Practical Tips covering SEO, OVP and CRO [Video]

Welcome to Round 2 of Smart Insights' Marketing Fight Club, where you get 2 different expert opinions on the simplest way to boost sales for a real startup. In Round 1 we looked at ideas to to boost sales for Boomf another startup.

Enplug gets new conversion tactics

Watch the video below to get simple tweaks that you can apply to your business today to improve your value message and increase conversions. After you watch the video don't forget to vote for the winner of this round in the comments below, and share your thoughts on the strategies discussed. We'd love to hear your feedback!

Stepping into the ring today we have...

Ramon Ray - Expert marketer & Publisher of Smart Hustle Magazine vs Wil Reynolds - SEO & Marketing expert and Founder of SEER Interactive Ramon and Wil…

Which channels affect purchase decisions for B2B buyers?

BuyerSphere is an excellent report for B2B marketers from Base One that is now in its 5th Edition and has just been released. If you don't know it, it reviews many aspects of B2B Digital Marketing with the focus on the decision-making process for B2B products and services by reviewing the behaviour and attitudes of over 200 B2B buyers for purchases over £20,000. Refreshingly the report focuses on 'what buyers do' and 'not what marketers think' with some enlightening findings. This article shares the findings on how the buyers find information to support their decision-making process and how influential the source is in terms of realising that sale.

Where do businesses find their information on their supplier?

Those holding the purse strings or 'influencers' in the buying decision, use at least 2 different information sources when selecting their supplier. With the main sources being gathered from…

Review your approach to marketing with limited budget

How to build - Start-up Marketing 101

Recently, we attended Denver Startup week, which inspired us to create a short 'How To' Guide that digs into issues related to getting a start-up off the ground – building on the 'How to build requirements for an MVP' and our white paper on 'Tips every first-time entrepreneur should know.' This article mamepecifically focuses on how to develop a marketing strategy as a start-up, with lessons learned from experts, as well as advice on tools of the trade and how to measure and analyze your progress.

15 Marketing tips for start-ups

Tip #1 The key advice that you always have to keep at the top of everything you do is: Get your product out the door – with emphasis on speed over perfection. Your product doesn’t…

We ask is social media marketing "Mostly a waste of time"?

Are some marketers so obsessed by social media that they are not investing enough budget and attention on traditional advertising and marketing? This is what is increasingly being suggested by some commentators. For example, in this recent talk, Mark Ritson, Associate Professor of Marketing and Branding and Columnist on 'Marketing Week' acknowledges that 'social media is an amazing tool' but states that it is 'mostly a waste of time' and suggests that our focus is wrong when he says: 'Marketers are putting too much emphasis on social media due to the hype in the media, and are forgetting how powerful traditional advertising and marketing can be'. http://youtu.be/S2NUayn2vP0 Some marketers and PR professionals like Nicola Swankie from Society felt the need to respond to his video on behalf of Social Media Practitioners. She responded in a …

How you can you dramatically increase your ecommerce sales with transactional emails

Transactional emails are a fascinating and often overlooked part of the ecommerce marketing landscape. Many business owners not only don’t take advantage of them but also don’t even have a clear idea of what they are. This is a shame because if harnessed properly, 'transactionals' can offer some truly remarkable benefits to those who use them for increased conversions and sales. Now, we’re going to cover some effective marketing strategies and statistics for a select list of key transactional emails but before we do, a quick run-down of what transactional emails are.

So what are transactional emails?

In simple terms, transactional emails are the email messages you send to users of your site or application whenever they specifically, individually interact with either. Thus, when someone joins your site and gets a welcome email or loads up their shopping cart or makes an order…

A review of digital change management – examining ‘top down’ and ‘bottom up’methods

"Like so many other revolutions, digital marketing has taken hold from the bottom up. Here, we find digital natives steeped in digital culture and practice — twenty- and thirty-somethings who came of age on the social web." Jake Sorofman, The Rise of the Digital CMO We often think of Senior Management as being the drivers of change within a business. After all, it is they who have they experience to see when change is necessary, and them who have the power to enact the change itself. However, as the quote above suggests, this is somewhat of a fallacy in the current climate – digital change has bubbled like a kind of ‘groundswell’, often meeting executives who are almost unaware.

Bottom Up Change is Commonplace

There are few better practical illustrations of change coming from the bottom than the growth of…

What are the best online services to fuel your blogger outreach?

You want more visibility for your business. But, how do you take your business from where it is now to being in a position where you have the blogosphere buzzing with mentions of your brand? The answer is blogger outreach. This involves tapping into the huge influence that bloggers have and using it to get more eyeballs on your content and to grow your business faster. Sure you could go ahead and contact any relevant blog that you come across but that won’t get you to where you want to be. By targeting the most influential and relevant blogs you will gain access to huge groups of people who are completely in line with your target audience. In this post I’m going to talk you through a number of tools that can help you not only find the right bloggers/blogs to contact but also manage…

Social Media Marketing campaign successes and failures

Every internet savvy person knows the potential of 'going viral' with content spread via social media. It’s about resonating your content so that it becomes popular, is shared and showcases your brand's reputation to improve your chances of your content being prominent, and engages with the right audience. The infographic shares some examples of successful viral case studies and others which have flopped, along with their 'recipe for success'.

Thanks to BestMarketingDegrees.org for sharing their infographic and commentary with us. It's a resource guide for students, looking  to follow a career in marketing and provides articles and graphics related to the latest development in the field of marketing.

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Combine your online and offline strategies for an industry-leading brand presence

Branding isn’t just about getting your logo seen everywhere. Your brand is your business. Successful branding is about communicating your values and vision to your target markets to attract, maintain and grow a loyal customer base. Your brand should instantly communicate why you are better than your competitors, but it takes a lot of work to get to that point. To reach this point you need a branding strategy which incorporates every aspect of your business, from how your CEO behaves and how your employees feel about their jobs right through to the quality of your product or service and the end customer experience. Slideshare features a good deck on how to write a brand plan step by step. To do this you can use an effective mix of online and offline techniques. However you present your…

Social Media - One Word to Unlock the Insight Potential

That word is segmentation. In a previous post on Smart Insights, I highlighted the various sources of intelligence achievable through social media analytics and possible ways to measure them. Here I take a step back and discuss how those sources of intelligence are obtained through the careful segmentation of data. The focus will be on the following media: Earned social media (PR and customer generated) Owned social media (both your channels and that of competitors) Paid social media (e.g. using social case to inform paid promotions) Unclaimed social media (e.g. related topics that may not mention your brand). Below are some of the sources of intelligence that were addressed previously but segmented by business function to accomplish varying business needs. Segmenting data will allow you to slice and dice information to enable greater insight for multiple stakeholders. It can therefore accommodate for different…