Top sources for comparing marketing software providers

As digital marketing has involved from being a niche activity to one at the core of most marketing plans, so too has the market for software design evolved to help digital marketing get the best results. From publishing tools, CMS, Social listening and content personalisation tools, there are loads of tools within each category, and it can be tricky to know which one will be right for your business. Just in case your not fully aware of the daunting size of the scale of the problem of selecting digital marketing software, this infographic from Scott Brinker does a good job of highlighting the massive variety of marketing technology available today. You won't be able to see without clicking for an enlarged version, but there are more than 3000 tools in the infographic! Hardly simple! So…

Moz releases a new free tool to help you discover, prioritize, and build lists of high-quality keywords.

The Keyword Explorer (KWE from herein) comes as part of the Free tools offered by Moz, a leader in Digital Marketing and Search Tools. It's a result of year-long development by a team already dedicated to the maintenance and development of Moz's rankings collections and research tools. How has it the impacted the final product? Let's find out.

What does it do?

The official strapline is...

"Find The Best Keywords For Your SEO Strategy

Discover, prioritize, and build lists of high-quality keywords."

And I can safely say it passes the "Ronseal Test"; it does exactly what is say's on the tin.

The tool takes users through the entire keyword research process, whilst providing metrics and scoring systems (Volume, Difficulty,…

These productivity and copywriting tools can help you take your content marketing to the next level

In a year in which content will reign supreme, it’s very important to differentiate yourself from tons of the material that is getting uploaded on the Internet every single hour. It’s important, but it is also very difficult. Your content has to shine, it has to entice, and it has to be beautiful. Now, when we say beautiful we don’t mean it as an invite to go out there and b-dazzle pieces of paper, charts and diagrams. One example of 'beautiful content' is well-researched and organized content that has a structure and a flow. Another example is richly illustrated content that speaks to visual learners; every writer who’s worked on content for an infographic knows that visuals can do wonders in getting the material to really shine. A page of content completely devoid of grammatical and…

10 practical recommendations for choosing the right retail personalisation service for your online store

Although ecommerce is now a relatively mature industry, the software solutions that underpin the industry are still very much evolving. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the personalisation field. Recommendation engines were perhaps the first tools to promote personalisation, but it is now a common feature espoused by many ecommerce tools, in systems designed for both marketers and online merchandisers, with each often having a very different take on what it means and the benefits it brings. If you’re in the process of selecting personalisation software where should you begin, what questions should you ask?

#1 KNOW YOUR GOALS

It may seem obvious, but knowing what you hope to achieve by selecting a personalisation solution is critical to selecting the right product. Although a ‘no brainer’, don’t fall into the trap…

7 mostly simple online services to hack your growth

Marketers have always relied on non-traditional tactics to make their startups grow rapidly. However, content marketing has remained a staple in their campaigns. The methods of online content marketing can almost guarantee a more successful, well-established business within a short period of time. There are many different strategies that marketers use to make their campaigns more effective, but their most recognizable approach involves creative, optimized online content that attracts relevant audiences, drives traffic to the main website, and generates actual income. From YouTube videos to Facebook posts, the method of content marketing are versatile enough to fit into everyone’s needs and preferences. The most important goal to have in mind is attracting new consumers to the services and products you offer. The following content marketing tools will help you do that! and Smart Insights new content distribution matrix gives…

How I boosted my lead generation with visitor tracking software, in conjunction with blogging, pay per click, email and social media outreach.

When you’re growing an audience, and converting website visitors into customers, you need a watertight marketing funnel.

The sad truth is that most of us convert less than 5 per cent of our website visitors into contacts, meaning that more than 95% of visitors leave our sites, potentially never to be seen again.

So what steps can we take to improve our website marketing, tighten up our funnel, and generate more leads from what we have already?

I faced this challenge earlier this year, and have written this post to share my experience with you. 

My website was only four months old, so I had insufficient visitor data in Analytics, and I was up against a tight deadline. My challenge was that I needed to…

Broken Links = Missed Opportunities

It's common with the growth of website Content Management Systems that websites have multiple editors & frequent updates, so this can easily result in mistakes. An area that often suffers as a result is internal & external linking from within webpages. While easy to manually check, it is often the case that sites are just too big to go through page-by-page to check. Luckily for webmasters and marketers alike there are tools that will help you identify broken links on your website.

Why are broken links such a bad thing?

Not only are you disrupting user journeys through the website which could leave users frustrated with your brand, but you are also making search engine spiders jobs more difficult and therefore reducing your opportunity to rank well. If search engines are unable to crawl / index you site easily they will be less likely to appropriately rank it. Broken links from other sites are also an…

Mobile apps to manage your digital marketing life

The modern marketer can reap massive benefits from the mobile app revolution.  Useful marketing software is becoming increasingly available in app form, making tools and data readily available on the go.  From uploading blog posts to tracking campaign metrics, apps allow marketers to access information at their fingertips quickly and conveniently.

But of all the apps available, which are the best for the marketer, and particularly the digital marketer?  I’ve put together a list of the apps I find most useful, both to keep up-to-date personally, but also to manage company social network activity.

The Best Social Media Management Apps

Founded back in 2008, Hootsuite is a popular…

SmartInsights tool review: Touchstone

Rumour has it that the next Indiana Jones film will see our favourite archeologist searching for the greatest undiscovered treasure of modern times: the perfect subject line. In the meantime, we're left looking for guidance on how to improve subject line performance by using the "right" words. Do we say "free" or "no cost"? "Summer" or "Summertime"? "Deal" or "Offer"? Any tool that helps us consistently pick out the best words or phrasing would, of course, have two huge advantages: The benefits go straight to your bottom line: subject lines have a big influence on opens, clicks and other success metrics. You can skip a lot of A/B subject line testing: A/B tests are not always easy to do right (and can give misleading results if done wrong). Unfortunately, the tools or reports offering advice on subject line wording tend to suffer from two critical flaws. First, they commonly base recommendations on a review of past subject lines and the…

5 key features and differences of Google's Keyword Planner

As many of you know, the Google Keyword Tool has been sunset and in some accounts has already been replaced by the Keyword Planner.

There has been much discussion (and disappointment) around this, as the Keyword Tool has, for many years, been the leading keyword research tool, loved by marketers SEO’s, bloggers and copywriters

Google’s launch of the Keyword Planner brings the functionality of the veteran Keyword Tool, combined with data from the Traffic Estimator. Clearly there’s more focus on the needs of AdWords customers, and whilst it’s not perfect, it will no doubt evolve as customer needs grow.

To ease the transition between the original Keyword Tool and the Keyword Planner,we’ve listed 5 changes Google has made.

5 New Google Keyword…