Audit your MarTech stack and quickly compare 30 different types of digital marketing tools available at different price points for businesses in 2024

As marketers today, we’re fortunate to have a huge number of free and low-cost digital marketing tools to give us insight into our customers, competitors, and markets. These strategic digital tools help us to compete to win and retain customers by delivering automated relevant, real-time marketing communications, integrated across digital devices and traditional marketing channels. To help highlight the range of great options available, our updated essential digital marketing tools infographic recommends 30 categories of marketing technology and our pick of the most popular 5 in each category. A new category for 2024 - we have included 5 Generative AI tools as well. As the original break-through AI chatbot, we've put ChatGPT in first place for our 2024 edition. But you can read a full breakdown of other recommended AI tools…

Introducing a new tool to help marketers review and improve the best options for promoting content

If you’re a regular reader of Smart Insights, it’s likely you’ve seen - or even better, used - our Content Marketing Matrix developed with First10. It has proved to be a popular infographic since it’s not just a nice visual of some interesting ‘facts and figures’ about marketing, rather it can actually be applied to get better results since it helps businesses brainstorm the best types of content to create as part of their content marketing strategy.

What is the Content Distribution Matrix?

This infographic is aimed at helping marketers review the effectiveness of different types of Paid, Owned, and Earned media to promote or distribute their content in generating site visits, leads or sales compared to the level of investment in applying the media measured as paid media costs or the costs of marketing…

What is PR Smith's SOSTAC® marketing planning model, what is the RACE Growth System, and how do you use them to win more customers?

If you don't know PR Smith's SOSTAC® model, it's worth getting to know if you're involved with planning marketing strategies or campaigns. SOSTAC® was voted the third most popular model in the CIM poll on marketing models because it's easy to remember and it makes it easy to structure plans for different planning activities. So, whether you're creating an overall marketing or digital marketing strategy or improving individual channel tactics like SEO or email marketing, SOSTAC® is your friend. In this article, we will talk through applying the SOSTAC® planning model to your marketing strategy, with the RACE Growth System.

What is SOSTAC®?

SOSTAC® is a planning model, originally developed in the 1990s to help with marketing planning by PR Smith, who is my co-author on Emarketing…

A digital marketing team management tool to help marketers of any level make long-term professional development plans for their career

Whether you are looking to plan your future career or are managing a team, it’s worth having an idea of the latest career opportunities in digital marketing. That’s why we’ve created our Digital Careers Family Tree, so you and anyone on your team can see potential career paths and establish the training needed to reach the next level of career progression. [si_guide_block id="21593" title="Digital marketing job description templates and role definitions" description="This guide provides a range of practical job description templates for 15 key digital marketing roles to support companies in the recruitment of digital marketing specialists to resource digital marketing activities within their team structure."] One of the joys of the digital workplace is how many disciplines that can fall under an individual…

A process for creating a multichannel marketing plan combining the SOSTAC® and RACE frameworks

Amidst the highs and lows of 2020 in multichannel marketing, one thing that remains constant for managers is strategic planning and frameworks for growth. At this time of year, many are reviewing their options for growing their business using improvements to their multichannel marketing. [si_guide_block id="88063" title="Access our Quick Win – Create a multichannel marketing plan" description="Discover the secrets to structuring an effective integrated marketing plan with tried-and-tested frameworks that will save time and get results."/] Our Multichannel Marketing Growth Wheel infographic gives a visual view of key planning activities that are needed as part of the process of producing an integrated digital marketing or multichannel marketing plan. We originally created the Marketing Growth Wheel infographic back in 2012. In his post introducing the infographic, Dan…

The right influencer can help you get a lot of exposure for your business, so what do you need to consider when working with influencers?

You’ve got your small business chugging along nicely, but you want more. You’ve decided that it’s time to take things up a notch or two. You’ve got good traction on social media, and are getting decent traffic to your site. Clearly, your marketing efforts are paying off.  How do you scale them up and extend your reach even further? Have you considered pairing up with an influencer? The right influencer can help you get a lot of exposure for your business. In this post, we’ll look at how you can make the process as cost-effective as possible.

What do influencers do?

Influencers have a reasonably extensive fanbase and regularly communicate with their followers. This can be done through blog posts, social media posts, and videos, to name a few. Their…

What kind of marketing strategy should you adopt to reach potential clients? Venngage surveyed 100 consultants and freelancers to find out which ones worked, and which didn’t

Creating a foolproof marketing strategy that will land your clients isn’t always an easy task. There are numerous freelancers, consultants, and solopreneurs demanding the attention of a small pool of businesses and customers. To find the best marketing strategy, Venngage spoke to 100 marketers to learn from their experiences. The results are surprising and should aid you in deciding which marketing strategy works best for you.

Traditional media is out

It seems like only a short while ago, marketers were putting out advertisements to coax clients to hire them. But those days may well be in the past. Among the marketers we surveyed, print advertising ranked lowest as a method of attracting clients. The only print medium that was still being employed was business cards. Another traditional…

B2C strategies can also be used for B2B audiences, after all, all marketing is human to human

B2B marketing strategies can be hard to get a handle on since reaching potential customers is very different from B2C ones, right? Or are there strategies that translate from consumer-focused organizations to B2B ones? In a word, yes...and it is those strategies that need to infiltrate our marketing efforts in the business-to-business world to compete in the current and future age. All marketing is, after all, human to human. In their article (and accompanying infographic), Imaginasium, a B2B marketing agency, demystifies B2B marketing with stats, tips, and strategies you can put to use today. First, let’s review a couple of those surprising stats about B2B marketing strategies; for more of these, see the full infographic below. 51% of companies don’t have a clear marketing strategy 68% struggle with getting enough quality B2B leads 79%…

This tube map is a great way to summarise online marketing options to non-digital specialists or to check your digital media knowledge for skills gaps

You will know from our digital media infographics and success maps that we're big fans of using visuals to help simplify the understanding of the many opportunities in digital media. Here's a visual representation of online media options we wish we had thought of! It's from our friends over at agency Hallam Internet and needs no further explanation.

The 2020 digital marketing map

You can get a higher resolution version of the visual from Hallam Internet.

The 2013 digital marketing map

I originally shared this infographic back in 2013 and since then a lot has happened as digital platforms have developed. I'm prompted to update it since Susan Hallam…

Insights from the Data & Marketing Association’s head of insight, Tim Bond, reveals email attitudes and behaviours among demographics over 45 years old

The technological world that we live and work in continues to evolve, seemingly offering new ways to engage customers at every turn. But this excitement over what’s new should not distract marketers from the central channel that still resonates with consumers.

Whether they’re considering a purchase, have just made one or need some help, these latest figures highlight email’s ability to help brands engage across the customer journey.

The DMA’s ‘Consumer Email Tracker 2020’ research revealed that email remains a core channel to attract and engage customers throughout the entire customer journey.

It remains the preferred channel for consumers from pre- to post-purchase and for customer service enquiries.

This is in spite of findings from the DMA’s ‘Customer…