24 checks to help focus your digital marketing budget
I've been reminded a few times during the last month that we're at "that" time of year. A time where many of us get our budgets reigned back for us (or we're at least asked to). It got me thinking that this might be a good thing to post about, so we wanted to create a list of pro-active budget improving, questions, ideas and checks - please add your thoughts in the comments, I am sure others will value your shared insight.
Plan for success
At times of budget cuts it's easy to cut the investment in the quality of your research and planning. Yet this is so important since helps get management buy-in when it comes to retaining budget and showing value of marketing to the bottom line. It's also vital to keep your communications customer-centric and beating the competitors. Otherwise the brutal…
Value: [rating=3]
Recommended link: New Media Age - Top 100 Interactive Agencies 2012 (Digital Magazine Download)
In this alert, relevant to larger UK companies who commission larger agencies, we’re flagging up the publication of this annual listing of digital agencies. It’s broken down into categories of marketing, technical and design and build agencies plus media buying agencies varying in fee income from £92 million for Sapient Nitro to £2.8 million for Unboxed Consulting.
A new feature this year was this regional breakdown, showing leading agencies outside London and the South East:
Also relevant to agencies and consultants who can see the fast growing sectors, an interesting KPI is efficiency which is income/staff - the best performers are around the £285,000/team member level. The report shows strong growth in performance in many agencies…
Lady Gaga’s Littlemonsters.com crowns her social media empire
Lady Gaga is renowned for her prolific following in Twitter (near 27m) and Facebook (52m Likes), Google+ (near 3m) - as well as Tumblr and recently her first pic on Instagram. Let’s not forget there’s also a plethora of fan sites and endless coverage in mainstream and niche media. If that weren’t enough “Mother Monster” (that’s what her fans call her) has opened her own social network fresh from private beta testing - you can see it here: Littlemonsters.com. We think it can help all marketers think differently about social media marketing...
What is it all about?
I’m not going to review the site in-depth (you can see stuff like that here), but suffice to say that it’s now the official community hub for the Gaga brand. Anyone with a…
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13 Jul 2012
Digital marketing features in more adjudications - especially email marketing
This used to be the strap line in the Advertising Standards Authority ads reminding marketers of their obligations under the advertising practice codes and the relevant law. Today, the ASA still regularly field complaints about the claims made in digital and offline advertisements.
As we alerted you in a previous post, the ASA’s 01/03/2011 online extensions to the marketing guidelines mean the self-regulatory CAP code now applies to websites, PPC, social media conversations, promotional video and email marketing, in addition to more obvious advertisement formats. Press releases and natural search do not come under the guidelines.
Reviewing adjudications can help you avoid creating misleading advertising communications
The majority of consumer complaints are about ‘misleading’ rather than ‘offensive’ advertising, and it is not always apparent how ‘misleading’ will be officially interpreted. There have…
Using lifetime value models to set campaign investment levels
We think Lifetime value (LTV) models are a powerful tool to help businesses demonstrate the future value they can generate from marketing activities. It’s a much better approach to evaluate investment based on long-term returns from marketing activities rather than the short-term success of a single sale. As the inimitable Avinash Kaushik has said, setting marketing budgets without using LTV is like saying a relationship will be successful based on a one night stand.
Although the benefits of using lifetime value models are strong, in our experience, lifetime value is a technique that’s not used as much as you might expect or it should be. It seems it’s mainly a “big company thing”, more often used in sectors like financial services, retail or where direct marketing marketing has been practiced.
We think LTV models can and should be used in businesses of different…
How to prosper in a world of Digital Disruption
It’s become fashionable in business/ technology circles to talk about ‘disruption’. As a ‘good’ thing. Not like a broken-down train on the London Underground which causes chaos in the evening ‘Rush Hour’, or the alarming and possibly dangerous cracks in the structure of the M4 which shut down the main motorway from Heathrow Airport just weeks before the London Olympic Games, nor even the biblical scale flooding that turns Silverstone Motor Racing circuit into a sea…
An interview with Bill Scott of Easel TV
I was recently asked after a conference talk about my views on Social TV by a student who was researching it. I must admit I didn't have much of a view on it... It's not a topic that we've covered much on Smart Insights either, so when I saw it was covered at the recent Econsultancy Future of Digital Marketing conference by Bill Scott I was keen to learn more from a specialist.
Bill is COO of Easel TV who work with broadcasters, content producers, pay TV operators and major consumer brands to help develop services to engage consumers in connected TV. I found Bill's answers helpful for explaining what Social TV and showing it's potential through the examples. I hope you find it interesting.
What is Social TV?
Q1.What is the scope of social TV? Is it any form of interaction with a brand via web or mobile…
Tools and tips to bridge and enhance online/offline live events
This post by Lisa Harris, Nicole Beale and Graeme Earl reports on the findings of our Social Media in Live Events (SMiLE) action research project.
The project is looking at real and virtual communities interacting around a ‘live’ conference.
Our focus is to show the learning points from this experience that can be applied improve the effectiveness of future events
Research methodology
Before, during and after the event we monitored a range of social media tools to track how the tools were used by real and virtual delegates. We expected the tools to be used for information recording and sharing, network building and profile raising.
During the event we carried out interviews with conference participants about their experiences and interactions via Twitter, Storify, Flickr, Vimeo, LinkedIn, Facebook, QR codes and Corkboard.…
Timeline shows the increasing complexity of web standards
This new HTML 5 infographic from Evolution of the Web reminds us about the power, but also the complexity of developing and delivering web services today.
It shows how the web standards delivered through different browsers (show on each timeline row) have changed from here:
to here:
The infographic itself shows the experiences it's possible to create today in HTML 5, but suggests the difficulty in making them compatible across different browsers. On a positive note, it shows that new standards are now generally implemented more quickly across browsers.
I've also posted this infographic since it gives and introduction to different web standards if you rollover the interactive version:
…
How does your Facebook engagement compare and how can you improve it?
For Facebook company pages, Tabs or Views have always been one of the most important ways to engage an audience more deeply. This can be through a Gated Like page (example); competitions encouraging Email or loyalty club opt-in (example) or games to name but three.
New data from Facebook analytics company Pagelever has shown the impact of the time line since it was introduced on 30th March this year. It also gives a useful benchmark for the level of engagement you should be getting:
The analysis is based on data across 500+ pages that had over 10,000+ fans.
The key insights from this report are:
Average tab views per visit are relatively low (now 0.06/6%). This gives a benchmark to compare with and a conversion rate within Facebook marketing to work…
