Chart of the Day: UK adspend is at a record £22.2 billion for 2017, the eighth year of consecutive growth
Adspend for 2017 was a record high following 8 years of continued growth in advertising spend. This according to the latest advertising spend figures for the full year 2017 which are analyzed by The Advertising Association and Warc.
It paints a fantastic picture for marketing and advertising, showing increases which have continued for many years and shows that despite any political situation, slumps or increases in consumer demand, advertising is still producing returns, as marketers are still spending and still depend heavily on their advertising campaigns.
Internet advertising saw positive increases but it was mobile advertising that produced the biggest by far - a massive increase in mobile ad spending of over 37%.
Regional newspapers saw decreases, as did magazines and a small decrease for TV. This could explain why recently UK TV network …
Chart of the day: Marketers are most concerned with improving email engagement
New research has found that improving email engagement, followed by increasing sales revenue as well as increasing the number of subscribers are the top priorities businesses have for email.
Top priorities have moved from wanting the most subscribers possible to increasing engagement to retain those subscribers and earn revenue from them. Improving the quality of subscribers was also important for just under 4 in 10 participants of the research (38%).
Most businesses said they were successful in achieving their strategic aims for email marketing, the vast majority rated themselves either very or somewhat successful.
The biggest barrier to their success was found to be improving the quality of subscribers, marketers want to make sure they have the most relevant subscribers for the services and…
Chart of the Day: Which objectives should be in your digital marketing plans?
"Rowing harder doesn’t help if the boat is headed in the wrong direction.”
So said, Kenichi Ohmae, who shared the Japanese approach to business planning with its idea of “long-term planning horizons”. It's useful to be clear on the difference between vision vs goals vs objectives vs KPIs as the measurement pyramid relating them shows.
With long-term digital marketing initiatives and transformation projects, the same is true, so it's essential that your digital marketing strategy features clear, SMART marketing objectives so that you have targets you can review performance against. Broader goals and vision can be useful too, to evangelize the benefits of digital marketing to the team.
A recent report from Adestra highlights the importance of choosing the right objectives to include within a digital marketing plan structure.
According to…
Chart of the day: Time is the biggest challenge when it comes to content marketing
Marketers have revealed time and quality are their biggest content marketing challenges according to research by Clearvoice.
Time, content quality and creating content were the top three challenges, which suggest a perception of the number of resource marketers feel content needs. And right they are! Quality and effective content takes time, needs to be good quality and needs the appropriate resource to put aside this time and make sure it's great quality. Marketers recognise that it's quality over quantity and understand quality is the most important aspect.
Production is also a big challenge for marketers, the resource involved in making it happen and getting it live and as someone who works full time in the production of content, it certainly is harder than you may think.
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Chart of the Day: How much budget is being allocated to ABM?
This week, I thought I'd take a look at the popularity of ABM since we have been getting a lot of interest in our recent series of articles on how to implement ABM by Daley Robinson.
Most studies on the adoption of ABM relate to larger B2B companies who are the early adopters of ABM which they have historically used as an approach to target their larger clients. This is the case with this research from Sirius Decisions which considers the percent of budget spent on ABM.
You can see that in the two previous years, more budget is being allocated to ABM with over one-third of business categorising their spend on ABM in 2017 as either 11-30% of 32-50% of budget. Nearly a fifth are spending more 50% of their budget…
Chart of the day: How does device preference for online activity differ with generations?
Marketers are always raving about Millenials and how important it is, for their brand to reach and target this segment of the population, especially the youth-oriented companies. In fact, it’s deemed equally important to decipher the millennial category in comparison to other generations and come up with an integrated marketing strategy that targets different segments of the audience with unique approaches, best suited to their consumption habits.
It comes without a doubt that the invention of mobiles had given rise to the migration of online activities away from PCs, albeit slow and steady. Smartphones have only boosted that migration, making the switch from PCs to mobile-first much faster. However, that rate of migration only applies to a certain segment of the population, advocated by their age, to be more inclined towards adapting newer…
Chart of the Day: 2 in 3 ad-blockers worry about how companies use their personal data
Data, and database marketing, allows to deliver targeted, personalized and relevant advertisements and communications in real-time dependant on where the user is in the buyer's journey.
Understanding their stage of intent is vital in order to deliver the right message - digital allows this process, and the user, to be tracked. Through data, explicit and implicit, we can continually change and optimize our ads in order to improve our communications and, in turn, increase our return on marketing investment.
Users are getting more and more concerned about the amount of data that is being captured, where it is stored and how it is being used. In the light of the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal, users are rightly concerned about how much personal data is being stored online and who can access it for what reasons.
New research shows…
Chart of the day: Netflix is the best performing brand in terms of highest average number of comments from users on their posts and highest on post shares
Scandal or no scandal Facebook is still hugely important to brands and customers, with brands using Facebook pages for marketing and customer service. Based on the volume of shares, posts, interactions and engagement Facebook is still very important for brands.
Research by Indivigital using brands ranked highest by Interbrand, explored the top 100 brands and the posts made on their pages between March 2017 and March 2018. The report found a number of interesting things around who the most popular brands in Facebook are, but also which are the industries and categories most engaged with too.
As shown above, Netflix had the highest number of post comments in the analysis.
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Chart of the day: Unbounce reveals business consulting, travel and job training industries have the best conversion rates.
The comprehensive report, which evaluates thousands of conversion rates has found the three industries with the highest conversion rates.
Business consulting, whilst most likely receiving low levels of traffic appears to convert well, whilst job-related training also has high conversion rates which is good news for elearning related websites and training providers! Travel is as strong as ever, with demand for flights, hotels and holidays as high as ever, the travel industry enjoys a decent conversion rate and the lending industry isn't far behind - there is still demand for loans and credit.
It could be something to do with the mindset of customers who are interacting with these industries. When people are looking for credit, after assessing options, they are likely to go ahead and proceed as…
Chart of the day: Customer Experience is the main focus for brand marketers looking to strengthen their brand marketing strategy for 2018
Branding has always been a hot topic of discussion amongst marketers, as there seem to be a number of different definitions and purposes of brand marketing that marketers can adhere to. Years ago, branding could simply be pinned down to defining a set logo, slogan, colour palette etc. However, in today’s day and age, branding has become a tad bit more complicated.
Branding can be that ‘feel-good’ emotion that your customer experience when they hear your brand name, it can be the feeling that makes them associate to your brand identity and the perception that customers get, when they see your brand.
Every year, the focus of branding and brand marketers keeps shifting, given the top marketing trends of the year and the latest developments in technology. A recent chart from…
