By
26 Mar 2015
Did gamification fail to live up to the hype or is there still untapped potential?
It wasn’t long ago that leading experts were making a big fuss about it. In 2012, Gartner, for instance, predicted that by today the use of gamified services for consumer goods marketing and customer retention would become as important as Facebook. The research house also forecast that more than 70% of Global 2000 organisations would have at least one gamified application by 2015, and that the gamification industry would be worth US$2.8 billion by 2016.
Big numbers. Big predictions. But also, as it transpires, a big miscalculation.
It’s fair to say that the business world circa 2015 isn’t in thrall to gamification in the way that Gartner predicted, and the research house is now estimating that market penetration is a measly 5-10%. Indeed, an Infosys study into gamification in…
Let's find out what the experts think...
Last year here at Cicada, we worked with a number of new clients who had nice-looking websites produced by designers they know and trust. As we worked with these customers on the 'discovery process' at the start of the projects, the same issue arose time and time again... While our clients thought their websites looked good, they couldn’t understand why they just weren’t doing well enough at getting visitors and converting them into leads.
We had a good idea why this was, but to bring more oomph to our argument, we spoke to four experts in effective site design to find out their views on the differences between a brochure website that looks great, into one that delivers enquiries for your business. Our four interviewees are from different professional backgrounds within the digital industry, and we were intrigued…
The essentials of writing excellent content
Are you beginning to wonder about how effective content writing is? Maybe you’ve written some outstanding pieces that received only a lukewarm response. All those long hours of research on problem solving for your niche, then writing, editing and polishing posts for a handful of shares. It’s a bit worrisome, isn’t it?
That’s because there’s a popular misconception about writing great content. The actual writing of the content is only half of the formula for success. You can write absolutely brilliant posts that are on topic, providing top-notch solutions for your audience - but if you don’t have a strategy for how to consistently produce and market it, it’s not going to do you much good.
So, today we’re going to focus on the entire picture, not just one segment of it. Let’s start with some of the primary elements of writing excellent content for small businesses, then cover…
How free whitepapers create customer obligation
Sometimes it helps to take a step back from the everyday tactics employed in digital marketing, and look at your customers from a different perspective. Take reports and whitepapers for instance. As digital marketers, we know that value adding free content works for customer engagement and for our search rankings. Google loves good quality, relevant content – and your customers and prospects gain great value from reading engaging reports and whitepapers (just take a look at Smart Insight’s own free range of reports and how to guides).
But let’s take that step back.
Let’s move away from viewing the world through our digital lens, and try and see it from a behavioural perspective instead.
Tactically, we know free content is a great customer acquisition tool, but could there be more to it…
By
03 Mar 2015
Joe Pulizzi of the Content Marketing Marketing Institute gives his take on the state of content marketing
Whether videos, blogs, infographics or ebooks, content is now being consumed on an unprecedented scale. And in our multichannel, multi-device, always-on world, that means content represents an exciting opportunity for brands to make an impression on the customer during the product purchasing process. Little wonder, then, that content marketing has become such big news.
In fact, the buzz for content marketing reached such extraordinary levels in 2014, that it led some to question whether interest in the discipline had reached its peak. Nonetheless, evidence suggests that there could still be plenty of growth left yet.
The Content Marketing Institute (CMI) recently conducted a research on content marketing in the UK, and found that 85% of respondents use content marketing, with 45% reporting they…
Our multi-device day from Smartphone to Desktop to Tablet
Technology dominates our lives night and day! Really - even when we're asleep, our mobile devices are monitoring some of us.
We thought we'd share this nice visual from comScore's recent research which summarises when we are using tablets, PCS and mobile phones. Find out more by downloading Comscore's whitepaper for insights into Today's Digital Consumer.
In media we have always talked about 'dayparting' to target audiences at different times of the day - this research emphasises the need to use mobile to target audiences. Desktop only will no longer cut it! Likewise, when creating digital experiences we need to ensure adaptive website designs that work in different contexts from smartphone to desktop to tablet.
Of course, the media use curves above are a simplification, as this insight from the Ofcom digital media…
Real-world examples of techniques to boost sales for a startup
NeuroOn gets an attractive sales pitch.
Welcome to Round 4 of Smart Insights' Marketing Fight Club, where you get 2 different expert opinions on the simplest way to boost sales for a real startup. Watch the video below to get simple tweaks that you can apply to your business today to improve your value message and increase conversions.
After you watch the video don't forget to vote for the winner of this round in the comments below, and share your thoughts on the strategies discussed. We'd love to hear your feedback!
Stepping into the ring today we have...
Aaron Ross - Author of Predictable Revenue vs Pete Z - Email sales specialist at magnett.co
Aaron and I go head-to-head in this episode to boost sales for NeuroOn? a sleeping mask that measures and affects your quality…
LinkedIn launches Lead Accelerator for funnel nurturing
Importance: [rating=4] (For B2B Marketers looking to attract nurture leads through the sales funnel)
Recommended link: LinkedIn Launches new Lead Accelerator
LinkedIn are positioning this new programme as a way for marketers reaching business (B2B) audiences to attract quality visitors, to nurture them through the sales funnel, via targeted display and social ads across the web and LinkedIn.
It appears targeting is based on your visitors profile and what they're doing on your website (like retargeting), so the advert is relevant within the buying cycle and to the online behaviour of your visitor.
What Marketers need to know about Lead Accelerator?
1. It's available to subscribe to via a LinkedIn Sales person, on an annual or quarterly subscription.
2. Available only if you have a minimum of 20,000…
Are you using these quick wins for social media?
A lot of businesses are now aware of the importance of building a community when it comes to social media marketing. Because of this, marketers are using more sophisticated strategies to maximize the use of online tools to initiate engagement and interaction with their customers. But not all are reaching the results that they want in terms of exposure or traffic.
If you’re still looking for more effective ways to use social media to your advantage, you need to use advanced techniques in reinforcing your marketing message. If you find your results underwhelming and you still don’t know what to do next in creating online presence, here are some of the advanced strategies you can use for your social media marketing efforts.
1. Find out the type of content that’s popular with your competitor’s audience.
It’s no secret that marketers monitor each other’s websites to…
5 ways to extend the use of popup technology on your site
Using the latest technology to engage visitors to your site is a must. In a recent post on using popups to grow email subscribers, Kath Pay discussed some best practices for capturing email addresses using popup technology.
In this post I’m looking at some of the ways you can extend popup technology to do more for your site. You’d be surprised how much that popups can do. Popups can be used to:
1. Ask for feedback
The latest popup technology allows you to fine tune who you show your message to. For instance, let’s say you only want your message to appear to people who leave your site without browsing for more than a minute.
When these short-term visitors go to leave your site, you can ask them, 'Was there another product or topic you would find interesting?'. Using popup technology this…
