Digital Strategy

‘Intent plus audience’ is a powerful new combination for search marketers

Search advertising has come to dominate performance marketing over the last decade, with advertisers seeing amazing returns from targeting messages at consumers based on their intent.

If a consumer is searching for ‘best golf clubs’ it’s a pretty safe assumption that they’re in purchasing mode and likely to be interested in an advert promoting golf clubs.

But, any search marketer will tell you that one of its weaknesses is that you have to use a degree of guesswork when it comes to audience characteristics.

In the example above, if you knew the consumer was a female then your advertising creative would be far more powerful if it promoted just clubs for ladies. The trouble with search is that unless someone is very specific in their search term, you’re forced to make assumptions.

The home of the future, today. How smart is that?

Qualcomm has been busy diversifying beyond chips and they now have an impressive range of software and even a smart watch.

Its smart home demo was one of my Mobile World Congress highlights and shows how technology will make our lives even easier in the coming years.

Verdens Gang and the Holy Grail: a case study in integrating print and digital

Is achieving integration of print and digital publishing the pursuit of the Holy Grail? Well, it certainly sounds nice listening to a publisher talk about burgeoning digital revenues in multiple channels, alongside beautiful print products.

Verdens Gang is a Norwegian newspaper with a daily circulation of more than 200,000, in a population of 5m. Across print and digital, 1.8m people use VG daily.

At Digital Media Strategies 2014, editor-in-chief and CEO of VG Torry Pedersen gave the lowdown on how they integrated print and digital effectively, along with how they monetised smartphone and tablet content.

Culture is the key, as is so often the case in disrupted industries where big brands have to adapt and are competing with pure-plays that have started on the right foot.

Torry used the analogy of Haile Gebreselassie vs. Usain Bolt to describe print and digital. They both run but they run in very different ways and they shouldn’t have the same training regimen. The same can be said of magazine-style high quality print products compared with the fast-moving multimedia world of online news. The two teams can’t necessarily work together.

That’s why from 2000 until 2011, everything at VG was separate for print and online, from ads to editorial. In 2011 the two were joined back together once again.

The same thing happened with mobile and desktop, the two had separate ad sales and technical teams from 2010 until 2014 (though the same content team). Now ad sales and techies across desktop and mobile are integrated.

So what are the challenges that VG has overcome and how is it moving forward?

Responsive web design: five reasons why it may not be the right answer

I generally find myself in agreement with the authors on Econsultancy, but when I read Ben Davis’ article: 10 websites that aren’t responsive (and probably should be).

I didn’t agree with this, as I think those websites aren’t responsive because they don’t need to be.

Responsive design is a wonderful tool and is a great solution for quite a lot of sites. I have used responsive design to deliver many sites, but it’s not a magic bullet that will solve all pains around mobile. 

Responsive, adaptive, mobile or native? What’s the best option?

You may have read in the press last week that obese football fans at this year’s World Cup in Brazil we have access to extra-large seats (and half price tickets!!). What this shows is that one size (or seat) does not fit all!

This train of thought should be adopted by any web designer when they are deciding on the best way to make a website compatible for mobile.

There are a number of options for mobile strategies: responsive design, adaptive design, a mobile version or a native app. One approach may suit a company perfectly and be completely inappropriate for another. Perhaps a combination of strategies is the way to go. 

By using comparisons with football players past and present, this blog post delves deeper into the pros and cons of each strategy…

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Digital marketing strategy: how to get started

One of my specialisms is digital strategy. So I read a lot about strategy, and digital, and digital strategy.

In doing so I consistently find that the term has many interpretations in the digital world, meaning that digital marketing discussion forums are full of people asking where to start with crafting their own strategy.

Those same discussion forums are often flooded with responses that are blatant and biased sales tactics rather than genuinely helpful pointers.

So, here’s my advice (without ulterior motive!) for where to begin.

New Year marketing resolutions you shouldn’t break in 2014

It’s February and already, according to a number of statistical sources, around a quarter of us have failed to uphold our New Year’s resolutions.

Interestingly, 39% of people in their twenties achieve their resolution each year compared to only 14% of people over 50. That’s interesting given the prevailing attitudes towards younger generations.

In the same vein, marketers are mapping out the conversations they want to have this year to stay ahead of the curve. Given the influx of ‘2014 Trends’ in January, I thought it would be a useful point to review the best and highlight a few that might follow New Year’s resolutions.

Leads and opportunities are the primary B2B marketing measure, not ‘attention’

We’re at an inflection point in B2B marketing, and marketers should celebrate the opportunity to show their true contribution to revenue and not fall back on squishy metrics like ‘attention’.

Last week the esteemed Top Sales World blog published a piece entitled, “Attention (not leads) should be B2B marketing’s primary measure”.

I couldn’t disagree more. And, since the post doesn’t include a way to comment, I couldn’t disagree on the page itself, so I’ll do it here.

How charity Anthony Nolan made the move to responsive design

Blood cancer charity Anthony Nolan launched a new responsive website last year as the proportion of traffic from mobile devices began to creep up to 50%.

The revamp has led to impressive increases in traffic and conversions, as well as reductions in the site’s bounce rate.

To find out more about what was involved in the move to responsive design, including the project duration, budget, agencies involved and the impact on visitor behaviour, I spoke to Anthony Nolan’s digital marketing manager Sam Butler.

For more information on how charities are adapting to digital, read our blog posts on three content strategies from the non-profit sector as well as looking at how charities use Twitter and Pinterest.

Five great ways to ace content marketing in Southeast Asia

Southeast Asia’s (SEA) 155m internet users are the next goldmine for digital marketing. The region contains a young base of internet users whose time spent online is significantly above the global average, and where social networking dominates.

The online population grew at a healthy 9% last year, and is expected to continue at a similar rate in 2014. Added to this, it has one of the highest levels of mobile adoption in the world.

So, are you ready to take advantage of these opportunities presented by the SEA digital market?

Thinking mobile first? Think again…

In a world where device fragmentation is increasing, taking a mobile-first approach is yesterday’s thinking. 

There’s no doubt that the smartphone has changed the way we all engage with the world around us.

We’re all glued to apps on our mobiles (Flappy Bird anyone?). And website owners have seen the steady, inexorable rise in mobile traffic to their sites, which spawned the inevitable rethink about how web experiences are delivered on mobile devices (yes, I’m looking at you responsive design).

So it isn’t surprising that the world is talking about making sure you take a ‘mobile-first’ approach. But I disagree.

Why this is an extraordinary time to lead marketing

This five part series is designed for all those marketers around the world who are aspiring to lead a marketing function.  

The objective of this series is to share insights, experiences and ideas for passionate marketers who want to grasp what it takes to be in charge of marketing, especially in these amazingly progressive times where marketing has attained a more strategic role.  

The series could be seen to be oriented towards B2B, but many marketers see the lines with B2C blurring. So grab a coffee, put your feet up and read on.

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