Chart of the day: Creating the right content is one of the biggest challenges facing marketers when it comes to mobile marketing

Research by Incite Group and Open mobile media, has revealed in their latest State of Mobile report, that content is marketers biggest challenge. Even with advancement in technology, creating the right content and relevant content is still as important as ever, as that's essentially what mobile marketing (in terms of mobile applications and mobile websites) comes down too, the right content. The research also found that context (and relevance) as well as marketing feeling quite separate from other parts of the business, were big challenges for marketers too. The research also found: Understand the customer was the biggest challenge facing mobile product management teams, followed by monetization strategy and fragmented OS environment Increasing brand awareness and engagement are the biggest objectives for…

Five ideas to help supercharge your marketing brief

The ability to write an effective marketing communications brief can be the difference between a campaign that comes to life and generates the results you’re looking for or one that misses the mark and leaves your audience cold and indifferent. The IPA outlines three reasons why marketers should write a brief: It leads to better work. A good brief helps ensure that there is clarity around the goals and objectives of the campaign meaning an agency can focus their efforts in the right direction It saves time and money. Efficiencies can be made by helping agencies to get to the right ideas more quickly first time round rather than changing the goalposts several times during the process, all of which costs time and money on all sides. It makes remuneration fairer. Make it clear from the start what exactly is expected of the agency and how success…

Snapchat’s new partners look to improve post swipe experiences

Last week Snapchat announced that they have taken on 14 new ad Creative Partners. They have introduced these partners to help build more engaging Ads that will deliver a strong ROI for their customers. They said the following:  "These new partners represent the best in video, cinemagraph, and gif creation; game and playable ad development; lead generation and data capture; interactive and 360 video players; mobile couponing and more" Snapchat believes that these new Creative Partners will help enhance the post-swipe-up experience on ads. As well as encouraging users to click through instead of quickly swiping, allowing users to interact more with the landing page. Here’s the list of new partners and the service they will provide to Snapchats advertising clients: Famous – Instant Apps pre-loaded in the web view for immediate interactive experiences Adludio – Haptics and gyroscope-powered experiences Jebbit – Lead generation…

Whether you’re a web developer, CEO, marketing manager, casual blogger, or e-commerce guru - it is worth setting up a heatmap trial.

Anyone who works in the digital marketing world should at least have some awareness of what heatmaps are. Since companies like Crazy Egg have begun huge advertising campaigns - even regular, non-marketing or web-developing types know about them. In short, heatmaps are used to precisely understand what people are doing on your web pages. They show where people are clicking, and where they are lingering and scrolling too, and can be extremely useful for helping people optimize the journey of their visitors/customers.

Why So Underrated?

A lot of marketing agencies, even the ones that are responsible for developing their client’s websites, don’t bother getting a heatmap subscription. They figure that through a tool like Google…

Chart of the day: Research by Google reveals why it's so important your mobile website has good user experience

Mobile experience directly affects conversions and whether users will purchase again.

Users who have a bad mobile user experience are 60% less likely to revisit and purchase from that brand in future. In addition, 90% of users who report having a good experience would purchase from the brand again. It isn't a "chart" as such, but as you can see from the graphics from Google below, those users who had an interruptive experience, which wasn't fast or smooth (in terms of load times etc) are less likely to purchase from that brand in future.

What do users need?

They need speed…

If you have trouble tracking your data, here are 3 easy steps to fix your problem

If you have been diligently using Google Analytics and Adwords reports to track the performance of your ads and website to help optimize bids and increase conversion – good for you! Yet you may see quite a bit of discrepancy in your data. Besides the frustration and confusion, it also makes you wonder whether you’re doing your tracking correctly. There are many factors that affect the consistency and accuracy of these reports, and not all of them are under our control. However, if you dial in a few things, and get a better understanding of what these reports mean, you’ll be able to get a much clearer picture of your data. So let’s look into what’s preventing you from accurately tracking your data, and what you…

An increase of touchpoints has made it harder to tell what drives customers to purchase

Digital advertising used to be so simple. Marketers would place an ad in a premium spot on an affiliate platform, leading the customer to see the ad, click the ad, and be converted. The well-known click-based attribution model let marketers accurately track that short and sweet customer journey with ease. However, a recent survey by Qualtrics and AdRoll shows that while 65 percent of marketing professionals still use single-click attribution, 57 percent want to toss that model out the window. Their reasoning is simple: The digital world has gotten more complex, and so has the customer journey. Customers don’t just search for a product, click an ad that comes up, and convert, so relying on the old single-click attribution model is a good way to lose customers and market share. Digital platforms that marketers use to engage…

Review your digital skills to get tailored recommendations to improve your marketing skills and business results

We are constantly updating content, improving the quality of our site for members and bringing new guides and tools to help your marketing needs. We have recently updated our capability grader, which allows you to rate and score your company's digital marketing strategy and planning ability via the RACE framework. Today, we have also launched the companion Personalized Learning Plan which will assess your personal digital marketing skills. and is available to all members, from free to premium. This new feature is available to all Smart Insights members. Be one of the first to get your Personalized Learning Plan.

What is the purpose of the Personalized Learning Plan

Our new tool enables you to: Do a quick self-assessment of your skills across 25 key digital marketing activities marketing defined in…

Chart of the Day: Do you need a separate, defined digital marketing plan or should it be integrated with your marketing strategy?

In 2017 you will often hear that we live and work in a post-digital world. That is to say since consumers naturally use a mix of traditional and digital media, as businesses, we shouldn't treat digital media and communications separately from other media and they should be integrated. 'Post-digital' is a compelling idea and I certainly believe that integration of digital activities into all marketing activities is essential, but what is the reality in businesses? Our recently published research report Managing Digital Marketing in 2017 in collaboration with Technology for Marketing 2017 (where we'll be exhibiting and I'll be speaking on the 27th and 28th of September), shows an interesting pattern of how businesses manage digital marketing through a planned approach: The green sector…

Chart of the day: Research reports are king! Research reports are the content type that generates the highest conversion rate when used for lead generation

Research reports, video and social media content all provide a high conversion rate. Reports are viewed as quality content and lead to the highest conversion rates when compared with other types of content. They are helping brands to establish their integrity and credibility. The report also found: Over half (56%) use a mix of in-house resources and agency/ third party resources to produce their content for lead generation Just under half (49%) report that conversions are increasing marginally Almost 6 in 10 (57%) say that content download forms generate leads with the highest conversion rates, this is followed by webinar registration (42%). The key takeaway: Research reports and content downloads are performing best for conversion rates. These methods are worth…