The people over at Avalaunchmedia updated their ‘History of Marketing Channels’ infographic. A very nice overview of marketing since the late 1900s. (more…)
State of Search
Posts About ‘Marketing’
The Power of Crowdsourcing
The term ‘crowdsourcing’ is not particularly new, in fact we have been surrounded by crowdsourced products and services for some time. A basic example are video games in beta mode where developers release a beta version for a selected few from their audience to test before its actual launch. Or think of Wikipedia which is nothing else than an encyclopedia written by people from all over the world. But what is the actual power of crowdsourcing, what lessons can we learn from it? (more…)
Awesome Marketing and Business Books – Recommended by the State of Search Team
Over the past couple of years I have been to a number of conferences and always come away with a list of books that have been recommended by the speakers. This got me thinking about the types of books that people in the industry read, whether they are directly related to online marketing, SEO or business in general so I spoke to the State of Search team and have compiled this amazing list.
I hope you find some of these useful and would love to hear what books you would recommend so if you have anything to add, please leave a comment at the end of the post to share with all the State of Search readers.
Everything Starts With a Marketing Strategy
It’s time to throw scepticism overboard. Time to bite the bullet. No matter how much we want to deny it, we have to face up to the fact that content is king.
Whether your content strategy focuses on creating highly engaging pieces of quality content, or whether it’s about automated processes that churn out massive amounts of unique human-readable articles – or whatever hybrid model you adopt that sits somewhere on a spectrum between those two extremes – the fact remains that content is the pivot around which all our digital marketing activities revolve. (more…)
Friday Talk: Attack of the Customers!
Technology journalist Paul Gillin presents research for his book “Attack of the Customers!” about the influence of customers in modern day marketing.
An Integrated Approach to Content, Search and Social Media Optimisation
This Tuesday Lee Odden will join Bas and Roy in the weekly radioshow. Lee was speaking at IonSearch last week and will be speaking at the Fusion Marketing Experience conference in Antwerp. Lee also just published his new book “Optimize“. In this guest post J-P De Clerck takes a look at Lee’s vision integration of content, search and social media.
The integration of various online channels with the consumer and his preferences at the centre, is more than ever a trend this year. It’s also a necessary evolution and often linked to a content marketing strategy. This integration has come about as marketeers are aware of needing to work in a more customer-focused manner and of needing to approach the consumer in which we might call a “holistic” way. This is exactly the focus of the brand new book “Optimize” by Lee Odden.
Lee Odden is the founder of TopRank Marketing and the blog of the same name, which is one of the most visited digital marketing blogs in the world. His company supplies optimisation services to companies such as PRWeb, Marketo, StrongMail and various B2C businesses. (more…)
Having “Fans” Does Not Mean Engagement: Only 1% of Fans Engage
Social Media is a weird science, if you can call it a science at all. In essence it is very close to what we as human beings have always been doing: recommending things to others and communicating about what we see happening around us. Still marketers seem to have difficulties grabbing and understanding this and making the best use of this.
This probably comes from decades of ‘old school marketing’ we have been doing. Trying to reach as many people at once, hoping that some of them will respond to it. This type of old marketing leads to a ‘wrong’ approach of Social Media. We try to reach as many people as possible hoping they will interact with us.
Recent research shows that the way marketers and users look at Social Media differs quite a bit. Where marketers still believe ‘presence’ counts and people will engage if you just share things with them, users actually don’t care that much. It turns out that only one percent of Facebook users for example tend to ‘engage’ with brands. (more…)
The History Of Marketing
I some of my presentations I have a picture of Jesus Christ. Why? Because he is one of the first to be actually ‘doing’ marketing. He just didn’t realize (we think).
So “marketing” goes back a long way. This infographic will show us just that. And it shows us it is a long way, both literally and in size of the infographic! (more…)
Integrated Marketing – From SEO to TV (by @andybetts1)
Andy Betts is a well respected marketing expert in the search industry. Because he is not your average SEO he has an interesting take on all matters. A person very fit to write about integration. And he goes all the way, from SEO to TV!
After reading the latest in the State of Search Integrated Marketing series it is clear, beyond doubt, that the online market is shifting rapidly from delivering campaigns in isolation to maximizing revenue for clients and brands alike through integrated approach’s to marketing optimization.
You have seen many a great example of integrated marketing in action in this series. So I am going to go a little leftfield. Whilst marketers get to grasps with the integration and holistic use of search, social, display, and digital marketing channels a huge challenge, often over looked or not addressed, still faces many business owners, agencies, and CEO’s alike – integrating and optimizing talent. (more…)
Integration of Marketing Channels – by Kristjan Mar Hauksson (by @optimizeyourweb)
The integration series continues with a post from Kristjan Mar Hauksson, the Director of Internet Marketing at NordiceMarketing. Kristjan takes a look at all the channels and how companies should handle them.
Integrated multi channel marketing is not merely a technological issue. It is rather a strategic, evolutionary path that businesses, especially the retailers need to follow to maintain their competitiveness in the market. An integrated multi-channel marketing approach can lead to better customer relationships and dramatically improve operational effectiveness – derived through customer dialogue, advanced data analytics and infrastructure integration.
In today’s rapidly changing and increasingly complex multi channel environment, businesses face the overwhelming challenge of reversing the downtrend in customer satisfaction and improving operational efficiency. They have to respond on several fronts: (more…)
Understand Your Market Before Integrating Your Online Marketing Channels – by Li Evans
The “second round” of our guest posts is being kicked off by Li Evans, an old friend of State of Search, has been a guest on our radioshow before. We are very pleased to have her on board. She is going to write about understanding the marketing channels.
There are a lot of ways that marketers can integrate different marketing channels. From email, to social media to search (both PPC & organic) to even affiliate marketing and display advertising, the questions truly become overwhelming if you aren’t looking at data and research to help point you in the right direction. If you are just going by with “what worked in the past” you can find that your efforts are truly falling behind the times and aren’t garnering you any ground in engaging with your customers.
Launching a major integrated marketing strategy without understanding where your customers are, what they like, what are their passion points, what do they consider valuable and in the end, what makes them convert is a useless effort. It’s a lot like playing the child’s game of pin the tail on the donkey where players are blindly trying to put the tail in the right place. Without some sort of guide to lead you down the correct path, pinning down the right tactics will be as hit and miss as that child’s game is. Unfortunately your business really cannot rely on hit and miss marketing tactics for very long. Most companies today need to see results, fast. (more…)
The Steve Jobs Way to Marketing Integration – By Bryan Eisenberg (@thegrok)
I am very proud that honored that Bryan Eisenberg agreed to do a guest post in our special integration series. Bryan is probably one of the smartest and knowledge people I know and at the same time a very nice guy. Bryan is speaking this week at the Conversion Conference in London as well as at Fusionmex this Friday. He decided to look at another great mind to give us an example of how we should look at marketing integration: Steve Jobs.
Do you currently own an Apple product? Better yet – more than one Apple product? That seems to be increasingly common. Have you ever experienced being in an Apple store? There is a reason that they sell up to 10x more per square foot than any other similar retailer. Even their online presence is demonstrating their dominance; they are now the number 2 most visited online retailer in the UK right after Amazon. The secret is an end to end seamless customer experience and equally tight marketing integration. Apple and a tiny handful of market leaders set the standard for your customers’ expectations. The question is – will you live up to it?
Ron Johnson who built Apple’s retail strategy said retailers should be asking, “How do we reinvent the store to enrich our customers’ lives?” Ask yourself: how will you reinvent your business to enrich your customers’ lives? If you find yourself or anybody at your company giggling then you have a propblem. (more…)
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