Using RACE to structure your social analytics
Social analytics is still relatively new and yet there are already many tools offering to give you the insights to empower your marketing.
Often, these tools won't give you a full picture of how your social media marketing is contributing to your business since they only look at one channel like Facebook. As I work with clients, I find you need to use a range of tools and integrate the data to provide a unified report. As with everything in analytics, 20% of the data will generally give you 80% of the answers you need. So it's necessary to identify the "measures that matter". In this post I'll outline the process and measures I use at First 10 to enable the required level of analysis for our clients.
It all starts with…
Applying PR Smith's SOSTAC® planning to digital marketing
SOSTAC® is a marketing planning model, originally developed by PR Smith in the 1990s to help marketers develop marketing plans. Paul is my co-author on Emarketing Excellence, so when we created this book it was natural to work together to show how SOSTAC® can best be applied to planning for digital marketing.
This new infographic, that I've developed with Paul and the designers at First 10, summarises the key issues to consider at each stage when developing digital marketing plans [click infographic to expand]:
See our more detailed post where we introduce how to apply the SOSTAC® template to Digital Marketing.
You can also find out more about the SOSTAC® approach for marketing planning in this Ebook: The SOSTAC® Guide - to writing the perfect plan V1.1 by PR Smith.
The "5S's and KPI's" refer to the…
24 checks to help focus your digital marketing budget
I've been reminded a few times during the last month that we're at "that" time of year. A time where many of us get our budgets reigned back for us (or we're at least asked to). It got me thinking that this might be a good thing to post about, so we wanted to create a list of pro-active budget improving, questions, ideas and checks - please add your thoughts in the comments, I am sure others will value your shared insight.
Plan for success
At times of budget cuts it's easy to cut the investment in the quality of your research and planning. Yet this is so important since helps get management buy-in when it comes to retaining budget and showing value of marketing to the bottom line. It's also vital to keep your communications customer-centric and beating the competitors. Otherwise the brutal…
Value: [rating=3]
Recommended link: New Media Age - Top 100 Interactive Agencies 2012 (Digital Magazine Download)
In this alert, relevant to larger UK companies who commission larger agencies, we’re flagging up the publication of this annual listing of digital agencies. It’s broken down into categories of marketing, technical and design and build agencies plus media buying agencies varying in fee income from £92 million for Sapient Nitro to £2.8 million for Unboxed Consulting.
A new feature this year was this regional breakdown, showing leading agencies outside London and the South East:
Also relevant to agencies and consultants who can see the fast growing sectors, an interesting KPI is efficiency which is income/staff - the best performers are around the £285,000/team member level. The report shows strong growth in performance in many agencies…
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13 Jul 2012
Digital marketing features in more adjudications - especially email marketing
This used to be the strap line in the Advertising Standards Authority ads reminding marketers of their obligations under the advertising practice codes and the relevant law. Today, the ASA still regularly field complaints about the claims made in digital and offline advertisements.
As we alerted you in a previous post, the ASA’s 01/03/2011 online extensions to the marketing guidelines mean the self-regulatory CAP code now applies to websites, PPC, social media conversations, promotional video and email marketing, in addition to more obvious advertisement formats. Press releases and natural search do not come under the guidelines.
Reviewing adjudications can help you avoid creating misleading advertising communications
The majority of consumer complaints are about ‘misleading’ rather than ‘offensive’ advertising, and it is not always apparent how ‘misleading’ will be officially interpreted. There have…
Using lifetime value models to set campaign investment levels
We think Lifetime value (LTV) models are a powerful tool to help businesses demonstrate the future value they can generate from marketing activities. It’s a much better approach to evaluate investment based on long-term returns from marketing activities rather than the short-term success of a single sale. As the inimitable Avinash Kaushik has said, setting marketing budgets without using LTV is like saying a relationship will be successful based on a one night stand.
Although the benefits of using lifetime value models are strong, in our experience, lifetime value is a technique that’s not used as much as you might expect or it should be. It seems it’s mainly a “big company thing”, more often used in sectors like financial services, retail or where direct marketing marketing has been practiced.
We think LTV models can and should be used in businesses of different…
How to prosper in a world of Digital Disruption
It’s become fashionable in business/ technology circles to talk about ‘disruption’. As a ‘good’ thing. Not like a broken-down train on the London Underground which causes chaos in the evening ‘Rush Hour’, or the alarming and possibly dangerous cracks in the structure of the M4 which shut down the main motorway from Heathrow Airport just weeks before the London Olympic Games, nor even the biblical scale flooding that turns Silverstone Motor Racing circuit into a sea…
An interview with Bill Scott of Easel TV
I was recently asked after a conference talk about my views on Social TV by a student who was researching it. I must admit I didn't have much of a view on it... It's not a topic that we've covered much on Smart Insights either, so when I saw it was covered at the recent Econsultancy Future of Digital Marketing conference by Bill Scott I was keen to learn more from a specialist.
Bill is COO of Easel TV who work with broadcasters, content producers, pay TV operators and major consumer brands to help develop services to engage consumers in connected TV. I found Bill's answers helpful for explaining what Social TV and showing it's potential through the examples. I hope you find it interesting.
What is Social TV?
Q1.What is the scope of social TV? Is it any form of interaction with a brand via web or mobile…
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04 Jul 2012
Don't act too corporate against negative posts on social networks
I was recently asked by a PR person working for an oil company about the best way to prevent bloggers posting inappropriate comments on their social network pages.
The company is worried that it can’t control what is being said about it - a major management challenge for many brands today.
Here is my response... It's a set of practical changes to make which often need a change in mindset rather than updates to the social governance policy, although it's worth looking at that too.
The five ways to avoid sparking a social media bushfire
For social networks to flourish they have to be open, transparent and honest so, inevitably, you will get negative comments. When you do, there are ways to respond, and resources you need to have in place, to best handle the situation to your advantage:
Act on and respond positively to…
Takeaways from IBM's global survey of marketers
Each year IBM interviews several hundred marketers to get a flavour of what the collective challenges, successes, fears and opportunities are.
It's interesting reading and always somehow comforting and inspiring to know you're not alone :-)
In this post I've picked out 7 of the key takeaways. You can view the presentation on SlideShare here and see the background on the study here, though I've summarised the salient points in this post and added the key charts below.
Here are our 7 key take-aways
1. The more successful companies expand the role of marketing in order to lead the customer experience - the success factors here are born around having influence across the 4P's and so being able to optimise their company's purchase cycle more effectively.
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