How to Plan a YouTube Marketing Strategy
There are 2.3 billion YouTube users worldwide, and the platform’s popularity has continued to increase significantly in the past few years. This, combined with the fact that the site is the fourth most visited on the internet, only proves just how much incredible marketing potential YouTube has. Most social media marketers don't spend enough time on video marketing on YouTube. It's often overlooked by those trying to create a successful content strategy because of how complex it is to manage this type of project. There are, however, lots of tools and methods for creating a YouTube marketing strategy that is both competitive and easy to execute. Here’s a guide on making and executing a YouTube marketing strategy that any brand can do. What is a YouTube marketing strategy? YouTube is a powerful platform for marketing. Whether you’re looking to create a video for your audience or to promote your brand, it has plenty of opportunities to achieve your goals. That being said, you do have to create a strategy for your YouTube marketing itself. The YouTube marketing strategy you create should be a carefully executed plan that involves consistent posting and a strong understanding of where you fit into your niche landscape on the platform. Your YouTube marketing strategy can be as detailed or as simple as you need it to be. It often involves planning out what you will create and how you'll create it. Your strategy will also heavily rely on target audience information for decision-making. Many YouTube strategists conduct competitor research at the beginning. You’ll also want to factor in search engine optimization for both YouTube and Google. Other factors go into YouTube marketing strategy off-site that you should be aware of. They include your other online properties such as your website, social media, and other content marketing channels. These will help with promotion and, if you already have an audience built up in one area, it will be easy to translate them to YouTube. If you don't already have an audience of one thousand or more highly engaged participants, you can build one from scratch. Whether you're a startup or an established business, a strong YouTube marketing strategy will help you identify who your content is meant for and what kind of content will help them out the most. In other words, what content will have the most engagement long-term? In a nutshell: a YouTube marketing strategy is a roadmap to achieving your goals for this channel. It should be attainable, realistic, and well-researched. How do you create a YouTube marketing campaign? In 2021, YouTube is full of amazing creators who have figured out how to conquer the algorithm and have been doing so for many years. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t room for one more brand. The good news is that a lot of the legwork has been done for you in terms of learning from beginner mistakes on the site. Here’s the simplest and most effective way to create a YouTube marketing campaign that will cut through the noise. Follow these steps to assert your brand as an expert for your topics, no matter what the competitor landscape looks like: 1. Think long-term You can set a ten-year goal, but this step should be done in a way that works for you. As a general rule of thumb, it takes an average of one to two years to achieve YouTube monetization, which requires a certain amount of watch hours and subscribers for approval. 2. Choose a target audience Who do you think is most likely to find and benefit from your videos? Even if you attract other audiences, your north star for content brainstorming, formatting, and editing will be clear if you nail this from the beginning. Age range, gender identity, and interests are good starting points for your research. Pro tip: If there’s a group of people you can easily reach now with your YouTube content, use them as a jumping-off point for faster channel growth. You’ll eventually reach your long-term audience, but growth is slow in the beginning, so reaching more people immediately is a good idea if it’s easier for you. 3. Strategize distribution Use your channel niche to create a promotion strategy that works best for your brand. Popular promotional channels include: Social media Facebook groups Instagram Stories TikTok teasers Reddit Forums Quora answers Niche blog communities LinkedIn Free virtual and in-person workshops Don’t forget about optimizing for YouTube SEO. This can be done in every aspect of your video, from your topic to your title and description. 4. Consider your content Think about what your target audience wants to see, what your brand needs to promote, and what kinds of topics will do best on this specific marketing channel (hint: education and entertainment are consistently top performers). Then, decide on what type of video you’ll produce. For example, this can be unedited live stream playbacks from virtual events on your other platforms. Or it could be highly edited and original comedy sketches made specifically to rank on YouTube, given what you’ve seen competitors do on the platform already. Whatever format you choose, make sure it aligns with audience expectations based on what’s already out there and also shows off your unique brand of YouTube content. 5. Use a project management tool YouTube video production and distribution is a complex process, which is why a creative project management tool like Wrike is so important to have when you first get started. Whether you’re a solo marketer or working with a hybrid team, the organization and communication features offered by this type of solution are priceless. What is the best way to plan a YouTube marketing campaign? The best way to plan a YouTube marketing campaign is to understand your audience and see what has worked for your brand on other channels in the past. To understand your audience, you need to know what they are looking for when they go on YouTube. Consider what other pieces of content you've published in the past have gone viral for your niche. Look at what topics you've covered on your blog or website and identify what has resonated with them. Then, build your strategy around that. Alternatively, if you're creating a YouTube marketing campaign specifically for a launch, you want to create a series that teases, promotes, and explains what your new product or service does. You also want to consider how your target audience will use the product or service. Then, create content that directly addresses questions they've asked your customer support team. You can also search for comments you've seen on social media that need further explanation or highlight interesting uses for your product they might want to know before buying. Your YouTube marketing campaign planning should begin as soon as you have a launch date. You’ll want to post at least once a week for a month leading up to any important dates that coincide with your campaign. If the campaign is ongoing, make plans to consistently create and post your videos before ever going live on your channel. Consistency is key for establishing an audience when you're just starting on YouTube and for the algorithm itself. Having systems and tools in place now will pay off in dividends in the future. Additionally, you need to consider what's realistic for your team. Plotting out what you need to do and when for each element of your campaign will help everyone visually see the workload they're taking on. This is a prime opportunity for your project management skills to shine. For example, a Gantt chart may help you understand and justify the expense of investing in a contracted video editor now rather than stretching your team too thin later. Decisions like these can only be made if you first have a marketing campaign management strategy in place before moving on to the next phase of your campaign creation. How to assess your YouTube competitors with a SWOT analysis A competitive analysis is a great way to identify areas of improvement and opportunities for your channel. To identify the right competitors to analyze, start with three to five primary keywords. Search for them on YouTube and see which channels come up the most. Then, once you know who you’re comparing your strategy too, you’ll need to do a SWOT analysis. A SWOT analysis is a strategic planning technique that helps identify the various factors that could affect a person or organization's business operations. This procedure involves analyzing multiple layers of the company. It helps identify the potential threats and opportunities that could arise from a business venture or project. For YouTube, this means identifying video content gaps and looking for ways you can do what competitor channels are doing, but better. YouTube managers use the following framework for their analysis: Internal strengths. This can include having a strong project management tool or an in-house team member who has YouTube experience. Build and enhance each of these over time. Internal weaknesses. Time poverty is a common example of this. Mitigate the risks of anything on this list getting in the way of YouTube goals before you launch. Eliminate any you can upfront. External opportunities. You may find that there aren’t direct competitors in your niche on YouTube already, or if they are, they may be producing low-quality content. That’s where you come in. External threats. There may be a lot of competition for your chosen keywords. Problem-solve around these and consider what new problems may arise in the future that you can safeguard against. Can you promote YouTube video campaigns? Yes, you can promote YouTube video campaigns using offsite channels, providing incentives for engagement, and with paid ads. First, create a website or social channels that include links to your video. Blogs with freebies, shops, and behind-the-scenes information are a popular way to attract viewers from your channel to your other branded properties. Next, consider how you’ll reward channel visitors for engaging early and often. YouTube marketing expert Cathrin Manning suggests being engaged with your audience in the comment section of your video the first full hour it goes live. This helps build community and gives people a reason to tune in right away, which is a great ranking boost. YouTube ads are also a great way to reach audiences on other related and non-competing channels. Along those same lines, working with an influencer to create a brand presence on YouTube when you’re just starting may speed up your initial growth. What are YouTube best practices? YouTube best practices are critical to know for business marketing teams who want to overcome common beginner mistakes. Here are the top ones to be aware of: Create a brand account. A brand account is better than a personal account because it allows multiple users to log in at the same time. This is a great way to keep everyone up-to-date with everything that's happening behind the scenes of your channel. Use the analytics. It can be overwhelming at first, but YouTube provides a great dashboard with historical channel data for you to keep tabs on your progress and audience. Their reports include data about your audience size, age range, and viewing preferences. It also shows where the majority of users live, as well as their preferred language and how they engage with your videos down to the second they typically click off. Create for your audience. Go to the comments section of your videos and read through them to see what viewers have to say. Use this data to identify the types of content that your audience is most likely to consume. Then, create video content that fits their needs. Monitor channel growth. Track key metrics such as subscriber count and viewership to see how they measure up against your goals. We recommend tracking these stats at least once per month. Block competitor ads. You can prevent your competitors from displaying ads on your videos by using the Ad Manager feature in Google. Be smart about keywords. Identify the weaknesses and strengths of your competitors in YouTube search based on which keywords they use and the new keywords you’ve chosen. Fill in their knowledge gaps within your content wherever possible. Use every YouTube feature. Maximize the word count for your description and keyword input. Include CTAs in your script and on the video itself. Add posts to your community board to engage your audience in between videos. How to optimize for YouTube By optimizing your channel, you'll be able to attract more followers and appear higher in search for target keywords. This 11-step strategy will help you get started on the right foot with YouTube marketing. Conduct research Watch channels by your favorite brands or competitors and start thinking about how you can use YouTube to promote your product. This will help you develop a content strategy that fits your brand and the landscape your future viewers are already participating in. Understand the algorithm Like Google, YouTube uses various unknown factors to rank videos. Then, it uses an algorithm to recommend the best ones. Even though no one knows for sure which factors affect YouTube SEO, we do know that high-quality production, interesting topics, and entertaining or educational content will rank highly in every category. Over time, you can conduct A/B testing to see which site formats, keyword combinations, and other video elements help your channel get discovered. Create channel art Even before titles, thumbnails are the first thing people see when they search for a video. Using custom art will help your video's thumbnail stand out more. Make sure that the image and title make sense together. And don’t forget your banner. It’s a great place to summarize the primary focus of your channel and introduce your hosts. This space can also be used to promote events or new products. You are also able to link out to your website, social channels, and landing pages at the bottom right-hand corner so design your banner with this in mind. Film a channel trailer A good channel trailer is like a teaser movie for your YouTube brand. It’s best to create one that’s specifically for YouTube and your specific goals for the platform. The entire purpose of a channel trailer is to create a compelling brand statement that will entice new viewers. Draft a content calendar Although you may only post once per week, there are many steps in between coming up with the idea and hitting publish. Relying on memory or habit for this portion, especially if you have a big team, is a recipe for disaster. A content calendar should organize every pre-production, production, and post-production task you have to complete for the coming week, month, and quarter. It should include individual timelines for each phase and some form of accountability among your team. Your content calendar should also be very easy to understand at a glance so that everyone knows the status of these various moving pieces at any given time. Plan out playlists Playlists make your channel easier to navigate but they also help boost your YouTube SEO. Design playlists so that they are cohesive and have a definite progression. For example, you can set up tutorials from beginner to advanced levels. You can also create playlists for partner videos. Outline your videos At the very least, you need to have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Prioritize saying a brief description of your video topic in the first few lines of your script to help with SEO and to let audiences know what to expect. Create a production workflow Templatize your production workflow with a simple task list or within your marketing project management software. YouTube video creation tasks are often repetitive. Some key ones to keep in mind for any video you create are: Brainstorm idea Outline script Define top-of-video CTA Define the end-of-video CTA Create shot list Secure or prep your location Gather props or supplementary inserts Film A roll footage Film B roll footage Edit your video Create your thumbnail Add an SEO optimized title, description, and keywords Schedule your video for publication Promote your video release online Engage with your audience during and after video publication Strategize when and how you post A good time to post is when there’s a high amount of engagement and viewership. This step can be easily done using your channel analytics. You can also schedule videos for release in advance from the Creator Studio or another tool like Hootsuite. Tools like these help keep your videos consistent and on auto-pilot. Add supporting features Adding captions to your videos will make them accessible to non-native speakers and those with hearing impairments. YouTube offers a Creator Studio feature that allows you to view the top languages your subtitles are typically used by subscribers which helps with market research too. If you’ve put the time and effort into creating a video, having your transcript translated is worth it. You can also add clickable links through cards and end screens that give additional information or offers. Assess your performance Take a moment to review your past videos and subscriptions to see what drives your audiences’ attention. Make a note of patterns you see among your top-performing video topics, thumbnails, and formats. Later on, you can replicate your most successful elements in future videos. Not sure what other KPIs to look out for? Changes in subscriber count, audience demographics, and video playback locations are a great place to start. Comments sections are also ripe with audience feedback. Some are more helpful than others but tracking constructive criticism over time will help reveal creative new ideas. Although time-consuming, it’s important to learn how people are talking about your video and what they think about your channel to help make decisions in the future. How does the YouTube algorithm work? YouTube relies on its algorithm to identify high-quality videos that best match each search query. How does it determine quality and match? Every element of your video is a factor in its ranking. That includes everything from what you say in the video to what colors you use in your thumbnail. It also includes direct audience feedback from the number of likes, comments, and subscriptions your channel as a whole earns. If a video doesn’t immediately gain traction after it’s posted, the good news is that YouTube may begin showing it more in search results later on once your reputation with the algorithm is established. Pro tip: If you're familiar with Google SEO, you’ll find that a lot of these optimization practices still apply here on YouTube. How to manage your video marketing campaign with Wrike Wrike is a professional services management software that can handle the complexities of a YouTube marketing strategy for a single person or large teams. Wrike makes it easy to visually break up your entire production process into separate phases. You can use color coding and Gantt charts to illustrate your project roadmap. This is especially helpful if you’ve got more than one video in production at a time, which is often the case for creators who choose to batch shoot. Wrike also offers workflow templates that make it easy to carry out miniature projects within your projects. For example, you may find that your YouTube video editing process involves cutting out pauses, cleaning up audio, and color correction. You can add all of these steps to a repeatable workflow template specifically for video editing that teams and partners can reference for every new project. And because there are many different tasks involved with YouTube video creation, you’ll want to stay on top of each of them with individual task assignments that include details such as descriptions, approvals, and individual due dates. The tasks within Wrike are also great communication tools because users can chat in one central location about the task they're referring to in that very same task assignment. That way if anyone else joins the conversation later on they easily catch up with what's been said and everyone stays on the same page. And finally, Wrike offers useful app integrations such as Adobe Premiere that make it easy to provide proofing and approval for every new video. Ready to get started on your YouTube marketing strategy? 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How to Find the Right Marketing Agency for Your Business
As an entrepreneur, you pour your heart and soul into your business and do everything you can to help it grow. Building your product, team, service models and customer base takes all your focus, and it can be difficult to know what to prioritize. But whether you’re a brand new startup or an established business, continuing to build your brand is always of vital importance. At amoCRM, we rely on marketing efforts to cut through the fierce competition within the Bay Area. Finding the right marketing agency, however, turned out to be a challenge. We needed an agency that tended to each and every lead, like we do with our own customers. We’re sharing the lessons we learned on our quest to find the perfect marketing agency, to save you from conducting your own wild goose chase. Starting Our Search Living in the Google era, we started our search for marketing agencies online, selecting 20 agencies with the best Google Ads. We knew we’d ultimately have to narrow our search to 5 agencies, but selecting 20 to start with gave us a nice pool of options. We began with Google Ads for a very pragmatic reason: agencies that allocate funds to quality Google Ads are more invested in pursuing every lead. We reached out to each and every one of these 20 agencies, either by direct mail or via their web forms. We provided them with a short introduction to our company and shared our brand strategy and development plan. We had a very rough notion of our marketing timeframe, goals, and budget, but we were far from a concrete marketing strategy. 30% of the agencies we reached out to never replied, either because they didn’t consider us a valuable lead, or they simply hadn’t invested in CRM software to help them track potential leads, we’ll never know. But that helped us narrow down our search and come one step closer to our perfect partnership. We also disqualified one agency due to the fact that their web form was disabled, and their contact details were difficult to find. Evaluating Marketing Agencies The remaining 70% of agencies that did answer our inquiry actually responded pretty quickly. Within a week, client directors and CEOs were reaching out to us, which really fluffed our feathers, so to speak. They all wanted to set up phone calls or face-to-face meetings. No generic proposals attached to a price list were thrown our way—we were genuinely impressed by their desire to get personal and find out all the details of our business goals before coming up with a plan. They all demonstrated the detailed attention to leads that we were searching for. In our own business, the follow up is as important as the first contact. Unfortunately, we never heard back from four of our “impressive” agencies. We can’t be sure if they forgot about us, lost track of their leads, or simply deemed us unworthy of future efforts, but as the saying goes, every kick in the butt is a step forward. The next step involved a lot of phone calls, talking to each and every agency that was still in the race and even meeting with some of their representatives. We wanted our vision to be perfectly reflected in the brand strategy and development, and after all our questions were asked and answered, we were able to move forward with 6 agencies. This number represents 30% of our initial “Google Ads” list. Each of these agencies presented us with an exceptionally creative and well-executed marketing proposal, Three out of these 6 actually pursued our decision within a week. This is the level of dedication and attention that we were looking for. Two agencies followed up more than twice to learn our decision, and soon after, we found our perfect match with one of these agencies. 4 Tips for Finding the Right Marketing Agency for Your Business 1. What’s their track record? Past results say a lot about a business, so the more you can find out about what the marketing agency accomplished for others, the more you can envision what they can do for you. A marketing agency that’s proud of its work and results should make case studies, analytics, or other metrics available to potential clients. 2. Communicate your budget from the start Marketing is a creative industry, and developing a marketing plan without a clear budget in sight can be the downfall of any partnership. Don’t be ashamed of your budget, not matter how small it is. You never know where lighting might strike! You could always be referred to another agency that turns out to be your diamond in the rough. 3. Get ready to talk …and talk and talk and talk! Keeping the lines of communication open is critical to enabling a marketing agency to design a proposal customized to your needs and goals. Look for an agency that’s just as curious about you as you are about them. 4. What’s their commitment? A marketing partnership is not a short-term relationship. Therefore, you don’t just want to partner with an agency that you like and does great work, but also an agency you can rely on to take your calls, answer your questions, and address your concerns about your marketing strategy plan. You can evaluate their level of commitment by paying close attention to the effort the agency puts in during the sales process. Are they quick to respond to inquiries? Do they follow up with you? Finding the right marketing agency can be a lengthy process, but remember: settling for less is not an option. Your brand is the key to your business’ success and what distinguishes you from competitors, which is why you need a marketing agency that understands where you’re coming from. Finding the right agency might just be the most important business decision you make. Author Bio Jen Anders is a marketing manager at amoCRM, a web-based CRM tool for small businesses.
10 Elements of a Successful Content Marketing "Engine" (Infographic)
Content marketing is critical component of many companies' marketing strategies. For those who are trying to build up what I call a "content engine" or for those who are looking to do a tune-up on their marketing vocabulary, this infographic provides ten areas that need to be addressed. Use the infographic below to understand the areas and to assess your company's situation with regards to content marketing. Which areas need the most attention? You can share this infographic with your team! Share this post, or copy the embed code below to put it on your site: Infographic brought to you by Wrike Which areas are the hardest to fix? Let us know in the comments!
25 Top Collaboration Tools to Power Your Marketing Team
Marketing teams are constantly evaluating and adapting—which can make managing campaigns and working together hectic and haphazard. Tight deadlines, tighter budgets, and higher expectations means marketers are always on the hunt for new technologies to help them streamline and scale their efforts. The problem is, there are literally thousands of creative collaboration tools designed to help marketing teams perform better. Scott Brinker’s infamous Marketing Technology Landscape now includes over 5,000 tools, up nearly 40% from last year. So, we’ve compiled a list of 25 top marketing collaboration tools, based on reviews from real users. From ideation to execution, these marketing collaboration tools will help your team work better together. Brainstorming Apps Stormboard A real-time virtual whiteboard where your team can generate new ideas, organize, and prioritize them in one tool. Top feature: Every idea has its own comment thread, where you can riff off and refine ideas as a team. Pricing: Free for up to 5 users. $5/month for Startup and Business plans are also available at $8.33/month. Coggle This collaborative mind mapping app makes it easy for your team to visualize and organize ideas quickly and easily. Top feature: Every change you make to your mind map is automatically saved, so you can go back and make a copy from any point, or revert to a previous version. Pricing: Free for up to 3 diagrams. $5/month for unlimited diagrams and image uploads, $8/user/month for individual workspaces, data management, and branded diagrams. Notism Share, edit, review, and approve both images and video with this online app. Your team can see each others cursors, making it easy to collaborate and ideate with fellow marketers and designers. Top feature: Sketch directly on the work to spin off a new idea, and to make feedback more precise. Notism also features version control, so you can easily compare ideas and decide which to pursue. Pricing: $7.65/month for 5 projects and collaborators and 2 GB of space; $20.40/month for 15 projects and collaborators and 10 GB of space, and $41.65/month for 40 projects and collaborators and 40 GB of space. Brainsparker When your team needs a little help to inspire some imaginative thinking, try Brainsparker. The app contains 200 creativity prompts. Just shake your device to shuffle the deck and see a new thought-provoking word or phrase. Top Feature: Find creativity journals, templates, and training programs in the Brainsparker Gym and Academy for even more inspiration. Pricing: Free app for Android and iOS LucidChart Store and organize ideas with this easy-to-use mind mapping software. Great for matching your content efforts to your marketing funnel, visualizing your SEO strategy, creating video storyboards, or tracking all your email campaign tracks in a single view. Top feature: Dozens of pre-built flowchart templates make it easy for your team to get up and running quickly. Pricing: Starting at $4.95/month for single users and $20/month for teams. Campaign Management Solutions Wrike Wrike’s work management software helps you coordinate work across teams, collaborate on creative assets, and get better visibility into progress and performance. Top feature: Automated, custom Requests bring order to the chaotic work intake process, and ensure your team gets all the details they need up front to get the job done right. Pricing: Wrike for Marketers starts at $34.60/user/month, or start a free trial. ActiveCampaign This digital marketing automation tool lets you build campaign workflows to send targeted campaigns, nurture contacts, and streamline sales and marketing processes. Top feature: The software notifies you of any potential mistakes that could negatively affect your workflow, like forgetting to specify a time delay between two steps. Pricing: $17/month for up to 3 users and basic features, $49/month for up to 25 users and additional features, $99/month for up to 50 users and advanced features, $149/month for unlimited users and all features. Net-Results From lead generation and nurturing to email marketing and social media management, Net-Results makes it easy for your team to create, manage, and collaborate on campaigns, as well as measure results with shareable dashboards and reports. Top feature: Drag-and-drop builders let you quickly create responsive emails, forms, and landing pages. Pricing: Starting at $800/month for 10,000 contacts. Flow A simple teamwork app that lets your team prioritize to-dos, delegate tasks, clarify priorities, and collaborate with both teammates and freelancers. Top feature: The app’s simplicity makes onboarding your team quick and easy. Pricing: Starting at $17/month for a single user, with unlimited tasks, projects, teams, and file storage. Flow Pro pricing available upon request. Communication & Chat Apps *Everyone knows about Slack, Skype, and Google Hangouts, so we'll skip those tools here and feature a few other chat tools worth checking out. Microsoft Teams A Wrike project added as a tab in Microsoft Teams.When you need to outline a campaign strategy or discuss a new proposal, Microsoft Teams channels help your team not only talk about work, but get work done. Write quick chats, a full wiki of documents, or longer messages, complete with a subject and importance indicator. When it’s time to hold a meeting, create a new chat room to jump on a video call, share your screen, and take down minutes. Top feature: Integrations with Wrike let you create and manage projects within Teams. View tasks, update details and due dates, and view your project schedule. Pricing: Included with Office 365 plans, starting at $5/user/month. Flock Flock lets you chat with your team, connect Google Drive to share files, and host video meetings. Load your shared to-do list in the sidebar, add tasks, and assign teammates for a quick way to reference what needs to be done, who’s responsible, and how it all connects. Top feature: In-chat polling lets you quickly take your team's temperature, or hold a vote on what to do. Pricing: Free for unlimited users at 10k message history. $3/user/month for unlimited messages, history, and integrations. Discord Designed for gamers, Discord offers voice channels: always-on phone calls that let you talk to anyone in your team at the push of a button. Keep your mic muted, then tap a key to start talking and join the discussion. Discord works on both your desktop and mobile device, so you can keep the conversation going from anywhere. Top feature: Quickly add a colleague from another team to your conversation with an Instant Invite link. Pricing: Free, or $4.99/month if you want custom emoji, GIF avatars, and larger file uploads. ChatWork If you frequently work with outside agencies or freelancers, it can be tough to manage all that communication via email. ChatWork makes chatting with people outside your company easy. Create a profile and you can message anyone else with a ChatWork ID, and access all your conversations from the sidebar. Top feature: See mentions across all your teams in one place, including a comprehensive to-do list. Pricing: Free for single users and up to 14 group chats, $4/user/month for unlimited group chats, $5/user/month for user and file management. Ryver Use Posts to organize ideas and conversations. Select messages, add a subject, and include a message with details, instructions, action items, or follow-up. Ryver saves all your Posts to a tab for easy reference. Top feature: Click the Set Reminder button on each chat and longform post to have Ryver send you a notification reminder. Pricing: Free. Unlimited users, teams, guests, search, storage, and integrations. Coming soon: Ryver Task Manager, pricing TBA. Digital Asset Management Systems Canto Flight Tag, search, collaborate and report on all your company’s digital assets. Make it easy for your team to follow established brand guidelines with a clear approval processes, copyrighting, and watermarks features. Top feature: Smart albums automatically assign images, videos, audio files, and presentations by type. Pricing: Contact Canto for plans and pricing details. MediaValet A central library that helps your marketing and creative teams easily manage, collaborate on and distribute marketing visuals and content, improving productivity and increasing ROI on marketing investments. With unlimited users, support and training, teams worldwide can access the content they need, whenever and wherever they need it. Top feature: Audio/Video indexing using Microsoft’s best-in-class AI to leverage searchable transcripts, text and object recognition and sentiment analysis for a game-changing search experience for DAM users. Pricing: Contact MediaValet to request pricing details. Bynder A central hub for all your creative assets that offers real-time collaborative edits and approvals, auto-formatting for channels and file types, and clear version control. Auto-tagging powered by artificial intelligence identifies thousands of objects within images and automatically generates the appropriate tags. Top feature: Create a shareable, interactive style guide with Bynder’s brand identity guidelines to ensure a consistent customer experience across all channels and communications. Pricing: Contact Bynder to request pricing details. IntelligenceBank Sick of searching messy shared drives? Categorize all your creative assets by file type, keyword, or metadata. Set permissions to specify which content individuals can access. Top feature: Custom brand guideline pages displayed within the app make it easy to keep guidelines up-to-date, and ensure your team knows exactly which assets to use. Pricing: $9/user/month for 10+ users, or $19/user/month for 10+ users and advanced features like workflow and approvals. AssetBank Upload, preview, and search for assets easily with AssetBank. You can create and share lightboxes both internally and externally, create user groups, and define what users can view, upload, and download. Top feature: Edit assets before you download, including cropping, resizing, reformatting, and masking. Pricing: $430/month for 50+ users and basic features, $700/month for 100-500 users and advanced features, or $1,120/month for unlimited users and all features. Widen A truly collaborative DAM that lets you view an activity feed of user uploads, downloads, shares and comments, plus comment threads, custom statuses, favorites, and ratings. Top feature: The Asset Engagement tool lets you see each asset’s popularity score, and quickly compare with your other creative assets to see what’s working best. Pricing: Start a free trial, or request a demo for detailed pricing information. Marketing Analytics Dashboards SEMrush What keywords are your competitors targeting? What are their ad strategies and budgets? SEMrush can help your team keep an eye on rivals and adjust strategies accordingly, so you come out on top in search engine rankings. Top feature: The keyword difficulty tool helps you pinpoint easy targets for your SEO strategy, or determine whether it’s worth investing time and resources overtaking the #1 spot from a competitor. Pricing: $99.95/month for 5 projects and 500 keywords, $199.95/month for 50 projects and 1,500 keywords, $399.95/month for 200 projects and 5,000 keywords. Cyfe Set up a series of dashboards for social media, web analytics, SEO, and more. View historical data alongside real-time reports, and add custom data sources as widgets. Top feature: Pre-built widgets make it easy to connect Google Analytics, AdWords, Salesforce, and dozens of other data sources. Pricing: Free version available; Premium starts at $14/month. Domo Bring real-time marketing data from your CRM, web analytics, PPC, social media, marketing automation, and financials into a single place. Give your team instant insights into metrics like ROI by channel, revenue and lead attribution, cost per acquisition, customer LTV and more, so everyone has the information they need to make smart decisions. Top feature: Get alerts via email or text message when key metrics need your attention. Pricing: Start a free trial, and contact Domo sales for pricing information on the Professional and Enterprise subscriptions. Moz Pro Get a complete picture of your SEO performance, including keyword rankings and research, competitor rank tracking, mobile rankings, backlinks, page optimization, reporting, and workflows. Top feature: Get actionable insights into website errors, competitive research, and SEO opportunities with the site audit tool, or use the Learn & Connect tab to access advice from industry experts and find SEO resources. Pricing: Starting at $79/month for 2 users and 5 campaigns; $119/month for 10 users and 10 campaigns; $199/month for 25 users and 25 campaigns, and $479/month for unlimited users and 100 campaigns. Kissmetrics Kissmetrics uses audience behavior analysis to help you find ideal customers—and keep your current ones. A blend of analytics and automation, Kissmetrics helps you understand customer behavior and trigger automatic actions to nurture relationships. See where you’re losing prospects, improve retention, and view trends in customer behavior. Top feature: Pre-built behavior reports provide meaningful customer insights, right out of the box. Pricing: Starting at $500/month. Bonus Drumup Drumup is a social media management and content curation tool that helps marketing teams discover trending content and drive customer engagement. Its social employee engagement and advocacy platform lets you broadcast marketing content to your fellow employees, making it easy for them to share to their social networks. Top feature: A built-in gamification module lets you run monthly contests and display leaderboards to keep colleagues sharing your content. Pricing: Start a free trial, or contact the DrumUp team for detailed pricing information. Choose the Right Marketing Collaboration Tools for Your Team Looking for a new marketing collaboration tool? Get advice for selecting software that will help your team work faster, communicate better, and accomplish more with our downloadable evaluation checklist. Sources: SEMrush.com, searchenginejournal.com, oliveandcompany.com, capterra.com, zapier.com
Top 20 Marketing Podcasts for 2021
Marketing podcasts are the number one source of continuing education for marketing managers, directors, and executives. Keeping up with the latest industry trends and news can be challenging when you’re doing it alone. But when you tap into the community created by top marketing podcasts, you suddenly have everything you need at your fingertips. Take advantage of these amazing free resources for general marketing, social media marketing, and other related topics listed below. Why listen to marketing podcasts? Marketing, in particular, is an industry that experiences many trends across a variety of channels. With this much depth and complexity to stay on top of, it’s no wonder why marketers rely on podcasts to keep up with it all. In addition to trends, marketing podcasts allow professionals to learn from the experiences of others. Insightful data, anecdotal evidence, and expert predictions make it easier for marketers to navigate this ever-changing landscape. Top digital marketing podcasts The top digital marketing podcasts selected below have all been largely acknowledged by key industry news outlets as leaders in the space. You’ll find a wide range of niche topics, formats, and episode lengths to fit your needs. Choose one or two that fit into your schedule, then get ready to take notes. Marketing Over Coffee Hosts John Wall and Christopher Penn discuss topics ranging from social media marketing to search engine optimization to marketing project management. In addition to being pro marketers, they are also both local coffee shop owners. They even record each episode in a real coffee shop, so you know they mean business. Marketing Over Coffee’s most popular episodes are where they interview Simon Sinek, Seth Godin, and Mike Volpe. You can expect a new 20-minute episode every Thursday. Be sure to submit your own questions ahead of time for them to answer on the show. Behind The Numbers by eMarketer Behind The Numbers is a podcast that explores the impact of marketing on the business world. They use in-depth interviews and short segments to reveal how your marketing impacts both the industry and individuals. As you can probably tell, data analysis factors heavily into their discussions. Behind the Numbers also paints a clear picture of what the modern state of digital media, commerce, and advertising now looks like. They recently celebrated their 500th episode and maintain one of the most consistent release schedules of all the top marketing podcasts on this list. Online Marketing Made Easy Amy Porterfield's Online Marketing Made Simple was created to help small businesses get started with their online marketing strategies. It's full of actionable advice and step-by-step instructions that will help you overcome common beginner challenges. Advanced marketers can enjoy brushing up on the basics plus learning detailed insider information from Amy’s personal case studies. Success Made Simple Create a winning mindset and develop a brand identity that will inspire your customers all at the same time with this top marketing podcast for 2021. Your host, Dr. Dave Martin, is a renowned speaker, motivator, and author. His episodes on positioning and teamwork are worth a virtual listening party for your whole marketing team. This podcast is also recommended for marketing leaders who want to grow in their personal and professional lives. Call to Action This weekly podcast talks about the basics of digital marketing from experts at Unbounce. It's full of practical advice and tricks from industry experts. Episodes run about 15 to 30 minutes, and although they’re currently on hiatus, you can still gain a lot of practical knowledge from their archived episodes. Reviewers call it “a breath of fresh air for marketers,” which may be the reason why they’ve achieved a 4.5 out of 5-star rating. One reviewer says, “Stephanie and Dan have really pulled together a fantastic show. I’m so thrilled to hear new content each week that actually helps me grow, and it’s the same old rhetoric over and over again. This is a must for any digital marketer.” Copyblogger FM Sonia Simone and her team keep you up-to-date on all the latest content marketing trends and techniques. Guests include expert marketers from tools you likely use every day. Some of their most popular episodes include the Copyblogger marketers themselves openly discussing lessons they’ve learned. This weekly podcast is on the shorter side, with episodes that are typically less than an hour long. ConversionCast The ConversionCast podcast delves into the inner workings of Leadpages, revealing all the insider marketing secrets that will help startups succeed. Their episodes are archived on SoundCloud but offer plenty of timeless tips for modern marketers. Topics include boosting customer lifetime value, turning customers into evangelists, and positioning. Interestingly, two years into the podcast, they restarted it at Season 1 to give their format and their audiences a total refresh. That demonstrates their commitment to maintaining high quality and ensuring that their episodes will stand the test of time. Top social media marketing podcasts Social media has grown at a lightning-fast pace over the past few years, with new apps and updates becoming the norm for marketers to keep up with. That’s why it’s important to have a social media-specific podcast in your toolkit. Learn from the trial and error of top brands and stay up to date with the latest news in all things social media with these top marketing podcasts for 2021. The Social Media Examiner Podcasts Michael Stelzner, the CEO of Social Media Examiner, will help you improve your brand’s social media profile. Social Media Examiner actually has two weekly podcasts: Social Media Marketing Podcast and Social Media Marketing Talk Show. On the Podcast, Stelzner conducts 45-minute interviews with industry experts every week. Topics include creating a Clubhouse strategy, TikTok Ads, and Facebook retargeting tips. On the Talk Show, Stelzner broadcasts live every Friday night to discuss the latest social media news and trends to be aware of. Perpetual Traffic This top marketing podcast discusses how to generate leads and sales through various social media platforms. Your hosts from DigitalMarketer.com and special guests will help you increase your social media presence and your revenue through real-life marketing campaign examples. Some topics you can expect to hear include Snapchat advertising, Smart Shopping on Google, and product launches. The Science of Social Media The Science of Social Media is a great podcast for anyone interested in learning about the behind-the-scenes aspects of social media marketing. It’s hosted and produced by social media tool Buffer and often features questions from the audience. The podcast covers topics such as how to create a strategy, how to implement it successfully, how to measure it all. They currently have 25,000+ weekly listeners and a 4.7 out of 5-star rating on Apple. Maximize Your Social Influence with Neal Schaffer Shaffer teaches marketers how to build, optimize, and monetize their social media. He also teaches business owners how to leverage social media and digital marketing. Episode topics include a step-by-step approach to creating a year’s worth of content, how to maximize impact with social media videos, and more. Episodes range anywhere from 19 minutes to an hour and sometimes feature guest experts. Social Zoom Factor with Pam Moore Got some bad marketing habits, questions about customer research, or just need some worksheets for crafting your next quarter strategy? Your host Pam Moore, a top 10 Forbes social media influencer, has you covered. This top marketing podcast has received an impressive 4.9 out of 5-star rating, with audiences calling it “the best ever” in iTunes reviews. Top free marketing podcasts While all of the podcasts mentioned above are also free, we’d like to highlight these additional top choices for your consideration. They all focus on broader topics and serve to help marketers become more well-rounded. Marketing School In this top marketing podcast, Eric Siu and Neil Patel share their unconventional marketing strategies that will make you think twice about how you market yourself as an individual. Their goal is to help users get actionable marketing tips in just ten minutes. They are also really great about including real examples and data to support their advice in all of their content. Mixergy Mixergy is a podcast hosted by Andrew Warner that focuses on interviewing successful entrepreneurs. Each episode has an interview with a different entrepreneur who talks about their journey so far and what they learned along the way. Their tagline “learn from proven entrepreneurs” says it all. Mixergy also offers courses and collections of themed interviews with topics such as Women Founders. The Tropical MBA Dan and Ian are the hosts of The Tropical MBA, and they bring on great guests to share their stories of building successful businesses. Their focus is on location-independent professionals, which is great for contractors or remote employees who need a little extra advice on how to juggle both. The In-Person Podcast Hosted and produced by Bizzabo, this innovative marketing podcast tells the stories behind some of the world’s most daring events. Topics range from creating inclusive brand experiences to producing hybrid events and everything in between. Guests include high-level executives and VPs of Marketing and Strategy from big names all over the world. The Hustle & Flowchart Podcast Joe and Matt are the marketing duo who teach about audience building and driving traffic to your website. On their podcast, they introduce their guests and share their expertise with listeners. Their two main focuses include building and running marketing processes which are perfect for any marketer looking to standardize or automate their work. There are a lot of actionable tips for marketers at every level. Seeking Wisdom The ConversionCast podcast, hosted by Drift’s David Cancel, reveals all the insider marketing secrets that will help startups succeed. Their tagline asks, “want to get better every day?” and perfectly encapsulates their podcast philosophy. Episodes are typically less than one hour, with many clocking in at just under 20 minutes. The Animalz Content Podcast The team at Animalz talks about content marketing strategy and writing. Their creative episode topics include how to write faster based on military communication tactics and distribution-first content creation. Overall, you’ll learn how to take your content to the next level while supporting your entire marketing team. HBR IdeaCast This top marketing podcast is hosted and produced by the Harvard Business Review and features many of their guest authors. According to their website, they primarily discuss business and management. However, marketers will find plenty of tips for both personal career development as well as information on the current state of global business practices, which will greatly inform their own campaigns. Why marketing podcasts are right for you From real-life examples to expert how-tos from marketing tool creators, a great marketing podcast is critical for success in any campaign. They offer solutions and creative ideas you simply can’t find anywhere else for every stage of marketing project management. Listen for free through iTunes, SoundCloud, Stitcher, the Google Podcast app, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. Looking for even more great podcasts? Be sure to check out: Our top choices for project management podcasts so you can seamlessly plan marketing campaigns and improve productivity. Wrike’s own implementation and project management coach Errette Dunn as a guest on the PM for the Masses podcast discussing how customer personas can influence solutions. And some tips on how fast-growing startups can leverage machine learning for customer segmentation with Wrike CEO Andrew Filev.
5 Essentials of the Best Marketing Project Management Tools
The right marketing project management tool means better communication, easy collaboration, and an organized team. But there are thousands of tools designed to help marketing departments with their hectic workloads, and each looks promising on paper. So how do you choose? Look for these 5 essential capabilities to quickly narrow the field and find the perfect tool for your team: 1. Easy Document CollaborationNo campaign is a one-person show. Between brainstorming, group writing and editing sessions, and several rounds of revisions, you need multiple team members to access and contribute to documents simultaneously with marketing collaboration software. 2. Convenient File Management & StorageMultiple copy revisions, design mockups, budget spreadsheets... marketers have a lot of documents to manage. Project management tools let you virtually paperclip related files together with the task they support, so you don’t need to search, resend emails, or verify that everything's up-to-date. 3. Free Mobile AppsCreativity doesn’t clock out at 6 PM. You need to be able to access your work whenever and wherever you want. Free mobile apps let you access your workspace from wherever you happen to be: at a client meeting, on the train, or over your leisurely Saturday morning coffee. 4. Visualizes Projects & PlansPlanning projects on calendars and whiteboards isn't ideal. A single change can lead to a domino effect of tasks that each need to be rescheduled, or may be completely forgotten until it's too late. Find a tool that lets you view multiple campaigns and projects at once, see how everything connects, and quickly make adjustments. 5. Real-Time UpdatesMeetings, presentations, reports, follow-ups — you barely have time to eat lunch let alone chase down teammates for status updates or to discuss changes to a task. You need instant access and visibility into exactly where your campaigns stand right now, so you can make sure your team is always focused on high-priority tasks. Marketing Collaboration Tools Buyers Guide For more help finding the perfect marketing project management tool for your team, download our free eBook:Collaboration Software for Marketing Teams: A Buyer’s Guide Free Checklist Download our checklist for evaluating project management software and find the perfect solution for your marketing team: Marketing Software Buyers Guide.xlsx
How Wrike's Content Marketing Team Manages Projects in Wrike
Here at Wrike we eat our own dog food—or drink our own champagne, as we like to say—so we were able to quickly adapt our workflow to meet our evolving needs and increase our momentum. Let’s dig into how we manage content projects in Wrike!
The Top Challenges for Creative Teams
We surveyed creative teams of all sizes and asked about their biggest challenges, struggles with collaboration, and how they manage their work. We found that generally, most requests are given at random, too much feedback is a hindrance, and clients are the most difficult to collaborate with.
7 Top Stories of Design Clients from Hell
Let's talk about the difficult clients. You know, the ones that don't know what they want, are picky as ever, and push up deadlines like it's their greatest pleasure in life. This indecisiveness and miscommunication creates a lag in the design process and leads to horrific scenarios. Without a collaboration tool to capture exactly what the client is looking for, schedules are thrown off by multiple iterations, endless revisions, and too much input.
Viral Marketing Strategies from Crazy Successful Campaigns
It's the holy grail of online marketing: the campaign that goes viral. Massive numbers of views, a staggering amount of social shares, and the kind of brand awareness money simply can't buy. But crafting a successful viral campaign is no easy feat; in fact, most experts say you can't really plan it with a marketing strategy definition at all — it either happens, or it doesn't, and luck is no small factor. But that doesn't mean you can't craft your campaigns to increase your odds of viral success. The key is to tap into your audience’s "lizard brain." “Stories that evoke very primal emotions tend to work best,” says Neetzan Zimmerman. He should know: during his time at Gawker, he generated an insane amount of traffic — more than all of his other colleagues combined. So which emotions do you target? How do you start? By getting to know your audience and understanding what makes them tick, first and foremost! Then, try these three proven viral strategies to help your next campaign spread like wildfire. 1. Make them laugh. Why it works: Funny marketing videos downplay the hard sell and instead go for "surprise and delight." They make people say, “I have got to see that again!” This cranks up the view count, and makes people want to share a laugh with friends. Positive emotions like joy are much more likely to trigger an action like social sharing. (Check out our recent work humor video, "Beware the Managers from Hell!") 2. Make a bold statement. Why it works: These campaigns go for the gut, tapping into powerful emotions. People connect to your message on a deeper, "Me too!" level and genuinely want to spread the word or share your cause. 3. Make their jaws drop. Why it works: The awe factor. These are the videos that make people turn to their friends and say, "You gotta see this!" Everyone wants to be the first person to share something cool or amazing with their friends. Warning! Don’t get so wrapped up in achieving viral status that you stray too far and your campaign ends up having nothing to do with your brand. If people remember your campaign but can’t remember what company or product it’s associated with, your efforts are wasted. Follow the DroneCo Comic for More Startup Fun! Browse previous episodes of Welcome to DroneCo in the comic archive, and subscribe to the strip to get each new episode. Then follow DroneCo on Twitter to keep up with the gang all week long. Share the comic on your own site with this embed code: Webcomic brought to you by Wrike
7 Questions to Help You Choose the Right Marketing Software
ebManaging a marketing team is not for the faint of heart. You start feeling like you need an extra arm, eyes in the back of your head, and the ability to read minds and forego all sleep just to keep up. While it won’t help you grow an extra limb or stay up all night, using a good project management tool means you won’t have to. You’ll get better communication, easy collaboration, and an organized approach to managing your marketing team. But with so many marketing tools to choose from, deciding between your options can be tricky. Ask yourself these 7 questions to find the best marketing management app for your team. 1. “Will my team actually use it?” You’ll only reap the benefits if your team actually adopts the software. They need to see that it will improve their daily work in a real way — making it easier to see what teammates are working on/responsible for, giving them a central place to communicate, complementing their personal work styles, and so on. Make sure whatever software you choose is easy to adopt and fits in with your team's current habits, standard processes, and other favorite tools. 2. “Can multiple departments use it?” No team works in total isolation. Easy handoffs, clear communication, prioritizing tasks, and coordinating projects with other departments requires a tool that's flexible enough that everyone from marketing and design to accounting and IT can easily use it for their daily work. Look for a customizable tool that allows teams to create their own workflows and folder structure. When everyone's using the same tool, communication and collaboration across teams is much easier and more efficient. 3. “Does it support transparency & clear communication?” Being recognized for your efforts isn’t a trivial matter. When people feel their work is going unnoticed and unappreciated, they aren’t as engaged and don’t put forth as much effort to go above and beyond. Positive feedback helps build good habits, strong teams, and thriving companies. As a manager, when you always know exactly who’s responsible for which tasks, where work stands, and what the results are, you can share successes with execs, keep projects aligned with new business goals, and get credit for your team's accomplishments. Look for a collaboration tool that notifies you of project updates, and allows you to create "favorites" or easily track your high-priority projects. 4. “Is organization flexible?” You can't be efficient if you can never find what you're looking for — and neither can the rest of your team. Find a tool with an organizational structure that makes sense for your group, or better yet, one that lets you tailor your folder structure however you prefer. Also make sure you can change the view to show the precise information you want to see, so you can quickly make sure important projects are progressing as planned or easily alter your schedule. 5. “Can you generate custom reports?” Keeping spreadsheets updated, accurate, and organized takes a lot of work. Complicated formulas, data accidentally entered into the wrong cell, tracking who made which changes and when, and trying to find and fix errors is time consuming and frustrating. And yet you need to account for how you’re allocating resources, demonstrate your team's efficiency, and pinpoint any areas where numbers aren’t meeting expectations to discover the root cause and most effective fix. Make sure your project management tool creates reports in real time so you always have the most up-to-date information, and that reports are easy to share or export. 6. “Does it easily (and securely) allow for external communication/users?” Working with contractors, clients, freelancers, or volunteers has become a routine part of daily work for most teams, and yet so many are still resorting to email when it comes to communication. Attachments are too big, easily lost in old email threads, or get caught in spam filters. Keeping track of every piece of feedback or updated attachment in conversations 15 messages deep creates even more work, and it's all too easy to miss an important comment or request. Many project management tools allow you to temporarily invite external users who only have access to certain tasks or projects, making it easy to discuss progress, get timely feedback, and make updates quickly and accurately. 7. “Does it integrate with other tools we use?” While you want to be selective about the number of apps you use, no one tool will meet every one of your needs. And you shouldn't have to give up the tools you love and rely on just because your team needs a better way to work together. When your task management tool integrates with your other favorite apps, it's easier for your whole team to fit it into your established workflow so it doesn't slow anyone down. Get the Complete Buyer's Guide to Online Marketing Tools Download our free eBook for more advice on selecting the right collaboration and task management tool for your marketing team, plus a printable checklist to help you quickly evaluate your options.
5 Rules for Scaling Your Marketing Operations Successfully
Marketing organizations are under tremendous pressure to perform. Budgets aren’t growing, but expectations are. How do you do more with less, without compromising on quality? For marketing leaders at growing companies who are ready to expand their programs, scaling marketing operations is a top priority. But doing so comes with major challenges: coordinating different teams while managing priorities, resources, and metrics in a way that doesn’t slow you down is no easy task. But bigger doesn’t have to mean slower or less effective. By scaling your marketing operations, your growing marketing organization can stay lean and agile while continuing to deliver campaigns that impress customers and fuel business growth. Wondering what is professional services marketing and how to excel at it? Follow these five rules to scale your marketing operations successfully. Rule 1: Ensure Your Strategy & Processes are Scalable Bigger doesn’t always mean better. Scaling your marketing efforts can create needless complexity, hinder collaboration, and slow your team down. Smart planning is needed to avoid these growing pains and keep your marketing organization running smoothly. So scale back before you scale up. Examine your current processes to see where you can streamline, determine which marketing efforts are generating a positive ROI, and cut back on what’s not working as well. To help determine whether you're in a good position to scale, ask yourself these questions: Do you know what distinguishes your brand from competitors in key vertical markets, or areas you've targeted for market expansion? Can you clearly articulate that difference? Being able to scale successfully means knowing what attracts and retains the customers you've already acquired, and leveraging that knowledge for growth that's sustainable. Rule 2: Make Sure Your Team is Ready Think about your team and its current workload and responsibilities. Are they equipped to handle a ramp up in projects without neglecting current customers, products, and services? If your marketing coordinators are also supporting other departments, such as PR and customer service, analyzing performance data, and implementing new marketing tools, they’re doing too much. Go back to step one to streamline efforts and processes so your team has the bandwidth to scale. Or consider adding staff to balance your team's workload and responsibilities. Next, ask yourself: does your team have the expertise needed to launch successful campaigns in the new regions or industries you're targeting? If not, should you hire new staff now, or contract out until you have a better idea of the kind of expertise your team needs? Evaluate your current team to identify each member's strengths and expertise, find out where your talent gaps lie, and hire for those roles. Rule 3: Fail to Delegate, Fail to Scale According to a report done by CMO Council and Deloitte, 45% of CMOs say they spend most of their time reviewing and approving marketing plans, budgets and campaigns. 42% say most of their day is spent in meetings. 66% wish they could spend more time on business strategy with fellow company leaders, and 55% want more time to implement innovative new marketing approaches. Making good decisions takes time — something few marketing leaders have enough of. So save your attention for the most important cases, and delegate whenever you can. Set your team up to be able to make good decisions on your current marketing initiatives, so you can focus on executing new strategies. Because many marketing tasks are recurring, like setting up campaigns, planning and publishing content, or promoting events, so are many of the decisions your team has to make around these initiatives. For instance, which segments or channels should a new campaign target? Which metrics will you use to track success? Create templates for recurring tasks and projects, so processes are standardized and easy to follow. Set up reporting dashboards that make it easy to measure and share results. This visibility lets you quickly check in on campaigns without spending all your time in meetings, and it allows your team to stay aligned on priorities and know exactly what their colleagues are responsible for, and what goals they're driving towards. Email and spreadsheets are about the least scalable solution there is, so find a work management tool that can grow with your team. This guide will help you evaluate your options and find the right fit for your needs. Rule 4: Embrace Automation It’s the central puzzle of marketing: sending the right message to the right person at just the right time. But as you ramp up your marketing machine, launching simultaneous, complex campaigns, it becomes more and more difficult to do so. In order to keep up with the complexity and volume of customer and campaign data, you need the right technologies to track, analyze, and optimize your marketing efforts. So how do you scale without losing the personalization that's resonated with your customers and fueled your current successes? Leveraging marketing automation tools allows you to send highly targeted messages to leads and shorten the marketing cycle. Automated lead nurturing helps you build relationships with customers through helpful emails, follow-ups, social media engagement, etc., to determine when they’re truly sales-ready. And by automating your creative workflows, you streamline repetitive tasks, cut down on errors, and execute faster. Rule 5: What Can’t Be Measured Can’t Be Improved A recent study by HubSpot found that only 23% of companies are exceeding their revenue goals — and of those not exceeding their goals, 74% don’t know the number of monthly visits, leads, MQLs, or sales opportunities they need. How can you grow your customer base and revenue streams when you don’t now how leads are coming into or moving through your marketing funnel? When you’re tracking the right things, growth becomes a much simpler task. Focus on metrics that make you a customer-centric organization, so you get actionable data and timely user feedback that pushes your company forward. Find out which marketing initiatives are creating value in order to improve results, boost ROI, and deliver mature leads to your sales team. Being able to properly attribute revenue across each of your marketing activities is key to knowing where to place your resources to fuel growth. Basic metrics like lead volume and website traffic are important, but failing to dive deeper means you’re missing out on key insights into your marketing performance, and valuable opportunities for improvement. MQL to SQL ratio, unengaged subscribers, and other advanced marketing metrics will give you deeper insight into what's driving your success and where you should focus your attention. And don’t just measure campaign results; measure the effort that goes into them as well. Evaluate campaign performance based on two factors: did your efforts produce the desired outcomes? And did the outcome justify the resources required? Maximize Growth and Stay Lean With the right foundation of marketing operations, you can grow your marketing organization into a responsive team that’s able to capitalize on customer needs and market trends. Teams that embrace the Agile marketing framework stay lean while improving productivity and efficiency. In fact, 87% of CMOs have found their teams to be more productive after transitioning to Agile marketing. Get in-depth strategies for making your growing marketing team more Agile in this free guide, 7 Steps to Developing an Agile Marketing Team. Sources: Oktopost.com, Blog.marketo.com, Inc.com, Blog.Hubspot.com
How to Build a Buyer Persona That Converts (Infographic)
As a marketer, it's your responsibility to send the right people to your sales team and "lego" of the bad ones. You must learn as much as possible about your audience, so you can connect to people's needs on a more personal level and share your solution. Unfortunately, getting to that point can be tricky; the required market research and figuring out what is marketing performance for your product is time-consuming and painful to maintain. Use our five tips to help you easily build ideal buyer personas, so you can make sure your marketing materials attract the right audience. A lot of the work can be done just by walking around the office! Like this infographic? You can share it on your blog with this embed code: Infographic brought to you by Wrike Apply the Power of Marketing Ops to Your Business If you’re ready to sharpen your marketing efforts and attain better results, download our free guide, 5 Steps to Transforming Marketing Operations for Maximum Growth. You'll find tips on delivering an exceptional customer experience, selecting the right tools to support your marketing efforts, and the key metrics you should use to fuel your success.
The Effect of Agile on Marketing Teams (Infographic)
We recently surveyed over 800 marketers regarding work management, cross-department collaboration struggles, technology integration satisfaction, and how Agile methodologies are helping them improve flexibility and collaboration across their teams.
How to Manage Ad Hoc Requests Before They Derail Your Marketing Team
Your team is heads down and focused, working hard to get the job done before a campaign launch. They’re making good progress, and with a little luck, you might actually hit your deadlines. Then suddenly, it strikes... the ad hoc request. The cubicle drive-by, the quick email or chat message, the “Hey, I was going to ask you...” while grabbing a fresh cup of coffee in the kitchen. These requests pop up out of the blue, and while they’re typically quick-turnaround tasks, they can hit your team hard. According to our Work Management Report, which surveyed 1,400 knowledge workers, the top productivity roadblock for 60% of respondents was “working on too many things at the same time,” followed by “unclear priorities” (31%) and “too many requests from others” (28%). Today’s marketers spend just 36% of their time on the work they were hired to do. It’s no surprise that ad hoc requests are among the top workplace productivity killers. And yet, ad hoc requests are not only unavoidable, they’re necessary for keeping customers happy. Your marketing team must be responsive to changing client and customer needs, and doing so requires flexibility. One of the biggest challenges for marketing managers is establishing a process that accommodates ad hoc requests in a way that minimizes disruption and distraction for your team. Use these strategies to incorporate unexpected tasks into your workflow and keep all those incoming requests manageable. Plan For Ad Hoc Requests You know ad hoc requests are coming, so leave some wiggle room when you plan your team’s workload and sprints. Enterprise Agile blogger Vin D'Amico suggests prioritizing items as A or B: A items are tasks the team commits to getting done in that sprint, and B items will be done if time allows, but can be subbed out for ad hoc requests if necessary. This ensures your team makes real progress on primary goals, while allowing for some flexibility. Visualizing your team’s workload is another easy way to see who has the bandwidth to pick up an urgent request when one inevitably comes in, or shuffle tasks as necessary to keep one person from being overloaded with work. [caption id="attachment_417149" align="aligncenter" width="820"] Wrike's Workload View[/caption] Embrace Agile to Be More Responsive Implementing an Agile methodology allows your marketing team to be more responsive, and makes your workflow much more flexible when it comes to incoming requests. 18% of marketers say adopting Agile has improved their quality of work, and 16% say their team is now better aligned on priorities. It’s important to note: Agile is not the same as improvisation, and adopting Agile doesn’t mean abandoning structure and planning. Two key components of Agile are ruthless prioritization and constant team communication. This means your team is better able to identify which ad hoc requests are priorities worth incorporating into your sprint, slot them into the current workload, and collaborate with each other to keep a deluge of incoming requests from bogging down a single team member or creating bottlenecks for the whole team. Learn more about implementing Agile on your marketing team in this free download: 7 Steps to Developing an Agile Marketing Team Be Your Team’s Buffer As a marketing leader, you know that even the best laid plans can be derailed by a single curve ball. It’s your job to field those curve balls and act as a buffer so your team can stay focused. Chances are, your marketing team is currently getting bombarded by requests in their inboxes, Slack, meetings, shared Google docs, and hallway conversations. Not only is it impossible to get an accurate picture of the amount of work you actually have coming in, it makes it very difficult to prioritize tasks and ensure your team has the resources they need. All ad hoc requests must come through you, so you can collect all the necessary information and weed out unimportant tasks before they distract your team. Appoint a Gunslinger Kirsten Minshall, founder of London-based web applications studio UVD, suggests defining a special role on your team— someone who can quickly “shoot from the hip” and clear out incoming requests. Working closely with you as the buffer, the gunslinger fields ad hoc requests that are vetted and accepted as priorities. If none come in, they can always pick up tasks from your defined backlog to stay productive. But this enables the rest of your team to focus on executing and achieving your goals, while still accommodating urgent tasks. You can always rotate the gunslinger role amongst your team members to keep any one person from feeling isolated or burnt out by a steady stream of incoming requests. Formalize the Request Process You can’t manage what you can’t see. If you’ve ever sat down for a one-on-one with a team member only to hear they’re working on tasks you know nothing about, it’s time to institute a formal request process. That means no more unofficial, drive-by requests: everything must come to your team via a formal request. No matter how small the task, or how big the title of the person who's asking for it. Establishing a central location where you can direct all incoming requests, prioritize them, and find all the info you need to get the job done right is essential for you and your team to get a handle on the madness. Instead of scattered through emails, sticky notes, or spreadsheets, use a Scrum board to quickly prioritize, assign, and track requests. You’ll know who’s responsible for each request and its status, and any duplicate requests can be easily identified and cleared from the queue. Learn how to set up your Scrum dashboard in Wrike to get started. [caption id="attachment_414564" align="aligncenter" width="820"] Scrum Dashboard in Wrike[/caption] "Wrike actually changed and improved how we function as a team. I look at the new requests that have come in, evaluate who has time this week, and move these into the Design inbox, so the team knows the priorities." - Katelyn Good, Manager of Marketing Strategy & Implementation at Lightspeed POS Track Everything You Work On Since so many ad hoc tasks are invisible, “off the books” requests, it’s impossible to quantify how much work your team is actually doing — or determine how you should improve processes to help your team perform their best. Many marketing leaders are turning to cloud-based project management solutions to help teams communicate and share information. But while there are thousands of tools to help marketers organize and collaborate on campaigns, there are only a few solutions like Wrike that are designed to help teams manage planned projects along with unexpected requests. By tracking everything in a work management tool, you'll be able to: Get an accurate picture of your team’s current capacity, and see exactly how each person spends their time Allocate resources more efficiently, or make a convincing case for additional resources/staff Clear out urgent but unimportant requests and keep your team focused on high-priority business goals Make work visible to executives and stakeholders so they can easily track the progress of their requests Say "no" (or "not today") to low-priority tasks—and easily justify why Keep Your Marketing Team Proactive, Not Reactive Defining a process for ad hoc requests enables your team to focus on the key strategic initiatives that move your business forward, while maintaining the flexibility to respond to client and customer needs. The more you can make plans that reflect what's really happening with your team—by making invisible work visible, formalizing new requests, and blocking out time for ad hoc tasks—the more flexibility you'll have to not only make adjustments and course corrections along the way, but capitalize on significant opportunities.
Top Tools for Maximizing Marketing Productivity & Efficiency in 2021 (NEW)
There are dozens of tools out there for every facet of marketing team productivity, but in this article, we’ll just look at the top tools that every member of your marketing team can use to boost their effectiveness. Here are the top 40 tools for maximizing the productivity of your marketing team.
5 Workflow Mistakes That Plague A Fast-Paced Marketing Team
You're busy staying on top of the latest and greatest marketing technology, generating content, building out campaigns, identifying buyer personas, or being a resource for your team (the list goes on and on). All of this activity makes it difficult to worry about how work is getting done, as long as it gets done.