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.
![Most Widely Used Video Types Used by Marketers [Study]](https://bersondeanstevens.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/harrison-kugler-qNzLI82MAso-unsplash-1080x675.jpg)
by Lori Berson | May 25, 2022 | Marketing, Marketing Strategy, Video, Video Marketing
According to Vidyard and Demand Metric report, more than 8 in 10 marketing, sales, and customer experience executives say that video is becoming more important as a form of content in their organization
Overall Video Creation Increased 178% in 2021 Compared to 2020
Key Takeaways
1. Brand and Social Media Videos Are Widely Used by Marketers
The most common type of videos are brand videos (53%), followed by demo or product videos (51%), social media videos (48%), training videos (45%), and how-to videos (42%). The popularity of social media videos speaks to social’s presence as a leading distribution platform: 63% of respondents distribute videos on social media sites, equal with websites as the top area for posting videos.
80% of All Videos Created in 2021 Were User-Generated, Versus 60% in 2020
The top video types differ by role. For example, a large share of sales teams will invest in user-generated videos, while customer experience teams show a strong inclination to invest in how-to videos.
The Average Video Created in 2021 Was 9 Minutes and 58 Seconds Long
Among marketing respondents, the video types used by a majority are brand (71%), social media (64%), and demo or product (60%) videos, while close to half use training videos (48%) and customer testimonials (46%). Although how-to videos did not feature among the top 5 for marketers in this study, previous research indicates that they are often used by B2B content marketers, who find video to be among their most effective top-of-the-funnel demand generation tactics.
2. Half of The Marketers Say Video ROI is Improving
7 in 10 respondents across job roles said that video performs better than other content types they use or have used in producing their desired results, a figure 10 times higher than the share (7%) who say that video performs worse.
Additionally, two-thirds of respondents report that video’s ROI is either getting better (45%) or staying the same (21%), though 3 in 10 don’t know. Marketers are the most optimistic about video ROI, with about half (49%) saying that it is improving, and another fifth (21%) reporting steady results.
Prior research suggests that videos have performed better than other content types such as long articles, livestreaming content, and podcasts, though fewer content marketers in that study found video to be as effective for them as virtual events and research reports, among others.
3. Video Viewing Data Deemed Important for Lead Scoring and Nurturing
Three-quarters of sales respondents believe that it would be important for the sales team to access video viewing data to qualify leads, engage prospects, or influence specific deals. Marketers largely agree, with two-thirds recognizing the importance of such data to lead nurturing efforts.
Currently, roughly 1 in 5 (21%) respondents say that their sales team uses video viewing data to a great extent to qualify leads, engage prospects, or influence specific deals, while about one-third say the sales team does so to a moderate extent (34%) and one-quarter (26%) to a slight extent.
Integration of this data would help, yet remains in its infancy: only slightly more than 1 in 3 respondents (36%) say that they have integrated video viewing data into their marketing automation platform (MAP) and/or customer relationship management (CRM) system, although another half (49%) claim that they are planning to integrate this data.
4. Video Production Proves Difficult
While various teams within the organization are requesting and creating video content, marketing has the biggest role to play, and is the only team that a majority identified as both requesting (63%) and creating (65%) this form of content.
Although most medium- and large-sized companies use external resources to some degree to aid in their video creation efforts, only a minority of smaller companies do so.
This could prove problematic, as video production is a challenging affair. When asked which barriers or roadblocks respondents are facing in successfully leveraging video to help achieve business goals, the top 4 (equally cited) all involved production to some extent:
- Producing professional quality video that represents the brand well.
- Having a strategy to drive video production.
- Allocating staff time and resources for video production.
- Producing videos that engage.
No wonder content marketers identified video as the number one type of content they would create if more resources were available to them.
Nonetheless, a majority of respondents are very satisfied (7%) or satisfied (49%) with the results they’re getting from their video efforts, with satisfaction rates much higher (67%) among those who use advanced metrics.
With this in mind, it’s perhaps not surprising that video was mentioned as the top area of investment for B2B content marketers this year.
About the Data: The results are based on a survey of 705 executives across marketing (45% share), sales (25%), customer experience (12%), and other (18%) job roles. Almost half (47%) described the nature of their business as mostly or entirely B2B, while another 41% described it as a split between B2B and B2C.
Need assistance with your video 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, including over a decade in marketing and sales automation. We work in partnership with you to differentiate your brand and achieve your business goals. Client list.
![2022 Top Marketing Objectives [Report]](https://bersondeanstevens.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Marketing-Objectives.jpg)
by Lori Berson | May 23, 2022 | Marketing, Marketing Strategy
According to the Nielsen 5th Global Annual Marketing Report, brand awareness is the top objective for marketers around the world this year, edging out customer acquisition, which in turn is more important than customer retention.
Nielsen asked approximately 2,000 marketers around the world to rank the order of importance of a variety of marketing objectives for their business from most important (1) to least important (7). Respondents gave brand awareness an average ranking of 3, giving it top billing among the objectives listed.
Next was customer acquisition (3.1), which was deemed a more critical objective this year than customer retention (3.3). This shows a shift from the height of the pandemic when brands tended to focus on retention over acquisition. This latest order of importance is reflected in marketing budgets in the US: the most recent CMO Survey indicates that on average customer acquisition budgets are about 15% higher than retention budgets. What’s more, Nielsen data indicates that “marketing accounts for 10%-35% of a brand’s equity.”
Top Goal: Brand Awareness
Given that brand awareness emerged as marketers’ top goal, it’s also their most important marketing metric. About two-thirds rated it as extremely (30%) or very (36%) important, putting it ahead of engagement (63% extremely or very important), marketing mix modeling (61%), full-funnel media ROI (61%), and viewability (61%).
Even though it’s their most important metric, brand awareness isn’t the one that marketers feel most confident in measuring. 64% rate themselves extremely (29%) or very (35%) confident in their organization’s ability to accurately measure sales. 61% are at least very confident in their ability to measure brand awareness, with similar numbers for engagement (60%) and viewability (59%). The metrics that the fewest are very confident in are full-funnel media ROI (54%) and unduplicated reach and frequency (53%).
About the Data: The results are based on an online survey conducted from December 2, 2021 to January 12, 2022 among 1,943 global marketing professionals at or above the manager level, working with annual marketing budgets of at least $1 million. Respondents were from the auto, financial services, FMCG, technology, health care, pharmaceuticals, travel, tourism, and retail industries.
Need assistance with your marketing initiatives? 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, including over a decade in marketing and sales automation. We work in partnership with you to differentiate your brand and achieve your business goals. Client list.
![Types of Videos B2B Buyers Prefer [Study]](https://bersondeanstevens.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/VideoShoot-1080x675.jpg)
by Lori Berson | May 16, 2022 | Content Marketing, Marketing Strategy, Video, Video Marketing
According to the results of a Brightcove study conducted by Ascend2, video has a strong influence on the B2B buyer’s purchase journey. Virtually all (95%) of the buyers surveyed for the report said that video has an important role in deciding to move forward with a purchase.
Video’s use in making purchase decisions manifests in various ways, according to the study, though buyers are most likely to find it helpful when learning about a product/service (58%).
Beyond learning about products and services, video also proves helpful to buyers in understanding a problem they have (36%) and learning how to solve a problem they have (40%). Buyers separately said that videos were more helpful than any other content type for creating awareness of business-related problems. Moreover, when comparing solutions to such problems, about 6 in 10 respondents said that video is the most impactful content type.
Video Types Preferred
Almost 9 in 10 B2B buyers have watched a video in the last 3 months for the purpose of learning about a product or service, and almost half (46%) have watched a video at least 5 times in pursuit of product and service research.
Two types stand out as the most widely watched: product reviews and product demos, each by 39% of this group of respondents.
Other popular types of videos watched include tutorials/training (33%), live videos such as webinars (31%), educational videos (30%), and brand story videos (24%).
Almost 3 in 4 (73%) report a preference for video over written communication when being introduced to a sales/customer service representative. And watching a video certainly seems to open buyers up to such communication: virtually all of the buyers surveyed said they were extremely or somewhat likely to be more receptive to sales communication from a specific organization after consuming its video content.
Additional Insights:
- 93% of buyers report that video is important in building trust in a brand.
- Almost all (97%) buyers find video content and communication to be useful post-purchase.
- Video is most helpful in the post-purchase stage for learning about other products/services offered and for training/onboarding.
- About 8 in 10 (81%) prefer video over written content when learning how to use a product or service.
About the Data: The results are based on a February survey of 305 professionals responsible for purchase decision-making within their organization, operating in the business-to-business (B2B) space for businesses generating more than $50M in revenue or more annually in North America and the United Kingdom.
Need assistance with your video 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, including over a decade in marketing and sales automation. We work in partnership with you to differentiate your brand and achieve your business goals. Client list.
![B2B Marketers Go-To-Market Top Priorities [Survey]](https://bersondeanstevens.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/b2b_marketing-priorities.jpg)
by Lori Berson | May 9, 2022 | Lead Management, Marketing, marketing automation, Marketing Strategy
According to the recent The State of B2B lead Management 2022 report from LeanData, Sales Hacker, Heinze Marketing and Outreach, B2B marketing and sales leaders found it more challenging to generate sufficient pipeline last year than to pivot go-to-market approaches amid changing conditions or sell virtually with a remote team. Per the study, those same leaders will be focused on generating pipeline this year.
Not only was pipeline the top challenge for 2021, but it’s the leading priority (among 5 listed) for 2022, according to the survey’s more than 1,700 respondents. Almost half (48.8%) named pipeline growth their top priority for their go-to-market organization this year. That’s more than double the share who said that building/staffing teams (22.4%) is their top priority. Other initiatives such as expanding their addressable market (18.3%), accelerating digital transformation (7.1%), and new tech stack investments (3.5%) were lower on the priority list.
The attention paid to pipeline growth, at least for marketing respondents, is understandable given the extent to which marketing is expected to contribute to the sales pipeline. In a recent study, 82% of marketers said they are measured by the sales pipeline they initiate, and 78% reported being measured by the sales pipeline they influence. The good news is that almost 6 in 10 respondents agree to some extent that their sales and marketing are aligned to deliver growth this year.
Although a slight majority agree that their organization’s lead management systems and processes help them deliver an ideal customer experience, more than one-quarter don’t feel that way. Moreover, one-quarter disagree that their current lead management system will support revenue goals this year. And, although almost 2 in 3 feel that they are somewhat effective in achieving their conversion goals with their current lead management strategy, only around 1 in 4 (27%) are very confident in this area.
Lead Routing Issues
The survey indicates that B2B organizations are at times assigning leads to the wrong owner, with 6 in 10 admitting this sometimes happens and another 7% claiming that it happens half or more of the time.
2 in 3 are able to match leads to accounts and are happy with the process. Unfortunately, this leaves many for whom lead matching occurs but is slow or error-ridden (24.3%), and a small fraction who simply aren’t matching leads to accounts despite a desire to do so (4.3%).
Issues with speed may be the result of outdated processes: the #1 method for routing leads is manual, as opposed to other methods such as using marketing automation platforms or native assignment rules in the CRM.
Looking forward, the top lead management capability that respondents would like to have but currently don’t is more automation and fewer manual processes.
About the Data: The results are based on a December 2021 global survey of 1,732 B2B sales, marketing, and operations professionals, with technology the most heavily represented industry.
Need assistance with your go-to-marketing strategies, and sales and marketing automation? 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, including over a decade in marketing and sales automation. We work in partnership with you to differentiate your brand and achieve your business goals. Client list.
