A three-step approach to check for paid search campaign mistakes

In an ideal world, enterprising entrepreneurs would only need to set up shop, open their virtual doors, and find customers lining up to buy their products. Of course, it’s never that easy. Digital marketers have to actually go out looking for them. And once you find them, you need to convert them. While conversion methods vary, many digital marketers arrive on a seemingly perfect solution when looking to invest to boost their visits: pay-per-click campaigns. PPC campaigns can work, and some work quite well. But they can be minefields for mistakes, and the most common is the marketing equivalent of 'keeping up with the Joneses.' Many digital marketers think they should run a PPC campaign because everyone else is doing it. [si_guide_block id="79626" title="Download FREE Resource – 10 costly AdWords…

Two major trends in email must not be ignored: interactive email and automation.

For certain messages, an old-fashioned email with a plain-text, well-written letter and a call-to-action at the bottom just might do the trick. But unless you want to take the risk of branding your entire online presence as “retro,” to be competitive, you must use the latest email technology.

What is Interactive Email?

To create an interactive email, a developer uses HTML and CSS to create radio buttons, forms, live counters, tabs and other interactive elements typically used on web pages. These interactive emails are now being dubbed “mailable microsites,” and the name fits perfectly. These emails act just like a micro website where users can move from “page to page” using tab and radio buttons to traverse the content and even convert directly within the email. These mailable microsites are being created using techniques such as punched card coding which effectively…

Web forms are a crucial communication channel between your organization and your audience - so making sure they deliver a first-class User Experience (UX) is imperative.

Turning a one-way flow of information into a two-way dialogue with your users, web forms can play a key role in facilitating the completion of tasks that are more often than not inextricably tied to the success of your organization. This may be an online purchase for those in the e-commerce sector, an application for membership of a particular institution or service, or a request for information for those operating in B2B industries. [si_guide_block id="5686" title="Download Premium Resource – Improving Results from your website: 7 steps guide" description="Use a structured review to increase leads, sales and satisfaction from your site."/] However, audiences today are fickle, and many users will be unlikely to persevere with a form that’s unclear and difficult to use, no matter how much they…

Chart of the day: 11.1% of businesses budgets is spent on marketing activities on average

Research by The CMO Survey has found that 11.1% is the average budget spent on marketing. As shown in the chart below, 11.1% on average is how much businesses are spending n marketing. If your business is spending less than this, it's worth considering whether there are missed opportunities. Across sectors, the research has found that marketing spend is mixed, but there are a number of industries that spend considerably more than others. Shown below is the percentage of budget spend on marketing in each sector listed. Energy, healthcare, media and tech industries are leading the highest average marketing spend Digital marketing also dominates marketing spend across B2C and B2B sectors when compared to "traditional" marketing spend. …

The voice assistant could eventually listen to all conversations in a room, identify speakers, and even interrupt them with sponsored suggestions

During the Second World War, a campaign warned private citizens against speaking too loosely in public places about matters of national interest. After all (so the campaign explained) one could never be sure of who was eavesdropping. In recent years, the rise of ‘listening robots’ has been precipitous, including Google’s Assistant, Amazon’s Echo device, and Apple’s Siri-activate HomePod. Triggered by ‘call names’ (for example, Siri), they offer useful hands-free assistance on everything from checking the weather and travel, to selecting music from a personal playlist. In the Case of Alexa, things are set to take what many would consider a sinister development by adopting a far more ‘hands-on’ attitude A recent Amazon patent suggests the voice assistant could eventually listen to all conversations in a room, identify speakers, and even interrupt them…

Three ways that marketers can benefit from working with Spotify

When marketers talk about ‘content’ one often thinks of words, images, video, or a combination of all three, such as infographics or interactive visuals. However, in recent years there has been a surge of interest in audio, from the growing popularity in podcasting to the emergence of smart devices. The growth of music streaming, in particular, has been a dominant trend across the globe, radically changing people’s relationship and consumption patterns with music.  These changes have revealed many interesting insights and have opened up new opportunities for marketers to reach new and existing consumers within an audio environment. [si_guide_block id="5676" title="Download FREE Resource – Digital marketing plan template" description="Our popular marketing planning template built on the Smart Insights RACE planning system."/]

Spotify and the emergence of audio platforms

Spotify, Apple…

Have you tried using webinars yet? What tools are you using to host and promote your webinars?

Do you want to learn more about what it takes to plan and promote an effective webinar? Smart Insights have kindly asked me to put together a Quick Win for their website – and it’s all about webinars, from how to set goals for webinars to finding ideas and topics and to promoting your webinar. If you’re interested in learning more about how webinars can help you improve results for your business, make sure you check it out!

[si_quick_block id="111353" title="How to plan and promote a high-converting webinar" description="This guide will show you how to effectively plan and promote your webinar. You will also learn about the different types of webinars and how to choose the best type for your business objectives."]

It covers literally every aspect of planning and promoting webinars so that once you’ve…

Chart of the Day: How much budget is being allocated to ABM?

This week, I thought I'd take a look at the popularity of ABM since we have been getting a lot of interest in our recent series of articles on how to implement ABM by Daley Robinson. Most studies on the adoption of ABM relate to larger B2B companies who are the early adopters of ABM which they have historically used as an approach to target their larger clients. This is the case with this research from Sirius Decisions which considers the percent of budget spent on ABM. You can see that in the two previous years, more budget is being allocated to ABM with over one-third of business categorising their spend on ABM in 2017 as either 11-30% of 32-50% of budget. Nearly a fifth are spending more 50% of their budget…

6 types of user experience and online audience surveying tools to help create a more customer-centred website and brand

Web analytics tools such as Google Analytics are used by nearly every company since they provide valuable quantitative data on site visitor behaviour. No surprise there. But web analytics systems don't give direct qualitative feedback from site visitors and customers and the surprise to me, is that relatively few companies use these, although their popularity is increasing rapidly. They can be used to support UX improvement projects both on the live site and when getting structured feedback during website redesign. We believe that qualitative website feedback tools are also essential to take the pulse of your website and improve your UX, but surprisingly they are less widely used despite paid services such as Opinion Labs being available for many years and some incredible free tools.

April 2018 update to tools

Thanks for your suggestions in previous…

4 strategies to help your agency expand abroad

As recently reported by The New York Times, the world market has finally escaped the throes of the economic crisis, as we now see every major economy enjoying simultaneous growth. While the reasons for this growth are manifold and far-reaching, one thing is clear: Businesses finding success at home in the United States are beginning to view the idea of opening offices abroad as a more viable opportunity. It’s not hard to see why. There are 28 countries and 500 million consumers in the European Union alone. To say opportunity exists in Europe is an understatement. But once you get to the EU, you need to have access to all those countries. Achieving this requires a carefully planned strategy.

[si_guide_block id="67467" title="Download Premium Resource – Running successful international marketing campaigns guide" description="A practical guide for running and structuring International Marketing…