Don't leave account growth to chance, there's a better approach

We're launching a new guide for agencies next week, in which I discuss my suggested approach to agency growth. The emphasis is very much on ‘planned’. To the point where I mentioned that you should drop the phrase ‘organic growth’ which is often used by agencies to describe how they will pick up new work from existing clients. That’s because ‘organic’ implies that work comes in by chance or via lucky conversations and serendipity. It doesn’t. Account growth shouldn’t be left to chance; you need someone to lead the conversations that themselves lead to the up-selling or cross-selling of new services. Which is where account handlers come in and the focus of this post. We have talked previously about how important great account handlers are to an agency, for a range of reasons. To my mind, the primary focus of the…

Chart of the day: Students don't think marketing offers the best career opportunities

Marketing has an image problem, we could struggle to hire the best talent if we don't position the industry better. According to a survey by Marketing Week and Unidays, just 3% of students believe marketing offers the best career opportunities when compared to business, finance, IT and other industries. Students believe that medicine offers the best career opportunities but only 3% believe marketing does. The impact for marketing could be profound, marketing needs highly talented people not just from a creative point of view, but an analytical and technical point of view. We know that many businesses lack both marketing strategy and hands-on elements such as a lack of marketing automation skills. Marketers need to sell their career better. A marketing degree was rated the lowest for setting students up for…

Churn is a growth and revenue killer but it’s not something that occurs when the customer is abandoning you.

It is a customer lifecycle problem, which should be tackled throughout your entire relationships with customers (and even before they start). In this post, we are going straight to the battlefield and explore low-cost, actionable ways to combat churn and boost the growth of your SaaS business.

[si_guide_block id="108833" title="Download our Free Resource –Improving Audience Engagement and Retention" description="Lifecycle Marketing Automation and Email marketing strategies to increase audience engagement."/]

1. Optimize your targeting

If you’re acquiring new customers at a fast pace but aren’t keeping them in the long run, your offer may not be the right solution for the people you’re targeting. Focus most of your marketing campaigns on your ideal customers - people who apriori look for the benefits that your product is able to give them. Study…

All you need to know about the specifics of creation, inventory management, pricing and promotions of Magento bundle products from the certified Magento partner

Users commonly mistake a Magento 2 bundle product for its 'grouped' peer. This is hardly a surprise because the names “bundle” and “grouped” don’t tell much about the difference. Still, these two complex product types have their specifics in management and use cases. We have outlined the nature, configuration and proper use of different product types in our Magento product types overview. Now, it is time to focus on a bundle product. We will find out how to create a bundle product in Magento 2, manage it expertly and enhance the shopping experience of your customers. Product managers mostly use the bundle product type, also called a build-your-own product, to sell electronics (for example, a smartphone with a charger, a USB cable and earphones). But let’s explore…

Chart of the day: Amazon has become, quite easily, the dominant player in voice purchasing with 90% of all spending, according to research by OC&C Strategy Consultants.

The research also showed what customers are using home voice assistants for, which is shown in the chart below. Over 6 in 10 (62%) consumers in the US who took part in this survey, have bought something at least once using their voice assistant. Most customers who use voice assistant for purchasing have bought electronics, entertainment-related products or grocery products. Clothing and furniture might be quite difficult to purchase, due to sizes and styles, as these categories are less popular. From experience, it's easier to ask Alexa to add butter (including brand name) to your basket than "oak coffee table" especially when you might not know what the coffee table looks like. …

Chart of the Day: Which online marketing techniques are marketers most excited by this year?

In my article covering digital marketing trends for 2018 we asked readers of our blog to give their views on the digital marketing techniques which they felt would give them the biggest uplift in incremental revenue in 2018. So, I was interested to see this new Econsultancy-Adobe research which asks a similar question. These are the research results: The common features of the responses to the two questions are the value of data-driven marketing. This also featured second in our poll. Content marketing is a popular technique in both, but this was a clear winner in our survey rather than customer experience in this research. This could be explained by a difference in respondents with more marketing communications focused respondents in the case of Smart Insights and more CX…

Learn how to retain the customers you already have

Strategies for winning new customers are always being tried and tested, many without success. It is much harder to bring in a valuable volume of new customers than to make the most of those you already have. Time and costs increase as you focus on new customer acquisition, when you could be reaping the benefits of your loyal and already engaged existing customer base. Growing your loyal customer base needs to be a key focus for all businesses looking for measurable ROI they can be proud of. Below we’re looking at three key marketing methods for bolstering customer loyalty and growing your returning customer base.

Be Remembered Through Email Marketing

In 2017, there were 3.7 billion recorded global e-mail users, with forecasts suggesting this will increase to 4.1 billion by 2021. While no one is suggesting you can capture the attention of all these…

Chart of the Day: 39% of marketers don't think their organization's marketing strategy is effective

Having already looked at top priorities in organizations, marketing and sales priorities and challenges, it is now time to address whether above all else marketers feel marketing is effective. Seems ridiculous to think that marketers think marketing is not effective. Almost a whopping 4 in 10 (39%) of respondents believe that their organization's marketing strategy is not effective. This might be due to them not using and utilizing the correct marketing model that suits their business objectives and goals. You also need to integrate a variety of platforms to gain a wider audience reach, using just one model might not be effective.

Do you feel that your organization's marketing strategy is effective?

One respondent commented: The most disruptive force to affect my job in the next 3-5 years is the lack…

[Editor's note: We now have more recent guidance for frameworks for digital maturity evaluation]

Chart of the Day: BCG's pathway to digital marketing maturity model

You probably know of Boston Consulting Group for their classic market prioritization matrix which we feature in our essential marketing models guide. Well, they still continue as a consulting group and naturally work on digital transformation projects for which they share strategies via their blog. The latest, which I thought sharing is a simple assessment of digital marketing maturity based on organizational structure. Most suited for larger organizations it shows the typical pattern from an ad hoc approach to digital marketing across a business characterised by innovation, but also inefficiency and wastage due to overlap or inexperience. To control digital marketing activities a centralized approach is then recommended, but as I have seen in many cases this then results…

What is 'extremely online' and how is it affecting children in Silicon Valley?

There’s a new buzzword on the streets: "extremely online." It means someone is constantly on social media. Whilst spoken in jest, it cradles a dark nuance. People are increasingly becoming addicted to ‘bottomless bowl’ apps. That term was coined by former Google designer Tristan Harris after a Cornell study found that people drank more soup when a bowl was constantly refilled. Many apps are designed to deliver a continuous stream of ‘bottomless bowl’ content.  Each screen-tap or swipe provides a morsel of satisfaction. News feeds keep people scrolling. Snapchat and Facebook ensures they check-in to check-out what friends are up to. Twitter provides a stream of endless schizoid and paranoid views. Hook-up sites like Grindr or Tinder deliver streams of non-starter, photo-finish relationships. For a growing constituent, life staring at smart device screens is beginning to feel like wasted time. Many are…