Live video presents major opportunities for social media marketers to better engage their audience.
Live videos and streaming are gaining an incredible amount of traction right now. Several of the most common platforms for interacting with live audiences include YouTube, Twitch, Facebook Live and Periscope.
You’d be forgiven for thinking these platforms primarily cater to consumers. While there are lots of people using live video to share their lives and personal updates with friends and family, the medium has the potential to be so much more.
Live video marketing is also gaining traction, especially thanks to Facebook Live. If you’ve been on Facebook at all in the last month, you’ve probably come across a live video feed or one of those live polls that show real-time updates of results.
Brands are competing with one another to come up with engaging live video content. It seems to be catching on, but is that happening simply…
Chart of the Day: Smartphones aren't killing TV
Those of us accustomed to reading marketing reports are used to the idea that mobile is killing TV, and that TV is an ageing dinosaur destined to limp along for a while till it's finally declared dead.
But the data reveals a more interesting picture. Time spent on mobile devices is growing fast, but it's not having a negative impact on TV viewing. TV viewing is shifting very slightly to video on demand and away from live TV, but TV viewing as a whole has held up solidly over the past 3 years.
Time spent on smartphones has more than doubled, but this seems to complement rather than compete with TV viewing. The lesson is simple - rapid mobile growth is happening, but it doesn't mean old mediums are dying.
Source: Nielsen Total Audience Report for the 4th quarter…
7 Web Design Trends You Can't Ignore in 2017
What do some of the top web designers have up their sleeves for 2017? In an industry that thrives on innovation and creativity, it's no surprise that the web design trends that are sure to make an impact in 2017 both push boundaries and embrace clean simplicity.
This infographic explores seven trends that are sure to make a big impact in the web design world this year. There's something for every style of designer here, from clean and tidy to chaotic and daring.
It starts with open composition, a style in which elements appear to be leaving the screen, giving visitors the impression that elements still exist somewhere outside the monitor. A trippy and intriguing concept.
Asymmetry might be more up your alley if you like to colour outside the lines every now and then.…
Chart of the Day: How businesses are promoting their content
Content marketing is the mainstay of many marketing strategies for both small and large companies. We can spend hours thinking up a theme our audience would be interested in and once you have found it, more hours are spent writing the content, finding accompanying imagery plus there is the possibility that you will need a little design help to turn your page of words into an ebook, white paper, infographic etc. By the time you have completed your brand new piece of content you have to get to work promoting it so that you can attract as many readers as possible. But how do you do this?
Linkedin and BrightTalk surveyed over 600 survey B2B marketing professionals and found that the most popular channel for promoting their content was through social media. This makes sense as it doesn't require any budget- only the marketer's time…
Facebook dominates social media by audience reach AND engagement
We all know Facebook is the most popular social network. Yet it's useful to be reminded how important it is since it helps us prioritise our marketing focus accordingly. This comScore 'Digital Future in Focus' report shows the importance of Facebook in an interesting format since it shows levels of audience engagement with the platform compared to reach.
By comparing Reach on the X-axis against Engagement on the Y-axis we can see how far ahead Facebook is compared to the other social networks. This data is for a younger US audience, but the report shows a similar pattern for an older audience and the 'Future in Focus' series covers other countries too. Note that this picture could be considered a little misleading if it was…
Flybe and Honda are fined £83,000 for breaking data rules
The EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is coming into effect in May 2018 and businesses have to prepare for this new rigorous regulation. Because of this, companies are beginning to panic and the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) will not tolerate misuse of people's personal information. These two examples of email reactivation campaigns attracting fines is a warning to all businesses since this is a tactic which is commonly used by marketers to re-engage inactive email subscribers using the techniques in our best practices guide to e-mail engagement.
In August 2016, Flybe sent emails with the subject line, "Are your details correct?" to over 3.3 million people in their database, who had previously opted out of marketing emails. The ICO have now fined the airline £70,000 for breaking the Privacy and Electronic Communication Regulations (PECR) - read enforcement notice and fine details.
In a…
Is your marketing automation set up to upsell as well as focus on ROI?
Everything your business does should focus on surpassing your revenue goal. Are you really doing enough to reach that point?
Smart digital marketing doesn’t just sell products; it convinces customers to add to their purchases through accessories or higher quality (and incidentally, higher priced) items. This is a tactic known in e-commerce as the upsell.
Upsells are highly useful for attaining business goals. They help with revenue, obviously but they can accomplish a much more worthy task than that: namely, securing the loyal customer.
When you sell a customer a core product, he or she usually makes the purchase based on factors other than your brand. Maybe the purchase occurred because the item had the best price, or you offered free shipping. That single purchase doesn’t create a loyal customer by itself.
Arranging an upsell, on the other hand, raises the…
Chart of the Day: New Smart Insights research comparing how businesses manage their email marketing activities
Email marketing remains one of today’s core customer communications channels with analytics showing that, for most types of business, alongside search marketing, it is one of the main drivers of customer acquisition - for generating new online sales and leads. While the beauty of email marketing is that you can quickly start by sending promotional emails and newsletters, businesses will only get the full potential delivered by their email service providers they choose if they deploy marketing automation.
In a major, global research project with our partners GetResponse, Content Marketing Institute and Holistic Email Marketing, we were interested to see how many businesses are taking full advantage of email marketing capabilities. The free research report Email Marketing and Marketing Automation Excellence 2017 was published this week and included the views of over 2,500 marketers - thank…
Marketing dashboards that can help you report on and analyze your marketing efforts
Like it or not, today's CMOs are married to metrics. They have to be.
From closely tracking traffic to understanding which channels may be leaking potential leads, failure to make data-driven decisions continues to be the bane of many of today's marketers. As a result, global spending on data-based marketing continues to rise and is similarly expected to spike in 2017.
As we delve deeper into an era of marketing dominating by metrics and big data, modern CMOs can't afford not to have some serious tools on deck to summarise the impact of their digital marketing. This rings especially true to understanding any combination of the following:
Which marketing channels are worth scaling and are likewise providing a positive ROI
Where leads are dropping off within your marketing funnels
Which messages and campaigns are resonating with leads versus those…
Five ways to supercharge your Facebook video ad campaigns for your brand
Facebook is now pretty much a ubiquitous presence in many of our lives. The platform now has over 1.65 billion monthly users and is considered so influential that it was even accused of affecting the outcome of the US presidential election.
What’s been fascinating to see is how Facebook has evolved as a mobile + video-first platform over the last couple of years. Of the 1+ billion people on Facebook every day, 100 million hours of video is consumed. Emerging social apps such as Snapchat have redefined how video is consumed on mobile (from clunky and expensive to quick and informal) and Facebook themselves point to the 2015 ALS ice bucket challenge as a turning point for social video proliferation. The trend proved just how simple and easy it was for anyone to upload video online, whether it was…
