by Lori Berson | Feb 20, 2024 | Digital marketing, Lead Generation, Marketing, Marketing Strategy
According to the study by Integrate Pipeline360 and Demand Metric, B2B marketers are increasingly relying on paid social media and email marketing to generate leads, reflecting a strategic shift towards digital channels that offer measurable results and targeted outreach. This focus is driven by the dual objectives of improving lead quality and increasing lead volume, challenges that are top of mind for marketers aiming to enhance their sales pipeline and drive business growth.
However, the quest for more leads doesn’t always end with choosing the right channels. It extends into optimizing these channels to ensure that the leads generated are not only numerous but also of high quality. This is where the complexity of digital marketing becomes evident, as marketers must navigate the nuances of content creation, audience targeting, and data analysis to achieve their lead generation goals effectively.
For companies looking to navigate the complexities of lead generation in this digital age, BersonDeanStevens, Inc. (BDS) offers expertise in crafting and executing lead generation strategies that are tailored to the unique needs of B2B marketers. With a deep understanding of digital marketing trends and the challenges faced by marketers today, BDS is positioned to help businesses enhance their lead generation efforts, ensuring a steady flow of high-quality leads. For those looking to elevate their lead generation strategies and drive meaningful business results, contact BDS for expert guidance and support.
About the Data: The results are based on a November 2023 survey of 437 marketers in the US (50% share) and UK (46%) working at companies targeting B2B (58%) or B2B and B2C (42%) channels.
For help with your lead generation, schedule a call or email Lori Berson at lberson@BersonDeanStevens.com.
BersonDeanStevens has been a recognized brand strategy and marketing leader for over 25 years. We work in partnership with you to differentiate your brand and achieve your business goals. Client list.
by Lori Berson | Feb 14, 2024 | Content Marketing, Marketing, Marketing Strategy
Gone are the days of text-heavy blog posts that leave your audience hungry for more. To captivate and engage in today’s digital landscape, you need to serve up an irresistible all-you-can-eat content buffet that’s not only high-quality but also innovative and engaging. This means breaking away from traditional formats and exploring new, creative ways to capture your audience’s attention.
Let’s explore the essential ingredients marketers can use to satisfy and delight their audience.
Visuals: Tantalizing the Eyes and Appetite
Forget boring stock photos. Whet their appetite with mouthwatering visuals like infographics, charts, videos, gifs, original graphics, and even AI-generated imagery. These eye-catching elements can transform your content from bland to brilliant and make complex information more digestible while adding flavorful brand flair.
With user-friendly tools like Canva and Adobe Express (both offer free versions), anyone can cook up amazing visuals.
Podcasts: Audio Amuse-Bouches
Podcasts are soaring in popularity, offering an intimate, screen-free way to connect with your audience. Strategically sprinkle podcast episodes across your menu to build brand awareness and deliver value through stories, educational content, discussions, and industry insights. These AI tools make it simple to turn text into captivating podcasts: Wondercraft, Riverside, and Adobe Podcast.
Remember to promote new episodes through email, newsletters, social media, and your blog for a multi-channel approach.
Interactive Content: Letting Your Audience Sample the Goods
Interactive content invites your audience to actively participate in the experience. Quizzes, games, calculators, image sliders, AR filters, interactive videos, and other digital tools provide value while capturing contact info.
For example, an interactive calculator provides personalized data guiding users through their buying journey while keeping them engaged. To get started, check out Okendo, Quizgecko, and Meiro.
User-Generate Content (UGC): Customer-Crafted Signatures
User-generated content offers authenticity and community. Highlight UGC-like social shares, video testimonials, and reviews to show you value your clients while improving engagement. Some easy-to-use tools include GatherUp, Boast, and TrustPilot.
Time To Dine on Captivating Content!
Like an artful chef, captivating content requires the right blend of visuals, audio, interactive elements, and UGC artfully presented across channels. Serve up your audience a journey that informs, entertains, and provides value. Do this, and your content will leave them satisfied and eager to come back for more.
For help with your content strategy and marketing, schedule a call or email Lori Berson at lberson@BersonDeanStevens.com.
BersonDeanStevens has been a recognized brand strategy and marketing leader for over 25 years. We work in partnership with you to differentiate your brand and achieve your business goals. Client list.
by Lori Berson | Feb 13, 2024 | AI, artificial intelligence, Marketing, Marketing Strategy
In the rapidly evolving world of marketing, artificial intelligence (AI) has emerged as a powerful tool, offering unprecedented capabilities to businesses aiming to enhance their content creation and overall marketing strategies. However, it’s crucial to acknowledge that AI, despite its advanced capabilities, is not a cure-all or magic bullet. It’s a tool that needs a well-thought-out marketing strategy to create transformative content.
AI offers the potential to generate content at scale, analyze data, automate tasks, and personalize marketing efforts in ways previously unimaginable, but AI-generated content requires human direction, input, expertise, and editing. In and of itself, AI content is not always correct, often over-written and not written in context. To be successful with AI, you need someone driving the process.
At BersonDeanStevens (BDS), we understand the delicate balance between leveraging cutting-edge AI technologies and maintaining the human touch that is fundamental to creating marketing content that resonates with your audience. With over 25 years of experience in developing results-driven content, campaigns, and programs, BDS brings a wealth of knowledge and expertise to incorporate AI to boost results.
Whether you are looking for an ally to handle strategic content creation, help train your team on the proper use of AI, or need consulting from time to time, BDS is your go-to resource.
For help with AI and how to successfully integrate it into your business, schedule a call or email Lori Berson at lberson@BersonDeanStevens.com.
BersonDeanStevens has been a recognized brand strategy and marketing leader for over 25 years. We work in partnership with you to differentiate your brand and achieve your business goals. Client list.
by Lori Berson | Jan 11, 2024 | AI, artificial intelligence, Marketing, Marketing Strategy
Staying ahead of the marketing curve is not just an advantage, but a necessity – especially with Artificial Intelligence (AI). Below are just a few examples (and tools) of how AI can elevate every aspect of a marketing campaign, from targeted planning to insightful post-campaign analysis.
The integration of AI in marketing goes beyond automation. It’s a fundamental shift in how we conceptualize and execute marketing strategies. AI offers unparalleled efficiency, personalization, and scalability in campaigns, setting a new benchmark in marketing excellence.
Tailoring Campaigns with Precision: The Pre-Campaign Stage
AI-Driven Audience Targeting
AI’s capability to analyze and interpret complex data sets enables marketers to identify and target the most receptive audiences. This allows for highly targeted marketing campaigns that speak directly to the needs and interests of your audience.
Content Creation
Imagine a creative assistant that helps generate ideas, themes, and content. AI aids in creating diverse and appealing marketing materials, ensuring your message is both engaging and relevant.
Campaign Planning
AI tools can assist in campaign planning by predicting market trends and customer behavior, allowing marketers to stay ahead of the curve.
Engaging Customers: The Active Campaign Stage
Enhancing Customer Interaction
AI can personalize customer interactions by analyzing past behavior and preferences. This results in more engaging and relevant communications.
Real-time Campaign Optimization
AI’s ability to process data in real-time allows marketers to make on-the-fly adjustments to campaigns, ensuring maximum impact and efficiency.
Predictive Analysis for Better Results
AI’s predictive capabilities enable marketers to anticipate customer needs and respond proactively, creating a more dynamic and responsive marketing strategy.
Measuring Success and Learning: Post-Campaign
Insightful Analytics and Reporting
AI’s ability to process and analyze post-campaign data is invaluable. It provides detailed insights into what worked and what didn’t, paving the way for informed decision-making in future campaigns.
Content Lifecycle Management
AI isn’t just about creating content; it’s also about managing it effectively. From identifying the best-performing content to suggesting repurposing strategies, AI ensures your content continues to deliver value over time.
AI Tools
- Demandbase and 6Sense – Leverage AI and intent data to help identify high-value accounts and audiences to target to help with account-based marketing planning.
- Drift – An AI chatbot that can have conversational interactions with website visitors to engage prospects. Chatbot data helps inform campaign messaging and offers.
- Madkudu – Uses AI and machine learning to analyze customer data and make personalized recommendations for marketing campaigns – helping with segmentation and targeting.
- Adobe Sensei – AI inside Adobe marketing products like Adobe Campaign can assist with campaign planning and optimization by predicting performance and identifying high-value customers.
- Salesforce Einstein – AI that’s built into Salesforce to optimize the sending of email campaigns, provide predictive lead scoring, and automated personalization.
- ChatGPT, Claude, Bard, and Microsoft Copilot are general AI platforms that help you brainstorm ideas, and create outlines, articles, blog posts, social media, e-books, emails, ad copy, and more!
- Persado – Uses AI to generate emotionally intelligent marketing copy and subject lines that drive engagement for email campaigns and other messages.
- Midjourney, DALL-E, Canva, Kittl, and Adobe Firefly can rapidly create unique images to tell your story.
- Sprout Social and HootSuite – Use AI for image and text analysis to help make content recommendations and schedule social media campaigns.
The key is finding AI marketing tools that align with your goals, data sources, technical capabilities, and budget.
AI – Your Strategic Partner for Growth
AI is more than just a technological upgrade for your marketing; it’s a transformative power. It enables a level of precision, personalization, and efficiency previously unattainable. Whether it’s through smarter targeting, creative content generation, real-time personalization, or insightful post-campaign analysis, AI is an indispensable asset for modern marketers.
To achieve your marketing objectives more effectively and efficiently, we recommend you use AI not only in your marketing strategy but throughout your campaigns – in addition to using it for sales, project management, presentations, etc.
Stay tuned for more insights and tips on leveraging AI for unparalleled marketing success.
For help with your marketing and how to incorporate AI, schedule a call or email Lori Berson at lberson@BersonDeanStevens.com.
BersonDeanStevens has been a recognized brand strategy and marketing leader for over 25 years. We work in partnership with you to differentiate your brand and achieve your business goals. Client list.
by Lori Berson | Jan 9, 2024 | Marketing, Marketing Strategy, Social Media
In today’s digital marketing landscape, leveraging social media for customer service has become essential. This approach, however, extends beyond simply reacting to customer complaints. It’s about integrating into the wider framework of engaging with your community across all social platforms where your presence is felt.
The key to effective response lies in the art of listening. Social listening involves delving into online dialogues about your brand, competitors, and relevant topics to gain deeper insights into your audience’s perceptions. Consider this: what’s the buzz around your latest product, your customer service efficiency, or even your brand’s new visual identity? To learn about what’s being said about your brand, below are several social listening tools for both small businesses and large corporations.
Social Listening Tools to Gain Audience Insights
It’s important to recognize that not all online mentions require direct engagement from your brand’s official channels. The primary goal of social listening isn’t always to respond but to understand and learn from these conversations.
For example, the launch of a new product or service by your company. Through social listening, you might notice a pattern of user experiences pointing to a common issue. By monitoring discussions around your product or service and brand on various social channels, you can gather valuable insights into user challenges and address them effectively. This proactive approach not only resolves issues but also demonstrates your brand’s commitment to listening and improving based on customer feedback.
For help with your social media marketing, schedule a call or email Lori Berson at lberson@BersonDeanStevens.com.
BersonDeanStevens has been a recognized brand strategy and marketing leader for over 25 years. We work in partnership with you to differentiate your brand and achieve your business goals. Client list.
by Lori Berson | Dec 29, 2023 | Email Marketing, Marketing
In February 2024, Gmail and Yahoo will be implementing stricter email sending requirements for high-volume email marketers. If you send more than 5,000 emails per day through these providers, you’ll need to ensure your email campaigns comply with the following rules:
- Authenticate Your Emails
You’ll need to authenticate your emails using protocols like SPF, DKIM, and DMARC. These authentication methods verify your identity as a legitimate sender and help prevent spoofing and phishing. Setting up proper authentication strengthens your sender reputation with ISPs.
- Streamline Unsubscribe Options
Recipients should be able to easily unsubscribe from your emails with one click. When someone opts out, you’ll need to honor their unsubscribe request within two days. Make sure your email service provider has automated features to handle unsubscribes smoothly.
- Maintain Low Complaint Rates
To stay in compliance, you’ll need to keep your spam complaint rate below 0.3%. This means sending high-quality, relevant content that subscribers want to receive. Monitor your complaint rate and optimize your lists and campaigns as needed.
While these new standards raise the bar for marketers, they shouldn’t cause panic. With some preparation, marketers can continue reaching inboxes and engaging audiences under Gmail and Yahoo’s new policies. Follow the tips above for a smooth transition that maintains deliverability.
For help with your email marketing, schedule a call or email Lori Berson at lberson@BersonDeanStevens.com.
BersonDeanStevens has been a recognized brand strategy and marketing leader for over 25 years. We work in partnership with you to differentiate your brand and achieve your business goals. Client list.
