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…

A good brief helps to ensure that the finished project is what you envisioned, meaning it is more likely to be an effective part of your marketing campaign

"Great projects start with a great brief. This isn’t one." "Garbage in, garbage out." Those are phrases I have heard a lot over the years. Often (whisper it) from the agency team, berating a client contact amongst themselves. But agencies have a big part to play in the quality of briefing. People in glass houses and all that. Over the last few years, I have seen some great briefs from clients that really helped an agency hit the mark. And I have seen some excellent briefs written (for themselves) by agencies, where the client couldn't articulate what they really wanted. But in amongst that have been some very lame briefs, on both sides, so I wanted to tackle that lack of consistency in the latest …

Progressive e-commerce brands are now rushing to leverage new gen functionality to create a highly visual shopping experience for customers

Image searches may still constitute a fraction of the total search volume on Google. But visual-heavy social media networks are already a "favourite" among avid shoppers. According to Pinterest  – a platform where an estimated 600 million monthly searches are performed through the visual Lens functionality  –  the majority of users come to the platform in a buying-state-of-mind. Some 87% of users said that the platform helped them make a purchase decision, 93% use Pinterest to plan purchases and an average shopper referred from Pinterest spends $50 per order. [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…

Small businesses can save time and get better results with these handy Twitter marketing apps

Social media provides a great platform to amplify your social media marketing strategies. It can help you establish a community, raise brand awareness and encourage engagement with your audience. However, social media management can be quite time-consuming, as it involves managing multiple social media accounts at the same time, and posting content on a regular basis. If you find it too time-consuming to be constantly posting updates on Facebook or Twitter, there are some amazing tools and apps out there that can help you save time and increase the effectiveness of your efforts. They help you juggle your social media accounts from your desktop and smartphones to make sure you have a very productive social media marketing campaign. [si_guide_block id="18501" title="Smarter Twitter marketing guide" description="For a detailed look at Twitter and how you can use it…

Influencers are trusted by millions of consumers, and marketers leverage their persuasiveness to engage customers

For most people, modern life is unimaginable without social media. With brands vying for the maximum number of views, social media has become the go-to platform when it comes to launching and promoting products. Influencer marketing is a byproduct of this phenomenon, with companies turning to Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter stars to influence their target audience’s purchase decisions. [si_guide_block id="27934" title="Download our Individual Member Resource – Influencer outreach guide for marketing professionals" description="Engaging influencers is now a key marketing tactic to expand your reach and awareness through integrating with your content marketing, social media and SEO activities. This practical guide shows you how to use tools to find and interact with influencers on the best social media platforms for outreach."/] To cut a long story short, influencers are trusted by millions of consumers, and marketers leverage their persuasiveness…

A combination of data types allows marketers to identify and build out the segment of ideal and high-value customers

Segmentation helps boost the value that marketing teams bring to an organization. I am a big fan of the trusted segmentation toolkit, but for most companies, it can do with a much-needed upgrade. Growing your current database with high-value customer acquisition seems just the way to get there. A new form of segmentation and targeting can be found with the use of  Customer Data Platforms (CDP). A combination of data types allows marketers to identify and build out the segment of ideal, high-value customers.

Moving away from "blunderbuss marketing" from the start

Look at the Pillars of Segmentation marketing segmentation framework for a minute and you will realize that your data is at the heart of all segmentation efforts. Purchase data is a good starting point to identify interesting groups. What your a good…