What are the common best practices, are best practices always best?
I was honoured to be asked to give this presentation for Manchester Manchester Metropolitan University Business School to launch the new Faculty of Business and Law, a stunning new £75 million teaching and research headquarters and business hub.
An updated, shorter version of the Manchester Business school deck was also presented to students and professionals at Leeds Metropolitan University and to an IDM Network evening in September 2012 which is included at the end of this post.
Leeds Metropolitan University presentation - November 2012
Manchester presentation - September 2012
We're often told to follow "best practices" in our digital marketing. In the talk I explore the value of this and some of the problems. How do we know what…
There were no major updates on the major digital platforms this month; perhaps the most significant was the announcement that Pinterest has opened free access to all and developed new mobile services which could further spur adoption.
I’d pick our first alert on the new content streaming services as the most interesting topic of discussion for this month, it shows how digital communications platforms continue to evolve.
I’ve summarised the updates on what’s new in the standard five areas to make it quick for you to scan what’s new.
Strategy and planning
The co-founders of Twitter unveiled two new social websites - This alert by The Drum simply says they’re called Medium and Branch and are currently invite only - one to watch. If this sounds insignificant, ReadWriteWeb says “we’re witnessing another sea change in Web publishing” - take a look at this summary by Richard MacManus for 5 reasons why web…
Look to your site first, or opportunities will go down the plughole
Digital marketing strategies vary wildly from business to business as well they should. Not every website has the same business/ sales goals and they most certainly don’t use the same marketing or technical platforms. To a certain degree, before starting to develop strategies for new clients you never know quite what challenges are going to be "thrown your way"!
However, there are some fundamentals to consider in advance of setting or spending budget. The website that you want to digitally market should always be assessed or audited to identify if the best use is being made of the additional traffic that digital marketing will invariably drive.
Let me break this down into an analogy that I like to use with my clients: think of your website as a bath, and your…
The answer depends on your perspective...
We know that the Olympics has been a raving success on so many levels, more so than many of us imagined. So, almost a week after the main event (the Paralympics are still to come), I wondered about the digital success story - what were the take-aways from the London 2012 Olympics for marketers, that we can learn and share on Smart Insights?
I came across this wrap-up from the Head of New Media at London 2012, Alex Balfour. You can see the Slideshare presentation embedded here…
London 2012.com olympic games digital round up 13 august 2012 from Alex Balfour
What can digital marketers learn from London 2012?
The data from London 2012 appears…
Differentiation vs Amplification
We shared Seth Godin's Circles of Marketing blog post a couple of weeks ago, it captured our attention because of the simplicity of the message, the focus on the fundamentals, Seth's always good at that.
The marketing paradox
We believe that Seth has described something of a modern marketing paradox, and we wanted to illustrate it step further than he has. We believe that the marketing paradox that we face is Differentiation and Longevity vs Amplification and Speed. Does the marketer seek genuine differentiation or does he or she chase an opportunity to measurably amplify the brand? The latter is realistically faster, it's what's expected, and just maybe you get a bit of luck or already have a great product, in which case amplification can then work for sure. Yet the inner rings are defensible, considered, harder and longer lasting. They're also the base to upon which you can amplify…
Research shows the continued importance of direct marketing in the marketing mix
With our focus on digital media, it’s easy to forget that traditional marketing communications are still widely used and important drivers of leads and sales. This new research has shown that
“Almost a quarter (23%) of overall turnover (sales) can be attributed to direct marketing”
This is based on research from DMA who are are naturally keen to make the point about the ongoing importance of direct marketing in its latest forms. In their recent research completed by the Future Foundation on direct marketing effectiveness in the UK ,600 companies were surveyed including 453 detailed interviews with companies involved in direct marketing.
It’s interesting to look at the range of options available from what can be considered direct marketing and we can learn from the most popular since this suggests what is most effective today. If we look at the four most popular…
Giving social business a human dimension
Over the past 15 years at IBM, Luis Suarez has carved out a reputation as a thought leader in knowledge management and more recently, in social business. He is currently the company’s knowledge manager, community builder and social software evangelist. IBM were one of the first companies to coign the term social business and it’s a core part of their Smarter Planet campaign.
What is social business?
Suarez is the first to admit that ‘social business’ isn’t really anything new.
“To me, social business is a philosophical movement where you redefine the way you do business with your customers following a people-centric approach next to a customer-centred approach - where it’s not you telling the customer’s what they need or what they should have, it’s the customers telling you what they need that you need to…
An introduction to the main social signals used by search engines and how this changes SEO
If you have followed the first 9 steps in this SEO series, you’ll have picked up tips on what have been the core elements of SEO since the optimisation of organic search listings began. In step 10 we move on to one of the newer components of SEO, one that is increasing in importance and likely to have a greater impact as search engines evolve from thinking about optimisation to rewarding interaction and influence.
Social media signals started to play a part in search engine algorithms back in December 2010 but it wasn’t until 2011 that the likes of Google really started to pay attention and dedicate more effort to indexing social content and using social signals to boost content in search results. For a neat…
How to prosper in a world of Digital Disruption
It’s become fashionable in business/ technology circles to talk about ‘disruption’. As a ‘good’ thing. Not like a broken-down train on the London Underground which causes chaos in the evening ‘Rush Hour’, or the alarming and possibly dangerous cracks in the structure of the M4 which shut down the main motorway from Heathrow Airport just weeks before the London Olympic Games, nor even the biblical scale flooding that turns Silverstone Motor Racing circuit into a sea…
Takeaways from IBM's global survey of marketers
Each year IBM interviews several hundred marketers to get a flavour of what the collective challenges, successes, fears and opportunities are.
It's interesting reading and always somehow comforting and inspiring to know you're not alone :-)
In this post I've picked out 7 of the key takeaways. You can view the presentation on SlideShare here and see the background on the study here, though I've summarised the salient points in this post and added the key charts below.
Here are our 7 key take-aways
1. The more successful companies expand the role of marketing in order to lead the customer experience - the success factors here are born around having influence across the 4P's and so being able to optimise their company's purchase cycle more effectively.
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