2 major changes within Google and Pinterest are the main platform developments

Each month we review the developments in digital marketing and share our alerts on what we see as the "must-know" developments across all the digital marketing platforms.

We also share some of our own advice for marketers. This month we start with two new free guides to help with marketing planning. Watch out for more advice on Planning and Strategy in the Autumn as we countdown to 2014 with our new #PlanToSucceed campaign.

Strategy and planning

2014 Digital Marketing Trends briefing. Each year, I look ahead to review the latest trends in Digital Marketing to help define digital technologies and marketing techniques which give options for companies to grow their businesses. This year, I have identified 22 Digital Marketing techniques that demand attention and you can listen / download a free briefing I have recorded.We hope this trends roundup…

The only way is… Local SEO.  A tutorial on how to optimise your website for Local Search.

It’s vital that you optimise your site for local results if you have a local sales presence. Google wants to provide their ‘customers’ the best possible and most relevant results and nowadays you don’t even have to type the location after your search term or be signed in to get local results. Let’s have a look at how to make sure your site is well-optimised for local search:

1. On-Site Optimisation

If you’re just starting to optimise your website for local search the first thing to do is to ensure that your core location is included in the following on-page key elements: Title Tag Meta Descriptions Headings (H1,H2,H3..) – Not all of them but occasionally On-page – The site copy as well as on the page itself (e.g. within the footer area) This is really a no-brainer and good SEO practise which…

A checklist of 10 best practices for creating infographics for marketing

You'll be all to familiar with infographics, so I won't bore you with an explanation. Some argue that infographics can only be about data visualised (charts, comparisons, Venn diagrams, graphs, flow-charts etc). Suffice to say that we believe the term covers more than just that and includes any graphics that explain something, a concept for example. For us, if it's visual, useful or entertaining and sharable, it's an infographic! We used that approach for our Content Marketing Matrix infographic and the inbound marketing process which aren't classic data infographics, but we got good feedback that they were useful and they were shared. So this is how Dave Chaffey and I see it, here is our checklist for creating the perfect marketing infographic. I've also written a follow-up on promoting infographics. We will illustrate it with extracts…

A review of the "need-to-know" developments in digital marketing in August 2013

The most significant changes in August relate to LinkedIn and Facebook marketing, so if your business is active on these social platforms, be sure to check you heard about these updates. There is also a major update to Google Analytics which we cover in our section on User experience, analytics and conversion optimisation. Our regular roundup is delayed a little this month due to holiday time, back to the end of the month for September!

Strategy and planning

In August, we launched two new features on Smart Insights to help members with strategy and planning. These also have related free versions that can help all site visitors, so I thought worth flagging up here. Our Online Marketing Statistics compilation is aimed at helping companies make the business case for investment in digital marketing and benchmark their performance against others. The free feature is…

Do colours really have an impact on conversions when it comes to web design?

Is there a 'British' web colour palette, or a Chinese one? Have web users from around the world adjusted to a Western led approach to colour and is it standardised? Within this blog, these and other questions will be assessed by GlobalMaxer’s cultural conversion expert Joe Doveton. [caption id="attachment_29592" align="aligncenter" width="531"] Source: Visibone[/caption] From feeling blue to shaking off a black mood, phrases can express a linguistic synaesthesia of emotions, commonly shorthand for an experience articulated through colour. By no means is this limited to English either, with most languages having their own such as the German’s 'blauer Montag' (a day off work), the French 'une peur bleue' (a morbid fear) and the Swedish 'sväva på rosa moln' (to be in love). So, how important are the cues of colour in web…

Which brands are using Instagram effectively?

Instagram and advertising. It seems to be causing quite the stir as the Instagram user-base has already made it clear that they don’t want to see the platform commercialised by Zuckerberg. For example, late 2012 saw Instagram’s terms of service change and then change back when users objected to the possibility that their photos would be used in ads.

Brands just need some imagination

Whereas Zuckerberg may struggle to easily monetise his Billion Dollar investment, the reality for brands is that they don’t need to wait for advertising to gain exposure in Instagram, they need some imagination. There are a number of brands doing this already and surprisingly, Instagram users seem to love them for it. A number of brands have adapted well to the nature of Instagram and its users, appreciating that ‘exposure’ comes with adding value to the Instagram community, not trying to interrupt it. Companies…

Five steps to clean up your on-page act

If you were to take a survey of blog posts on SEO in the last year I’d be willing to hazard over 60 per cent concern themselves with content marketing and online PR – what we used to call off-page SEO. Attracting links to your website using good quality content is crucial to SEO, but it's worth remembering it’s immaterial if your site is not technically healthy...

By that I mean your website needs to be set up so it’s easy to crawl for the Googlebots, while also optimising for users at the same time. Often even the smallest on-site changes can have significant impact on your search rankings so they should be at the top of your to-do list. If you aren’t already, here are five steps you should take to optimise your on-page.

5 steps to optimise on-page

1. Don’t over-optimise

Stuffing keywords into your…

4 Steps to creating a plan for online customer acquisition

Having a digital marketing strategy for your organisation is essential to ensure your marketing activities are supporting specific marketing objectives. The rise in the number of different digital channels available to target your customer base continues to grow as shown by this BIG list of todays customer acquisition channels by David Sealey, so withough without a sound framework in place to manage, monitor and measure organisation performance, not having a digital communications plan could prove disastrous. In a previous post, I provided an actionable plan to help create a retention strategy using key digital tactics.  Retention by its definition is 'maintaining or preserving your existing customer base loyal to your product offering. This post will is an introduction to creating an outline framework to create a plan for online customer acquisition techniques - defined as tactics to help drive traffic or generating a lead or purchase…

This research report from Quantcast is particularly interesting, especially given their specialist expertise in the display advertising category.

The premiss of their report is essentially

People who are on a website have different needs to those searching for one, yet digital marketers look to optimise for clicks in similar ways. Search advertising is an understood CPC (cost per click) model, where buyers have an intent and are served advertising that they’re interested in. In short, if you’re happy with the CPC, it works. People on a website tend to want the information on the website, not look to click a banner and leave it, there is a reason or intention to click away at the earliest opportunity - regardless of whether it’s a display ad or link. Click conversion is better aligned to where there’s purchase intent and a desire to click. This is inevitably lower down the sales funnel. Click measurement is not a…

Examples to encourage more customers to buy via Facebook

Big or small, any merchant can sell on Facebook today by following a few simple steps. Here are a few examples of smaller businesses using Facebook promotions effectively before we get into the techniques I have seen which are effective. Nava Zahavi, a small-medium jewelry designer who started with only 100 fans on Facebook made 400% Return on Investment (ROI) selling on Facebook.Here is an example of how Nava Zahavi offers Fans vouchers in return for 'Likes'.

Source: Nava Zahavi Facebook Store

OnePiece, a Scandinavian fashion brand, had to take off its Facebook promotion after 24 hours as it sold over 1,000 pieces of the same item, and it just didn’t have…