6 YouTube Tips to Improve Your Search Rank

 

Are your YouTube views falling?

Do you need to rank higher in YouTube search results?

Understanding how you can take advantage of YouTube’s algorithm will help your channel and videos be seen by more people.

In this article you’ll discover how to make your video rank higher in YouTube search results.

 

Discover six tips to improve your YouTube search rank.

#1: Align Content Development With Viewer Searches

To get a leg up on your YouTube competition (which may be targeting irrelevant topics or subjects), find the exact words and phrases people use to search for content like yours on YouTube.

You can use both free tools (like Keyword Tool and YouTube Trends) and paid tools (VideoCents and vidIQ, for example), to get insights into what people are searching for on YouTube.

The paid tools give a bit more data, but their true value comes from providing a sense of how hard it is to rank for specific terms. Here’s an example of some inline keyword insights on the word ‘vine’ from VidIQ.

 

Use tools like vidIQ to get keyword insights.

 

You’re looking to find the sweet spot, where a keyword is getting a good number of searches but isn‘t overly competitive. What constitutes a good number of searches will vary by industry or market.

After you’ve identified the best keywords, you can use them when creating and publishing your content.

Create Videos People Search For

Hank Green’s SciShow searched for the most asked questions about science and created an entire series of videos to answer them. This tactic earned the channel millions of views across the series.

 

Target the keywords people are searching for on YouTube.

 

Optimize Your Video for How Viewers Search

For all its power, YouTube still finds it difficult to read video content, so you need to tell the platform exactly what your video is about. You do this through the video‘s meta data.

If you use your keywords strategically (without spamming), you’ll be much more likely to rank for your chosen keywords, as YouTube knows that your video is related to these terms. Include your keywords in the video title (as close to the start as possible), the description, tags and transcript file (the script should contain targeted keywords).

Check out this example, which ranks #2 for the search term “video marketing.” The keyword is visible in the title and description.

 

Include keywords in your title and description.

 

You’ll also find the keyword in the tags.

Use keywords as tags.

 

It’s even included in the subtitles.

Add keywords to subtitles.

With strategic keyword optimization like this, it’s no surprise that this video ranks so high for such a competitive keyword.

#2: Maximize Video Watch Time

Watch time is YouTube’s most important ranking factor. It’s a simple fact: If you don’t have strong watch times, your videos will be demoted in search. Remember that it‘s all about what percentage of the video is watched, not just total minutes (though it’s best to increase both).

Michael Stevens of Vsauce is successful at getting his YouTube audience to stick around. Even though his videos are over 10 minutes long, they routinely log hundreds of thousands of views.

 

 

He gets straight to the point in answering the title question, and uses his personality and intelligence to pique people’s curiosity again, steering the conversation to a different but related topic. Take a cue from Michael and consider removing long intros and outros.

Get people to watch more of your video, and YouTube knows that you’re providing value to those viewers. YouTube will reward you by suggesting the video to more people and ranking the video higher in search.

#3: Drive Longer Channel Sessions

This may seem like a no-brainer, but try to get people to watch more than just one of your videos. All channels want this of course, but not all of them actively encourage viewers to watch more videos. This tactic has more benefits than meet the eye.

If your channel consistently starts people off on long YouTube sessions (even if they go off and watch videos on other channels), your channel will be rewarded by YouTube’s algorithm, and your videos will be more likely to rank higher in search.

A good way to encourage viewers to watch more video is to use clickable thumbnails (called end cards) to drive multiple video views in one sessions.

 

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Epic Rap Battles uses this tactic to earn great SEO benefits. The only action they want viewers to take is to watch more videos.

#4: Keep Your Content Consistent

YouTube (like its big brother Google) loves authority, and if you regularly upload videos on the same topic for a number of years, you’re much more likely to rank well for related search terms than the new kid on the block.

Unbox Therapy has been uploading “unboxing” and tech review videos multiple times a week for almost five years. Not only have they earned over 3 million subscribers to their channel, they rank second for a search of Apple’s latest gadget.

 

Improve your ranking by consistently uploading videos in your niche.

 

I always advocate tweaking styles and formats, but when it comes to topics, it’s best to choose as narrow a niche as possible and stick to it. That way YouTube recognizes you as a trusted source in that area and will favor you in rankings. If you make your content too diverse, you’re more likely to be overlooked by the algorithm. Remember that on YouTube, niche is king.

#5: Encourage Off-Platform Embeds

As previously mentioned, YouTube is hot on authority. This is also reflected in the weight they give to off-platform links and embeds. If your videos are featured and getting linked to from high-quality places on the web, YouTube thinks you must be doing something right and will give you a boost in the rankings.

A good example of this is BuzzFeed’s videos. Their videos are embedded not only on their own hugely popular website and social profiles, but also on popular and relevant entertainment blogs.

 

Reach out to relevant sites to promote your content.

 

This is doubly awesome, as it’s a sustainable and potentially huge source of views.

Think about how you can promote your content on external sites relevant to your market. Do active outreach to those sites so you’re being linked to and embedded instead of your competitors.

#6: Cultivate Audience Engagement

Comments, likes and shares are great for social proof, and comments are especially good for getting feedback and insight from your audience. But mixing up your calls to action to encourage engagement (rather than just subscription) has another benefit, too: a healthy boost in the search algorithm.

Again it all comes down to providing value. If people are giving your videos a thumbs up, sharing them with friends and talking about you, these are all positive signals to YouTube that the channel was right in sending searchers your way.

There’s no better example of this heightened engagement than the popular Soccer channel Copa90. They have a weekly show based on their viewers’ comments, so it’s little surprise that their engagement and rankings are off the charts.

 

Engaging with your audience is one way to boost your ranking.

 

You don’t have to go to these extremes, but you should mix up your calls to action and pose questions to get people talking in the comments. When people leave a comment, why not give them a shout-out to encourage interactivity?

Here’s a brilliant example from Screen Junkies, which uses fan comments in their videos.

 

Give your viewers an occasional shout-out.

 

The flipside of this is a comments section full of tumbleweeds, no shares (which also means fewer views) and no interaction, all of which are red flags to viewers and YouTube.

 

Bonus Tips

Here are a few other ways to boost your ranking:

• Upload in HD. There are also 4K, 360 and even VR upload options.
• Add closed–caption files. With closed-caption files, your scripts can be read and indexed by YouTube and Google. If you have the resources, translate your caption files into a language spoken in a secondary market or a market you’re trying to break into.

YouTube superstar Tyler Oakley called on his worldwide audience to translate his closed captions into multiple languages (62 and counting!). His video has been indexed and ranks higher in non–English-speaking countries.

• Include links in your descriptions. Like Google, YouTube likes when you link to other relevant websites (and videos).
• Choose a relevant video category. If your video can easily be placed in more than one category, choose the one that has the least competition.

Conclusion

As with any platform you publish on, you’ll only get out of YouTube what you put into it. The steps above might seem like a lot of work, but the results make it a sound investment of your time.

Go to your YouTube Analytics now and see how many views you‘re currently getting from search. You can do this by clicking Creator Studio > Analytics > Traffic Sources and look for the stats for YouTube Search.

Check out your YouTube stats.

Make a note of your average monthly views from search and then revisit this metric once you‘ve implemented the tips above.

Even if you don’t have time to implement all of these suggestions, putting just a few into practice should result in an uptick in views. Remember, too, that this process isn’t only for new videos. The beauty of YouTube is that it allows you to revisit and optimize old videos so you can get those working harder for you, too.

 

http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/6-youtube-tips-to-improve-your-search-rank/?awt_l=Kvf6.&awt_m=3cW7sod1Sgr.ILT&utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=NewsletterIssue&utm_campaign=New

What is Split-Path Testing (and When Should You Use It)?

 

One of the testing strategies is experimenting with the path people take towards their final conversion/purchase. This is referred to as a split-path test or alternative path test.

This could give you the needed lift when nothing seems to move the needle anymore.

What Is a Split-Path Test?

A split-path test is defined as “a type of A/B/n test where, instead of just altering a single page, you change multiple sequential pages.”

Split-path testing sends users down a different path instead of showing different page variations. It includes things like multi-step checkout paths, multi-page forms, and product recommendation wizards. As Chris Goward explained in You Should Test That!:

 

Chris Goward:

“Alternative path testing allows you to maintain consistency of design elements throughout the path and change the number or sequence of steps. In a simple example, if you were to test a checkout path and wanted to test the button color in the car, you would change the buttons on all pages in the checkout to match. Alternatively, testing individual pages would produce inconsistency throughout the path that could decrease sales and outweigh any improvement from the change.”

While split-path testing isn’t talked about as often as your regular A/B/n tests about button colors, it isn’t a new concept. Bryan Eisenberg and John Quarto von Tivadar wrote about this a while ago in Always Be Testing:

“This is different in that you’re testing the performance of grouped pages against other grouped pages. For example, you could test a checkout process by splitting it into two variations, one with four steps (or pages) and another with only three steps.”

How User Flow Affects Conversions

A major factor affecting your conversions is user flow. It’s the path a user follows through your website interface to complete a task (make a reservation, purchase a product, subscribe to something). It’s also called user journey or conversion path.

Non-linear checkout flow (Image Source)

Here’s an example of a typical conversion path you might have:

Facebook update –> Landing page –> Shopping cart sequence –> Payment funnel –> Pre-bill order confirmation page –> Billing page –> Confirmation page

Split-path testing is one way of optimizing your conversion path. As for why it’s important to do so, here’s how HubSpot explains it:

Just as it’s vital to make sure you’re maximizing the output of each individual page on your website, it’s incredibly important to understand how all of your pages work together. Which pages of your website make you the most money? Which ones generate the most leads? Which ones are preventing your prospects from advancing through your sales funnel? On a relay team, you can put together the greatest four runners in the world. But if they drop the baton at every handoff, you’ll never finish a race. Similarly, if a reader moves from one page to the next and gets confused, the only button they are likely to click is “back”.

Though Andrew Anderson, Head of Optimization at Malwarebytes, explains that assumptions about the drop-off between the user flow can limit the scope of your testing program:

Andrew Anderson:

“Conversely there are times where pages not matching are beneficial. It can be a huge benefit and also a massive risk to jump directly into assuming a full flow. It doesn’t have to at the start of the journey, you can test individual components and then view the impact of the system as a whole by doing a full path test. There are times that the “hand off” can be losing efficiency, but assuming so can be extremely impact limiting. Testing individual components and the whole allows you to see how much those assumptions about consistency really matter.”

Testing alternative conversion paths can open up new opportunities to boost conversions that cannot be obtained by simply changing page elements.

How Split-Path Testing Can Optimize Conversion Paths

Setting up split-path tests is similar to your regular old A/B/n tests in that you’re tracking the same goal. Each group of pages is treated as variation to be tested against the control, and each variation has the same conversion goal page – probably the order confirmation or thank you page.

You need to analyze the data the same way as a regular A/B test, with the same statistical rigor.

In addition, be careful with selection bias in split-path testing. As Andrew Anderson explains, many people think that you should only split-path test with new users, which creates a biased population:

 

Andrew Anderson:

“There is an extremely naive view that you should only test split paths on new users only as the complete change is supposed to be a major problem for existing users. This however assumes that those existing users are not people you care about or hope to make money from in the future, because eliminating them creates an extremely biased population and can invalidate your results.”

Remember also that site navigation isn’t usually linear. That means that gravity doesn’t pull visitors very cleanly down your funnel, no matter how much you wish that were the case. Linear assumptions of data is common, and it’s a bias that can be detrimental to any of your optimization efforts.. As Eisenberg and Quarto-vonTivadar explained:

“Although this can be an easy way to test strongly linear scenarios, you should keep in mind that few visitors navigate your site in a truly linear fashion (even though you might wish they did for analytics-tracking purposes!). Persuasion instead tends to occur along nonlinear paths, although that is a subject far beyond the scope of this book. Further, the longer the “click distance” between testing page and conversion page, the greater the likelihood that some visitors will wander off to other portions of your site, which Website Optimizer may record as a failed conversion for testing purposes, even though such a result doesn’t reveal visitor intent.”

For that reason, split-path tests are most appropriate on sections of your site that do follow a linear path, like your checkout flow and registration forms.

Image Source

Split-Path Testing is An Innovative Test

Split-path testing is considered an ‘innovative test’ – as opposed to an incremental test, split-path testing offers offers the opportunity for much greater lifts. That said, it’s riskier as well for multiple reasons.

As Andrew Anderson mentioned, “Perception is not always reality however as you may just be exponentially adding bias on top of bias and allowing yourself to take more time and opening yourself up to even more local maxima.”

If you’ve hit a glass ceiling (i.e. a local maximum) and need to do something innovative and creative to bust out of it, split-path testing is a possible but highly cost inefficient solution.

Let’s Talk About The Local Maximum

What is the local maximum?

It’s when, after a progressive period of A/B/n testing, your gains start to slow down. You’re experiencing diminishing returns even though you’re testing a bunch of iterations. It’s frustrating, but it happens to everyone.

What can you do about it?

There are many solutions, but most of them center on shifting your paradigm and getting a bit creative. In other words, swinging for the fences with some innovative tests, trying to change customer behavior/experience to increase conversions.

Though, as Andrew Anderson explains, split-path testing is not a silver bullet solution to the local maximum problem:

 

Andrew Anderson:

“This is almost always a sign of poor test discipline and a lack of creativity, and sometimes thinking about a different problem, the entire path, helps give temporary relief to that problem. That being said it is never a full solution to the problems of bias and storytelling.”

Split-Path Testing Subscription Pathways

Marketing Experiments wrote about a few tests they ran optimizing the subscription funnel of some large publications. They performed split-path testing to simplify the funnels. Here’s what the first test looked like:

Image Source

In this case, reducing the steps from 9 to 3 increased conversion rates by about 300%. As they wrote, “Reducing the number of steps is probably the single most-significant improvement you can make to your subscription path.“

In their second example, they employed a similar strategy: reduce steps to subscription. This is the flow that they started with (resulting in zero registrations in this case):

Image Source

They decided to chop a few of those pages off and pair it with an email capture form on the initial offer page for the next test:

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Finally, they removed another page from the sequence while retaining the same offer page:

Image Source

Of course, their sample size is too small to draw any conclusions between the four page and three page examples, but it seems they are moving the flow in the right direction.

Add Registration Steps

You can also take the opposite strategy and add in more steps to the checkout funnel. Here’s Andrew Anderson’s take:

Andrew Anderson:

“Keep in mind that adding more pages can also increase performance. A very large customer I worked with had a very strong inverse correlation between the pages a user viewed and the revenue they spent (more pages meant more money). When you swing big, it is even more vital that you challenge your assumptions, meaning that the cost goes up exceptionally high, as does the possible reward.”

So, let’s say you’re running a SaaS startup and want to increase the amount of paid signups you have. Your optimization efforts have leveled out – value proposition tweaking is no longer bringing any results. So you think that perhaps you can increase quality leads by changing the checkout flow itself.

You go from: Home page → Sign up → Confirmation page

To: Home page → Features → Sign up → Confirmation page

You hypothesize that if customers are to view your features page before being asked for their credit card, they’ll be more likely to sign up. Perhaps they’ll be higher quality leads. They may have a lower attrition rate. So, you can split-path test this to be sure.

Change The Order of Steps in a Funnel

Sometimes, changing the order of the flow but keeping the same content can provide a lift (Andrew estimated that he’s seen anywhere from 5-45% lifts and for some reason the scale tends to go up with larger sites.”

So imagine you’re selling a subscription product and your checkout flow looks like this:

Home page → Sign up → Payment Page → Create Account → Thank You

You could try changing the order to switch the payment and the create account pages, like this:

Home page → Sign Up → Create Account → Payment Page → Thank You

Similarly, if you ran an eCommerce site, you could experiment with running the billing address before the shipping, or vice versa. You get the picture.

Andrew Anderson told me about a Malwarebytes example where they ran a test changing their entire shopping cart user flow, going from multiple pages to different orders and page layouts. They tested a large variety of examples and found that moving from a 3 page flow to a one page flow and introducing the purchaser information fields much earlier results in a dramatic uptick in overall user RPV.

Test Low Touch vs High Touch Paths

Another split-path test one could run is sending users down a fully online purchase path or a live representative quote or demo path.

Picture that you’re running a SaaS company that sells form analytics software. You send 50% of traffic down your traditional funnel where they can pay online and get started on their own, and you send 50% down a “get a quote” or “get a demo” path and have a sales rep take it from there.

In this scenario, you need to factor in the increased cost that accommodates the increased workload for your sales team. Here’s how Andrew Anderson put it:

 

Andrew Anderson:

“Keep in mind that at this point you need to measure true net RPV as the cost dramatically goes up at that point. That being said I worked once with a financial lead gen company that tested this and had a 24% net RPV gain by forcing people to talk. Fewer leads but much higher cost. Conversely at Malwarebytes we have found the exact opposite. The more we try to move people away from talking to our B2B reps, the less money we make and it is dramatic (and also a -.81 correlation).”

In general, the sales rep/quote approach tends to work better with more complicated or more expensive products (this is the norm for many enterprise software products).

In this case, as in the others, there’s always a chance it won’t work and you’ll have spent a large opportunity cost. In addition, mind your sales cycles and your churn later on down the line with either path.

Warning: Heavy Development Resources Might Be Required

Split-path testing has promise of a huge lift but also the possibility of a huge waste of time.

For instance, coding these variations is much more costly and time consuming than testing page elements. Developers need to code outside of their testing tool and usually run split url tests to accomplish this (could also run multi-page tests for some checkout flows, but that’s theoretically different from the type of split-path test we’re talking about).

 

 

Dave Gowans, Head of Conversion at Conversion.com, gave the following example:

 

Dave Gowans:

“The biggest challenge for Alternative Path testing is the amount of development work that goes into the tests. Whether you build an alternative version of the funnel in the backend or using a testing tool, the development effort multiplies with the number of pages involved, so you could end up spending many days of time, even for a relatively small design change.

For one client, an online pharmacy, we spent hundreds of hours building a complete re-skin of their funnel to match a new design on a single page. It showed almost no impact on the overall conversion rate. That time could have been much better spent on other, smaller, tests delivering more impact.”

And as Andrew Anderson said, “You almost always need a unique user flow path or a cookie based system to control server side implementation. In many cases you will not even use the testing tool for data tracking.” It’s a minor issue, but one to consider with split-path testing.

Just imagine that you need to have a developer work on your variation full time for two weeks. How much does that cost you in time and opportunity cost (what else could they have built in that time)? Andrews says you can mitigate some of this cost by never wasting the time on 1 alternative experience.

According to him, “2 wasted weeks as a 10% success rate is far worse than 6 weeks at a 75% success rate and a 50-100% increase in expected scale of outcome. If you are going to go this big and take the time, the math always shows that you need to do even more experiences. The cost does not exponentially grow but the expected outcome does.”

Another issue: the only data you have is current funnel performance, meaning that existing analytics (correlative data) is basically useless. It tells you what did happen, no what should happen.

A Possible Split-Path Testing Strategy

Being that there is great risk with split-path testing, here’s a possible strategy to consider:

Start by improving your existing funnel. Use the ResearchXL model to figure out all friction, distraction, and other issues. When you begin to hit diminishing returns, then it may be time to experiment with split-path testing. By testing whole flows you can actually get better data, in that you’re able to find real problems and distinguish them from data anomalies and/or biased perceptions.

Finally, when considering split-path testing, keep in mind the PIE framework. With this type of test, you’re balancing the Potential with the Ease of Implementation, which is not low. Therefore, with the higher risk associated, you always need to increase the expected outcome. Dave Gowans from Conversion.com echoed this sentiment:

 

Dave Gowans:
“Our advice is to always carefully evaluate the impact and ease of every test – putting the effort into spending time with your developers, understanding the most effective way to make the change and how many hours it will take. This small investment of time upfront is easily justified by the time you’ll save by not embarking on a infeasible project. Look closely at the impact of your proposed test (both the upside and the potential downside of not testing a change). Does it really make enough difference to test it?”

Conclusion

Split-path testing runs on the same statistical models as a regular A/B/n test, but is different in that it fundamentally changes a user experience.

It is both a potential huge win but also an opportunity to get even more caught up in your own biases. It is the definition of swinging for the fences, but if you do it with discipline and with an understanding of opportunity cost and efficiency, it can be a huge win for your entire organization.

This could be good, in that you can achieve bigger uplifts, or this could be bad in that you spend a lot of money and time and development resources on a test that doesn’t move the needle at all.

 

http://conversionxl.com/split-path-testing/

100 Awesome Marketing Tools You Should Know

As digital marketers, we all know that the right tools can make a big difference. They can increase our efficiency, help us collaborate, and organize everything that’s going on. With the help of these tools, we can do our jobs better.

That’s why we’ve curated 100 awesome marketing tools you should know. These tools can help you manage projects, collaborate with your team, amp up your content efforts, increase your social media savvy, and so much more.

Project management

These tools will help you organize and manage projects.

1. Asana – Asana’s mission is to help teams to work together effortlessly, and they’ve created software that can bring your team together on countless projects.
2. Trello – Trello is organized into boards and cards, and is an excellent tool for organizing projects with those in and outside of your organization.
3. Basecamp – Often used by agencies to manage client work, Basecamp is a project management tool that’s simple and easy to use.
4. Evernote – Need to keep track of a project? Use Evernote, an advanced note-taking app, to write everything down.
5. Harvest – Harvest is a time tracking tool that allows you to spend less time managing your schedule, and more time doing.
6. Todoist – To-do lists may seem old-school, but they work! Todoist is a task manager and to-do list app that can help you get everything done.

Team communication

These tools will help you communicate and collaborate with those in and outside of the office.

7. Slack – Slack is a modern chat tool that brings all your team communication together. Send your coworkers GIFs and memes as you collaborate your way to success.
8. HipChat – HipChat is a team chat tool that includes group and private chats, file sharing, and other integrations.
9. Join.me – Need the perfect solution for virtual meetings? Join.me provides video, audio, and everything else you need to host successful virtual meetings.
10. Google+ Hangouts – Because anyone with a Google account can use Google+ Hangouts for text, video, and audio chat, this is an easy tool to use to connect with those in and outside of your organization.

Calendars and appointments

These tools will help you seamlessly create calendars, appointments, and meetings.

11. Calendly– Scheduling meetings over email can result in a lot of back and forth. Calendly, which syncs with your existing calendars, allows you to schedule meetings and phone calls with whoever makes a request.
12. Doodle – Doodle makes scheduling simple and easy, especially when you’re trying to schedule a meeting with many people.
13. CoSchedule – CoSchedule is an editorial calendar built for content marketers that can help you manage in-house writers as well as freelancers. You can also post your content to WordPress and social sites from CoSchedule.
14. WordPress Editorial Calendar Plugin – This plugin syncs with your existing WordPress site to help you manage your calendar and schedule your content publishing.
15. Gather Content – Gather Content provides seamless content planning, production, and workflow for agencies and in-house teams.

Search engine optimization (SEO)

These tools will help you with SEO audits, keyword research, and SEO-driven content marketing.

16. Moz’s Open Site Explorer – Open Site Explorer allows you to identify link building opportunities through information on backlinks, top ranking pages, and social media activity.
17. Screaming Frog – Screaming Frog is a web crawler, or spider, that crawls sites for helpful and relevant SEO information, allowing you to quickly audit and analyze a site’s SEO.
18. SEMRush – SEMRush is a competitive analysis tool that allows you to see the highest volume keywords as well as how your site ranks compared to competitors.
19. Yoast – When publishing on WordPress, you want to make sure your tags are taken care of, and Yoast can help any content creator do that.
20. Google Keyword Planner – Google’s free keyword planner will help you determine search volume around keywords so you can determine your plan of attack.
21. WordStream’s Keyword Tool – WordStream’s keyword tool is similar to Google’s in that it can help you assess which keywords are competitive and viable.
22. UberSuggest – UberSuggest provides lists of relevant search terms, pulled straight from Google, to help you do effect keyword research and find new search opportunities.

Content marketing

These tools will help you with content ideation, content planning, and general content marketing efforts.

23. BuzzSumo – BuzzSumo allows you to find the most shared content for certain topics, which can help you find out what types of content and from which sources have performed well in the past.
24. Feedly – Feedly is a simple, intuitive, and well-organized RSS feed aggregator that allows you to read your favorite blogs in one place.
25. Inbound.org – Inbound.org is a thriving community for inbound marketers for sharing relevant insights, articles, job postings, and more.
26. Reddit – Reddit is an online forum that allows for upvoting and downvoting from members. It’s a great place to ask questions and find new ideas for content.
27. UberFlip – UberFlip allows you to easily create a branded content resource center that brings together your videos, photos, social media channels, and eBooks.
28. Quora – Quora is a question-asking platform that can help you research ideas for new posts, as well as get expert answers to your most pressing questions.
29. Kapost – Kapost is a content marketing software solution that allows for easy scheduling, as well as team collaboration.

Writing & content creation

These tools will help you improve your writing and content creation abilities.

30. Grammarly – Grammarly is an app that checks your grammar– in your browser or directly in Microsoft Office — for misconstrued sentences, punctuation mistakes, misspellings, and other grammatical woes.
31. Hemingway App – In Hemingway App’s free web dashboard, you can copy and paste a piece of content, and the app will score it on readability.
32. Google Docs – Google Docs is the perfect cloud-based word processor. Its advanced commenting and revision features make it perfect for content teams.
33. WordPress – A favorite content management system and often considered an industry standard, WordPress allows you and your team to format and publish blog posts.
34. Portent Idea Generator for Writer’s Block – This idea generator, created by Portent, is a fun content ideation tool for when you have writer’s block and are out of ideas.
35. Emotional Marketing Value Headline Analyzer – This fun analyzer will show you which emotions are invoked when readers see your headlines.

Social media

These tools will help you share relevant content on social media sites.

36. Buffer – Buffer is a social sharing and scheduling tool that syncs with all major social media sites. Buffer is perfect for individuals, social media teams, agencies, and others.
37. Sprout Social – Sprout Social is a social media management tool that helps teams share content on social sites and analyze results.
38. Discover.ly – Discover.ly is a browser extension for Chrome that allows you to see what’s being shared on social media sites as you browse the web.
39. Nuzzel – Nuzzel collects the articles and links your Facebook and Twitter connects are sharing, then ranks them by the amount of shares they have.
40. Studio for Instagram – Studio allows you to seamlessly edit Instagram posts before sharing with your network.
41. IFTTT – IFTTT, which stands for “If this, then that,” lets you set up recipes to automate tasks. For example, you can set up a recipe that shares a blog post on Twitter each time a new one is published.
42. Moz’s FollowerWonk – FollowerWonk helps you explore your social media presence by helping you dig deep into Twitter analytics to understand more about your followers.
43. Topsy – Topsy provides advanced social media analytics to help you determine real-time sentiment around various topics.
44. SocialBro – SocialBro gives you audience sentiment, analytics, and other tools to help you come up with a comprehensive and effective Twitter strategy.

Stock photos

These tools will help you find better than average stock photos to use for blog posts, social media, and other marketing assets.

45. Death to Stock Photos – Sign up for Death to Stock Photos, and get free photos emailed to you each month. Go premium for full access to a library of great photos.
46. MorgueFile – MorgueFile is a free photo archive that provides high-resolution stock photos for your illustration, design, or marketing needs. Simply search through the database for photos that work for you.
47. Unsplash – Unsplash publishes a new, high-quality stock photo each day, and has a search field for finding past photos that fit your needs.
48. Twenty20 – Twenty20 is a library of free stock photos taken by a community of photographers. The photos are of real life, not staged.
49. Stocksy – Stocksy has a large selection of beautiful stock photos of real life moments at an inexpensive price.

Image creation

These tools will help you create compelling custom images and graphics for blog posts, social media sites, emails, and other online marketing efforts.

50. Canva – Canva is an easy-to-use image creation tool that can help you quickly create fun and engaging images for various online marketing campaigns.
51. PicMonkey – PicMonkey is a photo editing tool that allows you to edit, design, and touch up photos for use in your marketing.
52. Meme Generator – Need to create a funny meme for a blog post or marketing campaign? You can easily create what you need using Meme Generator.
53. Pablo by Buffer – Pablo allows you to create beautiful images for all social media sites in as little as 30 seconds.
54. BeFunky – BeFunky is a photo editing and graphic design tool that’s easy to use for marketers, creatives, and non-designers.
55. Tableau – Tableau can help you create data visualizations for your audience and clients, or for in-house presentations.

Email marketing & automation

These tools will help you send beautiful, helpful, and timely emails, as well as measure them for success.

56. Campaign Monitor – Campaign Monitor provides elegantly simple email marketing software that makes it easy to create, send, and measure the impact of your email marketing campaigns.
57. Email Monks – Email Monks provides email template design and newsletter and HTML coding services.
58. Salesforce – Salesforce is a widely used, sales-oriented customer relationship management (CRM) solution that syncs with Campaign Monitor and other marketing tools.
59. Litmus – Litmus syncs with Campaign Monitor and helps you test email marketing campaigns to find out what’s working, and what needs improvement.
60. Campaign Monitor Dashboard for WordPress – Keep an eye on your subscriber list statistics within WordPress using this dedicated and well-documented dashboard widget.
61. Boomerang for Gmail – Boomerang for Gmail lets you take control of when you send and receive email messages.

Web analytics

These tools will help you analyze your web visits– what visitors do when they come to your site, how long they stay, and where they come from.

62. Google Analytics – Google Analytics gives you insight into how many viewers come to your site, how long they stay, what pages they visit, and where they come from.
63. Dasheroo – Dasheroo is a free business dashboard solution that gives you and your team instant visibility into your KPIs.
64. KISSmetrics – KISSmetrics is a person-based analytics solution that can help you better understand the exact makeup of your website visitors.
65. Localytics – With Localytics, you can assess mobile engagement across a user’s lifecycle.
66. Clicky – Clicky provides real-time web analytics to help you monitor, analyze, and react to web traffic in a timely manner.
67. Raven – Raven, a particularly valuable option for agencies, helps you create engaging, thorough, and easy to understand marketing reports.

Customer engagement & success

These tools will help you communicate with your customers so that you can get feedback and improve the overall customer experience.

68. Help Scout – Help Scout is a simple customer service software that syncs with email to make it easy to communicate with customers.
69. Groove HQ – Groove HQ is a simple help desk software that helps you delight your online customers with awesome, personal support.
70. Wootric – Wootric is a Net Promoter Score (NPS) tool that helps you analyze customer sentiment at important stages of the customer lifecycle.
71. GetFeedback – GetFeedback provides easy-to-create, mobile-ready online surveys to help you learn what your customers are really thinking.
72. Intercom – Intercom provides software that can help your team communicate with your customers wherever they are– whether that’s in a mobile app, on your website, or elsewhere.

Live chat

These tools will help you communicate with customers using live chat on your website.

73. LiveChat – LiveChat is an easily installable and fully customizable live chat software that can help your customer support team.
74. Userlike – Userlike provides intuitively designed live chat software for website support.
75. Olark – Olark gives you insight into what your customers are doing on your site, such as what’s in their online shopping cart, and provides live chat capabilities as well.
76. SnapEngage – SnapEngage provides fully customizable live chat software that integrates with Basecamp, Salesforce, SAP, and a host of other tools.

Conversion optimization

These tools will help you optimize your website for conversions.

77. UserTesting – Wondering how people really use your website? UserTesting records a user going through your site to give you further insights on how your UX comes across.
78. Unbounce – Unbounce allows you to build gorgeous SEO and PPC landing pages and easily A/B test them to see what works.
79. LeadPages – LeadPages is an easy-to-use landing page generator with a variety of templates. The solution can help you create conversion-oriented pages.
80. Optimizely – Optimizely is an A/B testing tool that allows you to test different iterations of pages on your site to see which is most successful.
81. Crazy Egg – CrazyEgg is a heat map software that gives you insight into where users drop off on your site.

Webinars

These tools allow you to broadcast and share webinars and online fireside chats.

82. GoToWebinar – GoToWebinar is a comprehensive webinar tool that includes registration, analytics, and survey tools.
83. Blab – Blab allows you to broadcast live chats and conversations, making it easy to host an informal fireside chat or webinar.
84. WebinarJam – WebinarJam is a powerful, inexpensive webinar software that uses Google+ Hangouts to record and share webinars.
85. ReadyTalk – ReadyTalk offers audio conferencing, web conferencing and webinar technology to help you share insights with customers, clients, and colleagues.
86. Google+ Hangouts – Google+ Hangouts live on air and recording features make it easy to use the platform to host a webinar or online chat.

Public relations and promotion

These tools will help you promote your business, marketing campaigns, and other initiatives.

87. Help a Reporter Out (HARO) – HARO connects you with journalists who are writing about various topics and are looking for sources.
88. LittleBird – Little Bird provides tools to help you discover influencers that can help promote your brand.
89. Google Alerts – Google Alerts can send you an email or notification when your brand gets mentioned in newly published content around the web.
90. Cision – Cision is a popular PR software solution that includes media list building, media monitoring, analyses, and more.
91. BuzzStream – BuzzStream’s CRM-like software solution helps you organize your contacts and streamline media outreach.
92. Rapportive – Rapportive is a Chrome extension that delivers comprehensive information about whoever sends you emails.

Advertising

93. Twitter Ads – Twitter ads are a great way to get in front of a targeted audience on Twitter.
94. Facebook Ads – Facebook Ads offer extremely impressive targeting capabilities that can help you get your brand– and your content– in front of a relevant audience.
95. LinkedIn Ads – LinkedIn Ads are a great option for B2B companies looking to spread brand awareness, build name recognition, and generate new leads.
96. Google AdWords – Google AdWords are a must for any marketer looking to attract those searching for answers on the web.
97. Bing Ads – Though Bing is not as ubiquitous as Google, Bing Ads can provide a lot of value to your business for a lower price point.

Freelancers & consultants

98. Clarity – Clarity connects you with industry experts, entrepreneurs, consultants, and freelancers who are available to chat via phone on a pay per minute basis.
99. HourlyNerd – HourlyNerd connects small businesses and startups with seasoned MBAs who can offer advice and insights at an hourly rate.
100. LinkedIn – LinkedIn is the ultimate destination for finding professionals across a wide array of industries that can help with your unique marketing needs.

Wrap up

It’s easy to be efficient and productive if you have the right tools to back you up. If you give them a try, these tools can help you take your marketing to the next level.

By checking out the 100 marketing tools in this post, you’ll be ready to take on new marketing projects today, tomorrow, and beyond.

http://www.business2community.com/brandviews/campaign-monitor/100-awesome-marketing-tools-know-01386522#Dy0BROBjsGJ1fJXm.97

What You Need to Know About Marketing Automation for 2016

When you look at the cold hard facts, marketing automation is the new normal for the B2B marketing landscape in 2016. Simply thinking about putting a plan into motion is no longer enough—action steps for automating your marketing outreach also need to be well underway.

Dun & Bradstreet’s 2015 State of Marketing Data report found that “only 5% of B2B marketers say they’re not interested in using marketing automation. That means 95% of survey respondents think it’s a good idea for their business.”
This clearly points to the fact that B2B organizations are already creating and/or carrying out an automated marketing strategy.
If you’re not currently examining data and combining it with tech tools to drive marketing efforts in a timely way, your leads and customers are ripe, low-hanging fruit prime for the picking…by the competition.

Marketing automation is the best way to ensure you are building strong relationships with customers and new clients and enhancing trust in your brand (with more targeted, frequent marketing touchpoints) while also keeping pace with competitor tactics.
Given the lengthy duration of the B2B buyer’s journey, you also need a marketing strategy to create long-term, consistent customer contact that speaks to your target market in a way they can relate to.
Here are three ways to maximize the power of marketing automation in 2016 to keep the sales pipeline filled and flowing.

Clearly Define Your Objectives

Collecting data just for the heck of it is useless. It’s essential to build a marketing strategy that reveals useful insights about buyer behavior from the start. These key metrics act as a window into the true revenue-drivers along the buyer’s journey.
For maximum punch, track how marketing efforts and social media outreach specifically do the following things:

• Increase lead generation
• Improve lead nurturing
• Increase sales revenue

First, Get Focused. Then Refine, Refine, Refine

You don’t need more data. Instead, you need to refine and clarify the data you already have and use it to reach your marketing objectives.

Two-thirds of companies that use marketing automation believe it’s critically important to their business, yet 75% haven’t maximized its benefits

Dun & Bradstreet’s recent Marketing Automation Strategy Survey shows that, as of 2015, “two-thirds of companies that use marketing automation believe it’s critically important to their business, and yet almost 75% think they still haven’t maximized its benefits.”
In order to refine with precision, be sure to create consistent check-in points to monitor performance daily, weekly, monthly, etc. Make sure everyone on the team has access to the same data in a centralized location.
Next, make tweaks to marketing messaging or channels as needed. A bit of the work is trial and error at first, so get proficient on certain marketing and social media platforms and tactics before expanding your efforts.

Track Conversions from Lead to Customer to Measure Marketing Automation Performance

DemandGen’s 2015 Benchmark Study states that “74% of B2B marketers surveyed consider ‘lead quality over lead quantity’ as a prime focus.”

74% of B2B marketers surveyed consider lead quality over quantity as a prime focus

With so many eyes on the same objective in the B2B market, it’s essential for organizations to discover what content, delivery style, and timing impacts a customer’s decision to buy.
Getting clear on which content within the marketing automation process converts also serves as a powerful benchmark, helping marketing teams flow with changing customer behaviors while keeping skin in the game long-term.
The most important step for any B2B organization in 2016 is to get serious about marketing automation and the potential it has to turn leads into customers by leveraging the right data sets for success.
When push comes to shove (or if you have no idea where to start with a marketing automation content strategy), remember that outsourcing is always an option!

http://www.business2community.com/marketing-automation/what-you-need-to-know-about-marketing-automation-for-2016-01382797#EJzq6b6zQg4626eM.97