Five ways marketers can benefit from continuing professional development

As marketers we can sometimes become insulated from the world around us. But when we poke our heads above the parapet, it’s surprising what we can learn from others. I’ve always been interested in how other people approach their jobs, and a couple of recent conversations with friends opened my eyes to the way engineers, IT consultants and doctors approach their professions. Unlike engineering, or professional services such as accountancy, the marketing profession doesn’t put the same emphasis on continued professional development (CPD) and chartership. I’ve been a Chartered Marketer for over 10 years but I’ve never been asked about it by anyone, including colleagues, hiring managers or agencies. Whilst experience and aptitude is crucial, I also believe it’s important to have strong, up-to-date knowledge and understanding so we can practice our craft as marketers with confidence. …

Good service once earns one happy customer. Consistently good service builds a satisfied, loyal customer base.

Unfortunately, unless you’re a sole proprietor doing everything in your business, you can’t control how your customer service teams work at every moment. How do you make sure customers get a consistent, positive experience every time they interact with you?

Customer service needs to be at the heart of your business. It’s not something that’s limited only to the customer service team. Your company culture and the heart of everything you do need to revolve around serving your customers as well as possible.

This blog post explores 2 case studies - which highlight the dos and don'ts of customer service in 2020. But first, how can you lay the groundwork that makes it simple and rewarding for your employees to provide good service every time?

Building strong customer relationships

Before you can develop…

Channel sales compose a fundamental part of most business models. Trusted partners can help companies enter new regional markets with little investment or expand their share in existing markets.

But most channel partners will work with more than one brand, so a business needs to establish close relationships with its partners to boost its channel sales strategy. In a crowded landscape, live experiences (online and offline) have proven to be a successful way for brands to establish relationships with target audiences. Traditional marketing can communicate the quality of your brand’s product and the value of your relationship, but connecting channel partners with your brand amplifies the impact even more. With the right B2B event marketing strategy, you can build confidence in your brand plan and help secure further investment, too. [si_guide_block id="146918" title="Download our Business Resource – Channel and partner marketing improvement guide" description="In this guide we'll show you the seven factors that you should use…

As a small business owner, you can’t do it all. The first step is admitting you need help. The second is deciding how/when you could benefit from collaborating.

Before jumping to conclusions, you should first determine if your particular project is suitable for outsourcing. Assess your team’s competencies and define your marketing production workflow. Only then can you make the best decision for each of your projects.

Your team doesn’t have to do it all

After prioritizing your projects (however your organization does that), it’s time to decide whether any of them are appropriate to be outsourced. To help with this decision, consider these key questions: Is this project mission critical? Is the success of this project critical to the success of our organization (to our vision and KPIs)? Is this project strategic? Does this initiative/project involve things like the integration of new marketing technology, or a revamp of our customer experience? Is learning…

Are you using social media monitoring (SMM) tools and services tactically? Or maybe you're still not sure if you are using the right SMM tool(s) based on your specific business needs?

Social media monitoring offers digital marketers a wealth of opportunities for a more strategic approach. There is certainly plenty of conversation about these tools and services. So with so many definitions and nuances out there, let's start with a 3 step glossary: Social Media Intelligence: All aspects of social analytics inform your social media intelligence. This intelligence includes not only your own business but the wiser macro and micro environment, such as your competitors. Social Media Listening: This tool is for listening consumers and delving into customer personas and motivations to inform market research. Social Media Monitoring: Ongoing use of data-drive listening and analytics to shape your social media marketing strategy. Successful enterprises across all industries are continuously looking for the…

Cost-plus (times based) or value discussion: which one works better for your agency?

When I was putting together the new agency guide to pricing digital marketing, I made a conscious effort to call it exactly that - a pricing not a costing guide. I grew up in agencies that talked about ‘cost proposals’, ‘costing projects’, ‘cost to client’ and spreadsheets that had cost against each deliverable rather than ‘price’. In putting the new guide together, I referred back to two existing project budget workbooks that are on Smart Insights. But I refreshed them and renamed the line items from cost to price. Why am I reinforcing point this so much? Because if you start with the idea of ‘Price’ and not ‘Cost’ (Time + Materials + a markup) you are on the way to actively thinking about how your agency makes money – by providing value to clients (and therefore earning a value-based…

Examples of different Coronavirus notices around the world - and best practice for public communications

This is a strange start to the week after a strange weekend where we've seen the empty streets across Rome, Paris, and Madrid, then hearing about lockdowns extending to Los Angeles and New York and governments drastically reducing interest rates around the world. Since many businesses will be considering their own communications, in this post, we're collating examples from different sectors, which we hope you will find useful. At the moment, the advisories seem to have been published, for the most part, by the largest companies, but we expect to see them across all companies in time. Crisis communications teams in many of the larger brands most impacted by the Coronavirus are putting out Coronavirus business statements, like these who notified early on Monday 16th March: Starbucks Nike Tui Hubspot …

Embarking on my marketing journey at university, I learnt about the 4 Ps of marketing. However, since I left the classroom, I've found a disproportionate focus on promotion over the other Ps.

The 4 Ps are fundamental to any marketing strategy and explain the core concept of what marketers do. Any marketer worth their salt should know:

Product Price Place Promotion

However, as important as promotion - or marketing communications - may be, in their book ‘How Not to Plan’, Les Binet and Sarah Carter explain that econometrics consistently show that the effects of the other three Ps are as important for sales and profit. Without the right product, at the right price and distributed in the right places, it makes our jobs as marketers very difficult to promote.

Binet and Carter’s book reaffirmed the importance of these three Ps in my mind and gave me…

Organizations and brands thrive on strong repositories of digital marketing assets. Finding what you’re looking for, however, can be a challenge. Learn how to improve your metadata — and your team’s efficiency.

Metadata has been around since Callimachus invented the Pinakes at the Library of Alexandria. But now, we are no longer cataloging scrolls. In today’s digital enterprises, file volumes can easily eclipse the tens of thousands of items held in that ancient repository. Without a more sophisticated solution for describing and registering holdings, we might as well still be using papyrus and reed brushes.

[si_blog_banner_cta] Metadata is essential for allowing people to quickly and easily find the files they’re looking for. When applied efficiently, metadata improves nearly every marketing and creative workflow — plus it increases the value of your digital assets. No matter how much money is invested in a document, video, photo, logo, music track,…

Examples of engaging Facebook ads, and those that fail to stand out

The ultimate goal of any Facebook ad is to catch someone’s eye with the right combination of stunning visuals and compelling copy. You want the ad to stand out against the background noise of news, politics and status updates. And there is a lot of noise right now. The ad copy could be great but the visual has to be even better. Because that’s what will be seen first. Now that almost every news site, company page or blogger uses compelling visuals, standing out has become more difficult. But I have come up with a few tried and tested tips to help you create a winning Facebook Ad visual. [si_quick_block id="150792" title="How to use Facebook Instant Experiences (Canvas Ads)" description="Learn the ins and outs of Facebook Instant Experiences with this Quick Win. From set-up to optimization, this guide will help get you up and running with…