My clients and I have shot corporate videos that tell engaging stories about their companies’ value. We’ve created product introductions using CG animation. (Think your product is too commoditized to star in a video? You’ll be amazed what CG can do.) And we’ve created explainer videos discussing relevant industry topics … starring real company employees. Even if your employees aren’t Oscar-nominated actors, you can still create high-quality videos with the right editing help.

So why are these videos and others so successful? Who’s watching them? What results can you expect? These 16 statistics will make a clear case for getting your company, products, employees and customers in front of the camera.

Who’s Using Video?

• 55% of people watch videos online every day (MWP)
• Online video will account for more than 80% of all consumer internet traffic by 2020 (Cisco)
• More than 500 million hours of video are watched on YouTube every day (Business Insider)
• Four times as many customers would rather watch a video about a product than read about it (Animoto)
• 43% of people say they want to see more video content from marketers in the future (HubSpot)

Engaging Buyers with Video

• In 2016, 62% of B2B marketers rated video an effective content marketing tactic (Content Marketing Institute)
• Social video generates 1,200% more shares than text and images combined (Adelie Studios)
• Incorporating video into a company’s landing page can increase conversions by 80% or more (EyeView Digital)
• Companies using video see 41% more web traffic from search than non-users (Aberdeen Group)
• Video drives a 157% increase in organic traffic from search engine results pages (Brightcove)
• Including a video in email marketing can increase click-through rates by 200–300% (Digital Information World)

Getting Results from Video Marketing

• Companies that use video marketing grow their revenue 49% faster than those that don’t (Aberdeen Group)
• 64% of marketers using video believe it has directly led to increased sales (Wyzowl)
• 52% of marketing professionals worldwide name video as the type of content with the best ROI (Syndacast)
• 70% of B2B marketers think that video is more effective than any other form of content when converting qualified leads (Content Marketing Institute)
• 76.5% of marketers report seeing results with video marketing (Animoto)

Want to start driving results like these for your business? My team and I would be happy to meet with you and create a video marketing strategy for your company. Get in touch, or drop me a note in the comments!

The post 16 Stats that Prove the Value of B2B Video appeared first on The Mx Group.

I hear from B2B marketers who run into measurement problems all the time. The proof’s in the numbers: Only 44% of CMOs can adequately measure ROI, and 74% of marketers can’t measure how their programs contribute to their business.

Often, these measurement problems start with a key area marketers aren’t including in their calculations: marketing readiness.

A Measurement Framework for Modern Marketers

To frame our measurement discussion, take a look at the SiriusDecisions Aligned Measurement Framework below. It breaks measurement into four pillars — and the most important one is impact. That’s your holy grail: the effect you have on revenue, market share and business goals.

Source: SiriusDecisions

Many marketers don’t get that far, though. They only measure output, or the direct results of marketing programs. Or they just measure activity: day-to-day actions taken because of marketing. Maybe they measure a combination of both. But here’s the catch: Output and activity only tell you how your marketing is performing. They won’t tell you why. They don’t reveal what opportunities you might be missing, or why your impact isn’t as strong as you want. That’s where marketing readiness comes in.

Marketing readiness is a measure of your ability to have a positive impact on your business. In other words, it measures how prepared you are to perform well. It evaluates your operational foundation, and reveals problems that are keeping you from having a bigger impact.

So how can you measure readiness? There are many factors to consider, and each marketing operation is different. You could consider your readiness in terms of technology, operations, your agency, supplier base, and more. The three areas below, however, are a great place to start.

Readiness Area 1: Database Health

When it’s managed well, your database is a gold mine of buyer insight: who they are, what they want, how they want you to engage with them. But a badly managed database can be more of a headache than a help.

If your database doesn’t have enough records — or if your records aren’t complete, accurate and segmented — your programs will be limited from the start. This sacrifices potential reach and engagement, and your metrics will reflect that.

To get your data ready for action, evaluate your database health on a regular basis. Supplementing, cleaning and maintaining your database will result in better data to power your programs, and a bigger impact at the end of the day.

Readiness Area 2: Service-level Agreements

I think of a service-level agreement (SLA) as a sales and marketing road map. These written contracts define shared agreements and expectations for your sales and marketing teams, and they’re a key step toward marketing readiness.

How will Sales and Marketing approach lead nurturing? Who’s responsible for what? How will teams be held accountable? A good SLA includes those answers. Without one, balls will be dropped, and miscommunication will damage your impact.

If your company’s SLA is gathering dust, now’s the time to put it back into action. (Don’t have an SLA? This ebook will get you started.)

Readiness Area 3: Skills and Resources

Having the right resources in place doesn’t just mean making great hires — although that matters too! It also means having the right technology foundation to deploy modern marketing programs. This begins by defining which job roles will be responsible for the design, execution and management of those programs. Then, adding the right processes will make the operations really work.

As you evaluate your marketing readiness, audit your team. If you find holes, consider whether hiring or outsourcing is the best way to fill them. Getting the right skills takes an upfront investment, but the benefits are more than worth it. Then, ensure you have the tech and processes in place to make your team successful.

Results That Matter

Measuring readiness is a new idea for many marketers. But if you can evaluate and improve yours, you’ll see better metrics at every level. You’ll increase activity and output. Most importantly, you’ll improve your business impact: qualified lead counts, revenue, market share, profit.

Next time management asks for metrics, you’ll be proud of what you have to show. And importantly, you’ll be able to show progress as you improve your readiness, and measure where you are on your journey. After all, nobody can flip a switch and make all changes at once. With the right metrics — readiness included — you’ll be in control of your transformation story.

Wondering whether your measurement efforts could use a boost? Find out with our modern marketing assessment! This interactive tool evaluates your operations across seven key areas, including measurement. You’ll see how effective your measurement efforts are, benchmark your performance against your peers, and get helpful tips to improve. Start the assessment now!

The post Ready, Set, Metrics: A New Approach to Marketing Measurement appeared first on The Mx Group.

Here’s the thing, though: You don’t have to care about the nitty-gritty details of technology to work successfully with developers. We share more common ground than you think.

And we have to work together — you and me, marketer and software developer — now more than ever.

Scaling Up Personal Interactions

Five years ago, software development wasn’t on most marketers’ radar. They weren’t profiling the people who visited their website. They weren’t tailoring their website to deliver persona-specific content. Interactive content just didn’t interest them.

Instead of approaching demand generation from a digital perspective, yesterday’s marketers prioritized the person-to-person connections they’d been making alongside their sales teams. “I know my buyers,” they thought. “If I talk to them, I’ll win them over, and Sales can handle the rest.”

There’s no denying that as a marketer, you know what makes your buyers buy. And I’m not suggesting that digital can replace Sales altogether, either.

However, the software I develop does the same thing your best salesperson does. It identifies needs, segments personas and delivers relevant information. What I bring to the table is scale — scale you can’t achieve without technology.

Marketing’s New Digital Reality

There’s no way you and a 10-person team can reach 50,000 prospects this week. You’ll get as many as you can, but you can’t be everywhere at once. But my team and I can help you reach all 50,000 with one algorithm. It’s not quite person-to-person, but you’d be surprised how personal we can get. We can help you overcome the age-old problem of getting the right message to the right person at the right time. And I guarantee you’ll close more business than you would by hand.

Why? You’ve probably heard about marketing’s digital transformation, but I’m here to tell you it’s already happened. Your buyers are self-directing their own journeys online. They won’t even fill out a form unless you’ve given them a good reason to. They’re relying on digital interactions to shape their decisions.

As a marketer, it’s your job to facilitate those digital interactions. But you don’t have to spend hours studying code to understand exactly how software works. You and I need to agree on what it should do, and you can leave the rest to us.

Marketers and Developers: Better Together

While the technical aspects of software matter, you don’t need to worry about them — really, my team doesn’t either. Don’t get me wrong, we love coding! But a developer’s top concern shouldn’t be creating beautiful code. If it is, they’ll create a one-size-fits-none product that leads to waste: time, effort and resources spent developing a product that doesn’t deliver.

Good developers know our job isn’t to create code, just like your job isn’t to create ads. Even though both are important! Our job is to work together to create an outstanding customer experience, so that, at the end of the day, your buyers are happy to have bought from you.

Yes, we work in different mediums. But you and I are working on the same job.

Put it this way: Imagine that instead of creating a conversion-focused customer experience, our job was to make a pie. Maybe you’re an expert at mixing filling, and I’m an expert at rolling dough. We can divide and conquer, as long as we agree on how our pie should taste at the end. We don’t have to get in one another’s baking. We just both have to know we’re making pie.

In the same way, to get results from software, you and your developer have to agree on the goal. What counts as a conversion? How will you measure ROI? What constitutes success or failure? You need those answers — and for me to do my job well, I do too.

So the next time you see someone like me in a conference room, don’t check out! Talk about what’s important to your business, and we’ll help you make it happen. And my team and I are ready to have that conversation whenever you are. Feel free to get in touch!

In the meantime, want to learn more about how software development can help you close more sales? Check out our recent webinar on marketing’s digital transformation, now available on demand!

The post Finding Common Ground Between Marketers and Software Developers appeared first on The Mx Group.

I know how it feels to work in a changing industry. As CMO of The Mx Group, my goal is the same as yours: to turn marketing investments into revenue. To generate leads, bring in sales and have a measurable impact on our company’s success. That’s my holy grail, and I know it’s yours.

You’re dealing with change every day. And you know the solution isn’t as simple as buying the perfect marketing technology, turning it on and hoping for the best.

To keep up with our industry’s changes, you have to modernize every part of your operations. Strategy, technology, lead management, data, reporting — all of it.

But breaking it down into categories doesn’t really make the idea of change more manageable. You don’t want me to say “improve your marketing strategy.” You want to know how — because you need to start modernizing right now.

Know Your Starting Place

“Modern marketing” is a big concept, and getting started can feel overwhelming. First, find out where you stand.

I see so many marketers jump into modernizing their operations without ever evaluating where they are. I love that enthusiasm, but modern marketing isn’t something you can achieve in a day; it’s a journey. And you need to know where you are before you can get where you’re going. To get the results you want from your modernization efforts, you have to know which areas you’re struggling in and what you’re doing well.

And I mean “know,” not “guess.” You probably have a gut feeling about where your operations need improvement, but for a change this important you’re going to need more.

Small Steps, Big Impact

Fortunately, there are plenty of frameworks you can draw on. At The Mx Group, for example, we follow SiriusDecisions’ approach to modern marketing. Renowned for its research and insight into high-performance marketing, this firm studies marketing maturity holistically across the function. It shares what a modernized marketing function should look like across different operational areas.

Identifying those gaps makes it easier to set specific, measurable goals for your modernization process. “Improve lead management” is too broad to tackle, but a concrete goal like “make sure sales and marketing share a definition of a qualified lead” is easier to accomplish.

While these small steps might not feel transformational by themselves, together they add up to something powerful. Together, they’re the foundation of modern marketing.

What Next?

If you’re ready to find out where you are in your modern marketing journey, there’s one more useful tool I recommend. We’ve created a marketing assessment based on SiriusDecisions’ model. This simple online assessment evaluates your operations and gives you the personalized, concrete steps you can take to modernize.

We believe in this tool’s power to get your modern marketing efforts on track. That’s why if you use it, we won’t even contact you right now — not unless you ask us to. Our goal isn’t to get you in our database; it’s to get you on the road to modern marketing. Check it out here!

Modern marketing is a big change. But as with any big change, the way to achieve it is one step at a time.

This post was originally published on B2BMarketing.net, where The Mx Group was recently named the No. 8 B2B agency in the United States.

The post Ready to Modernize Your Marketing? Here’s the First Step appeared first on The Mx Group.

The Trouble with Waterfall

Before we adopted Agile as our development framework, we followed the more traditional waterfall method. Using this method, we’d complete all the steps in one phase of the project before moving on to the next phase. In other words, we’d design the entire project at once, then do all the development, then all the QA testing.

When we switched over to Agile, that all changed.

Agile: A Smarter Way to Work

Agile is a much more efficient methodology that lets us work iteratively and incrementally. It makes responding to change much easier, and shifting scope later in a project doesn’t break the bank.

In Agile, we break up larger projects into time-based chunks called sprints. During a sprint, we take on smaller pieces of the project and produce them from start to finish. Breaking down a large, complicated project into more manageable sections gives us the ability to “groom” our backlog of features. In other words, we can prioritize the most important parts of the project first.

Working in sprints also gives us the flexibility to adapt to clients’ changing needs as we release functional features of the project. We can work with clients to make changes while the system is being built, rather than after the entire project is completed.

To keep ourselves accountable for what needs to get done during a sprint, we have daily stand-up meetings. That’s when we check in on our progress, determine our next steps, and make sure everything stays on track.

After 100 completed sprints, I can say for sure that switching to Agile was the right move! Working in sprints makes us more flexible and efficient, and it’s much easier for me and my teammates to do our best work.

But you don’t have to take my word for it! Five of my teammates and I sat down to share our thoughts on Scrum, the Agile process and why we love them. Watch the video below to check it out.

Here’s to the next 100 successful Mx sprints!

The post What 100 Sprints Taught Us About Scrum and Agile Development appeared first on The Mx Group.

Today’s buyers demand a personal, customized experience throughout the buyer’s journey, long before they contact Sales. Delivering that experience takes deep knowledge about your buyers. It takes unmatched insight into your market. In other words, it takes data.

Data is a proven difference-maker for marketers looking to engage and convert today’s buyers. According to research from Winterberry Group, companies that put data at the center of their marketing and sales decisions improve their marketing ROI by 15–20%.

But getting those results from your data takes a well-managed database, and that’s easier said than done. Forbes reports that only 40% of executives believe their database provides accurate data. What’s more, 80% of marketing teams blame ineffective demand generation processes on poor data, according to Demand Metric.

However, a problematic database can be fixed! By following these data management best practices, you can turn your database into a gold mine of strategic insights.

1. Identify your ideal buyer.

It sounds simple, but you’d be surprised how many marketers don’t do this. If you don’t know what characteristics you’re looking for in a buyer, how can you identify opportunities when you see them?

Profiling your existing customers will give you an idea of your target buyer. Focus on firmographic data: revenue, company size, decision-makers and so on. Then, map every lead against your ideal buyer profile, so you won’t waste time on leads that aren’t right for you.

2. Embrace a centralized database.

I’ve worked with marketers who spread their data across multiple databases, so I know how much frustration that can cause. If you manage prospect data and programs from multiple databases, you likely don’t have appropriate syncs set up between your marketing and sales databases. Chances are you also can’t find or use critical information about customers and prospects that’s sitting in some database somewhere.

Getting all of this data aligned and working together can give you a significant opportunity to upgrade your marketing.

That’s why I swear by a single, centralized marketing database with appropriate syncs in and out to other sources of data. This makes it easy to view data holistically, segment your records and identify opportunities.

3. Keep your database clean.

I can’t stress enough how much bad data can cost your company. If your records are outdated or inaccurate, you’ll waste valuable time and resources on marketing that’s doomed to fail. In fact, Gartner estimates that low-quality data costs companies $14.2 million annually.

Your data management program should include both automated and manual reviews. Rules need to be defined for “what system wins” when different data is captured at different times. Don’t overlook inference rules either, such as populating “persona type if role and industry are known.” Develop an ongoing plan to append missing information, such as critical firmographics required for segmentation, as new data comes in.

Take the time to set up these rules and perform thorough reviews regularly. After all, what good is marketing if it doesn’t reach its target?

4. Prioritize complete records.

It’s important to have a healthy number of records in your database, but volume only tells half the story. It’s great if your database holds 2 million records, but if none of them have emails, phone numbers or first names, you won’t get much value.

During any data hygiene initiative, be sure to analyze your records for completeness as well as accuracy. If your database has critical holes, you may want to supplement it through additional research, telemarketing initiatives or list purchasing.

5. Be strategic.

Data-driven marketers bring data into everything their company does. To join them, use data to shape your strategy and inform your decisions. Report on the state of your database during every marketing meeting. Consider your database as you set goals and determine budgets. For every marketing program, decide how you will:

• Add new leads or lead sources to your database.
• Separate sales-ready leads from nurture opportunities.
• Attribute a marketing source to closed deals to determine ROI.

Integrating your database into your strategy allows you to make more informed decisions, putting you on the path to better results.

Modern buyers’ expectations for the purchase journey are high and getting higher. To meet those expectations, you don’t just need data. You need useful, well-managed data that gives you actionable insight — and these tips will help you get it.

If you’d like more support, my team and I are here to help. Contact us today to discuss your data challenges, and we’ll plan a database management strategy to set you up for success.

The post Solving the Database Dilemma: 5 Tips for Better Data Management appeared first on The Mx Group.

It took some sleuthing, but we finally put our finger on the issue — and it wasn’t our team’s fault at all. It was our process that needed fixing.

We put our heads together to create a revised process — one that now makes life easier for our whole team. So if your processes need some TLC, never fear! Let’s talk through how to spot a process issue, and some simple steps to get back on track.

The Cost of Poor Processes

Operational problems like ineffective processes might seem more like occasional headaches than serious setbacks. But if your process is full of speed bumps, your team will face the same frustrating issues over and over.

Plus, inefficient processes waste time that could be spent executing programs, generating leads and driving ROI. According to market research firm IDC, inefficiency costs the average company 20–30% in revenue every year.

How can you tell if your process is behind your marketing frustrations? Keep an eye out for these four red flags:

1. Frequent late work: Occasional missed deadlines are a fact of life. But if simple tasks often stretch on forever, there’s probably a more efficient way for your team to work.
2. Duplicated work: If two people accidentally double up on tasks, or if routine work is often redone, your roles and responsibilities should be better-defined.
3. Role confusion: Every task in your processes should have one owner. If two people are responsible — or if no one is — the odds of someone dropping the ball skyrocket.
4. Inconsistent results: A solid process is like a well-oiled machine. If your results are hit-or-miss, your team might be using workarounds that don’t always get the job done.

If these problems sound familiar, chances are you have a process problem, just like we did. Fortunately, those problems can be fixed! Here’s how we tackled ours.

Assemble Your Team

Evaluating a process from start to finish can’t just be management’s responsibility. No one knows your team members’ jobs better than they do, so they should be involved in mapping their own responsibilities.

We gathered our team for a group discussion to talk through every step of our process, including current problems and frustrations. Warning: This can get complicated quickly! I recommend using process charts, like the one below, to stay organized.

Map Where You Are

We divided the process mapping into two stages: “as-is” and “should-be.” In the “as-is” stage, we documented what was currently being done — even if we knew we’d change it later. It’s tempting to skip this step, but you need to know where you are to identify your biggest issues.

Once your process is on paper, look for spots where work slows down or frustrations run high. What’s behind these problems? Are steps missing? Are roles not defined? Could new technology help streamline tasks?

Know Where You’re Going

Next, we moved on to mapping what our ideal process should be like. By evaluating the difference between our “as-is” and “should-be” maps, we were able to plan our journey toward improvement.

That journey might take a while. You might need new tech to automate part of your process. Or you might need to make a new hire. But getting your road map in place is a big accomplishment — and it has to happen first!

Review Your Updates, and Test

Finally, we followed our new-and-improved process exactly as written. Then, we called another team meeting to debrief. What went well? Did unexpected problems show up? If so, how could we fix them? Repeat this step as often as necessary, until you have a process everyone’s happy with.

Not only does this help optimize your process, it helps your team’s overall morale too. They’ll know you see the problems they’re facing — and that you’re working to fix them.

I know how frustrating process problems can be. But I also know they’re fixable. If any of these red flags and frustrations sound familiar, now’s the time to give your processes a good, hard look. You and your team will be better for it.

Has your team recently dealt with process problems? What signs tipped you off, and how did you fix the issues? Share your stories in the comments!

The post 4 Simple Steps to Stop Process Problems in Their Tracks appeared first on The Mx Group.

But even though campaigns have worked in the past, the marketing landscape is changing fast, and it’s time for marketers to pick up a few new tricks. In today’s world of nearly unlimited information, it’s time to stop making campaigns our default strategy.

Operations + Experience

Campaigns are certainly useful in certain scenarios, like reaching time-sensitive goals or launching a new product or service. However, they don’t fundamentally help to modernize marketing efforts. In fact, they could be taking away from your team’s collective operational and experiential focus.

OK, “operational and experiential focus” sounds like some serious jargon. But when you break it down, it’s pretty simple. “Operational” is straightforward: It’s the foundation you need in order to run modern marketing programs, from technology to processes to personas and everything in between. However, it’s how you use that foundation that matters.

That’s where “experiential” comes in — the buyer’s experience. Today’s buyers want and expect to guide their own purchase decisions. According to SiriusDecisions, 57% of the buyer’s journey on average now takes place online. In some industries, it’s up to 90%! It’s your job to help buyers make decisions on their own terms, whenever they’re ready.

So instead of relying on one-off, start-and-stop campaigns, you should consistently provide compelling information that guides buyers toward conversion. Luckily, with some strategic planning, you can move beyond campaigns to make this happen. Here’s how:

1. Inbound Marketing

Operationally, focus your marketing efforts on creating helpful content to educate, convince and engage buyers. Campaigns only promote specific resources you’ve chosen, but a solid stable of tailored webpages, videos, blogs, ebooks, on-demand webinars and white papers — tailored for each stage of the purchase funnel — will guide buyers on their journey to you. It allows buyers to find what they need from your company, when they need it.

Because effective inbound tactics aren’t intrusive and don’t require manual intervention on your part, they generate highly qualified leads for less spend and effort. In fact, inbound marketing generates 54% more leads than outbound practices, and it costs 62% less per lead.

2. Interactive Content

Depending on where buyers are in the purchase process, scheduling a conversation with Sales can feel like an intrusion. To avoid this feeling of interruption, offer content buyers can interact with on their terms. Hosting an assessment, simulation or calculator tool on your website gives buyers valuable information about their needs and requirements, all without a conversation with a salesperson. Because interactive content tools allow buyers to self-direct more of the purchase journey, they’re long-term sources of lead generation and conversion. (Want to learn more? Watch our on-demand webinar about interactive content.)

3. Networking

Sales isn’t the only function that’s based on relationships — marketing is, too. To help buyers trust your company’s expertise, it’s key to nurture relationships that help build your credibility. You can do this in person and digitally, by:

• Hosting webinars
• Attending and speaking at trade shows and conferences
• Publishing your point of view
• Participating in industry forums
• Posting thought leadership to social platforms like LinkedIn

Although it may feel like you’re giving away your secrets at first, you’re really showing potential customers why no one can solve their challenges like you can. And engaging in conversations about issues your prospects care about — whether in person or through digital forums — is a great way to participate in the buyer’s journey. It gets results, too: According to DemandMetric, thought leadership generates three times as many leads at one-third the cost of traditional marketing methods.

What’s Next

Inbound marketing, interactive content and networking aren’t as discrete and contained as campaign marketing. But in the end, these important tactics will improve your operations and customer experience, bringing in enormous returns. And that sounds good for everyone, including management and Sales, right?

Your first step should be to get buy-in on this strategy from the top, and set realistic goals in each area to focus your time and energy. Consider how to shift your marketing mix to maximize your spend on these effective approaches. Create a few key measurements that you’ll review monthly, and make time for a quarterly milestone meeting with key stakeholders to review what you’ve learned on both the operations and customer experience sides.

In the meantime, if you need help thinking beyond campaigns, please get in touch. We’d be happy to help make it happen!

The post Beyond Campaigns: Focus on Marketing Operations and the Buyer’s Experience appeared first on The Mx Group.

Before you can decide if real-time personalization is right for you, you need to know exactly what it is, what it does and what it’s used for.

What Is Real-time Personalization?

Simply put, real-time personalization is a way to automatically deliver tailored content to different groups of visitors to your site. For example, you might set up your site to recognize visitors from a particular industry and adjust images, text and content accordingly.

If you’re using buyer personas, you probably already tailor your email content and other marketing communications to address what you know about each persona. And it makes sense to take that approach with your website, too. According to Demand Gen Report, 70% of buyers consider websites the most influential channel when making a purchase decision.

But when up to 98% of most website visitors are anonymous, how do you provide a tailored experience to someone you know nothing about?

That’s where the real-time personalization features of marketing automation software can help.

Real-time personalization gathers information from anonymous visitors’ IP addresses and can use that information to categorize visitors based on business demographics. From there, you can serve the most relevant content to those categorized visitors when they land on your website.

What Does It Look Like?

Let’s take a furniture company as an example. Their target market includes purchasers for both hotels and office complexes. With real-time personalization, the furniture company can determine which anonymous visitors are hotels that need bedframes and which are offices that need desk chairs — and highlight the right products for each site visitor.

Real-time personalization can be a big asset for your sales pipeline. Offering website visitors personalized recommendations has been shown to increase conversion frequency by 353%. But it might not be the right tactic for everybody. Is it right for you?

When Should I Use It?

1. Account-based Marketing. If you’re targeting a specific set of accounts, real-time personalization can be a gold mine. You can use IP addresses to determine whether anonymous visitors belong to your target accounts. Then, tailor your site to speak directly to their needs and preferences, increasing your odds of conversion.
2. Local or Regional Content. If some of your content is more relevant in certain locations — for example, events, trade shows or regional services — then real-time personalization can help you identify anonymous visitors within your region and promote location-specific content.
3. Content Based on Industry or Company Type. Remember that furniture company? That’s a great example of how real-time personalization can help target verticals. It ensures that buyers from different industries only see content that matters to them, instead of wasting time on irrelevant offers.

If any of these scenarios apply to you, real-time personalization can make content marketing across different segments possible without a massive increase in time, effort or resources — giving your website the edge it needs to earn more business.

What Next?

Real-time personalization can sound like a high-tech challenge, but don’t be intimidated. There are plenty of tools that can make implementation simple and painless. And even after you’ve chosen the right technology provider, you don’t have to go it alone.

We’ve helped our clients use real-time personalization to enhance their websites and boost their sales and marketing efforts — and we’re ready to do the same for you. Want to get started? Get in touch, and let’s talk next steps.

The post Real-time Personalization 101: What It Is and When to Use It appeared first on The Mx Group.

It’s a lot to tackle, but it’s also exciting! With the whole year stretching in front of you, the sky’s the limit for what you can accomplish.

At The Mx Group, we’re feeling that same excitement while we think about our plans for this new year. To keep us focused, we’ve created a modern marketing manifesto: a set of 10 new rules for the new world of marketing. These affirmations will be the guiding principles of our 2017 strategy, and I hope they speak to you, too.

Download the manifesto as a PDF >

If you’re ready to start applying these principles to your operations, we’re here to help! Subscribe to our blog, and we’ll send you monthly tips and insights to keep your modern marketing efforts on track.

Let’s make 2017 the year we shake things up in B2B marketing!

The post 10 Modern Marketing Affirmations to Inspire You in 2017 appeared first on The Mx Group.