Chart of the Week: 37% of marketers say increasing brand awareness is the main goal for 2019 but it is not a measure of success.

Increased brand awareness brings with it a range of benefits, including increased traffic, brand advocates and possibly more sales. It’s not surprising then that that over a third (37%) of marketers cite increasing brand awareness and brand health as their top priority for digital marketing in 2019. According to Altimeter by Prophet’s global survey of 500 senior digital marketers, brand awareness is still a big priority across the world. However, the research revealed that there are a lot of different priorities when it comes to digital marketing, with the focus being split across several areas.

2019 digital marketing goals

Over a quarter (26%) of marketers say that their primary goal for their digital…

Chart of the week: Only 2% of marketers have integrated all processes throughout their marketing funnel.

Creating a funnel that ticks all the boxes is a vital part of marketing. Your funnel should attract, nurture, qualify and convert, leading customers through to the checkout as seamlessly as possible in order to get the best conversion rates. Unfortunately, few funnels are completely perfect. Most of us will find that our marketing funnel isn’t performing as well as we might like, with at least one section causing issues at any one time. While you can work to deal with these problem areas, it’s unlikely that all the issues will be solved. More often than not, this friction between sections of the funnel is caused by how integrated all your process are. Poor integration will naturally slow other process and see your overall results impacted. Currently, according…

Chart of the Week: 55% of marketing influencers believe that improving decision making is the primary objective for a marketing data dashboard

A marketing data dashboard is a helpful tool that can allow marketers to visualize KPIs relating to the impact of their marketing efforts. It can help KPIs be easily and immediately understood, making a marketing data dashboard useful for reporting and tracking. However, there are a number of different tactics and strategies that can be used when it comes to visualizing data using dashboards, as well as different trends. To see what some of the most popular and useful methods are, Ascend2 surveyed 307 marketing influencers for its Visualizing Marketing Data with Dashboards report.

What is the primary objective for marketing data dashboards?

Over half (55%) of survey respondents said that the primary objective they want their marketing…

Chart of the Week: More than three in five consumers say that retail innovations or solutions have made shopping experiences easier, with online shoppers seeing the biggest benefits

More customers now expect a seamless, personalized shopping experience. Whether they are buying in person or online, people want a quick and easy experience, something that is being made more possible with retail technologies. In fact, more than three out of five consumers say that technologies used in retail and retail innovations have led to an improved shopping experience, according to the latest research from the National Retail Federation (NRF). When it comes to shopping online, 80% of customers say the same compared to 66% shopping in-store. Despite the fact that there is an increased focus on mobile shopping experiences, only 63% said that shopping technologies and innovations improved…

Chart of the Week: 87% of business video views take place on desktop but what types of videos are people engaging with?

Video marketing is highly engaging and increasing in popularity, especially with the ability to share and view them via social media platforms. In fact, people are more likely to choose video over other forms of content, with 72% of people saying they’d rather use video to learn about a product or service if it is on a page alongside text. As well as being engaging, video can also help influence decisions in both B2B and B2C industries. Research from Wyzowl reveals that 79% of people have been convinced to buy a piece of software or an app by watching a video. [si_guide_block id="23343" title="Download our Individual Member Resource – Video and YouTube marketing guide" description="Our guide shows you how to review the full opportunities from video marketing…

Chart of the Week: 81% of e-commerce marketers say the acquisition of new customers is one of their biggest goals, despite having higher costs than customer retention

E-commerce is a growing market, which is being reflected in its marketing budgets. In fact, 65% of e-commerce marketers have said that their marketing budget has increased this year compared to 2018 compared to just 10% who said it has decreased. The rise in budgets is likely tied to the increase in expectations for marketers in the e-commerce sector, with heavy competition meaning that new tools, techniques and technologies are being utilized to drive shoppers to stores. This is shown by the fact that 81% of respondents said that acquisition marketing was the largest e-commerce marketing investment priority in 2018. According to a new report from Commerce Next and Oracle, bringing new…

Chart of the Week: 70% of marketers say that their main goal for using social media is to increase brand awareness, showing that social is about more than sales

Social media continues to be a powerful marketing tool for brands and yet almost half (47%) of marketers say that the biggest challenge they face is creating a social media strategy that supports their organization’s goals. Sprout Social’s latest report reveals that marketers’ biggest goal for social media is to increase brand awareness, with 70% choosing this option. Second to this is sales/lead generation (59%), which is likely to reflect the larger goals of an organization and may not be suited to social media for every company. Other goals that marketers have for social media include increasing community engagement (48%), growing the brand’s audience (46%) and increasing…

Chart of the Week: Q4 2018 saw email engagement stay mostly stable but triggered emails still outperformed BAU messages, despite the lower volume

A huge part of improving email performance is benchmarking against industry standards to see where you are above or below average. The latest Epsilon ‘Email trends and benchmarks report’ takes a look at Q4 2018 to see how emails performed compared to the rest of 2018 and previous years.

Key takeaways

The majority of email metrics for Q4 stayed relatively stable compared to the rest of 2018. Emails that were triggered by specific actions taken by website visitors or customers received fairly strong results while business-as-usual (BAU) emails stayed stable. [si_guide_block id="13013" title="Download our Individual Member Resource – Email sequence contact strategy template" description="This spreadsheet provides a template for marketers to create a messaging sequence that supports their business for the range of potential event-triggered campaigns."/] Overall, the fact that BAU…

Chart of the Week: 40% of customers are highly satisfied with agent-assisted methods of communicating with companies

Customer experience (CX) is a huge part of driving engagement, sales and repeat custom. While companies understand why good CX is vital, there seems to be a disconnect between what customers view as good CX and what businesses think create great experiences. According to new research from NICE inContact, businesses tend to underestimate customers’ satisfaction with agent-assisted methods of customer service while over-estimating satisfaction when it comes to self-service methods like chatbots. [si_guide_block id="NUMBER" title="Download our Free Resource – 10 common website customer experience mistakes" description="This guide reveals examples of poor website design from different sectors which are commonly seen, but best avoided."/] While the rise of customer service methods like automated assistants and chatbots is increasing and customers are getting used to them, they may not be offering the experience that companies…

Chart of the Week: 76% of marketers say their companies follow a strategic approach to marketing but not all of these have a documented content strategy.

The majority of marketers say that their organization takes a strategic approach to managing their content. According to new research from the Content Marketing Institute, 76% of marketers state that their company follows a strategic approach when it comes to content marketing. Of those who said that this is the case, 97% said that they were involved in the strategic content management used by their company. This covered a number of areas, with 89% being involved in the creation of content and 84% having a say in the organization’s content marketing strategy, including thought leadership, owned media management and distribution channels. Other areas of involvement in business’ strategy included the content…