Insights on the best times to follow-up on leads in B2B marketing
Here's a summary of research specifically of interest to readers selling to marketers, but also relevant insight on best time for follow-up for B2B marketers selling technology to other professionals.
Traditional lead generation techniques work well when selling marketing technology to marketers - it's not seen as 'cold calling'. According to Jenny Vance, President of Leadjen 'Marketers wear many different hats in their organizations: social media, events, public relations and advertising, to name a few. It’s no wonder they are bombarded with sales messages. When done properly, traditional lead generation efforts to marketers can be very effective in driving sales appointments and revenue.'
Leadjen has backed this up with their study from 2010-2013, to look at best prospecting practices to Marketers, and traditional lead generation techniques. Leadjen made over 1 million calls and email contacts across more than 20,000 conversations. It…
A personal End of Year Review of Digital Marketing
You cannot escape the end of year reviews for pretty much everything at this time of year. You’ve got your best songs of the year, the best programmes, sports personality of the year (Andy Murray = best sports personality really?!!), best film….like we said, everything!
I am not complaining though, because here at MMT Digital we enjoy a good end of year review as much as anyone which is why I have decided to do one of my own.
A 12 months summary of my world of technology, web design and build, and marketing
Below is a summary of some of the most interesting subjects in the world of technology,web design & build and marketing that have caught my attention in the last 12 months…
January – March
Give me a slice of Rasberry Pi
As this is the season…
3 tools to find out the most popular and relevant topics
Before we look at tools for finding the best hashtags for twitter growth, I thought it best to explain what a hashtag is (I still often get asked this when talking to clients):
A hashtag is simply a way for people to label and search for social media updates. It may be a trending topic such as #cybermonday or a campaign-specific label such as a discount or campaign name. In most social networks if you click on the hashtag you see updates where others have used it.
Hashtags originated on Twitter, but their popularity means that they're now ubiquitous across social networks as this History of Hashtags shows. Hashtags can help get your message across and engage your audience in a concept. For example, we recommended Smart Insights used #PlanToSucceed as a hashtag to highlight the importance of planning and to…
This post gives a summary of a webinar by Smart Insights expert commentator Stephen Bateman of Concentric Dots.
Stephen started by showing the ongoing and increasing thirst for knowledge on content marketing, starting with this Google Trends data showing a large increase in each of the last 3 years since we have been advising on content marketing.
You can also see the growth in popularity from this infographic showing B2B Content marketing trends for 2014 that we shared earlier in the Autumn. In Stephen's talk, he reviewed the challenges of content marketing and then suggested that a more strategic approach can give better alignment with consumer needs and business aims.
You can view all 6 recordings from the Digital Marketing 2014 Summit here.
The other summary posts of the trends featuring…
Interactive video encouraging direct response
Episode 1, Scene 1. Boardroom meeting, charts showing sales figures on the up, 3 people sit around the boardroom table.
You can cut the tension with a knife...
Financial Director: 'OK, so what's the plan?'Marketing Director: 'We're going to create an online video campaign, everyone's doing it, we're going to do it better, it's going viral.'CEO: 'I'm sorry?'MD: 'We're going to get loads of views, people will feel really warm to our brand and they will buy from our company like never before.'FD: 'Can we measure that?'MD: 'Erm, not really.'FD: 'Does the sales team get leads?'MD: 'No but that's not the point, it will bring people to us, inbound mar…'CEO: 'You're fired.'Marketing Director faintsCut.
Video - the conundrum
Though there are signs that belts are loosening and that companies are investing in creativity, when communicating with their audience. However, one of the biggest challenges faced by the marketing dept is…
A group debate discussing the best way to make your site work on all devices?
A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of presenting at the J. Boye conference in Aarhus, Denmark about developing mobile optimised websites and applications. In the spirit of J. Boye I had decided to run an interactive session as opposed to the more traditional presenting method of lecturing people on personal experiences.
There was a fascinating cross-section of people from different businesses at the session. Among the 50 that attended there were people from a variety of industry sectors including banking, charity, government and other public sector organisations, pharmaceutical and many more!
The group was mostly made up of fairly senior people working across IT and marketing departments (with a fairly heavy emphasis on digital in their role!). Many, if not all, had some recent experience of…
How to increase engagement for your Facebook posts
In this post, I'm going to take one skill from the list I curated in my article 'The Ultimate Guide to becoming a great Social Media Manager' and demonstrate to you exactly why it is essential for a Social Media Manager - that skill is graphic design.
How to improved the design of a Facebook Post in 10 minutes
So, let's start with an example. From a social marketing point of view, how effective do you think this Facebook post is?
You might think it's not too bad. You might think it's terrible. You may also be thinking about a similar post that you shared and how this compares to it. But the answer I'm looking for is – it could be improved...
You…
In Part 1, we looked at the main features of YouTube Analytics (YTA) and how they can be used to a) build an audience and b) improve the engagement of your existing audience. In this article, we are going to look in more detail at 5 of the key reporting features available in YTA.
To get ideas and inspiration on creating the right type of videos and YouTube brand channel to maximise video plays and sales, see our new guide to YouTube Marketing.
Recommended Guide: Smarter YouTube Marketing
Create a content plan and setup your brand channel correctly to make better use of YouTube.
Download our YouTube Marketing Guide.
1 Youtube Traffic Source…
5 Legal ways to contact Facebook winners
When Facebook updated their promotion guidelines this past August, they casually removed the rule that stated brands could not contact promotion winners on Facebook via status updates, private messages, chat, etc. This rule was kind of a hassle, especially for businesses with multiple promotion winners to notify, so pretty much everyone we know was glad to see it go.
With this rule no longer in existence, some of our users have asked: What’s the best way to contact contest winners now? In today’s blog post, we cover not one, but five great and totally legal ways to contact Facebook promotion winners.
5 Tips for contacting your Facebook winners
Here they are:
1. Post a status update
One simple way to contact promotion winners is to create a post on your Timeline and announce your winners in it. For example, the post would read:
'Congrats Winner Name! You’ve won our…
New features to support content marketing and hiring new candidates
Value: [rating=3]
Recommended Link: Showcase Pages and LinkedIn Talent Updates
LinkedIn have announced two new features this week: Showcase Pages and Talent Updates. So, how are these new services relevant to marketers?
Showcase Pages are new, focused brand pages
This new feature is most worthy of consideration by marketers. They provide businesses with a more targeted page to promote a specific product or brand, with a maximum of 10 showcase pages, so content can now be targeted and more relevant to specific audiences. At the moment these are free.
Microsoft have piloted this with a showcase page for their Office product you can see more examples of Showcase Pages from Adobe and others by following the
Do you need to set these up? We think most companies will decide…
