3 key steps for fueling your performance with the latest news and information

Google Reader is long-gone as a way of keeping track of the latest developments in digital marketing. The important industry information on platform changes that we still need is out there but it is coming at us from more sources than most of us have the time to track effectively. The good news is that, with just a little planning, you can still stay on top of exactly the information that you need to fuel your own performance and also give your bosses, clients, co-workers and followers great reasons to be glad that they have you around. Gathering business information is a full-time job for me; I publish a newsletter, Who's Blogging What, that highlights important blog posts for 20,000 subscribers working in social media and online marketing. Given this, Dave Chaffey of Smart Insights thought it would be useful…

Make sure you don't fall foul of these common but expensive AdWords mistakes

When it’s used correctly, Google AdWords can be a fantastic way to drive relevant visitors to your website and generate new enquiries or online sales for your business. AdWords works well for all sorts of products/services and you don’t need a huge budget to get started. Plus, it’s quick and simple to set up a basic AdWords campaign even if you’ve never done it before. And that’s where the problems start. Yes, it is very easy for a beginner to set up and run their own AdWords account, but if you just accept all the default settings and don’t take the time to properly understand all the finer points of how AdWords works, you’ll end up spending a lot and getting very little return on your advertising budget. Here we provide a list of the top 10 most costly Adwords…

3 critical areas you will need to invest in to have a successful 2017

“In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.” Albert Einstein  Well there were plenty of difficulties for digital marketers in 2016, so let’s start 2017 by focusing on opportunities; i.e. good things which are available to those who recognise the challenges and tackle them with a positive attitude… So here are my 3 big opportunities of 2017:

 1. Finding and buying great Creative ideas

Some marketers seem to believe (digital) marketing is all about the technology but no…it’s (still) mainly about creative. Brands connecting with people. Entertaining, informing, providing value in return for their time, attention and money. Words, pictures, videos, IDEAS which resonate. Desired reactions would include: “Yeah!” “That’s so true.” “Exactly!” “100%!” “I know what they mean.” “Yes - same!” “Funny!” “Oh, that’s interesting…” “Hello. He’s fit.” “Wow - that’s useful…” (or just quietly watching, listening, engaged…). Check out this case history: The Next Rembrandt by Dutch Bank ING Group and Microsoft (Cannes Cybers Lions…

Our interview with Template Monster's CEO, David Braun

What are the challenges and success factors in creating online startups serving small businesses? To shed light on this with a case study, we spoke to David Braun about why he founded Template Monster and where he is taking the businesses during an interesting time for web developers looking to serve small businesses.

How did you come to a decision to start template monster ?

David: It all started quite a long time ago, although it seems as if it were yesterday. TemplateMonster wasn’t created from scratch, it was based on a local web development agency. We owe the idea of TemplateMonster to the customers who didn’t need a custom design, they needed a cheaper solution. At the moment we didn’t have anything that would meet their requirements. Once I saw a designer working with his templates and that was the moment when the idea…

Chart of the day: Website lead response management research

If you're involved in a business where you collect leads from your website you will know the importance of timing - 'timing is everything'. For example, for a financial services or travel company who offer brochures for download, phone follow-up is still often an effective technique if the profile of the lead fits. Of course, within B2B marketing, this approach is even more common when offering whitepapers to help prospects learn about a product or solution. Today's chart-of-the-day isn't as recent as most we feature, instead it's a classic study designed to identify what day of week, time of day and time from creation to call back a web-generated lead for optimal contact and qualification rates. The full report summary gives details on contact times (similar to best mail contact days Wednesday and Thursday are far more effective than other days and surprisingly, 4…

How to assess the value of blogs to your site and business

For most businesses, blogs are part of the online furniture - every office is expected to have one. Occasionally though, their value may be called into doubt, whether it's by a client or your sales director or marketing manager. The purpose of this article is to help you not only answer these questions with some confidence, but also demonstrate the hidden value of this type of content in an online sales environment. [Editor's note: Although Sam's useful post focus on E-commerce, the concept of proving the business value of a blog through analytics are similar for other types of business including B2B. Expert members can learn more in our post and guide on Measuring Content Marketing ROI]  

Showing value

The arguments for blogs are well known. Showing your audience that you have expertise in your field, or giving yourself space…

Expedia give their top strategies for growing new Ecommerce stores

Expedia launched in 1996. That makes us ancient by internet standards. But the benefit of having been around so long is that our team witnessed the rise of e-commerce, and we learned some priceless lessons in the process. Twenty years after Expedia opened its virtual doors, e-commerce is now booming. Global e-commerce revenue reached nearly $1.2 billion in August, and experts predict more than 10 percent growth annually. Billion-dollar projections are usually cause for celebration, but not everyone sees it that way. Some people view e-commerce’s explosion negatively because competition is stiff and getting stiffer. Everyone wants in on this lucrative industry, but more than 90 percent of online startups fail within four months. With nothing but growth on the e-commerce horizon, the rate of launches and failures can only increase. But don’t let the…

Google reveals what factors influence your sites 'crawl budget' and what you can do to boost it

Importance: [rating=4] For webmasters managing large sites (1000+ URLs) Recommended Source: Google Webmasters blog Your site has to be crawled by Google if it's going to rank for anything. That's SEO 101. If areas of your site are not getting crawled, it means they won't be appearing in any SERPs and are a total waste of time from an SEO perspective. If you have a small site with a simple URL structure, you don't need to worry about crawl budget at all. But if your site has several thousand URLs, or if it auto-generate pages based on URL parameters, then you might want to look at how you can increase your crawl budget. This post will outline what crawl budget is and how you can improve it, which Google have just explained for the first time.

What is Crawl Budget?

Google…

Email Marketing Expert Dan Grech explains his one goal for 2017: 'Do less'.

I've never really been a fan of ‘expert predictions’, especially when it comes to Digital Marketing. They remind me of Mystic Meg caressing glass balls, making some tenuous claims for the sake of entertaining an audience. I don’t think much will change in Digital Marketing in 2017. Like in previous years, email marketing will continue to hold the highest potential ROI against other marketing channels - yet so many businesses will get it wrong. Google will continue to make seemingly bizarre changes that we'll complain about - then we’ll accept them as being 'for the greater good' of online advertising. Video will continue to grow - yet people will scratch their heads at why a live broadcast of an eating contest on The Lad Bible's Facebook page gets more engagement than a 60 second YouTube pre-roll with a 6-figure…

Chart of the day: Facebook advertising cost per click across the World

Facebook advertising cost per click (CPC) is highest in Australia, Norway and Japan, where as Taiwan, Portugal and South Africa were found to be cheapest for CPC ads, whilst cost per "like" was found to be highest in Germany at $0.58 per like and cheapest in Mexico at $0.03 per like. The study also found that cost per app install was highest in the United States at $2.74 followed by Japan at $2.70 and cheapest in Vietnam at $0.38. Cost per like was found to be most expensive at 18:00, possibly when Facebook is the busiest. Younger users were also found to be cheaper to target and females are more expensive. Notably Instagram was found to be more expensive than Facebook advertising. Source: Buffer Social and Adespresso Sample: Adespresso analysed over $100…