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What's New in Marketing? January 2014

The end of January already! Does anyone not think that? The end of the month means it’s time for our regular roundup of the major developments that affect marketing and our pick of our advice on the latest practices.

When I speak with marketers I’m often asked “what’s new”, “what matters” and “what’s next” and “what matters” so I hope our summary helps answer some of these questions to save you having to sift through the content avalanche.

I also hear that it’s getting more difficult to keep up-to-date, so in our recent research on managing digital marketing I was curious to know how marketers found this. Of marketers completing the survey a majority (55%) found it challenging, with over a quarter (27%) stating that it had become more difficult recently. Nearly a quarter said it was easy - good for them - I’d like to know how?! We also asked in which areas marketers most wanted to develop their knowledge - you can see the results below.

Do let us know via the comments if there are any other areas you would like to know more about or contact us if you're happy to share your knowledge and experiences with readers.

There was a fair level of interest approaching half across the board, many marketers are now confident in their knowledge of digital channels with nearly half (46%) saying they are confident, with in-depth knowledge or sufficient knowledge for what they need across different digital marketing techniques. However, there is still hunger for new learning, particularly in Big Data and CRM (62% want to improve their knowledge), content marketing (55%), digital strategy (52%) and social media marketing (48%).

I’ve acted on this already - as you will see from new advice on Big Data and Marketing Automation within our CRM and Email section below. You may also find the prompts from Katy Howell’s 14 practical marketing ideas for 2014 useful.

Strategy and planning

• Managing Digital Marketing 2014 - our new free research report in association with Technology for Marketing & Advertising exploring how marketers manage digital with practical recommendations. Dave will add to this at TFM&A 2014 where he will give a Keynote talk and 3 other seminar advising on how to review and improve digital marketing.
• 7 Steps to digital marketing nirvana - our new infographic summarising the research
• Marketing Technology options 2014 - if you don’t know Scott Brinkler’s Tech Landscape map - check it out to see how your use of technology compares!

Social media marketing

• Creating a social media strategy for B2B marketing - Rene Power gives 4 examples to inspire B2B marketers
• Options for ad targeting on Facebook - a great review of the options from Marie Page

Search marketing

• Should we stop guest blogging - Yes or No? - This was the biggest platform development in January 2014 - all content marketers should read our take on 5 reasons you should continue guest blogging and 10 actions you should take given Matt Cutt’s latest advice affecting content marketers.
• Hiring the right content creator for your business Content is at the heart of SEO in 2014 (as it always has been), so you need to have the right resources in place.

User experience, analytics and conversion optimisation

• Digital strategy for a multichannel retailer an in-depth case study from Sajjad Bhojani, Head of Multi Channel Marketing at Dunelm.
• How to run a successful conversion rate optimisation programme - A great tutorial by Dan Croxen-John of AWA Digital
• A tutorial with examples and ideas of testing retail value propositions - Matt Lacey of PRWD shares his experience.
• 10 practical tips on responsive design - our most popular infographic of the month

Email marketing and CRM

• An introduction to using big data for Marketing - a short series to help readers get up-to-speed on digital marketing - see also our Guide to Marketing Automation
• The most popular email clients Which email clients should we design and test for in 2014?
• Email campaign tracking in Google Analytics - Our tutorial and examples shows you how to setup what some email marketers miss.

This summary was created by Dave Chaffey of Marketing strategy advice site SmartInsights.com.