It’s out with the old year and in with the new - just the time that those who work in the digital sphere reach for their crystal balls in an attempt to forecast the upcoming trends to watch over the next 12 months. In this fast-paced industry, everyone is trying to stay one step ahead of the game. Allow us to help you out with our round-up of the key trends you need to watch in 2016:
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“Only 32% of marketers believe they are executing an effective content marketing strategy."
Content may be king but there’s no denying it’s the strategy behind it which can make or break your content marketing campaign.
An article published earlier this year by Forbes revealed that although 82% of B2C marketers and 95% of B2B enterprise marketers use content marketing, only 32% of marketers believe they are executing an effective strategy.
London Fashion Week is the perfect example of an event, which in the past, has only truly captivated those fortunate or connected enough to be able to attend. However, the adoption of social media by brands is changing all that and when it comes to Snapchat, Burberry are pioneers.
Once considered a social platform dominated by college and university students, Snapchat is quickly becoming a crucial aspect of marketing strategies for businesses of all shapes and sizes.
With over 400 million “Snaps” shared each day by its active user base of around 100 million, it’s one of the fastest-growing networks around.
It’s no wonder, then, that Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg offered to buy out the start-up business for $3 billion back in 2013 (and promptly got turned down).
The first Panda update in 10 months from Google (4.2) has been announced this week. Though there is little detail directly from Google, they have said it will affect 2% - 3% of searches, or 700 million search queries per day.
Rewarding Quality Content
Businesses who saw rankings and organic traffic drop following Panda 4.1 and upped their production of quality content should see further improvement in rankings following 4.2.
Panda 4.1 focused on downgrading low quality 'thin' content and link-bait and the latest algorithm update is likely to build on this prioritisation of great content.
Over the past few years, content marketing has emerged as one of the most effective strategies for establishing a business as an expert within a specific sector, engaging and winning the trust of customers, and building credibility by dispensing relevant and useful industry knowledge. Data from the Content Marketing Institute states that in 2014, 93% of B2B marketers and 90% of B2C marketers were using content marketing as part of their overall marketing strategy and with content marketing spending set to rise over 2015, we can expect this trend to continue.
Putting together a paid search marketing campaign is one thing, but putting together an intelligent, effective and ultimately winning one is quite another.
There's a lot to consider, from researching, choosing and organising appropriate keywords to creating relevant, appealing landing pages optimised for conversions. And to get it right, you need the correct tools to do the job.
Does it mean you need to splash your cash on specialised software in order to get ahead of the game? Not necessarily.
There are some excellent freebies out there that can be utilised to help you plan and implement an effective PPC campaign; and even those that do cost often have a free basic level to get you started.
Three years ago today Curious Cat Digital was founded!
We recently came across this infographic which delivers a compelling case for finding time to consider ways of finding and connecting with relevant social media influencers.
When I think about the online purchase habits of myself and those around me, it is clear that buying decisions are heavily influenced online on everything from make-up to technology. This was confirmed via a quick search using Google Adwords' keyword research tool, revealing the sheer volume of monthly searches for 'hotel reviews', 'car reviews', 'book review', etc.
Blogs, customer reviews, Twitter and Facebook are all outlets for influencers big and small and customers are actively searching for recommendations before purchasing.
When I think about my current clients and those I've worked with in the past, there is often very little investment in engaging with advocates personally.
See if this inspires you to find out who your social influencers are.
The lowly service email. There to serve a purpose and provide basic information to customers. However the potential of these communications is often overlooked. With a number of different emails going out at various stages during the customer purchase cycle there is a real opportunity to go above and beyond the provision of basic account and order information and deliver emails that add value and engage customers.
First off, let's consider some of the most common problems with service emails:
They're written by tech bods
More often that not, service emails are the first automated emails that get put in place when a new website goes live and are therefore a necessity and end up being treated separately from marketing email communications. It often gets left up to developers to put them in place and as a result there is no input from marketing or brand teams. The result can be functional plain text emails, such as this example (I've blanked out the name as this isn't about naming and shaming).
