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Simplifying Product Event Marketing Automation

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Simplifying Product Event Marketing Automation
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Simplifying Product Event Marketing Automation

Simplifying Product Event Marketing Automation

Product events are tedious and difficult to manage. Can product event marketing automation simplify the process and negate the need for multiple hands?

Time and content are the components threading together brand and consumers. The right content delivered to the audience at the right time holds more impact than deemed possible. For example, when we have a time-sensitive query, all we do is input and receive the solution in a single search.

Marketing is majorly leveraging these two factors with a streamlined purpose. And it quite rightly works. In a market where competition is stiff and has minimal opportunities, leading the race is a dream. But businesses continuously churn out modernized means to engage the audience.

As the proverb goes – necessity is the mother of invention. And so, brands harness standard methodologies in their unique but convenient ways.

With the influx of marketing automation tools revolutionizing the market, businesses are seeking out convenient ways to minimize errors. At the forefront of this transformation is the introduction of AI, machine learning, and NLP, which has made automation perform tasks better.

Consumer behavior has always remained dynamic, often influenced by psychological, market, and other factors. To engage prospective buyers and maximize profitability, brands integrate modern tech with traditional methods, improving automation processes.

This resulted in a shift in the basis of B2B and B2C campaigns, influencing the marketing landscape to an extent. The general objective is driving value by concretizing positive brand perception and generating revenue. Focusing on customer preferences is a huge element here. This professional relationship goes beyond selling services and focuses on offering real value to the clients.

There is no single handbook for mapping successful marketing strategies. But optimizing one’s processes, from operations to management, lends a helping hand. Marketing automation has ensured that the focus is on priority tasks rather than routine ones.

Instead of offering only convenience, it becomes a means of betterment.

In the age of fast-paced digital marketing, it’s tough to stand out, especially when marketers leverage the same software and techniques. So, where should the focus be?

Take promotional events, product launches, or demos, for example. They are not difficult to organize and practically follow the same format. But something’s got to give. The essence of the event is to target each attendee and offer them personalized interactive experiences.

Marketing automation leveraged for product events construes a simple roadmap. It allows organizers to track attendee engagement and behavior before, during, and after the event, enabling them to measure its performance.

Why has marketing automation become vital?

It’s straightforward. It frees up resources and time to prioritize critical tasks. Through this, marketing and sales teams are able to enhance lead-generation strategies and foster positive customer experiences. Moreover, it’s quite a cost-effective solution to manage repetitive tasks.

While illustrating how marketers are driving value, marketing automation has helped reduce as much friction as possible. While automated processes focus on daily manual tasks, employees can personalize and have time to construct a strong relationship with their prospects that could possibly convert into high-value customers.

It’s not easy juggling different tasks. Especially sending numerous email reminders and SMSs to prospects once they demonstrate any form of engagement across the brand website or outreach content. It can also be tedious to send emails to multiple prospects who interact with a brand’s offerings.

Hence, the reason why automation is a crucial player in email marketing. It’s all about increasing as well as simplifying a brand’s engagement across the market. Marketing automation is the appropriate solution to manage these. For example, when a potential buyer subscribes to the brand’s newsletter, they might get an automated email regarding an event regarding the product/service(s) offered by the said brand.

Technically, marketing automation enables marketers to send automated responses to specific triggers. This is a streamlined methodology for sending multiple reminders for significant events. Automated outreach messages are popular and used by numerous organizations to simplify and enhance prospect engagement.

In other words, it’s quite the virtual support system for marketers. Not only does product event marketing automation make their jobs efficient, but also enhances customer interaction.

What is product event marketing automation used for?

Generally? Promotional events. By leveraging automation, marketing campaigns have become seamless, streamlining communication with potential buyers. Isn’t this at the crux of business deals – ensure a healthy and positive bridge with prospective customers?

Developing a relationship with prospects requires consistent engagement and nurturing. It’s not a one-time interaction. If the customers don’t feel a sense of belonging amidst the plethora of the brand’s loyal customers, they might churn or drop off beforehand.

However, involving them in product events such as trade shows and webinars can showcase their importance and remind them of the brand. Marketing automation is certainly a useful tool here, as it targets multiple social channels for advertisement by increasing visibility.

Marketing automation software assists brands in designing targeted marketing campaigns to elevate their reach effectively. Emails and messages are tailored according to the various audience segments to ensure the right content is delivered at a specific time.

Product event marketing automation also considers administration duties along with maximizing the number of attendees, collating guest information, and offering insights based on the aforementioned.

The utilization of marketing automation in product events is extensive. The end requirement is a smooth and streamlined event experience for organizers and participants alike.

Stages of Product Event Marketing Automation 1 edited

Before the event:

This stage critically involves promotion and management.

During the promotional phase, businesses leverage automation to initially collect attendee data, segment audiences, focus on ad placements, and consequently schedule posts relating to registrations, confirmations, event date/time reminders, and any last-minute check-ins.

The gathered information can be used later to track campaign performance and highlight the areas of maximum interest to improve future events.

At this stage, most automated processes focus on increasing the number of registrations and keeping them from dropping off. Automation software in the pre-event stage quickens the registration processes and keeps them updated without additional administrative involvement.

During the event:

Using automation during the event/sessions can seamlessly facilitate real-time connections. The goal here is to keep the attendees engaged and informed. Most wait times between sessions can be tedious and unnecessarily long. However, continuously sending push notifications and updates can help them know vital information concerning delays or cancellations.

Additionally, communicating consistently with the audience will keep them engaged even during breaks.

Post-event:

After the event, one of the major tasks is mapping the attendee experience to gauge its performance or success. This comprises follow-ups, “thank you for attending” messages, feedback surveys, and customized offers to further engage with potential clients.

Automation software at this stage after the event is necessary to nurture leads’ interests and convert them into long-term buyers.

How does product event marketing automation ensure these tasks are proactively carried out?

The automated processes work through a trigger or prompt that activates a response to a specific prospect interaction. For example, if an attendee registers for the event or signs up for the brand’s newsletter, the system will periodically send them promotional offers relating to their preferences.

Constructing a seamless and interactive product event for attendees is vital. So, marketing implements automated processes cued with software platforms, integrating various marketing channels. These platforms often initiate multiple features:

Product Events & Email Marketing Automation:

Email marketing is a significant tool in ensuring a packed house for product events, whether virtual or real. However, managing email campaigns alongside event planning can be daunting.

This is where marketing automation platforms such as Zapier become your savior. It frees up much-needed time while ensuring the brand messages reach the right audiences. One of the biggest advantages of email marketing for product events is its direct line to the attendees – whether to create excitement or share session details.

But this is not the only benefit. Automating email marketing ensures that the attendees are hooked even when the organizers are off the clock.

Email marketing automation fosters a successful product event by focusing on the following:

  • Personalized and resonating messages that focus on targeted communication by segmenting the attendees according to their demographic, interests, and aforementioned preferences.
  • Exclusive content through scheduled reminders and session updates to keep the attendees informed as well as engaged.
  • Automated emails with event sneak peeks can generate interest and boost registrations. The email content can also aim towards answering common queries and encourage newsletter sign-ups.
  • Are your attendees satisfied? Include review sections or feedback scrolls in thank-you emails to illustrate that the brand seeks to improve itself.

Now, the simple question is – how does email marketing automation for product events work?

It’s straightforward.

Primarily, the focus is curating a solid strategy. Using the data collected beforehand during the pre-event promotional stage can help build a specific framework. Developing this will assist in selecting the appropriate platforms with flexible integration capabilities.

An application such as Zapier helps the brand connect the event platform with the email marketing software. This will now enable triggers on specific actions based on the event keyed in on the chosen event platform.

image 10

For example, AEvent is the event platform, and ActiveCampaign is the email marketing software.

After signing up on Zapier, create a new automated workflow or a new Zap and connect both accounts, as shown in the above image. AEvent is the trigger app here, whereas ActiveCampaign is the action app. A new attendee registration will trigger an action, i.e., create a new campaign.

Every new email campaign created requires you to input the contact list. Now, it’s time to create email design and content and choose the segment of contacts. While ActiveCampaign also hosts a drag-and-drop feature to make choosing emails easier, remember inputting the contact list will help effectively segment the contacts based on diverse preferences.

Automated email marketing software utilizes autoresponders – emails triggered due to the user’s actions. All you have to do is outline an email sequence after deciding on a robust copy.

While marketers know how to curate a personalized email copy, what about email sequencing? Mapping it out will highlight who the specific email copies are sent to and when.

To consider:

  • Registration confirmation and calendar invite should be forwarded immediately after the registration form is filled.
  • Specific details regarding the session speakers can be sent a week before the event, especially their background and topics they might cover.
  • The exact schedule and reminders regarding the benefits of attending the event could be sequenced a day prior.
  • One or two hours before, a critical reminder can be sent with the venue or sitting details, online links, start time, duration, Q&A session, etc.
  • Checking in on the attendees and their experiences immediately after can be useful as the content might be fresh in their memories. Sending review and feedback forms can help pinpoint the concern for their experience.
  • After a few days, send key takeaways and summaries of all the sessions along with resources for no-shows.
  • Lastly, after a week and depending on the engagement behavior of the attendees, sending email copies with customized offers can help spark their memory.

Using email marketing automation drastically improves attendee engagement and establishes trust. Diverse and personalized email sequences guide users from A to B, i.e., the overall event lifecycle.

Social Media Automation

With social media gaining momentum, leveraging the platforms is quickly becoming a B2B norm. But managing it can be quite a grueling task. It’s more than merely curating content and being an influencer.

Posting regularly, elevating engagement, and monitoring different social media channels should be at the forefront. Curating an engaging social media presence is every business’ goal.

Social media automation tools lend a helping hand here. They allow brands to automate social media tasks that are quite repetitive, such as engaging with posts.

Automated actions enable an active and interactive presence, which is fruitful for product events.

How is social media automation beneficial for product events?

Social media automation can assist in one of the most significant tasks in the promotional stage of a product event – scheduling posts. It helps organizers map out the most ideal time to post and then automatically publishes it when the audience is most likely to engage with it.

Automation to optimize and streamline a content calendar works wonders for planning concrete social media campaigns. Several social media automation applications, such as Hootsuite, help analyze thousands of social media posts and highlight the optimal time – this considers all the different social platforms.

Which other factors have to be kept in mind? Content management and appealing to the audience’s tastes. While social media automation tools can help do the former, curating content requires a human touch. However, automating other tasks such as bid adjustments, ad scheduling, and targeting audiences can open up a window to focus on creative pursuits.

Taking note of these will foster content visibility along with attendee engagement. Most product events can leverage social media ads to promote themselves.

And this can elevate the reach, given the hype around social media networks. Ad campaigns are also difficult to manage, but using the right social media automation tool can be a huge savior.

When the platform is leveraged effectively, one can use ad performance analytics and reports to gauge attendee registrations. Measuring ad performance data doesn’t merely impact campaign results but also influences attendee registration.

Further, social media automation also has a way to enhance user experience. What if, after seeing a product event ad, the prospect has queries? Social media platforms may implement customer service bots, such as Botsify or Flow XO, to place virtual agents who cater to responses regarding the company and its offerings on social media.

A/B Testing in Product Event Marketing Automation

Additionally, marketing automation can help optimize the brand’s A/B testing methods for the product event. This is not isolated from email marketing and social media automation but works synergistically.

The concept behind A/B testing is known by every marketer and is quite simple. And in the case of product events, it can prove to be a huge asset in regard to marketing emails and social posts.

Small businesses that wish to organize product events might not have a huge marketing budget like Google or Apple. This is where A/B testing can help streamline the in-hand marketing channels and improve their workability.

The most beneficial aspect here is that this test can be run from fonts to subject lines to the placement of the sign-up form or button. What if its positioning is deterring potential attendees from signing up?

Before the event, the marketing team can test different placements with maximum visibility and click rates.

There’s so much that can be evaluated in reference to marketing campaigns for product events – from email campaigns to paid ads to social media content.

CRM Marketing Automation

Automating CRM systems enables one to efficiently manage and personalize marketing campaigns. For product events, CRM automation will allow businesses to leverage attendee data for targeted communication and lead nurturing even after the event lifecycle.

The organizers can identify high-value leads to nurture them through the sales funnel by tracking different attendee engagement and interaction levels at the event.

For product events, CRM systems help:

  • Directly Registering attendees helps store their data and facilitates seamless segmentation.
  • Follow attendee activity, i.e., session attendance and networking behavior.
  • Send personalized email post-event.

In simple marketing terms, CRM marketing automation for product events can boost attendance, improve lead generation strategies, elevate attendee experience, and offer data-driven insights into attendee behavior.

Benefits of Product Event Marketing Automation

Leveraging product event marketing automation can yield several benefits. Mentioned below are some of the compelling ones.

Integrating the afore-discussed automation processes can work wonders to elevate campaigns for product events. But this is not the end of the road. It carries significant benefits for the marketing and sales teams as well.

But in what ways?

  1. Prompt engagement for positive interaction and boosted conversion rates
  2. Outreach automation streamlines communication and helps nurture prospect relationships
  3. Tailored communication sequences for marketing and sales to align their needs with the prospects
  4. Manage different event marketing campaigns by curating outlines for engaging agendas and implementing multi-channel promotions

Even if the benefits of product event marketing automation are crucial for automating event campaigns, is it as easy as it sounds? Not quite.

How do we harness the maximum potential of marketing automation to revamp product events?

The brands have to keep particular attributes in mind:

  1. Selecting the appropriate software
  2. Develop a strategy with concrete workflows
  3. Consider the frequency of attendee communication
  4. Appoint admin for automated workflows to manage technical tasks
  5. Filter guest and attendee lists
  6. Leverage AI chatbot software for improved support
  7. Segment audiences for targeted invitations and outreach content
  8. Evaluate promotion strategies
  9. Track event performance using automated reports
  10. Test the workflows across multiple applications

In product event marketing automation, remember precision is the steering wheel.

Based on the goals of the marketing campaigns for an event, the triggers should be as specific as possible. The automated processes have to take into account every mentioned step in the customer journey and incorporate it.

Once it’s clear how the triggers and the specific stages of the customer lifecycle are related, marketing and sales will deem it effortless to align their strategies with overall expectations. To streamline marketing automation across channels, applications, such as Zapier, leverage webhooks to help brands ensure no valuable leads slip through the cracks.

This remains the promise of automation when used correctly.

While AI has drastically transformed marketing and sales campaigns, the integration of modern tech with automation will only improve its effectiveness. Transforming the shape of marketing in the future that is yet to come.

Risks-of-Paid-Advertising
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Significant Risks of Paid Advertising: How They Can Be Detrimental to A Brand

Significant Risks of Paid Advertising: How They Can Be Detrimental to A Brand

Ads influence brand awareness when paired with a comprehensive strategy. So, how do we realize the full potential of paid ads for optimal performance?

In their 2024 Gartner CMO Spend Survey, Gartner remarks that the marketing budget (as of total revenue) has been at their lowest since COVID. It went as low as 6.4% in 2021 and has again drastically declined to 7.7%.

Gartner concludes that we are approaching an era where growth is earned and not guaranteed. So, invest wisely because institutional trust is one of the central causes of market disruptions.

The Importance of Optimizing Marketing Resources to Improve Advertising Strategies

While CMOs are being asked to work more with less, your business needs to capitalize on the disruptions across the marketing landscape.

This is not an opportunity to spiral into doom and gloom about how modern tech can surpass us but rather a time to leverage our marketing preconceptions. Leverage and capitalize on AI disruptions – this is the motto of marketing in 2024.

Generative AI has been a bane and a boon for the marketing industry. While the advantages include AI working as your best friend, i.e., elevating your productivity and efficiency, it has certain drawbacks. This comprises the spread of misinformation, bots, and an overall user experience.

There is a way of gauging this fallout—investing smartly to foster deeper audience engagement. Thus, advertising has become one of the significant drivers of maximizing ROI. The priorities are meticulous budget allocation and optimizing expenditure across diverse marketing channels.

However, it doesn’t merely boil down to allocating resources and budgets. Your marketing team needs to identify the most impactful channels to ensure that every penny spent positively contributes towards meeting the marketing objectives.

And the next challenging task is justifying the spending because market share and data illustrate your organization’s value. If there is not enough alignment between the spent amount and the generated revenue, something is not working.

This is simple.

To balance these numbers, businesses are shifting their approaches and marketing channels. According to HubSpot, brands currently focus on channels that directly connect consumers to them. With strategic investments, they have to prioritize how and where they spend. The top channels driving ROI are:

• Social media shopping tools such as TikTok and Instagram Shop (preferred by over 97.9% of marketers)

• Paid social media content, such as influencer marketing (preferred by 21.8% of marketers)

• SEO and blogs (preferred by 41.4% of marketers)

As a marketer, you need to study which lead generation tactic offers the most benefits for your brand and is a worthy investment. Because trends are often short-term and might be a quick fix, long-term strategies promise stable growth for businesses.

Gartner says the latest market trend is the shift toward paid digital marketing channels.

Why?

With the increasing use of the Internet and mobile phones, people interact more on digital platforms, and brands actively invest in content creation, social media marketing, and digital advertising.

However, with increased market competition (especially after COVID-19), it has become quite difficult to focus only on organic and traditional marketing methods.

While several marketing techniques may be a shot in the dark, businesses prefer shortcuts that provide faster results, taking in the specific target audience and ideal business goals.

This is why they inch towards paid advertising, with over 34.6% of marketers opting for PPC advertising in 2024.

What is paid advertising?

Paid advertising is specific. It is also a crucial fragment of digital marketing. While opting for paid channels, businesses pay to market their products/services to targeted audience segments according to their location, browsing behavior, and purchasing interest.

This marketing method requires paying particular fees to advertising platforms, such as search engines and SEO.

According to a survey, over 14.5% of marketers prefer only paid advertising channels, i.e. SERPs and social media platforms. Meanwhile, over 64.2% leverage the benefits of paid and organic marketing.

The marketing strategy used here is entirely sales-focused. The intent is to facilitate sales-qualified opportunities and elevate the frequency. The ultimate goal of paid advertising is to propel sales by generating quality leads through relevant ads.

The relevance factor of the ad content is highly crucial here. Your ad content, placement, appearance, and size should catch the targeted attention at the ideal time.

image 9

I might not have been aware of MailChimp before, but the ad on top of web searches caught my attention as a browser.

Ad visibility is directly proportional to brand awareness. Frequent ads across different channels can strengthen brand recognition, facilitating brand recall with product association. This is why higher visibility is significant – the promise that paid ads offer.

Paid ads entail significant benefits that organic marketing doesn’t or cannot propose due to numerous limitations.

What are the benefits of leveraging paid ads?

Boosted visibility

Facebook Ads and Google Ads can propel a brand’s visibility among audiences that organic channels might not have reached.

Detailed targeting

Paid ads target specific audience segments. This ensures the ads reach relevant audiences, increasing the possibility of conversions.

Detailed performance reports

How does a business know its campaigns are effective? Measurable metrics. Paid ads enable this. They allow brands to track and analyze ad performance, highlighting its effectiveness.

If the strategies don’t lead to substantial results, performance reports can help businesses optimize roadmaps and align them with the necessitated objectives.

Engagement Boosters

If done efficiently, they illustrate almost immediate results. Once the ad is up, and this has been carried out insightfully, ads generate traffic to the brand’s landing page at the flick of a hand, also leading the users towards a purchase.

First, brands generally purchase advertising space. However, in organic marketing, ads should entail quality, valuable content, and relevance and be optimized according to the web page.

Why choose paid ads for the brand?

The objective of these paid ads is to take the prospect to the right landing page and end up converting into a buyer.

As shown above, for MailChimp, search engine ads or paid search ads are the top preferred paid advertising channels (72.3%), and as explained, it depends on the searched keyword.

And Google is one of the most effective options for PPC advertising. It offers particular paid options to target the most accurate audience.

Why did MailChimp’s ad appear at the top of my searches? For SEM, the factors for ad visibility differ.

Yes, Google has a pre-defined algorithm that uses bidding strategies (for ad space) to determine which ad will be placed on top of the SERP for a specific product/service. There are other factors, such as keyword relevance, offered bid, and landing page quality.

This is how Google Display Ads work for advertisers.

While ads are visually engaging and might engage prospects with little to no interest in your services/products, what distinctive benefits does paid advertising contribute to the business?

This seems like a fair question.

As a B2B organization, the priority is leads and revenue, and paid advertising offers diverse solutions to enrich the business with these. But businesses (small ones) rarely invest in paid ads. An article by Forbes states that there are two possibilities why this happens:

1. Limited resources and budgeting

2. Lack of understanding of current market trends

However, there are numerous additional reasons why businesses avoid paid advertising. For small businesses, the focus is on why they cannot leverage the benefits of paid ads, i.e., the resources they lack.

What about when a business has enough resources and budget and fears the unknown waters of paid advertising?

Potential Risks of Paid Advertising

Investing in paid ads is a huge step, but the “spent” numbers should align with the returns. This is a must.

The sticky situation here is – it’s quite easy to lose money on ads. Spending on ads is not quite like discovering a gold mine. A business could lose money or not witness any profits from paid advertising online, and sometimes, they don’t even realize this.

Is it the Ad effect or a fluke?

It’s quite difficult to track whether the ads are working or just a fluke when the numbers on the sheet are positive. Can a business trust these numbers?

Another article on the dangers of online advertising outlines how difficult it is to gauge whether the ads are working. It highlights two ways these paid ads function: selection and advertising effect.

The selection effect of paid advertising considers the audience who saw and clicked on a brand’s ad but would have converted nevertheless. Meanwhile, the advertising effect considers the conversions due to the ad. This analysis by Forbes asserts that if most people fall into the second category, then the brand is making profits through its ads.

Or the ads are just a waste of resources and budget. This is one of the primary risks of paid advertising – not being able to define whether the paid ads are generating any substantial ROI for the business, then they are just unnecessary expenditures.

Reaching the uninterested/unintended audience

Depending on the targeted audience, another challenge when it comes to paid advertising is not being able to target the correct audience.

No further action will be taken when the audience segments the brand’s ad is reaching are uninterested. No clicks translate to no significant revenue, poor engagement rates, and low click rates. While this is an error, it still affects the overall campaign and chips away the allocated budget.

One of the main reasons for this could be a lack of research.

Before executing the ad campaign, the team lacked a solid buyer persona which should generally entail demographic data, behavior patterns, and interests. It should be the very first step to curating a marketing campaign.

Refine the targeting strategies.

The plethora of emerging tech has enabled advertisers to select who sees the ads, based on their age, where they live, and interests among other factors. Leveraging the right road to an effective advertising campaign can increase ad visibility and performance by disseminating it to browsers with actual intent.

They will be the most likely to convert.

Risk of bot clicks in website placement ads

Additionally, paying heavily for ads without receiving placement reports can add to the disadvantages.

Reach is significant, but what if the ads are placed across risky websites? This is evident through unusually high CTRs or win rates. Sometimes, website publishers use bots that add no real value to your revenue but only help increase click-through rates – this could all be bot traffic.

Surveys across the Internet posit that paid advertising is a risky channel. Several malicious actors attempt to alter engagement metrics and deceive advertisers, which is quite common.

It becomes fraudulent and risky, given the entire budget poured into these ad placements. Here, the ads are being shown to bot traffic rather than actual humans, especially on sites with fake traffic, tricking fraud detection systems into seeming valid.

Because while it may seem there is ad engagement, there are no (numeric) business outcomes. If the ads are not watched by real humans, they are inherently generating sales or leads for the organization. This results in the waste of the marketing budget and resources and introduces inaccuracies in tracking reports.

But what about the expense wasted on the ads?

Negative branding & reputation.

According to research, this specific amount is expected to touch $172 billion by 2028. While it might not be a concern for the industry at large, it can largely influence the calculation of impressions and clicks and also halt the ad from reaching the right target audience.

Poorly targeted ads are a headache. Irrelevant ads in front of browsers can build a negative brand reputation. This can also result in bad reviews, increased customer churn, and wasted resources.

When a user does not require a service, repeated ads can elevate annoyance and frustration. This often leads to ad blockers, which can block one of your advertising channels, leading to revenue loss. Annoyed users may bad-mouth the brand, eroding trust.

This can disengage potential prospects as continuous and irrelevant targeted paid ads make brands seem desperate.

Additionally, negative brand reputation could also be enabled through ad content. Sometimes, dark humor works given who the ads target, but not always. Society is explicitly sensitive regarding societal issues and geopolitical events, and using this to form paid ads can harm the brand image.

The ad content should be assessed and focus on relevant factors concerning a brand. This also includes negative comments regarding other competing brands.

Competitive energy might also result in ad theft.

All of this depends on the brand’s success. With vendors selling similar services, the market has become quite competitive.

This can quickly get out of hand when brands copy other products and adverts. It triggers competition across the paid advertising channels, increasing the bids and CAC. There is a delicate boundary between a brand and its competitor’s ad strategies.

The battle is understanding the product’s success and how the ad propelled it. Hence, copying the marketing strategy is common, but its execution is a significant factor. When brands use the same marketing techniques, it can prove detrimental to how their product is received in the market, driving up advertising costs, especially for keywords and high-value placements.

With time, the functioning of the advertising channel may erode.

The first set of prospects who engage with the ad might have a better retention rate. In other words, the first few prospects are the most engaged and relevant ones. Hence, they react to the paid ads quicker than others, requiring fewer impressions per user.

This is channel saturation and inevitable.

Once this occurs, the channel will pull less relevant users, making it demanding to acquire new prospects. Prospects could react negatively to ad messages and become less engaged.

Does the ad campaign have concrete goals?

There are a lot of steps to elevate ad campaigns. But what comes after? Once the developed campaign is in the works, gauging its effectiveness is also crucial, right?

How does the team know that their formulas are working? Without a proper objective in mind, they cannot. If there are certain areas of improvement or which direction the strategy should take – these critical aspects have to have clear objectives in mind.

One of the key benefits of digital advertising is advertisers can use data to increase its effectiveness compared to traditional advertising. But capitalizing on this is something advertisers should be aware of.

Without specific metrics to measure the campaign against, your ad expense can only lead to directionless spending and disappointing numbers. Why run your campaigns blindfolded when the growing application of tech in marketing has attributed tools to assist us?

By mapping the ad performance by reviewing key metrics from clicks to ROAS and using analytics tools, your brand will have a clear goal in sight.

So, what is the end goal of the ads – more selling, brand awareness, or reaching potential customers? Allow your campaigns to focus on both tangible and intangible outcomes.

Paid ads significantly impact your brand and corporate value.

While ads are substantial for brand awareness and visibility, consumers are plagued with ad blindness and fatigue. This has transformed the customer perception of paid ads.

Businesses understand that they need to refine their advertising strategies. Random placing of ads on a page in front of a user and interrupting their search does not work in this atmosphere.

The lack of interest and attention has negatively influenced this landscape. Consumers want an enhanced experience when it comes to browsing and purchasing. Hence, a growing number of them use ad-blocking software to obstruct such ads.

Yes, they wish for content that offers quick solutions, and paid ads can help them get there. However, some advertising tactics are too intrusive.

Advertisers can opt for alternative advertising and consistently invest in chosen channels without relying on a single marketing channel to navigate these possible risks.

The risks of paid advertising are plenty. For the paid ads to instill benefits for a brand, isolating it from other channels can be detrimental. It all boils down to the strategic approach the brand undertakes to navigate the challenges and improve the effectiveness of paid advertising.

Nvidia’s Mini Computer: Another AI revolution?
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Nvidia’s Mini Computer: Another AI revolution?

Nvidia’s Mini Computer: Another AI revolution?

A new revelation by Nvidia at the CES sparks curiosity.

New technologies are pouring in, and we are constantly in a flow to adapt and integrate. With so many global innovations surrounding us, there has been another addition to this tech stream.

Nvidia’s CEO, Jensen Huang, astonished the audience at the CES event in Las Vegas with this innovation — a $3000 mini computer. In his elaborate keynote, Huang followed the footsteps of the late Steve Jobs’ surprise reveal — Project Digits based on an Nvidia chip called GB10.

image 7

(Source: Future/Keumars Afifi-Sabet | Live Science)

Huang received the limelight as he introduced the mini computer having the capability to run the Nvidia AI stack.

Digits is by far the world’s first personal AI mini computer. It is created by compressing the world’s largest supercomputers in research labs. This fascinating tech is possible due to the GB10 superchip — a system-on-a-chip (SOC) based on the Nvidia Grace Blackwell architecture. It can deliver around 1 petaflop of AI performance. The GPU is paired with an ARM-based CPU.

image 8

(Source: Patrick T. Fallon | Afp | Getty Images| CNBC)

NVIDIA worked with MediaTek to build the superchip. ‘Digits’ is portable and equipped with a power outlet similar to mobile devices.  

What makes it amazing is its capability to handle 200b LLMs. It’s like placing an AI supercomputer on the desk. Digits also comprises 128GB with a unified DDR5X memory and NVMe storage of up to 4TB.

This mini supercomputer is super powerful and can be slipped into your bag. The size and features make it a perfect fit for prototyping, fine-tuning, and running large AI models.

In a world flooded with innovation and dominated by AI, Digits could be a complete game-changer. It’s like making Blackwell portable enough to place on desktops.

The surprise reveal may end up surprising us with its features and applications.

What is SDR Lead Generation and How It Boosts Sales?
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What is SDR Lead Generation and How It Boosts Sales?

What is SDR Lead Generation and How It Boosts Sales?

With increasing market competition, B2B sales need reshaping. Can leveraging SDR lead generation prove beneficial against modern sales complexities?

The sales and marketing terrain is constantly shifting. To navigate the challenges underlying these changes, businesses want to leverage potentialities beyond the traditional ways.

An increasing number of sales teams continue to appoint representatives, helping potential buyers navigate the complexity during purchase and simplify their decision-making. This can be complicated for a prospect. They might have the right purchasing intent, but without the ideal guidance, they will lose their way in the funnel and the tiniest amount of interest.

Buyers are abrupt and spontaneous. This can result in a drop-off and a negative customer experience, deterring other potential customers.

So, B2B businesses have executed modern strategies to forge and retain client connections by fostering a delicate balance between growth and success.

B2B sales tactics executed by SDRs, especially when outsourced, step into uncharted waters and draw in prospects beyond the barriers of the known market. Sales processes require patience, negotiation, and comprehensive communication skills. It is a consistent push-and-pull between the sales rep and the prospective buyer.

SDRs work with these prospects at the top of the funnel and help them progress through multiple steps in the sales process.

What is SDR Lead Generation? The Significance of SDR

SDRs procure leads by identifying those who ideally fit the buyer persona profile and then proceed to spark interest in them. From SDR lead generation, they help the prospect toward lead nurturing carried out by an Account Executive (AE).

An SDR’s most important tool is a buyer persona. The representative finds a prospect, qualifies them against the curated profile, establishes contact, and guides them further down the funnel once they show purchasing intent.

ICP vs. Buyer Persona: Understanding the Difference

While this is simple to understand, there is a crucial difference between ICP and buyer persona. Both help outline who to target from the beginning to the end of a sales process.

But what is the objective here? It’s obvious.

In the B2B landscape, ICP helps outline the businesses the brand wants to target. However, the buyer persona moves beyond the organization. A sales deal takes place between businesses but also between individuals who hold the authority to do so. The buyer persona helps curate consistent messages across channels that target the decision-makers and stakeholders within the given ICPs.

SDRs leverage buyer personas. They know who to target and then work as ‘sales recruiters’ to find the perfect fit – potential clients for the business. They develop relationships with prospects to be converted into leads – this is primarily part of the lead qualification process.

Filling the sales pipeline is the primary step to establishing a buyer and generating revenue.

SDRs Within the Sales Team Structure

The sales team entails a specific organizational design.

SDRs are assigned the prospects at random. They initiate contact with the prospects who have shown even the slightest intent rather than waiting for them to come across a marketing campaign. Present within the sales team itself, they report to the sales manager or director.

In some organizations, SDRs might work closely with the marketing or other cross-functional teams. This is because first, marketing and sales alignment is necessary, and second, some techniques might be implemented using experimentation, which requires assistance.

Additionally, it’s significant to gauge how many prospects a single SDR handles roughly. It depends on the overall lead assignment rules. This is important as lead qualification and nurturing are time-bound activities.

Inbound vs. Outbound: Dividing SDR Responsibilities

In the case of organizations comprising multiple levels of sales representatives, prospects are divided into outbound and inbound.

However, following a general rule, SDRs mostly take account of the inbound leads – those who have shown some interest in the business and any form of content was made – either through the website, social media, or referral.

So, SDRs focus on convincing and qualifying prospects who might genuinely be interested or at least warm enough to be pursued further. A B2B sales cycle is longer and more complex than B2C organizations. B2B businesses require a large number of leads to qualify the right ones, hence SDRs are crucial to the B2B sales system.

The Critical Role of SDRs in B2B Sales

In the B2B sales system, SDRs are indispensable.

The sales cycles are long and entail high-value transactions. Hence, a sales representative must be more efficient and create a robust pipeline. This is also why AEs (Account Executives) don’t undertake the task of prospecting.

Managing leads is quite cumbersome. So, while the account executives focus on high-quality leads, SDRs assume the time-consuming tasks. This doesn’t mean there is a disconnect between the two roles because the prospects qualified by SDRs are guided to the AEs for a meeting. This requires alignment between the two roles.

SDRs are crucial gatekeepers at the top of the funnel, whereas AEs are the guides through the pipeline. They should establish a tunnel for open communication to agree on the quality of opportunities. In this case, if anything is amiss, the responsibility is taken by both. Hence, SDRs should be aware of AE’s pitch and expectations, while the latter should offer guidance and consultancy to the lower-level reps.

Similarly, both sales reps should be evaluated using the correct metrics to enable honest communication. Once the SDRs understand how the AEs sell, they can transition the interested prospect into a similar environment to foster a strong first impression.

SDRs generate, qualify, and nurture leads and eliminate unqualified ones. Elimination is a crucial process to scale and optimize the sales process.

What is the role of Sales Development Representatives (SDRs)?

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Sourcing prospects or prospecting

Prospecting or sourcing is technically finding potential buyers. This stage comprises research regarding who to target by focusing on the required demographic, such as industrial domain, company size, geographical location, etc.

They isolate options to find the perfect fit before finalizing them. They research the prospect and their company and personalize the outreach messages accordingly. Communicating or curating a relationship with the prospect comes next.

Outreach

Outreach, in simple words, means reaching out to people who are unfamiliar with the brand’s products and services. A representative reaches out to the prospect through cold calling, social selling, or cold emailing – the use of ‘cold’ because the representative and prospect interact for the first time. As much as the purchasing intent matters further down the pipeline, the intent to sell is also significant.

It maps the rep’s interaction with the prospects – and whether the outbound approach works beneficially. Outbound approaches might not be better than inbound methods, but they work faster. And for small businesses, executing outbound outreach holds crucial weight. This has to be done regularly and consistently to reap benefits.

Why?

Small businesses and startups might use several marketing techniques but lose their standing within the noise. They are barely noticeable with so much going on in the market to stay relevant. However, outreach, when done right, can help.

For example, cold emailing is an amiable sales channel as it creates a direct bridge to the client company’s C-suites.

But how can the brand ensure that its outreach is perfect to leave an impact?

  • Focus on the ICP, research the market, and determine the channels and who to target.
  • After this, the content team helps craft personalized messages and optimize the messaging profiles.
  • Lastly, the execution consists of sending the messages, placing the automation tools, and waiting for the responses.

While this is quite basic, the changing market landscape has called for best practices such as opting for sales enablement tools and automated reply scoring. This scales their efforts and offers efficiency, resulting in increased qualification and revenue.

However, these efforts don’t translate to guaranteed conversions. Once the prospect is in contact, they offer an overview or an insight into what the partnership would be like.

Nurturing

When prospecting and outreach require tons of research, finally engaging an interested party might feel like a win. However, that’s not the end of the road.

According to a Gartner study on sales development, an individual prospect requires at least 12 touches to return the message. Once they have responded, the lesser the lead response time, the higher the possibility of conversion.

Even when enthusiastic prospects approach the brands themselves with a clear agenda in mind, they don’t convert easily. This is when SDRs nurture the prospects with follow-up messages and emails, addressing any concerns and hesitance they may have.

Most of the time, businesses get busy and need reminders.

Hence, nurturing itself is a crucial step that should not be negated. It significantly increases the chances of closing a deal down the funnel. It shouldn’t go unremarked; the follow-up should be persistent and well-crafted. The prospects’ drop-off may not be due to lack of time but because they expect a good buying experience.

How do SDRs ensure this?

By developing brand and product awareness. These are different lead-generation strategies used to generate interest and attention for the brand. By hiring SDRs, businesses expect noticeable success in their overall sales performance.

Outbound lead generation strategies lead to extensive responses and can be complex to track. This is why sales teams require trained and skilled SDRs to undertake such tasks. In some organizations, SDRs partake in outbound and inbound lead generation strategies.

But there are specific indicators that illustrate whether the SDRs contribute to the business, right? How does one measure the effectiveness or performance of said representatives?

Through specific metrics.

SDR Metrics to Track Performance and Effectiveness

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Response Rates:

These could be positive, negative, or neutral. There might either be no response or even a follow-up scheduled at a later date.

Tracking these numbers might seem chaotic, but with tech advancements, it has become simple. Manual tracking is still an option; however, CRMs lend a helping hand.

Today, CRM systems also leverage automation and AI to log data regarding lead status, outreach, created opportunities, and schedules. They are also adept at developing reports and analytics to offer insight into the SDR’s lead-generation efforts and improve their performance.

Lead to Opportunity Conversion Rates:

This metric underlines the SDR’s ability to convert prospects onto the next stage of the sales funnel. Whether their methods are effective is a highly crucial question.

They can track the number of leads through CRM systems and then divide the number of opportunities by those of leads to gauge the conversion rate.

Number of Total Opportunities:

The impact of hiring SDRs should be evident in the sales pipeline. This can be calculated by mapping the number of potential sales opportunities created in a specific period since the hiring.

The number of opportunities created can be compared against the team goals or other members to highlight each SDR’s performance.

Percentage of Scheduled Appointments:

An SDR may build a relationship with a prospect and convince them to seek out demos, but the next stage is even more significant. The prospects should confirm an appointment with the AEs, who can further lead them down the funnel.

It is necessary to measure whether the scheduled appointments translate into successful meetings. This dictates the quality of prospects and the effectiveness of the SDR lead generation tactics.

Nurtured Leads:

Lead conversion takes time; it doesn’t just happen overnight. Prospects show interest but sometimes require consistent follow-up messages and calls. It shows potential clients that a brand can establish a healthy and communicative professional relationship with them and not ghost them. This could be one of the reasons most prospects drop off.

Hence, SDR’s capabilities should be measured by their ability to maintain relationships with potential buyers.

What are their engagement rates, CTRs, and response times to the follow-ups? Also, study how these numbers measure up to the goals set by the overall team.

Are they achieving their KPIs?

The above KPIs are significant. But an overall overview is also required. Are the SDRs meeting their established achievement rates or their KPIs? This includes the number of calls placed, messages and emails sent, appointments scheduled, etc.

These indicators outline SDRs’ performance after they have been hired and begun their role. This is an entry-level position, so what are the skills organizations looking for?

Skills the SDRs Should Possess

Communication

Communication is the key to any sales deal. A sales rep needs to know how to talk to a prospect and how to get the prospects to listen to them. The energy has to align with the potential buyer and understand their responses (non-verbal and verbal).

Having ideal communication skills means being able to convey and share one’s ideas and messages. The prospect may feel confused and drop the purchase if the brand message is not relayed to the prospect. But communicating is not merely about words but about the demeanor and physical language of the sales rep.

Emotional intelligence is also important in sales. It fosters a bridge of understanding, enabling one to act appropriately, compassionately, and professionally. This should entail empathy and active listening.

This additionally negates any possibility of miscommunication. An SDR has to be clear-worded. The sentences should have specific information and be straightforward, addressing the fundamentals.

Possessing the right communication skills necessary for an SDR can elevate client relationships, boost confidence, improve effectiveness, and enhance the brand’s goodwill. This is noticed by prospective clients and hence might influence their decision-making.

Curiosity

Being curious facilitates learning. The sales rep should learn the latest developments and trends when selling services or products. This provides them insight into their target audience and the product.

They should also research and identify the pain points that the prospect might face in making decisions. SDRs should be aware of what their product offers differently from others in the same industrial domain.

Not having any additional knowledge regarding the market illustrates surface-levelness, i.e., a sales rep is only interested in selling. If the salesperson knows the challenges the prospect might face and actively asks open-ended questions, it might make them feel recognized and respected.

Feeling seen is a crucial aspect of the buying experience. The prospective clients should not feel neglected and uncared for.

Time Management

Managing time is a significant skill that employees from the lowest to the highest levels may lack. But it’s also a valuable asset for the market.

Delays can cause frustrations and erode the buying experience. SDRs should take this into account. Their response time should be significantly shorter as prospects are their priority. Utilizing the potential buyer’s time results in positive experiences and simplification of queries, leading to quicker decision-making.

But caring about time goes both ways. Wasting time on uninterested prospects may result in a loss of resources. So, SDRs need to understand where to spend time and where not to and keep client requirements under a magnifying glass. This refines their work ethic and increases their productivity.

Persuasion

Persuading a prospect requires adept storytelling and negotiation skills. These are essential elements of communicating with the prospects.

The storytelling aspect entails outlining the drawbacks and the advantages of the brand solutions to offer a glimpse into what their future would look like if they took up the offer. This has to focus on a future where their challenges are identified, addressed, and solved.

Persuading a prospect is not just telling them a nighttime story. SDRs should leverage their research capabilities and offer the clients facts and figures in the form of case studies and professional experiences. This adds credibility to the story – a balance between realism and engagement.

Further, it’s about negotiation. The prospect might be interested, but hesitance can make them drop a brand. Owing to this, SDRs should be able to negotiate with prospects on a solution that agrees with both parties – and find a middle ground. It’s not a win-or-lose situation.

If a brand wins a client, the clients win a solution to their challenges. Successfully navigating the negotiation stage, especially when it comes to scheduling appointments, builds strong business relationships.

Concerns are ever-present during financial transactions. SDRs can help alleviate them at the top of the funnel. This sensitizes the sales pitch and directly considers the prospect’s requirements.

More Research on Their Responsibilities

SDRs can become more efficient when they understand the differences between sales and marketing. Sales comprises selling that focuses more on the product features and quality. Meanwhile, leveraging minute faucets of marketing into their sales strategies can allow clients to perceive the value in a brand’s solutions.

This value accounts for more than just the functionalities of the services offered. By doing so, SDRs can focus on fine-tuning their sales pitch by integrating product overviews and customer preferences. A general sales pitch is a dud. It might not add anything to a business.

Personalizing them has become a key component. The prospect’s choice is first on the agenda. Hence, understanding any industry-specific experiences might help customize the SDR’s interactions. Referencing the current market trends or instances can help embed a personal feel. It generates customer intimacy, resulting in loyalty and trust.

Due to its advantages, personalization has become a staple for SDRs to improve their engagement with prospects.

SDRs add finesse to the sales processes.

Sales processes are an interplay of stimulus and response. But it’s not only about selling the business and its solutions.

The presence of SDRs in the sales chain demonstrates the significance of understanding the prospects. Doing so can simplify the entire sales process. Hence, SDRs should remember what influences prospects from discovery to conversion.

At this stage, in the funnel, SDRs should focus more on deliberating and reasoning like the prospects themselves. With their soft skills, the sales rep finds it easier to predict the prospect’s behavior and understand the response.

The bottom line is an SDR should elevate the success of a brand’s sales strategy and amplify lead-generation efforts.

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Blogs

Data Hygiene: 5 Best Practices

Data Hygiene: 5 Best Practices

Outdated, missing, or incorrect data can adversely impact customer experience. How can data hygiene streamline information and accelerate engagement?

Data forms the core of every business. Any gaps in it can hinder effective communication with the target audience. That’s why, all information needs to be accurate and error-free. Hygiene in data makes it possible for brands to seamlessly manage all critical information. When integrated with automation, it can swiftly improve customer experience and brand productivity.

For data hygiene, you need to focus on two types of data: dirty and clean. Dirty data refers to the information that piles up, duplicates, and eventually has no use. If most of your data is outdated and tough to access, it indicates that it’s time to implement a cleaning process. Dirty data can cost around $3 trillion per year in the US. The hygiene process must be implemented to maintain data quality. Clean data is clear, concise, and easy to access, increasing performance efficiency.

We have prepared a list of best practices to help you manage and maintain a clean business database.

How to implement Successful Data Hygiene

These 5 steps will enable you to minimize inaccurate information and maintain your brand’s integrity and reputation. Let’s dive in.

Audit data

As a B2B brand, your teams have most likely collated data from multiple sources, which can pool into siloes. And when this happens, the data is difficult to identify and may become prone to errors. Nearly 27% of business leaders have reported being unsure of their data accuracy. An audit helps to keep things in check and store high-quality data.

This step provides a clear overview of the brand’s database and finds gaps, if any.  It involves identifying data fields critical for integration and monitoring the quality and completeness of each field. With data audit, you can easily identify consistencies, duplicates, missing values, and outdated information. Since manual audits can be time-consuming and tedious, automating data hygiene can go a long way.

Eliminate unnecessary files

Brands deal with so much data daily that unnecessary records may pile up. Excess data can produce clutter if not managed properly. And when you have irrelevant information, it becomes cumbersome to analyze and audit the infrastructure. This can be avoided by conducting a periodic review of your data. Removing outdated information would streamline your customer database and make it concise.

Validate Accuracy

Data accuracy is an essential element that promotes customer satisfaction. You can ensure accuracy by incorporating validation rules that verify data integrity and adhere to predefined criteria. Validate email addresses, phone numbers, and postal codes to double-check if they are in the correct format. If you run a data check regularly, you can avoid messy and fragmented information, transforming it into accurate and unified records.

Establish Standardized rules & constraints.

When standardization is not regulated, it may lead to the piling of dirty data. Studies indicate that around 60% of dirty data is due to human error, and you can reduce these instances with automated data hygiene. Standardization can take you a long way in preventing dirty data. All you need to do is look into the input fields. Simply put, all numbers and monetary values require standardization. And there should be no case sensitivity, spelling errors, or abbreviations. Data standardization and consistency are crucial elements in creating uniform databases. Applying rules and standards filters out unnecessary information while delivering brand consistency.

Update your data

Data, if not maintained, can become outdated, which makes it frustrating to sort through. Your prospects may change addresses, get new designations, or change jobs altogether. Studies suggest that nearly 21%of CEOs change every year. You may be surprised to know how fast data can decay —at the rate of 70% per year. If the data is not updated, you may deliver messages to the wrong contact. Updating your customer database in real-time with data hygiene prevents your teams from chasing dead-end leads and helps build strong relationships with prospects. Since you cannot predict when data will go outdated, opt for an automated data cleaning tool.

Final thoughts

Data is an asset for your business. Without a concrete strategy in place, it can create inconsistencies/errors, and require investment of resources to get it in order. These practices will build a solid foundation for data accuracy and reliability. The best bet is to be proactive about data hygiene, ensuring that all information entering a system is accurate, reliable, and comprehensive. It allows efficient integration of data in your system. Keeping your company database clean and compliant with regulations minimizes your chance of poor data.

AI Marketing and why content strategy cannot be automated website
Blogs

Why content strategy cannot be automated.

Why content strategy cannot be automated.

AI and automation have created tension. Jobs are under the threat of being replaced, and our intrinsic value is at risk. But is that true?

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Everyone has been afraid of AI disrupting their survival. One industry at the forefront of this onslaught is marketing or, rather, content marketing.

Creatives in the field are terrified and excited about what this technology will do. Will it transform how we consume content and deliver it to the user?

But let us present a hopeful future—one that shows that AI cannot replace the value of creativity.

Look at the screenshot above—we call it a gem. It was found through human experience. While the search volume and KD ratio can be automated, finding the keyword that might attract the right audience needs lived experience.

Marketing, especially SEO, is full of these gems. It can be found by understanding that people of all backgrounds are curious about topics, especially ones that intrigue or scare them.

Human beings want to know the answers immediately and are equipped with an encyclopedia in their pockets to answer queries, doubts, or fears, usually in the form of content.

We look for answers in the stories of others, hoping one would match our circumstances and provide an answer.

The answer to end uncertainty.

AI and Content Marketing

HBR wrote a piece on the three priorities of a CMO. In it, they declare that the principal role of a CMO has always been to be a great storyteller.

We can say it is a fact.

Great marketing is born out of stories. In technical terms, it is positioning yourself.

What perspective are you bringing, and what value does it provide? The CMO then directs their team to work towards that single goal. Sure, there are pivots along the way. Maybe a campaign does not meet its goal, or there are not enough qualified leads, but the story continues in a new iteration. Perhaps it’s rewritten.

But for a CMO— talented individuals who bring their vision to life is vital. Yet, they are still human and prone to errors. Writers may take time to write the content, or designers may create designs that are not on-brand. Maybe someone important on your team is on maternity leave.

Everyday problems disrupt businesses. After all, we are not machines that can work 24/7.

But now, there is one that can! AI.

It can write content that is informational, helpful, and in-depth— depending on the prompt, of course.

It can tell an expert story for you. Sounds great. Though, there is one hiccup.

The content will no longer be that of someone with similar experiences. Why? Because, as far as we know, the intelligent machine does not have any experience.

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This conversation with Anthropic’s Claude reveals something profound. And for now, this is the definite way of how AI works.

They provide a reflection for the questions you ask. What you input will be the output, and everything that follows will be a refinement of your thought processes. To get something unique out of the AI systems, you will need to spend time and dig deeper into your own experiences to ask the right questions.

AI is the extension of all accumulated human knowledge. It is the natural evolution of our desire to inquire and reflect on the answers provided to us.

The type of content you produce will depend on the accuracy of your prompts and the subject matters involved. If the process were fully automatic, there is a chance AI could hallucinate the information and feed an incorrect story to your prospects.

That’s why AI machines can be prompt hacked. They cannot be perfect because the data they are trained on is inherently biased.

Marketing Teams and the lived experience

With strategies like demand generation and brand awareness campaigns, marketing teams stir the natural curiosity of the human mind. The prospect is identified, and their pain points are tackled.

But we are quickly hitting a saturation point. Products, solutions, and the content surrounding it have surpassed the limits of production. Ahref reports 96.55% of content does not get traffic from Google.

Imagine, that is almost millions of pages. A lot of good businesses with good content probably fall under that spectrum. Why is that? It is because the whole of the web is inundated with outdated content, and now we have AI-made content in the mix. Marketing messages are just not working as effectively as they used to.

However, there is one thing that works like no other: Out-of-the-box-thinking.

Every successful campaign follows this. Either it simplifies things or creates a novel way of experiencing. These are created through understanding the present condition of the market, by relating to the pain points of the target segment, and by providing an experience that delights them and makes them feel understood. Automated systems cannot do that.

But your teams can. They can craft strategies that are in relation to prospects’ life experiences.

You can create ICPs based on data that AI can analyze and create content around, but actual understanding needs a lived experience.

Why content strategy cannot be automated.

Strategy sounds elusive. Because it is not planning, it is trying to create an intended outcome by hypothesizing the needs of the market. And yet, marketing teams and business leaders know that strategy is what brings success.

It offers tangible outcomes in uncertainty. However, there are a lot of inherent risks in playing a strategy.

  1. It might fail
  2. There will be a monetary loss
  3. Time invested in the strategy will go to waste.

Money and time cannot be recovered when it is gone. Competition will not wait for your strategies to succeed, and failure can threaten your position in the market. These are real concerns that leaders have to gripe through.

So, it becomes easier to rely on AI that is perceived as more concrete. Think about it— automated systems make fewer errors. Machines are tight-bound by laws and rules that human beings are not. The question, then, is: Why not automate strategies and make them definite?

Strategic Choices for Certainty

Roger Martin, one of the most prominent business strategists alive today, says that there are five choices a business must undertake to ensure strategic success. It is called the Strategy Choice Cascade.

They are: –

  1. What is our winning aspiration?
  2. Where will we play?
  3. How will we win where we have chosen to play?
  4. What capabilities must be in place to win?
  5. What management systems are required to ensure the capabilities are in place?

If this is all it takes, an AI system created solely for this task might use this logic and craft strategies—content marketing and business— for wild profits. It might even generate something novel and creative. Viola, there’s success.

Strategy is strangely human.

But as we know, AI and automation are based on rules and logic. It does not account for the changing dynamics of human behavior. Our models have trouble predicting long-term behaviors—we cannot even accurately predict weather beyond 10 days.

That’s because our models are incomplete for analyzing small details imperceptible to them. They are created by people, and we cannot account for everything. Changes happen on a minute scale, and they cascade rapidly, making it difficult to predict the future.

You must use these methods, data sets, and tools to enhance human intuition. For some reason, strategy is strangely human.

There is one trait common among good leaders: An imperceptible eye or “good taste”. Successful CMOs have developed an instinct for what resonates with their market because they have in-depth knowledge of their audiences and buyers.

The CMO, marketer, and writer who understands this will craft a creative content strategy that resonates with its intended audience. And that is how successful brands thrive.

We call it intuition, but it is pattern recognition that happens quickly and without thought. It follows the same logic as understanding what your spouse or friend will like as a gift.

This accumulated pattern recognition is not happening through mathematic models, and for now, it cannot be automated by a machine. Strategy is finding relatable experiences and bringing them to a market segment that will appreciate them.

Content strategy automation is unlikely because…

There are two examples that illustrate why content strategies cannot be automated. Do you remember the above screenshot? It was found through searching for a topic.

Our team found it while discovering topics for our newsletter. It came through discovery and a deep understanding of our SEO team’s understanding of our core audience’s needs. Through this, we can find such gems.

Another is this that we found by capitalizing on trends.

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This is another gem. The keyword Claude 3.5 V.S. GPT 4o is relevant and has a low KD of 33%. Making it possible for teams to talk about a relevant and timeless topic (Machine vs Machine), helping brands rank. Through such unique activities, we were able to find and create strategies that helped us identify keywords to rank for.

This process of discovery is difficult for a machine to do because it cannot, as of yet, self-direct itself and self-reflect.

Two metrics of effective content creation that urge its readers and move them.

Now, Let us talk about the second one.

Staying on trend is essential.

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Sensory marketing is picking up steam. It is essentially the ability to make your potential buyers feel the product or what it does. The above post is one of the hundreds that talk about a makeup brand called Rhode by Hailey Bieber.

This example may seem very B2C or better for tangible products. But it can be used in B2B contexts. Through design, teams can give the illusion of software tangibility.

The question is: How can you and your teams leverage your unique propositions to create this new experience? And what will be the context for it?

Automating your content strategy might be an option. But it is not the correct one.

Content marketing will always be about conversations and relationships with the ideal buyer. They will need their risks mitigated and experiences validated.

Marketing teams, through ingenuity, must show them that you understand the value of their problem and have a solution. The strategy you take differentiates you from the competition.

But as AI becomes accessible and you rely on the same tools as your competition, you will need free-thinkers and creatives who think in novel ways and create experiences. CMOs are asked to do less with more and operate on a lean model. Stakeholders and C-exes must ensure that the CMO is free to tell the story of your product.

Automation and AI are an extension of your teams’ creativity, but they must not be conflated with the certainty you seek.