Ramp up your professional performance and avoid the business ‘groove or grave’ by taking some tips from motivational speaker and business growth expert Royston Guest – who recommends you set the bar at around 100ft high!
If you are thinking of starting up on your own, here’s the advice you need for start-up success. Four sages – their fingers firmly on the pulse of the business world – share with us their thoughts on key things to bear in mind in order to successfully build and grow a business this year.
Technology is only valuable if you combine knowledge of what you want it to achieve with the ability to interpret what it tells you. So says William Roberts, discussing whether CMOs aiming to bridge the Digital Divide should be optimising data and incentivising customer behaviour by aligning customer understanding with tech strategy.
Ranking high in search engine results pages (SERP) is important, but the main aim of your digital marketing strategy should be to leverage search engine optimisation in order to create real value for the user and to improve the user experience. Here are crucial SEO tips that explain how… and why:
High street sales figures make grim reading currently, as rising inflation is clearly impacting consumer spending levels. And, with household incomes failing to keep pace, there is little sign of an upturn for retailers – in the immediate future at least. But Peter Zeun argues that in these difficult times, when it is getting ever harder for retailers to persuade consumers to spend their hard-earned cash in store or online, putting in place the right customer engagement and retention strategies is increasingly imperative for any brand. So start now, scrutinise your CRM strategies and take control of the future.
Research shows that more than half of consumers stop buying after a poor customer service interaction and that 95% ‘share’ bad experiences – so what, if anything, are companies doing to stop customers ‘falling through the cracks’ in the multichannel experience brands are offering? And how can they improve that offering? Chris Robinson says they should start by looking to their lines of communication and ensuring their customers can easily reach them.
Did the John Lewis TV ad ‘Moz the Monster’ prompt you to buy from that retailer . . . or do you fast-forward through the ads? Sweet seasonal telly ads leave a bad taste in the modern connected-up world, says Alex Hill – who believes brands busting their budgets on a big Christmas TV ad campaign should instead think audience-first, with social and digital activity leading the marketing, rather than the other way round.
All too soon, deals won in the discounts battle fought during major retail events such as Black Friday & Christmas fade into last year’s bottom line and marketers turn their thoughts to a new year and fresh battlegrounds! But Chris Baldwin has advice and strategies that will create value for retailers all year round.
We are currently witnessing a period of immense change within marketing, says Anoma van Eeden. Consumers are far more aware of the ways in which brands are communicating with them and more savvy in determining and dictating their own customer experience – so here’s how the Mazda customer journey was made unique to the individual, bringing a fully connected and personalised experience.
All digital marketers are becoming direct marketers. So says Phil Andrews here, as he examines the evolution of what he calls Direct Marketing 4.0 and decides that a combination of digital and direct disciplines are the way forward – a collaboration that will drive effective use of tight marketing budgets, win engaged consumers and increase sales. It’s a future where great creative is driven by insight and data.