What a week that was, huh? I don’t know about you but the internet had a very busy week.
For a start the net neutrality policy was passed on Thursday. If you're not already aware, this is a set of rules that basically ensures that no government or corporation can control free and open access to the Internet.
So that’s a good thing. A great thing. A tremendous thing even. And how did we celebrate this momentous occasion?
Google has announced that from April 21st it will be 'expanding our use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal'.
Here are a handful of thoughts and recommendations on some actions you may want to take around that.
These are not designed to be comprehensive, but hopefully to cover some of the areas other blog posts may not.
Taking advantage of these 3 customer trust factors? Based on 2015 Edelman Trust Barometer, 8 tips and charts to improve customer trust on social media.
The post 3 Customer Trust Factors To Boost Your Social Media Results appeared first on Heidi Cohen.
While several international ecommerce businesses have suffered heavily from the decline in the Russian economy, there are still ways of reaching the Russian market effectively.
Last week at a Tradedoubler event in London I presented key findings from our latest Quarterly Digital Intelligence Briefing, looking specifically at trends in the retail sector for 2015 and beyond.
Before outlining my key themes for the sector, it’s worth giving some context about the growth of the online retail.
Welcome to our monthly round-up of the best branded Vines from the last four weeks.
It being February you can expect the usual mixture of Valentine, pancake and Oscar related mirth, along with the odd abominable snowman and terrible joke thrown in for good measure.
It’s an eclectic mix, so pop your headphones on and try your best to concentrate for all of two minutes. Here are the best Vines of February 2015.
Investment in digital marketing continues to grow, with 77% of marketers saying their companies intend to increase budgets in 2015.
This is one of the findings of Econsultancy's Marketing Budgets 2015 Report, published in association with Oracle Marketing Cloud.
Here are a few highlights from the report...
An experiment in trying to combat my own deep-seated prejudices.
If you saw me in the street and said “hey Christopher Ratcliff, noted ecommerce and digital marketing expert, I run a successful retail website and was thinking of building a mobile app. Is this a good idea or a bad idea?” I would reply with the following…
“Well this fake moustache and cowboy hat disguise is clearly not working, but your flattery has touched me greatly and as soon as you’ve let go of my arm I shall answer your question right away.”
How Marketing Can Drive More Customers, Better Experiences and Great Products Marketing has a marketing problem. Ask most people to define what marketing is, and the answer will almost always come down to some form of a definition that is more closely related to advertising. Not that there is anything wrong with advertising. Advertising is an effective technique for any business that can afford it. And it should be part of every large brand’s marketing mix. But when I attended university, and took that Introduction to Marketing course, I remember something about 4 Ps. Yes Promotion was one. But there [...]
The post Does Marketing Get No Respect? appeared first on B2B Marketing Insider.
You don’t need to be a seasoned data scientist or have a degree in graphic design in order to create incredible data visualisations.
It has become a lot simpler to mine your data and interpret your insights in an engaging, attractive, and most importantly easy to understand way.
This is a list of various different free and premium tools and platforms available which will allow you to communicate data in a variety of different formats, from interactive charts, to infographics, to maps, to word clouds.
Boost content marketing visibility beyond owned and social media. Integrate content marketing and PR efforts to increase your content marketing placement.
The post Increase Content Marketing Visibility With PR appeared first on Heidi Cohen.
Ecommerce has been making its mark the past couple of years, but is still only a fraction of the overall retail industry.
Online retailers and ecommerce professionals have been eagerly speculating that online retail will soon overtake brick and mortar stores in terms of popularity and sales.
Despite optimistic holiday numbers, research has indicated that these speculations are simply not true.
In recent weeks I’ve been conducting various user tests on grocery store websites, and in the process I’ve registered my details with most of the UK’s biggest brands.
My inbox is now slowly filling up with welcome emails and other marketing messages trying to lure me back to their ecommerce sites.
The banking sector isn’t necessarily front of mind when we think about digital transformation, and in key areas of the digital experience they perform close to the average.
However digital innovation promises to connect and engage with consumers like never before.
Forcing people to register before purchase can be a barrier to conversion, so many ecommerce sites offer a guest checkout option.
This has been the general trend from retailers, so it's a surprise to see ASOS moving away from this.
So, is this a good idea?
Good checkout design is essential for ecommerce success.
It's all about making transactions as possible for your customers, and avoiding any unnecessary friction.
Here's a checklist of checkout success factors, along with questions to ask of your own checkout.
In the last post, I looked at how consumers search for home insurance, and now it's time to look at landing pages.
A study of 50 users searching for home insurance quotes has found quite a few issues with landing pages.
Here are a couple of the issues the users identified...
I recently presented at a Content Marketing conference on the topic of content marketing personalization. I argued that personalized content was the key to defining the core job of marketing: to build relationships at scale. And I made sure to differentiate personalized content from personas. So, one of my points in the presentation: Personas are great. Except when they suck! Before you start ranting or raving, let’s start with some basics: What is a persona? I actually like personas. And I know a handful of consultants who are really helping their clients create actionable insights and programs and plans based on a deeper understanding [...]
The post Personas Are Great (Except When They Suck) appeared first on B2B Marketing Insider.
Home insurance is one of the more competitive markets online, with brands spending a lot of money offline and online to acquire customers.
But how do consumers search for this? Well, whatusersdo asked 50 participants to find some home insurance quotes.
The results reveal some interesting insights into search behaviour and how much insurance brands rely on PPC to attract search traffic.
Want to get your business's social media activity on track to yield results? Then follow this 10 step social media marketing cycle with tips.
The post Super Simple Social Media Strategy: Get Big Results appeared first on Heidi Cohen.
Stat’s life! Stat’s what all the people say.
It’s time again for the weekly round up of stats and data relating to all things digital.
This week it includes the Guardian’s latest online figures, mobile commerce growth, digital adspend, and barriers to mobile commerce.
For much more of the same, download the Econsultancy Internet Statistics Compendium...
Do you understand the 2015 B2B Purchase Decision Process? As B2B buyers seek information on their own, here are 5 tips to help you serve them. (Charts)
The post How The 2015 B2B Purchase Decision Process Has Changed appeared first on Heidi Cohen.
Getting the right influencers on-side can give any social campaign a massive boost.
The past week saw a 2,119% growth in referral traffic from Twitter to the Prostate Cancer UK website. The trigger: a simple tweet from Stephen Fry.
Shop Direct has branched out into the luxury ecommerce market with the launch of VeryExclusive.co.uk.
It came about due to the high number of searches for premium brands on the successful Very.co.uk pureplay brand.
When used well, drop-down menus should help users to navigate more effectively.
They allow easy access to various sections of a website, and allow designers to tidy up busy layouts.
In this post I want to look at how drop-downs should be activated. Is it better that users open menus by mousing over them, or by a click?
In the early days of ecommerce customer acquisition and retention largely focused on selling products at the lowest possible price.
Now businesses have accepted they can’t win a price war with Amazon they’ve turned their attention to providing the best possible customer experience as a means of differentiating from the competition.
In November last year we hosted The Digitals Awards as part of the Festival of Marketing to celebrate excellence in digital marketing and ecommerce.
We’ve now published a report with case studies from all the winners, including details of the objectives, execution ad ROI.
It's easy to become bamboozled when thinking about SEO, but there's a lot you can do without any expert knowledge.
Here I've compiled 30+ tips to help small businesses improve on their SEO efforts.
These are all simple and free to implement, it's just a case of allocating the time to put them into practice.
Ever since Matt Cutts declared it dead (for SEO purposes), there seems to have been less interest in guest blogging.
I've seen it here, with fewer approaches from writers, while smart SEOs will never suggest this to clients as a link building tactic.
This reduced volume of requests is a good thing, but I still think there's a lot of value in it for publishers and writers alike.
Here, I'll look at what makes a good guest contributor and how they should approach sites.
It’s become a stereotype for media and tech companies to have some kind of quirky furniture in the office.
Because nothing says “we’re innovative and creative” quite like table football.
Need to sell your boss on using Twitter? These key 2015 Twitter trends along with charts and tips will help you. Includes data and examples.
The post Key 2015 Twitter Trends Every Marketer Needs appeared first on Heidi Cohen.
I know you’re wondering “what the heck is content marketing personalization?” I promise I will get to that. But first, I want to tell you a brief story I am pretty certain you can relate to. I went to the doctor a few weeks back. He asked what line of work I was in. I told him I was in marketing. He said, “that’s like sales, right?” I told him “no.” That’s not what I do. After a pause, he said emphatically, “oh you help make those ads on TV that I hate.” I told him “no” again. I laughed a [...]
The post Content Marketing Personalization: Build Relationships At Scale appeared first on B2B Marketing Insider.
As online grocery shopping becomes increasingly popular retailers need to find ways of generating traffic and attracting new customers.
Content marketing is one way of achieving this, though competition is fierce in the world of online food and recipe ideas.
The beginning of the year is always an exciting time to pore over recent trends and to make predictions as to what the next 12 months might hold for the global digital landscape.
The latest update of our Internet Statistics Compendium strives to bring together key data from our own research, alongside a wealth of freely available secondary research from around the web.
It is our handy guide to help you quickly find the internet statistics you need and to help get your pitch or internal report up to scratch.
As I previously mentioned in a post on how insurance companies use search marketing, it’s a challenge for insurance companies to do well in search thanks to the popularity of comparison websites.
However with a solid SEO strategy and a focus on paid search marketing it is possible for financial services to direct traffic away from the comparison sites and lead searchers straight to their own door.
It’s useful to remind ourselves that the act of publishing is a methodology that has been developed over thousands of years, and has used the most efficient technology of the day in which to deliver the message.
Here at Econsultancy we’re all about encouraging the quickest, easiest journey from product page to checkout as possible. Not just from a conversion point of view but also from a customer experience one.
This is certainly true of customers who know exactly what they want and don’t have to do any research about the product itself. ”I want a Julio Iglesias Greatest Hits CD and I want it now damn it!”
If you want a social analytics tool to add value to your business, you have to buy it right.
Check out these five pointers for doing just that.
In recent months I’ve heard more than one person suggest that it can be difficult to get sales teams to buy into a digital transformation project.
Obviously all departments are capable of resisting change, but apparently sales teams tend to kick up more of a fuss than their colleagues.
Not wishing to sound too astoundingly obvious right off the bat, but your on-site search tool is the key way in which visitors look for products on your website.
The surprising thing is how easy it is to get on-onsite search wrong: bad placement, lack of auto-suggest, poorly displayed search results, and so on.
Find out why now is the perfect time to start programmatic display advertising.
Seeking viral social shares for your content marketing? Here are 3 keys to improve your reach based on data from Upworthy, Fractl and TrackMaven. Charts too
The post Can You Create Content To Attract Maximum Viral Social Shares? appeared first on Heidi Cohen.
In 100 years when the internet is but a long defunct system of communication, scholars will look back on this time and say “man those weirdos spent a lot of time Photoshopping pugs on nude pictures of Burt Reynolds”.
Weekly round-ups of internet stupidity such as this will essentially be the Bayeux Tapestry for future generations interested in charting how civilisation developed a language based exclusively on two different emojis (the crying face and the poo with a face).
Our traffic stats show us that people are still really interested in responsive design.
RWD roundups from years gone by remain hugely popular and our review of B&Q’s responsive site was one of last year’s most visited posts.
Want to win over your prospects and customers? Follow these 14 tips to romance your audience with content marketing. Includes examples.
The post 14 Ways To Romance Your Audience With Content Marketing appeared first on Heidi Cohen.
If you are looking to build an app or other online service there are some clever product marketing plays that enabled Tinder’s incredible success - these should be taken seriously.
Despite the increase in online grocery sales over the past few years ecommerce still only accounts for a fraction of the overall market.
This means there's huge growth potential for digital sales in this industry, but are the UK's major grocery retailers positioned to take advantage of it?
Using a selection of specific criteria I’ll be gauging how some of the top US retailers handle on-site search.
The search tool is perhaps the most common way for shoppers to navigate an ecommerce site, so therefore its effectiveness is paramount in directing highly motivated visitors, who know exactly what they’re looking for, around your site.
TRUSTist is a startup which enables its clients to gather real-time in-store feedback on tablets so they can gauge customer satisfaction while also improving their search visibility.
The company provides a neat solution for multichannel retailers in a world where the voice of the customer is becoming more important than ever.
We caught up with TRUSTist CEO Nigel Apperley to hear more about the proposition.
Argos has been named one of the top multichannel UK retailers thanks to its customer-focused mobile app.
Placing a particular emphasis on creating an easy, joined-up customer experience has led to this app becoming one of the most popular downloads in Q4 2014.
Our recent Salary Survey 2015 made for somewhat depressing reading.
I was amazed at the continuing size (21%) of the gender gap in terms of average pay. But it wasn’t that so much as a certain despondency and lack of oomph that came through the data.
Most marketers feel underpaid, they feel that the function is not ‘understood’ internally, and more than a quarter are unhappy in their jobs.
A couple of years ago, I wrote an article for Econsultancy stressing the importance of writing a brief when looking to appoint a search agency.
This was in response to the fact that, in my experience, so few businesses seem to do so.
I ain't afraid of no ghost buttons.
We published our 17 crucial web design trends for 2015 at the beginning of the year, and this is part of a series of posts looking at each trend in more depth.
Content marketing is the axiom we all live and die by in the current digital marketing world, if you’re not producing content and marketing it successfully, then "the present is no place for you, Grandad".
Multiple tests and research have shown that phone leads have the highest closing rate.
I'm here to show you how you get more of them.
Though the use of big data remains a huge challenge for many businesses, those with more advanced capabilities are beginning to shift the emphasis from volume of data to speed of analytics.
As analytical processes gain more velocity companies are able to gain a competitive advantage by using data in a way that significantly impacts business performance and market position.
Online laundry startup Laundrapp launched last month, backed by £1.5m in seed funding.
We've been asking Ed Relf, CEO of Laundrapp, about the company's business model and plans...
Don't miss content curation opportunities! Create your content curation editorial calendar with these 5 steps. Contains easy-to-use worksheets and tips.
The post How To Develop Your Content Curation Editorial Calendar appeared first on Heidi Cohen.
Curiously is a dating site which is centred around music tastes.
I've been asking Grant Powell, the founder and CEO of Curiously about his plans for world domination...
Product videos are proven to have a positive correlation with online conversion rates, as people who watch videos tend to buy more stuff.
Whether or not these customers are further down the purchase journey and so more likely to buy anyway is open to debate.
Valentine’s Day is on Saturday but most retailers have been gearing up to it for several weeks.
I received my first Valentine’s promotional email on January 19, close to a month before the day itself.
With digital channels becoming more and more important, we're beginning to see a number of automotive brands adopting reviews.
Kia has been a prime mover here, while other brands such as Volvo and Peugeot are adopting reviews.
In this article, I'll look at how automotive brands are using reviews, and why others should think about following suit.
Since the end of December 2014, Twitter has been rolling out an analytics tool for its mobile app.
This is fantastic news for those of us who are out and about, live-tweeting hilariously named brands in the international supermarket or a joyless bus-ride and wondering if anybody actually cares.
Homebase has just launched a new smartphone app that aims to bolster its multichannel offering.
The home and garden retailer launched a click-and-collect app way back in 2010, but this new version offers a more comprehensive range of features.
It's common to see fashion retailers focus on the latest bright new shiny toys considered to be the latest digital craze or phenomenon, and in doing so miss out on delivering content and experiences that really matter to consumers.
One area where the majority of fashion retailers fall short, according to Euromonitor, is content and consumer experiences for size and fitting.
For years, brands have been chasing the coveted millennial market for their size, influence, growing incomes and their insatiable appetite for digital media. But now, the eldest millennials are approaching 40 and we see marketers shifting their attention to “generation z.” Loosely defined as those born after the turn of the century, this cohort grew up in our social, mobile and digitally-connected world. They communicate with text messages and, increasingly with emojis – single images that convey emotion such as a wink, a smile or a heart. Brands are using emojis to communicate with their target audience, to infiltrate their [...]
The post The Rise Of Emoji Marketing appeared first on B2B Marketing Insider.
When the internet was new, a lot of people predicted it would kill the trade show. Why spend all that time traveling and walking the aisles when you could stay at home Googling?
Not only did that not happen, live events are bigger than ever before – especially in B2B, where they’re eating up budgets and absorbing entire marketing teams for months on end.
Events like the Festival of Marketing just go from strength to strength, proving that people still want to hang out with and learn from other people.
But today, a different kind of B2B event has emerged and is dominating the genre: the single-vendor supershow.
Does your content provide social media quality vs quantity? 8 actionable marketing tactics to improve social media marketing based on Track Maven charts.
The post Social Media Quality VS Quantity appeared first on Heidi Cohen.
It's impossible to escape the hype around TV ads during the Super Bowl.
But big brands are also running some really impressive experiential advertising events to coincide with the big game.
Anyone who has shopped online, read a news article online, or is engaged in social media has interacted with recommendation systems in some form or another.
The one that immediately comes to mind is Amazon, the juggernaut online retailer and the largest internet company in the US.
The ‘response to buying suggestions’ that Amazon offers its customers is said to generate an additional 10% to 30% in revenue for the business.
Stat's what people say, mmm-mmm.
It’s become tradition to open the stats roundup with an awful song-based pun.
The ever-increasing use of smartphones among consumers means that mobile and local search should be a high priority for marketers.
But what’s the current state of play and how will mobile search develop in future?
Our newly published Digital Trends briefing describes 2015 as a year when customer experience really takes hold and asserts its position as the key theme for marketers and digital professionals globally.
Other areas of focus such as ‘mobile’, ‘big data’ and ‘social’ are still widely regarded as exciting opportunities, but they are increasingly seen in a supporting role as part of the overarching mission to become more customer-centric.
Does your content marketing yield sales? Here is how to fix your content with 5 Content Marketing Call-To-Action Tactics. Includes data, charts and tips
The post What Your Content Marketing Is Missing To Drive Sales appeared first on Heidi Cohen.
Chances are some sort of content marketing will be happening in your business.
After all, it’s a fairly nebulous term that covers digital marketing disciplines where there’s no media spend.
But while you might be doing content marketing, are you sure it’s working?
Just as digital technologies have improved the array of customer data available to marketers, sale teams have also benefited from advances in analytics technology.
It’s now possible to get a detailed view of potential customers, their previous interactions with your company and what they’re interested in, before the sales team even make contact.
The January sale is one of the biggest retail periods of the year, but retailers on Facebook may have found their promotional posts falling flat at the beginning of 2015.
In November 2014, Facebook announced an update to the news feed that made it clear promotional posts would be demoted ‘beginning in January 2015’.
Need to persuade your boss to use mobile apps and think mobile first? Then check out these mobile app trends 2015 complete with charts and tips.
The post 15 Mobile Facts That Should Change Your 2015 Marketing appeared first on Heidi Cohen.
I am always on the search to find old and little-known examples of content marketing. I wrote a post back on APRIL 9, 2014 for ContentMarketingInstitute.com that revealed what I believe is the oldest known example of content marketing written way back in 1732. (See 4 Illuminating Lessons From One of History’s Most Inventive Content Marketers) Well, today I’d like to share another example with you that is from 51 years earlier. There’s just one problem. I am not sure whether it really qualifies as content marketing. So I’d love to hear what you think. I made this discovery while watching the TV show Finding Your Roots on PBS. (Actually, my teenage [...]
The post Did William Penn Use the Oldest Known Content Marketing to Establish Pennsylvania? appeared first on B2B Marketing Insider.
Can an 86 year old brand still dance with millenial consumers?
7 UP is one of the world’s most recognisable brands, but in the past that branding has often danced between a variety of campaigns and messages.
Last week, I looked at how sites could identify that they had been penalised by Google.
But how easy is it to recover from a penalty? Does Google provide enough information to aid recovery?
Need to persuade your boss to use mobile apps and think mobile first? Then check out these mobile app trends 2015 complete with charts and tips.
The post 15 Mobile Facts That Should Change Your 2015 Marketing Plans appeared first on Heidi Cohen.
