A round-up of our advice and alerts from June 2014
Colin Green, Marketing Director, Land Rover UK stressed the importance of integration when he stated that:
“Truly Integrated Marketing is the holy grail for the marketeer. ”
However, it seems that integration is easier said than done. Our research on Managing Digital Marketing showed that many are making efforts to improve integration across the many marketing channels today.
Given these challenges, in our strategy posts this month we have focused on articles discussing how to improve integration.
Strategy and planning advice
Improving integrated digital marketing
Three examples of integrated campaigns
How to create an integrated marketing campaign
Talkwalker - a review of a new, free social media monitoring tool
Influencer marketing - Bryony Thomas explains her recommended strategic approach to influencer marketing.
17 LinkedIn Profile tips - this infographic was one of our most popular…
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June 18, 2014
What can we learn from these examples of failed digital marketing strategies?
There is a tendency for both brands and agencies to accentuate the positive in case studies and write-ups of campaigns and case studies. It’s understandable to take this positive approach to hide bad news out of sight of investors, clients and consumers. However, we can often learn more when marketing failures are reviewed. In this article I’ll take a look at 4 examples of digital strategy failures that highlight good practices by showing poor practices.
1. Boo.com
Despite the fact that boo.com went spectacularly bust over a decade ago, it still offers a unique insight into one of the biggest and most costly digital business failures in European history. Boo.com aimed to become a first-to-market global brand selling sportswear and designer clothes. The business launched in 18 countries in the autumn of…
What's New in Marketing? January 2014
The end of January already! Does anyone not think that? The end of the month means it’s time for our regular roundup of the major developments that affect marketing and our pick of our advice on the latest practices.
When I speak with marketers I’m often asked “what’s new”, “what matters” and “what’s next” and “what matters” so I hope our summary helps answer some of these questions to save you having to sift through the content avalanche.
I also hear that it’s getting more difficult to keep up-to-date, so in our recent research on managing digital marketing I was curious to know how marketers found this. Of marketers completing the survey a majority (55%) found it challenging, with over a quarter (27%) stating that it had become more difficult recently. Nearly a quarter said it was easy - good for them - I’d like to know…
Dave suggested I write something important this week, something for marketers in 2014, after all we’ve just updated our health-check tool, and recognise that our audience are looking ahead and busy planning for success this year, so that makes sense. My post from a year ago did just that, my advice was to focus on (1) content and (2) customer journeys across mobile channels. Proven advice I think? It’s interesting as those two things also came out top in an informal Smart Insights survey that we ran in early December. So am I to sugar coat the same advice and ideas differently this year? On the one hand yes, it’s still super relevant, but it’s missing some thing else for 2014.
I wake up worrying about marketing
I hope that you do too? I genuinely do worry. I run an agency with paying clients, their happiness is my focus, so it’s…
A review of the "need-to-know" developments in digital marketing in August 2013
The most significant changes in August relate to LinkedIn and Facebook marketing, so if your business is active on these social platforms, be sure to check you heard about these updates. There is also a major update to Google Analytics which we cover in our section on User experience, analytics and conversion optimisation.
Our regular roundup is delayed a little this month due to holiday time, back to the end of the month for September!
Strategy and planning
In August, we launched two new features on Smart Insights to help members with strategy and planning. These also have related free versions that can help all site visitors, so I thought worth flagging up here.
Our Online Marketing Statistics compilation is aimed at helping companies make the business case for investment in digital marketing and benchmark their performance against others. The free feature is…
What are the most common, most heinous online marketing mistakes?
More people are doing marketing badly according to Seth Godin’s recent post.
It got me thinking that with the Content Marketing Avalanche, more people are now also doing online marketing badly. It’s inevitable with the need to reach customers across more and more touchpoints across paid, owned and earned media.
So what are the most common mistakes. Here are 10 I see all the time, from more strategic to practical, in the economic, inimitable Godin style…
Not having a strategy for digital channels - here’s 10 reasons you do.
Not setting goals, not measuring or optimising site performance .
Thinking that online success is about following the latest shiny marketing tools like Vine or Instagram video when it’s all about building a brand online.
Creating product-centred, not…
Strategic Marketing Planning Reviews – Using simple frameworks to answer ‘where are we now?’
The start to any strategic process must be an appraisal of the current state of play. When answering the ‘where are we now’ question, key activities need to take place. These activities have been enhanced through digital technology and the information explosion that has resulted from the valuable resource that is the World Wide Web. However at the same time, this availability of information and data does not necessarily mean anything unless you can use this information to create insight.
In this post, I will focus on 4 aspects of digital strategy that should be reviewed in the crucial first phase of strategic marketing planning. The majority of this activity you can argue would occur as part of any internal analysis, however in exploring opportunities and threats it is essential to consider these four areas in terms of…
The key developments in digital marketing in February 2013
It’s not every month a new currency is launched. In February Amazon announced a new virtual currency called Amazon Coins (a genius moniker) and an interesting promotion where customers will be given money (virtual). Watch out from May onwards. Some are calling it the Bank of Jeff…
Image credit: Mashable
Strategy and planning
Did you notice the emergence of the term “growth hacking” for describing a “new” marketing approach in 2012 and continuing into the start of 2013? I initially dismissed it as a fad most relevant for SaaS (Software as a Service) / single product startup businesses. But recently, I’ve noticed some new job descriptions in this area which prompted me to take another look. In particular, I noticed that The Guardian is currently advertising for a Head of Growth Hacking…
7 steps to getting an edge through marketing
We asked ourselves this question of our own business this week - how will our own agency, First 10, grow commercial success in digital marketing as well as deliver that as a service to our clients? How will we walk the talk, too.
We wrote down the key seven factors to help us avoid those false gods of advertising (in any shape) and dedicated sales people who so often plague our industry. We came up with a list in order of importance - and we liked it - so I thought I'd share it with you since I think it applies to marketing across different types of businesses…
Improve the product (or service) - having worked in senior positions both client and agency side I cannot stress how this is the most important way to improve commercial success. Marketing is baked in. Sounds obvious, right.…
Facebook Graph Search, Vine and Google Analytics Gallery are the biggest announcements
January is the time of year when many look again at their priorities for the year ahead. To help with this, Smart Insights ran a series of 8 free webinars on January 9th. If you would like to take a look, you can still view the #MarketingPriorities2013 Webcasts and Slideshares. Continuing the theme, Expert commentator Annmarie Hanlon will be speaking in February in a webcast on how to create the Perfect Marketing Plan.
The brand new online brand of note in January was Vine. From the people who brought us 140 character tweets, so that we could say more with less, come 6 second videos. It’s based on technology Twitter purchased in 2012. It’s good to see some brands have been agile enough to trial the format, but I’m sure others will have larger, more…
