In a survey by eMarketer, 84% of marketers said they would launch at least one influencer campaign within the next twelve months.

It’s no secret that the world of marketing has been somewhat flipped on its head in the last few years. What with the vast inbound advancements in social media, growing dominance of online content and ever-increasing desire of brands to be seen as approachable personas, marketing professionals have had to change and adapt faster than ever before. However, there is one group that has ridden this wave of change better than any other, and has subsequently found itself at the very top of the inbound marketing pile: influencers. Using influencers in your marketing strategy can often seem daunting and expensive, with no guarantee of success. What follows is an exploration of this prominent trend, what we can learn from it, and how best it can be implemented for 2017.

What is…

Chart of the Day: Online spend surges whilst spending on newspaper advertising slumps

GroupM predicts that global marketing spend will reach an impressive $1 trillion dollars this year. But that increase in spend isn't evenly distributed across marketing mediums. It varies considerably from country to country, so it's worth breaking down the spend across the major economies. Brazil is the only country with digital ad spend falling. This is due to the country being in the grips of the worst recession it has experienced since the 1930s. Elsewhere the trends are broadly positive, especially for digital. We're seeing large increases across the board, with digital ad spend surging by an impressive 30% in India and a strong 15% in the UK. The USA is by far the largest mature economy with the biggest ad market, and digital spend is still increasing by a healthy 9%. TV ad revenue is also growing, though at a…

Leads are only as good as your ability to know how to calculate their value

Lead generation isn’t as popular as other acquisition channels such as Straight Sale, CPC, CPI or CPA. Why? Because most people struggle to understand two important things: How to do it properly How to calculate its value In this article, you’ll learn how to overcome these two obstacles and discover the information helping companies dominate their markets.

 How to do lead generation properly

 Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has some excellent advice. He says: “We don’t make money when we sell things. We make money when we help customers make purchase decisions.” This is the most important thing to master if you want to do lead generation well. You must be customer centric. Move away from a transactional mindset. Instead, think about repeat, retention-based sales. Doing this dramatically increases the lifetime value of…

Focusing your efforts on redesigning your brand identity is crucial for your startup’s success. Here are some tips that’ll help you head in the right direction.

With new businesses appearing almost out of thin air everywhere around us, there is no doubt that in order for your startup to reach your target audience and make a difference it has to stand out. While your startup’s product or service may be the one thing this world has been missing if no one ever hears about it, did it make a sound? This is exactly why your brand identity is so important. A business’ brand identity refers to the ways in which your company is represented, what its values, purpose, passions and goals are. There are many advantages to creating a strong brand identity. These include your being able to develop a competitive advantage in the…

Chart of the Day: Delivering quality leads is the #1 objective for B2B marketers in 2017

Todays, Chart of the Day is actually compilation of charts from DemandWave's State of B2B digital marketing report 2017. They asked nearly 200 B2B marketers what they saw as the pressing issues and trends for this year. When asked what the #1 objective of their digital marketing was the top answer was "deliver quality leads". This is unsurprising, but also an important issue for B2B marketers who need to provide enough leads to keep the sales team busy, while also not having them chasing prospects that will never convert. The respondents were also asked which channels were a part of their marketing mix and Social media came out top with 95% saying they used Social to deliver their objectives with Email and Organic Search making up the top 3. …

Facebook announced the US launch of a new 'Jobs tab' and will let users apply to jobs via Facebook

At $247 dollars per user, LinkedIn makes almost double what Facebook does from each of its members. Facebook is a much larger player because it has many times the number of users, but Facebook still probably looks enviously at LinkedIn's value per user. A large part of why LinkedIn users are so much more valuable is because LinkedIn is built around applying for jobs. Many industries are having to compete fiercely for talent at the moment with unemployment at or near historic lows in the US and UK. This makes the ability to search for and hire talent highly desirable for companies of all sizes, and Facebook's latest move shows they clearly are wanting to capitalize on this.

Job posting and application directly on Facebook.

As of February 15th businesses pages on Facebook in the…

How a watermelon got 500 times more views than the President of the United States: Why Live Video offers a massive opportunity for brands willing to be creative

Live video streaming found its footing nearly a decade ago when sites like Livestream and Ustream emerged. However, back then, brand marketers felt lukewarm about the technology — bandwidth was limited, audiences were extremely niche, and the stakes of live broadcasting seemed too high. But now, with Facebook pushing the option to its huge user base, YouTube announcing the integration of mobile live streaming on its platform, and news outlets like Wall Street Journal, NBC, CBS, and Fox News trying their hand at it, brands are having a hard time resisting this now-viable marketing avenue. In fact, a recent poll found that 44 percent of executives live-streamed an event in 2015, while another 20 percent plan to…

Chart of the Day: 70% of visits to Tripadvisor are from Organic Search but the other channels are playing their part too.

With will over 1 billion visits to its site every year, Tripadvisor has risen to one of the leading websites in the travel industry. Looking for hotels in the lakes? A quick check of the Tripadvisor reviews and you know which Hotels to avoid. A few clicks later and your holiday break could be booked ready for you to pack your bag. Even if you don't end up booking your dream getaway a few minutes (ok maybe hours) reading the reviews is always entertaining. "The beach is too sandy" is personal favorite. In today's, Chart of the day, we are taking a look at the sources of all that traffic broken down by channel. As with most popular sites, we see that Organic Search has the biggest slice of the pie with 70%, next we…

Interactive, creative and innovative emails to inspire your 2017 email marketing.

Email marketing consistently ranks as one of the most effective marketing channels in terms of ROI. But to stand out in a crowded field you need to optimise for device, utilise the latest technology, and have compelling creative. Without any of this crucial trio your email will fall flat. It's all very well telling marketers they need to use dynamic email with creative designs and attention grabbing copy, but it's very different to actually produce it. Often the best way to get inspiration for your own campaign is to see examples of effective email campaigns that you can draw upon. That's way we're giving you 6 examples of creative and effective dynamic content emails to inspire you in 2017.

1. Knomo - Scalable design for mobile optimization

As you can see from the desktop and mobile versions of this email from Knomo, by…

Massive mobile tech trends that will impact marketing this year

You want your small business to make it in 2017; you better be aware of the mobile technology trends that are redefining how companies sell and market their products, advertise, or directly operate on a day to day basis. Change and new technology can be intimidating, but the reality of the situation is that for every business that resists change, there are two of its competitors who are embracing it. If your company doesn't embrace the change brought on by mobile technology, your business will become a flip-phone in a smartphone world. It’s a new year, so it’s the perfect time to try something new with your business, and a mobile app should be one of those things. Chances are, you are already reading up about the industry-specific trends that will affect you. Mobile apps are no different, except they are changing…