consumers and thrive in 2016 and beyond, we marketers need to evolve, innovate, lead and be change agents in our organizations. We need to create a “Marketing First” world, if you will. This is an incredibly exciting time. This year, I said over and over that marketing has changed more in the last five years than it has in the last 500 and will change more in the next five than it has in the last five. What lies in front of us is the opportunity to shape this change and be a pioneer for all the marketers, sales teams, customers, partners and CEOs to come. So here they are—in no particular order (because after this whirlwind year, I only have four brain cells left)—the seven key things I learned this year: 1. It’s About Engagement Marketing, Not Mass Marketing This has been a central theme for me in years past, but I really saw it come to life in 2015; smart brands that were not targeting consumers with the same messages over and over again were the most successful. Some of the organizations that I saw executing this best were sports teams. Franchises have succeeded in creating an ongoing dialogue with their fans to engage beyond game attendance. By observing that a football fan has taken his whole family to the big rivalry game every year for the last six years, teams are able to market more effectively both around that game and around other family activities. They have begun talking to that individual—not some generic, large group of “fans.” In terms that may sound too “inside baseball” (pun intended), this shift is captured in a move from a “third-party” world (pushing generic messages to someone else’s audience) to a “first party” world where the marketer and the organization are the keepers of individual behavioral and demographic information. This allows them to make every interaction—even paid advertising—completely relevant and personal. Just think of the potential! 2. It’s About The Whole Customer Life Cycle, Not Just Acquisition Over and over this year, I saw—and felt personally in my own day-to-day role—a shift toward the marketing organization being responsible for, and a driver of, the entire customer life cycle, not just the top of the funnel. I met with customers whose “acquisition” marketing teams weren’t even in the same building as their “loyalty and retention” marketing teams. And then I watched them dismantle those constructs to bring them all together. Yes, we want to think of innovative and engaging ways to obtain new customers, but we must place equal, if not greater, importance on keeping the customers we have happy. More engaged customers spend more with us, they renew at much higher rates, and they advocate for us to bring in new customers in a way that our “clever marketing” could never do. Investing in that this year is just good business. 3. It’s About B2H, Not Just B2B or B2C The old distinctions of marketing are disappearing. I repeatedly heard “consumer” marketers this year say things like, “I need to figure out how to nurture relationships like those B2B marketers do.” And, just as often, I heard “B2B marketers” say, “I need to figure out how to dynamically personalize all my messages and content on the website like those consumer marketers.” It’s no longer about how we see ourselves (e.g., “We sell to consumers” or “We sell to businesses”), but about how consumers see us. Not only does this mean that marketers are “crossing the aisle” to learn from each other’s best practices, it means that they’re taking a more personalized approach to their interactions with the “humans” on the other end of their marketing messages. Dedicating ourselves to this broader definition of “must-haves” or best practices will drive higher conversion rates and more revenue for all of us in 2016. 4. It’s About The Customer, Not The Channels Or Silos I heard a lot of marketers this year coming to the realization that people don’t live inside one or another imaginary channel—that they had to think about “everywhere” and “integrated” and “conversation.” For example, while there’s been great emphasis on “mobile first,” there was discussion about falling into the trap of “mobile only.” One marketer expressed to me his “aha” moment of realizing that the mobile device “actually contained a minimum of five different channels” as he described the fact that on “mobile” you and I could be in email or a social network or on the web or watching a television channel — all in addition to possibly interacting with an actual mobile app — all in the very same device. A focus on marketing by channel creates disconnected—and, really, really annoying—experiences for customers. We need to think of our marketing systems holistically. For 2016, it’s not just about mobile or email or social—it’s about how these all intertwine and drive a customer forward on his or her journey. 5. It’s About Renaissance Marketers, Not Channel Specialists Building on the above, there’s a need for today’s marketers to be a master of many talents, instead of specializing in one area or channel. The topics of people, skills, and the prototype for the new marketer were perhaps the most frequent discussion I had with CMOs and marketers in 2015. Mostly recently, Lara Hood Balazs, SVP, head of North America marketing at Visa, in a Q&A with Marketo (my employer) on Mashable described her talent search as looking for “human Swiss army knives,” i.e., “people who … can easily move between multiple work projects.” These folks are rare, which is why I predict that there will be greater emphasis on educating tomorrow’s marketer in the year ahead. This education will go beyond traditional marketing tactics to include mastering marketing technology. 6. The Power Of “And” Vs. The Tyranny Of “Or” In Martech Prior to this year, “martech” and “ad tech” might as well have been on different planets as far as marketers were concerned. “Programmatichttp://marketingland.com/library/display-advertising-news/display-advertising-programmatic-media-buying” was the big buzzword with advertisers in 2014, but in 2015, the buzz was all about the convergence of advertising technology and marketing technology. This was a particularly enlightening lesson from 2015—that the world of paid advertising can andshould directly be tied to direct marketing and the ability to connect with individuals. The result is the ability to personalize ads like never before. For example, sending a specific, relevant message to someone via a paid ad in their Facebook feed should be no different than sending them an email. In fact, wouldn’t it be great if I could send that person a relevant email based on their behavior on my website showing interest in product X, and then if they open that email, automatically put a follow-up paid ad message in their feed—but, if they don’t open that email, I could put the original message in that paid ad? This also means that, as a marketer, our marketing spend will be tracked in new and improved ways. Instead of throwing dollars at programmatic and customers who fit a specific profile, but may or may not be interested in our product, we’ll now be able to better target our dollars to the people who really do care and are therefore are more likely to buy. In many ways, this is the “aha!” moment we’ve all been looking for. 7. This “Marketing First” Phenomenon Is Global I was all over the place this year—mentally, and physically! From France to Japan to the UK to Australia to Germany and over to New Zealand, I was meeting with marketers of all backgrounds and industries. What struck me was that no matter the location, all of today’s smart marketers are grappling with the same challenges that this new digital era presents. They were all talking about the lessons and issues that I identified here—things were not isolated to a specific geography or segment or vertical or size of company. Despite changes and challenges, it was universal that the marketers that were diving head-first into a Marketing First mindset were the ones who were seeing the best results and making the most waves. This won’t happen for all us overnight—it takes a lot of hard work and planning—but if we invest now, and if we commit to drive just one of these lessons in 2016, the results will be worth it. I hope these insights provide a little bit of guidance and luck as you head into 2016. Happy holidays, Happy New Year, and happy marketing! This post originally appeared on Marketing Land on December 20, 2015.

By: Ellen Gomes Posted: January 4, 2016 | Content Marketing It’s a new year, which means it’s time to get started on making your resolutions a reality (both personally and professionally). If you’ve set personal goals already (like seeing the inside of 24 Hour Fitness more than once a week), but you’re looking for a professional goal that will make a tangible impact on your brand and organization, you’ve come to the right place. Does your business communicate with its customers? Yes, of course it does! So this resolution is vital to any and every business: create and maintain a consistent brand voice. This blog is here to help you make this an actionable resolution by sharing the importance of a consistent brand voice and some tips and tricks on to create and maintain it. Why You Need a Consistent Brand Voice It’s important to present a consistent experience across channels, and the best way to do this is to define your brand’s voice.  Whether you’re creating content for your blog, your website, or on social, the style you write in will become the “voice” of your brand. Think of your brand’s voice as its personality. It helps make your brand more genuine and personable, but it needs to be consistent. While you might adopt a more playful voice on Twitter and a more professional voice in a whitepaper, consistency is key if you want to create a brand that your customers recognize and engage with over time. How to Determine Your Brand Voice The voice you use for your brand depends on the persona you’re creating content for. In some organizations, you may address different personas. It’s important to identify both a “go-to” voice that addresses everyone and one that addresses individual personas. Stephanie Schwab of Social Media Explorer breaks down a brand’s voice into four categories: Character/ Persona, Tone, Language, and Purpose. Here’s her list of attributes for each category—which of these descriptors resonate with your brand? (Note: You may decide that some attributes fit with one buyer persona, but not with another.) Character/Persona Friendly Warm Inspiring Playful Authoritative Professional Tone Personal Humble Clinical Honest Direct Scientific Language Complex Savvy Insider Serious Simple Jargon-filled Fun Whimsical Purpose (different content will probably serve different purposes) Engage Educate Inform Enable Entertain Delight Sell Amplify Create a Consistent Voice Once you’ve defined your voice, you’ll want to aim for consistency across your entire company—allowing for some variability for each persona.Here are some strategies we use at Marketo to achieve a consistent voice: Create brand guidelines. Ideally, you’ll develop a distinctive visual and written style that makes your brand instantly recognizable by your audience. To create brand guidelines, simply translate this style into words, include plenty of examples, and get buy-in from the C-suite. Check all your content against these guidelines and be sure to share them with any outsourced design agencies and your writing team. These guidelines will work best as living documents that are updated as you encounter new questions. So what should your brand guidelines include? Here’s a list to get started: Visual Guidelines—Do you use stock photography? How can your logo be used? Anything that visually supports your brand should be included here. Style Guides—This is where you indicate any writing style preferences that support your brand. Do you capitalize product names? Do you prefer open or closed words—for example, web site versus website. Do you have a style guide you rely on as your guiding principle—like AP Style or Chicago? Document these here. Personas—If it’s an internal document, it may make sense to include the details of your personas in your brand guidelines. Personas help writers and designers understand the audience they are trying to reach and make your visual and style guidelines come to life. Align your writers. Make sure anyone writing for your brand (whether it’s advertising, press releases, ebooks, or blog posts) is closely aligned. Start by ensuring that they have access to your brand guidelines. If multiple people handle these functions, meet regularly to review and improve. Extend the review process. We firmly believe that everyone needs an editor, so if the structure of your organization permits, having someone to share your writing with and get feedback from can make you a stronger writer. For example, at the end of each day, the social team could send their scheduled tweets, Facebook posts, and LinkedIn posts to a cross-functional team of reviewers. This way, members of the PR, demand generation, content, SEO, and PPC teams all have a chance to weigh in. (This is also a great way to catch typos and bad links!) A consistent brand voice is one way to make sure that your customers recognize you and understand that you are talking to them. Take these tips with you into the new year and see the impact it has across your organization. Do you have tips to share on building a consistent brand voice? I’d love to hear them in the comments section below. http://events.marketo.com/summit/2016/

"Kids today are lazy and entitled. Technology is ruining our lives. Advertising is out of control. Get off my lawn!” Every generation shares the same fears and uncertainty about the future that the previous generation once had. We may not see it at first, but there’s really no escaping the fact. It’s a realization we don’t like to face because it means we’ve crossed a line. The line. You know the one…when you start echoing the same things your parents once said. South Park’s Perspective on Sponsored Content is Hilarious and Frightening The truth is that we often overlook the worries of the past that we now complain about as if they are brand new. Many of our shared concerns as a society come in cycles, and what was old becomes new again. The current season of one of my favorite TV shows South Park has focused on some of these shared concerns from the past that are making a comeback—like political correctness, gentrification, and advertising overload. It’s an odd and intricate mix of themes, but if you’re fan of smart insights and 3 rd grade humor, I recommend checking it out. As a marketer, a recent storyline in the show that revolves around the fear of advertising grabbed my attention. It all centers on the increasing intelligence of ads’ ability to predict what you, as a consumer, will click on or interact with in real life. In several scenes, the characters in the show have an almost impossible time accomplishing anything online because they are constantly being distracted by “sponsored content,” which sidetracks them from their initial intentions. While this battle of attention is raging, one of the kids, Jimmy, discovers that there are people in the world who aren’t really people at all…they’re ads! Only Jimmy has the ability to distinguish these walking, talking, artificial intelligence driven ads from real people, which leads to him being kidnapped by a shadowy group of ex-newsmen to help expose the conspiracy. As I said, odd and intricate. It’s a frightening look into a world gone horribly wrong. What led to this new world of mixing advertising with entertainment in all forms? Is it all our grandparents’ fault? Or maybe our great-great-grandparents’? I’m sure it goes back even further than that, but let’s take a look back at the progression of this “new” type of advertising. Sponsored Content in the Real World Back before the internet and television, the radio ruled entertainment at home. Product sponsored shows were invented in this era and popular stars of the day mixed entertainment with advertising in a very early form of sponsored content. Even then, listeners were impatient with commercials, so advertisers experimented with new ways to sell their wares. In fact, soap operas were originally radios shows sponsored by detergent brands to reach the homemaker demographic, but the value of beloved and trusted personalities endorsing products was quickly realized. Remember George Burns and Gracie Allen singing the praises of the heavenly canned meat product, SPAM? Product placement in movies is another familiar advertising method that has been around for decades. Product placement involves the clever insertion of products into the storyline or events of a movie to subtly expand brand awareness. As a viewer, you unconsciously recognize a product and, if done well, associate it with a beloved character or aspiration. I can still remember E.T. following that trail of Reese’s Pieces and thinking, “I could reallygo for some Reese’s Pieces right now.”" Recently, I’ve noticed the almost seamless evolution of the old radio concept of sponsored advertising on television. This spot below from the Comedy Central show Drunk History is a great example of this. On this show, comedians will enjoy a few adult beverages and then retell the story of a historical event or person. The advertisement for a new video game below, set in Victorian London, could almost pass unnoticed as a segment of the show. Even if you were fast forwarding through the commercials, you probably wouldn’t skip over this because it features familiar faces from the show you’re watching and is structured in a very similar way. It’s also entertaining enough to keep you interested as it doesn’t focus on the product itself, but more on the experience and the fun the host and guest are having playing it. The wheel of advertising never stops turning The fact that this tried and true method of advertising has found a home in the latest form of popular entertainment shouldn’t be a surprise to anybody. It’s just another medium in the continuing endeavor for people to sell their goods, services, and opinions to each another. Like anything else, it takes time to polish and refine the process so that it becomes more valuable than distracting, both from a consumer and marketer perspective. As consumers, we look to the fast forward button and ad blockers to skip over the ads that don’t resonate with us. But as marketers, we continually strive to show relevant ads to those who are most interested in our products or services. As the wheel keeps turning and technology progresses,  marketers will get better at targeting our ads to the right audience and these fears of advertising will fade in the past… until the next generation. Have you seen any sponsored content lately that felt seamless? I’d love to see them in the comments below.

By: Johnny Cheng Posted: December 30, 2015 | Marketing Metrics Just like the saying goes to keep your friends close and your enemies closer, it’s important to keep tabs on what your peers are doing as a good benchmark of your own results. While your email campaigns may be hitting all of your marks, you may want to set your goals higher for 2016 based on how other companies in your space are doing. After posting my earlier blog around email performance, in which I revealed which types of email perform the best, I received a ton of requests to break it down by industry so marketers can compare the performance of their email campaigns to those of their peers. The numbers are in and the wait is over! Refresher on Email Types In case you’ve forgotten the three types of email campaigns, here’s a recap from the original blog post: Batch Emails: Also known as “batch and blast”. These types of emails don’t have any “intelligence” built in. Instead they just gather a list of contacts and send them the same email. A great example of this is your company newsletter—it goes to everyone, no matter what. Nurture Emails: This is a series of targeted emails based on personas (e.g. by industry, role, or use case). Nurture emails are primarily used to lead prospects through the sales funnel and warm up leads for a sales handoff. A nurture email offers something different to a person based on where they are in their buying journey. If they are just learning about you, your nurture email might offer a fun, light infographic versus a buyer who has engaged with you many times and consumed your content might get a webinar invitation to a live demo. Trigger Emails: These are personalized emails that are delivered based on prospect actions. Some range of email “intelligence” is built in based on behavior (think of it as a two-way conversation of listening and speaking). An example of a trigger email would be this: a prospect visits your events webpage and then, based on that activity, receives an email invitation to an event in their area. Email Performance by Industry Here’s the email performance for the three types of campaigns across all industries. As you can see below, batch campaigns performed significantly better in Healthcare and Life Sciences and Travel, Recreation, and Leisure. Nurture campaigns, on the other hand, performed the best in Energy, Healthcare and Life Sciences, and Transportation and Storage. Trigger campaigns prospered across several different industries, with the highestaverage click rate across all types of campaigns. This data represents average click rate for the 3 email types across all industries. Per the legend on the right, the green shades indicate the relative click rate performance (0.2% – 23.5%). Only industries with statistically significant averages are shown above. What We Learned This chart speaks for itself, but there are definitely some cool data points that stand out. Here’s my take on why certain email types do better or worse for certain industries. But I’d love to hear from readers of that specific industry (I’m looking at you…) to give their opinion. 1. In General–High Performance Trigger Emails I know I sound like a broken record, but despite its proven success at Marketo and beyond, there are still plenty of email marketers that don’t realize the potential of trigger emails. So I’m going to say this one last time (no promises)…personalized messages based on behavior are much better than batch and blast. In fact, they’re 3x better on average. They are an important customer touchpoint so spend that extra time and effort to create those triggers campaigns! 2. Energy–The Power of Nurtures The Energy vertical has the highest nurture email performance of any industry, at a whopping 12.4%! That’s as high as some trigger email metrics. It makes sense if you think about how an energy utility company communicates with their customers. Do you get regular emails around your energy usage, ways to save energy, and updates to policies? Those highly relevant targeted emails are nurture programs at work. Below you’ll see a similar example from a water department. 3. Travel–Brochures for Everybody! This one is really interesting. The Travel, Recreation, and Leisure industry has the highest batch rates, but the lowest nurture rates. Their batch programs perform almost 40x better than nurtures! This is most likely due to the nature of the travel industry. Interest in travel traditionally happens by time of year and less dependent on the individual. Nurturing a customer every month probably isn’t as effective as blasting your entire database with beach excursions right before summer or a trip to the mountains right before ski season. 4. Healthcare–You’re in Great Shape The most well rounded email performance award goes to Healthcare and Life Sciences. They excel in every type of email campaign. I think this is due to two main factors. First is how technologically advanced healthcare has become in the past few years. The overnight shift to the digital era definitely shows in their marketing efforts. Second is the wide range of use cases that each email type solves for this specific industry. Patient doctor office visits? Triggered emails! Ongoing preventative care tips and tricks? Nurture emails! Hospital announcements and newsletters? Batch emails! You can see that different types of emails serve different purposes, but I hope that digging into this data gave you some ideas on how you can use email more effectively for your organization. Notice something in the data that stood out to you? Have suggestions on what data to dive into next? Got follow up questions for me? Leave your comments below

This interview is part of Marketo’s “Ask the CMO: Marketing for Growth” series, which explores how marketing is helping to drive business at high-growth companies. In this session, we'll look at an interview with Suneet Bhatt, the CMO at LiveIntent. LiveIntent At A Glance Year Founded: 2009 Size of Marketing Team: 15 Marketing Stack Components: Social Listening/Automation, Sales Communication Platform, Sales Automation, Marketing Automation, CRM, Publishing Platform, Analytics Number One Reason for Choosing Marketing Automation: To keep up with the demands of salesforce automation and an increasingly hyper-efficient salesforce. Q&A 1. You’ve held marketing positions at a number of companies in various stages of growth. How has your marketing strategy at LiveIntent differed from your strategies at other start-ups or even well-established companies? I’m obviously smarter today because of the mistakes and opportunities I’ve made in the past. So, the biggest difference is another few years of knowledge and experience as well as greater clarity personally and professionally on the person I want to be. But high-level philosophy aside, the model and framework I’ve brought with me to LiveIntent is similar to what I’ve used to build marketing teams in the past. The core principles are exactly the same: Marketing is a servant function to the rest of the organization. Everything we do should be in support of an internal stakeholder’s goals and should push them one step closer to their stakeholders (internally or externally.) Practically, that means helping executives tell thought leadership stories, helping People Development communicate with candidates, as well as helping sales people throughout the sales cycle and into customer advocacy. Marketing is a servant function to the customer experience. Everything that Marketing does should impact some aspect of the customer experience. Whether that means: improving and automating reporting so Account teams can spend less time looking for information and more time serving clients, or helping our SDR team identify tools and use templates that improve their productivity, or helping our Sales team get closer to the point of sale with more qualified leads and better content to facilitate outreach. There’s always more work to be done than you have people to do it. The single best thing a manager can do is to identify what needs to be done at the highest-level (including soliciting feedback from all levels of the organization) and marry that to the skills you have around you. When you have gaps between the two, you also have your hiring plan. Sure, some people will have to take on some aspects of work that no one wants to do but needs to be done, but it’s rare that people are doing such things for too long. And when empowered to do it their way, they will tend to like it. The biggest difference for me at LiveIntent is that I walked into a highly functioning team of incredibly committed people. My biggest responsibility was simply to not screw it up, while helping the team think bigger about their roles. 2. One of the biggest problems that high-growth organizations face is the ability to scale. Within marketing, how have you kept your customer interactions effective and personal as LiveIntent has expanded? The first thing we did was structure and hire to ensure the entire customer experience is supported. So we have sub-teams focused on: PR/Corporate Communications, Events, Demand Generation, Marketing Intelligence, Product Marketing, Customer Success, and Creative Services. By having a horizontal team, more people are closer to the decision point, and more people have both the visibility into what needs to be done and the autonomy to make the call against what needs to be done (based on a system of shared values we’ve agreed to quarter over quarter.) As a result, the teams are nimble enough to adjust to not all customer needs, but to the most pressing, the most urgent, or the most impactful. 3. Fast-growing companies reach a point at which they need tools that will not just work for “now” but will grow with them. At what point in your growth trajectory did you realize it was time to future-proof your marketing tools? Our biggest point came last summer when we were using one very specific marketing automation system that was holding back our outbound sales efforts. We needed to make the switch. And as a result, we spent exceptional time researching (thank you to Scott Daily, Marketing Intelligence Manager on our team) and arrived at Marketo as the optimal solution. What I’ve learned is it’s important to let the business need and objective write the RFP for the appropriate technology solution without looking at a solution first. And we’ve had great success with Marketo, including making an investment in our newest team member and Marketo Expert, Alexis D’Alba. 4. Describe the marketing team’s relationship with sales. What was the biggest factor inaligning to the two areas of the business? I have run several sales teams in the past, and have had the benefit of running several functions (including product, service, and obviously, marketing, as well as overall integrated business lines.) I lead with that because one thing I think I have learned is empathy for successful cross-functional relationships. So to answer the question, we have a highly functioning relationship across sales and service, team member by team member. Because we’ve built empathy and respect for each other, and we all are focused on the customer’s need. 5. What advice would you give to other CMOs who are thinking about strategies for growth and how to structure their teams to support that growth? Have a model you believe in and can sell through and build support for. It will structure your thinking but it will give you a compass to guide you and refer to throughout. Start with what you need to do and who/what you have to work with so you can make progress quickly and efficiently. And use that starting point as a way to evaluate the longer-term decisions you need to make (team structure, technology solutions, partners, goals.) If done correctly, you can have enough of this work done and sized in 30-60 days.

By: Sarah Quinn Posted: December 17, 2015 | Content Marketing Do you spend a lot of time crafting the perfect piece of content, only to find that it barely generates any shares, let alone drive leads? As a fellow content marketer at a B2B company, this is hands down one of the most challenging things about my job. We know that content marketing can generate more leads, but according to Content Marketing Institute, only 30% of marketers consider themselves to be effective. What’s the missing link? It’s time to go back to the basics. The problem may be in your promotion strategy or your lack thereof. Unless you have an audience that seeks out your content en masse, promoting your content is the only way that your audience is going to see it. But aside from simply posting it across your social media channels, what else can you do? Let’s take a look at 10 tactics that are essential to expanding the reach of your content: 1. Get an outsider’s buy-in Before you publish your content, you may want to think about ways that you can make it even more shareable. One of the best ways to do this is to find influencers, bloggers, and other sources within your industry and ask them for a quick interview surrounding the subject of your content. That way, you can sprinkle quotes from them throughout your content and its promotion, which will not only give it more validation, but will likely lead to your influencer sharing that piece of content with their own followers. How to find sources to interview: You’ve probably heard of great platforms such as BuzzSumo or BuzzStream, where you can search for influencers within your industry, but have you ever thought about using HARO? Help A Reporter Out (HARO) has more than 475,000 sources and 35,000 journalists that you can use to ask questions surrounding your content. You’ll be able to collect various quotes from relevant sources to give your content more value, thus making it more impactful and shareable. 2. Use the Problem-Agitate-Solve (PAS) formula on social media Have you heard of the PAS formula? It stands for Problem-Agitate-Solve and it’s the copywriter’s secret weapon. PAS is a common technique that’s used when creating content, but it can also work to encourage more clicks back to your content when you post on social networks. To see this in action, imagine you’re writing a blog post. You would begin the post by identifying the reader’s problem, you would then agitate that problem, and then finish the article by providing the solution. How to use PAS on social: Let’s say your video teaches a person how to cook healthy pancakes. Using the PAS technique, your social snippet could be: “Love food but not the weight gain? It’s a daily struggle for everyone! Learn how to make yummy, guilt-free pancakes with this video.” And that’s the PAS technique working in less than 140 characters (for all you Twitter enthusiasts). Take a look at a post from Innocent Drinks—a healthy beverage company—for the perfect example. They’ve started their tweet by identifying the problem: that we don’t consume the Government recommended 5 fruits and vegetables per day. They go on to address the fact that people find it difficult to eat that much fruit and vegetables, and then they offer a solution to that problem at the end of the tweet by linking to their drinks. 3. Create social banners Do you change your social banners to promote your content? While it’s a tried and true tactic, not that many businesses will change the covers on their social pages to promote content. But it makes an impact because it’s the first thing that your audience will look at when they visit your page. Create an engaging image and include the address within the image so that your audience knows where to find the content. How to create a social banner: Take advantage of free resources to design the banners yourself like: Canva, GIM, Inkscape, and Pixlr. Social banners work best if you’re promoting big pieces of content like an ebook that’s designed to drive leads. In the example below, Wyzowl created a social banner for their Facebook page to promote their ebook. 4. Post in content communities A community that is dedicated to the type of content you’ve created is perfect place for promotion. You should be able to find various communities within your industry where you can post your content where it will offer value and not appear too “salesy”. If you are just getting started, check these places out: Visual.ly for infographics, YouTube/Vimeo for videos, Publi.shfor ebooks, and Medium for blogs. 5. Pin it to your Twitter feed Did you know that you can pin a tweet so that it appears at the top of your page? Similar to your social banners, this simple trick will help draw attention to people that visit your Twitter page because it’ll be the first tweet they see. You can remove it or change it whenever you like, and it’s perfect for promoting any type of content, including blogs, videos, infographics, or ebooks. How to pin a tweet: Find the tweet that you want to Pin, right click on the ‘more options’ icon (the three little dots under a tweet) and select to ‘Pin to your profile page’ and it will then appear at the top of your page. Take Moz for example. They’re promoting an upcoming event so they created a banner for it and pinned it to the top of their feed—highlighting its importance and driving registrations. 6. Mix up your snippets When it comes to promoting your content you shouldn’t just publish it just once on social media and hope for the best. To effectively promote your content, you need to put effort into testing out what works best for each of your different channels. By creating a variety of intriguing snippets, you’ll encourage a larger click-through to your content by delivering copy that appeals to a larger audience. How to mix up your snippets: Include a popular quote or saying Include an interesting statistic Include an engaging image Test out hashtags to increase the reach of your content 7. Include sources when sharing If you’ve cited sources in your content, then they are definitely worth mentioning when you post on social networks. The idea is that by crediting them on social media, you will encourage these sources to check out the content and share it with their followers. As you research for your content, keep track of bloggers and influencers within your industry. How to get sources to share your content: Including influencers that are active on social media, and crediting them on social can translate into a more widely shared piece of content. Take this tweet below as the perfect example. It doesn’t give too much away about the content, but simply tags a few sources within the tweet. 8. Reach out to people who have shared similar content This one isn’t exclusive to influencers, but rather peers who may help share your content for you. If you find people that have shared content around a similar topic as yours, the chances are they wouldn’t mind sharing yours as well since most people are actively looking for content to share. One of the best ways to cultivate these relationships is by reciprocally sharing and commenting. Another way is to understand their audience and make sure that your content offers value to them. You can be direct, and send them a message sharing your content with them and ask them if they would mind sharing. Or, you can follow them and slowly build a reciprocal relationship by sharing and engaging with their content and getting to know their audience before you ask for them to share—this often works best. How to find people that have shared similar content: Visit a website like BuzzSumo—a social media influencer insights platform— and type in the keywords surrounding the content that you’ve created. You’ll then find a list of articles that will be relevant to that content. Next, post the links of those articles into your search bar on Twitter and you’ll find a stream of people who have shared that very content. 9. Link from your best performing content As a metrics-driven marketer, you understand what your most successful content is. This underused tactic leverages your best performing content and its significant traffic, to promote new and related content. After you identify your best performing content, place a link from that content to the new piece that you want to promote. If you have a content recommendation engine, you may be able to automate this process. How to effectively link from your best performing content: One way to implement this is to use relevant keywords or phrases from your best performing posts, and create new content that is relevant to those keywords so that you can link to it. By doing this, the link will feel natural and relevant to your audience, rather than promotional and out of place. 10. Include a Call-to-Action (CTA) in your best performing content Chances are that your best performing content is effective at engaging your audience. Take advantage of their interest and include a CTA for them to act on. Let’s say the content that you want to promote is an educational, downloadable piece designed to generate leads. With this tip, once again you use the power of your best performing content to help drive traffic and attention to the new content you want to promote by including a call-to-action. How to include a CTA in your best performing content: The first step is to set up a landing page for the content that you want to promote so that when you include a CTA in your best performing content it points to the new asset. According to Brian Dean from Backlinko, this technique really works and he suggests using the CTA closer to the top of the content to help encourage more clicks. You can also design stand-out banners for the side bar and at the bottom of the post to really draw attention to your new content. Content marketing can be a tough gig—from content ideation to creation and promotion—but with the right tactics across various platforms, you’re far more likely to increase the chance of prospects seeing it, sharing it, and becoming your latest lead. Do you have any more tricks to promote your content? Let me know in the comments below.

It's the time of year when everyone is making lists and checking them twice. Whether you're making lists for work or for the gifts you need to get for friends and family, there is one list you are forgetting! Your Summit holiday wish list... Please share what you'd like to see and/or do at Summit 2016 with the Marketing Nation in the comments of this post by December 31st. Although we can't promise they'll come true, the Marketo team will be watching over as this list grows and who knows...you could be lucky and have your wish come true! We look forward to seeing what is on your holiday Summit wish list this year!

You can find a video here: How Marketo Structures Marketing Operations – Marketo.com

By: Crystal Vaughan Posted: December 15, 2015 | Modern Marketing If building a customer community for an organization were like planning a wedding and inviting guests, customer communities often are the second cousin who’s invited only when slots open up on the attendee list. But take it from me (I’m in the middle of planning my own wedding), they really should be a guest of honor. The Importance of Building a Customer Community Many companies see communities as a ‘nice-to-have’ and not as critical to the organization as sales and marketing, but the reality is that a customer community is a critical direct line to your customers and has the power to build your brand with your most powerful advocates. 2016 is the age of the customer, as the market moves at a speed not yet seen before, driven by customers’ high expectations for personalization of their journey. Businesses will need to realign and reorient their strategy specifically around the customer or risk losing out on developing and fostering a valuable channel as customers form communities of their own. During the last few months, I’ve researched and planned for the 2016 execution of an online community for Invoca. At the same time, I’ve also been planning a wedding and actively applying the lessons I’ve learned along the way to help lay a successful foundation upon which I’ll build Invoca’s community. Below, I share my advice on the three most important things I’ve learned from wedding planning that’s helped me assemble an online community proposal: 1. Get Executive Buy-In Early On While the tradition of asking the bride’s father’s permission before proposing is somewhat outdated and not as frequently used anymore, asking permission and getting buy-in is still a vital part of a community-building process. Getting internal buy-in and support is a rule of thumb within organizations as they build large initiatives. But, like a nervous fiancé about to ask permission, I bet you’re wondering: what’s the best way to set yourself up for success when you ask? Start by doing your research. Then create a project plan and define methods to measure your results—think about what success looks like for this initiative and ask yourself the hard questions you’ll likely get. Then present your plan to an executive sponsor. Their buy-in as you build an online community will help support your goals and guide you with your project plan, ensuring you stay in alignment with the overall business objectives. It will also assist with defining exactly what is being built and the importance of the initiative to the rest of the organization. 2. Customer Experience Matters Just like you have to understand your wedding guests and gauge their interest in the different elements of your wedding (did someone say photobooth?), you’ve got to gauge the level of interest your current customers would have in an online community. This may not be the main channel they are interested in actively participating on–perhaps they interact more with your brand on your blog or want instant support via chat or a Twitter account. But can you incorporate these elements into your community so they can get everything in one place? Getting consensus on what your customers want before throwing money into developing an online community should be part of your research. You want to establish a channel that supports development of the customer and helps them get value out of their current investment, while also ensuring you see a return from your investment. Establishing this type of customer experience broadcasts that you are listening to what they want and creates a strong foundation for your first interactions with them. So set up a primary channel to communicate with them and nail it. 3. You Need a Team to Bring It to Life When you’re planning a wedding, you’re either one of two brides: a bride that thinks in siloes or a bride that thinks all-encompassing. Those that think in siloes are the equivalent of marketers who have “tool bloat”, needing a decorator for wedding decor, florist for floral arrangements, and caterer for wedding menu. However, in my experience, I’ve found if you bind everything together, it’s a great way to indirectly support the main initiative. For instance, find a venue that incorporates catering, décor, lighting, floral, all in one complete package, and you’ll have an entire team working toward one main goal instead of trying to coordinate between all of them. The same goes for building an online community. Many think online communities are strictly for customer marketing, upsells and advocacy, and as such, marketing-owned. But it is much more than that–they allow for instant, unlimited communication and unparalleled networking, giving customers a chance to build stronger relationships with each other and the business. If your community is going to be a success, it needs to be rebranded internally, adopted widely and owned company-wide. Sales, marketing, customer success, product development and even finance need to work together in order for the business to have a successful community. By putting together a cross-functional team of champions, each person will be able to promote and indirectly support the online community. Aligning the goals of the community with the goals of all your organizational stakeholders is vital. When companies align the community goal across all departments, employees know to make decisions that put the customer first and are more likely to contribute to the world-class customer experience you are trying to build. Ready, Set, Plan The online customer community is often a neglected opportunity. Businesses that incorporate the launch of customer communities in their plans and immediately hire customer community managers know community is a strong driver of business value and revenue. When community is seen as an actual product of the business, organizations will invest in it because they understand that building engaged communities will keep their customers happy, which results in lower churn. Businesses that don’t incorporate communities into their plan will need to play catch up quickly in order to remain competitive in a customer dominated world. In 2016, my prediction will be that organizations will begin to reinvent themselves to focus on the value of loyal relationships and critical real-time customer engagement over resolutions and transactions. I want to invite you to join me as I traverse through the world of the online customer community (sorry, unfortunately, my wedding guest list is already at full capacity!) If you haven’t already, consider building one out yourself. It’s a great time to be a community manager! And if you’re already on top of it, leave me some feedback below on how you have built out your own community, what tips and tricks you can offer, or any other comments you may have!