Chart of the Day: Understanding word of mouth in the digital age

Word of mouth has always been a powerful method of marketing. Yet, marketers often struggle to make the most of this avenue. As with other areas of marketing, word of mouth, too, is becoming increasingly digital. According to AdWeek, 92% of consumers trust recommendations from other consumers, through reviews, influencers etc., over ads or content coming directly from the brand. Modern-day consumers, especially millennials, make choices based on what their friends or role models endorse. As ad-blocking becomes more and more frequent, brands that spend big budgets on advertising, are finding it hard to reach out to their audiences. BrightLocal’s Local Consumer Review Survey (2017) reaffirms the importance of digital word of mouth through its findings. More people are looking for reviews online and use them to decide if a local business is good or not. 93% of consumers read reviews to…

How three very different brands gained social success by creating Facebook campaigns that engaged users and got them talking

In our Facebook marketing guide we share lots of examples of practical techniques for businesses to achieve their goals. We're always on the lookout for new examples to share, so we 'put our heads together' in our team to share those we liked best from this year. We'd be interested to know which campaigns you rate from this year, please share to Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn. The examples we have chosen are all remarkable for getting cut-through and engagement to support the goals of the organisation. Thinking of our RACE planning framework,  Facebook (and other social networks) can support all the parts of the customer lifecycle goals from achieving reach, encouraging interactions, generating conversion and customer engagement. We have chosen these three examples since they achieve these across very different categories.

[si_guide_block id="19998" title="Download Premium Resource – Facebook…

Chart of the day: 58% of internet users have uploaded video content in the past year

We are consuming more video than ever before. Global Web Index have reported that while nearly 3 in 4 internet users shared a photo last month, the figures for uploading videos are not far away, with almost 6 in 10 having done so. Currently more than 500 million hours of videos are watched on YouTube each day. According to one source, more video content is uploaded in 30 days than the major U.S. television networks have created in 30 years. The biggest challenge for marketers is how to capture their audience's attention in the first 3 seconds and fit in all the points they need to make. Source: Global Web Index  Base: 77, 814 internet users Recommended Resources: Mobile Marketing Strategy Guide …

Chart of the Day: Ecommerce businesses share their ROI from personalization for the Retail, Travel and Financial services sectors

There are now many options for website personalization tools, but we know from our member research that many businesses have yet to implementation personalization for different reasons. I'm sharing these figures from a new research report since it may help as part of putting together a business case for investment in a tool. In the report, Personalization is defined as: "the ability to interact with each individual, at any moment, across touch points based on everything known about them, and includes testing, segmentation, and individualization approaches".  The first chart shows that across all three sectors reported, the vast majority - between 70 and 70% - do report a positive ROI. I was surprised that the proportion of businesses who don't or can't wasn't higher since many smaller businesses haven't fully implemented personalization. This perhaps reflects the larger businesses…

A briefing on the advantages and disadvantages of chatbots

Technology and fashion are not exactly two industries which you would associate with one another. While this might be the only time you see the likes of Mark Zuckerberg and Naomi Campbell ever compared in an online article, their worlds do share certain similarities. Much like fashion trends, as soon as you have got to grips with the latest technological development billed as revolutionizing the world then it has been promptly usurped by a new innovation. No one spends much time contemplating the potential of the minidisc anymore, for example, do they? But some technological buzzwords do have some substance beneath the layers of frantic internet hype. One such example is the chatbot, which has been proven to be hugely beneficial to businesses of all sizes with 80% expected to be using one by 2020.

Supporting the support agents

We have all been there. Listening…

Google puts A/B testing tools at everyone's fingertips by making it's Google Optimize product free

There may be no such thing as a free lunch, but since it launched out of beta in March 2017, there's a free CRO package that gives you the ability to run A/B tests across your site. Almost half of smaller businesses don't currently utilize A/B testing, which will mean they're potentially losing vast sums compared to the revenue they could have been generating had they engaged in CRO.

[si_quick_block id="101832" title="How to do AB tests with Google Optimize" description="This Quick Win explores what AB testing is, and what process you should use to build a test. We will cover some ideas on what you could test, as well as working out where to focus your attention, hint, don’t just jump to say your homepage, you may want to test somewhere else that will give you a bigger impact."]

That's…

Chart of the Day: What are the most difficult email marketing tactics to implement? ~ Part 2 of 2

Last week we discussed the most effective email marketing tactics. This week we look at the opposite side of the coin at the most difficult tactics to use.

What are email marketers finding difficult?

In the chart below, email marketers are struggling with list segmentation (42%) the most. Testing and optimization (38%) come in second. Keep heart my little email geeks, you can do it!

It's complex - but why?

Some of the most difficult strategies are the hardest to implement. That's not a surprise. But why are email marketers struggling? Is it because there is a: lack of knowledge? missing infrastructure? lack of support within the business? lack of time?

Let's break it down

List segmentation

To correctly segment data, you need just that - data.…

Updates to inform your social media marketing strategy

Welcome to our weekly summary of what's happened in social media this week. This week we look at Instagrams new features, Facebook ‘Messenger Kids’ and how you can import your Instagram contacts into Messenger

Instagram lets you archive stories

Instagram announced that stories will be automatically save to your archive when they expire. According to Instagram, this makes it easy for you to revisit your favorite moments later on or bring them back to life in a highlight. Only you can see your archived stories, and you can choose to turn off auto-archiving at any time in your profile settings. This has been rolled out globally.

Instagram highlights

Stories Highlights is another new feature Instagram have introduced. Highlights are photos which are named collections of your past Stories that show up in a new horizontal bar across the…

5 easy steps to improve your ecommerce conversion rate using personalization tools, segmentation, interaction data (AOV and RPV) and campaign split testing

As a marketer you’re always seeking the holy grail that will grow your revenues, that insight that tells you exactly which design updates are increasing your ecommerce website’s key conversion metrics like conversion rate, average order value (AOV) and revenue per visitor (RPV), and - equally importantly - which are not! The good news: 2017 is an awesome year for conversion optimization tools. We’re now way beyond the ‘seeing’ part - voyeuristically seeing what visitors are doing, where they most click and scroll. Now, by investing in a personalization platform, you can analyze your visitors’ specific interactions, and understand which of them correlate with higher conversions and revenues. Below I share the five steps for doing this. [si_guide_block id="57383" title="Access premium resource – Web Personalisation guide" description="This guide explains how to create…

Chart of the day: Marketers reveal that data quality, lead generation and user experience are the most critical challenges to the success of a digital marketing plan

When it comes to planning a digital marketing strategy we all know there are factors which affect its implementation and success. Data quality affects things like marketing automation and personalization and marketers said it was the biggest challenge. Lead generation is also related to data quality, marketers will always need leads. User experience (UX) also came near the top at 15%, it's great to see marketers are thinking about how UX improvements can benefit sales, revenue and even data.

Bonus chart: Are digital marketing budgets increasing?

For most marketers, their digital marketing budgets are increasing. For just over 4 in 10 (41%) their marketing budget will increase significantly, and over…