media

November 17, 2016 by Julie McGrath

There’s currently a talent gap in digital marketing and employers are on the look out to fill them…

The industry is currently experiencing a talent shortage in digital marketing. According to recent studies, 90% of marketers report suffering from a shortage of digital skills, and only 8% of surveyed companies feel strong in the area of digital marketing.

Here are seven of the most important skills that you need to make yourself a desirable job candidate in the digital age:

1. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO): Of the companies looked at for the study, in which hundreds of job postings for digital talent were analysed, 14% cited SEO as a required skill.

To compete as a candidate for a digital marketing job, you must have technical SEO skills, including server-side settings, sitemaps and server response codes. Moreover, competitive candidates should have experience using various tools to identify customers’ search behaviours and the competitive landscape.

2. Pay-per-click: Seven percent of the companies that were looked at in the study listed search engine marketing (SEM) as a required skill for their organisations, and one of the most important and growing facets of SEM is pay-per-click (PPC). In order to demonstrate your abilities in this area, you need to show that you have the research and analytical skills required to create and execute a strong PPC plan that aligns with an overarching marketing strategy.

3. Mobile: To demonstrate value in this area, you need to understand how mobile marketing differs from desktop marketing and communicate why that matters to the rest of the business. Moreover, a digital marketer should have general familiarity with mobile development in order to best communicate with the design team and create a cohesive mobile marketing strategy that aligns with other online and offline efforts. Get familiar with its vocabulary, including things like SMS marketing and responsive design.

4. E-mail marketing: You need to be able to do more than send out regular communication. You must be able to optimise your e-mail marketing by crafting a compelling strategy, testing relentlessly and refining content based on what works best. It’s also essential that today’s marketers understand the best ways to develop distribution lists and use e-mail nurturing to create more business opportunities.

5. Social media: Ten percent of the businesses that were analysed in the study cited social media experience as a requirement for applicants, and that doesn’t just mean that they want someone with an active personal Twitter account. Digital marketers need to understand how to develop a strong social media presence to help bolster their brands and further their marketing goals.

6. Content management: SEO, e-mail marketing and social media skills are useless if you don’t back up your technical skills with excellent writing for multiple platforms. The ability to flow easily between writing e-mails, press releases, website copy, proposals, social posts and even code is key to success in today’s digital marketing field. Make sure that you demonstrate your ability to write across media, and to guide and polish the content of others on your team.

7. Analytics: In the study, a whopping 13% of businesses listed analytics experience as a required skill in their job descriptions. In order to be a truly great digital marketer, you’ll need to not only implement strong inbound and outbound digital strategies, but also analyse them regularly and use those insights to constantly improve. If you want to make it in a digital marketing job, it’s time to make ROI your middle name.

If you feel worthy of utilising all of these skills within a working environment, check out our latest Marketing role by following this link!

If you would like to learn more about Digital Marketing Strategies, there are many courses which you can enrol on to. Check out the Digital Marketing Course websites below!

Digital Marketing Institute

Home Learning College

Chartered Institue of Marketing

FutureLearn

Online Marketing/SEO Training

– Avi Levine

October 15, 2016 by Julie McGrath

The usage of Social Media is increasing more and more by every year. But to what extent are Brits succumbing to it?

A new survey from BT has revealed just how addicted to social media the UK is, showing that the average Brit spends two hours and 12 minutes on social media every day, usually across three social media accounts.

In fact, BT thinks social media has made us “social needier” – Brits are expecting more and more validation through our social media, and putting a lot of time in to what we post on there… and it’s men who seem needier than women.

Men said they expected 40 likes on a post on average to “feel happy” about it, while for women that figure was 28. That’s much lower, but still pretty high. When we get those likes, the survey says, we feel happy (44%), recognised (29%), and popular (27%).

Then again, given how much time we spend crafting posts in the first place, maybe it’s not totally unreasonable to want something back: we spend an average of nine minutes composing a post (10 minutes for men and eight for women), or eleven minutes to take a picture and share it.

And then, when it’s finally up, men check a post for interaction every minute for a whopping 19 minutes, while women check every minute for 15.

Psychologist Dr Becky Spelman said it was “not surprising” that men show more dependence on social networks than women, since “they often have less well-developed social networks and fewer emotional ties in the real world”… a claim which could probably benefit from a little empirical evidence.

Overall, 68 of survey respondents said that being recognised on social media is “important”, and more than half said they felt envious of people whose posts garnered more likes, shares, and responses.

“Superficial interactions such as ‘liking’ someone’s post are harmless in themselves,” Spelman continued, “but people need to be careful that when they interact with social media they don’t forget real life relationships with friends and family members.”

– Kim Stables

Original Source: BT

October 10, 2016 by Julie McGrath

Digital media and financial pressures on CEOs are forcing marketing employees to focus increasingly on short-term metrics at the expense of creativity and brand building.

Short-term marketing tactics are increasingly taking precedence over long-term brand building, which is affecting advertising effectiveness, but whose responsibility is it to even the balance between fast results and brand longevity?

The issue of short-termism was raised by an IPA report in June that suggests the use of short-term metrics to measure campaign success is resulting in a sharp drop in creativity and diverting budgets away from longer-term brand building activity.

Author of the IPA report Peter Field believes the rise of digital and programmatic advertising is partly to blame for this shift in thinking, since it has put increased pressure on marketers to track whether activity is working in real time. If a message fails to resonate it can be quickly changed, which is appropriate in some instances but does not necessarily lend itself to brand building.

“There is a real pendulum that companies swing because they want long-term brand building to make sure the brand resonates and continues to be loved but that is a slow burn,” says Susan Smith Ellis, CMO at Getty Images.

“The instantaneousness of measuring then causes a shift back to all the digital channels all the time and trying to figure out how to measure these different pieces by the nanosecond.”

Smith Ellis believes companies need to consider whether “they are being schizophrenic about their behaviors”. She says: “The balancing of short-term revenue and long-term brand building is an art and a science and very few companies do it well.”

The impact of digital transformation

The Royal Shakespeare Company is in the process of going through a digital transformation and implementing a full overhaul of how it delivers commerce and content. Photo credit David Tett

Taking a long-term view depends on the position and direction of the business. The Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) is in the process of going through a digital transformation and has worked with software provider Progress to implement a full overhaul of how it delivers commerce and content.

Richard Adams, consultant digital programme manager at the RSC, says: “What we are doing is accepting short-term measures are in place, but underneath it I have implemented lots of different approaches to data.”

Adams is in the process of rolling out the ability to track trends over a longer period to understand how people interact with the company, which therefore allows the RSC to start thinking about how to change the way it works to become data-driven and evidence-led rather than reactive to short-term campaign successes.

“We are firm believers that a lot of traditional digital marketing spend is inefficient and wasted.”

– Neil Costello, head of marketing, Atom Bank

When embarking on a long-term digital transformation project, it is vital for the entire company to be on board in order for this approach to work. Adams says: “One of the things about transformation is that you have to somehow work out how to take people with you. You can put as much technology in place as you want but people have to know why and that explanation has to be simple and relevant.”

When launching a new business, it could be tempting to look for quick wins but in order to create a viable long-term business proposition, brand building is key.

Atom Bank launched its app-based savings account in April, but its flagship product – its current account – launches next year so the brand is focused on driving earned media using social networks. A short-term campaign on TV or digital is therefore not on the cards, according to head of marketing Neil Costello.

“We don’t have the investment to go on TV and have no desire to do that. We are firm believers that a lot of traditional digital marketing spend, such as online display, is inefficient and wasted so it pushes you into the territory of gathering a following in social, where you have an army of advocates ready to purchase your product,” he says.

Costello was drawn to Atom from Aviva by the “chance to build a brand from scratch” and the ability to “be as risky and provocative as you like from the outset, as opposed to being hampered by a large brand that can’t move too far away from its established core”.

“It’s really easy to be lazy and start attacking the big banking groups and what banking has done in the past,” adds Costello, who says Atom is more focused on helping people redefine the relationship they have with money. He says: “By getting people talking about that on your behalf, you are fostering trust before your proposition has even launched.”

When a long-term view is needed

Electrolux has been working on its digital transformation for the past two-and-a-half years

Household appliances brand Electrolux has been working on its digital transformation with agency Prophet for the past two-and-a-half years with the aim of building brands in a more effective way. The project is long-term and still going.

In EMEA countries, Electrolux has more than 30 brands across different categories in the white goods sector and senior vice-president of EMEA marketing Lars Hygrell wants to introduce a more consistent consumer experience.

“We needed to bring rigour into measuring and understanding the effect of our investment in different channels.”

– Lars Hygrell, senior VP of EMEA marketing, Electrolux

He says: “With everything going on in the industry and marketing overall thanks to the changes and impact of digital, we needed to bring rigour into measuring and understanding the effect of our investment in different channels.”

The goal for Hygrell is to effectively manage short- and long-term requirements. He adds: “The beauty of our approach is to be able to not only look at the long term and say we only look at brand health, but to have that balance to make sure we have the right focus on the monthly, quarterly and yearly results.

“At the same time we need to drive and feed into the overall strategy of securing an overall consumer experience and brand building strategy that drives us in the right direction.”

The rise of short-term thinking is closely aligned to the fact marketers’ tenure in any one role seems to be declining.

The effect of short-termism on creativity

Shrinking marketing budgets and the use of short-term metrics to measure campaign success have resulted in a sharp drop in creativity, according to the IPA’s ‘Selling creativity short: Creativity and effectiveness under threat’ report. It shows that since 2006 the percentage of IPA campaigns that ran for less than six months has more than quadrupled to more than 30%. For award-winning campaigns the rise has been even sharper at around 45%.

The report suggests it is important to note this rise because “creativity delivers business results most strongly over the long term and this ‘miscasting’ undermines the impact of creativity”. Over these short time scales non-awarded campaigns also tend to outperform awarded campaigns.

Report author Peter Field says short-termism is “putting attention on short-term tactics and diverting budgets, particularly into digital sales.”

He adds: “If you undermine long-term thinking and strategy, you entirely undermine creativity because it lives in that world of long-termism.”

Did you find this Article Interesting? If so, check out our most recent Marketing Manager vacancy on our website. It might be the perfect opportunity for you to take the next leap in your Marketing career! You can check it out by following this link

– Mindi Chahal

September 26, 2016 by Julie McGrath

Marketing is one of the most important aspects to promoting a business.

It’s therefore important to have extensive knowledge in a variety of Marketing techniques. Research has revealed what sort of Marketing techniques resonate well with Business Consumers. Check out the top 10 most popular techniques.

Cause Marketing

Cause marketing is a cooperative effort between a for-profit business and a non-profit organisation to mutually promote and benefit from social and other charitable causes. Cause marketing is not to be confused with corporate giving, which is tied to specific tax-deductible donations made by an organization. Cause marketing relationships are “feel goods,” and assure your customers you share their desire to make the world a better place.

Fact: 64% of consumers want corporations to integrate social impact directly into their business models.

Direct Selling

Direct selling accomplishes exactly what the name suggests – selling products directly to consumers. In this model, sales agents build face-to-face relationships with individuals by demonstrating and selling products away from retail settings, usually in an individual’s home. The top three direct sellers in 2015 are Amway, Avon and Herbalife.

Fact: The top 3 direct-sell companies averaged $9 billion in sales in 2015.

Co-branding and Affinity Marketing

Co-branding is a marketing methodology in which at least two brands join together to promote and sell a single product or service. The brands lend their collective credibility to increase the perception of the product or service’s value, so consumers are willing to pay more at retail. Secondarily, co-branding may dissuade private label manufacturers from copying the product or service.

Fact: In 2014, 6% of all product launches relied on co-branding.

Earned Media/PR

Earned media (or “free media”) is publicity that is created through efforts other than paid advertising. It can take a variety of forms – a social media testimonial, word of mouth, a television or radio mention, a newspaper article or editorial – but one thing is constant: earned media is unsolicited and can only be gained organically. It cannot be bought or owned like traditional advertising.

Fact: Nearly 75% of consumers identify earned media as a key influence in purchase decisions.

Point-of-Purchase Marketing (POP)

Point-of-Purchase (or, POP) sells to a captive audience – those shoppers already in-store and ready to purchase. Product displays, on-package coupons, shelf talkers that tout product benefits and other attention-getting “sizzle” often sways buying decisions at the shelf by making an offer simply too good – and too visible – to pass up.

Fact: 64% of consumers making unplanned purchases switch brands when a deal is offered in-store.

Internet Marketing

Internet marketing, or online marketing, combines web and email to advertise and drive e-commerce sales. Social media platforms may also be included to leverage brand presence and promote products and services. In total, these efforts are typically used in conjunction with traditional advertising formats like radio, television and print.

Fact: 97% of consumers search for businesses online.

Paid Media Advertising

Paid media is a tool that companies use to grow their website traffic through paid advertising. One of the most popular methods is pay-per-click (PPC) links. Essentially, a company buys or “sponsors” a link that appears as an ad in search engine results when keywords related to their product or service are searched (this process is commonly known as search engine marketing, or SEM). Every time the ad is clicked, the company pays the search engine (or other third party host site) a small fee for the visitor – a literal “pay per click.”

Fact: 76% of businesses use promoted posts and search engine marketing.

Word of Mouth Advertising

Word of mouth advertising is unpaid, organic and oh-so-powerful because those having nice things to say about your product or service generally have nothing to gain from it other than sharing good news. A recommendation from a friend, colleague or family member has built-in credibility, and can spur dozens of leads who anticipate positive experiences with your brand. It’s important to note that word of mouth isn’t strictly verbal. Leveraging online reviews and opinions are equally effective at spreading the word.

Fact: Word of mouth referrals drive $6 trillion in annual consumer spending.

Social Networks and Viral Marketing

Social media marketing focuses on providing users with content they find valuable and want to share across their social networks, resulting in increased visibility and traffic. Social media shares of content, videos and images also influence Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) efforts in that they often increase relevancy in search results within social media networks like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram and search engines like Google and Yahoo.

Fact: 54% of B2C companies report revenue generated from social media leads.

Storytelling

Brand storytelling uses a familiar communication format to engage consumers at an emotional level. Rather than just spew facts and figures, storytelling allows you to weave a memorable tale of who your company is, what you do, how you solve problems, want you value and how you engage and contribute to your community and the public in general.

Fact: Brands that inspire a higher emotional intensity influence consumer purchase intent 3 times more often than less emotionally connected brands.

Every Strategy Requires an Effective Marketing Plan

Regardless of the strategy you choose, marketing effectiveness is most dependent on how you execute. Create yourself a Marketing plan and devise yourself a structure to follow in order to utilise these marketing techniques to their full potential in which both your business and consumers will benefit from. Good luck!

If you already posses knowledge and experience in Marketing? Check out our latest marketing role by following this link. It may be just right for you!

July 6, 2016 by Julie McGrath

What does the future hold for SEO, online advertising and social media?

Today’s marketing landscape reflects predictions made in science fiction films from the 80’s. We have predictive technology, machine learning and computers that can perform complex actions at nothing more than a voice command.

Put simply, we are living in a new age of internet capability where every discovery leads to more endless possibilities than the last.

The impact this is having on the marketing world is immense as brands look to keep a pace with their customers, the adopters of this technology.

In this 140 character and 15-second video era, it is evident that consumers’ attention spans are decreasing and with it, so are the windows of opportunity for brands to connect with them. It is no longer about “sell sell sell” but “engage engage engage”.

So what does the future hold for SEO (Search Engine Optimization), online advertising and social media and how can marketers effectively use these tools in order to continue to engage audiences?

Why SEO will continue to boom

Given the advances in technology, it’s hard to look more than a few years into the future with huge predictability. However, it’s likely that SEO will continue to grow in popularity, in one form or another.

According to a recent study by Borrell Associates, companies are going to spend $65bn on SEO in 2016. What’s more, the same study found the SEO industry will continue to grow to an estimated $72bn by 2018 and $79bn by 2020.

It’s not hard to see why. There is more of everything. There is more searching as older generations, averse to technology, are making way for younger generations, who use it regularly.

Brands have moved from trying to make their content go viral to focus on creating content that resonates with their audience

There are more users as the internet becomes more affordable and available to different demographics. There are also more outlets for search visibility. When traditional advertising methods finally cease to exist altogether, businesses will have no choice but to look to inbound marketing campaigns in the online world.

Although it won’t all be plain sailing. We’ll see competition increase as more people get involved, which is likely to put up costs.

SEO will adapt with the times and so will how people using it. In the short-term there is much out there to help businesses keep up to date and incorporate a best practice SEO strategy – we do it regularly to support our users.

Looking further ahead, technologies such as self-driving cars will give users more time to perform searches at times when they previously couldn’t. These changes will make it possible for almost anyone to search for anything at any time.

Digital assistants will bridge the gap between online and offline search and as more and more brands get to grips with big data, we can expect to see search engines specific to individual platforms like the app store.

Social Media

While all of this is going on we will see a new age of social media that goes beyond the consumer dominated landscape it is today. It will become a business battleground, particularly centered on metrics and engagement.

Metrics such as likes, followers, retweets, unique views, total story completions or even screenshots, but most importantly click-through rates and the actions taken after that are what marketers will be looking at in more detail.

The goal of every marketer is to have a reliable social ROI (Return of investment) in order to be able to connect social efforts with real world results.

Alongside with metrics comes engagement. Brands have moved from trying to make their content go viral to focus on creating content that resonates with their audience, particularly video, and we will see a lot of developments in this space.

By producing content that is valuable and interesting to their audience, the most likely it is for it to be shared. This might seem an easy task, but it’s not. The only way to get it right is by constantly learn and understand what your audience expects from your brand and your business.

– Li-at Karpel Gurwicz

If this is of interest to you, be sure to check out our latest marketing roles here!

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