For marketers, Gartner’s prediction that 8.4 billion connected things will be in use this year means two things. Firstly, they will have access to a treasure trove of data. Secondly, the omni-channel nature of this data means it’s likely information will be held across multiple isolated platforms, making it hard to find true insight gems.

And with the May 2018 GDPR deadline fast approaching, making such huge volumes of fragmented data manageable — and...

As the Scott Brinker MarTech Landscape so clearly bears out, the number of tools available to marketers continues to set a new high-water mark, with no indication of slowing. In many ways, the situation is indicative of why so many professionals still struggle to reach customers effectively, and maintain positive customer experiences over time.

With an overlapping buffet of purpose-built solutions that carry out virtually any...

The results of Shutterstock’s 2017 survey of marketer’s use of imagery, shows that the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) decision to remove gender stereotypes is having a pronounced effect on ad campaigns.

The survey of 500 UK marketers found that 57% of respondents said they were already being impacted by the ASA’s plan to bring in new guidelines on gender stereotyping in 2018.

35% reported using a larger number of images that featured women in the last 12 months. The data also showed...

Advertising decisions are not made in a vacuum.

Every dollar and metric is carefully scrutinized by CMO’s to ensure that the company is receiving maximum return on its investment. If campaigns are ineffective, they will be quickly pulled and resources redirected to more lucrative channels. Digital advertisers are beginning to understand this reality.

Not because digital advertising isn’t as, or more effective than traditional means, but because of a phenomenon specific to the digital world: ad...

The role of the CFO is changing from “cost authority to business value architect”, as Accenture neatly put it. 73% of finance leaders say they’ve been more engaged with strategy over the past two years; financial management is no longer the CFO’s sole domain:

“Finance 2020 - tomorrow’s digital finance...

Competition is increasing, the pace of change within business is getting faster and digital technology is disrupting traditional work practices.

The pressure to keep pace with digital transformation is a concern for many firms, according to the SalesTech report by CITE research and SugarCRM – 63% of companies are worried about the cost and effort needed to keep systems up to date and 34% view their organisations resisting change as...

What effect does the environment in which you work actually affect the quality of the work you do? This is a question that agencies and brands ask all the time, especially when they see a plateau in growth or a perceived dip in quality.

There have been many theories as to what the best layout for an office should be. Should it be open-plan? Should employees have a set desk or be allowed to hot desk as they see fit? Should there be social spaces within the office?

Lots of companies have put time and effort...

Gone are the days of guessing what each individual customer wants by researching demographic populations. Take inspiration from some of the largest tech companies like Amazon, Facebook and Google who are investing large amounts of money in machine learning and AI to predict what their customers want before they even know it. Learn how to become a savvier marketer with these suggestions to improve your overall ROI and business performance.

1.       Content curation

By 2018,

Public speaking can be a daunting prospect, especially when the audience tends to form an opinion in the first 60-seconds of the presentation. Catching the attention of the audience, building credibility and motivating them to listen isn’t an easy task.

There’s nothing worse than spending hours planning, preparing and practising – only to find you lost the entire group just moments after beginning.

Giving an effective presentation means working with both the audience and the topic....

A new study by Accenture shows that B2B companies seem to struggling to deliver the kind of personalised customer experiences that drive loyalty and growth due to the growing complexity of customer buying journeys.

The global professional services company surveyed 1,350 sales, service and marketing executives from organisations around the world, and found that 21% thought that they had have “total control over their organisation’s sales networks and overall customer experience”.

According to...

More money than ever is being allocated to digital marketing budgets, as companies and brands try to launch social media campaigns, publish videos and create content.

But according to research by digital agency Greenlight, only 36% of digital marketers are confident that they are targeting the right audience with their campaigns.

The agency surveyed over 200 digital marketers from across the UK and found that 23% were not tracking their campaign spend at all.

“It is clear that many in the industry are...

We’re less than a year away from the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) taking effect, and by most accounts, many brands aren’t ready for it. Marketers, in particular, need to be out in front of the changes required for compliance because it is their job that will arguably be upended most by the legislation.

GDPR will redefine, and in some...

When your boss asks you how the online marketing efforts are doing, what do you say? “We’ve increased impressions by 30% and traffic is up 15%.” Do you know what that means for business growth? Does your boss?

Digital marketing is great for equipping businesses and marketers with the data to define their success and find unending opportunities for growth. Unfortunately, this also makes it incredibly difficult for marketing leaders to determine what truly matters to grow their company.

And yes, I say grow...

There is little doubt that technology has a role to play in streamlining and enhancing marketing production. However, from the decision to implement one of these systems, through to its implementation, there are five critical issues that need to be dealt with to ensure its successful deployment, adoption and usage.

Gathering the business requirements for such a solution can be a challenging task that can dictate the success or failure of a project.

The solutions available, digital asset management, content...

UK price comparison website Moneysupermarket.com Ltd has been fined £80,000 by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), for continuing to send emails to customers that had previously opted out.

The ICO is a regulatory body whose role is to upload information rights in the public interest.

Over 10 days in 2016, the company sent out a whopping 7.1 million to people who had actively asked not to be included in any further direct marketing.

The email the company sent was about the updating of...

Advances in technology mean that sales professionals should act more like business consultants, according to LinkedIn.

The findings have been published as part of the State of Sales 2017 study.

The survey of over 2,000 sales professionals and business decision makers shows that top performing sales people are the ones that take the time to understand a client’s business before making their initial pitch.

The...

Marketing departments, by their very nature, are populated by some very creative people. Ideas are the stock-in-trade and there is a process for taking those ideas from birth through to fruition.

The same is true in R&D, but what about other parts of the company -- the accounts department, or HR, for example – and what about partners and suppliers, don’t they too have great ideas and shouldn’t they be heard?

The fact is that organisations can tap into a battalion of potential...

The changing expectations of the customer is forcing many organisations to rethink how they market their brands, their goods and their services. How they are going about this could be referred to as marketing transformation. Akin to digital transformation, marketing transformation is concerned with bringing value to customers via a better and fuller customer experience (CX).

To provide better CX, you need to create a holistic and unified experience...

Reminiscent of the once popular magic eye pictures of the 1990s, the current martech LUMAscape is a colourful but confusing blur of point solutions, which have emerged onto the market over the years.

Regular visitors to Mobile World Congress and dmexco will know only too well that the number of new companies offering martech solutions has reached an all-time high.

But is it sensible for...

The digital marketing industry has been caught up in the midst of an on-going cross-industry digital skills gap over the last few years. With thousands of extra workers required to fulfil demand it’s imperative that the industry take steps to help close this gap from within.

Last year a Government report highlighted the gulf between the number of skilled workers in Britain compared to both the required sum and the state of the rest of the...