The Figaro Digital Summit Report: Spends & Insight

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Welcome To The Figaro Digital Spends And Insights Report 2016

Figaro Digital hosts seminars, conferences and summits dedicated to the latest developments in digital marketing.

We also publish a magazine packed with interviews and case studies. We help marketers from brands and agencies

learn and connect.

At the Figaro Digital Marketing Summit in October 2016, we surveyed 136 brands to determine what were their biggest priorities, challenges, and the budgets allocated to each ambition. The results really get to the heart of what the

current innovations in digital marketing mean for brands of all sizes.

This report, with the expertise of our agency partners, answers some of the most pressing questions raised by brand marketers, and takes an objective look at where

digital marketers should be investing their time and budgets in the coming months.

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Contents

Digital PR

SEO

PPC

Email

CRM

Content

Video

Social

Programmatic

Affiliate Marketing

Mobile

Web Design

Web Optimisation

Conclusion

Upcoming Events

Sources

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Digital PR

In our post ‘How Do You Choose the Right Influencers for Your Brand’ on the Figaro Digital blog, we discussed the rise in popularity of digital PR and influencer marketing.

Budgets in this area of marketing are beginning to increase. In fact, Statista claims 59 per cent of marketers are planning on increasing their influencer marketing budgets. Why? Well, people trust recommendations and often make purchases as a result.

Our research suggests that spend on digital PR is still relatively low. The majority of respondents spend between one and ten thousand pounds a year on digital PR, whereas the highest spend reached £100,000. So what factors can account for this wide disparity? Our survey reveals the most pressing questions for marketers in the field.

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What The Experts Said:

What is the best way to incorporate the old world of PR into the digital space?

“Digital PR has paved the way for real time content. Consumers demand information and trends often change at a tremendous pace. Print PR makes it difficult to provide live, insightful content due to long lead times, but we can talk about a story to a digital editor at 10am and the article can be live and being read by 11am. This has meant Digital PR teams need to align with content teams closely to ensure the content of varied mediums (especially video) is being produced live.”

How do we ensure links from good PR coverage? How do you best collaborate PR and SEO teams?

“The best results come when the PR team has SEO training and understands what is required. Getting links is not enough and can have a negative impact if it seems unnatural. The best approach is only applying links in coverage where it feels natural to link users from the publication to the specific site. Variation is also key. Having all links going to the homepage is not ideal; they should be varied to relevant landing pages. Links cannot be guaranteed unless they are paid for, but in most cases having a strong relationship with the editors and an honest conversation about the projected value to users will result in a link. If an editor makes it a non-followed link don't worry, it's good to show a mixture of link types – referral traffic is just as important as SEO links when looking at digital PR strategy.”

David Schulhof, Digital Marketing Director, Red Hot Penny

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What The Experts Said:

What is the best way to leverage v/bloggers without compromising brand values?

“Eighty-two per cent of PR and marketing professionals are now using social influencers in their digital marketing activities. Here’s how to make it work:

1. Find social media ambassadors who genuinely love your product or service(s): This is one of the most important factors in choosing a team of social influencers. The influencers should have a genuine passion for what you’re offering, and their brand values should align with yours. The more they love your offering, the easier it’ll be to not only work with them but to see the fruits of their labour. Their promotion will be natural because it comes from the heart and their followers will be responsive to this.

2. The creative should be a partnership: You and your team will have ideas on the proposition and messaging, however, remember that the chosen influencer will know what their audience is most responsive to better than you do.

3. It's not all about the numbers: It comes back to quality vs quantity. When choosing your influencers to work with, look for those who have responsive and engaged followers as opposed to influencers who just have the most.”

Emily Dunlop, Head of Digital PR, Reckless

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Leveraging Digital PR For AB2B Business

“Digital PR can apply to any service offering or industry – it all comes down to who the target audience are. Most sectors have industry publications, online resources and blogs that can be targeted for Digital PR opportunities. Online Newspapers such as Telegraph and The Times Online are great for B2B focused coverage. Interviews and industry insight pieces with senior figures, entrepreneurs and business owners are great ways to ascertain PR coverage in a B2B market.”

David Schulhof, Red Hot Penny.

“Digital PR in the B2B sphere is different than it is for consumer facing businesses. This is because of the specialist need to fully understand the B2B company’s industry. At Reckless, we believe that to effectively publicise how a B2B company’s product or service(s) solve business challenges, we must have a thorough understanding of the company market. This, in return, gives us the ability to speak the “language”, in terms of expressions and technology specifications in order to gain visibility and understanding within the right publications and online channels. We endeavour to find out where exactly the target audience go to online to educate and gain insight, which publications they read and what information hubs they subscribe to. It’s from this stage that we can then create campaign concepts and opportunities to gain coverage and media placements.”

Emily Dunlop, Reckless.

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While digital PR might appear to lend itself to a consumer-facing brand, it doesn’t mean that it’s not also a fruitful strategy for B2B businesses.

SEO

A 2013 Chitika report stated that results on page one get 91.5 per cent of Google Traffic. And nothing much has changed since. If you’re not ranking among those top results, you’re vastly reducing the amount of traffic (and subsequent conversions) you may get.

What are organisations spending to achieve this? Forty-two per cent of our respondents said they spend between one and ten thousand pounds a year on Search Engine Optimisation. A further 21 per cent spend between £26,000 and £50,000 a year, and 4 per cent spent more than £1million.

Whether it’s spent on keyword research, link building or the internal structure of your site, an optimised SEO strategy could make the difference between your site getting ten or ten thousand visitors each day.

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What The Experts Said:

Is off-site SEO now more important than on-site SEO?

“‘Off-site SEO’ in terms of link building hasn’t become less important, but on-site has certainly become more important. Search engines are getting better at understanding how searchers are engaging with results, so providing a fast, accessible, useful result is the single most important thing. Off-site, likewise, has changed. Now we’re looking much more at increasing brand search volumes rather than just improving our link profile. Links themselves are no less important, but they’re no longer the only important thing.”

How do you understand the value of SEO on your site, and assess what's working well and what isn't?

“We have to start with current customers. You don’t deserve more customers if you aren’t properly servicing the ones you already have, so we must assess our most important pages when we start and optimise those for relevant keywords, rather than finding keywords and optimising relevant pages. From there, engagement metrics are a good indicator – time on site, bounce rate, the user journey up to that point – it’s easy enough to figure where organic search has featured in that process.”

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Stephen Kenwright, Director of Paid Search, Branded3

What The Experts Said:

Is off-site SEO now more important than on-site SEO?

“Off-site and on-site go hand-in-hand in any well thought-out SEO strategy; building great links is pointless without a clearly defined and well-informed keyword strategy, and vice-versa. In order to understand the digital marketplace that you are trying to make ground in, it is essential to review and spot opportunities in both areas. In some instances, a website will be littered with quick win keyword areas and new pages that can be created, whilst in others there will be weak pages that are primed to be strengthened through link building. The important thing is to clearly understand what it is that you are trying to achieve, and leverage the tactic which provides the best opportunity to reach your goal(s).”

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Ben Magee, Digital Strategist, Liberty Marketing

PPC

From ads at the top of search results to sponsored posts in social newsfeeds, pay per click is often a quick-win when it comes to generating website traffic. But with keyword bidding costs varying greatly depending on the desirability of the term, PPC spend can differ with industry, product or audience.

This is reflected in our research. The most common budget spend fell between £51,000 and £250,000 a year, however we found that Pay Per Click spend varied greatly among our respondents. An equal amount of those surveyed spent between one and ten thousand a year to more than a million. There is, of course, no definitive answer to how much marketers should spend, but what should they be taking into account when assigning budget to PPC?

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What The Experts Said:

Is there a world beyond Google for PPC? “There sure is! Talking purely search engines, Bing cannot be discounted. Their market share is slowly growing, especially with the Cortana Voice Search feature of Windows 10. You can even upload your campaigns straight from Google Adwords too, so it’s quick to setup. Aside from search engines, PPC advertising is available on a series of other platforms such as Amazon, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. But we are not saying that you should be advertising on each one. It’s all about picking which platforms are right for you. Each platform attracts a different audience, at a different stage of the purchase cycle, so consider your audience carefully before jumping into any advertising. If you are selling a book for example, Amazon Ads could be the solution for you, whereas if you are increasing brand awareness, Facebook’s solution could be right up your street.” How important is PPC if your target market is

relatively niche?“Having a presence on search engines is more important than ever and can provide exposure to niche markets, helping your customers to find you. If you are advertising in a crowded market you are going to have more people competing for advertising space. Competition increases required click prices and makes it harder to rank your adverts high up on the first page. You can’t really afford not to be present on search engines – if you are not there your competitors are.”

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Olly West, Marketing Manager, WebBox Digital

What The Experts Said:

How can we assess the value of PPC?

“A very complex question, that could be discussed for an entire afternoon! In a nutshell, there are two options: You can assess the value of PPC in a silo, measuring the direct response from clicks using an analytics package, or activation tools themselves (Adwords, Bing etc.) Or you can assess the value of PPC in a more advanced way, operating a single ‘tech stack’ such as Double Click and developing an attribution model that considers all online traffic sources and the link between them.”

What automation techniques can be used to take away labour intensive PPC tasks?

“There are two levels to this; using a technology stack such as DoubleClick, or using available options within bidding platforms. These scripts can significantly reduce manual labour time spent on optimisation, and Google are consistently releasing options to allow easier bidding methods which move more towards automation than a manual keyword focus. Utilising a technology stack which automates several tasks within PPC management is a more expensive/premium option. Tools like Double Click are hugely beneficial when managing larger accounts.”

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Jon Greenhalgh, Director of Paid Media, Branded3

Email

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For brands with a vast collection of user email addresses, email marketing can be a simple and effective way of increasing brand awareness and conversions, using extremely targeted campaigns aimed at users who have already expressed interest in your products or services. What’s more is that email marketing is measurable, cost effective and easily shareable – but are marketers utilisingthis channel to its fullest?

Our research has found that marketers are spending very little on email marketing – 52 per cent of respondents spend between one thousand and ten thousand pound per year on email marketing – this could because of the relatively low cost or simply they are not changing email service provider. Our experts are keen to reflect the versatility and value of this key area.

Is email engagement equally achievable for B2B as well as B2C companies?

“I'm always astounded by how few companies utilise an email strategy or any sort of lead capture. B2B or B2C – it doesn't matter. Utilising email marketing to drive return visits, shares, and ROI is the groundwork from which you should grow your strategy. At NewsCred, our email distribution program is our number one driver of marketing sourced and influenced revenue.”

Marcus Stoll, Head of Marketing EMEA, NewsCred

What The Experts Said:

What The Experts Said:

How can brands be successful with e-mail automation?

“We’ll see marketers increasingly adopting First-Person Marketing. This doesn’t only rely on advanced personalisation to offer subscribers a tailored email experience, but also learning from other channels, analysing data, and optimising messages. Rather than an end destination, First-Person Marketing is an iterative, incremental process that will really differentiate performance levels in email marketing.”

What email techniques are new and, so far, un-proven?

“Email is a traditional channel and has generally stayed very similar in terms of design capabilities for a long time. Last year we finally saw Google and Microsoft get on board with updating email clients so it’s easier to make them as interactive as the web. Great email design improves engagement rates, customer experience, and loyalty. Hopefully that will continue to bear out at scale as interactive design becomes more accessible. As this area develops, we’ll see marketers spend more time refining their strategy than creating emails, which should in turn lead to better email results.”

What are your thoughts on the direction of email design and user experience in the next 1-3 years?

“Highlights (in Inbox by Gmail) allows users to see information at a glance without even opening the email, and Amazon’s in-email delivery tracking are just two examples of how UX is already improving in the email channel. From the marketer’s perspective, modular email design and user-friendly, robust email editors will allow a substantial decrease in time spent creating emails and an increased focus on email strategy.”

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Jennifer Watkiss, Head of Marketing Communications, Adestra

CRM

How do you analyse customer interactions and manage data throughout the customer lifecycle? Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is the bread and butter of customer loyalty, enabling brands to gauge consumer sentiment and exist as more than a soulless transactional platform. Facilitating effective and relevant communication with the consumer is arguably the most powerful retention tool in the marketer’s arsenal.

According to our research, 48 per cent of marketers spend less than £10,000 a year on customer relationship management (CRM). A further 20 per cent spend between £11,000 and £50,000, whereas 8 per cent spend more than a million pound a year improving business relationships and driving retention rates.

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What The Experts Said:

What are the phases to get CRM up and running seamlessly?

“The most successful CRM programmes start by getting clarity on the objectives. Without this, it’s impossible to design the best integrated communication and channel strategies that will drive your particular performance objectives.

“Once you have established what you’re trying to achieve, the next step is understanding the extent to which your data can support the delivery of these objectives, and how data is captured, held, analysed and utilised. Data is the currency for running an efficient CRM system, so building on your own data assets, and in many cases using pre-existing but under-utilised technology can be a more effective and less costly approach.

“A key aim of CRM is to create more personal relationships, but to do this well you need to use analysis and insight to understand your customers’ needs, motivations and preferences. Once the framework work has been done, more predictive analysis can be undertaken to identify the triggers and propensities that reveal who, what, when, where and how to effectively communicate.

“Test and learn is a key part of establishing effective CRM –in terms of offer, channel, incentive, and marketing mix. This approach provides the bedrock of effective CRM and continuous improvement over time. To do this, brands need to set up effective measurement and reporting infrastructures, and embed the optimum data-driven contact strategies across their technology systems. It’s important to remember that the technology should come further down the CRM process, not lead it.”

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Nick Evans, Marketing Practice Director, Jaywing

What The Experts Said (Continued):

How can you sift through the (potential) vast pools of data and do something meaningful with it?

“There are many ways we can explore data, but a useful technique when faced with the challenge of vast pools of data is to develop a limited set of clear hypotheses that can be tested using the data and data analysis.

“For example, you may have a hunch that the longer a customer spends on your site, the more likely they are to make a purchase. This means you can support or disprove your initial hunch by using hypothesis driven analysis.

“This will of course assume that your data is effectively processed, is as accurate as it can be, and in a format that enables analysis to take place. It also assumes you have access to strong analytical and CRM consulting expertise that can help formulate these hypotheses, and interpret the results.

“Diving into data in an disorganised way is ineffective, as well as being inefficient, so this hypothesis led approach is vital. This isn’t a purely analytically driven exercise; the hypotheses of course are informed by knowledge of the business and commercial model. The skill is to know which new lines of enquiry to follow. Again, it’s key that you have access to knowledgeable analytics and CRM experts who know when the data is telling you nothing, or something that is misleading.”

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Nick Evans, Marketing Practice Director, Jaywing

Content

The saying ‘content is king’ has been thrown about for many years in the marketing industry, to the point where many of us are now sick of the term. But despite the overused buzzword, the intent was correct. Quality-written content that is created with the reader in mind is an essential part of your marketing campaigns and is becoming more important than ever. But is this reflected in marketing budgets?

The cost of content management is relatively low. Once a site has a blog and content management system (CMS) built, uploading, updating or deleting content comes at no extra cost. This is reflected in our findings, where 69 per cent of our respondents answered that they spend between a thousand and ten thousand pounds a year on content management.

Whether it’s updating an onsite blog or creating content for another site, quality content takes careful strategic planning and should go through multiple proofing processes. The maximum spend of any respondent is between £251,000 and £500,000 a year, showing that this is still less of a priority to marketers than SEO or PPC.

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What The Experts Said:

What are the most cost efficient and effective content marketing practices?

“Simply throwing money at content doesn't mean it willwork. We must be strategic, and often we find that means using the content clients have created years back and forgotten. Pages, like domains, have built up years of trust from search engines. What’s more, there’s every chance that your content will have picked up other ranking factors that generate trust such as links and social signals. It’s what we all want – a quick, affordable win and something to impress our boss with. Consult your analytics and upcycle content with stronger research that makes the post more detailed and better written.”

If there was only one tool you could use for helping you plan your content marketing, what would it be?

“Buzzsumo. It’s the perfect combination of establishing what your competitors are doing and finding out what your target market loves.”

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Philip Woodward, Creative Content Manager, Liberty Marketing

What The Experts Said:

How do we deal with technical limitations to create interactive, personalised content?

“It's often much more efficient to look at solutions that can help take the burden off of your internal teams. The technical requirements of interactive and personalised content are extremely high, and a software solution can make all the difference. Variables like location, type of device, referral information, on-site behaviour, and visit frequency are all readily available via cookies, and can help drive the right messages at the right time. Platforms like Idio or even Marketo can help unlock this info and provide your visitors with an optimised experience.”

What can we do to create content that will drive traffic and links to our site?

“At the end of the day, if content is not relevant, useful, and timely to your audience, throw it out and start over. Dedication to quality is what will keep people coming back and sharing your content. At the beginning of your strategy, paid distribution is a must to help make people aware of your efforts. But from there, the quality content will drive others to post and reference your content which will complete the loop.”

What’s the next big digital trend on the horizon?

“Virtual reality, no doubt. As companies like Samsung work to make VR more accessible, the prevalence in consumers' lives will increase rapidly. There are huge opportunities to be truly creative with the way we deliver content to consumers. If you think about interactive content, there is nothing more interactive than actually living in it – and that's what VR brings to the table.”

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Marcus Stoll, Head of Marketing EMEA, NewsCred

Video

Following on naturally from our discussion about content, we also looked at budget allocation specifically for video. Recent research has revealed that 90 per cent of users find product videos helpful in the decision process and 75 per cent of online video viewers have interacted with an online video ad this month. Research has also found that including video on a landing page can increase conversions by 80 per cent.

However, likely due to the skill required to make these videos, our respondents said that they rarely invest in video content – 65 per cent spend between a thousand and ten thousand pounds on video content each year, with 23 per cent spending between £11,000 and £25,000. Despite the majority having a low budget, 8 per cent of respondents said they spend an impressive £51,000 to £100,000, showing that video is seen as a worthy investment to those with the budget to spend.

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What The Experts Said

What are your top tips of video content planning?“You need to identify who your target market is, what kind of content you’ll be making, where the content will be placed, how your audience might perceive it and why. In addition it’s critical to make sure you streamline your content and limit it to 1 or 2 messages, as this is most favorable when attempting to create a memorable product or idea. Finally, your video needs to have a call to action of some sort – tease the audience into wanting to find out more or visit your website.”

What lifetime can we expect to get out of video?“Although it is advisable to regularly refresh and update your website, one could expect to get 6 months – 1 year of lifetime out of your video content. But this doesn’t mean your ROI is limited to this time frame. Various elements from video content can be easily repurposed into shorter clips, stills, podcasts and gifs. Through clever reuse and recycling, your video content could last a year, in presentations, social media and printed collateral.”

Is on–site, Facebook or YouTube the best place to be?“The best place for your video depends on the content itself. Videos on Facebook tend to perform better and achieve higher play counts when they’re reasonably short; whereas lengthier videos tend to perform better on YouTube. Facebook’s algorithms prioritise short videos as they’re more likely to be shared, which in turn increases its exposure in individual’s newsfeeds. YouTube’s algorithms prioritise the length of time videos are watched, therefore incentivising the use of longer videos.

“It goes without saying that on-site video content is essential. Having visual content specifically reduces bounce rates, as they increase the length of time individuals stay on your landing page, which in turn allows for more opportunity for your brand message and essence to sink in. Ultimately, it is highly recommended to use all three channels to expand your video content’s reach, utilising the specific advantages each of them possess in order to get your message across to the right audience.”

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Christine MacKay, CEO, Salamandra Design & Digital

Social

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Over the last decade, social media has taken over our lives and there are now around 2.4 billion social network users worldwide – more than a third of the world’s population.But how are marketers addressing this audience?

From app downloads and special offers to sponsored tweets, social media advertising is an effective way of creating highly targeted ads for already engaged audiences. 55 per cent of marketers surveyed spend between one and ten thousand pounds a year on social media advertising, possibly as part of a wider PPC campaign. A further 13 per cent spend £11,000 to £25,000, and the same amount spend £26,000 to £50,000 per year.

Social media monitoring informs trends, allows customers to provide feedback, and helps improve customer satisfaction. There are a number of tools that can help brands do this, all of which are relatively affordable; this is the likely reason for our findings which saw budget spend in this sector being quite low.

What The Experts Said:

What offers the best value for money in terms of social advertising?

“The more targeted the campaign the more successful it usually is. A generic, widespread, paid-for campaign is basically impossible to gain a positive ROI on. By really specifying the demographics of your audience you can better invest resources into paid-for adverts and track customer patterns better. Do your research to ensure effective creative, channel selection and CTA’s.”

How can we make the best use of social media for a B2B business?

“LinkedIn is the best place for organisations to interact with other businesses. Employee advocacy is really the key for LinkedIn marketing and encouraging them to share content into LinkedIn groups and tag influencers into posts. It's free to do and enables you to boost your brand's content reach easily and showcase the loyalty your employees have to your brand. If you have budget available, LinkedIn’s sponsored posts are brilliant as they enable you to be very specific with your targeting.”

We have advanced CPC analytics, but how does paid social sit in with supported journeys and social?

“Paid social adverts can be used to engage with prospects and make them aware of your brand. Then organic social campaigns can be used to nurture these leads and eventually encourage them to click through to the website and convert.” 25

Rhiannon Birch, Marketing Communications Executive, SocialSignIn

What The Experts Said (Continued):

How can we extend our reach on social media?

“By creating unique and original campaigns combined with being responsive and human. Responding and interacting with customers and prospects on social media helps to create more interest in your social channels as customers want to be able to talk to you. Paid Adverts can easily increase your reach as can identifying and partnering with influencers.”

How do you measure your engagement if some of the action is taken offline?

“By using customised landing pages and domains you can track exactly where your traffic is coming from and gain clear insights into what campaigns convert into sales. Integrating social data with wider CRM data means you can connect all customer touch points and remove data silos.”

Are there better providers than Hootsuite to monitor Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn? If so, who?

“We use SocialSignIn, a complete social media management platform for driving clear social ROI. It enables all departments to work from within a single solution, including marketing, customer service and PR -removing the need for multiple tools. They also have real-time UK live chat support and offer on-site training, which is something you just can’t get with overseas suppliers.”

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Rhiannon Birch, Marketing Communications Executive, SocialSignIn

Programmatic

Automated buying, placing and optimisation using a bidding system can be a cost and time-efficient way of advertising a brand. According to IAB, programmatic spend will increase to account for 80 per cent of marketing spend by 2018.

There was a mixed response from our respondents as to whether or not they think programmatic marketing is the way forward. 40 per cent of respondents spend less than £25,000 a year on programmatic marketing, and 33 per cent spend between £26,000 and £50,000 annually. The largest annual budget for programmatic spend was half a million pounds. So, the human touch is more common for the time being.

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What The Experts Said:

How does programmatic work with digital display? Is there a metric that would work for both?

“If we're referring to digital display that's arranged directly, it's traditionally been planned, bought and served in bulk, across fixed metrics such as time (tenancies) or rates (fixed CPM's) against an assumed audience dictated by the publisher. Programmatic display is bought impression by impression using demand side technology against top-down targeting criteria such as IP for geo, cookie data for retargeting, day parting, frequency capping - linked to a centralised data management platform which optimises and segments audiences for more refined targeting and messaging. Direct display is usually arranged for branding and awareness exercises for which engagement metrics are used such a viewability and CTR. Due to the scale and granularity of programmatic targeting, conversion and performance metrics are more commonly used. Measuring the impact of display as part of a wider picture is essential in the same way ATL affects digital uplift.”

How do we best optimise programmatic marketing for existing customers?

“We listen. Planning a campaign based on assumed and historical criteria can only be accurate to a degree. Publishers, pricing and inventory levels are like market forces - constantly fluctuating based on supply and demand. Harvesting and interpreting data allows us to spot performance trends that we can turn into actionable optimisation decisions such as pricing, frequency, recency and inventory.”

What resources are out there for programmatic marketing?

“Exchangewire and Adexchanger are two leading industry blogs that are impartial in the sense that they sit outside of the adstackproviding impartial news about the industry's development and the latest participants in the market.”

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Justin Brookfield, Co-founder, Tomorrow TTH

Affiliate Marketing

Strong relationships with customers are essential, but in the B2B sector human relationships can be invaluable for generating interest in a niche industry. Affiliate marketing is an effective form of performance-based marketing that can get you the much needed referral traffic boost you need. Very few sites, however, will advertise your company for free.

Our research has found that affiliate marketing budgets vary greatly depending on the number of affiliate links and where they are hosted. 56 per cent of respondents said they budget between one and ten thousand pounds a year for affiliate marketing, whereas 25 per cent spend more than £100,000 per annum.

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What The Experts Said:

What works best in what channels and in what markets?

“It can be a big mistake to look at channels in isolation; it’s much more effective to take a holistic and integrated approach when looking at what works best in channels. A person's digital journey doesn't begin and end on one channel, which is why for any market, a goal-oriented approach works best. Curated looks at an audience's complete spectrum of behaviour, intent, and engagement throughout their entire journey to make sure that we create the right messaging that's deployed at the right time. This approach can be tweaked and made much more specific depending on the goal and industry.”

Are there any new attribution models coming out?

“One of the biggest problems with attribution is over complication (especially for SMEs). There are a lot of emerging platforms out there so it can be difficult to know which one to use. At Curated, we are only really partial to the models with Google Analytics. With Google Analytics, so many people get hung up on attribution - there is lots of talk about it but nobody seems to have conquered how to do it properly. For the bigger brands, it’s being able to track every different user journey, but for most advertisers and small businesses, its simple stuff. Like trying to understand how things like non-branded or generic paid search is having an impact on brand visibility, sales, and revenue, or being able to track ROI back to that non-branded / generic activity and move away from purely last-click reporting.”

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Simon Douglass, Founder and Owner, Curated Digital

Mobile

More brands than ever are reporting that mobile is overtaking PC. On average people spend 86 minutes a day using the internet on their phones, compared to just 36 minutes on a desktop. This trend hasn’t passed unnoticed, and a huge number of brands are taking a more mobile-centric approach.

Creating and promoting your own business app can not only build brand awareness and help your company stand out from the crowd. It can also provide immense benefits for users. Apps can improve mobile engagement, provide value to your customers and will provide you with a direct marketing channel where you can encourage customer loyalty.

Designing and managing an app requires a distinct set of skills, so are marketers embracing this mobile age within their budget spend? According to our research, 33 per cent of marketers budget between £11,000 and £25,000 a year for mobile app spend, and the same number put aside £26,000 to £50,000.

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What The Experts Said:

How can you move people from desktop to mobile?

“Marketers need to understand how mobile fits into the user journey, rather than simply substitute desktop for mobile. While stats show us that mobile use has overtaken desktop, it’s important to assess how important mobile is to your end goals. Use analytics to see how mobile and desktop users differ in terms of acquisition, behaviour and goal conversions and if this is an area you should be dedicating more time and resources to.

“If shifting people from desktop to mobile is important to your overall strategy, then utilising cross device retargeting is a great way to engage with users on mobile who have previously visited your site on desktop.”

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Paul Hunter, Marketing Manager, Liberty Marketing

Web Design

Size, code and templates are just a few of the factors determining how much a company should budget for building a website. The cost varies greatly and can cost anywhere from £250 for a basic site to £20,000 or more for large ecommerce companies. So, how much did our respondents expect to spend?

Of those who are considering web design, the budgets ranged from as little as a thousand pounds to £500,000, however the largest percentage (29 per cent) said they budgeted between £100,000 and £250,000 for a complete redesign.

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Web Build

What The Experts Said:

What new trends in web build are there?

Trend #1:“The test and learn approach becomes more widespread. Businesses can’t afford to waste time and resources implementing new tools and features that offer no value. As brands evolve their digital capabilities, the ones that succeed will be those that don’t go to market with a fully developed solution or a ‘big bang’ launch in the hope that this is what customers want – the clever money is on being quickest to market, rapid innovation through design sprints and a ‘test and learn’ approach. Working iteratively, not simply thinking about what features to introduce, is an approach that most of the major dot coms with large in-house teams currently take – but 2017 will see more agencies evolving in this direction too.

Trend #2:“Data-driven decisions and personalisation come to the forefront. 2017 will be the year of richer measurement and data becoming a greater driving force behind a business. The rise of the data scientist and an increased use of data visualisation tools to interpret findings will result in an opportunity to get closer to the customer. This greater insight will be used for machine learning and AI, catered responses and creating touch points that are specific and individual.

Trend #3:“The death of set projects. As an acceptance that start-to-end projects have been superseded by evolution, product thinking will be a big trend in 2017. Product thinking is a modern approach to developing customer-facing digital products, using customer-centric problem solving design techniques combined with modern engineering practices, such as lean development. It flies in the face of traditional ‘project’ thinking, where a team is given a defined solution with a set of features to deliver to a set budget in a set time. It ensures digital products are continually addressing real customer needs while simultaneously delivering real, measurable value for the organisation. When the initial problem has been solved, it’s about building and innovating around it to further enrich and improve it.”

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Louis Georgiou, Managing Director, Code Computerlove

What The Experts Said (Continued):

Trend #4:“Content saturation leads brands to become cleverer about their communications. 2017 will see a number of brands addressing the challenges brought on by fragmented channels and streamlining content. Some trend pundits are calling it a ‘Content Crunch’. We will see brands re-addressing which channels are being the most effective and increasing focus on customer experience over broadcasting, streamlining content and increased niche targeting. Similarly, expect to see consumers also ‘turning down brand noise’ or even muting brands as they become tired of being shouted at and sold to within ‘their spaces’. If you don’t resonate with your target audience, you run the risk of failure.

Trend #5:“Digital innovation steps up a level. Innovation in 2017 is about more than the latest marketing or technology gimmicks; it’s about inventing new ways to interact with customers in service delivery or product engagement. 2017 will be the year many organisations finally embrace and capitalise on the broader oppositionists by adopting a customer-first mindset. To achieve this, innovation and creative thinking need to be embraced by multiple departments in an organisation. These traditionally siloeddepartments need to collaborate and use design/strategic methods to identify and solve customer problems or customer opportunities, which can lead them to real breakthroughs in what they offer customers. As we see a growing emphasis on user and customer experience, we’ll see this move beyond just the marketing teams and into the hands of operations, customer service, product development, etc.”

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Louis Georgiou, Managing Director, Code Computerlove

Web Optimisation

As part of the ongoing marketing activity once the site is live, user experience (UX) is a key concern. In fact, many of our respondents said they budget more for UX than for web design.

Conversion rate optimisation (CRO) creates an experience that encourages the number of site visitors that convert. And everyone wants better quality traffic and a higher conversion rate right? But are all marketers investing in CRO?

According to our research, 50 per cent of marketers are spending between one and ten thousand pounds per year on CRO, 23 per cent are spending between £26,000 and £50,000, whereas the maximum any of our respondents budget £100,000 per year for CRO research and implementation.

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What The Experts Said:

How can we consider UX from a marketing point of view?

“If there’s one thing everyone working in UX agrees on, it’s that at the heart of good user experience design is an empathy for users. This means having a deep understanding of what users want and need coupled with an appreciation of factors such as context and presentation, that can influence perception and behaviours.

“In the 1930s marketing pioneer Louis Cheskin uncovered the relationships we have between packaging and the actual product. Designers at the Cheskin Company ran an experiment where they added 15 per cent more yellow on the colour of the can. Customers quickly reacted, complaining that the company had changed the flavour of the drink to be more ‘lime-y’, even though the contents of the can hadn’t been altered. The key lesson here for marketing is that people’s experience of your marketing is affected by other factors such as presentation.”

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Andy Marshall, Head of UX, Rufus Leonard

What The Experts Said (Continued):

“What people remember might not be what you’d like them to. In research by the Nielsen Norman Group, industry leaders in the field of user experience, participants were asked what they thought about websites they had used. Working solely from memory participants complained about the slowness of certain sites. Most marketers ignore details like this, but it’s these details that can have a hugely negative impact on the experience. Those weeks or months toiling on a campaign and perfecting your messaging can be lost due to a poor user experience.

“It’s up to everyone to contribute to user experience. So what’s my advice? Take time to consider the experience of someone consuming your marketing. Focus on the areas impacting the experience that you can improve. After all, the experience is going to happen whether you pay attention to it or not, so get involved. The more you can positively influence the experience for those consuming your marketing, the more successful your marketing will be as a result.”

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Andy Marshall, Head of UX, Rufus Leonard

Conclusion

We hope that this report has provided you with a generous helping of insight, ideas and inspiration to take away and

impact your own digital marketing strategy.

As every new year presents new challenges, we hope to continue to provide with the help of our expert partners the grounding and support that will take your business to

the next level.

By remaining agile, alert and adaptable, brands can look to a coming year packed with potential for innovation,

opportunity and the chance to connect with the core of your strategy: your consumer.

If you would like to join us at the next Figaro Digital Marketing Summit, please contact Events Manager Paul

Nichols at paul.nichols@figarodigital.co.uk

Figaro Digital would like to thank Liberty Marketing for aggregating the statistics and corresponding graphics.

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January26 VIP Boardroom: First Look At Christmas Results31 Digital Transformation Seminar

February2 Paid Search & SEO Seminar9 Email Marketing & CRM Seminar23 Digital MarketingSummit

March7 Digital Marketing Roundtable: Stockholm9 Content Marketing Seminar23 Retailer Spotlight: Digital Marketing Roundtable28 Digital Travel & Leisure Marketing Conference

April13 B2B Spotlight: Digital Marketing Roundtable20 Paid Search & SEO Seminar

May4 Email Marketing & CRM Seminar18 Digital MarketingSummit25 Digital Marketing Roundtable: Stockholm28 Retailer Spotlight: Ecommerce Seminar

June8 Paid Search & SEO Seminar13 VIP Boardroom: Knowing Your Audience20 Content Marketing Seminar22 Programmatic Marketing Seminar

July12 Digital Marketing Conference27 Video Marketing Seminar

August3 Email Marketing & CRM Seminar10 Retailer Spotlight: Digital Marketing Roundtable15 Paid Search & SEO Seminar22 Affiliate & Influencer Seminar24 Digital Marketing Roundtable: Stockholm

September14 Food & Drink Digital Marketing Conference21 Customer ExperienceSeminar26 ContentMarketing Seminar

October19 Digital MarketingSummit26 Digital Marketing Roundtable: Stockholm31 Email Marketing & CRM Seminar

November2 Paid Search & SEO Seminar8 Financial Services Spotlight:

Digital Marketing Roundtable30 Digital Marketing Conference

December12 B2B Spotlight: Digital Marketing Roundtable

2017Events

Keep up to date with the latest news on all our events at figarodigital.co.uk

Sources

Source: US Digital Marketing Forecast 2014 to 2019 by Forrester Research

https://searchenginewatch.com/sew/study/2276184/no-1-position-in-google-gets-33-of-search-traffic-study

http://insivia.com/50-must-know-stats-about-video-marketing-2016/

http://digiday.com/publishers/helps-build-daily-habit-publishers-use-instant-articles-bundle-daily-must-reads/

https://www.globalwebindex.net/blog/internet-users-have-average-of-5-social-media-accounts

https://www.statista.com/statistics/278413/number-of-social-network-users-in-the-united-kingdom/

http://www.stateofdigital.com/what-is-programmatic-marketing-buying-and-advertising/

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