Dave suggested I write something important this week, something for marketers in 2014, after all we’ve just updated our health-check tool, and recognise that our audience are looking ahead and busy planning for success this year, so that makes sense. My post from a year ago did just that, my advice was to focus on (1) content and (2) customer journeys across mobile channels. Proven advice I think? It’s interesting as those two things also came out top in an informal Smart Insights survey that we ran in early December. So am I to sugar coat the same advice and ideas differently this year? On the one hand yes, it’s still super relevant, but it’s missing some thing else for 2014.

I wake up worrying about marketing

I hope that you do too? I genuinely do worry. I run an agency with paying clients, their happiness is my focus, so it’s…

A summary of 'add to basket' techniques from 50 retailers

The checkout process is crucial for e-commerce sites and a holistic approach is best to improve retail website conversion rates, for example using abandonment campaigns and analytics to review the online buying journey. At an earlier stage in the customer journey, reviewing design and messaging practices around the 'add to shopping cart' or 'add to basket button' can help move shoppers further down the funnel. We thought this was a useful infographic from Volusion based on reviewing the "Add to Cart" practices of US 50 shopping sites considering its shape, colour, size and design. The infographic is not providing a 'one size fit's all solution' and shows commonalities and tips on what is important to support conversion; it's tailored to the shopper, layout and branding of your website. It's interesting to look at examples…

Combining broad categories with precise interests. Plus a clever alternative to the Boost Post button.

As you are probably aware by now, Facebook offers some really nicely drilled down advertising options for targeting possible customers. Using these could become more important in 2014 since Facebook are now admitting that they are further turning down organic reach and forcing brands to pay for exposure even to their fans. As well as selecting demographics such as location, age and gender you can also target people based on all sorts of other criteria. In a previous post, I described targeting using custom audiences, enabling you to find people with similar characteristics. In this post I'll explore a combined targeting approach. If you are familiar with the process of creating an ad you will know that you have the option of listing "Precise Interests" of individuals to target as well as some "Broad Categories" that Facebook has…

Best practices for online form data capture

Lead capture forms need to minimise data collection, but of course you do need profiling info to qualify the lead so you can follow-up with relevant content or contacts. So it's difficult to get the balance right between sign-ups vs data collection for lead generation. Often this balance isn't right as analytics shows campaign targets are not attained with bounce rates too high.

The Marketing Ninja from Singlehop has produced what we think is a useful infographic summarising the issues to boost form conversion which collates different advice on best practice for increasing form conversion including how to test your form, which buttons to use and more.

 

To make this post more useful, we asked The Marketing Ninja for details of resources for form best practices so you can follow-up on…

Google introduces 3 options to review content effectiveness in Google Analytics

Value/Importance: [rating=4] Recommended link: Google Analytics announcement The lack of options for content grouping in Google Analytics has been surprising given that it has been a core feature of established analytics systems like Webtrends and Site Catalyst since as long as I can remember. It’s true that you can use the Content Drilldown to review the effectiveness of different content types in driving visits leads and sales as we recommend in our guide to Google Analytics, but this only works if you have a site structured with a clear hierarchy of folders. In the real-world, many sites particularly Ecommerce sites, or other sites pulling products from a database don’t have this. In these cases your best option was to create a custom filter for grouping content as Peter O’Neill outlines. Google has introduced 3 options for setting up content grouping and reporting.…

Insights on the best times to follow-up on leads in B2B marketing

Here's a summary of research specifically of interest to readers selling to marketers, but also relevant insight on best time for follow-up for B2B marketers selling technology to other professionals. Traditional lead generation techniques work well when selling marketing technology to marketers - it's not seen as 'cold calling'. According to Jenny Vance, President of Leadjen 'Marketers wear many different hats in their organizations: social media, events, public relations and advertising, to name a few. It’s no wonder they are bombarded with sales messages. When done properly, traditional lead generation efforts to marketers can be very effective in driving sales appointments and revenue.' Leadjen has backed this up with their study from 2010-2013, to look at best prospecting practices to Marketers, and traditional lead generation techniques. Leadjen made over 1 million calls and email contacts across more than 20,000 conversations. It…

4 Steps to Inbound Marketing Success

One of the biggest challenges business owners as well as marketers will face in 2014 is how they can use different online media together to achieve inbound marketing success.  Many think of (social media, email, search…etc) in silos, and that’s the reason why many inbound marketing strategies may fail. In order for you to be able to design a less siloed, more effective inbound marketing strategy, I have found you need 3 elements:

1. A defined customer journey

This begins when a complete stranger finds your brand online. They go through a conversion path that is designed to turn them into customers and then turn those customers into evangelists who will promote your brand for you. You might get lucky turning very few of those strangers into customers from the first interaction if your product and copy resonates with them really well, but then you’ll be missing on…

Affiliate experts share their frustrations from 2013 and expectations for 2014

Affiliate Marketing had a big year in 2013 with the industry now estimated to be worth a staggering £9bn. With that in mind I asked some thought leaders in the Affiliate Marketing industry for some of their thoughts on 2013 and what they think will change in 2014. A big thanks to Kevin Edwards, Strategy Director at Affiliate Window, Helen Southgate, UK MD Affilinet and Owen Hewitson, Associate Director Acquisition from Starcom MediaVest Group.

2014 is fast approaching. Where do you think we will see the biggest changes over the next 12 months?

Helen Southgate (HS): I’m not sure we’ll see any big changes as such, more a development and progression of the current channel. There will be some regulation areas to look out for though. The RMR comes into effect from 1st Jan…