Why Social CRM could be better than traditional Social Media management?
Social media is a big deal for businesses, but that’s not exactly groundbreaking news... Consultants and strategists have been talking about the importance of social presence and social marketing for years now.
It’s simple math, really: 74% of online adults use social networking sites, there are about 500 million tweets sent every day. That adds up to a lot of missed opportunities if your business isn’t doing something intentional with social media. But there are many different opinions on what exactly that something should be.
A 2014 study from TNS Global revealed that over 80% of U.S. small businesses try to leverage social media for growth and have increased spending to do so. But many businesses have a difficult time measuring their return-on-investment (ROI), according to a…
Facebook to remove deactivated accounts from Page Like counts
Importance: [rating=2]
Recommended link: Facebook blog announcement
We aim to only alert members to the biggest changes happening on the main digital marketing platforms. This one is relatively small, but we thought we’d do a brief alert since you should keep an eye out to see how big the drop is and you may be asked by colleagues or clients, so will have an answer ready for when they ask?
What marketers need to know about this change
1. Your Facebook likes will fall by a small amount Facebook explains:
“Page admins should expect to see a small dip in their number of Page likes as a result of this update. It’s important to remember, though, that these removed likes represent people who were already inactive on Facebook”.
2. Why will Likes Fall? Facebook will remove deactivated and…
50% of customer service representatives disagree
Customers naturally have high expectations when it comes to customer service and will easily switch brands, so it's all well and good having a good workflow and technologies but 'customer service' is paramount and the 'human contact' and making it easy for online shoppers to quickly get responses to their questions.
Research on multichannel customer service backs this up, and consumers are still influenced by not only response times, but also the tone of voice and the information they are receiving.
Voice automation services (IVR) is popular amongst brands, but is this from the company's point of view to cut down on call time with a live agent rather than for the benefit of the customer!. Even customer service representatives aren't impressed with internal technologies and 75% of consumers are dissatisfied as ' it takes too long to get the info they…
How we got to #2 most popular inbound marketing blog in the UK. Sharing what works for our blog, the mistakes we've made and what could work for yours
Hubspot have just launched a new Inbound marketing ranking tool: InboundRank . It enables you to submit the URL of your marketing blog, and generate a ranking for your blog based on several parameters including inbound traffic, domain authority and average social shares.
As you'd expect, Hubspot are doing the content marketing thing and have compiled a post sharing some of the secrets of the Top 10. This is based on my response to them. I wanted to go into a bit more detail on our blog on what seems to have worked for us, the pitfalls we tried to avoid and what could work for you.
We're chuffed that SmartInsights.com is currently number 2 on the…
Track and optimize these 5 metrics and watch your profits surge
As a digital marketer with access to Google Analytics plus your multiple inbound marketing tools, you have hundreds upon hundreds of metrics to consider while judging your results. Where to start? For example, here is just a tiny list of metrics to consider to start:
Number of website visitors
Website bounce rate
Email subscriber list size
Email open rate
Advertising CTR (click-through rate)
Number of new leads
Overwhelming... I know.
The natural question that arises is, which metrics are the most important to track, and why? This article will answer just that. I'll explain the 5 most critical metrics for your business, and how tracking them will boost your profits immediately.
Business Asset Metrics vs. Operating Metrics
Before we go over the 5 key metrics, I want to briefly explain the importance of Business Asset Metrics and Operating Metrics, and the difference between the two.
Operating Metrics are the numbers that gauge your current…
How free whitepapers create customer obligation
Sometimes it helps to take a step back from the everyday tactics employed in digital marketing, and look at your customers from a different perspective. Take reports and whitepapers for instance. As digital marketers, we know that value adding free content works for customer engagement and for our search rankings. Google loves good quality, relevant content – and your customers and prospects gain great value from reading engaging reports and whitepapers (just take a look at Smart Insight’s own free range of reports and how to guides).
But let’s take that step back.
Let’s move away from viewing the world through our digital lens, and try and see it from a behavioural perspective instead.
Tactically, we know free content is a great customer acquisition tool, but could there be more to it…
New research shows B2B services marketing budget priorities
ITMSA's recent research reviewed B2B Marketing investment priorities from larger companies including Microsoft, SalesForce and BT.
The report shares findings on budget allocations, detailed allocation of marketing spend, staffing, priorities and challenges for this year.
It highlights shifts in focus - ' according to the research, in the past the focus was on 'reputation', today it's 'Revenue' and the future is 'relationships'.
The companies surveyed are focusing on revenue generation (ROI), Thought Leadership, Brand Differentiation and Reputations, as they continue to plan for online spend.
Where are marketing spending plans for this year?
The biggest spend is forecasted to be on marketing programs, campaigns and content development. Content Development accounts for 15% of spend.
The report shows some flexibility in budget investment with 8 in 10 of the companies able to…
New research shows the popularity of Online Customer Service including Live Chat, Social Media and Email
Improving customer service can be the answer for many companies to stand out in the crowd, as they trade in competitive environments with increasing customer expectations. Omnichannel customer care is being recognised by retailers, as the number of customer communication channels are increasing, as consumers are buying products and services. Consumers are contacting companies via traditional methods of the phone, in-store face to face contact and via social media such as Tweeting and Online chats.
What is the preferred method of contact for goods bought in-store?
Retailers know that customer service at every touchpoint, regardless of the communication method, must provide a positive experience every time so they don't lose sales or damage their brand. But which are the customer care channels they need to offer and how do they compare?
The research highlights the…
An example of using Audience Insights and Ad Manager to reach your target audience
If you’re a digital marketer there is a high chance that over the last year you have noticed the increased relevance of content as the key factor to a successful content strategy. Algorithm changes at Google have become more reader focused meaning that good quality content is now priority number one.
The most difficult part of distributing content is pretty much down to the fact you are posting it online. With over 3 billion active Internet users in the world and counting meaning that the net is becoming an increasingly difficult place to get noticed. Social, and particularly Facebook, has always been a great way to publish your content to people who care about your brand.
No need to worry right? We’ve got a huge Facebook page with 500,000 likes so plenty of people in our audience will see this…
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03 Mar 2015
Joe Pulizzi of the Content Marketing Marketing Institute gives his take on the state of content marketing
Whether videos, blogs, infographics or ebooks, content is now being consumed on an unprecedented scale. And in our multichannel, multi-device, always-on world, that means content represents an exciting opportunity for brands to make an impression on the customer during the product purchasing process. Little wonder, then, that content marketing has become such big news.
In fact, the buzz for content marketing reached such extraordinary levels in 2014, that it led some to question whether interest in the discipline had reached its peak. Nonetheless, evidence suggests that there could still be plenty of growth left yet.
The Content Marketing Institute (CMI) recently conducted a research on content marketing in the UK, and found that 85% of respondents use content marketing, with 45% reporting they…
