Playbooks empower marketing teams to improve performance from within
As marketing managers, directors, and heads of marketing, we are responsible for researching and developing marketing strategies that contribute toward our business goals. This means we are continuously scanning our marketplaces, tracking our progress, and reacting to change.
In well-integrated marketing teams, individuals are also contributing to shared marketing activities which, when combined, move the team closer to shared goals.
But, while we know what that looks like from a strategic 'top-down' approach, how can teams set up practical infrastructures at a tactical level? And how do we best track and record our marketing 'business as usual'?
That's where playbooks come in - a grassroots approach for managing marketing ops. As playbooks focus on the doing, they are designed to be used by marketing specialists who are responsible for the execution and tactical development of their dedicated…
It’s not enough to create buyer personas and leave them getting dusty on the shelf. Find out how to apply customer personas to inform each stage of your marketing strategy
What are marketing personas?
Customer or buyer personas are fictional people who represent target customer segments. Personas are used by marketing teams to segment and target key demographic, psychographic, and behavioural traits of their target audiences.
The term ‘user personas’ is also commonly applied when analyzing particular online users’ behaviours, such as website experience (CX, UX) or in response to marketing automation (e.g. email or mobile campaigns).
Why create customer personas?
By researching and creating customer personas, we as marketers, managers, and business owners can gain valuable insights into our buyers’ preferences, motivations, pain points, and online behaviours.
Persona-based marketing techniques enable businesses to tailor their digital marketing campaigns and always-on…
Learn how to create a PESTLE analysis to identify threats and opportunities in the macro environment to guide your marketing planning
You may have heard PESTLE mentioned when studying marketing theory or in your workplace. It is a powerful, yet simple, analysis tool for overall business and marketing planning. In this blog we explain what it is, why it is useful, and how you can create your own PESTLE analysis for marketing planning today.
What is a PESTLE analysis?
PESTLE is an acronym that covers 6 key areas in your macro (external) environment. Each letter stands for a different factor, as shown in the graphic below:
Did you know? Sometimes it is referred to as a PEST analysis, or spelt ‘PESTEL’, but the most common acronym is PESTLE.
A PESTLE analysis is a framework to help you identify external factors - happening outside…
Dr. Dave Chaffey, author of Digital Marketing: Strategy, Implementation and Practice explains a process to achieve success by focusing on the 18 most important digital marketing techniques
Simply put, our definition of digital marketing, or online marketing, is:
"Achieving marketing objectives through applying digital media, data and technology."
Within this broad digital marketing definition, there are many vital channels and platforms that we will introduce and share strategies and tactics for in this article, as well as the key digital marketing KPIs and metrics for success.
Our globally acclaimed RACE Framework is a digital marketing structure that enables marketers to plan, manage, and optimize all aspects of their customers' online and offline brand experiences.
In this overview of digital marketing we will cover:
What is digital marketing?
18 key types of digital marketing techniques across 6 media channel
How to achieve the business benefits of digital marketing using the 5Ss
Key…
Digital marketing is more important now than ever. My recommendations on the challenges and opportunities for growth
Where do you start if you want to develop a digital marketing strategy? It's still a common challenge since many businesses know how vital digital and mobile channels are today for acquiring and retaining customers. Yet they don't have an integrated plan to support digital transformation and business growth based on engaging their audiences effectively online.
The importance of digital channels in influencing brand discovery is highlighted by this research from Global Web Insight published in the Datareportal April 2023 Global Snapshot report.
This research shows that if you don't compete by maintaining quality online content to gain visibility within search engines and social networks, then you're missing out on opportunities to reach new customers.
Regardless of the type of business, if your…
E-commerce 2023: The latest data and forecasts for all things online retail growth
It's interesting to look back at e-commerce growth over the last few years and think forward to the future of this industry. As demonstrated by these charts from Statistica, the annual revenues of the US e-commerce industry shot up in 2020 and 2021.
What's more, despite recent growth slowing slightly, Statistica Market Insights estimates strong continued growth in this area in 2023 and beyond.
The reasons for this are two-fold - the rise of revenue from total retail sales, both in the US and worldwide, and also stark growth in the % of the total retail sales being e-commerce.
This constitutes a much larger share than previously to the pandemic, showing that some of the rapid changes to…
What are the most popular free and paid marketing writing asisstant tools using generative AI for creating content?
2023 has been a rare year in marketing, where the latest martech innovations we discuss have crossed over into the mainstream. Of course, this has been prompted by the huge interest in ChatGPT, not only for marketing, but in many other applications.
For 'hands-on' marketers seeking to take advantage of the latest AI-based tools for generating content and copywriting, there are now quite a few options which I'll recommend at the end of the post.
In previous posts, I have reviewed how to use the free version of ChatGPT for marketing and covered the latest updates to ChatGPT relevant for marketers.
What functionality is available in these Generative AI tools
All these AI-based copywriting tools offer the capability to create content based on prompts in a similar way to ChatGPT - see my article giving…
7 steps ensure top-down strategic alignment between business strategy and partner marketing
Aligning partner marketing with your organization's overall business strategy and specific strategic initiatives is essential for driving success and maximizing the value that partners bring to an organization.
However, this alignment can often be challenging due to a lack of understanding and buy-in from internal stakeholders.
Before exploring practical strategies to bridge this gap, let's first clarify business strategy.
Harvard Business School defines Business Strategy as
“The strategic initiatives a company pursues to create value for the organization and its stakeholders and gain a competitive advantage in the market.
This strategy is crucial to a company's success and is needed before any goods or services are produced or delivered.”
Does your organization value partner as part of your overall strategy?
If the answer is “no” or “partly” then it will hinder the effectiveness of any marketing programme. There is a need to establish…
Thinking about your e-commerce marketing plan for 2024? Use the RACE Framework to create a focused and well-structured digital marketing strategy
In today’s e-commerce business landscape, there is no room for a lack of planning.
All e-commerce businesses should plan out the best e-commerce marketing strategies to attract and retain high-value customers online as part of their e-commerce strategy.
Without a well-planned e-commerce marketing strategy, sustainable growth will be inhibited.
An e-commerce marketing plan with quantifiable KPIs should be directly linked to the goals of the business strategy which considers the e-commerce marketing landscape as a whole.
Our most recent survey found that nearly half of companies don't have a clearly defined digital marketing strategy. Of those who do, the majority have integrated it into their overall marketing strategy.
What is an e-commerce marketing plan?
E-commerce marketing planning is about formalizing how you intend…
Selecting the best revenue model options for your digital business
A good revenue model is a proven technique used by digital businesses globally, from startups to global corporations, to generate income from traffic on their website, mobile apps, and via digital channels.
The 10 digital revenue model options explained in this include both ad revenue models and charging for access to a digital service including freemium revenue models where limited free access is provided with fees charged for the full service.
I created this post originally in 2010 to support a revenue model spreadsheet for site owners to forecast their revenue generation. The main parameters you need to set are the variables for each Ad Unit or Container Type (blue fields) and it works out the revenue earning (orange fields) for you!
The site ad revenue model
If you 'plug-in' some average figures for pay-for-performance-based advertising options like cost per click or cost per action…
