Digital marketing is evolving at an incredible pace. There is a wide range of effective tools, technologies and platforms delivering exciting changes to the digital marketing world this year.

The infographic, The Top 4 Digital Marketing Trends for 2013, provides a comprehensive analysis of tools and technologies defining the digital marketing landscape this year. It traces the impact of the digital revolution on consumer behavior and highlights key trends that marketers need to focus on in 2013.

It provides insights on optimally utilizing various elements of a digital marketing strategy like mobile marketing, social media, content marketing and author rank, to offer greater reach, better relevancy and higher customer engagement. Thanks to the team at DCI for this excellent piece.

Read the rest of this entry »

As social networks grow and mature it has become inevitable that revenue streams such as advertising have become a key aspect of their long-term viability.

It is now predicted that social media ad revenues will to grow to $11 billion dollars by the year 2017 and so social advertising has become a huge topic of interest amongst marketers.  In fact, Facebook alone is expected to make close to $1 billion from its mobile ad revenue in 2013, according to the latest estimates.

As Salesforce Marketing Cloud VP Peter Goodman notes, “Social ads reach the audience in which you’ve invested a lot of money and time into nurturing.  You can see which audiences are engaging the most, so you can ensure that your ads are being bought correctly and you’re actually growing your fan base based on true data.”

This new infographic from Salesforce looks at the current state of the social ads ecosystem, including why you should consider using social ads.

Read the rest of this entry »

What are the top 10 factors that influence a purchasing decision?

What are the most important store features?

How does the web impact shopping?

How does social media impact shopping?

The answers are all in this excellent infographic from BigCommerce.

Read the rest of this entry »

Social influencers are possibly digital marketing’s most underutilised resource.

Let’s face it, we’ve always been influenced by people we admire or know. But online influence takes it to a whole other level. Buyers are listening to what their key online influencers are saying and sellers need to start paying attention.

I’m as guilty of this as anyone. When Tim Ferriss talks about a new product, book or brand I usually check it out and often buy it. Same for Chris Brogan, Chris Guillebeau or Gary Vaynerchuk. These guys know their stuff and I (and many others) tend to trust their opinions.

Technorati’s 2013 Digital Marketing Report revealed that brands spend the least on the outlets consumers trust the most: the word of mouth of their friends and those they follow.

The Word of Mouth Marketing Association defines a social media influencer as a person or group of people who possess greater than average potential to influence due to attributes such as frequency of communication, personal persuasiveness or size of and centrality to a social network, among others.

Yet fewer than half of social media influencers follow brands on Facebook (47%) or Twitter (38%) while well over half of the social media marketing budget goes toward those outlets. Why? Because they are being ignored by brands who would be better off engaging with them.

Here’s the bottom line:

- 74% of consumers rely on social media to influence their purchasing decisions.
- 81% of consumers are influenced by their friends’ posts on social media when making purchasing decisions.
- Facebook and Twitter are the top platforms used by bloggers and the top platforms for generating blog revenue.
- Facebook is the number one platform for mobilizing consumers to be brand advocates.

Marketers must start to invest in influencing the feeds of key influencers and bloggers.

Who do consumers trust when it comes to their purchasing decisions? This great infographic from MBA in Marketing explains all.

Read the rest of this entry »

Social media has become an invaluable marketing and communications asset for many organisations over the last few years but it also represents yet another task for marketers and business owners to cram into their already busy schedule. And there are now quite a few social networks that can’t be ignored, so it can been seen as quite a burden.

The most common question I receive when recommending a social media plan to clients is “but how much time must I dedicate to it?” The good news is that, with a bit of planning, organisation and automation, you don’t need to become a slave to social networks. In fact, you can manage 6 popular social networks in just half an hour a day.

The team at Pardot have assembled this great guide to demonstrate how you can rock social media in just 30 minutes a day. It covers, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, Pinterest and Instagram and also has some excellent automation tips.

Follow this plan, fine-tune it for your business and social networks and then be consistent and you will have gone a long way to really optimising the benefits of social media.

Read the rest of this entry »

Social media has become ubiquitous and naturally the world’s advertisers and marketers are following the trend and allocating an increasingly larger share of their budgets to the leading social networks.

If the future of advertising is to start participating in the stream that people want to use and around 80% of active internet users are visiting social networks and blogs, then its only natural that the marketing dollars will follow. In fact, in the USA over 75% of brands have already incorporated social advertising into their integrated marketing budget.

So what does the social advertising landscape look like? The team at Uberflip have compiled this infographic to illustrate the increasing adoption of social ads among marketers, the amount of dollars allocated on these channels, and the effectiveness of these paid social media campaigns.

Read the rest of this entry »

One of the biggest fears we hear daily from organisations expanding their online presence is how do they protect their online reputation? Its a valid question.

Here are some great tips from the team at Trackur in the form of a very nice infographic. To summarise:

• Identify your reputations – monitor names brand names, company names, product names and variations.

• Quantify your audience – who has a stake in your online reputation?

• Understand your goals – how are you going to measure the whether your reputation is improving?

• Specify your needs – what tools do you require and what sources do you need to monitor?

• How will you monitor? – what processes are in place to be alerted and respond to issues?

• Who will monitor the conversations? – who are you entrusting with managing and responding to online reputation issues?

Read the rest of this entry »

Search engine optimisation is a big part of my business. Its an area we can help clients improve quickly for long lasting results. Unfortunately its also a practice that is rampant with cowboys and snake oil salesmen, most of whom are still employing outdated SEO techniques that either don’t work or could even punish their clients.

In the last 18 months Google has has rolled out a series of updates to its search engine that have changed search engine optimisation for the better. Google increasingly rewards genuine high quality content and punishes cynical gaming of search. I’m happy to say that all my clients have benefited.

This excellent infographic from Fuzz One explains how search engine optimsation has changed in the last few years and how you can ensure your are generating Google-friendly content. Of course, my team and I would also be happy to guide your organisation towards better web marketing results if you’d like some assistance.

Read the rest of this entry »

Social media is ubiquitous now and for many organisations it has become an essential and effective marketing tool. But social media can also be highly effective as a customer service tool, something that relatively few organisations realise or utilise.

I have found from interactions with larger organisations that if you can fix an issue that a customer is having via social media you’ll find it’s one of the best marketing channels you’ve ever worked in. Leave them hanging, and you’ll find out the opposite is true.

This Infographic from ClickSoftware highlights compelling stats, for example, customers who engage with companies via social media spend 20%-40% more with those companies. So, how do you use social media when interacting with corporate brands or with your own customers?

Click to enlarge

Source: ClickSoftware service management software

Email is not a sexy topic and is often overlooked these days amongst trendier social network and display campaigns but there is still plenty of value and potential in well-managed email marketing. In fact, it is alive and well as a proven inbound marketing channel which converts strongly.

Here’s a great guide to creating an email marketing campaign that drives conversions from the team at Monetate. It is something I encourage my clients to do and part of the strategy we have employed in the launch and growth of InsiderJobs.

Monetate Marketing Infographics