My pick of the 6 of the world’s most creative demonstration videos

Today, demonstration videos are as essential as websites. Consumers searching for a product or service online expect a more interactive experience. They want to know how a product works and what its major benefits are for them. And they want to know quickly, and without wading through a whole heap of written explanations. Demonstration videos give you a chance to show off your new product or service, and reach a wider audience at the same time. After all, you may think your new product is brilliant, but not all products are as intuitive as the iPhone. And while your enthusiasm for it may be infectious when you’re talking to customers, you don’t have the time to talk to everybody, and anyway you don’t want to limit your reach. (more…)…

An introduction to the benefits of exhibiting if you haven't taken the plunge yet

From visibility to credibility, exhibiting at a trade show has hundreds of benefits for your business. Establishing a presence, whether big or small, for your company at a trade show gives you a powerful platform for meeting new customers, reaching out to your existing clientèle, and building a more established and reliable brand. [caption id="attachment_34551" align="aligncenter" width="600"] One of the largest exhibitions - CES Las Vegas. Image credit - AskDaveTaylor.[/caption] A lot of businesses are put off exhibiting at a trade show because of the cost. It’s true – developing a great trade show exhibit, training your staff members, and travelling to the event itself isn’t a very cheap process. However, like most forms of marketing, with the right strategy, a trade show can be a very profitable…

Minimize Waste, Maximize Impact by Optimizing Your Ads on Google Display Network

Google’s ads are shown on more than 2 million publisher websites a day, and that kind of broad reach can carry an incredibly powerful campaign — or send a lot of money to a lot of dead ends and wrong addresses. More than $12 billion of Google’s $43 billion in ad revenue came from Google Network members’ websites in 2013, but not all of this revenue yielded positive outcomes for the businesses that paid for them... A business wastes time and money when an ad campaign fails to yield the desired conversions or actions from its target audience. For instance, if your ads are being shown to people outside of the geographic area you serve, that’s campaign waste. Your business can create an effective and efficient ad campaign by using Google’s tools and taking a few simple steps to avoid campaign waste…

How Big Data enables the relationship between data types to be explored

In my previous article in this series exploring the application of Big Data to marketing, I looked at how the Velocity component of Big Data provides greater understanding of your customers, improving marketing performance. In this post, I will explore the third of the 3 Vs, the potential impact of Variety on Marketing Variety covers the multiple types of data that are now available from the established structured data of tables and columns, with defined elements and values, to the many unstructured free format types of data. In recent years the amount of unstructured data and machine generated data is increasing at an exponential rate, being the major proportion (>80%) of the vast volumes of data now in existence. So what does this…

Statistics on consumer psychology on Ecommerce sites

Have you ever wondered about which are the biggest consumer concerns that are a barrier to online purchase? For example, what is the perception if your website page is slow to load, what consumers actually think about your videos or if on-line vouchers affect the decision to buy. Of course, the best way is to ask consumer direct, by a panel of customers or through conducting a usability test. But as a quick alternative, check out the research we have compiled in the new Vouchercloud infographic on consumer buying psychology. The findings tell you some of the 'statistics and habits behind the clicks': 31% of consumers would be more likely to buy a product after watching a video since it reinforces their confidence, and 41% would abandon the shopping cart if there were hidden charges. More…

How video enhances the creativity for engineering marketing

The American author and renowned management consultant, Peter Drucker, once proclaimed that since the only real aim of a business is to create and keep customers, then all businesses could be seen as having only two basic functions; marketing and innovation. ‘Marketing and innovation produce results; all the rest are costs,’ he went on to conclude. Whether you agree with Drucker or not, his point highlights that often difficult relationships are found in engineering and technology companies between marketing departments and R&D. Engineers must develop products the market wants, and marketers must communicate complex products to customers effectively. When the product or system being engineered is highly complex or diffuse in nature and your target audience is not necessarily well versed in the technical language of your industry, a bridge is needed to create a connection between consumer and product. Engineering firms…

Recommendations on improving your content marketing capabilities

In our recent Smart Insights - Hubspot research on Managing Content Marketing, we asked five industry experts for their views on how content marketing can be successfully managed. Here they go into more detail of approaches to improve the effectiveness of content marketing. You can learn more ideas on how to better manage content marketing in this free webinar from Dave Chaffey showing examples and 10 techniques and examples to make content marketing more effective (recording available). 10 practical content marketing techniques from Smart Insights

The challenges of managing content marketing

The research showed that there were a common set of challenges of managing content marketing that companies need to manage. …

Part 3 in a series showing how Big Data can support marketing

In my previous article in this series exploring the application of Big Data to marketing, I looked at how the Volume component of Big Data provides breadth and depth to your understanding of your customers. In this post, I will explore the second of the 3 Vs, the potential impact of Velocity on Marketing.

Let’s first look at what we mean by Velocity and put down a simple definition of ‘Velocity is the speed of data growth/change’.

In the last few years, the accumulation of data has grown at an astonishing rate, with the amount of data increasing by 2.5 exabytes each day or 40% annually at current rates and accelerating.

The big question is, what does velocity mean for businesses looking to tap into it and does this speed of growth/change…

A checklist of the 13 most common touchpoint leaks

Over nearly two decades in marketing, and across well over 200 businesses – from as large as Microsoft and as micro as the back bedroom – I have yet to find a single one that isn’t leaking potential profit somewhere in their marketing operation. And, even those that have it pretty tight can usually notch it up with a few judicious tweaks.

Categorising marketing profit leaks

In pulling all this together, I found that profit leaks fall into two clear categories. The first, and most obvious, are those that relate to how you interact with the outside world. That is, the touchpoints with customers, potential customers, or anyone else who might encounter your business. Of these, I have defined thirteen typical ways that most businesses lose money in their marketing. The second category is what I call the Foundation Leaks, and they are far more…

64 ways to use Google+ for marketing

Are you new to marketing on Google+? Or perhaps looking for new ideas on how it can support your branding strategies? This simple infographic from Socialmediaonlineclasses.com is a quick checklist to review suggesting 64 ways to use this growing social media platform. With 540 million users per month, Google+ should be considered as a core social media marketing platform for sharing content and engaging through different features including Google Hangouts or perhaps Google+ communities.

Additional resources for Google+ on Smart Insights

Smart Insights guide to Google+ Google+ hangouts post Google+ for outreach post Google+ vs Facebook post Google+ Features post Google+ Communities post …