Author: Sally Hooton

Cambridge Marketing College lecturer Kiran Kapur (pictured) presents a new GMA blog. 

Does networking scare you? Would you rather fiddle with your phone than work a room?

Francis Tipper of Spoken Word Ltd had plenty of helpful advice. She argues that networking should be seen as a marketing tool, as a way to deepen your knowledge about your clients, competitors and customers. She argues nothing beats face-to-face meeting people. She reassures that you do not have to be gregarious and extrovert to be a successful networking, because it is all about generating rapport. Her tips include actively listening to the other person and having planned out how you are going to introduce yourself. Most importantly, you have to be genuinely interested in the other person. She also suggests ending the conversation with a handshake and a ‘thank you for your time’.

Have you considered how you can measure the ROI of your content marketing strategy?

Part two of Dr David Chaffey’s interview on content marketing. He recommends segmenting your audience so splitting your analytics across types of customers – so rather than just analysing the number of people who have come to your website in a month, to analyse how they have come to your website eg from social media or adwords, email – as these are all segments and shows you what resonates with each segment and why they convert. For example SMART Insights did a campaign called ‘actionable analytics’: they then measured how many people came to their website from this particular campaign, and then how many of those converted. Dr Chaffey thinks that content personalisation will be the next big phase in digital marketing, particularly in B2B marketing. More information here.

Kiran Kapur has worked predominantly in Financial Services with expertise in customer relationship marketing and customer communications. As a consultant, she has worked as project manager for companies including Liverpool Victoria, Barclays, London Life and Cazenove. She has taught a wide variety of courses at the college in Cambridge, UK, since 1999 and is the Distance Learning & Overseas Course director, and a CIM examiner. She is the author of Assessing the Marketing Environment (2009, FT Pearson) and Marketing and the Law (2013, Kogan Page) and has undertaken research at Kings College, London, into distance education theories, including specific issues facing overseas learners and the design and delivery of distance learning courses. Kiran also presents The Marketing Review on Star Radio.

Cambridge Marketing College lecturer Kiran Kapur (pictured) presents a new GMA blog. This first post is from the UK Cambridge Marketing Review Radio Programme/Podcast. The link to the podcast can be found here. 

The Content Marketing & Exporting show – for the show’s new season, Kiran Kapur met Dr Dave Chaffey of SMART insights to discuss content in digital marketing:

Dr Chaffey (pictured below) is the author of five bestselling books on digital marketing and the CIM recognised him as one of 50 marketing ‘gurus’ worldwide who have helped shape the future of marketing. This is a two-part interview and, this week, Dr Chaffey explains that businesses are investing more in content marketing. This has lead to increased competition as more content is created, and so is competing for consumers’ attention. Dave is very clear that it costs money to create good quality content.

He recommends Social Media Examiner for in-depth tips and techniques. This divides content in Primary which is regular information, such as updating your customers. This is important and will create some social sharing but it won’t generate the viral interest. Emotional engagement comes from Nuclear content which surprises or delights people. SMART insights has created a tool for measuring your content marketing matrix, which both helps marketers but also allows SMART Insights to reach new customers.

He suggests that less is more, and that it is best to create one excellent or ‘Nuclear’ content weekly or monthly.

On next week’s show, Dave explains how to measure the impact of the content marketing.

You can find more details about Dave Chaffey and his latest thinking here. 

Susannah Poulton, culture and language advisor at UKTI East, discussed exporting. 70% of all businesses could export and the UKTI can help them to do so.

Susannah explains the importance of understanding the culture of the any international market and all marketing material, including websites, need to reflect this.

For example, making sure that your website is designed with cultural understanding – for example, Japanese websites are very ‘crowded’ whereas UK websites tend to be white and with more empty space. 70% of internet searches are not done in English, so consider your international at SEO. For more information, visit this website.

You can contact the show at: review@marketingcollege.com or: @cmcpointsofview
You can hear the show here.

Kiran Kapur has worked predominantly in Financial Services with expertise in customer relationship marketing and customer communications. As a consultant, she has worked as project manager for companies including Liverpool Victoria, Barclays, London Life and Cazenove. She has taught a wide variety of courses at the college in Cambridge, UK, since 1999 and is the Distance Learning & Overseas Course director, and a CIM examiner. She is the author of Assessing the Marketing Environment (2009, FT Pearson) and Marketing and the Law (2013, Kogan Page) and has undertaken research at Kings College, London, into distance education theories, including specific issues facing overseas learners and the design and delivery of distance learning courses. Kiran also presents The Marketing Review on Star Radio.