5 problems that block strategic marketing planning and strategic thinking
Michael Porter sums up the focus of strategic planning best for me:
“The essence of strategy is choosing what NOT to do. Strategy is about making choices, trade-offs; it’s about deliberately choosing to be different".
I love this Porter quote - in marketing planning (any planning) we have to make decisions - there is not endless time and resource available to any of us, there is always too much to do.
This lack of time to focus on strategic planning and thinking was shown in our research on Managing Digital Marketing. Many organisations we asked did not have a marketing strategy to align their digital strategy against... So the question is, how do achieve focus? How can we avoid the common problems that limit strategic planning?
Focus!
The central premise of Porter's advice is to develop…
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20 Jun 2014
3 key barriers that need to be overcome to help towards better integration of digital media
“Truly Integrated Marketing is the holy grail for the marketeer. ”
Colin Green, Marketing Director, Land Rover UK
Yesterday I saw a PPC advert for a pair of shoes that I’d wanted for a while. I clicked through to find that the product was actually out of stock. The next day I was retargeted by the same retailer advertising the same shoes and but at a different price, I clicked through again, and again found that the price was as it was yesterday and there was still no stock. It’s not the first time I have seen this and imagine you may have too. The experience got me thinking about the dangers of running digital marketing in silos leading to a lack of integration with businesses a long-way from the holy grail of integrated marketing communications.…
5 Franchising Q&As with a look at opportunities in Australia
Becoming a small business owner has grown into one of the hottest topics in the world business news in the past few years. With an over 90% prosperity in the franchise sector, running your own business is a one-way ticket to success. Yet, the unlimited power which franchise enterprises hold is often deeply buried under a messy pile of obscure researches and heavy statistics. Understanding the basics of franchising is the first step towards starting a successful business. This article will give answers to the top most asked franchising questions helping you improve your organisational and personal management skills.
Q1. What is a Franchise?
Franchise is generally an authorisation granted by a company or product owner which gives a person the right to market a specific service or product by using the trade name or trademark of another business. The authorised person is…
Boo hoo: “ Learning from the largest European dot-com failure
This in-depth case study of Boo.com features in the last few editions of my book Digital marketing: Strategy, Implementation and Practice - it's based is based on story of Boo.com failure from the excellent book "Boo Hoo - a dotcom story"
"Unless we raise $20 million by midnight, boo.com is dead"
So said boo.com CEO Ernst Malmsten, on May 18th 2000. Half the investment was raised, but this was too little, too late, and at midnight, less than a year after its launch, Boo.com closed. The headlines in the Financial Times, the next day read: "Boo.com collapses as Investors refuse funds; Online Sports retailer becomes Europe's first big Internet casualty".
The boo.com case remains a valuable case study for all types of businesses, since it doesn't only illustrate the challenges of managing E-commerce for a clothes retailer, but rather highlights failings in E-commerce strategy and management…
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18 Jun 2014
What can we learn from these examples of failed digital marketing strategies?
There is a tendency for both brands and agencies to accentuate the positive in case studies and write-ups of campaigns and case studies. It’s understandable to take this positive approach to hide bad news out of sight of investors, clients and consumers. However, we can often learn more when marketing failures are reviewed. In this article I’ll take a look at 4 examples of digital strategy failures that highlight good practices by showing poor practices.
1. Boo.com
Despite the fact that boo.com went spectacularly bust over a decade ago, it still offers a unique insight into one of the biggest and most costly digital business failures in European history. Boo.com aimed to become a first-to-market global brand selling sportswear and designer clothes. The business launched in 18 countries in the autumn of…
A book review of Age of Context: Mobile, Sensors, Data and the Future of Privacy by Robert Scoble and Shel Israel
This book provides a summary of current thinking in providing effective customer experiences to support commercial goals. It's not a "how to" guide, but summarises current thinking which should inform digital strategies. So what exactly is context marketing? Essentially, it’s about combining insight about customers and prospects combined with personalisation to deliver the right content to the right audience of users at the exactly the right time to satisfy the users requirements and as Hubspot states:
'A decade ago, making personal connections with people on your website was no more than a pipe dream — the technology simply wasn’t available. Today, we have the technology to truly deliver the right message to the right person at exactly the right time. It will fundamentally change…
Google MyBusiness replaces Google Places for local businesses and provides a new Google+ admin page service for all businesses
Value/Importance: [rating=2]
Recommended link:
Announced on 12th June 2014, this has been touted as a major change, with an in-depth review by Search Engine Land for example. But we have rated it as relatively low in value and importance for marketers since it should’t be overhyped - it doesn’t involve new options for marketing, rather it is a new labelling to be aware of. It’s an attempt by Google at providing a more unified business offering from Google. It’s a good move since it aims to reduce the confusion between Google+ for Business and Google Places which it replaces.
What you need to know / do
1. If you or your clients are looking to register a local business within Google, e.g. to be visible in Google Maps, you now need to go to…
Best practices and examples of building a brand in 2014
For many new businesses and startups, failure is not an option to be considered. Unfortunately, failure is exactly what the majority of new companies face the first time they introduce their brand on the internet. Far too often, e-commerce endeavours fail and the sad part is that most of the time, the owner has no idea what may have happened.
If this sounds like something you have been through, it may be time to take a good, long look at your branding strategy.
Why many branding strategies fail?
Many people do not realize exactly what a brand is or what it means to have one. They have a vague idea… yet never take the time to understand fully the concept or even realize that there is more to it than a recognizable logo. They find an appealing image, slap a catchy phrase onto it,…
Our monthly summary of the biggest ‘need to know’ developments in digital marketing
In this month’s round-up, the two main alerts are in the sections about search marketing (notifying about a major Google algorithm update) and social media marketing (an alert about the impending Facebook brand page change).
We start by looking at advice on applying two classic marketing planning techniques.
Strategy and planning
Applying Pareto’s 80:20 rule to marketing - this post proved one of the most popular of the month - many find Pareto’s rule familiar!
Examples of TOWS analysis. Everyone in business knows about SWOT analysis, but I find when training that, relatively few know the much more powerful TOWS analysis that helps you plan forwards rather than look backwards. In this post I take another look at the technique.
Mistakes to avoid when creating…
21 Internet trends from the annual KPCB trends report
For anybody that doesn’t know, Mary Meeker is rightly famed for her intelligent selection and presentation of the key trends of digital business, so today we’re sharing a summary of her latest report with what we’ve jumped out to us from a marketing perspective - it's hot off the press this week. The full deck is 164 slides, I found I needed two coffees...
Our summary
Mobile, mobile, mobile. We're all going mobile in a hurry. This is where Meeker's report has focused for the last few years. The Internet as a whole is growing, led by developing countries of course, and mobile is growing faster.
Video is growing in power for brands who seize it. Television viewers are evolving to embrace the second screen for interactive content, while also ditching TV for online video content.
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