Agility is the key to staying at the cutting edge of a changing industry

We live in a world full of ever-evolving technology. Marketers don’t have the luxury of relying on a single technique for very long. Things change quickly, from new products to innovative technology to customer expectations. The days of keeping the same marketing techniques for years are over. It’s a new era for businesses across all industries, and you must adapt quickly to survive the shifting ecosystem. That’s where agile marketing comes into play.

What is Agile Digital Marketing?

The definition of agile digital marketing is notoriously hard to pin down, but Jim Ewel of AgileMarketing.net this definition: Agile Marketing is an approach to marketing that takes its inspiration from Agile Development and that values Responding to change over following a plan Rapid iterations over Big-Bang campaigns Testing and data over opinions and conventions Numerous small experiments over a few large bets Individuals and interactions over target markets Collaboration…

Informed consent and transparency will be hallmarks of GDPR

This blog is part 2 in our series on the marketing implications of the new GDPR. See part one here. Informed or explicit consent and transparency are key issues for the final version of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) that’s set to be agreed before the close of 2015. In a recent report commissioned by regulator Ofcom and written by German-based consultancy WIK-Consult, the authors note that it’s important to recognise that within the EU informed consent is needed both for placing cookies or similar tracking devices on a user’s device. The current laws and regulations in this area are the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) (Amendment) Regulations 2011 as well as the Data Protection Directive 95/46/EC. The forthcoming GDPR also provides for a higher level of…

Understand your marketing ROI and use the data to inform your data-driven marketing strategy

While the attraction of data-driven marketing isn’t in doubt, the challenge confronting businesses can be daunting. According to the Q1 2014 Gleanster Research customer experience survey, about eight out of ten senior marketers believe their organisation could be doing a better job of using customer data to inform customer acquisition and retention strategies. But with data-driven marketing involving so many working parts, the end goal can appear unobtainable. To create a data driven strategy, you first need to know how to establish an effective way to measure marketing ROI.

Data-driven measurement

The advent of data-driven marketing should ensure that organisations can not only identify the strategies and campaigns that are most likely to be successful, but also secure buy-in and investment for marketers by demonstrating the potential ROI of impending campaigns. Put simply, if a marketing department is truly data-driven, the measurement of…

Strategic social media mistakes

It's good to see an infographic which focuses on 'strategic mistakes' and covers more than the social media tactics. How many of us are still manually posting content or our managers are measuring our social media content based on the 'quantity' of followers rather than the 'quality', results and their profile? Thanks to Jason Squires for bringing these to the forefront of our minds, as many times we are aware of our mistakes but may feel captured in a web which we can't escape from, due to resources or other challenges. …

Technology is continuing to change the way we view digital marketing at breakneck speed, but the future is bright for digital marketing 

It’s quite apparent that technology has brought the marketing field a long way. We wouldn’t be immersed in the digital marketing field without it. However, many marketers, particularly those in small businesses, don’t recognize just how much and how often technology is changing. For that reason, they have a very difficult time keeping up, which could be their biggest marketing mistake. 

“In a nutshell, we’re living in a rapidly changing world where ‘on the fly’ collaboration sessions involving voice, video, and data sharing are becoming commonplace,” says Jeremy Cioara of CBT Nuggets, a company devoted to technological advancements. “Executives and employees have their expectations set high when it comes to supporting collaborative communication within an organization.”

With the ever-present…

Five Rules for integrating a contact centre effectively

Once the preserve of the contact centre, customer experience has become the focus of the modern marketer. In 2013 a Forrester Report called on brands to ‘Build Seamless Experiences Now’. It argued that, by failing to deliver a seamless dialogue across multiple access points, brands are degrading their value and eroding customer loyalty. This need to deliver a seamless dialogue has ensured that marketers’ priorities have changed and increasingly they are looking to technology to help; Gartner predicts that by 2017, the CMO will spend more on technology than the CIO. Yet marketing technology alone will not address the shift to multichannel customer communications. By rights, the contact centre should be the axis of the customer centric business model. It is the most common two-way touch point customers have with most businesses. Yet, in most organisations it is disjointed with the rest of the business, sitting…

How does your lead scoring rate against this benchmark?

Integrated 'SMarketing' is more than generating enquiries to pass them onto your sales team; leaving the ball in their court to qualify the leads, identifying if they are serious buyers or just researching. Qualifying these leads with the help of Lead Scoring Tools is proven to support companies not only to be more efficient, but to connect 'with sales-ready leads', so boosting conversion. By setting scoring criteria for your leads, your Sales team can reach out at the right time in the buying cycle, with relevant information and more likely to convert as they will communicating with serious leads, ready for more information'. Lead Lizard's lead scoring summary identifies which companies are adopting this process, their objectives for lead scoring and which is the most valuable asset when scoring. Read our …

5 all-too-common missed opportunities which you can take advantage of to make the most of the power of Email Marketing Automation

Marketing Automation is a powerful Marketing Technology since it promises better response by sending more relevant emails to your audience in the context of the their interactions with a business. Small marketing teams or even a 'team-of-one' in a small business can potentially do the work that previously would have required many marketers. These time savings are possible by using rules to automate the type of emails that are sent and embedding more contextual content in personalised emails and web pages through dynamic content insertion. Yet, in my experience from training and consulting with email marketers and as shown by the GetResponse-Smart Insights Email Marketing benchmarking report, many businesses are not getting the full value from the Marketing Automation systems they have adopted. This post takes a look at some of…

Struggling to generate ideas for your blog? Here are the tools you need

As an inbound marketer, you know how important your blog is for attracting people to your website, driving up your SEO rankings, and building trust with your target audience. You also know how difficult it can be to constantly come up with new and exciting content ideas that will both educate, entertain and convert your blog readers. In a recent survey from HubSpot and Smart Insights, we found that quantity and quality of content are top challenges for marketers. However, it doesn’t need to be an obstacle that gets in your way! In this blog post we will provide you with 10 cool (and free!) tools to help you brainstorm fresh new ideas for your blog so that you never have to run dry again.

Understanding Your Customer’s Language

The first step to creating great content that attracts the right people to your…

Developing skills needed for data-driven marketers who can understand and apply metrics and analytics

Becoming a data-driven organisation doesn’t just rely on the right technology, structure and processes. The human element is essential, and without the right skills, qualities and roles, any effort to be successful at data-driven marketing is destined to struggle.

The kinds of skills that support a data-driven philosophy are rich and varied

'The team needs to be technically savvy,' says Jim Sterne, Founder of the Digital Analytics Association. "They do not need to be technologists, but they need to understand how the Internet functions at the bits-and-bytes level, so they can make the most of it at the human level. The team needs to understand how data is gathered and where it may have weaknesses so they can make informed decisions about which numbers to trust in which…