What do C-suite level managers think drives their growth?
In our new Chart of the Day feature, we will share insights to inform your approach to digital marketing. This will include the latest benchmarks of results from digital marketing like conversion or clickthrough rates; consumer and business adoption of digital media and, as in this case, responses from businesses to manage digital transformation
In this survey by Forbes Insights, 255 company executives, 65% of which were from the C-suite level were asked about which digital technologies were working best at attracting new customers for their businesses in 2016. Their response shows that social media, Marketing Automation and Digital Advertising all performed well. It is interesting how large the differences are between regions. For example, European execs found digital advertising far less effective than execs in other areas. This is perhaps because ad blocking rates are far high in France and Germany than they…
Go 'Above the Clutter' and see how CMOs at the top of their game run their marketing campaigns
The founder of the CMO club, Peter Krainik, has just launched a new digital series which will take us behind the scenes with top American CMOs, to find out how they run their marketing departments and successfully push through changes to make them more creative, innovative and efficient.
The series offers a fun, no holds barred journey into the world of running the marketing of a huge business, whilst being refreshingly light on buzzwords and BS more generally.
A new one will be coming out every Monday over at 'Above the Clutter', and also features analysis from IBM's marketing team. The first episode is now out, and takes a look at how the CMO of Home Depo stays connected with her staff and customers by taking time to work in stores so that marketing decisions are…
Why Your Marketing Department Needs a New Marketing Plan and Marketing Budget — and Some Templates to Get You Started
Managing a marketing department often means having to prove that your marketing budget is money well spent. Since the ROI of marketing isn’t always obvious, it can be easy to get caught up in the never-ending cycle of reacting to analytics and reports. Chasing visitors, followers, subscribers, leads and sales can become a game of chasing fleeting metrics instead of thoughtfully executing a plan to accomplish the big-picture goals of your marketing department.
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This is a problem that can be solved with two vital documents:…
Convincing "the boss" of the need for bigger digital marketing budgets
Those of us who would describe ourselves as ‘digital specialists’ have a vested interest in evangelizing digital; we love it, we believe in it and we want to do more. However, working in real-world organisations, we need to make the business case to convince those who control the budgets that we require to implement our digital plans.
In this post I'll give some ideas on making the business case to the company owner, finance or marketing managers. Of course, every boss has a different personality. What works for you?
Otherwise change won’t be fast enough and the effectiveness of our marketing activity is likely to decline as consumers or business customers switch to new platforms; we risk “missing the boat”.
The reality is that “The Digital Revolution” has not resulted in whole new…
Should you just live “in-the-moment” or should you plan ahead using different planning horizons?
At Smart Insights we believe that businesses with a more strategic planning approach to their marketing and digital marketing are more likely to succeed in the long-term, despite the fact that many businesses don’t have a long-term digital or marketing plan. We’re not saying that those with a more ad hoc approach aren’t capable of doing great marketing that can get results, they certainly are. Rather, we’re saying that we’ve seen that they may miss out on core “always-on” digital marketing techniques that need to be prioritised and resourced over ongoing campaign activities which become all consuming and still often get the lion’s share of attention.
In our research into how businesses manage online marketing, we were interested to see how marketers plan. We saw that short-term non-strategic planning was most common among businesses who answered.
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The self-proclaimed "world’s gathering place for all who thrive on the business of consumer technologies", CES 2016 has been as popular as ever. Here's our roundup of the most important new tech innovations relevant to marketers.
More marketers than ever from across industries are now attending the huge Consumer-Electronics show, CES which takes place every January in Las Vegas. Marketers now account for more than 15% of the attendees (26,587 to be precise, according to the CES), so we thought we'd take a look at the latest innovations which we could be using in the year(s) ahead.
An increase of 9% attendance from between 2013 and 2015, points towards a trend and highlights the rising importance of digital platforms for engaging consumers. So much so that it lead AdAge to suggest that the “Future of CES Belongs to Marketers”.
"Digital isn't a destination. It's a foundation. What…
Showing how switching from working client to agency side can help your career progression
After spending the best part of a decade as an in-house client-side marketer, I recently made the decision to experience life as a marketer within an agency. My ambition is to continually develop myself as a rounded marketer, something I’ve tried to demonstrate using the ‘T-shaped marketer’ approach and I felt the change to agency-side marketing would help me to meet my personal development goals.
There are a number of advantages for marketers who experience both agency and client-side marketing and in this post I’ve tried to summarise some of the stand-out differences that I've experienced and how they can help marketers looking to develop their careers.
Culture
One of the stand-out differences I found when moving from client to agency-side was the company culture. I'd come…
Making purpose core to your marketing strategy
As a futurist, I always remind my clients that the future isn’t just somewhere we go but something we actively create. Simply because our actions today directly influence and shape our business of tomorrow.
In this article I introduce some of the key trends I discussed in my Smart Insights webinar on December 18th 2014- The Marketing Trends Management Toolkit - free registration to view here:
If you attend the webinar you will have a chance to win a free copy of my new book the Trends Management Toolkit with a prize draw…
The why and how of writing a business case for marketing investment
‘You’ll need a Business Case for that’ are the words that often strike dread to the hearts of those trying to seek investment in digital initiatives from their FD or CMO. The cynical amongst us suspect it’s delivered with the intent to kill off an idea through forcing us to ‘jump through hoops’ and ‘bureaucracy’.
But as a marketing or Ecommerce manager, the Business Case is actually your best friend! In this post I'll step you through what I have found in my experience is required for an effective business case which will get support from colleagues. If you're an Expert member of Smart Insights, I've also developed a Word template of a Business case for download.
Why have a Business Case?
Packed with solid preparation, a well-researched, well-considered document showing clear…
Tis the season for Digital Marketing Exams. It's time to F.R.E.A.K.O.U.T!
So my cohort of IDM friends have recently been speaking about the upcoming IDM Digital Marketing Diploma exams. Speaking might be better rephrased as "freaking out". Why? well, we are all feeling pretty overwhelmed by the scale of the digital marketing landscape these days.
Not one day has passed since (well, since I can remember) without some new update through my inbox on... Google, Facebook Advertising, Snapchat Stories, new entrant Periscope, the topic of Big Data!, permission and breaches, cookies, convergence, customer acquisition, integration, RTB, mobile, Panda, Penguin, penalties, optimisation, keywords , SEO, PPC, programmatic, Affiliates, retargeting, ad blocking,first party, third party data, eCRM, loyalty, advocacy, own media, earned media, bought media. Youtube, influencers, analytics, dashboards, automation, apps, opt in opt out, search, social, traffic, CTR's, OR's, CPM, CPC, CPA, LTV, OVP, AMC (agh). And then there is the world of Ad networks! .....The…
