Offline information sources remain important, supplemented by new online sources

High-value B2B purchase decisions are typically complex, involving multiple decision makers. They often involve interactions with sales staff to check the fit between product and service and what the client is looking for. Higher in the funnel, when purchasers are comparing the features of suppliers they will use multiple sources. This research from Global Web Index across a large sample of B2B buyers show the range of information sources that are used. These include both traditional sources such as sales presentations and direct mailing which remain important and newer techniques. For example, communities created by the business or independent communities are surprisingly important. Company pages are on social media are also used are slightly more important that trade ads today. The chart doesn't clarify 'relevant industry website', we can assume this includes both supplier sites and specialist industry news sites. 'News story' is…

Chart of the Day: What makes you choose your marketing automation platform?

There is so much choice with marketing automation platforms now, with nearly every Email Service Provider (ESP) adding them to their grades. But what are others choosing their platforms for? Marketing Automation platforms aren't cheap, even the ones that are rather simplistic. So these are expensive investments, but what would drive a business to choose one platform over another? In the chart below we can see that the most important reason why a business goes with a specific marketing automation platform. 54% said that it was the ease of implementation. Now, I have implemented a fair few marketing automation platforms and ESPs, and yes they are a ball ache and can take a lot of time and planning. But is this really a fair reason to go with a specific platform and spend all that money? Just because it's easy? I…

Chart of the day: Poor quality data is the reason for bad digital marketing campaign planning

Over 4 in 10 (43%) respondents to a survey by ExchangeWire Research and Xaxis said lack of quality data was the main reason for not using audience data when campaign planning for digital media. Time was also a major obstacle, whilst small data sets, narrowing campaign audience too much and a lack of there being a central data repository were all big factors. Marketers are finding that too much targeting is narrowing the audience down too much. Privacy concerns were not a major issue when it comes to data use for digital campaigns. Source: ExchangeWire Research/ Xaxis Sample: 616 digital marketing professionals across Europe; data collected from November 2016 to January 2017 Recommended Resource: Marketing Campaign Planning Toolkit …

Chart of the Day: Facebook's revenue per user increase 10 fold in 5 years

Facebook's drive to monetize itself has seen the social media titan raise its revenue per user from $2 to $19 in just 5 years. In this time Facebook has released many different advertising options for marketers to spend their budgets with. In the early days, we were using the advanced for the time demographic and 'likes' targeting options to serve ads via the news feed & the right-hand side area. But with the introduction more advertising features as well as adding Instagram to the mix, I can only see the gap between TV and Facebook becoming smaller and smaller. Now there are a wide range of ad options for Facebook. Which are: Retargeting - art of advertising to people who have visited your website before Messages - Contacting your audience with short messages on…

Chart of the Day: 47% of the 100,000 most popular sites now contain one or more Facebook technologies, giving Facebook unprecedented access to data and web traffic.

The results of a recent study from SimilarTech shows the scale of Facebook operation beyond its own domain, with insights on the platform's reach and exposure through the use of Facebook technologies, giving Facebook its competitive edge on audience data and referral traffic to its site.

This enormous audience reach has been achieved through the widespread popularity of the company's technologies and plugins such as ‘share buttons’ or ‘comment boxes’ on 3rd party sites which deliver traffic to Facebook and strengthens the presence of the Facebook brand across the web.

The most popular technologies from Facebook being used on the top 100k sites are Facebook Connect, followed by Facebook Social Plugin and Facebook's Like Button. 

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Chart of the day: Usability testing budgets have increased in 2016 compared with 2015, in an early-2017 study by Usertesting.com

Budgets are either increasing or staying the same for most respondents, budgets are only decreasing for such a small amount of respondents. This shows businesses value usability testing and the benefits user experience research brings. For industries such as market research, who are seeing reductions in budget, it's a pleasure to see user research budgets increase.   Most respondents also indicated that a change in attitude or simply no change/ no reason was leading to the budget change. The study also found that the majority of respondents have no fixed budget (40%) for usability testing. Source: UserTesting.com  Sample: 2,238 professionals across a number of industries who are in some way involved in user research Recommended resource: Digital Experience Mangement Toolkit …

Chart of the Day: The vast majority of marketers are still using vanity metrics to assess content effectiveness, whilst only half are measuring the effect on sales.

A recent report by TrackMaven asked 200 marketing leaders across 19 different industries about how they measure the effectiveness of their marketing efforts. The results show that marketers are still relying on 'vanity metrics' such as likes, shares and views, rather than calculations of how the marketing has impacted the bottom line. This needs to change if marketers are going to be able to justify future increases in budgets for new campaigns. It's no good going to the CFO with how many re-tweets you got. The only sustainable way to grow your marketing department is to be able to clearly demonstrate that is leading to increases in leads and sales, and thus contributing to the business growth. Marketers need to invest in better analytics for measuring their success and…

Chart of the day: B2B customers favor quality product information over the number of products to chose from.

B2B customers need to purchase all sorts of products. Whether they're looking to restock the stationary cupboard or bring in a new suite of marketing tools, they need to be sure that you will be making the right choice for everybody involved. This is where research from Forester & B2BecNews comes in useful for the businesses trying to sell their products and services. B2B buyers do have similar needs to your average e-commerce consumers placing significant emphasis on how easy the website is to use, fast delivery and the usual low prices. Most importantly the results of the survey show that B2B buyers place having access to credible product details above anything else. This is good news for marketers who are responsible for the information on their websites…

Which day(s) and times work best for maximum impact for B2B and B2C?

"Which day of the week is best for sending email?" has been a common question since marketers started email marketing. As with a lot of questions about good practice, the right answer is : "it depends", but it's fun to speculate. Ideally you want your email to arrive in the inbox of as many people as possible when they're sitting at their desk or picking up emails on go via smartphone. Greater impact will also be helped when there is less competition in the inbox from other email marketers. So Saturday and Sunday can be best for this.

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Chart of the Day: Setting Up for Success With Email Automation

How much revenue per person, per campaign, can email automation generate for you? The below chart covers 4 activities, winback, browse abandonment, welcome series and abandoned cart emails. It's then split into average orders from under $50 to over $200. The best performing in 90% of the activities is the abandoned cart email, displaying from nearly $3 per person, per transaction to over $14. The only anomaly is when the order value is under $50, where the welcome email series has $2 per person, per transaction. Source: How segmentation and automation drive email marketing success Sample Size: U.S.–based companies sent in Q4 of 2016 — a total of 1.5 billion emails Recommended Resource: B2B Marketing Automation Guide …