MarketStar Blog

Marketing Automation has seen the highest growth rate in the past five years, and it has changed from being a system to automate emails to being a sophisticated system for attracting, nurturing, engaging and retaining customers. In the year 2014, the most noteworthy development is how the focus of Marketing Automation has now drifted from the power and speed of automation to the necessity of personalization and relationship-building. 

We’re getting social on whole new level at MarketStar. It’s been a full month since the Grand Opening of our social intranet for all our employees in the U.S. and Canada. More than 2,000 employees now use MarketStar Connect daily as a way to collaborate, connect, and communicate. As the Social Community Manager, it’s exciting to see the innovative ways our teams are using social technology to be more efficient and effective for our clients.

Product demos, if done right, have the ability to shorten sales cycles, generate qualified leads, and drive conversions. For some companies, a snazzy product demo could mean getting noticed by prospects, target audiences, and sometimes even bigger giants in the same industry.

Google’s most recent Panda update sent shockwaves across the web-o-sphere with popular sites such as eBay, ask.com and yellowpages.com taking huge dips in traffic. The Panda 4.0 mirrors Google’s previous updates and is an effort by Google to ensure that it’s users only get access to the best content, which means sites (whether big or small) duplicating content or not providing value to their users will take a hit and see a drop in rankings. Although this update is said to have affected large companies and sites more than the small enterprises, it has also ended up providing an opportunity for small sites to rank well if they possess high quality and genuine content. 

The Panda update is not just a warning for sites with poor content strategy, it is a clear reminder for companies to re-visit and revamp their SEO strategies in order to acquire and maintain search engine visibility and rankings. Here are some steps that marketers can take to deal with this update: 

Consumers are using mobile devices such as smartphones, tablets, connected devices (iPods, smartwatches) etc. to enhance their shopping experience. With technology that allows them to make purchase decisions on the go, shopping behaviors have altered indefinitely. Especially mobile technology is gradually substituting human interactions as a study shows that 73% of shoppers with smartphones prefer to reference their mobile device in-store rather than ask a sales associate for help (Source: Accenture, reported by Internet Retailer, 2010). Changes such as these have altered today’s shopper’s purchase journey indefinitely. 

Introduction

Back in the days of mainframe computers, no one could have fathomed these huge devices fitting in the laps of users in only a few years. Technologies, just like everything else in the universe, follow a curve of evolution, with the lesser weaker ones eventually dying out. Some foresee it happening to the less-mobile personal computers of today, which the tablets and smartphones of the world will replace. This is evident from the increasing adoption rates of these devices worldwide. Currently there are 5 times as many mobiles as PCs in the world, with this number expected to double, maybe triple, over the years. This trend has huge implications for marketers and consumers alike. Mobile is driving a second, more profound internet revolution by changing how consumers interact with brands, disrupting traditional business models with their ubiquity. The mobile’s omnipresence now calls for marketers to not only include mobile in their marketing mix but instead have mobile-focused marketing strategies to capture the attention of today’s on-the-go consumers.

Video is fast becoming a powerful lead generation tool for marketers. Using video appropriately can easily shorten sales cycles and improve the nature of conversations you are having with your buyers. A study by the IT Business Edge showed that videos are used by B2B buyers throughout the buying cycle: from awareness to purchase; with more than 70% of B2B buyers relying on video product demonstrations before deciding on which product to buy.

Web designs are arguably the most dynamic of all design forms- constantly evolving, consistently adapting to the relentlessly mutating digital landscape. This ever changing and embryonic nature of web design gives birth to new ideas, new solutions, new designs-New Trends. Trends that push the design industry forward, enhance the user experience, create brands, and define style.

ideos drive traffic, boost engagement and help to reach out to customers on a more personal level than almost any other form of marketing. The supply of content is far outstripping demand online. Be it a blog post, slide share or an infographic, content is being shared at a rapid rate, making the online space extremely crowded and competitive. It is increasingly difficult to be heard in this melee. 

This is where video marketing is proving its worth. According to research done by Google and Millward Brown Digital, ‘70% of B2B buyers and researchers are watching videos throughout their path to purchase. And it’s not just light viewing. Nearly half of these researchers are viewing 30 minutes or more of B2B-related videos during their research process, and almost one in five watch over an hour of content’. 

An emerging trend in the video space is live streaming. While B2C marketers have recognized its relevance to their marketing efforts, fewer B2B marketers have tried it out. Here are five reasons why we think they should.

Ever wonder how some businesses leap from average to exceptional performance? According to Ottawa-based sales guru Colleen Francis1, those businesses see their sales closures climb from 25% to 33%. But here's the kicker: while new customer acquisition might plateau, their customer retention rates soar up to 95%. This means that focusing on retaining and nurturing existing customers can be far more profitable than constantly chasing new ones.