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9 AI Tools for Successful Marketing Funnels – Tools That Solve Real Problems (Not Just Hype)

You’ve read the headlines: “AI is revolutionizing marketing!”

Yet here’s what nobody admits… most teams drown in flashy marketing funnels that promise the moon but deliver chaos.

The real problem?

Traditional funnels treat leads like numbers, not people.

But what if AI could humanize your marketing more than your current efforts?

Let me show you how, without losing your brand’s soul.

Disclosure: This content is reader-supported, which means if you click on some of our links that we may earn a commission.

The AI Marketing Crossroads: Why “Business as Usual” Fails

We’ve all been there—staring at a spreadsheet of “qualified” leads that ghost, or pouring budget into campaigns that fizzle. Here’s the uncomfortable truth:

• 61% of marketers say lead generation is their #1 headache (HubSpot)
• 50% of prospects are mismatched from the start (Sales Insights Lab)
• Manual lead nurturing burns 22% of sales teams’ time (Forrester)

But here’s the contrarian take: AI isn’t here to replace your creativity—it’s here to amplify it. The winners won’t be those with the most data, but those who use AI to forge real human connections at scale.

Your AI Marketing Toolbox: 9 Precision Instruments

Let’s cut through the noise. Below, I’ll break down exactly what each tool does, when to use it, and how it aligns with your goals.

No fluff. No hype. Just tools that solve specific problems.

1. Systeme.io: The Swiss Army Knife for Bootstrappers

What It Does: Systeme.io consolidates your entire marketing stack—funnels, email, courses, affiliates—into a single platform.
Why It Matters: If you’re tired of paying for 5+ tools just to launch a campaign, this eliminates app fatigue.

→ Key Features:

• Drag-and-drop funnel builder (landing pages, sales pipelines)
• Built-in email marketing with segmentation
• Host online courses and manage affiliates in one dashboard

Use When: You need simplicity without sacrificing functionality.

From creating a landing page to teaching an online course to manage your affiliates, the Systeme.io platform provides an array of tools.

The free plan only allows up to 1,000 contacts, so you’ll need to upgrade if you need more.

Systeme also offers three paid plans, including:

• Startup $27/month: Up to 5,000 contacts
• Webinar $47/month: Up to 10,000 contacts
• Enterprise $97/month: Up to 15,000 contacts

If you need more than 15,000 contacts, custom plans start at $147 per month.

→ Pricing Reality Check: Start free (up to 1K contacts), then scale to 27+/mo.

If you are just starting out, you will be happy to know that all plans include:

• unlimited emails
• unlimited file storage space
• unlimited membership site members
• no transaction fees (Stripe and PayPal platform fees may apply)
• affiliate programs
• online support

For a truly all-in-one platform, Systeme stands out as both robust and affordable.

Who Should Use Systeme?

Marketers looking to consolidate their suite of marketing tools and processes and rely on one tool.

Use When: You need simplicity without sacrificing functionality.

 

2. Exceed.ai: Your Lead Qualification Robot (That Feels Human)

According to data from Sales Insights Lab, 50 percent of prospects aren’t a good fit for what you sell.

Instead of using your salespeople to weed out the duds, Exceed’s personalization and lead qualification automation can do it for you in less time.

What It Does: Exceed.ai automates lead nurturing using AI chatbots that mimic real sales reps.

Why It Matters: Stop wasting hours on unqualified leads. Exceed filters out tire-kickers while booking meetings for hot prospects.

→ Key Features:

• Two-way email/SMS conversations with leads
• CRM integration (HubSpot, Salesforce)
• Meeting scheduling without human intervention

→ Data Don’t Lie: Clients report 40% faster lead-to-meeting velocity.

→ Pro Tip: Use its “lead scoring” to prioritize follow-ups—saved my agency 15 hrs/week.

With Exceed’s top-notch AI technology, engage your leads in human-like conversation.

The platform can even schedule meetings for your reps and bring you that much closer to the sale.

You’ll need to request a quote from Exceed.ai to learn more about the package that fits your budget.

Who Should Use Exceed.ai?

Businesses and organizations that need the greatest help in their sales funnel’s lead nurturing and conversion stages.

Use When: Your sales team is drowning in unresponsive leads.

3. Saleswhale: The Cold Lead Resurrection Machine

Saleswhale is a SaaS product that uses AI to identify, engage, and convert neglected leads.

Using automated follow-ups, referral handling, and interest qualification, Saleswhale’s AI assistants offer a best-in-class experience for you and your leads.

With the free plan, you can begin to nurture and convert up to 200 leads per month.

What It Does: Saleswhale re-engages stale leads with hyper-personalized email sequences.

Why It Matters: 80% of leads go cold—this tool revives them without manual outreach.

For additional leads and active email campaigns, paid plans include:

• Starter $495/month: Up to 500 leads/month, one active campaign
• Plus $1,495/month: Up to 2,500 leads/month, three active campaigns
• Professional $2,495/month: Up to 5,000 leads/month, 10 active campaigns

→ Key Features:

• AI-generated follow-ups based on lead behavior
• Multi-channel nurturing (email, LinkedIn, SMS)
• Free plan for up to 200 leads/mo
  → Case Study: A B2B client recovered $120k in lost revenue from “dead” leads in 90 days.
  → Script Hack: Upload your best sales emails—it’ll replicate your tone.

Who Should Use Saleswhale?

Companies strong in lead generation, but who need assistance in lead nurturing and conversion.

Use When: Your pipeline has more ghosts than a haunted house.

4. Appier: The Cross-Channel Einstein

Similar to Systeme, Appier is an all-in-one sales tool with a full suite of AI services.

This SaaS can help with prospecting to transactions with its robust data science platform.

Using AI, Appier can effectively segment your audience to drive maximum lead conversions.

You no longer need to create campaign after campaign hoping to hit the mark, as Appier will do the dirty work for you.

What It Does: Appier uses AI to unify ad campaigns across Google, Meta, TikTok, and more.

Why It Matters: If your ads feel scattered, Appier finds patterns in chaos.

→ Key Features:

• Predictive audience segmentation
• Real-time bid optimization
• Creative A/B testing at scale
  → Niche Edge: Dominates e-commerce—clients see 30%+ ROAS lifts.
  → Contrarian Take: Skip this if you’re a solopreneur. It’s for teams spending $10k+/mo on ads.

Appier’s pricing is not available on their website, so you’ll need to reach out to learn more about their tools and their potential fit with your business.

Who Should Use Appier?

Companies looking for a comprehensive suite of AI-powered marketing tools.

Use When: Your ad strategy needs a central brain.

 

5. ClickFunnels

If you are looking for an end-to-end sales funnel solution, then consider ClickFunnels.

Utilizing AI sales models and neural sales data, ClickFunnels aims to improve the marketing experience for businesses of all sizes.

ClickFunnels enables you to easily create funnels, build websites, and manage affiliates.

This means you can collect, nurture, and convert leads using just one platform.

With more than 100,000 entrepreneurs using or having used the platform, it has undoubtedly made a name for itself in the industry.

What It Does: ClickFunnels builds high-converting sales pipelines with pre-built templates.

Why It Matters: Even non-techies can launch a funnel in 2 hours.

→ Love/Hate Stats:

• Pro: 22% higher AOV with one-click upsells
• Con: $297/mo hurts if you’re not monetizing aggressively
  → My Verdict: Perfect for info products, overkill for local businesses.
  → Template Steal: Their “Perfect Webinar” funnel converts at 18% (industry avg: 5%).

These include:

• Basic $97/month: 20 funnels, 100 pages, three payment gateways, and three domains
• Platinum $297/month: Unlimited funnels, unlimited pages, nine payment gateways, and nine domains
• Two Comma Club $2,497/month: Unlimited funnels, unlimited pages, 27 payment gateways, and 27 domains

All plans come with chat support and video training.

Who Should Use ClickFunnels?

Companies who want an all-in-one solution that offers hand-holding and easy-to-use templates.

Use When: You need speed over customization.

6. Data Studio

Previously known as BrightFunnel, Data Studio by Terminus is a funnel reporting tool that connects marketing platforms to deliver beautiful, insightful analytics.

With Data Studio, you can create custom reports for marketers, executives, and stakeholders.

What It Does: Terminus aggregates data from every funnel stage into actionable dashboards.

Why It Matters: Fix leaks in your pipeline by seeing exactly where prospects bail.

→ Key Features:

• Multi-touch attribution modeling
• Custom reports for execs vs. marketers
• Slack/Teams alerts for KPIs
  → Aha Moment: A client discovered their “hero” landing page had a 92% drop-off—fixed it in a week.

Pricing is not readily available on the website, but you can schedule a demo to learn more about the platform.

Who Should Use Data Studio?

Marketing teams need a cohesive analytics and insights platform to bring their sales to funnel data to life.

Use When: Your analytics feel like a puzzle missing half its pieces.

7. Akkio: The Lead Whisperer

According to HubSpot, the top priority for marketers is generating leads.

However, as any marketer can tell you, not all leads are created equal.

You can spend your time manually poring over the data to determine your best path forward, or you can let Akkio take the reins.

Akkio is an AI marketing platform with tools to support every stage of the funnel.

Where it excels, however, is in its lead scoring capabilities and churn reduction technology.

Using data-driven insights, Akkio aims to narrow in on the leads with the greatest chance of a conversion.

What It Does: Akkio predicts which leads will convert (and which will churn) using AI.

Why It Matters: Stop guessing. Let data decide where to focus your energy.

→ Key Features:

• Automated lead scoring
• Churn risk alerts
• $50/mo entry point (cheaper than a bad hire)
  → Case Study: A fintech startup boosted conversions by 37% by focusing on Akkio’s “high intent” leads.
  → Pro Move: Feed it your CRM data—it learns your unique patterns in 48 hours.

For as low as $50 per month, billed annually, you can give Akkio a try with very little risk.

The features included in all plans are:

• unlimited users
• unlimited data
• unlimited flows and deployments
• integrations and API
• model reports

Who Should Use Akkio?

Companies looking for a scalable, data-driven solution.

Use When: Your sales team argues over lead priority.

 

8. Bant.io: The Modular Lead Gen Army

If you are hurting for qualified leads, you should know you’re not alone.

According to HubSpot, 61 percent of marketers consider a lead generation to be their top challenge.

The good news is there are marketing AI tools, like Bant.io, that can help.

What It Does: Bant.io offers à la carte lead gen services (email, ads, chatbots).

These run the gamut, including:

• email
• social outreach
• pay per click ads
• retargeting ads
• sales chatbot

Unlike many one-size-fits-all options, Bant.io plans are customizable to meet your business’s needs. Just add the modules you need and leave the rest.

The modules include:

• Email Outreach: $795/month
• Social Outreach: $495/month
• Retargeting Ads: $395/month
• PPC Ads: $395/month
• Sales Chatbot: $95/month

Why It Matters: Only pay for what you need—no bloated suites.

→ Modules That Work:

• Email Outreach ($795/mo): Gets 15-20% reply rates (my agency’s track record)
• Retargeting Ads ($395/mo): 7x ROAS on abandoned carts
• Chatbots ($95/mo): Cuts support tickets by 50%
  → Client Truth: A consulting firm landed 8 clients in 30 days using their LinkedIn outreach module.

Who Should Use Bant.io?

Marketers who favor a piecemeal approach to lead generation.

Use When: You need flexibility, not a one-size-fits-all solution.

 

9. Funnel.io: The Data Unifier

It’s not enough to have a marketing funnel in place.

You must evaluate every step of your funnel on a regular basis.

While most funnel tools will have their own reporting, they may not always present you with the big picture.

That’s where a reporting tool like Funnel.io comes in.

With 500+ data connections available, Funnel.io makes it easy to build reports that touch on all areas of your business.

Can’t find the data source you need?

The team at Funnel.io will work with you to get it added to their platform.

There are a variety of plans available, including:

• Essentials $399/month: Connects to 260 platforms, five seats, email support
• Plus $999/month: Connects to 500+ platforms, unlimited seats, email and chat support
• Enterprise $1,999/month: Connects to 500+ platforms, unlimited seats, priority email and chat support and a Customer Success Partner

All plans are billed annually.

What It Does: Funnel.io connects 500+ data sources into a single reporting hub.

Why It Matters: End spreadsheet hell. See your entire funnel in one dashboard.

→ Key Features:

• Automated data cleaning
• Custom metrics (e.g., “Cost per Warm Lead”)
• Team collaboration tools
  → Brutal Honesty: At $399+/mo, it’s pricey—but worth it if you’re drowning in GA4, Meta, and HubSpot data.
  → Pro Hack: Use their “Funnel Health Score” to diagnose weaknesses in 10 minutes.

Who Should Use Funnel.io?

Marketers or agencies looking for a comprehensive and collaborative reporting platform.

Use When: Your reports are a Frankenstein of mismatched numbers.

Your Next Step (No Fluff):

1. Audit Your Funnel’s Pain Point
   • Lead gen? → Bant.io or Exceed.ai
   • Nurturing? → Saleswhale or Akkio
   • Analytics? → Terminus or Funnel.io
2. Run a 14-Day Sprint
   • Test one tool with a clear metric (e.g., “Reduce lead response time to 2 hrs”)
3. Debrief With Your Team
   • Ask: “Did this make us more human or just busier?”

Final Truth: AI tools aren’t magic. But when wielded with strategy, they turn “overwhelmed” into “unstoppable.” Now go fix that funnel.

How to Protect Your Website from Hackers and Data Breaches

The number of website data breaches is steadily growing. Statista data shows the number of U.S. breaches rose from 662 to more than a thousand in recent years.

Some industries like government and healthcare have been particularly affected. For instance, recent data by Verizon shows data breaches in the healthcare industry increased by 58 percent.

You may be thinking, “What is a website data breach exactly, and should I be worried?”

Like most things in technology, there are no one-size-fits-all warning signs and solutions for website data breaches. However, understanding what these threats entail and learning effective ways to prevent and deal with them can make a huge difference to your business.

 

What Is a Website Data-Breach?

A data breach occurs when information is taken from a system without the owner’s knowledge or authorization. This stolen data may include confidential details, personal data, trade secrets, and even sensitive information that could majorly threaten the organization’s security.

Some common examples of data stolen during a website data breach include:

• stolen passwords
• identity information (date of birth, email ID, location, etc.)
• credit card information
• banking details
• medical history

If a data breach occurs and this information is stolen for misuse, it could mean harm for both the business and the person whose information is being taken.

Think about it: If you’re a business owner handling sensitive customer information such as their financial history, you must protect this data. When a website data breach occurs, these personal details can be misused, leading to identity theft, empty bank accounts, and unauthorized transfers among other types of fraud.

Ecommerce businesses need to be particularly careful about website data breaches as most of their dealings happen online, so nearly all the information is at risk.

This is important because you’re not just losing data but also money. Consider this: Data by RiskIQ suggests cybercrime costs organizations $2.9 million every minute, and major businesses lose $25 per minute as a result of data breaches.

Do you still want to risk a data breach?

 

What Causes Data Breaches?

A data breach doesn’t need a trained hacker. Something as simple as losing your device can be enough for a website data breach to occur. Some other causes of website breaches include:

Hacking:

Various types of hackers work alone or in teams to compromise and sell sensitive data. This is one of the leading causes of data breaches and tends to cause the most damage as not only could you lose the data, but your entire system could be compromised.

 

Accidental access:

If you’ve ever logged in to a coworker’s computer for a minute and got access to sensitive information you weren’t supposed to see, it’s a data breach. This happens more often than you’d think, as many colleagues sometimes share a device to work on a common project.

 

Internal spy:

If an employee inside the company shares information to outsiders for money or other gains, the data is breached by an “internal spy.”

While these causes can be dangerous for businesses dealing with sensitive data (think payment processing apps), most of them can be prevented. To help you bolster your security, below we’ll talk more about common data breach strategies and how to protect your business against them.

 

What Strategies Do People Use to Cause Data Breaches?

There are various strategies people use to cause website data breaches. These can be spontaneous or well-planned depending on the type of data being breached, whether it’s a solo or a team venture, and the purpose of the breach.

Here are some of the most common strategies cybersecurity experts recommend watching out for:

Phishing

Phishing attacks are designed to fool users into giving up their information. These look like genuine messages from trusted institutions but actually are clever traps designed by hackers to get access to your data.

Users who are not tech-savvy or those in a hurry may accidentally click on the false links and give away important information straight to the fraudsters.

Here’s an example of a phishing email impersonating Netflix:

 

Brute Force

Brute force attacks cause website data breaches by working through all possible combinations to crack your passwords. This used to take a long time as there could be endless variations of letters, numbers, and symbols to try, but nowadays the use of sophisticated software makes this process much easier. In fact, some hackers use fully automated brute force attacks.

This graphic explains how a brute force attack works to cause website data breaches:

 

Malware

Malware attacks capitalize on your device’s security flaws to gain access to your system. Hackers shove viruses and spyware into your system to view, access, lock or change your files, which causes a massive data breach.

In fact, data shows nearly half of the security professionals surveyed say ransomware and malware pose the biggest IT risks, so businesses should be extra careful to protect themselves against such cyber threats.

 

How to Prevent Data Breaches

While every business that operates online faces some cyber threats, there are many ways to prevent data breaches or at least minimize their impact. Let’s take a look at some of them below.

Look for Vulnerabilities

No system is perfect. Every system, network, server, and the device has a flaw that hackers use to grab access. The sooner you identify these flaws, the better you can protect your business from website data breaches.

One way to do this is to proactively look for vulnerabilities in your security system. You can do this by using security software specifically designed to test your system for such vulnerabilities.

If you don’t want to rely on software, there’s another option for you. Many companies hire trained white-hat hackers to spot system vulnerabilities and patch them before other hackers can get a chance. This is more time-consuming but can also offer more reliable results, especially when it comes to larger organizations handling a lot of data.

Human testers are also better at recognizing patterns, so if there’s a recurring issue, paid white-hat hackers might be able to identify the problem before it’s too late.

 

Train Your Employees

While human testers can be a great benefit to your organization, sometimes it’s your very own employees causing the very breaches you are trying to prevent.

Many incidents of website data breaches occur when employees accidentally leak information to people who do not have authorized access to this data.

For instance, if an employee accidentally emails private information to a third-party client, or if sensitive information is leaked through a shared device in the office, this data is considered to be “accidentally” breached.

It’s still harmful to the company, but it’s caused by human error, often due to the employee’s negligence, lack of technical knowledge, or skills in handling data.

Accidental website data breaches like these are easy to prevent through appropriate employee training to improve their understanding of data management. Organizations can use various programs like the Polymer DLP Behavioral Approach to training up their employees on cybersecurity.

If a complete program is too big of a time or budget commitment, consider hosting small webinars. Invite a guest speaker or show a documentary that highlights the impact accidental website data breaches can have on a company, and how to prevent them.

These might sound like small steps offering minimal results, but training your employees early on can go a long way in securing your organization and minimizing the chance of accidental data breaches down the road.

 

Have Backups for Your Data

In some cases, despite your best attempts at preventing them, a website data breach can wipe out important information from your system. While it may or may not be able to be recovered, it’s always a good idea to backup any and all information that might be important.

This way, if data is stolen, you’re not completely lost. You still have something to fall back on. For this, you can invest in a cloud backup solution or use a third-party service depends on your company’s needs.

Install a Firewall

Firewalls are one of the most basic yet secure ways to defend yourself against website data breaches. By installing a firewall, you will prevent unauthorized traffic and malicious software from entering your network.

This can act as the first line of defense and work well with other security measures to minimize the threat of hackers and other cybercrime.

 

Encrypt Sensitive Data

The process of encryption involves encoding data in a way that only authorized parties can read it. This is another basic but effective strategy to protect your business against website data breaches.

Different types of encryption processes can safeguard confidential data that is only meant to be shared with specific people in an organization. Only these people will be able to access and share it, keeping it in tight circles.

Online payment apps, email service providers, and messaging apps like WhatsApp use encryption to protect user privacy and boost security around sharing personal information on these platforms.

This graphic by Okta, explains encryption in simple terms:

 

Monitor Database Activity

Want something that gives you a high-level view of your security system? Consider monitoring database activity. This might be a new concept for many teams who are still in the early stages of adopting data security tech, but it’s worth taking a look at and can be effective for organizations of all sizes.

A database activity monitor (DAM) observes, identifies, and reports on database activities. These monitoring tools use real-time security technology to monitor all actions across the database. Additionally, they can detect abnormal and unauthorized activity, internally and externally, while gauging the effectiveness of your existing security protocols.

Like most other measures, this has multiple layers, and it’s important to consider your security needs before implementing any complex programs.

 

Website Data Breaches: Frequently Asked Questions

 

Conclusion: Website Data Breaches

In the age of the internet, cyber threats are expected—which means you need to be prepared. Learning more about what causes breaches and finding personalized solutions to prevent those attacks can go a long way in keeping your business—and customer information—safe.

If you’d like to take this a step further, learn how to effectively manage your website, get an SSL certificate, or focus on security and trust throughout your website.

Which cybersecurity technique will you use to protect your website from hackers and data breaches?

Source: neilpatel.com

SEO for a New Site: Checklist

Starting SEO for a new site is overwhelming, especially if you haven’t done it dozens of times already.

In fact, the process can be quite intimidating, as there are so many technical tasks involved.

SEO for a new site is one of those most intimidating tasks new site owners tend to shy away from and set aside.

 

SEO for a New Site: Checklist

Here’s a guide that will make it doable for you:

1. Don’t Take Your Domain Name Lightly

Spend some time on this step: Your domain name will hardly have any direct impact on your organic search visibility but it will be important for your brand name recognizability.

What doesn’t matter for SEO:

• Domain age (when it was registered)
• Exact-match keywords in the domain name
• Top-level domain (as long as it is not a regional/localized TLD), i.e. don’t stress if you cannot find a .com domain.

What does matter for SEO:

• Domain meaning: Its topical associations. A good domain can get more people to click your snippet when they search
• Domain length: Too long or hyphenated domains may look spammy and hurt your brand.

With all of that in mind, take your time. Picking a domain is a huge decision. Use this business name generator that discovers some snappy names with meaning. You can also set how long your name should be and which category it should fall under:

Once you have your domain, search Google for your name to make sure there are no existing brands in your niche that you’ll have a problem overcoming in branded search.

 

2. Use WordPress

WordPress is the easiest platform to set up a site. And it is also incredibly SEO-friendly and flexible.

No other content management platform has so many years of fine-tuning and such a rich directory of plugins. You can do just about anything with WordPress without having to code anything.

WordPress is free, most plugins are free or freemium, and all it takes is a few-click installation on most hosting providers.

WordPress also doesn’t require a lot of optimizing, especially at the beginning. All it takes:

• Choose a theme. Unlike your domain name, this will be easy to change down the road, so focus on the theme being lightweight rather than pretty. Here are a few fastest themes out there
• Enable HTTPS: Here’s a detailed guide on doing that on WordPress
• Set your permalinks to “Post name” and choose your time zone in “General Settings”
• Publish some fundamental content to give search engines something to crawl. More on this below:

 

3. Set up Your E-A-T Right Away

The first thing you can do when launching a new site is to start with Lorem ipsum text on your fundamental pages: About us, Contact, Privacy Policy, etc.

Those types of pages convince your first visitors that you are a trusted business to deal with and send quality signals to Google.

Make sure your E-A-T is set up well:

• Your foundation pages (About us, Terms of Service, Contact us, etc.)
• Your website security information (how is your visitors’ privacy protected?)
• Basic facts about your business
• Some social proof from beta testers or first product buyers
• Your author bylines detailing why they have expertise on a topic
• Links to your social media profiles
• More importantly, your service or product pages. What is it you are selling?

Ensure your service pages are as descriptive as possible. In order to achieve that, try adding not just text but also some videos that demonstrate the key benefits of your products or services.

Also, since the majority of visitors prefer watching videos with sound off, make it convenient for them by adding subtitles, so that they can get to the meat of the matter even without having to listen to them.

You want your first visitors as well as search engines to know right away!

 

4. Start with the Least Competitive Search Queries

One of the biggest challenges of optimizing SEO for a new site is that you have no unique data to rely on.

Any data that you are going to use at this point is public, so you have zero competitive advantage unless you get really smart and creative.

When launching SEO for a brand new site, you need at least This content targeting definitive search queries at a minimum:

1. Pages describing your services/products: These will target high-intent queries
2. Initial content putting your products in the educational courses: What are those problems your products help solve? These could also be use cases.

#2 is where you can focus on less competitive search queries to start generating some organic search traffic earlier and send those visitors to your key “money” pages.

Ahrefs is a great tool to find those low-hanging-fruit keywords to target when starting a new site. The platform offers a “Difficulty” metric that shows how difficult it will be to rank for each keyword on page 1.

For a brand new site, you may want your keyword “difficulty” to be no higher than 20. For that you will need to create a filter inside the Keyword Explorer:

When creating your content, use Text Optimizer to build semantically relevant context and include related concepts:

 

5. Start Monitoring Your Progress

You want to start collecting your site’s data as early as possible. This will help you get ahead of your competition by utilizing your own data and making more informed decisions. You don’t have to do lots of web tracking systems.

These three will be enough:

• Google Analytics
• Facebook Pixel (especially if you are starting an ecommerce site and planning to use retargeting ads down the road)
• Google Search Console: Google will start collecting data about you as soon as they discover you but things like sitemaps may speed things up.

 

6. Focus on Content-to-Content Links

Links will help your site get discovered by Google as well as start growing its credibility. No site should be launched without a smart link acquisition strategy.

Links are still key to organic search visibility, so there’s no search engine optimization strategy without links.

Self-serving link building is a risky tactic that can bury your website in penalties and filters, and the risk is even higher for new sites that have no good record with Google.

With that in mind, don’t be in a hurry and try to avoid any link acquisition tactics where you can control the anchor text of the link.

There are a few powerful and safe link building tactics, and most of them come down to one process:

• You create useful and truly unique content assets. (e.g. an original study)
• You reach out to media publications for them to consider covering it.

It takes time and effort but you just cannot put a price on contacts you’ll be building underway. Make sure you build strong relationships with all the publishers that chose to link to your content. Every further outreach campaign will be easier from there.

 

Your New Site Is On Its Way to Ranking

SEO for a new site is mostly about building a foundation. You don’t have to do everything perfectly when starting a site. You just need to lay a good foundation to start collecting data and expanding.

SEO takes time, so whatever you do, don’t expect fast results. Google needs to start crawling your site and forming your opinion about your content before they know it is worth showing up for its users.

The post SEO for a New Site: Checklist appeared first on Content Marketing Consulting and Social Media Strategy.

Source: convinceandconvert.com

2021 Social Media Benchmark Report: 4 Takeaways for Your Social Refresh

Take a peek into the Convince & Convert team messaging threads and you’ll find us sharing all sorts of research and new data. In fact, when the Rival IQ 2021 Social Media Benchmark report was first released, Corynn shared it with the note,  “TL;DR–everyone needs more carousels.”

You can stop reading now if that’s all you need to refresh your social content plans. But for the rest of you, I’ve got a few more ideas.

The Social Media Benchmark report is an annual study from Rival IQ, our friends in the social content performance data business. The 2021 edition evaluates thousands of brand accounts across 14 industries to set the benchmarks that marketers use to measure social content performance.

Keep in mind that most of the data analyzed were pulled from 2020/early 2021. Social media platforms are constantly shifting their algorithms to respond to new content types, technology, and audience habits.

What is presented in any benchmark study shouldn’t be taken as gospel, but it does enlighten how to plan for your 2022 social media content strategy.

 

4 Cues For Your Social Media Strategy Refresh

1. Posting every weekday may be “expected” but is not necessary.

Creating enough content to post once a weekday on each channel is a common expectation of social teams. Yet as social media engagement rates decline or stay stagnant, brands respond with fewer main feed posts on each channel.

Rival IQ discovered that brands posted on Facebook on average the most per week; but outside of Media brands sharing 53.5 posts a week (7.5 a day!), the average was 5.5 posts weekly.

We’ll take the exception with the finding that brands are only posting content on Instagram four times a week. The API that makes data available is news feed specific. Yet remember that Instagram has 12 different ways in the channel to serve up content or connect with audiences.

This data point is a bit misleading because we can’t accurately benchmark Stories, Reels, Highlights, and Guides with the API.

Twitter was the channel that saw the most volume by brands, almost 3x more tweets than Instagram news feed posts. But Instagram is the clear social media royalty based on Engagements. Instagram audiences responded with more than 7x engagements than on Twitter, on just one-third of the total content.

 

Quality Over Quantity of Posts Matters Most

No doubt you’ve heard quality outranks quantity. This is especially true for B2B brands that are building content to support longer awareness and consideration timelines in their customer’s decision journey.

Focus on creating less social media content that resonates more with key audiences.

Show up in the nooks and crannies of social media channels; focus on different content outlets, like Reels, Stories, and Reddit threads. Even better, explore participation in ways that create more 1:1 micro-connections with your audience.

Direct interaction with audiences in spaces like AMAs, TwitterChats, Audio Rooms, and even DMs can go a long way with building affinity with audience members.

When everything is important, nothing stands out. So when there is actually an opportunity for different-than-usual content, make it shine.  Increase frequency around real-time opportunities, like events, webinars, launches, behind-the-scenes. Take a cue from Media and Sports, which hyper-focus on wall-to-wall coverage of the top story or game day. Media and Sports teams tweeted more than all of the other industries combined.

When everything is important, nothing stands out.

Click To Tweet

 

2.  Mix Up Content Types

We’ve been saying “Video Wins Social” for several years. While in some instances that can be true, the social media benchmarking data shows that in main news feed posts, actually photos and carousels now outrank videos for engagement.

The algorithm may prioritize video content when it’s available, but audiences care less. The reality is that even today, video is still more difficult for content teams to produce at scale unless it is a core part of the business (media, sports, etc). That’s why video appears less frequently as a post type across most industries.

What can B2B brands do without a consistent video workflow? Remember that in today’s visually dominated social feeds, carousels and photos perform well. Avoid posting a simple status in text-only on Twitter or Facebook, especially when it’s easy enough to include a GIF, image, or infographic.

Carousel impressions are repeated in a user’s news feed if they don’t engage the first time. On subsequent impressions, Carousels will display images two and three. You don’t have to win with the first image in a Carousel. Be sure the second and third ones are just as compelling.

 

3.  Identify And Measure What Metrics Matter

An engagement rate is calculated based on all measurable interactions on a post. Social networks are diversifying how audiences choose to engage with any post on their newsfeed–Facebook alone has up to six emotional reactions along with commenting, sharing, and saving posts.

Does an Angry reaction carry more weight or meaning than a Laugh? How does Love compare to a Share?

A better way to measure engagement is to identify what specific reactions are most valuable for your brand. Metrics are like pizza toppings–each one of us has our favorites, so we tend to always stick with those and overlook the other options.

Measure specific, meaningful reactions as a percentage of total engagements to ensure you don’t lose sight of engagements that move the needle. Padding posts to garner more “Likes” to hit engagement numbers is easy to do — but Likes don’t pay the bills (even for Influencers).

Take a Look at Your Own. Social Metrics

Rival IQ acknowledged a better way to measure engagement rates is by using the engagement rate per post metric. Engagement rate per post is the [best] metric because it controls for post volume and audience size and helps marketers understand how they’re doing in relation to their competitors.

Unfortunately, social network APIs continue to skinny the data that is publicly available, so Rival IQ and others cannot do this type of competitive reporting at scale. But you can with your own native metric reports.

 

4.  Plan Seasonal Content and Align Hashtags Accordingly

Hashtags were all about the holidays on Instagram and Twitter this year, so that signals brands must keep up with content that aligns with the seasons. Work ahead by identifying these in your annual and quarterly editorial calendars and planning.

Planning in advance means your team is better positioned to capitalize on seasonal content by finally deploying all the “next year we should do this” ideas that are missed after the fact.

Hashtags that performed consistently well across all industries included: giveaways, alcohol-related, or those relating to holidays and current events. One smart note from the social media benchmark report is that hashtags are not equally used across social media channels.

Use research and hashtag tools to identify the right hashtags and how many to use for each social channel. Update these monthly or quarterly for best effect.

—

Get started with benchmarking and analyzing social content performance with the Head to Head Social Snapshot, where brands can see 1:1 performance against the Rival IQ benchmarks.

Go further by completing a social media audit that identifies the insights to set up strategic decisions for next year’s social media plans. I built a self-paced, free course that explains social auditing and insights, available to guide you through using social media metrics to audit and build social media strategy.

How will you approach social media differently in 2022? Tweet me @LaurenTTeague to let me know.

The post-2021 Social Media Benchmark Report: 4 Takeaways for Your Social Refresh appeared first on Content Marketing Consulting and Social Media Strategy.

Source: convinceandconvert.com

How to Market Without Cookies

 

For several years, many digital marketing teams relied on cookies for marketing. However, everything is about to change. Mozilla Firefox and Apple Safari already block third-party cookies, and recently, Google revealed it would no longer support cookies on ad networks and its Chrome browser.

What does this mean for marketing teams, and what can you do to ensure your business keeps running smoothly when you are marketing without cookies? Let’s find out.

 

Why Are Third-Party Cookies Going Away & Why Does it Matter?

Whenever you use the internet, especially on browsers like Chrome, your actions are tracked through cookies.

These cookies can help marketing teams understand user behaviors and ad performance, but they may feel like an intrusion of privacy for many users.

By blocking these cookies, users can increase their privacy and security. Browsers like Firefox, Safari, and Brave have already started doing this. Google will also begin phasing out third-party cookies from its browsers to strengthen user privacy and promote itself as a secure search engine.

This represents a considerable change for marketers who heavily relied on cookies for their ad campaigns.

When creating paid ad campaigns on browsers and social media platforms, you need customer details to customize the copy. Marketing without cookies means you’d have to rely on first-party data (more on that below) rather than third-party cookies.

Now Google is launching “The Privacy Sandbox” as a response to the cookieless future. Here data will be stored anonymously to form a middle ground where companies can obtain customer data without intrusive cookie tracking.

Beyond this, there are various ways to market without cookies. Below, we’ll discuss some of the most effective strategies and offer tips for marketing without relying on the use of third-party cookies.

 

4 Tips to Prepare for Cookieless Marketing

Your marketing campaigns don’t have to suffer because you don’t have access to third-party cookies.

Using the strategies and tips below, you can learn to leverage tools like first-party data to increase the effectiveness of your marketing efforts without depending on cookies.

 

1. Turn on Google Analytics 4

An upgraded version of Universal Analytics, Google Analytics 4 supports both app and website-based tracking. It helps if you use both formats (app and website), as most businesses do today.

Whether you already run GA for an existing website or you want to create a different account for a new site, turning on Google Analytics 4 is simple. Here’s a detailed guide to help you get started.

 

2. Start Gathering First-Party Data

Third-party cookies are blocked, but marketing teams can continue to collect first-party data. This means you can still use data from email sign-up forms or newsletters, surveys, and other direct methods.

The biggest benefit of working with first-party data is you own the data. You don’t have to worry about buying it from someone else or losing the right to use it.

The second benefit is first-party data tends to be more accurate than third-party cookies because you know your customers and have the tools to figure out exactly where the data came from.

Another massive benefit is your competitors don’t have the same data. When you buy third-party data, there may be another company, most likely your competitor, that buys the same information.

Sounds exciting? Here are some ways to collect first-party data to help you get started:

• online surveys
• sign-up forms
• newsletters
• community polls
• SMS answers
• mobile notification responses
• direct mail (offline post), etc.

These are some of the tools marketers typically use to gather first-party data from both new visitors and seasoned users. You may not want to start using all of them at once as it could overwhelm your customers.

Instead, try one or two approaches first. See how your audience responds to it. Are they receptive to your methods, or do they need a different approach? Experiment with different techniques to see what best suits your business model.

 

3. Invest More in Market Research

Market research goes hand-in-hand with collecting first-party data. When marketing without cookies, you need to know who your audience is.

Understanding their needs and pain points will help you tailor your campaigns to suit their needs without having to rely on external cookies data.

If you’re new to this, here are some ways to get started with market research:

• Launch a targeted survey.
• Collect questions and feedback from your current users.
• Work with analytics to understand what’s working and what isn’t.
• Hold focus groups with incentives for participants.
• Observe how customers interact without interfering with their actions.
• Post simple polls in community forms to get a broad view of audience interests.
• Leverage the power of social media to understand what your target market wants.

No matter which method you choose, the bottom line is this: Start investing more in market research. Get to know your customers and target market with surveys, buyer personas, and most importantly, constantly testing your findings with A/B testing.

 

4. Focus on Personalization

What would you prefer? An email that addresses you by your name, or one that starts with a “hello there!?”

Research says people prefer the first option. Studies show 90 percent of users find personalization appealing and 80 percent of consumers are more likely to make a purchase when brands provide personalized experiences.

If you want to take your marketing efforts to the next level, it’s best to focus on personalization.

Now that you’re already working with first-party data, this will be easier.

Start with using the customer’s name. There are dozens of tools in the market, including ones that work with newsletters to automatically personalize your campaigns.

Then address customer pain points. Get really specific about what bothers them and position yourself as a solution for those problems. This will help customers connect with your brand better.

Here’s an eye-opening graphic about pain points to keep in mind when working on personalization.

 

Rethinking PPC: 4 Tips for PPC Marketing Without Cookies

If you’ve ever run online advertising campaigns, you know the best way to get effective results is to target your ads to specific audiences.

How can you do that when marketing without cookies? Here’s how.

A. Use AI-Based Bidding

By analyzing search data, AI-driven bidding determines which keywords and trends generate the most conversions. Then it optimizes your bids in real-time, maximizes efficiency for your ad spend, and improves the return on your investment.

Here’s an example from Google.

The Smart Bidding feature of Google AI-based bidding provides bid strategies based on conversions. As a result, you can make targeted bid decisions for every auction in which your ads are entered.

What does it mean? Simply speaking, it means you can get more reliable results without resorting to guesswork.

Such automated bid decisions are based on data that includes information about the device, the current location, the time of day, remarketing list, enabled languages, operating system, and other relevant details.

Still, confused about AI-based bidding? Don’t worry. Here’s a Google guide to help you get started.

 

B. Reconsider KPIs

Key performance indicators (KPIs) measure progress towards achieving ad campaign goals, so the success of your PPC marketing campaign often depends on what you’re actually measuring.

Here’s where it gets interesting. When marketing without cookies, you may have to reconsider these KPIs to better align with your business goals. For instance, you may want to pay more attention to conversion numbers (how many users convert vs. how many users bounce from your homepage).

Cost per acquisition is another important KPI you need to consider to ensure your ad campaigns are profitable in the long run.

Here’s a thorough representation of evolving KPIs to help you plan your cookieless marketing strategies more effectively.

Fully understanding and leveraging these KPIs can help you make better marketing decisions, especially when you’re navigating this new territory of a cookieless marketing future.

 

C. Use Contextual-Based Advertising

Now that third-party cookies are out of the picture, you may be wondering: How can I know which ads to place where if I don’t have data about consumer behavior?

That’s where contextual advertising comes in. In context-based advertising, ads are placed on web pages according to the website’s content. For example, a tech blog may display ads about computer accessories, while a vegan-living website may display ads about vegan food products.

Look at the NYT Books section, for another example.

The Amazon Prime Video ad copy literally talks about being a “bookworm.” This is contextual advertising as users who read the NYT Books section are obviously readers in some capacity.

One more: Look at WSJ’s Life and Work section. It has a classic lifestyle content ad, considering users visiting this section have already shown an interest in lifestyle content.

D. Target Based on Location and Time

Say you want something more personal than contextual advertising. Then consider targeting users based on their current location and time of the day.

This can be as simple as “geotargeting,” where you change the ad copy to suit users from different regions. You see this in most search results.

For example, if you look up “coffee shops” from New York, you’ll see ads and search results for coffee shops in NY, even if the same brand has a franchise elsewhere.

The most interesting part? It doesn’t even have to be a huge brand. As long as the business has some web presence and works with geotargeted ads, it’ll show up for location-based searches.

Time-based marketing is similar, with the only difference being you’re now using time data to personalize your copy. Imagine getting an email greeting you with a Good Morning when it’s actually morning in your region. Feels good, doesn’t it?

This approach can also be useful to determine when ads will appear for users.

Say you want to market coffee products. It’s better to show these ads in the morning when users are considering buying coffee, rather than at night when they are more likely to avoid it.

 

Frequently Asked Questions About Marketing in a Cookieless Future

Here are some frequently asked questions about marketing without cookies.

 

Cookieless Marketing Conclusion

Marketing without cookies may seem like a daunting task at first. However, it doesn’t have to be so hard.

Using the strategies and tips outlined above, you can improve your ad campaigns without relying on third-party cookies to find marketing success.

The best part is these methods give you more control and accuracy compared to cookie-based marketing, which has you sharing data with your competitors.

Which strategy will you try for marketing without cookies?

Source: feedproxy.google.com

Four Trends Driving the Future of Consumer Identity

 

Data privacy and consumer identity have been topics of conversation in the ad tech industry for a long time now. With the widespread use of the internet and the desire for companies to be more transparent with their motives, consumers are getting smarter about how their data is gathered online.

 

This new insight has sparked countless debates over what resources are and aren’t acceptable for companies to use and has led to big-name platforms, such as Apple and Google redefining their privacy policies.

Advertisers are able to reach consumers in new and meaningful ways with so many online channels at their disposal. However, the promise of value-based advertising has fallen short, with several voices calling for changes to the way consumer identity data is handled.

Trends such as consumer action, privacy regulations, the abolishment of third-party cookies, and the rise of the walled garden have all contributed to the rapidly changing landscape of the ad tech industry, and have made it important for companies to innovate their data and identity strategies.

There are currently four trends driving the future of consumer identity that marketing professionals should keep top of mind as they continue improving the brand/consumer relationship:

 

The Consumer is More Than a Participant

With so many data-driven insights comes the tendency for brands to shift away from human-based marketing and instead of seeing consumers as cookies, cohorts and user IDs.

By taking data gathered from consumers to best target them based on their personal wants and needs, companies hope to connect with their audience in more relevant ways.

While the average consumer values personalized marketing, they’re getting much smarter in their ability to recognize what’s truly valuable and what’s simply noise.

As consumer behavior changes, brands must shift towards a conversation-based approach instead of seeing consumer engagement as an end goal to be reached.

With the introduction of AI-based technologies comes the eagerness to automate consumer processes. Brands should be careful in taking this approach. Simply automating all processes can take away the dynamic and responsive aspects of marketing that consumers have come to value.

Instead, companies looking to evolve with consumer wants should be integrating AI with pre-existing ideas of human creativity and intelligence to bring to life answers to the questions consumers search for.

Implementing a creative ad tech system helps to streamline and automate across the creative process, allowing brands to marry large-scale personalization with consumer wants and needs.

Due to the boom of social media, consumers can connect with brands at various touchpoints across the customer journey.

Instead of a blanket advertising approach, brands must take into account the fact that the vast majority of consumers are likely to make a purchase from a brand that puts effort into personalized marketing.

Utilizing a creative personalization solution has the power to create 1:1 personalized experiences at the level the market has grown to demand.

 

Navigating Consumer Identity Privacy

The momentum around consumer privacy regulations has grown in recent years. Privacy regulations such as CCPA and GDPR require the consent of users and a designated opt-out policy and give consumers the right to demand their data be corrected if inaccurate.

Ultimately, these laws require brands to be transparent about how they collect, use and share customer information, bringing even more attention to how consumer data is being handled.

Brands need to take a proactive approach toward data privacy in order to avoid serious consequences.

Identity solutions, such as LiveRamp’s RampID and Unified ID 2.0 (an open-source ID framework using consumers’ anonymized email addresses gathered from a user logging into a website or app), offer brands a way to personalize communications with their audiences across all media channels while still adhering to privacy regulations via acquired consent.

Identity and consumer privacy will continue to be major themes across the industry for years to come. Combining data-driven identifiers with creative automation platforms allows companies to set themselves up for long-term success.

They must ensure that they’re still meeting consumers at the right places with the right messaging with privacy in mind.

 

Cookie and Device ID Deprecation

Consumers have been standing up to demand more fairness and transparency for their privacy online. Browsers and device manufacturers have also been on the same page.

With Google’s decision to moving away from third-party cookies (now delayed until 2023) and Apple integrating key privacy changes into their iOS 14.5, players in the direct-to-consumer market are creating big disruptions in the data-driven advertising space.

The industry is quickly pivoting from a world of ubiquitous consumer data to one where it’s significantly more controlled, managed and safeguarded.

These changes leave brands little choice but to turn away from traditional advertising methods and find new ways to harness consumer data, such as first-party cookies through privacy-compliant technologies.

Companies should keep in mind that traditional use cases for third-party cookies won’t simply disappear, but will instead evolve.

By maxing out the value of first-party data to effectively personalize experiences for consumers, brands will be in a better position to ride out these changes and evolve with the industry.

These changes may seem daunting to an industry that has depended on third-party cookies and device ID methods for decades, but a shift towards first-party data offers an opportunity for companies to take a step back and really dig into their personalization strategies to best optimize their consumer relationships.

 

Walled Garden vs. Open Web

The walled garden ecosystem is growing rapidly as big players such as Amazon and Facebook erect walls to protect their data and assets.

These walled gardens are incredibly disruptive to the future of data-driven advertising, as they block the gathering of data from any outside advertisers.

There has been conversation around publishers and ad tech companies banding around a new unified ID, however, it’s too soon to tell whether these efforts will be fruitful.

According to a 2020 Harris Poll, online users spend 66% of their time on the open web, and 34% behind walled gardens.

However, the open web-only accounts for 40% of total ad spend, whereas 60% of brands are putting their money behind walled gardens in the hopes of reaching more consumers.

For publishers and marketers to survive this large-scale shift of content to closed ecosystems, companies need to improve their first-party data and bolster their direct relationships with consumers instead of relying on platforms such as Google and Facebook to connect them.

 

Between You and Me

Advertisers who have consistently viewed cookies as the end-all-be-all for personalization tactics are going to have to get smart about their next move.

Respecting consumers’ desire for privacy, shifting to a first-party data strategy and recognizing customers as more than just a one-size-fits-all audience are all great steps towards creating a trusted, lasting brand.

There’s plenty of opportunity for outside-the-box solutions if only companies are willing to take the leap.

 

The post-Four Trends Driving the Future of Consumer Identity appeared first on Content Marketing Consulting and Social Media Strategy.

Source: convinceandconvert.com

6 MarTech Trends in 2021 and Beyond

Are you hoping to identify MarTech trends that can help your campaigns be more effective and run more smoothly?

As our marketing capabilities evolve, so do the tools we use to measure our successes and how we achieve that success.

In this blog, we unpack the six biggest MarTech trends looming over the marketing industry and how you can use them to your advantage.

Disclosure: This content is reader-supported, which means if you click on some of our links that we may earn a commission.

 

What Is MarTech?

Marketing technology, or MarTech, as it is more commonly known, refers to software and platforms that help individuals or organizations achieve marketing goals.

This term is very inclusive, covering everything from email templates to data analytics.

While every individual, agency, or company has unique MarTech needs, the constantly-growing field is making great leaps to fill any open niche.

Over the past twenty years, the field has seen truly exponential growth.

Today, being a marketer doesn’t necessarily mean you have to be incredibly tech-savvy, but it does mean that you need to understand the benefits of tools that can improve your strategy and help you reach your goals.

Your competitors are likely using MarTech to help their campaigns succeed.

If you’re not looking toward how you can automate, optimize, and ideate your campaigns through MarTech, it’s time to start.

 

Examples of MarTech

As we mentioned above, MarTech is a very wide umbrella.

However, some forms of MarTech are more common than others.

These include:

Email Marketing

With more than 50 percent of survey respondents copping to checking their email in excess of ten times a day, it’s no wonder that email marketing is an easy way to try to reach your target audience.

While the operative word in that sentence was try, marketing automation tools can get you that much closer to your goals.

To reach them, you need tools and platforms that not only disseminate your emails but provide in-depth analytics that gives you a real-time view of reader practices and interactions.

As email marketing continues to grow and evolve, the demand for personalization in this medium will also continue to grow.

Marketers should use automation and AI to deploy targeted emails engineered to attract a particular audience segment.

To achieve successful personalization, use data to assess customer habits and preferences for each audience segment and then craft corresponding templates.

Then your MarTech tool can do the rest.

 

Content Management

While managing your website content used to be a time-consuming, exhaustive process that took hours of coding, new marketing technology has automated cumbersome processes, allowing marketers to dedicate time to other important pursuits.

Content management systems (CMS) have evolved over the years, now equipped with the capabilities to develop the following kinds of websites (along with many others):

• social networking
• blogging platform
• static website
• news
• online store

Predicted to achieve a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 16.7 percent, as CMS capabilities grow, so will collaboration and planning tools that unite workflows to allow complete management of content from creative to back-end development.

 

Data Analytics

Today, marketers can harness the power of data analytics to gain an understanding of customer preferences and behaviors—including how they shop, where they spend their time, and how they discover new offerings—as well as market trends.

MarTech tools that allow marketers to dive deep into these data sets are invaluable, as they provide never-before-seen maps of how consumers operate online.

By tracking online behaviors, marketers gain a deeper understanding of their customers.

As MarTech data tools become even more intuitive, marketers will have even more visibility of customer journeys, following them from initial interest to final purchase.

These insights will be captured through cookies and CTR, among other trackers.

As the tools become more refined, so will understanding of consumer behavior, allowing marketers to readjust their strategies.

 

6 MarTech Trends

To help you decide which MarTech offerings you want to add to your stack, we broke down the six biggest trends that are likely to impact both the MarTech world and the marketing world well beyond this year.

1. Increased Spending on Analytics

If you’re tempted to bypass adding an intuitive analytics tool to your MarTech stack, don’t.

These tools can help you gain a better understanding of nearly every aspect of your marketing campaigns, from buyer behaviors to conversion rates.

In fact, researchers expect marketing analytics budgets to grow by 61 percent over the next three years.

That’s huge.

You don’t want to miss out on getting in early on a tool that can quite literally change the way you see your business.

Some of the many benefits of marketing analytics tools include:

• viewing real-time, comprehensive outcomes of marketing efforts across channels
• improving lead generation through actionable insights
• gaining insights into customer behavior and preferences
• using predictive analytics to enable your business to be proactive rather than reactive

 

2. Higher Emphasis on Personalization

We nodded a bit toward the importance and growing prevalence of personalization in marketing campaigns.

In short, this strategy means delivering individualized content to audience members.

This personalized route builds a connection with consumers, treating them as individuals rather than a mass market.

Some common (and growing) opportunities for personalization include:

• targeted emails
• custom video messages
• product recommendations
• social media

In the coming years, this prevalence will only grow, and marketers who don’t use tools to aid them in personalization will fall behind.

In fact, 99 percent of marketers claim personalization helps advance customer relationships, and 44 percent of consumers say they would be willing to switch to a brand that better personalized its marketing material.

If you’re not taking advantage of learning more about your would-be customers through tools and data, you’re missing out—not only on reaching customers more strategically but also on building relationships.

 

3. Transition Away From Third-Party Cookies

If you’re an advertiser or marketer who has relied heavily on third-party cookies, you may be in for a bit of a shock.

In 2020, Google announced its plan to phase out third-party cookies within two years.

With Google Chrome composing almost 65 percent of the web browsing market according to StatCounter’s data below, this move will have a dramatic impact on how marketers gather data.

If in the past, you relied on information from cookies to gain an understanding of consumer behavior and identity, you’re going to need to recalibrate your strategy.

Recently, Adobe found two in five brands are not prepared to transition away from cookies, indicating businesses do not have a strategy for gathering consumer data post-cookie.

After the transition is final, marketers will no longer be able to capture individual consumer data.

To prepare for this future, digital marketers must align with the trend of personalization to reach and understand their intended consumers.

 

4. Higher Need for Data Privacy and Security

If you’ve been keeping an eye on the news, you know that data breaches are on the rise.

The United States alone has seen data breaches grow from 660 annually to over a thousand within the past decade, according to Statista.

If you think this number doesn’t apply to you, think again.

Your website and consumer data are among your business’ most valuable assets.

You need to protect them from malicious attacks at all costs.

 

5. Increased Importance of Campaign Automation Tools

Marketing automation can make every aspect of your marketing campaign easy.

By using these tools, you reduce time spent, error, and unnecessary cost.

We’re not the only ones who think this way: The marketing automation market is primed to grow 8.55 percent annually, with 51 percent of companies already taking advantage of these tools.

• Time-saving: With tools that automate time-consuming processes like project management, all members of your team will rejoice in the sheer amount of time they can reclaim after implementing these tools.
• More effective spend: By pinpointing processes that devour valuable time and treating them with automation software, you can use your budget much more effectively, saving both time and money.
• Scalability: MarTech automation tools scale with you.

If you’ve got a big vision for your organization, these tools fit your business needs for today and tomorrow.

• Concrete measures of success: We’ve talked about the importance of data and metrics a lot in this article.

All MarTech automation tools come with data insights that allow you to track everything from productivity to campaign spend.

As you assess your organization’s needs, look at how marketing automation tools simplify your processes and streamline campaign creation.

The benefits of marketing analytics tools include:

 

6. Growing Importance of Direct Mail

Thought direct mail was dead?

Think again: Forty-two percent of direct mail recipients engage with your send either through reading or scanning.

Further, 73 percent of Americans prefer direct mail marketing, as it allows them to read the piece at their leisure rather than forcing immediate consumption.

This year and beyond, you should reassess your organization’s direct mail strategy to see if there are new (or overlooked) avenues for you to contact your prospects directly through their physical mailbox, according to Who’s Mailing What:

Outside of the above statistics, benefits of direct mail include:

• opportunities for personalization
• builds familiarity and trust
• easy to track
• complements your digital campaign
• cost-effective

 

MarTech Frequently Asked Questions

 

 

 

 

MarTech 2021 Trends: Conclusion

As marketing needs and customer predilections continue to change, so will the tools we use to meet them.

However, the six marketing trends outlined in this post are here to stay.

To help your organization grow with these MarTech trends, be sure to invest in software that can help you achieve all of your marketing goals.

Tools are meant to be used—be sure you’re taking advantage of them to outmaneuver your competitors.

What’s your prediction for the biggest marketing trend in 2021 and beyond?

Source: feedproxy.google.com

How B2B Marketers Are Using Intent Data – Research and Charts

Intent data. It’s not just another piece of jargon to add to your B2B dictionary. In fact, according to research from Ascend2, RollWorks, and Bombora, 97% of B2B marketers believe that intent data will give brands a competitive advantage in the year ahead.

 

What is intent data?

Intent data is dynamic, account-level data that signals interest in a business category or specific products and services.

Intent data is based on content consumption of users across the web (also known as 3rd-party intent), or it can be based on direct interaction with company properties such as a website (also known as 1st party intent data or engagement data).

It can be used to identify interested prospects and reach them with contextually relevant and personalized messaging.

Intent data can also be used to understand your open opportunities or existing customers better and move them through the conversion, retention, and expansion funnel.

 

How are B2B marketers using intent data?

B2B marketers have more information at their fingertips than ever before, but how are they using intent data now to position their brand ahead of the competition?

Ascend2, in partnership with Rollworks and Bombora, surveyed 126 B2B marketing professionals, and here are a few research insights and key takeaways from the research study, The B2B Perspective on Using Intent Data.

 

Insight #1: B2B Marketers Are Using Intent Data to Target New Accounts

B2B marketers are adopting the use of intent data with prospecting efforts in mind.

Identifying new accounts to target, aligning their sales and marketing efforts, and prioritizing accounts for prospecting are at the top of the list of primary goals according to 56%, 51%, and 38% of B2B marketers, respectively.

Identifying new target accounts and aligning sales and marketing are the top goals for using intent data.

Key Takeaway:

If your martech goal is efficiency, consider an account-based approach.

Account-based marketing (ABM) means taking a fit-first approach to B2B marketing, ensuring you’re only targeting the accounts with the highest likelihood to buy.

Research shows that 94% of marketers find ABM successful at achieving their primary objectives.

The more targeting you become in identifying your best audience, the more you can improve efficiency in your overall programs.

 

Insight #2: Accurate and Actionable Intent Data Is a Challenge

For 56% of B2B marketers, data quality is a major challenge when using intent signals, and half of those surveyed report having trouble making intent data actionable.

Having a strategy in place to capitalize on intent data allows marketers to more successfully run targeted content and ad campaigns, better enable the sales team and drive more revenue.

Data quality, making intent data actionable, and data security are the top 3 challenges B2B marketers face when using intent data.

Key Takeaway:

Intent data can be seamlessly into ABM platforms, allowing for effortless implementation.

This enables marketers to quickly take action on insights and drive account growth at scale.

 

Insight #3: Data Quality and Source of Data Are Key

When adding an intent solution to a technology stack, it is crucial for marketers to first evaluate goals to better define what they need.

This prevents bloating a tech stack and paying for unnecessary tools.

Over two-thirds (67%) of marketers are most concerned with the quality of data being delivered from an intent data solution, while 44% report that the source of data is of utmost importance.

Quality of data, source of data, and ease of implementation are the top 3 most important attributes B2B marketers look for when selecting an intent data vendor.

Key Takeaway:

Above all, B2B marketing technology needs to be user-friendly and customizable.

You’ll want to look for tools that allow you to build and measure your programs the way that makes the most sense for your business.

If you want to target specific accounts, the good news is that technology to support your strategy is not exclusively for enterprise companies with large budgets—now, small and mid-size companies have access to account-based tools that are fast, affordable, and customizable.

 

Insight #4: B2B Marketers Are Using Intent Data for Personalization and Targeting

Intent data gives marketers the ability to leverage personalization across various channels.

About half of B2B marketers report that delivering targeted ad content (52%) and personalization efforts (49%) are the most actionable ways to use intent data.

From ad copy to landing pages to the subject line in sales outreach, intent data can fuel many areas of sales and marketing.

Delivering targeted ad content, personalization, and account-based initiatives are the top 3 ways B2B marketers are leveraging intent data.

Key Takeaway:

The more you know about what your accounts are looking for, the easier it is to reach them with the right offer.

That’s where intent data can help inform digital advertising personalization for key accounts based on topics they’re surging on.

You can also segment these accounts into subsets audiences to reach them with personalized ads catered to their surging topics.

Not only are you able to find accounts with intent, but you can now speak to them just right.

You can download the entire The B2B Perspective on Using Intent Data for more data, tips, and strategies to plan, implement and optimize your intent data plans this year.

The post How B2B Marketers Are Using Intent Data – Research and Charts appeared first on Content Marketing Consulting and Social Media Strategy.

Source: convinceandconvert.com

9 Great Mobile App Analytics Tools

You’ve done the incredible—you’ve built an app and started marketing it. While congratulations are in order, making the app is just the first step on your path to app success. The next (and arguably most important) step is optimization.

With consumers spending four and a half hours per day on their phones, it pays to make sure your app is earning some of that heavy time-spend.

And better visibility can pay. On average, consumers spend $120B in the app store and $190B on mobile ad spend.

You can check traffic and user metrics on mobile app analytics to make your app as successful as possible.

Here’s what you need to know about mobile app analytics and which tools are most effective at helping you dig into the data.

Mobile App Analytics

Mobile app analytics aren’t too different from their web counterparts; they track and analyze user activity and events on apps.

Using an app analytics tool gives you access to invaluable insight into how your app works and highlights improvement opportunities.

By seeing how users interact with your app, you can optimize your app to be as user-focused as possible.

Why Analytics Are Crucial for Your Mobile App

Without visibility, your app may fall short of satisfying your users’ needs — regardless of how beautiful or useful your app is.

When that happens, your users will look elsewhere to have their needs met.

By implementing mobile app analytics, you not only equip yourself with the tools necessary to better understand your app’s performance, but you also benefit in these four key areas:

• Real-time ROI assessment: Enhance your app value and, ultimately, increase your ROI by gaining a better understanding of customers through data.
• Data-driven strategies: With increased access to data, you can pinpoint specifics that can drive future campaigns. With clear visualization of past successes and failures, you can recalibrate your approach with data-driven strategies.
• Personalized strategies: By segmenting and targeting audiences with more specificity, you’re more likely to provide them with what they want or need. By using app analytics, you can identify these populations and start targeting them with customized strategies.
• Goal tracking: App analytics allow you to determine which acquisition channels are working for you. By identifying these channels, you can dedicate more focus here and replicate the approach.

While these four areas aren’t the only advantages of implementing a mobile app analytics tool, understanding these categories is vital to overall app success.

 

What KPIs You Should Track for Your Mobile App Analytics

While it’s easy to get lost in the sheer amount of mobile app analytics available, there are seven crucial key performance indicators (KPIs) you should be tracking to gauge user engagement and your mobile app’s overall success.

• Retention rate: This metric identifies the percentage of customers that continue to use your app. Conversely, this figure also alerts you to the number of customers you’re losing due to churn.
• Lifetime value (LTV): This formula helps you assess what your customers are worth over the “lifetime” of their relationship with your business.
• Uninstalls: Tracking the number of people who uninstall your app is vital to understanding why those people uninstalled your app.
• Cohort Analysis: This analysis focuses on segmenting users by traffic source, country, and device and analyzing the associated metrics.
• ROI: This number represents what you’ve spent versus what you’ve earned on a particular effort.
• Cost per acquisition (CPA): This figure lets you know exactly how much you’re spending per acquisition.
• User growth rate: This figure represents the number of new users within a specific time frame.

While these seven KPIs are by no means the only helpful app analytics you can track, they provide a comprehensive view of your app’s success and highlight areas in which improvement is necessary.

What’s The Difference? SEO vs. ASO

Just like optimizing any web page for SEO is vital to your search success, it is imperative to optimize your app for app store optimization (ASO).

ASO refers to the continuous process of measuring, testing, and assessing existing app store marketing strategies to increase your app’s visibility and driving downloads. The higher your app ranks in the app store, the more likely potential customers are to see your app.

While SEO and ASO processes are similar, they also have some significant differences, including the ways users search the web versus searching an app store.

While the web is primarily used to answer questions, the app store is used to search for a specific product that matches the searcher’s intent.

This means you’ll need to use different strategies to rank high in the app store versus search engines like Google.

This is why you don’t want to just use web-based analytics tools for SEO to track ASO.

Best Mobile App Analytics Tools

With a slew of mobile app analytics tools available, it can be challenging to figure out which ones are the right choice for you. These nine tools represent some of the most effective platforms that can help you make your app climb toward the top of the search bar.

App Annie

App Annie is a mobile and data analytics platform that provides unprecedented views of both your app’s data and other in-market apps. With both a paid and free subscription option, App Annie can help your app stand out among the digital crowd, whatever your budget.

App Radar

App Radar is all about making your life easier. It offers several tutorials to help you optimize your ASO from the ground up. The mobile analytics app comes with keyword tracking and research functionality, helping you build a solid ASO strategy.

Adjust

Adjust is a mobile analytics app designed to help you identify and build your user base. This mobile analytics app tracks hourly trends assesses, LTV, and analyzes cohorts.

Adjust also allows you to aggregate lifetime user data in a single dashboard. Also noteworthy is the platform’s Fraud Prevention Suite, which protects your app from fraudulent activity.

Firebase

Firebase is Google’s free mobile app analytics platform that supports developing, improving, nurturing, and growing your app by displaying all metrics in a single central location.

The app aggregates user data and shares it via an immersive dashboard, allowing you a unique view of the actions happening in and around your app.

 

App Analytics

App Analytics is Apple’s mobile analytics app that provides specialized analytics for apps published in the Apple App Store.

This mobile analytics app gives you specific visibility into user interaction within the App Store, relaying how users discover your app.

Tune

Tune is your solution for measurement and engagement throughout the customer journey, tracking a user’s trajectory by monitoring movement and unifying cross-channel touchpoints.

Kochava

Kochava is a platform designed for tracking engagement, LTV, and user acquisition. Through this mobile app analytics platform, you can view vital data points and build user groups. This platform allows you to analyze ROI through pinpointed data.

MixPanel

MixPanel is chock-full of unique analytics tools, including a funnel analysis and its uniquely-titled engagement tracker, the Addiction Report. These tools allow you to understand which strategies increase conversion, retention, and engagement.

Flurry

Flurry Analytics is an extension of Yahoo’s Develop Network. This mobile app analytics platform lets you track new users, active users, and sessions via a single dashboard.

Conclusion

Whether you’re just beginning your app-marketing journey and looking to increase visibility, or if you’re looking to delve into the nitty-gritty of advanced data, you need a mobile app analytics tool to help you navigate the realities of ASO.

While there are tons of mobile analytics apps available to choose from, the nine tools I highlighted above offer detailed information about your users and provide unique data points that can highlight patterns of behavior.

Armed with these new metrics, you make your app irresistible for your targeted audience.

What’s your favorite mobile app analytics tool?

The post 9 Great Mobile App Analytics Tools appeared first on Neil Patel.

Source: neilpatel.com

Best VPN Services

The pandemic has changed work permanently. Before COVID-19, only 9.8 million (out of 140 civilian workers in the U.S.) worked remotely.

Today, almost 70 million people are working remotely.

Are you working remotely?

If you are, there’s a good chance that you’ll need a virtual private network (VPN).

Small businesses with employees that need to work remotely are also going to need a VPN as well.

Today, we’re going to take a look at VPNs — what they are, why you need them, and how to find the VPN that’s right for you.

What’s a VPN, and Why Do You Need One?

A VPN is a private network that’s run through a public network — imagine that a remote worker sitting in Starbucks had an extra-long Ethernet cable. They plug one end into their computer and the other end directly into their company’s servers at work.

That’s basically what a VPN does; it creates a secure and encrypted tunnel from your computer to a server on the internet.

This is great because it means no one can access the data you’re sharing with your computer and company server. You have privacy and data security.

We’re going to look at seven of the top VPN Services, explaining the pros and cons of each service.

Our 7 Picks For Best VPN Services:

• NordVPN Teams — Best new service from the industry leader
• ExpressVPN — Consumer favorite, best-in-class
• Perimeter 81 — Best for small business teams
• VyprVPN — Best VPN for speed
• SurfShark — Best for the price
• Mullvad — Best for anonymity
• TunnelBear — Best for beginners

How to Choose the Best VPN Service for You

When you’re looking for a VPN, the first thing you’ll want to do is identify your needs.

What do you want your VPN to do for you?

Beyond privacy and data security, are there other features you need from your VPN?

In general, most people focus their attention on four specific criteria.

Criteria #1: Speed and Reliability

If you’re planning on using your VPN for things that require a lot of data or activity, you’ll want to choose a service that’s optimized for speed and reliability.

For those who share large files routinely or stream video consistently, you’ll want to select a VPN that provides unlimited connections, unlimited bandwidth, and high download and upload speeds.

When it comes to speed and reliability, there are factors you control and factors your service provider controls.

Factors within your control include:

• Improving Wi-Fi stability
• Using a wired connection (which is always faster)
• Upgrading your internet connection speeds or your VPN
• Choosing a VPN service with more servers or servers closer to your desired location.

Factors outside your control include:

• Number of servers
• Server load
• Server location/distance (longer distance = slower speeds)
• International bandwidth restrictions (i.e., VPNs in Australia are slow due to underwater fiber optic cables carrying a set amount of data at any one time)
• VPN protocols
• Complicated peering relationships between networks (also reduces speed)

You’ll want to test your VPN speed so you can verify the claims your provider is making. You’ll need two things to do that — an accurate testing method and a baseline for your tests.

Here are some of the more reliable speed tests you can use to verify your VPN speeds.

speedof.mespeedtest.netfast.comspeedtest.xfinity.com

Next, run a speed test on the same connection, with and without your VPN. If you’re on Wi-Fi, stay on Wi-Fi for both tests. Run the tests twice to get an average speed. Run your tests using the same VPN server/location you plan on using with your service.

Criteria #2: Security and Privacy

VPNs should be secure by default; the VPN service you choose should have the basics of security and privacy protection down.

Here are the most important security and privacy requirements you’ll need to consider when choosing a VPN.

For security:

Handshake encryption: This takes place at the beginning of the VPN session where you and the server you’re communicating with exchange private keys that encrypt or decrypt data and messages to acknowledge each other.

Authentication: Reputable VPN services will use a hash algorithm to automatically verify the packets they receive, making sure that data from a middleman hasn’t been injected into your packet. They’ll also verify that your data hasn’t been tampered with or changed in any way.

Ciphers: This is an algorithm, like AES, that encrypts and decrypts your data in a series of clearly defined steps. Using a key to encrypt your data makes it impossible for unwanted eyes to spy on your data unless they have the specific key that was used to encrypt the message. So the unencrypted message “VPNs made easy” would become “FVWWOluB9rHb5KUtyJYqlA==” using the AES algorithm.

Encryption strength: 128-bit AES encryption is faster but less secure; 256-bit encryption is slower but more secure. Stronger encryption is obviously harder to break, so this is more of a priority if you’re focused on security.

For privacy:

Activity logs: Many free VPN services track your activity — the websites and pages you visit, files downloaded, etc. These free VPNs sell or monetize your usage activity on their VPN without your permission or knowledge.

Connection logs: Other VPN services track assigned IP addresses, connection start/end times, or bytes of data transferred. This typically doesn’t include your data, but it can be combined with other data (i.e., the IP address you used to log into your Slack account) to expose your identity.

If privacy is important to you, you’ll want to stick with log-free VPN services that don’t track your activity or metadata.

Criteria #3: Compatible Devices

If you have an iPhone, but you use Windows on your computer, you’ll want to verify that the VPN services are compatible with your devices.

While most VPN services are compatible with the standard platforms (Windows, Mac, Android, Linux, and iOS), some aren’t available on all platforms. The VPN that’s Windows ready may not be available on Android or iOS.You’ll want to verify that your devices are all compatible before signing up.

Criteria #4: Connections

How many devices can connect to your VPN service simultaneously?

The availability of connections tends to vary from service to service. Some providers allow just one; others allow up to three, while others are unlimited. You’ll need to identify what you need ahead of time.

It’s not just connections that you have to worry about, though. You also have to take a look at the availability of countries and the availability of servers.

If you have specific availability needs, you’ll want to verify this with your VPN service provider ahead of time, then confirm this during your free trial or guarantee period.

Other important VPN considerations include:

Payment plans: The cost you’ll pay for VPN services varies considerably, and it depends on the features you choose and the length of your subscription.

Customer service: If you need on-demand customer support (in case something goes wrong), you’ll want a VPN service that provides live chat or phone support (which will impact the price). If that’s not as much of a concern, then a provider who offers email support may be a better option.

Free trial or money-back guarantee:  If you opt for a service that offers a free trial, you’ll want to choose a service that gives you enough time to try things out. Some VPN services’ free trial period is quite short, which may not be enough time to verify the service on your end. A money-back guarantee is ideal because you have a way out in case their service isn’t what you’ve expected.

User friendly or tech-savvy: If you’re not comfortable with setting up and configuring your VPN, you’ll want to make sure you find a provider with a user-friendly interface. Some providers will configure your VPN for you virtually, so everything is done for you ahead of time.

Now that you have all the important considerations spelled out, it’s time to consider which type of VPN service is going to handle the job best.

The Different Types of VPN Services

It’s important to make a distinction between VPN technology and VPN services.

As we’ve already discussed, a virtual private network boils down to a secure, private connection between your device and endpoint. That is VPN technology.

VPN services, on the other hand, provide a suite of tools that allow companies to take advantage of VPN technology instead of having to set it up themselves.

Using VPN services, you can not only protect your internet connection and guard your privacy but gain access to extra customer service with configuration guides, automatic setup, and live chat support.

Generally speaking, VPN services break down into these four distinct types:

Remote Access VPN – Provide a secure connection from a user to a remote server to gain entry to a private network.

Intranet-based Site-to-Site VPN – Provide a secure connection for various users in different, fixed locations to connect to each other’s resources. For example: With a site-to-site VPN, multiple local area networks (LAN) can connect to a single wide-area network (WAN). Think of one company with numerous locations sharing resources.

Extranet-based Site-to-Site VPN – Difficult to implement, these VPNs are common in large-scale business environments where you are looking for a secure connection between two separate intranets, but you do not want them having the ability to access each other directly. Think of two different companies working together.

Cloud VPN – Also known as virtual private network-as-a-service (VPNaaS), is designed for organizations that rely on outsourced cloud data centers instead of in-house infrastructure. A traditional VPN doesn’t work if your organization stores all of your data in the cloud. A cloud VPN allows users to access a company’s resources — applications, data, and files through a website or via a native desktop or mobile app.

As a user looking to secure your privacy and access the internet, or secure business data for your remote workforce, you’re most likely looking for commercial VPN Services.

Let’s take a look at our picks for the top VPN providers.

1. NordVPN Teams — Best new service from the industry leader

• Pricing: $7 – $9 per mo.
• The number of servers: 5,000+
• Money-back Guarantee: 30-day
• Support: 24/7 response within 3 hrs.
• Single sign-on: Yes
• Multi-device support: Yes apps on all devices

NordVPN Teams is a new VPN service from an industry leader. NordVPN is known for its consistent performance, a strong stance on privacy, and aggressive security features. The company is based in Panama, where there are no mandatory data retention laws and no legal obligation to collect your data. It’s also important because Panama doesn’t participate in the five eyes or fourteen eyes alliances.

They don’t track, collect, or share your private data — activity, usage, or metadata. They invited one of the big four auditing firms PriceWaterhouseCoopers AG, to run an industry-first audit of their no logging claims to verify that they’re telling the truth.

NordVPN is one of the few providers that offers double VPN, an advanced VPN security feature that routes your traffic through two VPN servers instead of one, encrypting your data twice. They provide two-factor authentication and single sign-on, which are standard features for top-tier VPN services. They also provide you with a kill switch, if your connection drops for even a second, the kill switch will cut off all the Internet traffic on your device, ensuring none of your information is exposed online.

For business customers, they provide you with a dedicated account manager that’s assigned to your account. Your Control Panel enables you to manage user accounts, control permissions, and create gateways. You can oversee user activity, monitor server load, add new users, and create custom teams from inside your control panel.

Pros

• A trusted brand name
• Thousands of servers around the world
• Single sign-on (SSO) functionality
• Strong on security
• Apps on all devices
• Fast speeds
• Cryptocurrencies and cash accepted

Cons

• Slow app and server connections
• An open VPN connection is not user-friendly
• No split tunnelingShared IP addresses

2. ExpressVPN — Consumer favorite, best-in-class

• Pricing: $8.32 per mo. (annual), $12.95 (monthly)
• Number of servers: 3,000+
• Money-back Guarantee: 30-day
• Support: 24/7 live chat
• Multi-device support: Yes

ExpressVPN doesn’t have a product strictly designed for businesses. They’re consumer-focused, which is great if you’re a sole proprietor or a remote, contract, or freelance worker on your own. Their apps are compatible with almost every device on the usual platforms; they also have apps for nontraditional platforms, including— Linux, Kindle Fire, Chromebook, and even Barnes and Noble’s Nook!

Since they’re consumer-focused, their apps are user-friendly, easy to set up, and simple to maintain. They provide you with all of the standard encryption and security features you’d expect from a top-rated VPN provider. And, they also provide you with some unique features like split-tunneling or using their own DNS servers.

Like NordVPN, they have a no-logging policy as their company is based in the British Virgin Islands. There’s no mandated government surveillance and no data retention laws.

Pros

• Consumer-focused
• User-friendly and easy-to-use
• Apps available on all devices and platforms
• Strong reputation
• Top-rated security and encryption

Cons

• No VPN services for businesses
• More expensive than their competitors

3. Perimeter 81 — Best for small business teams

• Pricing: $8/mo. (annual), $10/mo. (monthly)
• Number of servers: 700+
• Money-back Guarantee: 30-day
• Support: 24/7 live chat
• Single sign-on: Yes
• # of Users: Minimum of 5 team member

Perimeter 81 is an Israeli-based business VPN service that’s unique because of its Cloud VPN architecture. It’s great for users on multiple devices. You don’t need external legacy hardware or tools. It comes with the business features you’d need to run your remote organization safely in the cloud.

Perimeter 81 is ideal for remote businesses because it protects your business from unexpected mistakes. Their automatic Wi-Fi Security and DNS Filtering features instantly shield your data by automatically activating VPN protection when employees connect to an unknown, untrusted networks. According to their website, “All outbound and inbound traffic is encrypted and routed through your dedicated private servers – concealing your company’s actual IP address with an IP mask.”

This protection shields your company from man-in-the-middle attacks and unsecured Wi-Fi networks. Their service keeps your business safe from data breaches, lawsuits due to negligence, and other claims. Employee training is important, but Perimeter protects your employees and your business when they’re working.

They also provide you with the data you need to monitor network activity. You can audit resource access, monitor bandwidth consumption, and detect network anomalies remotely and at any time. All of this is important because more organizations have a “bring your own device” (BYOD) policy in place.

The potential downside to Perimeter 81’s service is access points. As of today, they have 700 public servers in 36 countries. That might sound like a lot until you realize some of their competitors have double or triple that amount in twice as many countries.

Pros

• Single sign-on (SSO) functionality
• User friendly and easy-to-use
• Great for remote businessesAuto-integrated with all cloud providers
• Secure access to both managed and unmanaged devices

Cons

Higher price pointFewer servers than their competitors

4.  VyprVPN — Best VPN for speed

• Pricing: $2.50 per mo. (24 mo. plan), $3.75 per mo. (12 mo. plan), $12.95 per mo. (1 mo. plan).
• Number of servers: 700+
• Money-back Guarantee: 30-day
• Support: 24/7 response within 3 hrs
• Privacy: end-to-end
• Multi-device support: desktop and mobile

Owned by Golden Frog GmbH and incorporated in Switzerland, VyprVPN focuses on a few areas — speed, anti-censorship, and privacy. They call their service the “most powerful VPN.” They offer more than 200,000 IP addresses and 700+ servers, across 70 locations internationally.

Their platform resolves speed issues due to ISP bandwidth throttling. It’s common for users to state that their speeds are close to 100% of their original speeds. This is impressive when you realize that they rely on AES 256-bit encryption. They provide users with unlimited switching between servers and protocols without restrictions.

VyprVPN provides some of the same features listed from other providers — kill switch, public Wi-Fi protection, and DNS protection. But they also offer a proprietary technology called Chameleon. In this protocol, VyprVPN scrambles your metadata, so it’s not recognizable via deep packet inspection, but it’s still fast and lightweight. As a result, VyperVPN can bypass restrictions from governments, corporations, and ISPs while fighting censorship and maintaining speed.

VyprVPN also owns and operates its data centers to reduce any risk of a data breach. Other VPN providers route traffic to third-party servers, so they’re not as secure as a service that keeps things in-house. VyprDNS keeps your browsing history private. Their no-logs policy makes a breach unlikely.

Pros

• Unlimited high-speed bandwidth
• 70+ server locations
• Chameleon protocol
• 5 Simultaneous connections
• No activity or usage logs
• Fast customer support
• VyprDNS
• Self-owned servers

Cons

• Fewer servers than bigger competitors
• Poor speeds in specific regions (EU)
• Slower connection times in specific regions

5. Surfshark — Best for the price

• Pricing: $1.99 per mo. (24 mo.), $5.99 per mo. (12 mo.), $11.95 per mo.
• Number of servers: 1,700+
• Money-back Guarantee: 30-day
• Support: 24/7 live chat, email tickets
• Multi-device support: Desktop and mobile platforms

Surfshark is an award-winning VPN service that offers incredible value for the price. According to VPNMentor.com, SurfShark is ranked 4th out of 357 VPN services. Their service provides users with 256-bit encryption, double VPN, an automatic kill switch, and a no-log policy.

They’re headquartered in the British Virgin Islands, so like other VPNs in our list, they’re free from the five, nine, fourteen eyes alliances. While they don’t collect usage or connection data, they do collect your email address, password, and basic billing information. If you’d like to avoid sharing this info, you can use cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. They also collect unique advertising identifiers from third parties for marketing purposes and user analytics.

One detail that stands out with Surfshark is unlimited connections. The number of devices that can connect simultaneously, per license is unlimited. This is great if you’re an individual, but it’s also great if you’re running a business. There are no additional licenses or requirements once you’ve signed up. Just set your VPN up, pay for the service, and you’re all set.

Surfshark offers its Adblock VPN that blocks advertising and malware, counters phishing attempts, and boosts browsing speed. They offer premium features like private DNS on each server, camouflage mode to mask activity from your ISP, and Multihop – connecting via multiple countries at the same time to maximize footprint masking and ID protection.

Pros

• Best value for the price
• Unlimited connections/devices
• Built-in ad-blocker
• Whitelist
• Private DNS
• Double VPN
• No logging
• Engaged customer support

Cons

• Medium-sized network
• Moderately reduced speeds in specific regions

6. Mullvad — Best for anonymity

• Pricing: $5.50 per mo.
• Number of servers: 315+
• Money-back Guarantee: 30-day
• Support: Email

Mullvad believes privacy is a universal right.

Privacy isn’t the same as security. If you’re looking for a VPN service that will go to extreme lengths to protect your privacy,  Sweden-based Mullvad is at the top of the list. They don’t require an email address or even a password from their customers. The company randomly generates a unique code for your username. You use this code to log in to the desktop apps or add credit to your account. They even allow customers to send cash in the mail to pay for your account!

They want to know as little about you as possible.

Mullvad will store your account number, your counts, paid time remaining, and the number of simultaneous connections that are used by your account. This data is kept in temporary memory, then purged once you log off. They log the total number of current connections for a given server, the bandwidth used per server, and the CPU load per core on each server. None of these items contain personally identifiable information.

Mullvad only offers connections in 38 countries, and they only have 315 servers. They don’t use virtual servers, so your VPN connections are running on physical hardware at the location specified. The speed varies based on your location. If you’re in Europe or North America, speeds are generally good. If you’re in Australia or Asia, the performance is generally much slower.

Pros

• Privacy-focused
• Simple and user-friendly
• WireGuard support
• More anonymity than most VPN services
• No affiliates or resellers

Cons

• Focused exclusively on privacy
• Slower speeds in certain locations
• No password protection

7. TunnelBear — Best for beginners

• Pricing: Free, $3.33 per mo., $5.75 per user, per mo. for teams
• Number of servers: 20
• Money-back Guarantee: 30-day
• Support: 24/7 email support tickets
• Multi-device support: Mac, Windows, iOS, and Android

TunnelBear‘s service is designed to be incredibly simple for newbies. They’re based out of Canada, which is a member of the five eyes, nine eyes, and fourteen eyes alliances. This means data that goes through or is stored in Canada is subject to intelligence agreements —they may be legally forced to share your data. TunnelBear states that they have a no-logging policy, so everything seems okay until you read this in their privacy policy.

“TunnelBear makes good faith efforts to provide you with the ability to delete your Personal Data. However, there may be circumstances in which TunnelBear is unable to delete all your Personal Data. For example, we are unable to delete it where we are legally required to keep it, including where we need it to continue to offer you the service or if you are involved in litigation with us, we would be required to retain your personal data, which is limited to the fields we discuss above in 1.2, 1.3 and 1.4.”

This data includes your email address, Twitter id, paid user designation, operational data, and personal and financial data. If this isn’t a concern for you or your organization, TunnelBear is a great option for individuals and businesses that want to get started with a VPN but aren’t as knowledgeable as they’d like.

TunnelBear includes the standard features you need to get started with a VPN — AES 256-bit encryption, tunneling (Android only), hashing, and more. Their service is reasonably priced and designed to help inexperienced people get started with a VPN.

TunnelBear is transparent about its service, sharing the results of its independent security audits each year on its website.

Pros

• Designed for inexperienced users
• Generally open and transparent about their service
• Low cost
• Built for individuals and teams
• Offers a free plan

Cons

• May share your data with governments
• No phone or customer support

Conclusion

Whether you’re a freelancer, an entrepreneur with a small team, or a growing business looking for options, a VPN will provide you with the security and peace of mind you need to keep your remote team connected and working safely.

Your needs are unique, and they’ll dictate which VPN service will work best for you and your business. Weigh the options against your needs for speed, security, privacy, compatible devices, and a number of connections. Millions of people are working remotely, and that number continues to grow every day. If you’re not already using a VPN service, now’s a good time to start.

The post-Best VPN Services appeared first on Neil Patel.

Source: neilpatel.com