17 E-commerce Conversion Boosters [Infographic]

Boost your conversion rate by testing these different trust, engagement and experience factors

No retailer can succeed in modern-day commerce without a web presence. But simply running an online store doesn’t guarantee a boom in revenue either. To become a successful retailer, you must work out an effective strategy, which is undoubtedly a time-consuming process. For some quick tips on increasing your conversion, check out this Infographic dubbed 17 eCommerce Conversion Boosters.

The Infographic gives a compact overview of tried and tested ways to maximize the efficiency of any web store. If you're a CRO pro, these will be your 'bread and butter', but if CRO means nothing to you, then the different success factors are nicely grouped into a Table of contents. It looks at the use of images and videos, psychological impact of colors, trust seals, contact info, sales, shipping privileges, and many other aspects.

Thanks to Template Monster for publishing this Gifographic.

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UK marketing consultants love digital, but shun advertising

Research reveals how UK marketing consultants and small agencies promote themselves

Over the past few months my team at OST has teamed up with Constant Contact to produce a research report into how UK marketing consultants and small agencies promote themselves. The UK Marketing Consultants: Digital Marketing Report offers a fascinating insight into the marketing activities that experienced, but often time-poor and budget conscious marketing consultants, prioritise.

One of the headline findings is that the top four marketing activities that consultants engage in are: content marketing, social media, SEO and email marketing. This gives a hint (echoed throughout the report) that consultants prefer to use their own knowledge and time than spend their hard-earned cash on marketing.

Another key finding is that while 38% of consultants spend 81-100% of their marketing efforts on digital, 13% still say that 80% of their marketing still happens offline. Writing in the report, I admitted to being surprised by this, but with hindsight – and perhaps without my ‘digital blinkers’ on – it’s pretty obvious that a lot of marketing, especially at a local level, still happens face-to-face and at networking events.

The most damning findings of our survey relate to advertising. 68% of UK consultants say Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising is ineffective and 65% say online advertising is ineffective. Throughout the research we found that respondents simply don’t have any faith in advertising to deliver the results they need. For marketing consultants, at least, the heady days of on-going, localised, PPC advertising appear to be well and truly over.

While content marketing, social media, email and SEO generally wiped the board in terms of prioritisation among consultants, we tried to dig a bit deeper about what each activity is best for. For example, email marketing came out on top for lead generation while social media was used most frequently for increasing awareness of a product of services.

This surprised us a little bit, since most companies – reputable ones, at least - tend to use email marketing for nurturing existing relationships, rather than acquiring new customers. The social media finding is less contentious, though separating out the results of content marketing from social media (and to some extent SEO) may be quite difficult in practice.

In financial terms the report left us in no doubt that marketing consultants are thrifty customers. The majority spend nothing on most marketing activities and under £50 per month on the ones they do spend on – perhaps for a decent email platform or social media management tool. Only content marketing has the power to elicit budgets over £500 per month and only then for a minority of small agencies, though most consultants plan to spend more - or at least the same – on most activities this year, compared to last year.

Towards the end of the research survey we asked what regular sources consultants rely on for marketing information. While many of them listed blogs, email newsletters and news sites, the top answer was unequivocal: each other. The top sources of daily and weekly information for UK marketing consultants are Twitter and LinkedIn. That is surely a sign of our social times, if ever there was one.

You can download the full report here.

Thanks to Luke Brynley-Jones for sharing their advice and opinions in this post.Luke Brynley-Jones is CEO of Our Social Times, You can follow him on Twitter or connect on LinkedIn.

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How to select the perfect ESP for you

Expert tips for choosing the right Email Marketing Software

Choosing the right email marketing software is tough. There is a jungle of vendors out there and it is often hard to see what all of the vendors exactly do? But before you go out and fire up google for a wild and unsatisfactory search, read on for some crucial tips on the process by Jordie van Rijn.

Jordie is the co-author of the recently published Email Marketing Software Buyer’s Guide, which is officially the biggest research ever on ESP and Marketing automation providers, has some tips for companies starting their selection.

The right order: No cups of coffee based on gut-feeling

Doing through the process in the right order is very important in a selection. The first step is to find out how you will be using the tool. Because only then it becomes clear what to look for in a potential vendor. That way you can make the right evaluation and choice.

Vendors often want to invite for Meetings / demo’s and “cups of coffee, No offense to the vendors for asking you for coffee – they just want to sell their tools. These usually cost a lot of time and
you don’t know which questions to ask (yet). First get a clear image of what you want. And what you want is not a cup of coffee.

Base the choice on your 20%

ESP selection time is the moment to be honest with yourself. The tool and supplier need to fit to what you intend to do with it and what your organisation deems important. Describe what you will do in the coming 12 – 24 months. I mention 12-24 months, because if you aren’t going to do it in the first two years, little chance that you will after that.
More functionality isn’t better. Of course it is nice to know the supplier has room for growth, but 80% of the users (exaggerated stated) only 20% of the tooling intensively. Of course there will be many innovations in email marketing, but the field is already quite mature. So make sure your selection is based on your 20% and that those are completely like you want them. You can write those wishes down in normal language and later distil a shorter requirement.

In our research we asked 350 questions. 69% of the vendors can for instance send SMS from their platform, but only 4% has a native function to send push messages to apps. If mobile messaging is important for your organisation, those are things to look for. If not, they don’t count.

Creating a long list – how does that work?

There are a lot of suppliers. A lot. Today the total number of Email service providers stands at 543 if you count the 143 I haven’t reviewed yet. So how to get to a workable list of ESPs to look into?

Image: An overview of the 111 email and marketing automation vendors in the published Email Marketing Software Buyer’s Guide

A division between Small market (simple tools, relatively cheap, less functionality), mid-market (more functionality, often more support and send volume) and Enterprise (for big corporates and high demands) will help a lot.

As well as the selection between email centric, marketing automation or all-in-one. And the need for additional services and support. If you slice the market like that, you have got a category – the suppliers within that category would form your long list. But that is only the begin of the real selection.

1. There are Must haves and there are must haves

Your wishes can be prioritised according to the MoSoCoW method. The Mo -The Must Haves - form the absolute minimum requirements. If a vendor doesn’t fulfil those, they are disqualified. But even in the must haves are three categories:

Hygiene factors like security demand, hosting location, support hours or ISO certification are used to widdle down the list with potential suppliers. After the pre-selection they are no longer important for the selection, so they shouldn’t be further considered in the final decision.

Deal breakers, these must haves are what you would normally find to be a must have feature. For instance you want an easy to use email editor. But there is granularity. One vendors might have an email editor that is easy to use, but the second has one that is super easy to use.

Other Deal breakers might have an alternative solution. An example of that is a landing page maker, you can use an external tool to build the landing pages, or let your agency do it for you. Sometimes a bit more customization is needed, like with integrations for example. That is not ideal, but not per se a reason for exclusion.

So even “must haves” have multiple levels to distinguish.

2. Scoring by scoring

I use a scoring model when guiding selections. Such a scoring makes it clearer on what you are selecting and clarifies the considerations, also internally.
You give the requirements a score of importance, that way you can make a selection based on the right . Make sure the functionalities and requirements are grouped by category. Otherwise one category (with many items) can overshadow all other categories! There are 7 key features mentioned in this interview from some years ago. In our research we included 14 categories, this is mainly because not every selection criteria is a feature.

The model I use in selections that I guide is a bit more advanced than you would normally see. If you make your own scoring model, make sure the most important items get the highest value. The answer to “do they match this requirement?” should ideally not just be answered as yes or no. For in many cases it is not only the question if they do something, but how and how well it is done. Based on a scoring made in Excel you can get quite far.

3. The price is right

Price is also important of course. The cost of software differ hugely and often are not calculated in the same way.

Is it a fixed price per year, licence costs, number of emails sent, number of users, pay-as-you-go? What are the set-up and implementation costs?
With Marketing Automation tools, it is common to offer a package with functionalities and a number of contacts in the database. Do you want more, you go to a higher package. Or it is modular, in which case you pay extra per additional function. So here it is also important to know how you will be using the system.
.
The best way is to give the vendors a couple of scenarios, based on expected, higher rand lower volumes. That way there won’t be any big surprises once the usage is different than estimated.

But, and this is my own opinion, if tools and services are close enough to be in the same price-category, you would best drop price as a consideration all together and just go for the one that has the best fit.

The email Marketing Software Buyer’s Guide in short

The email Marketing Software Buyer’s guide is written by four international experts in ESP and Marketing automation selections. Jordie van Rijn, Bruno Florence, Torsten Schwarz and Gabriele Braun. is the ultimate selection cheat-sheet. and guide for the RFP and purchase process in 330 pages, 111 vendor profiles with in-software screenshots and contact information.

For more information on the guide or to requesting an abstract of the email marketing software buyer’s guide.

Thanks to Jordie van Rijn for sharing his thoughts and opinions in this blog post. Jordie  is an independent email and eCRM marketing consultant who helps companies get the most out of their digital efforts. He is the founder of the international platform for Email and Marketing Automation Software selection and author of the Smart Insights Marketing Automation Best Practices Guide. Brands like Unilever, EndeMol, KLM and Heineken turn to him for advice. Next to helping companies improve their marketing results, he is often asked as a trainer and speaker in the field of online marketing. His practical and enthusiastic approach is contagious and will have you sending better emails the next day. You can connect on LinkedIn.

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Working for an a marketing agency vs client-side marketer – Which path should I choose for my career?

Showing how switching from working client to agency side can help your career progression

After spending the best part of a decade as an in-house client-side marketer, I recently made the decision to experience life as a marketer within an agency. My ambition is to continually develop myself as a rounded marketer, something I’ve tried to demonstrate using the ‘T-shaped marketer’ approach and I felt the change to agency-side marketing would help me to meet my personal development goals.

There are a number of advantages for marketers who experience both agency and client-side marketing and in this post I’ve tried to summarise some of the stand-out differences that I've experienced and how they can help marketers looking to develop their careers.

Culture

One of the stand-out differences I found when moving from client to agency-side was the company culture. I'd come from a large company with a very corporate environment so I was immediately struck by the differences in the working environment. In addition to music in the office and more casual dress (t-shirts and shorts vs. suits and ties!), teams interact with one another more openly and there's a less siloed feel to collaboration.
The culture on the agency-side also feels less hierarchical and more meritocratic. One of the frustrations I often experienced client-side was the dreaded HiPPO (Highest Paid Person's Opinion). A piece of work or professional opinion could be trumped by someone else's seniority. And whilst this no doubt occurs in any company to one degree or another, senior figures at the agency certainly appear more open to opinions regardless of whether it's a junior or senior marketer.

The more laissez-faire culture at an agency can be a double-edged sword. I personally miss the more structured systems in place client-side and whilst the hierarchy could create bureaucratic blockages, you nevertheless had a clear idea of whom the key stakeholders were and how best to deliver for them what is required on any given project or task.

The work

The pace of work agency-side can be much faster. It's not uncommon to work on multiple clients at a time and therefore multitasking is essential. This has certainly been a personal challenge for me - I was used to working on just one brand before whereas now I'm expected to juggle projects from a wide variety of sectors (from financial services to automotive and FMCG). But at the same time the variety is a huge positive and forces me to keep my skills sharp and look for creative solutions.

It's also worth noting that on the client-side you are the boss and set the agenda, whilst on the agency-side you are the supplier. This is an important change in dynamic - work must be delivered based on the client's priorities and challenges must be conducted with tact.

Skill requirements

As a digital marketer, I like to think that many of the skills I have are transferable (and a key reason why I made the switch from client to agency-side marketing). However, what is different is:

a) How the hard marketing skills are applied

b) The different softer skills that are required

On the client-side, even if you have a wide range of knowledge across digital marketing it's likely you'll have a narrow focus within the business. You may be expected to specialise in just a few disciplines, e.g. SEO or social media, whilst others focused on others areas, e.g. UX, design and development.

Having strong commercial skills is a key attribute on the client-side. It's often necessary to sell in ideas to senior stakeholders and the ability to construct a strong business case is essential. In addition, long-term planning is also important - as the custodian of the strategy one must be able to plan 2-5 years (and onwards).

Whilst having a narrow skill focus can also be required agency-side, I've personally found that I'm now expected to augment my core skills, enabling me to provide a much more rounded set of recommendations to clients and at the same time develop as a marketer.

Although I believe time-management is essential wherever you work, I'd suggest that this is particularly important as a client-side marketer. As an in-house marketer I was used to spending time working on projects and 'finessing' my work before presenting whilst within an agency I have a number of clients with different projects, the timings of which can change at a moment's notice.

Career progression

How one develops their career on both the client and agency side is of course very much down to each individual and how they manage themselves. However, the company/ corporate structures I’ve experienced on both sides provide an indication of the potential career paths for marketers.

On the client-side, I’ve found there to be a very structured review/ appraisal process. Each review gives marketers the opportunity to understand how they’re performing in relation to their personal objectives, their peers and the organisation overall. Whilst the corporate structure can sometimes be a barrier to progression (for example, if there are established figures in place in senior roles), if you prove your worth and demonstrate value, structures can be changed and new roles created.
Agencies are typically structured like this across the industry:

• Account/ client services
• Planning
• Creative
• Production
• Media buying

There is often more of an entrepreneurial and meritocratic culture and if you can demonstrate great skill and ability there’s an opportunity to progress within your area (for example, within client services you could move from account manager to senior account manager, or within creative from designer to art director) or due to the common agency structure outlined above one can more easily progress by moving between different agencies.

Pay and remuneration

The research I’ve seen tends to indicate that client-side marketers earn more than their agency peers. This may have something to do with the way in which different types of businesses are structured and their respective business models although this is dependent on position and the type of role.

However, whilst pay is a very important factor, the skills and experience one can learn from either client or agency-side is of greater importance and should form part of a marketer’s greater long-term career goals. For example, if your goal is to be a head of digital marketing or creative director in 3, 5 or 10 years time, what are the skills, attributes and competencies you need to acquire? Knowing this will help you identify the right roles to go for and may mean that a lower salary is a worthwhile sacrifice for the potential long-term gains.

Summary of differences

Agency-side:

• Fast-paced
• Work across a variety of brands simultaneously - need to have strong multitasking skills
• Service focused - the clients are top priority
• Relationship management
• Time management to deal with competing priorities
• Negotiating budgets
• Pitches and presentations
• Must be up-to-date with the latest trends and developments to ensure expertise

Client-side:

• One brand to focus on
• Planning and development is crucial
• Can be political and bureaucratic
• Need good influencing skills to work with internal stakeholders
• Develop highly specialised skills in one or two areas
• Can be siloed as a result of specialised centres of excellence
• Manage multiple agencies on campaigns and projects
• Need good commercial skills to sell-in ideas to internal stakeholders
• Can suffer from the HiPPO problem!

Image credits: Fotos GOVBA and Stewart Butterfield

Download Expert member resources – Digital Marketing Agency Toolkit

This set of templates by agency specialist Mark Kelly covers how to improve processes and skills for managing agencies and delivering client projects from pre-sales to implementation.

Access the Digital Marketing Agency Toolkit

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What is Marketing Automation and how do I choose a provider?

What is Marketing Automation?

Marketing Automation is a talking point.  In some form it has been around since the 1980’s, and has been adopted by large multinationals for some time.  But it is evolving and growing.  It is becoming more relevant for a wider range of business sizes and types.  As more and more MA solutions start to appear, it is a great time to be thinking about what might work for your organisation. With that thought it mind, I’ve put together a guide to help you understand the key features, it’s uses and why it might work for you.

A definition of Marketing Automation

From the many definitions available on the internet, I’ve chosen this one from Gleanster as it gives a clear idea of what technologies are included and what the core purpose is.

“Marketing automation software replaces separate systems for email, web visitor tracking, lead scoring, nurture campaigns, campaign management, reporting and other core components with one solution that streamlines marketing processes and shares data with sales.”

A Simple Example

Think of Marketing Automation as the ultimate lead nurture tool.  Imagine returning from a trade show with a long list of leads.  Without marketing automation, your marketing team could send emails, individually score actions (such as those who opened the email), and pass the top leads straight over to your sales team.  But what about those who don’t interact with this email?  Blindly email them again?  Ask your marketers to call each one and qualify them?

Imagine setting up a marketing pathway before you ever head to the trade show.  This could be set up to send a series of emails, with different email paths depending on how each lead reacts.  It can include scoring when a lead visits your website, or interacts with you on social.  And when the lead hits a set score, it can automatically be assigned for a follow up call.

That’s a simple example of the benefits of Marketing Automation.  If you find yourself with too many leads to follow up individually, or a long sales cycle, it can step in and move those leads through the funnel.  And leave your marketers free to improve your automated cycle, work on original ideas and new ways to generate leads.

What is Content/Inbound Marketing?

Another common use of Marketing Automation is regularly described as content or inbound marketing.  The idea is to generate and nurture leads by sharing your knowledge about your potential customer’s pain points.  Content gives you something useful to send out in your emails, offering blogs, whitepapers, infographics, case studies or whatever else is relevant.  You show your leads that you understand them, and their problems.  They are then more likely to look to you first when they decide they need to purchase a product or service to solve a relevant pain point.

To generate leads, you can use gated content.  Gated content is simply a way of asking somebody to give you their contact details in exchange for a piece of content that they want.  A very common approach is a landing page on a website with a form, and a call-to-action button such as ‘Download Now!’  The lead fills out the form in exchange for a useful whitepaper which helps to solve a problem, and you get their contact details.  They are then effectively the same as the trade show example above, they are in your funnel and will be scored as they work their way towards the first sales call.

Choosing Marketing Automation Software

If you’ve reached the decision that Marketing Automation is right for your business, it is time to start comparing the many options in the market.  From vendors offering individual features of automation, such as email marketing or website visitor tracking, through to all-in-one solutions covering everything from website CMS through to CRM, there are lot of different providers to consider.

I will investigate the features included in marketing automation, giving an explanation of why each might be relevant for your marketing process, in the rest of this blog.  I've also included five key questions to help you work out how to implement a marketing automation solution that works for your business processes.

What features should I look for?

Core features you should expect in any marketing automation solution:

• Email Marketing
• Web Visitor Tracking
• Campaign Management
• Lead Management & Scoring
• Social Integration

Without the above, it will be difficult to automate a process.  You need lead management to store leads as they work their way through the cycle, and to record how they’ve interacted throughout the cycle.  Similarly, if you can’t score leads, how do you decide when they are ready for a sales call?  Lead Scoring is often also used to determine what should happen to the lead next.  For example, if they visit a specific product page on your website, they get a score AND they next receive an email related to that product.

Campaign management is the area in which you design the automated process.  This screen determines what actions will happen from the moment the lead enters your cycle, right up until it leaves (becomes a customer).  Similarly, none of this can work without email marketing.  Email may be the aging giant amongst the shiny new software, but it remains the strongest way to interact with a lead.  Without email you can’t deliver relevant content to work a lead through the nurture cycle.

Website Visitor Tracking enhances lead scoring, but is also useful for real-time alerting.  Alerts can be triggered by leads that are marked as close to sales-ready visiting the website, enabling timely sales calls.  They can determine which email sequence a lead is delivered, such as product relevant content after visiting a product page, and give sales teams a detailed history of website interaction when preparing for sales calls.

Social is a great way to deliver content to new and existing audiences.  It’s also pretty good for SEO.  If you are looking to generate leads using content/inbound marketing, then it’s 100% necessary.  If you are only nurturing leads that you generate some other way, it is nice to have.

Being able to schedule social posts within your campaign management section of marketing automation enables you to plan out relevant posts for each campaign.  It also saves your marketers from sitting on social all day, although it is likely they will still need to actually log in to interact.  Some people are very against scheduling social, others love it.  Follow your own strategy, but know it is useful for planning if nothing else.

Others worth mentioning: landing pages are handy if you cannot create them in your own website CMS, reporting is pretty important to measure campaign success, SMS automation is possible with plenty of MA providers if this is relevant to you, full Content Management Systems (CMS) are available with a select few if you’d like to host your website with your MA provider.

Consider these before signing up

As with any software solution, there are several things to consider before signing a contract.  Can it work in your business?  Do you know what exactly you are expecting it to achieve?  How will you ensure your team can use it?  Here a few things to consider before choosing a solution.

1. Is the SaaS model right for me?

Most, but not all, marketing automation solutions are sold using the Saas model, that's 'Software as a Service'.  This means your data is hosted on their servers, often referred to as the cloud.  SaaS models are now common place, but that doesn’t mean every business is able to host their data outside of their own servers.
SaaS models also typically charge a monthly fee per user of the system.  Consider the long-term costs of this fee structure carefully before signing up.

2. What is my lead-to-sale process?

Before implementing a brand new system, make sure you have your lead-to-sale process clearly drawn up.  Once you have a clear pattern of what you currently do, you can then start to work out how the various marketing automation features can fit into your cycle.  If you aren’t completely clear on your current process when you start using automation, how can you improve upon it, or measure it’s success?

3. What data should be included to improve my lead-to-sale process?

Another reason to know your process before identifying a new system is data.  What information is key to your process?  How will leads be entered into the system?  Where will leads go once they are qualified?  Is it important to bring data in from a system you already use, such as an event management program?  How will sales access the information stored against leads?  Will you want this data in your CRM system?  Answering these questions will save a lot of headaches later on.  Remember, the benefit of marketing automation is to improve the number of leads you turn into customers.  If the new software breaks down the relationship between sales and marketing, then it will not help to increase your return on investment.

4. Who could benefit from the system?

Clearly you want your marketers to use the system.  How many of them? The whole department, just one, or everybody in the business?  Consider the cost, is your new system charged per user?  If your marketing automation and CRM systems are integrated, how much information will be available in CRM for your sales team to access?

5. How do I make sure users can make the most of the system?

If you have answered all of the questions above, you should be implementing a system which compatible with your lead-to-sale processes.  You will have the right data flowing in and out of the system, enabling marketing to support leads through the funnel and pass on to sales at the optimum moment with all of the information they could need to make a successful sales call.  The final step is training.

You should receive thorough training for your key users, as well as support setting up the system for the first time.  You will need somebody to import your data, but ideally that person should also take the time to understand what you want to achieve with the system and show you how to set it up.  Finally, make sure you have both online resources to answer simple questions, but also a telephone number for support when something goes wrong.

Thanks to Penni Stanton for sharing her advice and opinions in this post. Penni is the Marketing Manager at Gold-Vision CRM. You can follow Gold-Vision on Twitter or LinkedIn, and you can find Penni onTwitter too.

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The State of Content Marketing 2015 and the prospects for 2016

New report showing content marketing budgets and benchmarks, and reveals the key trends for 2016 in the UK and other countries.

Content marketing is one of the most important component parts of digital marketing. Every year we survey our members asking what they think will be the most important marketing trends of the year ahead, and content marketing has come top for three years in a row and is predicted to be a top marketing trend of 2016, vying with Marketing Automation for the top spot.

Each year the Content Marketing Institute survey a wide range of marketers working across many industries. This 6th annual survey is a large-scale survey overall since they surveyed 3,714 people from businesses of all sizes, you can see the full research which covers B2B, B2C and Not-for-profit businesses in the United States and Australia overall in the CMI Content Marketing research section. In this post, we're focusing on the report titled 2016 UK Content Marketing trends. The report we describe here is a smaller survey of just 133 respondents who said they were for-profit marketers in the UK (65% B2B, 11% B2C, and 24% both B2B+B2C). For comparison, our survey of trends of content marketing in EMEA with HubSpot had over 700 respondents.

Usage Up

Almost every single form of content marketing was used more this year than ever before. Photos were up 12%, videos 10% and infographics 10%. Interestingly there was a 30% increase in the use of promoted posts, which is probably a result of needing to do more to boost content now that there is such a glut of it being created. The survey found that now 64% of marketers were paying to promote their content, compared to just 34% the year before. This partially explains why marketers are spending a higher percentage of their budgets on content marketing. The average for 2015 is now 29% of total marketing budget, compared to 26% the year before.

Over the whole sample, 89% of marketers used content marketing, up from 85% last year. Five years ago content marketing was new and exciting. Now it is very much the norm, making it far harder to stand out.

Better strategy and planning required to boost effectiveness

In total, 32% of marketers thought that their companies content marketing was mature or sophisticated, and of those people, 78% thought their content marketing was highly effective. This suggests how important it is to plan, manage and optimise their content marketing, as only 22% of those who reported being intermediately skilled with content marketing said they found their content marketing highly effective. Even more telling, only 1% of those who were only just starting out with content marketing reported finding it highly effective. It is no longer enough to just be ‘doing’ content marketing. You have to accurate measurement, integration across the businesses and a well-planned strategy in order to succeed.

54% of marketers think their organisation has clarity on what a successful content marketing program would look like, but this varies considerably by how sophisticated the organisations content marketing efforts were. 84% of those who thought their content marketing efforts were sophisticated/mature had clarity, whilst only 27% of those just starting out did.

Overall, 88% said they planned to create more content in 2016, whilst only 11% said they planned on creating the same amount and a tiny 1% thought they would create less. Which suggests 2016 is going to be a busy year for content marketers!

Many still lacking a content marketing strategy

We would have been shocked to discover how few organisations had a documented content marketing strategy, but our surveys show a similar picture! This report showed that

Only 37% had a strategy that was written down, whilst a further 42% had one that was not documented.

Surely this situation is not sustainable. Whilst it is good that so many have got strategies in place, having one that is not documented is asking for disaster. What happens if several senior marketers leave the business? Sickness, maternity leave, or talent getting poached by competitors all could leave you with your strategy literally walking out the door if it is not well documented. Even just staff being on holiday can leave the rest of the team clueless as to the strategy if it is not documented.

Having an editorial mission statement was slightly less common than having a content marketing strategy. Only 32% had a documented editorial mission statement, although again a considerable number (36%) had a mission statement but it was not documented. This is an easy situation to rectify, get it written down folks!

UK content marketing tactic usage

Social media content, blogs and newsletters remain highly popular forms of content marketing tactics. My prediction for 2016 is that the glut of content will mean the less commonly utilised tactics will stand out and be more effective, thus drawing more usage. We may also see new forms of content marketing added to the list, such a 3D video or marketing apps.

Blogs lead the way when it comes to the most effective content marketing tools, so if you aren’t blogging already, you should plan to in 2016.

The lack of reported effectiveness of enewsletters in contrast to their popularity is interesting. It may be that you need to blend your enewsletters with other forms of content marketing to make them more interesting to your audience and thus make them more effective. Pointing to recent blog content, research reports or videos is likely to engage your audience better than a newsletter which just lets them know about goings on in your organisation.

Social media usage

Social media marketing is another area of marketing that five years ago was new and exciting, but now it’s fairly standard practice. Almost all marketers surveyed were using some form of social network. LinkedIn led the pack, which I suspect is because many B2B marketers see all platforms other than LinkedIn as being only good for B2C brands.

Take up of some of the newer social media platforms was considerably less high. Pinterest was being used by only 36% of those surveyed, whilst SnapChat was being used by only 6%. Whilst obviously SnapChat won’t be any good for B2B marketers, many advertisers are finding it highly effective for targeting a millennial audience, so it may be one to consider if that is an audience your company wants to capture.

Key challenges

Producing engaging content was the most common challenge faced by content marketing departments in 2015, closely followed by measuring content effectiveness. The first problem is one that requires creativity whilst the seconds needs technical knowledge. Training up staff may be a good option to overcome these problems. Bringing in more talent may also be an effective way to boost your content creation program and overcome many of these challenges, although 25% of respondents did report that finding skilled content marketing professionals was major challenge.

For more insights on content marketing see the content marketing institutes new report on SlideShare:

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Facebook reaches 50 million business pages and releases new messaging tools [@SmartInsights Alert]

New tools make it easier for businesses to manage their incoming messages

Importance: ★★★★ For Businesses using Facebook for customer service

Recommended link: Facebook's official announcement

It’s been a good year for Facebook with the number of business pages jumping by more than 10 million since April 2015, and is now at 50 million.

Facebook pages have had the ability to send and receive messages for a few years now, which is a handy feature for businesses as it can allow them to answer customer queries and help them book services.

New features for Business messaging

Facebook announced they would be launching new tools for businesses to manage their incoming messages on their blog yesterday.

“People can contact businesses anytime and from any device, so we’re offering new tools for Pages to better manage their customer interactions” – Facebook’s products manager for pages.

Giving customers the power to contact the business at any time can present an issue, particularly for small businesses without dedicated customer service teams. The new features include being able to set an ‘away’ message, or setting up automated replies which point customers towards useful resources.

Businesses can now also inform their customers how quickly they respond to messages, be it instantly, within hours or within a day. This helps manage expectations of customers and helps the team in charge of overseeing responses to prioritise their time.

Inboxes given a revamp

The business pages inbox used to be as simple as the inbox used by people sending personal messages to one another on Facebook. However this simple design can not handle business needs, so Facebook have revamped business page inboxes.

The new inbox gives the business a overview of information on the customer contacting them, such as past interaction, current city and current orders placed. Notes can be added to this, so if you have multiple staff managing your business page they can easily exchange information on particular customers.

Pages can better manage comments

Comments on the statuses or photos that a brand posts, can often involve customers asking questions, complimenting the bland or expressing a problem. These will usually need responding to, and in the case of sensitive issues will sometimes need dealing with privately.

If you have multiple staff members dealing with comments on a Facebook page it can be tricky splitting the workload. Facebook have now made this a lot easier, as this business page update also lets pages flag comments, mark them as done or message the poster of the comment privately. These signposts will only appear to admins of the page, so won’t affect what your audience sees.

Facebook said that the new changes are starting to roll out globally on the 8th of December, and the changes will be available to all business pages within the coming months.

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The state of Broadband 2015

New broadband statistics showing uptake increasing dramatically around the world to give opportunities for richer digital experiences

Digital Marketing advances with the increasing provision of digital technologies for consumers. The better the digital technologies, the more opportunities for marketers to utilise them. Broadband is a key enabling technology for advanced in digital experiences, especially since providing compelling digital experiences requires high-quality videos and images which need high bandwidth broadband connections.

We like to keep digital marketers up to date with all the trends that will affect their discipline, and the state of broadband adoption around the world and amongst your audience in particular is an important trend for digital marketers. Uptake is increasing rapidly around the world, as is the shift to mobile. It took 125 years for the world to have one billion people with phone lines, but it only took 5 years for there to be 1 billion mobile broadband subscribers.

These graphs show some of the key trends in the global adoption of broadband, and particularly show how important mobiles are becoming as a way of accessing the Internet.

Fixed Broadband subscribers by region

Asia dominates broadband subscriptions - something for digital businesses to remember when considering expanding into new markets. Africa currently accounts for only 5% of connections, but this is predicted to increase massively over the next decade.

 

Broadband uptake around the world

Broadband uptake has increased rapidly in both the developed and developing world since 2007. In the developed world it is close to saturation point, whilst there is still a long way to go for the developing world. That said, if current trends continue, it  will only take another 8 years for the developing world to have a higher uptake of broadband than the developed world has at current. Expect the vast majority of the world's population to have access to broadband by the end of the of the decade- which will involve another 3 billion people joining the digital community. What they will add remains to be seen, but there is no doubting that the opportunities will be vast.

Global language use - how many languages do you support?

As billions of more people gain access to the internet, they will want to see content in their language and will be creating content in their native tongue. One only has to look at the number of languages currently offered by leading digital platforms and compare that to the total number of languages in use in the world to understand that the addition of 3 billion more people to the online world will mean many digital platforms will have to get better at providing local language.

Mobile broadband connections accelerate and advance

The number of mobile connections in the world has increased over twelvefold since the new millennium. What is more, the rate of adoption of the latest technologies has increased.

For more insights on global broadband use, you can view the full report from UNESCO

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Marketing agency costing and budgeting models

5 Options for charging fees and paying for agency resource

There are a wide range of agency costing and budgeting options for marketers to consider when outsourcing their marketing activities. The fees model used will vary by both type of agency and client engagement as you seek to agree what is a practical, mutually beneficial remuneration mix. Whichever model(s) you use, an agency or consultancy should ensure that all elements of activity are captured and you minimise working ‘for free’ e.g ‘giving away thinking’ in order to secure production work. I say costing model(s) since it’s common practice for an agency to have a preferred approach, but to vary it on a case-­by-­case basis depending on clients requirements and expectations.

How much you should charge clients for specific elements of work that you undertake will be based on a range of factors e.g. your fixed overheads (office rent, management salaries etc), variable overheads (e.g use of freelancers), estimated utilisation (billable time) rates for each role, the level of margin that you want to apply etc.

The agency costing and budgeting spreadsheets I have developed for Smart Insights are built on a time + skill cost model, but agencies can and do have different remuneration agreements in place with clients. To my mind and working with a range of agencies, ‘time’ is still the most common currency used between agency and client though. But charging for labour / effort using a calculated hourly or day rate multiplied by how long that task will take is just one way to look at remuneration.

Recommended Template: Marketing agency costing and budgeting models

Agency and client marketing can use these spreadsheets to estimate the cost for design and build or marketing activities as part of budgeting.

Download our Marketing budget spreadsheets.

Whichever model you adopt, it’s essential you monitor the real amount of effort required to create the solution by recording time accurately - I cover the options for this in a separate post on Estimating and Job Management platforms for marketing agencies.

Here are the costing options I see used most often by agencies:

Option 1. Blended rate with time estimates model

A blended rate covers all the specialists in the agency, regardless of role or seniority and will be one rate (e.g £650 per day). Useful if you are trying to keep things simple whilst estimating. And some clients will prefer this approach. Clients may ask you to give specific individual rates though if they are trying to compare ‘apples with apples’ in a pitch situation.

Option 2. Specialist rate with time estimates model

Here, as per the spreadsheet templates, the rates for individuals vary dependent on both their contribution to profitability (taking on board their overhead etc) and also the level of seniority and / or experience they have in the industry. You will be paying more for experienced people yourself and will seek to pass that on to a client who needs that experienced input into a creative or technical solution etc.

Clients sometimes baulk at the significantly higher rate a senior practitioner brings to their project but that experience will mean they ‘nail the solution’ or reach an effective insight much quicker that a less experienced colleague will.

This can be a conundrum for agencies since in reality, the ‘value’ provided by a senior practitioner (e.g Creative or Planning Director) may not reflect the recompense for their time (even at a ‘premium’ day rate) e.g. three days of billable Planning Director time may determine the architecture for what is ultimately a very successful campaign for a client, generating revenue that is multiples higher than that initial catalyst fee (the three days of Planner time). On that basis, the agency may have been better (if possible) applying a value fee rather than time fee (see Option 4).

Where do retainers fit?

For both Option 1 and 2, you may apply the calculations to either a one­-off project or an ongoing retainer fee. I think retainer fees are less common nowadays (certainly the whole­ account type of fees that covered all planning, creative and account handling for a brand , which typically ran for a year at a time). Retainers are still useful for budgeting for both client and agency though, where repeating tasks take place on a monthly basis e.g. SEO services or generating X number of updates per month for a social media account. Client and agency will typically monitor any agreed KPIs on a monthly and quarterly basis along with the time taken to undertake those tasks and adjust the fee accordingly (depending on what contract you have in place).

Option 3. Fixed fee model

Sometimes a client fixes the budget as a ‘fait accompli’ and in this case the agency has to calculate (with its own charge­out rates) how much time can realistically be spent at each stage of the process to arrive at a solution that will meet any KPIs or campaign objectives set. Fixed fees should ideally only be set in consultation: agencies and clients should work in partnership to transparently work out what is truly involved in delivering a solution. Trying to ‘massage’ time to make it artificially fit into a ­fixed budget can lead to problems further down the line.

Even if the client has a fixed budget you should still go through a robust estimating process yourself to determine how much budget would really be required for the brief that has been set. You can the make a decision: agree to invest time (out of goodwill and for considered commercial reasons) that makes up the budget shortfall, negotiate a more realistic budget (with your robust estimate as evidence) or walk away.

Option 4. Value-based model:

This is charging for the value of the strategy or creative thinking rather than the time taken to do that thinking itself. Value-­based remuneration is based on the assumption the client will gain a high Return On Investment against the fee you charge. This is a perennial point of debate in the industry. By debate, I mean that I know of a lot of agencies who would like to use this model but the market paradigm is still that of time not value!

Option 5. Payment by results model:

Still a rare model in my experience, but one you should consider for differentiation. But you need to be confident your marketing strategy or creative for the client in the sector you’re working for can have a demonstrable, measurable impact on the KPIs you have agreed with the client. That’s where it gets difficult I think: since integration of channels is core to most campaigns, how your specific input / thinking / media planning / creative etc is isolated and attributed to those agreed measures (e.g increase in brand awareness, website traffic, online sales etc) against other external factors such as a wider campaign that may have run recently, the efficacy (or not) of the client sales team to convert leads, the UX of the website etc.

Whether you use spreadsheets or an automated / integrated project agency fees management platform, the important thing is to get your estimating discipline right from the start. A lack of accurate estimating will lead to an impact on your agency profitability. By ‘accurate’ I mean estimates that factor in all the resources / roles and time that will be required to meet the project objectives and at rates that the business has set to achieve a desired profit.

Download Expert Member resource – Template for Agency Account Growth Planning

We created this template to help Account Owners (Group Account Directors, Account Directors) and their teams in agencies to plan the growth of their client business in a structured way.

Access the Template for Agency Account Growth Planning

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The Meteoric Rise of Instagram [Infographic]

This 'Gifographic' charts the incredible growth of Instagram

This month, Instagram celebrated its fifth anniversary since it launched back in October 2010. As of September 22^nd this year, Instagram announced that it had reached 400 million monthly active users. To put this in context, Instagram is now bigger than Twitter which has 316 million monthly active users. The kicker is that Twitter is more than four years older than Instagram having been founded in March 2006.

There is no doubt that Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram in April 2012 cemented the online mobile photo and video-sharing app’s position in the social space. Prior to Facebook’s acquisition, Instagram had reached ten million users by September 2011. Flash forward to July 2012 (three months after the acquisition) and Instagram had reached 80 million users and was growing rapidly.

But what makes Instagram so engaging? While celebrity profiles dominate the space and Kim Kardashian and Taylor Swift’s escapades are a daily occurrence, it is brand engagement where the real power of Instagram lies. Whether that is in the power of the celebrity ‘personal brand’ or commercial brands, Instagram delivers 58 times more brand engagement per follower, compared to Facebook, and 120 time more brand engagement per follower, compared to Twitter.

For more insights into Instagram’s rapid rise, take a look at this GIF produced by One Productions.

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Agencies: Do you need an account handler?

New guide update to help agencies with client account management

Maybe a surprising question (especially to those account managers or handlers reading this post) but it is a question that comes up fairly regularly from owners of new or smaller agencies. And that’s who this post is aimed at. As is the new section in our Agency Account Growth Planning template, that covers the requirements and tasks for the role in more detail.

Download Expert Member resource – Template for Agency Account Growth Planning

We created this template to help Account Owners (Group Account Directors, Account Directors) and their teams in agencies to plan the growth of their client business in a structured way.

Access the Template for Agency Account Growth Planning

The guide within the template covers the role itself, a breakdown of what you would expect a great account hander to do and also some discussion on KPIs for the role in its various permutations.

Actually, rather than being asked if an account handler (at the right stage in the agency’s growth) is necessary, I’ve sometimes been told that it isn’t. Period. To paraphrase some conversations:

“we won’t be recruiting account handlers, clients will deal with a flat structure, we’ll save on overheads and that’ll also set us apart from other agencies”.

Not to sound flippant, but ‘good luck with that’! That approach will be what eventually makes you over run on projects, miss new business opportunities and underserve on proactive ideas. And tie you (the business owner or creative/tech lead) up in knots, trying to service each and every client yourself.

Still need convincing? Well, the role of account handler has been around as long as ‘advertising’ itself and for a reason. Whether you call it account handling, account management or client services: the role probably goes back to the 1800s and the birth of advertising and promotions agents. Where there was creative work to produce or (initially, print) media to plan and book - there was ‘the suit’. Handling the client’s instructions and organising each step of the creation and delivery process.

So what should you look for in a great account handler? They should be excellent in seven areas:

• Communication
  - both verbal and written. With clients and in-house teams. That includes briefing, presenting, writing proposals and more. I would ‘bundle’ active listening and the ability to establish rapport (with clients and agency team members) in here also.That’s not say that account handlers should always act as buffers, dogmatically separating client and agency specialist teams. Clients can sometimes be better served at key stages in a project with some direct collaboration between them and the agency creative or tech teams who work on their account. But the best account handlers stay on top of that and steer both parties for mutual benefit.
• Strategy development
  - that means understanding marketing strategy frameworks (for example the RACE framework) as well as thinking strategically to devise campaigns (along with colleagues) and help the client build their brand / business. I would include analytical thinking within this area - great account handlers ask questions: of the brief, of pre and post campaign or initiative data etc.
• Account growth
  - which will flow from the two attributes above.
• New Business development
  - few fledgling or smaller agencies have dedicated new business staff. So some element of the account handler role may be ‘sales’. E.g. assisting with content creation for inbound marketing efforts, devising the response to a pitch or tender request, and/or attending chemistry meets or pitch presentations to represent the agency and sell-in the proposed ideas.
• Financial management
  - As a guiding principle, account handlers should clearly understand how the agency makes its money. They should be aware of the differing charging models that are available and always have an eye on project-level and over all account profitability.
• Project Management
  - This isn’t to say that account handlers should also be dedicated PMs: depending on your agency size and service structure, account handlers will very likely manage projects with a small ‘pm’ rather than a formal (as in an Agile or Prince2 certified) ‘PM’. But some PM skills are required.
• Personal development
  -the best account handlers are ‘always on’ in terms of educating themselves (and their clients) about new approaches, techniques, technologies and tools and marketing.

So, the account handler role is a wide-ranging brief with a lot of plate-spinning going on. Finding the right people isn’t always easy and it’s a skill that the agency owner or senior team needs to develop. But when you do find them, they will make a massive difference to your agency growth ambitions. See the guide to help you with that.

Image Credits: Flazingo Photos

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Social media listening tool comparison

Updated report shows the why, what and how of selecting social listening tools

Listen first! is the first step in almost all advice on creating a social media strategy. To listen effectively you need to choose the right tool. There’s certainly no shortage of choice. Back in 2009 (and updated since) Smart Insights created a comparison of 36 of the best-known online reputation monitoring tools including free and paid.

It seems the choice now is even more bewildering. A November 2015 comparison of social media monitoring tools by Ideya Ltd shows that there are at least 242 tools now available. However, the number of new tools has decreased. Of these sevices, 187 are paid, with the remainder free or using a combined model.

The 74 pages long report extract below, also published on the Slideshare.net (http://slidesha.re/ZAVP1x ) has a good level of detail on how to approach selecting tools, a listing of all tools and detailed profile of 10 tools (out of 245 profiles available in the full report).

What are social media listening tools

Social media listening or social media monitoring (SMM) tools can be defined as comprising listening, monitoring, analytics and often intelligence and engagement capabilities. Simple social listening platforms provide a basic capability of capturing online conversations based on the specific search query, offering key insights through the analysis of those conversations.

How do social listening tools help in marketing campaigns?

SMM tool metrics and measurements are designed to evaluate company activities and inform an overall social media strategy. Companies should develop marketing campaigns based on the insight gained through social media monitoring, focus on the highest potential markets or groups identified through market segmentation and influencer analysis and identify optimal time for engagement.

The metrics may involve statistics about the share, reach, sentiment, impact and speed of conversations about the company. These parameters can be used to assess the company image and perceptions before and after campaign and measure campaign effectiveness and identify trends that lead to new marketing and product tactics. Many tools also offer day parting metrics showing the effectiveness of an outbound message at different times of the day to identify optimum posting time and frequency.

To measure the value of your social media activities, you should also look at the overall results your company is generating and carefully examine how social media was engaged in increasing your bottom line through growing revenue and increasing efficiency looking at the incremental revenue after a particular promotion, number of conversions, lead generation effectiveness, number of leads per dollar spent vs. traditional advertising campaigns, and others.

In the area of Marketing and Communications, Ideya says that social media monitoring tools typically assist organizations in:

• 1. Acquiring real time social marketing insights to inform social media marketing and communication plans.
• 2. Optimizing design of marketing and advertising campaigns based on customer insights,
• 3. Developing social content strategies to promote products and services and engage with current and potential customers across social media channels in real time,
• 4, Monitoring and applying 'word of mouth' consumer recommendations as a form of direct advertising by identifying and engaging with key influencers, generating buzz, and establishing and building relationships with key influencers,
• 5. Making better decisions about campaigns and brand extensions with a clear understanding of the key factors influencing brand's health,
• 6. Supporting rapid social marketing engagement, and
• 7. Developing performance metrics.

I’d add that they’re also useful in getting insight about customer perception of product categories and how your products or services are considered relative to competitors. This can help inform new product development.

Depending on the maturity and complexity of the SMM tools and its key features, the tool can also support social media marketing professionals in social media publishing, SMM, analysis, and engagement, conversation management, and SEO

Requirements for social listening tools

So that’s the 'why' of social media listening tools, but how do you decide? Issues to consider when selecting social media tools are summarised in this chart.

FIGURE 15. The tool key features and factors impacting the selection process

The SMM technologies are continually introducing new features. Indeed, the number of SMM Tools offering Campaign Management and Monitoring feature has increased significantly in the past several years. According to Ideya’s 2015 Report, the number of featured tools offering Campaign Management and Monitoring feature has grown from 58% in 2013 to 68% in 2015. Similarly, about 69% SMM tools offer API integration - a very valuable option for organizations with complex social media programs, which is fourteen percent (14%) more than in 2013.

Social Media Monitoring Tools and Services Report 2015, 6th Edition from Ideya Business and Marketing Consultancy Ltd.

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Keeping ahead of the Flux: 5 Tips from working in a Digital Marketing Agency

Keeping digital skills relevant in an agency

If you think life is a continuous learning experience, then consider working in a digital marketing agency as a microcosm of this experience.

Flux, evolution and transformation are a constant theme. Digital marketers have to keep up to date with the latest technology, upskill on a regular basis and deliver results in an increasingly competitive market. I have experienced these challenges and in this post, I would like to share my experience of over five years working in digital marketing and SEO agencies. My goal is to give some tangible advice that can help you keep ahead of the flux and be more successful as marketers. Of course, flux is not restricted to agencies! So the advice can be applied to both agency and in-house marketers.

Let’s get started.

1. Project Management and Organisation

Project management is one of the less talked about subjects in digital marketing circles. It doesn’t have the same interest as say, digital marketing tools or the latest 'death of SEO/content marketing/email marketing' delete as applicable prediction...

None the less, project management is one of the most vital cornerstones of digital marketing. This is especially true in agencies where you may be working on multiple projects on the same day.

Organising your client tasks and scheduling digital marketing resources will make your marketing more efficient and streamlined.

Everything from social media posts, AdWords campaigns and content schedules needs to be planned in a calendar format. Using a calendar allows you to add milestones or goals associated with key dates in the project. If you have the budget I would recommend using Teamwork or Brightpod for managing your client’s task lists and sharing work with other team members or freelancers. If not, a simple excel file will suffice.

2. Test everything across your digital activities

Digital marketing agencies are results focused. With each client you should have a unique digital marketing strategy and the main goals set out and aligned with dates. But is there more you can do to improve results? Try testing, everything! Work with your client to build and test hypothesis around landing page text, design, images, videos and calls to actions. Testing will help to improve conversion rates and lead to better long-term results for your client. Google Content Experiments offers a free way to test various versions of your landing pages.

VWO and Optimizely both provide paid AB testing software that are intuitive and easy to implement and use.

3. Never stop learning - updating your digital skills

In the introduction to this post I mentioned the challenge that marketers have in keeping their skill set up to date. Digital marketers are expected to be experts in SEO, email marketing, social media, content marketing and all forms of paid advertising. Digital marketing changes at such a fast rate that unless you practise ongoing learning your skills may be out of date within 6 months. Online courses provide an excellent way to keep your skills up to date and here are some recommended courses:

• Smart Insights RACE Elearning Qualification
• Google Adwords training
• Google Analytics training
• Distilled SEO course
• Econsultancy training

In addition to online courses I would recommend following the blog streams of digital marketing thought leaders. This will help you keep up to date with best practises and the latest guidelines in the digital marketing industry.

4. Client Engagement

Working with clients is similar to any other relationship in life. Both parties need to engage and have a certain level of understanding of each other. This will ensure a fruitful relationship based on the same goals. Three key elements that can help the relationship succeed include:

• Rapport

A solid rapport should be built from the initial client meeting. Before you meet your client do your research. Do you have the same interests? Do you know the same people? Have a look at your clients LinkedIn profile and see where you can spot common ground.

• Understanding

Having worked with clients in niche industries I cannot emphasise the importance of understanding your clients industry enough. Taking a forensic approach to researching client’s business, customers, products and services will help you construct a solid framework for digital marketing. It will also allow you to build detailed personas for accurate digital channel targeting.

• Communication

Communicating with your clients is key. I am a firm believer in taking time out to explain digital marketing processes in clear, digestible language. Your clients may not associate penguins, pandas and hummingbirds with their digital presence. Don’t take it for granted that they do! Explain industry terms in language they understand.

5. Be Passionate as a Digital Marketer

Passion is infectious. If you carry your passion with you it will permeate through your being and rub off on your clients. Both parties will benefit with added enthusiasm for projects and more likely buy in for campaign tests and developments. Become passionate about digital marketing and so will others around you.

Working in a digital marketing agency is one of the most dynamic roles to be employed in. With a multitude of different projects and an ever evolving technological landscape it provides endless opportunities for meeting your personal and work goals. Just remember to keep ahead of flux!

Thanks to Patrick Naughton for sharing his advice and opinions in this post. Patrick Naughton is a digital marketing manager that specialises in international digital marketing. He works for Digital Skills Academy, a revolutionary digital technology educator with a proven track record in delivering high levels of successful employment outcomes for graduates. You can follow him on Twitter or connect on LinkedIn.

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Structuring Digital Marketing Teams: Digital Marketing Manager Census 2015

The big issues facing Digital Marketing Managers in 2015

Almost half of the UK’s 16 billion pound advertising spend goes on digital campaigns. This is because advertisers have had to chase changing consumer habits. Time spent online among the UK audience has doubled over the past decade, driven primarily by tablets and smartphones. Digital marketing is a large and fast-growing industry, but the fast pace of change needs deft managers to organise, structure and strategize without stifling agility or creativity. This is rarely easy. Being a great digital marketing manager requires a certain set of skills and a certain mindset. Some skills are technical, whilst others are harder to pin down. To get some insights into the world of digital marketing managers, Marin software conducted a census of 200 digital marketing managers working at businesses with over £20 million in turnover.

Digital spend up, as is complexity

The latest figures from IAB show that digital advertising spending increased thirteens and a half % this year. With increased spending came increased complexity, and the extra money certainly did not make digital marketing managers jobs any easier. A massive 73% of them reported their job becoming more complicated over the course of 2015.

Not increasing enough

Although spending on digital is increasing, the majority of managers don’t think that spending patterns are changing fast enough. 61% thought that more money should be transferred from offline marketing to digital marketing. Interestingly only 27% of managers reported this in 2014 when asked the same question, so we can see the power of digital marketing is increasingly becoming better understood.

The Digital Gap

There is considerable evidence to suggest digital managers are right to think it wise to shift spending to digital channels. Time spent per day on mobile represents 25% of all media consumption, yet gets only 10% of ad spend, where as print captures 3% of total media time yet gets 19% of total ad spend.

Frustrated by lack of senior buy-in

Digital managers are frequently frustrated by a lack of understanding from their superiors. 39% don’t think the most senior marketer doesn’t fully understand digital or invest sufficient resources in digital.

Having digital talent at the top can also help with recruitment, as 85% of respondents said that a recognisable senior ‘digital champion’ would be a major draw for them. Something to consider when structuring your digital departments.

Digital Skills Gap

As Smart Insights found in our own report with TFM&A recommending Essential digital skills, recruiting for digital talent can be a major challenge. More than half (59%) report that they are planning on hiring more staff this year, yet 66% reported that they have struggled to access talent with the required tech skills. It seems the war for talent will rage on throughout next year.

Omni-channel marketing

Digital integration remained an issue in 2015, with 69% of managers reporting that online needs to be better integrated with offline marketing. However, considerable progress is being made here, as in 2015 only 16% said their online and offline marketing was not integrated at all. However, 53% thought they needed to do more to intergrade online and offline, which shows there is still a long way to go.

For more insights on the challenges facing digital marketing managers, download the full report from Marin Software.

Smart Insights Expert members can download these relevant resources to help with managing new skills:

• Structuring digital teams guide
• Example job descriptions for digital marketing

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