Learn How to Boost Your Marketing Return on Investment Performance by Tracking Competitor Prices and Assortments

Ecommerce businesses face very strong competition due to the fact that SMEs have entered into the online world almost as quickly as the biggest companies, such as Amazon or Alibaba, resulting in the existence of millions of e-commerce companies. This great competition is not just focused on who sells something, but also on the earliest stages of the buying process, like getting customer attention when they are just looking for information prior to buying. Ecommerce competition is one of the best examples of Porter’s framework, since online buying decisions depend on many factors that are hard to control.  In this article, we will explain how pricing affects ecommerce competition and show how to become more competitive by getting smarter about it, in order to boost the ROI your marketing efforts, so you can attract and keep…

Chart of the Day: Top festive adverts on Youtube since November 1st.

Take a stroll into any retail store and you will instantly know that the festive season is upon us once again. Thanksgiving is less than two weeks away in the US and on this side of the Atlantic the burnt circles remain across the country from bonfire night. Both these events give the green light to marketers across the top retail brands to release their Christmas adverts. These adverts can make or break a brand during the holiday season, whether it is based on humour, humility or emotion the bottom line come January will be - did it increase sales based on last year. Since November 1st, the six Christmas adverts that have been first to launch include John Lewis, Argos & Burberry. It's been hard to miss the now yearly flurry of social media activity for the latest John Lewis Advert #BusterTheBoxer (67k likes…

Reddit users don't take too kindly to self-promotion, but they love quality content when they see it.

Are you tired of the same old marketing channels and want to try something new? Reddit might be just the thing you were looking for. It's a place where users share interesting news, cool links and insightful comments. Sounds perfect, right? Sure, but there's a catch. Reddit users are a community that hates advertising. If you fail to follow the “reddiquette”, your content will get downvoted and you might easily get banned. But if you do it right, you'll be on your way to tapping into the potential of the platform and generating a stream of targeted traffic to your website. Here are 10 actionable tips to help you make the most out of Reddit for your marketing strategy.

1. How it works

Reddit is a platform where people…

Confessions of an email marketer

Here an email marketer for a major retailer, who shall remain anonymous, confesses his or her biggest worry...

Anonymous: Working at an fast paced online/offline retailer for 3 years now, I’ve been through my fair share of email highs and lows. Preparing for an incredibly busy peak season in November and December I feel as though I’m as ready as I can be in my battle station and have the support of the rest of the business with the calendar.

The last two Christmas periods, I’ve been somewhat forced into committing what feels to me like a major email faux pas. Regardless of whether sales have been good or bad, on two or three occasions throughout the month our managing director (who has no background in email marketing) will ask me to re-send a successful campaign to an audience who did not open after just 24…

Trump defied every expert and still won. The implications for brands are huge.

Yesterday, I prepared a piece about the anticipated Clinton win as President of America. What a difference nine hours makes… Despite all the sophisticated big data … the huge political advertising budgets from the Clinton camp… the faceless pollsters who number-crunched rather than listened to the unspoken authentic voice of the people… in the end Trump won. …So why, from a branding perspective did a reported sexist, racist and narcissistic defy all predictions? Perhaps the regular American saw what a mess the world has become – despite all the propaganda suggesting the contrary. Looking for example to the UK, they got the impression that its identity had been decimated by an open-door policy leading to the country’s spiritual, commercial, social and political foundations becoming at best ‘in transition’ and at worst, tatters. They saw Europe down, despondent and divided. They looked at how former hard-working…

Chart of the Day: Travel Sector finds earned & owned media like organic search and email marketing the most effective for gaining new customers.

We all know customers don't like ads, and have got especially good at ignoring them or blocking them when they're online. Now this is really starting to filter through into the channels driving results online - Organic is rated as more effective than Paid Search or Affiliate marketing, at least when it comes to acquisition for travel brands. The travel industry involves single big-ticket purchases - with customers only occasionally engaging in repeat business.  This makes it very different to many other industries, especially FMCG, where it's low margins and repeat purchases that are the name of the game. Therefore I'd be very wary about applying these findings outside of the travel industry. But the implications for travel brands are clear - invest in exceptional content to build organic…

Key lessons for brands emerge from the most anticipated ad of the holiday season

On initial viewing the John Lewis’ £7m Xmas 2016 commercial  tells a quaint story of a girl whose trampoline becomes popular with the local wildlife community.

Set against a backing track of Randy Crawford’s ‘One Day I’ll Fly Away’. The commercial features a Boxer dog in a typical Middle-England home. The dog enviously stares out of a living room window as it watches two wild foxes, a badger, a squirrel and a hedgehog liberally jumping on a trampoline built by the household’s father for his daughter. 

Come Christmas morning Buster (the Boxer dog) pushes aside a surprised Bridget (the daughter) to merrily jump on trampoline all for itself.

Given a tumultuous political year, John Lewis’s customer director Craig Inglis said:  

“You could say 2016 has certainly been quite a year.  We…

How to win at Black Friday and Cyber Monday

Black Friday is traditionally the busiest shopping day of the year. It kicks off the critical holiday season. The holiday shopping season is crucial for the economy because around 30% of annual retail sales occur between Black Friday and Christmas. For some retailers, such as jewellers, it's even higher -- nearly 40%. Having roots in the retail sector, there is still a part of me that gets that toe-curling feeling when hearing those two words together – Black Friday. It is infamous with chaos, carnage and that primal, possessive part of our brains. There are those who have opted out of the chance of being trampled, losing teeth and other appendages and getting into car park fisticuffs, but have instead opted for waging this warfare online. The premise of Black Friday was to be a purely retail experience with rock-bottom deals on majority stocks in…

Chart of the Day: we question whether flash sales and daily deal marketing services are still giving customers what they want?

Daily deal sites have taken a few blows over the years, Groupon cut staff and fired it's CEO, Living Social was eventually bought by Wowcher which was sold by the Daily Mail. Amazon have also closed their daily deals service. But one great insight into daily deal sites is search history, which has slowly declined for 5 years. trends.embed.renderExploreWidget("TIMESERIES", {"comparisonItem":[{"keyword":"daily deals","geo":"","time":"today 5-y"}],"category":0,"property":""}, {"exploreQuery":"q=daily%20deals","guestPath":"https://www.google.co.uk:443/trends/embed/"}); The UK is one of the most prominent countries searching for daily deals, Australia, Ireland, Canada and the US also have a pretty strong taste for daily deals too. trends.embed.renderExploreWidget("GEO_MAP", {"comparisonItem":[{"keyword":"daily deals","geo":"","time":"today 5-y"}],"category":0,"property":""}, {"exploreQuery":"q=daily%20deals","guestPath":"https://www.google.co.uk:443/trends/embed/"}); Google Trends also reveal that one of the most searched for keyphrase was www.ebay.co.uk daily deals. Searches for daily deals might be declining, and…

Practical content marketing and profiling techniques to identify senior decision makers

Senior decision makers are increasingly reluctant to hand over their contact details when exploring potential solutions. You may have noticed how busy managers often omit their phone numbers from their email sigs! At the same time, the explosion in content marketing with the availability of detailed information online in a range of formats has enabled those seeking to use your products or services to carry out extensive research on you independently without booking a demo. There is now little need to book a demo, take a trial or speak to a salesperson when so much content exists online to inform their decision. Whilst these prospects are carrying out their due diligence research at distance, others who are at a much earlier stage of the buying cycle are seeking content that will inform and educate them. Whitepapers, videos, thought-leadership pieces and research are standard fare in any…