Business Insights

  Our marketing expert Richard Phillips shares some practical tips for procuring quickly and efficiently in the face of current pressures and demands.

When we asked our marketing directors for their end-of-year marketing predictions in 2015, they agreed that 2016 would be the ‘year of the video’. It’s hard to argue they got it wrong. Nearly 12 months on, and 96% of B2B organisations use video in their marketing campaigns, with 73% reporting a positive ROI. For video, read YouTube. While there are a number of video hosting platforms available—notably Vimeo and Daily Motion—the user statistics are dwarfed by YouTube. With over a billion users, it is the third most visited website in the world, the second biggest search engine, and the largest video distribution platform by a clear mile.

Marketing is often perceived by outsiders as being a creative industry, and, indeed, much of it is. Marketers are often caricatured as quirky creatives or flashy account managers – not skilled data analysts. But the most important thing in marketing is data: customer contact details, website analytics, email click throughs and everything in between. Get data management, analysis or reporting wrong and everything else that follows is potentially wrong, too.

D igital marketing may grab the headlines, but for real engagement, trade shows are unrivaled. Not only do they offer the chance to meet, mix and mingle with existing clients, 81% of trade show attendees have buying authority . New business opportunities are literally within touching distance. The value of tradeshows shouldn’t be in doubt, says The Marketing Centre’s regional director Malcolm Johnston . But too many businesses exhibit at irrelevant events or fail to maximise their investment. Click the video to hear Malcolm’s advice on picking the right show, planning for success and why British reserve hampers sales efforts. Read on for his seven-step guide to maximising tradeshow ROI. It all starts with strategy...

When Google launched in the late nineties, it was a simple search engine designed to make the internet easier to navigate. In 2016, Google is unapologetically an ad platform, with the Adwords pay-per-click (PPC) service generating a whopping 97% of its $73 billion sales in 2015. For many businesses, PPC is an addiction; their sole means of generating web referrals, because they’ve turned off all other marketing activities.