5 all-too-common reasons that stop companies investing in Marketing Automation?
Marketing Automation is becoming a more widespread purchase, indeed it's one of the top-rated trends in the Smart Insights poll of 2016 digital marketing trends. However, our research suggests that many businesses still aren't using functionality like lead scoring, lead nurture and web personalisation - download it for further details and recommendations.
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So this poses the question: what is preventing companies from adopting Marketing Automation? Well, as with the adoption of any technology, there are always obstacles and believe me, I have come up against these obstacles on numerous occasions! The good news is that I have also been able to overcome them through working through the arguments. In this post I'll take a look at the most common…
A checklist for digital marketers, bloggers and writers to create content that brings traffic and turns visitors into subscribers or customers
80% of B2B marketers and 70% of B2C marketers used content marketing for their businesses last year. The number of digital marketers who use content creation and distribution in 2015 is close to 90% from total.
Being a very significant part of successful marketing strategy, online content is developing and improving constantly; it's not enough for content writers to take a laptop, create a 500-word article on a particular topic, add a bright or funny image, and post it to their business blogs in hopes for great traffic and conversion rates. This tactics doesn't work anymore: top-notch content calls the shots, and online writers should abide by the rule of the game if they want to make their business more visible and recognizable online, as well as monetize their traffic.
According to…
Bear these site migration tips in mind to maintain rankings of your e-commerce store during a domain change or site restructure
Moving is hard. I would know – I started my life in the Northeast, moved across the country to Texas, and then to Chicago. It’s difficult to get settled into a new place, making new friends, finding a place with decent pizza
in your neighborhood.
It’s even more difficult when we’re talking about websites – there’s the potential for big wins, and big losses. Everyone wants a new, modern website – but few consider the work that needs to be done to ensure that website produces the results you desire. It gets even more complex when you add E-commerce to the mix – payment gateways, shopping carts, affiliate sites, coupons and more! It turns into a big project, fast.
In my role as an SEO Account Manager, I not only deal with the…
A reminder of Facebook's changes during October
Since a relative lull of announcements about new developments in August and September Facebook has been busy with releasing a bunch of updates since and some are well worth knowing about. The biggest from an advertiser perspective is the launch of Lead Ads and Facebook retail listings, but the one that will get the most media coverage once rolled out is the so-called Dislike or “Emotion” buttons. Local business verification is also an important one for many brands.
Here’s a quick roundup with links to articles that explain the topic in more depth.
Facebook Lead Ads
Lead Ads look like other Facebook ads except that when you hit the call-to-action button you stay on Facebook with a Facebook form collecting the customer data. This is particularly useful on mobile as it reduces the load time an external page is likely to suffer and enables Facebook to auto-fill many…
Contact Management and Email Marketing rank highest for Marketing Automation buyers
Software Advice has released their 2015 research into how buyers are selecting their Marketing Automation Software and which features are important to American companies.
This year it has revealed that 98% of buyers are 'first time buyers', a rise in 8% from last years results, indicating a growing demand for small businesses to move away from manual processes as they appreciate the return on investment.
What functionality are buyers looking for in their Marketing Automation Systems?
Companies are investing in industry-specific systems as well as focusing on key functionality. Over 2/3 of respondents have prioritised their system requirements towards contact management features, along with email marketing and lead tracking capabilities.
Which industries are using Marketing Automation?
This year, the report shows that low adopters…
Gamification can potentially revolutionize your content marketing strategy – examples and tips to show how to apply it
Content marketing is predicted to continue to be a key strategy in digital marketing and marketers will soon start looking for new solutions to create fun and engaging content. Many of them are already interested in gamification – analyst Gartner expects that by 2016, gamified strategies will become standard practice for driving brand engagement and fostering consumer loyalty. Here are a few tips to help you realize the potential gamification holds for revolutionizing your content marketing strategy.
The basics
First of all, what is gamification? It's basically application of game mechanisms to non-gaming activities and contexts. Gamification is of great use to areas of business which depend on engagement and motivation – for instance training, project management, recruitment or marketing.
Rewarding players with points and badges or…
A guide to Mastering SEO when there is no Google
Operating in a world where Google and many other familiar channels don’t exist is something that many search marketers in the west might feel unsure of. The fact is, many of the fundamental rules are the same, but the context in which you’re operating becomes dramatically different.
For search marketers that successfully venture into the Chinese market, the 'size of the prize' is huge. With over 640 million internet users, you’ve got the potential to reach an audience that’s more than twice the size of the US. Yes, twice the size!
For any business looking to grow an audience in China, gaining visibility and coverage on the nation’s biggest search engine Baidu should form a key part of any strategy. With SERPs that may look familiar on the surface, Baidu has a lot of features that actually differ from what we’re used to,…
Mobile Browsing is So Popular You Can’t Afford to Ignore Your Mobile Visitors
The statistics don't lie – mobile browsing has quickly become more common than desktop browsing, and mobile visitors tend to show higher rates of engagement than desktop users. However, the window of engagement time is also shorter for mobile users, which means they stay on your site for less time and come back less frequently. While someone browsing a site on their laptop or desktop might leave a few tabs open and go idle, only to return later on to continue reading, this type of tabbed behavior is not as common amongst mobile visitors.
The average small business website gets about 20% of its traffic from mobile devices, but that number is continually growing and for some sites it is much higher. Thus, the best way to…
Use these less well-known Social Media tools and Hacks to Get Things Done
The world of social media is a busy place. A very busy place. And this means that it can often feel like you're shouting into the wind with your social media campaigns. Indeed, if you approach social media without a strategy and without the right tools, your social media activity may amount to exactly this.
The good news, however, is that, as social media has grown, more and more tools have become available that can help the shrewd social media marketer do their job more effectively. These include tools for scheduling posts, tracking follower/fan demographics, refining content, creating social media calendars, and much, much more.
It’s hard to imagine running a decent social media marketing campaign without using at least some of these tools. And the very best social media marketers often use a variety of tools and make sure…
If you want a strong team you'll need to treat them right: 6 techniques to build a cohesive culture
A recent article about Amazon’s work culture shocked many, including the company’s CEO Jeff Bezos himself.
Regardless of what’s really happening at Amazon, this ongoing situation should serve as a cautionary tale of what happens when a company’s public image doesn’t appear to align with its employees’ experiences.
Big companies such as Amazon, Apple, and Walmart can weather bad press because of the value they deliver. Consumers might shake their heads at reports of demeaning worker treatment, but they’re not going to stop buying iPhones or cancel their Prime subscriptions.
But for the rest of us, ongoing internal unrest will undoubtedly hurt external output. You can’t expect overworked, underappreciated employees to consistently deliver high-quality products. You can’t expect the public to overlook…
