Plus how one post got a reach of over 400%

There's not a lot that Facebook offers brands for free any more but here's a little known technique that might just net you a few new fans without having to shell out any advertising spend. Most reasonably popular posts on a brand's Facebook Page end up surfacing occasionally on the newsfeed of non fans - normally in the form of a notification that a friend has liked or commented on the post. With a really popular post you'll often find a domino effect whereby you pick up Likes to the post from the non fan too. What a fantastic opportunity to convert to fandom. But how to do it? It's actually pretty simple. Take the post below. Now we have just over 10,500 fans on the Musicademy Facebook Page but I'd picked up on a news story that I knew would appeal…

Aligning training to marketing skills for 2015

B2B Marketing and Circle Research reported in their '2014 Professional Development Report' on how companies are carrying out their professional training and development, Interested in benchmarking your training or aligning your training to your gaps in terms of marketing skills? Their Infographic gives you a taster of the report's findings which is a paid report, and useful for supporting recruitment opportunities or building a business case for your training budget: The top marketing skills are employees with an understanding of 'Segmentation, Profiling and Customer Insight'. Top 2 skills gap are in 'Legal requirements' and 'Measurement and Reporting'. 62% of employers deliver ad-hoc training and the preferred delivery is face-to-face. You can download their full infographic for more highlights from their Professional Development Report.  Our…

Protect your brand in 2015 with the right tools

If you thought brand competition was intense in the real world, you can only imagine what it's like in the free-for-all digital marketplace. Sales online are constantly rising northward, and as someone who expends a lot of energy, time and money in building relationships with your customers, while heightening visibility and increasing rand awareness to grow your brand's bottom line, this post is for you. Your days can't possibly get any busier. You might be a one-person show. You might have a staff. In either case, while you read this post, you might think your work and of those around you might be heading into overtime. It doesn't have to be that way. Below are some questions you should consider asking regarding the ever-growing online threats your brand faces. By choosing to implement a brand protection tool, you will be…

An overview of the current use of Search Marketing

SEMPO's 9th annual report in 2014 highlighted the client and agency views on search strategy marketing. It's helpful for Digital Marketers planning their next strategies, looking for valuable insight into tactical steps and how 'the evolving role of search marketing is an integrated element of the marketing mix'. The infographic highlights: 90% of companies adopt an experimental approach, except with social media. 9 out of 10 respondents focus on SEO and 78% on paid search. Measuring ROI from social media still remains a challenge. Additional Resources on Search Marketing best practice available on Smart Insights include: SEO 7 Steps Guide and online course How Search Marketing is managed [Infographic] Paid Search 7 Steps guide and online course …

How Topshop used Instagram and Facebook to power the Topshop Fashion Catwalk

Topshop's 2014 social media campaign gives a good example of an integrating social networks. Topshop used Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to bring their live London Fashion event to a social media audience. They enlisted 5 Topshop Instagram Bloggers and strong advocates to share their pictures and videos, inviting fans to post to the hashtag #Topshopwindow. Brands appearing at the Fashion show shared photos from the catwalk and celebs at the show, under hashtag #TopShopUnique and some Designers even took the opportunity to release their new outfits, before they hit the catwalk. The live event was streamed to the website so fans could 'click-to-buy' whilst watching the models on the runway in the latest fashions, and even download the latest music playlist. Social comments were shown…

Examples showing how screencasts can help different types of business

Screencast videos are already a big hit in the education industry. Tuning into a video demonstration gives your audience a step-by-step guide, showing them exactly what to do. This is exactly how big providers such as Khan Academy and Treehouse got started. But screencasting doesn’t just have to be about how-to videos, it’s also a powerful tool that can be used to create clever customer-focussed videos or provide feedback on client assignments. This means that the technology has applications across a range of industries for businesses of all sizes.

What is a screencast video?

Essentially, screencasting is recording your computer screen and adding audio to it. Screencast programs usually highlight your cursor to make it clear to your viewer where the focus of attention should be. Screencast videos can be sold as a series of tutorial products or uploaded as a how-to…

Deck the Halls with Boughs of Holly

Yes, even now Christmas is being hijacked by people like me - hence the headline. And it’s this marketing exercise of Christmas that especially fascinates me. The marketing started in 300AD when in the Rome of the Emperor Constantine (recently converted to Christianity) the celebration of Christ’s birth was made to coincide with Saturnalia. The feel- good of a great blow-out got the Christian bandwagon rolling along nicely.   This coincidence of celebrating Christ’s birth and roll-out-the barrel party time continued happily until typically the mean old sod, Mr Austerity Cromwell banned Christmas. Back to normal and a lot more when Charles 11 returned to England. Enter the four great apostles of Christmas early in the 19th century, first Washington Irving…

The latest Ecommerce facts about shopper behaviour to inform retail strategies in 2015

We enjoyed the interesting + useful Ecommerce factoids and commentaries from digital agency Blueleaf. So we got in touch to share the learnings contained. If you would like to see the remainder of the series, you can sign-up to Gossip. Enjoy, please Tweet the facts you fancy and Merry Christmas!

Day 1 - Christmas commerce fact for 8th December:

Shoppers spend 30% more per order, when free shipping is included. Source: Wharton

UX Director Chris Jones explains, 'Take a long, hard look at your shipping costs. Could you trial free shipping to see if there’s an uplift in sales that would more than cover the cost? Do you at least offer free shipping over a certain basket amount? It’s something that customers feel very strongly about, especially on high…

Comparing the efficiency of your B2B Marketing Funnel

It's natural that marketers want to benchmark, to compare the efficiency of their conversion funnels - but what datasets should they compare with? Within Ecommerce there are relatively good sources for Retail ecommerce conversion rates provided by Ecommerce vendors, but within business-to-business, no similar benchmarks are widely available - let us know if you know any good sources! I think this lack of B2B benchmarks is partly because it is harder to define the different steps of the funnel within B2B marketing in a standard way. If you're looking for a comparison of B2B conversion rates - here is a simple comparison from Marketing Sherpa, but it's a couple of years old now and doesn't standardise the funnel as conversion from lead to marketing qualified lead to sale, or look at costs such as cost per lead and cost per acquisition. The figures seem high…

Is Google favouring long-form content in its results?

Something rather strange happened recently to the results for one of our major keywords 'copywriting' - see SERPs. For the past 12 months or so, our homepage has consistently appeared in the top 10 results for the term – the largest volume search term in our industry. This page has been replaced with various other landing pages, most recently settling on a guide we produced titled 'How to become a copywriter.' This is despite the fact that this page does not include the term 'copywriting' in the meta data or header tags on the page and has no external back links. I suspected that the replacement of this page may have been due to an algorithmic penalty due to overzealous use of the term in link building to the homepage. However, …