The emerging trends you need to integrate into your 2018 plan

We are through Q1, and top companies have the habit of starting to plan for the next year right from Q2. If you have initiated planning your marketing strategy and budget for 2018, be prepared to face questions regarding tactics you are opting to use that would go best with most of your customers. And most importantly, which tactics can result in the most efficient conversion. [Editor's note: For an update on the latest trends, see this in-depth article covering 2018 Digital marketing trends by Dr Dave Chaffey, co-founder of Smart Insights or download our free guide to 9 megatrends which are relevant to all businesses.] [si_guide_block id="81859" title="Download free member resource – Digital Marketing Megatrends 2018" description="Learn how to get an edge in 2018 by deploying the latest marketing techniques that businesses of all types need to consider to stay competitive."/] To plan…

Chart of the Day: Research shows the importance of social networks to B2C online publishers

It's really interesting to see which digital marketing channels drive the most traffic or sales in different sectors. In retail, this compilation of top online sales channels shows that organic and paid search, email and affiliate channels dominate, with each contributing more than 10%. It's surprising that when using 'last click' attribution the contribution of social media is sub 5%, although this is an average of all categories and we can expect that in some retail categories like fashion, the percentage of sales from social media will be higher. This research of traffic sources across large publishers who use the Parsely traffic reporting platform shows a very different pattern. The first chart shows that search (orange) is the largest external traffic source, but with social not far behind (purple). Note that this traffic source breakdown is unusual…

Practical customer retention tactics that any business can apply

For any digital marketing strategy or digital communications plan, defining a set of objectives and clear strategy behind your plan is essential to the success. This post focuses on creating an actionable online customer retention plan, which by definition is maintaining or growing your existing customer base loyal to your product offering. Retention should be at the heart of your digital strategy in maintaining and building communication with your existing customer base. Separate to this post, I’ve also created an outline covering techniques for creating a digital marketing strategy for acquisition. So, where to start? I advise the same place as for all marketing plans! Know your audience Before embarking on your retention strategy, understanding your audience is a key requirement to ensure the chosen retention tactics are in line with your existing customer base – so begin to build up a profile of the type of customer/s that…

Why a focus on the fundamentals of customer retention is essential to business growth

Many marketers are grappling with the challenges posed by fundamental changes in consumer behaviours, increasingly competitive markets and a host of digital technology developments, mobile innovations and social media proliferation. The good news is that marketers are far better placed to operate in this brave new world than they may think! The fundamentals of customers, brands and marketing have not changed. However, customers are still the most important asset of any business, so in my view, the number one priority for marketing  to acquire and retain customers by creating a compelling value proposition and brand story that resonates with customers.

There is a danger if there is too great a focus on customer acquisition, then businesses spend too insufficient time on managing customer retention. Instead the balance is wrong and they focus too much on acquisition using paid, owned and earned media and insufficient time…

We asked content marketing expert Stephen Bateman about how he uses the RACE framework to structure marketing campaigns for clients

Q. Yourself and Dave Chaffey of Smart Insights recently scoped out a project to improve the inbound marketing programme of a B2B telecommunications firm. Can you give us an idea of how RACE was utilised to scope out and plan the project?

Yes, the firm in question had been getting content from its agency for its inbound marketing programme for more than 18 months, and the team used the content to get “attention” from prospective buyers, but failed to generate the potential volume of qualified leads (MQL) they expected. There are lots of reasons why the team felt underwhelmed by their content marketing and inbound marketing programmes, but this is what happened over time: The team kicked off its inbound marketing programme, with a documented strategy that identified goals, audiences, content, process and…

Chart of the Day: After a peak in day 2 Snap's stock settles back down to opening levels

There has been quite the media circus leading up to Snapchat's parent company Snap's IPO going on the stock market. Last Thursday saw the company finally go public with a huge amount of fanfare and day 2 was the day it hit its peak of $29, as investors clambered to have a piece of the new kid on the block. Now over a week later the dust has settled and seems to have found it's new normal. The last two weeks (and many before) must have been a tremendous time for a relatively new company but is now the time they need to start driving up the revenue whether it is from advertising or glasses sales only time will tell. But if they go down the advertising route, I hope we marketers can expect a greater range…

Chart of the day: Analysis of email errors and subject lines suggest Monday is the worst day for email sending

In a study by Boomerang App in late 2016, Monday is found to be the day to avoid sending emails

The research found that the day with the most subject errors on average was a Monday. Response rates also fell by 14% for emails which contained such errors and emails with errors received a 29% reply rate compared with 34% for error-free emails. The research also went on to find that emails sent on a Monday were also the most negative. Source: Boomerang  Sample/ Data source: Subject lines from more than 250,000 emails were passed through an automated grammar-checking library and reported by day Recommended resource: Use our Email Marketing Broadcast Checklist before you send your next email  …

New research explains opportunities and threats

Since social networks like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter launched, social media has offered good organic opportunities for publishers and other brands to share their content and so gain awareness and new subscribers. As social networks have sought to keep more visitors on their sites, tools like Facebook Instant articles and Google's AMP - offers new opportunities for marketers to share their content, but at the same time, a threat since visitors have less opportunities to interact with the publisher website or register. Given this, this new research from Napco Research and Publishing Executive has useful insight for online publishers. This chart shows the publisher's view of the threat, which is substantial and can lead to a need to explore alternatives or avoid new techniques like Instant Articles. Instant Articles is viewed as the biggest threat with LinkedIn not far behind for B2B…

How to avoid the costly mistakes that plague small businesses

So... you’ve started your new business or start up and 2017 is going to be your year! But not wishing to dampen your enthusiasm there are several small business marketing mistakes that can lead to your untimely downfall. To help you prevent this We’ve put together a special guide for small business andstart-upss highlighting the common mistakes not to make this year. Digital marketing excellence isn't just for big business. In our guide to small business digital marketing mistakes we've noted the top 11 digital marketing mistakes that are commonly made by small business. The guide contains not only highlights the mistakes, but also gives actionable recommendations to help you fix the issues. Our top 10 covers all stages of the RACE digital marketing planning framework so you can easily add them to your digital marketing plans in 2017. Here's an exclusive…

3 critical areas you will need to invest in to have a successful 2017

“In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.” Albert Einstein  Well there were plenty of difficulties for digital marketers in 2016, so let’s start 2017 by focusing on opportunities; i.e. good things which are available to those who recognise the challenges and tackle them with a positive attitude… So here are my 3 big opportunities of 2017:

 1. Finding and buying great Creative ideas

Some marketers seem to believe (digital) marketing is all about the technology but no…it’s (still) mainly about creative. Brands connecting with people. Entertaining, informing, providing value in return for their time, attention and money. Words, pictures, videos, IDEAS which resonate. Desired reactions would include: “Yeah!” “That’s so true.” “Exactly!” “100%!” “I know what they mean.” “Yes - same!” “Funny!” “Oh, that’s interesting…” “Hello. He’s fit.” “Wow - that’s useful…” (or just quietly watching, listening, engaged…). Check out this case history: The Next Rembrandt by Dutch Bank ING Group and Microsoft (Cannes Cybers Lions…