8 Awesome Digital Marketing Platforms You Must Try to Drive Audience Engagement

It’s no surprise that over 54% of customers feel brands need to seriously change the way they engage with them. Given the extreme competition brands often face online, there are many who choose to focus on pushy sales, rather than customer engagement. 

But, customer experience and digital engagement are imperative to a brand’s success. The more frequently and transparently you interact with prospects, the more likely it is that they’ll convert. In fact, customers who say they’re fully-engaged, tend to be 23% more profitable than customers who feel disengaged and alienated from a brand. This represents a large chunk of business which you’ll lose out on if you don’t digitally engage your prospects.Source: Pexels

What does digital audience engagement entail? 

To successfully connect with prospects online and keep the brand on top of customers’ minds companies must: 

• Create content mindfully and consistently that their audience enjoys and finds useful. 
• Share customized, audience-centric posts that resonate with specific groups. 
• Invite prospects to make their brand experience personal. 
• Become available to customers via multiple channels. 
• Make the brand easily available and accessible through regular outreach.

To do these things, you’ll need to equip yourself with the right technology that can lend you the required digital marketing support. Without further ado, here is a list of the top 7 state-of-the-art digital marketing tools and platforms that can help you engage and bond with your prospective customers. 

Promo – Professional Quality Promotional Video Maker Tool

If there’s one type of content that is universally loved, its video. Videos are exciting, engaging and can be used to break down complex concepts in a fun and easy-to-understand manner. One great way of bringing together your disparate groups of customers, is to use videos in your digital marketing campaign. This is where Promo.com can help. 

Promo is a premier video creation platform that empowers you with the tools you need to create visually-stunning, compelling and unforgettable videos. The best thing about Promo is that you can have zero knowledge about video creation and still use the platform effectively. You can very quickly pick up on how to add text to a video, how to crop it, how to add music, and so much more.

Promo comes with over 4,000 easily-customizable templates that are aligned to different industries and social media channels. This allows you to create the most enticing videos that niche groups of customers will enjoy. Another plus, Promo supports multiple languages, making it one of the best video content creation platforms when you’re implementing international campaigns.  

If you’re running a social media advertisement campaign (or plan to in the future), Promo’s channel-specific ad templates can be used to bring your social campaigns to life. You can easily export these ads to the destination of your choice and post them immediately. If you ever need help with your video production, Promo’s 24/7 * 365 days customer service is there to help. 

The Promo platform starts at $49/month and comes with an expansive library of professionally-created images, videos and music, which you can use in your content.  

Narrato – Custom Content Ordering Platform 

There’s no denying the fact that text-based content is irreplaceable and key to your content marketing campaigns. It helps you showcase your domain expertise, establish thought leadership and share important research-backed data. But creating content consistently is a challenge. This is where the custom content writing service and platform, Narrato comes in. 

Narrato is a leading freelancer content marketplace where you can hire experienced freelance writers and domain specialists to produce informative and entertaining content for your website or blog. From short product descriptions to long opinion posts for blogs or LinkedIn, you can commission a variety of content. 

The platform uses smart algorithms to understand your unique content specifications and matches you with experienced writers, who have the skills and knowledge aligned to your content requirement. This eliminates the need for you to spend long hours vetting and selecting writers for your company. If you find a specific writer whose style really resonates with you, you can directly choose to partner with them on your subsequent projects. 

Turn around time for content on Narrato is between 24 to 48 hours after a writer picks the job. The platform is integrated with plagiarism checking tools that ensure the content you get is completely original. You receive recommendations for featured/post images and also get unlimited content revisions.

The 4-tier pricing ensures Narrato’s services remain affordable to all businesses and individuals. If you want to try the writers out before you place your order, you can do so by commissioning a risk-free $1 trial piece. 

Narrato is also soon going to offer a content creation workflow software, where you can bring your entire content team and other writers together on a single platform. The software will allow your team to collaborate on content tasks, create optimized content and if you are an agency, also deliver content to your clients through a white-label platform.  

Squarelovin – User Generated Content Creator For Social Media Marketing 

Here are a few facts you probably didn’t know about user generated content (UGC): 

• UGC based advertisements receive 4X more clicks than any other type of content brands publish online. For UGC email marketing, the CTR is a whopping 73%. 
• Over 25% of the top search results on search engines like Google are UGC. 
• Sites and web-stores that feature UGC experience a 20% increase in site traffic, compared to sites that don’t. 
• 70% of customers will check UGC posts and reviews before making a purchasing decision. 

User generated content is one of the best ways to drive audience engagement. To jumpstart your UGC campaign, you can use a dynamic tool like Squarelovin. 

Squarelovin is a user generated content creation and sharing platform that’s specifically designed for Instagram campaigns. Given that Instagram champions visual UGC posts, you can easily enlist Squarelovin’s top-notch features to drive up your engagements. 

The platform has a UGC manager tool which you can use to identify UGC posts, contact creators to get rights, curate posts into compelling promotional material and post them on Instagram. You manage all your content in a single spot, reducing any mess and confusion. These posts can be converted into shopping posts as well, driving traffic to your site. 

Squarelovin comes with a built-in analytics feature. You can use this to track the likes, shares and clicks each UGC post received and optimize your UGC posts for success. 

Minter – Social Media Analytics Tool For Deep Dive Insights

Did you know that 71% of customers feel their shopping and brand experience is impersonal? Personalized communication is one of the easiest ways to gain customer trust and supercharge your digital engagement. But, the only way you’ll be able to create custom content for each individual prospect or a specific target group, is if you have deep insights about their content consumption preferences. These insights will also help you fine tune your social media page aesthetics and your web design and development, making them more conversion-friendly.

This is where a tool like Minter can be of great help. 

Minter is a specialized social media analytics platform that allows you to track, monitor and collect key performance metrics about each social media campaign. The platform is fully-integrated with various social media channels and your dashboard is updated with real-time information. 

The best thing about Minter is that it acts as a social listening tool and tracks branded hashtags and brand mentions on social media. You’ll also be able to identify the geographical location and demographic characteristics of each person using these tags and mentions, empowering you to customize campaigns for diverse audiences. 

Minter also comes with a unique Benchmark tool where you can select your closest competitor and compare your social media performance with theirs. This will give you visibility into the weak areas of your campaigns. You can then make the necessary changes quickly, which will aid in managing your time better. 

The platform’s robust reporting feature supports, daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, mid-yearly and annual reports. You can automate their sharing to different members of your team and even export them to external stakeholders. The best part about Minter’s reports is that you can restrict visibility to specific segments of the report, ensuring customer privacy and your competitive advantage is retained. 

Customer.io – Dynamic Automated Omnichannel Marketing Platform

Consider this example. You have a prospect who’s visited your site and placed a product in their checkout basket. But after some time, they don’t complete the sale and exit your site. Now, you have two ways of this playing out: 

You can either stay passive and just forget about this person who’s not showing interest in your product. 

Or

You can gently pursue them with a timely notification that reminds them of their pending basket by sending them an email or a SMS or a push notification. 

Following the former method might be easier, but it’ll result in the loss of a lot of business. The latter option – implementing omni-channel platforms as part of your eCommerce marketing strategy – can bring you a prospect who might turn out to be a lifelong patron of your brand. It is here that a tool like Customer can really add value. 

Customer is a omni-channel marketing platform that gives you the freedom to interact with prospects across various channels, using multiple devices. From sending them a welcome email to pushing transaction reminders on the app to sharing shipping details via SMS, you can do a lot of things to keep prospects engaged with you at all times. 

The platform has a specialized audience analysis and segmentation tool that allows you to develop diverse buyer personas and create custom notifications that can be sent at different stages of the buyer lifecycle. 

Customer comes as an integrable software that helps you track site visitor behavior. You’ll be able to tell what products a prospect browsed through, which pages he/she visited and which sections they completely ignored. You can use the built-in A/B testing tool to modify your site pages until they’re engaging enough to push even the most stubborn prospect towards conversion.

Beaconstac – Proximity Marketing For All Stages Of The Sales Funnel

Audience engagement doesn’t always happen online – or rather, it shouldn’t only be restricted to digital platforms. Your prospects go out, visit retail stores and purchase products on the spur of the moment, if they see what they like. This is why you need to keep up your audience interaction offline as well. This is where Beaconstac can help. 

Beaconstac is a proximity marketing platform that gives you the freedom to use online tools to target people offline. Beaconstac offers a wide range of short-range frequency technologies like wall-mounted beacons and NFC signal tags. These technologies use bluetooth to connect with mobile and tablet devices nearby, sending target customers who are geographically close to your store, product recommendations, personalized offers and promotional messages. 

Another thing that Beaconstac offers – 2D custom QR codes. Built specifically for restaurants, QR codes allow users to scan and digitally peruse the eatery’s menus. Considering that we’re still living in the time of the coronavirus pandemic, Beaconstac’s QR codes enable a safe and contactless service facility. 

The platform also comes with an analytics and reporting tool, where you can check how effective your proximity marketing technologies were. You can identify the number of site visits and store footfalls thanks to geographic-specific metrics. You can use this information to edit campaigns and provide better purchase incentives to prospective customers. 

Acquisio – AI-Powered PPC Campaign Management Tool 

PPC advertisements are one of the most effective ways to share targeted content to particular audience groups. These ads can be used to help prospects find the exact product, service or information they seek, making their user experience wonderful and memorable. 

One digital marketing platform that can help you run powerful PPC ad campaigns is Acquisio. 

Acquisio uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to help you create the most-customized ad campaigns. Once a prospect clicks on your ad, Acquisio tracks their content consumption preferences minutely. The platform then automatically chooses a PPC ad template that is closest to the ads that the target group/individual prefers, ensuring your ads are opened and perused. 

The intelligent bid and budget management tools ensure the most-focused keywords are implemented in your campaigns. This reduces your CPCs significantly. Additionally, the platform tracks your campaign performance closely and manages your budget allocation smartly, ensuring your money is utilized in the right way. 

The advantage of this marketing automation software is its cross-channel support. Not only can you run and monitor PPC ads, but you can also implement social media advertisements through Acquisio. This helps you get a 360 degree view of your entire advertising campaign and you’ll be able to determine whether your expenses justify your ad ROI. 

Acquisio also comes built with a lead sizing tool that vets prospects who click on your ads. You’ll receive a detailed report about each prospect, outlining their conversion-potential. This will empower you to make mindful re-targeting decisions to ensure a sale.

NapoleonCat – Social Media Engagement Tool 

User engagement is the core of social media; comments, messages, reviews, and other interactions make platforms such as Instagram or Facebook stand out from traditional media. 

Those who run social media business profiles know that handling all these interactions alone or with just a small team can be overwhelming. Luckily, there are ways to optimize some parts of managing social engagement. 

NapoleonCat is one of those, and it’s an absolute gem for building engaged communities on social. The tool gathers comments, private messages, brand mentions, and other interactions from all major social media platforms in one place. As a result, social media managers can monitor all social media in real-time, without switching between tabs and profiles, and shorten response time without missing a single comment. 

But there’s more, NapoleonCat offers an automation feature that will help you build a quick-response system for frequently asked questions or alert you once there’s an engagement that requires critical intervention (like, a crisis on Saturday evening – sounds familiar, huh?)

The platform also comes with an analytics and reporting tool that helps you monitor the performance of your social media efforts, and a scheduling tool that allows you to post exactly when your followers are the most engaged on social media. 

Wrapping up 

Engaging social media audiences and prospective customers doesn’t need to be a challenging, time consuming or expensive affair. You can interact and build rapport with prospects by using the right technology at the right time. 

Give the above 7 platforms a try this year and watch as your audience engagement – both online and offline – soar beyond your wildest expectations.