The Ultimate Guide to B2B Marketing Strategies
Did you know that 64% of B2B companies surveyed across industries have a formal marketing plan? Gone are the days of crossing your fingers and hoping your product or service sells itself. To stay competitive with the rest of the market, you need to have a B2B marketing plan in place to increase and convert as many leads as possible. We know that creating a marketing strategy and mapping out your plan can be challenging and complex. There are so many tactics to use, channels to get up and running, and ways to approach your marketing strategy when speaking to various audiences. Not to mention that, in today’s world, digital marketing is paired with offline marketing efforts, which adds more layers of complexity to your overarching strategy. That’s why we’ve broken down everything you need to know about B2B marketing, including how to organize your B2B marketing plan, top strategies to consider weaving into your plan, and how Wrike can help you execute your B2B marketing strategy with more organization and less stress. First, let’s start with the basics and define what B2B marketing is. What is B2B marketing? B2B marketing, or business-to-business marketing, refers to the marketing of products and services from one business to another. In B2B marketing, the buyer is a business, or more specifically, the decision-makers who have purchasing power within that business. For example, companies who create software products like team-wide communication tools or accounting systems market their product to other companies. Wholesalers also engage in B2B sales. They purchase products from one business in bulk and sell them to their consumers, like store owners. B2B marketing targets the needs of an entire organization and not consumers at an individual level. Simply put, the organization becomes the customer, which means the marketing strategies need to be tailored to that specific audience. Businesses might be looking for ways to help their teams become more efficient, tools to make their work easier and more manageable, or industry-specific products and services their teams simply can’t live without. How to organize a B2B marketing plan You can organize a B2B marketing plan in many ways, depending on your goals and what you want to achieve. Understanding the B2B marketing funnel is one way to create a clear and solid B2B marketing plan. The B2B marketing funnel maps the buyer’s journey from prospect to customer, using various channels and messaging along the way until the prospect converts. You can organize each function of the B2B strategy within each stage of the funnel to ensure you’re hitting every step. The typical B2B marketing funnel can vary, but we’re focusing on the following six-stage model: Awareness: At the first, widest stage of the funnel, you’re trying to pull in potential customers by bringing awareness to your products, services, and solutions offered. Within this stage, you should include all activities that enable you to reach prospects. This might consist of paid advertising, social media, and search engine rankings. Interest: At this stage of the funnel, your primary focus is to increase interest among the audience that you attracted in the awareness stage. Prospects may learn more about your business and offerings through your website. This stage creates an opportunity for your business to develop a relationship with prospective leads and start building a sense of trust. Consideration: You’re now working with prospective customers who may end up purchasing your product. Activities that fall under this stage should include utilizing email marketing to provide more information about your products and offers. Targeted content is crucial, and you can nurture the relationship with free trials, resources like guides and case studies, and more. Intent: If the prospect reaches this stage, they have demonstrated that they’re interested in purchasing the product or service. This provides an opportunity to prove why your product or service is the best one on the market. Convince the prospect that they’re making the best choice to give them that extra bump to complete a purchase. Evaluation: At this stage of the funnel, your prospective buyer is making a final decision about whether or not they want to purchase from you. This is the last chance to hook the prospect, and sales and legal often jump in to help close out the experience. Purchase: The transaction is complete! You’ve signed a new customer. With these funnel stages as a framework to organize your marketing plan, you can then set clear goals you want to achieve, determine what resources you have, and identify the marketing channels you’re going to focus on. For example, awareness and interest are often cited as the key components needed for lead generation. So if you’re looking to bring in more leads, you’ll likely want to focus on these two stages of the funnel and identify which channels you’ll start with to support them. Speaking of channels to focus on, let’s take a look at the top B2B digital marketing strategies you should consider that fall within various stages of the funnel. Top B2B digital marketing strategies B2B marketing happens both offline and online. In our increasingly connected world, digital marketing strategies are crucial when it comes to supporting your overall marketing plan. Fortunately, there’s no shortage of B2B digital marketing strategies to choose from to complement your offline efforts. Here are the top B2B digital marketing strategies we see companies lean into: Develop a company website: A company website might seem like a no-brainer, but did you know that over 80% of buyers visit a company’s website before making a purchase? Your website is an entry point for prospective buyers to learn more about your business, what you have to offer, and how to get in touch with you to complete a purchase. Your digital presence is a simple and easy way for prospective clients to share your business with the key decision-makers within their organization too. Expand your digital presence through search engine optimization (SEO): According to Hubspot’s 2020 Marketing Mix Report, 36% of sales and marketing leads result from SEO efforts. Your business needs to be discoverable. The internet is filled with websites and companies offering similar services, so it’s necessary to utilize SEO tactics that will help your website rank near the top of search results. Harness the power of social media: How many times do you check social media throughout the day? How many social media channels do you engage with regularly? If your answer is “a lot” to both of those questions, you aren’t alone. Social media isn’t just a time suck — it’s a purchasing tool. Over 80% of C-level and VP-level B2B buyers use social media to influence their purchase decisions. Even though it might seem like social media is the place to target individual consumers, you should know that businesses are utilizing this channel too. And if you aren’t sure where to start with your B2B social media strategy, LinkedIn is the most used and trusted channel, reporting an 86% usage amongst B2B professionals. Give pay-per-click (PPC) advertising a go: It’s not enough to get in front of your current audience — you’ll want to get in front of new audiences too. PPC campaigns are paid campaigns where advertisers only pay when people interact with their ads through impressions or clicks. In the 2020 B2B Content Marketing report, 61% of B2B marketers used pay-per-click advertising in the previous 12 months, making it one of the top three choices for paid distribution channels. Commit to email marketing: When executed correctly, email marketing has an unbeatable return on investment (ROI). One 2019 report suggests that the ROI for email is $42 per dollar spent. And if that’s not convincing enough, Content Marketing Institute reported that email is one of the top three free content distribution channels B2B marketers use. These are just a few of the B2B digital marketing strategies you should consider building into your larger strategy. The specific choices you make will depend on the number of resources you have to allocate, your digital maturity framework, and the priorities of your business. In addition to the strategies mentioned above, let’s talk about some more specific (and popular) strategies. We’re breaking down B2B influencer marketing, B2B content marketing, and a B2B marketing mix, as well as how you could build these efforts into your strategy. What is B2B influencer marketing? Influencer marketing is all about promoting your business and products or services by collaborating with influencers. Influencers build a level of trust and connection with their audience members, which makes consumers open to the idea of making purchases based on their recommendations. Simply put, B2B influencer marketing leans on well-known people with large followings to share marketing and brand messages with a broader market. Brands generally pay influencers to promote their products to their followers and encourage them to take action and purchase the product for themselves. In a survey of 300 B2B marketers, 96% of the ones who engage influencers feel that their influencer marketing program is successful, so it’s worth considering adding some level of influencer marketing to your strategy. What is B2B content marketing? Content marketing plays a significant role in B2B marketing. In fact, 59% of marketers believe that blogs are the most valuable marketing channel. B2B content marketing isn’t merely about generating content or posting on a blog — it’s about creating content that’s valuable, relevant, consistent, and inspires action. You can use B2B content marketing to expand your audience, emphasize your brand, and drive leads to your business. Forget the days of pumping out content for the sake of publishing and focus on creating content that’s useful and actionable for readers. With B2B marketing, it’s essential to understand who your ideal audience is. You also need to know what type of information your audience needs and how you plan to promote your content and get it in front of your audience. What is a B2B marketing mix? The origin of the marketing mix dates is attributed to Jerome McCarthy’s introduction of the 4 P’s in the 1960s. We’ve seen the original 4 P’s expanded and modified in a few different ways throughout the years, but the 4 P’s still hold to be most prevalent when thinking about a marketing mix. The B2B marketing mix allows you to create a unique selling proposition (USP) and determine how best you fit into the market. B2B marketing mix is sometimes thought of synonymously with the 4 Ps: Product: Goods or services Price: The amount the consumer pays Place: Where the marketing of the product occurs Promotion: Level of advertising involved The 4Ps don’t have to be defined in any particular order but should be defined in relation to one another as part of a holistic strategy. These elements, or pillars, should be defined to help you maximize the impact you have and satisfy your customers and your business. With the 4 P’s, you’ll be able to lay out a more effective B2B marketing strategy. Why use Wrike to create business to business marketing strategies As you can see, a lot of work and information goes into building and executing effective B2B marketing strategies, and Wrike has all of the features you need to manage this process with ease. With Wrike, you’ll be able to: Take advantage of instant insights and optimize your ROI with real-time data Plan and manage your marketing campaigns in one place Use our campaign management template to manage campaigns from start to finish Adopt a marketing campaign calendar and ditch spreadsheets Create centralized, steady streams of content with our editorial calendar template Streamline your team’s collaboration and communication so they can focus on executing the strategy Are you ready to elevate your B2B strategy and start seeing a huge ROI? Sign up for a free trial of Wrike today to help you get started.
The Definitive Guide to Multi-Channel Marketing
Multi-channel marketing is a complex yet powerful strategy that marketers use to reach more leads using various platforms. By implementing multi-channel marketing, you can reach out to your customers at every stage of their journey. It also allows marketers to study behavioral patterns, making sending targeted messages relevant to their interests easier. Keep reading to discover what multi-channel marketing is and how to make the most of it with the right tools. What is multi-channel marketing? Multi-channel marketing is often defined as the strategy of communicating with prospects and customers across various channels. Instead of running a single campaign or tactic, marketers are now mirroring how consumers operate in various places all at once. It enables leads to take action in response to your offer or service without requiring them to purchase it using one particular channel. There are many types of channels that a business can use to reach potential customers. The most popular ones are: Social media Digital marketplaces Paid and native advertising Content creation Podcasting Blogging Direct mail marketing Mobile marketing Voice assisted search However, not all channels are created equal. The platforms you start with will largely depend on your industry, your audience, and your team’s workload capacity. For example, a B2B software startup may need to focus on building an engaged audience on LinkedIn before expanding to additional channels to build long-term success. With so many marketing channels to choose from, it's no wonder that many companies still struggle to create multi-channel campaigns that can stand out from the crowd. Yet, as the number of marketing channels continues to expand, it becomes more important to develop multi-channel marketing campaigns that can reach all of your potential customers. With multiple channels in play, it's also important to measure the effectiveness of each one. Through closed-loop analytics, marketers will be able to identify which channels were most effective and which ones were not. Why is it important to your business? Multi-channel marketing is important for the simple reason that customers are everywhere. Today's world is full of more channels than ever before, and the need to embrace multi-channel marketing is becoming a critical one. With the rise of digital marketing, customers have more control over their buying decisions. And for many, they’d prefer to consult multiple channels before coming to a conclusion. So it’s easy to see why having the ability to customize how people interact with your business is very helpful for increasing conversions. Another reason why it’s so important to participate in multi-channel marketing is that many consumers expect it these days. Think of it as an opportunity for your brand to stay consistent across various mediums, which helps keep it fresh and relevant. What are the benefits of multi-channel marketing? 1. Access valuable data By implementing multi-channel marketing, you'll be able to reach out to your customers at every stage of their journey. And by analyzing their behavioral patterns, you can send targeted messages that are relevant to their interests. 2. Improve campaign effectiveness Through multi-channel marketing, companies can create an integrated approach that combines various communication channels to reach their customers. This strategy allows them to measure and respond to each other in real-time. Plus, by creating a multi-channel marketing platform that enables marketers to connect and execute cross-channel campaigns, you can improve the effectiveness and efficiency of your marketing efforts while also reducing costs. For example, having more touchpoints in your funnel helps you collect more data. After all, knowing your audience can help determine the best way to reach them. 3. Develop strong ecosystems A good multi-channel marketing ecosystem ties all of your customer touchpoints into one overall experience. You're able to measure and react to each customer's behavior across all of your marketing channels so that your messages are always aligned with theirs. 4. Track wins accurately It can also help you measure your success and identify areas where your promotions are performing well. With that information, you’ll be able to perform A/B testing with the same message on a variety of channels. Or send different messages per platform once you drill down on who uses which channel for what. 5. Engage audiences more A multi-channel marketing campaign can help drive engagement and enhance a customer's experience at all touchpoints. For example, if a customer visits a shoe store, she might receive a discount code after choosing to receive a personalized message from the store. After choosing to receive a welcome email, she'll also be prompted to download the brand app. 6. Understand customers better A successful multi-channel marketing campaign is one that will help you understand your customer's communication and brand preferences so that you can constantly deliver relevant offers across all of them. After they've completed the onboarding process, you'll start providing targeted promotions based on their interests. For instance, if a user has saved their interests for future purchases, you can offer them limited-time discounts or promote products that match their saved interests. When your customers engage with your brand through various methods, you can use their behavioral insights to deliver highly personalized marketing messages. These insights can be used to inform content that's relevant to their interests. Multi-channel marketing examples Not sure where to begin? The simplest approach that many successful companies take is to add a complementary channel to an already established campaign. Here are some multi-channel marketing examples that illustrate this idea: Google Ads are used to promote various products and services. These extensions allow advertisers to easily integrate mobile and web activity into their ad campaigns. Some mail-order catalogs feature URLs or QR codes that direct viewers to a website. This feature is popular because it lets users order online without manually navigating to the online portion of the brand. Many television shows take advantage of the second screen effect by featuring a Twitter hashtag overlay during their shows. Some also verbally encourage their audience to participate on Twitter by following, retweeting, and using the hashtag while watching. Ways to improve your multi-channel communications Despite the advantages of multi-channel marketing, this approach does come with its own unique challenges. First, multi-channel marketing can be very costly. Second, it can take a while to develop a strategy and implement it. Third, it can also be difficult to measure the success of a campaign. With these common issues in mind, here are some simple yet effective ways to improve your existing campaigns: Be consistent. One of the most powerful factors that drive a successful customer experience is consistency. If your customers have varying experiences across all channels, then you run the risk of alienating them. Stay focused. Creating highly choreographed campaigns that are designed to influence multiple channels and devices is not realistic. Instead, marketers should constantly develop and coordinate campaigns that are designed to deliver consistent experiences across all platforms. Simplify everything. Creating targeted messaging that is both accurate and memorable is key to keeping your customers engaged. If you don’t already have one clear idea in all of your content, it’s time to reorganize your calendar. Research more. A clearly defined buyer persona helps marketers identify their ideal buyer and formulate their marketing efforts. Having a clear view of the customer is also critical to understand their behavior. It can help you identify areas where you can improve and develop new strategies to engage more effectively with them. Grow together. Your customer view must evolve along with their experiences. Doing so means constantly updating and revamping your data models and systems. Also, stay on top of marketing trends for each channel. Recognize your limits. Success doesn't come by being present on all of these channels. It comes by addressing the various areas of multi-channel marketing that are necessary to be successful. Use retargeting. Retargeting is a form of advertising that shows targeted ads to people who have bounced from your website while on other platforms. By understanding how many times website users have visited your pages and clicked on your ad, you can then customize your messages and offer them more relevant offers. Include activities. An activation sequence is initiated when a customer makes a purchase or opts in to a marketing offer across various platforms. This step typically begins by sending an email to confirm their account information. How does multi-channel marketing compare with omnichannel? Omnichannel and multi-channel marketing have one big thing in common. They both require you to know which of your channels are most likely to work for your buyer persona and your goals. Other than that, they are quite different. Unlike with omnichannel marketing, cross-channel marketing is the key to successful multi-channel marketing. It involves creating a strategy that works seamlessly across various channels and platforms. Cross-channel communications are also a great way to promote loyalty programs. You can reach out to your users through email and SMS and then provide them with in-app and web push notifications. A unique multi-channel marketing strategy helps you get a clear view of the buying cycle and identify opportunities to improve it. It also allows you to customize messaging and communications to reach each individual customer. For example, SMS marketing and push notifications have become popular channels for personalized engagement. This also means that channel combinations are as important as individual channel strategies since some channels work better with each other than others. For example, TikTok videos are easy to share on Instagram and vice versa. Multi-channel marketing is also reliant on your team’s bandwidth and skillsets. You probably have team members who are experts in different channels. It's possible to end up with a disjointed approach where each team member has their own channel expertise. That’s where a well-rounded marketing team with niche experts for every channel comes in. Omnichannel marketing’s biggest limitation is reach. There are different demographics of people who interact with each channel type. This means that a singular channel approach may not lead you to the right leads in the right way. Additionally, even if the channel is something everyone is familiar with, such as email, there will be differences in the ways each demographic uses the platform. And although messaging should be consistent across all channels, you'll also have to be strategic about what works on each platform. How can I improve my multi-channel engagement? If you want to improve your multi-channel engagement, you have to master the art of the follow-up. Whether it’s ad retargeting, email, or another channel, your channels should all work together to achieve seven or more touchpoints with each lead. Make sure to always offer value when you communicate with a warm lead. That value could be a free trial, helpful content, or anything else that will support your target audience. Also, track the data from your follow-ups the same way you track your initial interactions. Learn from and tweak your strategy over time to find the right combinations of messages and channels that will create a magnetic buyer's journey. What are the challenges of multi-channel campaigns? Content creation for one channel is hard enough. But creating content for multiple channels in a way that ensures they’re all working together cohesively? Even tougher. Still, having a clear goal and roadmap for how you’ll use each channel will make decision-making that much faster. Also, never be afraid to recycle content across platforms. Sometimes people need a few different mediums to learn something new. What are the different types of marketing mediums? Marketing mediums include online and offline channels. Popular online channels include social media, email, paid advertising, SEO, and mobile marketing. Offline channels typically use the mediums of print, television, mail, and radio. How to plan your multi-channel marketing strategy with Wrike A good multi-channel marketing automation system is essential to track all of your leads' interactions and engagement. It can also help you make better decisions and take action on your leads' unique paths. That’s where Wrike comes in. Wrike is a marketing project management software that allows marketers to plan, execute, and analyze multi-channel marketing campaigns. Simply create a new project for your strategy plus additional projects for each deliverable so that every deliverable has a beginning and end that are easy to track. To create unique structures for your many channels and subprojects, add tasks for each step in the process. For example, you can designate content drafting, design elements, and publication as separate tasks by channel. Each task can include approvals from other team members and automatically notify whoever is responsible for the next task once this step is complete. After that, add milestones for the deliverable share or publication date. This will create a deliverable calendar you can share with stakeholders to summarize all current and future initiatives. You can also use Wrike as a centralized marketing data hub with supplementary document and asset storage. Not only does creating a centralized marketing data hub get that single customer view, but it also consolidates all the customer data in one place. You can also use Wrike to create an integration strategy. An integration strategy involves seamlessly weaving various platforms and methods to enable organizations to manage all of their customer communication activities across various channels. This strategy could: include a unified inbox to track all of your customer communication a marketing operations platform that helps you manage all of your publishing and analytics activities a CRM that tracks interactions and engagement Choosing the right multi-channel marketing tool is challenging when you need to manage more than one platform at a time. Wrike helps marketers create fluid and foolproof roadmaps with the help of advanced features perfectly suited for simplifying even the most complex projects. Start your free trial today.
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
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.
6 Reasons Your Marketing Plan Isn't Working (+ New Welcome to DroneCo Comic)
Marketing teams have to be flexible in order to constantly adjust to new priorities, goals, tools, and audiences. But sometimes they get a little too used to the chaos, and start believing that creative work naturally feels out of control. Project management doesn't need to mean restrictive processes, frustrating red tape, or creative death for your marketing team. In fact, project management principles can help establish a reliable, efficient system so everyone can actually focus on being creative. Use these simple project management tips to get better payoff for your marketing team's hard work — and suffer fewer headaches along the way! Share the fun! Click the strip to Tweet it. 1. Standardize & simplify processes. Take a good hard look at your marketing process and developing a marketing plan. Does every single step add value? If not, cut it and focus on what does. Then make sure everyone in the marketing department can follow a clear-cut process and use standard formats and outlines as templates to save time and cut common errors. (See also this video on marketing workflows.) 2. Track your time. Aside from making billable and unbillable hours easier to track, knowing exactly how long typical tasks take makes it much easier to plan future projects and set accurate deadlines. 3. Balance your team’s workload. You shouldn’t have a few key team members drowning in deadlines while others are twiddling their thumbs. Keep track of everyone’s assignments and redistribute tasks as necessary to avoid bottlenecks and stalled progress. 4. Make information & resources easily accessible. Put conversations, resources, and work updates in a central location where they’re easy to find. Everyone can stay in the loop since discussions, decisions, and files are all kept where the entire team can find them. 5. Stay organized. Project managers have mastered the art of juggling several projects at once, making sure resources are used wisely, deadlines are being met, and every project is running smoothly. Stop trying to manage all your work via email and spreadsheets. (There's a better way!) Take advantage of popular project management tools, like the Gantt chart, to manage all your campaigns in one place. 6. Record lessons learned. Every project holds takeaways and lessons you can apply to future campaigns. Record and share them with your team to up your game with every new project. Ready to Start Using a Better Marketing Management Strategy? See how Wrike can help you coordinate team efforts, adjust to changing priorities, and keep every campaign organized and on track. Follow the DroneCo Comic for More Marketing Laughs Browse previous episodes of Welcome to DroneCo in the comic archive, then subscribe to the strip to get each new episode. Click here to follow DroneCo on Twitter and keep up with the fun all week long! Share this comic on your own site with this embed code:
A Winning Video Marketing Strategy (A DroneCo Comic)
Welcome back to DroneCo, Wrike's weekly comic strip! We're following the madcap marketing department at a hot new drone delivery startup in Silicon Valley. Last week, Marketing Director Sujay awoke from his personal productivity paradise to discover an email catastrophe. In this week’s episode, the gang preps for an impromptu video shoot. But CEO Dot has other plans for their marketing strategy types.... Click to Tweet: Want to share the fun? Click the strip to Tweet it! Embed this webcomic on your own site using this embed code:
Key Findings on How to Succeed in Managing Internet Marketing Projects
Want to know what it takes to successfully manage online marketing project? Rich Byrd, the President of Fast Forward Marketing, Wrike’s new client, and Nic Bryson, Wrike’s VP of Customer Care, are sharing their key findings and long-term expertise on how to best keep projects and your team organized: Break a project down into discrete, clearly defined tasks, instead of having one complex task. This will sharply reduce the chances of team members misunderstanding what they were supposed to do on a project. One project is to have neither too many nor too few tasks. Divide your project into subprojects with 5 to 15 tasks to detail just enough things that go into its successful completion. Put all tasks in one place. This way, you’ll make sure the areas of responsibility aren’t blurred, and two people aren’t both working on the same task on some days, while on other days, no one is. Assign tasks whenever possible to a single team member. So there will be no question as to who is responsible for it. To back the assignee up and make task completion easier, use the descriptions and comments. Request a status update on uncompleted tasks with approaching deadlines – this is a one-click action in Wrike, so it won't take long, and it will help you to avoid neglecting tasks. Set up dependencies and reasonable durations for tasks to easily see when a project is getting stuck on something. I love the ease of seeing what’s holding the project up and adjusting these things on Wrike’s timeline! Work backwards from the hard deadline. If your project has a strict due date, start from that and move back on the timeline to when various tasks must be completed in order to meet the overall deadline. Big thanks to Rich for his excellent input. Experiences are best when shared, so if you too would like to share your best project management practices and tips with other Wrike users, let us know, and together we’ll think of a creative way to feature it in our blog. ”— Rich Byrd, President of Fast Forward Marketing Boutique marketing company, specializing in websites and Internet marketing for small businesses and startups
How to Find the Details You Need for a Buyer Persona that Converts
If the marketing field has a golden rule, it’s this: know your customers. And not just in a vague, “females, 18-29 years old” way. You need to know what kind of job your customers have, what their goals are, the daily challenges they’re facing, what they find funny and frustrating — all the details necessary to connect to them on a human level. Only then can you offer an effective solution that will attract their attention and convert them into happy customers. Getting to that level of detail and familiarity can be trickier than it sounds, however. Painstaking market research is time-consuming and difficult to maintain on an ongoing basis, especially with so many emerging channels and trends influencing buyers in new ways. Here are our tips for building an accurate and effective customer profile that’s unique to your best prospects — and keeping it accurate as your market and customer base continue to evolve and you continue to embrace conversion rate marketing. As it turns out, the best resources are right at your fingertips — members of your own team! 1. Talk to sales. Find out the central problem most buyers are looking to solve using your solution, the one question they ask time and time again, and the most common misconception about your product. For instance, if you find that many customers are unaware that your software has a certain feature, maybe add a brief video showcasing that feature to your website's home page, or write a blog post highlighting its functionality and use cases. 2. Consult with customer support. They can offer a treasure trove of insight into your customers’ perspectives and ongoing problems. What common issues are your customers struggling with? How can you make it easier for them to adopt your solution? What resources can you provide to improve their experience with your product and recommend it to others? 3. Keep an eye on online communities. Browse LinkedIn groups, Quora, Reddit, and popular review sites to see what conversations your product is inspiring. How are people discovering your product? Are they using it in conjunction with another tool that you could partner with, or in unexpected or innovative ways you could highlight on your blog? Use these conversations to inform a deeper understanding of who your customers are and shine a spotlight on members of your community. 4. Monitor your analytics. Which pages of your website have the most views? Which blog posts have the highest number of comments or social shares? What kinds of search queries or keywords most often lead people to your site? The more specifics you know about what your customers are looking for and the kind of content that catches their eye, the easier it is to optimize your campaigns. 5. Go straight to the source. Spend an hour or two each week picking up the phone and talking to a few current customers, or sending a handful of personalized emails. Establish and maintain genuine relationships with people who actually use your product, listen carefully to their experiences and insights, and then keep them top of mind when developing your marketing materials. Applying the Power of Marketing Ops to Your Business Once you’ve nailed the buyer persona and attracted a potential customer’s attention, how do you create a marketing strategy that will convert them into paying customers and continue to grow your business? Download our free eBook, 5 Steps to Transforming Marketing Operations for Maximum Growth, for 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.