Digital talent: riding the wave of change

2 October 2011

In his post ‘Social Media requires a different perspective on talent – developing a social workforce’, Felix Wetzel referenced a comment from Brian Halligan’s (Hubspot) presentation at Dreamforce: ‘No traditional marketing skills and background are required, instead “hire people who speak digital without an accent. Hire people that blog, have twitter followers and are on G+”’ I’m sure it’s a bold and contentious statement for many, but from where I’m sitting it has merit.

Unfollow the anti-social media policy

5 July 2011

6 Comments

It irritates me when I hear Twitter, Facebook et al, blamed for loss of productivity and foot in mouth faux pas by employees. That inevitably leads to the discussion regarding banning the networks from the workplace or the introduction of a lengthy social media policy within the business. Stop blaming the tools – it’s the people using them.

Cut your advertising budget by 10% and invest in customer service

30 May 2011

5 Comments

What do you think would happen if you took 10% of your advertising budget and invested it in customer service? Your immediate reaction might be to think that whilst it’s a nice idea, it’s too risky to cut an advertising budget that doesn’t quite go far enough already. No Marketer in their right mind would willingly give up some of their budget anyway, right? I’ll be honest, I’d be a little nervous making that suggestion to my Finance Director too. But let’s just play out the thought process here

Social Sports: the ball is in your court

2 May 2011

4 Comments

Sport is big business. The competition on the field is nothing compared to the competition off it for fandom, viewership and in this economic climate, the fan’s dollar / pound. Recognising its potential, Sports businesses are looking to social media to help them reinforce and develop their relationships with fans – and of course to broadcast their product in as many different channels as possible. Global brands such as New Jersey Nets, Manchester City and multi-billion dollar entities such as the NFL (3.1 million Facebook fans and counting) are already forging ahead with engagement via social media, including foursquare check-in competitions, Commissioner Q & As and team and player fan pages. Would this work for other, smaller sports? What would this approach bring to leagues and clubs that are fighting to raise awareness and put bums on seats?

Who owns Conversion Rate Optimisation in your company?

28 February 2011

2 Comments

“Who owns the website?” It’s a simple question, but one that is difficult to answer. I couldn’t say for sure, when I was asked it this week. If you asked the same question to people from different departments across your organisation, I expect you’d get many different answers. The majority of which would be along the lines of “I/we do”. Perhaps the answers differ because each department has a different understanding of the question. IT builds and maintains the product/website, so they own it. Sales are selling the product, so they own it. Marketing are promoting and attracting the customers, so they own it. So if it’s hard to answer the question at such a general level, how do you answer the second question: Who owns conversion rate optimisation?

Your website stinks!

10 February 2011

2 Comments

Picture this internal monologue in the mind of a prospective customer… Argh, time to renew my home insurance again. What was the TV ad I saw with the special deal if I switch to them? The one with the singing pig… Bah, I’ll Google it…’l-o-w c-o-s-t h-o-m-e i-n-s-u-r-a-n-c-e’… Hmmm, was it this one? [click]…that rings a bell…not sure though… What about this one? [click]… No, don’t think so but it has kind of got the same deal…can’t be bothered to keep searching, I’ll give it a go… What you were just privy to there, was the thought process of your potential customer as they walked out the [digital] door. The galling thing was that it was your website they were looking at first. They looked but didn’t stop because they weren’t sure it was the one they were looking for. There was no reference to the deal, and no pig in sight. This happens every day, across all industries and products, no matter whether its ads on TV, print, radio, or outdoor media. Why? What’s missing?

Talk like a customer to attract a customer

16 January 2011

0 Comments

Does your Search specialist input into the briefing of your creative agency for your next print, TV or radio campaign? No? How about your Email marketer? Probably not and why would they? That’s offline. These guys focus on clicks not branding, right? In many businesses there is a distinct line separating the Online (technical) marketers and the Offline (creative) marketers. And that’s a big mistake.

Sell your competitors’ products

4 January 2011

0 Comments

If you’re a customer of the shopping behemoth, you can’t have failed to have noticed that Amazon let competitors use their website to sell their products. Known as Marketplace, like many others you’ve probably thought it’s a little odd. A bit counter-intuitive, isn’t it? I’m just guessing, but I suspect you don’t let your competitors do the same? Why not?

Making a business case for conversion testing

28 November 2010

0 Comments

You've seen the headlines and read the great case studies and you just know you should be doing conversion testing (A/B, multi-variant, usability, etc.) on your website. Problem is, you have these other projects to do, you don’t have the resource to assign it to someone else and there is little awareness of conversion testing elsewhere in the company, particularly amongst senior decision makers. So how do you change that? Find out how.

5 ways to make your site credible and increase conversions

21 November 2010

5 Comments

When you hear someone refer to ‘optimising the website’ you probably think one of two routes – search engine optimisation or A/B or multi-variant testing. What you probably don’t think of immediately is optimising your website’s credibility. It doesn’t matter how well you’ve optimised your ecommerce funnel, how much traffic your search efforts bring, you’ll still be missing your potential if your visitors don’t trust you and your site. They simply won’t buy, sign-up, download or recommend. So how do you establish credibility?

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