What does your Horoscope say about your Digital Marketing?
The Digital Marketing Horoscope 2015 links the key digital marketing trends for 2015 with the 12 signs of the Zodiac. Each sign represents a different trend and notable influencer who might share your approach to marketing!
Omnichannel marketing, wearable tech and paid amplification are just a few of the predicted digital marketing trends for 2015, identified by key industry influencers. While mobile friendly content and video continue to be key trends going into the New Year, brands will be focusing their efforts on distributing their content for maximum ROI in 2015. We will also see marketers hone their writing skills to create branded content that is confident, bold and honest to really resonate with audiences.
So, even if you don’t believe your life is governed by the position of the sun, moon and planets, some of the trends below need to be regarded as…
The TOP 5 Trends to look out for in digital marketing in 2015
1.Mobile (still)
“It’s all going mobile”.
Yes, we’ve been saying this for some time now. And every year it gets more true. The technology gets better (both hardware and networks). Things just work better. It’s faster. And easier. So consumers are more inclined to do things on mobile devices. As users, we are all accustomed to our mobile devices. We’re well up the learning curve. And so the payback becomes greater and the effort required becomes less.
For most of us, using mobile devices has become a habit and increasingly a life-support system. This thing in our pocket is the most personal communications device ever invented and many of us would struggle without it (ever lose your phone? Or drop it in the toilet? Or just run out of battery? Or struggle to…
Aligning training to marketing skills for 2015
B2B Marketing and Circle Research reported in their '2014 Professional Development Report' on how companies are carrying out their professional training and development, Interested in benchmarking your training or aligning your training to your gaps in terms of marketing skills? Their Infographic gives you a taster of the report's findings which is a paid report, and useful for supporting recruitment opportunities or building a business case for your training budget:
The top marketing skills are employees with an understanding of 'Segmentation, Profiling and Customer Insight'.
Top 2 skills gap are in 'Legal requirements' and 'Measurement and Reporting'.
62% of employers deliver ad-hoc training and the preferred delivery is face-to-face.
You can download their full infographic for more highlights from their Professional Development Report. Our…
Protect your brand in 2015 with the right tools
If you thought brand competition was intense in the real world, you can only imagine what it's like in the free-for-all digital marketplace. Sales online are constantly rising northward, and as someone who expends a lot of energy, time and money in building relationships with your customers, while heightening visibility and increasing rand awareness to grow your brand's bottom line, this post is for you.
Your days can't possibly get any busier. You might be a one-person show. You might have a staff. In either case, while you read this post, you might think your work and of those around you might be heading into overtime. It doesn't have to be that way.
Below are some questions you should consider asking regarding the ever-growing online threats your brand faces. By choosing to implement a brand protection tool, you will be…
Deck the Halls with Boughs of Holly
Yes, even now Christmas is being hijacked by people like me - hence the headline. And it’s this marketing exercise of Christmas that especially fascinates me.
The marketing started in 300AD when in the Rome of the Emperor Constantine (recently converted to Christianity) the celebration of Christ’s birth was made to coincide with Saturnalia. The feel- good of a great blow-out got the Christian bandwagon rolling along nicely.
This coincidence of celebrating Christ’s birth and roll-out-the barrel party time continued happily until typically the mean old sod, Mr Austerity Cromwell banned Christmas. Back to normal and a lot more when Charles 11 returned to England.
Enter the four great apostles of Christmas early in the 19th century, first Washington Irving…
2015 marketing trends lists: Big, safe but dangerous - Don’t let lists limit your thinking!
We’re nearing the end of the 2015 prediction window, where there is the annual glut of big, vague and safe lists of trends we love to read and share. We seem obsessed with lists.
But think of the problem with these lists... Each and every year lists appear to generalise, distort and delete, so by definition they remove what’s relevant to you. They create edges that don’t exist, and so they remove the real value. They can’t help but do that. Any list is written from ‘their’ start point, how likely is that directly applicable by you?
So who wants to read generic trend beliefs? Is it adding to the conversation or layering on more noise or jargon? A list will be most often written to match the agenda, PR objectives, knowledge and experience of the writer/seller. Worse,…
Recommendations on the top tips, techniques and tools to reach content marketing excellence in 2015
2014 has certainly been a busy year for content marketing and something that wasn’t a surprise given the research and buzz evident at the start of the year which showed that content marketing was the highest rated marketing priority for marketers. The more recent 2015 marketing trends poll on Smart Insights showed that content marketing is still the top marketing priority for 2015.
But as the year has gone on, what have we really learnt about content marketing and the lessons we need to follow in order to execute this particular area of digital marketing effectively?
In this post I’ve grouped together some key content marketing themes from 2014 and links to recommended best practice articles and resources from Smart Insights and other sites.
Key areas of focus
Understanding content marketing
Before embarking on content marketing for your business, it's…
A review of the biggest digital marketing events of 2014
It’s time for us to start writing the history of 2014. This has been a year with its share of growing pains from deploying digital technologies, but also with some remarkable new opportunities emerging from the technologies that connect users to their physical environment and to the human networks that they value.
Here is a month by month description of a year that we all helped to shape and one that provides a lot of lessons to take with us into 2015.
January
The ‘internet of things’ came knocking on people’s doors early in the year. On January 13 Google purchased Nest, the makers of very smart home thermostats and smoke/carbon monoxide detectors.
Under normal circumstances these might not be considered the sexiest of accessories but Nest’s CEO Tony Fadell…
5 things we can learn from the Santa brand
Now, if you’re looking for tips on marketing, the big man in red may not be the obvious place to start. But look behind the bushy beard and you’ll see an astute marketer who has some smart tips to share on making Christmas a roaring success
1. He plans ahead
Those toys don’t all appear by magic on Christmas Eve. When the reindeer are all back in their stable, on Christmas Day, he and the elves have a confab about what worked and what they could do better next year. Now for marketers in the real world, this conversation probably needs to happen in January when everyone’s back in the office, and there are some stats to review. But the principle is still the same.
2. He knows his target audience
Santa has a…
4 types of mobile app metrics that must be reported
A mobile app's raison d'être, just like any other product, is to generate more money for its creator than it costs to build. Use mobile app analytics to evaluate effectiveness of your mobile app marketing methods and to ensure ad spending leads to installations, and installations lead to app use and in-app purchasing. To review your approach to measuring app effectiveness, here are 4 types of measure we recommend.
1 Tracking the number of installs
One of the key metrics regardless of the app business model is the number of daily installs and their sources. Do your installs come from mobile ads or from app store directly? What is the split between paid and free sources of users and how does it change over time? Tracking paid and free installs are the basic metrics every mobile marketer should track from day one.
Answering these questions is…
