Marketing automation is hot right now. There are a multitude of companies from HubSpot to a company CashSherpa is writing about today called SharpSpring.

What is marketing automation?

Marketing automation refers to software platforms that help businesses automate their marketing and sales engagement processes to generate more leads, convert those leads to sales and optimize ROI. Marketing automation allows businesses to automate repetitive tasks such as sending emails, maintaining social media, tracking website interactions and handling various other tasks. Marketing automation centralizes all of the features and functions that make up the marketer’s role in an organization.

A marketing automation platform should have the ability to integrate with other sales and marketing tools (CMS, CRM, social media, meeting software and more) to provide a streamlined platform for data management and analysis.

Learn more about Sharpspring

What Does Marketing Automation Software Do?

Drive More Leads
Convert Those Leads into Sales
Maximize Marketing Spend.
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Compare Marketing Automation

SharpSpring Feature List

Email – Put an end to boring, mass email blasts and save time on your marketing strategy. Start conversations that lead to conversions with personalized messages and automated campaigns that respond to user behavior. Use the SharpSpring email marketing platform to track leads “after the click.” Unlike other email service providers, we offer detailed analytics on every interaction – so you can send the right message at the right time, and send your sales team into action with real-time notifications.

Forms – Build, customize and reorder fields effortlessly with the sleek drag-and-drop editor. Our dynamic forms autocomplete fields for known visitors to improve conversion and look great on any site with custom CSS. You can even map fields from 3rd-party and native forms.

Automation – Our powerful, easy-to-use visual workflow builder simplifies marketing automation. Use branching logic to engage leads at critical points in their unique buying journeys. Instantaneously sync information with our built-in marketing automation CRM suite. Set up buyer personas for your products and services, then assign leads to different personas so that you can send automatically targeted messages. Receive a list of each day’s hottest leads right to your inbox, and act at just the right time to convert them to sales. Use SharpSpring’s marketing automation tools to score leads based on engagement, page tracking, fit and more – they even factor in natural lead decay over time.

Visitor ID – VisitorID is one of the secret weapons in our stack of marketing automation tools. Use it to identify twice as many visitors to your site (compared to competing marketing platforms). Use behavioral-based tracking to truly understand what motivates each click. Identify pain points and successful strategies so that your website never stops optimizing. Receive a list of the day’s hottest leads directly to your inbox, and act at just the right time to convert those leads to sales.

CRM – Knowledge is power – and CRM is sales. Use our marketing automation CRM or seamlessly integrate your preferred CRM provider with the SharpSpring marketing platform. Keep integrated data up to speed with instant two-way synchronization. Track opportunities from creation to close with a bird’s eye view of your pipeline. Create custom deal stages, fields, filters and more, to manage sales effortlessly with our marketing automation tools.

Landing Pages – Build powerful landing pages and landing page funnels that transform visitors into leads. Use our simple point-and-click editor to create unique landing pages, or adapt a template from our extensive library. Set up chains of linked landing pages to organize visitors into different funnels. Drive more conversions with dynamic web content that changes based on visitors’ interests and attributes. Deliver results quickly without coding or a developer, and without touching your website – but for those who want total control, you can add your own HTML and CSS code to customize pages even further.

Blogs – Launch a blog in minutes with the blog builder and editor in our marketing automation system. Design, manage and publish posts with ease. Set up collaborations within your team, or create profiles to welcome guest bloggers. Extend the reach of your content with RSS email syndication that automatically sends new posts to your mailing lists. Get more reach out of your content with social media widgets that allow users to share and follow you online. Use SharpSpring’s marketing automation tools to track visitors, find out which content performs best, and target posts to maximize conversions.

Marketing Analytics – Make key decisions with accurate and relevant data. Choose the most important metrics for each campaign and message, then generate custom reports to review your performance. Understand end-to-end ROI and track lead sources – even from offline. Share key information with your team, clients, and customers in a readable and accessible display.

Platform – Connect to hundreds of third-party software providers with SharpSpring’s APIs and Zapier integration. Sync data with your marketing automation CRM systems, keep your content management systems updated and integrate native and third party web forms with our marketing platform. Truly make SharpSpring your own by rebranding emails, notifications, reports, and even the app itself. Store data on our encrypted, secure, and scalable platform.

Social – Go beyond publishing, scheduling, and monitoring. Turn social interactions into meaningful conversations that generate sales and show up in your marketing reports. SharpSpring Social offers all the features you expect from a social management solution, plus powerful conversion tools you can only get from a fully-integrated marketing platform. Trigger automated workflows and score social leads based on interactions, sources, interests and more. Measure end-to-end ROI of integrated marketing campaigns and demonstrate the value of your social media efforts.

Visit Sharp Spring for more info

I’ve written about Gravis Marketing services recently, now I’d like to bring Gravis social media tracking, analytics, and influence marketing to my readers attention. Do your own research, I use Gravis Marketing as an example for those business owners that are on the fence as to hire a marketing agency or not. Gravis is a great example of what a full service marketing agency can offer. Check out Gravis Digital Command Centre:

http://www.gravisinsightsaustralia.com/live-blog/2017/2/2/gravis-digital-listening-centre

Why Social Media Marketing?

Anyone can run a social media marketing campaign the question is can you get it to convert? If it’s converting are you tracking what’s working and what is not? This is something a marketing agency like Gravis can help you with. “The GDCC is a development from Gravis Insights Australia (GIA) in partnership with our IT partners Knowledge Partner Professionals (KPP) to deliver our clients the 21st century digital ‘listening’ technology to analyse the sentiments users and the public feel towards their brands.”

I’ve heard social media marketing described like playing the piano. Anyone can make noise, but only a truly talented person can make music. Social media is a tool, just like a piano that takes skill and talent to play well.

What Gravis Command Centre Offers

“Track conversation to find mentions of the brand, products or issues being raised by the public about the brand or products. With social media command centres, each individual module offers a snippet of valuable data related to the product or business throughout the lifecycle of a campaign; whether that be political, corporate or charitable in nature. Rapid response: Allows for rumours to be quashed, issues to be fixed and status updates to be dealt with in real time. Also allows for the counter attack to be delivered when under attack from Opposition brands.”

If you would like to know more about Gravis please see previous blog article. Like I mentioned Gravis is just one of many marketing agencies for businesses and governments. I use them as an example of what a company like this can offer to expand your horizons on what’s possible. It’s up to you if you want to incorporate these tactics in your campaigns yourself or hire someone like Gravis to do it for you.

Are you looking for someone to help with your online marketing? If you answered yes there is a company called Gravis Marketing based in Australia that can help. Visit them at: http://www.gravisinsightsaustralia.com/gravismarketing

As the writer of a gadgets, technology, and marketing blog I am asked time and time again should I hire a company to run my marketing campaigns? I feel if you are talented, have the time, enjoy the process, than by all means DO IT YOURSELF! When I say yes to this questions it’s usually because one or two things. Number one you don’t enjoy anything having to do with marketing and your expertise lay elsewhere. Or number two your company is large enough that spending money on a marketing company makes no significant dent in your company profits.

Arrive at the Gravis Marketing web site and you’ll be greeted with the words, “Relationships, reputation, and results.” I’m using them as an example to illustrate my point. A company like Gravis would be a solid choice for those that meet one or both of the criteria in previous paragraph. Sometimes in order to grow a company the business owner has to get out of his or her own way.

By utilising the full potential of Gravis digital marketing the following can be achieved: “Broadcast your outreach to a wider audience and perform a digital integration with market research. Send simple automated surveys through Smartphone texts, which consumers can respond to with a quick push of a button. Delivery of information campaigns for consumers, clients and/or voters. Connect with votes on a personal basis and capture technically savvy consumers that never pay attention to printed materials.” Gravis Marketing can do everything from creating new web sites, social media channels, or just website copy/digital media copy for existing websites/social media channels.

Connect with Gravis on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GravisInsightsAustralia/

What Else Can Gravis Do?

VOIP Dialer Software And Headphones

“Gravis can also provide you with an easy to use laptop with the hosted VOIP dialer software and headphones as a turnkey solution. Speak up to 300% more people using the hosted predictive dialer. Hosted predictive dialer has fast and easy setup with no special hardware needed. Only a headset, a computer and internet connection is needed.”

What Can This Gravis Phone Be Used For?

“Political Campaigns, fundraising, telemarketing, get out the vote, lead generation, business to business sales, appointment scheduling, collecting payments, market research, polling, charities, schools, customer service, service desks, appointment reminders, businesses or campaigns which you make many outbound calls, and collections.” The possibilities are nearly endless.

Conclusion

The world is moving faster than ever, choose a company that “knows this world.” Anyone looking for marketing services whether business or government should look into Gravis Marketing. It’s a company that “prides itself on professionalism, ability to adapt, courtesy, and understanding that each client is unique.” A company focused on these core values bodes well for a strong long lasting relationship.

Adding Animated Video To Your Marketing Plan

Top companies like Againstudios.com know the value of animated videos in promoting their products. This not a coincidence that companies using animated videos are the top companies in the market. The videos must have some sort of power in convincing potential customers and retaining the old ones.

What is the Degree of Effectiveness of an Animated Video?

With a properly done animated video, a company can increase its conversion rate by up to 25%. Yes, 25% increase in conversion rate for just using an animated video. This shows how effective an animated video can be. All that a company need to do is to create a killer animated video and watch it convert potential leads to real customers.

Why is an Animated Video Effective?

There are many reasons that try to explain the effectiveness of animated video production. Here below are some of the reasons why an animated video can help your business increase conversion rate to 25%.

Visual and verbal learning

Animated videos are outstanding because they use a combination of two most effective modes of communication. Visual and verbal are the best ways of communicating to a consumer audience. With the use of visual and verbal modes, consumer audience is likely to retain over 50% more information than if it were to be written. This is why animated videos are considered effective.

Clear presentation

Animated videos are very clear in their presentation. With animated videos, a business can remove any form of ambiguity in its product. This clarity is what makes it an effective way of presenting information.

Simplicity

Animated videos are very simple. A lot of information is passed to the audience in just a minute or two. This high level of simplicity is what make animated videos a preferable way of promoting products.

Sharable

Animated videos are quite interesting in their nature. In as much as they pass important information about a product, they are also humorous and thus liked by many people. This way, people are likely to share these videos over the social networks. The fact that they are sharable are what make them effective.

The above mentioned show why animated videos are considered effective. Noting its effectiveness, businesses should ensure that they have animated videos to explain their products.

Great Blog Marketing Techniques

Marketing your blog is not all that hard to do. You have to be persistent and want success however if you want your blog to do well. You cannot just make a post and forget about it. You have to continue updating your blog and marketing it so that it will become popular and one that everyone wants to read. There are other ways as well that are good marketing your blog.

Interviewing people and posting it on your blog is an excellent way to market it. Just be sure that the people that you interview pertain to the market of your blog. You want all of your posts to be relevant, including any interviews that you might do. For example, if your blog market was vacuum cleaners, and you did an interview with the owner of Hoover vacuum cleaner; that would definitely pertain to your market. If you do conduct an interview be sure to record the audio and/or video. Create a Podcast with the audio and a Youtube channel with the video.

If you hear any news on the market of your blog, be sure that you post it. Everyone loves news, and event he readers of your blog will appreciate you blogging about the current events in the market that you are blogging about. Something to keep in mind when blogging about the news is the more current the news, the better. No one wants to reread old news, so it is a great idea to try and stay as current as possible when you are blogging about the news. News is a commodity so be sure to take a unique perspective on current events. The blog should be about you, not what others are saying.

Contests are another way that you effectively market your blog. Having contests on various things would be a lot of fun, and something that will keep your readers coming back. Everyone loves to win things, and you can also make the prize that you are giving away relevant to the market you are promoting on your blog.

While good content is something that you will need for your blog, you also want to ensure that it is original content as well. You can market a blog with something that is copied and that you do not own the rights. Plagiarism will get you in trouble with search engines as well as the person that originally wrote the content. Be sure that all of your posts are ones that only you own the rights too. This is a great thing to know and do when you are marketing your blog.

Press releases are also an excellent way to market your blog. Sending out a press release or having one made for you is a great idea. You will find that they are even affordable for most budgets, and some companies offer a package deal for example, if you let us write your press release we will submit it for half price. Who could resist a deal such as that? Especially when you are budgeting and trying to get the most from your funds.

Comments on a blog are also a very important aspect of blog marketing. You will want to be sure that you always answer and acknowledge the comments that are made to your blog as well as others. When you show that you are an actual person that can hold a conversation, you are showing others that you are real and that you really and truly have the best intentions for your blog. Make sure that no comment goes unanswered. This is true on your social media accounts as well. Always respond and interact with your audience. The goal is to build your community of like minded people.

Blog marketing is not hard to do. Just be sure that you follow all of the proven and tried techniques that others are talking about and you wont go wrong. Just don?t give up and keep on marketing because it will pay off sooner or later.

Your Guide To Blog Marketing

With there being so many blogs out there in cyber world, how do you make yours known and get people to read it. Some people feel blogs are not as valuable as they once were, but that’s exactly why you should start your own now. The key to making your blog successful is getting it to stand out. Check out our guide to blog marketing.

There are several things that you can do to make your blog marketing a success, and we are going to cover some of them right here. The first thing that you should know is that you should have your blog URL pointing to your market. For example, if you are trying to promote and sell sunglasses from your blog, you want your URL to say www.sunglasses.blogurl.com or better yet www.sunglasses.com. Doing so will give you an extra advantage.

The next step would be to customize your blog. Rather than having the same old blog interface like everyone else has, make your unique and interesting to look at. This will also help anyone from getting your blog confused with others that look just like it. There are so many types of blog software on the market that having your own look should not be that difficult to accomplish. WordPress is our #1 choice. Pick from a large variety of free themes or choose a professional one for $50.

Keyword research is another very important part of blog marketing. If you are not using the keywords that people search on, then chances are no one is going to find your blog. Have a variety of keywords in your blog as well. Not just the same one over and over. Not everyone just uses the term ‘sunglasses’ when they are searching for shades. Keyword research is an important factor to remember. Know the market you are looking to go into.

On a recent podcast I heard a company say they transcribe all their customer service calls on their blog. This may be a great way to generate content if you own a business.

At the very minimum be sure to create a Facebook Page and Twitter Profile to promote your blog content.

Using SEO on your blog, which stands for search engine optimization is a great idea as well. SEO will help get your blog out there and read. There are many good free WordPress Plugins to help with SEO. Being as high as you can in the search engine results is something that you want.

Many people do not realize this, but having a different title tag in the HTML code on each page makes a big difference. If you have given the first page on your blog the title of sunglasses, you need to be sure that none of your other pages are named this.

Once you have done your keyword research, you will want to write content based on the research you have done. Using one or two keywords, make entries into your blog using the keywords will make it easy for your blog to be indexed under those terms. That will also result in people searching on those particular terms able to find your blog.

Blog marketing is pretty much the same as website marketing. However, if you have never had a website, and are not familiar with marketing these great tips will help you get started. Be sure that you put new entries into your blog on a regular basis as well. This will help keep you up to date and current and also will keep your readers coming back for more.