The SaaS market is in quite a conundrum. The old playbooks aren’t working, and while it can be chalked up to the amount of content in the market, it is more than that.
The industry is facing a brand-new problem: the oversaturation of data points and an overreliance on that data. While the B2B SaaS train chugs on, is it time to rethink the marketing principles?
The SaaS marketing playbook is outdated.
Jon Miller, the co-founder of Marketo, was a pioneer in the SaaS field. Most of the common principles that the marketing world takes for granted today were perfected by him if not outright created. And he says something known for quite some time: the old playbooks and methods of SaaS marketing will not work.
If that’s a surprise to anyone, it’s time to take note of it. But what’s not working about the old playbooks? It’s the over-reliance on measurable and linear tactics. Many in marketing believe that what is working today will continue to work tomorrow.
But, historically, that hasn’t been true. From the days of Salesforce, SaaS marketing has been a disruptor. Humans crave novel experiences that help them reinforce something about themselves.
It is a very personal endeavor that speaks to our tribality. Marketing is evolving—or rather, it’s returning to its original form: forming communities around solutions and identifying markers of trust.
The marketing principles should be based on today’s culture.
Tribes and Communities
Brand building is a form of identification. But why is this brand-building necessary in the first place? First, it is to distinguish and differentiate. Apple is not Samsung. Trello is not Asana.
Second, it is to build trust. Asana has something Trello doesn’t, and vice versa. But why would someone choose one over the other? That begins by identifying with the mission and what that mission brings to the table.
Think of your own experiences. Maybe it’s a finance or marketing solution that solved your pain point—you will defend that solution. You will tell people why this solution is the best because it makes you feel heard and improves your life.
When it comes to SaaS, this identification is vital—it will keep the buyer asking for more. Anecdotally, many marketing teams have preferences for what tools they use. Maybe it’s Slack for communication (amazing community-building by them, by the way), Notion for brainstorming and writing, or even the Pomodoro timer for getting into the zone. And they swear by it.
It is in our nature to defend the things that help us—if nothing else, for the ease of it all.
Marketing teams must understand that while generating MQLs is a priority, marketing is evolving into a more organic way of communication between two parties: the customer and the vendor.
Problem-Solving
Problem-solving is something all marketers have done and continue to do daily:
Addressing their ICP’s pain points
Creating a campaign
Working around the budget
Brainstorming unique ways of reaching the audience
Crafting subject lines for emails
Writing unique content for blogs
Composing copy that speaks to the buyer
Directing the journey
And so on
The foremost marketing principle is realizing that every marketer, at their core, is a strategic problem solver. And while neither strategy nor problem-solving is measurable, their impact can be. The process requires deep reflection and thinking in novel ways.
This comes from experimentation and patience—two abstract concepts that might be drifting further away in our “always-on” world.
The Attention Economy
In this “always-on” world, attention is a resource that cannot be overlooked. But that doesn’t mean bombarding prospects with indefinite messages.
Attention can be gained through creativity.
But that may not seem actionable enough to some. What does being creative mean? While it involves thinking in novel ways, many creatives start by connecting two different ideas.
Think of handwritten notes and the B2B SaaS industry. Wouldn’t that get your attention? Of course, which is why there’s a B2B company that does it: https://www.scribeless.co/.
B2C industries have it easier—human connection and impulse buying are at the forefront, and a more casual approach often works. However, gaining the attention of the SaaS buying committee can sound daunting. Every decision they make has to lead somewhere. The cost must justify what it does.
Luckily, in the workplace, leaders and even employees are looking for solutions that can ease their work. From the boom in AI-powered virtual assistants, it is evident that we want tools that save time. The challenge lies in finding the correct channels and identifying stakeholders for attention-grabbing ABM campaigns.
The marketing principle viable for the modern B2B buyer’s journey
Customer-centricity will drive the future. With an increase in automation, the need for thoughtful messages will keep increasing.
Content, marketing experiences, and everything in between serve two purposes:
To build trust
And eventually turn prospects into paying customers
But the buyer’s journey has evolved. Its non-linearity and long buying cycles point to the problem of having too many solutions in the market. Your competitors have the same tech stacks and the same information as you.
So, what can you do when everything else seems stacked against you?
Well, there are two ways:
CMOs must lean heavily into storytelling and create an identity for the SaaS product.
Get to know the buyer like you would your closest friend, and reach them in empathetic ways.
Trust your SaaS product and articulate what it does. The buyer is no longer someone who doesn’t understand the implications of tech. Tell them what it does, and do it consistently. Promise them a frictionless life and deliver on that promise.
Once you do that, you’ll realize every marketing principle says: connect, attract, and retain.
Intent Signals: Mapping Buyer Behavior in Marketing
Marketers want a single answer – why buyers buy. They require an in-depth window into consumer behavior and patterns. Can intent signals prove fruitful?
In the pre-digital age, traditional forms of marketing used to depend on a single thread between sellers and buyers. The marketing messages were printed in newspapers or broadcast on radios – quite a “see-what-sticks” formula. The broader the audience, the higher the possibility of reaching potential buyers.
At least, this was their underlying hope.
Marketing has taken a huge step forward – by using what is already available. In this case, it is the buyer data called intent signals. They are mini digital crumbs left behind by potential buyers while researching a brand or products, especially in the initial stages.
It highlights what the prospect is in the market (search engine) for, and considerably, their level of interest.
How did intent signals gain such rapid significance in B2B?
Jon Clark, the CEO of a B2B intent organization named Cyance, outlines how marketers such as them began leveraging the data (firmographic and contact information) already in hand. Especially when the consumer dynamics are transforming, they chose to pivot towards the trails left on the trails.
When businesses ask themselves – what does our best buyer look like? How does one describe them? – Move towards behavior-based marketing.
The rapidity of digital transformation has shifted control and influence into the marketer’s hands. Leveraging these innovations has empowered marketers with the unique means to modify their marketing efforts and, most significantly, study buyer behavior.
Modern marketing has become an enclosed loop – changing buyer patterns transform marketing efforts, and on the other hand, marketing also influences buying decisions.
Marketers are intrigued to find a solution to the growing pains of the customers – understanding their buyers. Meanwhile, marketing studies leverage this conversation to outline fresher consumption models.
This has remained the epicenter of the consumption-purchasing process – especially as an answer to the age-old question – why do buyers buy?
Consider the Black Box model.
This contemporary consumer behavior structure links consumer’s actions to the effect of external stimuli. Remember that these actions should be observable to map their route to the final purchasing decision. They are trackable and offer ideas as to why the buyer took a specific step towards dropping off or closing the buy.
The relationship between marketers and buyers used to be a tug-of-war. But it’s all over now. And the buyers have now come out on top – they dominate the decision-making process.
But there is a black box that hides the thoughts, right?
How do external stimuli such as personalized marketing messages influence a specific behavior – a gap between the stimuli and action emerges.
The black box in the middle has the potential to pinpoint the consumer’s next step.
The selling experience used to be easy, at least to the naked eye. However, the increasing divide between decision-makers and buyers has complicated this. So, organizations have shifted to behavioral models and data analytics. They invest more and more resources and time to gauge this and simplify the purchasing decision.
What leads buyers to make a decision and settle the purchase? Modern marketing has one answer – intent signals.
At the base of leveraging intent signals is the need to highlight specific behaviors influencing buyers in their decision-making process. This translates to digital body language telling marketers if a prospect is currently searching through the market for solutions that exactly mimic theirs.
To understand buyers, marketers wish to understand the pre-thought before buying a product/service. In simpler terms, there are various gradations of buying intent.
How broad is this spectrum?
In a marketing journal article titled “The New Theory of Consumer Buying Intent” (1964), all business offerings fall into the spectrum of buying intent, ranging from the absence of any pre-thought to the highest degree of pre-thought.
Consumers whose purchasing process involves impulse buying are present on the extreme left, whereas those whose decision-making process requires prolonged pre-planning are on the extreme right. Quite frankly, the different degrees of buying intent shade into each other.
This journal piece was penned in 1964, almost six decades ago. While this consumer buying intent model has undergone multiple transformations and birthed several other models, its relevance has remained.
Consumer buying intent continues to be the foundational determiner of crucial marketing activities.
The changing market dynamics reveal that each buyer is different. An external stimulus influences each of their buying intent.
It’s about understanding the prospective buyer’s interests, preferences, and purchasing intent. The theoretical understanding behind buying intent stems from psychology, but in the digital world, it stems from data.
Intent data involves a prospect’s digital behavior – from whitepaper downloads and social media activity to clicks and searches. The objective of leveraging this data is straightforward – curate targeted and personalized marketing messages and solutions.
A rapid increase in prospects searching for solutions online has not necessarily led to a boost in conversion rates. According to Foundry research, merely 2% of website visitors fill in the forms. The buying patterns are becoming quite complicated to grasp because today’s buyers, with millennials and Gen-Zs on their teams, are wary of interacting with sales.
So, marketers follow these tiny digital breadcrumbs to measure consumer actions and behavior across diverse channels, from email to social media. The diversity in marketing channels and prospect interaction with a brand alludes to two different types of intent signals:
First-party Intent Signals: Direct Engagement and Proactive Search
The first sign that someone is interested in a brand is noticeable through their engagement patterns. These actions undertaken by the prospect illustrate active interest in a brand’s solutions or similar ones available in the market. It could be as small as a like or comment or as significant as signing up for a newsletter.
Every small interaction is a form of communicating interest.
But engagement and interest don’t always mean or translate to purchasing intent. A user might publicly comment on a LinkedIn post but might not want to make a purchase. Meanwhile, selected engagement data are not evident to everyone. This private interaction, only undertaken on the brand’s website, such as downloading a whitepaper, might translate into actual interest in the company’s offerings.
It’s the same for searches.
Marketers leverage the data illustrating which different types of search keywords the prospects are entering into search engines. This helps them highlight the types of queries the user is searching for and offer them the most ideal response.
The proprietary intent signals carry higher value because the prospect actively visits the brand’s website and showcases an interest in their proprietary data – content syndication programs and other digital content.
For example, after downloading an eBook, the prospect tunes into the brand’s podcast and signs up for an online event. These are bright signals that demonstrate their interest in the brand. For a marketing team, these prospects are ideal for nurturing. This consumer action is highly intentional compared to an impulsive like a LinkedIn post in front of them because they are willing to share their contact details. It’s like saying out loud – “I’m giving you my contact details so that it’s easier for you to reach out.”
The latter intent signals concretize a positive connection between the brand and a potential customer – they are aware of you, and your solutions are at the top of their mind.
By following the brand’s carefully laid out content path, they are giving out clues for how marketing can personalize their communication and communicate with the prospect, such that the interaction is engaging and focuses on demonstrated areas of interest.
In short, this leads to effective and fruitful sales conversations.
Third-party Intent Signals: Understand Client Companies and Competition
For a B2B solutions provider, the prospective client is another business, not an individual. While the priority is to enhance the quality of the offerings, how can an organization ensure its marketing efforts are streamlined to address other high-level decision-makers?
Third-party intent signals, especially firmographic and technographic data, play a significant role here.
These signals make it easier to understand the prospective client company – their revenue size, industry, demographic, employee size, etc. When a brand customizes its offerings, firmographic data ensures it considers the entire organizational objective rather than focusing on an individual’s vision.
Further, technographic data alludes to the technological advancements the prospect is leveraging. This is beneficial if the brand targeting them offers technological solutions. This also highlights where the competition stands in the market and the tools they utilize to enhance their services.
Third-party signals can be found in business directories, websites, whitepapers, etc., but are often accessible through intent data providers and publishers. These intent signals are a window, offering a glimpse into the organization, its market standing, and the challenges they are facing.
Intent signals provide an entrance into the mind of a prospective buyer.
Appropriately leveraging intent signals can help paint the entire picture of the buyer’s journey. Intent doesn’t just gauge interest but demonstrates that the buying process is constantly taking place, even before a concrete decision.
Different intent signals can be put together, like nerves of the nervous system or puzzle pieces, to understand the whole picture. It creates a roadmap of the customer journey for the brand that intends to leverage them. A single click might not mean anything when studied in isolation but within a long timeline of significant events. It might just help the brand understand who their buyer is.
The priority should be understanding the right time and context.
Understanding what intent signals are, is quite an easy task. It’s mapping when and how to use intent signals that miss the mark for most brands.
Marketing is a series of experiments. Is there no space for perfectionism?
With tech advances, the B2B marketing landscape is constantly witnessing changes and innovations. How has that influenced the team’s internal workings?
With creatives, it is hard to say.
One copy requires multiple revisions and edits before finally receiving approval for the publishing process. But is this about perfectionism? No. It’s about fine-tuning the content according to the standards set for your brand. Your content has to align with your brand objectives and narrative.
Due to its accessibility and simplicity, content marketing has remained one of the most sought-after strategies for lead generation.
Content marketing entails storytelling to make it more gripping and engaging. This has to be balanced with your branding, aligning it with the preferred B2B standards.
While storytelling has been around since humans came to be, does it have the capability to make or break your content marketing strategies? A Forbes article, “15 Exciting Trends That Are Impacting B2B Digital Marketing In 2024“, reports that instilling human connection into content is one of the most exciting trends, especially during the post-Covid landscape.
But has AI transformed how we create content and perceive it?
Over 43% of marketers assert that AI is used for creating content in the marketing realm. While it does add productivity to the process and offers diverse ideas, does it contain the ability to instill human connection into it?
The human essence is not merely encompassed within the context of an emotional connection, but it also considers the expertise that the content creators bring. AI can help save time, but can it add skillful flare to the generated content?
AI can provide us with content generated through prompts but cannot address the client’s expectations to its maximum capacity. As human components of an organization, our work will comprise errors with other touches that leave a trace of our humanity. These errors can be erased and improved multiple times according to the client’s briefs, but with AI, the frustration of finding the right prompt continues.
AI has opened up space for focusing on the human aspects of B2B marketing but doesn’t content aim to amplify the human facet that already exists in this landscape?
In the near future, AI may acknowledge the multiple rounds of revisions and edits, but there is still a long way to go, especially regarding content marketing.
Writing, creating designs, research, and strategizing are not straightforward processes. Brainstorming and ideation are required to branch into content that can resonate with your audience and add value to your brand. A graphic designer can partake in rounds of edits to fit the client’s demands and understand the audience to implement the ideal branding into the design.
But AI? It works with prompts. It erases the trust factor with the expertise required to market a brand.
The human-generated content versus AI debate is never-ending. A significant factor differentiating how we interact with both is the inherent expertise. If we didn’t value the dexterity, thought leadership would be out of date in the latest era of digital marketing.
Expertise holds enormous value to us, marketers.
The popularization of thought leadership content, such as guest blogs and techtalks, is evidence.
Adding expertise to our content marketing strategies is one of the significant reasons brands outsource lead-generation tactics. Outsourcing these efforts signifies that your brand is electing the help of third-party services to attract and generate high-quality leads.
The goal is the same: deliver something so meaningful that it entices your readers to hear what the brand offers. Whether it’s an external marketing agency or your in-house team, the priority is high-quality valuable content that is relevant, creative, and timeless.
And whether our strategies effectively disperse this content to the target audience.
Does outsourcing lead generation make a difference?
Lead generation is delicate and time-consuming.
Outsourcing adds multiple advantages to our marketing efforts: cost-effectiveness, high-quality leads, boost in ROI, and resource allocation on the core business tasks.
Outsourced B2B lead generation does make a difference – for small businesses. Simply said, when small businesses and startups lack the budget to hire a full-time in-house team, they turn to external agencies.
Hiring and training a group of experts is a long-term task. This causes hindrances in your growth as the time and resources are directed elsewhere.
Your organization should be aware of its capabilities. Entrusting lead generation to an external agency is also a matter of trust. The vendor you choose for outsourced lead generation services can help with lead generation efforts on the ground.
When your sales team is new and unfamiliar with the market trends, a marketing agency offers familiarity and skills that matter.
Outsourced expertise and specialization are necessary tools to propel our brand.
The in-house sales team might not be well-versed or experienced with lead generation efforts and how to improve them. This is where B2B lead generation outsourcing is a savior.
Besides, there is a significant reason why writers cannot review their novels. They are too close to the story. As writers, your content might address emerging trends, identify the audience’s pain points, and creatively align with the business goals, but will it resonate with the market?
An in-house marketing team is often close to the solutions it offers. Thus, it is often impossible to highlight the errors, or the areas in need of improvement, but an external vendor may not feel the same way.
Outsourcing lead generation offers a chance to market your solutions to the audience in a way that provides them with a comprehensive idea of your brand.
The primary step in marketing cannot be assuming that your audience knows what you are selling them. You tell them why you believe it’s best for them alongside educating them regarding the technicalities of your solutions.
Outlining lead-generation techniques that make your brand distinctive in a market crowded with similar services can be burdensome. When your target audience is stakeholders and high-level decision-makers, who possess their expertise, how do you make a difference?
Your lead generation efforts, especially content marketing efforts, require a narrative. The more extensive you understand your audience and implement this, the more likely you are to stand out to them.
Outsourced lead generation services help bridge the gaping hole in your marketing efforts.
Investing funds into lead generation efforts is inadequate to gauge the maximum effectiveness of outsourced b2b lead generation.
When you are a small business, merely focusing your budget on Google Ads will not yield the desired results. Strategizing effectively is important, or you can lose revenue in the flick of your hand.
A strong lead generation strategy with long-term effectiveness is significant for small businesses to expand into the market.
Outsourcing lead generation services might be the go-to option due to cost-effectiveness, but what more does it offer?
According to a report by NNC services, outsourced lead generation brings in 43% more leads than in-house. Outsourcing vendors implement lead gen strategies in simple but highly impactful ways.
A small business, initially, might lack the dimensions necessary to expand into a proper enterprise.
Outsourced lead generation services can change this.
And help your brand’s market expansion into a new geography. Expanding into a new market carries its challenges – language, cultural, and legal nuances that transcend borders.
Outsourcing can ensure that this happens smoothly. These agencies entail significant years of experience in the field alongside diverse experience across different industrial domains.
So, to expand successfully, your small business can harness the vendor’s knowledge of the territory and your competitors.
Research the audience and client profiling
“Who are your customers? Or who do you wish to cater to?”
The lead gen experts possess advanced tools and resources to conduct client interviews and surveys to understand their pain points, objectives, and expectations from the partnership.
As much as this can help us understand our audience, by doing so, we can modify and tailor our messages by highlighting behavioral patterns and purchase patterns to help define the buyer personas or the ICP.
When you understand who your audience is, you understand who your solutions are meant for and what you hope your customers gain from them.
Market report and competitor analysis
After understanding their target audience, the vendors carry out market analysis, the strategies used by competitors, and market fluctuations.
Ever compared your report card with that of the topper? Imagine asking them about their study techniques and how they spend their free time to balance it out with their studies.
This is how competitor analysis works, only discreetly.
The outcome of these reports is streamlined and mapped to find a single pathway to where the lead gen efforts are supposed to lead – what is your goal? And remember, these are highlighted in line with market preferences and emerging trends.
Effective benchmarking to understand competition
A healthy understanding of the tactics your competitors are using can help you get ahead in the race. As a small business, even participating in the game can be daunting. You don’t know your competitors or how they compete. But a coach, with years of experience on the ground, can help you get an idea.
Outsourcing lead gen is your coach.
Comparing your efforts against your competitors can help you improve your performance and understand what you are doing differently. Are your strategies bearing any fruit?
Simplifying and utilizing existing customer data
Data is crucial for your business. It lies at the crux of any functionalities.
And your user data can help you understand how your business is fairing. By examining the different lead generation channels and the strategies being implemented, small businesses can adopt the best practices.
The past data present in the CRM system can offer insights into purchasing patterns and help improve your lead-targeting methods.
Adopting multiple lead gen channels
When in a new territory, online and offline communication is important. Any form of open channel between you and the market can offer you ample networking opportunities.
This can go a long way to facilitate successful list-building with targets with the most conversion potential.
Correct targeting has significant potential in closing deals with a won. Talking and negotiating with the incorrect executive with no decision-making authority can waste your resources. Don’t stop at finding any executive, ensure that they hold the power of attorney.
Targeting the right executive can help you understand and research your potential client in-depth and gain reports on the latest data. Data matters, but only the accurate one.
Co-operating with an external outsourcing party is not a piece of cake.
Often, there is a lack of underlying trust that can cause operational issues. So, selecting the right outsourcing partner is necessary for seamless lead generation.
As lead generation specialists they should be equipped with research tools, understand your services, and offer guidance. While they lead the prospecting process, this still entails a balance in decision-making authority.
As a brand that is just starting, partnering with a group of industry experts has its pros and cons. It can be daunting when your business goals are unclear, especially when you have to outline them for a third party.
The partnership has to be built on a concrete foundation – what is the scope of this teamwork and how do they align with our individual brand goals?
Once the objectives and KPIs align, the outsourcing vendor can help you adapt to the local market dynamics through the steps discussed beforehand.
Ask yourself – What is the priority of the local market: purchasing cost or efficiency?
Your brand message should align with the local trends. Identifying their preferences and how they change across regional borders can allow you to tailor your messages.
Once the feedback starts to rush in, there is no reallocation of resources required in hiring new staff but instead, can be used for further improvements in your services. They lend a helping hand by assisting you in optimizing your services in real-time and maintaining your competitive edge in the market.
After all, brand expansion is integral to driving growth and with experts by your side, you can focus on your core activities with little concern towards your lead gen effectiveness.
Product events are tedious and difficult to manage. Can product event marketing automation simplify the process and negate the need for multiple hands?
Time and content are the components threading together brand and consumers. The right content delivered to the audience at the right time holds more impact than deemed possible. For example, when we have a time-sensitive query, all we do is input and receive the solution in a single search.
Marketing is majorly leveraging these two factors with a streamlined purpose. And it quite rightly works. In a market where competition is stiff and has minimal opportunities, leading the race is a dream. But businesses continuously churn out modernized means to engage the audience.
As the proverb goes – necessity is the mother of invention. And so, brands harness standard methodologies in their unique but convenient ways.
With the influx of marketing automation tools revolutionizing the market, businesses are seeking out convenient ways to minimize errors. At the forefront of this transformation is the introduction of AI, machine learning, and NLP, which has made automation perform tasks better.
Consumer behavior has always remained dynamic, often influenced by psychological, market, and other factors. To engage prospective buyers and maximize profitability, brands integrate modern tech with traditional methods, improving automation processes.
This resulted in a shift in the basis of B2B and B2C campaigns, influencing the marketing landscape to an extent. The general objective is driving value by concretizing positive brand perception and generating revenue. Focusing on customer preferences is a huge element here. This professional relationship goes beyond selling services and focuses on offering real value to the clients.
There is no single handbook for mapping successful marketing strategies. But optimizing one’s processes, from operations to management, lends a helping hand. Marketing automation has ensured that the focus is on priority tasks rather than routine ones.
Instead of offering only convenience, it becomes a means of betterment.
In the age of fast-paced digital marketing, it’s tough to stand out, especially when marketers leverage the same software and techniques. So, where should the focus be?
Take promotional events, product launches, or demos, for example. They are not difficult to organize and practically follow the same format. But something’s got to give. The essence of the event is to target each attendee and offer them personalized interactive experiences.
Marketing automation leveraged for product events construes a simple roadmap. It allows organizers to track attendee engagement and behavior before, during, and after the event, enabling them to measure its performance.
Why has marketing automation become vital?
It’s straightforward. It frees up resources and time to prioritize critical tasks. Through this, marketing and sales teams are able to enhance lead-generation strategies and foster positive customer experiences. Moreover, it’s quite a cost-effective solution to manage repetitive tasks.
While illustrating how marketers are driving value, marketing automation has helped reduce as much friction as possible. While automated processes focus on daily manual tasks, employees can personalize and have time to construct a strong relationship with their prospects that could possibly convert into high-value customers.
It’s not easy juggling different tasks. Especially sending numerous email reminders and SMSs to prospects once they demonstrate any form of engagement across the brand website or outreach content. It can also be tedious to send emails to multiple prospects who interact with a brand’s offerings.
Hence, the reason why automation is a crucial player in email marketing. It’s all about increasing as well as simplifying a brand’s engagement across the market. Marketing automation is the appropriate solution to manage these. For example, when a potential buyer subscribes to the brand’s newsletter, they might get an automated email regarding an event regarding the product/service(s) offered by the said brand.
Technically, marketing automation enables marketers to send automated responses to specific triggers. This is a streamlined methodology for sending multiple reminders for significant events. Automated outreach messages are popular and used by numerous organizations to simplify and enhance prospect engagement.
In other words, it’s quite the virtual support system for marketers. Not only does product event marketing automation make their jobs efficient, but also enhances customer interaction.
What is product event marketing automation used for?
Generally? Promotional events. By leveraging automation, marketing campaigns have become seamless, streamlining communication with potential buyers. Isn’t this at the crux of business deals – ensure a healthy and positive bridge with prospective customers?
Developing a relationship with prospects requires consistent engagement and nurturing. It’s not a one-time interaction. If the customers don’t feel a sense of belonging amidst the plethora of the brand’s loyal customers, they might churn or drop off beforehand.
However, involving them in product events such as trade shows and webinars can showcase their importance and remind them of the brand. Marketing automation is certainly a useful tool here, as it targets multiple social channels for advertisement by increasing visibility.
Marketing automation software assists brands in designing targeted marketing campaigns to elevate their reach effectively. Emails and messages are tailored according to the various audience segments to ensure the right content is delivered at a specific time.
Product event marketing automation also considers administration duties along with maximizing the number of attendees, collating guest information, and offering insights based on the aforementioned.
The utilization of marketing automation in product events is extensive. The end requirement is a smooth and streamlined event experience for organizers and participants alike.
Before the event:
This stage critically involves promotion and management.
During the promotional phase, businesses leverage automation to initially collect attendee data, segment audiences, focus on ad placements, and consequently schedule posts relating to registrations, confirmations, event date/time reminders, and any last-minute check-ins.
The gathered information can be used later to track campaign performance and highlight the areas of maximum interest to improve future events.
At this stage, most automated processes focus on increasing the number of registrations and keeping them from dropping off. Automation software in the pre-event stage quickens the registration processes and keeps them updated without additional administrative involvement.
During the event:
Using automation during the event/sessions can seamlessly facilitate real-time connections. The goal here is to keep the attendees engaged and informed. Most wait times between sessions can be tedious and unnecessarily long. However, continuously sending push notifications and updates can help them know vital information concerning delays or cancellations.
Additionally, communicating consistently with the audience will keep them engaged even during breaks.
Post-event:
After the event, one of the major tasks is mapping the attendee experience to gauge its performance or success. This comprises follow-ups, “thank you for attending” messages, feedback surveys, and customized offers to further engage with potential clients.
Automation software at this stage after the event is necessary to nurture leads’ interests and convert them into long-term buyers.
How does product event marketing automation ensure these tasks are proactively carried out?
The automated processes work through a trigger or prompt that activates a response to a specific prospect interaction. For example, if an attendee registers for the event or signs up for the brand’s newsletter, the system will periodically send them promotional offers relating to their preferences.
Constructing a seamless and interactive product event for attendees is vital. So, marketing implements automated processes cued with software platforms, integrating various marketing channels. These platforms often initiate multiple features:
Product Events & Email Marketing Automation:
Email marketing is a significant tool in ensuring a packed house for product events, whether virtual or real. However, managing email campaigns alongside event planning can be daunting.
This is where marketing automation platforms such as Zapier become your savior. It frees up much-needed time while ensuring the brand messages reach the right audiences. One of the biggest advantages of email marketing for product events is its direct line to the attendees – whether to create excitement or share session details.
But this is not the only benefit. Automating email marketing ensures that the attendees are hooked even when the organizers are off the clock.
Email marketing automation fosters a successful product event by focusing on the following:
Personalized and resonating messages that focus on targeted communication by segmenting the attendees according to their demographic, interests, and aforementioned preferences.
Exclusive content through scheduled reminders and session updates to keep the attendees informed as well as engaged.
Automated emails with event sneak peeks can generate interest and boost registrations. The email content can also aim towards answering common queries and encourage newsletter sign-ups.
Are your attendees satisfied? Include review sections or feedback scrolls in thank-you emails to illustrate that the brand seeks to improve itself.
Now, the simple question is – how does email marketing automation for product events work?
It’s straightforward.
Primarily, the focus is curating a solid strategy. Using the data collected beforehand during the pre-event promotional stage can help build a specific framework. Developing this will assist in selecting the appropriate platforms with flexible integration capabilities.
An application such as Zapier helps the brand connect the event platform with the email marketing software. This will now enable triggers on specific actions based on the event keyed in on the chosen event platform.
For example, AEvent is the event platform, and ActiveCampaign is the email marketing software.
After signing up on Zapier, create a new automated workflow or a new Zap and connect both accounts, as shown in the above image. AEvent is the trigger app here, whereas ActiveCampaign is the action app. A new attendee registration will trigger an action, i.e., create a new campaign.
Every new email campaign created requires you to input the contact list. Now, it’s time to create email design and content and choose the segment of contacts. While ActiveCampaign also hosts a drag-and-drop feature to make choosing emails easier, remember inputting the contact list will help effectively segment the contacts based on diverse preferences.
Automated email marketing software utilizes autoresponders – emails triggered due to the user’s actions. All you have to do is outline an email sequence after deciding on a robust copy.
While marketers know how to curate a personalized email copy, what about email sequencing? Mapping it out will highlight who the specific email copies are sent to and when.
To consider:
Registration confirmation and calendar invite should be forwarded immediately after the registration form is filled.
Specific details regarding the session speakers can be sent a week before the event, especially their background and topics they might cover.
The exact schedule and reminders regarding the benefits of attending the event could be sequenced a day prior.
One or two hours before, a critical reminder can be sent with the venue or sitting details, online links, start time, duration, Q&A session, etc.
Checking in on the attendees and their experiences immediately after can be useful as the content might be fresh in their memories. Sending review and feedback forms can help pinpoint the concern for their experience.
After a few days, send key takeaways and summaries of all the sessions along with resources for no-shows.
Lastly, after a week and depending on the engagement behavior of the attendees, sending email copies with customized offers can help spark their memory.
Using email marketing automation drastically improves attendee engagement and establishes trust. Diverse and personalized email sequences guide users from A to B, i.e., the overall event lifecycle.
Social Media Automation
With social media gaining momentum, leveraging the platforms is quickly becoming a B2B norm. But managing it can be quite a grueling task. It’s more than merely curating content and being an influencer.
Posting regularly, elevating engagement, and monitoring different social media channels should be at the forefront. Curating an engaging social media presence is every business’ goal.
Social media automation tools lend a helping hand here. They allow brands to automate social media tasks that are quite repetitive, such as engaging with posts.
Automated actions enable an active and interactive presence, which is fruitful for product events.
How is social media automation beneficial for product events?
Social media automation can assist in one of the most significant tasks in the promotional stage of a product event – scheduling posts. It helps organizers map out the most ideal time to post and then automatically publishes it when the audience is most likely to engage with it.
Automation to optimize and streamline a content calendar works wonders for planning concrete social media campaigns. Several social media automation applications, such as Hootsuite, help analyze thousands of social media posts and highlight the optimal time – this considers all the different social platforms.
Which other factors have to be kept in mind? Content management and appealing to the audience’s tastes. While social media automation tools can help do the former, curating content requires a human touch. However, automating other tasks such as bid adjustments, ad scheduling, and targeting audiences can open up a window to focus on creative pursuits.
Taking note of these will foster content visibility along with attendee engagement. Most product events can leverage social media ads to promote themselves.
And this can elevate the reach, given the hype around social media networks. Ad campaigns are also difficult to manage, but using the right social media automation tool can be a huge savior.
When the platform is leveraged effectively, one can use ad performance analytics and reports to gauge attendee registrations. Measuring ad performance data doesn’t merely impact campaign results but also influences attendee registration.
Further, social media automation also has a way to enhance user experience. What if, after seeing a product event ad, the prospect has queries? Social media platforms may implement customer service bots, such as Botsify or Flow XO, to place virtual agents who cater to responses regarding the company and its offerings on social media.
A/B Testing in Product Event Marketing Automation
Additionally, marketing automation can help optimize the brand’s A/B testing methods for the product event. This is not isolated from email marketing and social media automation but works synergistically.
The concept behind A/B testing is known by every marketer and is quite simple. And in the case of product events, it can prove to be a huge asset in regard to marketing emails and social posts.
Small businesses that wish to organize product events might not have a huge marketing budget like Google or Apple. This is where A/B testing can help streamline the in-hand marketing channels and improve their workability.
The most beneficial aspect here is that this test can be run from fonts to subject lines to the placement of the sign-up form or button. What if its positioning is deterring potential attendees from signing up?
Before the event, the marketing team can test different placements with maximum visibility and click rates.
There’s so much that can be evaluated in reference to marketing campaigns for product events – from email campaigns to paid ads to social media content.
CRM Marketing Automation
Automating CRM systems enables one to efficiently manage and personalize marketing campaigns. For product events, CRM automation will allow businesses to leverage attendee data for targeted communication and lead nurturing even after the event lifecycle.
The organizers can identify high-value leads to nurture them through the sales funnel by tracking different attendee engagement and interaction levels at the event.
For product events, CRM systems help:
Directly Registering attendees helps store their data and facilitates seamless segmentation.
Follow attendee activity, i.e., session attendance and networking behavior.
Send personalized email post-event.
In simple marketing terms, CRM marketing automation for product events can boost attendance, improve lead generation strategies, elevate attendee experience, and offer data-driven insights into attendee behavior.
Benefits of Product Event Marketing Automation
Leveraging product event marketing automation can yield several benefits. Mentioned below are some of the compelling ones.
Integrating the afore-discussed automation processes can work wonders to elevate campaigns for product events. But this is not the end of the road. It carries significant benefits for the marketing and sales teams as well.
But in what ways?
Prompt engagement for positive interaction and boosted conversion rates
Outreach automation streamlines communication and helps nurture prospect relationships
Tailored communication sequences for marketing and sales to align their needs with the prospects
Manage different event marketing campaigns by curating outlines for engaging agendas and implementing multi-channel promotions
Even if the benefits of product event marketing automation are crucial for automating event campaigns, is it as easy as it sounds? Not quite.
How do we harness the maximum potential of marketing automation to revamp product events?
The brands have to keep particular attributes in mind:
Selecting the appropriate software
Develop a strategy with concrete workflows
Consider the frequency of attendee communication
Appoint admin for automated workflows to manage technical tasks
Filter guest and attendee lists
Leverage AI chatbot software for improved support
Segment audiences for targeted invitations and outreach content
Evaluate promotion strategies
Track event performance using automated reports
Test the workflows across multiple applications
In product event marketing automation, remember precision is the steering wheel.
Based on the goals of the marketing campaigns for an event, the triggers should be as specific as possible. The automated processes have to take into account every mentioned step in the customer journey and incorporate it.
Once it’s clear how the triggers and the specific stages of the customer lifecycle are related, marketing and sales will deem it effortless to align their strategies with overall expectations. To streamline marketing automation across channels, applications, such as Zapier, leverage webhooks to help brands ensure no valuable leads slip through the cracks.
This remains the promise of automation when used correctly.
While AI has drastically transformed marketing and sales campaigns, the integration of modern tech with automation will only improve its effectiveness. Transforming the shape of marketing in the future that is yet to come.
Significant Risks of Paid Advertising: How They Can Be Detrimental to A Brand
Ads influence brand awareness when paired with a comprehensive strategy. So, how do we realize the full potential of paid ads for optimal performance?
In their 2024 Gartner CMO Spend Survey, Gartner remarks that the marketing budget (as of total revenue) has been at their lowest since COVID. It went as low as 6.4% in 2021 and has again drastically declined to 7.7%.
Gartner concludes that we are approaching an era where growth is earned and not guaranteed. So, invest wisely because institutional trust is one of the central causes of market disruptions.
The Importance of Optimizing Marketing Resources to Improve Advertising Strategies
While CMOs are being asked to work more with less, your business needs to capitalize on the disruptions across the marketing landscape.
This is not an opportunity to spiral into doom and gloom about how modern tech can surpass us but rather a time to leverage our marketing preconceptions. Leverage and capitalize on AI disruptions – this is the motto of marketing in 2024.
Generative AI has been a bane and a boon for the marketing industry. While the advantages include AI working as your best friend, i.e., elevating your productivity and efficiency, it has certain drawbacks. This comprises the spread of misinformation, bots, and an overall user experience.
There is a way of gauging this fallout—investing smartly to foster deeper audience engagement. Thus, advertising has become one of the significant drivers of maximizing ROI. The priorities are meticulous budget allocation and optimizing expenditure across diverse marketing channels.
However, it doesn’t merely boil down to allocating resources and budgets. Your marketing team needs to identify the most impactful channels to ensure that every penny spent positively contributes towards meeting the marketing objectives.
And the next challenging task is justifying the spending because market share and data illustrate your organization’s value. If there is not enough alignment between the spent amount and the generated revenue, something is not working.
This is simple.
To balance these numbers, businesses are shifting their approaches and marketing channels. According to HubSpot, brands currently focus on channels that directly connect consumers to them. With strategic investments, they have to prioritize how and where they spend. The top channels driving ROI are:
• Social media shopping tools such as TikTok and Instagram Shop (preferred by over 97.9% of marketers)
• Paid social media content, such as influencer marketing (preferred by 21.8% of marketers)
As a marketer, you need to study which lead generation tactic offers the most benefits for your brand and is a worthy investment. Because trends are often short-term and might be a quick fix, long-term strategies promise stable growth for businesses.
Gartner says the latest market trend is the shift toward paid digital marketing channels.
Why?
With the increasing use of the Internet and mobile phones, people interact more on digital platforms, and brands actively invest in content creation, social media marketing, and digital advertising.
However, with increased market competition (especially after COVID-19), it has become quite difficult to focus only on organic and traditional marketing methods.
While several marketing techniques may be a shot in the dark, businesses prefer shortcuts that provide faster results, taking in the specific target audience and ideal business goals.
This is why they inch towards paid advertising, with over 34.6% of marketers opting for PPC advertising in 2024.
What is paid advertising?
Paid advertising is specific. It is also a crucial fragment of digital marketing. While opting for paid channels, businesses pay to market their products/services to targeted audience segments according to their location, browsing behavior, and purchasing interest.
This marketing method requires paying particular fees to advertising platforms, such as search engines and SEO.
According to a survey, over 14.5% of marketers prefer only paid advertising channels, i.e. SERPs and social media platforms. Meanwhile, over 64.2% leverage the benefits of paid and organic marketing.
The marketing strategy used here is entirely sales-focused. The intent is to facilitate sales-qualified opportunities and elevate the frequency. The ultimate goal of paid advertising is to propel sales by generating quality leads through relevant ads.
The relevance factor of the ad content is highly crucial here. Your ad content, placement, appearance, and size should catch the targeted attention at the ideal time.
I might not have been aware of MailChimp before, but the ad on top of web searches caught my attention as a browser.
Ad visibility is directly proportional to brand awareness. Frequent ads across different channels can strengthen brand recognition, facilitating brand recall with product association. This is why higher visibility is significant – the promise that paid ads offer.
Paid ads entail significant benefits that organic marketing doesn’t or cannot propose due to numerous limitations.
What are the benefits of leveraging paid ads?
• Boosted visibility: Facebook Ads and Google Ads can propel a brand’s visibility among audiences that organic channels might not have reached.
• Detailed targeting: Paid ads target specific audience segments. This ensures the ads reach relevant audiences, increasing the possibility of conversions.
• Detailed performance reports: How does a business know its campaigns are effective? Measurable metrics. Paid ads enable this. They allow brands to track and analyze ad performance, highlighting its effectiveness.
If the strategies don’t lead to substantial results, performance reports can help businesses optimize roadmaps and align them with the necessitated objectives.
• Engagement Boosters: If done efficiently, they illustrate almost immediate results. Once the ad is up, and this has been carried out insightfully, ads generate traffic to the brand’s landing page at the flick of a hand, also leading the users towards a purchase.
First, brands generally purchase advertising space. However, in organic marketing, ads should entail quality, valuable content, and relevance and be optimized according to the web page.
Why choose paid ads for the brand?
The objective of these paid ads is to take the prospect to the right landing page and end up converting into a buyer.
As shown above, for MailChimp, search engine ads or paid search ads are the top preferred paid advertising channels (72.3%), and as explained, it depends on the searched keyword.
And Google is one of the most effective options for PPC advertising. It offers particular paid options to target the most accurate audience.
Why did MailChimp’s ad appear at the top of my searches? For SEM, the factors for ad visibility differ.
Yes, Google has a pre-defined algorithm that uses bidding strategies (for ad space) to determine which ad will be placed on top of the SERP for a specific product/service. There are other factors, such as keyword relevance, offered bid, and landing page quality.
While ads are visually engaging and might engage prospects with little to no interest in your services/products, what distinctive benefits does paid advertising contribute to the business?
This seems like a fair question.
As a B2B organization, the priority is leads and revenue, and paid advertising offers diverse solutions to enrich the business with these. But businesses (small ones) rarely invest in paid ads. An article by Forbes states that there are two possibilities why this happens:
1. Limited resources and budgeting
2. Lack of understanding of current market trends
However, there are numerous additional reasons why businesses avoid paid advertising. For small businesses, the focus is on why they cannot leverage the benefits of paid ads, i.e., the resources they lack.
What about when a business has enough resources and budget and fears the unknown waters of paid advertising?
Potential Risks of Paid Advertising
Investing in paid ads is a huge step, but the “spent” numbers should align with the returns. This is a must.
The sticky situation here is – it’s quite easy to lose money on ads. Spending on ads is not quite like discovering a gold mine. A business could lose money or not witness any profits from paid advertising online, and sometimes, they don’t even realize this.
Is it the Ad effect or a fluke?
It’s quite difficult to track whether the ads are working or just a fluke when the numbers on the sheet are positive. Can a business trust these numbers?
Another article on the dangers of online advertising outlines how difficult it is to gauge whether the ads are working. It highlights two ways these paid ads function: selection and advertising effect.
The selection effect of paid advertising considers the audience who saw and clicked on a brand’s ad but would have converted nevertheless. Meanwhile, the advertising effect considers the conversions due to the ad. This analysis by Forbes asserts that if most people fall into the second category, then the brand is making profits through its ads.
Or the ads are just a waste of resources and budget. This is one of the primary risks of paid advertising – not being able to define whether the paid ads are generating any substantial ROI for the business, then they are just unnecessary expenditures.
Reaching the uninterested/unintended audience
Depending on the targeted audience, another challenge when it comes to paid advertising is not being able to target the correct audience.
No further action will be taken when the audience segments the brand’s ad is reaching are uninterested. No clicks translate to no significant revenue, poor engagement rates, and low click rates. While this is an error, it still affects the overall campaign and chips away the allocated budget.
One of the main reasons for this could be a lack of research.
Before executing the ad campaign, the team lacked a solid buyer persona which should generally entail demographic data, behavior patterns, and interests. It should be the very first step to curating a marketing campaign.
Refine the targeting strategies.
The plethora of emerging tech has enabled advertisers to select who sees the ads, based on their age, where they live, and interests among other factors. Leveraging the right road to an effective advertising campaign can increase ad visibility and performance by disseminating it to browsers with actual intent.
They will be the most likely to convert.
Risk of bot clicks in website placement ads
Additionally, paying heavily for ads without receiving placement reports can add to the disadvantages.
Reach is significant, but what if the ads are placed across risky websites? This is evident through unusually high CTRs or win rates. Sometimes, website publishers use bots that add no real value to your revenue but only help increase click-through rates – this could all be bot traffic.
Surveys across the Internet posit that paid advertising is a risky channel. Several malicious actors attempt to alter engagement metrics and deceive advertisers, which is quite common.
It becomes fraudulent and risky, given the entire budget poured into these ad placements. Here, the ads are being shown to bot traffic rather than actual humans, especially on sites with fake traffic, tricking fraud detection systems into seeming valid.
Because while it may seem there is ad engagement, there are no (numeric) business outcomes. If the ads are not watched by real humans, they are inherently generating sales or leads for the organization. This results in the waste of the marketing budget and resources and introduces inaccuracies in tracking reports.
But what about the expense wasted on the ads?
Negative branding & reputation.
According to research, this specific amount is expected to touch $172 billion by 2028. While it might not be a concern for the industry at large, it can largely influence the calculation of impressions and clicks and also halt the ad from reaching the right target audience.
Poorly targeted ads are a headache. Irrelevant ads in front of browsers can build a negative brand reputation. This can also result in bad reviews, increased customer churn, and wasted resources.
When a user does not require a service, repeated ads can elevate annoyance and frustration. This often leads to ad blockers, which can block one of your advertising channels, leading to revenue loss. Annoyed users may bad-mouth the brand, eroding trust.
This can disengage potential prospects as continuous and irrelevant targeted paid ads make brands seem desperate.
Additionally, negative brand reputation could also be enabled through ad content. Sometimes, dark humor works given who the ads target, but not always. Society is explicitly sensitive regarding societal issues and geopolitical events, and using this to form paid ads can harm the brand image.
The ad content should be assessed and focus on relevant factors concerning a brand. This also includes negative comments regarding other competing brands.
Competitive energy might also result in ad theft.
All of this depends on the brand’s success. With vendors selling similar services, the market has become quite competitive.
This can quickly get out of hand when brands copy other products and adverts. It triggers competition across the paid advertising channels, increasing the bids and CAC. There is a delicate boundary between a brand and its competitor’s ad strategies.
The battle is understanding the product’s success and how the ad propelled it. Hence, copying the marketing strategy is common, but its execution is a significant factor. When brands use the same marketing techniques, it can prove detrimental to how their product is received in the market, driving up advertising costs, especially for keywords and high-value placements.
With time, the functioning of the advertising channel may erode.
The first set of prospects who engage with the ad might have a better retention rate. In other words, the first few prospects are the most engaged and relevant ones. Hence, they react to the paid ads quicker than others, requiring fewer impressions per user.
This is channel saturation and inevitable.
Once this occurs, the channel will pull less relevant users, making it demanding to acquire new prospects. Prospects could react negatively to ad messages and become less engaged.
Does the ad campaign have concrete goals?
There are a lot of steps to elevate ad campaigns. But what comes after? Once the developed campaign is in the works, gauging its effectiveness is also crucial, right?
How does the team know that their formulas are working? Without a proper objective in mind, they cannot. If there are certain areas of improvement or which direction the strategy should take – these critical aspects have to have clear objectives in mind.
One of the key benefits of digital advertising is advertisers can use data to increase its effectiveness compared to traditional advertising. But capitalizing on this is something advertisers should be aware of.
Without specific metrics to measure the campaign against, your ad expense can only lead to directionless spending and disappointing numbers. Why run your campaigns blindfolded when the growing application of tech in marketing has attributed tools to assist us?
By mapping the ad performance by reviewing key metrics from clicks to ROAS and using analytics tools, your brand will have a clear goal in sight.
So, what is the end goal of the ads – more selling, brand awareness, or reaching potential customers? Allow your campaigns to focus on both tangible and intangible outcomes.
Paid ads significantly impact your brand and corporate value.
While ads are substantial for brand awareness and visibility, consumers are plagued with ad blindness and fatigue. This has transformed the customer perception of paid ads.
Businesses understand that they need to refine their advertising strategies. Random placing of ads on a page in front of a user and interrupting their search does not work in this atmosphere.
The lack of interest and attention has negatively influenced this landscape. Consumers want an enhanced experience when it comes to browsing and purchasing. Hence, a growing number of them use ad-blocking software to obstruct such ads.
Yes, they wish for content that offers quick solutions, and paid ads can help them get there. However, some advertising tactics are too intrusive.
Advertisers can opt for alternative advertising and consistently invest in chosen channels without relying on a single marketing channel to navigate these possible risks.
The risks of paid advertising are plenty. For the paid ads to instill benefits for a brand, isolating it from other channels can be detrimental. It all boils down to the strategic approach the brand undertakes to navigate the challenges and improve the effectiveness of paid advertising.
A new revelation by Nvidia at the CES sparks curiosity.
New technologies are pouring in, and we are constantly in a flow to adapt and integrate. With so many global innovations surrounding us, there has been another addition to this tech stream.
Nvidia’s CEO, Jensen Huang, astonished the audience at the CES event in Las Vegas with this innovation — a $3000 mini computer. In his elaborate keynote, Huang followed the footsteps of the late Steve Jobs’ surprise reveal — Project Digits based on an Nvidia chip called GB10.
(Source: Future/Keumars Afifi-Sabet | Live Science)
Huang received the limelight as he introduced the mini computer having the capability to run the Nvidia AI stack.
Digits is by far the world’s first personal AI mini computer. It is created by compressing the world’s largest supercomputers in research labs. This fascinating tech is possible due to the GB10 superchip — a system-on-a-chip (SOC) based on the Nvidia Grace Blackwell architecture. It can deliver around 1 petaflop of AI performance. The GPU is paired with an ARM-based CPU.
(Source: Patrick T. Fallon | Afp | Getty Images| CNBC)
NVIDIA worked with MediaTek to build the superchip. ‘Digits’ is portable and equipped with a power outlet similar to mobile devices.
What makes it amazing is its capability to handle 200b LLMs. It’s like placing an AI supercomputer on the desk. Digits also comprises 128GB with a unified DDR5X memory and NVMe storage of up to 4TB.
This mini supercomputer is super powerful and can be slipped into your bag. The size and features make it a perfect fit for prototyping, fine-tuning, and running large AI models.
In a world flooded with innovation and dominated by AI, Digits could be a complete game-changer. It’s like making Blackwell portable enough to place on desktops.
The surprise reveal may end up surprising us with its features and applications.
