Without setting clear marketing objectives, you’re basically directionless – and working to achieve vanity metrics that don’t necessarily help you achieve your overall business goals
Digital marketing objectives underpin all marketing strategies. After all, how do you know what you're working towards without clear, actionable, and achievable metrics? Setting marketing goals should always be the priority as they will be the basis of your entire strategy.
By achieving your digital marketing objectives, you’re also helping reach your overall business goals, whether that’s boosting your overall sales or improving awareness of your brand.
Setting marketing objectives is, on one hand, a great way to motivate yourself and your team and work towards achieving better results for your business.
On the other hand, objectives and KPI-setting is about much more than just saying “I want to achieve that and that” – it’s how you can develop a plan or strategy that will help support your vision…
What do you think is the best, i.e. most useful marketing model? Download our free RACE Growth System guide and learn the skills and techniques you need to boost your marketing strategy
You may have noticed we're fans of using practical models as tools to support marketing strategy development. We believe a clear, simple model gives us a framework to assess how we're doing things now compared to our competitors and plan growth strategies for the future. They're also great for communicating the purpose and reason behind a strategy you are pursuing.
But there's a problem - over the years, the number of marketing frameworks available has increased. Some are academic, based only on theory but have no "real world" credentials. Whereas others have been developed with no consideration of universal marketing strategy and planning fundamentals.
So many marketing models have been developed over the years that it can be overwhelming to know…
The cultural digital transformation we experience every day highlights the importance of continuous learning in all aspects of business and marketing. How can you leverage training and skills development planning to achieve your goals this year?
The landscape of today’s workplace isn’t what it was twenty years ago. Today’s environment is both fast-paced and competitive, which makes it all the more important that employers find a way to keep employees energized - often with an employee training and skills development plan.
This changing nature of work requires additional training strategies focused on enhancing learning agility, transferability of skills and opportunities to explore adjacent, in-demand skills.
Digital transformation is an area of skills development that demands attention. Companies need to improve the effectiveness of their online communications now that digital channels are one of the main techniques customers use for selecting and buying products and services.
If you're looking to create or improve your marketing…
Adapting your digital marketing strategy could help your business overcome the effects of inflation
Inflation as a consequence of the pandemic has affected most if not all industries, and digital marketing is no exception. As businesses try to overcome the challenges caused by the current economic state, it is necessary for companies to evaluate their digital marketing strategy to ensure they are reaching the right audience online.
What is inflation and how does it affect businesses?
As a marketing professional rather than an economist, it is probably best to give you a more official and informed definition of inflation! According to the IMF, inflation is a broad term used to describe the increased cost of living or an overall rise in prices. It is often mentioned in relation to a specific country.
Inflation: the global picture
With consumers spending less on non-essentials…
Your ultimate guide to creating a user journey map with step-by-step instructions, a template, and an example to follow
Creating a user journey map has many benefits for both your users and your team. A journey map will help you discover friction points for the user and opportunities to improve user experience. Ultimately, you’ll discover opportunities to increase engagement and build customer loyalty.
The process of creating a user journey map will help foster team alignment, clarify priorities and surface opportunities for increased revenue or saved customer service costs. Creating a journey map means that you’re prioritizing user experience as a means to create long-term value.
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Template to use
Don’t be intimidated by the thought of jumping straight into creating your user journey map. Starting with a blank…
The decision to act, or not to act, can have a knock-on effect on how your company will weather the storm of inflation and change in 2022
In our recent LinkedIn poll, 30% of respondents admitted to making no changes to their marketing strategies in light of inflation.
Suggested changes we gave include making marketing more efficient (majority response at 58%) and reducing spend. Only 7% are adapting their strategy to reduce spend - which shows most of the ‘adapters’ are doing so with a growth mindset.
But, alarmingly, the same poll showed that 30% are not planning to adjust their strategy, or were not sure. The ‘not sure’ answer indicated, to me, either slow decision-making or poor management, neither being great for reacting to a global phenomenon. So what can we learn from this?
65% of marketers are adapting in light of…
What are the differences in digital marketing for business-to-business compared to business-to-consumer audiences?
Since working in digital marketing I have found that much of the discussion and examples of digital marketing focus on B2C marketers and well-known big brands. Yet, when I have trained marketers, it's a different picture with at least half of the people on the course working in B2B digital marketing.
We also see the importance of B2B marketing to digital commerce if we look at the latest statistics on global E-commerce from UN trade and development group UNCTAD.
The value of global B2B e-commerce in 2019 was $21.8 trillion, representing 82% of all e-commerce, including both sales over online market platforms and electronic data interchange (EDI) transactions.
We also have to remember that many B2B transactions are conducted by more traditional invoiced arrangements and contracts, so not even…
Find new brand building strategies to delight your customers online with our RACE Growth System
Consumer branded goods marketing is all about reaching and delighting your customers in a time and place that suits them. Increasingly, consumer goods marketers are turning to online and social media marketing for brand-building strategies.
B2C marketing is an ever-evolving discipline, because customers' tastes and expectations are, naturally, always developing. With the rapid digitalization we've seen particularly over the last 2 years, the change of pace is faster, and it can be hard for marketers to keep up.
Moreover, in a competitive marketplace, businesses are struggling with the challenge of growing their brand alongside also generating leads and sales. A large market share doesn't necessarily translate into a high turnover if you can't move prospects down your marketing funnel.
Optimize your consumer branded goods marketing funnel with our RACE Growth System
Without a structured marketing strategy in place, many consumer-facing…
Marketing is crucial for businesses of all shapes and sizes, no matter your budget size. Read on to find out more about digital marketing for startups
Interested in digital marketing for startups? So you recently started a business. Or maybe you have a small business that you’re trying to get off the ground and running.
Of course, now you need to start getting the word out about your start-up. The great news is, digital marketing is highly accessible to businesses of all shapes and sizes, no matter your budget size.
But digital marketing is really wide. If you know nothing about it, you can easily get lost in the noise, which means you can waste your efforts and have little results to show for it.
On the other hand, if you do digital marketing the right way, you can increase your customer base, survive, and even thrive as a business.
To get the right results,…
Today, content marketing is one of the most effective forms of marketing. Find out how digital and content marketing managers can boost their content strategies in 2022
Businesses are using content marketing as a strategy to reach and convert prospects. But are they getting the best results possible? To achieve these results, you need to focus on improving these 9 most important content marketing skills.
1. Content creation skills
Even though it’s obvious, very few content marketers can create the type of content that will achieve great results for their business. First, content writing is important for your blogs and other important website pages.
To improve content writing skills and eliminate blunders, a marketer has to learn about grammar. Grammarly is a tool that can assist writers to proofread their written content.
Content marketers need to improve their multimedia content creation skills to connect…
