The 25th May 2018 marks the day that GDPR comes into force around Europe, and it's about to change the way many of us do business
A recent session I attended brought home not just the stark realities of the fast approaching GDPR, but also the plethora of unanswered questions that need addressing.
In this article, I’m going to be addressing some of the key issues we may be presented with, in the run-up to May 25th, whilst providing you with some actionable takeaways to make the transition as smooth as possible.
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12 easy steps to making your business card a successful offline marketing strategy that integrates online marketing
At Smart Insights we focus on digital marketing channels, and how we can help our members plan, manage and optimize their marketing strategies. However, we also look at the effects of offline and online marketing integration to create a holistic strategy which leads to business success. Our lifecycle marketing model shows the integration of offline and online marketing across RACE planning framework.
Do you give much thought on how your business cards are going to impact people before you give them out? You probably just place an order for a standardized one from your local office supplies store. What you may not realize is that you are sitting on potentially the most potent weapon in your marketing arsenal.
Maybe it is time you start…
Cohesive customer journeys rely on brand and growth marketers working together
Many modern-day marketing departments are now split into two distinct groups: brand marketers who are tasked with building consumer awareness and growth or channel marketers who are tasked with transforming that awareness into action. Although both parties play for the same team, they often possess different internal priorities. It is easy for silos to emerge that make collaboration an uphill battle.
There is overlap between what brand marketers and growth marketers provide. They each play pivotal roles in fueling department-wide success — but only if they work in tandem to create cohesive customer journeys.
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6 key metrics to measure your social media impact and social media ROI
Social media is one of those tricky topics that marketing departments know is effective for business growth, but getting this across to other departments – and specifically the C-Suite – can be difficult. Measuring vanity metrics and talking about “social shares” is not something the senior team has any interest in; you have to show the business impact and value your social activity is having.
52% surveyed in the recent Smart Insights and Clutch Social Media report confirmed that social media has positively influenced their revenue and sales with Facebook and Linkedin providing the highest value for businesses.
But how to do you measure and prove this? Below we’re looking more closely at the metrics to focus on and how they can be demonstrated to the board as positively…
If there’s one thing CROs could use more of, it’s psychology.
I’m all for testing crazy ideas. It’s how some of the most counterintuitive and surprising discoveries are made.
But we still need to build our landing pages on a solid foundation, and since it’s human behavior that our landing pages are attempting to influence, psychology is central to that foundation.
There’s no shortage of articles about psychology marketing out there, but I wanted to share three powerful ideas that I don’t think get enough attention in these discussions.
Let’s take a look.
1. Single Option Aversion
You’ve probably heard of “the paradox of choice”, the theory that if you are presented with too many options, you are less likely to make a decision. Well, it turns out that most experiments attempting to replicate that effect don’t actually find it. The effect may be real, but it seems to only occur in idiosyncratic circumstances that…
Paywalls, donations, monthly subscriptions, stealing your processing power!?…..the internet’s struggle to figure out which model works best for service providers, content creators and consumers.
Recently, Gizmodo broke the news that online torrent search engine, The Pirate Bay, had been caught trialing a new means of monetizing site visitors by getting them to mine cryptocurrency through the browsers on their devices without their knowledge or consent.
Naturally, people weren’t happy. I mean who would be? Modern device battery times deteriorate faster than fruit from Aldi.
But this does raise a good question, just how much is that content worth?
We are all very easily detached from the human and technological cost of our favourite media sites and flavour of the month apps. Ads have served as means of covering these costs for quite some time. The systems are in place, easy to implement and are very much a natural part of the online ecosystem.
However there…
Make sure you choose an SEO package that will get you results but won't tell you these common lies
SEO is an important part of any digital company - it can be the most successful way of driving traffic to your site if optimized correctly.
Whilst many companies have the set of skills to audit, perform and optimize their own SEO, others prefer an agency to do it for them so they can dedicate the time to other areas of focus. However, before you sign a contract for an SEO package, we would recommend taking certain steps to ensure you get the results you need and want in order to grow your business.
[si_guide_block id="80207" title="Download FREE Resource – 10 business-limiting SEO mistakes " description="The search engine optimisation (SEO) mistakes to avoid and what to do instead. Google's engineers have said there are at least 200 'ranking signals' which affect whether you can rank…
How the 4Ps still work for product marketing
This article focuses in on the 4Ps, which are the core of the Marketing mix, applied to the product launch. Read our article on the 7Ps of the Marketing mix, if you want to explore the full 7Ps, which also includes customer service.
[si_guide_block id="100244" title="Download Premium Resource – Product launch Playbook" description="Launch a product using RACE planning to structure your marketing activities. A marketing playbook defines the key messages, types of communications, best practices and optimisation techniques that should be used to maximise return-on-investment for different marketing objectives."/]
Some have said that ‘the Internet and digital marketing change everything’, but the marketing mix – widely referred to as the 4Ps of Product, Price, Place and Promotion – was originally proposed by Jerome McCarthy in 1960 as explained in the Smart Insights free guide to Marketing models and frameworks and is still used…
Case studies on global brands and how they've created a story to support their content marketing strategies
According to a recent CMI survey, just 37% of B2B marketers and 40% of B2C marketers have a written content marketing plan in place. At the same time, content marketing continues to become more mainstream as a recognized channel to help brands communicate, story-tell and convince their own audience and prospects.
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But there is a growing challenge - there appears to be a lack of true understanding as to what and how content can help meet the many different types of organizational objectives? In many examples, the reason why so many content marketing strategies fail is because there simply is no business case.
Where a number of content strategies fall flat is that they run right into the…
Everything you need to know to manage affiliates
Affiliate marketing is a recent development in marketing methods. One party (the affiliate) brings customers to a second party (the retailer or merchant) and gets rewarded for each customer. As opposed to referral marketing, the incentives in affiliate marketing are purely financial.
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What is affiliate marketing?
The affiliate network is the go-between for retailers and affiliates. It helps the former find affiliates and the latter to receive offers.
While retailers have traditionally used more common methods for marketing (search engine optimization, email marketing, pay-per-click deals, content marketing and display marketing), affiliate marketing is becoming more important.
Affiliates are free to use these other marketing techniques to direct customers to a retailer, though they also use less orthodox methods. For…
