Animated GIFs or Reaction GIFs are gaining popularity nowadays. Animated GIFs are used to express an emotional reaction to something very specific. If any business or brand share animated GIFs that do not belong to you, can create some copyright issues. Alison Zeringue (Team Manager at Search Influence), writes in her article how to use GIFs in Social Media Marketing. They are: 1. Adding personality to your brand can help customers; 2. using animated GIFs in social posting or your website’s blog posts can make your content more viral; 3. Companies can use animated GIFs to highlight the main feature of a company’s products; 4. Animated GIFs can help others understand what it’s like to work with you. Read more at: http://marketingland.com/animate-social-media-marketing-gifs-127152

Paid social advertising is important for any business in today’s world. Paid social channel is worth investing nowadays as it helps in targeting, attractive ad types which includes video ads, better conversion tracking, more flexible bidding, and retargeting. Columnist Scott Rayden in his article writes all about paid social advertising. Read more at: http://marketingland.com/7-things-cmos-need-know-paid-social-137014

Nowadays, the only goal of any inbound strategy is to educate the consumers with relevant information. But, the challenge is to figure out how to create content which will be interesting to target audiences. An inbound marketing content to be successful must speak about what the target audience likes the most. Social monitoring also helps companies to create more customers. Columnist John Donnelly III, writes in his article about three ways that social media analytics can transform boring inbound campaign into the dynamic, lead-generating tool. Read more at: http://marketingland.com/social-media-insights-goldmine-inbound-marketers-131015

According to a recent study by IDG Connect, it was found that nearly half of respondents are still finding it difficult to draw insights from data. It is hard for the marketers to find out the impact of marketing & advertising programs. Marketers are still trying to find out answers to some questions like: How do we most effectively make the right people aware of our products and services? And then how do we figure out what we did right and wrong? Big data had come to the rescue, but still many marketers find themselves in very much the same place as 1900's. Columnist David Booth in his article writes about the areas that organizations should focus on improving their marketing activities. Read more at:  http://marketingland.com/reach-maximum-potential-intent-data-134086

Everyone uses smartphone nowadays. According to a research it is estimated that 2.1 billion people use smartphones. Marketers are trying to please these mobile using consumers with personalized geolocation targeting and content localization. Marketers are now focusing on geotargeting. Brands are now tweaking their national marketing campaigns on a store-by-store basis, localizing emails and regularly sending notifications about in-store promotions though multi-channel and geolocation marketing. Columnist Andy Lombard hi his article link explains why geomarketing is becoming essential for marketers. Read more at:  http://marketingland.com/even-biggest-brands-can-get-hyperlocal-geolocation-targeting-135849

According to a research by Gartner, it was found that marketing executives are three times more likely to lead strategic growth initiatives in 2016 than they were in 2012. Corporate managers are now focusing on customer experience and they think mobile is best to know about this. But, mobile should not be looked as a channel and it requires a different approach. “Mobile eliminates the notion of channels by blurring the distinction between the physical and digital worlds. E-business professionals who treat mobile as just a channel will fail,” Forrester analyst Julie Ask says in a report. Mobile apps deliver utility and valuable experiences that bind people to brands. Columnist Brent Hieggelke in his article link writes how to bridge mobile engagement gap between high and medium performing apps. Read more at:  http://marketingland.com/getting-grip-mobile-engagement-gap-133357

Nowadays, marketers are using technology to plan, create, manage, automate and monitor campaigns. Companies must have a strong marketing technology foundation so that it helps them to optimize productivity, maximize return on investment and create competitive advantages. Columnist Paul Roetzer in his article shares tips on how to increase phttp://marketingland.com/10-questions-guide-marketing-technology-strategy-135591

It is the age of neuromarketing and it is developing fast. It was first developed in the 1990’s by the psychologists at the Harvard University. Nowadays, it is playing an important part in the marketing industry. But, we must first know about neuromarketing. It is a study of consumer behavior relative to marketing practices. But, the use of specialized equipment, like FMRIs, EEGs and advanced bio-metric sensors makes it special. These tools are used to study the consumer’s responses to various marketing stimuli like - sensorimotor, cognitive and affective responses. Columnist Jeremy Smith in his article writes about some neuromarketing principles. Read more at: http://marketingland.com/6-neuromarketing-principles-always-true-137206

According to a research by Gartner, it was found that 79% of marketing departments maintain capital budgets mainly for technology. Marketing technology is emerging very fast. It was also found that 61% of the companies want to increase the proportion of technology, and spend more on marketing communications.  So, companies must have a good marketing technology strategy. Author Kavin Dodson (VP of Data and Marketing Strategy for Beckon), writes in his article link about how to gather the right stack for a business. Read more at:  http://www.cmswire.com/digital-marketing/making-sense-of-your-martech-stack/

CRM solutions are important in order to improve the sales process. A good CRM solutions also help to identify quality lead. But, these benefits will be of no use if the deployment is not done in a correct way from the beginning. The causes vary for not understanding why the users need CRM. Companies must know how to minimize failure risk during CRM deployment. This can be done by aligning the business process in a proper way, by choosing the right technology, by upgrading the old CRM solution, by handling migration from old CRM solution to the new one properly. Read more at: http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/insidecrm/avoiding-failure-during-your-crm-deployment-68429

A cloud-based CRM is a powerful tool that helps a company to save IT resources. So, choosing the right vendor with good customer support helps you to diminish the impact of potential problems. In a research it was found that a company saves 21% off IT expenses by putting cloud-based apps to use. It was also found that cloud-based customer relationship management (CRM) tools have many benefits especially during maintenance of system. Read more at: http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/insidecrm/how-to-choose-a-cloudbased-crm-vendor-with-reliable-customer-support-68432

Wholesale distribution salespeople are often outside the office. So, they need basic functions like recording contact events, storing e-mail communications, and creating activity reports in their laptop which in a nutshell is called CRM system. Nowadays, the mobile CRM app is making their work a little easier. David Gillman (analyst with Studio B) writes in his article how mobile CRM is changing wholesale distribution. They are: Instant access to customer history; Predictive analytics; Fast order processing; better sales management. Read more at: http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/insidecrm/4-ways-mobile-crm-is-affecting-wholesale-distribution-68472

Sales pipeline helps in revenue forecasting for the sales department. It defines the distinct stages of your sales process. CRM tools also help in analyzing prospects in each pipeline stage and also determine whether a lead needs additional encouragement. There are also some features which will help in optimizing the sales pipeline. They are: clearly defined sales pipeline, Integrating CRM Information, Identifying customers leaving the pipeline, and Lead Scoring Criteria. Read more at: http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/insidecrm/optimizing-your-sales-pipeline-with-crm-68441

According to a research, use of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tools have increased to $23.2 billion market share in 2014. Now, more companies are venturing into CRM solutions designed for mobile environment. It has been seen that sales team has improved their productivity by 15% more by using CRM tools in mobile environment. Some key features should be kept in mind while choosing mobile CRM. They are: Enterprise Level Security, Device Compatibility, Distilled Feature Sets, Data Aggregation, and Real-Time Analytics. Read more at: http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/insidecrm/5-key-features-for-your-mobile-crm-68505

CRM software and automated marketing software together helps companies to develop leads in a more systematic way. This combination allows users to analyze a potential buyer’s interest so that companies can help users at every stage of buying. But, companies are facing difficulty in lead generation and good quality. According to the author Eric Scott Johnston (an analyst with studio B), businesses can improve lead generation by focusing on these areas: upgrading technology, improving content quality, and developing the metrics. To know more, follow the link:  http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/insidecrm/3-ways-to-improve-automated-lead-generation-68473

Nowadays, customer relationship management (CRM) software can help companies to customize their marketing campaign by reducing the usage of bad data. Bad data can decrease the quality of the content and may also lead to underdeveloped leads. Here automated marketing comes in. This helps in improving the quality of data. Eric Scott (An Analyst with B Studio), writes in his article about some steps to ensure that the data are cleaned up and providing the right metrics for a smooth and automated marketing campaign. Read more at: http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/insidecrm/4-ways-to-boost-the-quality-of-automated-marketing-content-68477

In business, one not only has to keep a track on competitors and a close watch on the market but also keep a tab on what the customers are feeling, and how they are responding about their products in social media. Luckily with the advancement of data analytics many such tools are available and are becoming popular. One such marketing tool is a search engine which searches any social mention of the topic in social media. These platforms enable a business leader to evaluate customer sentiments and use it for business development. Read more at:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jayson-demers/7-marketing-tools-to-find_b_7605262.html?ir=India&adsSiteOverride=in

Social media and networking sites are helping businesses and companies to grow. Social media not only helps as a platform to communicate with the customers and build up a brand reputation, but it also helps the way business is run. It also helps business enterprises to collaborate across departments, offices, countries, and with other business houses as well.  According to a recent studies, social media analytics along with predictive analytics is going to be the most effective technology for business development. Its impact will be greater than internet of things and mobile payments. So, embracing this aspect will be necessary for a business to survive. To know more, read: http://www.cio.com/article/2937401/social-collaboration/how-collaboration-tools-can-turn-your-business-into-a-social-enterprise.html

Maintaining data confidentiality is the new challenge faced by healthcare organizations. It is important for them to protect this digitized data from criminal hands. Hospitals, clinics and other healthcare organizations are slowly adapting to new technologies that are capable of protecting such data. There are some more challenges, such as accessing permission. A lot of insurance agencies, healthcare providers may require access to the data, but access control needs to be maintained for proper security.  The healthcare organizations may have data spread across various mobile devices. So, proper data encryption should be done in order to ensure data safety. The other important issue is using third party software in medical instruments; it may cause data theft. These security issues are raising concerns in the healthcare industry. To know more read: http://www.cio.com/article/2933323/healthcare/healthcare-organizations-face-unique-security-challenges.html

The value of data is no longer unknown to the business world.  Both structured and unstructured data are important because they are unprocessed raw materials which go into analysis. Many business leaders and IT professionals prefer structured data, while it is currently being observed that unstructured data also has a lot to offer. Unstructured data coming from various social network sites help business leaders to gauge customer sentiments and grievances. It also helps to reduce costs and adapt to a changing market situations. Sometimes there can be challenges handling unstructured data such as collection, organization, integration and analysis. text analytics, auto taxonomy generation, auto tagging and other techniques are vital when it comes extracting value from unstructured data. To know more read: http://www.cio.com/article/2941015/big-data/solving-the-unstructured-data-challenge.html