Four proven steps to boost your online testing
Many businesses have dipped their toes into the world of online testing, and sometimes expectations of high returns from simple tests can outweigh reality.
The truth is that there are genuine and continuous benefits to be had, but you should think outside the box to drive real change.
Branded content strategies in 2012: from predictions to reality
Over the past month I’ve read a great deal of trend forecasts and predictions for 2012.
They range from a renewed interest in advertising on mobiles to connected TVs, more creative thinking from marketers to the resurgence of email marketing.
But overall it seems the industry is in agreement over one key trend: online video.
Managing expectations in B2B content marketing
Your audience's opinions abut your content depends largely on their expectations, but few B2B marketers think about managing expectations around their content marketing.
DIY usability assessments for expert users
I firmly believe that observing real users doing real tasks is the 'gold standard' for usability testing, particularly when the designers observe it themselves and see the problems only real users can find.
However, sometimes full user testing falls outside the budget and the project manager will decide to use an expert usability assessment instead.
This works well for websites where an expert usability consultant can put themselves in the shoes of the user and work through typical tasks identifying critical usability issues.
But what if the system supports far more complex tasks, which users take years to learn?
Maintaining momentum in B2B marketing
A planning vacuum means most B2B marketing progresses in fits and starts. Inertia kills momentum.
Ask a consumer marketer for a look at their marketing plan and you're likely to get anything from a 20-page powerpoint deck to a 400-page binder with tabs, spreadsheets, gant charts and dashboards.
Ask a B2B marketer for their marketing plan and you're likely to get a funny look and some awkward rationalisation. "Erm... we're agile here. Our market moves too fast. If we had a plan it wold be out of date in a week." Yadda-yadda-yadda.
Five tips for using Facebook for customer service
If we get bad customer service online, we vote with our feet. We stop doing business with the company in question, or take action against it. We call it out on Facebook, Twitter and (in the famous case of United Airlines) we notoriously write songs about it.
Although most brands use social media to market themselves, relatively few provide really excellent customer service.
Here are my top five tips for getting customer service right on Facebook...
Psychographic targeting in B2B marketing
There are so many ways to segment an audience and target your messages – by job title, industry, seniority, behaviour... But there's an important dimension that's often ignored by B2B marketers: psychographics.
How different prospects feel about things can guide your segmentation, offers and creative. The trick is to find ways to get your psychographic targets to identify themselves so you can market to their specific biases.
Technology powers display growth, but people power its adoption
According to the recent IAB and PwC study, in 2010 display grew by 27% and search by 8%. If you have been following the growth of display and the rise of DSPs (demand-side platforms) you are no doubt aware that growth has been fuelled by RTB (real-time bidding).
Its growth and similarities are closely aligned to ‘traditional’ search bid management techniques. This is great news for the display industry and highlights great opportunities for the search marketer.
However, are search marketers grasping this opportunity, and do marketers and agencies really understand the new display environment?
We know the power of one-to-one, but what about its value?
Defining ‘the value of email’ from both a marketer’s and a recipient’s perspective means being able to provide a unique customer experience in every message.
Some of the responses to my last blog post are spot on: I particularly agree with the comment that customer experience is most important before or after a purchase is made, and another that said we should find out what customers want before launching a product.
Exactly the same is true of email marketing, and that’s the first channel that I want to explore in our multichannel customer journey.
Introduction to DDG and digital sales & marketing for SME/SMBs
This is an introductory article for small to medium businesses who are either behind the digital sales and marketing curve, or who are dabbling with digital tactics for either branding or lead generation purposes.
The focus of this article is 'Digital Demand Generation' (DDG), a discipline that combines a custom combination of digital tactics for lead generation (traffic), and an implementation of a marketing automation tool to manage lead progression through the funnel towards a closed sale.
This discipline is now emerging as Revenue Performance Management (RPM) and was originally termed Marketing Automation. Regardless of title, progressive organisations can make significant strides forward with DDG by increasing their number of leads, number of sales qualified conversions and reduction of the sales cycle in terms of time and expense.
Using digital marketing tactics, marketing automation tools and the latest best practices can result in a tremendous revenue growth opportunity for SMEs, but be sure to consider the suitability of DDG for your business.
