There is an overwhelming number of marketing tools to help with every aspect of the customer journey, from automation tools, to attribution measurement, to lead qualifiers and beyond. According to a five-year forecast by MarketsandMarkets, the digital marketing software industry is set to grow from $37.5 billion in 2017 to as much as $75 billion by the end of 2022.

For marketers looking to streamline their solutions and understand which technologies to implement, it can be an overwhelming task to find the right mix for your business.

In other cases, you may have recently implemented solutions and after a few months aren’t sure if you’re really maximizing their value or potential.

Whether you’re still on the market for new solutions or looking to optimize your current mix, we’ve put together four helpful tips on how to make the most of the marketing tools in your toolkit.

Tip 1: Using your tools for conversation

We have never had as many mediums for communication with our customers as we do now. From email, to SMS, to chat apps, to AI chat bots, we have hundreds of tools at our disposal to engage with our customers and provide the best value possible.

No matter the tools you have in place, the key is taking an organic, conversational approach with your customers. Ask questions to understand your customer needs and let them feel heard. Make it easy for your audience to engage with you – quick responses via surveys is a great way to collect data, and this can be done via any channel – email, social or chat.

In collecting this data, you’ll be well-position to be of service and provide a more tailored response. Marketing strategist Dan Moyle, a proponent for conversational marketing, wrote that businesses will be missing out if they don’t include this strategy in their overall marketing strategy. He cited several conversational marketing statistics to support its importance, such as 79% of customers prefer to get customer service via messaging apps and 82% demand an “immediate” response whenever they have inquiries regarding a product or service.

People who are engaged enjoy the experience better and tend to be more loyal. By using the tools you have in place to create conversations and engaging dialogue, your audience will be more likely to take the actions you want them to take and ultimately help you achieve your marketing goals.

Tip 2: Make your chatbots work smarter

Chatbots are becoming popular tools for every business. Initially developed to ease off the burden of customer service, chatbots are proving to be an awesome marketing tool. They are no longer a fad – chatbots have evolved into a full-blown movement.

According to the 2019 State of Conversational Marketing, 86% of people prefer to answer a chatbot rather than complete an online form. The same study also revealed that 78% of respondents expect chatbots to deliver a relevant response within five minutes. It is clear that people’s view of chatbots are changing faster than anticipated.

With advances in natural language processing (NLP), machine learning (ML), and artificial intelligence, chatbots are now capable of talking to online visitors, customers, and potential clients in a humanlike manner. They can gather information, provide answers, and deliver even sufficient responses for basic queries.

Chatbots can feed marketing systems data that can be thoroughly combed for marketing insights and business opportunities. They can also be configured to initiate the sales cycle, upsell, and cross-sell based on the information provided by the customer.

The chatbot bandwagon has blown into a marketing revolution businesses can’t afford not to be a part of.

Tip 3: Make the most of performance marketing

Performance marketing is a marketing tactic that, as its name implies, is results-based. This means an advertiser only pays when a customer completes a specific action, such as fills out a form or is approved for a product or service.

Affiliate marketing is one of the most common forms of performance marketing, where a brand partners with influencers, bloggers, and content sites that align with their product offering and target audience.

Whether you’re using Google Analytics, an internal CRM tool or an affiliate marketing platform, the key to making this type of marketing work is providing timely data and insights for the affiliates or marketing partners, so they can optimize their marketing efforts and increase results.

The most important things to consider for the performance marketing tools you have in place:

• Your solution must be scalable with minimal manual work
• Provide an easy way to share data and insights with your publisher partners
• Allow granular tracking of campaign and partner performance

To know more about what goes into making this strategy work, read our performance marketing 101 guide.

Tip 4: Maximize social engagement

While traditional marketing such as print, TV and radio have value in creating overall brand awareness, the majority of traditional marketing strategies leave little room for feedback and offer less opportunities for interaction from the customers’ side.

Social channels provide a valuable way to create these two-way engagements, although they can take time to build and requires high-touch and heavy-lifting. That’s why it’s important to make the most of your efforts by identifying the tactics and content that are most engaging and finding ways to easily replicate them across your other marketing channels.

Many marketing software platforms, including those you are exploring or have implemented, are now rolling out with new features and sophisticated capabilities that support this customer-centric approach. Customers don’t just want to be fed with marketing content and other branded messages. They want to talk, communicate, and know more. They want to be heard and answered almost immediately.

Ultimately, the best social tools are those that allow you to create customer engagement in the most scalable way. This FinancesOnline resource provides options of tools you can explore. 

Conclusion and Key Takeaways

There are a number of considerations that go into finding the right mix of marketing tools. Whether you are looking to optimize your current solutions or seeking new ones to complement your existing mix, consider the following tips to get the most out of your marketing efforts.

• Tip 1: Have meaningful conversations with your audience to create greater engagement
• Tip 2: Make your scalable conversational tools work harder for you by collecting marketing data and insights
• Tip 3: Ensure optimal performance of your partnerships by providing as much insight and data transparency as possible
• Tip 4: Amplify your social media efforts by incorporating the content across all channels

Let us know if you have any questions, we’d love to hear from you! Write a comment below or get in contact with our team here.