The Step Change Blog

The Internet of Things is steadily becoming a huge disruptor in the world of business. With the ability to communicate with more devices, exchange and harness valuable data to inform business strategy, IoT can empower digital transformation throughout organisations.

So you already have a killer inbound marketing strategy. You may find yourself wondering  why you’re still having trouble getting your qualified leads down the pipeline. Why aren’t they converting?

Have you ever landed on a website to look into some content only to be confused by the plethora of information on the homepage? Sure enough, that website likely has a problem with its information architecture.

If I told you there was a way to earn three times as many leads without spending any more money on marketing, would you believe me? Because that’s exactly what happens when you switch from the traditional outbound marketing to content marketing.

Marketing automation assures us of one thing: it’s a powerful, remarkable, personalised way to engage with your audience. And if it’s done right, it can give you an edge over the competition in the war for customer attention.

Buyer personas. Either you have them but your team doesn’t know how to use them, so they’re good as gone — or your team simply skipped creating one to get to the ‘real work’.

While many companies are aware of the general importance of personas, they don’t fully understand what it is they’re trying to do when they create them.

Even Amazon‘s $685 billion market value couldn‘t save the Amazon Fire. Launching a product online takes a lot of work — and it‘s something that can elude even the largest companies in the world.

In the midst of constant discontinuity, only one thing is certain: technology will disrupt every aspect of our lives and drive how business is done in the coming years. For CMOs, it is crucial to know and understand what these technologies are and how they are disrupting the way we do business today.

Digital transformation — you may have heard this term in a recent digital conference you’ve attended, or you may be even assigned to lead one. And you’re not the only one, because right now, it is a big focus in growing organisations.

A blog is a powerful tool every business should have. If you want to stay relevant and competitive, if you want to be found online, a business blog is a necessity. It’s simply the most effective tactic that allows you to attract, engage, and nurture leads as they go through the stages in your marketing funnel.

Every year, businesses spend thousands of dollars on campaigns that would just fail. Why? Because they missed to focus on one vital thing: relevance.

In today’s fast-paced digital world, businesses operate in a time where attention is scarce and content is everywhere. Businesses who are serious about reaching out to their consumers are upping their game to win their attention.

Marketers are facing a dilemma today. On one hand, it’s becoming clear that creating content is not only an effective way to raise publicity for their companies, but it’s also essential to do so. On the other hand, so many companies are using content that consumers have become overexposed to.

The typical consumer sees hundreds of articles, blog posts, videos, and other forms of content per day and only manage to fully consume or remember a small fraction of them.

Unless your content marketing strategy can stand out from the rest, there’s no way to convert viewers and readers to consumers.

Throughout the Director’s Guide to Digital series, we’ve established the need for digital to be fully integrated into your marketing strategy. Still, you can’t add any real value to your digital marketing efforts until you can measure performance and track how digital has added to the success of your overall strategy.

If you think that email marketing is dead and that using email to reach your audience is an outdated approach, here are some statistics to prove that it’s here to stay and it’s not slowing down anytime in the future.

Let me start by thanking all our clients who have given us the chance to prove this and believed in us. You know who you are.

Many still believe that some of today’s modern marketing techniques, particularly in digital, just won’t work when communicating with government departments.

To this, we say: Rubbish!

Digital marketing knows no bounds. And when we talk about modern marketing techniques that can be used in government, these can refer to content marketing, performance media, social media marketing, and marketing automation, amongst others.

Here’s why we think digital has a place in government.

We recently surveyed 133 CEOs, Directors of Marketing and Sales, and CMOs to find out where companies are likely to invest for growth. 

We found that most young executives are aiming to increase investment across the board more than older executives. We also found it interesting that smaller cities like Adelaide are more adventurous in terms of virtual reality or augmented reality than Sydney or Melbourne.

The highlight of our survey reveals the key areas where business leaders plan to invest to grow their businesses this year.

In an ever-changing and highly competitive digital environment, not having a solid digital marketing campaign is a lost opportunity to attract new leads, engage your audience, and drive them through the funnel for actual conversion.

Still, so many businesses out there do not have a digital marketing strategy or know how to run an effective marketing campaign online. 

With today’s digital space overloaded with so much content, cutting through the noise is only half the battle won.

You need to get your audience to complete the content engagement hierarchy to drive actual conversion.

We have recently seen an interplay between design and business strategy in the digital landscape. With key players setting the pace for how we can tailor design towards the user experience, we then ask, does it really make a difference?

Big data has been described as the “new oil” as far as business assets go. However, a better analogy might be the Wild West. It is fairly easy for any business to now leverage BI and data to make decisions; however, the “how” still isn’t clear, and neither is the application. 

According to KPMG, when the strategy is data-driven, it helps to make sense of structured and unstructured data and applies that knowledge to a wide range of business functions. The result is that there is no more guess work, and results can become more predictable. Far more predictable than conventional forecasting techniques based on static historical financial reports.

Today, the emergence of new digital trends has virtually transformed digital marketing overnight, and CMOs need to pay attention.

Planning a digital marketing strategy for businesses in 2018 has never been a more exciting time. With technological trends that have emerged, marketers are left with great opportunities to connect with their brand’s target audience.

In this blog post, we share digital marketing trends that leaders of challenger brands should know to plan their strategy for 2018.

With over 800 companies in Australia appointing Chief Digital Officers, it is undeniable that digital has found its way to be part of the strategic core of many businesses.

As you’re reading this post, there’s an overabundance of content screaming to get noticed online. In fact, every minute, people publish 1,400 new blog posts, send 150,000 emails, share 3.3 million pieces of content on Facebook, and upload a total of 500 hours of video to YouTube. Every minute.

Every cent your company leaves on the table is a missed opportunity, allowing your competitors to gain resources and customers that could have been yours. If you work with a vendor or manufacturer, there is a good change that you are not using potential marketing funds that are available to you.

If you’re doing online marketing, there’s no doubt that you are interested in maximising the rate of conversion when potential and returning customers visit your page.

There are many ways to generate leads for your business. Advertising, referrals, cold calling, buying names — you’ve probably done some of these to sell your product or service. But there’s one tool marketers miss to use to its full potential to generate more leads.