Personalizing on a B2B level is more important than ever

Personalization for B2Bs is staggeringly more effective than giving visitors a flat, generic experience. 80% of B2B businesses surveyed said that personalizing their website was more effective when it came to reaching their company’s objectives than unpersonalized content. But personalization for B2Bs has not been a widely adopted strategy. Businesses say they don’t have the technology, the required data, or even the resources to personalize for their customers on a one-to-one level. However, just like regular customers, B2B buyers are beginning to expect and even demand relevance at every point in their buying cycle. Mass marketing is no longer applicable. It is no longer the aim to find the message that will resonate with a large number of your customers: you’re looking to find the most important message for each individual buyer. B2B…

Google chief questioned by US Congress about political bias and data transparency, UK regulators banning harmful gender tropes in advertising, Marketers concerned about data freedom after Brexit and Facebook's pop-up attempt to re-build trust

One of the biggest news stories this week has to be Google being questioned by Congress about how search works, data privacy, China plans and political bias. In just under four hours of questioning, the covered a lot of ground, some of which our roundup will take a look at. When it comes to marketing and advertisiting in the UK, the big announcement was that negative gender stereotypes are going to be banned in adverts. In a bid to avoid stereotypes causing real-world harm, new regulations are st to come into effect in 2019. Our roundup also takes a look at the concerns that marketers have about the impact that Brexit could have on the free flow of data.…

While some word of mouth marketing is completely organic, you can also make a targeted effort to boost word of mouth and get more people talking about and promoting your brand

Word of mouth marketing has always been hailed by marketing experts as one of the most effective marketing strategies, way before the existence of social media and digital marketing in general. There’s a simple reason for that: people trust other people more than they could ever trust a brand. Think of it this way: are you more likely to try a product if a trusted friend recommended it to you, or if you can see dozens of positive reviews from regular people? Or are you more likely if you saw a few well-placed posts from a brand? [si_guide_block id="26078" title="Download our Premium Resource – Affiliate marketing strategy guide" description="This guide explains the opportunities of affiliate marketing. It is aimed at owners or managers…

Small business marketers need to sit up and pay attention to the latest mobile design options

Technology has revolutionized communication and changed the face of doing business in modern times. Computers, Tablets, and Smartphone which were initially used to surf the net, stream videos and chat online have become key business tools. Mobile is becoming ever more crucial now that it accounts for over half of all web traffic. But how does a small business use the latest mobile design to grow its business? The answer to this question is determined by two factors: Increase in popularity of Social Media The development of more capable Smartphones Facebook, the most popular social network worldwide has 1.71 billion monthly active users across the world, according to the latest statistics. The other factor hinges on the improvement of mobile design evident in the…

Have you ever been questioned on how you can drive more organic traffic to your website? Or been asked to provide KPIs for what you can achieve with SEO efforts in the next 6-12months?

Haven’t we all. But before we begin to answer questions of that sort, it is important to understand, as well as explain to management, what SEO actually means and how it works. Rest-assured what you are about to read is not something I’ve based on reading online only. It is based on actual experiences throughout my SEO career (in-house and agency side), through tested methods. Let’s begin with what a small website is.

[si_guide_block id="5750" title="Download our Premium Resource – Successful SEO Guide" description="This guide is one of our most popular and rightly so. If you get it right, SEO can be a fantastic, relatively low-cost way to drive quality visitors who want to do business with you to…

Learn how to transform uncertain prospects into brand advocates one step at a time

Marketers often see the customer journey as a linear progression of four stages: Awareness Interest Consideration Purchase But there’s one important thing most of us tend to forget - the customer journey is no longer linear. Gone are the days when you could easily walk alongside your customers, guiding them all the way to the checkout page. [si_guide_block id="86160" title="Download our Free Resource – 10 common website customer experience mistakes" description="This guide reveals examples of poor website design from different sectors which are commonly seen, but best avoided."/] Today, your prospects can unexpectedly jump in or out at any point. Now, this doesn’t mean that the framework of the customer journey is no longer relevant. You should still think about these stages, but the way you approach them needs to change. Your ultimate goal today should be to provide a…

Startup company growth needs effective and easily accessible digital tools and resources

Over the past few years, we have seen a significant increase in the number of startups that can be seen as a fresh alternative to working in corporations. This is due to their creators’ desire to be independent and run their own company, but also due to changes taking place in the business culture, rapid technological development and most of all, easy access to tools that help grow and manage firms effectively. As a matter of fact, every startup company supporting relevant software and digital sources can build a strong marketing campaign and grow business all by itself. Looking for tools to conduct startup business, entrepreneurs are drawing attention to some of their common features: • Easy availability • Low-cost or free • Accelerating work • Integrated with other tools SaaS…

Content marketing should explicitly be about promoting the right content to the right audience at the right time in order to achieve your marketing goals

Whether you're creating content from scratch or refurbishing existing content, your goal should be to engage and entice your target audience effectively on different platforms and, ultimately, prompt action. Your blog posts, videos, infographics, contests and ads all need to be perfectly aligned with the buyer’s journey. This means you need to understand the awareness, consideration and decision stages. [si_guide_block id="70710" title="Download our Premium Resource – Content marketing strategy e-learning course" description="Use our course to step through the analysis, planning and implementation activities which will take your content marketing to the next level."/] However, it’s quite difficult - if not entirely impossible - to do this without having a documented plan that covers effective distribution of your content. At the same time, your content marketing campaigns may end up…

We have explored the world of SEO custom alerts to make sure that key elements such as robots.txt, traffic and rankings are closely monitored

Have you ever spent time and effort on optimizing a website only to see all that hard work blown away in a blink of an eye? We have explored the world of SEO custom alerts to make sure that key elements such as robots.txt, traffic and rankings are closely monitored so you can track issues and fix them straight away. [si_guide_block id="5750" title="Download our Premium Resource – Successful SEO guide" description="Our comprehensive guide to Search Engine Optimisation best practices isn't just for SEOs, the clear explanations mean that it can be used by marketers to ask the right questions to boost their SEO."/] After a (bad) experience with a developer going rogue and disallowing an entire site overnight, I’ve been focusing on finding solutions to potentially avoid catastrophic issues like…

Instagram is largely dubbed as the best platform for influencer marketing campaigns

If you want to start an influencer marketing campaign on Instagram but aren’t sure where to start or what you can achieve, make sure to check out the Quick Win here to learn everything you need to know. But first…why should you choose Instagram rather than another social network? So, why choose Instagram for your influencer marketing campaign? There are plethora of influencers on all major social networks – Twitter, Facebook, YouTube – but somehow, 93% of all influencer marketing campaigns happen on Instagram. Why is that? Why do so many brands prefer to work with Instagram influencers?

Reason no. 1: Instagram influencers have higher engagement rates than other social networks

The biggest reason why so many influencer marketing campaigns happen on Instagram – and why it’s also one of the best choices for influencer marketing – is because Instagram actually…