In the August 2018 CMO Survey by Deloitte, the biggest weakness is the ability to measure the success of digital marketing activities and working with external partners. Yet another study, this one from Bannerflow, shows that 91% of brands are bringing their digital marketing in-house. Hmmm… there seems to be a gap in what CMOs need (measurement) and what they have (lack of internal talent with analytics acumen). Let’s explore when it makes sense to outsource your digital marketing and when it’s time to bring select capability in-house.
Which 2019 SEO Trends Do You Need To Care About?
January has always been a tough month. Recovering from the excesses of the festive holidays. Getting back into a groove at work. All those new year’s resolutions to break. Well, there’s another January tradition — in the content marketing world, at least — that involves predictions. What are the 2019 SEO trends? What’s this year’s next big digital marketing “thing?” What’s on its way up? What’s on its way out?
Changes to How We Blog
At Spectrum we believe it’s important to create quality content. That’s why going forward we’re going to be reducing the amount of content we share. Instead of writing for Google, to keep the SEO gods happy, we’re going to start writing content that we would want to read, aimed at our customers.
Chrome Extensions for the Digital Marketer
Web browsers have developed a great deal in the last few years. Now with Google Chrome dominating the market it’s strange to think that not that long ago most internet users were using Internet Explorer. One of Chrome’s great features is that you can add plugins into your Chrome interface, so, much like a smartphone, if there’s a feature missing you can probably add it yourself. Here are some of our favorite chrome extensions that we use on a day-to-day basis that help us be better digital marketers.
How To Create a Content Calendar
Do you need a content calendar? In short, yes. We think so. If you want to blog, even semi-regularly, you should have some sort of plan to ensure that your content keeps on track, you keep your sanity and that your writing fits with what the rest of the business is doing. So how do you build a content calendar?
Why People Click On Ads
As someone who’s worked in online marketing for a number of years, when I carry out a search I typically scroll down below the ads, and start reading the search engine results page from where the ads stop. Because of that I’ve often thought “who is clicking on the ads?” Well, judging on the amount of money Google makes from AdWords year on year, the answer is “lot’s of people.” So it was interesting to read some research from Clutch.co on why people click on ads.
How To Improve Your Blog (Without Better Writing)
Getting more out of your blog can be a difficult ask. Often blogging regularly is enough of a strain on resources that you don’t have time to take a step back and look at how your blog is doing, and if it is really engaging your readers. Well, here are some simple tips on how to get more from your blog without discussing the content itself.
Are There Website Design Best Practices?
In the world of content marketing ‘best practices’ are king. We’re as guilty of it as anyone. 7 Top Tips, 13 Best Kept Secrets. And on and on. There are lots of ways to write a best practices article because there’s an almost limitless list of best practices for anything, nothing more than website design. But are they really best practices?
Search Isn’t Dying – Yet
Predicting the future is great fun. Especially when you’re doing it online and it’s easy for anyone to go back and look at the stupid predictions you made. Also, when you have a lot of content to churn out, some outlandish predictions might just get a few clicks. So is search dying? Not with millennials it isn’t….
Don’t Hammer Your Message – Create Subtle Content
A lot of content created for content marketing purposes is glorified sales copy. Subtlety is not always valued in businesses, and if you’re writing for a sales brochure you don’t want to hide your light under a bushel. Loud and proud is the way to go. But if you’re writing four or five blog posts a week, countless social media posts, white papers and infographics, you can afford to be a little bit more obtuse.