How National Geographic engage 350 million combined global followers via storytelling content marketing on social media

Personally, I follow National Geographic across all social platforms - preferring the visual platforms like Instagram, Pinterest, and Facebook - and for many years been a paid subscriber to their printed magazine. So what makes me, and their other 81.7 million followers on Instagram stop scrolling, engage with the content and ultimately convert to their paid content? (They are the number 1 television brand and number 2 printed media on facebook). It's the ingenious way they captivate attention through the power of visuals and great storytelling. This is why storytelling is the future of social media. With the multitude of content on social and the many brands that choose to pay to promote content, it is becoming an increasingly crowded and noisy environment to reach social users. Although 37% of marketers say visual marketing is the…

Chart of the Day: Podcast Advertising Market Sees 117% Year-on-Year Growth

Podcasts are a fantastic way for companies to regularly generate digestible content and stay at the forefront of their customers’ minds. The impact of podcasts is certainly being felt in the US, where 16 million homes could be classified as “avid podcast fans”, a year-on-year increase of 3 million from 2016. This has led to massive increase in US podcasting ad revenue, which has now risen to over $300 million. A report from the Interactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhourseCooper presented the findings from 19 self-reporting companies that generate revenue from podcast advertising in the US, which equates to a year-on-year growth of 117% rise in ad revenue. The report also forecasted the future growth of the market, which projected an increase of 28% and reaching $659 million…

Send the right message, to the right person, at the right time: Automating your campaigns

Automated campaigns are the backbone of a successful email marketing strategy; campaigns that are set up within your email system and send automatically based on specific rules. In this blog post, we will cover 5 automated campaigns to consider as part of your lead nurture sequence. [si_quick_block id="115280" title="How to create a lead nurturing strategy" description="This guide will show you how to create an effective lead nurture strategy for B2B and B2C. The majority of new subscribers you generate and bring onto your email programme will not be ready to buy from you, hence, lead nurturing is a crucial part of any well-structured email strategy."]

1. Welcome series

This is often the first impression that a prospect has of your brand and gives you the opportunity to immediately start to build a relationship with your new subscriber when they…

Digital advertising trends have shifted from desktop to mobile in recent years. This mobile-first approach is quickly taking over as the preferred method for digital advertising and is on the cusp of being the most focused on medium for ad campaigns.

But mobile-first is not the only digital advertising trend that has pushed to the forefront of the marketing sector. We’ve researched what the future holds for digital advertising, and have come back with some deep and interesting insights into five advertising trends that will have a strong impact through the rest of 2018: Mobile-first advertising Personalization in digital marketing The effectiveness of video advertising Impact of location-based targeting The effect of micro-moments on consumers

Mobile-first advertising

Mobile-first was intended to notify consumers that a company cares for its websites and digital forms of communication while remaining…

Successful business communication entails tailoring messages to different types of audiences

Not so long ago, digital marketers and influencers used to make bold statements such as Email marketing is the best communication channel and shall continue to dominate for eternity. Today, the tables have turned and such statements make little business sense. Many businesses are relying on mobile and desktop push notifications to communicate and engage with different types of audiences. And importantly, push messages are agnostic to ad blockers. No wonder ads are playing second fiddle to push messages! Unfortunately, many marketers are not fully aware of using push notification services to their advantage. The express purpose of this article is to throw light on how to drive ecommerce sales with desktop push notifications. If you are looking forward to best practices, read on.

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Email is a marketing channel that has evolved over the years, smartly adopting new technology and adapting to demands of the changing times

Emails have been in place for around four decades now. It is a remarkably cost-effective way to build long-lasting relationships with customers and drive business growth. Marketers who can adhere to the principles of correct email marketing will surely be able to give more bang for the marketing buck. Here’re the top reasons why emails reign the marketing world as a noteworthy medium.

Emails can be personalized for individual subscribers

Emails can simulate one-on-one conversation with your subscribers and impart a personalized experience to them. You can send real-time emails according to the triggers such as website activity, past purchases, cart abandonment, etc. It facilitates “marketing trinity”, that is, sending the right message (offer) at the right time to the right person. See how ASICS sends an interesting cart abandonment email to…

Marketing strategy can use privacy as a strength, not a weakness

There has been a lot of controversy about data and privacy for businesses and consumers alike in 2018.This has been highlighted by the introduction of GDPR in the EU on May 25th, which has heightened consumers’ concerns about privacy. When you look at recent incidents such as Facebook and Cambridge Analytica, companies have been alerted to ensuring that regulations are met and revenue is not affected. In this article, I’m going to look at ways that businesses can see data privacy regulations as a marketing tool. I’ll include good and bad examples to help drive some points home. [si_guide_block id="37500" title="Download Premium Resource – Managing Customer Data to Improve Marketing ROI" description="Improve marketing data management to compete through insight"/]

Let’s look at an example of where the response to privacy by marketing, perhaps goes too far,…

What skills should each of your employees have? Create the marketing dream team with the right skills, knowledge and employee enthusiasm

We have recently updated our Digital Marketing Job Descriptions and Roles guide to help businesses of all sizes recruit the right talent for their digital team.

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These practical descriptions will help you create a marketing team structure that has all the necessary skills your business needs to make the most out of every opportunity. But, we have also seen a fun infographic created by the Website Group, which explains a marketing dream team in lego characters.We like this, but what do you think? Courtesy of: The…

An introduction to the LGBT market, cautions, and advertising examples

LGBT, you might ask? LGBT is the acronym for the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender community—you may also use LGBT+ to be inclusive of additional members of this group. With the acceptance and visibility of people with various sexual orientations and gender-identities having increased and welcomed, in the last number of decades, I thought it would be a good time to bring understanding to current marketeers inlcuding the members of this group, demographics, and warnings. I have also added several example campaigns to demonstrate how to advertise to this community. [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."/] Within this article: Explanation of the LGBT+ community Pronouns in marketing Demographics Globalization: Beware of some countries laws LGBT advertising examples First, it is…

Ever found yourself stuck in a dilemma while posting images on social media?

A crisp shot posted on Facebook may appear to be of a terrible quality on Twitter, and that’s just two of the many different social channels out there.

While content marketing focuses primarily on the quality of content, the quality of additional assets, such as the feature images and video links should be equally scrutinized. These assets should compliment the textual content, instead of detracting from it. A blurry image may put the user off of your content entirely, as they might question the overall quality of the link.

If you can’t make the effort of presenting your audience with decent quality content, why should they make the effort of consuming it?

[si_guide_block id="85104" title="Download our Free Resource – Top 10 common content marketing mistakes" description="With so much content being produced,…