News

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…

The Three Step Bounce – better sales pitches

January 18^th, 2021 in News

The three-step bounce model is your route to better sales pitches and a technique for improving every brochure, email or webpage you write. It works because it’s all about what the customer is interested in. Here’s the model. Imagine a four quadrant graph. At the top, we have you. At the bottom, we have your customer. On the left, we have the past. On the right, we have the future. When you’re trying to sell or promote something to a customer, what do you think they’re…

Marketing isn’t just about ‘digital’ and social media

January 13^th, 2021 in News

This is the high(er) resolution version of the animation we posted on social media (ironically). Everyone has become so obsessed by digital marketing in general and social media in particular that we’ve forgotten the other dimensions of marketing that could help our businesses. The world has now reached the stage where the likes of Mark Ritson are recommending candidates to lie about their devotion to digital marketing to get a job. He was probably talking tongue-in-cheek but you can…

The Long and the Short of It: questions and problems

December 23^rd, 2020 in News

OK, so let’s look at some of the very puzzling data and charts in “The Long and the Short of It”. Don’t let these questions detract from the value of the principles the report reveals. The message is undoubtedly right. But some of the data. Well, let’s take a look. The Long and the Short of It dataset “The Long and the Short of It” is based on the results of 996 advertising campaigns entered into the IPA’s national and international effectiveness competition between 1980 to…