Three search trends and implications for marketers
As we move into another new year there are once again a new set of predictions, hopes and concerns as to the direction of digital marketing over the next twelve months and beyond. There are so many exciting developments set to take place and I’m really looking forward to seeing how these take hold in 2018.
One of the interesting areas I’ve observed across many trends is the recurrence of two themes: artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning. These two closely related subjects seem to be taking hold across a number of areas, including marketing automation, digital creative, personalization and marketing technology. However, it’s the influence of AI and machine learning on the future of search that I’d like to explore in some detail in this article and the potential implications on business and marketing.
[si_guide_block id="5750" title="Download our Premium Resource – Successful SEO Guide" description="This…
Digital PR is here to stay folks, but how do you make it a success?
Digital PR is one of those new-fangled buzzwords that everyone is talking about at the minute. But, like influencer marketing, a lot of people aren’t too sure what it is, or how to make a success of it.
But digital PR is here to stay folks. As more and more businesses try and maximize on the overlap between SEO and PR. But what makes digital PR different from regular PR? And how can you make a success of it?
Essentially, Digital PR is the art of placing a press article, whilst also earning a link back from the publication to your site. This is obviously different from traditional PR, where you’re looking to maximize brand awareness and place the brand front and centre of an audience’s mind.
Your KPIs will differ for digital PR too. With traditional press,…
Customer engagement in ecommerce is paramount to success and must be a constant priority for your company
If your company isn’t hitting its sales targets, there could be a number of reasons responsible for these shortcomings.
However, all too often, companies aren’t profiting as much as they should because they’re not engaging customers as much as they should. This is an especially prevalent problem in ecommerce. Without any face-to-face opportunities, far too many companies are dropping the ball when it comes to customer engagement.
Sound familiar?
Why Customer Engagement Is Essential to Ecommerce
It should come as no surprise that people like individual attention. Alternatively, no one wants to feel like they’re just a number.
We’ll spend our money on something we want, but most of us will also pay more if better service comes with it.
This isn’t a small distinction, either. You ignore it at your company’s risk.
86% of consumers will spend more…
Three guiding principles of effective influencer marketing
The concept of influencer marketing is not new and has in fact existed for many decades. For years brands have worked with celebrities and other influential figures to leverage their popularity to positively impact their products and services, however, despite its long history, the rise of digital and social media has propelled influencer marketing into the consciousness of more marketing leaders than ever before. Fuelled by lower barriers to entry and access to a plethora of opinion leaders across a huge range of sectors and interests, the concept of influencer marketing has become a prominent device in the modern marketing toolkit:
trends.embed.renderExploreWidget("TIMESERIES", {"comparisonItem":[{"keyword":"influencer marketing","geo":"GB","time":"today 5-y"}],"category":0,"property":""}, {"exploreQuery":"date=today%205-y&geo=GB&q=influencer%20marketing","guestPath":"https://trends.google.com:443/trends/embed/"});
2018: the year of the influencer?
Many commentators have illustrated that 2017 proved just how popular influencer marketing has become, leading some to suggest that 2018 may be the year of the influencer.…
Every day, we instinctively change our communication styles to fit our audience
That bawdy joke? You’re never going to tell it in the presence of your buttoned-up in-laws. Instead, you’ll wait until you’re surrounded by old friends.
Why? It comes down to intuition. As children, we begin to understand that no two people communicate the same way. Yet by the time we hit adulthood, we seem to forget that fact, especially when it comes to corporate communications and marketing.
Instead of lumping together all our prospects and customers, we would be much better off if we focused on connecting with them on the basis of their personalities. In other words, we should speak their language, not try to force them to learn ours.
[si_guide_block id="44461" title="Download FREE Resource – Email trends 2017: A visual guide" description="Review your approach to email marketing by reviewing the latest trends."/]
Authors Jeremie Kubicek and Steve Cockram dived…
26+ features for a successful Facebook social strategy
Facebook dominates social media use with an extensive base of 2 billion users who can be reached by organic or paid advertising tools and targeting options.
But, it's easy to get lost in the various tools which are available and you can be left uncertain where to start. Having a holistic Facebook marketing approach that incorporates many of Facebook's features will help shape a larger and more targeted social strategy or campaign.
Remember, you need to know what your target audience is doing on Facebook to peak their interest in your company/product/service. In Q3 of 2016, Global Web Index found that over a third of 16-64-year-olds answered that they had visited a company's page within the last month. And, over 20% stated that they had shared content (post, article, photo and video)…
Use these techniques to help convert and engage customers into repeat purchases and brand advocates across the customer lifecycle
Being a marketer can be exhausting. As if it wasn’t hard enough to attract new customers, now everyone’s talking about optimizing the entire customer lifecycle. (We’re tired just thinking about it!)
If you’re trying to understand customer lifecycle marketing, grab a coffee and read on: we’re here to remedy your marketing overwhelm. In this blog post, we explain why you need to work across the entire customer journey, and how to do it well.
What is customer lifecycle marketing?
Customer lifecycle marketing is about making every touchpoint between a customer and a brand more profitable.
A customer’s lifecycle describes their journey through the buying cycle. It includes every interaction they have with your brand along the way. And covers every marketing channel those interactions happen on.
Creating a customer lifecycle marketing strategy helps you optimize each…
When it comes to selling online, a good marketer is doing their best to optimize the marketing funnel. But most often they do the online part of the job - supporting the customer on their way to the shopping cart
It is not new that we make our decisions emotionally, so often ignoring the rational part of the purchase while analyzing the product. When surfing online for a new pair of pants, we will buy only them, most likely.
But what if we come to the store and try a new pair of pants on?
What if walking between the aisles we will stumble upon an amazing blazer and a cool shirt? Well, we will try them on also, since we are already heading to the dressing rooms. More experimentation, assisted purchasing, great atmosphere, people around...
The growth…
Research giving benchmark of most successful acquisition channels for retail
It's useful to know how your business compares to competitors in terms of the mix of online traffic. You can use the Google Analytics benchmarking feature for companies of a similar size and sector and that can be useful for arguing the case for reallocation of acquisition budgets, for example, more investment in organic or paid search.
It's rare for data to be published which compares your digital media mix, i.e. the relative importance of different traffic sources driving visitors to websites. So, I thought it would be interesting to share this data from US Ecommerce sites.
Location: US Retail
Date: Published Autumn 2017
Sample: Top 250 US retailers (so representative of common consumer behaviour)
Source: Adobe Retail Industry report
This retail visitor acquisition data shows that organic search is in the number…
Don’t make mistakes that others have already learned to solve; these email marketing strategy tips will give you the foundation you need to increase your conversions
There’s nothing more frustrating than knowing that you’re making mistakes that others have long since solved. If you could learn from their mistakes you could avoid repeating them yourself.
This is especially true with email marketing strategy.
[si_guide_block id="59002" title="Download FREE Resource – The State of Email Marketing" description="Global benchmarking research report to support email marketing excellence."/]
You’ve put the effort into getting your subscribers on your mailing list, so the last thing that you want to do is risk losing them by messing up.
Sent too many emails in a day? You’re spamming, and they’ll unsubscribe. Focused too much on sales? You’re not valuing their wants and needs, and they’ll unsubscribe.
No matter what mistake…
