Debunking the misconceptions that may prevent you investing wisely in strategies and resources while creating Social Media Campaigns
As many as 72% of all internet users are active on social media, with 936 million daily active users of Facebook worldwide, one billion YouTube users and 270 million active Twitter users. And these figures are only growing each day. Given these statistics, it’s no wonder why social media has become the fuel driving the modern marketing machine. But, there is a lot of competition - just check out the Smart Insights infographic of the number of posts, tweets and status updates in 60 seconds.
It's understandable that there are many myths and misconceptions about how to use best social media to draw traffic to your sites, generate leads and boost conversions. Sadly, a fair share of marketers follow wrong practices and end up wasting their valuable time and resources on social media…
Most product launches are complete failures. This product launch example shows the ingredients for a succesful launch
In fact, it’s been reported that about 70% of all new product launches fail within the first year.1 While product launches require input from many teams, if anything goes wrong the blame always points to the marketing team. While most marketers chase after proving ROI—as they should—some clearly overlook the need to get the product out the door in the first place.
So what’s the challenge with product launches? Whether it’s underestimating demand, skimping on the market research, or failing to educate consumers on a new category—as marketers, we’ve all been there. A number of factors can spoil even the most thought-out product launches.
How influencer marketing and research helps overcome product launch dilemmas
When it comes to launching a new product, influencer marketing is your secret weapon. The practice helps you tap into niche influencers already…
A beginners checklist of content marketing metrics
Content marketing is an excellent tool for generating leads and creating conversions. However, even the most thoughtfully planned out content marketing campaigns are rarely a home run.
In order to get the most out of a content marketing campaign, you will have to make adjustments and improvements along the way. In order to determine where you should make these improvements, you'll need to monitor 10 important content marketing metrics I recommend. For other ways of structuring these in a frameworks see this article from Smart Insights on Content Marketing KPIs and this from the Content Marketing Institute on Content Marketing Metrics as part of a strategic approach to content marketing.
1. Bounce Rate
When a visitor clicks into one of your web pages and backs out without taking any further action, you have earned a bounce. A high bounce rate can indicate many things:
The content on…
Making a brand meaningful
According to the 2015 Meaningful Brands research by Havas, most people would not care if 74% of all brands disappeared for good. This should be a wake-up call for the majority of brands. The marketing landscape is continuously changing and digital technology is developing faster than ever. It will come as no surprise, that some businesses fail to keep up with these trends.
Most of the problems that brands face nowadays result from problems in marketing communication. Many marketers have not updated their strategies to today's consumers who are more demanding in terms of customers service, less loyal to favorite brands and more resistant to traditional marketing messages.
December is usually the time when most companies sum up the whole year and prepare for the upcoming months.
1. Ad blocking will continue to grow
Users that use ad blockers…
An integrated small business campaign example
I awoke on the last Friday of November to the usual Black Friday hangover. On checking my emails I was inundated an avalanche of offers in relation to that American import which, like Halloween, is now huge over here in the UK too: Black Friday. With the Argos, Currys, Tesco and Boots' websites all experiencing outages due to weight of demand, the British public appears to have got over its aversion to this American celebratory holiday of all things consumer.
I run a niche ecommerce business that has a big US subscriber base, and based on previous Thanksgiving weekends it was clear that we needed to have a planned approach to the "holiday" season. As the day drew nearer we had customers emailing asking what we had planned as offers - it was going to be a big sales day.
Now we are a small business, our turnover…
Get those seats filled with these many and varied tips from 10 Email marketing experts
Whether virtual or physical, events are a mainstay of marketing to engage new prospects and build relationships with existing contacts.
When you’re responsible for marketing an event it might be something you only do a handful of times a year, so I’ve rounded up some tips from seasoned experts on how to use email to ensure you pack out your event. Read on to find out what you should say and how often to say it.
Once you’ve read the advice below, continue on to the examples of event invite emails and why they work for everything else you need to get your event promotional campaign organised.
Justine Jordan, Marketing Director at Litmus
For webinars, send a stand-alone email! We used…
Integrating your email and social media marketing opens the door to exploiting a wealth of data.
Integrating your email marketing audience with your social media audience should already be a game-plan-in-action within your marketing strategy. Using the rich data that comes from crossing these marketing channels however is often the post game oversight.
Email and social media are touch points your audience interacts with daily - channels you yourself have spent time on today. Social Media Examiner wrote what’s turned out to be an evergreen piece of content titled 9 Ways to Integrate Email and Social Media Marketing. This content lives on today because the fundamental relationship between emails and social media for the user remains the same, as do the benefits for marketing teams. Consider the amplification of your email message that social can provide, consider the data you can collect using email service provider platforms (ESPs) and how…
Compare cost-effectiveness with volume or leads and sales generated
In this post, I'm taking another look at some data points from our 2015 research, in association with the TFM&A where we asked marketers which were the most effective online media.
The research showed the ongoing importance of the core digital marketing channels and Email Marketing rated highly or very effective by 51% of respondents, followed by SEO (44%) and Adwords (34%). Organic use of social media wasn’t far behind with 32%, but with only 21% believing paid social media was effective.
In terms of cost or return for buck, SEO was seen as the most effective by 50% of our respondents.
Our respondents rated SEO as the most highest-rated channel for generating leads…
8 steps showing how to combine SMART and RACE to set campaign goals
SMART goals are a commonly referenced concept in marketing, to help check that goals are Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Realistic and Time bound (i.e. have a deadline). Goals have their place at all levels of planning whether business planing, marketing planning or campaign planning. It can often be the difference between a successful campaign and not. As my previous post on goal-setting for marketing showed, they have huge benefits in:
Empowering, aligning and focusing teams and colleagues
Managing senior management
Giving you and your team a sense of success
Allow you to understand a campaign within a wider marketing activity context
But in practice, it's not easy to select and set goals, they are very rarely obvious especially when you put them against the SMART test. Setting goals requires a numbers of thing's…
Only 7% of businesses have an optimised effect
We know social media is here to stay, despite any backlash, but so too is traditional marketing. Omnichannel marketing is driving the need for Marketers to integrate digital marketing strategies rather than creating separate plans for different channels, and departments working in silos.
Our research with the TFM&A suggests progress as Marketers are move towards strategic integrated digital planning 'though only 1/4 of companies were satisfied with their level of integration across digital and traditional communications and 7% are full integrated and optimised.'
The chart certainly shows there is challenge which many businesses are trying to meet.
The most detrimental factor to 'integrated planning' is the lack of planning, as many companies have separate traditional marketing and digital marketing teams whom work independently when it…
