Marketing is evolving in many exciting ways. It’s challenging to navigate the changing implications of digital and data, but these changes also have ushered in a variety of strategic and tactical measures to improve efficiency.
To mark the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday this week, we’ve revisited previous posts to pay homage to the tools that keep us marketers aligned, integrated, and centered on our customers.
Here’s our ‘Ode to Integrated Marketing’, a cornucopia of 10 marketing tools we’re thankful for:
1. Customer Community Networks- Forums that connect you to your core audiences are multi-faceted awesome. Thanks to our Topliners community, we’re able to keep in close touch with our customers, engage in conversations that help us understand their needs, as well as how we can enhance what we do to serve them better.
2. Collaborative environments- Truly integrated marketing hinges on the ability to stay aligned with our teams, sync up efforts, and share best practices to keep the right processes in motion. So we salute tools like instant messenger/chat, webinar hosting platforms, and live video tools that enable us to connect with customers, and the key players to keep business in motion across the globe.
3. Visual creation tools- Content increasingly drives our marketing communications, so tools that allow us to build out infographics for presentations help deliver a better demo experience, and can serve other educational purposes to better engage with our audiences.
4. Recording applications- The massive outpouring of media impressions, social postings, phone calls, emails, chats, and links we consume every day can be overwhelming. There is so much important information to sift through, and apps that help record audio, video, and/or notes enable us to store and manage the consumption and delivery of content.
5. Data applications- Smart, helpful marketing starts with the right data set, properly organized and prioritized for the marketer. Earlier this year we announced our acquisition of BlueKai to help our customers build the richest user profiles combining information from first party and third party sources. Getting the message right across advertising, social, and mobile channels is a communication imperative.
6. GPS Enabled devices- Once relegated to the phantom ‘wish list’ for marketers, it’s great to now have the opportunity to know what’s up, who’s nearby, and how you can capitalize on the location of your audiences to deliver value.
7. Keyword Management- SEO and PPC strategies are critical to smart online marketing. Google’s Keyword Planner enables marketers to examine keywords for both SEO and PPC efforts to develop the appropriate strategies.
8. Content management systems- This past year our organization has been focused on integrating content marketing management into our product ecosystem since the acquisition of Compendium. CMS platforms support marketers’ ability to collaboratively manage content being shared across various channels, and organize performance data for more efficient analysis.
9. Design software- Because content is so important, the creative team/agency also has become an integral part of the marketing team. Whether you’re outsourcing your content creation, making the magic happen in-house, and/or a hybrid of both, design software is a core component in delivering engaging marketing content.
10. The Cloud- Big things are happening thanks to cloud-based technologies. The Cloud enables us to build a customer-obsessed marketing culture by truly knowing the customer, deploying always-on multichannel marketing, and enabling data driven accountability.
Most of all, we’re thankful for the vibrant community of modern marketers who we learn from every day!
Tell us what you’re most thankful for in the comments!
The New York Times created an interactive,