Use our updated digital marketing tools infographic to audit the types of marketing technology you use

As marketers today, we’re fortunate to have a huge number of free and low-cost digital marketing tools to give us insight into our customers, competitors, and markets. These strategic digital tools help us to compete to win and retain customers by delivering automated relevant, real-time marketing communications, integrated across digital devices and traditional marketing channels. To help highlight the range of great options available, our updated 2023 essential digital marketing tools infographic recommends 30 categories of marketing technology and our pick of the most popular 5 in each category. Plus, we’ve grouped them across our RACE Growth System for managing digital marketing, so you can review where you could make better use of the tools across the customer lifecycle. Click on the infographic below to see a larger version, or, free members can download our…

AR gives you another tool in your belt when it comes to driving sales and enhancing brand value through mobile devices

Today's markets are driven more and more by the needs and desires of consumers. As technology advances, those desires change and a brand must keep pace with those changes. Augmented reality (AR) is an emerging trend within marketing and sales strategies, one that allows brands to give their customers unique experiences with the convenience of tapping into their mobile devices. Mobile has become one of the most significant media types through which consumers interact with brands and make purchase decisions. AR gives you another tool in your belt when it comes to driving sales and enhancing brand value through mobile devices.

1. Let customers try before they buy

Potential customers have always wanted to try products before purchasing them. Fitting rooms, cosmetic samples, automobile test drives, and many other related…

Nobody can deny that the rise of video has drastically changed the way we consume content.

Video allows customers today to get all the information they need about your brand in a matter of minutes, with as little resistance as possible. Importantly, brands using video can engage customers more intimately than ever before.

Statistics about video marketing that will blow your mind

A study conducted by Hubspot showed that 78% of people watch videos every week, while 55% of people watch videos daily. Hubspot found that 72% of customers want to learn about brands through video and 85% of businesses now use videos as a marketing tool. Cisco predicts that in 2020, there will be close to 1 million minutes of videos uploaded to the internet per…

Benchmarks of B2B webinar promotion and presentation

Webinars are a key inbound marketing technique, particularly for business-to-business companies. Webinars can be used to support different audience engagement goals across the B2B marketing and sales funnel from attracting new prospects to interact with your brand through to nurturing prospects, product demonstrations and keeping customers up-to-date. Experienced B2B marketers will know from their tests which are the best times to promote and what attendance levels can be expected, but if you're planning a series of webinars, then we hope you find this summary of B2B webinar statistics useful. They're from BrightTALK which we use for our webinars, but the insights shouldn't be platform specific since the mechanics of promoting and encouraging attendance are similar. We'll present the benchmarks as the answers to a series of FAQ we hear from webinar marketers.

Q. Best day of week to promote a webinar?

This data is actually showing the most…

Five practical steps to improve your video SEO and align objectives with strategy and tactics

Video is becoming an increasingly important element in the modern content marketer’s toolkit. When we consider that YouTube alone is the world’s second largest search engine in the world, there’s a breadth and scale to video that marketers can’t ignore. ‘How-to’ videos, in particular, are very popular and something that brands can take advantage of in order to appeal to their own prospects and customers: Whilst the creation of great content itself is essential, it’s equally important to ensure that the content can be found by your target audience. Search engine optimization is one of the most effective ways of boosting the discoverability of content and a topic covered in depth on Smart Insights previously. Whilst many SEO techniques can be…

Streaming has quickly become the primary source of video consumption within the US and around the world, so what do marketers need to bear in mind?

For most of us, the internet is already the primary source of the videos we watch. In the US, streaming is headed towards a saturation point. Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, and now Disney + are quickly picking up new subscribers as streaming quickly becomes the primary source of video consumption within the US and globally. Not to mention that YouTube is essentially ubiquitous around the world. This is important for marketers to take notice of. Not only because traditional TV advertising budgets will soon be replaced by their digital counterparts, but also to understand consumer behavior. Knowing how your customers consume video content helps in a few ways: Knowing what your target audience consumes and what platforms they use can help you develop a better digital video ad…

Video is continuing to grow in popularity and importance, which means it's vital to stay on top of the latest advances and statistics in order to create a strong digital video marketing strategy

Video is a highly effective form of content and its popularity has gone hand-in-hand with the rise of social media. Despite the fact that so many of us consume online videos on a daily basis, many marketers still aren’t using video as part of their digital marketing strategy or aren’t seeing the best results. In order to inform your marketing strategy and help you get the best possible ROI from campaigns, we’ve compiled some video marketing statistics that could help you get to grips with video.

92% of marketers say it’s an important part of their marketing strategy

In 2020, 92%…

Learn the different types of webinar you can host to attract and connect with new customers

Webinars are, essentially, online workshops, courses, demonstrations or seminars. They can either be live or recorded, and they can take various forms. Depending on what your goals are and the audience you are targeting, you will need to host a specific type of webinar.

Why webinars?

Webinars are highly-effective tools at any stage of the buyer’s journey, from awareness to the consideration and decision-making stages. Webinars can help you: Raise awareness of your business, as well as your products and/your services Reach your target audience with highly relevant and value-filled content Generate more targeted and higher-quality leads for your business Build more trust with your target audience by showcasing your value and knowledge Increase your authority in your niche or industry by showcasing your skills Convert more of your leads into paying and loyal customers – webinars…

Find out what video marketing trends you need to be aware of for 2020 in order to better shape your digital marketing strategy and deliver results.

Social media, the rise of Stories and the way in which people consume media have all contributed to making video more important than ever before, meaning it pays to be aware of the video marketing trends for 2020. In fact, 83% of marketers believe that video is becoming increasingly important, which signals the start of more brands using them as part of their digital marketing strategies. It is estimated that people will spend more daily minutes watching video over the next few years than ever before, resulting in more advertisers investing in online video ads in order to drive engagement. While this is…

When it comes to your blog SEO, which type of domain is the best option? We've taken a look.

Where you host your blog relative to your main site is one of the more important decisions involved with setting up a blog. If you get the decision wrong, you may fail to get the hoped-for SEO benefits you have worked hard to convince your colleagues about. But, if you get it right you can almost immediately see new, incremental visits you wouldn't have attracted without the blog. [si_blog_banner_cta]

The three main blog hosting options

The three options are straightforward. Let's take some examples: 1. Subfolder - http://www.domain.com/blog e.g. http://www.econsultancy.com/blog 2. Subdomain - http://blog.domain.com e.g. http://blog.zopa.com 3. Separate domain - http://www.newdomain.com e.g.  I can't find a good example - can you?

So which is the best blog hosting option for SEO?

I often ask this question in my SEO classes and ask for…