Avoid a Black Fridays Sales #Fail by optimising your Black Friday Marketing

Over the years, we Brits have been given much by our transatlantic cousins: the telephone, the lightbulb, David Hasselhoff… In more recent times, we have been ‘gifted’ the concept of Black Friday. Once nothing more than jaw-dropping news reports of deal-hungry shoppers fighting over reduced flat-screen TVs, it’s now recognised as the biggest retail opportunity of the year. Though still a relatively new phenomenon, the UK’s ecommerce industry has started to act accordingly, taking steps to ensure that it gets the most out of this strange, yet lucrative, US import. To help you do the same, we appealed for some advice. We know you will have your core plans for Marketing Black Friday in place, but you will still be making last-minute adjustments.  Here are some Black Friday ecommerce marketing tips…

Why you should pay attention to microcopy on your website and how to make it work

The great majority of advice for digital marketers and content writers is about how to write incredible landing pages, engaging content and killer headlines. And those things are incredibly important - don't get me wrong. But, the good web marketers know that there's a third category of text that's so tiny (literally) that most writers ignore it, yet so significant that it can help boost conversion rates and customer loyalty. It's microcopy. Those tiny snippets of words that ask people to fill out a form or tell them that there was an error. For those out there that think that microcopy doesn't matter consider this: microcopy is sometimes the only actual interaction between you and your readers/customers. It's where you ask your customers to fill something out, explain to them what went wrong and guide them on…

Get the basics of your onboarding strategy right

In my experience as a marketing professional, potential customers almost never just decide to walk away from a purchase - unless given sufficient reason to do so. And, if you’re wondering how a promising list of leads managed to slip through your fingers, it might be time to refocus on the basics of your onboarding strategy.

While there isn’t a definite methodology for conducting 100% watertight onboarding strategies, certain fundamentals exist that should remain top of mind during this seminal stage of your hopefully long and prosperous relationship with your customer. So, here are a few back-to-basics considerations if your leads and sales funnels are dwindling.

Is my offering correctly aligned to my market?

If your sales, marketing and product teams look to each other for the answer to this question, there’s a problem. Product alignment is the first – if not most…

Use this chunking tool to help stimulate content marketing ideas

Chunking is something that is used in Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) and performance coaching but it can also be used to plan your next content campaign. Most clients are always looking to create content about them and as agencies we know that we need to produce content that the audience cares about so they share it. The challenge is finding the middle ground that satisfies the needs of the business whilst producing content that has an actual audience to share it. This is where our chunking tool can really help to uncover communities that you might not have thought of otherwise. You can use it here

Chunking up to move away from niche product targeting

If you want a client to look at alternative communities outside of their direct customers then you can chunk up. Let's…

Only a very small, highly targeted portion of your customer base is powerful enough to be influential: Here is how to find them

For decades, advertisers and marketers have clearly understood that word of mouth is one of the highest returning forms of exposure you can invest in. However, that doesn’t make the challenge of identifying and leveraging brand influencers any easier.

The hardest aspect of maximizing word of mouth in the age of social media is discovering who they are and how to best utilize them in a way that’s fair to all parties involved.

Top Characteristics of Brand Influencers 

Not every customer is a brand influencer. Even some of those customers who share your content wouldn’t be considered brand influencers. Only a very small, highly targeted portion of your customer…

Get more from your data with these answers to frequently asked questions from email marketers

Digital marketers love their statistics and are always looking for that next piece of insight to drive their business forward. As Data Insight Manager at Communicator, I work daily with leading brands and I’m often contacted by Digital Marketers with a whole range of questions. Below are the three most popular questions I’m asked, with some actionable tips to help you make more impact.

Question 1: The big one! “When is the right time to send my emails?” 

There’s no simple answer to this. As you can appreciate from the sheer scale of differences in businesses, brands, customers and even the devices they use, there’s (unfortunately) no one size fits all approach. The send time is a vital piece of email campaign building which is often overlooked. After you’ve built countless emails, chosen your images and text then proof read…

10 practical recommendations for choosing the right retail personalisation service for your online store

Although ecommerce is now a relatively mature industry, the software solutions that underpin the industry are still very much evolving. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the personalisation field. Recommendation engines were perhaps the first tools to promote personalisation, but it is now a common feature espoused by many ecommerce tools, in systems designed for both marketers and online merchandisers, with each often having a very different take on what it means and the benefits it brings. If you’re in the process of selecting personalisation software where should you begin, what questions should you ask?

#1 KNOW YOUR GOALS

It may seem obvious, but knowing what you hope to achieve by selecting a personalisation solution is critical to selecting the right product. Although a ‘no brainer’, don’t fall into the trap…

What do businesses need to do to gain more insights and value from Google Analytics?

You know the way it is with using Google Analytics... nearly all businesses have it installed, but far fewer have customised it correctly for their business AND have a structured approach for using it to improve their online marketing. I think many business owners and marketers know that because of this and the lack of skills to interpret the data, the obvious potential of using Google Analytics to review and improve online marketing is missed by many organisations. The reason for this missed opportunity is not a technology problem. As Avinash Kaushik has pointed out, in his 10/90 rule of managing analytics, that's because this is largely a People issue, i.e. how to provide People with the right processes, tools and KPIs to drive performance. Those most aware…

Tips on using Google Analytics to improve traffic building and conversion

Google Analytics provides a wealth of insight, so much more than the basic visits, page views and bounce rates which are are the limit of what some marketers consider. So we believe that Google Analytics deserves more focus to use the insight to drive improvement. We like this infographic from Quicksprout since it goes further than stating the obvious metrics. Instead, it shares practical steps to take to use Google Analytics to increase your traffic particularly through keyword analysis when you link Google Analytics with Googles' Search Console (formerly Webmaster Tools), conversion rates and 'how tos' (such as where to place your keywords, how to analyse top referring sites and more..). So use this  infographic as a prompt to get started with practical steps to optimise your website using the insight available in Google Analytics. …

Local SEO is key for small businesses, these tips will help you optimize it

Local SEO or Search Engine Optimization can pave the way for smaller online businesses to grow at the expense of their larger competitors. An effective SEO strategy helps online businesses to create a strong online presence that keeps the profit pouring in. Even if a website has an appealing design, attention-grabbing titles, and offer quality products or services, it cannot remain afloat for long without an effective SEO strategy. SEO is invaluable for online businesses to boost their online presence, attract maximum number of visitors, and accomplish sales levels that go right through the roof. Here we will reveal 10 local SEO tips that every entrepreneur should follow in 2015 to take their online business to the next level.

1. Comply with Google Pigeon

Google Pigeon is a local search engine…