What consumers want and how to give it to them?

This infographic isn't a compilation of different unreferenced sources, rather it's based on a single piece of research by Sociomantic Labs who polled over 1000 US consumers via ResearchNow, specifically to assess their attitudes toward online shopping and digital advertising. 'It found that personalized ads lead to a dramatic improvement in a marketing channel’s perceived influence, as well as a channel’s ability to encourage consumers to take action'. Their findings delved into shopper behaviour by understanding: why and how consumers shop - interestingly, 41% visit a site with a 'product in their mind' to buy or research. how consumers use online shopping carts - 19% add to their cart to create a reminder/wish list. how consumers embrace targeted ads - 70% happy to receive ads and how receptive consumers are to ad targeting - targeted content converts browsers to buyers. The infographic provides more key highlights and…

A case study of a campaign to create a a sustainable online presence for a seasonal brand: Christmas Tree World

When Christmas Tree World initially approached us with grand schemes to conquer the artificial Christmas tree market throughout the year, we knew this project was set to be a campaign our entire digital team could sink their teeth into. Christmas Tree World came to us looking for a responsive, animated website re-design and a social media and content plan that would generate B2B interest 52 weeks of the year. As a result, Christmas Tree World proved to be a unique challenge for our digital marketing team, who were duly tasked with generating a campaign that would attract B2B and B2C interest for a late summer re-launch. Aside from building brand awareness and increasing conversions for Christmas 2013, we also had to establish a strategy to ensure Christmas Tree World was well…

The challenge for managers of contact centres in the era of the social media empowered customer

Integrating social media into the Contact Centre is rather a daunting task, but with demand for social customer service growing at its current rate the time to think about it is now.

Social customer service platform, Sentiment, has put together this handy infographic (below) that outlines some of the biggest challenges contact centres face.

We will also be discussing approaches to manage this issue on January 15th 2014, when our Social Times CEO Luke Brynley-Jones will be hosting a webinar on ‘How Should Contact Centres Integrate Social Media?’. He’ll be joined by an excellent panel, including Martin Hill- Wilson (Brainfood Consulting), Luke Porter (Contact Centre Social) and Dom Sparkes (Tempero). You can register for the webinar.

I’ve picked out some of the highlights from…

A group debate discussing the best way to make your site work on all devices?

A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of presenting at the J. Boye conference in Aarhus, Denmark about developing mobile optimised websites and applications. In the spirit of J. Boye I had decided to run an interactive session as opposed to the more traditional presenting method of lecturing people on personal experiences. There was a fascinating cross-section of people from different businesses at the session. Among the 50 that attended there were people from a variety of industry sectors including banking, charity, government and other public sector organisations, pharmaceutical and many more! The group was mostly made up of fairly senior people working across IT and marketing departments (with a fairly heavy emphasis on digital in their role!). Many, if not all, had some recent experience of…

Which social media complainer do you recognise?

The importance of social media to customer service has been highlighted through 2013. Marketers are seeking to deliver a positive customer experience, but if there is a problem, to use social media to react quickly and transparently to complaints, as well as using analytics to track and respond to customer behaviour and predict problems before it's too late!. Exact Target have recently created this infographic based on the results from research from the University of Florida. They segmented these Social Media Complainers into 5 types. The infographic gives ideas on how to treat these types of disgruntled customers differently, if you can recognise them. The Meek Customer: Don't like to complain, and will do so on Twitter or Facebook as they are seeking reassurance. The Aggressive Customer: Vocal with their complaints and best…

7 Tips to win the hearts, minds and wallets of mobile shoppers

A recent Google survey shows the importance of mobile in driving shopper behaviour today – at every stage in the customer journey. Pre-shopping: 58% of the sample use their mobile to locate stores, 57% check store hours and 44% browse retailers’ mobile sites. In-store: 84% of shoppers are using mobiles devices in-store. 62% access store websites, 50% access brand sites and 21% use store apps.

7 Tips to engage and transact mobile shoppers

This post picks out 7 tips to engage and transact with today’s mobile shoppers across multiple devices and throughout the purchase cycle. If you're to evaluate the wider developments in mobile marketing that will be important in 2014, see my free webcast.

1. Personalising the shopping experience

In its study 'The Future of Shopping’ commissioned by The Marketing Store, the Future Foundation sets out a…

How to increase engagement for your Facebook posts

In this post, I'm going to take one skill from the list I curated in my article 'The Ultimate Guide to becoming a great Social Media Manager' and demonstrate to you exactly why it is essential for a Social Media Manager - that skill is graphic design.

How to improved the design of a Facebook Post in 10 minutes

So, let's start with an example. From a social marketing point of view, how effective do you think this Facebook post is? You might think it's not too bad. You might think it's terrible. You may also be thinking about a similar post that you shared and how this compares to it. But the answer I'm looking for is – it could be improved... You…

What’s wrong with endless button colour testing?

Disclosure: We DO test buttons. Size, prominence, copy, positioning and very occasionally, colour. However, in many cases there are higher value tests that we could be running. There will almost always be constraints that limit the number of tests that you can run, based on design & developer effort, a limited number of conversions, limitations of your tools, etc. Therefore prioritising your tests is absolutely crucial. Where can you get the most bang for your buck? In this post I will share the most important things to consider when choosing what to test.

Selecting What to Test

If you've been working on Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO) projects for any length of time you'll know that there is a huge range of ways to capture insights on user behaviour. No matter which tools/techniques you use, here are the three…

The one New Years Resolution you should be making right now

If I said that you could have access to 3,000 Wembley stadiums full of buyers that have the ability to purchase your product and the ability to pay immediately, you'd probably think I'm lying or a looney. But I'm not, this is the reach of the marketplaces like eBay and Amazon, right now, today. In this article I aim to quash a few misconceptions and open your eyes to the obscene power of the marketplaces. And at the end of this article I have one question for you, but for now let's dive in.

A Car boot sale and books?

If you think eBay is a great big car boot sale and Amazon is just for books, then you're wrong, so very wrong. The marketplaces have evolved, they're gaining pace every single day and it's not just…

Facebook pushing quality content to the top on its newsfeed

Value: [rating=3]

Recommended Link: Facebook's Newsfeed changes

This Facebook update should be of particular interest to content marketers since it can potentially help businesses drive more traffic to their site based on their content. Facebook can already be effective in driving traffic given its reach. Indeed, in this update, Facebook announced that average referral traffic from Facebook to media sites has increased by over 170% - almost tripled - in the past year.

Facebook has introduced two new ways to highlight quality content on its newsfeed as it says it can now identify 'high quality articles' that are linked to rather than less newsworthy content such as what it calls 'meme photos'. The main changes within the feed are: 

1. Links to articles display more related articles

Selecting an article on the Facebook…