Optimized Organization and Access

A well-implemented DAM system centralizes digital assets, offering a single point of access that can significantly enhance productivity. However, Dean Brown emphasizes that the real benefits of a DAM system come with effective organization. “A DAM system can quickly become cluttered without proper management,” he says. “The role of a DAM administrator is to ensure that assets are meticulously organized using best practices in metadata, tagging, and file naming conventions. This optimization not only reduces the time spent searching for assets but also enhances overall efficiency.”

Anna Raugalis, DAM admin at Laura Mercier, underscores this point: “When we transitioned from Box to Acquia DAM, the challenge was not just in implementing the new system but in organizing it effectively. A dedicated DAM administrator was critical in establishing proper metadata structures and ensuring that our assets were easily accessible.”

Improved Workflow Efficiency

Efficient workflows are central to leveraging the full potential of a DAM system. “Automating repetitive tasks such as file uploads and approval processes is a key responsibility of the DAM administrator,” notes Brown. “By configuring the DAM system to integrate seamlessly with other software tools—like CMS and marketing automation platforms—administrators can eliminate bottlenecks and speed up content delivery.”

Leah Carlson, DAM admin at McCormick, provides insight into how this plays out in practice: “Our DAM system has streamlined our content operations by automating various tasks. This not only speeds up our workflows but also allows us to repurpose content more effectively across different teams and partners.”

Brand Consistency and Compliance

Maintaining brand consistency across diverse channels and regions is a significant challenge. A DAM administrator plays a pivotal role in this aspect by setting permissions and access controls. “Ensuring that only approved versions of brand assets are used is essential to maintaining consistency,” Brown explains. “The DAM administrator also monitors compliance with licensing agreements and copyright regulations.”

Carlson adds, “In a global company like McCormick, it’s vital that our branding remains consistent. The DAM administrator ensures that everyone, from marketing teams to external partners, has access to the correct versions of our brand assets, thus preventing costly mistakes and legal issues.”

Enhanced Security and Control

Security is a major concern for digital assets, which are often proprietary and sensitive. A DAM administrator is tasked with implementing stringent security measures. “Setting up user permissions and controlling access are fundamental responsibilities,” Brown says. “This helps protect intellectual property and reduces the risk of data breaches.”

Raugalis highlights the importance of these security measures: “Our DAM system includes features like two-factor authentication and encryption, which our DAM administrator manages. These measures are crucial for safeguarding our assets and ensuring that they are only accessible to authorized personnel.”

Analytics and Reporting

DAM systems offer valuable insights into asset usage and effectiveness. “A DAM administrator leverages built-in analytics tools to track usage patterns and generate reports,” Brown explains. “This data is instrumental in informing strategic decisions and optimizing content creation efforts.”

Carlson elaborates: “We use our DAM system’s analytics to understand which assets are performing well and how different teams interact with the system. This information helps us make data-driven decisions and improve our content strategy.”

Training and Support

Effective training and ongoing support are essential for maximizing the benefits of a DAM system. “A DAM administrator provides training to ensure that all users can navigate and utilize the system effectively,” Brown says. “They also offer support for troubleshooting and customizing features.”

Raugalis notes, “Training is a crucial part of our DAM administrator’s role. They ensure that our team understands how to use the system to its full potential, which enhances our overall efficiency and return on investment.”

DAM System Are a Strategic Asset

Successful businesses know that a well-managed DAM system is a strategic asset. However, to truly capitalize on its potential, organizations need a dedicated DAM system administrator. By optimizing organization and access, improving workflow efficiency, maintaining brand consistency, ensuring security, leveraging analytics, and providing essential training and support, a DAM administrator plays a crucial role in driving growth and efficiency.

As Dean Brown succinctly puts it, “Investing in a skilled DAM system administrator is not just a smart decision—it’s a strategic necessity in today’s fast-paced, content-driven world.”

For businesses looking to enhance their digital asset management, the role of the DAM administrator is not just an operational necessity but a catalyst for growth and success.

The Collabig LLC YouTube Channel includes the top seven DAM solutions in 2024. Each offers unique features and functionalities to meet diverse user needs and preferences.

Air: Renowned for its intuitive user interface and robust collaboration capabilities, Air is a cloud-based DAM solution favored for its ease of use. With seamless tagging, searching, and sharing functionalities, Air simplifies asset management and fosters efficient teamwork. While its free plan offers basic features with limited storage, paid plans scale to accommodate growing storage requirements, making it suitable for businesses of all sizes.

Brandfolder: Positioned as an enterprise-grade DAM solution, Brandfolder excels in security and brand management. Its comprehensive suite of tools enables users to control access permissions and maintain brand consistency across all assets. Despite its steep learning curve and potentially higher costs than competitors, Brandfolder’s emphasis on security and brand integrity makes it an ideal choice for large organizations with stringent compliance requirements.

Binder: Explicitly tailored for creative teams, Binder offers a wealth of features catering to the unique needs of content creators. From digital rights management to workflow automation, Binder streamlines creative processes, making collaboration seamless and efficient. However, beginners may find its interface complex, and free plan options may be limited, making it more suitable for established teams with specific workflow requirements.

Canto: Canto is recognized for its advanced search functionalities and meticulous metadata management. It empowers users to organize digital assets with precision and efficiency. While its pricing structure may appear daunting to some, Canto’s emphasis on detailed organization and search capabilities makes it an attractive option for users seeking comprehensive asset management solutions tailored to their needs.

Dash: Positioned as a user-friendly DAM solution, Dash prioritizes simplicity and ease of use, making it ideal for small businesses and teams. With an intuitive interface and seamless integration with popular creative tools, Dash streamlines asset management without overwhelming users with unnecessary complexities. While its feature set may be more limited than some competitors, Dash’s affordability and straightforward approach make it an appealing choice for those seeking a hassle-free DAM solution.

SproutLoud: Tailored specifically for marketing teams, SproutLoud offers a comprehensive suite of features designed to streamline marketing asset management and distribution. From brand guidelines management to content distribution across various channels, SproutLoud caters to the unique needs of marketers. However, its free plan options may be limited, and non-marketing users may find its features less relevant to their requirements.

Image Relay: Focused on security and streamlined workflows, Image Relay is well-suited for teams requiring secure sharing and collaboration on visual assets. While its feature set may be more limited outside of image management functionalities, Image Relay’s emphasis on security and ease of use makes it a preferred choice for users prioritizing asset protection and efficient workflows.

In conclusion, the choice of DAM software ultimately depends on individual requirements, budget constraints, and organizational preferences. By carefully evaluating each solution’s features, pricing plans, and usability, businesses can make informed decisions to streamline their workflows, enhance collaboration, and maximize the value of their digital assets in today’s fast-paced digital environment.

Dave Gerhardt, VP of Marketing at Drift, was recently interviewed on the B2B Growth podcast by John Rougeux who is VP of Marketing at Skyfii. Gerhardt discusses conversational marketing as a new B2B product category and how it is changing marketing from reaching out to you later to a conversation that is happening now:

Conversational Marketing is About Connecting You Now

Conversational marketing is a whole new way of thinking about marketing and sales. The traditional way of doing marketing and sales is all about later. Come to my website and fill out this form and somebody is going to reach out to you later, when it’s convenient for them. The big shift that is happening in marketing and business over the last five to ten years is customers have all the power today. You can’t make people wait. Information is free now.

I can find anything I want to know about a company without ever having to go to your website. It’s crazy to think that you are going to force people to go to your website, fill out a form, wait three days to hear back from your sales team, and then get a demo. Conversational is all about connecting you now with the people who are ready to buy now while they are live on your website.

B2P – Marketing to People

It’s not about buyers. It’s not about sellers. It’s not about sales. It’s not about marketing. It’s about people. That’s how people all communicate online today. I pressed one button in my car and I got a list. I ordered something from Amazon while I was here this morning to send back to my house and it’s going to be there tomorrow when I get home. There are countless examples of that. That is how we all behave online in our real lives today.

But then something happens weird happens. We go to our jobs in B2B and none of the tools that we use match how we actually buy as real people. That’s the most exciting thing to me about conversational marketing. It’s really closing the gap between B2C and B2B. We just call it B2P, marketing to people.

What Ties Our Products Together is Conversation

We have an email product and we have a landing page product. Black and white versions of those people would say everybody has email, everybody has landing pages. The thing that ties those together is conversation. That forces us to think about what is conversational email? What is conversational landing pages? What is conversational whatever? That one word forces our product team to think about how can we change this? If our fundamental stance as a company is that the internet should be one conversation, then how does that weave into everything that we build?

Ultimately what we care about is that email becomes a conversation. Meaning, the way that marketers have had to use email the last decade is a one-way channel. Email is meant to be a two-way channel. Marketers have been using it as, “John come to my webinar.” What happens if you actually respond to that email? Most of the time you can’t because it’s donotreply@ or it just goes to some inbox where nobody is answering it. That is a terrible experience. Our belief is that if you reply, “Hey actually I can’t make it. Can you reregister my colleague?” That should get handled. We are thinking of that from an evolution standpoint.

The same thing with landing pages. Most landing pages today are static. You go to the landing page, put a bunch of info in and you are gone. What if that was a real-time conversation on the page? That one topic has to weave itself into everything we do from a product perspective.

>> Listen to the complete interview with Drift Marketing VP Dave Gerhardt on the B2B Growth podcast.

Our lives are affected today by digital platforms and content taking over today. The demand for digital content keeps rising. For instance, the global digital content creation market size is expected to touch over $16 billion by 2025. This means a business that invests in digital products has a chance to thrive.

There is a lot involved in making a hustle out of a digital product like eBooks, tickets, podcasts, manuals, or tutorials. It all begins by having the basic knowledge to run a successful online business. Here is a guide on starting an online business selling digital products.

Register your Business

The first step to starting an online business is registering it with the relevant authorities. You want to ensure your business is legitimate and recognized. You can register your business as an LLC and get the proper certification and copyright for your digital products.

The cost of registering an LLC may vary depending on your state. For instance, in Delaware, it costs about $415. This cost includes a state filing fee, name reservation, and adding a registered agent. When you register your business as an LLC, you can reap the benefits of a partnership and a sole proprietorship.

An LLC allows you to reduce personal liability to your business while gaining flexibility in operation and taxation. The process of registering an LLC is not that long compared to other types of business. You should also learn more about the benefits of an LLC for different types of business before deciding the best type of business to register.

Define Your Image and Brand

If you are selling digital products online, you will need a brand image that can sell your products and battle the stiff competition in the online market. Your brand is like an overall vibe of the business. It will need to be iconic enough in case you do expand enough to have more products or even a business delivery fleet.

You want to ensure everything in your business, right from the business name to the design, conveys a consistent idea and visual image of your business.

When working on your brand, you should focus on the logo, color scheme, page layout, typography, photos and graphics. These elements should work together in portraying your brand image out there.

Build a Responsive Website

A website is a must-have if you want to sell digital products. As soon as you’ve validated your business idea, you should proceed to build your website. A website is like your storefront for selling digital products.

It is not that difficult to build a website nowadays. You can create your website in just hours without coding skills using any of the best website builders. You can also hire a website designer to design your website who will also help you choose the best host server that will keep you online round the clock.

When designing a website to sell digital products like courses, written content, and podcasts, you should ensure it has all the required functionalities. Here is what you should do:

• Incorporate forms so visitors can subscribe and join your list.
• Build customized landing pages that can educate your audience to learn more about your products and services.
• Design your website to accept payments so it is easy to sell online.
• Optimize your website for mobile and make it responsive to most visitors who access your services using their smartphones and tablets.

Build an Audience to Sell to

For a physical store, this will sound like building a customer base. If you are selling digital products like a coding course, you want to first build an audience that needs your product. At this point, you want to make use of your greatest asset, the email list.

Everyone on your email list is interested in your brand, which means they trust you. There is a high probability that they will buy from you if only you market your products and services. Add people to your email list and begin marketing your brand to them. Send emails with information on your products and services. This is called list building.

You can give people freebies in exchange for their contact information. For instance, if you are selling a course, you can give a short coaching session to everyone that subscribes to your email list. Freebies can act as your lead magnet. It can attract leads to your business and help you grow your business.

Optimize Your Website for Conversions

You are already selling your digital products to your customers at this stage of the business. What remains is finding ways to increase your sales. If you want to increase your sales, you should optimize your site leveraging SEO to convert most visitors to customers.

To optimize your website, you should look at the data on your site. What do the numbers say about your most trafficked pages? You should also identify the pages on your website that most people rarely visit, and once they do, they leave the page fast.

You want to ensure you can hold your visitors for long so you can get the chance to convince them into buying your products and services. Focus on removing the things that don’t work on your site and improve those that work to optimize your website sales funnel.

You should focus more on how you can sell your digital products on the website. Therefore, make it clear that your website aims to attract people willing and able to buy your products and services.

Make sure you can send every visitor to your landing page, and you persuade them to buy. To achieve this, ensure you have a call to action on one very single page of your website. Go straight to the point and tell your visitors what you want them to do.

You can then reward them accordingly for taking action you asked for.

Final Thoughts                                     

Suppose you are out to start a business selling digital products, now is the right time to start. Register your business and get a copyright for your products. Build a website, brand, and audience for your products and services.

Start your business today by following the five steps listed here and turning your fantastic idea into an income-generating business.

Seth Freeman, Chief Marketing Officer of Buffalo Wild Wings, was recently interviewed on Adweek’s CMO Moves podcast with Nadine Dietz. Freeman discussed their new “game on” brand architecture that defines not just their new marketing strategy but really the heart of the business. “The purpose ultimately is really about inspiring legendary experiences between friends,” noted Freeman:

Turning Good Times With Friends Into Great Times With Brothers

When I think of brand architecture it really gets to the essence of the brand. There are three components to it in the way we framed it up.  They are the promise, the essence, and the purpose. We identified an insight out there that guys want to turn good times with friends into great times with brothers. More accurately, legendary experiences with brothers. That was the cultural insight that really framed our brand architecture.

When we think about our purpose we defined our promise as the great American sports bar that turned game time into stories worth telling. It wasn’t just about inviting folks to watch a game. It was about translating that into an experience worth telling. That’s what folks are really looking for. That’s the promise that we deliver on every single day. That’s why we get up. That’s why folks are going out there and doing the job that they do and delivering a great experience.

It’s “Game On” for Buffalo Wild Wings

Our purpose ultimately is really about inspiring legendary experiences between friends. The essence of the brand is around this idea of camaraderie and ritual and something that we like to call “game on.” It’s our ability to make sure that when folks come in to experience Buffalo Wild Wings that we have a game on mentality and that we bring them the very best of who we are. We have 80,000 folks out there working across Buffalo Wild Wings and they bring it every single day.

As we were talking to consumers, one of the things we learned was that some of the most impactful experiences that they talked about was with the bartenders and servers. They are influencing whether or not those folks come back. For instance, one of the most memorable experiences they talked about was the bartender remembering them when they came back.

That is our brand architecture, but it also lends itself to things we have done in rolling out this purpose to the broader community through our Brand Champ Initiative. That really is a cultural movement that we are employing across our franchises and corporate stores. We have over 1,200 locations where folks are trained to make sure that the brand architecture is translating to a way that is meaningful to the consumers and also meaningful to the folks that are on the front lines every single day.

Nirosha Methananda, Vice President of Marketing at Bombora, discusses the challenges of marketing without annoying your potential customers by bombarding them with marketing messages in an interview with Logan Lyles on the B2B Growth Podcast:

Marketing Is Really About the Customer Experience

As a B2B marketer, I get marketed to a lot. It’s something that I have increasingly noticed and I’m probably not the only one. That’s just becoming part of the experience in terms of being inundated with different messaging and different calls and this, that, and the other. Use this, do this, buy this, whatever it is. It’s really not a great experience. It doesn’t necessarily provide value. Marketers are so busy as it is, and I know that is applicable across the board with everyone we are marketing to. Being able to cut through the noise and having an understanding of all these different things is very challenging. 

Having on top of it being inundated with this constant flow of messaging like meet me, meet me, meet me, is not very helpful. That’s one of the things that I’m passionate about. It’s really about customer experience. I think that is something fundamental to marketing. I feel like we have gone down this path of almost over automating and having to constantly pounce on people without necessarily being conscious and mindful of what their experience is on the other end. From my experience, it’s leading to me switching off and ignoring messages. I’m sure I’m not the only one. 

Create a Marketing Strategy That’s Not Annoying

It also leads to this annoyance and irritation which leads to distrust of brands and that’s not great for this industry. From a customer perspective those bad experiences, unfortunately, more than good experiences, they stay with you for longer and you remember that. Another thing that we don’t necessarily think of is that it’s wasteful. It’s wasteful of time and it’s wasteful of money especially for marketing and sales where money is a precious resource. It’s not something to be wasted. That’s basically why I’m passionate about creating a marketing strategy that’s not annoying.

As an example, our Intent Event was our first flagship event that we did last year. It was a closed event so we did have limited numbers and we were limited as to what we could do with promotion. What we did was try to have mindfulness around what we were sending out and ensuring that it was helpful. Making sure that the recipients, the people that we invited, were given all the relevant information, but there was brevity in the communication as well as encouraging them to participate without forcing them to be there. 

There was certainly some urgency around some of our communication but it wasn’t you need to attend this and this is why you must attend this. It was more about being a bit more subtle in presenting them the idea and the concept of what it was, why it would help them, and exactly the information that they needed. What that meant was not sending out multiple emails, being very controlled around it, really thinking about what the experience was before the event, to during the event, to after the event. We were really focused on the customer and making sure that all of the content and communication was educational and helpful.

What Is A PDF?

Ever since its introduction in the market in the 1990s, Portable Document Format or PDF has become one of the most popular file formats. Today, if it is a document, it should be a PDF. 

Be it an official letter or an important study note, people choose the PDF way to save it all.  If you wish to Fill Out Sample Request Loan Approval Letter or to frame a Cease Harassment and Desist Letter, you will find several free, online PDF forms. 

Who Should Care About Using PDF Files?

In short, almost everyone should care about PDFs as long as they deal with documents. From students to professionals, from corporate employees to business owners, PDF makes handling documents easier than ever for everyone. 

In fact, if you are a home make and have a monthly grocery list to make, saving one in PDF form will save your efforts and time. Therefore, there is hardly anyone who cannot benefit from PDFs. 

Benefits Of Using PDF

Now that it is clear that PDFs come with a plethora of benefits, let’s have a look at those advantages in detail. 

• When you convert a Word doc or an HTML document into a PDF one, the format remains unaltered. 
• Compared to other document formats such as JPG, and TIFF, the file of PDFs remain smaller
• You can use passwords to protect the PDF files
• No matter the device or the OS, PDFs open everywhere
• PDFs are supportive of images, hyperlinks and other non-text features
• Users can also compress, rotate and watermark PDF files using appropriate online tools
• Adding a signature to a PDF file is possible with the help of a conversion tool

Is A PDF File Editable?

PDFs are images of documents that offer readability. However, editing a PDF is not entirely impossible. There are several free PDF editor tools available online that help edit PDF files. 

The text-based files are easy to edit. But the image-based ones such as screenshots, scanned documents, images saved as PDFs, etc., can be a little difficult to edit. 

Then again, using OCR, one can turn an image-based PDF into a text-based one and edit it.  

Formats Convertible Into PDF

A wide range of document formats can be converted into PDFs. Here is a list of such document formats that undergo smooth transition when uploaded on a converter tool. 

• Word doc
• TIFF
• JPG
• HTML
• PNG
• EXCEL

Final Words

In a nutshell, PDFs are an excellent choice for everyone looking for a friendly and easy-to-handle document format they can store, share, and edit effortlessly. Additionally, you can protect eth files, add signatures and resize the file whenever needed. 

Free, online PDF tools help create critical letters and schedules using template forms. Even though technology alters quite quickly, PDFs are here to stay for a long time.

Lyft is one of the leading ride-sharing services and sees an opportunity to expand its own advertising business and help partner brands reach more consumers. As the pandemic wanes, people are traveling more, opening the door to increased opportunity.

“Our vision is to build the world’s largest transportation media network, delivering value to advertisers while also elevating the platform experience for riders and drivers,” reads the company’s blog. “Over the past two years, we’ve been growing our media business and are excited to share more details about our products, new partnerships, and future plans.”

The company’s plan revolve around four advertising channels: Lyft Halo, Lyft Tablet, Lyft Bikes, and Lyft Skins.

Lyft Halo

Lyft Halo consists of rooftop-mounted screens that can display digital advertising. The concept is built around Lyft’s 2019 acquisition of Halo Cars.

Rather than generalized ads, Lyft Halo will display ads specifically tuned to the time of day and vehicle’s location, maximizing possible engagement. Brands will be able to track the performance of their ads, thanks to Lyfts attribution partners.

Lyft Tablets

Lyft Tablets are in-vehicle tablets that provide passengers with a way to monitor the progress of their journey, control the vehicle’s music, pay and tip the driver, and engage with partner branding.

In the company’s pilot program, “1 in 4 engaged with the tablet during their ride, and 98% rated the experience as positive or neutral. And for drivers, tips increased by an average of 28% per ride while using the tablet in Q4 2021.”

Lyft Bikes

Lyft Bikes provide an easy way for customers to rent a bike rather than a traditional vehicle. Lyft is installing display panels at the bike stations, providing partners yet another way to engage with consumers.

The company already has 3,000 stations, 45,000 bikes, and serves 36 million rides annually, providing a significant opportunity to advertisers.

Lyft Skins

Lyft Skins provides a way for brands to interact with consumers via the Lyft App itself. DoorDash, Starbucks, HBO Max, Marriott, and Google are just a few of the brands that have already benefited from this channel, and the company is bringing more companies and brands onboard.

Lyft is clearly looking to capitalize on its position in the ride-sharing market to become a digital platform that provides value to consumers and brands alike.

Nirosha Methananda, Vice President of Marketing at Bombora, discusses the challenges of marketing without annoying your potential customers by bombarding them with marketing messages in an interview with Logan Lyles on the B2B Growth Podcast:

Marketing Is Really About the Customer Experience

As a B2B marketer, I get marketed to a lot. It’s something that I have increasingly noticed and I’m probably not the only one. That’s just becoming part of the experience in terms of being inundated with different messaging and different calls and this, that, and the other. Use this, do this, buy this, whatever it is. It’s really not a great experience. It doesn’t necessarily provide value. Marketers are so busy as it is, and I know that is applicable across the board with everyone we are marketing to. Being able to cut through the noise and having an understanding of all these different things is very challenging. 

Having on top of it being inundated with this constant flow of messaging like meet me, meet me, meet me, is not very helpful. That’s one of the things that I’m passionate about. It’s really about customer experience. I think that is something fundamental to marketing. I feel like we have gone down this path of almost over automating and having to constantly pounce on people without necessarily being conscious and mindful of what their experience is on the other end. From my experience, it’s leading to me switching off and ignoring messages. I’m sure I’m not the only one. 

Create a Marketing Strategy That’s Not Annoying

It also leads to this annoyance and irritation which leads to distrust of brands and that’s not great for this industry. From a customer perspective those bad experiences, unfortunately, more than good experiences, they stay with you for longer and you remember that. Another thing that we don’t necessarily think of is that it’s wasteful. It’s wasteful of time and it’s wasteful of money especially for marketing and sales where money is a precious resource. It’s not something to be wasted. That’s basically why I’m passionate about creating a marketing strategy that’s not annoying.

As an example, our Intent Event was our first flagship event that we did last year. It was a closed event so we did have limited numbers and we were limited as to what we could do with promotion. What we did was try to have mindfulness around what we were sending out and ensuring that it was helpful. Making sure that the recipients, the people that we invited, were given all the relevant information, but there was brevity in the communication as well as encouraging them to participate without forcing them to be there. 

There was certainly some urgency around some of our communication but it wasn’t you need to attend this and this is why you must attend this. It was more about being a bit more subtle in presenting them the idea and the concept of what it was, why it would help them, and exactly the information that they needed. What that meant was not sending out multiple emails, being very controlled around it, really thinking about what the experience was before the event, to during the event, to after the event. We were really focused on the customer and making sure that all of the content and communication was educational and helpful.

Dave Gerhardt, VP of Marketing at Drift, was recently interviewed on the B2B Growth podcast by John Rougeux who is VP of Marketing at Skyfii. Gerhardt discusses conversational marketing as a new B2B product category and how it is changing marketing from reaching out to you later to a conversation that is happening now:

Conversational Marketing is About Connecting You Now

Conversational marketing is a whole new way of thinking about marketing and sales. The traditional way of doing marketing and sales is all about later. Come to my website and fill out this form and somebody is going to reach out to you later, when it’s convenient for them. The big shift that is happening in marketing and business over the last five to ten years is customers have all the power today. You can’t make people wait. Information is free now.

I can find anything I want to know about a company without ever having to go to your website. It’s crazy to think that you are going to force people to go to your website, fill out a form, wait three days to hear back from your sales team, and then get a demo. Conversational is all about connecting you now with the people who are ready to buy now while they are live on your website.

B2P – Marketing to People

It’s not about buyers. It’s not about sellers. It’s not about sales. It’s not about marketing. It’s about people. That’s how people all communicate online today. I pressed one button in my car and I got a list. I ordered something from Amazon while I was here this morning to send back to my house and it’s going to be there tomorrow when I get home. There are countless examples of that. That is how we all behave online in our real lives today.

But then something happens weird happens. We go to our jobs in B2B and none of the tools that we use match how we actually buy as real people. That’s the most exciting thing to me about conversational marketing. It’s really closing the gap between B2C and B2B. We just call it B2P, marketing to people.

What Ties Our Products Together is Conversation

We have an email product and we have a landing page product. Black and white versions of those people would say everybody has email, everybody has landing pages. The thing that ties those together is conversation. That forces us to think about what is conversational email? What is conversational landing pages? What is conversational whatever? That one word forces our product team to think about how can we change this? If our fundamental stance as a company is that the internet should be one conversation, then how does that weave into everything that we build?

Ultimately what we care about is that email becomes a conversation. Meaning, the way that marketers have had to use email the last decade is a one-way channel. Email is meant to be a two-way channel. Marketers have been using it as, “John come to my webinar.” What happens if you actually respond to that email? Most of the time you can’t because it’s donotreply@ or it just goes to some inbox where nobody is answering it. That is a terrible experience. Our belief is that if you reply, “Hey actually I can’t make it. Can you reregister my colleague?” That should get handled. We are thinking of that from an evolution standpoint.

The same thing with landing pages. Most landing pages today are static. You go to the landing page, put a bunch of info in and you are gone. What if that was a real-time conversation on the page? That one topic has to weave itself into everything we do from a product perspective.

>> Listen to the complete interview with Drift Marketing VP Dave Gerhardt on the B2B Growth podcast.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the main goal of content creation. You want your content to rank organically and ideally as high as possible on the first page. 

Even well-written content doesn’t always rank, though, so why is that?

Below we explore some of the potential reasons a piece of content may not perform well organically after you post it. 

Understanding Content’s Ranking Potential 

In general, the more content you publish that’s high-quality on your site, the more likely you are to rank for keywords across the entire site. Google likes to see a lot of content because then the algorithms that fuel the search engine have more context, and they’re better able to understand what your site is about. 

Each time you publish a new piece of content, Google is getting more keywords, and that means more understanding of your brand. 

That’s why optimizing all of your content with semantically relevant keywords in your headers, descriptions, and titles is essential. 

That doesn’t mean you go for quantity over quality, however. Google can actually end up not only ignoring your content if it’s not high-quality—you could also be penalized. 

Along with the words you use in your content creating ranking opportunities, you’re also able to optimize your images. The way you optimize images is going to be a major ranking factor that drives traffic. 

So what if you’re in a situation where you know you’re creating great content that you feel is properly optimized, and you still aren’t ranking?

We’ll cover these situations below. 

Your Keywords Are Too Competitive

Probably one of the biggest reasons your content isn’t ranking is that you’re targeting keywords that are too competitive. Yes, they have a lot of volumes, and that can make them a shiny target, but to rank for keywords that are extremely competitive is going to be almost impossible for a new piece of content. 

First of all, stop with the one and two-word targeted keywords. Instead, look for long-tail, less competitive keywords. 

You should do a keyword search on everything you’re thinking about using for your content. Under a search box, if you type your targeted keyword in, you’ll see gray text that lets you know how many results it brings up. You can also use keyword tools to figure out the competitiveness of any given word or phrase. 

Irrelevant Content

You might create content that you think your ideal audience wants to see, but you might be wrong here. 

You have to think carefully about why you’re creating every piece of content before you spend time and effort on it. You also want to consider if you’re going to be able to truly add value to the lives of your readers with what you’re producing. 

If you’re not thinking carefully about creating value, you’re going to have weak, shallow content that doesn’t get much engagement.

The Content Is Outdated

If you have a lot of content on your site already and you don’t think it’s ranking as well as it should be, you need to consider whether it’s outdated. You need to update your old content on a regular basis, and that can help you boost its ranking. 

If you’re overwhelmed and have a lot of content, start with an audit. Go over your current content by performance, and then from there, look at your oldest and underperforming pieces of content to figure out if you could make changes that would help them be more relevant or updated. 

Your Site Has Technical Problems

If your site as a whole has technical issues, it’s going to prevent individual pieces of content from ranking. 

Common technical SEO problems include not having an XML sitemap, broken links, coding errors, privacy concerns, or Google not indexing your site. 

You may need to work with a developer if you think your problem stems from your technical SEO. 

Similar to some of the technical issues already mentioned, you also need to ensure your site is fast and mobile-friendly. Google has outright said that its priority in indexing content and sites is mobile-first. You can check using Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test, and if your site isn’t responsive, you need to work on redesigning it. 

Similarly, site speed is also a critical ranking factor. If your site is too slow, you may need to invest in updates such as getting better hosting service or compressing your media files. 

Short, Thin Content

Just like Google wants to see updated and highly relevant content that’s tailored to the needs of your audience, you also want to make sure that your content is long enough. There’s a reason this matters.

First, when you have longer content, it gives Google more content to crawl. 

Also, long-form content tends to provide a very in-depth view of a topic, and that’s more likely to be high in value for a reader compared to short or thin content. 

This doesn’t mean you fill your content with meaningless fluff to try and up the word count, though. Don’t go overboard trying to have a longer article to the point that you’re no longer adding value. 

When you have in-depth content that’s relevant and valuable, this can help reduce your bounce rate because people are going to spend additional time browsing your site. That can in and of itself be a ranking factor for Google. 

You Don’t Have Enough Links

Finally, Google’s algorithm analyzes your site’s relevancy and domain authority when determining how to rank your site for particular keywords and phrases. The term domain authority was initially created by Moz, and it’s a prediction of how well your site will rank on search engines, with a score that ranges from 1-to 100. 

The number of links pointing to your site is part of this. If you don’t have a lot of backlinks to your site as a whole and also to individual pieces of content, it’s going to be tougher for you to rank. 

You need to use link-building strategies through relationship building and creating quality content. You should also send guest blog and content pitches to sites and publications or outsource the work to a professional link-building company.

Shantanu Narayen, Chairman and CEO of Adobe, discusses how the pandemic has created another “inflection point” in the move toward digital transformation:

Digital Transformation Is A $120 Billion Opportunity

It was a good quarter all around. All of our businesses performed exceedingly well. On the Creative Cloud and the Document Cloud, not only did we have a great acquisition. in other words, new customers adopting the platform, but we really focused on engagement and demonstrating the value of our products to our customers. Even our retention levels came back to pre-COVID levels which we believe is a really good sign.

What’s happening in the world is the businesses that we’re in, namely creativity and enabling people to tell their story, what’s happening with documents and accelerating document productivity, and what’s happening associated with every single enterprise needing to engage with their customers digitally, when you add all of this up we think it’s over a $120 billion of an addressable market opportunity for Adobe.

Pandemic Was Inflection Point For Everything Being Digital

What the pandemic and the current health situation has done is that it has created yet another inflection point for everything being digital. What we will have to continue to monitor is what happens in the spending environment. But as it relates to the overall need for the kinds of solutions that Adobe provides as well as the importance of digital in the marketplace I think that’s going to be sustainable for decades. You’re not going to put the genie back in the bottle as it relates to engaging digitally and creating content digitally.

We believe that we’re in this third phase of what is happening in the enterprise. Traditionally, businesses first focused on automating the back office, and then they focused on automating the front office for knowledge workers. It’s absolutely clear that the biggest imperative that exists in the enterprise today is how do you engage with customers? This is a category that we call Customer Experience Management.

Customer Insight Is Key To Your Digital Transformation

If you’re an enterprise today and you’re thinking about digital transformation, what’s top of that stack in terms of where you have to invest is to make sure that you have insight into what your customers are doing. How are they engaging with you? What’s the profile? How do you deliver the personalized experience?

We really believe that what you’re seeing in the enterprise spend environment is that the companies that are focused on this next generation of delivering customer engagement, the customer experiences, and the insight associated with how to take the most advantage of that data, they’re going to be the secular winners moving forward.

Microsoft Teams is the leading corporate messaging platform. Until now, working with PDFs was a weak point, one that has been solved by close collaboration between Microsoft and Adobe. Collaboration between the two companies allows Adobe Acrobat to be the default PDF handler for Team, providing full viewing and editing support.

“The Acrobat app in Teams allows for viewing, editing, exporting, organizing, combining, converting, compressing, protecting, accessing PDFs from Teams chats, channels, OneDrive or SharePoint,” writes Tulika Gupta, Adobe Senior Product Marketing Manager, Strategic Partnerships & Integrations. “You can use Acrobat for Microsoft Teams as a Personal Tab, Bot, Tab, Message Action, or Message Extension. We had also added Single Sign-On (SSO) and introduced the personal tab — a home page for curating all your recent documents, tools, and collaboration into one view.”

The improved integration should go a long way toward streamlining workflows.

“Given Teams is where you’re already having the conversation with your colleagues, there is no longer the additional burden of providing context (say goodbye to those emails),” Gupta adds. “You can also get notified when comments are added to PDFs directly in Teams. All comments get recorded on a single version of the PDF stored in SharePoint or OneDrive (by default) as the ‘single source of the truth.'”

The integration of Acrobat and Teams demonstrates what is possible when companies work together to make their products and services interoperable.

Incorporate User-Generated Content

All companies have to face it: customers are no longer simply consumers. They are active participants and content creators and are impossible to ignore in your marketing strategy. UGC content serves as social proof for your brand reputation and product quality. New customers are more likely to purchase your product or service when they discover positive reviews.

You can capitalize on formal or informal UGC. You might (with the creator’s permission) repost pictures or videos demonstrating customers using or raving about your products, or you can solicit active participation through company-sponsored contests and giveaways. You also have the option to access UGC regularly through partnerships with influencers.

Brand partners and influencers allow you to set the terms for the content that will best serve your brand, and they allow you to reach a large audience through influencers’ trusted advice. Whatever direction you take, incorporating UGC into your marketing strategy is essential.

Create Quality Content

The content you release should reflect your specific audience’s needs and preferences, but one thing remains true for every brand. Your content must be of high quality.

Your long-form content, such as blog posts and research articles, should be grammatically correct, engaging, and contain optimized keywords to boost their SEO performance. Using tools like Ahrefs and Semrush, you can edit your work to increase your readership and add value to your customers.

Video content should also hold an esteemed position within your marketing plan. Videos quickly capture viewer attention and increase accessibility by utilizing audio, visuals, alternate text, and subtitles. While every company battles for customer attention, you can set yourselves apart through quality videos that present them with information quickly.

When you make or solicit videos, you should ensure they have high-quality visuals and audio, show multiple angles, and keep the product, creator, or customer within the frame. You must engage viewers through authentic and relatable stories.

Conduct Market Research

You might have the most impressive, trusted marketing practices in your toolkit, but they are only effective if you know your target audience. While many consumers share similar needs and preferences, you find business success in identifying their unique qualities and niche groups.

You must center your marketing strategy around your niche audience. Whether you’re launching your business or updating your previous marketing strategy, you must identify and narrow down your target audience to provide more personalized content and outreach. Build consumer personas and perform SWOT analysis tests to determine what calls to action, color schemes, and information your customers respond to.

When you conduct market research, stay on the lookout for trends that work for your industry and specific audience. Though trends come and go, incorporating some of them into your marketing techniques will help you stay relevant and generate excitement. Additionally, you’ll want to study your competition’s marketing strategies to take stock of their strengths and weaknesses. You can adapt what they do well to meet your business needs and avoid their pitfalls. Comparative market analysis will help you stay on budget and stand out from the crowd.

Outline Your Objectives

Developing a marketing strategy requires goal-setting. You need to know what specific results you’re working towards and implement measurable KPIs to reach them. When creating or updating your marketing approach, select a few long-term goals and outline short-term objectives.

Setting goals will help get your team on the same page and allow you to track your progress and adapt to unforeseen challenges. Actionable market plans increase brand awareness, generate leads, and boost revenue.

Take SEO Strategies into Account

You can’t overlook search engine optimization when creating and sharing content with your target audience. Including optimized keywords and generating backlinks to your website in other off-site articles boost your search engine rankings and allows you to share your credentials and expertise with a larger audience.

SEO also helps you improve the customer experience. By adapting your content to reflect what your customers are looking for, you make it easier for them to find solutions to their problems.

Conclusion

You can improve the results generated from your company’s marketing strategy by incorporating user-generated content, conducting market research, and outlining your objectives. While it might seem like the marketing world is an ever-changing landscape, if you base your marketing techniques on your target audience’s needs and preferences, you’ll find success.

Dropbox is one of the most popular cloud storage services, but it doesn’t have end-to-end encryption like Tresorit and other more security-conscious services. Dropbox is looking to change that by acquiring assets from Boxcryptor. Boxcryptor is an independent service that helps user encrypt their files across a range of cloud services, adding an extra layer of security.

Dropbox announced the deal in a blog post:

Today, we’re excited to share that we’ve signed an agreement to acquire several key assets from Boxcryptor, a provider of end-to-end “zero-knowledge” encryption for cloud storage services. The combination of Boxcryptor’s leading encryption capabilities and Dropbox’s easy-to-use product, with our already robust security features, will help us better meet our customers’ evolving needs.

The only downside to Dropbox’s plans is that it seems Boxcryptor’s features will only be available to business users:

We plan to embed Boxcryptor’s capabilities natively within Dropbox for our business users on our paid plans, adding an additional layer of security by encrypting files locally on their devices prior to syncing their content to Dropbox.

Despite the limitation, Dropbox’s announcement is good news for security-minded customers.

Figma has taken the design world by storm, providing web-based design tools that rival more traditional options, such as Adobe’s. The company’s offerings have even become popular within Microsoft, a long-time Adobe ally.

In the wake of Adobe’s announcement that it is purchasing Figma for $20 billion, users are already worried the deal spells the end of what made Figma special.

“Figma was a tool that gave designers superpowers. And part of the reason they did that is because they listened to what the community was asking them for,” Adam Glynn-Finnegan, a product-design lead at Netflix, told Business Insider. “I don’t think Adobe necessarily has that muscle.”

Adobe has a long history of raising prices and charging near-exorbitant prices for its design software. This has helped contribute to the rise of open source options, as well as startups like Figma that offer comparable services at prices people can afford. Many are now concerned Adobe will take the startup’s services and raise the prices to be more inline with the rest of the larger company’s offerings.

Adobe and Figma have tried to reassure users, saying the latter will remain an independent unit within Adobe. What’s more, Figma’s CEO, Dylan Field, will continue to run the unit and has said they “currently have no plan to change Figma’s pricing.”

The reassurances are not resonating with users, especially freelancers and startups that can’t afford Adobe’s software.

“Saying that people are freaking out too much comes from a place of privilege,” Mia Eltiste, a design researcher at the IBM spinoff Kyndryl, told Insider. “They can afford the subscription-based model, unlike freelancers or smaller companies, where income comes sporadically.”

Only time will tell if designers’ fears are warranted, although Adobe’s history would suggest they are. There’s also the possibility that regulators will block the deal, especially given Adobe’s dominant position within the industry.

Live Video Has Been on the Rise

In fact, the growth of live video has become so rapid and widespread that global revenue is projected to reach beyond 180 billion dollars within the next few years. Of course, it’s easy to see how this speedy upward trajectory has evolved.

Since the outbreak of the COVID pandemic, remote interactions have skyrocketed. Where we once worked mainly in offices in a particular geographical location, and we once did most of our socializing in person, and we frequented theaters for new releases, now all of these things can and do happen from the comfort of our own homes or other remote locations.

All of this new connectivity outside of larger, better equipped networks, such as those in place in a company’s headquarters, have given rise to an increase in connectivity issues and security vulnerabilities. Naturally, we’re seeing these problems with the use of live video as well.

Live video is certainly not only used for business meetings. We’re using live video for marketing, brand engagement, gaming, B2B, webinars, healthcare, real estate, entertainment, social interactions, and more. Regardless of our intent and purpose, the problems we face are common among all uses.

Live Video Issues

The most common problems have to do with a variety of aspects such as bandwidth availability, internet connection, compatibility, encoding, privacy, and user interface. Having all of these things in place for every live video interaction is crucial to maintaining a quality live video experience.

One of the main reasons why we’re experiencing the common challenges is that there are so many video platforms available, but the majority were developed prior to the pandemic, therefore their development didn’t intrinsically rise to the challenges which were relatively minimal at the time, but which have become quite pervasive three years into the sudden transition to remote.

Although we’ve returned to the “old normal” in many ways, this trend of remote connection is not going anywhere and we must embrace every available technology to diminish the difficulties.

Fortunately, there is a solution which needs to become as commonplace as live video itself. Single stream technology resolves all of the most common concerns surrounding every live video experience.

Single stream technology takes data from any source, every live video stream, along with each participant, and merges them all together into a single interface, displaying a single live video feed. It can be used on any device and requires no infrastructure for clients or live video viewers.

In Conclusion

Single stream technology answers the challenges of bandwidth availability, complies with every new privacy law, smooths out any potential problem area for lagging or connectivity interruption, and ultimately produces a high quality live video every single time.

The MoonRay renderer has been used in a number of animated hits, including How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World, Croods: A New Age, The Bad Guys, and the upcoming Puss In Boots: The Last Wish. While MoonRay is currently proprietary software, DreamWorks plans to open source, making it available to everyone.

“We are thrilled to share with the industry over 10 years of innovation and development on MoonRay’s vectorized, threaded, parallel, and distributed code base,” said Andrew Pearce, Vice President of Global Technology at DreamWorks. “The appetite for rendering at scale grows each year, and MoonRay is set to meet that need. We expect to see the code base grow stronger with community involvement as DreamWorks continues to demonstrate our commitment to open source.”

The announcement is good news for the creative and open source community and will give animators of all skill levels access to an industrial-strength rendering platform.

Lyft is one of the leading ride-sharing services and sees an opportunity to expand its own advertising business and help partner brands reach more consumers. As the pandemic wanes, people are traveling more, opening the door to increased opportunity.

“Our vision is to build the world’s largest transportation media network, delivering value to advertisers while also elevating the platform experience for riders and drivers,” reads the company’s blog. “Over the past two years, we’ve been growing our media business and are excited to share more details about our products, new partnerships, and future plans.”

The company’s plan revolve around four advertising channels: Lyft Halo, Lyft Tablet, Lyft Bikes, and Lyft Skins.

Lyft Halo

Lyft Halo consists of rooftop-mounted screens that can display digital advertising. The concept is built around Lyft’s 2019 acquisition of Halo Cars.

Rather than generalized ads, Lyft Halo will display ads specifically tuned to the time of day and vehicle’s location, maximizing possible engagement. Brands will be able to track the performance of their ads, thanks to Lyfts attribution partners.

Lyft Tablets

Lyft Tablets are in-vehicle tablets that provide passengers with a way to monitor the progress of their journey, control the vehicle’s music, pay and tip the driver, and engage with partner branding.

In the company’s pilot program, “1 in 4 engaged with the tablet during their ride, and 98% rated the experience as positive or neutral. And for drivers, tips increased by an average of 28% per ride while using the tablet in Q4 2021.”

Lyft Bikes

Lyft Bikes provide an easy way for customers to rent a bike rather than a traditional vehicle. Lyft is installing display panels at the bike stations, providing partners yet another way to engage with consumers.

The company already has 3,000 stations, 45,000 bikes, and serves 36 million rides annually, providing a significant opportunity to advertisers.

Lyft Skins

Lyft Skins provides a way for brands to interact with consumers via the Lyft App itself. DoorDash, Starbucks, HBO Max, Marriott, and Google are just a few of the brands that have already benefited from this channel, and the company is bringing more companies and brands onboard.

Lyft is clearly looking to capitalize on its position in the ride-sharing market to become a digital platform that provides value to consumers and brands alike.

OBS Studio is a popular multi-platform video recording and live streaming app. According to the company’s release notes, the latest beta brings native Apple Silicon support, so users won’t have to run the app via Apple’s Rosetta 2 translation layer.

Here’s the release notes:

• Native Apple Silicon Support (macOS)
  • Note that many third-party plugins will need to release Apple Silicon versions of their plugins in order for them to work on Apple Silicon builds of OBS

The company includes the usual disclaimer about this version being beta software and not ready for production.

This is a test build, not a full release. This build may contain bugs or broken functionality. For production usage, we still recommend using the latest stable build of OBS. If you are willing to test this build, please let us know if you run into any issues.

Even with the warning, the update is good news for Apple users.