Marketing agencies need to learn from tech leaders
Having spent ten years spearheading one of the UK’s leading dot com companies to digital success, Dave Heath is now shaking up the agency landscape by taking dot com thinking into agency processes.
Dave believes all companies should behave like a dot com; and an agency’s role is to help clients take a dot com approach to gain competitive advantage, especially where technology is core to achieving business goals – arguably in 2016 this is almost every company.
[si_definition title="What is it? Dot Com" description="A dot com company is a company that does most of its business on the internet, usually through a website that uses the popular top-level domain “.com”."/]
Some of the largest dot com companies are undoubtedly leading the field in digital innovation, delivering huge profits as a result.
Dot coms tend to act differently to multi-channel businesses that have added…
A New Definition of Edgerank
Facebook Pages are not what they used to be.
It may (or may not) come as a surprise to discover that only a tiny proportion of the content published by Pages that you “Like” actually reaches your News Feed. Some studies put this percentage (known as “reach”) at as little as 2%. Even the most optimistic of studies suggest that little over 11% of a Page’s fans will see its content.
This is due to the existence of a filtering mechanism Facebook uses that employs a complex algorithm. Without the algorithm in place you’d be overwhelmed with something like 1,500 posts a day on your News Feed. And a lot of those would be from brand Pages.
Facebook is well aware that users like to see content from friends and family first, and dislike a News Feed cluttered with promotional messages from…
Dirty data leads to costly mistakes. Here's how to prevent them
A co-worker once told me the sort of horror story that causes marketers to wake up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night.
In a previous position at a large technology company, he and his team generated numerous leads through conferences and trade shows. The field marketing managers would send the leads to their marketing operations team via CSV files, and the operations team would use the information to follow up with these leads. The data came in varied formats and was not always clean or easily segmented.
In one unfortunate case, the marketing operations team mistakenly uploaded a file containing 500 software industry leads under the service provider category in their system. The leads were routed into the service provider channel, and all 500 of them received a service provider newsletter rather than a software email. Needless to…
Expanded Text Ads re-write the Ad Words rulebook. Don't miss out on their benefits.
Google’s new Expanded Text Ads (ETAs) have been a real game-changer for pay-per-click marketers, rewriting the rules for AdWords best practice and forcing users to adapt. Almost doubling the character count allows greater opportunity to create engaging, unique content, and with Google reporting increased click-through rates of 20-30% during beta testing, it’s a development that PPC managers cannot afford to ignore.
The search engine giant will be shifting to the expanded format permanently, phasing out ‘standard’ ads by the end of January 2017. Any experienced AdWords marketer worth their salt will appreciate the need to lead the pack and nail their ETA game before competitors know what’s hit them, so here’s a brief guide to doing just that.
What inspired the change?
It’s been 16 years since AdWords…
If you haven’t started your holiday planning yet, it’s time to push the panic button.
Email marketers often don’t get pulled into the planning process until the end and then it’s often an afterthought or emergency: “Yeah, just send another email”. When email is an afterthought instead of the engine, you’re setting yourself up to fail.
Don’t sit on the sidelines and wait for the coach to send you in. Develop your own plan, including copy and contact strategies. It should fit into the overall brand strategy, but it needs to be your design because you have your own revenue and goals to meet.
Develop your Black Friday strategy now
Although many consumers have already started shopping, Black Friday is still the official kick-off for the season. Locking down your strategy now gives you time to test it and have it in place. You’ll be ready to start building your base of subscribers from the fresh…
Conversational research takes social listening to the next stage
It is more important than ever now to raise brand awareness through conversations. Modern consumers are not as susceptible to advertising and product placement as in the past. Therefore, smart marketers generate brand awareness via influential social media strategies.
Good social media marketing depends on how thorough the keyword research is. It is important to use the best keywords in context, and then monitor them to see how effective they are. Also, the strategy should also employ "social listening." It is a way of getting real-time feedback relating to keywords to perfect the long-term marketing campaign.
The point of using the tactics mentioned above is to monitor your brand’s appeal and efficacy on social networks. Brand monitoring will help your company to gain a distinct leg up over the competition.
Now let’s look at how you can monitor your brand through a useful tactic…
How to Create An Effective Digital Marketing Campaign for Your New e-commerce Business
Creating a digital marketing campaign for an e-commerce startup is a real challenge. You want to make your mark on social media as quickly as possible, and to begin building a following that will ultimately become loyal customers. The challenge is that you don’t have much to go on. Finances are tight. This means limited resources when it comes to market research, or paid advertising. In many cases, it is up to your team to build a campaign from the ground up.
The following six points will outline some very important points to know as you begin to develop your first digital marketing campaign. Keep reading to learn how to develop a strategy that is economical, results oriented, and lean.
1. The Key Starting Point is Great Web Design
As…
Just because Penguin constantly updates, doesn't mean you can throw out the disavow file
When taking to the familiar waters of the social media swimming pool this morning, instead of enjoying my relaxed, smooth, exercise regime, I was met by the sound of shrieking and splashing from the children’s pool of Twitter. Upon investigating, I see there is a lively debate about the implications of disavow in the fallout of Penguin 4.0.
The main topic for the heated discussion? With the new incarnation of Penguin and its constantly refreshing live scrutiny when it is evaluating domains and URLs, is the presence of a disavow file even necessary for your business going forward? There are arguments both for and against this, there are those who are of the inclination that complete and utter removal of the disavow file is in their best interests as Google Penguin 4.0 algorithm is only doing minor devaluing…
Direct traffic is a great indicator of brand strength - marketers should consider its use as a KPI
How a brand drives its traffic in the online arena is one of the most important things for any digital marketer to know. These traffic drivers can be divided broadly into these 7 segments
Direct
Mail
Referrals
Social
Organic Search
Paid Search
Display Ads
Each has its own implication on a brand’s online presence however for the scope of this article we will focus on Direct Traffic vs. Various Search metrics.
Direct Traffic is when a consumer directly types in the name of a brand’s website in the address bar.
Search Traffic is when a consumer is looking for information about a brand and its services/products via a search engine or directly inputting the name of the brand or its product/service, in a search engine.
Before we begin it is worth mentioning that a lot of the…
Partnering with a supplier can save time and boost profits.
Ask any eCommerce retailer what is the number one concern they have and inventory will likely enter the equation. Fulfilling orders yourself is time-consuming and not always the cheapest option in the long run. Hiring employees to do it cuts into your profit margin.
So what’s the solution?
Dropshipping.
If you haven’t heard about this rising trend in eCommerce order fulfillment, let this article be your guide to understanding dropshipping, how it makes you a better business owner, and what to expect in the coming months.
What Is Dropshipping?
Image: Oberlo
Rather than you buying inventory, stocking it, then packaging and shipping it out every time an order comes in, dropshipping allows you to sell products that are housed by your manufacturer or a wholesaler. They store it until you sell it. And you don’t…
