Google has begun penalizing the rankings of mobile sites with "intrusive interstitials" (Pop-up ads or email capture lightboxes)
Continuing their ongoing push for the "perfect" mobile experience Google announced via the Official Webmasters Blog "two upcoming changes to mobile search results that make finding content easier for users". Although their headline doesn't mention pop-ups and the article labels them 'interstitials', that's the change we wanted to alert you to since most marketers and web users know them as pop-ups.
The first change is basically general house-keeping for Google. They're looking to remove the labels they first introduced two years ago as part of the Mobile-friendly update AKA Mobilegeddon, to show which sites were mobile friendly (as shown below). It's likely that you have acted to ensure your site is mobile friendly, but if not, sites that aren't mobile-friendly were penalized on smartphone rankings from April 2015 with the signal increased from May 2016 according…
One of the biggest trends of 2016 went unnoticed, but it will change advertising this year
Chatbots, Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality and Big Data. These are the hot trends for 2017 that have got marketers excited, and you are probably reading a whole host of blogs repeating endlessly how great Chatbots, VR, AR and Big data will be this year.
They may well be great, but it’s often so difficult to distinguish between the hype and the actual business value delivered by a new technology that they can be impossible to effectively evaluate until some time has passed the hype has begun to die down.
Instead of focusing on the next shiny thing to come over the horizon, I thought it would be valuable to look at a major long-term trend that will have an impact on marketing not just in 2017, but over the next 5-10 years. I speak of the growing politicisation of…
The essential strategies you need to successfully win major B2B customers.
Although the phrase has been around for over a decade and arguably being deployed by smart marketers ever since B2B sales teams have focused on target/key accounts, in recent years account-based marketing (ABM) has become hotter than ever.
As far back as 1993, Peppers and Rogers proposed marketing would take an increased role in developing intelligence on key accounts: “When two marketers are competing for the same customer’s business, all other things being equal, the marketer with the greatest scope of information about that particular customer... will be the more efficient competitor.”[1]
In short, ABM is a strategic approach that coordinates personalised sales and marketing efforts, to target specific accounts for new business and create deeper and broader relationships with existing customers.[2]
It’s clear to see from Google Trends, the term account-based marketing, was being searched since the Information…
Chart of the day: Small businesses are missing out on some of the most effective marketing techniques.
Salesforce, a content partner of SmartInsights, surveyed 300 small business owners (defined as businesses with less than 100 employees. They found that whilst some marketing techniques such as social media and email marketing were very popular, the vast majority of small businesses were failing to use more advanced techniques which could deliver more value. 93% did not use marketing automation, and 91% did not use a cloud-based CRM system. 4 out of 5 businesses said they did not use any SEO techniques, and only 21% used digital advertising.
To say they are missing a trick is an under-statement. Social Media Marketing, the most popular activity, often fails to deliver ROI, and should be used as more as an engagement tool rather than one to gain customers. SEO and Marketing Automation have huge potential, yet…
How to select the very best agency for your business.
So you want to hire a marketing agency. But how do you find the one that will deliver what it promises? What are the things you should ask and, most importantly, what are the answers you want to hear?
Here are some of the answers to these questions and insider tips on hiring agencies (and not regretting it afterward) from the perspective of a marketer.
Before You Begin
First things first. Before you start asking questions, answer a few yourself. You need to be able to get at least a general idea on the budget and your marketing goals.
What do you expect to achieve? How much are you willing to pay for…
Draw inspiration from the greatest strategists and marketers when creating your plan for the year ahead
It's the time of year for setting out what you want to achieve in the coming twelve months at both a personal and business level. Given that 'the road to hell is paved with good intentions', you'll also want to think through how and when you will achieve them.
It's all too easy to get back into the work routine and find yourself so swamped with daily tasks that taking a step back and thinking about planning and vision for the long term ends up taking a back seat. Before you know it you're several weeks into the year and you still haven't found the time to sit down and properly plan out your strategy. For businesses working on digital transformation, inspiring digital transformation through vision statements can help here.
To inspire action, we have put together…
Instagram is letting select brands advertise via its 'Stories' feature
Importance: [rating=4] (For Social Media Managers)
Recommended Source: Instagram Blog
Instagram has just announced it is beginning the processes of letting advertisers make use of the large audience its newish 'Stories' feature has been able to generate since its launch back in the summer of 2016. Again taking the lead from Snapchat, it is introducing the ads in a mid-roll format- that is they will appear between stories the user has elected to see. In a way this is not dissimilar from TV advertising, where the user accepts the ads between content he or she wants to see. The format will however allow for the skipping of ads, so as to not degrade the user's experience.
Instagram reports that over 150 million people view stories content every day. Combine this with the fact Instagram users tend to be young, tech savy and have…
Examples showing how Chatbots will become an increasingly important marketing app in the future
Artificial intelligence and machine learning is one of the top trends in digital marketing for 2017. At the same time, we are seeing a reduction in demand for apps, particularly as the largest platforms are reaching saturation.
You could say that chatbots are the new apps; the new customer service reps, not to mention the new support system for marketers. In future, more people will turn to chatbots to manage their daily chores, be it ordering a ride or a pizza. Often these are built within Messenger apps themselves.
In fact, the rise of bots could be plainly attributed to increasing usage of messenger apps. According to Forester, people spend a staggering 85% of their time using the top messenger apps including Facebook Messenger, Kik, Slack and…
An in-depth case study from our work with Conversion Rate Experts, including before and after images of winning A/B tests
It's fair to say we talk a lot about how you can improve your digital marketing results here at SmartInsights. It's kind of our thing. I like to think nobody does it better. But those who talk the talk should also be made to walk the walk, else how else do they know their advice is actually relevant and applicable to real business?
Since we're always talking about the need to optimize across the whole customer journey and constantly test messaging to boost your conversion rate, we worked with Conversion Rate Experts to do exactly this. We wanted to share what we did and the changes we made with you so you can make similar improvements to your own sites which can deliver big boosts to your CRO.
Start out with deep research
Stripped…
New research reveals the top tactics ecommerce businesses can use to convert the 68% of people who abandon their shopping carts
In 2016, global ecommerce sales within retail grew to $1.915 trillion, a figure excluding sales for travel, events, and restaurants. What is more, ecommerce is projected to grow to over $4 trillion by 2020. This type of growth isn’t occurring anywhere else in retail (an industry which hovers around 6% growth year to year as a whole), so it’s clear that ecommerce revenue will increasingly become a dominant force in retail. Yet as retail adapts to the digital world, the ecommerce system has evolved into something imperfect.
Simply googling ecommerce business problems reveals a troubling statistic: the majority of shoppers abandon their shopping cart before finalizing a purchase. In fact, according to Baymard Institute, 68.81% of online shopping carts are abandoned, and this figure is based on the…
