Engage Quick Guides

Traditional promotional techniques will only get today’s B2B marketer so far. Digital marketing techniques can support B2B marketing well since B2B relationships are rarely about an immediate one-off transaction. Rather it is about building reputation, demonstrating capability and showcasing credibility.

Content marketing is a vital method of engaging online audiences and using social sharing to reach new audiences too. Our content strategy guides and templates give you the tools to support this process.

Conversion rate optimisation (CRO) isn’t only important for Ecommerce and transactional sites. Every site should have clear conversion paths to marketing outcomes which contribute to the business.

We’ll show you how to increase your conversion, no matter what your type of site through using the right measures and using the right best practices.

Our recommended links:

• 7 Step Guide to getting more from your site
• Increasing new customer conversion rate
• The perfect landing page

Of all the areas of digital marketing we cover on Smart Insights, Customer engagement is arguably THE most important and THE most challenging for a brand. It’s crucial to repeat business, but with the choice available online difficult to achieve.

Our recommended links:

• What is customer engagement?
• 2011 Customer Engagement report summary
• How are you involving customers to shape your content and propositions?

Customer relationship management or CRM is a well established approach. Although some argue it’s impossible to achieve and customer managed relationships is more appropriate! Digital media provides new opportunities to tailor customer communications integrated with traditional channels.  We also review this for our email marketing tactic.

In the beginning, the web was just flat text and images accessed through desktop computers. In this section we cover emerging technologies and innovation.

Our recommended links:

• Increasing the impact of your blog
• Introducing web video into your digital mix
• 8 key SEO issues when choosing a new blog platform
• Augmented Reality examples
• Webcasting – audio and video streamed presentation

Your digital strategy provides a foundation for all of your tactical marketing to engage customers across the lifecycle of Reach-Act-Convert-Engage summarised in our RACE digital marketing planning framework.

Our recommended links:

• 7 Steps to developing a digital strategy guide
• Digital marketing strategy and planning Word template
• 10 reasons why you need a digital strategy
• 2011 digital marketing trends
• Digital marketing strategy trends

Some say Email marketing is dead. We’re sure there’s a lot of life in yet; it’s still a primary way of engaging customers and one of the most popular topics on Smart Insights.

Our recommended links:

• Our 7 Step Email Marketing Guide
• Segmentation and targeting for email
• Email communications strategy
• Tracking email marketing
• Reviews of email and enewsletter software

If you don’t know where you’re heading, you’ll never know when you get there or whether you’re on track. Setting the right goals for digital marketing isn’t so easy, but our RACE framework should help you select the right goals.

Our recommended links:

• 7 Steps to getting results from digital marketing
• Inspiring through vision statements
• Set the right goals using the 5Ss
• Setting goals in Google Analytics
• Difference between efficiency and effectiveness measures

Google Analytics is a fantastic tool, but to get the most from it and so get more commercial value from your Internet marketing needs careful setup. Our guides take you through the steps to customise it for your business.

Our recommended links:

• Google Analytics Setup Guide
• Goal setup in Google Analytics
• Using advanced segments in Google Analytics
• Tracking offline campaigns with Google Analytics

Online lead generation creates new selling opportunities by converting site visitors to prospects. Prospects are classically qualified through completing a profile form and then tailored communications delivered.

Our recommended links:

• Landing pages for lead-generation

Managing digital marketing will often need new skills, new staff, new technologies and new processes for marketing. It’s a big change! We look at digital marketing governance the – best way to structure teams and update processes in larger organisation. If you’re a team of one you can ignore this section! The bigger the organisation, the bigger the challenge!

Our recommended links:

• Gartner’s technology Hype Cycle
• A report on allocating digital marketing budget
• McKinsey update on the 7S model (podcast)

Understanding your customers online is the first step to improving your results from online channels. Next, it’s benchmarking competitors and looking for partners to work with. We’ll show you how to audit your capabilities and identify the best commercial opportunities.

Our recommended links:

• Digital marketing strategy template
• Internet SWOT analysis
• Competitor benchmarking guide
• Backlink analysis
• Digital marketing radar

Mobile marketing is massive already and forecast to exceed desktop Internet access in many developing countries. So every marketer needs to keep tabs on the opportunities of reaching their audiences via mobile and how to make their mobile sites and presences visible and accessible. To learn more take our free mobile marketing healthcheck

Our recommended links:

• Mobile statistics
• Mobile design trends
• Developing and marketing iPhone Apps
• Marketing with QR codes

We think Online PR is one of the most cost-effective marketing approaches for all types of business. But it’s difficult to get right since it is often managed by different people and there’s the overlap with SEO and social media marketing.

Our recommended links:

• Identifying key online influencers
• Online PR campaign management
• How to measure online PR campaigns
• Social media listening software
• Do you have social shareability

The Internet and digital technologies give fantastic opportunities to engage companies with your brand in new ways.

Creating usable sites is important, but an effective marketing site overlays persuasion to encourage visitors to engage and follow a journey to conversion. So understanding user psychology and knowing the persuasion principles we describe here is helpful.

Our recommended links:

• Using persuasion for customer engagement
• Landing page persuasion principles
• Email signup persuasion

You may have heard of this! It’s transforming marketing, for the better most would say. We’ll help you navigate social media with a strategic approach sharing approaches from the leading commentators and companies.

Our recommended links:

• 7 Steps to Social media marketing Ebook
• Social media marketing trends
• Social media marketing – if you don’t let go, you miss-out

Most site owners want more traffic, that’s quality traffic of course. In this section we show how a planned approach can help you build traffic. We also cover how to increase the reach of your brand through publisher sites and social networks.

Our recommended links:

• How to review your traffic mix in Google Analytics
• Campaign planning template
• Media attribution