Cloud marketing is influencing many industries including marketing. The banner ad and pop up you see online is stored in the cloud. But, marketing cloud also needs to upgrade itself in a few areas. They are – Security, Customer Satisfaction, New Technology, and many more. Read more at - http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/tech-advances-business/5-aspects-of-the-marketing-cloud-that-need-foolproofing-71413

The goal of marketing technology is to deliver "the right message to the right customer or audience at the right time," says Jake Sorofman, research vice president at Gartner. Marketing technology has evolved into a combination of complex software and data. Tools which are used today with marketing technology also create new complexities and difficulties. It can't solve the ad- waste dilemma. This means that the marketing team wastes billions of dollars on digital ads that no one sees. Marketing tech can't tell about the impact an advertisement had about the brand to the viewer. Read the complete article here: http://www.cio.com/article/3024934/marketing/how-and-why-marketing-tech-fails-to-deliver-on-its-promise.html

There is a lot of confusion building around marketing tech and ad tech. Are they same or different? There are minute differences between the two. Let's see what they are. Marketing technology comprises of tools that manage marketing processes, customer analytics, digital content and workflows. It covers all aspects of marketing, SEO, and even ad tech. It is basically the understanding the customer and optimizing data science around them. Programmatic buying and selling of advertisements are referred as ad tech. Both of these technologies also share many similarities. Read the complete article here:  http://www.itworld.com/article/3030325/marketing/what-the-hell-is-the-difference-between-ad-tech-and-marketing-tech.html

There was a time when all the retail stores were taking their business online. But now the well- flourished online stores have begun to establish their brick and mortar stores. In addition to the online setup, they are now even working on traditional retail. An online presence has become crowded and expensive. According to a report, there are more than 800,000 online stores, all competing to attract customers through the gateway of Google. By opening the physical stores they aim to create awareness and attract more customers. They have seen that this creates awareness for their brands and drives a lot of traffic to our website, as well and accelerate the e-commerce sales. Read more at: http://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/jan/30/future-of-e-commerce-bricks-and-mortar

Business Plan is a systematic evaluation of the business goals, the reasons behind attaining them and tailoring a plan to reach up to them. The reason for the failure of many businesses is that they don't start with a business plan. It is essential as it helps in realizing the vision of next 2 to 5 years. So the start- up can always keep a check whether they are proceeding in the right direction. Must haves of a business plan are: Business Overview, Market Analysis, Marketing Strategy, and Financial Information. Before you start writing your business plan, you should honestly evaluate yourself and decide if your business idea has a good chance of success. Write down about how you intend to make money, what will be your business model. Start with your company description. A thorough description of the business environment and analysis of its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats supports its marketing strategy. Financial information, gives the details of how the company will run the finances in the upcoming years. Read more at:  :  http://yourbusiness.azcentral.com/four-major-types-information-presented-business-plan-9328.html

Contextual Integration refers in identifying meaningful relationships between different information types. This gives a multi-dimensional view of the data rather than a single access point. The best approach is to analyze these volumes of data from different perspectives. The traditional way is to follow a fragmented approach. The web teams, marketing and sales team will look at the different statistics offered by data. This lengthens the time to take decisions and also introduces inaccuracy. The need is to look at data from many angles to create a multi- dimensional profile of the customer. Then predictive analytics can assess and lead to intelligent messaging. Machine Learning is also helping to improve these predictive analytics algorithms by checking it on the real time data. Read more about it in the article written by Dominik Dahlem (Senior Data Scientist at Boxever) at: http://data-informed.com/contextual-integration-secret-weapon-predictive-analytics/

Retargeting is a form of online advertising that focuses on display ads to the visitors after they have left your website. It is a cookie based technology. It has proved to be of benefit to B2B businesses, according to the statistics. Retargeting can be done in three ways.

 1. Pixel-Based Retargeting: The marketer places JavaScript code on his website which drops a cookie on a visitor's browser.

2. List- Based Retargeting: The marketer prepares a list of contacts from email marketing campaigns or for some other source. It then serves them with a specially targeted ads on the Social Networking platforms.

3. Search Retargeting: Search retargeting targets user audiences based on previous keyword searches, they have conducted on search engines such as Google, Yahoo & Bing.

There are many tools available in the market that can be used to design the strategy for retargeting. Read more about it in the article written by Jessy Smulski (a valued contributor to Business 2 Community) at: http://www.business2community.com/b2b-marketing/tips-retargeting-b2b-leads-beginners-guide-01441414

The smart span filtering algorithms of the internet service providers make it difficult to reach the user's inbox with advertisements. So to take benefit of the email marketing, you need to keep few things in mind. One needs to integrate a HTML button in your email that is coded as Call to Action (CTA). These make the emails responsive. HTML buttons help in building and engaging traffic. A well designed HTML email reinforces your brand even in the email. The HTML button is visible before the images get loaded. According to a report, the majority of the online purchasing begins from the mobiles. So the emails should be very responsive for these devices. The three components needed for this are: Right breakpoints, Larger Text on Mobile Devices, CTA buttons. Read more about it on: http://blog.marketo.com/2015/12/3-email-marketing-must-haves-to-conquer-the-inbox.html

Sales management benefits from lead tracking and activity monitoring i.e. keeping an eye on the sales pipeline. But sales staff, however, has a different perspective. CRM features are important to sales people. There are many important CRM features, but, there are some features that are important for the agent closing a sale. They are – Automation, Analytics, Activity Scheduling and Process Management, Offline Sync, and Easy Contact and Pipeline Management. Read more at: http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/insidecrm/five-features-your-sales-team-will-want-in-their-crm-71207

Start-up and entrepreneurship is not only regarding ideas you have, it also regarding the execution of that idea. Great ideas without execution and follow-through stand nowhere even if you have a good idea. The important things one need to do, if one wants to achieve success with your ideas are:

1. Be confident.

2. Accept risk.

3. Define your purpose.

4. Create a plan.

5. Assemble a like-minded team.

6. Constantly build momentum.

7. Anticipate obstacles.

8. Establish a professional/personal balance.

9. Set micro-goals.

10. Be patient.

To read in detail, follow the article by Jonathan Long (Founder and CEO, Market Domination Media) at: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/269869

Most businesses need a combination of multiple marketing techniques to exhaust the full potential and make it more productive. Though internet usage is increasing each day, but offline marketing channels still involve lots of customers. Best marketing strategies merge both offline and online marketing. This might seem a difficult task, but machine learning models make it easier. These lessons from the data field which channel, in what way, and at what time will be most effective for the particular set of customers. This is called intelligent messaging. Thus leading to maximize success of marketing. A significant increase in the success rate has been observed in the marketing strategies using these techniques. Learn more about it in the article written by Brendan O'Kane (managing director and chief executive officer of OtherLevels) at: http://www.itproportal.com/2016/01/04/intelligent-messaging-big-data-machine-learning-a-powerful-combination-for-multi-channel-marks/

Ever wondered if machine learning can be used for Data Driven Marketing. The Intelligent Agent (IA) developed on the concept of machine learning takes a big leap in data driven marketing.  IA technology can learn about the user behavior and suggest most suitable actions. It can identify the most relevant data from the whole lot and can even find out the reasons for the importance or relevance of that data. Artificial Intelligence is revolutionalising the field of marketing. Intelligent Agent would reduce the manual processing and will produce better results. Read more about it in the article written by John Bates(Senior Product Manager for Data Science & Predictive Marketing Solutions) at: http://blogs.adobe.com/digitalmarketing/analytics/data-driven-marketing-ready-for-machine-learning/

A lot is investment is made in the digital marketing campaign. Before planning the campaigns, it is important to correctly determine whether to use Rule Based or Algorithmic Attribution. First, we have to analyze the data in hand properly. If the data is coming from different platforms and needs to be combined or analyzed at one platform, then Rule Based Attribution can't be even thought of, go for the latter. Rule Based Attribution uses the last touch as the final touch, so sometimes it can be misleading. If the journey to the destination has been maneuvered by the smart moves at each step, then we can't rely on the Rule- Based approach. But if the algorithmic approach was that easy, everyone could have adopted it. Read more about the pros and cons of each in the article written by Matt Scharf (Senior Manager at Display Media Operations & Analytics at Adobe Systems) at: http://blogs.adobe.com/digitalmarketing/analytics/rules-based-vs-algorithmic-attribution/

The purchasing decisions taken by the customers are more often the result of online reviews and various comparisons. After buying products they themselves become reviewers and express their views on web about the product. This significantly impacts the reputation of the product and hence the company. This expands marketing horizons, thus its measure can't be only limited to ROI (Return on Investment). Work of marketers is not limited to being just creative. It is important for them to be contributing employees to the organization. Testing of the marketing strategy should be done. All the influencing factors should be kept in mind. The marketing team should be aware of when to measure. Read more at: http://bloomreach.com/2016/01/measuring-marketing-roi/

Before you approach a marketing automation vendor, there is always some necessary groundwork to do. This is not only important to prevent making fool out of yourself, but also to get best out of the vendor. A vendor can only provide what you want, if you have 100% clarity of it. It is important to highlight your needs. Add-ons are always good if they make your work better. Keep the strengths and drawbacks of your old system in mind. A clear goal must be decided before starting the automation. Read more about it in the article written by James A. Martin (tech journalist and bloggerz) at: http://www.cio.com/article/3023570/marketing/12-questions-to-ask-marketing-automation-vendors-before-you-buy.html

It's no more difficult to shop at a new place with Location Based Marketing. We often look for the unique and best products, when we visit a new place. A common practice is to inquire about the best deals, with the people around who are aware of the new place. But with everything becoming techy we have Location Based Marketing to rescue. It integrates mobile marketing with location based services. The motive behind this is to make mobile users aware of your presence, while they are in the areas nearby. Most relevant display ads as per user's location are sent. Their interest can be pulled by either providing some discounts or some other perks. This benefit both the user as well as the business. Read more about it in an article written by Jack Simpson (a Writer at Econsultancy) at: https://econsultancy.com/blog/67418-what-is-location-based-advertising-why-is-it-the-next-big-thing/

A research was done in 2015 where purchase decisions of 20,000 European citizens, across 30 product areas and more than 100 brands in the year 2013 and 201 were examined. They were asked how social media influenced their purchasing decisions.  It was observed that social media recommendations induced an average of 26% of sales. It was found that consumers made 10% more purchases on 2014 in comparison to 2013. Moreover, the choice of product also played a vital role. For example, 40 to 50% of consumers look for social recommendations for categories like travel, investment services, etc., whereas only 15% recommendations were looking for low end utility services. So we can see that Social media does play a vital role in brand awareness and hence end up converting to the sales. Read the full article here: http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/marketing_sales/getting_a_sharper_picture_of_social_medias_influence

Drop shipping refers to the direct delivery of the products from a manufacturer to the retailer or the customer. This is very convenient if you are going to start an ecommerce business. This decreases the overhead as the costs of purchasing inventory or managing warehouses is eliminated. The businesses using drop shipping find scaling easier. For example: if you receive four times as much offers, you'll usually need to do four times as much work. But with drop shipping most of the work to satisfy the additional orders is to be done by the suppliers. This makes businesses flexible. Most of the startups find difficulties in raising funds. So, it is easier to start with drop shipping. It even offers the largest variety for the customers. Being directly linked to the manufacturers selling the products, number of middlemen decreases. Fewer the middlemen, bigger the profits of a business. Read more at: https://econsultancy.com/blog/67406-what-is-dropshipping-and-is-it-right-for-your-business/

Firms often spend a huge amount of money on display marketing. But as a consumer, do you remember at all the last display ad you saw. The answer is NO. Display Marketing can be very effective if targeted. It is important to know which item should be placed on which site and what part of the site. Most vendors don't go into details of the strategy, thus shelling out more money out of those interested in display marketing. Algorithmic attributions can be used to determine how the impressions will impact the ROI. Learn more about it in the article written by Sandy Martin (Sr. Business Consultant) at : http://blogs.adobe.com/digitalmarketing/analytics/how-to-get-more-from-display-marketing-with-analytics/

Gone are the days when the tiny pieces of paper were most essential parts of CRM. Automation has made it lot easier by keeping the data records. Sticky notes are quite prone to physical damage, leading to loss of critical information. Automated systems keep data records safe and highly organized. This way data can be efficiently sorted or searched. If you still continue to wholly rely on sticky notes, come out of the cocoon and take the benefits of technology. Read more at: http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/insidecrm/crm-and-the-death-of-the-sticky-note-70917