MTA and MMM are powerful when used separately, but when used together, they can be transformative for marketers

Modern customer journeys are long, with myriad touchpoints between initial awareness and the ultimate decision. One shopper might end up on your website by way of an organic search but won’t make a purchase until reading a recommendation on a social platform. Another might come to you via email, return after conducting a little research on a referral site, visit again following a click on a banner ad and then finally buy your product after reading a recommendation on that same social platform. [si_guide_block id="45342" title="Download our Premium Resource – Online Customer Acquisition Plan guide" description="The guide features a structured approach to creating an online acquisition plan by reviewing current performance; defining the right KPIs to control acquisition; creating a media and content engagement strategy; creating a zero-based budget model and reviewing attribution and…

Spreadsheets are an essential tool for marketing from advanced calculations for budget forecasts to reviewing marketing KPIs

Every marketer loves data! Whether they are numbers, feedback results or leads, this is what marketers dream about. They say knowledge is power, and that it is.

Importance of spreadsheets in marketing

Whether you’re preparing a report or trying to untangle raw data, working with spreadsheets can be rewarding to your job performance. Not only can it improve your efficiency, it could also speed up your projects. It also improves your insight into your business and the effectiveness of your campaigns.

[si_guide_block id="119542" title="Download our Premium Resource –Using spreadsheets for marketing" description="Spreadsheets are an essential tool for marketing and business today, no matter what your role is. They are incorporated into many aspects of companies; from advanced calculations for budget forecasts to reviewing marketing KPIs, or even making a drinks preference list for staff."/]

Spreadsheets are an essential…

Marketing can suffer from a lack of flow, especially when it's interruptive in nature, but the results are impressive when the two concepts come together

As a self-confessed app junkie who automates everything possible, it’s safe to say I’m a fan of things like web personalization and marketing automation. When lead scoring, triggered emails, personalized experiences, reusable nurtures, multiplatform integration, and analytics come together to form a holistic strategy, that brand of beautiful synergy gets me excited. All this automation doesn’t come without a cost, however. Automated engagement strategies focus primarily on email, which has inherent flaws. Email can be a highly effective channel, but it's not without its shortcomings. Those who do agree to exchange their email address for something of value don’t always see, open, or click the content they receive. [si_guide_block id="5676" title="Download FREE Resource – Digital marketing plan template" description="Our popular marketing planning template built on the Smart Insights…

How does your business compare with others for digital marketing capability to Plan, Reach, Act, Convert and Engage?

Since we introduced our free interactive benchmarking tool to audit digital marketing for Smart Insights members in September 2015, we've expanded it from auditing top-level digital strategy to also review individual channels like SEO, AdWords, Content Marketing, Email and Social media as part of our toolkits on each. This uses a similar approach of selecting a rating from just 7 questions for each - there aren't hundreds like some other audit tools.

Want to try the auditing tool?

If you want to try the audits, but you're not a member, just sign-up here using the form.

http://www.smartinsights.com/howgood/ If you're already a member simply sign-in - top right and click on any of the toolkits on the members home page with…

To succeed your start-up must be lean. These are key principles to apply to marketing

Around the world, thousands of new businesses with exciting new ideas for original products start up every day. To say most of them fail is an understatement. The reality is the vast majority fail. Yet some go on to transform the way we live, eat, shop, work and pay for things. Start-ups are remaking the modern business landscape by disrupting established players. It's an exciting time to work for a start-up, or even better to be a founder. However, that doesn't change the incredibly slim odds of success.

Why do Start-ups fail?

Start-ups fail for all sorts of different reasons. But they all suffer from a set of problems which more often than not are the primary reason for their failure. Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, David Collis, outlines these problems as suffering from a…

Track and optimize these 5 metrics and watch your profits surge

As a digital marketer with access to Google Analytics plus your multiple inbound marketing tools, you have hundreds upon hundreds of metrics to consider while judging your results. Where to start? For example, here is just a tiny list of metrics to consider to start: Number of website visitors Website bounce rate Email subscriber list size Email open rate Advertising CTR (click-through rate) Number of new leads Overwhelming... I know. The natural question that arises is, which metrics are the most important to track, and why? This article will answer just that. I'll explain the 5 most critical metrics for your business, and how tracking them will boost your profits immediately.

Business Asset Metrics vs. Operating Metrics

Before we go over the 5 key metrics, I want to briefly explain the importance of Business Asset Metrics and Operating Metrics, and the difference between the two. Operating Metrics are the numbers that gauge your current…

Evolution, not revolution is the pragmatic approach to Digital Transformation

Businesses of any scale can generate huge quantities of data from their analytics – most of it with the potential to improve performance. But to realize that potential, to action the actionable takes time, focus and budget. This research from the Smart Insights Managing Digital Marketing report shows that many businesses are conscious that they are not spending sufficient time on planning and optimization. In organisations who have yet to embrace data as a vital marketing tool, getting buy-in for the resources to make it happen can be challenging to say the least. As a digital transformation specialist, I often work with people at the start of their journey to a digital direct-sell business model. For them it represents a…

Practices agencies should avoid when reporting digital marketing performance to clients, and tips for how to get it right

As marketers, and humans for that matter, we’ve all been guilty of committing (at least) one of the seven deadly sins in one way or another. You won’t have Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman hunting you down, but when it comes to marketing agencies, committing these reporting sins can be deadly to the agency/client relationship.

Deadly reporting Sin 1: Avarice

Otherwise known as greed, Avarice is a sin of excess. Clients want and need to know what their agency is doing to move the needle, but consistently sending them an overly-comprehensive reports can be a lose-lose for the client and the agency. Massive reports take agencies a lot of time to prepare, billable hours that could be better…

Applying Dave Brailsford’s philosophy of excellence to improve results from digital marketing

The recent announcement that Sir Dave Brailsford has stepped down as British Cycling performance director to concentrate on Sky team management reminded me of his famous philosophy for improving performance from his team and how it can be applied to digital marketing.

British Cycling describe his marginal gains philosophy as perhaps his greatest British Cycling legacy. The technique is encapsulated by this quote:

“If you broke down everything you could think of that goes into riding a bike, and then improved it by one percent, you will get a significant increase when you put them all together,”

Implementing his marginal gains approach initially led to success in Chris Hoy’s gold in the kilometre time-trial and Bradley Wiggins’ gold in the individual pursuit in Athens. More recently, multiple Olympic gold medals and…

An introduction to using the Balanced Scorecard for performance management in Digital Marketing

The Balanced Scorecard is a well known performance management tool. It suggests following a cause-and-effect logic to build a tree of business objectives moving from a financial perspective down to customers, process and education and growth, and then enriching the entire scheme with KPIs and action plans.

Who said that it is for international companies only? What about an Internet company that wants to manage its performance? I believe that the BSC framework will be very useful to focus strategic efforts on what matters.

Let's have a closer look at the marketing strategy of a business on the Internet. These will be some general thoughts that need to be adapted to the vision and mission of a specific company. So if you decide to follow these ideas then you must take them as a starting point for your own research and…