If you want a strong team you'll need to treat them right: 6 techniques to build a cohesive culture
A recent article about Amazon’s work culture shocked many, including the company’s CEO Jeff Bezos himself.
Regardless of what’s really happening at Amazon, this ongoing situation should serve as a cautionary tale of what happens when a company’s public image doesn’t appear to align with its employees’ experiences.
Big companies such as Amazon, Apple, and Walmart can weather bad press because of the value they deliver. Consumers might shake their heads at reports of demeaning worker treatment, but they’re not going to stop buying iPhones or cancel their Prime subscriptions.
But for the rest of us, ongoing internal unrest will undoubtedly hurt external output. You can’t expect overworked, underappreciated employees to consistently deliver high-quality products. You can’t expect the public to overlook…
Choosing a conversion optimisation agency is a major businesses decision, here's how to choose the right partner
It’s great that you’ve made the decision to start a Conversion Optimisation programme but the hard part is deciding which agency deserves your investment. So where do you start? This post will give you a few key areas to help with your selection process to ensure you end up with the right partner for successful optimisation.
1. Chemistry
CIC Chemistry Show by David Carroll. Flickr
Arguably the most important questions are, ‘who are they?’ and ‘can we work with them?’ You are likely to be spending the best part of a year working with your chosen agency, so first and foremost you need to like them as people. Ideally you should arrange to meet with the strategist(s) you’ll primarily be working with, at the pitching…
Discover your business's ability to Plan, Reach, Act, Convert and Engage
Applying the many digital channels and technologies to your business is no easy task. The industry moves fast, and there are a large number of different disciplines to master (see our list of the top 20 digital marketing skills). Email marketing, SEO, Social Media Marketing, Conversion Rate Optimisation, the list goes on, and each one requires a very different set of skills and awareness of the success factors for different platforms.
Amongst the many different skills we need to master for digital marketing, it's easy to lose sight of the big picture of how a business is using digital marketing to compete. Our research shows that many businesses don't have a digital marketing plan, so knowing how to structure a plan can be difficult.
To help provide a structure for creating a strategy, when Smart Insights first launched, we developed this Excel digital…
Which of these skills does the modern marketer need too?
Throughout this week we've been looking at the digital skills needed by marketers and found a large percentage of marketers roles is now taken up by managing digital activities. Here's a round-up of all our posts and new report on the level of digital marketing skills. This means marketers are starting to need many of the skills previously reserved for IT professionals. So we thought it would be interesting to see how the role of the IT professional has developed over the past 25 years, and where it is headed.
As Gen Y steps up to take centre stage in the employment pool, and technology increasingly dominates our life and work, it is predicted that there will be an 18% growth in tech jobs by 2022.
This infographic looks at how tech roles have evolved…
Basic Tips and Tricks Every Business and Marketer Can Use to Prove The Source of Campaign ROI
Whether or not your business is advertising, you’re always marketing. Every phone call, mailer, coupon, Facebook post, email… everything is a representation of your brand. Knowing what marketing piece works and especially what doesn’t, reveals what steps to take in the future. Numbers don’t lie. The analytical success and failures of your pieces cannot be ignored. In order to hone your marketing efforts, tracking, both print and digital, is no longer an option, it’s a mandatory, tedious process, but like everything, there are tricks to marketing campaign tracking.
Track Everything
Your marketing pieces aren’t just advertising, they’re raw data!
Phone Calls, emails, web banners, social media posts, mail pieces, billboards, TV commercials, radio spots -- every campaign can, and should, be monitored to the…
Help up build a picture of the current digital skills landscape
This infographic shows that there are 1.46 million people working in digital companies in the UK, with 45,000 more jobs in digital currently being advertised.
Digital marketing requires a huge breadth of skills, with some marketers specialising in key areas such as SEO, content marketing or Paid Search. Many however are generalists, who have a wide set of skills. This can be highly useful, but it is also tricky to keep all these skills up to date.
Some 5 million people globally work in digital marketing, and as the industry rapidly grows a skills gap is developing.
We’ve come up with a list of 20 skills that digital marketers may require, and…
How do your digital marketing skills compare?
Developing your Digital Marketing skills is now crucial to staying relevant in your career and, for employers too, 'digital talent development' is vital to stay competitive. Through our resources and blog articles we're keen to help members develop their skills and of those in their team. To help here, we will be grateful if you take our new Digital Skills research survey which will show which skills are most sought after and the best techniques to gain and develop your skills.
To develop this new research we have again teamed up with the organisers of the TFM&A and eCommerce Expo where the research will be presented - thanks for their input too - full details of the upcoming eCommerce Expo conference is available at the end of the survey.
We will let you know by email when the full report is published and available for…
Simon Swan interviews David Edmunson-Bird about teaching Digital Marketing in Higher Education
In this interview Simon Swan talked to David Edmunson-Bird about the opportunities and challenges of teaching Digital Marketing in Higher Education.
David, AKA @Groovegenerator, is a Principal Lecturer in Digital Marketing and Enterprise and Associate Director at Manchester Metropolitan University and has worked for leading companies including BT. He has been involved in the teaching and training of Digital Business since 2004 and was active in setting up the BA (Hons) in Digital Media/Marketing and MSc in Digital Marketing, some of the first and best regarded Digital Marketing qualifications in the UK.
Q1. MMU seem to have been an early adopter in grasping the opportunity to create recognised digital qualifications, do you see this as a necessary in helping to drive awareness for MMU and…
Why is recruitment marketing one of the most creative applications of content marketing?
As we claw out of recession, a now-searing job market has been flipped in the pan. Those with experience and marketable skills are finding they now constitute choosers as opposed to the beggars of years previous. Although there is still plenty of competition, skilled graduates now have scope to play hard-to-get with recruiters. This is why I think, that one the most competitive applications of creative content marketing right now is in recruitment.
So, what’s the return on investment (ROI) for a recruitment areerontent strategy? You could say that staff retention and productivity are obviously measurable vectors, and on a macro-economic scale, ones that go hand-in-hand with our needs as a nation.
Skill shortages and Graduate needs
Findings by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) published last…
Census of Digital Marketing Managers reveals improved integration needed in many businesses
Over 200 Digital Marketing Managers in the UK, working in companies with turnovers over £2o million, were contacted by an independent research agency commissioned by Marin Software for this census. The top 5 priorities revealed from their research were themed on integration; 46% of respondents will be focusing on improving their on and off-line integration, 37% working towards integrated digital marketing disciplines and Managers will be working across teams, more closely with their IT/Tech departments.
In terms of digital marketing integration, 12% were not integrating it in their organisation and only 27% felt it was fully integrated.
Download Marin's Software's 'UK Digital Marketing Manager's Census' Report for more details (registration is required).
To help marketers find the right job in…
