How to Do Marketing More Effectively Using Cloud Software

Think of the marketing tools you use on a daily basis. What is it about these tools that makes you come back to them all the time?

Ease of use, convenience, and reliability may be what you’re thinking — that’s what you get with cloud-based marketing software.

Most marketing tools (e.g. Buffer, MailChimp) use the cloud in their products and services for businesses to streamline their digital marketing efforts. This is reflected in the growth of the cloud computing market which is forecasted to hit the $200 billion mark this year.

A big reason why cloud marketing software is so popular today is due to its affordability.

Since subscriptions are the standard pricing model for these tools, you don’t have to spend money on expensive setup fees and long-term contracts. Instead, you only pay for what you need as most providers allow you to scale your costs flexibly.

Teams are also leveraging these services to increase productivity as it makes collaboration and project management a lot easier, especially for teams that work remotely or have multiple offices across the world.

These are just some of the countless benefits you gain from using cloud-based tools, which begs the question: how do you use marketing software to boost your digital marketing performance?

Use Cloud-based CRMs to Improve Customer Experience

If you’re still using Excel sheets and notebooks to keep track of customers, it’s time to move on.

In short, customer relationship management (CRM) tools help you to manage customers comprehensively, from nurturing leads to tracking your customers’ post-purchase journey.

Cloud-based CRMs are a digital marketer’s dream. With a CRM, you gain access to insights and analytics that help you make better decisions in your marketing strategy since you’re able to keep track of the entire buyer journey.

This is extremely helpful in achieving the holy grail of digital marketing — converting cold traffic to leads and subsequently turning them into customers.

Many of the popular CRMs today analyze data automatically and presents it visually for your team to understand your customers better.

Freshworks, for example, shows heatmaps on landing pages (which also works for mobile devices) to help marketers identify what prospects are clicking on.

All these benefits give digital marketers the edge they need to create optimized campaigns for their leads, leading to better performance and improved customer satisfaction.

Invest in SEO Tools

SEO today is more competitive than ever as most (if not all) businesses are aware of how lucrative organic search traffic is in comparison to other channels.

It’s no longer just about getting backlinks; creating content that people want to read and making sure it reaches the intended audience through smart keyword usage are just as important for your page to rank higher.

The modern digital marketer has to manage all these factors while keeping up with Google’s ever-changing ranking algorithm.

Thankfully, tools like Ahrefs and BuzzSumo take the heavy work off marketers to allow them to focus on other important areas of SEO optimization.

Ahrefs, for example, gives you everything you need to know about target keywords and your site’s (and competitors’) SEO performance.

Imagine trying to discover content gaps and finding potential backlink opportunities without Ahrefs — it’d take you weeks to get the analysis done!

The hours saved from using these tools can be spent better on optimizing your SEO strategy where machines can’t help (e.g. coming up with a multi-channel content plan), improving productivity immensely and generating better results for your SEO strategy.

Automate The Boring Tasks

Automation is one of the best ways for you and your team to boost productivity.

67% of leading digital marketerssay they use marketing automation tools on a regular basis.

69% of the top performers in the B2B space also leverage automation heavily in their operations.

Expect the figures to grow as more people start to realize the benefits of automation even in small teams and one-man operations.

Why is automation becoming so popular in digital marketing?

Marketing tasks such as sending out e-mails and segmenting leads can be done by hand but you will quickly reach a plateau where doing things manually is losing you money instead.

Ideally, you want your team to focus more on crafting the right message for your target audience and building the strategy to convey it.

You definitely don’t want them to spend most of their time filtering leads and punching out 100 e-mails in an hour — it’s simply a huge waste of your resources.

Marketing automation takes the burden away from mundane, time-consuming work so you can focus more on tasks that matter.

Some tools to help you get started with automation include Buffer, a social media scheduling tool that also acts as a collaborative platform for your team, and Drip, which creates effective e-mail and drip campaigns for you.

Most CRMs like HubSpot and ActiveCampaign have automation features bundled with their software. If you’re already using a CRM, find out what those features are and look into how they can help you improve your marketing performance.

Use Collaborative Tools Instead of Calls and E-mails

Before the cloud, you had to rely on e-mails and calls to communicate with your team outside of the office.

Forget about communication; would you want to go back in time when external drives and shared network folders were the standard practices for collaborative work?

Definitely not.

As a digital marketer, you’re likely to work with remote teams and handle multiple projects at one time so it’s a huge help to have a platform to manage all your communication and digital assets intuitively.

Tools like Slack, Trello, and Google’s G Suite make collaborating a breeze.

Since these platforms use the cloud, your data is synced in real-time across all devices. Your colleagues could be all over the world in different timezones; you’dstill be able to work together without a hitch.

Improved communication, better project management, and increasing the work efficiency of your marketing team are just some of the advantages you get from using collaboration tools.

Conclusion

Cloud marketing software is simply toogood of a benefit to pass up in your digital marketing. Consider implementing the tips mentioned in this post to boost your productivity and results of your marketing strategy.