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The decision to act, or not to act, can have a knock-on effect on how your company will weather the storm of inflation and change in 2022

In our recent LinkedIn poll, 30% of respondents admitted to making no changes to their marketing strategies in light of inflation. Suggested changes we gave include making marketing more efficient (majority response at 58%) and reducing spend. Only 7% are adapting their strategy to reduce spend - which shows most of the ‘adapters’ are doing so with a growth mindset. But, alarmingly, the same poll showed that 30% are not planning to adjust their strategy, or were not sure. The ‘not sure’ answer indicated, to me, either slow decision-making or poor management, neither being great for reacting to a global phenomenon. So what can we learn from this?

65% of marketers are adapting in light of…

With the launch of our brand new Learning Paths - offering practical, strategic marketing courses online - discover which marketing training solutions have been the most popular

Deciding on a marketing course to optimize your strategy in 2021 is tough. With so many marketing training options, you need a solution that's practical, data-driven, and proven to generate results, quickly. Read on to discover our Smart Insights members' top Learning Paths and resources in each membership tier.

Top Business Professional marketing course: Manage change for digital transformation

Module from Digital Transformation Learning Path for Business Professional Members Digital Transformation is the use of new, fast and frequently changing digital technology to solve problems. However, a Boston Consulting Group report found that only 33% of significant IT projects have been fully successful since the year 2000. The danger is that the benefits of digital transformation are not being fully achieved as organizational barriers can hold…

Becoming a better marketer isn't rocket science if you have access to the right resources

The world of marketing is fast-paced and ever-changing. You can’t scroll through LinkedIn without finding out something new about the industry. It seems that every day a new theory, acronym or feature has emerged that you need to get up to speed on (mainly before your boss or colleagues ask you what it is). But how do you stay on top of all of these updates and new features, and how do you apply them? Smart Insights is definitely a great place to start.

Why should I pay for digital marketing training?

Perhaps you want to grow your digital marketing skills within your current position or work toward getting a promotion. Maybe your goals are focused on growing your business and achieving ROI on your digital marketing. Or, you manage a marketing team and you know that effective digital…

Google and Facebook plan to offer SMBs ad credits to support them during the coronavirus pandemic. This is what you need to know to secure your share

On Friday the 27th of March, Google announced that they will be offering ad credits for small-to-medium sized businesses (SMBs) who routinely advertise with them. Google have pledged $340 million in Google ads credit, to help companies “stay in touch with their customers during this difficult time” (Google Ads Help). More details have now been made available and this ad credit can be used at any point until the end of 2020, across any Google Ads platform. On Monday the 20th April, Google provided updated information on their ad credit programme, particularly in regard to eligibility criteria. Those eligible for this programme are small and medium-sized businesses globally, who have spent with a Google Ads account in ten out of twelve months of 2019, and…

Highlights, insights, and lessons from some of Smart Insights’ best marketing guides

The world of marketing is constantly changing and modern marketers are expected to have an increasingly diverse set of knowledge and skills. Although the internet offers a vast wealth of information, it’s often difficult to judge what is and isn’t good quality. Although biased, I believe that Smart Insights provides a wide range of quality marketing resources, from daily blog posts to quick guides and toolkits. Smart Insights has over 200 different guides that marketers can access (depending on your subscription) - as well as online training and e-learning - to learn about everything from how to set up a social media campaign to managing a digital transformation strategy. I’m a big believer that marketers should always be learning and looking to build their skills and capabilities. But with so many resources, where should you start? The answer to this question…

What guides, templates, examples and Quick Wins have our members found helpful in 2019? We've taken a look at this year's most popular Smart Insights resources

Over the last year, we’ve updated and created new guides, templates, presentations and Quick Wins in order to help you better develop your marketing skills. We always aim to provide the most up-to-date information and advice to enable you to grow your knowledge, while our practical approach means you can easily put this knowledge to use. No matter what your membership level, business or personal goals, we’ve aimed to provide you with a broad range of resources to help you achieve them. So, whether you’re trying to improve your skills, upskill your team or grow your business, you’re all set with the support of Smart Insights. You’re not the only one either, as this year has seen a huge number of people making use of our guides,…

Benchmarking allows you to see how well you are faring against your competitors, allowing you to pinpoint what you do well and where improvements need to be made.

Measuring your success is more than looking at how much traffic is coming to your site and what your conversion rate is. You can’t really get a true idea of how you are performing unless you compare yourself to your competitors. ‘How do we compare to our competitors?’ and ‘What does excellence look like?’ are questions you should be asking when developing your digital marketing strategy. While many companies are asking these questions, they may not know exactly what answers they are looking for. In order to benchmark your performance against your competitors, you need to know exactly what you should be comparing and how to structure your review and recommendations. This is where our comprehensive benchmarking templates come in. …

Unsure about how to use Google Analytics? Need some guidance on how to navigate around it? Learn how to set-up a GA demo account

Jill Quick originally wrote this advisory for our blog in July 6th 2016 based on a briefing with Google. 

A while back Google launched a new string to their analytics learning bow. A fully functioning Google Analytics account that anyone with a Google account can access. This is a wonderful education tool for any marketer, or business owner, who wants a better understanding of how to use Google Analytics. One of the problems my clients and delegates face when I deliver training on Google Analytics is a real-life example. Something to play around with, learn from and use to back up your measurement plan to educate your team on the insights they could be getting and showing your boss what your time and budget is paying for, especially…

Smart Insights Alert: The new tools include a single multi-country feed

If you've ever run an AdWords campaign you'll be familiar with the process, but now the AdWords platform has introduced new Merchant Centre tools: Adding or overriding product data with supplemental feeds A single multi-country feed modification of your product data from the content API with Feed Rules Driving more clicks via opportunities Add your entire team The new features have been implemented before the holiday season and well benefit retailers that advertize on Google Shopping. [si_guide_block id="5739" title="Download our Google AdWords Guide – How to get better ROI from your Google AdWords campaigns" description="All the questions you need to ask to audit and optimize your Google AdWords campaigns"/]

Supplemental feeds

Instead of relying on one feed for product data, it is now possible to change your data from multiple sources - giving…

But how slow is too slow?

Providing a high quality and fast user experience has always been a priority for Google - Mobile AMP pages were introduced to do just that (provide a faster user experience). Yesterday they announced that starting in July 2018, page speed will be an official ranking factor for mobile searches. It has always been debated whether page speed has previously affected search rankings for mobile but now Google has made it official. The “Speed Update” as Google are calling it, will only affect pages that deliver the slowest experience to users and will only affect a small percentage of queries. They have stated: "It applies the same standard to all pages, regardless of the technology used to build the page. The intent of the search query is still a very strong signal, so a slow page may still rank highly if it has great, relevant content." This shows that relevant…