Chart of the Day: Benchmarking digital media and technology adoption of the UK with eight developed countries
At one level, it's simple. The online opportunity for businesses to reach and influence their audiences online depends on the levels of use of the web by different types of individuals and businesses. Defining the Opportunity, Creating a Digital Strategy and taking action works best if you can define how many of your target audience are actively using digital media and technology to inform their buying decisions.
At another level, it's now highly complex to define this opportunity. While we can still use search engine gap analysis to assess the number of people searching for information about products online and review our 'share of search' or search impressions, many other platforms are involved. These include cross-device use from mobile to desktop and use of social media and influencers. Plus, we shouldn't forget that, even in developed…
Agencies can use data to plan for the coming year, and to improve digital marketing services
You don’t have to search far to find information about the marketing budgets of the mammoth corporations, like Proctor and Gamble and Verizon. However, the typical US marketing agency has small business clients with small budgets—details about the marketing budgets of these smaller businesses is hard to come by.
For the past two years, HubShout has surveyed small to mid-size marketing agencies and the data from the surveys shows where their small business clients are investing their dollars, and how much they’re investing in each service. The survey of 200 professionals who deliver online marketing services to small businesses provides plenty of data that is useful for small to mid-size digital marketing agencies. In addition, this article provides helpful tips on selling and improving digital marketing services.
First, Get a Piece of the 28 Million
The…
Will 2017 see a revolution in the way we think of branding and brand strategy?
For many, the sound and sights of fireworks exploding on New Year’s Eve already seem a lifetime away.
Slowly but surely, marketers are getting back into the swing of the pendulum of routine marking out yet another year of deadlines and performance assessments. In the spirit of making a resolution to change, during January, some will send the odd surreptitious online application to a recruitment agency’s ‘black hole’ of resumes on sites like LinkedIn. In time-honoured tradition, many will invest in Apps which measure strides on runs, or calories at burger bars. For most January is about picking up where projects were last left.
Conventionally, campaign messages supported by features feeding into benefits… an approach that has been tried and A/B split tested for eons… centre on rewards of happiness ‘hits’ in exchange for buying a product/service.
In 2017,…
Report shows the key trends small and medium businesses need to utilise this year
Small businesses have more marketing options than they have ever had before. Low barriers to entry on marketing automation and social media platforms present massive opportunities for smaller businesses, yet it also means increased complexity and more channels to keep on top of. This can be a big problem for smaller marketing departments which can quickly become overwhelmed.
To give an idea of the scale of the problem, just last year the number of marketing technology companies doubled from around 2000 to 4000. In our infographic of digital marketing tools we identified 35 categories. That means way more options and loads of great new tools, but it also means there are twice the number of solutions to get your head around. How are you meant to know which tools you need and which are superfluous?
Understanding trends across…
Chart of the day: Online campaigns precisely targeted at a certain demographic often miss the mark.
Digital advertising is sold on the basis of targeting. Whilst everyone watching the super bowl or the X factor gets shown the same TV ad regardless of their age, gender or interests, digital ads can be hyper-targeted to just be seen by the exact demographic you know is most interested in your product. Or rather that's how it works in theory. In practice, the results are often very different. Recent research by Nielson found for certain groups, such as males in the 18-24 age range, only 17% of targeted ads were actually reaching the intended demographic. The rest were being seen by people the advertiser did not intend to target.
This reveals a big flaw in targeted advertising, as across the board about half of views are coming from people the advertiser wasn't paying to target. Whilst there is…
Every B2B marketer's holy PECR is on the chopping block
So, you thought the Privacy and Electronics Communications Regulations, your precious PECR, was going to save you from the new ePrivacy rules. Unfortunately not. The PECR appears to be on the chopping block and there is only one way it is going: to fall in line with the new EU General Data Protection Regulations.
"Oh!" I hear you cry. "But I didn't listen to the GDPR changes because I assumed it didn't apply to B2B marketers!"
Well, I have good news and bad news for you. Let's start with the good news, shall we? You've got the rest of this year and until 25th May 2018 to make sure your marketing data does comply with the GDPR. There are 17 months between now and then, giving you plenty of time to make sure that anyone on your email mailing lists has given you…
How does your business compare with others for digital marketing capability to Plan, Reach, Act, Convert and Engage?
Since we introduced our free interactive benchmarking tool to audit digital marketing for Smart Insights members in September 2015, we've expanded it from auditing top-level digital strategy to also review individual channels like SEO, AdWords, Content Marketing, Email and Social media as part of our toolkits on each. This uses a similar approach of selecting a rating from just 7 questions for each - there aren't hundreds like some other audit tools.
Want to try the auditing tool?
If you want to try the audits, but you're not a member, just sign-up here using the form.
http://www.smartinsights.com/howgood/
If you're already a member simply sign-in - top right and click on any of the toolkits on the members home page with…
Chart of the Day: How does your advertising budget break down compare to the average?
As we start the new year many marketers will have already been negotiating their advertising budgets for the coming year. Once approved the next major hurdle is to decide how to split that budget across the multitude of channels that are available. Search, Display, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, Pinterest the is seemingly never ending, So how do you decide?
Today's chart of the day highlights that marketers like to hedge their bets when it comes to their marketing budgets, which is a good strategy, as it's risky to have "all your eggs in one basket".
As shown in the chart below the highest proportion of the budget is reserved for traditional advertising which makes sense when you consider the costs associated with Radio, Print & TV advertising. Now if we combine Social and Display you get a substantial 27% of the…
Chart of the Day: A conversion funnel example from the loans sector
A different format of chart for today, showing analysis and modelling for digital marketing rather than statistics on adoption or benchmarks.
The recommended Smart Insights approach for creating achievable marketing plans is centred on creating realistic forecasts of leads, sales and revenue in the year ahead based on conversion-funnel model spreadsheets with the contribution of different channels shown in this digital marketing planning spreadsheet.
This example shows how in some types of business, like the financial services sector, it's important to take into account multichannel behaviour as the decision will be influenced by different channels such as web-phone-branch and the customer journey will involve switching between them.
This is a useful visualisation that adds more detail to a ROPO analysis by breaking out different channels in each vertical bar and…
Adapting the Growth/Share Matrix to Marketing
The Growth/Share Matrix is a business strategy tool that's been around for years, but it remains a useful way to think strategically about where you make investments and allocate company budgets. Although it's a general business strategy tool, it can be very useful for thinking about allocating marketing spend and so it is as important for marketers as it is for boards making big strategy decisions. The model is also known as the BCG model, the acronym of the group that created it.
The model involves mapping business divisions or products across two key dimensions; Market Share and Market Growth, which then maps them into one of four quadrants. Products/Divisions operating with low market share in a low-growth market are dogs, those operating with a high market share in a low-growth market are cash cows. Divisions or products serving a high growth market but without…
