What’s New in Marketing?

Our summary of the latest developments to be aware of from October 2012

The most obvious developments in October were the introduction of new hardware platforms that you couldn’t fail to miss, thanks to coverage in the main stream media. We cover these in our user experience and conversion section where we also have reviews covering the business relevance of two major Google Analytics developments.

Although there was a flurry of new feature announcements in October after the summer “break” which we cover below, we believe that defining a strategic approach to marketing is what is most important and this is where we start our summary.

On a lighter note, this video simulation This video simulation of the way we will use our phones in 2025 was one of our most popular posts in October, although many felt it didn’t give a positive image of life or marketing in the future…

Strategy and planning

• Creating an integrated marketing strategy. It’s important that digital isn’t siloed, so this was a timely, popular post by Expert member Simon Swan sharing his experience of applying Chris Fill’s Digital Marketing Communications Framework.
• 7 Steps to Brilliant B2B marketing infographic. I helped shape this “Holy mutha of infographics” (according to one commenter) to support the publication of Rene Power’s brilliant new guide to Brilliant B2B marketing.
• Your customer’s purchase journey has changed, has your marketing? Dan Bosomworth asked this important question in his review of the relevance of McKinsey’s consumer journey model and Google’s update on ZMOT.

Social media and content marketing

• New global survey on consumer social media use. We summarised the latest GlobalWebIndex report showing maturing use of social media.
• Facebook’s new options for company Facebook pages. In this alert we showed how page management options have improved for international companies
• A great example of an analytics-based content marketing audit. We get a lot of questions about how to make the case for investing in content marketing. One approach to answering this question is to see what existing content marketing efforts are delivering now. But where to start? Kevin Gibbons of agency Quaturo has created a great detailed post stepping you through the stages they use at his agency. Definitely a "must read" post for October.

Search marketing

• Google’s New Disavow links tool. In this alert, Chris Soames explained the value of this new tool.
• Google’s new Authorship tool. Most publishers and “hard-core bloggers” will know the importance of this, but we think all businesses need to know. Another alert from Chris explains its relevance.
• What can we learn from Google announcements? The plunge in Google’s share price was also big news in October. Behind this story were details released about how Google’s revenues from different sources were changing. I wrote up the implications of these on the ClickThrough Marketing blog.
• The growing importance of mobile SEO. This infographic summarises best practices for mobile SEO.

User experience, analytics and conversion optimisation

• Tablet competition hots-up even more. The iPad Mini was announced and Kindle Fire was also introduced in the UK providing competition for Google’s Nexus 7 - this post compares the 3 main rival 7–8" tablets.
• Windows 8 and Microsoft Surface launched. This is one of the best reviews of the Surface. It will be interesting to see how the new tile interface metaphor in Windows 8 will be used in future web designs.
• Google Analytics tag manager launched. Our Smart Insights alert covered the relevance for businesses.
• Google’s new Universal Analytics and other new features for 2013. Announced at its Annual Summit, there will be a lot of positive changes for advanced Google Analytics users in the months ahead.
• 6 ways to improve your product pages. A great, practical article by new Guest Expert blogger Paul Rogers for e-retailers, but applicable to other companies too.

Email marketing and CRM

• New DMA Email 2012 survey results. Mark Brownlow summarised this new results which looked at the branding impact of Email.
• Email open rate, as useful as your appendix. Tim Watson calls-out bad practice in using and interpreting this email marketing KPI.
• The best time to send an email campaign? This infographic on this perennial Email marketing issue was the most popular of the month.

I hope you find our roundup useful. Maybe November will be quieter?