Examples showing why the 'Thank you Mom' campaigns are so effective

Procter & Gamble Co.’s “Thank You, Mom" campaign is the first of our new series of pieces celebrating the most influential campaigns, both past and present. In this case, we are looking back to 2010 when the start of heartstring plucking ads came out ahead of the Winter Olympics. [si_guide_block id="74955" title="Download FREE Resource – Agency digital marketing services – the top 10 mistakes to avoid" description="The 10 most common mistakes made by marketing agency owners when offering new digital services."/]

The history

Toward the end of Chairman-CEO A.G. Lafley’s first term in 2009, P&G learned that it had the chance to sign a sweeping sponsorship deal with the U.S. Olympic Committee for the 2010 Winter Games. Rival Johnson & Johnson had locked up much of the sponsorship opportunities in prior years. But P&G had to act fast,…

Chart of the Day: How Google's featured snippets are reducing the number of traditional organic links

Organic search traffic remains one of the most effective methods of customer acquisition. So, it's as important as ever to be on top of the changes that Google makes to its algorithms and the formats used to show recommended sites in the search engine results pages (SERPs). This Chart of the Day shows nicely what SEOs have known for a long time, i.e. that the search results features such as featured snippets, related questions, images, video are now so important that they should be an essential consideration in most markets. It's indicated by this compilation from Moz of 10,000 sample queries used in the Moz features graph (see second chart below) which shows that fewer than half of these SERPs have the full 10 blue hyperlinks we have been familiar. The remainder are the features shown in the…

Branding is indispensable for businesses, big or small, new or old

Branding defines a business’s identity; it is how a business presents itself to the world. But branding is much more than fancy logos and catchy taglines – it captures the ethos of a business and guides its journey. Branding is also important for positioning and the subsequent competitive advantages. If you do not brand yourself, others will. That’s the reality, so new businesses would do well to take control of the narrative right from the time of launch so that others cannot slot them or define the space they can be in. Let’s look at some ways to transform a new business into a trustworthy and successful brand.

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Is there a place for snarky comments when responding to customers on social media?

In a recent report, by Sprout Social, it was found that brand personality on social media affects consumer purchase decisions. Respondents said they wanted more honest, friendly and helpful brand personality on social media over snarky and politically correct comments.

How one company uses snarky comments to engage and produce viral content

Yet, Wendy’s has developed quite the reputation on Twitter. From burying a troll at the mere suggestion that its meat was frozen to throwing shade at its burger rivals, snark has become such a specialty for the fast food chain that you’d half expect to see it listed alongside burgers and fries on the value menu. [si_guide_block id="82119" title="Download FREE Resource – 10 common social media marketing mistakes guide" description="Our actionable…

SEO made simple: A quick look

What once was an esoteric and often misunderstood matter, quickly is becoming a mainstream practice that is deeply embedded in proper web design and good content strategy.

No longer is search engine optimization a list of counterintuitive practices that seek to exploit the shortcomings of search algorithms. Instead, it is a set of good business practices, guidelines that steer web designers and content creators in the right direction.

Direction which leads to memorable user experience through smooth site navigation and content that provides real value, be it for entertainment or educative purposes. Of course, there is lots of value stored for the site owner as well.

When the right SEO strategy – on and off page – is applied, the ranking inevitably rises, increasing site exposure and organic traffic. The latter translates directly into more business, as SEOtribunal stats…

6 Keys to building a better online brand experience for your customers.

Online brand experience and customer experience is a widely discussed topic amongst brand managers and marketers, and for good reason — customers who have a better brand experience with one brand over another will naturally veer toward the brand they favour when making a purchase. It’s not rocket science.

Put simply, the customer experience includes every touchpoint between customer and company. Marketers usually break this experience into three categories: pre-purchase, purchase, and post-purchase.

These experiences extend from online forums to in-person interactions, but in today’s connected world, pre-purchase often begins online with researching a company, reading reviews, and browsing blog posts — so optimizing your brand experience across all things digital is essential.

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The Problem With Perfection

The mistake many…

The #MarketingMinds series share real-world stories from marketers showing how digital marketing has helped them develop their careers or businesses.

Marketing Mind:

Hanna Cevik

I'm Hanna, I've been a Marketing Manager for 10 years, working in the third sector, the arts and now technology. I am a generalist, which I think is increasingly rare, but I enjoy being part of the strategy as well as the tactics of marketing in the B2B space, so I tend to join organisations as they are growing large enough to start separating roles like marketing out for the first time. That means I'm most often a one-woman team - with support from all over the business. Reason is just that; five years old, growing, with a great client roster and a really smart team of designers, strategists and engineers. I've worked with Reason…

Legendary American football coach Vince Lombardi said it best: ‘Practice does not make perfect. Only perfect practice makes perfect.’

If you’re running around like crazy - doing redesigns, running split tests, and adding new technologies - but don’t know the best practices needed to define the ‘most likely to succeed’ designs and tests - you’re definitely not practicing perfectly. And you’re leaving a lot of potential revenues on the table. Don’t succumb to constant guessing: plan and execute your online merchandising tactics based on proven best practices.

Types of best practices

Best practices in e-commerce certainly cover a wide spectrum. In this post, I will focus on the user experience design tactics most likely to lift your core metrics: add-to-carts, conversion rates, and revenues. The best practices you should be implementing right now include: Optimizing product findability Optimizing your category pages Optimizing your product pages [si_guide_block id="119482" title="Implementing e-commerce merchandising best practices" description="Learn more about each of…

Ecommerce strategies that will set your business apart from competitors

Traditional retail is dead. Or perhaps it is experiencing a slow death due to the rise of the Ecommerce industry. Many experts will say that the retail apocalypse has been greatly exaggerated but the truth is, more and more brick and mortar stores are gearing towards operating their business online.

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Even big brands such as Macy's, Bebe, Guess and Payless have closed dozens - or even hundreds of stores in 2017. Big names such as KMart, Sears and Toys R Us have also declared bankruptcy…

“Buyers are becoming more discerning and selective in the content they decide to consume”

As B2B purchases become more complex, it’s important to take a look at some of the latest B2B buyer trends in the market. Buyers are becoming more selective in terms of the content they consume, to make their buying decision. While B2B buyers continue to rely on trustworthy and credible sources, expert opinions and their peers to inform and educate themselves, their content preferences keep fluctuating over time, with various new content formats being introduced into the market. According to Demand Gen Report’s annual survey on content preferences, B2B buyers are “becoming more discerning and selective in the content they decide to consume”. Majority of the respondents (88%) said that content producers need to focus less on content around product specifics and more on…