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What’s New in Marketing – November 2014

Author's avatar By Dave Chaffey 01 Dec, 2014
Essential Essential topic

The monthly Smart Insights round up of the latest developments and advice for marketers

There were three major digital marketing platform developments to be aware of in November - these are the changes to the Facebook newsfeed and Twitter tools covered below in our social media section and Google introduced mobile SEO-friendly site labels as featured in the @SmartInsights alert in our SEO and content marketing section.

Digital Marketing Strategy and planning for 2015

Well, it’s already that time of year where it becomes popular to look at marketing trends for the year ahead. Many readers will naturally have been planning and prioritising how you invest in marketing in the year ahead for some time already.

In my article on digital marketing trends for 2015 we asked readers of Smart Insights to vote on what they saw as the most commercially significant trend for their business in the year ahead. We have now had over 600 responses - thanks if you have voted! If you’re still able to share to learn about managing digital marketing, I’d be really grateful if you could complete this more in-depth survey about Managing Digital Marketing in 2015 – there are 5 prizes available and everyone who completes the survey will get a free copy of the final report.

Here are the results of the poll on the biggest trend for 2015.

No surprise that content marketing topped the poll for the third-year running, in fact it was even further ahead compared to previous years since mobile marketing and social media marketing have declined in importance as marketers have implemented these. It’s close for second, third and fourth position. It’s significant that ‘Big Data’ is still in second position although the hype has receded. I think this shows the potential for companies to implement more in data-driven marketing techniques in 2015, which will likely be closely related to marketing automation which is in third place.

In the later parts of the trends post I review 30 different analytics and reporting tools – perhaps not ‘Big Data’, but certainly tools to support data-driven marketing in 2015.

  • SOSTAC® Planning Guide - Do you know SOSTAC®? We feature PR Smith’s SOSTAC® planning model regularly in our blog posts, infographics and other Expert member downloads advising on strategy and planning since it’s a really clear way to structure and communicate different types of business and marketing plans. This month, we’re launched a new guide for Expert members by the originator of the concept: PR Smith’s SOSTAC® guide to your Perfect Digital Marketing Plan. In the ebook, Paul advises on key issues you should consider when creating a digital marketing plan. If you want to understand more about it we have this post explaining SOSTAC®.
  • Innovation in Marketing - Covering 5 key themes of innovation in Modern Marketing

Social media marketing

Search and content marketing

  • New, free content marketing plan template - In November Smart Insights worked with HubSpot to publish a new free content planning template including this tool for creating a content strategy - our previous research referenced in the report showed that as many as 50% of businesses didn’t have a content marketing strategy.

User experience, analytics and conversion optimisation

Email marketing and CRM

Author's avatar

By Dave Chaffey

Digital strategist Dr Dave Chaffey is co-founder and Content Director of online marketing training platform and publisher Smart Insights. 'Dr Dave' is known for his strategic, but practical, data-driven advice. He has trained and consulted with many business of all sizes in most sectors. These include large international B2B and B2C brands including 3M, BP, Barclaycard, Dell, Confused.com, HSBC, Mercedes-Benz, Microsoft, M&G Investment, Rentokil Initial, O2, Royal Canin (Mars Group) plus many smaller businesses. Dave is editor of the templates, guides and courses in our digital marketing resource library used by our Business members to plan, manage and optimize their marketing. Free members can access our free sample templates here. Dave is also keynote speaker, trainer and consultant who is author of 5 bestselling books on digital marketing including Digital Marketing Excellence and Digital Marketing: Strategy, Implementation and Practice. In 2004 he was recognised by the Chartered Institute of Marketing as one of 50 marketing ‘gurus’ worldwide who have helped shape the future of marketing. My personal site, DaveChaffey.com, lists my latest Digital marketing and E-commerce books and support materials including a digital marketing glossary. Please connect on LinkedIn to receive updates or ask me a question.

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