content marketing

Content remains an undisputed king in the dynamic digital marketing landscape. As businesses strive to capture the attention of their target audience, content marketing emerges as a potent strategy for lead generation.

In this article, we’ll delve into content-driven lead generation, exploring how businesses can harness the power of content to attract, engage, and convert potential customers. Let’s get started.

What is Content Marketing

Content marketing is more than just crafting words; it’s a strategic approach that revolves around creating and distributing valuable, relevant, consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience. Its core goal? To drive profitable customer action.

Despite the evolution of marketing trends, content marketing remains an evergreen strategy that transcends industries and niches. The very essence of content marketing lies in providing value upfront, establishing trust, and nurturing long-term customer relationships.

Is Content Marketing Still Relevant in 2023?

In a world inundated with information, the question often arises: Is content marketing still effective in 2023? The resounding answer is yes. Content marketing is not just relevant—it’s indispensable. As of 2023, content continues to hold the throne as a critical element in digital marketing strategies. 

Research reveals that a staggering 90% of organizations consider content marketing a valuable asset, and 72% of marketers believe that content marketing generates leads faster than traditional marketing tactics. The ability of content to educate, entertain, and engage audiences remains unparalleled.

Proven Techniques for Content-Driven Lead Generation

Here are a few tips and techniques for content-driven lead generation:

1. Educational Blogging

Blogging is not just about churning out words; it’s about establishing your brand as a reliable source of information. Educational blogs are your platform to demonstrate your expertise, address pain points, and offer solutions.

Craft articles that not only answer common questions but also provide valuable insights that your target audience is actively seeking. From ‘How-To’ guides to ‘Top 10 Tips’ lists, educational blogs create a magnet effect, drawing in readers eager to learn and find solutions.

When creating these blogs, incorporating relevant keywords is essential. These keywords not only help your content rank higher in search engines but also increase its discoverability among your target audience.

The more value you provide, the more likely readers are to engage with your content, share it, and potentially convert into leads.

2. Compelling Ebooks and Whitepapers

Ebooks and whitepapers take content to a deeper level. These in-depth resources allow you to explore complex topics comprehensively, positioning your brand as an industry authority.

By offering these resources in exchange for contact information, you’re not only gathering leads but also establishing a relationship built on trust and value.

The key to creating compelling ebooks and whitepapers lies in thorough research and valuable insights. Present data-backed information, case studies, and actionable takeaways that your audience can implement.

By delivering substantial value through these resources, you encourage leads to engage with your brand further, setting the stage for potential conversions. According to recent surveys, 63% of marketers use ebooks for lead generation, making it a highly effective technique.

3. Engaging Webinars and Video Content

Visual content has become a driving force in modern marketing. Webinars and videos allow you to connect with your audience on a personal level, providing a face and voice to your brand.

Hosting webinars on topics relevant to your industry or products engages your audience in real-time discussions, where they can ask questions and receive immediate answers.

Videos, whether in the form of tutorials, product showcases, or industry insights, capture attention and convey information quickly.

They can increase organic traffic from search engines significantly, as video content is highly shareable and tends to rank well in search results. Video content can increase organic traffic from search engines by 157%.

4. Interactive Quizzes and Assessments

Interactive content takes engagement to the next level. Quizzes and assessments not only capture attention but also provide personalized experiences. Creating quizzes related to your industry’s pain points or offering assessments that help users understand their needs can yield valuable insights.

These insights can guide your lead nurturing strategies, helping you deliver more targeted and relevant content. Research shows that interactive content, such as quizzes, generates higher engagement and sharing rates compared to passive content.

By encouraging users to share their results or insights, you’re also creating opportunities for organic lead generation. Interactive content generates two times more conversions than passive content.

5. Email Newsletters

Email newsletters are a timeless tool for staying connected with your audience. By delivering curated and valuable content directly to your subscribers’ inboxes, you maintain consistent brand visibility.

Segmenting your email lists based on preferences and behavior allows you to deliver personalized content, increasing engagement rates.

Nurtured leads often make more significant purchases, and email newsletters play a pivotal role in nurturing. By regularly providing valuable insights, industry updates, and exclusive offers, you’re building a relationship of trust and authority with your subscribers.

Segmented and personalized newsletters can lead to higher engagement rates, and nurtured leads make 47% larger purchases than non-nurtured leads.

Conclusion

Incorporating these proven techniques into your content-driven lead generation strategy ensures that you not only attract leads but also engage and nurture them through their buying journey.

Remember, the key lies in providing value, personalization, and actionable insights that resonate with your target audience.

Content marketing’s ability to connect, engage, and educate audiences makes it an essential strategy for businesses aiming to thrive in 2023 and beyond.

By implementing the proven techniques of educational blogging, compelling ebooks, engaging webinars, interactive quizzes, and email newsletters, you can create a robust content marketing strategy that generates leads and builds lasting relationships with your audience. 

Learn more about generating leads using content and automation technology. Book a FREE demo with our experts below.

Data, the digital age currency, is the key to unlocking business growth opportunities. In today’s competitive landscape, understanding your audience and catering to their needs is paramount.

But how can you achieve this? Enter the power of data. It’s time to dig deep into the data goldmine and discover how businesses can leverage it to grow their audience. 

From understanding audience preferences to crafting personalized content strategies, this article will guide you to harness the potential of data-driven audience growth. Grab your mining gear and embark on this exciting journey. Let’s get started.

What is the Role of Data in Growing Your Audience? 

Data is valuable information from various sources, such as customer interactions, website analytics, social media engagements, and market research.

Data serves as a treasure trove of insights for businesses seeking audience growth, revealing valuable details about audience behaviors, preferences, demographics, and more.

By analyzing and utilizing this data, companies can create targeted marketing strategies, deliver personalized experiences, and attract a more significant, engaged audience.

Impact of Growing Your Audience Through Data

Growing your audience is a crucial business goal for several reasons:

1. Increased Revenue Potential: A more extensive audience translates into more potential customers and revenue opportunities. As your audience grows, so does the pool of potential buyers for your products or services.
   
2. Enhanced Brand Awareness: Expanding your audience increases brand visibility and recognition. More people become familiar with your business, leading to a more substantial brand presence.
   
3. Competitive Advantage: A growing audience can give you a competitive edge. It allows you to reach a broader customer base, potentially attracting customers away from your competitors.
   
4. Improved Customer Insights: As your audience grows, you gather more data about their preferences, behaviors, and needs. This data provides valuable insights for your marketing strategies, product development, and customer experience enhancements.
   
5. Increased Engagement and Customer Loyalty: A more extensive audience provides more opportunities for engagement and building lasting relationships with customers.
   
   Engaged and loyal customers are likelier to become brand advocates, driving word-of-mouth referrals and further audience growth.
   
6. Adaptation to Changing Market Dynamics: Growing your audience allows you to stay agile and responsive to changing market trends and demands.
   
   As your audience expands, you can identify new market segments, target emerging demographics, and capitalize on evolving customer preferences.

Tips for Data-Driven Content Marketing

Now, let’s delve into practical tips on using data for content marketing in three different types of businesses that leverage various platforms to reach their audience.

Whether you’re a budding e-commerce venture, a local service provider, or a B2B software company, data can be your compass guiding you toward audience growth. Here are some points to ponder:

1. E-commerce Excellence
   
   For e-commerce businesses, customer data is the fuel that powers personalized product recommendations.
   
   You can deliver tailored product suggestions, upselling opportunities, and relevant content to your audience by analyzing past purchases, browsing behavior, and customer preferences.
   
   Implementing a CRM system with advanced analytics lets you gain insights into customer shopping patterns, segment your audience effectively, and execute targeted email marketing campaigns.
   
   This data-driven approach fosters customer loyalty, drives repeat purchases and expands your audience through positive word-of-mouth recommendations.
   
2. Local Service Dominance: Utilizing Data for Hyper-Targeted Local Marketing
   
   Local service providers can harness data to conquer their target market with hyper-targeted local marketing strategies.
   
   By leveraging location-based data, such as geo-targeted advertising, local search trends, and customer demographics, businesses can tailor their content and promotions to resonate with the local audience.
   
   Using data analytics tools, you can identify critical local search terms, optimize your website for local SEO, and create compelling content that addresses your local audience’s specific needs and interests.
   
   This data-centric approach enables you to build a strong presence within your community, expand your customer base, and dominate your local market.
   
   
3. B2B Software Success: Empowering Data-Driven Thought Leadership
   
   In B2B software, data is a powerful tool for establishing thought leadership and driving audience growth.
   
   By conducting industry research, analyzing market trends, and utilizing data from CRM systems, businesses can produce insightful whitepapers, reports, and case studies that provide valuable data-driven insights to their target audience.
   
   Sharing this content through strategic channels, such as industry forums, social media platforms, and professional networks, positions your brand as an authoritative voice and attracts a highly relevant and engaged audience.
   
   With data as the backbone of your thought leadership initiatives, you can foster trust, build credibility, and grow your audience of industry professionals.

Advantage of CRM for Data-Driven Decisions

To maximize the potential of data-driven audience growth, businesses need a powerful ally—a CRM system. A CRM system empowers businesses with robust data analytics capabilities, allowing them to gain deeper insights into audience preferences, behaviors, and demographics.

With this knowledge, companies can create personalized content marketing strategies, tailor their messaging to specific segments, and deliver targeted campaigns that resonate with their audience on a deeper level.

By leveraging CRM data analytics, businesses can identify growth opportunities, refine their marketing approaches, and attract a larger and more engaged audience.

Conclusion

Consider data as the North Star guiding businesses toward audience growth and success in the vast digital landscape.

By understanding the value of data and implementing effective data-driven content marketing strategies, companies can elevate their audience engagement, foster customer loyalty, and expand their reach. 

So, put on your mining gear, dive into the data goldmine, and unleash the power of data to grow your audience. Remember, in this data-driven era, those who wield data wisely will reap the rewards of an ever-growing audience.

Want to learn more about how data can transform your business? Book a FREE demo below with our experts.

Writing a blog could be difficult for some people who are still starting their businesses. Find out how to write a blog for your website in 6 easy steps.

Blogs are important tools of communication that helps brand educate their customers and engage them. It’s also a great way to capture potential customers, provide value to them, and fast-track the process of lead conversion. 

But what are the important things businesses must keep in mind when writing a blog for their websites? Here’s how you can start writing blogs that provide impact in just six easy steps.

1. Identify your business goal

The most basic and perhaps the most important part about writing blogs is why you’re doing it and to what business end. Many companies start integrating blogs without a particular purpose and just because everybody’s doing it. But this can be a waste of time, money, and effort if the blogs do not do anything for the company. Remember, in the end, your blogs will be measured by their ROIs.

So when deciding to write blogs for your website, have a business goal in mind like the following:

• To attract potential customers to check your website
• To encourage customers to click the CTA button to book a demo
• To establish brand awareness in the market
• To educate customers about the product
• To encourage customers to make a purchase

Your business goal in mind will be the foundation for your strategy and will determine how you will select the topic and write about the blog.

2. Know more about your audience

Knowing your audience’s needs, preferences, and interests will help you narrow down your strategy— what topics to write about, what to focus on, and how your blogs will appear and where. 

Younger audiences are more active on social media and have lower attention spans than older generations, which is why video marketing may work better for them. Older audiences may be keener on details which is why a shallow, zero-impact blog may not work for them. 

Gathering more information about your audience is key to making your blogs successful. You can learn more about them by conducting customer profiling using forms or better by progressive profiling.

Learn more about marketing to different generations here.

3. Plan your content writing strategy

After knowing more about your target audience, start planning your strategy. What topics you will focus first, when you’re going to post them, and how you’re going to reach your target audience.

A strategy is important because, this way, you can structure your topics and categorize them on your website. You can start with the most basic topics or the most important pain points of your customers that you need to address. 

4. Make your headline clear, short, and catchy

Writing a valuable and detailed blog wouldn’t mean much if it’s never seen or read.

That’s why headlines need to be clear, informative, yet short and catchy for them to stand out in the search engine results pages. This will help improve its clickability, which ultimately helps with its SEO in the end.

5. Write with “value” in mind

More importantly, write with “value” in mind— what will the customer get from your blog that they won’t get elsewhere?

This is very important in establishing credibility in your field or industry, engaging customers, and establishing brand loyalty.

Some blogs provide “value” by doing the following:

• Writing with data in mind and being supported by statistics and research
• Making the blog as entertaining as possible so as to make learning difficult topics easier
• Providing infographics that condense topics to educate readers quickly 
• Providing basic information that isn’t provided elsewhere

Remember, a “valuable” blog is more likely to perform better on search engines like Google, helping you increase its discoverability and reach more people at the end of the day.

6. Don’t forget about your CTA

This goes back to your business goal in mind. Is your business goal driving more customers to sign up for your newsletter? Your CTA should lead them to fill out a form that will get their contact details.

Is your business goal making them purchase a product? Your CTA should redirect them to a landing page that helps them learn more about the product or where they can make a safe purchase. 

When writing blogs, don’t forget about your CTAs as they will help move your customers in your desired direction to help you achieve your business goals and get that ROI, as mentioned earlier. 

Want to learn more about collecting customer data?

Check out Saphyte’s complete suite of tools that you can use for digital marketing. Talk to our experts and book a FREE demo to learn more about how you can use content to grow your business. Get started here.

What are the ways that personalized content helps businesses? Why should companies seriously consider personalizing? Read on to find out.

Personalization is a strategy that has been observed to help businesses that apply it. It has helped with boosting brand recall, driving sales, and establishing customer loyalty. In 2022, with the pandemic-induced trends, personalization has been found to matter more.

What are the ways that personalized content can help businesses? Read on to find out.

1. Personalization helps engage the audience better

It’s not enough for you to communicate with your audience through marketing. It’s also important to keep them engaged as an engaged audience is more likely to take action. 

Personalization narrows down the message, making it relevant and responsive to the target audience’s needs and preferences. This ensures that the audience will: (1) read the message you sent, (2) take the desired action, and (3) help you achieve your marketing objectives.

2. It enhances lead nurturing

Personalized content also helps convert more leads into MQLs (marketing qualified leads) and SQLs (sales qualified leads). With personalized lead nurturing, the process of establishing and nurturing relationships with leads at every stage of their journey becomes enhanced, making it easier for them to convert into customers.

3. It improves lead conversion rates

Personalization also includes the strategy of engaging a prospective customer with the right message at the right time. This curated experience makes them more likely to convert into actual customers compared to random, irrelevant messaging.

4. It helps drive sales

With an engaged audience, an improved lead nurturing process, and better conversion rates, sales are highly likely to increase. According to statistics, personalization has been observed to drive sales, with 70% of brands claiming a 200% ROI and 63% observing an increase in customer interactions and conversion rates. 

5. It boosts brand recall

Personalization has also been observed to improve the customer experience. This helps the customer remember the brand the next time the need comes up. Personalization not only helps with lead conversion, but it also increases repeat purchases for existing customers.

6. It helps with establishing customer loyalty

With an improved experience, customers are more likely to come back to you in the future. This makes their chances of churning or moving to competitors for their preferred product or service less likely. With established customer loyalty, it becomes easier for brands to convince customers to take an action to reach a sales and marketing goal. 

Discover how to personalize content

Explore how a digital ecosystem like Saphyte helps you collect important information about your customers for your personalization goals. Discover how you can keep your target audience engaged with minimal effort. Book a FREE demo now.

2020 proved to businesses that they can adapt to drastic changes, even at a rapid pace, with the help of digital tools and technology. This pace carried on two years later. While some trends and predictions from 2020 were proven correct, others didn’t come to fruition due to urgent and strategic needs that needed to be met as the pandemic persisted. 

At present, global spending on digital transformation and initiatives is still rising. Statista predicts a jump to an annual 20% jump, making it $1.8 trillion next year. 

Now that 2022 is on full-combust mode, it’s going to be hard not to be able to keep up. So what will the headlines entail this year? What is the most engaging digital business driving trends to watch in 2022? Only time will be able to tell. 

But, for now, here are some of the most interesting digital trends in 2022 that might or might not surprise you. 

Data Fabric Weaves its Way to our Doors

Data fabric architecture is the future of data management and integration. This design concept uses both human and machine capabilities to access data in place or aid in data consolidation in which is most appropriate. 

Data fabric constantly determines and connects data from different applications to find unique, business-relevant relationships in-between available data points. The data points, in return, produce insight that supports “re-engineered decision-making.” Thus providing more value for businesses through immediate data access and comprehension than the traditional data management practices.

This concept provides scalable, flexible, and more tight integration of data sources across platforms and business users. If implemented vigorously, data will now be available everywhere it’s needed, regardless of the location of the data.

Data fabric uses analytics to learn and actively recommend where data should be used and changed, thus reducing up to 70% of data management efforts.

Agile and Flexible Solutions, No longer a Fad

This trend is not new, but agile and flexible solutions will be more prevalent and necessary this year. Agile methodologies have an excellent reputation and are popular among software developers, and IT teams alike. These methodologies began to make strides when COVID forced businesses and companies to acknowledge the importance of responding quickly to extreme changing conditions.

This trend will be more prevalent amongst retail and eCommerce businesses. With a vulnerable industry, investing in flexible, scalable, and agile IT solutions can help them adapt to changing market conditions. 

Customer and Employee Experience Centric Digital Transformation Projects

The pandemic has changed the way we interact with businesses and people. And, honestly, there’s no point in returning things the way there were in 2019. COVID-19 highlighted our need to focus both on customer experience and employee experience. 

Everything has turned virtual, from ordering food, grocery shopping and doctor visits. Customers and their experiences now shifted to digital channels. Companies that deliver better customer experience brought up to 5.7 times more revenue than competing brands with bad customer experiences. 

However, emerging trends now focus on investing in customer experience initiatives. The pandemic has also changed how businesses engage with their workforce. With the work-from-home setup, some companies find it hard to find ways to make employees feel engaged with their work. 

Research has shown that one-third of employees who work from home report feeling engaged in their job. This could pose a problem for businesses as low engagement can significantly impact output and performance. With this trend, companies are expected to increase and intensify investing in adopting modern CRM systems with customer experience, employee onboarding, and data management capabilities.

The Era of Privacy Rules

Tech companies will be in a blaring spotlight. Big tech companies will be regulated, and their privacy rules revisited most significantly. We are all aware that data creates the best experiences. But, somehow, there has been neglect on how data is collected and how often it is gathered. There’s no actual law or policy on how information is monitored from last year – until now. 

With the massive amount of data we voluntarily give to apps, e-commerce, and other social media sites, we have “unconsciously” created a world where tech companies can make the best user experiences. The best-of-breed user experiences will be balanced with more solid and thoughtful data management practices this year. 

This year, organizations that rely on data collection through apps and other third-party apps or organizations will need to expand their data collection policies. This will eventually lead businesses to find a new way to source data and decide on strategies to collect and manage data openly and honestly without hurting or compromising customer experience. It sounds like a bit of a pickle, which won’t be a manageable undertaking. Still, spending and investing time in building an excellent data privacy policy will be critical to your business’ success. 

Hybrid + Multi: Are you Paying Attention?

Cloud is old-school. But a new type of cloud is taking center stage as we speak (we mean, write). Welcome to the era of the hybrid+multi cloud!

2022 will be an exciting year as vendors compete for the perfect public and private clouds mix. As enterprise IT structures become more omnipresent, hybrid leadership will remain a focal point for legacy IT and cloud providers alike. The rise of open-source and popular modalities for hybrid IT architecture will be more prevalent this year.

Experts believe that businesses will be adapting this setup as any workload to any destination remains a requirement for sustaining the complex needs of a business. This trend will be advantageous for companies that use more than one public cloud to solve their technology and business integration challenges. Companies that invest in this space can simplify the process of orchestrating workloads and make their data more accessible and secure, eventually future-proofing their business core.

Wrapping Up

2022 is just getting started. There has been so much focus on data, privacy, AI, and applications, that it has become hard to keep up with what is happening around us. However, future-proofing and streamlining your business is always a priority. Regardless of these upcoming trends, 2022 will be a great and exciting year for tech and business advancement. Let’s just buckle up and see how things play out. 

Digital marketing has become an opportunity for many entrepreneurs and businesses to gain a competitive edge in the market. 2022 will be no different, as technological advancements and changing social media trends, and ever-increasing customer demands. As reality looms over, businesses have no other option but to evolve their services to keep up with the times. 

2022: Keeping up with the Customers

The year 2022 will be the dawn of the new age of digital marketing. There will be no actual numbers on how the year will look for businesses. But, Deloitte experts believe that global digital marketing will revolve around customer-centricity. The year 2022 entails marketers keeping up with the customers. 

So, in what ways will digital marketing change businesses in 2022? As the marketing game shifts into customer mode, Saphyte has identified some trends that might happen throughout 2022. We hope you have your papers and pens with you to jot down some of the most interesting digital marketing trends to help your business build dynamic customer experiences. 

Businesses Developing Human-first Data Experience

It’s time to bid goodbye, for real, to generic customer data deployment. Also, there’s a fine line between being helpful and creepy stalker-ish in treating customer data. In fact, 53% of consumers find active device listening super creepy. 

So marketers will be exploring how to use customer information and which strategies can build or erode trust. Businesses must cultivate transparency, value, and data security – apart from the promises they have to keep. Although using consumer data transparently and consistently keeping up with the customers’ needs in mind can lead to better decisions and more valuable brand relationships overall—absent the stalker-ish factor. 

Building customer trust is hard. Navigating through the consumer privacy landscape is also an increasingly complex endeavor. 2022 will change the way businesses treat customer data, and eventually, how they’ll treat the customer. 

However, developing a human-first digital experience for your business will give your business a better marketing edge. So, how will businesses achieve this?

Start with the relationship. Don’t lead tracking methods before the consumer trusts you. 

Empower customers. Giving them options puts customers in the driver’s seat to tailor their own data experiences. 

Involve privacy and security terms and teams on day one. 

Don’t let them read long terms and conditions. Nobody finds that fun. Just put it in bullet form, plain and simple language. 

Businesses Shifting to Authentically Inclusive Marketing

Customers are now more than self-aware. Modern customers are also socially aware, and they shop more with businesses that commit to addressing social inequalities. For businesses to win future customers, they have to be diverse, equal, and inclusive. 

Deloitte data says that high-growth brands (annual revenue growth of 10% or more) have more frequently established key performance metrics for diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) objectives than lower-growth competitors. As a result, 57% of consumers are more loyal to brands that commit to addressing social inequities in their actions. 

Shifting to authentically inclusive marketing can also bring growth to your business and increase consumer loyalty. So how can businesses achieve this? 

Ensure teams and suppliers match your market.

Bring diverse voices back to the organization.

Make your commitments measurable. 

Businesses Taking Personalization to a Hybrid Level

The world shifted from physical to digital at the snap of a finger. Surprisingly, a lot of businesses excelled in delivering excellent customer experiences. Brands seemed to be more adept at providing services even in a digital space. However, the next challenge is integrating both physical and digital experiences – a hybrid, you might say. 

The challenge is not in the implementation but in exceeding people’s expectations. Customers will expect no less from hybrid experiences, and the omni-communication channels add to the complexity of this challenge. So how can your business cope up? 

When in doubt, always go back to your customer data. By putting the human at the forefront, involving other individuals, and innovating constantly, brands can make hybrid experiences more agile and flexible. 

Enable choices through greater personalization. Meeting your customer’s expectations in their preferred channel of communication helps businesses personalize their experience. Most importantly, tailoring channels to customers also allows your brand to offer more inclusive experiences. When your customers have empowered choices, you also gain customer loyalty—a total win-win for you and your business. 

Let the “human” take the lead. While systems and infrastructures play a vital role in delivering hybrid experiences, interaction still starts with humans. Tailoring experiences to meet consumer needs and empowering them with choices – brands are on the right track in elevating digital marketing experience. 

Businesses will Supercharge Customer Service with AI

Artificial intelligence is no longer the future. It is now the present. For brands, helping customers make purchase decisions is a top priority. However, it’s not a simple theory. 

A surge in digital channels and hybrid digital and physical journeys along with heightened customer expectations have complicated brands` desire to create and deliver a dynamic experience that equips customers with the correct information and incentives—when they need it most. Experts from Deloitte believe that for businesses to achieve an actual end-to-end customer experience, companies must optimize artificial intelligence within the customer experience to achieve harmony 

between human tasks and machine capabilities.

So, how can your business keep up with this? There’s no actual recipe for tapping into the power of artificial intelligence, but here are some starter steps.

Design a dynamic customer experience.

Let humans and machines meet halfway. 

Understand the experience strategy.

Always have a clear picture of your customers. 

Design with human-centered factors at the forefront.

Employ a customer data platform, like CRM software.

Conclusion

Digital marketing will change the way businesses function over the next decade. For business leaders, marketers, and sales leaders, this is an exciting opportunity to take in. If your business is still trying to adjust and keep up, don’t worry, you still have time to re-adjust your goals for next year and make things possible for your business. 

Digital marketing may have changed the way businesses run their operations, but it’ll never change brands’ perceptions and vision. So, what are you changing this 2022?

Product catalogues are powerful tools to showcase business products and services at one glance. Find out how they can help convert leads into loyal customers.

Catalogs used to be popular in print. Companies have been using them to display their product and service information, which helps customers decide quickly which product or service to go for.

Today, product catalogs are making a comeback. Companies that have been using them online— via email, for example— have observed a 28% increase in sales and a 77% lift in inquiries. 

How do you advertise using product catalogues? What are the best practices that you should keep in mind when using product catalogues? Read more to find out.

What are Product Catalogues?

Product catalogues are tools that businesses use to showcase all important information about their products and services. This helps buyers make a purchase decision, therefore shortening the sales cycle. Details in the catalogue may include product descriptions, features, and price, among others.  

Today, product catalogues are more commonly used online. They can be downloaded on companies’ websites or sent via email. (Read more: Business Growth Combo: Email Marketing and Sales Pipelines)

They may also be automated— where you can automatically populate them in your future quotes and invoices and send them to target recipients. Watch the video below to find out how:

How to Advertise Using Online Product Catalogues

Below are five best practices to be mindful of when using product catalogues online:

1. Choose your type of ad

The first thing to be mindful of is choosing the type of ad when promoting your products and services online (e.g. social media). Below are the common options:

Dynamic ads: This type of ad shows relevant items from your catalog to specific users. The banners adapt automatically to users based on their interests, intent, or actions. 

Collection ads: This is a type of ad that shows four items from your catalog in an immersive way. Here, users can click on items to learn more or browse similar items. 

Carousel ads: This ad format shows multiple images or videos that can be scrolled through. Each image or video can have its own headline, description, link, and call to action.

Ads with product tags: Ads with product tags can be made for users to click on. After clicking, they are directed to a product details page to learn more about the product and buy it. 

Products from Facebook Page shops or catalogs in photos and videos can be tagged.

Collaborative ads: A type of ad where brands can run direct sales campaigns by selling products through retailers and merchants. This allows brands to run performance marketing campaigns for their products while directing traffic to a retailer partner’s website or other online channels.

2. “More” is more

Information about your products must be complete, accurate, and detailed. Here, “more” is more. Every important detail matters to the buyer. Relevant images and videos can make purchase decisions easier and faster.

Includes technical attributes, images, videos, availability, units of measurement, product usage combinations, and related/alternative products, if possible.

3. Centralize your product catalogue using a tool

Use a tool like a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software if possible to centralize your product catalogue.

Make use of functions like automation where the catalogues are populated in quotes and invoices for the benefit of target recipients. Tools make it easy for businesses to manage their catalogs and send them to specific customers to maximize sales opportunities.

4. Upsell and cross-sell

Catalogs can be used to upsell and cross-sell. Suggest alternative products to encourage buyers to purchase products with better quality (at a higher price). This gives buyers options to weigh when buying— which increases the likelihood of the purchase happening.

5. Personalize your catalogues

Your catalogue’s content must be tailored to cater to each customer’s needs and interest. It must differ per customer or per ordering situation. 

For example, you can have two different catalogues with different pricing and descriptions, which are adjusted specifically for two different customers— one from the pharmaceutical industry and another from the automotive industry. (Read more: 16 Stats for Automotive Companies in 2021)

Catalog personalization is important as it allows you to not only maximize sales opportunities but also to ensure customer satisfaction at the end of the day.

Conclusion

Want to know more about product catalogs and how they can help your business? Book a demo now. Get started here.

Over the years, business owners thought that the marketing and sales departments were better off coexisting. However, these two departments are the most unlikely duo that is meant to be together. Believe it or not, sales and marketing work a lot better when they work closely instead of separately. Your business will greatly benefit when both departments are aligned and working on the same page. 

As a rule, the sales and marketing departments have separate functions within a business, and when they work together, they don’t always get along. More often than not, each department often underestimates the contributions of the other. Thus, ending up hurting corporate performance. 

There are two sources of friction between your sales and marketing departments. One is economical, and the other is cultural.

The economic friction is caused by the need to distribute the total budget given by senior management to support their sales and marketing teams. Promotion costs are also sources of conflict, and the sales teams often view the enormous sums spent on promotion as a waste of money. More often than not, sales teams think that the money spent on marketing be spent on increasing the quantity and quality of the sales force.

The cultural conflict between sales and marketing teams is even more rooted than the economic conflict. This is because the two departments’ functions bring different people who spend their time in very different ways. Marketing people are highly analytical, data-oriented, and project focused while salespeople are skilled relationship builders who spend most of their time talking to existing and potential customers.

The Benefits of Both Teams Working Together

The processes of both teams should not only coexist, but they need to work as if they’re one. That is why it is imperative to connect the sales and marketing processes of your company. Not only will your business greatly benefit when both teams are aligned and working on the same page, but you can also avoid more significant conflict inside your business. Here are more of those benefits.

Better Qualified Leads

Your marketing and sales teams can stop wasting their time and energy arguing about unqualified leads and blaming each other. When both teams are aligned, are in regular communication, and have a proper lead scoring in place, information can freely flow from department to department. Your teams can now determine what is and isn’t working to adjust strategies based on what has been observed based on data. 

Better Engagement and Stronger Relationships

The more both teams communicate clearly, the stronger their work and personal relationships will become. Hence, they’ll eventually learn to trust each other. This will make campaigns more impactful, your leads can be handled better, and potential buyers are more impressed. This shows that marketing and sales work better together rather than individually.

Accurate Buyer Personas

Both teams are responsible for attracting, nurturing, delighting, and closing deals; thus, both teams need to be on the same page for added success. Doing otherwise, both teams can find that the buyer personas don’t match up to the audience they’re targeting. By understanding your customers better and having accurate data on buyer personas, both teams can share ownership and help deliver a better and smoother buying experience.

Better and Clearer Feedback

Unifying your sales and marketing team means establishing a solid relationship, which eventually leads to open communication lines, creating a better opportunity to refine strategies down the line effectively. It’ll be easier to make adjustments, give and receive feedback, and they’ll focus on their shared goals. So things around the office won’t be too awkward anymore. 

Stay Ahead of the Competition

Your marketing team can keep your sales team informed of their tactics and the competition’s positioning by working together. In return, when your salespeople are speaking with prospects, your sales team will adequately address why your products or services are far superior to the competition.

Better Marketing Materials

Your sales team will be bombarded with the same questions from prospects through to customers. When your sales team communicates this to your marketing team, it creates valuable content to educate the target audience. When salespeople have better marketing materials, it’ll be easier for them to create more traction 

The Tool to Get Things Done

You have a long journey ahead of you when you decide to align your sales and marketing teams’ processes. Aligning your sales and marketing is the first step toward implementing sales enablement. So, what are the tools to get things done around your business? Here are some of them. 

Get sales involved in campaign planning.

Establish a straightforward lead scoring.

Set mutually agreed goals. 

Build a sense of connection between both teams.

Saphyte CRM Systems.

Implementing clear and straightforward tactics, tools, and processes can enable your marketing and sales teams to succeed. In return, your business will grow quicker, and your sales team will be more efficient at closing deals and enjoy a 36 percent increase in higher customer retention rates.

Saphyte: The Perfect Partner that Connects your Teams

Saphyte is a UAE homegrown business operating out of Dubai. Saphyte is a digital ecosystem designed for businesses of all sizes, helping them acquire, convert, and retain more customers at the end of the day. 

Users can experience increased visibility amongst their teams and better down tasks with their Team and Workspace tools. With Saphyte, businesses can promote team building while ensuring that team tasks are done and projects move forward.

Users can onboard, engage, and manage their leads on their journey to becoming customers. Saphyte’s Sales Management tools are built and designed to make sales processes faster, easier, and more convenient.

Users can redefine and create a personalized customer experience and gain a better understanding of their marketing campaigns. Saphyte’s Marketing tools allow you to have more straightforward and more engaging conversations with your leads and clients— all in just a few clicks.

Users can also build a strong customer feedback loop with Saphyte’s Support tools and keep themselves updated with the rapidly changing trends that may affect their customers’ purchasing decisions. With Saphyte, rest assured that your customers are constantly engaged.

Currently, Saphyte is helping hundreds of local companies in and out of Dubai to drive digital transformation through local support, zero implementation fees, competitive subscription models, and an advanced SaaS CRM ecosystem technology. 

Be a part of the main evolution and connect your sales and marketing processes with Saphyte today. How to make it work? Contact us, and we’ll show you how to turn things around.

Drip marketing is one of the most used strategies these days to gain leads fast and convert them into customers. Check out how these companies use it to grow.

If ever you’re wondering how companies grow these days, especially when they mainly deal with customers online, the answer to that is— drip marketing!

What is Drip Marketing?

Drip marketing (also known as drip email marketing or drip campaigns) is a series of email activities employed by companies to attract leads and guide them in their journey into becoming loyal customers. 

It can start simply as leads visiting a company’s website, signing up a form, and getting emails that spark interest— designed to fit the target reader’s needs and preferences— until the reader takes the desired action.

Does Drip Marketing Work?

According to statistics, it does. In fact:

Email itself reportedly generates $42 for every $1 spent. That’s a 4,200% ROI.

Drip marketing has been observed to generate 50% more sales-ready leads than traditional email.

A 20% sales increase has also been observed after companies used drip campaigns to nurture leads.

So, yes. In general, drip marketing does work. And companies that employ this strategy tend to perform better than those that don’t.

How to Start Using Drip Marketing

The easiest way to employ a drip marketing strategy is by using an email automation platform. This helps “automate” things, which means that the software is designed to perform certain tasks that are manual, repetitive, and monotonous, so you won’t have to.

Email automation platforms collect data, generate analytics, and are designed to let you focus on more important tasks when nurturing leads. They let you organize your leads, understand their journey at a glance, and send personalize emails in a few clicks.

Saphyte has helped companies generate growth with drip marketing. Find out how you can get started here.

5 Examples of Companies that Excelled in Drip Marketing

Here’s a list of companies that successfully used drip campaigns to win customers:

1. Netflix

One of the challenges of Netflix is to sustain the interest of customers and encourage them to remain subscribed to their services. To reduce its customer churn rate, Netflix employed drip marketing to remind its (former) customers what they’re missing out on.

This incentivizes former customers to resubscribe. After this, a series of emails that highlight the benefits of using Netflix are then sent to former customers to win them back (e.g. uninterrupted streaming, watching movies on any device, personalized viewing, etc.).

2. Trello

Trello used drip marketing to aggressively promote its product and its benefits to leads with project management needs. The “Twelve Days to Trello” campaign is inline with the holiday season, at which time it was launched. 

A timely message can generate interest, which, when coupled with personalized content that addresses the target reader’s needs and preferences, can effectively convert readers into customers.

3. Zendesk

Drip marketing is one of the easiest strategies to use to guide customers what to do next. This is to keep them interested in your product, explore its benefits more, until they establish reliance on your product. 

Zendesk perfectly understood this and used a simple drip campaign to demonstrate to their users what they can do next.

This also helps reduce customer churn— which can mainly be caused by customers losing interest in your product.

4. Uber

Uber uses drip campaigns to encourage customers to use their product again after a time of inactivity. Allowing customers to lock-in flat rates can stimulate the interest of those customers who may have lost interest in the product and its benefits.

5. 23andMe

Sometimes customers get easily distracted and forget to complete their purchases. 23andMe uses drip campaigns to remind customers what’s in their carts to push through with the process. This gives customers an opportunity to rethink and make a purchase at the most suitable time.

Start Your Drip Campaign Now

All the best tools and features you need in a digital ecosystem. Find out how you can start your drip marketing campaigns now, along with other possibilities for your business, by getting started here.

Empathy is the hottest marketing buzzword now when it comes to CRM strategies and terms. Why? Empathy involves emotions, and a great CRM strategy takes the customer’s emotional experience into account. And empathy is at the center of it all. 

However, businesses are always rushing to utilize and adapt to new tech, but how do empathy and CRM drive better customer experience? The entirety of this article is dedicated to discussing the connection between empathy and CRM. Read more to know. 

Empathy is the Foundational Component of Customer Experience

Little do people know that emotion is the main driving factor for purchasing behaviors and decision-making in general, whether people do it consciously or not. Emotions drive humans. So marketers strive hard to create meaningful interactions and genuine engagements with a customer to drive a better customer experience. 

Expert marketers use this concept all the time, and there are plenty of emotion-based campaigns everywhere. Luxury brands invoking feelings of acceptance, self-worth, exclusivity, and status in the world. Telecommunications companies create excitement by creating concepts of connection to friends, family, and a broader network of people. And a whole lot more examples to see. 

Tapping into empathy is a compelling marketing strategy—and a lot of large companies are doing this all of the time in various ways. At present, businesses use empathy to have meaningful interactions with their customers and connect with their feelings even though they could not resolve their problems. However, being empathetic doesn’t mean agreeing with the customers all the time. Being empathetic also means being able to say ‘no’ to your customers or to take actions that they may dislike, but doing so with compassion. In other words, to be humane.

How can CRM connect to Empathy?

So, the main question now is: where does CRM fit into all of these? CRM systems may look simple in hindsight, but they carry and execute empathy the best way. 

Customer empathy has proven to be even more critical for marketing and customer support teams during this crisis. With the rise of “COVID customers,” businesses need to understand that they will be working in a stressful situation and are expected to act accordingly.

To maximize empathy, the messages you send to your customers must be personalized to suit their needs. You also must have the ability to send these personalized messages on a larger scale. Without the presence of a CRM tool like Saphyte, it wouldn’t be possible to send personalized messages at scale.

When you use CRM software, you can support your sales and marketing teams to empathize with your customers. Here’s how CRM improves your business’s empathy.

CRM allows you to have more authenticity

Establishing genuine empathy is challenging without the help of authenticity. With a CRM tool packed with a create-your-own email template, you can use your own words and learn to be informal without being too overly familiar. By using natural everyday speech, including contractions (‘hi’ rather than ‘hello’) and pairing it with your customer’s name, you have an open opportunity to establish better relations through genuine empathy.

CRM Automation allows you to streamline and shorten business processes

Customers don’t like waiting, and if you keep them waiting, you’ll eventually lose them. But with the help of CRM automation technology, you can streamline your processes and eventually automate most of your manual tasks. Not only does this free up tasks off your team’s hands, but this can also help them handle your customers better. A happy team creates happy customers – it’s a win-win for everybody. 

CRM Analysis Tools gives you more insights into your customer’s preferences

Most businesses assume what their customers want, which leads to stereotyping, and stereotyping your customers is like running in a minefield – dangerous and deadly. However, with the help of analysis tools built into a CRM system, you can understand and analyze what your customers want and create better and intelligent business decisions through those numbers. 

Key Takeaway

Empathy can give your business the ability to add a human touch to interactions with your customers. Its significance is emphasized more than ever in the economy’s current climate, which is swarmed with uncertainty and anxiety. Empathy is also an essential character trait for your sales and marketing teams because this allows them to establish rapport with your customer.

For businesses to take full advantage of empathy, they must take actions that reflect each customer’s needs and ‘wants.’ However, empathy is just a part of the bigger picture of the whole customer experience. Empathy might be of emotional intelligence; however, it should be based on operational reality too. Lastly, carrying out empathy can be challenging without the help of a CRM ecosystem like Saphyte. 

Saphyte is a tech company and a UAE homegrown business operating out of Dubai. The company is helping hundreds of companies drive digital transformation and enable businesses to carry out their business with empathy and ease through local support, zero implementation fees, competitive subscription models, and an advanced CRM ecosystem technology. 

Are you looking forward to connecting empathy and technology to keep up with the pace and economic climate? Book a call with us, and our digital ecosystem experts will be right on with you.