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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