Travel brands must select the right influencers to work with in order to see the best results and create effective stories

Working with influencers can propel a travel campaign forward and help your company reach its audience more effectively. But when you pick an influencer to work with, you are aligning their brand with your own, this is why it's incredibly important to choose the right individuals to work with. This can mean selecting influencers is a daunting prospect, especially if you have little or no experience of working in this way. One of the biggest mistakes that first-timers make is not doing enough research into influencers before choosing who to work with. [si_guide_block id="35932" title="Download our Individual Member Resource – Smarter Instagram marketing guide" description="Our Smarter Instagram marketing guide will help you tap into the consumer activity on Instagram to use it to grow your business."/] It’s simply not enough to select the…

Instagram to stop recommending 'borderline' content, the UK government is proposing new rules for social media companies, Amazon Alexa conversations being listened to by people, Netflix is testing new subscriptions in India and Lego named as the UK's favourite brand

A big focus this week across the board is social media and the spread of harmful content. Instagram has announced that it is set to stop recommending 'borderline' content that isn't quite breaking its rules but could be seen as potentially harmful. On top of this, the UK government is seeking to make social media in the country as safe as possible with proposed new regulations and sanctions for platforms failing to ensure users' safety. In other news, Amazon has admitted that some recorded Alexa conversations are listened to by people, raising security concerns. Netflix is seeking to grow its market share in India by offering new subscription services in the country, including weekly subscriptions. Finally,…

Videos are the second most lucrative form of content, leaving behind blogs, webinars, infographics and case studies. This year, to dominate your competition, use videos to increase conversions, attract a new audience, create brand recall, explain a product service and for customer support

Videos have taken the marketing world by storm. By 2021, video traffic will be responsible for 81% of all consumer internet traffic, reports Cisco. Think about where you go when you want entertainment or information about a product? I bet, one of your go-to-solutions is YouTube. Not only are people seeking more videos to consumer information, but they also remember them more. Around 80% of customers can recall an advertisement they watched last month, according to Vidyard, which analyzed 250,000 videos from 600 businesses. [si_guide_block id="23343" title="Download our Individual Member Resource – Video and YouTube marketing guide" description="Our guide shows you how to…

Creativity and resourcefulness may be the best weapons you can use when it comes to lead generation

Lead generation is a crucial marketing activity as it signals the start of what could be a fruitful relationship with future customers. Unfortunately, leads don’t fall on your lap that easily. Not only are you dealing with competition that will try to be first on your prospects’ radar, but you also need to cater to the changing buying behavior and needs of consumers. Faced with these challenges, your creativity and resourcefulness may be the best weapons you can use. This is where infographics come in handy. Infographics have an artistic appeal to content consumers as they are rich in visuals that pique your target market’s interest in learning more about your brand and its unique value offer.

Infographics as blog posts

To generate leads with infographics, you can post them…

SEO needs to be considered as an integral part of a web design project, not as an afterthought

SEO can play a crucial part in achieving the perfect digital marketing mix for your business and any brand that takes its digital strategy seriously will no doubt already have a robust plan in place to maximise online performance. But, organic search can be fragile, even fickle, and the smallest misjudgements can leave you exposed. Timing is of the essence, with SEO, and can often be a major contributor in getting the best, most cost-effective results in the long run. In an ideal world, brands should begin focussing their attention on their organic search strategy as early as when they are planning the design and development of their website. However, all too often, they fail to do so and leave SEO as an afterthought or retrospective consideration, unknowingly jeopardising future success. [si_guide_block id="22067" title="Website design…

Human customers mean you should be writing content aimed at humans, not algorithms

Your customers are humans. You’re not trying to sell your products and services to Google’s web-crawler bots. This means you should be writing content aimed at humans, not algorithms. At the same time, the algorithms control search results and SEO can have huge effects on your bottom line. So as much as you might want to create beautiful content written for a human audience, it can seem that economics favours the robots. [si_guide_block id="34016" title="Download our Individual Member Resource – Evaluating content marketing ROI guide" description="This guide is aimed at helping you improve your confidence in the value of content marketing by stepping you through a range of techniques to help marketers evaluate and prove their content effectiveness."/] The truth is that you can - and must - write for both. But it’s easier than you might…

Is your business equipped to offer customers personalized experiences across multiple channels?

In the era of instant communications and instant gratification, relationships between businesses and customers are changing. Driven by customers’ need for personalized and seamless interactions, brands are constantly adopting new communication channels, which allow them to reach customers at any stage of their purchasing journey. Making a purchase nowadays is easier than ever as customers can go from discovering a product on Instagram to an online checkout system in less than a minute. With 51% of UK’s consumers saying they prefer to shop online, the pressure is on for businesses to engage customers in high-touch point, more personalized interactions. [si_guide_block id="135151" title="Download our Business Resource – Integrating customer acquisition and retention communications" description="Our briefing to integrating customer acquisition and retention communications will show you common areas where the two teams fail to communicate, how a customer data…

Push notifications that are sent at the right time and convey value to the subscriber lower cart abandonment and increase conversions for the e-commerce brand

Did you know that it costs five times more to attract a new customer than to retain an existing customer? Imagine all the money, time and effort you spend in attracting a new customer who’d visit your store once and then never return. Alternately, increasing the customer retention rate by as little as 5% can increase your profits by between 25% and 95%, according to research by Bain & Company. It's no wonder brands focus their efforts and funds on nurturing the relationships with existing customers who’re already buying their goods and services frequently. This in no way means that you shouldn’t market your brand to new customers, which is, of course, vital, but you should also seek to re-engage them. [si_guide_block id="125181" title="Download our…

Sharing content early or deleted pages still indexing can affect your site rankings. Here's how to remove your content from Google

Having written a lot of blogs around how to get your website rank higher on Google, we’re not surprised when we are asked this question: "How can I remove my site, or a part of it, from Google?" If you’re scratching your head trying to get yourself to rank higher, this question might puzzle you. Although, your being here implies you’re actually scratching your head for the opposite reason. [si_guide_block id="5750" title="Download our Individual Member 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."/] For the uninitiated, there are a number of reasons why you might want to delist your content from Google, including: Some information…

How to plan, market and execute an event around communication

Communication is at the heart of everything we do, enabling us to form relationships, carry out work and achieve our goals. It is also at the heart of successful event marketing. Whether speaking in front of an audience, conducting a product demonstration or simply networking, being able to communicate your brand successfully is essential. All event marketing relies on effective communication from the initial event development, marketing and promotions phases, through to the actual event itself. [si_guide_block id="57658" title="Download our Business Resource – Event marketing guide" description="Whatever your business goals, live events can help you achieve them. This guide will give you the strategic advice you need to run successful events."/] To plan a successful event, organizers need to listen to their audiences, understand their needs and plan an event that envisions these desires. Only by effective communication from the organizer can marketers communicate…