Explaining how modelling of marketing outcomes can let you make smarter marketing decisions

As 2016 gets under way we're seeing more discussion of the applications of Predictive Intelligence. It’s a nascent field, but one that is gaining popularity fast and for some very good reasons, which we will discuss in a lot more detail in this article. We’re going to start this article off by explaining what precisely Predictive Intelligence is, we’re then going to provide some hard stats on its impact in the marketing world so far and are going to finish off by explaining how we feel it’s set to shape marketing in 2016 and beyond.

What Is Predictive Intelligence?

Despite the buzz surrounding Predictive Intelligence, many still don’t know what it actually is, so here is our definition. Predictive…

Digital Marketing will increasingly become about visual storytelling

As we move into 2016, the digital marketing industry is inevitably bound to shift. While changes occur at all points throughout the year, there’s something about January that gives brands a fresh start. All of the sudden, we’re paying attention to the future, as opposed to reflecting on the past. Well, as you look towards 2016, it’s important that you focus on two words: visual storytelling.

What is Visual Storytelling?

It doesn’t matter what continent you travel to, which time period you study, or which people group you analyze, humans have and always will love stories. In the early days, people sat around campfires and told stories and passed along legends from one generation to the next. Today, we log into our Netflix account to watch the latest flick. Stories are what engaged and captivated the early inhabitants of the world, and somehow, they’re still…

Use predictive modeling to give your campaigns an edge over competitors

The Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization’s 2015 State of Search Industry Report provides several valuable insights derived from both marketer and agency practices over the past year. The most useful conclusions center on three forms of advertising: paid search, social media, and display media. In general, marketers were more confident in managing paid search advertising efforts in-house, whereas social media advertising was a responsibility better left to outside agencies. This shows how marketers are often more comfortable managing “tried-and-true” tactics as opposed to navigating the more complex and fast-paced landscape of social media advertising. Throughout the report, a continuous theme emerges regarding success in measuring return on investment. For a paid search campaign, it’s a relatively easy task because the data and tools used to properly interpret those data are…

A new whitepaper proposes the Customer Mix as a replacement for the 7 P's marketing mix

Global eCommerce and Multichannel consultancy, Practicology have released a new paper for 2016 putting forward their case that the classic 7 P’s marketing mix needs a fundamental overhaul and in its place, the Customer Mix, or the 6 W’s, should be welcomed which is a more fit for a modern marketing, customer-centric framework. You can download the paper here (no registration required). Let us know your views. Do you think the time is ripe for change, or does the 7Ps still have it's place. Source: Practicology The traditional marketing mix framework was created in the 1960’s, a bygone era when organisations held the power based on the size of the marketing spend and how they controlled the limited range of…

We've structured our 140 resources into 15 interactive toolkits to help Basic and Expert members discover the exact tools you need

As Smart Insights has grown and we've developed more and more resources, the range and quality of the resources has increased so that we now cover the full customer lifecycle of marketing activities across our RACE Planning framework. However, as we have developed our library of advice we have suffered a challenge that all libraries, online and offline face - it becomes more difficult to find the most relevant guide. That changes today as we launch a new members area in response to feedback from our customer research that we completed in the autumn. To help with the findability of our resources and to add extra guidance on developing digital strategies, we've developed a series of interactive toolkits which group our resources around the key areas of digital marketing, or present…

The thinking behind our new summary of the latest, most critical developments in digital marketing

You'll know that Digital marketing develops fast. Really fast. So, it can be really difficult keeping up-to-date on the latest developments from the marketing platforms like Google and the social networks. Businesses and marketers who are agile can take advantage of testing the latest tools, techniques and insights to get an edge on their more laggardly competitors. Given the rate of change, when we launched Smart Insights, one of our key aims was to help advise marketers on the digital marketing techniques that are most relevant to their personal and business success or, if you prefer, to help prevent you drowning in content. Some updates are critical and will massively affect marketing outcomes, others are interesting to know but unlikely to greatly affect your…

Taking control of your online store to stay competitive

By customizing online stores, merchants are getting much more extensive business opportunities. Of course, it's quite difficult and sometimes rather expensive to customize your own web store, but looking at possible gains we can definitely say that it's worth doing. It doesn't matter whether you will adjust a site on your own or hire a professional developer for this purpose, remember that customization gives you the opportunity to take a competitive edge on the tough ecommerce market. Currently, there are plenty of well-known web stores that impress people with their style, design, functionality, speed and advanced technologies used. So what should a new vendor to begin with? It isn't necessary to order full-fledged customization at the very start (though highly desirable) - you can just go with a single or couple of specific options that will allow you to stand out.

Customizing your ecommerce…

Email Still Outperforms Social Media for Engaging Your Customers

With some exceptions, social media has really poor engagement rates (people clicking links and taking action). And many companies are wasting their precious marketing budgets on an audience that rarely sees their posts, and when they do, is distracted and often uninvolved. The proof is in the numbers: email campaigns see 50-100 times the click rates that Facebook and Twitter do. If you’re after traffic that convert, clicks, comments, opts-in, and takes a credit card out to actually buy your product- you can’t afford to ignore the power of email. Take Max for example… Max wants to start selling a personal finance product online. He is an incredibly successful financial advisor in his town, and he’d like to share his wisdom with a broader audience. Max gets off to a good start by writing detailed and informative blog posts that are relevant to his target customer. Unfortunately,…

Agility is the key to staying at the cutting edge of a changing industry

We live in a world full of ever-evolving technology. Marketers don’t have the luxury of relying on a single technique for very long. Things change quickly, from new products to innovative technology to customer expectations. The days of keeping the same marketing techniques for years are over. It’s a new era for businesses across all industries, and you must adapt quickly to survive the shifting ecosystem. That’s where agile marketing comes into play.

What is Agile Digital Marketing?

The definition of agile digital marketing is notoriously hard to pin down, but Jim Ewel of AgileMarketing.net this definition: Agile Marketing is an approach to marketing that takes its inspiration from Agile Development and that values Responding to change over following a plan Rapid iterations over Big-Bang campaigns Testing and data over opinions and conventions Numerous small experiments over a few large bets Individuals and interactions over target markets Collaboration…

While you may have thorough buyer personas sketched out for your customers, there may be one piece of the puzzle that you’re missing: behavioural psychology.

Behavioural psychology often dictates how people make choices, whether it’s what to order at a restaurant or whether to subscribe to a company’s email newsletter. Within your digital channels, you can incorporate certain principles of behavioural psychology into your strategy in order to keep your marketing customer-centered, engaging, and conversion-driven. This will help turn your website visitors into conversions.

Anchoring

This is a principle of behavioural psychology that guides people towards context clues when making decisions. Oftentimes, your audience is unsure about how much time or money they should spend on a certain product or service, and when that’s the case, they turn to context clues to help them decide and usually settle on a middle ground. Incorporate anchoring into your digital marketing strategy by adding an “extreme”…