Voice search or voice-based search marketing has been much hyped for its SEO benefits, but delivers little direct benefits for most businesses in my opinion. I find the hype annoying since for the last 10 years that has...
Dark patterns in digital marketing
Dark Patterns are a persuasion marketing technique based on misleading people using subtle design and interface messaging to make an offer appear more compelling in order to increase conversion and revenue. The...
Marketing tripwire
A marketing tripwire is aimed at converting interest in a product or service into a purchase by reducing perceived risk and cost, so encouraging someone to purchase more immediately. Tripwire offers are effective in...
Multichannel marketing
Multichannel marketing is an established term which recognises the need to integrate both different sales channels and supporting marketing communications to meet different options for distribution. These include:...
Omnichannel marketing
What is omnichannel marketing vs multichannel marketing? Omnichannel marketing is a useful way of higlighting today’s challenge of selecting and managing the many marketing channels that are available to...
RACE marketing model
Why and how I developed the RACE marketing planning framework In the latest editions of my books on digital marketing and in our Smart Insights members resources, we feature the Smart Insights RACE planning framework...
Social media intelligence
Given the importance of social media in shaping how brands are perceived and their future success, using social listening to monitor the interests and opinions of consumers is a common practice. However, in our...
Social media editorial calendar
A close relative of the content marketing editorial calendar, this is useful for businesses of all sizes with social media business pages on the main social media platforms from Facebook, Instagram, Google YouTube...
Ad frequency cap
Ad frequency refers to the number of times an ad is served to an individual. Research on ad frequency comparing traditional and online advertising shows that the more times an ad is served, the more likely it is for it...
Digital marketing goals
It’s important to have clarity on your goals for digital marketing as is the case with any business or marketing strategy. Whether you’re investing in digital media, digital experience, content, or marketing...
Customer journey map
A customer journey map shows the steps and touchpoints on the ‘path-to-purchase’ from when a customer first gains awareness of a product and service through to product comparison, selection and purchase...
Content mapping
Content mapping is a powerful technique to review and select the most relevant content to support a customers’ buyer journey. It can potentially be used for stages in a campaign also. In my books I define content...
Data-driven marketing
Data-driven marketing describes a mindset or a culture of how insight is used within a business. It includes harnessing the many different formats of data that are available today including: Customer data including...
Digital marketing dashboard
Defining a dashboard to review the effectiveness of your digital marketing investments is essential if you want to use a data-driven marketing approach based on regular reviews and the test-learn-refine mindset. I...
Macro and micro goals in digital marketing
When customizing Google Analytics to a business it’s important that it is configured to include the right types of goals, so the business can review goals achieved and then develop tactics to improve goal volume...
Marketing Bullseye Framework
If you know me, you’ll know I’m a fan of marketing mindtools and models to help marketers create strategies or simply focus. The Bullseye framework featured in Gabriel Weinberg’s 2015 book Traction is...
Google Tag Manager and Tag Management Systems
Google Tag Manager is the most widely deployed tag management system in the world. It runs many millions of tags for sites all over the world including Google Analytics tags and many other applications. It’s likely you...
Client-side vs server-side AB testing
Traditional AB testing for comparing two (or more) different alternative pages uses client-side testing. The standard Google Optimize tool uses this technique. The browser executes JavaScript in the web page to...
Digital transformation plan
A digital transformation plan defines a long-term roadmap for changes to business and communications models, resources, structure and process to enable an organization to compete through improving their digital...
Website user technographics
It’s useful to consider technographics when looking to improve the effectiveness of a website to suit the needs of users and to improve conversion for the business. Website technographics is a clunky word...
Digital monetisation
Monetisation describes the different methods a website or mobile app may use for revenue generation. Ad-supported and E-commerce monetisation are the two most common and these may be combined with freemium business...
Digital business model
A digital business model is the method used to generate revenue from a website or mobile app. It is usually based on an ad revenue model – this companion post gives 10 options for digital monetistation – the...
Online revenue model for digital businesses
An online revenue model describes the method(s) of monetisation used for businesses to generate revenue online. It’s particularly relevant to publishers who may consider different forms of ad revenue. These first...
Digital transformation
Brian Solis of analyst Altimeter defines digital transformation as : “The evolving pursuit of innovative and agile business and operational models — fueled by evolving technologies, processes, analytics, and...
Ad Clickthrough rate (CTR)
If you’re investing in paid media or forecasting your return on investment from digital advertising it’s essential to be able to compare your ad clickthrough rates to other averages. How is Ad clickthrough...