Learn the value of chat interactions for your business

Here’s the first thing to know about chat, and online communication in general: direct, real-time human interaction improves brand engagement. Granted, people who know the exact product or service they want don’t need help. But these people are the minority. Most people either need considerable help or want ‘just in time’ assistance - the answer to a quick question or concern that, once addressed, will increase their confidence and likelihood to buy. A second reason why having chat is essential in an e-commerce context: chat usage lifts conversions and revenues. In my experience consulting on over a dozen mid-sized and larger e-commerce websites that do and don’t offer chat, I’ve found that visitors who chatted converted at roughly 12 - 15%, while visitors didn’t chat converted in the 1.5 - 2.0% range. That’s roughly an 8X increase,…

Every blogger wants one thing more than anything: more traffic

In order to increase your traffic and keep growing, you need to get creative and you need to leverage a lot of different platforms and channels. There is a lot of competition when it comes to content, so in order to stand out and reach your audience, you don’t just need quality, but also a strong promotional strategy. In my latest Quick Win for Smart Insights, I show you how you can build such a strategy by listing all of the main methods of promoting a blog. You’ll get to learn: The top free ways of promoting your blog, such as social media strategies and how to maximise your traffic from social media, search engine optimisation tips, and other effective free tactics The top paid ways of promoting a blog, including PPC ads, social media ads, content syndication platforms, and more …

Improve your skills to become a 'T-shaped Marketer' via these free online courses and tutorials

When we look at where to focus our free blog content at Smart Insights, our main aim or filter we use is that the content must help digital marketers plan, manage and optimize their business results or improve their digital skills. This is also what our member content, in our guides focuses on too - starting with digital strategies and planning templates then more specialized marketing tactics like email marketing, social media, SEO, video and many more digital skills. [si_quick_block id="117459" title="Marketing careers and skills development workbook" description="Tools and techniques to give you clarity on your future path, skills development and position yourself to attract the employers you want to work for."] Of course, there is a lot of great free, structured online courses around developing digital skills, so we thought it would help to share our thoughts…

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…

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…

“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…

Marketing automation industry is currently valued at $1.65 billion, and the majority credit for this jump in value goes to the introduction of AI in marketing automation; more-so the AI-enabled chatbots that are taking marketing automation industry by storm

Here we will go over three significant reasons for why every brand should consider a chatbot while framing their marketing automation strategy. The first breakthrough was the introduction of social media within marketing automation strategy. Marketers started using various tools and software to make the maximum out of their social media activities. Things took a more substantial leap when artificial intelligence made way into marketing automation strategy. The simple concept of making repetitive marketing tasks easy got a new lease of life with predictive analysis and personalized marketing. With AI, marketing automation became more human. Fast-forward to present time; AI…

6 questions your boss will ask about social media automation (and how to win them over)

Engagement is the name of the game in running a successful social media campaign. Customers are 20-40% more likely to spend money on products coming from brands that engage with them on social media. However, responding to comments and messages left behind by potential customers can quickly consume a huge chunk of your time. On top of this, running a successful social marketing campaign involves carrying out tasks that are repetitive. Here are 8 statistics to prove the worth of social media marketing: It is for this reason why more and more businesses are using marketing automation tools to run their social media marketing campaigns. As its name suggests, these are software programs that handle many of the time-consuming tasks involved in running a successful social media campaign. By…

How programmatic marketing can help you target specific demographics

Over the last five years, the way advertisers have bought media and the way publishers have sold it has changed significantly. Influenced by technology, sophisticated platforms, and automated processes, advertisers have the ability to target groups in real-time, through a range of segmentation methods and demographics. In theory, this new way of buying should bring marketers and media planners closer together. With the new level of transparency, it’s surprising how many marketers still do not understand the programmatic media buying process. [si_quick_block id="58728" title="Programmatic marketing guide" description="This report is aimed at marketing managers and directors, digital marketing, and e-commerce managers who are looking to understand the key components of programmatic marketing from both an agency and advertiser perspective."] According to eMarketer, the total UK spend on programmatic advertising is expected to more than double from £1.99 billion in 2015 to £4.52 billion by 2019.…