A technique for comparing and selecting the best marketing technology or tool for your business

The job of many marketers consists of countless hours doing something that can be automated. Hence why Marketing automation is growing so much in recent years. It’s not just email, but also any other software that you can use that improves performance, such as automatic reporting tools, social media marketing, Analytics, SEO tools, testing tools, etc… Believe it or not, in these marketing tools infographics, including this one from Scott Brinker you can see there are 3,874 tools in 2016 represented across 50 categories, no wonder we all walk into the jungle of marketing technology. Over 3,000 companies in 2016, is this good or bad? The point of this graphic is to demonstrate the following: Marketing has become a technological discipline; Marketers need to know how to choose the…

New 'SimilarTech' service promises to help marketers compare martech stacks

We love any tool which helps marketers do their jobs better, which is why we created an infographic breaking down 150 of the best marketing tools into 30 different categories. But we aren't the only ones. Some of the folks at SimilarWeb also looked at how to help marketers decide on what marketing tools to use, and came up with a clever new service which they've dubbed 'SimilarTech'. We chatted to Daniel Buchuk, SimilarTech's head of brand and strategy about their new feature, what inspired it and how it works.

As someone involved in the marketing technology industry, what did you make of Scott Brinker’s latest Martech graphic? 

Scott Brinker's market landscape graph is testament to the extraordinary evolution of this industry, featuring featured 350…

Rob McLaughlin, Head of Digital Analytics at Sky explains the importance of a data-driven approach to modern marketing

Q. You recently moved from agency DigitasLBi, to join Sky as their Head of Digital Analytics. Why the move?

It has been a great experience working with my colleagues and clients at DigitasLBi, the breadth and depth of our engagements ensured interesting and challenging projects which really helped me continue to develop myself. I have been incredibly fortunate throughout my career to have been given the opportunity to work with some fabulous brands and high -growth businesses, DigitasLBi continued to add to that but the human aspect of that agency is something special. The agency is a collection of exceptionally bright and diverse individuals and one can only benefit from sharing space and time with them, I highly recommend the experience! More than any other role I have…

Do you know what pages are drawing valuable traffic and which aren't pulling their weight?

For all of the discussion about creative content marketing campaigns, and for all of the plaudits that they attract, there is an elephant in the room that many brands are ignoring. These brands are investing significant sums in producing campaign-led creative content, but it is the content that they already have that is arguably where that investment should be focused. Functional content, on-site content, static content or whatever term you prefer to use, is the lifeblood of your digital presence. It is what drives your search visibility, guides your users through the customer journey and reflects your brand personality. But it is all too often neglected. As search engines continue to change their approach to assessing on-page content, many organisations fail to review and update their content to keep pace with the ever changing, and ever-growing list of…

What does it take to build and improve a successful website? It all starts with the analytics

Your website is the most important asset you have for attracting and converting customers. Optimising it for SEO and conversion is critical for growing your business. In this talk Dave Chaffey talks with Grant LeBoff from Sticky Marketing about the key things you need to consider to improve the effectiveness of your website. Watch it to find out what you need to do to take your site to the next level. In a noisy office? Don't have headphones? No problem, instead of watching the talk you can just read our transcript instead: Grant Leboff: So Dave, when we're talking about digital marketing, obviously the one piece of real estate that I think everybody owns these days is a website. What are the things businesses need to think about when they're…

Using a bottom-up model to guide your analysis, you can gather amazing insights from the data you already possess

The key to data analytics lies in asking the right questions, but success can often hinge on the person who is asking those questions. Traditionally, organizations have analyzed their businesses from the perspective of the boardroom, approaching problems from the top down. But in trying to address how to best use their data to solve problems without first understanding the data itself, errors of human bias and oversimplification of the issue may occur. Consequently, company leaders may invest time, money, and resources into technology and products that don’t deliver on expectations. Just because a software package comes with a flashy dashboard and a colorful knack for highlighting correlated relationships doesn’t mean it’s all that great at proving the causal ones. But there’s no turning…

Maps for reviewing the range of insights tools to improve digital marketing

We love tools for managing digital marketing as I think  many working in marketing today do... When I'm talking at conferences I often see most pens to paper when I'm recommending the many freemium tools to gain insight to improve results from marketing. Sharing advice on selecting and using these tools to get better results from digital marketing was one of the drivers behind setting up Smart Insights and we'll soon be launching a marketplace to feature these tools - get in touch if you'd like to be featured in our new directory. However, the range of tools to gain insight is daunting and this has been highlighted again by the new Gartner Digital Marketing Transit Map - newly updated for Spring 2015. It's a great complement…

The massive volume of analytics data can confuse and point you in the wrong direction. Here’s how to understand what your website visitors are really doing...

Web analytics can be extremely useful, but it the data can also be a curse. Indeed, online we now live in a world swimming with data, so much so we have to call it “big data”. The problem with big data is it needs big analysis. The more analytics you collect, the more time it takes to wade through the reports and try to work out what is happening with your website. Google Analytics, for instance, has 103 standard reports you can look at. That’s before you start adding your own specific requirements and comparisons. In addition, there is a problem with all of these reports; none of them tell you “why” a visitor did what…

Working with your HiPPO

Data / analytics can be both liberating and restrictive but the one thing it will always do and do well is ensure we remain commercially focused. I was at a clients HQ for the first time 2 weeks ago and this quote summarises my belief about business and why being commercially minded is fundamental to success: “We need freedom to shape our future; we need profit to remain free”. This quote is the one thing that can unite teams if understood and even help with the subject of my blog post. I spent a lot of my junior marketing days in data analysis tools like Omniture & Google helping to craft my story of how me / my team were performing and to show our contribution to the business, it rarely went as I expected in the early days, but I learnt and learned fast, here are 5 ways I found to help me that I…

4 tools that give you a fuller view of your online marketing spend

If your business receives a high volume of inbound sales calls referred from your website, then tying your telesales function into your marketing metrics is absolutely crucial to ensure you understand the overall performance of your online marketing spend. This key marketing requirement has led to different call tracking measurement tools being created and made available to marketers which I'll introduce in this post.

Why integrate call tracking?

Call tracking measurement has often been something restricted to a sales manager giving them an understanding of volume of inbound calls and then looking at the conversion rate to sale, generally broken down by agent. However as marketers, we need to understand what made a customer call in the first place. When we understand this we can make (more) educated decisions on marketing spend. Without call tracking in place, if we look purely…