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Reviews, evidence, references. People increasingly expect to do business based on trustworthy proof of prior success.

So why do so many professional services organisations and marketers struggle to produce compelling, timely case studies?

It doesn’t matter whether you call them case studies, client stories or credentials, it all looks easy on paper.

In an ideal scenario, you deliver some great work. You write up the challenge, how you solved it and the positive impact that you...

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Pokémon fever is rife across the globe thanks to a new augmented-reality version of the 90’s franchise, which sees players hunt through real-world locations for digital Pokémon powered by Google Maps.

Produced by Nintendo and Niantic, it was officially launched on iPhone and Android last week in the US, Australia, New Zealand and Germany. The widespread adoption has led to Nintendo adding $7bn to it’s value and shares increasing by more than...

The EUROs was a tournament dominated by the unexpected. Few could have predicted Portugal’s final 1-0 win, or Wales reaching their first semi-final since 1958.

Fans flocked to Twitter to register their joy, and surprise – with over 10.7 million tweets posted by Brits during the live broadcasts of the 49 matches alone, driving more than 2.8 billion impressions – making social media the key battleground for real-time engagement.

Our data reveals three universal fan behaviours that brands can...

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Brands have been chasing the coveted millennial market for years. As true digital natives, millennials’ comfort and fluency in the online world has set them apart.

With an insatiable appetite for digital media, they are the force behind the content revolution taking place in the digital sphere.

Brands have reacted by throwing themselves into digital content production, working to craft content that resonates with millennials.

As a result, 2015 was a record year for content...

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A lot of ink (or pixels, really) is dedicated to the ways in which marketing organisations are evolving. We’re told that the CMO now has a seat at the CEO’s table, and marketing tentacles now reach into every nook and cranny of the enterprise.

Marketing organisations are no longer made up exclusively of creative types; they’re staffed with just as many data geeks and junkies.

What’s driving this evolution? Can the digital revolution take credit for all of...

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The benefits of strengthening a story with statistics, or some other form of quantitative data, are widely acknowledged by marketing professionals from all industries.

Working to provide quantifiable insights to clients across various sectors, I have recently seen an increasing interest in using data to reinforce theories about a consumer-base. But most companies have not considered all the options for commissioning research that are now available.  

In becoming...

For many brands, ‘digital’ is still viewed as a channel in marketing. This completely misses the point that digital technology has changed the lives of customers and brought about the evolution of industries.

To appreciate this, just take a look at Uber, or Airbnb. Over-used examples perhaps, but Uber and Airbnb have become the poster children of modern business because their business models are built around digital.

They didn’t develop market concepts and then consider how to promote them...

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Showcasing your skills on LinkedIn isn’t always straightforward. Endorsements are given by random connections on skills you never even knew you had, and a good recommendation is sometimes rare.

This is true for all job roles, but also in the case of marketing professionals. The level of marketing tech skill varies from person to person, but may not always be immediately obvious from a generic ‘marketing exec’ job role.

With

A digital marketer is spoiled for choice if they’re in the market for tools - and let’s be honest, who isn’t?

It’s fair to say that we’re almost driven to distraction in the search world for the right tool for the right job. Every paradigm shift needs a new tool, every new platform opens up a fresh opportunity and there are additional workflows which can be shortened or optimised.

Spending on marketing technologies within in-house marketing teams or...

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Retail  brands must focus on four key areas in 2016 that include continued integration of instore and online customer experiences, according to the latest Future of Retail study from Walker Sands.

The study, which showed a general plateauing of retail activity this year, surveyed 1,400 consumers in the US and found that seven in ten of them were willing to opt into instore tracking and mobile push notifications if retailers properly incentivised them to do so. Only 6% of consumers had...

Clients demand them. Vendors promise them. But actionable insights seem like the most difficult things to find. Insights don’t just happen and aren’t automatically generated.

Looking back at past attempts at gathering insights that really delivered content that could be acted upon – what was the winning ingredient? Similarly, what elements resulted in a pile of unusable data?

While there is no easy or consistent recipe for insight success, understanding the critical ingredients can allow...

The term “digital marketing” may seem like a recent development. However, with digital marketing increasingly becoming a heavily data-focused discipline, it has already evolved through three distinct ‘waves’ of consumer online experiences.

The first wave saw the movement from physical materials (business cards, brochures) to the digital (a website).

The second wave focused on consumers getting direct access to brands through mediums such as social media. While the third wave focuses on...

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Kantar WorldPanel recently released research looking at the lives of UK millennials. Besides revealing everything from their favourite movies to their levels of alcohol consumption, the findings featured some interesting gems for marketers around the distinctions between online and offline browsing and purchasing habits.

For example, 25% of millennials often use their smartphone while in-store to check online prices and...

The world is in the middle of a mobile retail boom, with the majority of UK online sales coming from mobile devices, according to latest IMRG data.

The fashion industry is at the head of this wave, as clothing is the most-searched-for retail category from mobile devices.

That trend is igniting...

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Companies today are confronted with an ever-evolving IT landscape, which brings opportunity and risk in equal measure.

For every new device which enables enhanced productivity and the ability to work from anywhere, there is also one more potential security loophole within the business.

Managing this balance between embracing workflow-enhancing innovations and ensuring strong security defenses is crucial, and so companies look to the senior IT team to help workers safely transition...

It is no secret that digital has arrived and it is changing the way businesses operate, market themselves and communicate with customers.

What is surprising though is that many organisations are still failing to adapt to this shift. In fact, according to research from the annual Russell Reynolds Associates survey, 10% of c-suite executives confessed to still not having a digital strategy in place.

So why is this...

For retailers desperate to control their whole online customer journey, the issue of delivery has always been a stumbling block where retailers face basket abandonment and potential damage to their brand.  

But a new survey shows that 60% of consumers in the US said they had abandoned their shopping cart because the retailer offered slow delivery options.

The study, of 650 respondents in the US and carried out by same-day delivery firm Dropoff, showed that 97% of customers said speed is at least...

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Ad intermediaries can now be verified through new a new process and guidelines from an independent industry body to reduce the risk of ad fraud.

The UK’s Joint Industry Committee for Web Standards (JICWEBS) published the Good Practice Principles today, against which companies can be audited to reduce the risk of fraudulent ads being served.

It’s estimated that ad fraud cost $6.3bn in 2015 and is set to increase this year. 

The new principles are based on...

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According to Jon Miller, CEO of Engagio, the secret sauce and the future of marketing technology is - wait for it - account based everything (ABE). 

As the keynote speaker for the recently held MarcomCentral Marketing Tech Roadshow, Miller outlined in an exciting, determined, informative, and illustrative PowerPoint the new concept of ABE. 

Miller’s presentation headlined the MarcomCentral mini-conference, a three-hour event...

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Businesses of all sizes need must have unified, defined customer experience and digital strategies to properly cater for the modern day customer’s needs, according to a recent report from Forrester Consulting.

The paper, commissioned by SugarCRM and Squiz, outlines how digitally mature businesses are succeeding...