Martech tools aren't just for marketers, sales needs them too
The much-talked about disconnect between sales and marketing departments (and likewise professionals) needs to be put to bed. If you pardon the (intentional!) pun: they always have been, and always will be perfect bed companions. Let’s boil this down: the purpose of your marketing department has always been to drive sales, and connect with and engage customers with your brand.
As such, sales and marketing have always been closely linked. Nevertheless, in many businesses, they are remaining distinctly separate, often operating in silos. This approach is in direct opposition to the way modern business works. Instead, marketing and sales should come together to help join the dots between the target audience and the brand itself.
Modern technology is an integral tool in not just connecting those dots between the brand and prospects or customers, but also between the two departments. Silo-based business models…
Debunking the biggest SEO myths so you don't fall foul of them
Poor SEO, so misunderstood! These days there are so many misconceptions about SEO that it is becoming ridiculous. It is now time to shed some light on the biggest myths of SEO. Unfortunately, anyone can write anything on the internet. This is how some of the biggest myths are born. Others myths seem to be embedded in people’s heads because they haven’t done their research.
It is common to see many businesses fall for at least some of these myths. This is quite disturbing because believing in some of these myths can cause detrimental effects to your SEO campaign (or even mean businesses do not use SEO altogether).
Some of these myths are simply bad SEO practices while others are outdated due to the ever evolving nature of SEO. Most businesses don’t even know they are following these myths that could…
How to start using advanced content analytics
Analytics, in general, is key to performance optimization. Getting accurate feedback on what is working and what not helps companies make improvements that will lead to better outcomes. And when content is the center of your business, Advanced Content Analytics becomes the center of your Big Data analytics. By now, most businesses have heard of the Advanced Analytics and how it can generate value from large amounts of warehouse and fresh data. But despite this, most marketers today are struggling to measure whether anyone is using their content, how often their content is used, how much their content engages customers, and most importantly – whether their content has any impact on sales. Advanced Content Analytics using today’s sophisticated tools and techniques can make it easier to measure the outcomes of your content.
What are analytics and what are their types?
According to RapidMiner, analytics is…
Trust Is Your Most Valuable Asset, So It’s Time to Embrace the Most Trusted Source: Other People
Social media has reinforced the common belief that many of us have: other people like me the most.
Marketers have caught on and are looking to capitalize on that desire for the spotlight and the chance to celebrate people who are putting themselves out there for the world to see. Social posts, featured reviews, photos, and other content are now coming from customers and marketers are happily sharing these to give each person their moment in the Sun.
All of this user-generated content (UGC) is being touted as the next big thing in content marketing, and we think it’s particularly useful for e-commerce brands. Your e-commerce shop relies heavily on user reviews, word of mouth, positive shares, and social buzz, which is UGC in a nutshell.
Your fans and followers are already creating and consuming social content…
How marketers can capitalise on new AI technology to deliver more effective chatbots
Chatbots are no longer the robotic, clunky machines from the days of old. If you remember bots like AOL Instant Messenger’s SmarterChild, for example, you might be interested to learn that advanced designs are allowing for the creation of more interactive conversational pathways — meaning these days, chatbot conversations look a lot like their fluid human counterparts.
What’s more, companies developing these technologies are increasingly able to iterate upon each chatbot, optimizing specific types of interaction within the messenger conversation. As a result, a new element of artificial intelligence technology is emerging, and it’s called natural language generation.
Generating ‘Natural Language’
NLG is simply the creation of human-like language by a machine representation system. These systems begin with the idea of figuring out what the communication goal is or what the user wants to know. What follows is an analysis of…
Study from PwC shows the need for Chief Digital Officers in larger organisations
The digital revolution is transforming all business departments. Marketing, HR, Sales, Finance & IT all have massive opportunities and considerable challenges thanks to the rapid pace of digital change. Whole industries are being disrupted with newer, faster and more efficient ways are doing things emerging. Many businesses are responding by creating a digital transformation programme - our new research shows the number of businesses adopting digital transformation programmes is increasing with around one-third having a programme in place and a further third planning a programme within 12-months.
Managing digital transformation is a herculean task, but one that needs to be done well if the business is going to continue to grow in a world forever changed by pervasive technology.
[si_guide_block id="43709" title="Download Expert Member resource – Managing Digital Marketing" description="Our free research report based on a survey of Smart Insights members…
Instagram’s algorithm update and why it’s good news for marketers
Most businesses are on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, but now need to be concerned with the new power player, Instagram. Instagram is one of the fastest growing social channels, it was recently reported that it now has 700 million active users per month and sees 95 million photos uploaded every day.
With this ongoing increase in popularity of Instagram, even businesses who haven't traditionally used Instagram like business-to-business companies should consider it for engagement. At Smart Insights we have seen good organic sharing of our infographics and industry trends on Instagram via a smartinsights hashtag, so we've decided to 'take the plunge' and I've recently set up a Smart Insights Instagram account - follow us to learn and be inspired by all things digital marketing.
In 2016 Instagram announced a major algorithm update which is still important to success. The update took many…
Batch and blast aren't pretty, and there are better email tactics. But nothing gets you more bang for your buck.
I don’t intend this to be a sales piece but I feel you need to know a little about myself and my company before you read this.
I work in marketing for an email service provider and my company preaches the value in sending sophisticated emails.
Now I’ve told you that, I have something to get off my chest. Something that would appear to contradict the opinions of my industry peers and perhaps, on occasion, that of my own company.
Here we go: although I think sophisticated emails are great, I think a ‘batch and blast’ style of emailing is better.
Yes, batching and blasting emails (the act of mass marketing through email) is great. I highly recommend it. Do it for all it’s worth. Seriously.
You will never, ever find a greater ROI rate…
How to use Artificial Intelligence to boost ROI from advertising
For marketers, the tide of artificial intelligence has finally crashed ashore.
It has begun making waves at industry events like WSDM: The 9th ACM International Conference on Web Search and Data Mining Web Search and Data Mining conference in San Francisco. In his keynote address, Google research fellow Jeff Dean told attendees it’s time to embrace techniques like deep learning. Once a land of buzzwords, rapid improvements in machine learning have made AI a pivotal member of marketer’s toolkits. As best practice guidelines on Machine Learning at Google shared by Martin Zinkevich (technical) show, Google are actively using Machine Learning in many projects.
Dean and others are excited about AI because it will finally allow marketers to take full advantage of the hordes of data they’ve begun collecting. While we’ve been able to generate mind-boggling mounds of data for a while —…
Live chat, video and product finders can help you massively boost your conversion rate
If you suddenly discovered you had superpowers, you’d use them, right? Of course you would! (and hopefully in a socially beneficial way). Well, I recently discovered a few user experience (UX) techniques that are proven to significantly lift E-commerce revenues, so I wanted to share these techniques so that you can starting use them yourself soon.
First I’ll describe the revenue ‘leverage factors’ each of these features provide. Then I’ll provide guidance on how to design and implement them for your eCommerce website.
The X factors, please
My recent analysis for a website that sells surveillance products found that the Revenue Per Visitor (RPV) - the top conversion metric for E-commerce websites - was amplified by the following factors:
By 3.9X when visitors used chat
By 1.7X when visitors viewed videos
By 2.2X when visitors used a product finder
In other…
