Use questions and filters when planning for digital - don't just follow 'what's hot'
We're just ending the period of 2013 predictions, something I am fascinated by, find useful, but also dread each year.
There are undoubtedly some great posts out there with valuable opinion and insight. Yet it can get a little overwhelming and in most cases leave you feeling a little depressed around all the things that "you should be doing." Maybe that's just me?
The thing is, in marketing (as any job role), you can't do everything, so there's no point getting anxious about the million things that you could do, prediction posts heap that pressure on; they're good and bad, in that way.
We too ran our first online summit a week ago advising on a number of topic areas and recommended priorities for 2013, (you can see the recordings and slidedecks here if you missed them). It's easy to get…
The latest in marketing from November 2012
November is now synonymous with Movember in many countries. Have you heard the story of Movember’s growth? It’s been great to see the growth of this cause in recent years. This year it seems that every other person is supporting it. It’s an interesting story of how Movember has grown from 30 Mo Bros in Melbourne, Australia in 2003 to 854,288 Mo Bros and Sistas worldwide in 2011.
Our friends at First 10 have a Movember team page, one of over 30,000 teams in the UK taking part to raise money. With the Dads of two of the Smart Insights team members affected by Prostate Cancer it’s close to our hearts too.
Strategy and planning
There’s a diverse mix of free tools available to support analysis for planning; one of the enjoyable aspects of working in digital marketing today. In…
Our summary of the latest developments to be aware of from October 2012
The most obvious developments in October were the introduction of new hardware platforms that you couldn’t fail to miss, thanks to coverage in the main stream media. We cover these in our user experience and conversion section where we also have reviews covering the business relevance of two major Google Analytics developments.
Although there was a flurry of new feature announcements in October after the summer “break” which we cover below, we believe that defining a strategic approach to marketing is what is most important and this is where we start our summary.
On a lighter note, this video simulation This video simulation of the way we will use our phones in 2025 was one of our most popular posts in October, although many felt it didn’t give a positive image of life or marketing in the future…
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5 reasons why content is core to B2B digital strategy
The importance today of using digital marketing in organisational or business-to-business (B2B) marketing is highlighted by the latest Buyersphere report from Base One. Supplier websites, web searches and in most countries emails are now primary information sources for business buyers.
Online events and social media are also significant, more so if you drill down and look at their overall influence on purchase.
I've shown through my previous posts of examples of how companies use B2B marketing, that many companies have responded well to the opportunity from digital media. Many B2B organisations are already successfully using digital marketing in specialist sectors like financial and professional services, IT and software, manufacturing, engineering and science to name a few. But because they don't have a planned approach, they fail to make the most of…
What are the common best practices, are best practices always best?
I was honoured to be asked to give this presentation for Manchester Manchester Metropolitan University Business School to launch the new Faculty of Business and Law, a stunning new £75 million teaching and research headquarters and business hub.
An updated, shorter version of the Manchester Business school deck was also presented to students and professionals at Leeds Metropolitan University and to an IDM Network evening in September 2012 which is included at the end of this post.
Leeds Metropolitan University presentation - November 2012
Manchester presentation - September 2012
We're often told to follow "best practices" in our digital marketing. In the talk I explore the value of this and some of the problems. How do we know what…
There were no major updates on the major digital platforms this month; perhaps the most significant was the announcement that Pinterest has opened free access to all and developed new mobile services which could further spur adoption.
I’d pick our first alert on the new content streaming services as the most interesting topic of discussion for this month, it shows how digital communications platforms continue to evolve.
I’ve summarised the updates on what’s new in the standard five areas to make it quick for you to scan what’s new.
Strategy and planning
The co-founders of Twitter unveiled two new social websites - This alert by The Drum simply says they’re called Medium and Branch and are currently invite only - one to watch. If this sounds insignificant, ReadWriteWeb says “we’re witnessing another sea change in Web publishing” - take a look at this summary by Richard MacManus for 5 reasons why web…
The answer depends on your perspective...
We know that the Olympics has been a raving success on so many levels, more so than many of us imagined. So, almost a week after the main event (the Paralympics are still to come), I wondered about the digital success story - what were the take-aways from the London 2012 Olympics for marketers, that we can learn and share on Smart Insights?
I came across this wrap-up from the Head of New Media at London 2012, Alex Balfour. You can see the Slideshare presentation embedded here…
London 2012.com olympic games digital round up 13 august 2012 from Alex Balfour
What can digital marketers learn from London 2012?
The data from London 2012 appears…
Differentiation vs Amplification
We shared Seth Godin's Circles of Marketing blog post a couple of weeks ago, it captured our attention because of the simplicity of the message, the focus on the fundamentals, Seth's always good at that.
The marketing paradox
We believe that Seth has described something of a modern marketing paradox, and we wanted to illustrate it step further than he has. We believe that the marketing paradox that we face is Differentiation and Longevity vs Amplification and Speed. Does the marketer seek genuine differentiation or does he or she chase an opportunity to measurably amplify the brand? The latter is realistically faster, it's what's expected, and just maybe you get a bit of luck or already have a great product, in which case amplification can then work for sure. Yet the inner rings are defensible, considered, harder and longer lasting. They're also the base to upon which you can amplify…
Takeaways from IBM's global survey of marketers
Each year IBM interviews several hundred marketers to get a flavour of what the collective challenges, successes, fears and opportunities are.
It's interesting reading and always somehow comforting and inspiring to know you're not alone :-)
In this post I've picked out 7 of the key takeaways. You can view the presentation on SlideShare here and see the background on the study here, though I've summarised the salient points in this post and added the key charts below.
Here are our 7 key take-aways
1. The more successful companies expand the role of marketing in order to lead the customer experience - the success factors here are born around having influence across the 4P's and so being able to optimise their company's purchase cycle more effectively.
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An example of aligning the Tesco.com digital marketing strategy with retail growth strategy
I was recently speaking at the Internet Retailing Expo and when attending, I noticed Tesco announcing their online marketplace. This has now quietly soft launched in the UK.
This interested me as yet another sign of Tesco responding to online opportunities, in this case by opening a marketplace to sell products from other retailers as part of its Tesco Direct offering. Currently marketplace sellers aren’t explicitly featured as in Amazon product listings, instead, it’s folded into search results for some products:
It looks as if Tesco are testing how to best integrate the marketplace approach now, as part of a soft-launch.
Tesco marketing strategy - 7 core principles for growth
I was also interested that at the show Tesco talked about how the marketplace supported…
