Top Tips for Creating a Twitter Marketing Strategy
Twitter can be complex. Similarly, the techniques and methodologies that brands use to implement their Twitter marketing strategy add yet another layer of difficulty. While some marketing project managers prefer to follow Twitter best practices and cross their fingers, others know that putting a strategy down on (virtual) paper ensures growth and success on the platform long-term. For those who prefer to know what they’re doing on Twitter and why their efforts (and budget) matter, having a strong Twitter marketing strategy is a no-brainer. In this guide, we’ve answered your most frequently asked questions about Twitter marketing, provided a curated list of essential tips, and listed the exact tools you need to achieve your next benchmarks. What is a Twitter marketing strategy? A Twitter marketing strategy is an action plan that aligns with your company’s concrete goals for this particular platform. A good Twitter marketing strategy involves creating and publishing content that will attract new followers and improve your brand recognition. Why is Twitter good for marketing? Twitter is not as creative as other platforms like Facebook and Instagram. However, it does have an advertising audience of 353 million and is the first in line for customer service as far as social media apps go. Not only is Twitter a must-have social media tool, but it’s also effective for engaging individuals, sharing time-sensitive content, and staying up to date with what’s going on in the world as it relates to your business. How to create a Twitter marketing strategy Despite its fast-paced nature, Twitter still requires a bit of strategic planning and discipline to get the most out of it. Not to mention the fact that it’s important to be prepared for all the unexpected conversations that happen on Twitter. Having a strategy in place will help you respond to any situation that may arise while also building a strong marketing and sales funnel for your brand. Here’s everything you need to know to successfully implement a Twitter marketing strategy. 1. Evaluate your current strategy You should check your existing social media accounts both on and off Twitter to make sure they're in good standing. This will help identify any issues that need addressing now before you launch the next phase. 2. Define clear goals Having clear goals is the first step to achieving success on any social media platform. You should create goals that are specific, measurable, and time-bound. These should align with your company's greater objectives and be realistic about the resources you have to dedicate to the project. You’ll also need to get specific about which metrics you’ll use to measure progress and how often you’ll check in with goals. Remember that there are a ton of different metrics available but not all of them will be applicable to your particular goals. 3. Check out the competition By carefully analyzing the accounts of your competitors, you can learn about their weaknesses and develop a stronger strategy. Look for common themes, tweet frequency, and their most popular tweets to better understand what your audiences are looking for. You can also use this information to improve on what they’re already putting out there in your own content. Pro tip: You can also get digital marketing inspiration from original strategy examples found elsewhere that you can make your own on Twitter. 4. Create a Twitter guide Your company’s customized Twitter guide should include a code of conduct and a clear set of style guidelines anyone can replicate. First, follow a clear responsibilities policy to ensure that everyone is on board with how you’ll deal with the variety of scenarios you may find yourself in on Twitter, which can be a well-known hangout for pot stirrers and ‘trolls’. Even something as simple as accidentally having multiple team members answer the same questions can create a lot of confusion and lead to unproductive discussions. Following actionable guidelines will prevent these common roadblocks from happening in the first place. Next, remember that a good social media style guide is also helpful to keep your team's communications on track. This will prevent branding mistakes and minimize miscommunication. Keep in mind that your brand personality should be consistent across all platforms. It should also communicate your company's values and goals. 5. Create your Twitter profile Having a professional Twitter profile can help strengthen your brand and inform your audience. You also want to make sure that your handle is consistent across all platforms. Here are the steps you’ll need to take in order to get started: Create a handle. Your username is the first thing that people will see when they look at your profile. It should include your company's name and other recognizable details. Add a profile photo. Make sure your imagery keeps to the correct dimensions and is high-resolution. Add a header image. Your profile should also feature a clean and prominent header image. It can help provide insight into your company culture or reflect on current campaigns. Write your bio. A well-written and snappy bio is also important to stand out from the crowd. You can also use a tagline or a creative image to highlight your brand personality. Include a link. Send click-throughs to your homepage or a dedicated landing page for Twitter audiences. Choose a location. One of the most important elements of your profile is your location. This is very important for small businesses as they want their customers to be able to find them offline. Add a birthday. Use the date your company was founded or an important launch date. 6. Start a Twitter content calendar A social media content calendar is a great way to align your content across all your channels and identify potential conflicts. It can also help you plan ahead and capitalize on any opportunities that arise. Another benefit of planning out your calendar is that it will help you determine if you're sharing a balanced mix of content. Although you can schedule some tweets to go out ahead of time, the social aspect of social media will still require you to respond to DMs, mentions, and retweets promptly. 7. Schedule some tweets ahead of time Get ahead of the competition by scheduling your tweets to go out on optimal days and times. Doing so will allow you to maximize the engagement and visibility of every post. Unfortunately, you can't always schedule 100% of your tweets or else the platform may flag you as spam. However, it's possible to save time by pre-scheduling content that's already planned in advance. 8. Create a monitoring plan Once your marketing strategy is in place, it's time to regularly evaluate your progress and set goals against those that you set. Use the same project management platform to evaluate your Twitter data and run reports to keep everything in one accessible place. 9. Use social listening Twitter isn't just about speaking. It's also about listening. Through social listening, you can learn about the opinions of other people about your products and services. It can help you develop a more authentic and loyal customer base. 10. Consider paid ads Paid ads aren’t right for everyone, but they can help your new Twitter marketing strategy gain more traction faster. Twitter Ads are a great way to target specific audiences. They allow you to measure the effectiveness of your campaign and find the right messages for your brand. Even if someone doesn't follow your brand or hashtags, a promoted tweet can still show up in their timeline. You can also interact with them in the same way as organic content. 11. Include link tracking Just like you link track on your sales pages, email newsletters, and other social media, Twitter offers another way to obtain data on customer buying journeys. Track the link in your bio as well as any company website links you tweet out. The metrics provided by link tracking tools allow you to monitor how people navigate to your website and measure the effectiveness of your campaign management. They're also useful for analyzing your bottom line as you improve your conversions and traffic over time. 12. Use all of Twitter’s features This one may take some time, but it’s worth noting that the best way to maximize your Twitter marketing strategy is to use every last tool the platform has to offer. For example, did you know Twitter allows users to host live chats? Use a live chat to discuss a topic, ask customers for their opinions, or collaborate with a brand partner on something you're working on. Twitter marketing tips There are countless tips on the internet about how to do Twitter well. The truth is most of your success depends on trial and error plus consistency over time. Here are some of our curated Twitter marketing tips that we’ve either used or seen work firsthand. They serve as a good jumping-off point for any foundational strategy. Start with one, then mix the rest in over time. Think big-picture. One of the most important factors to consider is how Twitter fits into your overall social media strategy. Assign daily supervision. Busy accounts may require a team member’s attention to monitor them every day or even every hour. Have a backup team member for every single account in case one is out-of-office. Plan one month out. A 30-day content plan will help you grow your Twitter following fast. It will also help you track your social media campaigns and analyze what resonates with your audience. Use lists. Through lists, you can get in touch with the conversations that matter to you most. These feeds are curated by the accounts that are most likely to have influential discussions. Develop your voice. Although you can use images and videos to attract followers, a well-written and compelling voice is very important to have on Twitter. Tweet authentically. Don't send tweets that sound like they're coming from a robot or a script. Instead, communicate clearly and politely. Stand out. Follow a unique and original message whenever you post on social media. Doing so will make your Twitter content more engaging. Use polls. Twitter polls allow users to pose questions with multiple choice answers. Gather valuable feedback and opinions about your customer preferences and favorite products. Add photos and videos. Visual assets can help you convey a message more effectively. They can also be used to reinforce an important point or highlight a chart or infographic. Use hashtags. Hashtags are a great way to boost your visibility and discoverability on Twitter. This feature is essential for new accounts. Add branded content. For example, creating a branded hashtag is a great way to organize and promote content about your business. It can also be used to search for user-generated content related to your products. Track trends. Follow trending topics to get notified about new posts and hop on relevant themes. Think before posting. Although most Twitter users rely on the mobile app, search engine preview snippets of profiles may show recently deleted tweets. So think through each message before you hit publish — otherwise, it may come up on Google days, weeks, or months from now! Engage, engage, engage. It's important to create a two-way channel of communication on Twitter to engage your audience. Creating content that encourages your followers to interact with each other is also important. Get verified. A verified profile helps prevent people from being confused with fake and duplicate accounts. Twitter marketing tools to get you started There are three main marketing tools you’ll need to get started, regardless of your goals or strategy. Data measuring and reporting Asset storage Project management platform Without the help of data measuring and reporting, brands aren’t able to perform well on Twitter. The feedback from key metrics such as retweets helps marketers better understand their audience, grow their following, and reach as many new timelines as possible. Asset storage is another essential Twitter marketing tool. Between branded links, third-party links, photos, videos, GIFs, and more, having one central location where all of your Twitter content assets are stored is both convenient and strategic. Last but not least, the most important Twitter marketing tool you can use is a project management platform. Twitter requires you to create content, respond to public and private messages, track data, and keep up with the latest features. A great project management tool will allow you to do all of that in one accessible place so you can stay on top of all the moving parts while focusing on your chosen strategy. Why use Wrike to build your Twitter marketing campaign Like other social media platforms, finding success on Twitter requires a strategy and an intentional approach. That is why using a marketing project management tool is so important. Wrike's marketing project management software lets you track and communicate with your team across all your campaigns in one place. Not only does it help break down silos and make communication easier, but it also gives you a 360° view of your Twitter and related social media campaigns, allowing you to see all of them in one place. Wrike's software also helps you track communication with your team across all your campaigns in one place, so you’re always on the same page, even with Twitter’s fast-paced conversations. If last-minute tweets or replies need approval, team members can easily see your feedback and loop approvers into ongoing conversations via @mentions, which can help cut down on review cycles. For productivity, Wrike's marketing project management software helps you streamline your processes and achieve your goals. Doing so will increase the visibility and efficiency of any strategy you implement. With all of Twitter’s moving parts, having full transparency into your workflows is essential since bottlenecks are that much harder to resolve. If you run a social media strategy on any other app, you already know that project management for digital marketing is different from other project management disciplines. That is why Wrike developed flexible workflows that make it possible to eliminate the guesswork and get more done in less time. Twitter has many complex moving parts with real-time feedback, so solid data reporting is mission-critical to getting it right. Wrike's marketing project management software features dynamic reports that allow you to visualize and gather business intelligence quickly. Ready to take action on your new Twitter marketing strategy? Get started today by organizing your social media plan into assigned tasks and timelines using Wrike’s two-week free trial.
Use Gamification to Revolutionize Your Team Task Management
The thought of victory often pushes people to do their very best. It only makes sense, then, that this mentality leads to productivity gains in the workplace. By integrating gamification with team task management, companies can inspire a healthy level of competitiveness among employees.
What Is Multicultural Marketing and Why Is it Important?
When you promote a product to a new audience, it’s obvious that you have to take that audience’s sensibilities into account. But what does that mean when your business appeals to specific demographics, cultures, and subcultures? Cross-cultural marketing requires a thoughtful approach to the context, history, and sensibilities of any given culture or subculture. In some cases, that might mean learning new words. Or you might have to learn a different “marketing language” to resonate with your audience. To achieve true cultural diversity in marketing, you have to dig deep into the history behind a different culture, learn what makes it tick, and ultimately align your marketing materials with that new language. What is cultural marketing? Cultural marketing is any business endeavor to promote a product or service to a particular demographic. This includes overseas and international cultures but can also refer to minority cultures in your own country. To resonate with a demographic, the marketing campaign has to consider the tradition, language, religious upbringing, and history of that culture. For example, travel companies target specific cultures to resonate with why their customers travel for the holidays. It requires a global marketing perspective that embraces traditions across the world. Consider when Expedia once shared an employee roundup on their social media platforms. They asked employees how they celebrate the Lunar New Year — a bigger event in cultures with Hindu and Buddhist influences. The campaign looked at traditional Lunar New Year dishes and travel plans centered around February 1st, not the January 1st new year, as is traditional in western countries. Cultural marketing touches on two of the four Ps of marketing: promotion and place. Promotion identifies the cultural touchpoints to align your campaign to the appropriate demographics. After all, you wouldn’t advertise your Christmas trees during a Hanukkah television event. Place means finding where your target demographic spends their time, either offline or online, to prevent wasted advertising dollars. Why is culture in marketing important? Integrating cultural knowledge into your marketing efforts is key because you need to engage people in the appropriate context. Otherwise, your message may not resonate the way you hoped. Think of multicultural marketing as learning to speak a new language. But rather than conjugating verbs, you’re picking up on the social cues and habits that define different demographic influences. Anyone in international business knows that what may be acceptable in one culture turns into a faux pas in another. For example, when the Australian TV anchor Karl Stefanovic attempted a joke with the Dalai Lama (“the Dalai Lama walks into a pizza shop and says, ‘make me one with everything’”), the joke didn’t translate. Said Stefanovich: “He didn’t know what pizza was.” When marketing to your native culture, it’s easy to take cultural assumptions for granted. You have the same baseline experiences, the same influences, and speak the same cultural languages. Effective multicultural marketing strategy requires humbling yourself and your team as you learn to move across boundaries. Great cross-cultural marketing examples 1. 100% Pure New Zealand To drive visits to their native country, Tourism New Zealand had to accomplish two things. First, they had to reach across cultural boundaries to show the appeal of New Zealand to an international audience. Second, they had to incorporate every local culture that helps make New Zealand unique. Their “New Zealand Welcome” campaign accomplished both with a clever fusing of the two goals. They focused their subject on something any culture will resonate with — something as simple as a sunrise. Then Tourism New Zealand invited people all across the country to submit their own sunrise greetings with the hashtag #goodmorningworldnz. The result? A video highlighting the broad spectrum of cultural diversity within New Zealand — while still emphasizing the unity and beauty of a country with universal appeal. 2. Procter and Gamble: “My Black is Beautiful” Campaign Procter and Gamble’s television campaign “The Talk” included a frank look at the history of racism in the western world. But rather than paint African-American culture with an overly simplistic brush, the commercial showed a diverse range of individuals and circumstances. It revealed a deeper understanding of the reasons behind their hashtag #TalkAboutBias. The TV spot was clearly the result of a thoughtful approach to the double standards and racial biases in our society. A lesser campaign may have shied away from the frank conversations in the ad. Procter and Gamble did not. 3. Target: “Cada Momento Vale Más” Sometimes multicultural marketing requires speaking another language — but only figuratively. Target’s Cada Momento Vale Más campaign took real demographic numbers into account, realizing there are over 40 million people in the U.S. who speak Spanish at home. When Target launched its campaign, it included both Spanish and English language ads. Target even changed the music in its campaigns depending on the demographic targets. For English-language ads, the campaign featured hits by Mary J. Blige. For Spanish-language ads, they shifted to the Brazilian artist Anitta. What are the challenges of cross-cultural marketing? Based on these successful cross-cultural marketing examples, it might seem like avoiding multicultural marketing is the only mistake a business can make. Of course you should reach out to other cultures to expand your business’s boundaries and build a more inclusive marketing plan. But doing so isn’t without its risks, particularly if you go about it in the wrong way. Even well-intentioned campaigns can have unintended consequences, including: “Lost in translation” mistakes Translating from one language to another is not a challenge. But finding an effective cultural translation is another thing entirely. For example, during Coca-Cola’s initial entries into the Chinese market, its marketers looked for Chinese characters to spell out “Coca-Cola” as accurately as possible. The problem? As written, the characters actually meant “bite the wax tadpole.” It’s not enough to perform literal translation. Your company has to understand the cultural and historical context behind every campaign. Superficial mistakes To borrow an example from another cola company, Pepsi ran into a cultural blunder with its 2017 Super Bowl ad. In the ad, the gift of a Pepsi from a prominent celebrity seemed to suggest that deep-mired cultural issues could be rooted out with a nice gesture from a reality star. The commercial featured celebrity Kendall Jenner gifting a Pepsi to a police officer supervising a protest, solving the turmoil in the background. Rather than striking the right chord, the ad came across as blind to the complex realities behind the Black Lives Matter movement, which inspired many worldwide protests that year. Ignoring cultural context To borrow another example from Procter and Gamble, the company once launched an advertisement that featured a woman taking a bath. The woman’s husband entered the bathroom and gave her a massage. The ad performed well in Europe, where cultural norms generally accepted the scene. In Japan, however, audiences were confused as to why the husband would violate the wife’s privacy in such a brazen way — the ad was seen as racy, inappropriate, and in poor taste. They’d failed to take different cultural norms into account. How to use Wrike to manage a multicultural marketing campaign The question isn’t whether you should take a thoughtful, complex approach to multicultural marketing when attempting to reach a new demographic. You already know the importance of culture in marketing. The question is how you achieve a thoughtful approach. The first step is to make the marketing campaign as simple to run as possible. For example, if you reach out to different cultural experts across the world, you’ll need a singular dashboard that keeps everyone in communication with each other. Wrike’s marketing campaign management template makes it easy for a remote worker on the other side of the planet to tag a project manager whenever there’s a potential issue with your approach. The next step is to double-check your cultural research. Use Wrike’s operations management templates and build a custom request form whenever a representative of that culture needs to add their input. You should also build a diverse team of multiple voices to ensure a balanced approach to your marketing campaigns. Add team members to each layer of your project management with a custom workflow that runs every new idea by the people who need to hear it. Finally, consider the PESTLE acronym as you move ahead with a project. This acronym is an ideal way to consider the whole context of your marketing environment. Don’t launch your new campaign until you’ve considered the following: P: Political factors E: Economic factors S: Social and demographic factors T: Technological advancement factors L: Legal and regulatory factors E: Environmental factors It’s not enough to consider just one of these factors and call it a day. Effective project management is about bringing in multiple viewpoints — from experts and team members to stakeholders — and disseminating them into cohesive strategic steps. There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to multicultural marketing. It requires an adaptable, unique approach for every new project. That’s where effective collaboration comes in. Try out Wrike today and discover why so many people rely on our collaborative work platform to turn large, complex projects into actionable workflows.
Push vs. Pull Marketing: What You Need to Know
Planning your strategy for next quarter and not sure which direction to go in? In this article, we’re analyzing push vs. pull marketing so you can make the best possible decision. Learn more about what they are, how they are used, and the main difference between push and pull marketing. We’ll also go over some push vs. pull marketing examples and provide templates you can use to create winning marketing content. What is push marketing? All advertising can be classified into two broad categories: push and pull. On the one hand, push advertising aims to push products towards specific customers, while pull advertising focuses on the right people at the right time. Push marketing, specifically, is a strategy managers use to promote their products to consumers. The goal of push marketing is to get the products seen by the consumers at the point of purchase. Exposure is the north star for this marketing plan. This can be accomplished through many different channels, including social media, standard mail, or in stores. Although many companies try to build long-term relationships with their customers alongside this strategy, push marketing focuses on acquiring an immediate sale. That’s why it’s great for increasing sales volume and improving brand loyalty. Push marketing can be applied to both B2C and professional services spaces. For example, in the B2B space, a manufacturer or wholesaler may try to convince a retail outlet to stock its product by including samples at an in-person marketing demonstration. Although push marketing seems like the best option on paper, marketing managers should be cautious about making this their only approach. If a company decides to spend a huge sum on advertising, they can easily lose money if their customers ignore their messages. Because push marketing doesn’t focus on building relationships, major drivers of sales, such as repeat business, aren’t a direct result of this campaign type. In other words, using push marketing as your only strategy could lead to missed opportunities. On the other hand, push marketing is most successful when marketing campaigns promote goods and services that are already in demand. Overall, push marketing is a great way to create immediate results and make a strong impression on potential customers. It eliminates the need for branding and promotes a new product quickly. Its temporary effects attract new customers even though it can be expensive and the results are often not long term. Before you get started on a push marketing plan, your team should first gather information on the potential customers that you’ll be pushing the advertisements out to. Afterward, marketers can use this data to choose which platform or platforms they’ll focus on. From there, they’ll be able to create a powerful message that appeals to the right demographic and is highly effective for the marketing channel they plan to use. What is pull marketing? Pull marketing is a strategy that focuses on increasing the number of consumers who want to buy a particular product. It often involves convincing a consumer to actively seek a product in order to get retailers to stock it. Brands that use pull marketing will reach out to consumers through a direct marketing campaign. The consumers then go to a retailer and purchase the product. This allows the producer to both sell the product and fill stock according to the consumer's demand. This strategy typically works best when the lead time is long enough for consumers to compare alternatives. This allows them to make a purchase without being pressured into a hasty decision. It also means companies must convince consumers that they should buy the product they see advertised. The advantage to consumers is that they won’t have to settle for whatever product is in stock elsewhere simply because it is available. Instead, they’ll see the real value of your goods or services through your pull marketing strategy and are more willing to make the effort and reinvest long term if the proposition is strong enough. There are many ways to reach customers through pull marketing, all of which aim to build excitement for a product or a company. With pull marketing, a company can promote a product before it is available for purchase. It saves them money by reducing the number of units they produce before the product launches. In the best case scenario, the demand for a product will exceed the supply when pull marketing is used. Most people are unsure of the differences between push vs. pull marketing. But they should also be asking what the differences are between pull marketing and regular marketing. A pull marketing campaign is different from a traditional advertising campaign. Instead of focusing on a specific product or service, this strategy starts with analyzing the company’s goals and market potential. While both methods may analyze market research data, a pull marketing campaign places a greater emphasis on generating new interest. Pull marketing is especially important for products that are completely unique in some way. Whether it’s a never-before-released trademark doll or a rare kitchen gadget, pull marketing is best used to reach new or underserved markets. Word-of-mouth excitement and attracting plenty of customers is the name of the game with push marketing. This excitement should last across various stages of a product's life cycle, selling out in stores or surpassing user capacity whenever possible. Key differences between push and pull marketing At first glance, push vs. pull marketing seems to be about exact opposites. But in reality, they do overlap. We’ve outlined the primary characteristics of each and how they look when applied in real life. Demand: Push marketing works well with products people are already familiar with or have an interest in. Pull marketing is effective for selling something people may have never heard of before and for creating demand where there was none or little to begin with. Length of time: Push marketing focuses on short-term sales, whereas pull marketing may take longer to establish. Product type: Pull marketing products are typically one of a kind in some way and may require telling audiences exactly what they are. Push marketing products are familiar to audiences and usually require little to no comparison shopping. Goal: Push marketing aims to make a sale immediately, whereas pull marketing builds an audience over time and often from scratch. Cost: Both types of marketing campaigns are what you make of them. They both may use similar channels but reach different audiences. It truly depends on the product and who you’re trying to reach. In a nutshell: the differences between push and pull marketing primarily revolve around the brand’s relationship to the audiences they’re targeting and the sales goals they are trying to reach. Push and pull strategy examples Amazon is a great example of a company that uses both push and pull marketing strategies to make a profit. First, its warehouses are strategically placed close to major cities and metropolitan areas. This makes Amazon a pure push company when it comes to selling its products because their service meets customers where their demand is. At the same time, they use a pull strategy to promote third-party sellers with tools such as retargeting ads that entice users to go back onto the site and complete their purchase. Both are highly effective. Without their warehouses, Amazon would have fewer sellers since space is often an obstacle for brands with physical inventory, which could deter wannabe businesses from the site. And without promoting their sellers' products, they wouldn’t see any profit from their sales. How to choose between push or pull marketing There are two things to consider as you choose between push or pull marketing. The first is demand. Is there already strong demand for what you do or offer? Do you know how and where to reach customers at the point of sale, whether online or in person, for this specific product? If you can confidently answer those questions, then push marketing is the strategy for you. On the other hand, is word-of-mouth marketing an important part of your strategy? Do you know if your offer fulfills a need that your customers don’t realize they have or don’t yet know your solution is the best possible option? If yes, then pull marketing is your best bet. How to set up your marketing strategy with Wrike Wrike is a project management tool marketers use to plan and execute their strategies. Wrike users plan and launch hundreds of digital marketing campaigns across various platforms and languages. Planning and executing these campaigns can be challenging, even for those who already know a thing or two about push vs. pull marketing. That’s where Wrike’s template comes in. This template is built to help marketing teams organize and execute digital marketing campaigns. To begin, break down your campaign into phases. Create tasks that must be completed within each phase and assign them to your team. Each task can be assigned to a specific member of your team. These tasks can be easily categorized into various categories and can be deleted or renamed as needed. Next, track progress with our interactive Gantt chart and export reports for review. Because Wrike is secure, you can safely communicate and share data with other stakeholders and managers to get feedback on performance. Not only is this useful for keeping track of complex push and pull marketing campaigns, but it’s also helpful for managing different marketing projects at the same time. Most marketers utilize both push and pull marketing strategies but have the same team members working on both. Having your projects managed all in one place makes it easier to see progress, communicate tasks, and keep everyone on the same page despite all the different strategies in play. In addition to task assignments, Wrike also offers visual Gantt charts to help users better understand the big picture. The Gantt chart view shows the project's overall plan and all the tasks in its dynamic timeline. It can help you spot delays and maximize your chances of meeting your deadlines. To further maximize visibility, this template comes with a pre-configured dashboard that shows campaign progress, which includes unassigned tasks and overdue tasks. It also includes a variety of predefined widgets to help you keep track of all your campaign data. As you go about creating materials for your push and pull campaigns, Wrike allows you to store campaign assets and label them in files that display in chronological order so you can manage them better. In addition to managing campaigns, Wrike helps both push and pull marketers maximize the efficiency of daily operations. The role of marketing operations management is a critical one, as organizations are now more focused on collecting and managing large amounts of data. This often involves planning, implementing, and reporting on various analytical platforms. Wrike is the ideal companion for analytical marketing teams, who love the ability to manage all of their campaigns. Whether you use our premade template or a custom one, your marketing operations team can execute at new levels of efficiency. In conclusion The debate over the pros and cons of pull and push marketing has been ongoing for decades. Both strategies are often used by marketing professionals as part of their company's marketing plans. Whichever you choose, make sure you partner with a solution that offers the level of organization, visibility, and attention to detail that Wrike does through features such as Gantt charts and dashboards that make even the most complex strategies manageable. Start your two-week free trial with Wrike today.
Marketing Trends Leaders Should Know for the Future of Work – Insights from Wrike’s Reuters Workshop
The following year will prove to be a critical time for marketing teams as they look to re-engage with their core customers in a post-pandemic world. To do so successfully, however, teams will have to choose whether to go fully remote, stay in-office, or develop a hybrid work environment. Furthermore, teams will have to do more with less and leverage key technologies to keep up with the ongoing digital transformation of business. To address these issues, Wrike recently held a Reuters Workshop roundtable to discuss how marketing leaders from organizations like Hallmark, Carmax, and others are preparing for the future of work. We’ve collected some valuable insights on the problems they’ve encountered so far and the solutions they’re exploring to address upcoming marketing trends. Hallmark Hallmark is seeing exponential growth at the moment due to moving towards an omnichannel brand from a primarily retail brand. However, a spokesperson noted that the key to navigating this growth comes down to staying organized – something new technology like work management solutions can facilitate. They also supported the continuation of remote work, as the removal of time-wasting commutes and other in-person obligations opens the door to better creativity and uninterrupted workflow. Carmax A spokesperson from Carmax had been a proponent of remote work for years but hasn’t been able to support that aspiration fully until now. They are prioritizing building out a design team and work platform this year. To achieve their ambitious goals, they are looking to integrate an enterprise-level design system capable of maintaining consistency with their visual brand communications and promoting efficiency across their distributed product design and engineering teams. Prepare to hit the ground running In our Reuters Workshop, we sat down and talked with some of the best and well-prepared leaders about the marketing trends of the future. However, over a third of them expressed doubts that they'd achieve their 2021 growth goals, and stated that their martech stacks failed to meet the needs of their team. Taking advantage of and leveraging the right technologies will become key to succeeding in the new age of digital collaboration. If you’re looking to uplevel your own teams and processes in preparation for a post-COVID era, start a free Wrike trial today.
The Beginner's Guide to Online Marketing (Free eBook)
In the past decade, the number of people connected to the internet has exploded. Now, almost 3 billion people are online, sending over 100 billion emails, posting 500 million Tweets, and watching 3 billion YouTube videos every day — and the numbers keep growing! As more customers flock to the internet to socialize, conduct daily business, and make purchases, marketing departments are also evolving to incorporate new online marketing approaches and teams. With so many new marketing roles, strategies, and tools popping up, it can be tricky to keep track of them all — or understand exactly how they all relate to each other. Click through the Slideshare presentation below to learn the essentials of 5 popular online marketing approaches, then download the full eBook for a complete guide to digital marketing. Beginner's Guide to Online Marketing Download the free online marketing eBook to read tips on creating or improving your strategies, gather new tool suggestions, and get a better understanding of the online marketing world.
Want to Ramp Up Customer Acquisition? First, Break Down Your Campaigns
Customer Acquisition teams manage thousands of campaigns across dozens of channels. Here’s some tips from the team here at Wrike about how to optimize lead gen campaigns and refine your customer acquisition strategy for maximum impact.
The Best Funnel Marketing Techniques for B2B
Finding new leads can take a lot of time and resources without a concrete plan, which is why you need a scientific approach to funnel marketing. Read more to learn marketing funnel basics, how to set up your own lead generation machine based on tactics from leading brands, and create an impactful B2B campaign for your business.
5 Future Marketing Job Titles You Should Be Hiring For Right Now
Since buzzwords like social shares, mobile marketing, and (wait for it) Big Data are nothing new and don't really provide a competitive advantage any longer, the marketer of the future will be nothing like the marketer of the past... or present. Marketing has changed more in the past two decades than it has in the last 80 years and we are all just trying to keep up. From data to design to content to creative, customers are becoming harder and harder to impress.
How to Supercharge Lead Generation With Project Management
The right project management strategies can teach marketers how to nurture customer relationships, scale lead generation efforts, and produce better, more organized systems for success. Read on for examples and tactics you should know to increase your marketing leads and convert a higher percentage into sales.
B2B vs. B2C Marketing: What is the Difference?
While B2B and B2C marketing are different, they share the same goals and objectives. There is an art to both B2B and B2C marketing, with their strategies and thinking being both separate, and in some cases, the same. This article will clear the confusion and explain the fundamental differences between B2B and B2C marketing, along with guidance and considerations for each marketing type. Keep reading to discover tools and tips to uncover the subtle yet significant differences between the two. What is the difference between B2B and B2C marketing? Business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) marketing techniques are focused on attracting two distinct audiences. B2B refers to businesses that are focused on serving other businesses instead of themselves. Some examples include software, manufacturing equipment, and repair services for long-haul fleets. B2C refers to businesses that are focused on the needs and interests of their customers, who are often individuals. In other words, they sell to everybody but professionals. Think toothpaste, grocery stores, and mobile gaming apps. While these brands may also appeal to businesses, the bulk of their customer base comes from consumers, so their marketing reflects that. There are also cases where both B2B and B2C initiatives happen at the same time. For example, an interior design agency might design rooms for hotels as well as homeowners. On the surface level, B2B and B2C marketing campaigns share the same technical and behavioral best practices. However, there are several strategic differences that separate the B2B and B2C campaigns. Potential sales volume B2C campaigns can reach anyone interested in a product even if they aren’t the intended buyer. For example, a product intended for children might appeal to the decision-maker in the household by also targeting them to get them to purchase something. While B2C companies can cast a wide net and still expect a solid ROI on their campaigns, B2B brands don’t have that same advantage. That’s because, in B2B marketing, the products are meant for businesses, and there are typically far fewer businesses than there are people in any demographic. While specificity is key for both, B2B marketing has to niche down even further by industry, business size, approximate revenue, and much more when choosing their target audience. Average budget per customer There's a big difference in the budget that an individual has versus what a corporation has. While spending five figures on a piece of equipment might be out of reach for the Average Joe, it's likely already built into the company budget for a business. And, as you can probably guess, how you market a $5 item is quite different from how you market a $50,000 item. This distinction is important because it highlights another one of the biggest key differences between B2B vs. B2C marketing: volume. Volume of sales needed to reach goals Because B2C products are typically sold at a lower price point, they need to rely on a significant number of purchases to reach their goals. This is often reflected in the frequency and variety of their marketing. Even the B2C channels they use offer mass appeal. Podcast ads, paid social media ads, and even billboards are excellent examples of this. Conversely, B2B products are sold at a higher price point and need fewer yet more highly targeted accounts to make a profit. These types of campaigns rely more on reaching the right quality of audience rather than the right quantity of audience. In other words, more is not necessarily more in B2B marketing. Even if the B2B marketers are targeting a specific set of individual decision-makers within a company, they are still benefiting from that company's access to a greater amount of financial resources than the average individual would have. In short, B2C marketing is often aimed at individuals with smaller budgets, while B2B marketing is all about targeting corporations with larger budgets. Decision-making timeline In both B2B and B2C marketing, ads need to immediately inspire customers to take the next action. The difference here is that the next action for B2C audiences might be to make a purchase, while B2B buyers tend to have a much longer decision-making timeline. For B2C, consumers should be able to see an ad and decide whether or not they like the product enough to go in-store or online to make the purchase. While they might do additional research, the time it takes to read reviews or watch product videos on YouTube is a much quicker turnaround than in B2B buying. For B2B brands, there may be many different decision-makers from a variety of departments involved in the purchase. Often, a few different budget approvals and negotiations will take place between the business’s first initial ad viewing and the final purchase. When put together, the B2B marketing timeline can often be significantly longer than the B2C marketing timeline. Emotion vs. logic B2C marketing also relies on appealing to emotions to make quick buying decisions. This means their content is often more fun or entertaining. Think TikTok videos, YouTube reacts, and paid social media sponsorships. For B2B, marketers often aim to move their leads to the next stage of the sales funnel. That could mean anything from setting up a free demonstration to starting a subscription. B2B marketers have to consider which campaigns will target which parts of the marketing funnel. This helps them reach the right audience with the right messaging at the right time. Also, the demand for efficiency and expertise is higher among B2B audiences than among the consumer group. As a result, the purchase decision is often influenced by both logic and financial incentive more than emotion. Personal attention Unlike in a B2C environment, B2B customers expect their sales and marketing teams to be focused on them because of the higher ticket price. This means providing personalized service, getting to know their team members on an individual level, and tailoring solutions to fit their changing needs over time. Customer experience is an important factor for B2C audiences too. However, the average consumer doesn’t expect to get to know a sales representative at their favorite laundry detergent brand before buying their next bottle. Do B2B & B2C marketing intersect at all? Both B2B and B2C sales require extensive experience and knowledge about customer service. In fact, “on average across 20 industries, there is a 38% difference in likelihood to recommend between consumers rating a company’s [customer experience] as ‘good’ versus those rating a company’s [customer experience] as ‘poor’” according to Qualtrics XM Institute. In other words, good customer service really matters for most industries and can positively impact the decision-making process for both types of audiences. Another way the B2B and B2C marketing intersects is shared goals. The primary goal of both B2B and B2C sales models is to convert a prospect into a customer. The ways they go about it or the specifics of how many sales they make might look different. But at the end of the day, they are focused on the same big-picture vision. Another similarity between B2C and B2B sales is that their customers are (or have the ability to be) very well-versed in their products and services. In addition to viewing ads, customers will often research products on their own and ask their network for referrals. Both B2C and B2B marketers will have to consider how they’re appealing to their target audience outside of the physical and digital spaces they have control of because of this. B2B Vs B2C Marketing: Which approach is best for me? If you're trying to decide between B2B vs. B2C marketing, you need to consider who you're going to reach. Again, it all goes back to businesses versus individuals. If you are aiming for audiences in both sectors, you can use a combination of B2B and B2C marketing techniques in separate campaigns. Another thing to consider is budget. B2C marketing typically casts a wider net across platforms, channels, and ad types. If you can afford to reach the masses on a variety of mediums, then the B2C marketing approach is worth considering. There's also a chance that your B2B product might have mass appeal to individuals or vice versa. In that case, you can test a small campaign using the opposite approach to see which works best for your brand. If you have a smaller budget or a niche product, then the B2B marketing approach is ideal. It may take more planning, but you can easily reach high ROI leads using this methodology. B2B vs. B2C OKRs: What is the difference? OKRs help marketers align their efforts with the goals and objectives of their companies. They can also affect the people who work with them and offer actions steps for marketing operations and management. B2B and B2C objectives and key results are identical for the most part. That’s because B2B and B2C brands often have goals that fall under the same category. The details, such as the specifics of the objective and the steps they’ll take to achieve each goal, might look different. But for the most part, any marketer can use the OKR system for establishing goals and next steps. Here’s an example of OKRs in action: Objective: Become the go-to product for this pain point on the market Key Result: Provide one new product update every quarter to reflect industry trends Key Result: Reduce the number of steps it takes to make a purchase through the website from 10 to two Key Result: Increase average star meter review score from 3.5 to 4.5 stars on major industry review website Notice how this can apply to either a B2B or a B2C marketing campaign? While this example is a bit generic, there are instances where the OKRs will look different, especially when it comes to the approach. How do B2C and B2B marketing approaches differ? B2C and B2B marketing approaches differ and how and when they reach potential leads. While both B2C and B2B customers are more likely to purchase after seeing an ad, the latter is also more likely to take longer to make a purchase. People tend to make impulsive decisions when it comes to buying goods and services on their own. On the other hand, buying a business product or service can be more challenging to change once purchased. There's even evidence of this in the marketing tools B2C and B2B marketers use most often. For example, most ad platforms have shorter windows of attribution for B2C customers. For that reason, B2B businesses should also check these settings and ensure that they are being used correctly. B2C and B2B marketing management approaches also differ in how they motivate buyers. B2B and B2C customers both typically buy because they see a product or service that they can use in some way. However, B2C customers are looking for ways to improve their lives. Even though emotional appeal is important in both B2B and B2C, it needs to be tied back to the business and not just the sales pitch. Can I organize B2B & B2C marketing campaigns with Wrike? Wrike for Marketers is a robust and pre-packaged solution that enables marketers to easily create and manage their marketing plans. Marketing teams use it to streamline and keep track of their work for both B2B and B2C marketing. They’re able to clearly see all active projects, statuses, and tasks in one shared system, all while monitoring performance and improving ROI as they go. Some ways you can use Wrike to organize B2B & B2C marketing campaigns include: Create use requests, tasks and projects to streamline your intake process for both B2B and B2C marketing initiatives. Organize incoming work from clients, partners, and third-party collaborators. Create an actionable timeline for campaigns and individual assets. Easily compare and approve files and materials while also commenting on files directly in Wrike. Run reports on internal and external progress to see how your team is doing across all departments. To sum it up: Wrike can help both marketers and businesses plan and execute their marketing strategies and campaigns. Start your free trial.
The Complete Guide to Marketing for Professional Services
How do you get noticed in the professional services industry? It involves finding the right mix of content and tactics to attract and retain clients. In this guide to marketing for professional services, we’ll help you build a great team, develop a plan, and gather the right tools. Keep reading to discover trends and tips that will enhance your marketing strategy. What is marketing for professional services? Traditional marketing techniques are no longer enough to succeed in today's world. Instead, they should be designed to work seamlessly with today's clients, especially in the wake of the major changes that 2020 brought to the traditional workplace. This means finding strategies that will help you generate leads and close sales for the professional services niche. There are many ways to market a business, both offline and online. Examples include everything from social media to search engine marketing to networking events. Online and offline marketing techniques combine to allow you to reach out to clients wherever they are. For a professional services organization, you’ll need a strong roadmap for conquering both. There are two distinct and important concepts in marketing for professional services: niching down and customer-centric branding. While these aren’t unique to professional services, they should be top of mind for all marketing strategies in this sector. Niching down Instead of trying to be the best in the industry, try to hone in on a specific area. This will allow you to stand out from the crowd and ensure that your customers are happy with your work. Finding your niche market can also help you attract potential clients and partners that your competitors aren't specifically speaking to. Through niche marketing, you can expect to see more referrals and testimonials from your existing clients. Customer-centric branding Before diving into the world of selling, you should carefully consider the following: are there customers out there who you can sell to? Many professional service companies fail to develop a brand beyond simply being a service provider. Yes, it takes up a lot of resources to do. But when you shape your service around the client’s needs, you can confidently deliver it knowing that your offer is being marketed to who needs it the most. The result is a central marketing message that will be direct, clear, and memorable. It can even help further develop your offline and digital marketing strategy over time since a client-centric organization will listen to its customers and develop solutions that fit their needs as they go. Customer feedback will allow you to create new campaigns that answer specific questions, offer educational resources, and solve their problems with both free and paid solutions. This will ultimately provide a strong foundation for long-term client relationships. How to build a professional services marketing team The question of how to build the optimal marketing team comes down to a simple yet critical decision: what roles do you actually need?. Most of the time, the answer is not clear. It often comes with a series of generic titles such as social media guru, content writer, or marketing administrator. While they are useful for discussing how to accomplish each step, the following will give you the exact actions you need to take as you begin to build a professional services marketing team. Step 1: Ask questions Instead of cultivating a culture of continuous improvement, firms tend to create a hodgepodge marketing team focused on meeting the demands of fast growth. If you have any questions about the firm's strategic direction or growth priorities, start by asking your partners. Clarity is key to building or restructuring your team. It’s easier to make decisions regarding hiring when you know what you need and why you’re hiring in the first place. At a minimum, you should be able to answer the following: Where have we succeeded and failed in the past? How has marketing contributed to growth so far? Which of our services should be prioritized for marketing? What does success mean and how is it measured? Is our branding where it needs to be to reach our next set of goals? Which of our current marketing initiatives support our continued growth, and which do we need to revise, pause, or cancel? Step 2: Create a roadmap Most marketing managers don’t realize that, in order to build an effective team, they first need to create a comprehensive marketing roadmap that takes into account all their current and future needs. How do you get people to see your marketing and convert them into customers? By going beyond building a strategy that simply drives traffic to one that monetizes said traffic through a series of well-thought-out action steps and corresponding tasks. Doing so will help you map out the steps and resources needed to get it all done. This step will also provide a clear understanding of your long-term goals and how your future marketing team members will affect those goals. In fact, you may even realize that your current team has all the skills necessary to move forward with your plan. Step 3: Identify gaps There are two types of gaps in marketing teams: skill and availability. Based on the roadmap you’ve established in the next step, it should be clear where these gaps are for your current team. If you’re still unsure, look to your project management tool for help. For example, Wrike users can view individual schedules to determine where employees might have pockets of time to work on additional tasks. They can also redistribute work if the effort looks uneven. And if a particular team member has some out-of-office time coming up, managers can simply reassign tasks so that there are no bottlenecks in their absence. This feature also makes it easy to identify employee skills and where they should be putting more or less time. For example, if you have an SEO expert on social media posting but need assistance with your new website, you’ll be able to see what they’re working on and quickly follow up with a reassignment. Step 4: Make a wish list Now that you know where your marketing is, where it’s going, and what gaps you need to fill, it’s time to create your marketing team wishlist. In a fresh document, create separate sections for skills, availability, experience level, salary, and location. Fill this out based on your answer to the previous steps and use it as a hiring guide as you move forward. Now you know exactly how to build a professional services team that fits your unique needs while using critical thinking and data-backed analysis. What to include in a professional services marketing plan The fastest-growing firms are usually focused on a specific niche. Specialization is a marketing technique that helps define a certain aspect of a business or a certain industry. In fact, a firm’s competitive advantage often stems from its ability to identify and understand a specific segment of the marketplace. In professional services marketing, this means a number of different things, including: Hiring full-time and freelance team members who have experience in marketing for professional services Highlighting niche subject matter experts for your top services as part of your outbound content Narrowing down your offerings to the highest ROI ones and building a campaign around one or two Once you have your specialization strategy written down, at a minimum, you’ll need to build out each of the following to bring in more clients: 1. SEO content Creating compelling content is a great way to demonstrate your expertise and how you can solve complex problems. Blogging is useful for improving page rankings and strengthening your professional services website domain authority long-term. There are two sides to blogging: maintaining your own blog and contributing articles to other firms or industry publications. 2. Fully optimized website A lead-generating website is a key component of any marketing strategy. It serves as the central point of contact for all of your online marketing efforts. A well-designed and well-implemented website is an integral part of any marketing strategy. It can help generate leads and improve conversion rates. Make sure that any website you publish has a fast-loading speed, a back-end SEO strategy, and a plan for adding consistent weekly updates. Also, be sure to build out pages for each of the services you offer. Target keywords and publish written content that fully encompasses each specialty so that customers return to your site over and over again. 3. Event strategy Even if your professional services company operates entirely online, an event strategy will help your brand stand out. Regardless of how much time or budget you have for events, there are lots of ways to use them in your plan. Here are some examples: Sponsoring a popular event for your target industry Holding a virtual or live stream event Speaking and guest lecturing Hosting an after-party at a conference Networking with potential leads at an industry-specific event Professional services marketing trends you need to know Here are the professional service trends to look out for and how they’ll affect your marketing going forward: Virtual events In 2020, marketers had no choice but to embrace virtual events. And it turned out to be a positive change for many. Virtual events help attract new audiences and lower costs. And for professional services companies with clients and potential leads all over the world, connecting with them online in a more personal way isn’t such a bad idea. Everything from live streaming to virtual demonstrations can work. Value-based branding Consumers are increasingly demanding that their purchases align with the brands they buy from, which can be challenging for marketers. But for professional services companies, your marketing can revolve around your mission statement, ethical hiring and wage practices, and commitment to personal service. Relationship-building Professional services are focused on meeting the needs of the client. Before, many firms were able to provide these services through face-to-face client meetings. Today, clients are demanding more from their professional services firms. This means firms need to re-think their offerings and develop new ways to deliver value to their clients. This can be done through surveys, regular check-in meetings, and marketing materials focused on customer retention in addition to acquisition. Tools you need in marketing for professional services Because professional services brands focus on B2B clients, they’ll need to use B2B marketing tools to reach them. Here are the must-have tools for marketing professional services in 2021: Website traffic analytics Virtual meeting hosting service Content management and organization A/B testing tool Email sales funnel creator SEO research and reporting Keyword and search engine content analyzer Teamwide messaging tool File and media asset storage Workflow manager with status updates Automated social media posting tool CRM You can combine these tools into a marketing stack or look for solutions like Wrike that combine one or more of the above features into a single platform. How Wrike can help with your professional services marketing Most professional services firms know they need a marketing organization. But they don’t know how to build one that fits their business goals and needs. That’s where Wrike comes in. Hands-on product management and project management help marketing managers align onsite and remote teams with an organizational strategy that builds consensus across all team members. This is beneficial for all teams but is especially helpful for those working on complex projects or across different time zones. And if you offer multiple services, Wrike can help you keep track of who is working on what for which client at all times. Before any project begins, Wrike helps identify the key metrics and reporting infrastructure necessary to measure, monitor, and track marketing campaign success, even if you have more than one active project going at the same time. That way, your omnichannel marketing plan is all in one place. During projects, Wrike gives professional services companies the ability to optimize their processes. They can do so by creating and editing workflow templates for recurring projects. They can also use visual timelines and Gantt charts to eliminate potential roadblocks before they come up. And if something disrupts the plan, Wrike makes it easy to recover seamlessly with in-app communication and simplified status viewing, so managers never miss a beat. Wrike can help you align your marketing goals and processes all in one place. Wrike can also provide visibility into how those actions are impacting your success metrics through reporting and insights. Ready to master your marketing plan this year? Start your free trial.