Lessons to learn from Start-up failure
This week we are releasing our new growth hacking guide and have a bit of a growth hacking and start-up theme across the blog. Although we focus on the marketing side of start-ups pretty exclusively, it interesting to look at why start-ups fail, and see how this fits in with marketing issues.
A study by Quartz looked at 87 bootstrapped (that's Californian for growing without venture capital funding) start-ups which failed, to find out what caused their eventual downfall. Only 2 explicitly blamed poor marketing, which isn't a huge amount, although is above pricing issues, legal challenges or burn out, which are no small matter. If you're running a start-up or work for one it's a great chart to spur thinking and maybe even do a bit of soul-searching to think about where your weaknesses are and how you can avoid the most common traps.
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Top sources for comparing marketing software providers
As digital marketing has involved from being a niche activity to one at the core of most marketing plans, so too has the market for software design evolved to help digital marketing get the best results. From publishing tools, CMS, Social listening and content personalisation tools, there are loads of tools within each category, and it can be tricky to know which one will be right for your business.
Just in case your not fully aware of the daunting size of the scale of the problem of selecting digital marketing software, this infographic from Scott Brinker does a good job of highlighting the massive variety of marketing technology available today. You won't be able to see without clicking for an enlarged version, but there are more than 3000 tools in the infographic! Hardly simple!
So…
Latest report on marketing hiring from McKinley Marketing Partners shows strong demand for digital skills
We hear from plenty of thought leaders that we are now in a 'post-digital' age, that we shouldn't be siloing digital and so digital is a pointless term. Whilst we agree digital should permeate the entire organisation and marketing department, rather than being a 'silo', that doesn't mean the word digital is irrelevant. In fact, specifically digital skills are in demand like never before, and this is highly apparent in the latest hiring trends.
Looking back at the data from 2015, we can see that digital marketers are highly sought after, being the most hired type of marketing professional in 2015. Of the companies surveyed 39% hired a new digital marketer, whilst only 1 in four hired a new project manager. This is interesting as in 2014 project manager was in the top three most hired positions in…
Join Dave Chaffey of Smart Insights in a new webinar highlighting the key success factors for marketing online in the business-to-business sector
Although digital marketing is not now a new discipline, it is evolving fast as the mega platforms like Facebook, Google and LinkedIn used by consumers and businesses offer new ways to engage their users and improve their monetisation .
But are you and your business keeping up? For a large number of businesses of different size, the challenges presented by online marketing are holding them back since they don't have a strategy. Falling behind with your digital strategy or not having a strategy at all means losing competitive advantage—something that no company can afford to do in today's fast-moving markets. So what can you do to improve the situation? How can you ensure that your online…
Our look at the latest trends in digital media and technology and how they will impact marketing in 2016
At the start of each year, there is always a lot of interest in predictions for the year ahead and the latest marketing trends."What's Hot?" and "What's Next?" are always the most common questions when I give webinars and talks!
What are the latest digital marketing trends for 2017?
I originally wrote this post in early 2016 and, as you'll know, the digital marketing world moves fast, so in a new post, I have recommendations on key trends for 2017. Hopefully, you'll find different ideas there. This post looks at integration and the challenges of digital transformation, the new post looks at 5 different types of trends each business should consider and specific trends that should change your approach.
Digital Marketing trends for 2017 : 8 megatrends affecting every business
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Omnisearch will let Twitter 'provide search as a service'
Importance: [rating=2] (For Social Media Managers)
Recomended source: Twitter's blog
Twitter's dev team have been rather busy of late. They've refreshed the Home timeline to highlight the best Tweets first, introduced tailored content via Highlights for Android, and personalized the search results and trends pages. This, of course, is all in response to lackluster Follower growth and losing market share to competitors like Facebook and Instagram, which, unlike Twitter, sort their content via an algorithm which predicts what users will want to see.
Twitter is sticking with the reverse chronological feed because, after all, that's what makes Twitter Twitter. But because of the obvious popularity of algorithmically curated content, it is going to be showing more and more content based on relevancy to the user, rather than just what happened to be the last thing Tweeted.
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What are employers looking for from digital marketers?
A 2016 marketing salary survey from Marketing Week is interesting reading since it sheds light on some of the issues marketers face in their roles, and highlights issues that are important for managers and HR departments to consider if they want to hang on to their marketing talent. It also highlights the demand for keeping digital skills up to date with the latest marketing trends, and a general willingness among marketers to invest their time and effort into developing their skills, which is always great to see.
The survey uses results from 4,300 marketing professionals. So although there may be some selection bias in the sample, it is plenty for inferring trends in the industry.
At Smart Insights, we're keen to support the development of digital skills as shown by our Managing Digital Skills survey. So, for us, a key finding was that only 16%…
What do C-suite level managers think drives their growth?
In our new Chart of the Day feature, we will share insights to inform your approach to digital marketing. This will include the latest benchmarks of results from digital marketing like conversion or clickthrough rates; consumer and business adoption of digital media and, as in this case, responses from businesses to manage digital transformation
In this survey by Forbes Insights, 255 company executives, 65% of which were from the C-suite level were asked about which digital technologies were working best at attracting new customers for their businesses in 2016. Their response shows that social media, Marketing Automation and Digital Advertising all performed well. It is interesting how large the differences are between regions. For example, European execs found digital advertising far less effective than execs in other areas. This is perhaps because ad blocking rates are far high in France and Germany than they…
10 steps that all marketers need to take to act on The GDPR
Four years ago, The European Commission proposed a radical shake-up to the arcane data protection and privacy laws that were failing to protect the interests, rights and freedoms of millions of consumers in the EU that were facing an unprecedented threat in the misuse and misappropriation of their personal data.
With the explosion in use of the web, the Internet of Things, Cloud and mobile computing and all things digital, the EU was one of the most attractive places to do business as it’s the world’s biggest Digital Single Market.
But it was also quickly becoming one of the most unsafe places in the world to share personal data as 'cowboy marketers' looked to make a fast buck and millions of customers were getting spammed with unsolicited emails and offers…
To succeed your start-up must be lean. These are key principles to apply to marketing
Around the world, thousands of new businesses with exciting new ideas for original products start up every day. To say most of them fail is an understatement. The reality is the vast majority fail. Yet some go on to transform the way we live, eat, shop, work and pay for things. Start-ups are remaking the modern business landscape by disrupting established players. It's an exciting time to work for a start-up, or even better to be a founder. However, that doesn't change the incredibly slim odds of success.
Why do Start-ups fail?
Start-ups fail for all sorts of different reasons. But they all suffer from a set of problems which more often than not are the primary reason for their failure. Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, David Collis, outlines these problems as suffering from a…
