Avoid these 10 mistakes when developing digital services for your marketing agency
If you're running a marketing agency, you probably know a thing or two about offering marketing services to your clients. But with the pace of digital transformation and new trends emerging all the time, 'to err is human', you may make some strategic and tactical errors when selecting the best mix of your digital marketing services.
If you are considering offering new digital services like Design and build for websites and mobile or PPC, Search, Social or other Paid, Owned or Earned media, you'll want to check this quick checklist to avoid the mistakes agencies often make when getting into new digital services.
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Tap into your brand heritage to revive your brand's position and values.
“An organization’s history and background is a valuable asset in how they are perceived to a wider audience and which can be used to its advantage”
Corcoran (Source: The Art of Digital Branding, 2011)
This article takes a look at the growing need for a clearly defined digital transformation strategy for organizations to follow and what practical steps organizations can take in skilling up their employees with digital skills, referencing the DARC model
More and more traditional brands find themselves operating in ever competitive sectors being disrupted by emerging brands built on new business models. This Disruptive innovation has continued to gather pace, looking to re-map and re-invent any market sector.
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The right vendor depends on your own personal requirements
Marketing Automation vendors are not one-size-fits-all. It is important that you choose the right vendor for your specific business requirements as B2B companies have more complex and longer buyer journeys and more people involved in the buying process. Your Marketing Automation platform selection should focus on finding the best fit with your business plans, resources and company culture. There are several ways to navigate the selection process, including a formal RFP (Request for Proposal) for shortlisting vendors to running in depth demonstrations. Here are six steps that will help you in this process.
1. Define Your Business Goals
In order to know what a Marketing Automation vendor should be able to deliver in terms of features and service, it is important to clearly define the business challenges or opportunities that you are facing. Describe the gap between the current situation and the desired state.…
How digital agencies and consultants can use Discovery on digital marketing projects to improve the value they deliver to their customers
Over the last few years, I have seen an increasing focus amongst agencies on improving their client discovery projects. In this article, I describe a process I recommend to run effective discovery. It can be applied both for onboarding new customers, but also applied for prospects when pitching.
The post is aimed at marketing and in particular digital marketing agencies and consultants, but client-side marketing teams looking to review their position in the market may also find it useful.
More details on the questions to ask during discovery are available in this client discovery process checklist template I have developed for Business members. You may also find the brand audit in the Smart Insights Agency Toolkit useful.
The term “Discovery” is not used…
An introduction to the what, why and how of digital transformation covering examples and 5 key challenges to overcome
We’re working in an era where the development of technology exceeds companies' capabilities to manage the challenges created by the technology.
New platforms, apps and tools are emerging daily and as they do, customers, prosumers and keyboard warriors are adopting the technology, talking about businesses and brands, sharing feedback and pinning images of what they’ve bought.
Marketers and brands have lost control forever. On a regular basis we witness well-known companies managing customer conversations very publicly. And it’s not always positive.
Some businesses have made a full transformation to digital. They embraced 'new media' at an early stage, listened to customers and have digital strategies fully integrated within their businesses. Examples include RS Components who realised that they needed to create their own customer community and created Idea Spark, a forum for engineers to…
What sets apart those digital marketing strategies that you read about in case studies, from those failing strategies that never see the light of day?
Aside from the impact that budgeting and available resources will have on the outcome of any strategy, there are some steadfast rules you can stick to, to give your digital marketing strategy the best chance of success.
"What's the use of running if you are not on the right road?"
There’s a German proverb that says “what’s the use of running if you are not on the right road?” and needless to say I was shocked to discover from an infographic by Smart Insights and TFM&A that many marketers set out without so much as a digital marketing strategy!
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The big mistakes that content marketers need to avoid when planning their campaigns
While many are aware of the benefits and importance of content marketing in the interaction-driven online universe, some of us still forget the countless dangers that can cause your campaign to fail before it starts generating meaningful results.
Content marketing works on a premise of building a relationship through value and intellectual or emotional connection. However, relationships need time and commitment which can render content marketing campaigns complex and messy. Tasks start piling up; team members lose sight of the goal and the initial infatuation with the project evaporates.
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To avoid going down the wrong path when planning your content marketing campaign, it’s essential you keep an eye on these risky areas:
1.…
Small business marketers need to sit up and pay attention to the latest mobile design options
Technology has revolutionized communication and changed the face of doing business in modern times. Computers, Tablets, and Smartphone which were initially used to surf the net, stream videos and chat online have become key business tools. Mobile is becoming ever more crucial now that it accounts for over half of all web traffic. But how does a small business use the latest mobile design to grow its business? The answer to this question is determined by two factors:
Increase in popularity of Social Media
The development of more capable Smartphones
Facebook, the most popular social network worldwide has 1.71 billion monthly active users across the world, according to the latest statistics.
The other factor hinges on the improvement of mobile design evident in the…
Don't fall foul of these common Google Analytics mistakes
Google Analytics is a fantastically useful tool for businesses of all sizes. Rather helpfully for all the SMEs and SMBs out there, it's also free. That means anyone can start using Google analytics to study their web traffic in an attempt to tease out insights, to use to improve their sites.
This openness and low barriers to entry mean it's easy to launch yourself into Google Analytics before you actually have a handle on exactly what you are using for and how you should use it for your business. There's nothing wrong with getting stuck in and learning on the fly, but it can leave you vulnerable to making mistakes that could affect your bottom line. This post will introduce you to some of the basic mistakes people often make when setting up and using their Google Analytics. If you want…
Social media strategy and planning essentials series
This is part 7 of my Smart Insights 12 part social media series. In the last part we looked at aligning social media with other marketing channels; in this blog, I discuss what resources you need to manage your social media marketing and how you scale a social team sensibly.
To frame the conversation, you need to find answers to the following questions:
How many people do you need and in which roles?
What business processes are required?
What KPIs should you use and what resources do you need to measure them?
What tech and tools are required for your social media plan?
How do these resource demands change in the next few years?
Approaches to resourcing
There are two main ways to plan your resourcing:
Bottom up
You’re governed by the resource currently at your disposal, so you shape your scope of work around this. For example,…
