Planning a mobile marketing strategy

'The year of mobile’ has been quoted many times over the past 5 or even 10 years as organisations tentatively decide if this will be the year to invest in their mobile proposition. A recent study by comScore suggests the dawn of mobile marketing becoming a mainstream channel is finally upon us with a recent report claiming that mobile usage (combining mobile web browsing and mobile apps) accounts for 60% of time spent consuming digital media compared to 40% via desktop. This suggests the importance of creating a mobile marketing strategy and in this post I will highlight some key components of this and case studies to illustrate where a mobile strategy has been implemented. The chart below enhances this significant change in media platform usage since May 2013 to June 2014, displaying a fundamental shift to mobile browsing: …

6 Essential parts of a marketing campaign

In a previous post I gave these examples of 6 common problems which can kill a marketing campaign. This post is a companion to that article and shows what you should include in a marketing campaign plan. The structure I outline in this post is based on this Smart Insights marketing campaign planning template originally developed by Dave Chaffey when he was a tutor on the Integrated E-marketing campaigns training workshops for the CIM and then updated in his books. More recently, it’s been extended for Smart Insights Expert members in association with First 10 and is used by us on a regular basis on planning client marketing campaigns. The recommended structure of the campaign and the questions to ask at each step are: 1. Campaign goals and tracking. What are we trying to achieve through our campaign and how will we know when we achieve it? Here you define…

#DigitalImpact2014 transforming your digital world

Our showreel gives the vibe of our first conference held in London on 17th September 2014 based on Smart Insights members who attended, speakers and partners. In a previous post, we gave a visual, Twitter picture summary of the recent Smart Insights  Digital Marketing conference. In this post, I've summarised what I thought were the most useful insights from listening to the speakers, linked to more detailed posts from some of the speakers.  I listened to speakers from start-ups to large corporations sharing best practice, their mistakes and insight into how we can manage digital transformation; from planning, to managing and optimization. My colleague Dave introduced the conference, by sharing key models (PR Smith's SOSTAC® and Smart Insights RACE) on how to plan for digital transformation through structured models. He showed how John Lewis ranks as the No…

Four ways to prove the value of social media to your CMO

So you have ambitious plans for a new social media program that will build brand buzz and drive business impact? There’s just one problem: you need a big budget to match your big dreams. Though social media budgets are projected to double in the next five years, many social media marketers still report feeling underfunded. How can you convince your senior marketing leadership to invest in social?

4 Steps to gaining social media buy-in

These proven tactics can help you prove the value of your social media efforts and win buy-in from your CMO. Step 1. Prove social media ROI through direct sales. Social media ROI: often talked about, but rarely proven. But if you want your CMO to increase your funding, you’ll need hard numbers that demonstrate your impact on the bottom line. Use your web analytics platform to …

What length of copy is most shareable across social media?

As we all put more effort into content marketing and our competitors do as well, we want to get cut-through, to maximise the chance of sharing. So, it helps to know the length of copy which maximises shares. We like this research from CoSchedule since it isn't based on opinion, it's based on data analysing the number of shares from social media from 1 million articles, focusing on those with more than 1,000 shares in total... It showed that 'on average, longer content gets more shares’.

Source: OkDork.com

Of course, there will be exceptions to any rule-of-thumb based on a large data set, but this clearly shows that  content producers who create more in-depth content will be rewarded by more shares. Their research reinforces researchers found in the…

Avoid those common PPC Mistakes to maximise your campaigns

As I work with new clients to improve their PPC campaigns, there are some common mistakes I see again and again. These include both the way the account is set up and the overall strategy of where to focus PPC spend. In this post I'll recommend a number of tools and techniques that can help you avoid these mistakes and so boost campaign ROI in AdWords.

1. Not analysing enough data

One simple mistake that marketers make is that they don't analyse enough data to come to a statistically reliable decision. When you first start out testing and you see that one ad has 15 clicks and one has 12 and come to the conclusion that the one with 15 is better. However here you would not have enough data to make a reliable decision and are at risk of choosing the wrong advert as your winner. To…

A visual summary of Smart Insights members' conference

Well that's a relief! I think it's fair to say our first conference went pretty well judging by the Twitter comments and other feedback. Many thanks if you attended the event and got involved in the sharing. I've compiled a quick "best of" starting with some general feedback and then looking at highlights of individual talks. If you're an Expert member of Smart Insights and weren't able to attend, we'll be making the slides available on the site next week, we'll let you know :) It was great we had a full-house and I was delighted to see attendees from many industries across Europe and beyond - I spoke to Smart Insights Expert members from Denmark, Ireland, Switzerland, Italy even Australia! and I think there were more countries besides. مؤتمر رائع جدا بحضور أحد أهم خبراء #التسويق_الإلكتروني في العالم @DaveChaffey #digitalimpact2014 …

5 tips to avoid drowning in social media

I am fortunate to be working in an agency environment, so I hear stories from various industries and brands related to digital marketing. It keeps me on my toes as it forces constant learning and hones my listening skills! One of the most common trends I hear and read about at the minute is how stressful and overwhelming people and brands are finding the management of "social media". It's my job in those circumstances to help give clients clarity and focus. I thought I would share my 6 tips for ensuring you don't fall into the same trap many others seem to. I think that in recent years as more people in businesses have become alert to Social Media and even using it themselves it has forced it into the limelight for marketers. CEO's who want to have more likes…

Take control of your localized website for SEO

For digital marketers managing many localized websites, multilingual SEO can be a whole different ballgame compared to traditional SEO strategies. Sure, some practices are similar, such as placing appropriate keywords in headers and metadata. However, there are many new considerations to factor into the plan when optimizing your website for various cultures around the world. After all, there is a lot more to multilingual SEO than translating a few keywords.

5 Tips to avoid with your website localization

Here are five common setbacks to avoid even before you head down the website localization path. Along the way, I’ll share some valuable tips to help guide you on the right path to search engine (and customer experience) glory.

Tip 1: Thin, low-quality content on your localized websites

As you may know, SEO is not about stuffing your website full of keywords. In fact, doing so can land you right…

Key approaches to develop your marketing analytics strategy

When you first begin venturing into the world of marketing analytics, it’s easy to get overwhelmed. Why? Well, put simply, marketing analytics is made up of a number of processes and technologies that help you analyze the performance of your marketing efforts. By measuring marketing data, you can determine where to adjust your strategies, improving your ROI. And because it’s all about tracking and responding to data, your first instinct might be 'the more data, the better!' but that can be a slippery slope. You’ll soon learn that crafting an effecting strategy can help streamline your processes and give you more 'bang' for your metaphorical analytics 'buck.'

Why you need a marketing analytics strategy

Your strategy acts as a plan that informs the purpose of analyzing the data you collect. Rather than just looking through all…