A case study of marketing for start-ups with low/no budgets
In our current and future enterprises, we all have the duty and obligation to generate new customers for our services or products. To maintain our dream and vision, unfortunately, despite being an absolute truth, the main barrier for start-up companies is the lack of capital for investment. Case studies of how Nike, Sony and McDonalds invest in brand marketing isn't too relevant - although you are also aiming to build your brand! However, facing this financial limitation, we can use online marketing in our favour to take the first steps in overcoming the investment barrier.
Here are some ideas based on our experience of creating an online presence on a shoestring budget.
1. Initial contact to start building contacts
Building initial contacts on an email list is what our initial success was based on. These were our 'Early adopters.' To begin with, we do…
How are companies managing content marketing today?
Lee Odden gave a great webcast on Creative Content marketing for Smart Insights on the 12th April - thanks if you attended and many thanks Lee for your great insights! If you want to catch up on Lee's advice and examples you can review it at the end of this post.
A couple of quotes from Lee to live by in your content marketing that I picked out are:
@leeodden's formula for successful #contentmarketing: "Ask people to share something, then recognise or reward them: ow.ly/k02xK
— Dr Dave Chaffey (@DaveChaffey) April 12, 2013
and
"Successful #contentmarketing is Creative + Social + Optimised" @leeodden of @toprank
— Dr Dave Chaffey (@DaveChaffey) April 12, 2013
I also wanted to share the results of some of the polls that Lee and I devised for the webcast. These Votes are good for increasing the…
Take control by reducing WILFING and other timesappers
"Every action has an equal and opposite reaction" Isaac Newton
And, of course every inaction has, well, an equal and opposite non-reaction. If we don't work on the right marketing priorities, if we lack focus on the right marketing activities, then you won't get the result. After all, the world doesn't sit still because you're busy on something of (questionable) priority.
Busy - what does that mean?
It was only recently that the word 'busy' made me think how accurate a term it is for a lot of wasted time in marketing teams. A lot of marketers, me included, have and do spend time being busy - that's busy avoiding the priorities, avoiding doing the hard work. A few friends I have from Liverpool use the term "busy" as a negative term, meaning that…
5 ways of encouraging Disruptive Innovation
Disruptive innovation is no longer the exception, it’s becoming the rule as category incumbents are swept aside by new entrants. Just look at Blackberry, Blockbuster, Borders, Kodak and even Polaroid – all erstwhile “innovative” companies that somehow missed opportunities to leapfrog to the next big thing in subsequent innovation that is often digitally fuelled.
Memorex can be added to this infamous listing, once darling of the US stock market, when its innovative pipeline under a new CEO ran dry in a most spectacular way embarrassing its entire board.
This is by no way an isolated example. If we’re not proactively driving disruption in a systemic manner, we’ll eventually need to react to it or confront reality. Most Leaders however, aren’t prepared for the challenges of leading through such prolonged periods of uncertainty and the often accompanying…
Ensure you have the right #smalldata foundations in place before you begin looking for answers in #bigdata
You can't have failed to have noticed the interest in Big Data. Of course, there have been people debating whether this is actually a worthwhile term. After all, “big data” is just data… but bigger...
Once the concept becomes more widely applied, it will probably go back to being just data, but the increase in the amount of data available made it necessary for some to make the distinction. Like most marketing technology terms it is useful good to have a word to show the value of the concept.
Applying Big Data principles to affiliate marketing
Simply put, I think that the more data you have, and the better you become at analysing it, the better it is for you and your business. After all, a decision…
Examples of how to use the new widget, event and mobile segmentation features
Google Analytics 'Realtime' features launched almost 2 years ago, and brought plenty of practical benefits to tool. For example, see these 5 ways to use Google Analytics Realtime from the excellent Helen Birch.
The set of Realtime tools has now been updated with some very useful extras. Here are my 3 favourite updates, and a couple of reasons you may choose to use them:
Realtime Dashboard Widgets.
Realtime Event Reports.
Realtime Segmentation by Desktop / Mobile / Tablet.
Here are some screengrabs and notes on each of the changes:
New Feature 1. Realtime Dashboard Widgets:
Google have added ‘realtime’ widgets to dashboards. The tool to add those looks like this:
Here’s how they look within the dashboard:
(minor note: ‘dimensions’ aren’t yet working for me there. I presume they’re fixing this)
New Feature…
Learning from Zig Ziglar and Marc Benioff
As a busy marketer working client-side, you'll often hear yourself - and others - talk about not having enough time. That there aren't enough hours in the day. I know from my own (sometimes painful) experiences, when I sometimes sit working on the wrong stuff at 1 AM, that this is rubbish - that we all get the same minutes in the day, it's how we choose to spend them that matters. I believe that it's a matter of focus.
The challenge of focus
Seth Godin recently wrote about FOMO (fear of missing out) and it really resonated from a marketing perspective. Passionate marketers often run themselves and each other ragged, worrying if we're all missing out on the latest insight, learning, app, model, idea, case study or news piece. I understand that, it's often…
A summary of mobile video marketing trends
In this article we are going to show how mobile video usage is likely to change in the coming years and offer some tips on how you can ride the wave to benefit your business. Over recent years, we have seen major changes in both online video and in mobile usage. A combination of the two has transformed the way we interact with our mobile phones and the way that we watch online video. Things are set to change even more.
What are the experts saying?
Cisco has recently predicted a 13x increase in mobile data traffic from 0.9 exabytes per month in 2012 to 11.2 exabytes per month in 2017. Their report points to four key factors that are influencing this rate of growth:
1) Increase in mobile users
2) More mobile…
Our monthly summary of advice and developments to help manage online marketing
Strategy and planning
Early to mid March saw the annual SXSW conference take place in Austin, Texas. This is increasingly influential in highlighting marketing trends and technology. Thanks to David Sealey for his summary of 5 inspiring lessons from marketing. If you’re following the latest trends, then I also recommend Altimeter’s take on the technologies that matter from SXSW.
This year it seems that Omnichannel is the new term for managing multichannel marketing to emphasise the growing importance of social media marketing. If it’s new to you or you’re looking for examples, read more in our Introduction to Omnichannel marketing and these examples of Omnichannel retail.
One of our most popular posts on planning this month is an Digital media introduction infographic courtesy of Hallam Internet Marketing.
We think this is a…
By
28 Mar 2013
Unless you're one of the lucky few, work can become monotonous. Same commute. Same desk. Same issues.
For this reason I leapt at the opportunity to head out to Austin Texas for South by South-West (SXSW) Interactive. Four days of inspiring learning and informal networking followed and I'd recommend that if you ever get the chance to go, take it.
It's difficult to download everything that you experience at SXSW into a single presentation or post. Rather than give a travel log or diary entry on the events, I hope to offer some inspiration from my notes. I've picked 5 of the things that made me really sit up and pay attention and then after each item I've posted questions designed to inspire you on how to improve your job, business or life.
Ultimately I want my post to inspire you to build or improve…
