Articles about Marketing

Companies can now gather more information about their customers than ever before. But according to a new study data science is not benefiting marketers, with 84 percent of marketing executives saying their ability to predict customer behavior is guesswork.

The report from predictive analytics company Pecan AI, based on surveys carried out by Wakefield Research, finds four out of five marketing execs report difficulty in making data-driven decisions despite all of the consumer data at their disposal.

Continue reading →

The pandemic led to a boom in online commerce, but as it fades away enterprises are keen to find new ways to understand and reach their customers, at the same time as addressing increasing privacy concerns.

Customer experience company Acquia commissioned Vanson Bourne to seek the views of 2,000 consumers and 200 marketers in the UK and the US on the digital marketing landscape.

Continue reading →

Social media technology is restlessly inventive, providing thousands of awesome ways for you to market your business inexpensively and on a large scale -- often directly into the pockets of consumers. But in the proliferating, ever-changing world of tweets, influencers, handles, and alerts, it can be hard to know where to begin and then to evaluate what’s actually working for you.

In the new edition of Social Media Marketing for Dummies, leading SMM voices Shiv Singh and Stephanie Diamond clear away the confusion and show you the smartest, most effective ways to plan, launch, manage, and assess your campaigns -- and then iterate and optimize for increased success.

Continue reading →

Despite the hype during the past year, the demise of third-party cookies has not arrived. It is, however, on the horizon and unquestionably inevitable. Therefore, marketers are showing concern over what will replace those cookies or what can replace them.

It’s okay to feel uneasy about these massive changes. But it’s more productive to act on proven marketing instruments that reliably fill their void. By dissecting marketing attribution and knowing what’s working with existing customers, marketers can forgo broad approaches to reaching segments of prospective customers and, instead, refocus energies and resources to put powerful first-party data to use.

Continue reading →

Business-to-business (B2B) companies spend $40 Billion on marketing each year, and they embrace tech-driven innovations, yet the traditional model for lead generation has not changed for decades. Why?

In addition to the techniques being outdated, they create friction and distrust between marketing and sales teams. Account-Based Marketing (ABM) has quickly gained traction with leading B2B companies because it aligns sales and marketing teams around the accounts that will have the most business impact. Instead of chasing a large volume of lower-quality, generic leads, ABM helps sales and marketing professionals coordinate their efforts against a specific set of target accounts.

Continue reading →

Third-party cookies are already blocked by Firefox and Safari and will also be blocked by Google Chrome by the end of 2023. But new research from Twilio shows 81 percent of companies still rely on them, while 85 percent of consumers want brands to use only first-party data.

The change is likely to bring more issues for brands that rely on such cookies to identify and track visitors to their websites. More than half (55 percent) of companies say they are not fully prepared for a cookieless world, and 42 percent predict that the impending changes will lead to lower returns on their marketing spend.

Continue reading →

New research from digital experience company Acquia shows that 39 percent of UK consumers don't trust all brands to handle their data correctly.

The study also suggests wide scale breaches of GDPR rules, with a huge 87 percent of UK consumers receiving marketing communications from brands which they don't recall opting in for.

Continue reading →

The global enterprise messaging industry accounts for 2 trillion messages annually. Messaging is a great medium for engagement -- it’s instant, and users tend to be much more responsive compared to other media. Also, users tend to utilize messaging apps dozens of times every day. Therefore, brands that do messaging right will see much higher frequency and intensity of engagement than with other media.

Most messages are delivered today using good old-fashioned SMS messaging. However, this sizable enterprise messaging industry is about to change in significant ways. Newer messaging channels are emerging with far greater capabilities -- namely Whatsapp, Rich Communication Service (RCS), Google Business Messages (GBM) and even a new messaging channel launched by Gupshup called Gupshup IP (GIP) Messaging. The common theme across all these channels is that they are all based on data messaging using the Internet Protocol (IP messaging).

Continue reading →

Recently, a report conducted by PFL and Demand Metric -- which surveyed nearly 600 marketing professionals across a variety of different industries -- revealed data accuracy, understanding audience needs, and branding as the three most important factors to multichannel marketing campaign success.

Data is critical for marketers conducting multichannel marketing campaigns because it’s used to personalized messages and reaching prospects at the right moment in their customer journey. When marketers rely on and analyze data within multichannel marketing initiatives and campaigns, they can measure and improve strategies in real-time, allowing for better, more segmented outreach. Without data to inform campaigns, marketers might as well write a message on a paper airplane and throw it out the window.

Continue reading →

In the face of lockdowns to control COVID-19 marketers have had to quickly adjust customer experience strategies and utilize new technologies and channels to engage with consumers.

A new report from digital experience company Acquia shows that many have done this successfully, with some 83 percent of UK brands seeing improved return on investment on marketing and customer experience technology over the past year.

Continue reading →

Increasingly customers expect personalized experiences that are relevant to their unique situations and needs. However, with the increased reliance on technology needed to provide this, the human angle can go by the board.

We spoke to Jon Perera, CMO at sales and marketing software specialist Highspot to learn more about how people, processes and technology can be aligned to offer optimum customer experience.

Continue reading →

Telemarketing calls often come through at the most inconvenient times, such as when a person has just sat down to enjoy a hot dinner or is trying to put a toddler to bed.

Although laws restricted how telemarketers operated, many found loopholes. For example, a New York law enacted in 2001 allowed people to opt-out of prerecorded robocalls, but not live telemarketer calls.

Continue reading →

The Sales and Marketing (SaM) environment has undergone a fundamental shift over the past decade, driven largely by the proliferation of accessible artificial intelligence (AI) toolsets. According to recent research, 40 percent of marketing and sales teams today recognize the importance of AI, and in particular machine learning (a subset of AI) in ensuring they are able to pursue and accomplish their growth goals.

But what makes this technology so powerful? The answer lies in automation. Namely, AI has the ability to automate tedious, complicated, and time-consuming tasks (which would otherwise be left to SaM professionals), leaving professionals to focus on more value-adding activities such as managing projects and making high-level strategic decisions.

Continue reading →

The most successful distributed brand managers know that local marketing is a necessary part of a national and global marketing strategy, as consumers look for a personalized and tailored experience that is relevant to their needs and specific to their location. Organizations are looking towards self-service marketing to streamline processes for local teams and facilitate local efforts at the corporate level.

When done right, local marketing offers an excellent return on investment. In 2017, Google found that businesses made $2 in revenue from every $1 invested in local advertising through AdWords and retailers advertising locally on Facebook achieved an average ROI of 152 percent. However, deploying a local marketing strategy across the distributed network can be challenging for corporate marketing teams. To maximize the chances of local marketing success, local marketers need to carry their weight. That's where self-service marketing comes in to play.

Continue reading →

One of the key trends of the last few years has been the growth of influencer marketing via sponsored content on social media.

New research from marketing platform Socialbakers into Instagram marketing shows that in North America, influencer-sponsored posts have grown by over 150 percent from 2018 to 2019.

Continue reading →