…and, is it relevant anyway?

We've all heard this term, integrated marketing communications or IMC (yes it has an acronym!). Yet is it relevant I wonder, shouldn't marketing be integrated by definition? Integrated states the obvious! Marketing of old was relatively simple, from a marketer's perspective advertising was straightforward, retail wasn't complicated and the Internet didn’t exist. Integrating marketing communications was relatively easy to achieve. Today there are many more disciplines and channels than consumer attention can cope with, and we obsess over them. From a consumer perspective, there's much more information to take in now than say pre 1995. There's more TV programming, radio choice, print options, and outdoor potential, not mentioning online and mobile platforms, of course! In turn, advertisers are quick to hit people with more marketing messages because of that choice, new communication channels are quickly exploited and as a…
New media can learn a lot from old media… I spent 15 years behind a mic in radio and I’m amazed by the similarities between radio and social media – be it Twitter, Facebook or Email. It may surprise you that social media shares some qualities with the more traditional medium of radio. Obviously the technology is very different, but there is a good deal which social channels and those who employ them can learn from radio done well. Here are five key things social media can learn from radio: One-to-One communication Good radio is a one-to-one communication. That is to say that any host who knows their stuff is going to stay away from referring to listeners as a mass audience. You focus on making it a casual conversation between two friends and you talk directly to that one person. Mmm!…

10 goals you should be measuring on your B2B website using Google Analytics

Having a good method for quickly reviewing the effectiveness of your B2B website is really important as the majority of your time and effort will be spent trying to get people onto your website as early on as possible in their purchasing cycle. Once prospects are on your site it’s then up to various factors around the quality of your content that must work together to get the visitor to convert into a lead. How important is your website as part of the overall marketing strategy? “Our website gets over 10,000 visits a month which is really good” or similar is a comment I often hear from marketers, but probably have no idea about how many actually convert into leads or data capture for further opt-in marketing. Whilst traffic is easy to measure and most of the holds no value, it…

An explanation of why Edgerank matters to Facebook marketing - Part 1

So you’ve got a great piece of content all ready to go on your Facebook page. You post and wait expecting the likes and shares to come rushing in. You’ve got several thousand fans but you appear to have generated online tumbleweed moment. Why? Well, research from allfacebook.com and Edgerank Checker shows that, on average, 83% of your fans may not even be seeing your posts. Facebook suggest as few as 16% of fans are actually reached. That might explain the tumbleweed feel you can get on Facebook. Data from Pagelever at Inside Facebook suggests the situation is even worse, and the larger the number of fans, the less likelihood of the post being seen. Whatever the actually figure, getting your…

A brief review of 4 E-CRM alternatives suitable for a small business or not-for-profit company

I recently evaluated online E-CRM services for a contemporary art gallery. Dave Chaffey suggested I share my evaluation with Smart Insights readers since it may be useful for others taking the same decision for a small business. This follows on from a question I answered in the Smart Insights LinkedIn Group as to the issues to consider when selecting a CRM or email marketing system. The review was also a fantastic opportunity to look generally at the CRM market place and consider what CRM system I should have in place for my own marketing consultancy business. At the outset I had a number of requirements in mind including: the security of data (based on the supplier assurances and, for US suppliers, the Safe Harbor scheme); lists; custom fields; bulk email; online data capture; mobile access; back ups; auto-updates…

Boost SEO x53 - and other great reasons to use animation in your marketing

There are all sorts of names for it – explainer videos, corporate video, marketing videos, animated web videos…. cartoons for your company - I prefer to call them animated videos! But, whatever you call them, their popularity in digital marketing strategy is growing. Once animation was limited to those with massive six figure production budgets, but current technology means you no longer need a big studio or access to television broadcast channels to create and distribute animation. In theory, anyone can have one written, designed, storyboarded and produced tailored to your marketing needs.

Four major reasons to use animation in your marketing

Increased conversion rates – 64%- 85% of people are more likely to purchase after watching a product video. And, on average, people will stay 2 minutes longer on…

Four tips to increase Facebook ad efficiency

Your Company is running ads on Facebook and so far you got a decent click-through rate, but where is the conversion? We’ve found this is one of the more common issues confronting Facebook advertisers. In this post, I’ll give some tips on to how to switch this scenario around and make your Facebook marketing more efficient. A large Scandinavian hardware chain, active in the Nordic countries and the UK, wanted to boost its Facebook fan page activity last Christmas. Its campaign aimed to drive traffic to its web shop. At the time of the campaign, most of the company’s fans were its employees. In just a month, the number of fans went up from 2,000 to over 11,000. And, for the first time, the fan page experienced organic activity; people commented, liked offers and…

Our evaluation, recommendations and examples for UK companies

With the new UK “cookie law” now in force, many UK companies will be wondering what they need to do to be within the law. Given the difficulties in interpreting the guidance on this law we thought it would be helpful to create a summary of what the largest companies have done to comply. If you missed it the ICO issued new, detailed guidance on Friday 25th May, this included a big change with more advice on implied consent. If you haven't read that, it's important to "get your head around it". It's actually good news since it means explicit opt-in, e.g. through a pop-up isn't necessary as we thought it might be at one point. The companies I evaluate here will have the resources to implement the changes and to take the decisions balancing interpretation of legal requirements against problems against a…

Orientate content around people at different stages of purchase intent

Since I'm always pushing the importance of content marketing and creating infographics about how to use content marketing, it's interesting to see the questions marketers ask about them. This week a client asked me a great and simple question this week... "I understand creating content, but where do I put all this content… what kind of content goes where"? That's a fair question that I think many will have. The short answer is there are no rules, but there is some common sense if you can step back and look at your marketing process ended to end. Here's how we'd recommend that you approach it… plan your content rather than just creating it en masse, orientate your content around people at different buyer stages, simplify it by focussing on what matters to them at those…

New detailed guidance for marketers released by the Information Commissioner (ICO)

Value/Importance: [rating=5] As of 27th May 2012, the new "cookie law" which is part of the 2011 amendment to the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulation 2011 is now in force. There was a dramatic change in guidance from the ICO just before the new law came into force stating that "implicit consent" is the main requirement now. If you're involved with managing websites we recommend you download the new PDF from the ICO, read our short summary below or read the Guardian announcement. In a separate post we've taken a look at examples of how UK companies are complying with the UK cookie law. Recommended links: 18th June 2012 - ClickThrough 9 page whitepaper advising on compliance 26th May - Cookies law changed at 11th hour to introduce 'implied consent' - Guardian 25th May - Download PDF new guidance released by information…