The government has readied plans for a major change in India’s tax administration structure, including overhauling the Central Board of Excise and Customs (CBEC) to ensure a glitch-free roll-out of a nation-wide goods and services tax (GST).

Skoda Octavia RS 245 deliveries have commenced in the country. The company has started to deliver the performance sedan as the nation-wide lockdown has been eased at select cities including Bengaluru.

INS Jalashwa, participating in Indian Navy#39;s "Operation Samudra Setu" to bring home Indians stuck in foreign countries due to COVID-19 pandemic, has departed from Male port for Kochi with 698 Indian nationals on board on Friday night. It is expected to reach here on Sunday.

ICICI Bank#39;s asset quality is also expected to improve in the March quarter on account of write-offs.

Alphabet Inc's Google said on Friday it has asked employees to take a day off on May 22, to address work-from-home-related burnout during the coronavirus pandemic.

When people think of account-based marketing (ABM), they tend to think of it as a smaller-scale practice. Since ABM is fundamentally built around focus in the aligned pursuit of high-value accounts, it’s often associated with a significant reduction in target market scope (i.e., “Let’s narrow down to our 20-30 most promising accounts).

This itself is a constraint from which B2B marketers need to break free, which is why Gary Gerber stood out as a fitting guest for the first interview in our second season of Break Free B2B. At B2B Marketing Exchange in February, he sat with TopRank Marketing President Susan Misukanis to unpack what’s needed to bring ABM to the next level.

Gary and his team at Folloze helped Cisco develop a sophisticated and highly effective ABM program that targeted 20,000 customers through one-on-one, personalized content and messaging.

How can other B2B marketers achieve this level of scalability in their ABM efforts, overcoming one of the biggest remaining hurdles holding back this fast-growing approach? In large part it’s about rethinking our tools, Gary suggests, while leaning on a rather literal metaphor.

“You have to focus away from blunt instrument tools,” he says. “I’m not bashing blunt instruments, by the way, because a hammer is one of the most useful tools in your toolkit, but you wouldn’t use it to repair a watch. So you need to migrate to tools that let you [achieve] that kind of precision, because that’s the only way you’re going to build trust with your customers.”

[bctt tweet="“A hammer is one of the most useful tools in your toolkit, but you wouldn’t use it to repair a watch.” @Gary_Gerber of @Folloze on the need for more precision in #ABM. #BreakFreeB2B" username="toprank"]

Solutions like Folloze’s platform, which enables the delivery of personalized experiences at scale, are helping pave the way. But it’s not just about technology. Reaching a state of advanced ABM also requires shifts in organizational mindset, philosophy, and operation.

Gary and Susan cover the gamut in their 18-minute conversation. You can watch, listen, or find key excerpts and takeaways below.

Break Free B2B Interview with Gary Gerber

If you’re interested in checking out a particular portion of the discussion, you can find a quick general outline below, as well as a few excerpts that stood out to us.

• 1:30 - Recognizing that change is inevitable
• 2:30 - Where is ABM in terms of market maturity?
• 4:45 - Helping clients recognize shortcomings and make incremental progress
• 6:30 - Approaching the marketing funnel from an ABM standpoint
• 9:30 - Re-centering on the fundamentals of ABM targeting
• 11:15 - Where are you seeing successes in ABM?
• 13:15 - Optimizing for the future by taking the right steps right now
• 16:00 - Gary's personal hobbies and philosophies
• 17:15 - How can modern digital marketers break free?

Susan: What's your consulting approach? As marketers, we can't just tell our clients, "You're wrong, do it my way." How do you inch them toward making incremental progress?

Gary: It's an interesting question because when we talk to people, the tools that people are using are the same ones that worked well 10 or 15 years ago. People built their careers on tools like marketing automation and things like that. So it is challenging to tell them, "Those tools are blunt instruments by today's standards."

You have to focus the other way, on what's not working, on the pain. Because there is pain there, especially if they're under the gun for an account-based program, and for pushing things through the funnel, right? We like to talk about the three symptoms that marketers today are subject to: funnel starvation, pipeline constipation, and sales frustration. They can't get stuff into the top of the funnel anymore, whatever they get in the funnel doesn't come out, and they're under the gun there because sales and the entire organization is looking to them to move opportunities and it's not happening. So if you can put it in terms along those lines most marketers will eventually have to concede. 'Cause everyone's feeling that pain in B2B.

[bctt tweet="“We like to talk about the three symptoms that marketers today are subject to: funnel starvation, pipeline constipation, and sales frustration.” @Gary_Gerber @Folloze #BreakFreeB2B #ABM" username="toprank"]

Susan: Do you counsel equal focus on the top, middle, and bottom of the funnel to try to get things moving? Or is the first thing, you gotta fix the top of the funnel? What's your methodology?

Gary: Well, if you think about what ABM is, especially if you're doing it right, it's almost not a funnel mentality at all anymore, right? We refer to it as full cycle personalization, or some people are saying bow tie. If you're approaching it with that funnel mentality, you've almost doomed yourself to failure right from the start in 2020.

[bctt tweet="“If you're approaching #ABM with that funnel mentality, you've almost doomed yourself to failure right from the start in 2020.” @Gary_Gerber @Folloze #BreakFreeB2B" username="toprank"]

There’s an analogy others are using and I agree with it: it’s like a football team or a soccer team running down the field together. So the focus isn't on top of funnel or middle of funnel, it's on -- by definition -- the accounts themselves. And as sales and marketing are running down the field, they're bringing the account and the individuals together along with them. It's a journey.

And so how do you do that? You can't do that by sending them mass emails because everybody's getting that. Ultimately what it's about, and I've said this to other people, it's about building that relationship with them. More importantly, it's about building a relationship that's built on trust, not on hype. Because if you've built that trust and you're adding that value to them that they trust you're interested in their success, and you're providing information and content and messaging and whatever it is, that will help them be successful. They'll happily march down the field with you because you're adding to their success.

Susan: So let's talk about what's working in ABM these days. Where are smart modern marketers really experiencing some great progress from your perspective?

Gary: Most people think of ABM, as you mentioned before, as, "Well, I'm going to pick my top 20 accounts and I'm going to focus everything I got on them, and the rest of the 88,000 or whatever, oh well too bad, them we'll just spray and pray with a nurture campaign or something like that." And it's interesting because when you stop and think about it logically, limiting it to your 20 or 25 or whatever, that's a technical limitation, right? It's because I can't do what I want to do -- create a deeply personalized, individualized, valuable, trust building experience -- with more than those 20 people because there's me and this person, that's all that we can do.

But there is no procedural reason for that. If you could do [personalization] for everybody, then you would, but you can't. And so, Cisco is a really awesome example. What they've been able to do is actually automate a lot of what's manual to create these very individualized experiences where they’re getting content, and imagery, and messaging, and information, and everything that is very salient to them, that they used to have to build by hand, so it took hours for each … it’s automated, so they kind of wind it up once and this goes out. So Cisco is actually doing one of the largest ABM programs in the country.

Stay tuned to the TopRank Marketing Blog and subscribe to our YouTube channel for more Break Free B2B interviews. Here are a few interviews to whet your appetite:

• Break Free B2B Series: Jon Miller on How ABM Can Help Marketers Keep Their ‘Ship’ Together
• Break Free B2B Series: Hal Werner on the Intersection of Marketing Creativity and Analytics
• Break Free B2B Series: Adi Bachar-Reske on Taking the Lead in the Evolution of B2B Content Marketing

The post Break Free B2B Marketing: Gary Gerber on Scaling ABM without Losing Focus appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

Between stay-at-home orders and the manic Minnesota weather, I’ve found myself at home for the last four weeks looking for something, really anything, to occupy time. One can only take so many walks in a day. Naturally, I turn to YouTube, Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, Disney+ and all of the other video streaming sites for entertainment.

As a marketer, this makes me wonder what those streaming sites are seeing in their analytics. Obviously, views must be up by an unbelievable amount. But, what about engagement? How many people are completing the videos they start? Are they watching more? Unless it’s Tiger King, the answer is unknown (it’s impossible to look away from Tiger King). But those streaming sites aren’t the only ones that might have some fascinating new data to look at.

Social sites and YouTube provide a host of different metrics and analytics options. While each data point serves a purpose, there are a few key performance indicators (KPIs) that are more important to track to better understand your audience and improve content performance.

Video Analytics and Content Benchmarks

A recent study from video streaming site Vidyard established some useful benchmarks for video content:

• 52% of viewers watch a video all the way through
• 68% will watch the entire video if it’s less than 60 seconds
• 25% will finish a video if it’s more than 20 minutes

The same study found that the most common business-created videos are webinars, demos and social media videos, and are most likely to be published on websites, social media and YouTube.

Of course, these benchmarks will vary by audience, by industry, by the light of the silvery moon — basically, take them as a starting point and customize from there. Here’s the process we recommend.

Using Video Analytics to Optimize Your Video Content

1 — Use Demographics to Understand Your Audience

The first step to increasing content engagement and effectiveness is to gain a better understanding of your audience. To do that, it’s critical to monitor demographic data in your video analytics platform. Most will give you basic demographic data, like location, age, language and device use. Some will give you user interest data, income estimates and even company data.

Knowing this information helps you create more relevant content. For example, if you find that your audience primarily speaks English, but there is a growing subset of French speakers accessing your videos on mobile devices, you might want to consider adding French caption options for mobile users.

If you see an increase in viewers from a specific geographic area, you will want to look at the analytics for that region to determine what content is attracting the new audience and how they are engaging while they’re watching and immediately afterward.

2 — Use Awareness and Engagement Metrics to Understand Audience Demand

Understanding your audience is important at a strategic level, but understanding audience demand is tactical gold. Of course, this data will drive your go-forward strategy, but it will also help you improve performance right away by adjusting promotion tactics and featured content.

For example, if you see an uptick in video views week over week for a particular video, that indicates that the topic is becoming increasingly popular. To prove that, you will want to look at engagement metrics like watch time, clicks on your call to action (CTA), and subscribers gained or lost. If you see an uptick in views and a corresponding uptick in engagement, you’re going to want to feature that video more prominently. If you see an increase in negative engagement —  a loss of subscribers — or if viewers are dropping off right away, that might indicate your video doesn’t quite match the intent for that topic.

This granular view of data can help you improve and optimize your existing content, create more strategic video content roadmaps, and provide viewers with content they want and need to make critical decisions later in the funnel.

[bctt tweet="“Understanding your audience is important at a strategic level, but understanding audience demand is tactical gold.” @Tiffani_Allen" username="toprank"]

3 — Audit Your Video Library for Optimization Opportunities

Following the best practices for whichever video hosting platform you’re using can result in increased video visibility and better user experience. A great first step is to optimize video titles, descriptions, and tags. Then you can organize  your videos into different sections, playlists, or even channels to help the right audience find your content faster.

To determine your next steps, audit your existing video channels. Do you know at a glance what the video is about? Does the thumbnail image inspire a click? Does your channel, landing page or resource center adequately convey the type, purpose and content of your videos in a way that compels action?

If the answer is yes, go take a break. I recommend a few hours of Animal Crossing: New Horizons. It’s very soothing. But if the answer’s no, you’re not alone. And you do have the tools you need to create better video content. It’s all in your analytics.

As a quick disclaimer, if your videos are hosted on your website and you notice some odd user behavior patterns over the last month or so — increases in direct traffic, crazy long time on page — you might want to look into whether or not IPs are blocked for your team’s home IP addresses. Determine if the patterns are happening on a more global level, or if they’re localized to the geographic area surrounding your physical office.

If you want help with an audit, or just want to bounce some ideas around, we’re here to help. Tweet us @toprank or contact us to get started.

The post What B2B Marketers Need to Know about Optimizing Content with Video Analytics appeared first on Online Marketing Blog - TopRank®.

Tara Reade, the woman who alleges Joe Biden sexually assaulted her in 1993, said in a video interview on Thursday that he should withdraw from the White House race. Gloria Tso reports.

Stone by stone, digital artists and game developers from Mosul are rebuilding Nineveh's heritage sites in the digital world. Francis Maguire reports.

Artist Ryu Jong-dae experiments with various cornstarch-based bioplastic in the bid to protect the Earth. Rosanna Philpott reports.

Young German climate-strikers on Friday (April 24) got creative with their social distancing, set up hundreds of cardboard cutouts to represent protesters taking part in the Fridays for Future demonstration.

BMW expects the coronavirus pandemic to hit demand and earnings throughout this year, while Volkswagen sees some green shoots with higher Chinese demand. Francis Maguire reports.

Belgian waffles may be about to become more environmentally friendly.

Under partial lockdown due to the spiraling coronavirus pandemic, Spaniards are allowed to leave home only for essential outings, walking a dog being one of them.

Stone by stone, digital artists and game developers from Mosul are rebuilding Nineveh's heritage sites in the digital world. Francis Maguire reports.

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer on Thursday said it was 'dangerous' for the Trump administration to pressure states and businesses to 'reopen without a plan for a dramatic increase in testing'.

Alphabet Inc's Google said on Friday it has asked employees to take a day off on May 22, to address work-from-home-related burnout during the coronavirus pandemic.

Pfizer Inc said on Friday it is in talks to shift more of its medicine production to outside contractors as it prepares for large-scale production of an experimental vaccine to prevent COVID-19, should it prove safe and effective.

The number of deaths from the coronavirus in Mexico's best-known border city, Tijuana, has soared and the COVID-19 mortality rate is twice the national average, the health ministry says, after medical staff quickly fell ill as the outbreak rampaged through hospital wards.

The 2020 K-League season started on Friday with a match between Jeonbuk Hyundai Motors and Suwon Samsung Bluewings played without spectators after a delay of more than two months caused by the coronavirus outbreak.

UFC has withdrawn a bout from Saturday's card in Jacksonville after middleweight Jacare Souza and two of his cornermen tested positive for the new coronavirus, the mixed martial arts promotion said.

Staging this year's Ryder Cup without fans is not in the event's best interests but it might have to "take one for the team" and proceed that way amid the COVID-19 crisis, Team Europe captain Padraig Harrington told The Times newspaper.

Harold Varner III is getting impatient to play professional golf again, and has no qualms about jumping straight back into the water when the PGA Tour resumes next month amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Former South Africa captain Faf du Plessis has committed to playing for his country in all three formats of the game in the 2020/21 season, a boost for a test side that lacks experience and depth in the batting lineup.

England all-rounder Ben Stokes says playing in closed stadiums would not dampen the competitive side of matches and that players "would do anything" to get cricket back on television screens for fans to watch during the COVID-19 crisis.

Londoners locked out of galleries can find an alternative art fix on a wall under under some railway arches after street artist Lionel Stanhope painted a Caravaggio classic, updated for the coronavirus age.

Television can fake it, movie audiences can wear masks, but a live theatre performance like "Romeo and Juliet" needs real actors kissing and fighting rivals in front of real people.

Kenya and Uganda were hit by power blackouts on Saturday, and Kenya Power said the outage on its grid was caused by a fault on a high voltage line but that it had restored supply to most parts of the country.

Pune being a crowd puller during the annual Ganpati festival, these young drummers feel that it is the time they can showcase their skills while also worshiping Lord Ganesha through their art.

It took four years for Dhalgade to get a project, yet he believes that everyone must follow their passion however tough it seems at the start.

The decision to resume classes was taken so that the students do not face further disadvantages.

The Vice-Chancellor says the Savitri Phule Pune University administration is also reviewing conditions given for the eligibility of 40 other awards.

Mumbai has recorded bulk of the cases in Maharashtra with 3,451 COVID-19 infections and 151 deaths.

Pardeshi has been transferred as additional chief secretary in the urban development department.

With 4.5 billion views, Neha Kakkar surpassed Selena Gomez, Billie Eilish, Ariana Grande and Nicki Minaj to become second most watch female artist on YouTube in 2019

The 42-year-old actor has been making the best use of the quarantine period by binge-watching movies and shows of the world.

Apart from Hrithik and Farah, Genelia D'Souza and Kunal Kapoor also shared inverted images to raise awareness about World Thalassemia Day

Meanwhile, the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare on Friday said that India's recovery rate from the COVID-19 disease is around 29.36%

"At least, it is judged that Kim did not receive surgery or a medical procedure related to his heart," a representative of the ruling party in South Korea stated.

Congratulating Jinping, Kim said he was pleased over the successes made in China in the prevention of COVID-19 infection.

The activity was done in partnership with Annamrita Foundation, a non-profit organization.

All this while, states were pushing for the opening of liquor shops as they face cash crunch due to the closure of all non-essential businesses for 40 days.

Saeed is active in daily affairs of the Markaz headquarters and used to hold meetings with the officials there.

[London] : [s.n.], 1907.

[London?] : [s.n.], [1909?]

London : Printed under the authority of His Majesty's Stationery Office by Hayman, Christy & Lilly, Ltd. E.C. To be purchased, either directly or through any bookseller, from Wyman & Sons, Ltd., 29, Breams Buildings, Fetter Lane, E.C., and 54, St. Mary Street, Cardiff; or H.M. Stationery Office (Scottish Branch), 23, Forth Street, Edinburgh; or E. Ponsonsby, Ltd., 116, Grafton Street, Dublin; or from the agencies in the British colonies and dependencies, the United States of America, and other foreign countries of T. Fisher Unwin, London, W.C., 1915.

London : Printed under the authority of His Majesty's Stationery Office by Hayman, Christy & Lilly, Ltd. E.C. To be purchased, either directly or through any bookseller, from Wyman & Sons, Ltd., 29, Breams Buildings, Fetter Lane, E.C., and 54, St. Mary Street, Cardiff; or H.M. Stationery Office (Scottish Branch), 23, Forth Street, Edinburgh; or E. Ponsonsby, Ltd., 116, Grafton Street, Dublin; or from the agencies in the British colonies and dependencies, the United States of America, and other foreign countries of T. Fisher Unwin, London, W.C., 1915.

[Bruxelles] : [s.n.], [1914]

Dublin : Printed & published by Sealy, Bryers & Walker Ltd., 1915.

Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2019.