Thank you to all our readers and writers for sharing in 2013!

In our last monthly round-up of the year I want to thank all our writers who have shared their insights across the year, particularly our regular writers, so in this summary of advice from December, I have thanked some of our most regular contributors alongside their most popular posts on the latest developments.

The most significant platform for developments this month to be aware of this month are in the SEO (mobile) and Email (Gmail) sections.

Many thanks also if you’re a regular reader too, especially if you have shared, asked or answered questions or commented via the site or a social network. Through “spreading the word” you have helped us grow and share our advice and insights more widely - 82% YoY on uniques the analytics tells us - so many thanks!

Do let us know of anything you'd like to…

A personal End of Year Review of Digital Marketing

You cannot escape the end of year reviews for pretty much everything at this time of year. You’ve got your best songs of the year, the best programmes, sports personality of the year (Andy Murray = best sports personality really?!!), best film….like we said, everything! I am not complaining though, because here at MMT Digital we enjoy a good end of year review as much as anyone which is why I have decided to do one of my own.

A 12 months summary of my world of technology, web design and build, and marketing

Below is a summary of some of the most interesting subjects in the world of technology,web design & build and marketing that have caught my attention in the last 12 months…

January – March

Give me a slice of Rasberry Pi As this is the season…

Key questions to ask and insights to use when deciding on the best investment of your precious time and money

Using the latest insights showing how consumers and businesses are using digital media and technology is powerful in helping decide where you need to invest more/less time or budget. Using the right insights can also make an impact when presenting to colleagues or clients about improvements to marketing. In this post, I round-up some of the significant stats from 2013 which show the big trends in consumer behaviour across different digital platforms and channels that will help you question your priorities in 2014. If you’re looking for specific insights about a particular channel or network, perhaps in a region or country, we compile these together to make them easier for our members to find when creating presentations - see our Online marketing usage statistics and our online marketing benchmarks compilation.

Social…

7 steps to a better project estimate brief and costing

Whether you use spreadsheets or an automated / integrated marketing project management service platform, the important thing is to get your estimating discipline right from the start. Whether you're developing an estimate for in-house digital projects or for your clients, a lack of accurate estimating will lead to an impact on your profitability and credibility for future projects. By ‘accurate’ I mean estimates that factor in all the resources / roles and time that will be required to meet the project objectives and at rates that the business has set to achieve a desired profit. Underestimating the time required, the numbers of people involved and / or the level of seniority or experience required on a project is sometimes done deliberately (in the belief that only low costs will attract new work). That’s a commercial decision for you to make but my…

22 Digital Marketing techniques that demand attention

Update: I update this post annually with a new poll on the techniques that readers think is important. You can see the latest poll in this post on Digital Marketing Trends for 2015 - in the article I have also covered what I see as 30 of the top tools for managing and optimising digital marketing in 2015. Many of the trends I identified below will remain key digital marketing activities in 2015. Each year, I review the latest trends in Digital Marketing to help define digital technologies and marketing techniques which will give options for companies to grow their businesses. In 2013 we reviewed top-level digital marketing trends, asking which trends will give the greatest commercial benefits, this year I drill down to the next level to give more specific practical recommendations to increase effectiveness.

What are the major trends in digital marketing for the year ahead?

To…

10 essential requirements when selecting a new marketing agency

Selecting an agency from a short list - using the scorecard and transparent process

In the first post in this series I outlined 8 options to shortlist alternative marketing agencies as part of the process of managing pitches to select an agency. In this post, I look at the next step, covering 10 steps or requirements, that in my experience, help make the pitching process run smoothly and help towards selecting the best agency.

These tips support using the agency selection scorecard we have developed to help marketers review potential agency partners on both a qualitative and quantitative basis as part of the pitching process. You'll see that some of the evaluation criteria are more relevant to initial short listing whilst others are more relevant to a detailed pitch evaluation.

We have kept all criteria on one…

The most popular jobs in digital marketing show what employers are looking for

We showed in our recent review that digital marketing is now bigger than Internet marketing based on searches for knowledge and services related to digital marketing. As demand for digital marketing has grown, so has the number of specialist digital jobs needed in companies and agencies. Google Trends shows us that searches for Jobs in Digital Marketing has overtaken Jobs in Internet Marketing and continued to grow through 2013.

What is the talent gap between digital marketing jobs and resources

Earlier in 2013 we created the second infographic in this post showing the most in-demand online marketing jobs based on LinkedIn skills and the popularity of online marketing jobs in the UK. We have now added this related infographic which shows the Talent gap between…

8 techniques to choose the right marketing agencies to pitch to you

This article supports the Smart Insights agency selection template. The template helps businesses with the next step in the process, which is using a scorecard to help you choose the best agency when several are pitching to you. This workbook details a range of selection criteria which you’ll glean during either desk research, due diligence stage and/or at face to face meetings with an agency (either ‘chemistry’ meetings or pitch presentations). In the first part of this article I suggest how you can pull together a short list of potential agency partners.  In a follow-up article I will look at approaches to running the actual selection or pitch process. I say ‘or’ because you don’t necessarily need to run a full-blown pitch process (which can be very time consuming for both you and the agencies involved) for smaller projects or where an…

Our monthly roundup of the latest developments and advice in 5 key areas of digital marketing

1. Strategy and planning

#PlanToSucceed. In October we launched this new campaign offering free marketing planning tools. The idea behind the campaign is to encourage better planning in the countdown to 2014. We also created this new Slideshare to inspire improved marketing planning approaches.

Managing Digital Marketing in 2014? Last month I shared my ideas on 2014 marketing trends. We’re keen also to keen to develop understanding of how marketers will manage marketing in 2014, so we’re now following up with a joint survey with the Technology for Marketing and Advertising Conference (TFM&A 2014) - please take the survey to receive the free report advising on approaches to managing digital marketing in 2014.

Latest technology innovations?. Closely related, in…

What and Why and When And How and Where and Who?

What and Why and When And How and Where and Who are words we use throughout the day, but not necessarily together! Combining them gives a simple check that you’re you're using the right approach for business planning. In this post, I’ll outline what to consider and link through to some posts giving more detail. I like to think of them in this order when relating to planning, although they don’t have the nice poetic rhyme which their original source has, as I explain at the end of the post.

WHY plan?

Start here, since the need to plan isn’t obvious, or at least making planning happen isn’t obvious according to our polling which shows that over half of businesses don’t have a digital marketing plan - here are 10 reasons why we think…