Examples of applying the Pareto principle to marketing

The 80:20 rule, equally well known as the Pareto principle, is widely used and abused in business, but how does it apply to marketing and digital marketing? In this post I review some marketing applications. Wikipedia tells us that the Pareto principle is named after Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto, who noted in 1906 that 80% of the land in Italy was owned by 20% of the population. Apparently Pareto developed what would later be known as his principle by observing that 20% of the pea pods in his garden contained 80% of the peas! Although there is some doubt whether he mentioned the 80:20 principle as such, it is known formally known as a specific power-law distribution and named as a Pareto distribution based on an analysis in the 1940s of production quality / flaws by…

What are the essential parts of a digital transformation plan?

A digital transformation plan is a strategic, long-term plan focusing on integrated digital media channels, implementation of new technologies, and smart, digital ways of working. The purpose of a digital transformation plan is to define how to compete more effectively with digital marketing. The scope of a digital marketing plan is typically annual, but a digital transformation plan will typically be longer since this involves creating long-term digital roadmaps. Since creating awareness and achieving conversion still commonly involve offline channels such as a call-centre or in-store, digital marketing plans need to define integration between channels using techniques like customer journey mapping.

Your omnichannel digital transformation plan

Digital or online marketing is any form of marketing that involves using online channels for goals of acquisition and retention. It also includes digital technology and the use of data to target audiences more precisely with personalized messages. Understand…

Learn how the PESTLE analysis model can help you assess your business’ place in a variety of environments

PESTLE is one of a well-known series of acronyms used in business and marketing planning which summarizes how to review the broader forces, sometimes known as the 'macro-environment', that can shape a business.

What does PESTLE stand for?

PESTLE stands for:

Political Economic Sociological Technological Legal Environmental These are the contexts that a business should assess itself against to review competitors, markets, and the situation in which an organization finds itself. Environment Factors affecting a business - Source: Chaffey and Ellis-Chadwick - Digital Marketing, Strategy, Implementation, and Practice [si_guide_block id="65204" title="Digital marketing models guide" description="We rate PESTLE analysis as one of the top 20 marketing models which we feature in our digital marketing models guide. To learn about more models you can use to effectively assess your…

Apple's iOS 14 platform update has certainly not been without controversy. Increased customer privacy has caused problems for mobile ad providers. What do the platform updates mean for your digital marketing strategy?

Released on 16 September 2020, Apple's iOS 14 constitutes a huge overhaul in mobile customer experience. And the biggest change is yet to come! The delayed new iOS 14 opt-in processes, penned in Forbes as 'Facebook and Google's worst nightmare', have been penciled in for January 2021. This will at least give ad suppliers more time to adjust to the changes - and it looks like they're in for a busy couple of months. We'll be discussing what these changes mean for your business below. Plus, we'll take a whistle-stop tour of some of the platform's new features and how marketers can delight customers on their iPhone.

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Retailers, restaurants and service providers:…

Practical AMB guidance for putting together your account-based marketing target list to get results, fast

Account-based marketing starts with a clear picture of who to target. Sounds simple enough. But with account-based marketing (ABM) being such a new thing for so many marketers, building the right focus list is often not as easy as it first sounds. I’ve found with so many clients, they end up getting steamrolled by the ‘Who should we target’ question. When you keep hearing the same query time after time, you realize there’s clearly an education piece that’s needed. So here we are! It’s worth pointing out at this stage that this guidance is based on best practices gathered from being involved in a number of account-based marketing deployments. There are no hard and fast rules to any of this, so feel free to tweak depending on the individual circumstances of your business. Anyway, now we’ve got that out…

“Plans and strategies are crucial.”

You hear this a lot in the marketing world but, it seems, many of us are failing to put our money where our mouth is - or finding it harder to do rather than just say. Partnering with Technology for Marketing, we recently surveyed our members to discover how they approached digital marketing optimization. What we found was a distinct shortfall in strategy and planning activities.  We asked our members to rank their digital marketing abilities at the initial “Plan” stage of the RACE Growth Framework on a scale of one to five. ‘One’ meant having no strategy and ‘five’ stretched to a significantly advanced level. 57% of our respondents rated themselves within the lowest stages - one or two.  [si_guide_block id="155497" title="Download…

10 ways to segment website visitors using Google Analytics

When I work on E-commerce projects to identify methods to increase conversion, I always start with a structured analysis of the current effectiveness of customer journeys for different segments, using Google Analytics to help identify potential improvements to site page templates to test.

Segments are powerful since they help you isolate and compare different traffic sources, so in the screengrab below we have selected organic traffic to just find out how these visitors behave, for example, which landing pages do they arrive on?

Note that to encourage usage of Advanced Segments, Google renamed them a couple of years ago to 'Segments' in order to make them less scary and encourage adoption amongst GA users who don't see themselves as advanced. A key part of this approach is to go beyond the…

Digital Marketing Optimization is transforming recession marketing strategies. These 5 tactics for managing customer experience will set you apart from your competitors

Surviving this recession is all about, you guessed it, your customers! As we have seen clearly in 2020, being able to anticipate and respond, fast, to changes in the market can mean the difference between make or break in a challenging environment. And, when it comes to managing customer experience, haven't we all seen some rapid changes? "Recessions inevitably lead to changes in consumer spending and demand for products and services." - Dr. Dave Chaffey As Dr. Dave Chaffey asserts in our recession-beating marketing tactics for growing your business guide, changes in consumer spending require marketers to 'prioritize marketing activities with the biggest potential'. After all, to survive this recession, marketers need to make strategic decisions to outpace their competitors and acquire and retain valuable customers. [si_guide_block id="151279" title="Download Free…

Digital transformation strategy to grow your business: Our recommended planning frameworks to implement your successful digital transformation

More marketers than ever are fueling growth through digital transformation. But with the stakes so high, we want to make sure you get your digital transformation strategy right, first time. That's we're here to guide you through it. Discover the success factors for creating a digital transformation strategy to grow your business, read-up on the implementation process for your digital transformation next steps, and explore our latest digital transformation research.

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Why create a digital transformation strategy?

Our research shows that today many businesses are realizing the imperative for digital transformation; to compete in digital marketing data and technology, a structured process of digital transformation is needed. The need for transformation is particularly strong in larger, international brands and organisations that…

What needs to go into a marketing communications action plan to survive a recession?

In March 2020, we saw global brands like Apple, Nike and Starbucks closing stores around the world and posting Coronavirus advisories to their websites and social networks. Since then, many businesses and individuals have seen their fortunes transformed by the COVID-19 pandemic and following recession. By May, we saw many countries moving from lockdown to re-opening some businesses, with new measures in place. But this wasn't enough. By mid-June, the impending global recession had been confirmed, the worst economic hit since WWII. This forecast by the World Bank demonstrates a GDP drop in 2020 for all regions, Latin America and the Caribbean being hit the worst and East Asia Pacific the least. To help consider the priorities and options from…