Virtual or in-person, we are optimistic about what 2022 holds for us in terms of conferences throughout the world. Brands such as Digiday+, Admonsters, AvertisingWeek are already facilitating registration to some of their events – so without further ado, here is the full list of the most important 2022 events designed for digital publishers:

I am sure as an excel user you probably use the same basic calculation functions. Are you doing the same with your Marketing Automation platform?

Hands down Microsoft Excel is probably the most important invention of the 21st Century. It is one of the very few products that every single person on earth is required to have some familiarity with regardless of their status or station in life. And without a doubt it is considered to be the Godfather of all CRMs and Marketing Automation platforms. So regardless of any new tool or sexy platform that arises excel will always be the familiar comfort place we will all resort to when we don’t get how these new platforms work.

It’s therefore not surprising that there’re so many businesses using excel to run their sales, marketing and customer service efforts today– not just the small or start-up enterprises, but also some well-established businesses that have been in existence for many years. Is yours one of them?

I know excel could seem easier to use, and even capable of managing your customer relationships. However, it’s not the most efficient way to collect, analyze and manage business data, especially if you are looking to grow in the near future.

Let’s do a quick comparison of Excel vs CRM. The winner is clear, and hopefully by the end of this article, you will be convinced and appreciate the need to adopt a CRM for your business – especially if your business is growing.

But just before that, let’s make sure we are on the same page.

What is a CRM?

CRM is an acronym for Customer Relationship Management, and as the name infers, it’s a system for managing relationships with your customers. It’s designed with the aim to help foster stronger customer relationships and improve sales and retention by having quality conversations with prospects and customers.

Like a CRM, excel can be used to collect, store, analyse and manage business data. So what’s the difference or the big deal with opting to use excel over the CRM?

Here are 8 basic comparison points to help you decide:

More Benefits of the CRM

• Higher revenue – improved efficiency and a holistic view of your customers allows you to take advantage of the right moments to cross sell and upsell with higher success rates. This also reduces the chances if attrition.
• Healthier pipeline – Having a holistic view of your pipeline enables you to prioritize deals more diligently. Therefore your pipeline isn’t clogged up and you remain committed to the bottom line.

When should you adopt a CRM?

Many businesses start small and it works well to manage their data in emails and spreadsheets like excel. As a result, data usually ends up segmented in different places i.e. in people’s laptops and emails.

However, as the business grows, it becomes difficult to use. Data and flow of communication with clients is easily lost along the way or takes too long to retrieve. Then the business starts to feel the pain of disorganization and poor data management, which is usually accompanied by data, customer and financial loss.

Don’t wait for that time. The earlier you adopt a CRM, the better for you.

How do you decide which CRM to use?

There are a lot of CRM options of available.

First you need to decide what your need needs are. Understand what you are looking for.

Then consider the CRM’s:

• Simplicity – it should be easy for your team to use.
• Relevance – it should be able to meet your specific needs
• Integration – does it integrate well with your business tools?
• Analytics and reporting – does it offer custom reporting and performance tracking.
• Communication tracking – it should be able to track interactions from your customers from emails, phone conversations and online chats.
• Affordability – look out for hidden charges which could be in form of maintenance fees, need to pay extra for additional contacts or reporting ability, overage charges for data storage etc.

For more insights on why businesses should invest in a CRM and not rely on excel, listen here as sales experts Resa Gooding and John Golden discuss.

Ready for your first CRM? Let us know in the comments below.

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If you haven’t heard or used Google NLP API, you’ve seriously missed out on a great opportunity to optimize your content. Here’s your chance to rectify that oversight.

Google NLP API is a free tool that uses machine learning to analyze text and reveal insights based on its structure and meaning (well, technically it’s a tool for enterprises that isn’t free but this post will cover how you can leverage the tool demo). You can use the tool to get a better understanding of social media interactions and customer conversations and maybe most importantly – the underlying technology is the same Google uses for its search engine, meaning it’s a perfect way to have your content truly optimized.

How, you ask? By following these guidelines:

1. A keyword is still the most important part

How you start your campaign is likely how you’ll finish it. Targeting keywords with no search volumes is throwing money (and time) down the drain. When picking the right keyword, always adhere to these rules:

• Low keyword difficulty/competition to make it easier to rank on the first SERP
• High search volume, depending on the niche
• Couple relevancy with intent for more precise targeting

2. Check out the top results

Having a top-ranking website means taking care of a number of ranking factors. It’s always a good idea to check out what google provides as the top results for your target keywords in order to follow suit and match the intent. For this exercise, we’ll search for ‘growth hacking small business’ and copy an entire page’s content from a website that ranks first in Google.

3. Analyze in Google NLP

This is where things get interesting. Paste the content in the Natural Language API demo box and press ‘Analyze’.

The tool will categorize the content into four elements:

• Entities

• Sentiment

• Syntax

• Categories

Entities’ lists people, organizations, numbers, and other entries (entities) in the text, and generally helps with the selection of important words for your niche. Words with salience (the importance of the entity to the entire text) above 0.00 are typically a good pick for your niche (the maximum score is 1).

The ‘Sentiment’ category highlights positive (green), neutral (beige), and negative (red) sentences based on their sentiment, along with a magnitude score (ranging from zero to infinity) that shows the strength of sentiment. Both positive and negative sentences relay useful information about the content on a scale from -1.0 to 1.0. That’s where most of your focus should be, while neutral sentences refer to the type of content that is common knowledge.

‘Syntax’ correlates the structure of each sentence with plenty of diagrams.

Finally, ‘Categories’ shows if your content belongs in the right category or niche you are ranking for with a Confidence score (from 0.00 to 1). Your aim is to change the wording so that your content fits your niche if your score is low.

Bonus tip: use a Google spreadsheet for easier organization.

Roll up your sleeves and optimize

And that’s pretty much it – now it’s time to put Google NLP API to good use based on well-ranking content you gathered. This practical tool is very easy to apply and can help you improve the precision of your writing ability when it comes to specific niches and categories. That’s all you can ask for, isn’t it?

Content is evolving and if you want to survive, you should, too.

The funny thing about technological evolution is that we rarely see it coming. Computers in the living room? Ha, what a joke. Mobile phones? Who in their right mind would want to carry a phone around! Social media? Why would you want to know what everyone’s thinking about?

Yet, all these things came to pass. The skepticism of the majority has, almost by default, been followed by new and exciting marketing opportunities, too. They follow new tech and the rage against the machine like a creeping shadow from a Stephen King novel and only the brave and the Bold (see what I did there?) seize the opportunity when it presents itself.

That’s exactly what I’m going to discuss here. The next step in technological evolution, what it means for marketers, as well as which challenges and opportunities they may encounter in the near future.

Shall we, then?

5G and mobile video

The 5G technology is not all the rage yet, but I’m willing to bet you that the hype is just around the corner. The technology is so promising that it made Apple and Qualcomm, two fierce rivals who’ve been duking it out on courts for ages, bury the hatchet. Samsung has just pushed its first 5G phone and Huawei has been under immense pressure from the West for one reason only – they’re extremely capable at building 5G infrastructure.

There are multiple reasons that make 5G an exciting piece of tech. Sure, the Internet of Things and connected cars are some of them, but the one that makes it particularly interesting for marketers is the fact that it will allow a lot more video to be consumed on the go.

And oh boy, will video be consumed on the go! Don’t take my word for it, check this Statista chart out:

Researchers expect mobile video traffic to grow more than three times between 2019 and 2022. Obviously, marketers need to pay close attention and make sure they use the new trend to their advantage, but they also need to be extra careful not to ruin the opportunity. I’d say us marketers should keep an eye out on these challenges:

Producing quality video

The good news? you’re not making a Marvel movie, you don’t need a huge team and a ton of expensive gear. But that also doesn’t mean you can use that 1995 potato of a phone you have lying around to create compelling content. There are many friendly tools these days that enable creating really great videos without a full production in place.

Keep your ear to the ground regarding search engines

With the emergence of not only video but also audio (more on that later), search engines are adapting and are bound to keep doing so. We’re already seeing this in action for quite a while now. YouTube, for example, has an automatic transcribing feature. Facebook is now actually listening to the audio in the videos you post and showing different content in your newsfeed based on the data they aggregate. All these elements will help search engines index and search through video content. And given that search engines are orienting towards context and relevancy, that’s something you should definitely keep on your radar. Even if video platforms don’t automatically transcribe your videos, make sure you add the transcriptions manually. Search engines are almost entirely interested in getting users relevant content and if the transcription can help them do that – they’ll help you get visibility.

Adjust the message to the medium

I can’t stress this enough. Different platforms have different approaches to video, and that can make or break your mobile video content strategy. You know that (annoying) mantra that almost all YouTube creators end their videos with?

“Don’t forget to hit the subscribe button, give this video a thumbs up and comment below.”

While some believe this is baseless tradition being carried down from one content creator to another, without real effect, Google is actually recommending it through its Creator Academy Bootcamp. It’s recommending it because it knows it works.

You know what else? The length of the video is crucial. YouTube encourages longer videos because they’re easier to monetize. If you haven’t already, I highly recommend you watch this PewDiePie video (it’s not really 10 minutes long, it’s much shorter than that).

What this means is that YouTube will give more visibility to clips that follow its unwritten rules of longer videos that invite people to comment, like, share and subscribe.

Facebook, on the other hand, does the exact opposite. They encourage shorter videos and as per clickbaits? I’ve recently interviewed, Facebook marketing guru Mari Smith on my podcast and learned that Facebook’s new algorithm penalizes video content in which people are invited to “like, share and subscribe.”

What should you take from this? That you need to be extra careful and adjust your messaging to the platform you’re sharing your content in.

Audio is back with a vengeance

Video may have killed the radio star, but the radio star seems to be back from the dead, a bit transformed but stronger than ever. He’s coming back, carrying two main ‘weapons’. First, the recent emergence of the smart home speaker, whose growth seems unstoppable at the moment.