Marketers should plan for every scenario, rather than only the most likely one
2016 is behind us. Marketers have their eyes set firmly on the year ahead, and will be currently drawing up their marketing plans and strategy documents for 2017. However, the vast majority of these plans will actually only plan for 1 scenario: business as usual.
It makes sense to plan for business as usual, after all, it’s impossible to predict the future so it wouldn’t make sense to base ones marketing plan around an event which may or may not happen.
Consider the following:
- The future is not pre-determined or predictable
- If it were, there would be no point taking action today, because it would have no effect on the future.
- Full information about the future is never available
But precisely because the future cannot be predicted, you shouldn’t only plan for one scenario (businesses as usual), but rather should have…
There’s no better way to start 2017 than to take stock of emerging trends in today’s continually evolving marketplace and put some best practices in place for the year ahead.
As we pause to look back on what has changed, we should take note of the improvements that are needed in order to stay on top of any new advancements. A lot has changed in the past 12 months. New marketing tools have been created and existing services improved that will continue to shape the way that we conduct marketing research. Forward thinking marketers are placing more emphasis on survey-based software in order to discover exactly what their customers want.
As political change influences the way we work and developments are made with marketing tools, it is important that we stay informed about any relevant changes.
It’s an exciting time for digital marketers with numerous online tools to help you deliver more effective…
Chart of the Day: New Survey reveals that the vast majority of B2B buyers across all generations consider mobile devices essential
If you work in B2B marketing you may have been thinking that all this 'mobile-first' lark only need apply to your B2C friends. After all, serious B2B buyers use desktops, right?
Wrong. Okay, so that's an overstatement. Of course, they use desktops, but they also use mobile. And not just the hip young millennial buyers - new research shows in even the 50+ group (baby boomers) say that a mobile device is essential to their job.
The results come from a salesforce report which asked over 7,000 business buyers about their device usage in October 2016. Because terms like 'millennial' are often poorly defined, I thought it would be worth delineating the age ranges counted as in each generation for this report. In the graph below, millennials were regarded as being 18-35, gen-Xers as…
3 critical areas you will need to invest in to have a successful 2017
“In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.” Albert Einstein
Well there were plenty of difficulties for digital marketers in 2016, so let’s start 2017 by focusing on opportunities; i.e. good things which are available to those who recognise the challenges and tackle them with a positive attitude…
So here are my 3 big opportunities of 2017:
1. Finding and buying great Creative ideas
Some marketers seem to believe (digital) marketing is all about the technology but no…it’s (still) mainly about creative. Brands connecting with people. Entertaining, informing, providing value in return for their time, attention and money. Words, pictures, videos, IDEAS which resonate. Desired reactions would include:
“Yeah!”
“That’s so true.”
“Exactly!”
“100%!”
“I know what they mean.”
“Yes - same!”
“Funny!”
“Oh, that’s interesting…”
“Hello. He’s fit.”
“Wow - that’s useful…”
(or just quietly watching, listening, engaged…).
Check out this case history:
The Next Rembrandt by Dutch Bank ING Group and Microsoft (Cannes Cybers Lions…
How to assess the value of blogs to your site and business
For most businesses, blogs are part of the online furniture - every office is expected to have one. Occasionally though, their value may be called into doubt, whether it's by a client or your sales director or marketing manager. The purpose of this article is to help you not only answer these questions with some confidence, but also demonstrate the hidden value of this type of content in an online sales environment.
[Editor's note: Although Sam's useful post focus on E-commerce, the concept of proving the business value of a blog through analytics are similar for other types of business including B2B. Expert members can learn more in our post and guide on Measuring Content Marketing ROI]
Showing value
The arguments for blogs are well known. Showing your audience that you have expertise in your field, or giving yourself space…
Email Marketing Expert Dan Grech explains his one goal for 2017: 'Do less'.
I've never really been a fan of ‘expert predictions’, especially when it comes to Digital Marketing. They remind me of Mystic Meg caressing glass balls, making some tenuous claims for the sake of entertaining an audience.
I don’t think much will change in Digital Marketing in 2017. Like in previous years, email marketing will continue to hold the highest potential ROI against other marketing channels - yet so many businesses will get it wrong. Google will continue to make seemingly bizarre changes that we'll complain about - then we’ll accept them as being 'for the greater good' of online advertising. Video will continue to grow - yet people will scratch their heads at why a live broadcast of an eating contest on The Lad Bible's Facebook page gets more engagement than a 60 second YouTube pre-roll with a 6-figure…
One of the biggest trends of 2016 went unnoticed, but it will change advertising this year
Chatbots, Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality and Big Data. These are the hot trends for 2017 that have got marketers excited, and you are probably reading a whole host of blogs repeating endlessly how great Chatbots, VR, AR and Big data will be this year.
They may well be great, but it’s often so difficult to distinguish between the hype and the actual business value delivered by a new technology that they can be impossible to effectively evaluate until some time has passed the hype has begun to die down.
Instead of focusing on the next shiny thing to come over the horizon, I thought it would be valuable to look at a major long-term trend that will have an impact on marketing not just in 2017, but over the next 5-10 years. I speak of the growing politicisation of…
Chart of the day: Small businesses are missing out on some of the most effective marketing techniques.
Salesforce, a content partner of SmartInsights, surveyed 300 small business owners (defined as businesses with less than 100 employees. They found that whilst some marketing techniques such as social media and email marketing were very popular, the vast majority of small businesses were failing to use more advanced techniques which could deliver more value. 93% did not use marketing automation, and 91% did not use a cloud-based CRM system. 4 out of 5 businesses said they did not use any SEO techniques, and only 21% used digital advertising.
To say they are missing a trick is an under-statement. Social Media Marketing, the most popular activity, often fails to deliver ROI, and should be used as more as an engagement tool rather than one to gain customers. SEO and Marketing Automation have huge potential, yet…
How to select the very best agency for your business.
So you want to hire a marketing agency. But how do you find the one that will deliver what it promises? What are the things you should ask and, most importantly, what are the answers you want to hear?
Here are some of the answers to these questions and insider tips on hiring agencies (and not regretting it afterward) from the perspective of a marketer.
Before You Begin
First things first. Before you start asking questions, answer a few yourself. You need to be able to get at least a general idea on the budget and your marketing goals.
What do you expect to achieve? How much are you willing to pay for…
Draw inspiration from the greatest strategists and marketers when creating your plan for the year ahead
It's the time of year for setting out what you want to achieve in the coming twelve months at both a personal and business level. Given that 'the road to hell is paved with good intentions', you'll also want to think through how and when you will achieve them.
It's all too easy to get back into the work routine and find yourself so swamped with daily tasks that taking a step back and thinking about planning and vision for the long term ends up taking a back seat. Before you know it you're several weeks into the year and you still haven't found the time to sit down and properly plan out your strategy. For businesses working on digital transformation, inspiring digital transformation through vision statements can help here.
To inspire action, we have put together…
