Chart of the day: According to research by Salesforce, over half of ad spend is allocated to Facebook (including Instagram) or search marketing (Including Google search)

In the previous year, 30% of ad budget was allocated to Facebook and Instagram and 28% was allocated to Google and Bing paid search ads. Facebook budget is expected to increase slightly by 1% to 31% and search budget allocation is expected to stay the same at 28%. Compared to other channels such as youTube, Display, and Linkedin, Pinterest and Snapchat etc. Facebook and Google are dominating the ad space with most ad budget allocated to them. Next year, 66% of digital ad spend will go to Google, Facebook, Instagram and Youtube. Over the last year, 65% of businesses have increased their video advertising budget, with more money going on video on Facebook, Instagram and Youtube. …

Insight into the different ways you can select a digital partner, and practical tips to ensure you end up with the supplier - and solution - that’s best for you

No matter what its nature, the ultimate success of your digital project will be significantly affected by the choices you make early on - such as those decisions taken during the supplier selection process. Fail to take the time to thoroughly assess bidding teams and the solutions they’re proposing and you could miss valuable opportunities, discover your teams have incompatible working practices or - in the worst-case scenario - be forced to run the selection process all over again. However, tailoring your process to deliver the greatest possible value is not always as easy as it sounds. Although the price might be at the forefront of your mind, in reality, there are a whole host of other critical factors to consider in…

The best tools and softwares to help manage and optimize your SaaS project

You’ve launched a great service or a product, but it is not getting the due consideration that you’d hoped for after the release of your SaaS project. Why? Simply because no one knows about it. [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."/]

What is SaaS?

The SaaS concept as a business model has been around for quite long period of time but still very much growing and evolving in many directions. To explain it in a few words, SaaS means that users are not buying a software to install but instead sort of rent it out for a monthly or yearly fee. So basically Saas is a leased software owned and managed by one or more providers and not hosted on a SaaS provider’s…

A detailed list of the best digital marketing tools we recommend to help you reach, act, engage and convert your target customers

Having the right set of software tools to manage data insights, content and digital marketing is essential! Without the right ones, you won't be able to create a strategy which reaches target customers and follower them through the customer journey - giving you insights into customer journeys, personas, conversion rate optimization and many more digital metrics essential to staying ahead of competitors. The digital tools we recommend will be categorized into our essential toolkits: Search Engine Optimization: Organic search Paid Search: AdWords Analytics Social Media Marketing (PR and influencer) Email Marketing / Marketing Automation Content Marketing The aim is to provide you with a list of the multitude of different tools available and a comparison of features for various industries, products or services. If used correctly, they can help streamline your…

What's new in the travel industry? Keep up to date with the latest trends and innovations to streamline your strategy

The multichannel marketing approach

 It is vital that there is a multichannel marketing plan in place for all online travel agents and comparison sites to thrive. Travellers are using more than one channel to research and book holidays and excursions – it is important now more than ever to ensure their experience is optimized for multiple devices and channels that contribute to an effective customer journey.

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Our visual shows typical touch-points relevant for the…

Marrying logic and magic pushes campaigns beyond the marketing noise

Today’s savvy consumers require authentic connections at precise points in the buying cycle. Brands that fail to consistently hit that mark will struggle to keep up. Instead of adding value, they end up just creating a busier, more confusing market. Finding these key points of connection requires you to get serious about data.

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Nevertheless, data without a vision is like a bad teacher just quoting the textbook: It’s all there, but there’s no meaningful connection. Additionally, bad data costs the typical company up to a fifth of its revenue each year. It takes a human vision…

Chart of the Day: What emerging behaviours are consumers showing as they interact with digital assistants and what are the implications for marketers?

At the moment the physical and virtual papers are full of reviews and consumer experiences of the different options for home smart speakers. It's no surprise, since this is one of the biggest trends in tech, with 50+ million voice assistants due to ship in 2018 as I showed in my last article on smart speaker forecasts. We're also seeing emerging research on how consumers are interacting with these speakers which is useful for marketers and brands who are working out how they can potentially interact with audiences. In this article, I share some of the latest consumer research from Google. Here is their research summary. I found the figure that 70% of queries to the Google Assistant are natural language since this shows the increasing importance of optimising…

Review the Business challenges caused by using separate systems and how you can overcome them

There’s nothing more counterproductive (and irritating!) than being in a situation where several people are trying to control what’s going on. It could be countless friends and associates giving you conflicting life advice, your entire family trying to plan your wedding, or a bunch of your colleagues who all think they know the best corporate tactics (when obviously, it’s you). As an age-old proverb that has been extensively confirmed throughout the centuries, it can be true that “too many cooks spoil the broth”,  and this definitely applies to your digital marketing endeavors… One of the largest and most widespread problems in both marketing and advertising, is attempting to deliver top-end campaigns through the navigation of disparate systems. If you’re utilising multiple platforms for limited or singular purposes, you’re only going to overcomplicate matters, decrease your potential for positive results,…

Whether you’ve had any issues so far with cyber-attacks or not, one thing can’t be denied: they pose a big risk to the security of your business. And, unfortunately, they’re also more likely to happen to you than you may think

So, the question is: how protected is your online business? If you’re reading this and thinking, “This can’t happen to me”, or “I have a very small business. What thief would even find out about it?” Well, you might be very, very wrong. [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."/]

The state of cyber-security

In fact, a survey from PWC conducted last year on the state of global economic crime, found that cyber-crime is now the 2nd most reported economic crime and that it is affecting 32% of organizations. These numbers will only continue to grow as Internet…

Chart of the day: Most marketers are not using Bandit, a CRO testing method.

Most marketers are doing A/B testing, whilst Multivariate testing and Bandit testing, are less used. 

What are the differences between each method?

A/B testing involves testing two versions of a page. There is a challenger and a control (usually the original page if you’re testing a different version against an existing page). Visitors are randomly assigned a version. Tests usually continue until a page (or version) is statistically (and significantly) better than the other. Multivariate testing (MVT) is very similar to A/B testing but involves testing more than two versions Bandit is similar to MVT except, increased traffic is sent to the most successful option, rather than sending equal numbers of visitors to each version. This allows you…