Don't let your digital marketing campaigns fall foul of these mistakes

The great thing about making a mess of a digital marketing campaign is that, with the benefit of hindsight, it becomes clear which actions were a mistake and which contributed to a winning campaign. In this article we share some examples of 'epic fails' that we have seen, and yes, if truth were told, we might have just had an up close and personal experience of some of them.

1. Leaving it to the boss to decide your Digital Marketing Strategy, i.e. – Ego Marketing

The boss is not always right! Come on, repeat after me “the boss is not always right! Their input is necessary and important, however, they aren’t the ones who are being held responsible for your Digital Marketing Strategies. You are the one that is supposed to know better in this regard, but sometimes the Boss just can’t help it ……

Debunking the misconceptions that may prevent you investing wisely in strategies and resources while creating Social Media Campaigns

As many as 72% of all internet users are active on social media, with 936 million daily active users of Facebook worldwide, one billion YouTube users and 270 million active Twitter users. And these figures are only growing each day. Given these statistics, it’s no wonder why social media has become the fuel driving the modern marketing machine. But, there is a lot of competition - just check out the Smart Insights infographic of the number of posts, tweets and status updates in 60 seconds. It's understandable that there are many myths and misconceptions about how to use best social media to draw traffic to your sites, generate leads and boost conversions. Sadly, a fair share of marketers follow wrong practices and end up wasting their valuable time and resources on social media…

Most product launches are complete failures. This product launch example shows the ingredients for a succesful launch

In fact, it’s been reported that about 70% of all new product launches fail within the first year.1 While product launches require input from many teams, if anything goes wrong the blame always points to the marketing team. While most marketers chase after proving ROI—as they should—some clearly overlook the need to get the product out the door in the first place. So what’s the challenge with product launches? Whether it’s underestimating demand, skimping on the market research, or failing to educate consumers on a new category—as marketers, we’ve all been there. A number of factors can spoil even the most thought-out product launches.

How influencer marketing and research helps overcome product launch dilemmas

When it comes to launching a new product, influencer marketing is your secret weapon. The practice helps you tap into niche influencers already…

An integrated small business campaign example

I awoke on the last Friday of November to the usual Black Friday hangover. On checking my emails I was inundated an avalanche of offers in relation to that American import which, like Halloween, is now huge over here in the UK too: Black Friday. With the Argos, Currys, Tesco and Boots' websites all experiencing outages due to weight of demand, the British public appears to have got over its aversion to this American celebratory holiday of all things consumer. I run a niche ecommerce business that has a big US subscriber base, and based on previous Thanksgiving weekends it was clear that we needed to have a planned approach to the "holiday" season. As the day drew nearer we had customers emailing asking what we had planned as offers - it was going to be a big sales day. Now we are a small business, our turnover…

Get those seats filled with these many and varied tips from 10 Email marketing experts

Whether virtual or physical, events are a mainstay of marketing to engage new prospects and build relationships with existing contacts. When you’re responsible for marketing an event it might be something you only do a handful of times a year, so I’ve rounded up some tips from seasoned experts on how to use email to ensure you pack out your event. Read on to find out what you should say and how often to say it. Once you’ve read the advice below, continue on to the examples of event invite emails and why they work for everything else you need to get your event promotional campaign organised.

Justine Jordan, Marketing Director at Litmus

For webinars, send a stand-alone email! We used…

8 steps showing how to combine SMART and RACE to set campaign goals

SMART goals are a commonly referenced concept in marketing, to help check that goals are Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Realistic and Time bound (i.e. have a deadline). Goals have their place at all levels of planning whether business planing, marketing planning or campaign planning. It can often be the difference between a successful campaign and not. As my previous post on goal-setting for marketing showed, they have huge benefits in: Empowering, aligning and focusing teams and colleagues Managing senior management Giving you and your team a sense of success Allow you to understand a campaign within a wider marketing activity context But in practice, it's not easy to select and set goals, they are very rarely obvious especially when you put them against the SMART test. Setting goals requires a numbers of thing's…

6 Essential parts of a marketing campaign

In a previous post I gave these examples of 6 common problems which can kill a marketing campaign. This post is a companion to that article and shows what you should include in a marketing campaign plan. The structure I outline in this post is based on this Smart Insights marketing campaign planning template originally developed by Dave Chaffey when he was a tutor on the Integrated E-marketing campaigns training workshops for the CIM and then updated in his books. More recently, it’s been extended for Smart Insights Expert members in association with First 10 and is used by us on a regular basis on planning client marketing campaigns. The recommended structure of the campaign and the questions to ask at each step are: 1. Campaign goals and tracking. What are we trying to achieve through our campaign and how will we know when we achieve it? Here you define…

Avoiding common 6 pitfalls of marketing campaign planning

In my previous post reviewing techniques for digital marketing integration post I touched on the three major challenges to integrating digital marketing: planning, people and agencies. In this article I will look in more detail at these challenges as they relate to  marketing campaigns, giving suggestions on how they can be avoided through better management. To help make the campaign successful it can help to think about what can go wrong in the planning and execution and then avoid these pitfalls. In this post I'll show 6 pitfalls that I’ve seen with campaign planning - each of the following pitfalls is directly aligned to one of six stages of creating an integrated campaign covered in the Smart Insights marketing campaign planning/briefing template which I will describe more fully in a later post: 1. Campaign goals and tracking. 2. Target audience,…

Are you looking in the right place for ideas generation?

We recently launched our Plan to Succeed campaign and as a part of our Slideshare deck we feature a whole bunch of ideas to help marketers improve their planning. One factor in effective marketing planning is building up strategic ideas around which you can build a plan - these are specifically customer problems to solve, or outcomes they are seeking. As the brand representatives, we all too often explore in the wrong areas to seek answers to those questions, or focus in on a single area. We created this simple graphic to help you find the sweet spot. We feel there are four dimensions that provide a starting point for strategic planning: Your brand: This is the where marketers are most likely to start, and unfortunately end, their thinking.…

Examples of how Hotels are integrating social media and mobile marketing

Technology is the cornerstone of business growth. Whether it means new tools for maximizing efficiency, new platforms for reaching out to potential customers, or new resources for building professional networks; digital innovation is a boom for businesses of all shapes and sizes. But social media and the recent proliferation of mobile devices has proven particularly beneficial for the hotel industry. Because travelers rely upon their mobile technologies and depend upon social networks to find accommodations they can trust; web savvy hotel marketers can connect with customers like never before. So whether they are well-known international chains or tiny boutique businesses, hotels throughout the world have begun harnessing the tremendous potential of mobile technology and here is how:

Hotels harnessing social media

Size Matters (Less Than Ever) Social media has leveled the playing field in the world of hotel marketing. Sites like …