It's easy to ignore banner ads. Here is how to make yours stand out and increase clickthrough rates

Online ads have become an inseparable part of our internet life. An average person is exposed to more than 1700 online ads every month and 77 percent are left unseen, resulting in low ad CTRs even if a click isn't essential to making an online ad effective. Some ads are too stuffed with information and visuals, others don’t seem to be relevant to you and some just lead to thoughts like “what is this ad even about?” To maximize the effectiveness of your ads and avoid falling into one of those categories, there are a few things that you need to keep in mind when creating your ads.

Evoke curiosity

Humans are very curious species. It’s natural for us…

Defining content marketing is the first step to getting it right

A great question that will require a rather thorough answer. In the broadest sense of the term, ‘content marketing’ refers to the creation of any piece of media that has the purpose of acquiring or retaining customers. Strictly speaking, you could quite reasonably argue that all marketing is indeed content marketing, and that in fact the concept isn’t anything particularly new or ‘Digital Age’, as it were, when you consider that anything from an in-store sign saying “Bargain Basket – 50% Off Everything” to a cigarette advert in a 1950s magazine could be considered as ‘content marketing’. However, when we talk about the term today, in 2015 going on 2016, generally speaking, we’re making reference specifically to digital content that is distributed over the internet. The purpose of this content remains the same – to attract and retain customers – but the…

We've structured our 140 resources into 15 interactive toolkits to help Basic and Expert members discover the exact tools you need

As Smart Insights has grown and we've developed more and more resources, the range and quality of the resources has increased so that we now cover the full customer lifecycle of marketing activities across our RACE Planning framework. However, as we have developed our library of advice we have suffered a challenge that all libraries, online and offline face - it becomes more difficult to find the most relevant guide. That changes today as we launch a new members area in response to feedback from our customer research that we completed in the autumn. To help with the findability of our resources and to add extra guidance on developing digital strategies, we've developed a series of interactive toolkits which group our resources around the key areas of digital marketing, or present…

A beginners checklist of content marketing metrics

Content marketing is an excellent tool for generating leads and creating conversions. However, even the most thoughtfully planned out content marketing campaigns are rarely a home run. In order to get the most out of a content marketing campaign, you will have to make adjustments and improvements along the way. In order to determine where you should make these improvements, you'll need to monitor 10 important content marketing metrics I recommend. For other ways of structuring these in a frameworks see this article from Smart Insights on Content Marketing KPIs and this from the Content Marketing Institute on Content Marketing Metrics as part of a strategic approach to content marketing.

1. Bounce Rate

When a visitor clicks into one of your web pages and backs out without taking any further action, you have earned a bounce. A high bounce rate can indicate many things: The content on…

The thinking behind our new summary of the latest, most critical developments in digital marketing

You'll know that Digital marketing develops fast. Really fast. So, it can be really difficult keeping up-to-date on the latest developments from the marketing platforms like Google and the social networks. Businesses and marketers who are agile can take advantage of testing the latest tools, techniques and insights to get an edge on their more laggardly competitors. Given the rate of change, when we launched Smart Insights, one of our key aims was to help advise marketers on the digital marketing techniques that are most relevant to their personal and business success or, if you prefer, to help prevent you drowning in content. Some updates are critical and will massively affect marketing outcomes, others are interesting to know but unlikely to greatly affect your…

Latest communications from the EU parliament suggest more leniency for marketers than expected

  Importance: [rating=3] (For Marketers storing customer data) Recommended source: DMA- EU DPR agreed The authorities in Brussels responsible for the new EU data law have undertaken a U turn on the proposed restrictive data law. The latest official communiqué on dialogue between the EU Parliament, Council and Commission, the bodies responsible for the forthcoming new law, indicates that the current UK marketing data regulation will be the template for what is to come. The previous official report of progress on talks indicated marketers would face draconian type rules that would prohibit use of tracking data, and no profiling or segmentation without explicit consent. Now any data that cannot directly identify an individual is considered to be within the boundaries of use. However, in terms of profiling there will be the right of…

Kellogg’s initial foray into the Indian market is generally agreed to have been a failure, although it’s now doing well in terms of both market share and sales growth in the subcontinent.

As part of our series of in-depth case studies with TranslateMedia looking at major brands tackling major new markets we look at Kellogg's attempts to crack the tricky Indian market.

But are Indian consumers ready to accept breakfast cereals?

Kellogg’s initial foray into the Indian market is generally agreed to have been a failure, although it’s now doing well in terms of both market share and sales growth in the subcontinent. In this article, we’ll examine what went wrong, and discover how Kelloggs recovered from its initial problems in this challenging market.

An unsuccessful first foray into India

The world’s leading producer of cereals and a major snack foods manufacturer, Kellogg’s entered the Indian market way back in 1994. Kellogg’s is no stranger to…

A social media policy is crucial if you want to be in full control of your social media interactions

One social media gaffe can ruin the reputation of even the strongest brands out there. No marketer wants to face a host of outraged consumers. Social media might be the best thing that ever happened to branding, but one wrong move and you can be sure that a PR disaster will drag behind you for years. The internet never forgets. How to avoid that risk? By building a social media policy to set up standards for social media usage at your enterprise. Here are some practical tips for developing a social media policy.

1. Set out the basic rules

Developing a social media policy requires a clear understanding of your main goals on social channels. Here are a few questions to help you: What is…

SMEs/SMBs with offline businesses models can still utilise digital marketing

You would be forgiven for thinking that the days of bricks and mortar stores are numbered due to the rise of Internet shopping and dramatically increased usage of Smartphones to make purchases when on the move. Certainly, online shopping is fast becoming the norm as UK shoppers are expected to spend over £52 billion online by the end of 2015; an increase of over £7 billion on the 2014 figure. Yet this only represents 15.2% of retail sales in the UK which is a clear indication that in-store shopping is still the consumer’s #1 choice. Even better news is that you can use digital marketing to boost your level of in-store customers! According to a Deloitte report, digital technology influenced approximately 33% of in-store retail sales in the United Kingdom during 2014; this equated to over £100 billion. No matter how advanced…

Panda Integrated into Googles' Core Ranking Algorithm

Importance [rating=4] (Webmasters & SEO Consultants) Recommended Source: 7 Steps to Successful SEO Guide. Update 20th of Jan 2016: Another major set of ranking changes over the weekend (16th-17th of Jan) led some to think Google were updating Penguin, but Google was quick to clarify that it was actually further updates to the core algorithm rather than a Penguin update. It seems mostly likely these ranking fluctuations were just further side effects from Google baking Panda into it's core algorithm the weekend before.

@AdilAdilrehman core algorithm. Not penguin

— Gary Illyes (@methode) January 18, 2016   Over the weekend (8-10 January 2016) there were mutterings of changes to the Google Algorithm, with a new Penguin update being deemed the most likely candidate. However, earlier this morning (12th January 2016) news started to trickle out, that the speculated Penguin Update was not the…