Using different insights tools to build an understanding of the opportunities for an agency to create value for a client
In a previous article, I defined and explained the need for marketing agencies and consultants to develop a robust Discovery process when they start working with new clients or on new market pitches or projects.
In the second part of the article, I’ve broken them down the discovery process into nine distinct activities covering different insights sources, focusing on those needed for a digital or multichannel marketing project. Exactly who undertakes these will depend on your agency or team size, individual experience and skillsets. You will need to make a call on both the depth and breadth of discovery undertaken depending on the size of the opportunity/potential impact on the client business in the long run as mentioned in the…
A vital step towards marketing digital transformation
In the current climate, digital interactions between brands and their B2B and B2C partners have become a major feature in their customers' buying journey.
Given the complexity of customer interactions via different touchpoints and channels across the modern customer lifecycle as shown in the visual, planning frameworks can help simplify the analysis and prioritization of digital marketing activities.
It is sometimes difficult to orchestrate marketing activities in order to ensure that the right digital tactics are used at the right time and in the right place in that journey, to nurture a customer lead. However, in the partner world it’s a lot more complex, because before you embark on the development of any marketing campaign with or through a partner, an imperative step is to market to that partner to raise awareness of your brand and educate…
Benchmarking allows you to see how well you are faring against your competitors, allowing you to pinpoint what you do well and where improvements need to be made.
Measuring your success is more than looking at how much traffic is coming to your site and what your conversion rate is. You can’t really get a true idea of how you are performing unless you compare yourself to your competitors.
‘How do we compare to our competitors?’ and ‘What does excellence look like?’ are questions you should be asking when developing your digital marketing strategy. While many companies are asking these questions, they may not know exactly what answers they are looking for.
In order to benchmark your performance against your competitors, you need to know exactly what you should be comparing and how to structure your review and recommendations. This is where our comprehensive benchmarking templates come in.
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The biggest delusion you can have about your venture is “My idea is completely new, I have no competitors”. If you truly have no competitors, you probably have no market either
Getting an edge over your competitors is important, and only possible when you truly and deeply understand the competition. Which brings us to one of the best ways of gaining new insights for your company:
Market research!
With the advent of sophisticated software and technology, marketers today have the ability to dig deep into the activities of their competitors and get some incredible new ideas about their audience. Because of these reasons and more, it is immensely important to conduct regular and thorough research into your compadres.
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Web scraping is one of the best tools for competitive content analysis. It allows to automate data collection and get the deepest insight into competitors’ content
What do you usually do when you want to purchase something or learn a new skill? You take your smartphone or laptop and search for reviews and how-tos trying to find content that will satisfy your intent. Fortunately, there are tonnes of content available nowadays.
[si_guide_block id="15270" title="Download our Individual Member Resource – Competitor benchmarking guide" description="Benchmarking is vital when you're refreshing a website through a major redesign, but it can also be useful to review more regularly to see how competitors' marketing changes."/]
Things get more complicated when you are on the other side. If you are a startup that wants to launch a content marketing campaign, you may realize that the market is quite saturated (not to say overwhelmed).
According to the …
How digital agencies and consultants can use Discovery on digital marketing projects to improve the value they deliver to their customers
Over the last few years, I have seen an increasing focus amongst agencies on improving their client discovery projects. In this article, I describe a process I recommend to run effective discovery. It can be applied both for onboarding new customers, but also applied for prospects when pitching.
The post is aimed at marketing and in particular digital marketing agencies and consultants, but client-side marketing teams looking to review their position in the market may also find it useful.
More details on the questions to ask during discovery are available in this client discovery process checklist template I have developed for Business members. You may also find the brand audit in the Smart Insights Agency Toolkit useful.
The term “Discovery” is not used…
Good market research ensures that your site is optimized for the best customer experience while also helping you make sales
With growing competition, SEO is not the same as it used to be. Nowadays, it is critical for a business to strategically think about its customers and identify what they want. Thereafter, it is essential to prepare content that completely aligns with the existing demands of the customers.
Why market research is essential for SEO?
SEO is all about optimizing your website to better meet the needs of your customers, with improved rankings coming from doing so. Market research helps you to understand the exact needs of your customers so you're able to address them. If you are able to identify what your customers want from you then you can target the best keywords and write relevant content that genuinely helps your prospects.
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A quick-fire guide to making the case for greater investment in market research
There’s so much you can learn from customer satisfaction surveys, exit-intent surveys, claims testing, ad testing, concept testing and by simply getting closer to your customers.
Market research is always changing but maybe isn’t talked about as an industry as much as other parts of marketing, such as SEO, paid media and even CRO.
There’s a whole new world of opportunity out there to get insights, quicker, faster, and cheaper than ever. Research should always be done to the highest quality, with standards respected – and I think, combined with its often-lengthy timescale, this scares people off. But it shouldn’t. You wouldn’t produce a blog post without typo checking it and you wouldn’t write an ad for Google Ads without making sure the message is relevant to the audience you’re targeting. Market research is no different.
It’s easier than you may…
Chart of the Day: Just 30% of marketers have completed a full audit of their data-collecting methods
Data protection is hardly brand new, but new EU law and news of data breaches from the social media giants Facebook meant that everyone and their grandmother (who you have to generously keep showing how to check her emails) know about GDPR.
How companies gather, store, and handle their customer’s data has never been under more scrutiny. Naturally, marketers across the globe have followed suit and completed full audits of the technology and communication channels they use to collect their customers’ data. Right?
Well, research from CMO Council tells us that 30% of them have. Big gold star to them because it’s extremely likely that a review of your current methods will yield possible improvements for how your company handles data.
You won’t necessarily find…
Chart of the Day: Research for 2018 shows the dramatic growth of Snapchat and Facebook static for most age groups in the UK
The government-commissioned annual "Communications Market Review" is one of the best sources for compiling data on Internet and Social Media usage.
Variations in age-related usage of social networks
The latest report, published last month has a good visualization summarising the most recent changes in use of the main social networks between 2016 to 2018:
The visualization gives a great summary of the changes in three of the main consumer network:
Facebook - Static or declining in most age groups except the older (55+ age group) which is now the biggest group of users
Instagram - Increase in usage across all age groups with the largest, the 25 to 34 age group followed by 18 to 24
Snapchat - The largest increase…
