Get in the game - don’t get stuck on the sideline
More than a third (35%) of senior marketing professionals believe that digital marketing will account for more than 50% of marketing spend by 2019, according to a new report from Accenture. 37% feel it’ll account for 75% or more of all budget.
Accenture’s research is based on survey responses of nearly 600 executives in 11 countries conducted between November 2013 and January 2014.
My immediate question when I saw this headline for the report is what is "digital investment"? Is this just online advertising rather than actual marketing? We have to guard from a lazy “TV 2.0” mindset towards digital where we move ad spend, literally online. Thankfully the report is more broadly focussed on using digital to orientate around a consumer - so all's good!
What's behind the positivity about the future of digital? With the Accenture…
Some practical tips based on 10+ years of marking exams
I was first involved in setting and marking exams in digital marketing around 2000 for the pioneers taking the Chartered Institute of Marketing E-marketing certificate or award as it was known then. Since then I have marked many exams and assignments and a few years ago I posted this note on my personal blog in response to requests.
Recently, I have had some more requests for tips on taking exams although I'm no longer directly involved with marking since I'm focusing on developing resources for Smart Insights with our team of writers.
You will see that these tips are based on obvious, but nonetheless common failings in approach, it's natural that a logical approach will "go out of the window" under exam pressure, but hopefully these tips may enable you to have some "grace under pressure".
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A review of the Academy of Marketing 2014 Conference
The 2014 Academy of Marketing Conference took place in July in sunny Bournemouth on the south coast of the UK. Over 370 marketing educators from across the world gathered to share and discover the latest academic marketing practices over 3 days, with between 12 to 16 sessions a day!
In this post I have compiled what I found to be the most interesting research into digital marketing grouped into different research themes. You can see that research into social media marketing is strongly represented. I hope you find it useful if you're a researcher or a professional or full-time student focusing on online marketing.
What was interesting was the convergence between the academic and practitioner standpoints. There is a push to identify ‘managerial implications’ of much of the work being undertaken and here are my highlights:
Online communities
Dr Jan Breitsohl from…
Integrating online marketing into marketing communications is the key to success & longevity
The head of the world’s largest PR firm, Edelman, declared recently that the marketing industry has its business backward. That marketing has a “short-term and broken model”. And, he’s saying, it doesn’t have to be this way. Where brands could originally only reach and stimulate consumers through advertising or promotional marketing, we’re seeing brands such as American Express, Coke, Red Bull and Dove all creating content rich stories, integrated into much wider campaigns, to enable connections in consumer news feeds.
Annoyingly Edelman is pointing to “marketing” but referencing the advertising model specifically, but the point is still great if viewed in a wider context.
“I see the emergence of a new paradigm, which is ‘communications marketing’ instead of ‘marketing communications.’”
Richard Edelman, CEO, Edelman
Of course Edelman is encouraging a PR or journalistic mindset of ‘communications’ vs…
A Review of CTRL ALT Delete by Mitch Joel
As we work from day-to-day, week-to-week and month-to-month it’s easy to miss the extent of the changes that digital media and technology have made to our businesses and careers.
I will be discussing how to manage these changes, both at a business level and a personal level in our upcoming webinar on July 10th with Mitch Joel, the author of CTRL ALT Delete and Six Pixels of Separation, who is President of Twist Image - one of the largest independent Digital Marketing agencies in North America, but sold to WPP earlier this year.
It's a free webcast and if you register now you can watch live or playback.
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Alignment vs Impact: Why businesses must get a grip of digital
Managers of digital transformation initiatives should ask where does digital strategies ‘sit’ compared with more general business and marketing strategies - where does leadership of the digital agenda actual come from, and is that right? A new report from Forrester, State of Digital Business 2014 , has revealed major disconnects between the marketing and technology sides of businesses. The survey responses from 1,591 senior business leaders in the UK and US during November 2013 to January 2014, signals a “digital strategy execution crisis."
In the report, 74% of executives report that their company has a digital strategy - yet a ‘digital strategy’ often means something different in each business.
What does digital strategy mean to you? It’s often a quick tactical respond - moving spend into digital display ads, re-targeting and email within a CRM programme, search engine marketing. Or is it bigger than that, involving a…
A round-up of our advice and alerts from June 2014
Colin Green, Marketing Director, Land Rover UK stressed the importance of integration when he stated that:
“Truly Integrated Marketing is the holy grail for the marketeer. ”
However, it seems that integration is easier said than done. Our research on Managing Digital Marketing showed that many are making efforts to improve integration across the many marketing channels today.
Given these challenges, in our strategy posts this month we have focused on articles discussing how to improve integration.
Strategy and planning advice
Improving integrated digital marketing
Three examples of integrated campaigns
How to create an integrated marketing campaign
Talkwalker - a review of a new, free social media monitoring tool
Influencer marketing - Bryony Thomas explains her recommended strategic approach to influencer marketing.
17 LinkedIn Profile tips - this infographic was one of our most popular…
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26 Jun 2014
Avoiding common 6 pitfalls of marketing campaign planning
In my previous post reviewing techniques for digital marketing integration post I touched on the three major challenges to integrating digital marketing: planning, people and agencies. In this article I will look in more detail at these challenges as they relate to marketing campaigns, giving suggestions on how they can be avoided through better management.
To help make the campaign successful it can help to think about what can go wrong in the planning and execution and then avoid these pitfalls. In this post I'll show 6 pitfalls that I’ve seen with campaign planning - each of the following pitfalls is directly aligned to one of six stages of creating an integrated campaign covered in the Smart Insights marketing campaign planning/briefing template which I will describe more fully in a later post:
1. Campaign goals and tracking.
2. Target audience,…
3 essential requirements for a more strategic marketing planning approach
To compete today, a company needs a unique brand story if it’s going to really have success at capturing and maintaining a clear competitive edge over other organizations in its niche. This brand story has to resonate with your customers and play to their desires, passions and needs. But how can this be created? I believe that the best way to achieve this is by creating and implementing a systematic process of research with the framework of something called strategic planning. In this article I will cover the 3 techniques which can help support a more strategic approach.
1. Make time for Marketing Research and Planning
The most important quality that an organization needs if it wants to make understanding its customers a key part of its long term strategic planning is the development of a deep understanding of those customers real needs.
You will have to get to…
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25 Jun 2014
Incorporating the 4Cs of integrating digital marketing into marketing campaigns
Do you know the “4Cs” of integrated campaigns? When thinking about how to create a successful integrated marketing campaign, Pickton and Broderick’s 4 Cs explained in their book Integrated Marketing Communications can be a handy test. They outline the four key concerns that need to be addressed in order to give your campaign a chance of reaching its goals. The 4Cs are:
Coherence – different communications are logically connected?
Consistency – multiple messages support and reinforce, and are not contradictory?
Continuity – communications are connected and consistent through time?
Complementary – synergistic, or the sum of the parts is greater than the whole?
In this post we take a look at three high-profile campaigns, and offer an insight into their results related to the 4Cs .
02: Be More Dog
O2’s foray into 4G advertising asked us "to be more dog". The overall message of the campaign is that life in the digital…
