Set the right goals for digital marketing using the 5Ss

Do your set of goals for online marketing cover all the bases? A good set of digital marketing goals covers a range of different measures to help set, review, and control performance across all digital marketing activities.

Digital marketing goals through the 5 Ss

PR Smith, my co-author on Emarketing Excellence developed the 5Ss of digital marketing around 2000, and although basic, it's still used by many planning their digital marketing strategy. So I thought I'd share it here by showing how it applies today to ASOS.com, a dynamic online business.

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1. Sell - Grow sales

Start with your most important transactions that lead to revenue and profit! That's sales, or if you don't…

Using re-brandable digital marketing tools and templates can help small marketing agencies and consultants compete with the bigger players - here's how

The concept behind white labeling/private labeling in business is simple. It's a business arrangement in which one company produces goods or services, and another company rebrands them as their own and offers them to their customer base. The big benefit of white labeling in marketing is that it allows agencies and consultancies an easy way to quickly expand their service offerings to their clients, without having to develop marketing specialisms in-house. With the ever-increasing demands for specialization and the emergence of new marketing technologies, it can be a daunting task to keep up. So, partnering with a trustworthy and reputable specialized service provider is a popular solution enabling marketing agencies and consultancies to offer their expertise under your agency's name and brand. To consider: Within this B2B transaction, there is an underlying…

Are you benefiting from the latest sector innovations in your healthcare business' marketing strategy?

We are now in a period of significant change for healthcare marketeers, as digital developments continue to increase the importance of both digital communications and value delivery in healthcare. Now, businesses need to continue to innovate their business models to make their online experiences and customer engagement communications even more effective, to attract and retain healthcare practitioners (HCPs) and consumers amidst uncertain/disruptive times. In our future of digital marketing trends report, we focus on how innovations in digital communications can support brand marketing and sales teams to communicate these new value propositions.

Disruption and change management

The authors of The future of Biopharma highlight trends of disruption within the biopharma industry specifically. This disruption is a result of a shifting power balance in two primary directions. The first shift is in the balance…

Your website reflects your organization

No one wants their website to look tired and out of date. Being aware of the latest website design trends means you can ensure your website keeps impressing visitors. It’s not about chasing the latest fads, which you should be careful to avoid, but rather understanding the current state of best practice and applying these to your site where relevant to you. 

Website design agency Numiko builds stunning and complex websites for some of the most prestigious organizations in the world. So we asked their team of web designers to uncover the latest web design trends for this year and share what their predictions are for 2024. Here’s what they identified as the current top web design trends:

Bento grid layouts

These types of layouts aren’t new. In fact, they’ve been around for decades. However, they have exploded in popularity recently, in part…

Social media done well is your absolute best shot at getting even closer to the most important people for your business

By embracing today's social media trends, you'll open a direct line of communication with your everyday audiences, channeling both positive and negative feedback from your customers, colleagues, competitors, and other voices in your brand's social ecosystem. In fact, the public and connected nature of today's current trending social media techniques helps us shine an even brighter spotlight on our social media campaigns and always-on digital presence. It's like digital PR on speed. But it's no secret that consumers and advocates are becoming more aware, and demanding, in terms of their social experiences of our brands too. That's why it can help to turn to the upcoming 2024 social media trends to inform our strategies.

What do the current trends on social media mean for marketers in 2024?

At Smart Insights, we practice an integrated…

What AI-based tools and digital marketing techniques should businesses from small to large be considering?

I’ve been fortunate to be involved in digital marketing for over 25 years now. The opportunities presented by AI recently are the most exciting developments that I have seen in this time, since the early days, where everything from organic search, a website and email marketing seemed a similarly huge opportunity. This range of projections of advancement in AI presented at Technology for Marketing by Implement AI highlights that we are at a relatively early stage of adoption of AI, with the biggest advancements yet to come recently hinted by the rapid adoption of ChatGPT. In this post, I’ll summarize trends in real-world applications of AI and tools to consider in each of these categories of AI that are open to any business from small to large. Some of the…

Actionable steps to prepare for the future of marketing

Digital marketing today is complex and it’s inevitable it will get more complex in the future as new technologies and platforms emerge. Take the recent rapid adoption and interest in Instagram Threads and Open AI ChatGPT, as an example. Marketers also have to contend with the complexity of the many channels we need to track in our analytics such as organic and paid search, social media, display, and email marketing. This visualization of the B2B customer lifecycle shows the great opportunities for harnessing different digital marketing channels to encourage lead generation, nurture, and purchase. It also highlights the challenge of managing the always-on marketing activities that need continuous focus to maximize conversion in the face of fierce competition.

Our latest research on digital marketing trends for 2023 to 2024

Each year, at Smart Insights we…

A three-step approach for your retail strategy: stand out and win more retail sales in 2024

It’s no secret that the last few years have caused chaos for retailers globally. To survive you need a robust retail strategy that focuses on long-term and short-term profit for your business.

According to the Centre for Retail Research forecast in July 2021, total retail sales in 2020 will fall overall by -4.6% compared to 2019 (or a reduction of £17,281m). The level of retail sales will not regain last year’s level (2019) until 2022.

With reduced consumer spending, competition for retail marketers converting customers is tougher than ever. Marketers need the right tools, and skills, to optimize a winning digital marketing strategy and cut through the noise to convert even more customers online. [si_learning_path_module_shortcode_block id=154071]

Of course, the rise of online is another major factor that has influenced the…

Benchmark your use of AI with other businesses

Despite the recent hype around ChatGPT, the opportunities for using AI in marketing are far from new. We have been advising on using AI for marketing since at least 2017 when we first recommended businesses consider these 15 use-cases of AI in marketing. Yet before 2023, I have been surprised by relatively low levels of interest and use of AI by marketers and within businesses when we have asked in our surveys. Typically in-house use of AI had been at the level of 10-15% of respondents since it seems only the largest brands with Business Intelligence teams could work on their own AI applications. Of course, levels of use are much higher if you include AI in paid media such as Google Ads, LinkedIn or Meta Advertising. However, with the growth of interest in using…

How to research and optimize strategic brand development. Creating a strong omnichannel brand identity based on research

Brand identity is often misunderstood as simply picking a color palette and a logo. In reality, this is just one element of brand development strategy. With every market bulging with competitors, carving out a strong brand identity is critical to differentiation and achieving cut through. The concept of building a strong brand identity is therefore grounded in research, and based on a clear understanding of the business, market, competitive landscape, and brand positioning. It’s more than simply coming up with a name and plastering a logo across collateral. It is a strategic approach to designing an identity that truly reflects the business. It requires a deep understanding of the business values, what it does, and how it wants the world to perceive it.

What is brand identity?

Brand identity is a collective term for all…