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June 20, 2014
3 key barriers that need to be overcome to help towards better integration of digital media
“Truly Integrated Marketing is the holy grail for the marketeer. ”
Colin Green, Marketing Director, Land Rover UK
Yesterday I saw a PPC advert for a pair of shoes that I’d wanted for a while. I clicked through to find that the product was actually out of stock. The next day I was retargeted by the same retailer advertising the same shoes and but at a different price, I clicked through again, and again found that the price was as it was yesterday and there was still no stock. It’s not the first time I have seen this and imagine you may have too. The experience got me thinking about the dangers of running digital marketing in silos leading to a lack of integration with businesses a long-way from the holy grail of integrated marketing communications.…
How to build your email list using viral promotions
When building your email list, or indeed any lists for direct marketing, it is best practice to grow them organically, but of course that’s easier said than done and additional incentives will help grow a list more rapidly and can encourage sale as part of sales promotion. Social media will help amplify your promotions further.
Running viral promotions via social media, such as contests and sweepstakes and the other examples I will show in this post, are the perfect example of how social media can both increase engagement with prospects and clients as well as building your email list organically.
Before I explore the various viral promotions that you could utilise, we need to acknowledge the common pitfalls with viral promotions strategy and how to avoid them.
Prize hunters not paying customers
Viral promotions can attract the wrong type of prospects. There are always going to be those who will…
Prize draw options, tools and legal compliance to help create an effective prize draws
Online prize draws are an increasingly common tactic used by marketers to encourage engagement and also to increase leads, particularly in key sales periods. I think this is largely due to the simplicity of devising and setting them up using social media campaign tools and their popularity on social networks which facilitate sharing.
I'm finding that I am often being asked about best practice for planning and running online prize draws. While I think the best approach differs in detail by audience and compliance needed for each brand and industry there are some general best practices we can summarise. In this post I have outlined a process I follow and included some of the tools you can utilise too.
Set-up and Planning
Key to any successful marketing activity is planning, I have outlined an approach to…
A checklist of the 13 most common touchpoint leaks
Over nearly two decades in marketing, and across well over 200 businesses – from as large as Microsoft and as micro as the back bedroom – I have yet to find a single one that isn’t leaking potential profit somewhere in their marketing operation. And, even those that have it pretty tight can usually notch it up with a few judicious tweaks.
Categorising marketing profit leaks
In pulling all this together, I found that profit leaks fall into two clear categories. The first, and most obvious, are those that relate to how you interact with the outside world. That is, the touchpoints with customers, potential customers, or anyone else who might encounter your business. Of these, I have defined thirteen typical ways that most businesses lose money in their marketing.
The second category is what I call the Foundation Leaks, and they are far more…
Practical tips based on how 1500 small business owners manage their marketing
Aweber.com surveyed over 1500 of their customers, to find out the views of SMEs on online marketing, of which 96% had 5 or fewer employees and felt like 'an army of one'. Is it true that they feel overwhelmed or are embracing it?
The infographic below shares the findings, including insight into how many hours are allocated to social media, which channels they are sticking too and where they will increase their marketing efforts.
…
A case study of a campaign to create a a sustainable online presence for a seasonal brand: Christmas Tree World
When Christmas Tree World initially approached us with grand schemes to conquer the artificial Christmas tree market throughout the year, we knew this project was set to be a campaign our entire digital team could sink their teeth into.
Christmas Tree World came to us looking for a responsive, animated website re-design and a social media and content plan that would generate B2B interest 52 weeks of the year.
As a result, Christmas Tree World proved to be a unique challenge for our digital marketing team, who were duly tasked with generating a campaign that would attract B2B and B2C interest for a late summer re-launch.
Aside from building brand awareness and increasing conversions for Christmas 2013, we also had to establish a strategy to ensure Christmas Tree World was well…
But search and direct visits dominate...
The role of social media in driving visits to transactional sites like retail and travel if often documented. Research on corporate sites is more limited, so in this post we summarise research from a provider of corporate sites.
The Investis IQ Insight Audience Q3 2013 analyses 2 million visits across 60 corporate websites and nearly 7 million views per month. They sample includes a range of companies, by size and sector across the FTSE 100, FTSE 250, Small CAP and AIM companies and a small section from Europe.
The report highlights where there has been the greatest change over two years, and is aimed at companies who wish to ensure that their 'digital communications reflects the needs of their corporate audience'.
Overall importance of social media
The findings show that social media has the least impact on driving traffic to corporate websites; 54% is driven by search and…
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November 15, 2013
How to assess the contribution of different communications touchpoints
In my last post for Smart Insights I published a complete list of today's channels. Thanks to some comments and suggestions , the channel list has reached 106 channels so far. 95 of these are suitable for marketing purposes be they physical, digital or a bit of both. This is the way they break down.
[caption id="attachment_32020" align="aligncenter" width="550"] Venn Diagram of Marketing Channels[/caption]
Naturally there are at least two questions that arise when faced with such channel choice.
Firstly, how do you pick which channel to use? And then secondly, how do you measure the combined performance across channels? The latter question of course relates to the tricky issue of attribution - the apportioning of sales revenue to the channels that lead up…
Are you looking in the right place for ideas generation?
We recently launched our Plan to Succeed campaign and as a part of our Slideshare deck we feature a whole bunch of ideas to help marketers improve their planning.
One factor in effective marketing planning is building up strategic ideas around which you can build a plan - these are specifically customer problems to solve, or outcomes they are seeking. As the brand representatives, we all too often explore in the wrong areas to seek answers to those questions, or focus in on a single area. We created this simple graphic to help you find the sweet spot.
We feel there are four dimensions that provide a starting point for strategic planning:
Your brand: This is the where marketers are most likely to start, and unfortunately end, their thinking.…
Examples of creative content ideas show it is possible
Compelling content is the key to successful marketing. You know that. Your boss knows that. So why are so many marketers still half-hearing it?
Folks who work in 'boring' industries have an added challenge.
Let’s say you are a marketing specialist in insurance or for a mortgage bank. Even if your company and services are important, these topics have snoozefest written all over them.
The good news is that there are some simple tactics you can use to make your marketing campaigns more exciting.
Create a Voice with an Attitude
Creating a brand voice is nothing new or at least it shouldn’t be if you write content for your company! Some of the most influential brands have created strong voices that their audiences connect with. Just think of some of today’s largest companies - Coca-Cola, Salesforce, Apple. You…
