5 key themes of Modern Marketing innovation
Innovation is a concept that is referenced regularly in marketing content: from blog posts to keynotes, it is widely acknowledged as a critical ingredient for success in the digital age. Yet, for all the importance attributed to innovation, it is rarely analysed or explored.
We decided to take a closer look to understand how marketers perceive innovation both inside and outside their own organisations. How do marketers define innovation? What are the main enablers of innovation? Do they feel their own marketing is innovative? We wanted to answer these questions, and more, to understand the key drivers and challenges. We went about doing this by surveying the attendees of our 2014 UK Roadshow in London. This group was made-up of senior-level marketers, representing a wide variety of sectors; both consumer and business-to-business.
The Five Key Marketing Innovation themes
From the survey results, we distilled five key themes,…
Our monthly round-up of the main developments in marketing
The main platform developments this month were Twitter Digits and the relaunch of Facebook Atlas which we report on in our Social Media section. We also heard about Google's reinvention of email through Inbox - although there's not much to report on just yet, we'll have to see when it officially goes to Public Beta - request your invite here!
Strategy and Planning
This month we’ve been focusing on an aspect of Digital Marketing that you don’t hear discussed very often, but we think will be discussed a lot more in the future as more businesses start to get the fundamentals of digital marketing right. That’s Digital Marketing Optimization - check out our post for why we see it is important and how the best results will go to those businesses who succeed in getting People, Process and Tools to work effectively…
Our round-up of the latest advice and developments in digital marketing with a focus on customer experience and trends this month
This month we published The Managing Customer Journeys Report 2014, a new research report in conjunction with Ecommerce Expo. It’s a free download for all members via our Customer Experience Strategy page which also contains details of the talk and this visual to help you assess your approach to managing customer experience.
We were keen to commission this research since, with the increase in the complexity of the path to purchase across Paid, Owned and Earned media it’s becoming more difficult and more important to manage customer experiences!
It focuses on approaches to managing customer experiences and suggests how businesses are progressing across these experience management maturity levels.
Digital Marketing Trends 2015 - Dave Chaffey’s annual prediction of the marketing trends that will be important in…
#DigitalImpact2014 transforming your digital world
Our showreel gives the vibe of our first conference held in London on 17th September 2014 based on Smart Insights members who attended, speakers and partners.
In a previous post, we gave a visual, Twitter picture summary of the recent Smart Insights Digital Marketing conference. In this post, I've summarised what I thought were the most useful insights from listening to the speakers, linked to more detailed posts from some of the speakers. I listened to speakers from start-ups to large corporations sharing best practice, their mistakes and insight into how we can manage digital transformation; from planning, to managing and optimization.
My colleague Dave introduced the conference, by sharing key models (PR Smith's SOSTAC® and Smart Insights RACE) on how to plan for digital transformation through structured models. He showed how John Lewis ranks as the No…
Travel, retail and brand examples of marketing with the new virtual reality headset
You will know that the Oculus Rift is one of the hot technologies for 2015. It came to prominence in March this year when Mark Zuckerberg announced Facebook's acquisition of the VR platform explaining that, as he sees it, it is much more than a new gaming platform.
'This is really a new communication platform. By feeling truly present, you can share unbounded spaces and experiences with the people in your life. Imagine sharing not just moments with your friends online, but entire experiences and adventures'.
While no consumer launch date has been set yet, Oculus Rift Dev Kit 2, a developer version with headset has recently started shipping and it is expected to be released in 2015 with a price in the range of $200 to $300. At this price it seems inevitable…
What are the marketing opportunities, implications and actions for brands, businesses and marketers?
Tech watchers have become used to the regular September announcements from Apple. After a couple of years without major updates to the product line we were expecting a genuinely new Apple product and it’s here in the shape of the Apple Watch.
Of course, Apple announcements are huge news across mainstream and tech channels, so what can be said that hasn’t already be said!? So I’ll keep our alert brief focusing on the names, timelines and marketing implications for businesses and brand. There were hours of announcements across the Apple Live event, but there are 3 main releases to be aware of.
1. Apple Watch
Release date: Early 2015
Cost: $349 (£216)
Resolution: Not disclosed!
Battery life: Hours not days!
You will have heard that the Apple Watch will be touch screen, feature Siri voice interactions…
Our alerts and advice on the "must-know" developments in digital marketing
In August our two most significant alerts were about changes to the Facebook and Google algorithm - check these out in the sections on search and social media marketing below.
Now we’re into September we’re into the final build-up to our Digital Impact conference which is in central London on the 17th September.
We’re looking forward to meeting members at the event where we'll show how to make a bigger impact with your digital marketing with in-depth case studies and workshops covering all the digital marketing techniques we cover in our monthly updates, that’s Digital Transformation, SEO, AdWords, Content, Social and Email marketing plus improving desktop and mobile experiences using CRO and analytics.
Strategy and planning
What influences purchase of your product or service? - Our new infographic showing how your marketing communications should match your customer’s…
6 examples of businesses building new systems to innovate their marketing using digital technology
Against the backdrop of CMO’s spending more on technology than CIO’s there has been a lot of debate about where digital strategy should exist within an organisation. Is this missing the point though? Perhaps the question we should be asking is when will corporate and marketing strategy simply become part of an overarching digital strategy that is responsible for the direction of business as a whole.
Since I work in a digital agency you could say I’m bound to see things this way but let’s take a look at the facts. At present many of the conversations that we at Blueleaf have as an agency will start with a brief for a new website but increasingly such discussions go on to encompass marketing issues that are fundamental to the organisation as a whole.
G.R.I.N. and bear it
This is because digital technology…
Our monthly summary of the biggest ‘need to know’ developments in digital marketing
In this month’s round-up, the two main alerts are in the sections about search marketing (notifying about a major Google algorithm update) and social media marketing (an alert about the impending Facebook brand page change).
We start by looking at advice on applying two classic marketing planning techniques.
Strategy and planning
Applying Pareto’s 80:20 rule to marketing - this post proved one of the most popular of the month - many find Pareto’s rule familiar!
Examples of TOWS analysis. Everyone in business knows about SWOT analysis, but I find when training that, relatively few know the much more powerful TOWS analysis that helps you plan forwards rather than look backwards. In this post I take another look at the technique.
Mistakes to avoid when creating…
What’s New in Marketing? Our summary of digital marketing advice and developments in April 2014
Three of the main social networks updated their profile pages in April. Have you updated yours to fit in with the new designs? See the social media marketing section for details.
Strategy and planning
Key digital marketing priorities for 2014?. In this article Dan reviewed new research from Deloitte/Exact Target which discusses priorities - how do yours compare?Take our digital marketing healthcheck. Have you taken our free healthcheck? We’ve updated this to include our latest research and recommendations. It’s designed to be quick to take with just 5 questions across each of our RACE Planning framework.
Improving results with the aggregation of marginal gains philosophy. In this article I took a look at applying Dave Brailsford’s philosophy of excellence to improve results from digital marketing.…
