Out with the Old, In with the…Old.  Why Dynamic pricing is even more relevant today

Dynamic pricing is a price-setting approach relying on data analysis and flexibility. It allows to shape and control price changes on the fly, depending on customer’s previous interactions with the website and his general profile. Items like past searches and purchases, location, time and date of previous searches and purchases are taken into account to generate a personalised offer. Dynamic pricing has been around for nearly 15 years when retailers like Amazon started testing this. So, this isn’t a new practice but each year that technology advances, so does the way we use dynamic pricing. As a business owner, the opportunities for delivering more relevant propositions has improved. From search history to previous purchases, customer location to general tastes, it allows a business owner to personalise its offer on a user…

Ideas for developing your digital marketing skills

In previous posts we have looked at how marketers can stay relevant by developing their digital marketing skills. Simon Swan asked Are you a T-Shaped Marketer? which is an interesting way of reviewing the depth and breadth of your digital marketing skills and I summarised another infographic showing how the modern marketer needs to be Part Scientist and Part Artist. We also interviewed online recruiters to find out what industries were looking for when employing digital staff and reviewed typical digital marketing roles in our marketing job descriptions outlines. 

In this infographic, we look at social media marketing skills . This shows how soft skills such as listening, nurturing and patience are just as important as some of the hard, technical skills. We're not sure they need to be 'superpowers' though!

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And avoid boring brand content

One of the key challenges in content marketing is being able to create enough great content. Great? OK, maybe that’s vague, I mean relevant, engaging and it works. Great means different things to a financial services company than say, a BBQ grill manufacturer, a basmati rice brand or sports clothing manufacturer.

The truth is we all have the same challenge when it come to content creation and content marketing - creating dull content is a choice, it’s your choice.

“If people aren’t talking about you, they’re not talking about you for a reason. And the reason isn’t that they dislike you. They’re not talking about you because you’re boring.” ~ Seth Godin

People first...

Use your imagination, take a step back and think about your target audience, not your brand. What your audience needs over what you want to promote. It’s this return to people where it get’s so much…

Statistics on consumer psychology on Ecommerce sites

Have you ever wondered about which are the biggest consumer concerns that are a barrier to online purchase? For example, what is the perception if your website page is slow to load, what consumers actually think about your videos or if on-line vouchers affect the decision to buy. Of course, the best way is to ask consumer direct, by a panel of customers or through conducting a usability test. But as a quick alternative, check out the research we have compiled in the new Vouchercloud infographic on consumer buying psychology. The findings tell you some of the 'statistics and habits behind the clicks': 31% of consumers would be more likely to buy a product after watching a video since it reinforces their confidence, and 41% would abandon the shopping cart if there were hidden charges. More…

Taking the example of using rich snippets for hotels

In my experience, many local businesses miss out on the opportunity of SEO since they don't focus their efforts in the use and implementation of structured data.

Rich snippets on SERPs attract the attention of users and this means that the CTR is improved than the ones of your competitors.

In this guide I will take the example of Hotels to show how structured data can be used. Let's take an example. Here are 2 cases, decide which one would grab your attention.

Case 1

Case 2

We should note, that at least for now, the appearance of rich snippets on SERPs…

What's New in Marketing? January 2014

The end of January already! Does anyone not think that? The end of the month means it’s time for our regular roundup of the major developments that affect marketing and our pick of our advice on the latest practices. When I speak with marketers I’m often asked “what’s new”, “what matters” and “what’s next” and “what matters” so I hope our summary helps answer some of these questions to save you having to sift through the content avalanche. I also hear that it’s getting more difficult to keep up-to-date, so in our recent research on managing digital marketing I was curious to know how marketers found this. Of marketers completing the survey a majority (55%) found it challenging, with over a quarter (27%) stating that it had become more difficult recently. Nearly a quarter said it was easy - good for them - I’d like to know…

A tutorial with examples and ideas of what to test

Prominently displaying why users should buy from you rather than a competitor is extremely important for any business look to increases online sales, particularly in retail, but it applies across many other sites. As Bryan Eisenberg, author of Always Be Testing can Call To Action explains in this punchy clip, testing value propositions can have a massive impact on conversion. [youtubevideoembedder id="ps7bB9-ksMY"] Bryan Eisenberg On Unique Value Propositions (1m45s) >> As Bryan says: "If you're not doing this, you're wasting your time" Given this, value propositions are something that I love to test. Smart Insights have covered the importance and examples of value propositions in other posts on their hub page, here I'm going to focus on testing, looking at retail Ecommerce examples.  I will looking at testing and optimisation point of view, starting with a review of…

Dave suggested I write something important this week, something for marketers in 2014, after all we’ve just updated our health-check tool, and recognise that our audience are looking ahead and busy planning for success this year, so that makes sense. My post from a year ago did just that, my advice was to focus on (1) content and (2) customer journeys across mobile channels. Proven advice I think? It’s interesting as those two things also came out top in an informal Smart Insights survey that we ran in early December. So am I to sugar coat the same advice and ideas differently this year? On the one hand yes, it’s still super relevant, but it’s missing some thing else for 2014.

I wake up worrying about marketing

I hope that you do too? I genuinely do worry. I run an agency with paying clients, their happiness is my focus, so it’s…

A personal End of Year Review of Digital Marketing

You cannot escape the end of year reviews for pretty much everything at this time of year. You’ve got your best songs of the year, the best programmes, sports personality of the year (Andy Murray = best sports personality really?!!), best film….like we said, everything! I am not complaining though, because here at MMT Digital we enjoy a good end of year review as much as anyone which is why I have decided to do one of my own.

A 12 months summary of my world of technology, web design and build, and marketing

Below is a summary of some of the most interesting subjects in the world of technology,web design & build and marketing that have caught my attention in the last 12 months…

January – March

Give me a slice of Rasberry Pi As this is the season…

Survey shows the potential for Pinterest to drive traffic

December 2013 update

Social sign-in and sharing tool Gigya have released their latest social sharing report showing which could be helpful if you're asked that general question - which social network should we focus on?

The new infographic shows the dominance of Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest with Google+ surprisingly limited across consumer sites. It also has specific data on sharing for Ecommerce and publishing sites. Pinterest is even more popular on Ecommerce sites. They have also released a regional breakdown for the first time we think.

We know that social sharing is having an increasing impact on traffic and sales, but which social sharing channels have the biggest impact? Demographic information  on social media is becoming more accessible now through sites including…