What are the most important marketing investment priorities for Smart Insights members for the year ahead?
Each year, we ask Smart Insights members for their predictions of THE most important high-level digital marketing technique for their business or their clients. This has been really interesting to take the pulse of opinion on marketing trends across the main digital marketing techniques. Thanks if you shared your opinion, we had 2,352 responses from marketers around the world! Here are the results for 2017:
How the top trends were selected
From September to mid-December 2016 we asked readers of our post on Digital Marketing Trends for 2017 to select just one marketing tactic which would give them the biggest uplift in the year ahead. While this doesn't have a controlled sample of our free research reports like Managing Digital Marketing, it does canvas opinion widely.This isn't necessarily…
How to know your audience and create the right content for them
We've all heard the phrase ‘the client is king’. In practice, this means that an important part of marketing is an exercise of empathy, which consists of finding out who our audience is, so we can give them what they want in a better way than our competition.
This simple idea should also be the center of your efforts when it comes to increasing your leads. You should adjust to them, and to their buying process. You should give your prospects the answers they are looking for, when they’re looking for them, in an appropriate way to address the subject of their interest.
The Inbound Approach
But let’s start from the beginning. You may have heard the term “inbound marketing” before. If you haven't, it mainly consists of making leads…
Chart of the Day: Key Financial Services Industry Marketing Trends
There were 347 million mobile payments made via banking apps in 2015. This is a rise of 54% compared with 2014. In addition to 417 million payments made via internet banking in 2015, a modest 2% rise from 2014.
The chart comes from a report by BBA, which is the UK's largest trade association for the banking sector. The report found:
With 40,000 financial app downloads a day in 2015, this is a 25% increase on 2015. The question for the beginning of 2017 is, what will 2016 show?
There were also 4.3 million mobile banking logins in 2015 and 11 million app logins a day.
There were 15 million Contactless cards issued in 2015 and 250% annual rise in spending using Contactless cards.
There were just 71 bank branch visits a day in 2015.
Source:…
Creating Pricing Strategies for Different Objectives
How much does it cost?
This is one of the first questions that customers have when they see something they like, whether 'on the high street' or in an e-commerce store. That is why if there is a key decision a business has to make, it is pricing strategy. Price will define a great proportion of your attractiveness in the eyes of the customers, your revenue, and eventually your profits.
As with other marketing areas, pricing strategies have developed considerably lately. In this article we are going to give you an overview about them and in addition, some valuable insights for applying them to accomplish your objectives.
What to think about when making pricing decisions?
As an essential marketing decision, pricing affects…
The Marketing Hall of Fame: The Very Best Campaigns of 2016
It's getting that time of year when the nights draw in, the Christmas Ads are on the telly and you're mulling over when to bother bringing that tree out the loft and covering it in sparkly things. Well, that's what most people are mulling (along with some wine of course), but us marketers are thinking about our 2017 marketing plans and what we can learn from a year that's rapidly slipping through our fingers.
With only a few weeks left to go of 2016, we thought it would be a good time to look back at the year and think about what we can learn from the most successful marketing and advertising campaigns of the year, what they have in common and what they did to stand out. We've focused on the campaigns that either did something innovative, broke the mold or integrated…
Chart of the Day: Customers around the world chose retailers with loyalty programs over ones which don't.
As this chart from Nielson shows, customers spending decisions are highly likely to be influenced by the presence of a customer loyalty program, with 65% of US and European customers reporting they'd buy from a retailer with a customer loyalty program over one that didn't, all else being equal.
A majority of those surveyed also reported they'd be more likely to continue doing business with a company that has a loyalty program, and on average over 60% said they'd be more likely to shop at online retailers if they provided similar loyalty benefits as in-store retailers.
That said, before you go rushing off to start a customer loyalty program for your online store, there is one caveat. All the survey respondents for this data set were themselves already members of a customer loyalty program. This means they may be predisposed to…
The key trends all Travel Marketers should be aware of
2016. What a year. We've had Brexit, Trump and all manner of celebrity fatalities. It just makes you want to jet off somewhere nice and forget about your troubles for a week or two doesn't it?
Well, I'm sure the same can be set for travel marketers. In the UK the falling pound has smashed margins and raised prices for holidaymakers heading abroad, whilst for marketers promoting European destinations the disturbing spate of terrorist attacks this summer may have encouraged some holidaymakers to stay at home.
But take a step back and you'll be surprised to hear the picture is actually looking rather good for travel marketers, despite the challenges. Tourist numbers have increased in 2016 by over 3%, and 33% of travelers say they will be willing to spend more on a holiday this year than they were last year. What's more, 49% of…
Chart of the Day: We explore recent research which shows that long term social media marketing engagement leads to increased sales and loyalty.
In a study by SocialMediaExaminer, marketers believe that when compared to short term work, long term efforts are proving fruitful for their businesses. The research suggests that most marketers believe that over time social media can increase sales, 66% believed that over 5 years of social media marketing, sales can improve.
The research also found that social media can increase traffic and loyalty long term, but not in the short term.
Key takeaways:
Marketers should accept that social media will not give immediate rewards for their efforts in the short term, however, when embraced fully, long-term social media engagement can eventually contribute to driving sales and loyalty.
Sources: Social Media Examiner and Convince&Convert
Sample: 5000+ marketers
Recommended resources: The Smart Insights social media management checklist lives…
Hidden navigation menus, such as hamburger menus negatively affect discoverability, increase task time and perceived difficulty of the tasks.
Quantitative user testing studies aren't as common as qualitative studies in the world of User Experience Research, but this brilliant study by Nielsen Norman Group (NNG) with 179 participants found that hidden menus, such as hamburger menus led to worse discoverability on both desktop and mobile devices.
Methodology
The study by NNG used remote unmoderated testing, which involves users recording their screen and voice at home, whilst working through instructions. Six live websites were tested across desktop and mobile, including three types of navigation:
Hidden navigation: where the main navigation is placed under an icon (e.g. hamburger) and the user is required to click or hover over the icon to display the navigation
Visible navigation: main navigation shown clearly in a navigation bar
Combo navigation: a combination…
Facebook Insights team used a mixed methodology of data to analyse wedding planning behaviour and how mobile messaging apps are benefiting users.
This post is a vasriation of our usual #chartoftheday posts, as we summarise two studies from Facebook's insight division.
I was delighted to listen to the research managers at Facebook IQ, Facebook’s insight division, during their webinar as part of Qualtrics #MRWeek (Market Research Week). Naturally I was fascinated by their approach to how they take insights from one of the world's largest data sources: Facebook, as well as how they complement the data with other research too.
After scanning through the Facebook IQ website I found two brilliant studies, both are summarised below.
The first is about how conversation is changing due to the rise of mobile messaging applications. The Facebook Messaging Survey was actually undertaken with Nielsen with 12,500 respondents who are…
