Which marketers running the show do you find useful?
I love Twitter as a way of learning about new developments and approaches in a social way. But if you're looking to learn from others on Twitter, as well as socialise, you need to know who to follow.
To help find good people to learn from, a couple of years ago, I wrote this guide to what I thought were the best marketers to follow on twitter.
What about client marketers?
My post was popular at the time, and I've learned loads from these guys around the world, but its weakness is that almost everyone on there is a consultant or works for an agency. Nothing wrong with that! But where are the client-side marketers?!
I have identified a handful of marketers I follow who are different - they are client-side marketers actually walking the talk and running the show.
I find following their tweets really…
A new infographic (we do love them at Smart Insights!) to have in mind for your planning this year. I think that the Facebook registration volumes in 2010 compared to total Facebook registrations is a real eye-opener, as is the 35 hours of video being uploaded to YouTube every minute!
Like you needed another reason to ensure that social and video are two major considerations for your marketing this year ;-)
[caption id="attachment_3935" align="alignright" width="600" caption="Infographic from Focus.com"][/caption]…
The question in question is "Tell us what you think!".
Surveying customers has always been popular, but the new opportunities for gaining feedback from customers is one of the most exciting aspects of engaging customers through digital channels for me. It's also an underrated aspect of web analytics. So when I was reviewing the 2011 cScape engagement report, the section on adoption of technology for product development and innovation caught my eye.
Feedback through analytics or surveys about customers"€™ online experience, whether it"€™s website, mobile, email or social is always useful to improve the way we design experiences. But what interests me most are the opportunities for learning more about how we can improve our brand offering to customers by innovating core or value-added products or services.
The classic example of this is the Dell Ideastorm approach where customers suggest product innovations and then other customers rate or comment on these. Smart! Particularly…
Our suggestions on getting more from your web analytics
Rather than just looking at predictions or trends in analytics, I've tried to make these practical to show quick wins or changes to your digital strategy which can help get better results.
5 success factors for your web analytics in 2011
Since we're big advocates of using Google Analytics, we've tried to apply many of these practical suggestions to Google Analytics.
1. Make Smarter use of your analytics.
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Here are the most popular posts by page views as voted by you and our listings in Google since we launched the site in March 2010.
Thanks to all our readers, writers, commenters and retweeters for creating, adding to and sharing our advice and alerts. All the best for you in navigating the Internet marketing maze in 2011!
1. Internet marketing strategy and planning template
Comfortably most popular was a detailed word document for developing or refining an Internet Marketing strategy. We also provided this RACE framework to help structure your plans with this content. We're hard at work developing more guides to release in 2011 to help with your Internet marketing planning.
Download Digital marketing strategy and planning Word template
2. Online brand reputation or social media listening software - a comparison review of 36 tools in 7 categories
Originally…
Is Your Brand Inspiring The Millennials?
Value: [rating=4]
Our commentary: Our modern concept of convenience is about getting what you want, when and how you want it - whatever that may be, so says Nick Parish - the North American Editor of Contagious. Blogging on Mashable, Nick believes that it's down to Millennials, or as Edelman call them 8095-ers. Double-jargon alert, I know, that's people born in 1980-1995 in short. I feel a lot of us have come to expect that, it's how it is, and probably how it always has been when change happens and a new reality dawns for enough people - a Tipping Point as Malcolm Gladwell puts it.
Edelmen's 8095 survey is important and insightful to what is an influential market - did you know that 8 in 10 Millennials take action (or at least claim to, whatever action is) for brands that they trust - their…
Examples of using vision statements to give focus to your digital marketing
I believe that developing a specific vision or mission statement for your digital channels can really help explain the need for sufficient investment in digital marketing within a company. They also show where your focus should be. So in this post I look at some examples which show effective vision statements.
As you read, you're probably thinking we've already got a corporate mission statement that everyone pokes fun at, so why would we want to define a digital vision statement? or why should we bother?s too corporate and we're just a small business, we just get on with selling our products.
Good questions! I still think it's helpful to have a vision for your online marketing for all different types of organisation. We say this since the opportunities from digital marketing are too big to not have a vision of…
A detailed case study showing how Dell structure their customer experience and improvement programme worldwide
Value: [rating=5]
Added Jan 2011: The commitment of Dell to improving sales and experience through a measured approach is shown since have 25 dedicated people doing A/B and MV tests, not counting several others who support them. This was reported on Twitter by @anilbatra who was listening to Dell present at a Web Analytics Assocation symposium in Austin.
Our commentary: Presented at Emetrics Washington DC in 2010, this 36 slide presentation entitled "From Good to Great" shows how Dell have evolved their analytics capability as shown in the diagram. It shows that the move to digital optimisation doesn't occur overnight.
Marketing implications: This case shows the strategic importance Dell attach to web analytics and how it supports their vision for the digital channel. It shows…
My predictions on 11 marketing trends for 2011
I'm was early in reviewing marketing trends for 2011 since I presented my predictions on the latest developments at the IDM/DMA North Annual Conference in October 2010. You can view my presentation at the end of this post.
2011 update - predictions in key areas of Internet marketing
Since this post has been popular and we've been learning from what others have been saying as we enter 2011, we've also created a series of posts giving our recommendations on strategies you could consider for your 2011 marketing. To make them more useful we give links through to other recommendations and where you can get started. We have top tactics for 2011 for:
Social media recommendations
Natural search marketing tactics
Paid search marketing recommendations
Email marketing predictions
Web analytics predictions
I also updated the presentation embedded at the end of the post for a talk I gave…
Our guide to benchmarking competitors for effectivness in customer acquisition, conversion and retention
In this guide, we take a look at the what, why, how and when of competitor benchmarking for digital marketing and provide a step-by-step guide showing the tools and KPIs you can use.
You can download the guide or read our introduction below.
Competitor Benchmarking Guide - Smart Insights
What is online competitor benchmarking?
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