The Challenge

Over the past decade, the Bulgarian hosting market has undergone intense consolidation, which led to a single hosting provider owning more than half of the market in the country. The rest of the competing companies had to face a challenging situation where they could not keep up easily with the push from the monopolist or compete with its marketing budget and sales strategy. Delta.BG, one of Bulgaria’s well-known traditional hosting vendors with more than ten years of experience in offering IT solutions, decided that instead of putting up with the situation, they would reposition themselves to keep their growth and get an even bigger market share. That’s when they engaged in a strategic partnership with Brandanizer to take advantage of our deep expertise in helping IT companies reposition themselves and build an outstanding strategy.

“Brandanizer was the trusted partner for Delta.BG,” said Dragomir Zhelev, CEO at Delta.BG. “They have been involved in the entire process from start to finish – creating a thorough strategy about product presentation, generating ideas for product bundles, segmenting the market, writing complex IT content in a way that the customers will best understand it. We are very happy with our joint work and the results we achieved thanks to It.”

The Solution

The logical step for Delta.BG to continue its growth and development was to reposition its brand into a Managed Service Provider. Once a traditional hosting vendor, the company started to focus on larger companies with more extensive projects that have individual needs and require a tailored approach. It was a smooth transition as Delta.BG already had more than 10 years of expertise in designing, building, and managing complex infrastructure solutions for eCommerce companies. In addition, the company already had the reputation of a trusted technology provider for large e-commerce providers who could solve even the most challenging infrastructure issue.

One of the first things, which Delta.BG needed to solve in their brand repositioning strategy was the redesign of the existing website. It had to reflect their new brand positioning, the services’ changes, and the new custom solutions the company designed. The entire messaging of their content needed an update in order to speak directly to the new decision-makers – large enterprises. The company collaborated end-to-end on the project with Brandanizer, taking advantage of our skills to create compelling messages and an excellent online user journey, which converts into sales.

About Delta.BG

Delta.BG is a Bulgarian cloud and managed service provider that offers IT solutions to mid and large businesses in different industries. The company has more than 10 years of expertise in designing, building, and managing a new generation of cloud servers and infrastructure solutions. Their product portfolio includes Cloud VPS, Dedicated Servers, Colocation, custom cloud infrastructure solutions, and more. Delta.BG is a trusted technology partner for some of the biggest Bulgarian eCommerce companies.

Is multi-channel marketing part of your business strategy? You need to be aware that, regardless of your industry and target market, your clients are certainly users of several communication channels such as email, social media, print, and so on. Then, why would you limit your marketing campaigns to one channel only? The secret is to approach your leads and prospects in all their favourite channels and to speed up their user journey until they buy from you. We at Brandanizer are here to help you learn how to do it in a proper way. 

What is multi-channel marketing?

Let’s start from the beginning. In the past, marketers were only able to perform and measure the results from a single activity or a campaign in a single communication channel. Later on, they realized that numerous transactions and touchpoints happen in parallel with users’ returns to that given channel. And this is where the concept for multi-channel marketing started to shape.  

Multi-channel marketing aims to leverage the marketing communication across different channels to present a unified message for users online and sometimes – offline. Also, proper planning and performance will let you measure your results in a meaningful way by combining separate data such as whitepaper downloads and a number of users who read your latest SMS message, for example. In other words, multi-channel marketing is here to help you see the big picture instead of partial results of low value for your business. 

Why is multi-channel marketing helpful for your business?

If you as a marketer or, your brand’s marketing studio, plan for multi-channel campaigns, then you will be able to design the overall unified customer experience and message that people would get across all channels. Moreover, this will help you get meaningful data and outline dependencies in user behavior and the number of interactions with your brand (touchpoints) that they need before making a purchase decision. Do you see now where this is going to?

• Personalized experience. Yes, you can tailor your communication, messages and number of touchpoints according to every user’s preferences, demographics and behavior.  
• Great visibility. Which channel works better for every stage of the buying cycle? Only a multi-channel campaign can give you a true answer eliminating the guesswork and the waste of time and budget. 
• Aligned communication. Make people who have viewed your video ad guess your brand when they see you on a billboard, on a banner, on TV or when they receive an email from you. If they do, then you are doing alright. 

Top channels for multi-channel marketing campaigns

As mentioned, multi-channel campaigns may combine various digital and offline channels, but the most frequently used ones are: 

• Email – this is where most campaigns usually begin. Email as part of multi-channel campaigns stands out with its good ROI and broad application – for bringing awareness, engaging, triggering action and so on. 
• Social media – you can always leverage social media to keep your brand on top of users’ minds, engage them, retarget them, and make them loyal. Insights from people’s interaction with your brand on social media, clicks on posts and ads, comments, etc. in the context of your campaign can give you excellent feedback and help you strengthen your performance. 
• Push notifications – this is a growing trend in the world of digital marketing. We are facing an increasing number of mobile, web and in-app push notifications that aim at reminding us about certain products and services or triggering action by us as users. A good idea when using push notifications for your brand is to gamify the process or to offer exclusive deals to people who have opted in. 
• SMS – did you know that 9 out of 10 people read their text messages up to 3 minutes after receiving them? For marketers this is a good sign that SMS are expected to bring better results from marketing campaigns, especially when designed to trigger reaction or to offer good deals to recipients. 

Multi-channel marketing in action

Now, let’s take a look at some good examples of using multi-channel marketing activities in a proper way. 

1. Onboarding customers. Activating their journey.

This stage begins when a customer is having their initial touchpoints with your brand. They might be visiting a physical or an online store for the first time when you can stimulate them to subscribe to your newsletter or opt-in for receiving marketing communication by your business. After confirming their will to receive additional offers or discounts it is your turn to add value for them via e-mail or by sending push-notifications via Viber chat, for example. Here the idea is to make people acquainted with your brand and to get used to receiving regular updates on your deals.  

2. Get the most out of the nurturing stage.

Here you already know a lot about your customers’ preferences and behaviour. What you can do is to send them a personalized deals, hot offers, limited-time promotions and many more. After someone clicks and shows their interest you might retarget them on social media, Google Display Network, via email, etc. 

3. Reactivate and increase loyalty.

Multi-channel marketing is highly effective after a user completes their purchase, but you want to keep engaging them and making them loyal to your brand. Reactivating also refers to users who abandon their shopping carts or are still indecisive to make a purchase on your website. What you’d better do in this scenario is to reach them via e-mail, on social media or with SMS giving them a discount code or presenting additional benefits from using your product or service. 

In a nutshell, multi-channel marketing aims at bringing incomparable efficiency from marketing campaigns and at driving the best possible results from your branding efforts at every stage of the customer journey. Interested to see how we can boost the key metrics for your brand with multi-channel marketing? Get in touch with us straight away and tell us more about your business. 

If your lead generation campaigns, emails or landing pages generate weak results, very often there is one common reason for their poor performance – the non-effective call-to-actions or their absence which is a big mistake by marketers. The job is getting even tougher when you realize that simply putting a call to action is not enough. Users are much more informed than ever before and only few would convert from simple or trite messages such as “buy now”, “order now” or “subscribe”. In 2021 you needed something more to attract their attention and drive actions that are valuable for your business. Below you can find some useful tips how to write the best CTAs that have turned into a trend in the past year. 

1. Provoke the curiosity of users

It has been proven that curiosity makes people buy more even on a subconscious level. The desire to know something can turn into a powerful magnet for a user to click on your call to action and see what you have to offer to them. The secret to boosting your CTR when leveraging curiosity is to tell people what you do and how you do it but without revealing too many important details. 

Experienced marketers and copywriters know that more often people take emotional decisions to make purchases and later justify them in a rational way, as Neil Patel defines the pattern of emotional buying. Then why not trying to evoke the curiosity of your target audience and influence the emotions of your users with your copy and your CTAs?  Some good words to include in such messages will be “bonus”, “free”, “instantly” or “new”. 

2. Offer a free trial

If you can offer a free trial for your product or service, then this is your most promising option to drive conversions. It is not a surprise that offering a sale during the first interaction with your users will most likely result in a bounce, but if you have a free e-book or a 14-days’ trial, for example, this can grow your audience and lead to high-value, loyal customers. 

When choosing to offer a free trial in your CTA do not forget to take care of users during this period to make sure that they will upgrade or pay in the end. Be there for all their questions and uncertainties and prove the value of your brand. A tricky question might be whether to choose a 7, 14 or 30 days as your trial period, but it all depends on your business. We suggest trying A/B testing to explore what type of offerings work best for your and your target buyers. 

3. Dramatize a problem before giving the solution

What problem does your product solve? What would someone miss if not using it? Describe a common issue that your desired buyers have and try to explain how it evolves and worsens in time. Now, tell people that they can actually avoid going through all of this if they decide to trust your brand and offerings. 

Sometimes, however, you have not yet identified a specific problem that you want to put on the table. Then you need to discover what your potential customers might suffer from, educate them in a given field or raise their concerns with some news or statistics related to their industry. This tactic enables the field for creativity, as long as you don’t go too far with making up irrelevant or non-realistic issues. 

4. Leverage the concept of social proof

This one will give you a little “unfair” advantage since it goes beyond your brand or product features. Instead, it attacks humans’ desire to belong to a group, especially to a group that is already receiving many more benefits and is experiencing more success. 

Social proof is based on the idea that people tend to copy others’ behavior and follow the crowd, especially when it comes to new trends or actions that bring a reward. Having mentioned this, can you offer to your customers a deal and instantly reward them for buying, subscribing, or signing up? When leveraging the social proof concept you may also tell your target audience the number of users who already rely on you or the number of times they have visited or purchased from your store. 

5. Put the benefit in your CTA

A major reason for low click-through rates is the poor message that marketers give on CTA buttons and links. Instead of pushing people to sign up, order, or read more, you may switch to putting a specific benefit to tell users what they are getting by clicking on it. 

For example,  if you offer exclusive free content on your newsletter and you want people to subscribe, you may place a text on the button such as “Get free exclusive content” or something similar instead of “Sign me up” or simply “Subscribe”. 

When writing benefit-oriented CTAs you may also think of the results that users will achieve in future after buying or converting, e.g., “Get a 13% increase in sales in just 2 weeks”. 

6. Use a cliffhanger

“We can’t wait to tell you how good this one is…”

Here is one more idea by Neil Patel that will definitely make your copy and CTAs stand out. What marketers can learn from books and movies is the technique that makes the audience eager to turn the next page or watch the next episode.

If you can make people enthusiastic about your next step, email, or blog post, then you have done half of your job even before writing the CTA. Going back to the beginning of this article, people are curious by nature, but they get even more curious when you leave the story open and offer them the chance to “reveal” what happens next after they engage deeper with your brand. 

Got some good ideas on how to use this in your business? Remember that you can turn any piece of content into a cliffhanger to make users want more and more from you. 

Being on this blog post, you are probably looking for ways to improve your CTR and drive more conversions for your business. Take a look at some other good posts that we have for you:

• 7 useful ideas for conversion rate optimization
• 8 tips to reduce bounce rate
• How to use a CRM for effective lead generation

Running a marketing campaign usually aims at generating leads and converting them into clients. Our previous article was about the relation between lead generation and CRM systems.  Now we want to tell you more about ways to improve the aforementioned process. 

Whether or not you work for a company that is already generating leads and sales, this information could be useful for improving your customer approaches.

There are a few essential steps that we must follow if we want to improve our lead generation, using CRM marketing automation tools.

1. Set Goals

When starting the long-way process to come as close as possible to potential clients, every company has to identify its needs. With clear goals and bright vision, you should search for the CRM automation tool that scores your marketing and sales targets. 

And to answer a few questions eventually: Will the marketing studio we chose be easily used by the departments responsible for the campaigns? Which processes should we automate? How to use collected data to run the most effective campaigns? The answers will give you a clearer perspective on which tools to focus your attention to.

2. Unite All Your Data

 Information silos can be a major roadblock in businesses’ endeavors to use the proper insights for nurturing leads in different stages of the marketing and sales funnels. Hence, compromising their ability to secure conversions.

A major point of picking up the proper software for your company’s goals is finding a way to collect and centralize all customer and visitor data available. Such process will allow you to carefully track the concerns and inhibitions of your eventual leads. The unity will also help you effectively recognize the pain points and thus offer the best solutions through your marketing and sales assets.

3. … Then Analyze It

With enough data and good analysis of it, the CRM database system can make the management of the information regarding your prospects and potential customers really useful. The data insights you manage should serve as the bedrock of your lead generation initiatives. 

In any case the proper customer segmentation and the following the process of “next best action” according to the AI of your marketing studio can improve your leads and generate more conversions. CRM database systems can include more various components that are based on the company’s needs and that segment the potential customers/ visitors accordingly.

On the other hand, Customer relationship management automation systems go hand in hand with the CRM database systems. Automation used in CRM marketing studios describes a set of processes that are executed by a software which responds to customer activities.

A crucial point is the real-time analysis of lead generation marketing efforts in garnering sales and profits. It can help you differentiate between campaigns that generate high sales but small profit margins and those that generate higher profits with fewer sales.

4. Create Personalized Journeys

Personalization nowadays does not mean to put the first name at the beginning of the e-mail. Not at all. If you want to get the most of your lead generation initiatives, you have to track the journeys of your existing as well as potential customers. At first comes the proper segmentation. With a well-balanced AI CRM automation tool, you will be able to set a list of criteria that will put your customers on the right spot, at the right time. 

Then comes the creation of assets. The purpose of inbound marketing is to attract customers by offering valuable content and experiences tailored to their needs. You can read the Complete Guide to Marketing Asset Creation here.

To sell your solution successfully you need to nail the right messaging to the right audience. Brandanizer’s team has the needed experience to help you tailor your Customer Value Proposition (CVP) and design your product in the right way. Give the solution to customers’ challenges and pains and make a case for your company as the problem-solver.

Starting from website visitors’ engagement, lead generation, thought leadership, closing deals or visiting a virtual or physical event, your technology company needs a wide variety of assets. From website content writing to the creation of high-value white papers, Brandanizer’s solutions can offload dramatically your internal team.

Every user journey map must be detailed and able to cover everything from the first interaction with any of your communications, through the proper offer and sale process, to the after-sale experience.

To do that properly, pick a marketing studio that will analyze the perceived goals of your potential clients and match them with your business objective. The best way to do so effectively is to put yourself in their shoes and embark on the journey yourself with a detailed A/B testing.

5. Convert Sales Leads into Clients

Getting a sales lead is one thing, converting it into a customer is a whole other. The journey is usually long. However, it would be a lot longer without a stable management tool that can simplify the process of transforming a lead into a solvent customer.

As in applicable, you have to track all interactions and responses to your assets and thus personalize leads of your sales process. There is a better chance to convert if you determine which sales opportunities present the highest value. Give them a good reason to be your clients. Make an offer they will hardly resist.

A “tailor-made” approach to your leads in the sales pipeline with the help of your CRM software helps ensure that no conversion opportunities slip through the gaps. This could take your lead generation a step further, passing into a boost in revenue.

6. Assign value to your leads

Define which of them are worth the effort in order to pick up the most accurate marketing initiative. That’s when lead scoring comes of usage – a method of assigning a value that corresponds with the viability of conversion.

Through automation and a well-working CRM platform such process is pretty straightforward. They allow you to customize the lead scoring and then automate the process of assigning value to each one of them. In other words – a lead with higher buying power, or a repetitive visitor end up with a higher lead score. 

Differentiating the buying power of leads does not mean you have to focus only on the ones with a higher lead score, but focus your marketing and sales efforts at them. The ones with a lower one go to another segment, where they are approached with another offer. This happens easily with a well-formed automation process.

Aligning the lead generation efforts with an automated marketing studio means less effort for marketing and sales teams; saves time; saves resources; increases the chances for conversion. 

7. Do Data Monitoring Constantly

Last but not least – CRM platforms have the ability to track in real-time, 24/7 all updates regarding your customers. The insights you receive for customer behavior, trend forecasts, and the progress of your marketing and sales campaigns could help you adjust your campaigns on the go.

Being live with your campaign management process means you do not have to stick to a strategy that does not work properly. The secret of optimizing lead generation is the willingness to dive deep into analysis frequently and afterwards implement the necessary changes.

Live adjustments generate quality leads and help you convert them into paying, loyal customers.

One of the best features of CRM software that is fundamental for lead generation’s improvement is that it integrates with other software that collects all the data you need in order to nurture successfully.

A few quick tips to the topic:

• Make leads interact: The attention span of a person in the overloaded with information virtual spaces is around 15 seconds. You need to be creative and use the CRM system as user friendly as possible in order to get more interactions.

• Quality, not quantity: Use CRM systems not to generate as many leads as possible but to target the most potential ones. It’s better to target 10 potential customers and have 1 sale than to target 100 clients and have 0.

• Contact management: Sort your clients using a CRM contact management system by demographics, age, interactions, transactions. Sort out trends, heatmaps results, bounce rates, click-through rates and make as much segmentation as possible. Use the CRM system to notify you if a lead is not converted on time.

• Sales management software: Use sales management software to organize your contacts and the calls, messages, requests, appointments, notes, deals, files that will be easily accessible by the sales team when communicating with the client.

Lead generation or Demand generation is the process of attracting and converting suspects (people/ businesses who are interested in your product) into prospects.

As previously discussed in Marketing Qualified Leads vs. Sales Qualified Leads article there are 2 types of leads – sales and marketing ones. 

Lead generation’s goal is to attract potential clients and turn them into customers. To do so, you need to identify the interested sides in your product and nurture them through marketing campaigns and convert them with effective sales strategies.

Leads can be created for list building and segmentation of your customers, newsletters and various processes that will eventually generate a sale. They can come organically from owned channels, earned channels, or paid ones.

Earned channels are the hardest to achieve. Here clients/ media are brand ambassadors and recommend your product without you paying for it. Owned media is important for brand identity. Paid channels are all the campaigns you set for advertising. You should not count only on paid media as the line of sales here tops at the beginning and starts going down and down afterwards.

Among the best channels for generating leads is email marketing, as well as content marketing, search engine marketing (SEM) and organizing events. Search engines drive traffic to your website that also can be direct, paid one, or a web referral. Direct traffic is believed to be the most popular online channel for lead generation as it is organic which means that the person behind the search engine intentionally searched for your company/ products which makes him more potential for future sales.

If you are a marketeer, you need all the information for a customer that will help you improve the demand generation of the company. One of your main points is to work with databases and manage them to the moment when leads become sales. Databases can be really weary. With the presence of Customer relationship management (CRM) tools and systems, they become something really beneficial for every business and funny to work with – something otherwise boring to process.

For best results in marketing campaigns, CRM systems help at every step of the marketing funnel. 

Where do we start?

Let us say you are an emerging company. You have no clients’ database and have to set up a campaign in order to convert. The best thing you can do at first is to set a CPM (cost per mile) campaign that brings awareness for your brand and products. With CPM campaigns you lack a target audience and potential customers segments. An example of such a campaign is a billboard ad or a magazine ad. A minus is that you cannot measure the success of such a campaign. But it is your first “stop” on the long way to generating leads.

Another good way to bring brand awareness is to use CRM systems that research and collect information from potential customers automatically, help in the organization of events, blog articles, webinars, direct mailing, and social media posting easily. 

Social media posting usually includes carousels, banners, infographics, videos, gifs, stories and articles. Facebook for example is good for targeting people by liked pages and the paid ad there is not determined by bidding as it is in Google.

What comes after awareness?

Interest comes when you have already created awareness among the potential customers of your business. CRM systems deliver practices that surround a successful implementation with more engagement rates, positioning of the product/ service, targeted content and classes. If you already know the interests of your potential customers, you can start sending more personalized content. 

At this part of the funnel you start measuring different data from your campaign. Here you can see how people respond to your publications/ marketing assets by the clicking rate, visits and interactions.

Investigating…

Consideration for a client in 2021 is basically a lot of research and review reading. Automation tools assist marketing teams to showcase product info, email marketing, case studies and free trials. If a potential client hasn’t come close to purchasing – send him a newsletter with additional value, or interesting facts on topics related to your products, or a short free trial/ demo of them in order to convince him it is the right solution to his problem.

CRM automation tools come to help with the content marketing campaigns and the newsletters’ design and optimization. We have to note that content could be hardly measured since its purpose should never be direct sales. People do not like to read advertising content articles – they like to digest useful information and eventually buy any of your products. 

To buy, or not to buy?

Here we are – a few steps from purchase but still not there. Marketing automation has to assist the marketeers with product demos, specials, shopping carts, sales ads, to nurture the stream.

Thank you for your order

A conversion! You did it! But does that mean you end your relationship with this customer? Of course not. First of all you must have a well-optimized checkout process. The more possible integrations of payment methods your system supports, the more are the possible ways to purchase. Contemplate this matter when looking for an automation tool for your business.

AI powered automation and loyalty

CRM systems are able to help you generate loyalty in the after-sales process. The goal is to convert clients into your brand’s advocates ready to defend your name. Loyalty also means long-lasting relationships, thus leading to secure conversions.

CRM systems’ AI abilities could help you improve the user experience (UX) and the user interface (UI) of the company’s presence as well. Companies should strive for a better presence both in online and physical space. 

With an intelligent system, you can quickly receive results on the most qualified leads and the most appropriate marketing technique based on the lead’s characteristics. With smart software, you can avoid wasting time on the wrong leads while focusing your efforts on the most promising ones. AI-powered CRM tools recommend the best marketing strategies per lead to maximize conversions. 

Predictive analysis in your CRM also uses your current and historical data to find similar leads that may be interested in your products and services but have not interacted with your business. With proper AI-automated predictions, you can focus your marketing activities exactly where you have to. This will increase your company’s attraction and additional value.

There are some CRM systems that are more complete than others and have a more powerful influence on the success of your marketing strategy. In the next article on the topic we will inform you on how to improve lead generation and which are the best software systems to do so. Stay tuned! 

The phrase “content is king” seems to be more popular than ever, especially with the surge of the Inbound marketing methodology in recent years.

The purpose of inbound marketing is to attract customers by offering valuable content and experiences tailored to their needs. Unlike outbound marketing which is more interruptive and not customer-centric, inbound marketing’s about valuing and empowering these people to reach their goals at any stage in their journey with you.

All three phases of inbound marketing (Attract, Engage, Delight) require specific pieces of content (or marketing assets) to help prospects move to the next stage of their buyer’s journey.

And in this article, we’ll dive deeper into the marketing assets world, what types there are, how to manage them, and more.

Let’s begin!

What are Marketing Assets?

Marketing assets are anything used by an organization to promote its brand, products, or services. This may include emails, brochures, case studies, white papers, podcasts, blog articles, website content, videos, and many others. 

What type of marketing asset a company will use to target customers is based on its marketing strategy.

As we mentioned at the beginning of our article, Inbound marketing uses those assets to engage with and inform the modern buyer who is constantly looking for more information.

For instance, a blog article that presents you as a market expert will appeal to this buyer which is the first stage (attract) of their customer journey with you.

But marketing assets are not only for customers and prospects. Some of them are used for the internal purpose of motivating and empowering employees to promote the company and product in a specific and consistent way. 

For example, an internal brand guide might advise employees on the consistent use of logos, colors, fonts, image style, and brand voice, while a product messaging presentation might train your sales team on how to communicate your company’s product and its values in the right way.

But what types of digital marketing assets are there and when to use each of them? 

Let’s see.

Types of Marketing Assets

There are a ton of different digital marketing assets that you can utilize. However, it’s good to know their specific strengths before creating them. 

Here the phrase “the more assets, the better” is not applicable as you want to have only those assets that will bring the most value for your company. 

Furthermore, as we’re going to discuss later in this article, creating an asset is just the first step. Then, you have to manage it properly, otherwise, you risk things going out of control. 

But here are some of the fundamental assets that you might want to have:

White Papers

A good definition of a white paper would be “an advanced problem-solving guide”.

A lot of marketers find it hard to differentiate between white paper, ebook, and a blog post. To start with, it must be an authoritative and in-depth report/guide that provides information and education about a complex issue. Its main purpose is not to promote a product or specific solutions. A white paper could help you establish yourself as an expert in the field and someone who knows customers’ biggest pain points.

That’s why white papers are a perfect TOFU offer. Typically, white papers require at least an email address for download, making them great for capturing leads.

Videos/Webinars

Today’s users consume more videos than ever. Videos and webinars are a great alternative for those of your prospects who do not want or don’t have time to read a lengthy document. 

Overall, the video as a media format will provide you with a lot of options to engage your prospects and customers. You can offer them “how-to” content, interviews, product presentations, etc. 

And the best thing is that you can transform an existing written piece of content into a video in no time. 

Let’s say that you have a blog article on a specific topic. You can rework the text into a script, add some animations, and background music, and you’re done. 

Additionally, videos and webinars could be useful in every stage of the marketing funnel. Even your existing customers can find something valuable in them. 

Case Studies

Whatever marketing assets you decide to have, their main purpose is to move your prospects down the funnel.

Now, let’s say that some of your leads have jumped from the TOFU stage to the MOFU stage. At this point in their journey, they are aware of their problem, and now they are considering different solutions to tackle it.

In other words, they need convincing that you are the right solution for their problem.

This is where case studies enter the stage. 

They provide concise, interesting, and factual information about existing clients and how their pain points were addressed and their problems were resolved. 

Case studies are such powerful tools because people believe people. They don’t trust companies. That’s why users always search for social proof, go through customer reviews, and ask for feedback in Facebook groups. They need to be sure that other real human beings with similar problems like theirs had a good experience with your company.

Infographics

The term “infographic” itself is shorthand for the phrase “information graphic.” Infographics help communicate complex and detailed information in an easily digestible, visual format that uses images, data, and text to tell a compelling and memorable story. 

Infographics can help entice readers by presenting lots of information quickly. Furthermore, they could be a great addition to your set of marketing assets as they are compelling material for all of your visual prospects.

In short, infographics have a lot of advantages that you might miss if not use them:

• Easier to share;
• Easier to read;
• Marketing friendly;
• Condensing content.

Corporate Brochure

The purpose of a corporate brochure is to highlight the benefits, products, and services of the company. 

A brochure typically has one, two, or three folds and is distinct from a flier, direct mail letter, or catalog. 

Despite being used by large companies, brochures are an affordable advertising tool for small businesses.

Companies can use brochures in a variety of marketing capacities. You can mail a brochure with a business card or other collateral material to targeted customers using a mailing list. Door-to-door salespeople often hand out brochures. Brochures may also be displayed on a retail shop’s front counter or in displays for customers to view while they are in the store or after they leave.

Presentation

The purpose of company presentations is to give prospective clients and customers valuable information about the history and services of a company. 

Presentations are used by businesses to explain how they can help their customers with their needs or problems. However, companies can also use presentations to report business successes to partners and executives or attract the attention of possible investors. The right company presentation can help you gain new clients, increase revenue, and show others how your business has succeeded.

Blog Articles

Blog posts are one of the most popular types of marketing assets. While they are typically used for educational purposes, some business blog posts can contain a call to action to persuade new readers to check out the company’s products, services, or other content.

Blog posts are great for answering questions that your prospects are searching for, resulting in increased traffic to your website and helping your company build brand awareness.

Blog posts can be used at any funnel stage, depending on what information they contain and what questions they answer. However, they’re especially great in the awareness stage.

How to Organize Marketing Assets

Marketing assets need to be designed and created with a marketing strategy in mind. They are most effective when they are used in the proper context so take care to employ them appropriately in the right type of campaign. 

Typically, marketing departments are full of people with creative ideas who are constantly willing to create new assets and materials that support global campaigns and empower staff to promote and sell products or services.

However, tracking and managing too many assets can quickly become an overwhelming task.

Eventually, you might end up in a situation where your assets don’t contribute to your business goals as you’re constantly wasting time looking for the latest iteration and making sure that all of your salespeople are using it.

It’s simply impossible to operate and collaborate without a central repository or Marketing Asset Management (MAM) system.

Integrating a MAM system will allow you to digitally control your corporate marketing assets and make sure that all assets are accessible, easy to find and share, brand-compliant, and available for global campaigns.

Apart from that, there are other techniques for asset management like:

• Standardizing file names and including date and version; 
• Categorizing assets; 
• Applying a status to each asset, such as current, needs an update, or archive; 
• Archiving outdated assets.

What Are The Key Benefits of Marketing Asset Management?

Time is money, and if you have ever dealt with the annoyance of trying to find a critical campaign you know how time-consuming that task could be. 

Having a proper Marketing Asset Management system means no more digging through old folders, emailing the entire department, or the worst – writing to an ex-colleague for help because they were the last ones who worked on the asset.

And that’s the biggest benefit you will get from integrating a MAM system – quick and uncomplicated accessibility.

Of course, the list doesn’t end here. You’ll also

• Increase your revenue growth and overall performance;
• Improve your team’s communication, productivity, and collaboration;
• Reduce time searching for assets;
• Reduce redundant recreation work;
• Maintain global brand consistency;
• Repurpose assets for improved ROI.

Brandanizer: The Asset Creation Partner

The number one issue with relying on an outside contractor/agency for creating your marketing assets is whether they will be able to grasp the industry tone of voice. 

A lot of times agencies find it hard to blend in more specific markets like the IT industry, for instance. 

For us, at Brandanizer it’s not only important to get the job done, but also to be able to do the tasks in front of us as if we are in-house members of your team. 

That’s why we are specialized mainly in the IT industry and know the challenges, problems, and pains IT companies face every day.

We are a team of highly motivated and proven experts in the field of strategic marketing, branding, brand positioning, content creation, and design. We love our job and have earned many partners through the years with the passion we do our work. 

In Brandanizer we know how important marketing for IT companies is and we show it to our partners and clients.

When it comes to marketing and sales teams, there is always this fight for the significance of each team’s work to the added value of the company they work for. As to profits, both teams love to take credit for their contribution and when there are losses, they usually try to blame the other one. 

The key difference between marketing and sales is that they do completely different jobs over the customer journey, but the resemblance is that their job paves one single way – the one leading to more profits. 

Talking about marketing and sales there is no way not to mention “leads” as they define the results for both teams’ efforts. Their purpose is to transform the audience into leads and eventually to buyers. From one side the Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) is what the marketing teams fight for, in order to pass them to the sales team, whose purpose is to turn them into Sales Qualified Leads (SQL) and eventually customers.

Marketing Teams vs. Sales Teams 

If we have to define the differences between MQL and SQL, we first must define those for the role of marketing and sales teams when communicating with potential clients. 

Marketing communications establish basic information for your brand, offers, costs etc. The marketing team also showcases what your company has to offer to the audience and explains how the products/ services can solve the audience’s problems.

Marketing teams target the so-called suspects, who are basically all users with any chance of buying their company’s product. No one really knows whether they are interested in the offer, but there is a slight chance they will need it at some point. The marketing team’s job is to turn them into prospects throughout the marketing funnel. This happens after the so called qualification process. A prospect who is interested will engage with you consistently, while a suspect will only engage with you if it’s safe. 

The prospect becomes a qualified lead as soon as they answer to the “call-to-action” of the marketing campaign, regardless of being an online publication, a content marketing article, or a print ad. Leads are prospects that satisfy your criteria. They need your product or service. They have the budget to buy it and the right to expend the budget and get the purchase. The more urgent the need, the hotter the lead.

Sales teams focus on working exactly with the qualified prospects, who are potential customers having already gone through a qualification process, to get them to convert. 

Essentially, marketing is the first step to getting leads interested, while sales take that interest and nurture it.

The approach of sales and marketing teams is different but when it comes to the entirety of a campaign, they are a whole. You have to think of marketing as the precursor for the sales team.

So, what’s the difference a MQL and a SQL? 

A good way to explain the difference between MQL and SQL is to break the process of approaching the potential customers into small steps.

1. Need: All marketing funnels start with a problem that your potential clients may have. In order for a company to offer anything that comes with a price tag, it has to be able solve this problem. Then comes the need to solve it so the potential buyer makes research for the available opportunities which can improve the existing situation. The marketing team here has the job to make their products/ services visible for suspects that seek for a solution of their problems.
2. Interest: The potential client runs into your company’s solution to their problem. Once introduced, they now know about you and see that you may be able to help. This is also the marketing team’s job. They must have a clear vision on how to resolve the client’s problem.
3. Consideration: The client knows they need the product by now, but they need more information to determine if it’s the right one to solve their problem. That involves a lot more in-depth , focused and personalized information. Here, the suspect becomes a prospect. If he reached you through your marketing correspondence and campaigns – this is an “official” Marketing Qualified Lead. Marketing Qualified Leads have shown interest in buying. They’re open to the idea of a sale and have taken an initial step to engage with your business, without buying.

Examples of Marketing Qualified Lead actions:

• Clicking on a “call to action” button
• Clicking on your website’s link (direct, search, remarketing)
• Launching a free version/ trial of your product
• Requesting your product’s demo
• Submitting form for a newsletter
• Filling out any other online form
• Adding any of your items to a wish list
• Adding any of your products to a shopping cart
• Visiting your website on a regular basis
• Clicking on any of your ads
• Contacting you directly to request additional information

In other words, when a potential client is aware of your product and is already convinced that they need it, they become a prospect and if that happens throughout the marketing campaign that you set, they are Marketing Qualified Leads. 

1. Intention – The consumer has now essentially made the choice to make a purchase, but needs to determine whose product exactly is their best match. This is where your product’s demo takes place. It is part of your sales team to showcase it to the potential clients, offer them a free trial/ sample and begin their process of convincing them of buying it. This is a good time to include content and the right branding in forms that actually compare one thing against another, and show why your brand is superior.
2. Evaluation – The buyer is already convinced they need a product like yours, but now they need to know for sure that yours is the right one for them. More info for the business value, phone talks and here comes the price. In this part of the marketing-sales procedure, prospects become Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs). They have the budget to buy it and the right to expend the budget and get the purchase. The more urgent the need, the more hot the lead.
3. Purchase – This is where your audience makes some sort of commitment or makes an actual purchase. The purchase phase can actually involve several other stages of the funnel in terms of your audience purchasing entry level products to try you out. Here, the prospects go to the final level, eventually becoming customers – a real paying business units or an individual who must be kept satisfied and happy in order to convert into a loyal lead – the end goal of every marketing-sales funnel.

The transition from MQL to SQL can vary depending on the company but usually begins with a lead scoring, or personalized segmentation. This is the process of assigning values to each lead to determine their willingness to make a purchase. Leads are scored based on demographics, the information they provide, and the type of engagement with your campaigns. Having proper lead scoring helps your sales team save time which they can spend for the most potential leads.

In conclusion, we can say that the most important difference between MQLs and SQLs is the intent to buy. While there are other factors that will affect whether a lead is categorized as marketing or sales-ready, the biggest tip-off for marketers when deciding whether to pass a lead on to sales is the intent to purchase. That is a surefire sign that they are ready to talk to sales and tells you that passing them onto sales is the best way to serve that lead.

Today every business goes digital chasing new markets, more clients and stronger brand positioning. When planning for their company’s digital journey many marketers and brand managers use common tactics and apply one and the same techniques for positioning different products, services, and brands. However, every business owner would tell you that they offer a unique value proposition and that standard best practices for promotion may not always apply in their case. 

Digital marketers need to understand that every piece of communication, every message, call-to-action, design, ad, or email, needs to be tailored to a specific audience having in mind the stage in the user journey, the value they get and the goal of your business. But how to guess which ones would work best for your campaigns? Well, you can’t. And this is why you need to rely on A/B testing.

What is A/B testing?

A/B testing in digital marketing & sales is the approach of experimenting with two or more variations and combinations of campaign elements – design, content, or audience. The purpose of A/B testing is to make you stop guessing and take data-driven decisions in regards with your targeting, budgeting and message to the right group of users. Ultimately, by means of A/B testing you are supposed to discover the best settings for your marketing campaigns and achieve conversion rate optimization. Below are some of the most popular A/B testing tools that will help you do it.

Most popular A/B testing tools you can rely on

1. Google Optimize

Within the Google Marketing Platform you get a set of tools that help you perform split testing or A/B/n testing. You have A as the original page and B or n as a given number of copies with one or more elements modified as variations. These could be colours, CTAs, arrangements, etc. Varian B could even be a completely different version of the original page. 

The best thing about this tool is that it is free and also offers Multivariate tests that experiment with two or more elements simultaneously. The user interaction with them is monitored and analyzed to identify the best performing combination of your content elements. Google Optimize also offers redirect tests that are often helpful when you publish a complete redesign of a given page and test it against the original one. 

2. Omniconvert 

A/B testing is part of the platform, commonly known as a CRO tool. You could perform tests on mobile, tablet or desktop pages, and take additional advantage of survey tools, personalization, and segmentation tools.

Talking about segmentation, you can combine it with A/B testing and experiment on additional factors such as geographical location, user device or behaviour, traffic source, and many more. Unlike our previous suggestion, Omniconvert is paid. However, you can always book a free demo to make sure that it offers the right tools for your online business. 

3. Convert

This is a bit pricy option for enterprises which has proved its value for some of the biggest brands worldwide. The tool comes with a wide variety of testing and experimenting options and offers advanced segmentation features based on events on your website. Additionally, it offers valuable insights and reporting that can help you better analyze your data and find ways to optimize conversions. One more benefit from Convert is the integration you can have with popular third-party applications such as HubSpot, WordPress, Shopify and many more. 

4. Freshmarketer

Another good option to validate your website’s messages, design, and ideas and to boost conversion rates. The tool is intended for testing landing pages and stands out with its feature allowing for tracking the revenue that each and every experiment brings. Freshmarketer enables integration with Google Analytics and also adds a split URL testing tool that helps you experiment with variations of your pages. A useful feature might be the heatmaps added to every version and the option to turn the most successful variations into real pages.  

5. Optimizely

One of the most popular tools and platforms for designing unique digital experience for users. Optimizely helps you take data-driven decisions and experiment with multiple elements on your website, even on dynamic one. The idea of the creators is to offer a great level of personalization and customization at every touch point the user has. This is why we can trust the team that Optimizely comes with a full set of features needed to build the best performing variation of a page on your website. 

6. VWO

The tool is intended for large enterprises and offers a complex set of features and integrations. The well-known A/B tests, split URL tests and multivariate tests are part of the brand’s solutions for running complex experiments and setting up various tests in no time. VWO stands out with its reporting dashboards and SmartStats features that ease you in making decisions and adjusting your digital campaigns. 

7. Crazy Egg

Businesses rely on Crazy Egg due to its simplicity and the option to set up A/B tests with no coding experience. What you need to do is to add a snippet of code to any of the pages on your website that you want to experiment with. The tool will be monitoring and analyzing the performance of each variation and will send more users to the winning one. The platform tends to have more popularity among small and medium-sized businesses. 

Bonus tool: Adobe Target

With this tool you can go far beyond experimenting with your website and run A/B tests on your other channels. Actually, you can A/B test your whole experience, including images, copy, UI, and more, to find the winning experience. The rigorous testing approach in Adobe Target is designed to test multiple variations across web, mobile app, IoT, and more on both the client and server sides.

In today’s world we as buyers are exposed to countless numbers of offers, products and service providers that fight for our attention and loyalty. However, only a few of them manage to convert us into clients, and the reason for that is well-known to the business – people do not simply buy products and services anymore, but also the look, the positioning, the feeling, the reputation, and the emotion that come with them. Our experience in marketing and branding for IT companies tells that a strong brand is what makes the difference between average market players and top performing businesses. Here is why we are sharing the 7 key steps that can help you build a successful brand identity and stand out from competition in the tech field. 

1. Define your brand’s purpose

If “earning money and making profit” is what comes first to your mind, this is not a shame, but would hardly impress your potential buyers. For sure, financial results are essential for your business, but, when shaping your brand identity, take the example of the most prominent global brands which have a clear definition of what they want to change in the world and how they want to improve our lives. For example, Apple’s main purpose is to create products that enrich people’s daily lives and Google’s purpose is to maximize access to information.

What is your brand’s purpose? Think of what impact you have on your stakeholders and put it into words. 

2. Remain consistent when managing your brand

Here it is key to make every piece of content produced (message, social media post, blog post, visuals, etc.) consistent with the purpose you have defined. Do not let people wonder what you want to tell them with your new post, video, or advertisement, and make them look natural in your content strategy. Remaining consistent within all your communication might be a tough job and here is where you may need to involve a brand manager or a marketing-as-a-service agency to get professional support. 

An important aspect of remaining consistent is to overcome the temptation to talk about trending topics and try newsjacking when this has nothing in relation with your brand. 

3. Bond with your customers emotionally

Think about all the times when you have “experienced” a brand. Emotions that you can provoke may have nothing to do with your service or product features but are much more important for retaining loyal customers. This is what most successful brands leverage to keep growing. Find ways to connect deeper with your audience by making them part of your community, engaging them with your brand, surprising them with a gift, producing “behind the scenes” content and demonstrating the human nature of your business. 

4. Be adaptive

IT is now one of the fastest changing industries in which you need flexibility and adaptability more than anywhere else. Even if  today you have the most innovative software, IT service, or  technology, they may become outdated tomorrow. For your brand this is a warning to be prepared for adapting to the new market environment or even for entire brand repositioning in case your messages and style stop attracting and engaging your audience.

Read More: What is Brand Repositioning and When Do You Need One

5. Turn employees into brand ambassadors and advocates

Happy staff is equal to happy clients, and this is true not only for customer service, but also for strengthening the brand image. First of all, make sure your employees believe in your brand’s purpose, vision and values and that these are well-communicated to all of them. Then, ask them to follow your brand’s guidelines, tone of voice, and visuals, when interacting with an external audience.  Bear in mind that a well-trained, motivated, and loyal representative of your business could become a great supporter of your brand image across your potential or existing clients. 

6. Encourage and reward loyalty

Strong brands are strong because they know how to retain their buyers and increase their customer lifetime value. In the field of IT, your product and service features could be easily copied and outperformed by competitors. However, competition would hardly steal your buyers when you take care of them even after they have purchased from you. Here are some good ideas to engage them deeper and make them loyal:

• Make them part of special groups or communities (on Facebook, LinkedIn, email lists, etc.) to receive exclusive deals and offers
• Offer free or additional technical support for your service
• Offer new features or updates of your software
• Reward people when they refer your products or services
• Produce free content to ease them when using your service

7. Observe competition

In many cases reasons for your success or failure may come from competition. It is important to monitor your competitors and to analyze whether their brand positioning outperforms yours. Try to identify those aspects of a strong brand that they lack and make them the base points for your own brand. Also, turn to your customers on social media and other web channels and empower social listening to understand more about the perception of users about your brand and its actual positioning against competition. At the end of the day what you need to know is whether you can add more value to your products and services than they do. 

To Summarize

Building a strong brand goes far beyond the technical aspects, features and qualities of your products. Branding encompasses all the reasons why people should buy from you rather than from your competitors – what is the added value of your business, how you communicate it and how you inspire emotions and turn your one-time buyers into permanent clients and brand advocates. Not sure where to start from with your brand? Get in touch with Brandanizer and take advantage of our expertise in marketing and branding in the IT field. 

Bounce rate is one of those metrics indicating whether users get engaged on your website and find the content that they search for. But what bounce rate is good enough for your website and your niche? 

In 2021 as a good bounce rate is considered 41% to 55% which does not always mean that higher numbers show poor performance of your website. Here is what you need to know and consider:

What is bounce rate?

First, let’s clear out what bounce rate is and how it is being measured. According to Google, bounce rate is “the percentage of single-page visits (i.e., visits in which the person left your site from the entrance page).” If you want to understand bounce rate, however, you need to know that not all bounces are the same.

• Hard bounces – these happen when users leave your site immediately after landing on a page, without wasting any time scrolling or reading. Hard bounces are a clear signal that people do not have any interest in your site and that they have probably landed on the wrong page. 
• Medium bounces – they indicate a little interest by users who might skim the page before they leave. This might mean that they are not ready to go through all the content now, but they may return on the page later. 
• Soft bounces – with them you will notice higher engagement by users who might stay a few more seconds on a page, scroll down, and interact with more of the content. Even if they leave it will be much easier to retarget and re-engage them.  

Is high bounce rate good or bad?

In general, you will consider high bounce rate as bad because users spend little time on your website and interact less with your brand. However, sometimes high bounce rate may indicate that people find the right answer to their question on your page, and they will leave after going through it. While this is valid for websites in categories such as news, recipes, forums, etc., for online businesses, IT services and e-commerce high bounce rate is a negative result. Here is why we are giving you some proven tips to optimize it.

How to reduce bounce rate on your website?

1. Focus on UX

You only have a few seconds to impress users that land on your page, to engage them, and to help them find the solution they are looking for. Make sure that you offer responsive layout which appears on all browsers and devices and offers easy navigation. Also, do not forget to make your content easy to read and to move all distracting elements such as banner ads and popups aside. 

2. Minimize page loading time

Speeding up your website is crucial for reducing your bounce rate. According to Akamai, 53% of mobile users will abandon a webpage if it takes more than 3 second to load. How much does it take for yours? Check your page speed with PageSpeed Insights tool by Google. In order to improve the speed of your website you can reduce the size of your images, include self-loading content, remove unnecessary plugins or use a content delivery network (CDN). 

3. Offer high-quality fresh content

All the rest of the steps to reduce bounce rate will have no meaning unless you produce high-quality content regularly. Make sure that the texts, images, and videos published on your website are engaging, clear, and relevant to your business and also that you often publish new content to demonstrate your authority and gain trust by users. 

See also: Website Renewal: How to Plan It Properly

4. Set a clear and strong call-to-action (CTA)

Even if you successfully engage users with your content, you might easily lose them with by a weak call-to-action. What you need to have is a CTA that will make them click and continue their user journey. A good idea for a CTA that works for SaaS businesses is offering a free trial for your software or subscription service, for example. 

5. Target popular keywords with value for your business

By just creating any type of content for your blog or website you will hardly reduce your bounce rate. You need to target those keywords that will bring you high-quality traffic and people who are interested and engaged in your niche. You will most likely be interested in transactional or commercial keywords suggesting that users are searching on the web with buying intent. In the e-commerce niche these will be searches related to the price or distribution of products while in the software field they might be related to a tool that is performing certain tasks or is solving specific problems. Not sure about the right keywords for your business? Do a research on Google’s Keyword Planner about the volume and price of the keywords that you consider important for your business. 

6. Attract the right visitors to your website

Sometimes the problem is not with your content or website performance, but with your targeting, instead. The understanding for “quality content” differs a lot among users in different categories and this is the reason we are not giving universal rules about content types or length. However, it is your job to identify and target the type of prospects that might be interested in your brand and that could be turned into leads. Otherwise, high bounce rate indicates nothing of value for your business. 

7. Make external links open in a new tab 

A very simple rule that is often neglected is to set external links to open in new windows of users’ browsers. This is how you make sure that when relating to external sources people would not just click on the link and abandon your web page right away. In such cases they may never come back to your website again. 

8. Monitor, experiment, optimize

Every change that you make on your website will have an impact on your bounce rate. Here is why you need to monitor, test, and further improve your content, UX, functionalities and design. 

In Conclusion

Understanding bounce rate is fundamental for improving your website’s appearance and performance. You already know that a high or low bounce rate is not always good or bad for your business unless you have a clear plan and content strategy. You can always turn to a professional marketing-as-a-service studio that will take the lead of your marketing and branding strategy and help you achieve results from your marketing efforts with real meaning and value for your business.