Steve Masters says, “When we suggest that marketers should think like journalists, we don’t mean you should start hacking phone calls and selling kidneys to get the next big scoop. Trust me, having worked as a journalist in some capacity for more than six years, I can tell you that not all journalists are like that (and besides, I no longer have the technology for that line of work. Or any kidneys, for that matter). What we mean is that marketers should adopt the same practices that great magazine journalists do in order to produce engaging and sharable content. This involves preparing... [...]

Kelvin Newman says, “Recruiting the right talent for your team is tricky no matter what industry you’re in, but people working insearch marketing face some very particular challenges. There aren’t a lot of experienced and talented people to go around. Equally, experience doesn’t always correlate with talent. There are a lot of excellent search marketers with only a few years experience and others who’ve done the years but don’t have the skills. Lots of people are responding to this by taking on trainees, this can work a treat but does eat into one of your most precious... [...]

Rachel Serpa says, “Coined in Joseph Heller’s classic satirical novel of the same name, ‘Catch-22’ is a term that refers to a situation in which a person is trapped by completely contradictory goals or circumstances. In Heller’s book, the only way for a pilot to escape his WWII flying mission is to request psychiatric evaluation due to mental instability, and be deemed insane. However, awareness of his own insanity is considered proof of a rational mind, thus making it impossible to escape his mission, a total and complete Catch-22″. Privacy and personalization: a marketer’s... [...]

Graham Charlton says, “We’re pretty big on measurement on this blog, and we use analytics to identify key topics, improve our content, and prove our effectiveness.  To this end, we’re big users of Google Analytics, supplemented by paid tools from Moz and others. We use a bunch of custom reports, segments and dashboards for measurement but I’ve only recently come across the Google URL builder, thanks to our Head of Social Matt Owen”. How to use Google Analytics URL builder to track campaigns ‘Econsultancy’ Blog  [...]

Graham Charlton says, “Analytics produces insights which drive business improvements, though more companies need to provide the staff and resources to make the most of this technology.  Our Measurement and Analytics report, produced in association with Lynchpin, found that there is an analytics skills gap which is holding back implementation. Skills shortages are most apparent in the use of digital analytics tools, statistical modelling andConversion Rate Optimisation (CRO). This infographic summarises some of the findings from the report”. The era of data-driven marketing [Infographic] ‘Econsultancy’... [...]

David Moth says, “All digital marketing activity is measurable. Right? It’s nice to think that’s the case and there are a lot of people who believe it, but unfortunately it’s simply not true. The reasons for this are numerous, not least that companies are struggling to keep up with the constantly shifting digital landscape. In the past digital analytics mainly focused on desktop activity, but now businesses have to employ a broader range of analytics products to measure activity across relatively new channels such as mobile and social”. Which analytics tools do marketers use?... [...]

Jeff Rajeck says, “All marketers are short on time and find it hard to prioritise tasks. Spending 15 minutes on analytics can help a lot. Here’s a simple how-to guide to help you get started… Marketing is a tough job these days. It feels like we are never done with our work. There’s always something that we could be working on, improving. And it often feels like we’re jumping from one thing to another all day long. We’ve all been there: fixing the layout of a web page, writing headlines, changing button colours. Things which should be a quick fix suddenly end up taking... [...]

The latest article on HubSpot blog is titled “Why You Can’t Resist Clicking on This Article: The Clickbait Conundrum”. Ginny Soskey says, “Most people have the same experience with clickbait. You stumble across it in your Facebook feed or Twitter feed. It reads, “13 Problems Every Blonde Bostonian Working at a Marketing Software Company Has.” You recognize it’s pandering to you … but it’s just so perfectly intriguing, you have to click. You click, resigning yourself to scrolling through for just a minute because you’ve got work... [...]

The latest article on HubSpot blog is titled “The Problem With Predictive Analytics”. Corey Eridon says, “Let’s pretend you need to close 30 more customers to hit your sales target. Luckily, you just so happen to have a whitepaper with a customer close rate of 30%. You might assume that if you get 100 more people to download that whitepaper, you’ll get 30 more customers and everything will be gravy — because based on its past performance, that’s the outcome you can expect. If you’re thinking like that, you’re using predictive analytics. Predictive... [...]

The latest ‘MarketingExperiments’ blog post is titled “Analytics: How metrics can help your inner marketing detective”. Anuj Shrestha says, “Why are there so many different metrics for the same component of a website? For example, page views, visits, unique visitors and instances, just to name a few. Which metrics should you use? Are all of these metrics really helpful? Well, they exist because these metrics are tracked differently and yield different interpretations. However, much more knowledge can be gained by analyzing these metrics with respect to one another combined with usage... [...]