How to start using advanced content analytics
Analytics, in general, is key to performance optimization. Getting accurate feedback on what is working and what not helps companies make improvements that will lead to better outcomes. And when content is the center of your business, Advanced Content Analytics becomes the center of your Big Data analytics. By now, most businesses have heard of the Advanced Analytics and how it can generate value from large amounts of warehouse and fresh data. But despite this, most marketers today are struggling to measure whether anyone is using their content, how often their content is used, how much their content engages customers, and most importantly – whether their content has any impact on sales. Advanced Content Analytics using today’s sophisticated tools and techniques can make it easier to measure the outcomes of your content.
What are analytics and what are their types?
According to RapidMiner, analytics is…
Chart of the Day: The most popular methods for measuring marketing performance
Marketing effectiveness has always been tricky to measure. Digital marketing isn't short on analytics, but there are so many different analytics tools and types of data that it can be highly confusing. One of the major issues is knowing which metrics to weigh higher than others when there are so many available.
A recent report from Trackmaven shows that marketers rank measuring content performance as the most important measure of marketing performance. This is followed by social media analytics and channel performance.
These are valuable concepts, but are they really the most important metrics? I worry marketers are confusing important with measurable. It's relatively easy to measure social analytics or using Google analytics to report on content performance. But does that really mean your marketing efforts are doing what they're meant to - sell more of your products.
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Study from PwC shows the need for Chief Digital Officers in larger organisations
The digital revolution is transforming all business departments. Marketing, HR, Sales, Finance & IT all have massive opportunities and considerable challenges thanks to the rapid pace of digital change. Whole industries are being disrupted with newer, faster and more efficient ways are doing things emerging. Many businesses are responding by creating a digital transformation programme - our new research shows the number of businesses adopting digital transformation programmes is increasing with around one-third having a programme in place and a further third planning a programme within 12-months.
Managing digital transformation is a herculean task, but one that needs to be done well if the business is going to continue to grow in a world forever changed by pervasive technology.
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Use our infographic as a visual checklist for planning digital transformation across your entire organisation
Digital transformation is an incredibly complex undertaking, particularly in larger organisations. But given modern consumers' propensity to demand more from brands, it is not optional. Businesses have to become more adaptive and quicker to utilise the latest technology to improve the experience of their customers. If they don't then they'll rapidly find themselves disrupted by more agile competitors since there are so many sophisticated multichannel marketing techniques required today.
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Too often companies recognise these trends but fail to transform successfully. They start a digital transformation process because they feel like they should, but do not integrate it across departments. Worse, they often focus on attempting to use new digital tactics whilst failing to actually develop a cohesive digital strategy.
This leaves a mishmash…
AI isn't going to take your job. It's going to make you better at it.
When Deep Blue beat Garry Kasparov in 1996, it was a testament to the incredible number crunching power of a computer. Deep Blue was capable of evaluating 200 million moves per second, and no one since built a more powerful chess computer. That's right - even though it was built in 1996, it's still the most powerful chess computer ever built. Can you think of any other type of computer for which processing power peaked in 1996? No, I didn't think so.
So why has no one ever built a more powerful chess computer? Because advances in AI mean you simply don't need that hardware anymore. Today it's possible to get your old laptop to beat the best chess player in the world by installing some chess software, and even though your rusty old machine is only…
Chart of the day: Research by Advertising Association and Warc finds that digital dominates UK advertising spend
Magazine advertising continued to decrease, whilst digital magazine advertising is expected to grow. Regional newspapers and Direct Mail see the biggest decreases, whilst digital formats are expected to continue their recent growht.
Some key highlights of the research include:
Ad spend in the UK grew to £5.8bn, representing 3.9% rise year-on-year
Overall for 2016 UK ad spend grew 3.7%, reaching a total of £21.4bn, this is also the seventh year of continued growth
Digital ad spend is up 13.4% to £10.3bn for 2016. 45.4% to £3.9bn. The report predicts mobile advertising spend will slow over the coming years (2017: +30.4% and 2018: +20.8%) as the current boom dies down.
Mobile accounted for 45.4% of that digital ad spend, meaning £3.9bn spent, however, the report predicts that mobile advertising…
Chart of the day: Market research budgets have been cut whilst marketing budgets are being sustained
Market research (increasingly referred to as "insight") budgets are taking another cut this year, according to research by the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising, whilst marketing budgets overall have not grown. As few as 8% of respondents signaled growth in their insight budget whilst just over 26% of respondents indicated marketing budget growth. The analysis shows it's the worst prediction for market research in over four years of data collection.
One reason for the fall in budget could be that businesses are using non-traditional research methods, doing fewer large-scale annual research projects and instead focusing on more cheaper, innovative techniques, such as the use of research communities, online focus groups and cheaper providers such as Survey Monkey Audience, Ask You Target Market and Toluna Quick Surveys, rather than using…
How marketers are using analytics wrong and how to fix it
Google Analytics is one of the most powerful tools for marketing analytics. However, it is also one of the most underutilized tools - the amount of data and information it provides can be overwhelming, and users often have to spend hours tweaking their segments before finding any use in their data.
To solve this problem, we set out to build a data science algorithm that turns that data into actionable insights. We thought it’d be a straightforward task.
We had no idea about rabbit hole it would lead us to, the nuances we would have to factor in, and how working with hundreds of brands and agencies would allow us to see that it’s not only a data problem, but also a psychological one.
Marketers are human. Our views are biased, our thoughts have fallacies, and our teams have constraints. Coupled with only…
The five biggest announcements from Facebook’s global developer conference
On the 18th and 19th April Facebook hosted F8, their annual global developer conference, where the technical community joined up for two days of workshops, product demos and 1:1 time with Facebook’s product experts.
Whilst the content and announcements at F8 are typically geared towards developers, there is always interesting and important news that digital marketers should be aware of, too. For this post I’ve selected five top announcements but you can watch the full keynote here.
Facebook Analytics
What is this:
During the F8, updates were announced for Facebook Analytics in order to help businesses better understand their customer behavior across devices and channels. This update is designed to enable businesses to measure and optimise their complete customer journey across mobile, web, bots on Messenger, and now Facebook Pages and Offline Conversions, too. Facebook will also be launching automated insights, custom dashboards, and additional…
Chart of the Day: Digital Advertising, Content Marketing and Social Media are the most sought after skills in 2017
Research by McKinley Marketing Partners highlights the wide range of skills digital marketing teams need in 2017, varying from SEO and project management to Email and Analytics. There are a few front runners for being the most in demand skills for businesses in the USA.
Digital advertising and content creation, curation and strategy are highest in demand. Social media, email and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) were close behind, highlighting the importance of an overall digital media strategy that makes the most of the content bring produced. SEO, Advertising & Social would not be very effective and very boring without a steady stream of high-quality engaging content.
Interestingly Project Management is at rock bottom as the least sought-after skill but without a well-structured project plan to support the marketing strategy you will quickly find that the final product of all your hard…
