7 ideas to engage through storytelling

"Those who tell stories rule the world" - Plato Storytelling - the buzz of 2012? I remember so many articles from last year, many great, claiming that 2012 was the year of brand storytelling. The power of those stories central to marketing dialogue. Let's remember first that storytelling isn't new, using narrative to evoke emotion in people is central to clever advertising creative from decades ago. It's 'digital' and 'direct' marketing that has only more recently moved marketing too more of a science - and often a very lazy one at that - bypassing all the important learning of what it means to market to, and motivate, real people with unmet needs. It seems though that we’re all catching back on to the effectiveness of building stories through content and connecting with people, our consumers. When your information is communicated…

Where do you start when seeking to establish your social networks

While much of the social media marketing advice on Smart Insights gives advice on social media best practices for companies that are already set up on social networks, some businesses are still venturing onto social platforms for the first time. If this is relevant for you or your clients, this introductory post is for you.

Understand how and when your users use social networks

If you’re online a lot you will probably have an innate built in idea of the demographics on the different platforms. If you are new to social you will need to do a bit of research beforehand. See these top 10 sources of digital marketing statistics or this free 2013 digital media usage data from comScore for useful research into how different ages and genders use different social networks. You also need to bear in mind how…

Twitter moves to a more Google-like intent-based keyword targeting

Value/Importance: [rating=4] Recommended link: Twitter blog announcement Twitter has offered interest-based advertising for some time, but we’re notifying this is a big deal since from today it offers targeting based on intent shown by keywords in a similar way to Google AdWords. The way this works is that when someone tweets and it contains a targeted keyword, a promoted tweet can be delivered as this example of a request for a coffee coupon shows! BrandRepublic reports that several companies looking to drive awareness and transactions have used the approach including Everything Everywhere (@EE), MicrosoftJapan(@SurfaceJP), Walgreens (@Walgreens) and GoPro (@GoPro). For GoPro, which offers wearable and gear-mountable cameras, engagement rates as high as 11% were seen and more than two million impressions after testing keyword targeting in timelines across four marketing campaigns. This advertising is not…

A checklist of issues to consider in a responsive website redesign project

If there’s one thing that every Web and Digital marketing manager has had on their agenda in recent times it’s responsive design! Responsive Web Design has become the defacto standard of web sites in a very short space of time. But is it a silver bullet? Is it a magic cure for many digital illnesses our sites (and visitors!) have been suffering from? It certainly gives many challenges, and in this post I'll share 9 key issues that site managers need to talk through with their designers. When I first started looking at the concept of responsive websites back in 2010 - I fell in love. This seemed like a proper working implementation of the “fluid websites” that were largely a dream back in the days when we were moving from table based layouts to CSS based ones. Over the past…

Have you tried Facebook's Promoted Pages yet?

I noticed something new in my admin panel last week. Yep, I'd finally got Promoted Pages rolled out to me. Sometimes I think I'm the last admin on the planet to get the new features. Promoted Pages is a really simple way to get more Likes to your Page but it does come with a few caveats and warnings.

#1 It's a rolling program

You choose your daily budget and carry on spending until you stop the ad. Helpfully Facebook shows the metrics in your Page admin without having to dig around though so you should have it as a constant reminder.

#2 It's not very targeted

One of the beauties of Facebook advertising is the platform's targeting ability. Promoted Pages will (at least until you tweak some settings) blanket target everyone in your selected geographic area (and all friends of fans).

#3 The ad copy isn't what you think

As…

A content marketing productivity tool for faster content marketing

[caption id="attachment_23960" align="alignleft" width="257"] Little Bird - a great way to find and learn about key people online fast[/caption] If you spend time like I do, writing content for special interest groups online, then you probably love to hear about content marketing productivity tools that can help you optimise your time during the different stages of the content marketing continuum, and  improve your return on content marketing effort (ROE). After years working as a publisher, I’ve now got a new job as a startup CEO, managing a content marketing agency, as well as doing the digital marketing for a…

The John Wayne view on marketing attribution

'You’ll never know where you’re going until you know where you’ve been.'

– John Wayne

Within the marketing technology community, we find ourselves speaking on the topic of marketing attribution a lot. It’s constantly on the front burner of every modern CMO – how do I do more with less? How do I demonstrate ROI from my various channels, tactics, campaigns – and then boost it? How do I not only defend my budget, but make a data-driven case for more?

Make my day, pilgrim

It’s not just market competitiveness that’s driving this pressure. It’s becoming a cliché to point out the ever-increasing crush of customer behavioral data today – from digital properties, mobile devices and apps, social media, third-party sources, offline transactions, and so on. Marketers have more data than ever, and technology vendors are scrambling to…

7 simple and effective ways to use email segmentation

A database filled with a lot of quality data offers many possibilities. The best way to send an email is to send one that's personal and completely adjusted to fit the needs, interests, and (buying) behaviour. And more relevant email campaigns means a better shot at more opens and clicks. In this blog post, I'll show you different options to segment your customer database, enabling you to better target each customer.

7 ways to segment your email lists

1. By gender One of the more obvious ways to segment your email campaigns: do you want to target men or women? When creating your email templates, try to design a template which is able to switch content based on the variable 'gender'. Adjust the images in your campaigns to appeal to men as soon as you are targeting the men in your marketing database. The same…

How to avoid Google+ being another push channel Last week, I attended BrightonSEO where one speaker asked an interesting question showing how agencies manage social media channels for their clients: "How many people here manage Twitter profiles for clients?" > Around half still raised their hands "How many people here manage Facebook pages for clients?" > Slightly more than half of the room raised their hand "How many people here manage Google+ accounts for clients?" > Three quarters of the room raised their hand I know it was an SEO conference and there are obviously search benefits for Google+ pages, but can this be correct? Hmm... We now know that Google+ is catching up with Facebook in terms of active users, and that keeping on the right side of the search giant is a must, but are brands really taking that much notice of the social network? Well it seems so. 75% of the top 100…

Beware the social sprawl: consolidate your company's communities

Development of their own online communities by brands is one of the most popular social initiatives for 2013 according to new research. But Michael Fauscette warns that networks can get out of hand as they switch subscriptions to social software, chasing the next hot social tool that promises to deliver more effective collaboration than the last.

Each year, analyst IDC conducts a social business survey to examine the latest hot topic in the space. Whilst the trend of enterprise social network adoption has continued to progress steadily since the launch of the first survey in 2009, there is one area that has continued to evolve: social initiatives.

The…