Reach Quick Guides

Affiliate marketing is still an essential digital media channel for many transactional Ecommerce sites for retailers, travel and financial services. Affiliate marketing is also a revenue model to consider for site owners, especially online publishers. Here’s the issues to think about it to manage it effectively.

Our recommended links:

• Affiliate revenue calculator
• Identifying rogue affiliates in Google Analytics
• Affiliate marketing trends and tips

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.

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

Our content on Ecommerce focuses on techniques to increase sales of transactional Ecommerce sites including retail, travel and financial services.

Our recommended links:

• Best practice in managing Ecommerce sites
• Creating a digital strategy
• Developing an online brand strategy

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

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

In our coverage of Internet advertising we focus on display advertising, still more commonly known as banner ads. These get a bad rap because of low clickthrough rates, but that doesn’t mean that they aren’t worthwhile.  We have separate advice on paid search (PPC) marketing strategy.

Our recommended links:

• 7 Steps guide to display advertising success
• Display advertising clickthrough rates
• 10 options to reach online customers with display ads

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)

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.

Paid search marketing opportunities includes Pay Per Click Ads via Google and Bing plus ads on the display network – a third of Google’s revenue. The cost of pay search can be high, so we discuss how to make sure you’re getting the most value from PPC by maximising your Google Quality Score.

Our recommended links:

• Google Adwords – 7 Steps to Success Guide
• Google Quality Score – the hidden formula
• KPIs to review and improve PPC

Our recommended links:

Here is a selection of the most useful articles on SEO on Smart Insights followed by a listing of the most recent articles.

• The basics of SEO
• Understanding SEO ranking factors
• Why do most companies fail in their link-building?

Search engine marketing is now a core marketing activities. We have a lot of details on the techniques for search marketing in our separate Quick Guides on SEO and PPC Adwords. Keyphrase analysis is important for both paid and natural search, so that’s covered here.

Our recommended links:

• SEO Quick Guide
• PPC/Adwords Quick Guide
• Latest Google Updates

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

The tools and techniques for creating a compelling user experience are constantly changing. With today’s websites and social networks offering interactivity and rich media we couldn’t have dreamt of a few years ago, there are great opportunities to produce an effective experience.

Our recommended links:

• User-testing 101 – an introduction
• Website design crimes
• Findability in Website design
• Selecting a website design agency
• Upgrading an SME website