Below, we will introduce some of the basic concepts around marketing automation and ways you can get the most out of it. 

Table of contents

• What is marketing automation and why is it important?
• Key benefits of marketing automation 
• How marketing automation works
• Marketing automation best practices
• Popular marketing automation vendors
• Resources for learning more

What is marketing automation and why is it important?

Marketing automation platforms (MAPs) help automate activities across various marketing channels. The goal is to put repetitive tasks such as sending emails, posting on social media pages and managing data on autopilot. 

Marketing departments use marketing automation to ensure their campaigns generate desired outcomes rapidly and efficiently. Employees can focus on thinking through higher-level problems when automation is working correctly. It can take some time to set up initially, but the results can significantly impact your business once it is up and running.

Marketing automation is often associated with email marketing. After all, marketing automation began with IBM’s Unica email platform in the early 1990s. 

It’s useful to have an automated system for sending emails at scale to selected audiences or triggering emails in response to users’ certain actions (cart abandonment, for example). But using marketing automation only for emails can result in a disjointed customer experience. Thus, marketers must also consider its use across other channels too.

Key benefits of marketing automation

In addition to efficiency, marketing automation has several key benefits for marketing organizations:

Savings in time, energy and money

Marketing automation is responsible for increasing productivity among sales by 14.5% and reducing overhead in marketing initiatives by 12.2%. Intuitive marketing automation tools can give marketers their time back to invest in other initiatives and activities that boost a company’s bottom line in other ways.

Better targeting of audiences

A marketing automation platform that works for you will allow you to target your audience and monitor behaviors on your campaigns. Tracking real-time data and monitoring engagement allows you to capitalize on personalized communication across multiple channels. Consistent and relevant communication to your target audience results in major ROI and a boost in customer loyalty. 

Embed a seamless omnichannel experience

Remember, marketing automation takes over all the repetitive tasks when done correctly. When this happens, you can craft a seamless and personalized customer experience. Targeted emails, pre-filled forms based on user data and anticipating customer behaviors help to ensure your customers receive the same service each time.

How does marketing automation work? 

Marketing automation tools and platforms may have specific nuances to how they function, but at a high level, they automate workflows. They help us remove all the individualized sticky notes on our desks with reminders and put those reminders into a cadence that automatically gets done with minimal human involvement. 

At a basic level, marketing automation campaigns will send content to a list of contacts based on a specified behavior or predetermined criteria to get them to take a certain action. 

For example, let’s say you’re doing your last webinar before the end of the year, and you want to get some new leads into the pipeline to start January off strong. What would you typically do with marketing automation doing its part?

• You would send an invitation email to all the new leads to attend the stated webinar at a specific time. 
• You might include an end-of-year incentive to get them to participate and perhaps invite their peers.
• Those leads automatically fill out a form that will funnel them into two lists based on a “Yes” that they will attend or a “No” that they cannot attend.
• The people on the “Yes” list will start receiving an email or text nurture cadence that will keep your upcoming webinar top of mind in their inboxes and on their phones. 
• After attending the webinar, those attendees will be shipped over to the sales team to have a sales conversation about your product or service. 

As you can see, you did nothing except craft the content and inject it into the automation tool. The tool did the rest of the work until the sales call, for which people generally prefer speaking with people.   

Marketing automation best practices 

There are plenty of marketing automation tools available. The first rule of thumb is to do your research and see which one would be best for your business and which will help you reach the goals you’re trying to achieve the best. Here are a few other best practices to follow. 

Understand the journey of your buyers

For a marketing automation tool to benefit you, you must understand the journey of your target audience. 

• What do they really want? 
• What channels are they using? 
• What questions are they asking? 

If you know this information, you will find it easy to craft a workflow that works.

Ensure your content is relevant, engaging and consistent

Your audience is likely already bombarded by endless content, with most of it not being so good. How do you intend to cut through the noise? Test your content before feeding it to the automation tool. 

You want to produce what people actually want, not what you think they want. Once you have found what your audience finds relevant and engaging, deliver it to them consistently.

Avoid lengthy processes

Delight your customers but don’t bog them down with lengthy forms and overbearing popups. In each piece of content, focus on one asset, one opportunity and one call to action. The “keep it simple” rule of thumb applies here. 

Popular marketing automation vendors

Marketing automation software is very widely used by marketing automations. There are many solutions on the market.

Some specialize in B2B marketing, and as noted above, there are variations in the capabilities offered by each platform. Among the best-known and most popular are:

• Acoustic
• ActiveCampaign
• Adobe Experience Cloud
• Adobe Marketo
• HubSpot
• Mautik
• Oracle Marketing Cloud
• Salesforce Pardot

Dig deeper

A good marketing automation system keeps marketing to your target audience simple and consistent while being less time-consuming and cost-effective.  

For best results, follow the key points in this article and allow marketing automation to improve communication with your target audience. 

Here’s some further reading: 

• Find out if your organization needs a marketing automation platform to personalize the buyer experience. 
• Need help choosing a marketing automation platform? Here are 16 options that you can choose from. 
• When on a demo call with a marketing automation vendor, here are 15 questions you should ask before choosing one vendor over another. 
• The vendor marketplace is vast; here are several things you should expect from a B2B marketing automation platform. 

The post Why we care about marketing automation appeared first on MarTech.

Below, we will introduce the basic concepts around attribution modeling and ways to get the most out of it. 

Table of contents

• What is attribution modeling? 
• Why is attribution modeling so important?
• The different types of attribution models
• How to choose the right marketing attribution model
• Skepticism about the viability of attribution modeling
• Additional resources

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

What is attribution modeling?

Your prospects and potential customers can take a range of pathways to interact with your content and make their way through the buyer’s journey. These pathways are specific touchpoints throughout that journey, such as:

• Opening an email.
• Clicking on an ad.
• Commenting on a social media post.

Attribution modeling in marketing allows you to determine how beneficial each of those touchpoints is along the buyer’s journey. With it in place, you can identify which marketing channel best helps to convert a lead from a mere browser to a loyal buyer.

By assigning a particular value based on interactions with a marketing channel, marketers can decide where time, energy and money should be spent. Knowing what touchpoint actually converts a lead can make a great difference for both sales and marketing professionals.

Why is attribution modeling so important?

Attribution modeling is critically important for several reasons. We will discuss them below in the form of some questions you can ask.

What improvements can I make to the buyer’s journey? 

When attribution modeling is in play, you will start to see what works and what does not. Underperforming areas can likely be improved, and you will dig deep into the data to find out why and how to do so.

What is the real ROI from a channel? 

Understanding the parts within the buyer’s journey that push your prospects to convert can help you see the channel’s or sub-channel’s value. It will also allow you to determine whether you should spend more (or less) of your efforts and resources there.

Can I craft better content for my ideal client? 

The answer, with attribution modeling, is a resounding yes. Tailor more of your marketing campaigns to the working channel(s) and the ideal client most likely to buy from you.

The different types of attribution models

There are several different types of attribution modeling. Each model looks at the various channels you are using but may apply varying degrees of weight to them.  

Multi-touch attribution modeling takes into account each touchpoint and channel within the buyer’s journey from start to finish. It will determine which channels were the most beneficial and effective in influencing a customer’s decision to convert.

First-touch attribution modeling focuses on the first touchpoint or channel that the client interacts with within the buyer’s journey.  

Last-touch attribution modeling focuses on the very last touchpoint or channel that a prospect entered before making the decision to convert.

Time-decay attribution modeling gives equal consideration to each touchpoint and channel but gives the highest points to the touchpoint that was interacted with closest to the conversion.

Cross-channel attribution modeling is a form of multi-touch modeling that looks both at touchpoints within each channel and also at how channels work together.

Linear attribution modeling is a form of multi-touch modeling that gives equal range and weight to all channels and touchpoints throughout the full cycle of the buyer’s journey. 

These attribution models can be used in marketing campaigns based on your pre-determined goals and KPIs. The answer to what is working and what is not working may change based on the type of attribution model that you’re using. 

How to choose the right marketing attribution model 

Before settling on an attribution model, you may want to test them to see which one works best for your campaigns. There isn’t necessarily one that stands out above all others.

Consider your campaign goals and how quickly those goals were reached. This can help you determine what model might best be used.

In addition, as your marketing campaigns evolve, you may need to switch the attribution model you use. Stay agile and allow the tool you use to move flexibly with you and your team. Here are a few questions you can ask before picking an attribution model:

• How many touchpoints are within the journey for the prospect?
• What are the goals of the campaign? 
• What does the overall funnel look like? 
• What is the end result or expectation of the campaign?
• Will I be using a tool, or can Google Analytics give me what I need?

Skepticism about the viability of attribution modeling

While most marketers find attribution modeling an essential part of their toolkit, some skeptical voices argue that traditional attribution modeling cannot cope with today’s vast proliferation of channels and touchpoints and the complexity of today’s customer journey.

“At the end of the day, people have to give up the fantasy that [marketing] can ever be completely predictable,” says marketing strategist Kathleen Schaub.

The skeptics say it is not feasible to hit a certain ROI target by a specific date. Instead, the suggestion is that marketing analytics should be treated as a kind of GPS, where routes and even destinations can be optimized along the way.

Dig deeper

Want to learn more? Here’s some further reading that may be useful: 

• How can we understand and fully embrace attribution modeling? Let’s find out in, Modeled behavior: A future-proofed new measurement strategy.
• Opinions on addressing attribution in digital and physical marketing campaigns are sparking a debate among marketing OGs and professionals.
• Do you need a marketing attribution and predictive analytics tool? It could be that you do.  

The post Why we care about marketing attribution modeling appeared first on MarTech.

Below, we introduce some of the basic concepts of marketing management. 

What’s inside:

• What is marketing management and why is it important?
• What are the different types of marketing management?
• Top marketing management processes to know
• Agile marketing management team development 
• Measuring the results from marketing management
• Resources for learning more about marketing management 

What is marketing management and why is it important?

Marketing management is a process that helps you plan, develop and implement promotional strategies and campaigns with the right team members and teams. With the best people executing the right marketing plans, you can promote your company’s services and products, adjust pricing, and increase your profits while reducing costs. This process may take time, including learning brand awareness techniques, increasing conversions, and expanding your business reach. 

Marketing management focuses on the strategies you develop and deploy to better engage with and reach your target market. As you face challenges with developing your products and services, marketing management continues to move your brand forward with that strategic vision. 

What are the different types of marketing management?

Good marketing management helps your brand initiatives and marketing campaigns stay on course. With so many areas to consider with your marketing efforts, here’s a quick breakdown of some important types. 

• Brand management: You maintain and improve your brand’s reputation by building brand equity, awareness and trust.
• Product management: This aims to develop or bring a new product to the market. It focuses on the successful implementation of your product lifecycle. This is closely related to “go-to-market” strategies.
• Sales: Your sales team’s job is to sell your products or services to customers, converting qualified leads into buyers.
• Business development: This process is essential to establishing and maintaining prospect relationships. Your business development team will also focus on understanding your buyer’s persona and recognizing new growth opportunities.
• Customer marketing: One benefit is that it goes beyond simply acquiring customers. You identify and market your products to existing customers, but you also work to retain them as longtime customers. Then, you can work to develop them into advocates for your business as part of referral generation.

Clearly, some types of marketing management are more relevant to B2B marketing or high-consideration consumer purchases than to mass marketing of low-cost products. They do, however, offer a quick snapshot of the options available. Your emphasis will change based on your relationship with your customers and your type of business. 

Top marketing management processes to know

A marketing management process isn’t a one-time deal you design and never use again. Instead, it should be part of your marketing plan. The process in many cases should extend over the long term and evolve with your company’s growth and development.

A strategic marketing management process aims to accomplish the following:

• Market analysis: Conduct a market analysis to determine how well your business is positioned within a particular vertical and how your competitors are performing.
• Customer analysis: Analyzing customer data involves understanding the composition of your market, its needs, and its satisfaction levels.  
• Product development: This refers to the entire process of conceiving, developing, and launching a product on the market.
• Strategy and goal development: This step involves developing your company’s specific objectives. 
• Monitoring and reporting: With monitoring, you check the status of your marketing management process. Then, with reporting, you review and analyze the outcomes. 

As you fully embrace the marketing management processes, you’ll take risks and push your company and your teams to perform better. All the while, you’re monitoring and reporting as you further optimize your operations. 

Agile marketing management team development 

Agile marketing is an approach which takes its cue from agile software development. It emphasizes teamwork rather than top-down direction, and the achievement of specific short-term objectives in a series of “sprints.”

One key to making agile marketing management work is putting the right team members in the correct positions. In addition, you must have team members willing to adapt to the new approach. Your agile marketing team has a flat structure where neither silos nor hierarchies exist. You will encourage your team to work collaboratively and cross-functionally on projects. 

To prepare a team for agile marketing, follow three key steps: 

• Establish what an agile team structure looks like for your company.
• Put processes and platforms in place for agile marketing management.
• Train team members on the agile way.

Building agility into your marketing is a simple way of helping your team and/or department respond to changes in a fluid manner.

Dig deeper: Learn about the Agile Marketing Navigator

Measuring the results from marketing management

Marketing management is likely to have the key objective of reaching your audiences and converting them at the lowest cost. You’ll use benchmarks, metrics, and key performance indicators (KPIs) to determine your overall results. Here’s a quick overview of that process: 

• Define how you will measure success as part of your marketing campaign.
• Determine your marketing channels.
• Calculate your KPIs by determining the cost of each marketing channel.
• Assess your revenue impact by measuring the ongoing (and ultimately lifetime) value of your customers. 

Resources for learning more about marketing management 

Marketing management sounds easy to understand, and the initial concept is simple. What’s more complex is how you take these relatively basic ideas and use them to manage the complexities of marketing in alignment with sales, product development, and customer service.

Despite the challenges, marketing management represents the opportunity to improve your sales and customer relationship management continuously. Your business can tap into and evolve with the channels and technologies to meet current and future needs.  

Here’s some further reading:

• Here’s an overview of the field from Western Governors University.
• Project management software vendor Wrike takes a deep dive into the concepts of marketing management.
• Here’s another deep dive from customer experience management platform Sprinklr.
• A related topic is the kinds of work management software available to support marketing management. You can download our “Enterprise Work Management Platforms: A Marketer’s Guide” here.

The post Why we care about marketing management appeared first on MarTech.

It’s not a nice thing to have, it’s a necessity. Many studies have shown that more diverse organizations out-perform less diverse ones. 

Having a culture of diversity and inclusion is an outcome of policies and procedures that empower, encourage and provide support to members of groups who have received little to none of that before. It focuses on outcomes, not intent. In this situation, actions must come before words. 

Marketing is all about trust. In fact, 46% of customers will pay more for products and services from brands they trust, according to a Salsify survey. With such a focus on trust-building, you also must represent diversity in your ads and promotions. Why? Nearly 60% of customers will trust you more if you use inclusive ads, according to a Facebook advertising study.

However, it’s essential to note that just adding people of different ethnic backgrounds to your content will not accomplish this. The “faces and festivals” approach, where marketing includes different faces and makes a big deal of particular holidays (Juneteenth, Cinco de Mayo, Ramadan, Pride, etc.) is a recipe for disaster. It all but guarantees gaffes that will cause problems with the audience being targeted. Avoiding that requires having a diverse team.

Consumers want advertisements and promotions that represent them and their needs and interests. They don’t just take that at face value. They look for proof that representation is authentic and get angry if they believe it isn’t.

This is an introduction to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) for marketing organizations. It explains basic concepts and suggests steps you can take.

What are diversity, equity and inclusion

Diversity in marketing content and in the workplace are directly related, but take different forms. In content, it means portraying people of different ages, abilities, ethnicities, genders, sexuality identities, religions and other demographic characteristics. In the organization, it is actively seeking out and recruiting people from marginalized communities. It is creating a team that reflects both the society at large and the audiences you want to reach. 

Inclusion means policies and behaviors that ensure people from marginalized groups are heard and they and their contributions are given the consideration and respect they have usually been denied. Just having them on the staff isn’t enough.

Equity means giving these people the support they need — training, mentorship, etc. — to advance in the organization. It requires understanding why the organization has failed to do this in the past and making sure it doesn’t do it again.

Benefits of diversity and inclusion in marketing

Increased audience engagement and trust

• Nearly two-thirds (60%) of consumers find the topic of diversity and inclusion to be important, according to Quantilope. This is highest among parents with children 2-12 (78%), African-Americans (80%) and younger generations (76% of Gen Z and 72% of millennials compared to just 46% of boomers). 
• Some 62% of people said that their perception of the brand’s service and products was influenced by their diversity, according to an Adobe survey. Lack of diversity will cost you sales: 53% of African-Americans, 40% of Hispanics and 58% of LGBTQ+ stopped using a brand because of representation issues. 
• 59% of people say they are more loyal to brands that stand for diversity and inclusion in online advertising, according to Facebook Advertising. 

Better revenue

• Companies with higher than average employee diversity have higher innovation revenues, according to a Harvard Business Review study. 
• The top 100 Fortune 500 companies have more diverse boards than the other 400 companies on the list.
• Ethnically diverse companies are 35% more likely to yield higher revenue, while gender diverse companies are 15% more likely to yield higher revenue, according to a McKinsey study. 
• High growth brands (annual revenue increase of at least 10%) are 1.9x more likely to have diversity-and-inclusion related talent objectives than negative growth brands, according to Deloitte.

Attracting new customers

• 64% consumers are more likely to consider, or even purchase, a product after seeing an ad that they considered to be diverse or inclusive, according to a Google study. This percentage is higher among specific consumer groups including Hispanic (85%), Black (79%), Asian/Pacific Islander (79%), LGBTQ (85%), millennial (77%) and teen (76%) consumers. 
• In more than 90% of the simulations run by Facebook, diverse representation was the best strategy for ad recall lift, according to Facebook Advertising.
• Some 70% of younger millennials are more likely to choose one brand over another if that brand demonstrates inclusion and diversity in terms of its promotions and offers, 66% in terms of their in-store experience. and 68% in their product range. According to the Accenture Holiday Shopping survey.

 Employee acquisition and retention

• Some 57% of employees and 67% of job seekers consider diversity an important element of their workplace, according to Glassdoor.
• When employees perceive their organization as committed to diversity and inclusion and they actually feel included, they are 80% more likely to rank their employer as high performing, according to Deloitte.

Steps you can take 

Changing an organization is difficult. Even more so when it comes to diversity, inclusion and equity. A lot of people feel threatened by the idea of diversity and inclusion, let alone its implementation. They may seek to sabotage efforts around this. They may say they are for it while fighting against it. Avoid arguments involving morality and beliefs. Stick to the business case and arm yourself with facts. You are fighting for both your company and your community. 

Here are some steps you can take.

Analyze the situation. Hire people/consultants from marginalized groups to help. They can see better than you can what you are doing right and wrong. You almost certainly do not see all the challenges and obstacles that people different from you face every day.

Develop policies and procedures. Embedding DEI principles within the organization will build trust with employees from groups that have heard a lot of promises and seen few actions.

Listen more than you talk. Pay attention to who isn’t speaking much (or at all) at meetings. Encourage them by calling out their contributions and successes. Tell them one-on-one that you’d like to hear more from them. In meetings be aware of people interrupting or talking over them or doing other things that push them into the background. That is when you must speak up.

Educate yourself and your team. Education and training are vital to diversity and inclusion efforts, but it’s not a one-and-done situation. These efforts must be ongoing in order to educate new employees and reinforce these principals across the organization.

Test and measure. One of the truths of business is we measure the things that matter. Develop metrics and pay attention to them. Test to see if you’re getting the outcomes you want. If not, then try new policies and metrics.

Read next

• The business imperative behind inclusion and diversity: How to manage, enrich and diversify your talent portfolio.
• New solutions support workplace diversity and inclusion: Knockri is boosting racial and gender diversity in recruitment. KeepWOL is gamifying DEI training.
• How inclusion can lead to diversity in marketing and communications: Inclusion and diversity consultant Dr. Lauren Tucker explains why inclusion comes first.
• Diversity and inclusion are good business: Diversity and inclusion improve stock and revenue performance, hiring and retention and customer acquisition and loyalty.
• Actionable ways to drive diversity in your marketing organization: How to stop paying lip service to diversity and create meaningful change in the marketing and advertising industry.

The post What are diversity, equity and inclusion, and why do marketers need them? appeared first on MarTech.

Combined with connected TV, the world of advertising now has a range of high-quality, affordable options to reach audiences with targeted messaging.

While there’s more flexibility and accessibility now, you also face challenges as you seek to optimize when, where, and how you reach your audiences. It’s important to tap into artificial intelligence in marketing so you can achieve the success you need.

In this piece, we’ll dive into connected TV and OTT advertising. We’ll cover:

• What Is connected TV?
• What Is OTT advertising?
• Differences between CTV and OTT advertising.
• Benefits of advertising with OTT and CTV.
• Challenges of advertising with OTT and CTV.
• OTT vs. CTV reporting: How to measure advertising campaign effectiveness.
• Which is better for advertising: OTT or CTV?
• What is the future of OTT and CTV?
• Learn more about OTT and CTV.

Estimated reading time: 0 minutes

What Is connected TV?

Connected TV (or CTV) falls into a subset of over-the-top (OTT) outlets. They’re the smart television sets, which allow you to connect to the internet via Roku, Fire TV, Apple TV, or gaming consoles.

What Is OTT advertising?

OTT (over-the-top) allows you to stream digital content directly from the internet via platforms like Hulu, Peacock, Philo, Prime Video, Sling TV, and TubiTV. You can stream OTT content on many connected devices, including tablets, phones, and laptops.

Differences between CTV and OTT advertising

At the most basic level, connected TV and OTT advertising allow you to better fulfill the increase in demand from your audience while letting you tap into new platforms and strategically distribute your content.

• Connected TV just acts as a conduit for OTT, so you can connect your smart TV or other devices to the internet.
• OTT Advertising passes through broadcast, cable, or satellite TV providers, so you can stream the digital content on mobile devices, PCs, or TVs.

While the methods for distribution may vary, connected TV and OTT are both solutions that address consumer dissatisfaction with the high cost and lack of options available from traditional TV. OTT advertising involves pre-roll, mobile, and web inventory, which is cheaper. Connected TV advertising is a more expensive product because you’re paying for a premium experience.

Benefits of advertising with OTT and CTV

There’s much more to the migration of consumers from traditional TV to connected TV and OTT though. CTV and OTT offer a range of benefits, which were not available at all with traditional TV or were not possible to the same extent. So, why do advertisers love OTT and CTV?

High Completion Rates

With OTT and CTV, your audience is more likely to watch the streaming ads because they’re not able to skip them. This trend is important since traditional TV options usually offer DVR services, which allow your audience to fast-forward through or skip advertisements altogether.

Targeting

As OTT and CTV advertising content evolves, you can more easily segment your audience and target different versions of your ads to various demographics. With that level of high-tech targeting, you can more easily engage with your audience and inspire them to act.

Ask them to purchase, sign-up, or even visit your store. If the ads aren’t working, it’s also a simple matter of adjusting your messaging and optimizing your targeting to achieve the return on investment (ROI) you need.

Challenges of advertising with OTT and CTV

While you’ve probably become familiar with how OTT and CTV advertising work by watching them yourself, the strategy may not be as easy as it sounds. To be successful, you must learn the process and optimize your placements. Here are just a few of the challenges you’ll face.

Analyzing your metrics

Understanding your analytics and fine-tuning your strategic decisions is daunting. It’s a learning curve that many advertisers are just not willing to invest time and money into learning and doing well.

Finding the right advertising strategy

You need to deliver the right messaging to your target audience at the best time. To achieve that sweet spot, look at your metrics to focus on the best way to advertise your brand’s products and services.

OTT vs. CTV reporting: How to measure advertising campaign effectiveness

There’s never a single metric you should use to determine the success of your advertising campaigns on OTT or CTV platforms. So, let’s look at which factors you’ll analyze to strategize and determine the best placement options for our audiences.

Reach

Unique users who see your advertisement are your reach. You use this metric to determine where your budget is going.

Rate of completion

Your completion rate is the number of times your audience actually sees your ad all the way through. If you have a high rate of completion, you’re sending a message that probably resonates with your audience. They’re engaged with your messaging.

Viewability

This metric helps you determine whether your audience can see your ad and what their overall experience is. You’re looking at how long they watched your advertisement and the screen size to determine how captivating your campaign was for your audience.

Attribution tracking

You should track the action that your audience takes when they view your ad. Do they download your application, view your website, or visit your store? Those simple actions are essential to the success of your marketing AI campaigns.

CPCV (cost per completed view)

You should measure the cost per completed view to better determine the success of your advertising campaign.

Which is better for advertising: OTT or CTV?

Over-the-top (OTT) and connected TV (CTV) offer different experiences for advertisers, which may make you select one over the other. You might use OTT for a political ad campaign because you’d likely reach a larger audience with marketing AI. With OTT advertising, your audience can also click on the ad, which can be an effective way to drive traffic to your website.

With CTV advertising, you might invite your audience to stop by your store, attend an event, or take some other action that doesn’t require direct interaction with the screen. You pay a premium price for connected TV ad campaigns, so you should check to see where your ads are running.

What Is the future of OTT and CTV?

Whether you’ve been using AI marketing for years or you just started, you’ll continue to see changes in the industry that will affect OTT and CTV advertising. Media platforms and digital technologies are rapidly changing to better address the demands of your savvier audience.

82% of U.S. households with a TV have at least one internet-connected device or platform, so brands would be wise to gravitate toward OTT and CTV advertising. AI in marketing supports your efforts in this area, as you can more easily strategize and develop a plan for implementing an approach to reach your targeted audience.

Learn more about OTT and CTV

Even if OTT advertising and CTV advertising are relatively new concepts to you and your marketing team, you can use the power of AI marketing to better understand how these placement options can work for your brand.

Here are some helpful OTT and CTV resources:

• 2022 Predictions: CTV and cross-channel advertising: What marketers in the new year are looking to gain from increased programmatic investments.
• How to use QR codes to leverage CTV and cross-channel campaigns: Marketers are using QR codes to make CTV campaigns actionable and to engage consumers on all devices.
• Social media marketers need fresh tactics for posting on CTV apps: With Facebook Watch, Tik Tok TV and other connected TV apps, marketers have to adjust their strategies to best leverage this new medium.
• Increasing number of services makes it harder for viewers to find the content they want: Some 46% of US viewers say the number of video streaming services makes it tougher to find the shows they’re interested in, according to a Nielsen report. For marketers, this is a loss of opportunity as audiences are spread ever thinner, while finding it harder to identify content they want to engage with.

The post Why we care about connected TV and OTT advertising appeared first on MarTech.

Artificial intelligence (AI) in marketing leverages machine learning to make automated decisions. With AI, brands can boost the ROI of marketing campaigns through predictive modeling, advanced segmentation, and personalization.

In this piece, we will dive deep into the value of AI technologies in marketing. We’ll cover:

• Why AI marketing matters.
• Benefits of artificial intelligence in B2B marketing.
• Components of artificial intelligence.
• Examples of artificial intelligence in marketing.
• Frequently asked questions about AI marketing.
• How artificial intelligence is changing the marketing landscape.
• Learn more about AI marketing.

Estimated reading time: 8 minutes

Why AI marketing matters

AI has transformed digital marketing and reduced the risk of human error while streamlining marketing campaigns. To truly connect with customers, you’ll still need the human touch — especially concerning compassion, empathy, and storytelling. However, when it comes to certain aspects of marketing, like predictive analytics and digital advertising, AI is capable of incredible things. For example, when your goal is to understand your customers’ needs and match them to appropriate products or services, this is where AI shines.

A 2020 McKinsey survey found that those working in marketing and sales had the third-highest rate of AI adoption. What’s more, the survey reported that “A small contingent of respondents coming from a variety of industries attribute 20 percent or more of their organizations’ earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) to AI.”

Since then, AI use in marketing has continued to grow. As rates of use increase, if you don’t consider implementing these technologies, your brand risks being left behind. Your competitors will adopt AI strategies to improve their business outcomes, allowing them to increase sales, boost customer retention, and more effectively launch new products.

Know how your customers interact with your advertising today and into the future. Explore the platforms essential to predictive analytics and marketing attribution in the latest edition of this MarTech Intelligence Report.

Click here to download!

Benefits of artificial intelligence in B2B marketing

There are plenty of artificial intelligence marketing tools designed specifically for business sales, allowing B2B vendors to leverage the power of personalization, machine learning, and more. From AI-powered workflows to automated next best action features, AI is helping companies solve challenges specific to B2B.

Here are some of the benefits of artificial intelligence in B2B marketing.

Campaign ROI. With the help of AI technology, B2B marketers can better predict the performance of data and campaigns. They can then make suggestions for optimizing those campaigns to reach the maximum ROI. When leveraged effectively, marketers can use AI to transform their marketing campaigns, extracting the most valuable insights to act on them in real-time — for example, analyzing the most effective ad placements to increase engagement.

Better informed decisions. Data integration automation replaces manual processing to enable faster, real-time decision-making. The goal is to gain promptly actionable customer insights. For example, with the help of predictive analytics, you can access buying patterns that help forecast purchasing decisions. Since these buying patterns are often more complex to spot in a B2B model than in a B2C model, the help of AI can be a game-changer.

Marketing metrics. The ability to track the effectiveness of campaigns can significantly affect your marketing ROI. Artificial intelligence can help monitor the outcomes of countless customer touchpoints, thus supporting campaign optimization.

Better data management. AI marketing tools also help to significantly reduce the risk of improper data interpretation, support optimal data integration, and eliminate data silos. An AI marketing tool is software that leverages AI technology to automate decisions based on collected data.

Components of artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence encompasses various features and capabilities that can scale your marketing programs. Here are some of the main components.

Machine learning. Unlike task automation, which is fairly limited, machine learning relies on algorithms trained to use large quantities of data to make complex predictions and decisions. Machine learning models can decipher text, recognize images, perform audience segmentation, and even anticipate how customers are likely to respond to various initiatives. More importantly, as the name implies, it can correct and improve itself without supervision (although some human supervision is often involved).

AI-powered platforms. Many marketing platforms today have AI “baked in,” using it to analyze and drive insights across large pools of data. Most of the large marketing suites have AI components providing cross-platform support for the solutions the suites offer. Examples are Salesforce’s Einstein and Adobe’s Sensei.

Platforms to perform specific kinds of work are also available, for example, AI-powered content creation platforms. Some solutions offer draft content for emails or specific social media platforms, such as Twitter. Other solutions optimize content for SEO.

Big data and analytics. Collecting data is one thing — effectively analyzing it is another. AI presents one solution to the challenge of analyzing and interpreting data at a scale beyond the reach of human beings. Using AI in B2B marketing can efficiently analyze immense amounts of data, link that data, recognize patterns, and drive predictions. The more data AI is given, the better it can learn and improve., but there is still a lack of emotional intelligence. For this reason, as well as the need for human supervision (e.g., data stewardship, the maintenance of data catalogs, etc.), people continue to play a vital role in data management and analytics.

Examples of artificial intelligence in marketing

Many companies across all industries are implementing unique AI marketing strategies. Here are some common examples.

AI chatbots. STCHealth uses intelligent chatbots to answer vaccine-related questions and help people access their immunization records. Botco.ai, an automated, AI-powered conversational marketing platform, made the seemingly impossible possible. Thanks to this automated platform, the company saved approximately 52,000 human hours across two million chatbot interactions.

Visual intelligence. The eBike manufacturer Serial 1 used Vizit, a visual intelligence platform that uses machine learning and AI to help the company determine what images resonate most with consumers. As a result, Serial 1 was about to optimize digital assets and boost website conversions by 98%. This use case is a prime example of how AI marketing leads to better decision-making.

AI platforms for SMBs. Mailchimp uses a tool called Smart Platform, bringing AI to the SMB market. Some of the latest tools allow SMBs to automate content creation, gain access to dynamic recommendations and leverage a new customer journey builder.

Frequently asked questions about AI marketing

While AI technologies have been around for decades, many brands still wonder how to apply them to their marketing processes. Here are some of the most common questions people ask.

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How artificial intelligence is changing the marketing landscape

Companies can accomplish much by implementing artificial intelligence in marketing campaigns, strategies, and tools.

Whether your goal is to study consumer behavior on your website or develop tailored advertising campaigns, AI can play a pivotal role. Many digital marketing strategies can benefit significantly from these technologies, ranging from social media to SEO.

Some of the ways that AI continues to change the marketing landscape include:

• Customer acquisition and the need for personalized marketing: The digital world is fueled by data now more than ever, especially as the number of people online continues to abound with growth.
• Customer service through chatbots: Customers want their needs to be taken care of immediately, and the use of AI to power chatbots has enabled some businesses to handle customer inquiries more effectively while reducing the role of human agents.
• Advertising campaigns: Campaigns can now be more precisely optimized and targeted.

As AI continues to evolve, there are disruptions in day-to-day marketing operations. However, it’s likely that AI technology will continue to enable sophisticated marketing strategies for years to come.

Learn more about AI marketing

Want to learn more about implementing successful machine learning and AI? We recommend the following resources:

• AI-driven personalized content grows in importance for marketers: A report from Persado suggests that AI will soon power personalized content for many organizations.
• Using AI-powered predictive analytics to time your next move: Even in uncertain times, AI-driven predictive analytics can help marketers see what opportunities are coming down the pike.
• What is call analytics software and how is AI giving marketers more power to measure inbound call data? The ability to track calls is a core use case of call analytics technology. However, advances in machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) are driving more sophisticated applications.
• Making AI work for workflow management: AI-powered collaborative work management enables marketing teams to keep up with competition and WFH challenges.

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