Report: Only 8% of brands believe their Marketing team is strong in all digital areas

Nov10
, No Comments

New research by OMI, in partnership with ClickZ and Kelly Staffing, reveals Fortune 500 companies and global agencies face a serious digital marketing skills shortage.

Surveying 747 brands and agencies, the study found a “substantial gap” between the number of organizations searching for employees with strong digital marketing skills, and the talent available.

While 71 percent of large brand/enterprise organizations believe their digital marketing team is strong in some areas, their employees exhibit mediocrity/weakness in others when importance and strength are analyzed together, with sizable gaps in every area studied.

Continue reading “Report: Only 8% of brands believe their Marketing team is strong in all digital areas” »

Competitive Analysis Checklist: Getting to know your online competitors…and learning how to beat them

Oct08
, , No Comments

As web use continues to grow, more and more online channels are standing out to businesses as new opportunities for customer acquisition. They offer lots of promise and potential, but the market is flooded and it can be hard stand out from your competition.

A simple competitive analysis goes a long way to demonstrating exactly where a particular brand can beat the competition, but many business owners simply don’t know where to start.

With that in mind, we’ve decided to publish the online marketing competitive analysis checklist that we use when weighing up campaign strategy for clients – along with the tools we use to make these assessments:

Continue reading “Competitive Analysis Checklist: Getting to know your online competitors…and learning how to beat them” »

My Twitter rant: why not delete inactive accounts?

Nov26
16 Comments

ADDITION Feb ’12 – due to a lack of response from @willrussell, I changed the handle to @willrussellmktg to move in line with the creation of Will Russell Marketing.

I have a problem – an inquiry, if you like, into the Twitter policy on inactive accounts. If you can shed any light, please do!

My problem goes like this…

Continue reading “My Twitter rant: why not delete inactive accounts?” »

Automate your impact with this simple inbound growth funnel

Apr19
No Comments

Inbound growth refers to the use of content and paid campaigns to grow a user base, and driving the users to take action. Part of the same family as growth hacking and inbound marketing, this process uses a couple of specific marketing strategies to push users through a funnel to reach a particular goal.

Once advanced, this process can take place in an almost entirely automated system. You can automate, and therefore scale, your impact. That’s why all brands – nonprofit, for-profit, or somewhere in between – should consider how it can play a role in their marketing efforts.

Here’s the standard marketing process on which inbound growth is built:

Inbound Growth Process

In inbound growth, we prioritize email marketing and retargeting/remarketing (advertising served to people who have already visited your website or are a contact in your database) to build, segment, and message our target audience(s).

Essentially, the goal is to build a community of website visitors and email subscribers, and use email and retargeting/remarketing to convert these prospects. Let’s take a look at a basic funnel:

Continue reading “Automate your impact with this simple inbound growth funnel” »