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.