Going for gold: How The Royal Mint tapped into consumer behaviour

As marketers understand well, driving the path to purchase on any product is far more complex and nuanced than a simple case of ‘find person, show ad and the rest will follow’.

The motivations that drive consumers are intricately layered. Take my recent acquisition of a copy of Pride and Prejudice. I’d recently watched the film and had been considering rereading the novel. That day, I had read an article that told me the most productive people read a book a week -...

12 February 2019 | Automation

The SEO/data analyst hybrid: Why you should advocate for data-driven decision making in a content-driven field

The digital landscape is continually evolving—and the major search engines regularly roll out new algorithm updates—so SEO specialists have learned to stay flexible and reactive. As the industry inches closer and closer to relying on comprehensive machine learning, data points, SEO professionals must again evolve with the times. Content was king—and in some sense, it still is—but more and more SEO professionals see the writing on the wall and are expanding their...

30 January 2019 | Data Science

It’s time for a new kind of agency – based more on teamwork and transparency

The relationships between marketing agencies and their clients have come under increased scrutiny in past weeks. Recent stories include Honda taking much of its creative work in-house, WPP losing several of its longest-standing clients and an October report which revealed marketing budget growth is at the lowest it has been for three years.

These industry moves have happened as brands are pushed to reduce marketing costs while delivering increasingly personalised content which is...

17 January 2019 | Branding

Why generation Z will drive the growth of visual search

eCommerce navigation and exploration has remained largely unchanged in recent years, even as retailers have scrambled to pinpoint more effective and personal ways to engage their customers in the process of product discovery.

This is likely why there’s been no shortage of hype surrounding voice search technology, despite ample grounds for skepticism: A recent report found only two percent of people with Alexa-equipped devices have made purchases through voice search this year,...

9 January 2019 | Advertising

How brands need to get to grips with voice search – before the opportunity disappears

Voice-enabled search is here – and if your organisation is not up to speed yet, there may be trouble ahead.

That’s the key finding from a new report by marketing agency BrandContent. The report, which combined analysis with a survey of more than 2,000 consumers, found that while men (28%) are significantly more likely than women (13%) to utilise voice search frequently, more than two in three polled had access to either search or a voice-activated assistant.

When...

7 January 2019 | Branding

Make solving data fragmentation key for 2019 to deliver a greater customer experience

What do marketers need to do in 2019 to deliver a better customer experience? According to a new industry report, it’s all about ensuring the possibility of conversion at any point in the customer journey.

The study from advertising platform provider Criteo, which polled more than 900 direct response marketers, found – to the surprise of not many – a plethora of applications and accounts marketers have to grapple with today. When it comes to budget allocation, the...

13 December 2018 | Advertising Technology

How to find the right Instagram hashtags for every post: A guide

Instagram is a visual-first platform. When you log on, you’ll see image after image of jaw-dropping scenery, drool-worthy dessert, and high-quality pictures of everything you could ever want to buy. The images and videos being shared are the focus, but that doesn’t mean that you can ignore the text altogether.

Hashtags are an important part of that text on both feed posts and in Stories, and can help you to more effectively expand your content’s reach, connect with...

16 November 2018 | Advertising

SEO ranking: The factors you need to focus on in 2018

Search engine optimisation (SEO) is not what it used to be. No surprise there, just think of an industry that hasn’t changed over the years. The reason SEO isn’t the same, however, is because the rules and ethics keep changing and are pretty much rewritten every year. It’s not easy to keep up with this and Google like it that way. So, looking at your own website and the results you want to achieve, what gave you a positive return last year may not work at all in...

22 October 2018 | Organic Search

Amazon first port of call for nearly half of online shoppers

The brand website is “losing importance” as a source of information for today’s shopper. Instead, Amazon now dominates as the first port of call.

In a report highlighting the retail giant’s growing monopoly in the world of e-commerce - if that were needed - inRiver surveyed some 6,000 consumers across Europe and found that just one in ten (11 percent) of shoppers will head to a brand’s website in the initial stage of purchase. Just 28 percent turned to a...

18 October 2018 | Customer Experience

Search accounts for half of digital ad spend in first half of 2018, finds IAB UK

Search accounted for half of all digital ad spend in the UK in the first half of 2018, according to the latest Digital Adspend report published by the IAB UK (Internet Advertising Bureau) and PwC.

In total, digital advertising saw a 15% year-on-year increase amounting to £6.36bn. Enjoying the same rate of growth, spend on search advertising amounted to more than half of that (52%), amounting to £3.3bn.

Non-video display spend was next highest at £1.33bn, a...

10 October 2018 | Advertising