Learn which types of PPC are most effective at the various stages of the sales funnel

Why does anybody do marketing? The fundamental answer is to make more money. You might argue that some campaigns have other motives, but ultimately all marketing activity funnels back to one end objective – sales (or a charitable equivalent). However, in order to complete sales we need to break our approach down into a number of smaller goals and objectives. These form our different marketing approaches. The potential customer who already knows exactly what they want or need should form the core of advertising efforts, but what about those who haven’t yet reached that stage? Perhaps you’re in a niche industry or a competitive market – your potential customers may not have even heard of you. Even if they have, do they understand your unique selling points and what makes you different? The clever marketer knows that, while they…

Which resolutions of web browsers should you target when testing new website designs or on conversion rate optimization projects?

It pays to be aware of the screen resolutions for the devices your prospects and customers are using since the quality of experience you deliver through your website can vary hugely depending on how well your design works at different resolutions. Even with a responsive web design (RWD) where screen layout adjusts depending on resolution, there are 'break points' which may mean that some resolutions don't work so well. The latest worldwide screen resolutions show the challenge of the wide range of Desktop vs Mobile vs Tablet screen resolutions to test against. Of course, the tablet and smartphone resolutions have to be tested in both portrait and landscape format: Of course, to find out the…

What does it take to build and improve a successful website? It all starts with the analytics

Your website is the most important asset you have for attracting and converting customers. Optimising it for SEO and conversion is critical for growing your business. In this talk Dave Chaffey talks with Grant LeBoff from Sticky Marketing about the key things you need to consider to improve the effectiveness of your website. Watch it to find out what you need to do to take your site to the next level. In a noisy office? Don't have headphones? No problem, instead of watching the talk you can just read our transcript instead: Grant Leboff: So Dave, when we're talking about digital marketing, obviously the one piece of real estate that I think everybody owns these days is a website. What are the things businesses need to think about when they're…

How difficult are the most effective CRO techniques?

This chart from the Ascend2 Conversion Rate Optimization research report shows the views on CRO effectiveness from 177 marketers in medium to large B2B and B2C organisation. A/B testing seems to rule the roost, as the most effective and easiest tactic. Our Customer Journey analysis survey also found A/B testing as the most popular testing method among 1100 marketers, so this corroborates our findings. We also found that multivariate testing was seen as difficult to implement. Personalisation of content was also seen as very effective but was also judged to be tricky to implement. You'll need content personalisation tools to do it right, so you might want to consult our free digital marketing tools guide if you're considering implementing a content personalisation program. Source:Ascend2 Conversion Rate Optimization research…

Marketing Lessons from How Apple became the Dad’s brand and the kid’s choice 

Ah the good old days. Aged in my twenties, I must have looked like a prat lugging my arm-breaking Apple computer – simply to demonstrate I was so out (from the conventional crowd) that I was ‘in’. Everything about Apple was different. Especially its marketing. In 1984 the brand ‘disrupted’ the American Superbowl showcasing an ad predicting armies of former independent thinkers who had turned into insipid automatons, eyes fixed and living in a dystopian ‘ Big Brother society. In terms of futurology, the Cupertino brand got it right about people’s heads down to their their chests and thoughts high in data clouds and the surveillance observation via ‘Big Data’. However rather than feeling under duress to submit every private thought, thanks in part to Apple’s lifestyle…

How are businesses improving their user's experience?

Improving your online customer journeys is critical both to boost conversion rates and to improve customer experience to boost customer loyalty. So when experiences are optimised, it's one of those rare improvements that can boost revenues in both the short and long term. But improving the journey is far from easy, and to do it you'll need lots of data of how your customers actually use the site. When it comes to testing, we have a rule of thumb we have seen in our tests and others. 1/3rd of tests will lead to a significant improvement; 1/3rd will have no effect, and 1/3rd will make conversion significantly worse. It really is hit and miss, but it's important to try plenty of different tests, as it often surprising what yields positive results and what doesn't. If you just assume you know your customers without looking at the data…

What your e-commerce store needs to boost conversions

The average eCommerce conversion rate on desktop is still less than 10 percent on average according to our Smart Insights compilation of larger retailers and it can be lower for smaller retailers - just 1.4% according to a 2015 Ecommerce KPI study carried published on Moz. So, the reality for marketers working for retailers is that it takes far more than a great product offered at the right price to convince consumers to buy. Why? Because online shoppers are getting savvy and they no longer simply want to browse eCommerce stores; they want to have a great experience whilst doing so. Given this need to improve experiences, we’ve seen a huge rise in interest in improving UX design over the past few years. To help our members, Smart Insights have a regularly updated guide that recommends ideas for testing retail UX design based on different…

One algorithm to bind them all

In March this year, Instagram continued with its plans to change its photo and video feed model to one which is algorithm-based rather than organic. This is not on the cards just yet – the plan is to introduce it over the next few months – but for a platform which supersedes the others in level of  social network engagement and interaction, this move is very interesting indeed. It is also one which is going to have a marked impact on brands, users and consumer behaviour. See this Gifographic for the statistics on Instagram growth. Like it's parent, Facebook, this new structure will now see images slotted into streams based on user actions, not in reverse chronological order. For the A-List it probably means very little indeed. For the rest, well, there…

Top sources for comparing marketing software providers

As digital marketing has involved from being a niche activity to one at the core of most marketing plans, so too has the market for software design evolved to help digital marketing get the best results. From publishing tools, CMS, Social listening and content personalisation tools, there are loads of tools within each category, and it can be tricky to know which one will be right for your business. Just in case your not fully aware of the daunting size of the scale of the problem of selecting digital marketing software, this infographic from Scott Brinker does a good job of highlighting the massive variety of marketing technology available today. You won't be able to see without clicking for an enlarged version, but there are more than 3000 tools in the infographic! Hardly simple! So…

The best way to justify investment in organic SEO is the fact your customers don't trust ads

The infographic from seotraininglondon shows just how important ranking well organically is for your business. Consumers are far more likely to trust links that aren't ads. People think organic search results give answers that are more relevant, and are thus more likely to click on them. Only 28% of people think organic results are more reputable than Ads, so in terms of reputation PPC may not be such a bad thing after all. Check out the infographic based on 1,000 respondents to an SEO survey. It's perfect if you need to justify increased spend on organic SEO to a manager.  …