Ideas for using Social Media to support marketing events

Eventility have created an infographic which we thought could be useful to B2B marketers who plan events (or consumer events) now that social media is a key digital event marketing tool alongside email marketing.

The 4 key streams where social media can help event management

The infographic is built around social media can be integrated throughout the plan for the lifecycle of an event.

1.  Organising an event: collect information on RSVPs by integrating sign up with social media and enables pre and post event follow-up by email. Share and collect ideas to build up affinity throughout the planning; asking for votes of favourite speakers, ideas etc.

2. Promoting an event: provides strong presence when people are searching for the event, so listing on search engines is key as well as encouraging social media sharing.

3. Engagement during the event: Creating online buzz on the day through sharing videos, photos…

How agencies can provide clients with an integrated service given the increasing connection between brand, content marketing and SEO

After a couple of years of travelling and lifestyle consulting, I returned to the UK in 2012 with the goal of setting up a digital agency. I knew I wanted us to be very hands on and do transformative work with a limited number of clients I loved working with. But beyond that, I wasn’t sure what service I needed to create to do this!

Source: InterGreater

It has taken me a year to work this out. But I’m there now and I’m inspired and it’s a journey of discovery I am keen to share.

First Steps: Recognising key developments in SEO and social media

I started this journey as a big believer in SEO having driven 50%…

Research on charity adoption of digital marketing to support fundraising and campaigning

We've just been alerted to this research on the Use of Digital Marketing by Charities. We thought we would share it since although not brand new we have many members who are not-for-profit organisations in the UK and worldwide who may not have seen it and can benchmark their approaches and challenges. Lasa researched over 300 charities across the UK were surveyed to find out how advanced they are with digital marketing and it's use to support fundraising and income generation, including the impact on the sector by not adopting digital channels. 55% felt digital has to be a 'core competency' for all staff but over half needed training to fully embrace it's full potential

These were two of the key findings - first, the majority see big potential improvements are possible.

   

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Improve efficiency and effectivness through IMM

As marketers, we know that integration across media, channels and campaigns is important, but it's not discussed as often as practices and examples of individual channels. So I thought it would be interesting to summarise this talk by Lorna Loney, Senior Applications Consultant for Teradata Applications (Aprimo). She gave an insightful presentation at Connect2013 in London, on 'Integrated marketing management, you can also download her full presentation here on Integrated Marketing Management. The focus of her presentation was on how poor internal structures, systems, processes and a lack of integration across the organisation can impact the customer experience and marketing/business performance. This diagram shows the nature of the challenge.

Marketing challenges

From her experience, she has seen many marketing challenges which include: inefficient and manual processes poor internal audit trails poor performance management lack of processes to manage problems and lack of…

…and, is it relevant anyway?

We've all heard this term, integrated marketing communications or IMC (yes it has an acronym!). Yet is it relevant I wonder, shouldn't marketing be integrated by definition? Integrated states the obvious! Marketing of old was relatively simple, from a marketer's perspective advertising was straightforward, retail wasn't complicated and the Internet didn’t exist. Integrating marketing communications was relatively easy to achieve. Today there are many more disciplines and channels than consumer attention can cope with, and we obsess over them. From a consumer perspective, there's much more information to take in now than say pre 1995. There's more TV programming, radio choice, print options, and outdoor potential, not mentioning online and mobile platforms, of course! In turn, advertisers are quick to hit people with more marketing messages because of that choice, new communication channels are quickly exploited and as a…

Are we entering a 'post-digital world’?

I'm hearing more and more people saying we're heading into a post digital world. Although these ‘buzz-words’ tend to grab the headlines but I don't think digital is over yet. In business, language is most useful when it communicates unambiguously. ‘Digital’ currently still means something distinct from ‘offline’. I certainly prefer ‘digital marketing’ to ‘interactive’ or ‘new media’ which never meant very much, even in the 1990s! By the way, one term I really can’t get my head around is ‘inbound marketing’. Let’s agree never to use it! [Editor's note: I think inbound marketing is here to stay as a term thanks to Hubspot Mike, since it's popular and helps distinguish between the benefits and approaches of digital marketing against online marketing. But I know what you mean, it essentially means the same as digital marketing!] I believe we still need digital marketing as a way of…

Our summary of the IPA new models of marketing effectiveness report

As marketers, we use the expression “integrated campaign” often, but of course in practice, the degree to which campaigns are truly integrated across channels varies. Recently the IPA released a new report models of marketing effectiveness which  shows the popularity of alternative options for campaign integration. It’s certainly an exhaustive study with analysis of over 250 IPA Effectiveness Awards case studies, entered over a seven-year period (2004-2010) including examples from Hovis, O2, Virgin Atlantic, HSBC, E4 Skins, Johnnie Walker and more. I hope our writeup is useful in helping prompt ideas on how you can tackle integration.

4 Options for integrated campaign planning

The report defines 4 options for integration. Analysis of campaign effectiveness reviewed hard measures including sales gain, market share gain, reduction of price sensitivity, customer retention, customer acquisition, profit gain and market share defence. Soft measures reviewed include brand awareness,…

Integrating email marketing into a display ad campaign boosts recall by 13%

I'm sharing this recent research study since it offers some interesting results and insight for multi-channel marketers. It covers an area you don't see discussed so much - the intersection between email marketing and online ad campaigns. Today email is mainly thought of as a customer communications tool for developing loyalty and sales to existing customers, but this study shows how using email as a media buy through ads in email newsletters and in rented lists can help in customer acquisition and conversion to sale. You'll see that the results suggest that online advertising campaigns are enhanced when the email marketing channel is added. It's a classic case of the increasing reach and awareness through adding an additional channel.

Methodology / case study

The study, which analysed the advertising effectiveness of…