The 14 top rated digital marketing techniques for 2017 according to Smart Insights readers
[Editor's note: Dave Chaffey has now updated his predictions for 2018: Read Digital Marketing Trends to act on in 2018]
In this article, I'll take an in-depth look at what I see as the most significant trends in digital marketing for the year ahead. But, it's not only my view, since I have 'crowdsourced' the importance of the different trends rated by the popularity of each trend.
For all members of Smart Insights, we also have a more detailed free download of the marketing megatrends for 2017, which are 9 digital marketing and martech megatrends will help give you an edge in 2017. In the download we discuss machine learning and artificial intelligence, which for me is the biggest trend in marketing right now. Machine learning techniques apply across many of the techniques we discuss in this post including Big Data,…
Pepsi's terrible ad shows the dangers of in-house agencies and leaving creativity to non-experts.
Last week the ad world was all of a flutter over an ad by Pepsi starring Kendall Jenner.
It is probably the worst ad you will see this year. (A competitive field, to be sure).
Or indeed you may never see it, as Pepsi have quite rightly pulled the ad and apologized to everyone involved including Kendall Jenner for “putting her in this position.”
How did a global brand like Pepsi put themselves into this position? The ad it screened is so culturally tone-deaf that Saturday Night Live have done a skit about it and everyone is laughing at them.
Pepsi made one simple, but very significant mistake. They thought anyone could make creative work. They were so very, very wrong.
Have you seen the ad? It’s hilariously bad. In case you were on vacation last week, here’s how it goes: for…
Adidas just made a colossal bet that could be a game changer, or a catastrophic mistake.
Last week, Adidas announced they were going all-in on digital advertising.
Chief Executive Kasper Rorsted said he was going to ditch TV ads and instead spend 100% of his budget on digital to capture younger consumers, a crucial demographic for the sports clothing line.
This way, he said, Adidas would quadruple e-commerce revenues by 2020.
“All of our engagement with the consumer is through digital media and we believe in the next three years we can take our online business from approximately one billion (euro) to four billion (euro) and create a much more direct engagement with consumers," he said.
Predictably, the internet exploded.
It was a hell of a time to bet all your chips on digital marketing, said critics. Digital ad giants Facebook and Google are now embroiled in full-blown scandals and a quick glance at today’s CampaignLive reveals…
JP Morgan Chase found it was advertising on 388,000 sites to no effect. Brands using programmatic advertising need to sit up and take notice.
Over the past several years we've seen programmatic ad spend saw, Icarus-like, to dizzying heights. At the start of this year, UK programmatic spend was predicted to increase by over 30% in 2017, whilst US programmatic ad spend has tripled since 2014, becoming the single fastest growing ad medium. So-called gurus predicted this trend would continue, by doing what so-called gurus always do and assuming the future will resemble an extrapolated version of the past. Hence the predictions that programmatic spend will double by 2020, reaching an incredible $42 billion dollars globally. But the present has got in the way.
Ever since The Times uncovered programmatic ads for major brands appearing on the websites of far-right hate groups or terrorists (See Mercedes Advert on an IS video below), brands have…
10 Delightful Email Design Trends to Flatter Your Subscribers
You've got mail! The design is quirky, colors bright and beautiful, and there’s an oh-so-amazing GIF. You love it at first sight!
Psychologists have researched to find out that we take 1/10th of a second to form an impression, and only a long term experience is capable of altering it.
So the point is… YOUR EMAILS MUST HAVE THE WOW FACTOR.
People love novelty, and more engaging the novelty, the merrier. Email marketers, the smart ones, have always gone with the flow, embracing new discoveries and paying heed to new age demands.
That's why I'm presenting some amazing email design trends that I feel will having a big impact this year.
Roll Out the Red Carpet for These Delightful Email Design Trends
Long live the GIF: How many GIF emails did we see in 2016? Countless. A GIF gives movement to a static image. And with…
1 to 1 dynamic content personalisation is the future of email marketing
I am a big fan of automation, a very big fan. Whenever you can, automate part of your email marketing process. While delivering timely, personalized and relevant content, automation is a big step forward in email marketing maturity of any program. So, the next big thing is Email Content Automation. Few email marketers are currently using it but it’s about to be the hottest trend – and a trend that’s here to stay.
Realistically a lot of production time goes into curating, copy-pasting and sorting content. Then there’s compliance and the multiple people who have to give their stamp of approval, checking details they shouldn’t be worrying about. It can take all your time just to manage and get “business as usual” email out of the door. Often that is a huge waste of creative power, time and resources. Wouldn’t…
How to keep your marketing job and stay competitive as traditional jobs disappear and Artificial Intelligence erodes demand for some marketing skills but increases the demand for others
When robots named Pepper are taking orders at Pizza Hut, it’s safe to say that we’re entering the era of automation. Traditional jobs are being automated out of existence on a daily basis. And it’s happening in every industry, from healthcare to marketing.
Yet most marketers aren’t concerned about becoming irrelevant in the near future. This is short-sighted; acknowledging that many marketing jobs aren’t going to be around in another 10–20 years is the first step to staying competitive in an uncertain future.
How many jobs are disappearing?
In 2015 alone, nearly 2.4 million U.S. jobs were outsourced to other countries. And nearly every major American company has been accused of outsourcing or automating their jobs overseas.
By some estimates, artificial intelligence will cause the…
Stay ahead of these major marketing trends to retain your edge over the competition this year
Marketing moves fast. Fads come and go, but big shifts in technology change the whole marketing landscape. The launch of the iPhone and the growth of social networks in the late 2000's massively disrupted the whole marketing landscape, just like the massive adoption of PCs did in the mid to late 90's, and TV did in the 50's and 60's.
At the moment marketers are firmly concentrated on the latest big technological fads like chatbots, virtual reality and augmented reality. It remains to be seen whether these will create real value for marketers beyond a few niche applications, or if they are just over-hyped by virtue of their novelty. However, it is possible to identify some big changes in how marketers are using existing technology, and these major shifts have serious implications for brands in…
Pizza Express are embracing chatbots in their social media - how easy was it for us to book a table and what are the implications for other E-commerce sites?
Pizza Express have launched a new chatbot on Facebook Messenger, they state it allows users to book restaurants using Messenger - we wanted to book a table ourselves, with this in mind, we did. Here's how we got on.
The launch followed a trial over Christmas, which was used by 150,000 people, much to the surprise of Pizza Express.
We first tried it on desktop, aiming to book a table for the restaurant near our office in Leeds, UK.
An interesting point to note is there is not much chat involved, you select options - I typed responses to see how well it worked, but also because I felt this was the way to do…
The biggest technology trends emerging this year
For organisations of all shapes and sizes, it’s crucial to stay ahead of the latest digital and technological advances. To help you do this, we’ve looked ahead at those trends that will have a major impact in 2017 - and beyond…
2016 saw significant technological advances in a number of different areas (as we discussed in a post on the Box UK blog towards the end of last year). It doesn’t look like this rapid rate of change will slow anytime soon - so what will everyone be talking about in this year? Here are some of the trends we expect to see dominate:
‘Digital Transformation’
Addressing one of the most talked-about trends in recent years, digital transformation may be fast becoming an overused and increasingly vague term - but with four generations now in the workplace and collaborating across all sorts of projects, digital is…
