Peter Isaacson, CMO and account-based marketing leader at Demandbase, presented at MarTech West about how to reach buying committees at target accounts. Questions were submitted by attendees around intent, KPIs and the journey of the buying committee and Isaacson took the time to share some insights with us.

How do you use AI – along with intent – to reach the buying committee early?

The goal of all B2B marketing and sales is to reach the buying committee at your target accounts, i.e., the people who will sign off on a purchase and all of the influencers who are going to contribute to the decision. The challenge has been how to identify that buying committee because they are by nature ad hoc, ephemeral and different at every organization. And quite frankly, different for every purchase.

It’s very difficult to identify the buying committee, but technology now allows these people to self-identify themselves. The people who are researching the topics and keywords that are connected to your company are very likely the buyers and influencers you’re trying to reach at your target account. These people are self-identifying themselves as the buying committee- showing interest and intent because of the content they are consuming online.

How do you actually get intent for the account and for the buying committee?

Intent at the account level and intent at the buying committee are very much linked because we are identifying all of the content areas, topics and keywords that individuals are researching across the internet as a whole. The magic (I mean AI and machine learning) is synthesizing all of this data, and connecting the topic areas to the value proposition of your company. Each of the individuals is connected to an account, giving us both individual-level intent and account level intent.

For instance, at Demandbase, we are very interested in any keywords or topic areas around Account-Based Marketing, website personalization, digital personalization and marketing customization. We take individuals that are researching those types of keywords and we combine all of those individuals at a particular company into a full account identification. If there are three or four – or 15 – people at a specific company who are researching topics or keywords associated with a specific company, we’ll combine those into a holistic look at the full company and identify that as an account that is showing strong intent. This gives us intent for both the buying committee because they’re self-identifying by actually doing the research on these topic areas and at the account level because an aggregate of these people from the same company shows they are all researching common topic areas.

How do you advertise in the anonymous buyer journey?

B2B marketers understand that waiting until the hand raise or someone fills out a form is too late in the buyer’s journey to start marketing to someone, as most of the research and investigation has already occurred by then. Likewise, it’s even too late in the process to wait until they show up the first time at your website to evaluate or consume different content. By then, they have likely already researched on the outside web and, very likely, have been to at least one – if not a few – of your competitors’ websites.

You need to reach buyers at the very earliest stages of their research. The first sign of intent that you can measure is when they’re starting to do some research on the broader web on areas that are connected to your company’s value proposition. At that point, they’re still anonymous. They haven’t identified themselves and they’re probably going to be anonymous for the next several weeks – if not few months – before they finally click on a button and say “show me a demo” or “I’d like to talk to a sales rep” or “sign me up for a webinar.” But just identifying these individuals demonstrating intent is not enough – you need actually to trigger a marketing activity, like advertising. So your intent identification needs to be integrated into an account-based DSP that can execute ads against these individuals and accounts.

You define the KPIs for modern advertising as 90% of target accounts reached, 30% of target accounts engaging on site, and $15-$300 per account engaged on site. How did you determine these metrics, how often are companies achieving them and what can they do to ensure they’re hitting these KPIs?

When it comes to advertising, B2B marketers have been sold metrics that have nothing to do with business impact for a B2B marketer. They are told they should focus on CPMs, and purchase inventory as cheaply as they possibly can. Focus on click-through-rates, even if those clicks have absolutely zero chance of buying your products. This is often why marketers lose credibility with their C-level peers. Chief Revenue Officers and CEOs don’t care about CPM’s or click-through-rates but publishers and adtech vendors push this because they are the only metrics they can sell.

As B2B marketers, and Account-Based Marketers specifically, we should care about what percentage of our target accounts are actually engaging with our content, which of our target accounts are making it onto our website and what percentage of those target accounts that saw the advertising are making it a pipelined business.

When it comes to the benchmarks mentioned in the question, if you’re below those benchmarks, you should reevaluate, but in most cases marketers should be striving to reach those KPIs. More and more marketers are focused on business impact, but I still talk to a lot of folks who are obsessed with CPMs and click-through-rates. For CPM’s, getting the cheapest advertising that you can is somewhat akin to buying all you can eat sushi. It’s a great deal in terms of getting a ton of fish for a low price, but is it something you want to eat? Absolutely not. It’s the same with CTR’s. Why are marketers obsessed with a .02 vs. a .03 CTR? It really doesn’t matter if people who are never going to buy your products are clicking on your ads. We shouldn’t be obsessed with that. Rather, we should be focused on whether the right company – and the right people at the right company – see our ads, and whether they taking action on those ads.

This story first appeared on MarTech Today. For more on marketing technology, click here.

https://martechtoday.com/martech-west-overtime-how-b2b-marketers-can-reach-buying-committees-at-their-target-accounts-232870

Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Marketing Land. Staff authors are listed here.

About The Author

Peter Isaacson has over 25 years of marketing experience in both B2B and B2C marketing, ranging from branding, advertising, corporate communications and product marketing on a global scale. As CMO for Demandbase, Peter is responsible for overall marketing strategy and execution, including product, corporate and field marketing. Prior to joining Demandbase, Peter was CMO at Castlight Health, helping to scale the company and build the marketing team prior to its successful IPO. Peter got his start in advertising, working at agencies in New York on accounts ranging from Procter & Gamble to Compaq computers.

“So… most businesses know about voice search. But has this knowledge helped them optimize for it?”

An interesting report recently released by Uberall sought to address that exact question. For as much as we talk about the importance of voice search, and even how to optimize for it — are people actually doing it?

In this report, researchers analyzed 73,000 business locations (using the Boston Metro area as their sample set), across 37 different voice search directories, as well as across SMBs, mid-market, and enterprise.

They looked at a number of factors including accuracy of address, business hours, phone number, name, website, and zip code, as well as accuracy across various voice search directories.

In order, this was how they weighted the importance of a listing’s information:

And pictured below are “the 37 most important voice search directories” that they accounted for.

Uberall analysts did note, however, that Google (search + maps), Yelp, and Bing together represent about 90% of the score’s weight.

How ready are businesses for voice search?

The ultimate question. Here, we’ll dive into a few key findings from this report.

1. Over 96% of all business locations fail to list their business information correctly

When looking just at the three primary listings locations (Google, Yelp, Bing), Uberall found that only 3.82% of business locations had no critical errors.

In other words, more than 96% of all business locations failed to list their business information correctly.

Breaking down those 3.82% of perfect business location listings, they were somewhat evenly split across enterprise, mid-market, and SMB, with enterprise having the largest share as one might expect.

2. The four most common types of listing errors

In their analysis, here’s the breakdown of most common types of missing or incorrect information:

• Opening hours: 978,305 errors (almost half of all listings)
• Website: 710,113 errors (almost one-third of all listings)
• Location name: 510,010 errors (almost one-quarter of all listings)
• Street: 421,048 errors (almost one-fifth of all listings)

3. Which types of businesses are most likely to be optimized for voice search?

Industries that were found to be most voice search ready included:

• Dentists
• Health food
• Home improvement
• Criminal attorneys
• Dollar stores

Industries that were found to be least voice search ready included:

• Consumer protection organizations
• Congressional representatives
• Business attorneys
• Art galleries
• Wedding services

Not much surprise on the most-prepared industries relying heavily on people being able to find their physical locations. Perhaps a bit impressed that criminal attorneys landed so high on the list. Surprising that art galleries ranked second to last, but perhaps this helps explain decline in traffic of late.

And as ever, we can be expectedly disappointed by the technological savvy of congressional representatives.

What’s the cost of businesses not being optimized for voice search?

The next question, of course, is: how much should we care? Uberall spent a nice bit of their report discussing statistics about the history of voice search, how much it’s used, and its predicted growth.

Interestingly, they also take a moment to fact check the popular “voice will be 50% of all search by 2020” statistic. Apparently, this was taken from an interview with Andrew Ng (co-founder of Coursera, formerly lead at both Google Brain and Baidu) and was originally referring to the growth of a combined voice and image search, specifically via Baidu in China.

1. On average, adults spend 10x more hours on their phones than they did in 2018

This data was compiled from a number of charts from eMarketer, showing overall increase in digital media use from 2008 to 2017 (and we can imagine is even higher now). Specifically, we see how most all of the growth is driven just from mobile.

The connection here, of course, is that mobile devices are one of the most popular devices for voice search, second only perhaps to smart home devices.

2. About 21% of respondents were using voice search every week

According to this study, 21% of respondents were using voice search every week. 57% of respondents said they never used voice search. And about 14% seem to have tried it once or twice and not looked back.

In general, it seems people are a bit polarized — either it’s a habit or it’s not.

Regardless, 21% is a sizable number of consumers (though we don’t have information about how many of those searches convert to purchases).

And it seems the number is on the rise: the recent report from voicebot.ai showed that smart speaker ownership grew by nearly 40% from 2018 to 2019, among US adults.

Overall, the cost of not being optimized for voice search may not be sky high yet. But at the same time, it’s probably never too soon to get your location listings in order and provide accurate information to consumers.

You might also like:

Related reading

The biggest impact here will be in the advertiser workflow. Great news for those seeking efficiency and less time spent on the Bing platform.

The robots.txt file is an often overlooked and sometimes forgotten part of a website and SEO. Here’s what it is, examples, how to’s, and tips for success.

Digital marketers are often more concerned with attracting traffic to a site than boosting on-site conversions. 8 ways to increase ecommerce conversions.

14 stellar examples of distinctly link-worthy digital PR campaigns, broken into five specific categories of content formats.

The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) is set to take effect next year and is likely to become the de facto national privacy standard for online publishers and marketers. Ahead of this deadline, however, competing groups are lobbying for changes in its terms.

AB 1760 looks more like GDPR. A recently proposed amendment in the California legislature (AB 1760) would make major changes to CCPA, effectively repealing and replacing it with something that imposes stricter obligations on companies and has more teeth — much more consistent with Europe’s GDPR. It would allow an additional year for implementation and not go into effect until January 2021 (proposed amendment embedded below).

A group of 23 technology companies, lead by DuckDuckGo, has submitted a letter in support of the changes. The bulk of the signatories are not household names. Major internet companies, many of whom oppose CCPA in its existing form, did not sign the letter.

Proposed changes make the law tougher. Below are some of the major proposed changes to CCPA at a high level:

• The name would change from CCPA to “Privacy for All Act of 2019” (PAA) and delay the effective date of the law until January 1, 2021, to allow more time for preparation and compliance.

• CCPA has an opt-out consent framework; that would change to opt-in for personal data sharing. The new rules would prevent companies from sharing or selling a consumer’s personal data without prior authorization.

• It carries tougher disclosure obligations for companies. For example, businesses would need to disclose specific pieces of personal data (as opposed to categories) as well as the specific third parties that are receiving the data.

• Consumers that exercise their rights cannot be refused access to services or charged different prices. Conversely, this raises a question about whether companies could offer incentives for data sharing (e.g., discounts).

• Companies could not refuse a consumer request to delete personal information from their databases. There could only be delays for permissible reasons under the statute. Significantly, business would be required to delete all data related to that consumer in their possession regardless of how it was acquired (first party vs. third party).

• Data retention rules would look much more like GDPR: only what’s reasonably necessary for the stated use case.

• There are a range of stronger enforcement provisions and consumer legal remedies, increasing potential liability for violations.

Why you should care. It’s not yet clear whether the amendment will pass. However, if it does a tough law will get even tougher and effectively create a GDPR-like framework for personal data in the U.S. Congressional action that could pre-empt the California law is unlikely before the 2020 election. (As more people find out about AB 1760, pressure will mount for Congress to act.)

GDPR is a year old this May. It has not proven to be the data cataclysm that many feared. Accordingly, companies shouldn’t panic about CCPA or AB 1760 but educate themselves about the existing California privacy rules and the proposed amendment. If the latter comes to pass there will be an additional year to get ready, which almost nobody is doing right now anyway.

Companies that went through the GDPR compliance process will be in a much stronger position than those that did not. And unless Congress enacts new privacy legislation (unlikely), the California law(s) will be unavoidable.

This story first appeared on MarTech Today. For more on marketing technology, click here.

https://martechtoday.com/collection-of-tech-companies-support-changes-to-ca-privacy-act-that-bring-it-closer-to-gdpr-232815

About The Author

Greg Sterling is a Contributing Editor at Search Engine Land. He writes a personal blog, Screenwerk, about connecting the dots between digital media and real-world consumer behavior. He is also VP of Strategy and Insights for the Local Search Association. Follow him on Twitter or find him at Google+.

One of the most overused phrases in content marketing is how it is an ever-changing landscape, forcing agencies and marketers to adapt and improve their existing processes.

In a short space of time, a topic can go from being newsworthy to negligible, all while certain types of content become tedious to the press and its readers.

A vast amount of the work we do — at Kaizen and many other similar agencies — is create content with the sole purpose of building high authority links, making it all the more imperative that we are conscious of the changes and trends outlined above.

If we were to split the creative process into three sections — content, design, and outreach strategy — how are we able to engineer our own successes and failures to provide us with a framework for future campaigns?

Three important factors for producing link-worthy content

Over the past month, I’ve analyzed over 120 pieces of content across 16 industries to locate and define the common threads between campaigns that exceed or fall short of their expectations. From the amount of data used and visualized to the importance of effective headline storytelling, the insight is a way of both rationalizing and reshaping our approach to content production.

1. Not too much data — our study showed an average of just over five metrics

Behind every great piece of content is (usually) a unique or noteworthy set of data. Both static and interactive content enables us to display limitless amounts of research which provide the origins of the stories we try to communicate. However many figures or metrics you choose to visualize, there is always a point where a journalist or reader switches off.

This glass ceiling is difficult to pinpoint and depends on the type of content, and the industry or readership you’re looking to appeal to, but a more granular study of good and poor performing campaigns that I performed suggested some benefits of refining data sets.

Observations

A starting point for any piece of research is the individual metrics, whether it is cost, type, or essentially anything worth measuring and comparing. In my research, in the content campaigns that exceed our typical KPI, there was an average of just over 5 metrics used on each piece compared to almost double in campaigns with either a normal or below satisfactory performance. The graph below shows the correlation between a lower number of metrics and a higher link performance.

An example of these findings in practice can be found in an infographic study completed for online travel retailer Lastminute.com that sought to find the world’s most chilled out countries. Following a comprehensive study of 36 countries across 10 metrics, the task was to refine these figures in a way that can be translated well through its design. The number of countries was whittled down to just the top 15, and the metrics were condensed to have four indexes which the rankings were based on. The decision to not showcase the data in its entirety proved fruitful, securing over 50 links, covered by the Mail Online and Lonely Planet.

As an individual who very much enjoys partaking in the research process, it can be extremely difficult to sacrifice any element of your work, but it is that level of tact in the production of content that distinguishes one piece from another.

2. Simple, powerful data visualizations — our analysis showed highest achievers had just one visualization

Regardless of how saturated the content marketing industry becomes, we are graced every year with new and innovative ways of visualizing data. The balancing act between originality in your design and an unnecessarily complex data-visualization is often the point on which success and failure can pivot. As is the case with data, overloading a piece of content with an amass of multi-faceted graphs and charts is a surefire way of alienating your users, leaving them either bored or confused.

Observations

For my study, I decided to look at the content that contained data visualizations that failed to hit the mark and see whether the quality is as much of a problem as quantity in terms of design. As I carried out the analysis, I denoted the two examples where one visual would incorporate most or all of the study, or the same illustration was replicated several times for a country, region or sector. For instance, this study, from medical travel insurance provider Get Going, on reliable airlines condenses all the key information into one single data-visualization. Conversely, this piece from The Guardian on the gender pay gap shows how it can be effective to use one visual several times to present your data.     

Unsurprisingly, many of the low scorers in my research averaged around eight different forms of data visualizations while high achievers contained just one. The graph below showcases how many data-visualizations are used on average by high and low performing pieces, both static and interactive. Low performing static examples contained an average of just over six, with less than one for their higher-scoring counterparts. For interactive content, the optimum is just over one with poor performing content containing almost nine per piece.

In examples where the same type of graph or chart was used repeatedly, poor performers had approximately 33 per piece, with their more favorable counterparts using just three.

It is important to note that ranking-based pieces often require the repetition of a visual in order to tell a story, but once again this is part of the balancing act for creatives in terms of what type and how many data-visualizations one utilizes.

A fine example of an effective illustration of the data study contained in one visual comes from a 2017 piece by Federica Fragapane for Italian publication La Lettura, showcasing the most violent cities in the world. The chart depicts each city as a shape sized by its homicide rate, with other small indicators defined in the legend to the right of the graphic. The aesthetic qualities of the graph give a campaign, fairly morbid in the topic, an extended appeal beyond the subject of just global crime. While the term “design-led” is so-often thrown around, this example proves how effective it can be to integrate visuals effectively through your data. The piece, produced originally for print, proved hugely successful in the design space, with 18 referring domains from sites such as Visme.co.

3. Pandering to the press — over a third of our published links used the same headline as our pitch email subject line

Kaizen produces hundreds of campaigns on a yearly basis across a range of industries, meaning the task of looking inward is as necessary today as it ever has been. Competition means that press contacts are looking for something extra special to warrant your content’s publication. While ingenuity is required in every area of content marketing, it’s equally important to recognize the importance of getting the basics right.

The task of outreach can be won and lost in several ways, but your subject line is, and will always be, the most significant component of your pitch. Whether you encapsulate your content in a single sentence or highlight your most attention-worthy finding, an email headline is a laborious but crucial task. My task through my research was to find how vital it is in terms of the end result of achieving coverage.

Observations

As part of my analysis, I recorded the backlinks of a sample of our high and average content and recorded the headlines used in the coverage for each campaign. I found in better-performing examples, over a third of links used the same headlines used in our pitch emails, emphasizing the importance of effective storytelling in every area of your PR process. Below is an illustration in the SERPs of how far an effective headline can take you, with example coverage from one of our most successful pieces for TotallyMoney on work/life balance in Europe.

Another area I was keen to investigate, given the time and effort that goes into it, is how press releases are used across the coverage we get. Using scraping software, I was able to pull out the copy from each article where a follow link was achieved and compare it to the press releases we have produced. It was pleasing to see that one in five links contained at least a paragraph of copy used in our press materials. In contrast, just seven percent of the coverage within the lower performing campaigns contained a reference to our press releases, and an even lower four percent using headlines from our email subject lines.

Final thoughts

These correlations, similar to the ones discussed previously, suggest not only how vital the execution of basic processes are, but serve as a reminder that a campaign can do well or fall down at so many different points of production. For marketers, analysis of this nature indicates that a refinement of creative operations is a more secure route for your content and its coverage. Don’t think of it as “less is more” but a case of picking the right tools for the job at hand.

Nathan Abbott is Content Manager at Kaizen.

Related reading

Google Analytics is powerful but the sheer volume of data available can make finding usable insights tough. 10 tips for using it for international SEO.

How to enable the usage of JavaScript frameworks while keeping the search engine bots happy? Where should SEOs start from? Key guidelines shared.

Complete overivew of what Google Search Console is, what it does for your site, how to use it, and what you need to get started taking advantage of it today.

Last month, Google tested AR functionality in Google Maps. What are the implications of VPS, street view, and machine learning for local search and SEOs?

Airstream might just have the most iconic and recognizable campers around. So when it came to visualizing their marketing technology stacks, the company didn’t stray far from the campgrounds.

The company partnered with marketing agency Element Three to develop a slide that ultimately earned them one of five Stackie Awards at MarTech earlier this month through a visualization that demonstrated the many technologies at work in their martech stack, while playing on the theme of nature and escaping to the great outdoors.

But it wasn’t all for the prize. Digital marketing director Dustin Clark said that during the teams’ creative processes and analysis of the stacks, they recognized common goals — and opportunities — across marketing operations teams.

Here are the takeaways they gleaned.

Better data

The persistent need to pull together disparate data remains a pain point for many organizations. “I’m happy to see clients, and others, adopt connectors — systems to move data from one system or another to consolidate sources to get better data,” said Clark. “It’s also nice to see a series of project management software included since the operations side of marketing doesn’t get much love.”

‘Single source of truth’

According to Clark, integrating technologies and creating a reliable source of data continues to challenge marketers. As organizations continue to add technology, it becomes increasingly difficult to create a method for sharing data in a scalable, digestible way. “The biggest opportunity we continue to see is connecting technologies. As communications continue to evolve — ad platforms, chatbots, automation, etc. — the need to work towards one ‘single source of truth’ continues to get trickier, but it’s a fun challenge to solve.”

Analytics are key

“Investing in and setting up analytics is so often overlooked, and yet always pays for itself in the long run, especially in marketing operations. Being able to track and report on the results of marketing efforts quickly is crucial to getting buy-in on projects and budget approvals. You’re not going to get those numbers easily if the state of your web analytics is a mess,” Clark added.

Bring it all together

For digital marketers striving to provide the ‘single source of truth,’ Clark said that integrating data sources properly is crucial to success. “Start with cleaning up your analytics and implementing those technology connectors,” said Clark. “This will help stakeholders see the value of their efforts.”

The Stackie Awards were announced at the MarTech West in San Jose on April 3, 2019. The event also raised $4,800 for Girls Who Code, a nonprofit organization supporting women in the field of computer science. This year’s other winners include ESRI, Juniper Networks, Paychex and Sargento.

This story first appeared on MarTech Today. For more on marketing technology, click here.

https://martechtoday.com/what-stackie-winner-airstream-learned-from-communing-with-its-stack-232768

About The Author

Jennifer Videtta serves as Third Door Media’s Senior Editor, covering topics from email marketing, analytics and marketing automation to project management. With over a decade of digital marketing experience, she has held in-house management positions overseeing digital marketing operations, and agency roles, advising enterprise marketers on maximizing their martech capabilities. Jennifer formerly organized the Inbound Marketing Summit and holds a certificate in Digital Marketing Analytics from MIT Sloan School of Management.

Today we are rolling out support in Google Search’s AMP web results (also known as “blue links”) to link to signed exchanges, an emerging new feature of the web enabled by the IETF web packaging specification. Signed exchanges enable displaying the publisher’s domain when content is instantly loaded via Google Search. This is available in browsers that support the necessary web platform feature—as of the time of writing, Google Chrome—and availability will expand to include other browsers as they gain support (e.g. the upcoming version of Microsoft Edge).

Background on AMP’s instant loading

One of AMP’s biggest user benefits has been the unique ability to instantly load AMP web pages that users click on in Google Search. Near-instant loading works by requesting content ahead of time, balancing the likelihood of a user clicking on a result with device and network constraints–and doing it in a privacy-sensitive way.

We believe that privacy-preserving instant loading web content is a transformative user experience, but in order to accomplish this, we had to make trade-offs; namely, the URLs displayed in browser address bars begin with google.com/amp, as a consequence of being shown in the Google AMP Viewer, rather than display the domain of the publisher. We heard both user and publisher feedback over this, and last year we identified a web platform innovation that provides a solution that shows the content’s original URL while still retaining AMP’s instant loading.

Introducing signed exchanges

A signed exchange is a file format, defined in the web packaging specification, that allows the browser to trust a document as if it belongs to your origin. This allows you to use first-party cookies and storage to customize content and simplify analytics integration. Your page appears under your URL instead of the google.com/amp URL.

Google Search links to signed exchanges when the publisher, browser, and the Search experience context all support it. As a publisher, you will need to publish both the signed exchange version of the content in addition to the non-signed exchange version. Learn more about how Google Search supports signed exchange.

Getting started with signed exchanges

Many publishers have already begun to publish signed exchanges since the developer preview opened up last fall. To implement signed exchanges in your own serving infrastructure, follow the guide “Serve AMP using Signed Exchanges” available at amp.dev.

If you use a CDN provider, ask them if they can provide AMP signed exchanges. Cloudflare has recently announced that it is offering signed exchanges to all of its customers free of charge.

Check out our resources like the webmaster community or get in touch with members of the AMP Project with any questions. You can also provide feedback on the signed exchange specification.

Posted by Devin Mullins and Greg Rogers

Instagram is a phenomenon of our time. The photo-sharing app has 7.7 billion users by now (and counting).

One billion people use Instagram every month and 500 million use the platform every day. Its engagement is also 10 times higher than that of Facebook, 54 times higher than Pinterest’s, and 84 times higher than Twitter’s.

All kinds of businesses ranging from your teen neighbor making earrings to huge corporations and media are on Instagram. And for a good reason — 80% of Instagram accounts follow at least one business.

[Screenshot taken from the Instagram Business homepage]

At times when Facebook is becoming more and more Messenger-based and Twitter revolves around politics and social issues, Instagram stands to be the platform for friends, strangers, and brands alike.

It’s no surprise we’re so serious about Instagram marketing and the tools that help us with it.

Below is the list of such tools which covers everything from filters to analytics.

19 top Instagram marketing tools

1. Grum

Grum is a scheduling tool that lets you publish content (both photos and videos) on Instagram. You can publish from multiple accounts at the same time and tag the users. You can do that right from your desktop.

Price: Starts at $9.9/month. Offers a free trial for 3 days.

2. Awario

Awario is a social media monitoring tool that finds mentions of your brand (or any other keyword) across the web, news/blogs, and social media platforms, including Instagram. By analyzing mentions of your brand on the platform, it tells you who your brand advocates and who the industry influencers are, what the sentiment behind your brand (positive, negative, or neutral) is, as well as the languages and locations of your audience. It also analyzes the growth and reach of your mentions, and tells you how you compare to your competitors.

Price: Starts at $29/month. Offers a free trial for 14 days.

3. Buffer

Buffer is another scheduling tool. However, it includes Instagram among other social networks rather than focusing on Instagram alone. With Buffer, you can schedule content to be published across Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and LinkedIn. You can publish the same or different messages across different platforms. You can also review how your posts are performing in terms of engagement, impressions, and clicks.

The tool can be used by up to 25 team members, and you can assign them the appropriate access levels.

Price: Starts at $15/month. Offers free 7-day or 14-day trials depending on the plan.

4. Hashtags for likes

Hashtags for likes is a simple tool that suggests you the most trending relevant hashtags. Knowing the most popular hashtags in real time helps brands keep up with trends, bandwagon on the news, and ultimately grow followers.

Price: $9.99/month.

5. Iconosquare

Iconosquare is a social media analytics tool that works for Instagram and Facebook. It shows you the metrics on content performance and engagement as well as on your followers. You’ll discover the best times to post and understand your followers better. The tool also analyzes Instagram Stories.

Besides analytics, you can schedule posts, monitor tags and comments about your brand.

Price: Starts at $39/month. A free 14-day trial is available.

6. Canva

Canva is a design tool that is a great fit for marketers and companies that don’t have an in-house designer. Among other things, Canva helps create perfect Instagram stories. Stylish templates and easy design tools ensure that your Story stands out, which, again, isn’t easy in the world of Instagram.

Price: Free

7. Shortstack

Shortstack is a tool to run Instagram contests. Contests are huge on this platform, they cause loads of buzz, increase brand awareness, and attract new followers. They are a practice loved by marketers.

ShortStack gathers all user-generated content, such as images that have been posted on your content hashtag, and displays them. It also keeps track of your campaign’s performance, showing your traffic, engagement, and other valuable data.

Price: Free up to 100 entries. Paid plans start at $29/month.

8. Soldsie

Soldsie is a handy tool that helps you to sell on Instagram and Facebook using comments. All you have to do is upload a product picture with relevant product information. Users who are registered with Soldsie can simply comment on the photo, and Soldsie will turn that into a transaction.

More expensive Soldsie plans are also integrated with Shopify.

Price: Starts at $49/monthly and 5.9% transaction fee.

9. Social Rank

Social Rank is a tool that identifies and analyzes your audience. You can identify influencers among your followers, see who engages with your brand and with what frequency. You can sort your followers in lists that are easy to work with (for example: most valuable, most engaged, and others).

You can also filter your audience by bio keyword, word/hashtag, and geographic location.

Price: Available on request.

10. Plann

Plann is an Instagram social media management tool. It allows you to design, edit, schedule, and analyze your posts. For example, you can edit the Instagram grid to look just as you wish. You can rearrange, organize, crop, and schedule your Instagram Stories. All exciting stats, from best times to post and best-performing hashtags to your best-performing color schemes are available. And you can also collaborate with other marketers to run your Instagram account together.

Price: Free, paid plans start from $6/month.

11. Social Insights

Social Insights is another platform that offers many important Instagram marketing features, such as scheduling and posting from your computer, identifying and organizing your followers, and analyzing followers’ growth, interactions, and engagement. You can add other team members without sharing your Instagram login.

Price: Starts at $29/month. A free 14-day trial is available.

12. Instagram Ads by Mailchimp

If you’re already using MailChimp, its Instagram Ads feature might come in handy. The tool lets you use MailChimp contact lists to create Instagram campaigns. The whole process (creating, buying, and tracking results of your ads) is, therefore, in the familiar place and powered by data.

Price: No extra fees if you’re using MailChimp.

13. Unfold – Story Creator

Unfold – Story Creator is an iOS app that makes lifestyle, fashion, and travel content more professional-looking. The app offers stylish templates, advanced fonts and text tools, and exports your stories in high resolution so that you can share them to other platforms besides Instagram.

Price: Free

14. Picodash

Picodash is an Instagram tool that finds target audiences and influencers on the platform. It lets you export your and your competitors’ Instagram followers and following lists, users that have used a specific hashtag, posted at a specific location or venue, commented or liked a specific post, as well as tagged users. You can also download any account stories or highlighted stories.

Price: Starts from $10 for a Followers/Hashtag Posts export. You can also request a sample of 100 for free before you order a full export report.

15. Wyng

Wyng is an enterprise-level platform that finds user-generated content with a specific mention or hashtag, exports it, and gets the rights to this content. This is very helpful for running contests. Instagram is, however, a tiny fraction of what the tool covers.

Price: Available on request. A free 14-day trial is available.

16. Afterlight

Afterlight is the iOS/Android image editing app that makes your content look more professional and refined. It offers plenty of unique filters, natural effects, and frames.

Price: $2.99

17. Sendible

Sendible is a popular social media management platform that lets you run accounts on different social media platforms, including Instagram. It’s integrated with some other tools that are useful for Instagram, such as Canva. The tool does scheduling, monitors mentions, and tracks the performance of your Instagram posts. You can also team up with other marketers and work together on your Instagram marketing (and other) goals.

Price: Starts at $29/month. A free 14-day trial is available.

18. Olapic

Olapic is an advanced visual commerce platform. It collects user-generated video content in real time, publishes it to your social media channels (including Instagram) makes it shoppable, measures and predicts which content will perform best. It goes far beyond Instagram and even social media. What is more, it obtains rights for the content for you so that you’re able to use it across your advertising, email, and offline channels.

Price: Available on request.

19. Pablo

Pablo (made by Buffer) is a platform that lets you easily create beautiful images for your Instagram marketing purposes. You can choose photos from Pablo’s own library which includes more than 500,000 images, add text (25+ stylish fonts are available) and format. The resizing option for various social platforms, including Instagram, will ensure your image fits perfectly.

Price: Free

Conclusion

As you can see, there’re plenty of tools to choose from. Check them out, spot the ones that you need, and take your Instagram marketing to a whole new level.

Aleh is the Founder and CMO at SEO PowerSuite and Awario. He can be found on Twitter at .

Read next:

Related reading

81% of marketers that tried influencer marketing reported that it is an effective channel. Here are the top tools to connect you with relevant influencers.

Over 600 million users visit FB business pages every day. 52% of consumers have discovered a brand there. Why and how to optimize for Facebook local search.

New year, new chance to check out cool new toys. Here’s a roundup of seven social media monitoring tools that could revamp your 2019 strategy.

Webinar marketing has grown in popularity for loads of reasons. One way it’s quite useful is for reputation management. Here are four tips for how to do it.

Artist Donald Glover (aka Childish Gambino) used iOS Airdrop at Coachella to surprise random festival-goers with a photo of shoes he created in collaboration with Adidas. Those who accepted the Airdrop received a free pair of the sneakers – with terms and conditions, of course.

The lucky recipients had to sign a contract stating they would wear the shoes, attend the show, and keep the shoes on all weekend. Experiential marketing in action.

childish gambino airdropped a picture at coachella of his adidas collab and everyone who accepted got a pair of his unreleased shoes… pic.twitter.com/JLKsmNb4LM

— jay ➐ (@THEGOODSlDE) April 12, 2019

Why we should care

Glover’s Airdrop play comes at a time when experiential marketing is making waves. From Chanel’s Le Rouge Pop-Up to Refinery29’s 29Rooms funhouse, brands are finding ways to invite customers into their story.

But the creative experiences are only part of the strategy. In Adidas’ case, the brand leveraged Glover’s celebrity to influence an audience that was already tuned in (literally). The Airdrop tactic was simply an unexpected and delightful conduit bringing fans to the product.

Before launching an experiential strategy, we should consider what resources are appropriate and available to rally awareness and engagement. Because if there’s anything we’ve learned about tangible experiences, it’s that delivery and perception can be everything.

About The Author

Taylor Peterson is Third Door Media’s Deputy Editor, managing industry-leading coverage that informs and inspires marketers. Based in New York, Taylor brings marketing expertise grounded in creative production and agency advertising for global brands. Taylor’s editorial focus blends digital marketing and creative strategy with topics like campaign management, emerging formats, and display advertising.