Chart of the Day: Image and Link post contribute to a 20% decrease in engagement

Analysis of 880 million Facebook posts by brands in the last 12 months conducted by Buzzsumo has revealed that the average engagement was relatively steady in 2016. Come January, engagement started falling and didn't stop until June where we see a small increase. The post types that have seen the biggest decline are image and links post, whereas video has been able to remain consistent. There could be many reasons why this decline has been so substantial: The organic reach on Facebook has been falling for years with Facebook pushing brands down the route of paid promotions. The issue with this strategy is that you get lower engagement due to people seeing them as ads rather than interesting content for their favourite pages. So much content. With an average of over 1,000 stories…

Create a successful funnel to encourage your audience to buy

Product tours aren’t for everyone. No, you see, they’re for your ideal buyer — the customer you’ve identified through your marketing data is most likely to convert and make a purchase. A great product tour will keep your sales team in productive conversations with quality prospects that are more likely to convert, shorten the sales cycle by providing relevant information upfront, and increase conversions through a main call to action. Focus your energy on building a compelling product tour rather than wasting resources funneling the wrong folks through the marketing and sales pipeline. It begins with a relevant and engaging demonstration of how your product benefits users.

Funneling to Success

Consumers move fast on the internet, scouring pages of content and looking for even quicker solutions to their problems. With 96 percent of your website visitors seeking valuable content to lead them through the buyer’s…

What is referral marketing?

Essentially, referral marketing is about enabling and incentivizing your existing customer base to encourage their friends and family to try your product for the first time. It represents a significant opportunity for most online businesses to boost their customer acquisition. There are some well-documented examples of businesses that have acquired a huge percentage of their customers via referral. It is reported that for Dropbox it represents 35% of new customers and daily bookings tripled for Airbnb when they introduced a referral programme. Whilst these figures might seem unattainable for established online businesses, our experience suggests that targeting 10-25% of new customer growth from referrals is realistic. Figures not to be sniffed at. After all, there aren’t many other marketing channels that you could switch on and deliver that kind of an increase in acquisition.

The hidden benefits of referral

Whilst the main benefit of referral is the number of new customers that…

Chart of the Day: CMO survey of investment in alternative strategies for growth

A key part of marketing strategy development is to review the strategic options for growing a business. Here we're sharing a breakdown of actual investment by companies using this classic marketing model that has stood the test of time since it originally dates from the 1960s... You may recognize Ansoff’s growth model, which is a matrix that can be used to identify alternative growth strategies by looking at present and potential products in current and future markets. The four growth strategies are market penetration, market development, product development, and diversification. It's no surprise that investment in existing markets is the main focus,  followed by new product development. But it's surprising to me that market development and diversification are as high as they are. This breakdown showing the balance between…

Social Media Essentials: 6 platform updates from this week

Find out what happened in social media this week with these six platform updates to help inform your social media strategy.

Spotlight story: Snapchat adds 14 ‘Creative Partners’

Last week Snap Announced that they have taken on 14 new ad Creative Partners. They have introduced these partners to help build more engaging Ads that will deliver a strong ROI for their customers. They said the following:

These new partners represent the best in video, cinemagraph, and gif creation; game and playable ad development; lead generation and data capture; interactive and 360 video players; mobile couponing and more Snapchat believes these new Creative Partners will help enhance the post-swipe-up experience on ads. As well as encouraging users to click through instead of quickly swiping, allowing users to interact more with the landing page.Find out more about the update.

Instagram…

We talked to Scott Jaworski, Director of Global Social Media at Intel to find out how Intel manages social media on a global basis

In a recent survey Smart Insights, and Clutch, found that social media usage and effectiveness differs between B2B and B2C companies: Facebook was found to be the most valuable platform for B2C companies (96%), whilst LinkedIn is the most valuable for B2B companies. To find out more about trends in managing social media in large global brands, we interviewed Scott Jaworski, Director of Global Social Media at Intel, one of many senior keynote speakers at the Marketing Leadership Forum on October 5-6. We were interested to learn his thoughts on social media trends and innovations, brand identity on social, and mass-communications.

Trends and…

A round-up of our time at TFM 2017

This week the Smart Insights team were in London for Technology for Marketing 2017. A two-day conference dedicated to martech.  If you didn’t make it to TFM, here is a recap of Dave's talk and panel discussion, as well answers to the most common questions we were asked at our stand. Download the 10 reasons you need a digital marketing strategy booklet All visitors to the stand were given a new 10 reasons why you need a digital strategy mini-booklet which gives recommendations on what a strategy should include - you can download it here [pdf] if you want to take a look.

How to measure and improve your return on MarTech, Dave Chaffey

Dave spoke…

Chart of the Day: Inactivity Managment

What is inactivity in email data management?

Your email marketing platform tracks all activity relating to your email marketing, including opens and clicks. It also tracks clients who have not interacted with your emails. Different platforms also rate inactivity differently, for instance, some may class opens still as non-activity because recipients haven't clicked on any links. So, before planning your campaigns it's best to check first.

Win-back campaigns

Win-back campaigns are aimed to re-engage your subscribers. They usually focus on an offer or Unique Selling Point (USP) depending on what you think will entice your subscriber. Your win-back campaigns can be either automated or manual, however, automation does take the hassle from creating one-off manual emails. While planning your campaign, you need to decide on three things: What does inactive mean for you? What are you going to do to entice your clients back? What are you going to…

How much your cost per click should be for a #1 advert position, according to your industry

A question that is becoming increasingly common for business owners. “How much does it cost to advertise on Google?” A perfectly simple question with a not so simple answer. As you’re probably aware, the keywords you use in your campaign have various costs associated with each click. So when estimating a sensible Adwords budget for your new campaign, without using Google’s Keyword Planner as a rough guide, (emphasis on rough), you may not know where to begin. In this post we’re going to focus on the Google Search Network as this is often the starting point for businesses when they begin digital advertising. We’re going to look at Google’s estimates for what the average cost per click is for the top 10 online industries in the UK and how you can reduce these costs significantly.

What does…

Smart Insights Alert: How will retargeting be affected by changes to iOS11 and macOS High Sierra Safari users? Google also updates Adwords in response to Apple’s ITP for Safari

Apple is making massive waves again, this time in the advertising industry (but not in a good way for digital marketers). Apple has introduced ITP - Intelligent Tracking Prevention - for those using their Safari browser, a new feature in their upcoming software update. Marketers are facing one more obstacle in their online advertising campaigns as this new feature will essentially prevent you from Retargeting your customers effectively. Safari, Apple's default browser, is used by 14.9% of internet users - a small proportion, but a proportion of a target audience that may no longer be accessible because of this ad blocking. Retargeting is a great way to persuade users to return to a site or convert into a paying customer, a major feature of marketing today. …