News

Learning from Apple marketing

June 23^rd, 2021 in News

Learning from the masters of a trade is a good way to improve our own skills. When it comes to brand marketing, we often think of Apple as the best proponent of the art. But it’s also useful to learn about how the masters did it wrong before they learned to do it right. Apple can teach us that just as well as anyone else. If you think Apple got it right from Day One, think again. The story starts with IBM The lessons we can learn from Apple’s marketing don’t start with an Apple…

4 steps for business growth

April 20^th, 2021 in News

We’re writing this as the UK emerges from the COVID/Brexit recession although, in all honesty, when haven’t we been emerging from a recession? If there’s such a thing as an evergreen topic, “business growth” is it. To put this recovery into focus, the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) has just released research that shows: 63% of UK businesses are starting to show signs of recovery. Only 16% of businesses now report the pandemic’s impact as being “extremely negative”; that…

NPS scores may not be honest

March 11^th, 2021 in News

There are times when you won’t get honest NPS scores (Net Promoter Score) in response to the standard question. That question is usually: “On a scale from 1 to 10, how likely are you to recommend us to a colleague?” There are at least two situations when you can deliver fantastic value and service and still get a poor score. NPS scores and channel partners NPS scores might not be as high as they should be if you’re asking a dealer, reseller or distributor. Dealers don’t want…

Image optimisation improves page speed by 11%

February 17^th, 2021 in News

If you impose a 100 kB limit on all the images on your website you can expect to improve page speed by an average of 11%. In some cases, it’ll be a lot more. This is a big enough performance increase to boost your search performance. Image optimisation is one of those pain-in-the-backside tasks that we all know we ought to do but we never really want to. We have a sneaking suspicion that it could be a whole lot of work for very little return. Our tests show quite the opposite. It’s well…

Brand advertising is mainstream, not risky

February 11^th, 2021 in News

You’re not alone in being nervous about brand advertising. As soon as somebody says it’s difficult to demonstrate an activity’s ROI (return on investment) you’ll inevitably start to wonder whether it’s worth doing. Google’s latest financial performance shows that brand advertising is not the bleeding-edge, risky activity you may think it is. In fact, if you’re just thinking about starting it you could see yourself as a latecomer rather than as an innovative risk taker. In the…

Is Google Trends data worth the pixels it’s written in?

February 10^th, 2021 in News

Google Trends data – even historical data – seems to change every time you look at it. In mid-January we used Google Trends data to research where searching for “Shropshire” was most popular. It was a surprise to see that, despite Shropshire being an English county, it was a more popular search in Wales. Was Shropshire being forgotten by England? The data for January to date suggested it was. A historical check through all of 2020’s data confirmed it. But without complete data for…

6 Steps to BCG’s Multimoment Maturity

February 2^nd, 2021 in News

The Boston Consulting Group’s report “Responsible Marketing with First-Party Data” suggests that business can cut costs by 30% and increase revenue by 20% if they learn how to deliver relevant information to purchasers at key moments in the buying cycle. They call this “multimoment maturity”. This requires technical and managerial coordination and, for once, that puts SMEs at an advantage. BCG identify six steps to reaching multimoment maturity: Centralised Data Warehouse: Cloud-based…

11 Steps To Effective Personalisation

January 28^th, 2021 in News

63% of consumers “expect personalization as a standard of service” according to a 2019 survey by Harris for Redpoint Global. So how do you personalise your relationship with customers and prospects? The key is to keep communications relevant. Personalisation isn’t just about adding a first name to an email’s subject line but OK, let’s start with that. You might want to be a bit more elaborate like The Marketing Meetup (I was “Steve, you beautiful soul” in their last email) but,…

TOWS Model Analysis – SWOT with actions

January 20^th, 2021 in News

The TOWS analysis model adds actions to a traditional SWOT analysis, making it a powerful summary of the future rather than a limited assessment of the present. SWOT analysis and its limitations. SWOT analysis in action. Going beyond SWOT with TOWS. TOWS analysis in action. Let’s compare the models. SWOT analysis and its limitations SWOT analysis has been with us for decades. It’s been helping companies identify their internal Strengths and Weaknesses and the external Opportunities and…

The Ansoff Matrix – deciding your growth strategy

January 19^th, 2021 in News

The Ansoff Matrix is an old business model that survives to this day because it still helps you develop a growth plan for your business. It won’t magically reveal an option you’d never thought of before but it will help you understand the difficulties you’ll face with different growth options. Contents Ansoff 1: Market Penetration Ansoff 2: Product Development Ansoff 3: Market Development Ansoff 4: Company Diversification Here’s the model. Imagine a matrix with products across the top…