5 tips showing how campaign planning prevents fires

Working in various marketing roles, I have noticed that even though we have advanced with technology to make our jobs easier, we have never been more short of time, with more jobs on our plate, and customers (internal and external) are demanding real-time updates and output work at an ever-increasing pace. When I catch up with my marketing network and ask how it’s going 'I'm fire fighting' is the common response. This article addresses the challenges of getting campaigns off the ground and gives some ideas on avoiding mistakes that I have seen in my roles and network roles over the last 9 years. We all know that integrated campaigns are the key to success, and we have all read and understood the templates that put them together. However, I found that when it was…

Daniel Buchuk on the launch of SimilarWeb

As part of our occasional feature giving readers the low down on new tools for digital marketers to collect insight, in this post we ask Daniel Buchuk from SimilarWeb to introduce their service. SimilarWeb enables companies to benchmark performance against competitors. If you're interested in this process and other tools available, check out our post detailing competitor benchmarking services. 

During the interview, Daniel talks about the story behind SimilarWeb, why their tools are different to those in the marketplace such as Alexa or Compete and the availability of  free features.

1. What inspired you to create SimilarWeb, when there are already other competitor benchmarking tools?

There's an increasing demand for online competitive intelligence and existing high-end tools in the market are often too complex and unaffordable for the mid market. There are simply no solutions…

6 experts and 6 takeaways on the future of brand advertising

This is a nice piece from Contently. They're asking what exactly does it mean to be a brand publisher today?  They polled a number of thought leaders from some of the world’s biggest brands, agencies and publishers about the future of content marketing and social sharing. Here’s what they had to say.

The 6 take-aways…

Sponsored content - this is interesting from Mashable, a big publisher collaborating with brands on creating sponsored content. Relevance is the success factor from the consumer's perspective. Is this something your brand could look to do for easy outreach wins? The longevity, credibility and scalability of your sponsored content featuring on publisher websites is a paid tactic worth considering over advertising spend?Why content, why now? We’ve written much on this and Contently’s CEO suggests it’s driven by a brand’s need to ‘say something’ and the opportunity created by…

Sharing ideas on managing a remote team using social media

While it might be true that in some cases absence makes the heart grow fonder, this is not necessarily so in the workplace. Fortunately, modern technology and a little bit of extra effort and creativity can help overcome the difficulties of building relationships between team members and colleagues.

Source: Image: Bingmanson / Flickr

Out of sight, out of mind..? As someone who has worked and lived in several countries, I am used to working with people from different cultural backgrounds who speak different languages. However in my current position I have the additional challenge of managing a team which is split between two countries: half of my team are at our Head Office…

How agencies can provide clients with an integrated service given the increasing connection between brand, content marketing and SEO

After a couple of years of travelling and lifestyle consulting, I returned to the UK in 2012 with the goal of setting up a digital agency. I knew I wanted us to be very hands on and do transformative work with a limited number of clients I loved working with. But beyond that, I wasn’t sure what service I needed to create to do this!

Source: InterGreater

It has taken me a year to work this out. But I’m there now and I’m inspired and it’s a journey of discovery I am keen to share.

First Steps: Recognising key developments in SEO and social media

I started this journey as a big believer in SEO having driven 50%…

Our roundup of the "need-to-know" developments in digital marketing and technology

The main development across the major digital marketing platforms in July was the upgrading of Google AdWords to Enhanced campaigns and adding Promotional tabs in Gmail. There were also significant developments of analytics tools for Facebook, LinkedIn and Google this month. So, in our five categories this month we focus on advice to improve marketing effectiveness.

Strategy and planning

Are you ready for Marketing 2020 Steven Van Belleghem asks how we should be preparing now for future shifts in marketing.

Here’s a summary of his ideas:

The top 10 most useful digital marketing statistics sources? In July we released a new compilation of 50+ trends available for Expert members to include in their business case presentations. But many of the best stats are freely…

If social networks are your online resume, how do you stand out?

Recruiters are now scouring social media sites to either head-hunt candidates and/or to check credentials, and candidates are actively searching for roles, uploading CVs - some without realising that their LinkedIn profile is their on-line resume!.

Earlier on in the year, we interviewed top recruiters who reinforced this view and provided tips for companies looking to recruit the right digital staff online following it through to interview questions.

Reed Global have released an infographic, sourcing information from sites including Reed Employment and the Guardian, to provide the top ten tips on how a candidate can use social media to improve their job search, including savvy ways to produce a CV - ever considered creating an Infographic?

If you are an active user of LinkedIn, we produced a …

Social media ROI is a messy business

How do you bring some order to it? There’s no getting away from it. The higher up the sales funnel, the harder and messier it is to make decisions on measuring ROI. Social media is, like any channel (if you choose to view it as one) not perfect to measure, though far from hard to get a good handle on it, and to compare channels with channels using techniques like Google's Multichannel funnels or social reports. It’s the scale of choices that become complex. It’s much easier to post rationalise and retrospectively connect the dots, but not easy to plan for it - otherwise why is ‘viral’ still so remarkable in social media - and why we don’t see the experts doing amazing campaigns repeatedly. It’s always been a challenge, attributing the value of visitors through multiple channels, social media has made that more…

Ideas, examples and a process to develop your online value proposition (OVP)

I’m really pleased that Jay Baer of Convince and Convert could speak recently in our webcast. He explained three blueprints and examples of how companies can develop their Youtility.  Jay is one of the great original thinkers who shows how to apply social media and content marketing to get business results. Dan and I have been following his ideas from his blog for a couple of years now. The talk and slide deck are now available

Youtility talk

Youtility slide deck

…

A new report from eBay mapping the flow of international sales

Value to retailers: [rating=4]

Recommended link: eBay cross-border Ecommerce sales report

eBay commissioned Nielsen to conduct a research study on the importance of cross-border / International Ecommerce sales in six key markets around the world – the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Australia, China and Brazil. The output is this interesting infographic which shows the main flows of traffic (click to enlarge).

The report makes the analogy of cross-border Ecommerce with the Spice routes of the past between Asia and Europe. The report certainly provides support for investing in approaches to localise Ecommerce merchandising to market needs. Just within these six markets:

Cross-border online shopping will be worth $105 billion this year with 94 million consumers regularly buying from overseas websites.By 2018, this will increase nearly 200%…