Practical Tips covering SEO, OVP and CRO [Video]

Welcome to Round 2 of Smart Insights' Marketing Fight Club, where you get 2 different expert opinions on the simplest way to boost sales for a real startup. In Round 1 we looked at ideas to to boost sales for Boomf another startup.

Enplug gets new conversion tactics

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...

Ramon Ray - Expert marketer & Publisher of Smart Hustle Magazine vs Wil Reynolds - SEO & Marketing expert and Founder of SEER Interactive Ramon and Wil…

Which channels affect purchase decisions for B2B buyers?

BuyerSphere is an excellent report for B2B marketers from Base One that is now in its 5th Edition and has just been released. If you don't know it, it reviews many aspects of B2B Digital Marketing with the focus on the decision-making process for B2B products and services by reviewing the behaviour and attitudes of over 200 B2B buyers for purchases over £20,000. Refreshingly the report focuses on 'what buyers do' and 'not what marketers think' with some enlightening findings. This article shares the findings on how the buyers find information to support their decision-making process and how influential the source is in terms of realising that sale.

Where do businesses find their information on their supplier?

Those holding the purse strings or 'influencers' in the buying decision, use at least 2 different information sources when selecting their supplier. With the main sources being gathered from…

How you can you dramatically increase your ecommerce sales with transactional emails

Transactional emails are a fascinating and often overlooked part of the ecommerce marketing landscape. Many business owners not only don’t take advantage of them but also don’t even have a clear idea of what they are. This is a shame because if harnessed properly, 'transactionals' can offer some truly remarkable benefits to those who use them for increased conversions and sales. Now, we’re going to cover some effective marketing strategies and statistics for a select list of key transactional emails but before we do, a quick run-down of what transactional emails are.

So what are transactional emails?

In simple terms, transactional emails are the email messages you send to users of your site or application whenever they specifically, individually interact with either. Thus, when someone joins your site and gets a welcome email or loads up their shopping cart or makes an order…

Retail examples showing how to bring the on and offline worlds together through social and mobile channels.

I have been following the retail industry as businesses plunge or dip their toes into the omnichannel waters. Some are certainly doing some revolutionary, original campaigns using technology which I'll look at here - do share others you like! This blog posts sums up my favourite case studies from retailers with some thoughts on how this will impact the modern marketing department’s strategies, as technology drives change.

How are retailers tackling the on and offline world?

Consumers are using multiple devices, screens, and channels to make purchases, but you know this already. Retailers still get a huge chunk of sales in their bricks and mortar outlets, for example clothing and footwear brands in the UK 44% of purchases are done in store*. In store doesn’t provide the same level of data as their website or digital marketing activities. They will only…

Seconds out, Round 1 in a series of 4 bouts!

Boomf gets a clear value message.

Welcome to Round 1 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...

Ian Lurie - Expert marketer, speaker & CEO of Portent. vs Pete Z - Email sales specialist at magnett.co Ian is well-known for his search marketing and analytics advice which you'll find on the Portent Blog. Ian and I go…

Holiday marketing planning for retailers

Marketers, we know the struggle. We know that taking into account the holiday seasons are vital to your retail strategy and it's not just having an idea of what you will do, it's having a plan, a system and a course of action. Without these things, you’ll be left in the marketing dust. Timing is everything. At Fathomdelivers.com, we have created this infographic and content, to give you a framework that you could work to for the year. If you are looking for management buy-in, it can help to have a visual calendar to show your plans - whether it's for a quarter, a six month period of the year ahead and also a great way to show your results if you don't have an analytics dashboard. Here are some ideas of how we have used it to plan from October - January, for a retailerr.

October - SEO…

Tips to improve social proof on TripAdvisor including how to handle negative reviews and 6 best practice tips

One of our clients is a group of eight hotels, so for them, like all hospitality businesses, TripAdvisor can be both friend and foe. Recently I was asked to look at each hotel’s presence on TripAdvisor and to suggest some tips for best practice.  I was surprised by the lack of online commentary so here are my thoughts.

Setting the scene for TripAdvisor - how it dominates the travel industry.

How to handle negative reviews on Tripadvisor?

Clients we speak to are often worried about entering the world of social media, afraid it will open the door to negative reviews. Our response is consistent; a presence on social media doesn’t create negative reviews, nor does an absence prevent them. What it does do is allow your…

What influences purchase of your product or service?

Getting cut through is a key challenge for marketers today since there are so many online influences on purchase from search engines and social networks and from media sites to personal blogs and YouTuber vlogs.

So, to be effective in influencing purchase today, brands need to intimately understand the footprint of their brand communications through marketplace mapping and how this relates to consumer purchase decision-making.

To help you understand your consumers' decision journey we have created this new infographic which summarises the latest thinking on how to use online marketing to influence purchase.

[caption id="attachment_39199" align="aligncenter" width="600"] Infographic: Today's consumer journey and the influences on purchase[/caption] Recommended Download: Free digital strategy infographic bundle Members can…

The latest Ecommerce facts about shopper behaviour to inform retail strategies in 2015

We enjoyed the interesting + useful Ecommerce factoids and commentaries from digital agency Blueleaf. So we got in touch to share the learnings contained. If you would like to see the remainder of the series, you can sign-up to Gossip. Enjoy, please Tweet the facts you fancy and Merry Christmas!

Day 1 - Christmas commerce fact for 8th December:

Shoppers spend 30% more per order, when free shipping is included. Source: Wharton

UX Director Chris Jones explains, 'Take a long, hard look at your shipping costs. Could you trial free shipping to see if there’s an uplift in sales that would more than cover the cost? Do you at least offer free shipping over a certain basket amount? It’s something that customers feel very strongly about, especially on high…

Comparing the efficiency of your B2B Marketing Funnel

It's natural that marketers want to benchmark, to compare the efficiency of their conversion funnels - but what datasets should they compare with? Within Ecommerce there are relatively good sources for Retail ecommerce conversion rates provided by Ecommerce vendors, but within business-to-business, no similar benchmarks are widely available - let us know if you know any good sources! I think this lack of B2B benchmarks is partly because it is harder to define the different steps of the funnel within B2B marketing in a standard way. If you're looking for a comparison of B2B conversion rates - here is a simple comparison from Marketing Sherpa, but it's a couple of years old now and doesn't standardise the funnel as conversion from lead to marketing qualified lead to sale, or look at costs such as cost per lead and cost per acquisition. The figures seem high…