Are you reaching your audience on mobile?

Importance: [rating=3] Recommended link: IAB/IHT Mobile advertising report This month, the IAB and IHS Technology's published a survey that shows strong demand for global mobile advertising, as revenue almost doubled last year to 19.3 billion dollars and mobile growth accounts for a large proportion of this. In terms of the format of mobile advertising, display has shown the most growth followed by search and then messaging. According to Anna Bager, Vice President and General Manager, Mobile Marketing Center of Excellence, IAB. 'as mobile ad campaigns become easier to plan, create, buy, and measure – in great part due to programmatic strategies – these operational efficiencies are spurring the growth of the mobile display ad market. And, this impressive rise in mobile advertising is unquestionably a worldwide phenomenon, with strong year-over-year upticks being seen in every corner of the globe.' Globally, there are differences…

“Close variant” keyword matching to become default by end September can increase clicks by 7% on average

Importance: [rating=4] (If you’re not already using this feature) Recommended link: AdWords official announcement

Context for the change to match types

The Match types advertisers use in AdWords are important since they control whether relevant ads are displayed to searchers based on the keywords they type. This in turn affects the clickthrough rates, Quality Score and the ROI you get on your campaigns. Here’s a reminder of the main match types from iProspect:

What is the change?

In their announcement, Google explain that starting in late September, they’re applying close variant keyword matching to all exact and phrase match keywords. Previously it was possible to opt-out of these. Close keyword variations include Close variations include misspellings, singular and plural forms, acronyms, stemmings (such as floor…

Our new mobile responsive home page and customer journeys

22nd August update: New library search and other updates It's nearly a couple of months now since we redesigned the site to update our design style and to make the site fully mobile responsive on smartphone and tablet. In this note I just wanted to let members know about another round of updates. Since the original relaunch we have updated our blog page template to be responsive too, so you can access our updates "on the go" more easily. Thanks if you left a comment with support - it's been nice to get a lot of positive comments! We did have a few support queries about mangled layouts with the previous updates - this can happen when the previous design stylesheet is in your cache if you have accessed a page before. A simple refresh of the browser should sort this, you may need to do this for the the new…

Don't forget the bigger picture

When writing emails, we do like to "optimise" each individual element of the message. Which is a good thing, provided that optimisation takes account of how those elements interact with each other. If it doesn't, you end up with mails like this: From line, subject line and preheader are all individually optimised to ensure people recognise the message. But the combined impact is over the top and ignores the potential of, say, the subject line and preheader to better highlight why someone would want to take a closer look at the mail. (And, yes, I have seen mails like this!) There's a broader impact to consider that depends on the combined impression generated by these elements as people work their way (or not!) through the email. It's why you might ask your copywriter for a headline change and find them rewriting the rest…

Three ways to use marketing analytics to increase sales

As there are so many options available when using data analytics, why do some businesses typically rely on one single approach? The analytical tools available for the business leader's arsenal are now better and bigger than ever before, and are targeted to generate better decision-making. Despite this, and the ability of such tools to increase conversion rates, growth and MROI (marketing return on investment), some companies seem frozen by the choices on offer. This causes business heads to default to their usual performance-management and planning approach, and the typical result is the discovery that even advanced single methodologies have limits. The variety of audiences and activities that marketing budgets support and the diverse time limits for investment requires an approach that's a little more complex. The ideal way for companies…

6 examples of businesses building new systems to innovate their marketing using digital technology

Against the backdrop of CMO’s spending more on technology than CIO’s there has been a lot of debate about where digital strategy should exist within an organisation. Is this missing the point though?  Perhaps the question we should be asking is when will corporate and marketing strategy simply become part of an overarching digital strategy that is responsible for the direction of business as a whole. Since I work in a digital agency you could say I’m bound to see things this way but let’s take a look at the facts.  At present many of the conversations that we at Blueleaf have as an agency will start with a brief for a new website but increasingly such discussions go on to encompass marketing issues that are fundamental to the organisation as a whole.

G.R.I.N. and bear it

This is because digital technology…

How to save time and reduce waste through better operational planning

As the digital marketing environment continues to evolve, introducing efficient marketing practices is more important than ever. Coordinating multiple channels, running integrated campaigns and relying on external partners make modern marketing processes complex and difficult to manage. Teams are often reluctant to update their day-to-day management tools and processes as change isn't always easy though always needed! This challenge is faced by every marketing team and can be tackled by making important changes to the way things are planned and managed. By thinking through and then implementing some of these following six steps, you can save time, reduce waste and improve operational marketing management. Get everyone pulling in the same direction. Defining business and marketing objectives first is crucial, your most powerful leadership tool is clear and specific objectives. Define your battleground, understand where your efforts are likely to…

Why and how marketers must respond to the decline in organic reach

There are many articles talking about the demise of Facebook, articles like this on Forbes discussing the decline of organic rearch. Other research suggests growth in users is  strong, albeit from new markets. At the same time, Facebook is demanding that we now ‘pay to play’, no more organic reach - at least not reliably for those cheap contests and product-led posts brands seem to love so much - this is resulting in fellow whining marketers like these guys bemoaning the gifted “free” ride that we’ve had for the last free years. But hasn’t it always been this way, haven’t we had to evolve with this change from Google too as they led the search engine charge that marketers were so keen to follow, a case of déjà vu? Remember how…

Bringing ideas to life - developing the perfect process for content ideation

"Creative thinking inspires ideas. Ideas inspire change." Barbara Januszkiewicz Ideas are the lifeblood of campaigns and the content strategy to support them. Creating brilliant ideas and developing them into unique and appealing content is what marketing campaigns have used to generate audiences for years, and that won’t be changing anytime soon. The value of the creative process is something we recognize and respect at Zazzle Media, which is why we spend hours – many, many hours – honing that process. In this post, we'll describe 12 process steps to consider as part of content ideation. But contrary to popular belief, there’s a lot more to producing fantastic ideas than huddling together crossed-legged in a Zen-like state, shouting random ideas at each other during a wacky brainstorm session.  Adopting the structured approach this article suggests will help produce consistent results across the board, whatever…

5 reasons why your content marketing campaign may fail and ideas to make content more 'viral'

We know from our research into Managing Content Marketing that one of the main challenges for marketers at the moment is selecting relevant content which will become viral and shared. Creating sharable, viral content is a challenge, so we thought this infographic is useful since it reminds us of the basics that we sometimes forget, as we focus on finding and curating content. There are 5 practical steps on improving reach from this infographic shared on Business2Community. 1.  Highlight emotional appeal. Positive engaging content will need to 'trigger emotions' to make people laugh, be inspired or amazed. Use this in your headlines and copy sharing the content asset. 2. Create shareable content. Shareable content makes the sharer look good - it needs to be useful or entertaining. 3. Timing. Share at the right time when your audiences are most likely to…