How workplaces at high-tech social media giants meld work and leisure

According to Edel Mahony's research, from All Systems Commercial Fitouts, there is a new phenomenon called 'Bleisure', referring to the blend of work and personal life, or leisure time and he showcases in his infographic how the big tech giants (Facebook, Google and Twitter) are accommodating this for their workforce through innovative work and social spaces. Google provide free food for their staff (is this for the staff to work longer hours or to keep them sweet?) and nap pods (for late nights or does a quick nap increase productivity?). Facebook's 'Bleisure' code is driven to 'change people's thinking' through their work environment by offering cupcake stores, barbeque joints and workable walkways for fast meetings. Jeremy Myerson, Co-Editor of Time and Motion Redesigning Working Life, sees this new future as the 'new contemporary workforce where the gates never close'. This may not be…

Are you using hashtags correctly?

The discipline of marketing is filled with jargon, especially within digital marketing where constant technological change causes prevailing shifts in the landscape. Never have there been more three letter acronyms (TLA). The elusive ‘hashtag’ symbol, which most people know from entering conference calls, still causes confusion amongst my clients and peers when used on social media platforms. Not so much what they are but when and how to use them. The approach laid out here is by no means an all-encompassing thesis study, merely a brief attempt to demystify the matter in my own subjective opinion. Hashtags, although used in IT since the seventies in a different context, were popularised by Twitter in the late noughties as a way of clustering similar topics into easily retrievable categories, i.e. search #summer to find all conversations categorised as a ‘summer’ topic. This enables you to join conversations on topics that…

What are the most important marketing investment priorities for Smart Insights members for the year ahead?

Each year, we ask Smart Insights members for their predictions of THE most important high-level digital marketing technique for their business or their clients. This has been really interesting to take the pulse of opinion on marketing trends across the main digital marketing techniques. Thanks if you shared your opinion, we had 2,352 responses from marketers around the world! Here are the results for 2017:

How the top trends were selected

From September to mid-December 2016 we asked readers of our post on Digital Marketing Trends for 2017 to select just one marketing tactic which would give them the biggest uplift in the year ahead. While this doesn't have a controlled sample of our free research reports like Managing Digital Marketing, it does canvas opinion widely.This isn't necessarily…

Example of how to harness Instagram to capture new audiences and convert that attention into sales

Instagram is one of the most effective ways to boost your e-commerce marketing. In a recent Yotpo survey of over 165,000 e-commerce businesses, 75% of them reported being active on Instagram. Customer research data is on their side. In fact, the research found that: Traffic from Instagram is the most engaged: this means that visitors from Instagram stay on a site for an average of 192 seconds – that’s longer than visitors from every other channel, including Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter. 30% of Instagram users have bought something they first spotted on Instagram: meaning the potential for the browsing conversion to sales is high. 83% of Instagram users reported that they were influenced by friend’s posting about a brand on Instagram: meaning Instagram is a powerful megaphone for your brand’s messaging. …

Talkwalker shares their views on the trends to shape social media in 2017 and practical actions businesses should take to gain advantage from them

In 2016 we saw social media networks introduce many new features including Facebook’s live streaming, Reactions, Instagram Stories and major updates to Snapchat. When the first social media platforms were launched they soon became more than just a place to chat with friends. Brands jumped on them for marketing purposes, journalists spread news stories, and politicians shared their manifestos and opinions as we saw recently with the Brexit in the UK and the US presidential elections. Now we can see the big social platform offerings overlapping. Facebook Messenger is experimenting with Snapchat’s disappearing messages. Instagram Stories has also stepped on Snapchat’s toes. So, what social media trends do we expect to see in 2017?

Trend #1 Increasing need to tie social media marketing to tangible results

The big social networks are giving…

How financial services firms can harness the digital revolution

Consumer expectations are growing. Recent research suggests that given the chance, over half of financial consumers would opt to bank with Amazon. Why? Because a company famous for delivery innovation, outstanding customer service and indeed, thinking outside the box, has fundamentally disrupted the service industry, reinventing what it means to provide a best in class customer experience. We believe that in the age of the expectation economy, there is much that retail giant Amazon and disruptors like it, can teach brands about what it means to provide an outstanding experience and stand out from the crowd. There is no shortage of commentators noting that the retail banking is set for change with a new breed of innovators entering the industry. It’s not only Millennials that are demanding more Amazon-like experiences from every service provider and banks need to catch up quickly. All customers…

We interviewed Certona's CEO Meyar Sheik about the future of one of marketing hottest trends - personalisation tech.

1. First of all, congratulations on being named top personalisation provider! Can you tell us how Certona uses machine learning and predictive algorithms to predict customer behaviour?

Certona pioneered the use of patented machine learning and predictive algorithms that empower retailers to leverage real-time profiling of individual shoppers across the omnichannel landscape. Certona’s personalisation platform is powered by a sophisticated blend of continuous profiling and real-time targeting that augments behavioural profiles with every interaction. This develops shopper insights that fuel intelligent predictions, letting retailers deliver increasingly individualised experiences as shoppers engage across touchpoints. Within 3-4 clicks on a site, Certona’s personalisation platform ingests real-time shopper data such as location, weather, time of…

How to know your audience and create the right content for them

We've all heard the phrase ‘the client is king’. In practice, this means that an important part of marketing is an exercise of empathy, which consists of finding out who our audience is, so we can give them what they want in a better way than our competition. This simple idea should also be the center of your efforts when it comes to increasing your leads. You should adjust to them, and to their buying process. You should give your prospects the answers they are looking for, when they’re looking for them, in an appropriate way to address the subject of their interest.

The Inbound Approach

But let’s start from the beginning. You may have heard the term “inbound marketing” before. If you haven't, it mainly consists of making leads…

The most effective ways to boost your conversion rate 

Have you ever considered why it happens? Why a visitor enters your website, stays there for a while and leaves without purchasing when you have so much to offer? According to the latest trends, you have 5 seconds to engage the customer and make an impression before they leave your website. In this article we will expose 5 major conversion blockers that can be disastrous for your website, but are fixable at the same time. So if you are a new business getting started with ecommerce, you better make those 5 seconds worth your customer’s time.

The Rise of Ecommerce

Ecommerce started as a revolution in shopping. With time, increased competition inspired companies to invest more in their websites, improving their appearance and usability to meet the standards. Ecommerce as we know it today has evolved into a billion dollar industry, but for…

How to boost CRO for non-ecommerce sites

When you think of Conversion Rate Optimisation and AB testing, what comes to mind first is probably ecommerce websites, product pages, baskets and checkouts. But the scope of optimisation programs is much wider than this. We work with several brands, from car dealership groups to home improvement to charities, where the objective is to create a lead, usually via a form – the sale or activity happens in a branch, over the phone or in a customer’s home, rather than on the website. The challenges when optimising these lead generation sites can be quite different to e-commerce. Here are some of the things we’ve learned over the years.

1. There is no such thing as ‘best practice’ in a lead generation websites

Arguably, there’s no such thing as best practice on any website, but, still, there are some conventions and expectations around checkouts and product pages that…