How to develop a clear marketing brief that unlocks insight and gets to the heart of the marketing challenge

Our primary role as marketers is to constantly solve new and different types of challenges and demonstrate this insight through an effective marketing brief. From a client-side perspective, this may be responding to a change in the market, for example, a new competitor disrupting the status quo or a sudden change in consumer demand as a result of a new trend. From an agency perspective, this will often involve responding to a client request to help formulate a strategy for a new campaign or initiative, usually in support of the challenge they’re attempting to solve! I’ve written about the importance of an effective marketing brief before and its positive impact on both clients and agencies. However, whilst a written brief is essential, one of the keys to the success…

There comes a time in every business when scalability takes front and center. As difficult as the beginning stages were, achieving a scalable business can be just as challenging

You’ve succeeded in proving that your business is viable, but now you have to make sure you achieve steady growth. Scale too quickly and you can suffer from not being prepared. Scale slowly or unevenly and you may get stuck with employees you hired that you don’t need anymore. Overall, you need to ensure that the rate of your growth doesn’t hurt you in the long run. [si_guide_block id="5676" title="Download FREE Resource – Digital marketing plan template" description="Our popular marketing planning template built on the Smart Insights RACE planning system."/] How can you do that? By coming prepared. There are certain elements you can integrate into your business now that will ensure a seamless scaling process in the future and will also help if you…

As more competitors on the landscape compete for keywords and "airspace", it’s now more important than ever to explore new ways to engage and communicate with your target demographic and community

Marketing has come a long way since those smoky days in the Mad Men-style advertising board rooms. It has, at one point or another, revolved around each medium that has engaged us as humans, from newspapers and radio to television, and now, the internet and social media. What we used to call "traditional marketing" (the direct mail and radio/TV advertising) has now morphed into "digital marketing," a way to reach people where they are: online. Digital marketing these days covers a wide swath of channels: search engines, social media, and email, among others. [si_guide_block id="5676" title="Download our Free Resource – Free digital marketing plan template" description="This popular digital marketing strategy template will give you a structure for applying the Smart Insights RACE…

It may have originated in the world of software development, but agile ways of working can significantly benefit marketing teams to perform more effectively.

What is 'agile', I hear you ask? Focused on collaboration, communication, and iteration, agile methodologies have long been used by development teams to speed up time-to-market, reduce waste and risk, and rapidly respond to new trends and opportunities. Its popularity is such that 94% of software organizations and teams now practice agile, according to VersionOne’s latest State of Agile report. Today though it’s not just those involved with software development that can benefit from an agile approach. Indeed, I’ve personally delivered coaching for organizations across a range of industries - from an events management company through logistics and automotive firms to universities and membership institutions - to support their successful transition to agile ways of working. [si_guide_block id="74453" title="Growth hacking guide" description="Adopting an agile way of…

Three key insights from the UK Government’s latest report on employers’ demand for digital skills

Regular readers of Smart Insights know all too well the importance of having an up-to-date digital skillset. In today’s age of the internet and social media, it’s become more important than ever for employees to have a sound working knowledge of digital in an ever-growing digitized economy. The UK government has recognized the need for a digitally literate workforce in our modern economy and the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport commissioned a report, conducted by Burning Glass Technologies, to provide an overview of digital skills demand and to help inform the development of evidence-based digital skills policy. [si_guide_block id="117459" title="Download our Free Resource – Marketing careers and skills development workbook" description="Our guide shows you how to map out your personal short-term and long-term goals, become more productive in…

We often associate the word “audit” with tax season – it’s not really a subject we enjoy thinking about. But in reality, there are so many audits that marketers can benefit from

This is especially important for your marketing strategy, to ensure you are actually delivering your marketing objectives and allocating budgets wisely.

Unfortunately, the majority of marketing teams are not closely tracking the results of their efforts. A survey from LinkedIn found that just 39% of B2B marketers were confident that their ROI measurements were accurate!

By conducting marketing strategy audits, your team can effectively assess their efforts, find current weak spots, and discover solutions for better results in the upcoming year.

But which types of audits are necessary to properly evaluate your strategy and improve it for the future?

Let’s discuss.

SEO Audit

One major mistake that many marketing teams make is…

Marketers who are willing to take a hands-on approach can achieve dramatic results with personalized data strategies

Regardless of what your short- or long-term business goals are, an imperative part of achieving success is knowing who your prime audience and decision-makers are, and then identifying the best way to reach them.

Major advancements in technology and data analytics have certainly helped shed some light on who ideal audiences are and how to reach them in a specific, hyper-targeted way.

Natural air freshener brand Citrus Magic, which creates sprays and air freshening products free from harsh chemicals, had a few ambitious marketing goals:

Increase brand recognition and exposure Drive foot traffic Promote an in-store sales lift [caption id="attachment_152108" align="aligncenter" width="526"]…

As a marketer, getting better jobs will be a target at one point in your career. Of course, a great job could mean different things to different people

To some, a better job means better pay. To some, it’s better flexibility at work. To some, it’s the ability to take on challenging work.

Whatever a better job means to you, it’s vital to stand out to get those jobs. In some ways, being able to land great jobs shows your level of expertise.

Having said that, what are the tactics that can make you stand out to potential employers? What will give you an edge when a great client needs a marketer?

In this blog post, discover 7 tactics that can help you stand out as a marketer and get better jobs:

1. Focus on a niche

Every type of business on earth needs a marketer. After all, every…

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has actively taken the world by storm. More and more businesses are now planning to leverage AI to develop brand management strategies as a fundamental part of their vision and mission

Meanwhile, AI is slowly but steadily becoming more prevalent in customers' day-to-day lives. It makes everyday tasks and small chores easier and is quickly becoming more readily available in lots of shapes and sizes to suit customers' needs.

Google and Microsoft are among the popular global brands that have already regulated their business operations to focus on Artificial Intelligence research. Other industry leaders like IBM, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, and Alibaba are not far behind from this objective.

According to a market research firm IDC, global spending on AI systems is said to reach $57.6 billion in 2021.

While AI offers undeniable benefits such as cost savings for the business, the…

With the channels skills-gap currently estimated at 13%, whether you are looking to change company/function or keep progressing in the career you already have, building up your channel-specific skills will help you bring the right skills to the table

While we're adjusting to taking everything online (yes, it really does seem like there is a place for everything in this new physically distant world), as a digital marketer I am finding myself paying particular interest to the roles of different marketing channels in today's internet of things: "Q) How many engineers does it take to change a light bulb? A) Depends on whether or not that lightbulb is connected to WiFi - Arielle Pardes, wired.com" Although lightbulb marketing isn't something we specialize in at Smart Insights (yet?), I do recommend having a mental run-through of your marketing channels, and whether there's anything you've seen in the last few weeks that you…