Bridging The Marketing Gap

Board meetings are about top-line company performance, but the CEO and the CFO aren’t the only people contributing to that goal. CMOs — like other executives — play a critical role yet are often left off to the side. One reason CMOs may not speak at board meetings is because few board members have marketing expertise, which often means that “marketing speak” is lost on the people in the room.

In the Fortune 1000, one study found that only 26 seats out of more than 10,000 were held by former CMOs, which means that the marketing leader is often speaking to a room of people that have different priorities and terminologies. With these challenges in mind, CMOs may find that they get more from the meeting if they take an approach that connects with the people in the room based on their knowledge, goals and style of communication.

CFOs Can Help CMOs Translate To “Board Speak”

While a CMO is an expert at everything from their ideal customer profile to the competitive features of their products and even the capabilities of marketing technology investments, most board members are not — and usually get lost when presented with that level of detail. It’s best to stay away from marketing jargon or getting too much into the weeds.

Collaborating with your CFO can be an effective way to figure out the right balance of data and narrative to communicate with a board. This level of partnership will help align the marketing narrative with the rest of the board materials when the time comes. While day-to-day discussions are tactical, the CFO should be able to help the CMO determine which elements are important at that particular board meeting.

This help can come in the form of measuring and quantifying the financial and sometimes non-financial impact of marketing activities and collaborating on how to best present the information. CFOs typically have the most frequent communication with the board in between quarterly meetings and can help prepare CMOs for likely questions or concerns or validate a positive reaction.

Play To The Audience

Understanding the expertise and focus of the board members can also help marketing leaders shape their presentations. It is critical to learn about the composition, interests and priorities of the board of directors, which are usually heavily slanted toward financial expertise.

The other members of the board may or may not be marketing experts and often have their own focus. They could be former CTOs, sales leaders or have another value to bring to the meeting. Understanding what they care about will help CMOs relay the value of marketing more effectively. Getting to know individual board members by asking for insight between meetings can help the CMO better understand their perspective and build consensus that will help during budget or strategy discussions.

Data is also a great equalizer. CMOs can use data to demonstrate the impact of marketing efforts on key performance indicators (KPIs). The marketing leader should be able to provide examples of successful marketing campaigns that directly contributed to the achievement of strategic goals. Be it brand recognition, a product launch, an increase in pipeline, MQLs or something else, each will have its own set of expectations and measurement of KPIs. This approach is especially key when starting any new initiatives to set goals, milestones and hurdles along the way for easy measurement and flexibility to pivot. Actual results with data supporting it will excite any Board member.

Accept The Board Meeting For What it Is

Board members are people that are invested in the success of the organization, which means they’ll scrutinize the information delivered to ensure that it makes sense. The right approach for a CMO empowers board members with information and showcases the valuable role of the CMO and their team without going so deep as to lose their interest.

CMOs that successfully navigate a board meeting aren’t just good communicators, they’re also good interpreters and smart strategists that ultimately win the respect of the board. Board members are rarely as interested in the details as the company executives, and only get a snapshot of what’s happening. The marketing leader needs to play their cards right and not make big promises or hype up a new idea so much that the board members grab onto it too tightly. This is a time to play it safe, stick to the script of initial goals and their results and any learnings from that activity which the data provides.

Jim Ogle is the Chief Financial Officer of Anteriad, a full funnel marketing and B2B data solutions provider.

The post Navigating The B2B Boardroom: CFO Insights For CMO Impact appeared first on Demand Gen Report.

Misconception 1: It’s All About The Subject Line

For lots of marketers, “A/B email testing” starts and stops at the subject line. The truth is that there’s several variables you can and should test, such as:

• Open rates at different times of the day and week, along with varying subject lines; and
• Post-open engagement and conversion factors, such as body copy, headline copy, offer/promo, CTA, background colors or the order of content blocks.

You should make a point of updating your list periodically with other elements to test. The more you test, the more you learn.

One last note on this subject: Changes in open rate are relatively murky post-iOS 15, which is even more reason to expand the scope of variables to test.

Misconception 2: You Can Test Everything, Everywhere, All At Once

Clean A/B tests involve one variable, not many: Don’t switch up a subject line and time of send and day of week, or you won’t know which one(s) made a difference. Beyond that, they require focus on specific elements within that variable.

Since people love to talk about subject lines, let’s use that as an example. Wildly different subject lines will perform differently, but you won’t understand why. On the other hand, if you’re testing specific differences like emojis versus no emojis, question versus statement, etc., you’ll have a clear takeaway from the data.

Misconception 3: Instant Wins Abound

One of the biggest misconceptions is that each A/B test might just produce a silver bullet. In fact, A/B testing results are best seen in aggregate, over the long term. If you’re structuring your tests well and getting information to optimize future sends, the wins will mount steadily over time.

One reason you shouldn’t expect instant results is that the audience for the test will be split in half: Even if one version knocks the other out of the park, 50% of your audience will still be underperforming in comparison.

Last thing here: Depending on the test, you might not find any kind of winner. Inconclusive findings are fairly common, and it doesn’t mean the test was flawed. Instead, it simply means the variable you introduced — e.g., changing the copy format to bullet points — didn’t move the needle one way or the other.

Misconception 4: Once A Winner, Always A Winner

A winning test from six months ago might not be a winner if the same test were run today. That’s not to say you should relaunch tests in rigid six-month intervals, but you should keep an eye on any winning campaigns to make sure their performance remains strong. If you see engagement trending steadily down over time (rather than witnessing one bad send and over-reacting), it might be your signal to take another look.

Misconception 5: The Truth Is Universal

We love a good best practice at DMi, but we also know there are exceptions to every rule that you won’t know until you test. For instance, for one client, we personalized a CTA to reflect the person’s location (e.g. “Find businesses in {city}!”), and performance was far lower than the email with the non-personalized CTA.

In other words, work with guidelines — not assumptions —and be prepared for some surprises along the way.

Misconception 6: A/B tests Are Always A Good Idea

Speaking of universal truths, while we love A/B tests, they aren’t always a good strategic move! If you need to push out an email for the sake of engagement and performance, put your best foot forward (informed by all the learnings from past A/B tests, of course) rather than segmenting your audience and risking a less-than-optimal performance from 50% of the list.

Misconception 7: There’s No Value In Failure

If you test a great idea that falls flat, it can be hard on the ego — but it’s also important knowledge that you need to file away for reference. Remember that the aggregate value of A/B testing comes in the insights you can apply over time, and you’ll reframe “failure” as a valuable piece of information.

How important is it to get A/B email testing right? Well, as media costs soar and first-party data usage becomes even more important, email marketing has a very important role in holistic marketing strategies. Great A/B testing that helps you raise the levels of your email engagement over the long term is one of the best investments you can make for your marketing growth.

Lauren McGrath is an Associate Email Strategy & Execution Manager at digital marketing agency DMi Partners, which she joined in 2021. Lauren, a New Jersey native who earned a bachelor’s degree in fashion merchandising and an MBA from Thomas Jefferson University, builds and optimizes email campaign execution processes for a portfolio of brands across B2C, CPG and B2B verticals. She began her email marketing career in 2018 and is passionate about raising the bar for email performance standards across the marketing industry.

The post 7 Misconceptions About Email A/B Testing appeared first on Demand Gen Report.

However, this emerging generation of sales professionals may not find allure in group vacations with colleagues as a reward. Consequently, savvy sales leaders must reevaluate their incentivization structure, shifting away from prioritizing work-related events and instead focusing on motivating reps with incentives aligned with their individual preferences and priorities.

Understand Gen Z Behaviors To Tailor Incentive Compensation

In today’s world, incentivizing sales professionals effectively requires a mix of financial rewards, recognition, non-monetary incentives and a supportive work environment. Some modern and effective incentivization strategies include:

Performance-Based Bonuses & Commissions

A tiered commission structure can be set to ensure sales teams continually create new sales goals as they achieve current ones. When they exceed these goals, sales leaders can grant quarterly or annual bonuses based on these benchmarks. These objectives can be on an individual or a team basis, where they work on surpassing a collective target together, which can foster collaboration.

Non-Monetary Incentives

Outside of the President’s Club model, non-monetary rewards can be effective on their own. Experienced-based rewards, such as travel opportunities and event tickets, would be well-received if rewarded individually. Additionally, sales leaders should publicly recognize their most successful salespeople through programs such as “Employee of the Month” during town hall meetings or through company-wide email blasts.

Health & Wellness

A recent study found that 56% of Gen Z consumers in the U.S. say fitness is a “very high priority,” compared with 40% of US consumers. Wellness program incentives, like gifting gym memberships or health coaching, would resonate well with the next generation of salespeople. With 20% of Gen Z more willing to talk about mental health than their older counterparts, mental health counseling services and stress management programs are also great incentives to offer.

Analyze Data To Implement Effective Incentive Programs

These strategies help create a motivating and fulfilling environment for sales professionals, driving individual and organizational success. Regarding this compensation, sales leaders and professionals can ensure success by overseeing these rewards through incentive compensation management (ICM) software.

ICM software consolidates sales and employee data, streamlining the calculation of commissions. Effective incentive compensation programs help sales representatives focus on their performance, encouraging them to manage leads and close deals. Accurate and transparent ICM software motivates sales personnel, retains vital staff and enhances sales performance. Interactive dashboards where individuals can create plans, rate tables, quotas and highlight sales opportunities help sales leaders inspire and drive their teams to meet and exceed targets.

Additionally, ICM software allows organizations to efficiently and accurately compensate top performers while enabling sales representatives to manage and monitor their individual sales goals in real-time. The software can show sales reps exactly how their commissions break down with unrestricted clarity. This transparency builds trust so sales teams can focus on selling, not double-checking commissions.

Ensure Incentives Meet Modern Workforce Needs

As the workforce evolves with a growing presence of Gen Z, companies must rethink traditional incentivization methods to stay relevant and practical. This shift is especially critical for sales leaders who have historically relied on models that will no longer be effective. Modern strategies that blend financial rewards, personalized non-monetary incentives and wellness-focused benefits are essential to appeal to the values and preferences of younger sales professionals.

Implementing ICM software can enhance these efforts by providing a transparent, efficient and motivating platform for managing commissions and performance metrics. By embracing these contemporary approaches, organizations can foster a motivated, high-performing sales force that drives individual and collective success.

Bayley Fesler is the Director of Revenue Operations at Xactly, a provider of sales performance management solutions.

The post Not Your Grandparent’s President’s Club: The Next Generation Of Incentivization   appeared first on Demand Gen Report.

Despite the rise of other B2C communication methods, roughly 61% of consumers still opt for text messaging over social media or phone calls for customer service-related matters, like asking questions. As a result, it’s clear that companies without this messaging solution are limiting their ability to build a stronger rapport and grow their business.

While channels like WhatsApp and social media have evolved, texting is growing in value for businesses as both a marketing and business communication tool. SMS allows companies to build stronger relationships with consumers thanks to a higher degree of personalization and immediacy powered by personalized data and smart messaging automation platforms.

Today, text messaging is delivering entirely new best practices for customer communications, helping companies build better messaging strategies, improve trust and drive engagement.

Intuitive & Adaptable SMS Solutions

As technology like AI and the cloud have advanced, messaging communication platforms have become more intuitive and intelligent. They listen to what businesses and their customers need and suggest better and timelier communication strategies for the right engagement. As such, these programs guide companies to achieve stronger connections with their clients.

For example, many SMS platforms now provide pre-programmed messaging templates tailored to specific industries that can improve customer engagement. These messages range from new client inbound inquiries to efficient document collections and payment reminders, reducing the company resources typically needed to respond to multiple inquiries or complete these tasks.

SMS messaging solutions have also evolved to make personalization much easier to achieve. By easily integrating with popular CRM platforms like Salesforce and HubSpot, which handle valuable customer data, the programs work in tandem to deliver real-time personalized responses that speak to the customer’s needs.

Because traditional digital marketing campaigns come with a hefty price tag, it can seem as if SMS campaigns could cost just as much. But in reality, these solutions deliver the strongest response rates and efficient ROI without breaking the bank. SMS messaging platforms have become widely accessible to companies of all sizes, giving them a cost-effective way of connecting with new and existing customers. This creates a dual advantage of having a tool that can maximize your marketing and customer service strategy.

Messaging That Builds A Trusted Customer Relationship

Every opportunity to interact with customers is a chance to improve the most critical aspect — trust. So, when a customer opts in to receive text messages, it shouldn’t be taken lightly.

First, consumers trust that they won’t receive regular spam and messages that don’t apply to their needs, which U.S. regulations have also recently ensured. That’s why proactive customer engagement and messaging controls that limit the likelihood of spam are needed to create a trusting relationship.

Secondly, 74% of consumers say that quickly responding to and resolving their concerns is important to earning trust. SMS messaging has already been proven to provide a faster response rate than phone calls or email. Combined with automation, SMS platforms allow companies to automatically respond to inquiries and identify keywords in messaging to generate quick and accurate replies. They also help them identify and escalate messages that suggest customer dissatisfaction and potential churn.

Automation That Drives Higher Engagement

We associate SMS messaging with the most personal form of communication — messaging our friends and family, which is usually direct, conversational and personalized. SMS platforms and their automated technology allow businesses to boost customer engagement by fostering a strategy that offers the same sense of closeness.

Consumers are more inclined to engage with conversational messages geared to their interests rather than a sales pitch. Automated messaging that implements personalized customer data can power these connections, fostering the feeling of personal engagement when communicating with clients. For example, using their name and referencing products or services they’ve shown interest in.

Businesses should never miss an opportunity to be readily available to new and existing customers. AI technology has now evolved to deploy personalized conversations, campaigns and quick responses through its ability to integrate with CRM programs, allowing companies to deliver valued customer experiences with every interaction. These solutions, combined with an SMS strategy that prioritizes trust and personalization, will undoubtedly increase customer engagement and brand value and create better business results.

Nitin Seth is the Founder and CEO at Conversive, a digital messaging solution that offers AI features and CRM integrations.

The post The SMS Evolution: How Text Messaging Can Enhance Your Communication Strategies appeared first on Demand Gen Report.

Consider these recent incidents:

• In June 2023, The National Eating Disorders Association took down its chatbot within a month of launch after it started doling out advice that would exacerbate eating disorders;
• In January 2024, Dynamic Parcel Distribution’s AI chatbot started swearing at customers and then disparaged its own employer; and
• In April 2024, New York City’s AI chatbot was caught telling businesses to break the law, even though it was launched to help small businesses navigate the city’s rules and regulations.

These examples are the tip of the iceberg and fit into a broader pattern that contradicts the increasingly erroneous — yet popularly held — narrative that AI will replace humans. For example, “A December EY survey of 1,000 U.S. workers showed that two-thirds are concerned about AI replacing their own job,” per CNBC.

Although AI is advancing and poised to remake much of the modern workforce — especially as natural language processing, machine learning and generative AI become more capable — the value of humans has never been clearer.

As AI Grows, So Does Humans’ Impact

It’s paradoxical that as computers grow more powerful, they’re actually revealing the indispensability of humans.

I speak from experience. As COO of Blazeo — formerly ApexChat — we’ve helped more than 35,000 small businesses since 2008 across North America leverage chatbots. I know first-hand at a professional level what bots can do for small businesses and what they can’t. Our firm has leveraged AI to its maximum capacity, and we continue to train our bots to become increasingly useful. But at the same time, we’ve also grown our human headcount and made live human agents the core differentiator of our business model.

For our customers, relationships matter, empathy matters and so do flexibility, complexity and nuance. For example, drug treatment programs and mental health centers use our services. When you approach a clinic for help with addiction, you don’t want an impersonal bot on the other end. Law firms use Blazeo to help find new clients. When people want a lawyer, they’re often in the middle of a crisis. They want an understanding voice on the line that only humans can offer. Plumbers use our services. If you have a pipe burst in the middle of the night, you want a human agent to talk to when you’re scheduling service. To be sure, there are plenty of customer cases, like ordering food or an Uber, where chatbots can get the job done well. But for the industries where relationships matter, humans provide indispensable value.

Affirming The Integral Role Of Human Intervention

That’s my own professional experience, but a growing body of corporate and academic research seems to confirm the irreplaceability of humans, particularly in customer-facing applications.

Car dealerships, for example, have found that consumers want to communicate with humans before they purchase a car. Deloitte’s 2024 automotive report found that 79% of American consumers want to interact with real people when buying a car. In India, China and Germany, the share of consumers who want a human salesperson ranged between 80% and 90%.

Early last year, in the Journal of Retailing and Customer Services, a team of Chinese and Italian academics found that “customers hang up on AI tele-sellers faster than their human counterparts,” because customers feel no empathy for bots — and vice versa.

A survey of 2,201 consumers by SurveyMonkey is particularly revealing, as it found that consumers value product recommendations provided by AI. Gen Zers, especially, like personalized deals that AI can create. However, when it comes to customer service, it’s not a close contest. Nine out of 10 consumers “prefer to get customer service from a human rather than a chatbot,” per SurveyMonkey.

When the report drilled down into the details, it found an important explanation behind consumers’ insistence on human interaction, “61% of consumers say that humans understand their needs better than AI.”

Ultimately, as people worry about their role in a labor market increasingly disrupted by admittedly powerful AI, what they need to know is this: Humans’ greatest asset is, and will always be, their humanity.

Cory Halbardier is the Chief Operating Officer of Blazeo, a provider of ad conversion tools and expertise.

The post In The Age Of AI, Human Value Is Clearer Than Ever appeared first on Demand Gen Report.

When my company Outsnapped launched its first AI photo booth in early 2023, we noticed that gen AI is inherently conducive to collecting all kinds of information — and putting a smile on a future customer’s face while doing it.

3 Methods For Leveraging AI Technology

Here are three ways you can employ the technology and begin tapping into a retargeting goldmine.

1. Give Trade Show & Event Attendees A One-Of-A-Kind Experience

If your company has an annual trade show or conference (or attends them as a vendor), offering participants gen AI images with an onsite photo booth is the opposite of handing out drink koozies with your logo. While one will likely end up in the back of a kitchen cabinet somewhere, the other might end up on their social media profile.

AI photo booth technology can turn a simple selfie into an AI avatar and deliver unique images with that avatar within minutes in exchange for that crucial email address. True gen AI renderings are far more than swapping backgrounds — a simple headshot can be used to generate a person’s AI avatar riding on horseback into a canyon, closing a deal, looking like a boss or in full superhero regalia ready to take on the next challenge.

You’ll want to be sure to work with a vendor that can design an interactive experience that aligns with your brand, but the forms that experience take are almost endless.

2. Gamify Experiences & Use The Process To Get More Info Than Email Addresses

Many of us remember illustrations and cartoons of robots in scenarios where a human says a command and the robot goes, “Bleep bloop” and does the thing. Well, the command part with gen AI — the input that dictates the output — is where demand gen marketers have a huge advantage in collecting potential customer data easily and willingly.

If you’re really focused on customer education in a niche market — say time-saving cleaning appliances — you might ask a prospect to choose their cleaning style, design inspiration (i.e. modern, vintage, minimalist) and the area of the house they struggle the most with — and then render images that show their AI avatar smiling and laughing in a spotless dream living room or kitchen.

Any type of answer can affect image generation as part of a carefully crafted behind-the-scenes process. For example, if you ask where people spend their time online, answering “over X hours spent on social media” might generate lightning bolts in the images of these participants, providing striking visual data that can help you target customers more efficiently.

3. Build Trusting Relationships With Your brand Over Time & Fight Retargeting Fatigue

Using gen AI to create cool, personalized experiences is possible in a variety of situations beyond a physical photo booth. Experiences can be digital on any device and live on a landing page or within an app. You might use gen AI to render text experiences instead of images to make participants a character in a short story, or deliver a scene in a script for a TV pilot based on their life (using the answers they disclose).

People love AI photos of themselves, but AI can render images of anything you can imagine (and many things you can’t). In your brand’s email newsletter, you could invite people to create images of “the most irresistible pizza” on a special landing page and give away a pizza party to the winner.

To avoid some of the pitfalls of gen AI (like bias, or extra fingers), always work with someone who is an expert on creating prompts and behind-the-scenes guardrails. Just like any other marketing experience or event, you have to think through worst case scenarios and test it out before going live. You aren’t going to have an open, self-serve bar in a high school gymnasium during school hours, right? So don’t be like Bing, who let bad actors ruin the reputation of Mickey Mouse faster than the beloved character can say, “Oh boy!”.

Take Advantage Of Free Tools To Dip Your Toe In Gen AI’s Creative Potential

It’s a great time to play with AI image generators that are currently free, such as DALL-E 2, Microsoft Designer and Canva, as they definitely won’t be free forever. Render an animal hybrid, the perfect cake or a tropical escape for your mood board and have some fun with it!

Remember, beyond the stereotype of faceless AI robots is a magical capability that can make interactions with future customers feel MORE human, not less.

Nicholas Rhodes is the Founder and Creative Director of photo booth agency OutSnapped. 

The post Generative AI Experiences: 3 Ways To Tap Into A New Retargeting Goldmine appeared first on Demand Gen Report.

In fact, the search engine’s leaked documents support this theory, outlining the value of quality over quantity and reinforcing that relevant, high-authority backlinks are more beneficial than numerous low-quality links.

The Google Contradiction

For years, Google told marketers that links were crucial trust signals for brands. The company’s spam policy documentation previously stated, “Google uses links as an important factor in determining the relevancy of web pages.” In its most recent update, the company removed the word “important” to convey that links are just one factor in determining a website’s relevance.

Let’s put this into practice, shall we? During the research phase of a campaign developed for recipe site, Inspired Taste, we discovered that the website’s competitors were outranking it due to a lack of relevant and authoritative backlinks. Through a creative digital PR campaign and content targeting keywords in the “dessert” category, the site’s average SEO ranking increased by 3.6 positions within a matter of weeks. This correlated largely with several authoritative publications linking directly to Inspired Taste’s key product pages, as well as the significant buzz and engagement driven across social channels.

Leveraging Click Data To Fuel Relevance

Google’s recent leak also unveiled a nuanced tiered approach to link weighting that fundamentally integrates user click data. These tiers — low, medium and high quality — are determined by the volume and authenticity of user clicks, analyzed through data from Chrome and other Google services.

Low-quality links with minimal engagement are ignored in rankings, medium-quality links have moderate influence and high-quality links, which receive significant verified clicks, provide the strongest ranking signals.

Still, Google will continue making core updates to its platform, making it increasingly important for your brand to not only grab your audience’s attention but get them to stay longer and maintain their engagement. When it comes to long term brand loyalty, staying relevant is the most important factor.

Future-Proofing Your Brand

The good news for companies that have already dedicated substantial resources to link acquisition and SEO to reach customers on Google is that these strategies are still important. But, to increase prospects’ time on-site and maintain engagement, your brand must become and stay relevant. Here’s how:

Know Your Audience

Use data and insights that outline who your target audience is and what type of content is going to make them stop scrolling, engage and, most importantly, share with their friends and family.

Be Authentic

Stay true to your brand proposition: All content, whether it’s owned, earned or paid, should have a single thread running throughout that’s aligned to your key messaging.

Tap Into Trends

Monitor trends and sentiment across the news and social platforms to ensure your content is timely and topical.

Ensure It Aligns To Google’s Guidelines

Google has always been transparent with its E-E-A-T content guidelines, which stands for experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness.

Make It Relevant

Create content that’s genuinely useful, timely and engaging. Ensure that it’s written with your target audience in mind but also references your commercial keywords (where appropriate) to help Google rankings.

Make It Shareable

With Google’s emphasis on audience engagement, it is crucial that the content, whether earned or owned, is enticing and encourages searches to click and share.

All in all, it’s clear that Google rewards brands that are putting customers and searchers at the heart of everything they do. Marketers should therefore focus less on chasing the algorithm and focus instead on building a brand. Creating high quality, engaging and relevant content, through earned and owned channels, to inform both a search engine, and their target audience, on what they have to offer by providing the best and most useful answers to their queries.

Beth Nunnington is VP of Organic Media at performance marketing agency Journey Further. With more than a decade of experience, she has garnered widespread recognition in catapulting brands to unprecedented heights of visibility and credibility. Equipped with a wealth of innovative digital PR strategies, Nunnington empowers businesses to amplify their content reach and harness the immense power of organic traffic. 

The post Google’s Link Contradiction: Company Downplays Importance, But Leak Reveals Dominance appeared first on Demand Gen Report.

Transparency In AI

A few months ago, there were some events in the media that highlighted the importance of maintaining transparency while using AI. From Kate Middleton’s photoshop mishap to the Willy Wonka exhibit in Scotland whose promotional images promised much more than what was delivered, consumers are beginning to feel skeptical over the use of AI — and for good reason. Deepfakes and misinformation that are generated using AI tools have decreased consumer trust, making it hard for buyers to know what’s real and what’s bogus.

“AI watermarking” has been proposed to combat this problem, which is the practice of embedding a recognizable, unique signal into the output of an AI model, such as text or an image, to identify that content as AI-generated. With AI watermarking, the fake images of Kate Middleton and the Willy Wonka exhibit could be identified as AI-generated, making it easy for audiences to know if the images have been altered or fake.

Unfortunately, AI watermarking isn’t foolproof and most likely won’t stop disinformation altogether. That’s why it’s important for marketers to practice transparency and responsible AI usage, as it’s not all bad — AI innovation has plenty of positive impacts across different industries.

Where Marketers Benefit Most From Responsible AI Usage

By focusing on responsible AI usage, marketers will not only comply with ethical and legal standards but also build trust with consumers and employees. At the same time, they can also enhance operational efficiency and position their brands as industry leaders to promote long-term loyalty and greater competitive advantage. A few ways marketers can benefit from responsible AI use include:

Enhanced Customer Insights

AI can analyze large amounts of data from different sources to provide rich insights into consumer behavior, preferences and trends. Marketers can practice this responsibly by ensuring that they are only gathering accurate insights while also respecting consumer privacy and ethical guidelines.

Improved Personalization

AI enables marketers to easily tailor content, recommendations and advertisements to individual consumer needs and preferences. Through responsible AI usage, this personalization is done without compromising user privacy and trust, ultimately enhancing customer experience and satisfaction without feeling invasive.

Customer Service Optimization

AI-powered chatbots and virtual assistants can provide quick and efficient customer service. By being transparent about when customers are interacting with AI, marketers can improve customer satisfaction while ensuring that the technology is used in an ethical manner.

Risk Management & Sales Compliance

AI can help marketers remain compliant by streamlining consent management, assisting in adhering to local, state and federal compliance standards and more. Additionally, AI enables marketers to quickly adapt to evolving regulatory landscapes, ensuring ongoing compliance and consumer trust.

How To Leverage AI To Target New Leads

Perhaps the greatest benefit that marketers gain from practicing responsible AI use is the ability to target new leads. Consumers see hundreds of ads and messages per day, and AI allows for highly personalized marketing experiences tailored to individual preferences and behaviors. By leveraging AI-powered recommendation engines, chatbots and content customization tools, marketers can break through the noise to deliver targeted messages and offers that resonate with each individual customer, increasing engagement and conversion rates.

Marketers can also target new leads through AI’s advanced customer segmentation and audience targeting capabilities based on detailed behavioral and demographic data. Practitioners can use AI algorithms to segment their audience into specific groups and create targeted campaigns that resonate with each segment.

The Fine Line Between Using AI To Help Employees Vs. Creating Mistrust

Marketers can best draw a line between using AI to help employees versus creating mistrust among their customer base by highlighting that AI is most successful when it’s used for augmentation, not replacement. AI is best used to enhance human capabilities, not eliminate humans altogether. When companies create a culture of collaboration between employees and AI and provide proper training, they can leverage the strength of both to foster innovation and success.

Michelle Tilton is VP of Marketing at Gryphon.ai, an AI platform designed to deliver enterprise solutions for call center compliance, real-time conversation intelligence and call sentiment analysis.

The post What Marketers Must Consider When Balancing AI Innovation With Buyer Trust appeared first on Demand Gen Report.

However, digital accessibility solutions remain largely overlooked. This isn’t just a missed opportunity — it can amount to a significant loss of revenue for marketing leaders.

One in four adults in the U.S. lives with a disability that can impact their digital engagement. Imagine the financial impact if 25% of your audience couldn’t fully access or engage with your content, products or services — specifically, an audience that controls nearly $8 trillion in spending power.

Despite spending more than $20 billion on marketing software in 2022, many organizations still have a massive gap in their martech stack without an accessibility solution in place.

The Business Case For Accessibility

In a recent survey internal survey of AudioEye’s A11iance Community, comprised of people with disabilities, we discovered that more than half (58%) frequently encounter inaccessible marketing materials.

While we as business leaders often prioritize efforts around diversity and inclusivity, we’re doing a poor job at extending this to people with disabilities. And since this is a population with such large buying power, our business will be the one to suffer in the long run.

Marketers have the unique ability to truly change the market, especially as marketing campaigns often serve as a customer’s initial introduction to a company.

Here are three benefits of prioritizing accessibility within your martech stack:

1. Expanded, Loyal Audience

Many organizations mistakenly believe they don’t have customers with disabilities. In reality, more than 1.3 billion people globally live with some form of disability — making the disabled community one of the largest audience segments in the world. By failing to invest in accessibility, organizations miss out on the chance to tap into this audience, who often describe themselves as being fiercely loyal to companies that prioritize accessibility.

Think about what it would mean if you had 1 million people visiting your site, but 250,000 are essentially seeing a blank page with no way to actively participate or purchase.

Marketers are constantly being asked to generate more pipeline while at the same time doing so with less money and resources. Addressing and resolving accessibility issues is an easy way to squeeze more out of our existing web traffic without spending extra resources.

2. Improved SEO Performance

Accessibility and SEO best practices often overlap. Clear and concise page titles, for instance, improve search engine rankings (which “crawl” websites to get a sense of what each page is about) and assist screen reader users, enhancing search visibility and overall user experience.

In 2021, Google introduced a significant user experience update, gradually implementing a new algorithm that considers on-page user experience as a ranking factor. Websites that continue to prioritize accessibility over time will start to see the benefit of better search rankings.

3. Reduced Legal Risk & Ensure Better Compliance

Earlier this spring, the Justice Department signed a final rule under Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) clarifying that websites and digital content for government entities must be accessible to individuals with disabilities. Similarly, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has reinforced the importance of accessibility in healthcare.

Additionally, as accessibility becomes less a feature and more a requirement, B2B service and technology providers are being asked about their accessibility measures during the vendor selection process. Many enterprise companies will pass up the opportunity to do business if your company does not meet ADA compliance.

Incorporating Accessibility In The Marketing Tech Stack

For those new to accessibility, incorporating digital accessibility into your existing martech stack may seem easier said than done. From my experience, the most successful approach leverages the capabilities of both tech and humans and, even more importantly, tackles accessibility proactively through ongoing testing and education. Here are a few practical steps I’d like to address:

1. Ensure all digital content meets accessibility standards;
2. Use experts and automation to conduct accessibility audits and ensure compliance; and
3. Maintain accessibility by utilizing members from the disabled community to find missing accessibility gaps.

While it may seem like a long and complex journey, prioritizing accessibility in every stage of development is essentially an extension of the personalization efforts many businesses are already implementing. By viewing accessibility as a deeper form of personalization, businesses can better capture and engage the one-quarter of the U.S. population living with disabilities — and consequently access the $8 trillion of spending power they represent.

By doing so, we not only enhance the digital experience for all users, but we also play a larger role in driving both business success and social impact.

Chad Sollis is a seasoned marketing and product leader with more than two decades of experience in driving business growth and innovation across various industries. As the SVP of Marketing and Operations at AudioEye, a digital accessibility platform, Sollis spearheads strategic initiatives in brand development, product marketing, growth, revenue operations and customer engagement.

The post Digital Accessibility: The Missing Piece In Your Marketing Tech Stack appeared first on Demand Gen Report.

Although B2B brands have smaller budgets and need to make each point of contact work harder, they also have lots of chances to boost branding: Think web videos, customer service lines, events and expos. Each brand touchpoint brings a chance to convey brand values, differentiate from competitors and build audience familiarity.

Why B2B Brands Need A Sonic Identity

A sonic identity is the soul of your brand translated into music and sound. It does more than a jingle by conveying your brand values in many scenarios, cultures and platforms. A sonic system gives brands the power to distinguish themselves in the market and suggest their brand promise wherever their prospect runs into it.

A sonic identity packs a lot of punch in digital encounters. It can elevate content that may be dry, as well as prompt higher levels of user attention in podcasts, explainer videos, marketing materials and online presentations. Going further, the strategic use of user interface/experience (UI/UX) sounds in B2B software and platforms will blend user experience with brand recognition. Sonic logos bring a critical tool to aid brand recall — think the Apple start-up chord or the Intel audio signature. If you don’t have one, you’ll find it harder to stand out in a crowded market.

In short, a consistent sonic identity that delights users and aligns with your brand values will foster trust and lead to more sales.

What To Think About When Crafting A Sonic Identity

How should B2B brands go about crafting a sonic identity that builds long-term relationships with customers? There are a few things to think about:

Let Your Brand Essence Shine

Design a sonic identity that reflects your personality. Sounds can convey distinct meanings, e.g., “We are a company that’s tech-driven and innovative” or “we bring you caring service from a supportive team” — you can imagine the way each might sound. Don’t take your lead from others in your industry; instead, base your music on the unique qualities of your own brand.

Create A Sonic System (Not Just A Jingle)

Sonic systems include a suite of assets, such as a sonic logo (i.e., the final sound element that signs the brand message), UI/UX signals, environmental sound designs and a branded music library.

Deploy Across All Of Your Touch Points

Brand consistency is key here, as studies show that it increases sales. A developed sonic system gives you the flexibility needed to infuse your sonic identity across digital marketing channels (TVCs, social media, webinars, podcasts) and even physical touchpoints, such as trade shows.

Create A Varied Library Of Branded Music Tracks

One music track won’t do the job: Sometimes you’ll want to make a huge splash for a product launch, other times you’ll want a subdued music bed in the background. Create a library of branded sonic assets that vary in mood for different needs (e.g., optimism, solemnity, triumph). Add a chapter to your brand style guide that covers sonic assets and usage recommendations.

Test & Measure Your B2B Sonic Identity

Finally, take the time to test your sonic identity to make sure it conveys your sentiment correctly, so it delivers the success you want. Be careful not to ask about the music directly, because when it comes to music, people often posture. Instead, explore how they feel about the brand itself, not the music.

Brand recall and awareness are critical goals of any sonic brand, so after you’ve been using it in the market a couple of years, plan to measure its brand fluency (the ease with which customers attach your sounds to your brand). How quickly do listeners recognize your brand when they hear your music?

And as always, don’t be afraid to ask your customers about your sonic identity. Plan to collect user feedback so that you can assess the degree to which your sonic system enhances the customer experience, both digitally and in-person.

Every brand interaction gives you an opportunity to build or cement loyalty. A set of sonic assets that support your brand excel at capturing those opportunities. In today’s visually saturated digital world, if you can’t be heard, you’re invisible.

Daina Todorovic is Chief Client Officer for Sixieme Son, a global sonic branding and sound design agency. She brings more than two decades of international branding expertise from working with some of the world’s largest brands. She believes sound holds the key to measurable brand impact and enjoys helping clients create transformative brand experiences.

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