How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time
You’ve probably heard this expression before. The “elephant” is the project, or goal, which is so large and challenging that you feel totally overwhelmed by it, and can’t even see where to start.
The advice is not to tackle it all at once, but to start with small steps. Take enough of them, and before you know it, you will have made serious progress – and no longer feel so overwhelmed.
For many business owners, online marketing is that elephant.
All those social media platforms….. So much to learn and understand …. Such an investment of time and money required…..
Where do you even begin? How do you make serious progress?
It can be totally paralysing.
In three months’ time, I…
Contact Management and Email Marketing rank highest for Marketing Automation buyers
Software Advice has released their 2015 research into how buyers are selecting their Marketing Automation Software and which features are important to American companies.
This year it has revealed that 98% of buyers are 'first time buyers', a rise in 8% from last years results, indicating a growing demand for small businesses to move away from manual processes as they appreciate the return on investment.
What functionality are buyers looking for in their Marketing Automation Systems?
Companies are investing in industry-specific systems as well as focusing on key functionality. Over 2/3 of respondents have prioritised their system requirements towards contact management features, along with email marketing and lead tracking capabilities.
Which industries are using Marketing Automation?
This year, the report shows that low adopters…
US companies need to prepare for controls over their marketing to EU citizens in the wake of agreement on EU General Data Protection Regulation
This blog is part 3 of Ardi Kolah's series on the GDPR. See the others here.
The State of the European Union address by EU President Jean Claude-Juncker on 9 September 2015 may appear on the surface to be largely insignificant for US-multi-national marketing activities within the EU.
However, such thinking is highly dangerous as it reveals an almost total lack of awareness of the risks to business continuity facing some of America’s biggest corporations that generate vast profits from their marketing activities with EU citizens.
Here in Europe, many companies and organisations are bracing themselves for the biggest shake up in data protection and privacy for a decade with the forthcoming EU General Data Protection Regulation…
Discover your business's ability to Plan, Reach, Act, Convert and Engage
Applying the many digital channels and technologies to your business is no easy task. The industry moves fast, and there are a large number of different disciplines to master (see our list of the top 20 digital marketing skills). Email marketing, SEO, Social Media Marketing, Conversion Rate Optimisation, the list goes on, and each one requires a very different set of skills and awareness of the success factors for different platforms.
Amongst the many different skills we need to master for digital marketing, it's easy to lose sight of the big picture of how a business is using digital marketing to compete. Our research shows that many businesses don't have a digital marketing plan, so knowing how to structure a plan can be difficult.
To help provide a structure for creating a strategy, when Smart Insights first launched, we developed this Excel digital…
Which of these skills does the modern marketer need too?
Throughout this week we've been looking at the digital skills needed by marketers and found a large percentage of marketers roles is now taken up by managing digital activities. Here's a round-up of all our posts and new report on the level of digital marketing skills. This means marketers are starting to need many of the skills previously reserved for IT professionals. So we thought it would be interesting to see how the role of the IT professional has developed over the past 25 years, and where it is headed.
As Gen Y steps up to take centre stage in the employment pool, and technology increasingly dominates our life and work, it is predicted that there will be an 18% growth in tech jobs by 2022.
This infographic looks at how tech roles have evolved…
Why were these 24 CRM Vendors listed as the top suppliers?
Value: [rating=4]
Recommended link: 2015 CRM Market Index Report - A Complete Analysis of Market Leaders CRM (registration required for this free report)
Finding the right CRM vendor can be a minefield since there are so many to choose from and selecting the right CRM system is a major long-term investment and commitment. Procurement activities can include auditing your internal requirements and current CRM; building your business case for capital; writing your CRM specifications; in many cases going through a tendering process (depending on the capital investment and more likely for the public sector); then shortlisting and choosing your vendor. All that effort can take up to 18 months for some companies even before the CRM partner has been selected..
In the past, we have shared CRM and MA posts on how to plan for…
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11 Sep 2015
Is Customer Experience the New Branding?
Something I've been thinking about for some time is the relationship between brand and user experience. I've come to realise that for me, when it comes to exposure in an online world, there really is little distinction and it's hard to determine when one process starts and the other ends - or even if there are start or end points... Working as Digital Director for a brand consultancy, more often than I and my team are tasked with making a brand "come alive" or "get their story across" online. For me these client driven terms have some weight and value, but for me the key challenge for our digital team is making their "brand values, promises and customer expectations, clearly and appropriately experienced online".
Branding Before Jesus
To help explore this new shift in branding, it's important to explore the origins of brand. Staring in 2,000 BC there was branding, farmers' cattle and livestock were branded…
The UK has the highest percentage of e-commerce purchases via Smartphone in the EU
Smartphones have become a key component of how we browse the web, entertain ourselves and consume media content. 85% of 18-24-year-olds have Smartphone's, and the rate of uptake barely decreases with age; 84% of 25-34-year-olds have Smartphones and 81% of 35-44-year-olds do.
E-commerce from mobile devices is growing fast, and the UK is ahead of the curve. 32% of people surveyed in the UK had made a purchase on their Smartphone in the past month, the highest rate in the EU.
Digital marketers need to keep up with the rapid trend towards mobile, and it certainly moves fast. In just the past four years Smartphone use has rocketed by 43%. Use this infographic to see some of the latest stats regarding mobile use and uptake.
This infographic is courtesy of the…
Five recommendations for approaching digital innovation in order to serve the customer better
Through using digital technology and media, customers have found new ways to communicate, consume and share. They now measure the performance of organisations and the brand experience based on the standards set by ‘digital natives’ such as Amazon or Uber. Customers expect the same rapid response times, a seamless omnichannel experience and real-time information from every other organisation they do business with.
While most traditional organisations now have customer-centricity and enhancing the customer experience high on their strategic agenda, they’re at a distinct disadvantage as few of these organisations have been built around the customer’s needs or with an ‘outside-in’ approach. Digital start-ups, on the other hand, have customer-centricity at their very core which gives them the edge on customer experience.
Why digital disruptors have the edge…
4 Agile Marketing Experts give their views on what it takes
Unfortunately, too many marketers have confused ad-hoc social media promotions with genuine agile marketing.
While the original concept of ‘agile’ as a way of working was first popularised in the world of software development, it wasn’t until recently when applied to the realm of social media that we’ve started to talk about ‘agile marketing’.
Certainly real-time engagement with your customers can get you noticed. Oreo Cookies, for example, is famous for its ‘dunk in the dark’ tweet during the Super Bowl power outage.
The success of Oreo Cookies has spurred many brands to attempt their own quick turnaround content for social media, which has often got them noticed in the wrong kind of way.
From barely thought-out newsjacking attempts, to the sloppy creation of ham-fisted memes, poor execution has helped make agile marketing a…
