However good the Hootsuite app may be, it’s not for everyone. Maybe you hate their points-based reporting system, dislike the discombobulated dashboard display, or perhaps you have an unreasonable fear of owls.

According to our Technology Advisors, buyers consider switching from Hootsuite to another social media management solution for a number of reasons. Some want to track and schedule all social media within their CRM and/or marketing automation platform and don’t use one of the few systems with a pre-built integration in the Hootsuite App Directory. Others may want to integrate their paid and organic campaigns in a single social media platform.

For these reasons or any other, we’ve selected this list of six business-focused Hootsuite alternatives. There are a plethora of consumer or “prosumer”-level Hootsuite alternatives for small businesses (like the ones discussed in the articles below), but enterprise-grade platforms are less common.

READ MORE:

• Hootsuite vs. Buffer: Comparing Social Media Management Software
• Sprout Social vs. Hootsuite: Comparing Two Social Media Standouts

Top Hootsuite Alternatives for Enterprises

Denim Social

Formerly Gremlin Social, Denim Social has long led the enterprise social media management tool space in security and regulatory compliance for banks and financial institutions. In 2014, Gremlin was endorsed by the New York Bankers Association as the recommended social media management platform for all its members, and the company has never looked back.

Like many social media management tools, Denim Social offers a single dashboard for access to all of your social accounts and posting or scheduling access in the same space. Denim Social allows posting to multiple groups and pages and builds employee engagement with approved posts users can share on their own networks. Your content library holds approved messages, branding, and images for easy access as your team schedules out your content. This means your team can differentiate your Facebook posts from those you send to your Twitter audience, tweaking your branding and message per platform and social media account.

Approval processes and restricted keywords help keep posters within the bounds of corporate branding and government regulations. Keyword filtering keeps teams from posting restricted messages, and social media monitoring keeps an eye on what your customers and competitors are posting. These key features allow you to stay in compliance while also engaging in the conversation.

Buffer for Business

Buffer is a popular Hootsuite alternative among businesses and individuals for its ease of use and automatic link shortening capabilities. Business pricing is a flat monthly fee rather than per-user cost, which comes as a relief to lots of marketing departments that spread the social duties around. You can also connect up to 150 social accounts across social networks like Facebook, Twitter and more, so the social media management tool works great for agencies. Request enterprise plans on a quote basis for building out user accounts or adding multiple accounts.

Buffer’s features include smart scheduling, which finds out when your audience is most active on your social channels and lets you schedule posts.

Use the browser extension to curate content directly from your social feeds into the scheduling tool to position your brand as a thought leader who not only produces content but also reads the landscape. Connect your RSS feed to have direct access to posts and updates within your Buffer app and curate where you schedule your content.

Access your posts and scheduling at every payment level including the free plan, but only the paid plans give you analytics and insights right in the Buffer dashboard.

Oktopost

Oktopost is a social media marketing and social media management tool aimed primarily at B2B marketers. If you are a B2B firm, Oktopost should be at or near the top of your list due to its comprehensive, revenue-focused analytics and robust LinkedIn integration.

The simplest comparison of Oktopost and Hootsuite? Hootsuite was initially designed to help businesses manage multiple Twitter accounts and handle the day-to-day scheduling. Other functions and social media networks were added as the need became apparent, but what Hootsuite is to Twitter, Oktopost is to LinkedIn. It’s purpose-built for B2B firms who source leads from LinkedIn, allowing you to track not only the results from social profiles, company, and showcase pages that you own, but also pages or profiles owned by your employees, thanks to the built-in employee advocacy tools.

With its focus on B2B, Oktopost can, of course, schedule updates for LinkedIn profiles and company or showcase pages, but it also manages publishing to Facebook profiles and company or group pages, Twitter handles, and Google+ business pages. Linking profiles to your Oktopost account is quick and easy — see their knowledge base entry here.

Like Hootsuite, Oktopost offers the ability to monitor brand or keyword mentions across social platforms via their “Streams” interface, but it also allows you to track replies to your social media posts or comments, sending them to the “Social Inbox,” where you can craft your response directly within Oktopost. You can also monitor mentions of terms within LinkedIn groups of which you’re a member, allowing you to easily engage when and where appropriate.

Oktopost offers unlimited reports (unlike Hootsuite’s points system) and pre-built integrations with Marketo, Pardot, Eloqua, Act-On, and many other sales/marketing platforms. Using the built-in analytics features, you can track both destination conversions (when a user reaches a particular webpage) and event conversions (when a user conducts a specified action, such as watching a video). 

Sprout Social

Sprout Social is a professional-grade social media posting, social listening, and engagement tool for companies. Enjoy the standard features of a social inbox, scheduling posts and drafting social media posts, social media presence monitoring, and paid post management with reporting that can drill down to a single post or include entire groups. 

Sprout Social has invested in agency and enterprise-grade tools like inbox workflows that help promote enterprise team collaboration to manage social mentions and messages quickly. Inbox notifications will keep social team members apprised of increased traffic, so they can respond to changing social conditions.

Users of Sprout Social will benefit from upgraded accounts that bring in automation, tagging, and custom settings that make reporting, trend analysis, and integrations with CRM or other reporting software fast and easy. 

Unlike many of the other options on this list, however, Sprout Social’s pricing plan does not offer a free plan, although you can take advantage of a free trial of the tools. And the number of included connected accounts tops out at 10 with this social media tool, but more accounts can be purchased for a monthly fee without increasing the paid plan you’re on.

Social Champ

Social Champ is an agency and enterprise social media management software that boasts connections to Pinterest, bulk social media scheduling to all multiple channels including Facebook and Google My Business, and powerful content curation features to boost your social profiles. The team management tools let you assign various roles that can be integrated into workflows to speed up your approvals processes and ensure that your accounts are securely managed.

The sentiment analysis tools included in Social Champ can help your team understand your audience, build a sustainable marketing strategy, and react quickly to the changing tide of your audience. React quickly from the Chrome extension, which lets you share photos, videos, and posts from any website directly to your accounts.

Social Champ outperforms many of the other Hootsuite competitors on this list based on the number of accounts you can connect. The Agency paid plan includes 100 accounts with 2000 scheduled posts per account, which significantly outstrips the 35+ accounts you can get from the Hootsuite enterprise account. And the relatively inexpensive Professional plan connects 15 social accounts, which may be enough for enterprise companies with a smaller social presence.

Social Pilot

Social Pilot is an agency and enterprise-grade social media management software that makes a good Hootsuite alternative due to price and the number of social accounts you can connect. In addition to Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, Social Pilot also includes connections to Google My Business and TikTok. Read and respond to direct messages and mentions from multiple channels via a centralized social inbox.

Agencies and enterprise companies looking to report on all social media posts will enjoy that the analytics tools will report on all posts, whether or not they were scheduled through Social Pilot’s tools. And the agency plans lets you white label your reporting, meaning that your agency can add your own branding to reporting and mask the tooling that helps you provide such deep insights. Unfortunately Social Pilot does not yet have analytics for TikTok, but will provide analytics for other connected accounts.

Salesforce Marketing Cloud

If you’re looking for Hootsuite alternatives because you want to build a single-platform marketing solution, the Salesforce Marketing Cloud should be one of the first options you consider. If you’re already using Salesforce CRM and/or Pardot, then it’s likely the only option you should consider.

With cross-channel functionality including mobile, email, social, retargeting, and much more, Salesforce’s Marketing Cloud is the system-of-record for some of the world’s most respected brands.

Offered in four main editions — Email/Mobile/Web Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Advertising, and B2B Marketing Automation — Marketing Cloud has a solution for almost every use case. For the purposes of this article, we’ll focus on the Social Media Marketing edition, since it compares most favorably with Hootsuite.

Salesforce Marketing Cloud allows you to schedule posts across multiple networks, including LinkedIn social media profiles and company pages, Twitter accounts, Facebook profiles, pages, and groups, Google+ pages, Pinterest boards, Instagram, and YouTube. You can easily build and apply publishing macros, helping automate repetitive tasks, delegate posts to other users, and even access an audit trail for engagement, which helps you paint a more accurate picture of how a particular post performs based on specific user interactions.

Salesforce Marketing Cloud is tightly integrated with other Salesforce products, including Service Cloud, Pardot, and Salesforce CRM, but it also offers some of the best two-way integration with social networks available, including the ability to like, favorite, quote, retweet, or share social posts on various networks from directly within the platform, follow/unfollow users, and track private messages sent via Facebook or Twitter.

Khoros

Khoros is trusted by some of the world’s largest companies to simplify and amplify their social media marketing. The company enjoys preferred/strategic partner status with all the major social networks, including Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube, Google+ — even Tumblr, Foursquare, SlideShare, and others.

Khoros is offered in three editions: Social Marketing, Experiences, and Intelligence. This segmentation has both positives and negatives. If you’re looking to use Khoros as a comprehensive digital marketing platform, you’ll need to purchase all three products. However, if you’re like most businesses and already use one or more marketing software tools, you won’t have to purchase a redundant product. This is especially true thanks to the open nature of the Khoros platform; they offer pre-built integration with a wide variety of platforms and/or services, including CRMs, link shortening, web analytics, and others. See the full list here.

You’ll find social media scheduling tools and profile monitoring features in all four versions of Khoros, which makes it somewhat confusing to choose between them. That said, the Social Marketing product seems to include the most functionality. With Social Marketing, you can schedule posts and publish them to all the major social networks (including LinkedIn company pages), respond to incoming social conversations, or monitor basic sentiment and brand mentions on major networks.

The Khoros platform is a full customer experience platform that adds SMS marketing, email, messaging, chat, and more through owned properties and social media channels. Khoros can be expensive, depending on the number of seats you purchase and which version(s) you select. But, as you can see, it’s no slouch for features.

Sprinklr

Sprinklr is trusted by more than 1,000 of the world’s largest consumer brands to manage or track all parts of the customer experience. With over 20 social channels (including the basics like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter) and more than 85 languages supported, Sprinklr is the first choice for many globally-focused businesses.

Unlike the previous products discussed, Sprinklr offers a unified customer experience marketing (CXM) platform, which includes basic functionality for content and campaign management, planning, and publishing, audience segmentation and engagement tracking, approvals and policy management, reporting, and even an easy-to-use mobile application that helps you manage your campaigns when you’re away from the office.

Customer analytics and sentiment analysis within the CXM platform helps marketing teams make data-informed decisions based on actual customer feedback, instead of gut feeling. Automated workflows and approvals, smart bidding, and AI-automated campaign optimizations will speed up the social media manager’s work and help them scale campaigns.

The customer experience platform connects directly to your CRM to make for more targeted experiences based on audience insights. And integrations with over 30 data sources will help you build targeted campaigns that make sense with your marketing. 

Choosing the best Hootsuite competitor

If you’re looking for a social media marketing solution that surpasses Hootsuite, these six options above are a good place to start. To see more options, check out our Social Media Marketing Product Selection Tool, or talk to one of our unbiased Technology Advisors for a free consultation based on your requirements.

The post Top 9 Hootsuite Alternatives for Enterprises appeared first on TechnologyAdvice.

Sharing passwords via insecure methods — written down, via email, or storing them in a spreadsheet — increases the likelihood that those passwords, and the data they protect, will be exposed to hackers. A data breach in the US in 2019 cost companies an average of $8.19 million — nearly twice as much as the global average. A password manager software can reduce the risk of exposure.

Password managers were originally created to solve the problem of creating unique, secure passwords, and then remembering them. Businesses of all sizes now adopt enterprise-wide password management tools to create and administer a corporate password policy where users securely share passwords to decrease the likelihood of a breach.

Choosing the best password manager for your business can be difficult, especially when you try to satisfy everyone in your company. This article will focus on two enterprise password management leaders: 1Password and LastPass. We’ll provide an overview of each platform and then compare 1Password vs. LastPass pricing, their differences and similarities in functionality, and each company’s approach to password security.

Also Read: Best Password Management Software & Tools (eSecurityPlanet.com)

1Password Overview

The latest version of 1Password is 1Password 7, which is available for all operating systems including Mac, Windows, Linux, and the Command Line. The accessibility of the software from all these tools makes it an ideal product for implementation across the enterprise.

Both the individual and business-oriented plans support mobile applications for Android and iOS, which means you can access passwords stored on your computer via your mobile device. When you connect your mobile device to the internet, the app syncs with the desktop version to keep all versions up to date.

Most businesses will prefer the robust functionality and granular control offered by 1Password Teams, Business, or Enterprise, although some small businesses may get away with a Family plan. All versions include desktop and mobile applications, unlimited sharing of passwords, automatic syncing, and access control. The Business version increases data storage from 1GB per user to 5GB, provides an unlimited password history (as opposed to 30 days), and offers more options for groups, activity logging, and role-based access. Business also provides priority customer support.

LastPass Overview

LastPass is a cloud-based password management tool, so you don’t have to install a desktop app to get started using LastPass. It’s available on Mac, Windows, or Linux computers, and they offer extensions for major browsers including Safari, Chrome, Internet Explorer, Microsoft Edge, and Opera. These extensions make using the service easier, but they’re not required.

LastPass comes in several versions. Free, Premium, and Families tiers are for consumer use, while MFA (multi-factor authentication), Teams, and Enterprise are recommended for business use. There is also an Identity plan that combines the MFA and Enterprise capabilities.

Yes, you can use LastPass completely free of charge. But as of March 16, 2021, you will need to choose to use your account on either mobile or desktop. You also won’t be able to share passwords with other users or have access to any of the other features that make a password manager useful. But you can generate, store, and automatically fill passwords, and that’s better than no password manager at all. For very small companies or companies that are not concerned with sharing passwords across teams, the free tier is a no-excuses way to start using password management.

Business plan pricing is based on the number of users, with the Teams plan starting at 50 recommended users. All business plans include offline mode, a security dashboard, two-factor authentication, and self-guided support.

Comparing integrations and security for 1Password vs. LastPass

You’re probably reading this article because you’ve narrowed down your search for a password manager to these two options. While both applications are a strong choice, one may be a better fit for your unique situation.

LastPass has more options for directory integrations, supporting Active Directory, Okta, OneLogin, Microsoft Azure AD, and API access. Currently, 1Password supports Azure Active Directory and Okta for automated deployments.

The more fundamental difference between the two platforms is this: LastPass’s security is authentication-based, while 1Password’s is both authentication and encryption-based.

An authentication-based system checks your credentials — in this case, your Master Password — and then provides or denies access based upon whether or not your credentials match those stored by the authenticator. These credentials may or may not be stored in plain text, and there are typically backdoors that allow access in case your password is forgotten or that allows administrators to reset passwords, so you can regain access.

In an encryption-based system, resetting a lost encryption key with a backdoor method simply isn’t possible, as the key is used to generate the “code” that encrypts your data. This means that your employees will need to download and securely store their 1Password encryption key to access the system in case of a lockout. Neither you as the admin or 1Password as the vendor will be able to access their password vault for them if they lose it. This is why, according to 1Password, they don’t (and probably can’t) offer multi-factor authentication in the same manner as an authentication-based system like LastPass.

• For a more technical look at encryption, authentication, and authorization, see this useful piece from Boston University: Understanding Authentication, Authorization, and Encryption.
• For a useful explanation on this subject from 1Password, click here.
• In the interest of fairness, LastPass offers their take here.

If security is your only concern, 1Password’s locally installed option is certainly the way to go, but usability is just as important. For that, the cloud-based options from either LastPass or 1Password might be more appropriate, since they offer business-friendly features that help less-savvy users recover and change passwords.

Choosing the right password manager tool

In conclusion, both tools should greatly increase the security of your business data while also making it easier to create and store secure passwords. But each service is only as good as the passwords it stores. If you use weak passwords (like “password” or “1234”), write passwords down on post-its stored on the underside of your keyboard, or store plain text passwords in a spreadsheet as well as your password manager, hackers and bad actors can still access them. The software also can’t help if you commit the other cardinal sin of password management — using the same password for multiple sites.

Ultimately, the decision between LastPass vs. 1Password will come down to your unique situation — your users, your OS environment, your regulatory requirements, or your IT admin’s preference.

The post 1Password vs LastPass: Password Management Review appeared first on TechnologyAdvice.

About two-thirds of job seekers look to job boards to find roles that match their qualifications, while less than half (46 percent) use social media. Many companies don’t even post their executive-level jobs on these job sites, so your company could receive the lion’s share of qualified applicants if you do.

These numbers demonstrate that recruiters need to be strategic about listing jobs online. Gone are the days of set-and-forget posts on generic job boards. Today, recruiters must think like marketers. Who is the audience? Where do they go? How can I reach them through all the noise?

Read More:  Best HR Software for Small Business

To that end, we’ve compiled a list of the eight best job listing sites. When compared to other behemoths on the list, some of the niche hiring sites might seem inconsequential, but they can be great places to look if you need specialized talent. If you think you’re going to use a generic job board to find a qualified developer that can write in every language you need, I’ve got a bridge in Brooklyn that I’ll sell you.

We examined the websites below regarding their Alexa ranking (which indicates global traffic — lower is better), pricing structure, and the level of specialization required for most of the postings on their site.

For help finding the most qualified candidates for your job openings, recruiting software is the way to go. Our Recruiting Product Selection Tool provides you with a list of vendors that match your needs, so you can speed up the hiring process.

Table of contents

1. LinkedIn
2. ZipRecruiter
3. Indeed
4. Upwork
5. CareerBuilder
6. We Work Remotely
7. Dice
8. TotalJobs

LinkedIn

Fast becoming the online replacement for your resume, LinkedIn unquestionably belongs at the top of our list. While it’s not a job board at all, it is becoming the go-to place for recruiters to publicly post jobs. Applicants love it because they can auto-fill electronic applications using their LinkedIn profile. Recruiters love it because it’s easy to gather information on candidates, and job postings can be shared by employees, friends, etc.

The cost to post jobs on LinkedIn is basically up to you. You set an average daily budget, and you’re then charged based on that budget and the number of candidates that view your job. One thing to note: LinkedIn will charge you up to two times your daily budget in a single day, but it won’t charge more than your total monthly budget for a 30-day period.

There is a huge range of jobs on the site from hourly jobs with little to no specialization needed to executive-level jobs requiring years of experience. Notably, all the top referring keywords are variations on the site’s name, which indicates strong brand recognition among searchers.

Alexa Rank (Global): 17

ZipRecruiter

ZipRecruiter acts as a job board itself, but it also sends your job posting out to other job listing sites to help you reach candidates wherever they’re searching. By sending out the job posting to other sites, you’re more likely to reach niche sites that your ideal candidates are crawling but you may not know about. This site takes a more active role in recruiting, finding candidates that match your qualifications, and inviting them to apply. There are even screening questions to help you ensure the candidates are qualified.

ZipRecruiter charges a flat monthly fee and has several plans you can choose from. You can take advantage of a free trial to see how their service works for your business. There are a lot of hourly and mid-level jobs available on the site, but executive and C-level positions are rarer. If you need to post for one of these higher level positions, you’re more likely to stand out on ZipRecruiter.

Alexa Rank (Global): 1348

Also Read: 4 Ways to Recruit Passive Candidates

Indeed

Although most people think of it as one, Indeed isn’t technically a job board. Indeed is a search engine that aggregates job listings from all over the web — a one-stop-shop for job seekers and employers alike. Indeed appears as a referring domain elsewhere on this list five times, more than any site that isn’t Google or Facebook. Indeed’s referring keywords indicate strong brand recognition and functional relevance for recruiters. The site ranks high for users searching “jobs” and has a steady volume of inbound traffic. You can’t afford to ignore Indeed.

Indeed allows you to post jobs for free, but you’ll have better luck if you “sponsor” the job posting. This sponsorship works similarly to LinkedIn’s pricing structure in that you set a daily budget and only pay when someone clicks on your job post. Because Indeed is so well known, the number of posted jobs in most categories is quite large. You’ll need to carefully target specific searchers and make your postings stand out if you want to get noticed.

Alexa Rank (Global): 164

Upwork

Upwork is an online community of freelancers. Although mostly used for contract work, it’s not unheard of for a freelancer to get hired full-time after their contract period. Regardless, freelance work is becoming more popular among job seekers and employers alike, so if you’re posting a temporary or contract job, don’t neglect Upwork.

Upwork basically works like a staffing agency in that they’ll match you with a freelancer that meets your needs. You can sign up for free, but there’s also a premium monthly plan with a few extra perks. Additionally, you’ll pay an extra 3% processing fee on top of whatever you and the freelancer have agreed upon. You can hire virtual assistants, web and mobile developers, writers, designers, marketers, and administrative roles.

Alexa Rank (Global): 619

Also Read: 6 Recruiting Platforms That Help You Source Better Talent

CareerBuilder

Another one of the original job boards (according to Wikipedia, the original), CareerBuilder has the name recognition and financial backing to maintain relevance even in the referral-driven recruiting world. Additionally, it’s crawled by Indeed, so assuming you’ve posted here, it will show up in the results for anyone using the job search engine.

CareerBuilder offers each a single-time fee if you only want to post one job or a monthly fee with several plans available. The one-time fee is quite a bit higher than the monthly fee, so if you’re planning to post more than one job, we’d recommend a monthly plan. As a general job board, CareerBuilder hosts jobs for most industries and any level of specialization.

Alexa Rank (Global): 1903

We Work Remotely

We Work Remotely is a job posting site focused only on jobs that can be done from anywhere. All listings are posted directly on their site, and they don’t scrape from any other platforms. They boast the largest community of remote workers and claim that they’re able to fill 90% of posted positions.

We Work Remotely offers prices for single job postings, or you can bundle several postings together for significant savings. Jobs skew towards the technology industry, but you can also post for marketing positions, design, copywriting, sales, and other categories. They even offer a remote hiring guide to help you ensure you get the best people.

Alexa Rank (Global): 14402

Dice

Dice is a niche hiring site, but for an ever-broadening niche: technology jobs. Employers list openings on Dice for business analysts, digital marketers, data scientists, and more. If you’re a technology company or looking to fill a tech-related position, Dice is likely a good fit for you.

Read More: Are Chatbots the Future of the Candidate Experience?

Like We Work Remotely, Dice does pricing per job post. You can either post one for a flat fee, or bundle several to save on the per-post cost. Unfortunately, there are no free trials, so you can’t try the service before paying. Only technology jobs are posted, but they include part-time, full-time, and even contract positions, so you can choose the right fit for your company. You can even offer remote work if your company is equipped for that.

Alexa Rank (Global): 4739

TotalJobs

TotalJobs is a leading option for companies in the United Kingdom. In addition to job postings, TotalJobs publishes a fair amount of recruiting and career development content. Referring keywords indicate a mostly job-seeker audience, though a large portion find TotalJobs via Indeed.

Read More: Avoid These 6 Recruiting Email Mistakes

TotalJobs allows you to either post a job for six weeks and gather applicants that way, or you can pay for 30-day access to their database of candidates. If you’ve never worked with them before, there are new customer offers you can take advantage of to lower these costs. Applicants can browse jobs by skill level, time commitment, industry, and location. There’s also a search feature to narrow down job listings.

Alexa Rank (Global): 5147

* * *

This list is by no means exhaustive. In fact, it was cut down from a larger collection of 50 sites we assembled. While you could try to post on every job board available, the better approach is to focus on a few of the most relevant and market them towards your ideal candidate.

To make your candidate search even easier, applicant tracking software integrates with your job board postings and filters through the candidates to find the ones that best match your requirements. Use our Applicant Tracking Software Product Selection Tool to get a short, customized list of software tailored to your business.

Top Human Resources Software Recommendations

The post 8 Best Job Listing Sites for Employers appeared first on TechnologyAdvice.

Interoperability woes can make it difficult to share and view medical images from disparate systems, especially if providers are using outdated EMR software or don’t have a Picture Archiving and Communication System (PACS). As medicine moves towards a film-less future, providers must have the software tools necessary to share, view, or edit medical images. To accomplish this, many providers are choosing standalone DICOM viewers.

DICOM stands for Digital Imaging and COmmunications in Medicine. It is an international standard file format and network communications protocol developed by the American College of Radiology (ACR) specifically for medical imaging. Most EHR systems support the DICOM standard for viewing and transmitting images. If you can already view DICOM images within your EHR, you likely won’t require a standalone viewer. However, if your system doesn’t support DICOM, you’re having difficulty communicating with a PACS or RIS system, or if you don’t have PACS/RIS access — or even EHR at all — a free DICOM viewer will help you get started viewing images.

The following systems can help you securely view, edit, and share DICOM images. Some offer paid versions intended for commercial applications, which usually include increased functionality — or at least won’t remind you constantly that you’re using a trial version. The software below is listed in no particular order, and represents some of the better systems on the market.

3DimViewer

A smooth, minimalist graphical user interface makes 3DimViewer easy to use and learn. It’s capable of displaying 3D imaging profiles, including multi-planar and orthogonal displays, but it’s specialty is both volume and surface renderings with thresholding-based tissue segmentation. GPU acceleration is necessary for volume rendering, so don’t try to use this on older computers, or even many newer models with integrated graphics chipsets.

Native installers are available for Macintosh, Windows, and Linux-based platforms, making it one of the more flexible systems available. It is also open-source, meaning your developers (if you have them) can use the publicly available C++ code to integrate with it with other programs, or otherwise customize your system. It is a view-only solution — there’s no native editing beyond simple brightness, contrast, etc. Installers for Macintosh and Windows 32 and 64-bit systems are available here — Linux users will have to go to SourceForge.

DICOM Web Viewer (DWV)

DWV is a completely browser-based DICOM viewer written in Javascript and HTML5, which means you can use it on almost any device with almost all modern browsers, including laptops, tablets, phones, and even some smart televisions. With some coding, it can be incorporated into any PACS server that supports the Web Access to DICOM persistent Objects (WADO) protocol, or images can be browsed or accessed via a local URL.

Once again, this is a view-only system, so there’s no editing. The link above will take you to the full wiki, and demos can be found here. While the GitHub version requires some programming knowledge to implement, you can also get DWV as a Chrome extension, a Google Drive app, or a WordPress plugin. Visit the GitHub link for more information.

Mango

One of the most advanced systems on our list, Mango — or Multi-image Analysis GUI — is available in three versions, for Windows, Macintosh, or Linux <desktops (Mango), browser (Papaya), or iPad (iMango). The browser version does require some coding, so you’ll need some knowledge of HTML and JavaScript to use it. Developed by Jack Lancaster, Ph.D. and Michael Martinez at the University of Texas Health Science Center’s Research Imaging Institute, Mango supports DICOM, NEMA-DES, MINC, and NIFTI image formats, VTK, GIFTI, and BrainVisa surface rendering formats. It even can create custom imaging formats and filters.

Mango offers a host of analysis, processing, and editing features, and can convert, anonymize, and register images. It offers more functionality than many commercial systems, thanks to initial and ongoing support via grants from the National Institute of Mental Health and the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering.

Escape EMV

EMV is a lightweight DICOM viewer that can open most DICOM images and DICOMDIR files from CD/DVD, flash drives, etc. The software comes in two different versions, a recently updated version for Mac, and an unsupported version for Windows. EMV can access WADO PACS systems to retrieve studies. It can handle user objects, like annotations and measurements, and is available in English, French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese versions.

The tool offers anonymizing capabilities, can export images, and the viewer offers various displays, overlays, filters, marking, and colorizations. It requires QuickTime to work, which is why the Windows version is unsupported. While you can download and demo the software for free, using it in a commercial environment requires a €245 license for up to three computers.

IrfanView

Yes, that IrfanView, the simple free image viewer you may have downloaded in the early 90s to view .gifs, .tiffs, and other image files now supports DICOM viewing. It is provided as freeware for non-commercial use, so if you want to use it in your medical practice you’ll need to register it and pay a one time, $12 licensing fee, but if all you want is a lightweight program to view simple DICOM images on your Windows desktop, IrfanView is hard to beat.

***

This is not intended to be a comprehensive list — there are hundreds, if not thousands of software solutions for viewing, editing, and otherwise manipulating DICOM and other medical imaging formats. An ideal DICOM viewing platform would involve access to an in-house or networked PACS server at the radiology center of your choosing, but we recognize that many physicians are not operating under ideal circumstances.

Having trouble deciding which EHR system is the right solution for your business? Check out our EHR EMR Software Product Selection Tool to find the best fit or contact us to speak with one of our Tech Advisors. They will be happy to help. Best of all? It’s free.

Top Electronic Health Record Software Recommendations

The post 5 Free DICOM Viewers for Any Practice appeared first on TechnologyAdvice.

The Traditional B2B Funnel

B2B marketing and sales have undergone so many “revolutions” in the past few decades that it’s hard to keep track. Until recently, few have questioned the traditional funnel.

Whether inbound or outbound, multi-level, or direct marketing, prospects go in the top, and customers come out the bottom. Every company has different criteria and terminology for each stage in the funnel, but the principles are mostly the same. Before we discuss why the traditional funnel no longer works, let’s define those stages.

Awareness

Beginning at the widest point is awareness, which, depending on your product or services, means one of two things:

1. The prospect is aware they have a problem
2. The prospect is aware of your company or product

If you’re marketing well, they should be aware in both ways — aware of how your product can solve their problem. In the first two instances, the prospect is an inquiry or a lead, respectively. In the third, the prospect is an opportunity.

Measuring awareness can involve a number of factors, but most often includes web traffic, survey responses, social media likes/shares, and similar engagement metrics.

Consideration

Once your prospect is aware of their problem, your product, and how your product can solve their problem, they enter the consideration phase. At this point, most prospects begin gathering more specific information: What features does your product offer? How much does it cost?

In the traditional B2B sales funnel, the consideration phase usually takes the longest, but motivated buyers that connect with your sales team (perhaps at a conference) can shorten this stage considerably. Moving from awareness to consideration, the lead becomes “qualified.” They have a problem, know about your company or product, and have expressed interest in learning more.

ALSO READ:  Lead vs. Prospect vs. Opportunity: Definitions that Define the Sales-Marketing Relationship

Measuring consideration is easier than measuring awareness, but does require you to judge intent based on the prospect’s actions. For example, a prospect who reads a case study and contacts your team for pricing information is demonstrating purchase intent. They’re likely in the consideration phase and should be considered a qualified lead or even a sales opportunity.

Transaction

Once a prospect has converted into a qualified lead or opportunity, the next sales stage is the transaction — assuming your content (or your sales team) has successfully educated the lead.

Measuring transactions is easy. How many leads bought your product or service?

But measuring progress from consideration to transaction requires a deep understanding of intent. There’s a whole body of stated and implied data that can indicate purchase intent. For example: asking for post-sale details like implementation instructions or customer support may signal that a lead intends to buy.

What’s Wrong With the Traditional Funnel?

The traditional B2B funnel is like a romantic movie: all the focus is on courtship, and the movie ends with a wedding. There’s nothing about the marriage, subsequent challenges, children, or plans for retirement in Florida. The wedding is the beginning of the story, not the end. The same is true with the sale. It’s the beginning of the relationship, not the end. We’ve all heard complaints about salespeople who were amazing during the buying process only to disappear after payment.

Thankfully, companies understand this problem and have started realigning to maintain the relationship post-sale. Customer loyalty and advocacy programs were the first step in addressing the post-sale relationship, but ultimately these only go halfway. Account-based marketing is the true endgame.

ALSO READ: Why Your Business Can’t Ignore Advocate Marketing

Traditional customer loyalty and advocacy programs still only focus on you and what the customer can do to help your business succeed. Sure, you need to be authentic and helpful to customers, but customer loyalty and advocacy only encourage your best customers to evangelize, thereby increasing referrals and sales.

How is ABM Different?

Modern B2B purchase decisions aren’t made by a single person. According to CEB, the average B2B purchase now requires 6.8 stakeholders (up from 5.4 just a few years ago). Until ABM, you couldn’t connect with more than one of them until it was time for a hard sales pitch. Now, thanks to advances in marketing technology, you can identify and target all of those decision-makers far in advance.

ALSO READ: How To Write Truly Personalized Emails And 3 Other Nurture Marketing Ideas

The Terminus Flipped Funnel

According to marketing software vendor Terminus, ABM “flips” the traditional funnel upside-down to focus on what happens after the sale. Instead of the usual awareness, consideration, and transaction stages, the ABM funnel proceeds as such: Identify, Expand, Engage, and Advocate.

But matching up traditional funnel stages with an ABM model quickly reveals an issue. Where’s the transaction? During Advocacy? Post-advocacy?

In theory, the transaction is still at the bottom, but it’s no longer the focus. Instead, the target account (and its 6.8 decision-makers) are the focus, and everything filters down from there.

Here’s how it’s supposed to work:

1. Your sales and marketing teams work together to identify the best accounts to target.
2. Using your company’s social networks and marketing channels, you identify a key decision-maker.
3. Now, you expand your targeting and work through that person to identify and engage the other decision-makers at your target account.
4. Internal advocates beget more internal advocates, and, theoretically, advocates at other companies.
5. Everyone buys your product or service, and choirs of angels sing from the heavens.

No disrespect intended to the ABM experts out there, but the idea that someone will advocate for your product before they’ve become your customer is naive at best. I certainly wouldn’t recommend a product with which I’ve had no hands-on experience beyond a sales presentation.

If we’re being realistic, the sale takes place between the engage and advocate stages, not at the bottom of the flipped ABM funnel. Assuming you continue to engage properly post-sale — through onboarding, implementation, customer success — advocacy will follow.

Perhaps a better model for the modern B2B funnel is an hourglass, which leaves room for both the traditional B2B lead funnel and the ABM flipped funnel. This puts the focus back on advocacy and customer service, but also allows for the all-important transaction to remain a key success metric. 

The hourglass funnel via Kuno Creative.

What does all of this mean?

To be clear, account-based marketing can and does work very well. Even before the advent of modern marketing technology, salespeople have given dedicated attention to target accounts — identifying the best prospects, expanding the relationship, engaging with colleagues, and asking for referrals (advocacy).

Now it’s time for marketing to pitch in. A headlong push for advocacy will never create meaningful, measurable growth. Instead, B2B marketers should take the best elements from both approaches — ABM and traditional lead gen. Build a strategy that can address the whole buyer’s journey and target key accounts, but doesn’t neglect lead management and the critical transaction stage.

If you’re excited about ABM but can’t get those key stakeholders at your target accounts, TechnologyAdvice can help. Learn how you can access our database of 46 million decision makers with account-based leads.

The post The Traditional B2B Funnel appeared first on TechnologyAdvice.

Of course, shrewd salespeople are using this opportunity, employing innovative sales prospecting tools to automate lead discovery and intelligently engage them when the time is right. 

“But,” you may be thinking, “I already have a website, a form capture solution, and I’m active on social networking sites. What more do you want?”

If you know much about inbound marketing, you know that lead quality can sometimes be a problem, especially as traffic begins to scale up. To someone with a simple “Contact Sales” form, a lead is likely a name and email address that may or may not be valid. To combat that issue, businesses sometimes pay for prospect or lead lists, but there’s little assurance these “leads” are aware you’ll be reaching out, or even have a business need that you can solve.

Neither of these approaches is correct, unless you want your sales development representatives and closers wasting valuable productivity on opportunities that will never convert.

Lead discovery and qualification is a crucial process for successful marketing and sales, but it can take hours of work — especially when data profiles have to be compiled manually, copying and pasting to your spreadsheet or CRM. Thankfully, the following four tools can help you more efficiently discover high-quality sales leads and begin gathering information that drives the lead qualification process. Many of these tools also offer powerful sales force automation features that can help your team do more with less.

SalesLoft

Founded in Atlanta, Georgia in 2011, SalesLoft’s sales development platform is trusted by tens of thousands of sales and marketing professionals to help them automate key processes, discover and qualify new leads, and track sales activities in a single, integrated platform.

Sales development teams use the SalesLoft platform to craft cadences across contact channels — email, phone, and social — and “semi-automate” outreach, using a built-in auto-dialer that pursues leads based on engagement with your marketing content. Innovative features such as call recording, pre-recorded voicemail drop, and LocalDial (lets you make calls from the same area code as your prospect) make SalesLoft an even more powerful tool for your reps.

Users of SalesLoft cite increased visibility of engagement with emails and calls and a better ability to identify and duplicate successful campaigns as two of the primary benefits. If you use SalesLoft’s native integration with Salesforce, it can take some work to ensure your fields all map correctly at the beginning, but set-up is still relatively quick, compared to other solutions.

SalesLoft is delivered in three pricing tiers — Group, Professional, and Enterprise — each with increasing functionality. Group, the least expensive, offers cadence scheduling, their email engine, the SalesLoft dialer, and Salesforce integration (many similar products lock down Salesforce integration for all but the highest-priced version). Professional adds the voicemail drop, integration with several more services/data partners, and custom fields, plus the ability to map said fields to Salesforce. Finally, the Enterprise tier unlocks some of their most powerful features, including InMail integration, the LocalDial feature, and more.

Get Pricing

Get pricing for 4 Sales Prospecting Tools That Accelerate Lead Discovery & Qualification

×

How can we contact you with pricing info?

Make sure this product is right for your budget. Our experts will be in touch with all the pricing info you need.

By clicking the button above, I confirm that I have read and agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.

LiveHive

Founded in San Jose, California in 2011, LiveHive’s sales engagement platform helps sales development teams build targeted contact lists, follow-up with personalized email and call templates, and track prospect engagement with website and email content.

LiveHive helps sales and marketing professionals with some of the best content analytics available; see how far a prospect read through your content, what they spent the most time viewing, even where it may have been forwarded. That insight can mean identifying decision-makers and buying groups faster. Intelligent analytics help you identify top prospects and help your team maintain focus on the most qualified leads. Easy activity tracking (plus integration with your CRM and marketing platform) lets sales managers measure follow-up effectiveness and identify top performers. With the same functionality, Marketing can identify the best performing email templates and sales enablement content.

LiveHive users cite the content insights, plus the seamless integration with marketing automation, CRM, and email as two of the platform’s primary benefits. Some users find it difficult to learn initially, which may be due to the width and depth of LiveHive’s capabilities, rather than any fault in its design.

LiveHive’s subscription-based annual pricing is highly variable, depending on the requirements of your team, but it’s in line with other solutions on our list.

Get Pricing

Get pricing for 4 Sales Prospecting Tools That Accelerate Lead Discovery & Qualification

×

How can we contact you with pricing info?

Make sure this product is right for your budget. Our experts will be in touch with all the pricing info you need.

By clicking the button above, I confirm that I have read and agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.

KiteDesk

Founded in 2011 in Tampa, Florida, KiteDesk’s automated prospecting software for B2B sales, KiteDesk FIND, helps lead generation teams keep the top of the funnel filled, manage outreach, and identify their ideal customers.

KiteDesk FIND helps sales development representatives build highly targeted lead lists using a Chrome extension that grabs contact information from LinkedIn, company websites, and wherever else you find leads. Thanks to KiteDesk’s data enrichment capabilities, you’ll be assured that phone numbers, social profiles, and email addresses are accurate and current. Sales development reps won’t waste time trying to connect with someone who has moved on to a new company.

Users cite KiteDesk FIND’s “upload and enrich” feature as one of the best tools for account-based marketing and sales. The feature helps you build a prospect list and then discover other contacts within the same organizations. Furthermore, the activity tracking and robust integration with your CRM/marketing platforms means you don’t have to buy additional, costly CRM seats for your sales development team; they can work exclusively in KiteDesk, but still easily collaborate with marketing and sales.

KiteDesk FIND’s pricing is straightforward — $75 per seat gets you access to all of their tools. There are no pricing tiers, though you will have to pay extra for data packages and any custom development or implementation services you require.  

Get Pricing

Get pricing for 4 Sales Prospecting Tools That Accelerate Lead Discovery & Qualification

×

How can we contact you with pricing info?

Make sure this product is right for your budget. Our experts will be in touch with all the pricing info you need.

By clicking the button above, I confirm that I have read and agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.

Prospect.io

The newest entrant on our list, Prospect.io, was founded in 2016 in Brussels, Belgium. Countless sales reps are already using their prospecting tool to collect prospect information, manage outreach and follow-up, and track interactions with emails and web content.

As with the other solutions on our list, Prospect.io offers a browser extension that lets you “clip” contact information and build custom lead lists from any source, including LinkedIn. You can send individual emails using the system, or build complex drip campaigns that engage prospects in various buying stages. There’s also robust tracking of email opens, link clicks, replies, and even a tracking pixel for conversions made on your site.

Where Prospect.io sets itself apart is pricing: instead of tiered pricing with increasing functionality, they offer “credits,” which are spent to send a cold email, or when a Prospect.io-powered search on LinkedIn or another website returns at least one email address. Plans start at $39/monthly for 500 credits, and no matter how many credits you buy, you can manage an unlimited number of records, collaborate with unlimited users, upload unlimited templates, create unlimited drip campaigns, and have access to all integrations. This unique pricing structure means you only pay for what you use, and you’re given the opportunity to move up to the next credit tier when you’ve used 80 percent of your credits for the month. 

Get Pricing

Get pricing for 4 Sales Prospecting Tools That Accelerate Lead Discovery & Qualification

×

How can we contact you with pricing info?

Make sure this product is right for your budget. Our experts will be in touch with all the pricing info you need.

By clicking the button above, I confirm that I have read and agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.

* * *

No matter which of the above sales prospecting tools you choose, you’ll enjoy increased alignment between sales and marketing, detailed engagement tracking, and more accurate prospect data — three factors crucial to sales development success.

READ MORE: How Modern Technology is Bridging the Sales/Marketing Gap

If you have suggestions for comparable solutions that you feel should have made our list, please let us know in the comments. Shopping for sales prospecting tools? Call, click, or email for a no-cost, no-obligation consultation. You can also visit our Product Selection Tool to compare solutions that match your requirements. 

The post 4 Sales Prospecting Tools That Accelerate Lead Discovery & Qualification appeared first on TechnologyAdvice.

According to Zoho, 20 million users worldwide trust their platform to handle contact records, deals, transactions, and other essential business information or processes. With reliable, cloud-based delivery and free versions of many of its products, Zoho is a solid choice for many businesses — especially those looking to limit spend.

That doesn’t mean it’s right for everyone.

According to our Technology Advisors, users often switch from Zoho — particularly Zoho CRM — as their business grows. Their needs are no longer met by the free versions of the platform’s various tools, and they begin looking for Zoho alternatives.

ALSO READ: What Buyers Want from CRM Software (Infographic)

Maybe you need marketing automation and realized Zoho’s options are pretty limited in that arena. Perhaps you need a CRM that integrates with LinkedIn. Zoho doesn’t. Maybe you want a self-hosted, or open-source platform. Zoho is neither.  

Or maybe you’re just outgrowing Zoho’s capabilities and, upon exploring the paid options, realize you might save money by switching platforms (each additional Zoho app usually requires another per user/month fee). 

Choosing the best Zoho alternative can be tricky, due to the breadth of the platform’s functionality. With 33+ tools for nearly every area of your business, there are few platforms that can easily compare. The following list of four Zoho alternatives cannot possibly satisfy every use case, every time, but it should be more than enough to get you started. 

Every business software search must begin with the why  —  especially in a case where the replacement may be involve several tools from several vendors. If you’re dissatisfied with Zoho CRM, naturally you’d look to a CRM-focused platform as a substitute. If you’re concerned with order processing or logistics, a supply chain management tool or ERP system might be an appropriate Zoho replacement.

For the purpose of this article, we’ll consider Zoho alternatives based upon the platform’s primary offerings: CRM, email, and accounting. With the ubiquity, availability, and wide variety of integrations available for Google Apps and Microsoft Office 365, we won’t consider the office suite an essential factor for most users.

Salesforce

For the budget-conscious, Salesforce might not be the first choice. The limited, introductory version of the popular CRM begins at $25 per user/month — and it’s only CRM. You’ll still need to sign up for a separate email service and accounting solution. However, for the buyer who’s serious about finding the best tools for the job, Salesforce warrants strong consideration.

FinancialForce offers an excellent accounting tool that’s built on the Salesforce.com platform, making integration a breeze, but you’ll have to pay separately for the additional subscription. Quickbooks, Xero, and Intacct all have integrations available as well, so you’ll have a variety of reliable choices at various price points.  

Another point in Salesforce’s favor is the huge number of add-ons available in the Salesforce AppExchange. Sure, Zoho has 33+ pre-integrated tools you can add to your system, but the AppExchange offers thousands — most even affordably priced.  

If CRM is your primary reason for replacing Zoho, Salesforce is the market-leading option, but there are hundreds of excellent tools that may also work. Be sure to visit our CRM Product Selection Tool to get a full picture of the product landscape and begin filtering your options.

Get Pricing

Get pricing for 5 Zoho Alternatives That Might Make You Upgrade

×

How can we contact you with pricing info?

Make sure this product is right for your budget. Our experts will be in touch with all the pricing info you need.

By clicking the button above, I confirm that I have read and agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.

Insightly

Another popular CRM alternative to Zoho, Insightly was founded in 2012, and has grown to serve hundreds of thousands of users across the globe. It’s often compared with Zoho, in no small part because they both offer a free, limited version of their application to small businesses.

Insightly is tightly integrated with Google Apps/Office 365 and offers two versions tailored for either sales or for projects.

Insightly offers deeper functionality than Zoho in many respects, particularly for sales and marketing processes. It includes many important features for free, such as mass email, custom fields, and advanced reporting, for which most vendors require an upgrade or additional fee. At present, Insightly only integrates with two accounting platforms — Xero and Quickbooks — but that’s hardly a deal-breaker.

Get Pricing

Get pricing for 5 Zoho Alternatives That Might Make You Upgrade

×

How can we contact you with pricing info?

Make sure this product is right for your budget. Our experts will be in touch with all the pricing info you need.

By clicking the button above, I confirm that I have read and agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.

READ MORE: Insightly vs Zoho

monday.com

monday.com, founded in 2012, is a cloud-based Work OS that serves 10,000 organizations such as Hulu, Coca-Cola, and Adobe. It’s a one-stop-shop for workspace management that can quickly adapt to shifting priorities, which is ideal for fast-paced industries. Users can plan, track, and deliver projects on one platform. At only $10 per user per month for the base package, it’s an affordable software to introduce to your team.

Some of the features that make monday.com a top competitor include customizable workflow templates, deadline management through time tracking, elimination of manual work, analytics dashboards, and tool integrations to include your teams’ most-used apps and tools in one space. monday.com is also compatible with mobile devices, which reduces barriers for working on the go.

monday.com offers easy customizability while Zoho presents some barriers to customize its dashboard to user satisfaction. monday.com may be a better platform for your team depending on your organization’s needs.

Get Pricing

Get pricing for 5 Zoho Alternatives That Might Make You Upgrade

×

How can we contact you with pricing info?

Make sure this product is right for your budget. Our experts will be in touch with all the pricing info you need.

By clicking the button above, I confirm that I have read and agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM

Like Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics is one of the most popular CRMs on the market. The stability and reliability of the Microsoft name, the suite of pre-integrated tools including accounting, ERP, email, and productivity, and the wide array of products that bolt on to the platform make it a solid choice for any business. Recent and continued acquisitions by Microsoft have grown the platform and should continue to do so — Microsoft for Field Service, anyone?

Also like Salesforce, Dynamics CRM is relatively expensive. Forgoing the limited introductory-level account, MS Dynamics starts at $50 per user/month. 

For those interested in an all-Dynamics environment, consider Dynamics AX or GP for your accounting, as they integrate “out-of-the-box.” Those may be a bit heavy-duty for smaller businesses, but lower-cost options such as QuickBooks and Xero require a third-party connector in order to integrate properly.

Email is, of course, available through Microsoft, or Dynamics CRM can integrate with nearly any mail client.

Get Pricing

Get pricing for 5 Zoho Alternatives That Might Make You Upgrade

×

How can we contact you with pricing info?

Make sure this product is right for your budget. Our experts will be in touch with all the pricing info you need.

By clicking the button above, I confirm that I have read and agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.

READ MORE: Microsoft Dynamics CRM vs Salesforce

* * *

Choosing the right Zoho alternative isn’t easy. Whether you’re looking for a CRM, accounting, or project-focused solution, there are a multitude of factors to consider, and the risk of making the wrong choice is high. But you’ve come to the right place for help. Use our Product Selection Tool to compare products and get a custom recommendation, or call us for a free consultation.  

The post 5 Zoho Alternatives That Might Make You Upgrade appeared first on TechnologyAdvice.

Since the birth of the mainframe-driven Critical Path Method in the 1950s to the rise of modern, cloud-delivered team collaboration tools, businesses have used project management software to plan and organize their work, allocate resources, and keep track of deadlines and progress. Both Trello and Asana offer teams (and their managers) increased task visibility, easier delegation and follow-up, and many other features essential for modern business. 

Choosing the right project management tool is often a matter of taste or preference; heavy competition between vendors has helped create an army of ever-so-slightly differentiated copycats that handle general collaboration and task management, plus some options tailored to specific industries or use cases (e.g. construction project management software).

While there are many similarities between Trello vs. Asana, there are some differences that anyone choosing between them should consider. In this article, we’ll look at each system separately, outlining basic functionality and features, then compare the two systems, considering why you might choose one over the other.

Asana

Founded in 2009 by two former Facebook employees who based it on an internal tracking tool they developed, Asana’s mission is to “help humanity thrive by enabling all teams to work together effortlessly.” I’m not sure if they’re “making humanity thrive” per se, but using Asana is a relatively effortless experience for teams, especially once you get used to working within the system. There’s also a helpful tutorial, an easy-to-search “Help” section, and a series of wonderful on-boarding emails that will have you and your team acclimated in no time.

When you first log in to Asana, you’re greeted by your upcoming tasks list, as seen below (this can be customized in your preferences). Depending on your role, you may find the customizable, project-tracking “Dashboard” area or activity-logging
“Inbox” to be a more appropriate place to start, but most users should probably just stick with ‘Tasks.” 

As you can see in the image above, Asana sorts tasks into tabs for “Today,” “Upcoming,” and “Later,” which helps you maintain focus on your current work, while also planning for the future. For each task, you’ll see essential information such as the due date and project name, and you can easily click on a task to drill-down into specifics, including the description and history, who else the task is assigned to, notes, attachments, a comment area, and the ability to create and assign sub-tasks.

This task list and the individual task entries are the focal point of Asana, but they also offer a calendar view and a file sharing area where you can access attachments your team has uploaded to Asana.

The other main area you’ll be using every day is the navigation menu, accessed via the hamburger icon in the top left of your user interface. Once pressed, the pane below will manifest on the left side of your window.

You can quickly navigate between projects to view all tasks, files, and communication surrounding each. You can also access your team calendar, your team-wide conversations, invite new collaborators, and switch between teams.

Asana’s pricing is straightforward, with free (albeit limited) accounts for teams with up to 15 members, then $8.33/user/month (billed annually) for larger organizations.

Trello

Trello was created by Fog Creek Software in 2011 (makers of popular development tools such as the FogBugz bug tracking platform) and split off as an independent company in 2014.

Where Asana focuses heavily on training in the onboarding and signup experience, once you finish registration for your free Trello account, you’re immediately taken to your boards page, where you find a “Welcome Board” and the ability to create a new board, search boards (and search help!), or create a new team.

Once you’ve worked your way through the welcome board to learn how Trello functions, you can get started by creating a new board. You can skip the welcome and just start creating boards if you prefer, since the UI/UX is fairly intuitive. I’ve created an example board (pictured below) to demonstrate some of Trello’s features.

Speaking of boards, Trello is based on a production system called ‘Kanban’, developed by Toyota for boosting efficiency at their auto manufacturing facilities. Learn more about Kanban: What is Kanban and How Did It Change Management?

You’ll probably want to create a new “Board” for each project you manage, and then a “List” to manage related tasks. Within each list, the individual cards functions like Asana’s sub-tasks — you can assign cards to collaborators, create due dates, upload attachments, etc. That said, Trello is extremely free-form. You can use the Board-List-Card hierarchy to organize just about anything, from brainstorm sessions to sales quotes.

One of the more powerful ways to organize Trello is for managing processes. For example, TechnologyAdvice uses a Kanban board to organize our content production efforts. Each “list” or lane represents a single step in our process, including ideation, editing, social promotion, etc. Each step is managed by different team members, but we all can see, at-a-glance, where any one piece of content is in the process. This is a boon for teams that adhere to sprints and Agile or Scrum-based project development.

Last but not least, Trello is free. Yes, there’s a paid individual user version that offers increased file attachment sizes (from 10-250MB) and the ability to customize appearance, but most users interested in paying for the system will likely want the Business Class or Enterprise editions, which offer pre-built integrations for popular third-party tools such as Slack or Salesforce, single sign-on and two-factor authentication, intrusion detection, and priority support. Click the image to see the full pricing page.

Trello vs. Asana

Odds are, you’re reading this article because you’ve been filtering options, and you’ve reduced your choices to Asana vs. Trello. 

The biggest, most obvious difference between the two systems is how they organize tasks. Trello’s highly visual Kanban approach is hard to beat for creating custom, repeatable processes that allow easy team collaboration. Asana’s task-centric, list-based approach is more traditional, organizing your team’s work around individual projects and keeping everyone up to date with Asana notifications and reminders.

A few more points of differentiation include:

• API: Both Asana and Trello offer an API, but Asana’s is only available to paid users

• User Limit: Asana cuts off its free option at 15 users, while Trello offers unlimited users for free.

• Account Management: If you require support, Asana’s paid accounts are enrolled in their Customer Success Program, which will give you access to a training specialist for onboarding and deployment, process design, and more. Trello only makes this available to the highest-cost plan.

• Integrations: Asana offers free integration with a wide variety of tools to both paid and free plans, including Zapier. Trello only offers Box, Dropbox, and Google Drive integration for free — others require you to pay, or know how to use the API to integrate it yourself.

Making the Choice

Hopefully you now have enough information to choose between Trello vs. Asana. If you need any further help, check out the articles below, or visit our Project Management Software Product Selection Tool for a list of customized software recommendations. 

Read More:

• Trello vs. JIRA: Choosing an Agile Project Management Tool
• Wrike vs. Asana: Which Should You Choose?

The post Trello vs. Asana: Choosing the Right Tool for Team Projects appeared first on TechnologyAdvice.

Maybe you need an integration with a system that Leadpages doesn’t support, or you’re looking for Leadpages alternatives because of features they don’t offer.

If you’re looking for dynamic keyword insertion capabilities for your PPC campaigns, want multivariate testing capabilities, or want to tailor your landing page design based on browsing device, you’ll need an alternative to Leadpages, as it currently offers none of those features. Perhaps you’re outgrowing the solution, or you want to consolidate your spend into a single system.

No matter the case, these four Leadpages alternatives are good place to begin your search.

Unbounce

Unbounce was founded to “educate, connect, and empower marketing teams and agencies to grow their businesses with the best conversion tools on Earth.” Marketing-speak aside, Unbounce is one of the most popular form capture/landing page creation solutions. With a simple drag-and-drop editor, over 85 tested and mobile-optimized landing page templates, and a wide variety of integrations with content management systems and marketing automation platforms, few solutions are as well-suited to landing page creation and optimization as Unbounce.

Of course, their strength is also their limitation for many marketers; they only do landing pages, eschewing the value-adds Leadpages provides (LeadBox pop-ups, LeadDigits SMS opt-ins, LeadLinks email opt-ins) to provide a singular landing page experience. Unbounce does offer simple A/B testing, though it’s only for the landing pages you create with their tool; you can’t A/B test your home page design, for example.

One of the better features they offer is dynamic keyword insertion (DKI), meaning they can insert users’ search terms into your landing pages automatically — a game-changer for anyone designing landing pages for PPC campaigns. Extremely intuitive and user-friendly, even a relative neophyte to digital marketing will have little trouble creating new pages and/or variants using Unbounce. It’s not without expense, however, as the starter package begins at $49/monthly for 5,000 unique visitors to your Unbounce pages, and integrations and DKI are locked until the $99/monthly, 25,000 visitor price tier. They do offer a 30-day trial, and you can get access to their core features for free, longer, if you’re willing to deal with an Unbounce-branded footer on all your pages.

Instapage

Perhaps the tool that compares most easily with Leadpages, Instapage offers a high-quality selection of landing page templates, an intuitive user interface, and a nearly unbelievable price point — $29/month gets you unlimited landing pages and unlimited visitors to an unlimited number of domains. Of course, that is just for the basic package, but even the professional and premium versions are competitively priced versus Leadpages and other systems on this list. 

Instapages are WordPress-compatible, mobile-optimized, and there are over 100 templates that you can use to get started. As with Unbounce, Instapage offers landing page A/B testing, but only for the ‘Professional’ or ‘Premium’ customers — though it does offer an unlimited number of tests and test visitors, unlike most of the other solutions outlined here. They also offer drop-in pixel tracking for non-Instapage conversion pages, which is useful if you’re driving traffic to an Instapage that converts on a subsequent, non-Instapage.

Make sure to pay attention to the fine print regarding the “Basic” and “Professional” integrations when you talk to the sales team, however, as there’s little information on their site regarding what is considered “Professional” or “Basic”, and integrations with CRM/Marketing Automation platforms such as Salesforce and Infusionsoft are only unlocked for ‘Professional’ plans or above. 

Lander

Lander offers an easy, drag-and-drop landing page editor, a large number of responsive templates, and allows you to A/B test pages built with Lander. Starting at just $22/month, Lander is one of the least expensive options on this list, although it’s also among the least powerful when just considering the basic package, which doesn’t include CRM, marketing automation, or Zapier integration. Those integrations only become available at the “Professional” price point — $74/month. It does allow you to A/B test on the basic package, though you’re only allowed 3,000 unique monthly visitors to your landing pages, so a statistically significant result may take some time to achieve. Lander Professional only allows 25,000 unique monthly visitors. To get more than that, you’ll have to talk to Lander directly for an “Enterprise” custom package quote.

It’s worth noting that Lander was recently (July ‘16) acquired by Silicon Valley investment firm, Internet Cowboy Ventures, and it remains to be seen whether pricing will change. 

UnDelay.io

Currently in beta (with appropriate discounting), UnDelay is a relatively new, but interesting entrant to the landing page software marketplace. Acknowledging the fact that an ever-growing number of consumer interactions take place on mobile devices, UnDelay says responsive design just doesn’t cut it anymore. Offering what they call an “adaptive builder” that allows for 40.2 percent faster page load speeds on mobile versus responsive design, they let you create separate, multi-page experiences for your consumers based on the devices they’re using.

UnDelay offers an easy, drag-and-drop visual editor, lightbox capabilities (provide more information while keeping your customers on-page), and a pre-configured Google Tag manager container that will take care of tags, triggers, and variables automatically. It also offers CSS, HTML, and JavaScript editors, so if you do have some coding acumen, you can further customize the form and function of your landing pages.

UnDelay offers unlimited A/B testing of your landing pages, it supports pop-ups, and is competitively priced versus Leadpages, starting at $34/month (paid annually) for 3,000 visitors and unlimited access to all features. With the current 20 percent beta pricing discount, that would become $27/month, making it one of the lowest cost options available. Furthermore, there are eight pricing tiers, versus the traditional three, which makes it less costly to jump up as you grow. 

* * *

This list of Leadpages alternatives is a good place to start, but far from a comprehensive selection. Our Technology Advisors can help you narrow down your options from the vast array of marketing solutions available.

ALSO READ: 5 HubSpot Alternatives for Inbound Marketing Automation

Every buyer is different, and every buyer has different needs. You may think you need a landing page builder, and you may be correct, but you may have not considered other systems that will solve your landing page problem and other business problems. Give one of our unbiased experts a call and get your custom recommendation today.

The post 4 Leadpages Alternatives for Any Use Case appeared first on TechnologyAdvice.

Technology is important for modern ABM, but that’s putting the cart before the horse. Noted ABM expert and Terminus CMO Sangram Vajre once said, “ABM is a strategy, not a product.” Before embarking on any new initiative, marketers and other internal stakeholders must understand both why and how. Before you target your first account, you will have to land supporters in your organization and expand your influence to create buy-in. It’s hard to support a strategy you don’t understand; so the first step to any ABM implementation is selling ABM.

Executive Buy-In

According to a 2015 survey from SiriusDecisions, 92 percent of B2B marketers believe ABM is a “must-have.” In a separate study, 71 percent said they plan to add ABM tools to their marketing stack in the coming months. Maybe you knew that. Maybe you’re already sold on ABM and understand the value it can bring, but you aren’t sure how to build internal support.

Gaining buy-in from your leadership team is a critical success factor, especially since ABM’s value (revenue) isn’t usually realized for some time. You’ll need to talk to the C-suite in language they understand: numbers. You’ll need to show the impact ABM can have on the metrics that matter most to your company, and be prepared to answer any objections.

Beyond the C-suite, there are some tactics you can use to gain support among sales and marketing — the two teams most responsible for running a campaign. Let’s take a look.

Selling ABM to Your Marketing Team

Odds are, you’re on the marketing team. If you’re the CMO or marketing director at your organization, you can probably skip this part, since you won’t need help selling yourself. But if you aren’t in a position of leadership on your marketing team, you’ll want to get your manager and other higher-ups on board. Some may feel you undermined them by approaching other leaders first, so it’s important to follow the chain-of-command in these situations. It would be a shame if your ABM initiative failed because of office politics.

It would be a shame if your ABM initiative failed because of office politics.

Thankfully, selling marketers on ABM is easy. Most have heard the term, but may not understand exactly what ABM is and the value it can bring. Make sure they know the difference between ABM and other, more traditional marketing strategies. Then, plan a pilot program. Most marketers are experimenters and tinkerers, so it shouldn’t be difficult to get them involved. This pilot, of course, will help you sell ABM to the rest of your organization.

When making the case to your marketing leadership for an ABM pilot, focus on the benefits of sales and marketing alignment; ABM is one of the best ways to make sure the two departments support each other. According to research from Marketo, well-aligned sales and marketing teams are 67 percent better at closing deals. Demandbase found that 34 percent of marketing departments with ABM programs in place say they are “tightly aligned” with their sales team.

READ MORE: The Three Stages of Sales and Marketing Alignment

Selling ABM to Sales

If your sales team isn’t fully invested, you will fail. ABM can make their jobs a lot easier, but you’ll have to prove it, and you’ll have to be careful in your approach. Most salespeople are protective of their accounts, and they’ll have to be sure that you won’t harm their relationships.

Start small; ask a few members of your sales team to identify accounts they have a good relationship with, but would like to grow. Maybe you have a large client that is currently piloting your services but hasn’t signed a contract. Help sales win that account by providing them with useful data on the contacts they have at that organization. What are their social media accounts? Do they have a blog, and does sales read it?

Set up a few Google Alerts for keywords associated with individuals and the companies you’re targeting, so you’ll know any time a new article is posted, a new partnership announced, a new executive hired, an award received, etc. Deliver all of this information to sales with key takeaways highlighted. They’ll be impressed that you tracked down the information and thankful they didn’t have to do it themselves.

Pro Tip: If you use Slack or some other internal communication platform that lets you integrate RSS feeds (or works with middleware like Zapier or IFTT), you can automatically post all of this information in an account-specific channel and invite the entire account team to view it and contribute. This is an easy way to keep sales in the loop and get them on board with your ABM plans.

Once your salespeople see that you’re there to help, ask them to share their greater account plan. Try to discern how marketing can help them meet their goals, and establish a few deliverables so you can further prove ABM’s value. These deliverables may be different for each account, and if your company sells multiple products, it may be quite an undertaking. Perhaps there are upsell or cross-sell opportunities, or other departments that would be a good fit for your product if sales had time to research and pursue them.

Pro Tip: Focus on small, immediate wins if possible. Identifying one or more decision makers within a particular department, for example, is a small, immediate win marketing can provide. Getting their contact information and setting an appointment is not.

Remember, ABM is about true sales/marketing alignment. Give sales the names, and let them leverage their existing relationship(s) to obtain the contact or introduction necessary. When that appointment is set or the account expands the amount of business they’re doing with your company, you’ve created a win together. Then you can approach sales management about the opportunity to expand your pilot and get the rest of the company on board.

Next Steps

As with any new initiative, expect some push back, especially if you’ll need to invest in new tools to execute and measure your ABM efforts. If you need help establishing why a particular tool is necessary, or identifying a software solution for a unique business problem, don’t hesitate to call for a free consultation with one of our unbiased Technology Advisors. They’re well-versed in use cases and value propositions for thousands of software solutions, and are available to help you narrow your options and choose the best tool for your needs.

The post Land and Expand: Selling ABM to Internal Stakeholders appeared first on TechnologyAdvice.