Digital to the top

I've just read eConsultancy's article on Changing Company Culture. Some of it seems slightly utopian from a digital point of view, but the angry-youngish-digital-man in me finds it encouraging that other marketers are suffering similar disappointments.

For me, the biggest issue is a generational one that will take both time and forward-thinking companies to change - the simple fact that CEOs and the rest have limited (at best) digital experience.

Is this the last generation of executives that didn't grow up with online marketing? I suspect not... It will likely take another 10 years before a groundswell of companies begin to employ digitally-able execs. 

That's not to say mega-businesses haven't already been changing. Coca Cola's Content 2020 strategy is rooted in digital and there are notable UK businesses that clearly "do digital" well. Barclay's recent thrust in consumer experience and digital innovation has been very noticeable.

However, it's not these outliers that we should be thinking about. It's the long tail of thousands of SMEs which continue to lag behind in the digital economy.

The most galling thing is that it's precisely these smaller businesses that have most to gain, least to loose and the best opportunity, unencumbered as they are by unwieldy organisational change.

Google shared endorsements

Google have, in their own inimitable way, sneaked out a new feature that further shoehorns Google+ activity into SERPs.

Google shared endorsements.

Google Shared Endorsements example

It's a bit like those hateful sponsored ads/stories/posts that your most vacuous Facebook friends comment or like. From now on, if anyone in your Google+ circle has commented, reviewed or +1ed you ad or service, a thumbnail of them with their activity will appear alongside your ad or listing. 

Yet again, Google taking more steps to increase the prominence of Google+ activity in SERPs which only goes to make Google+ more important for businesses. It's yet to be seen whether this will increase CTRs on ads, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if it does.

On-page SEO fights back

Over recent years, with the increased popularity of content marketing and social, off-page SEO has has taken all the limelight.

Whilst flicking through the decks from the recent BrightonSEO 2013 conference, I enjoyed this presentation from Lisa Myers on on-page SEO. Oft-forgotten, there have been some great developments in this area which can really impact your on-page work. Personally, I'm a massive fan of the Structured Data Mark Up helper from Google in WMT which makes enriching your on-page content so easy.

#BrightonSEO 2013 - On Page SEO & Marketing from Lisa Myers

2014 digital marketing trends

The online marketing mentor, "Dangerous" Dave Chaffey, has released his thoughts on 2014 Marketing Trends.

As with many of his musings, he's split the trends along his Plan to RACE approach which looks at different stages of the marketing approach

Reach

Act

Convert

Engage

A few partner points which pick out some of what I see as the key areas for me over the next year.

Growth hacking

I actually hate the term "growth hacking". Not for its buzzwordiness, but for its connotations of coding skills. These aren't really required at all in my opinion, although a willingness to embrace tech and some lateral thinking around technology certainly is. 

But, regardless of my feelings on the term, it's the sort of analytics-lead, conversion rate optimisation that I think we need to be adopting in the work we do. I also like the way that it encourages us to move away from "meak tweaking" and into other areas like influencing product set up, pricing etc to achieve the best result.

Be a growth hacker. Measure things, optimise things, stick your nose into things that aren't normally your domain and make them work better.

CXM (customer experience management)

Many businesses are awful at this, everyone working in their silos. I'm guilty of the same. Such a missed opportunity.

Attribution models

Nothing too new here, I already dabble a bit in this area of GA (should do more), but it did remind me of this interesting benchmarking tool from Google which looks at how different channels influence differently between industries.

Content marketing

Again, we all know the theory here and it's only going to get more important to marketing departments in the next year. So, does your team produce "epic" or "nuclear" content for marketing? Is your business prepared to do that

Also, I think this quote is spot on - "Of course Content Marketing is two words and I think marketers’ efforts often focus too much on the Content rather than the Marketing". This is why there are so many business Twitter accounts with only a handful of users.

What I really like about this whole post is that most of the points aren't about flashy new tools or crazy new approaches (apart from Google Glass which I suspect won't play a major role in my marleting efforts in 2014!). 

The majority are simply about doing digital marketing right - setting goals, measuring, optimising, identifying your audience and using the right tools to reach them.