The most popular jobs in digital marketing show what employers are looking for

We showed in our recent review that digital marketing is now bigger than Internet marketing based on searches for knowledge and services related to digital marketing. As demand for digital marketing has grown, so has the number of specialist digital jobs needed in companies and agencies. Google Trends shows us that searches for Jobs in Digital Marketing has overtaken Jobs in Internet Marketing and continued to grow through 2013.

What is the talent gap between digital marketing jobs and resources

Earlier in 2013 we created the second infographic in this post showing the most in-demand online marketing jobs based on LinkedIn skills and the popularity of online marketing jobs in the UK. We have now added this related infographic which shows the Talent gap between…

How to assess the contribution of different communications touchpoints

In my last post for Smart Insights I published a complete list of today's channels. Thanks to some comments and suggestions , the channel list has reached 106 channels so far. 95 of these are suitable for marketing purposes be they physical, digital or a bit of both. This is the way they break down.

[caption id="attachment_32020" align="aligncenter" width="550"] Venn Diagram of Marketing Channels[/caption]

Naturally there are at least two questions that arise when faced with such channel choice.

Firstly, how do you pick which channel to use? And then secondly, how do you measure the combined performance across channels? The latter question of course relates to the tricky issue of attribution - the apportioning of sales revenue to the channels that lead up…

8 techniques to choose the right marketing agencies to pitch to you

This article supports the Smart Insights agency selection template. The template helps businesses with the next step in the process, which is using a scorecard to help you choose the best agency when several are pitching to you. This workbook details a range of selection criteria which you’ll glean during either desk research, due diligence stage and/or at face to face meetings with an agency (either ‘chemistry’ meetings or pitch presentations). In the first part of this article I suggest how you can pull together a short list of potential agency partners.  In a follow-up article I will look at approaches to running the actual selection or pitch process. I say ‘or’ because you don’t necessarily need to run a full-blown pitch process (which can be very time consuming for both you and the agencies involved) for smaller projects or where an…

A guide to setting high-level goals to keep your marketing on track

The range of marketing channels available today and the rate at which they change drives to us to work longer, harder and more efficiently...  it can often feel like you are ice skating uphill. The challenge can seem even harder if realistic goals aren't set to base your plans around.  The lack of goals and just a constant, never-ending journey of 'change' can mean that we miss out on the rewards of achievement. My time spent as part of growing a marketing agency with smaller and larger multi billion dollar companies has taught me that both benefit businesses and staff benefit from moving to clearer goals.

Goals are different to objectives and KPIs

Even in my relatively short time in marketing (9 years), I have seen the rise of data, analytics, information and I…

The essential ingredients of a B2B Digital Strategy

Professional service marketing has rarely ever been about creating immediate business transactions. It's always been a long-term effort of building reputation, demonstrating capabilities and showcasing credibility through opinion and thought leadership.

Whilst content marketing and promotion through social media remains a core activity of professional services digital marketing, most marketers experience a rapidly expanding gap between the demand for material and their ability to consistently execute on that demand internally. The sources of thought leadership content are usually the practising professionals, who are often too busy and aligned with managing ongoing client caseloads and maintaining existing client bases.

Given the economic pressure on firms to maintain – and improve – profitability, as with most initiatives, developing a digital strategy tends to be viewed as less important than shorter-term business development methods. But whilst most professional service…

Our monthly roundup of the latest developments and advice in 5 key areas of digital marketing

1. Strategy and planning

#PlanToSucceed. In October we launched this new campaign offering free marketing planning tools. The idea behind the campaign is to encourage better planning in the countdown to 2014. We also created this new Slideshare to inspire improved marketing planning approaches.

Managing Digital Marketing in 2014? Last month I shared my ideas on 2014 marketing trends. We’re keen also to keen to develop understanding of how marketers will manage marketing in 2014, so we’re now following up with a joint survey with the Technology for Marketing and Advertising Conference (TFM&A 2014) - please take the survey to receive the free report advising on approaches to managing digital marketing in 2014.

Latest technology innovations?. Closely related, in…

Using the Diffusion of Innovation (DOI) to engage with different types of buyers when new products are launched

What is The Diffusion of Innovation?

This model helps a business to understand how a buyer adopts and engages with new products or technologies over time. Companies will use it when launching a new product or service, adapting it or introducing an existing product into a new market. It shows how the product can be adopted by five different categories/customer types and how to engage as a business with these types of people:   Of course, the emergence of new digital technologies and marketing techniques means that the diffusion of innovation model is particularly relevant to digital marketers. Analysts Gartner have a long standing report showing the stages of adoption of new technologies that is useful for digital strategists to follow. See our post on the Latest Gartner Digital Technology…

A practical way to link different types of plan within a business

It’s often the blanket reactions to the word ‘planning’ that suggest somebody’s misunderstanding of what the word actually means. The classics are “I don’t have time to plan”? This is interesting since the same person has time to do the work again, or write off budget, for marketing that fails “I’m spending this week / month planning”. Wow - for what, the over keenness to get lost in planning can feel a bit too excitable sometimes! “I’m just getting on with it”. It’s common to see people deep dive into their work with lists, Gantt’s and schedules, and little context for the mass of action

So what’s the solution?

All planning is not the same, the purpose of planning is to enable enough forethought around the desired results vs costs from a set of actions. So it’s a ‘horses for courses’ thing and the…

An alert about LinkedIn Sponsored Job Listings

Importance: ★★★ Recommended link: LinkedIn Sponsored Job Listings An alert to let you know about LinkedIn sponsored job listings if you're not aware of them. We get quite a few questions about how to expand awareness of new roles outside of traditional recruitment, so thought we'd share this option. These listings are now showing in the main feed on the member’s homepage where historically, they were only accessible in the ‘Jobs You May Be Interested in’ on the homepage and to email subscribers.

'The benefit to these listings is that they have the capability of reaching those who may not be actively looking for work, but happen across the job recommendation on the site or via email, and decide to learn more or apply' These will…

Examples showing that Why is often more important than How and What in brand storytelling

Have you ever wondered why some companies do what they do?, Why do Hotpoint make washing machines?, Why do Dyson make hoovers?, Why do Casio make watches?,Why do Yale make locks? or Why do Baxi make boilers?

Why does Alexander Dennis make single and double-decker buses? (you probably didn’t know this right? You do now)

If you haven’t already then I urge you to read a book called ‘Starting with why’ by Simon Sinek. It’ll change the way you think about marketing and differentiating your business from the competition. The book talks about how some companies became so successful by communicating the why’s (beliefs, causes, visions) before they communicate what they do & how they do it.

Simon…