The Digital Marketing Podcast: Recent Episodes
Daniel Rowles
An advert free, Weekly digital marketing podcast with listeners in over 180 countries worldwide, The Digital Marketing Podcast combines interviews with global experts, together with the latest news, tools, strategies and techniques to give your digital marketing the edge. Perfect for your daily commute, the podcast aims to be both entertaining and informative. Produced by Target Internet and hosted by Digital Marketing and E-commerce Expert, Ciaran Rogers and Award Winning Author and Speaker, Daniel Rowles. Find out more at TargetInternet.com
AI tools are evolving fast. One of the biggest shifts is the move from one-off prompts to reusable AI skills. Instead of rewriting the same instructions every time you use ChatGPT, Claude or Copilot, you can package your best workflows into portable skills that deliver consistent, repeatable results. In this special episode, recorded as the Digital Marketing Podcast celebrates its 16th anniversary, Daniel Rowles and Ciaran Rogers explore why AI skills could fundamentally change the way marketers work. They explain how skills fit alongside projects, agents and prompts, why they are becoming an emerging standard across the major AI platforms, and how to start building your own library of reusable expertise. Along the way, they also reflect on sixteen years of podcasting, discuss the rapid pace of AI adoption within organisations, and share practical advice for creating skills that become more valuable every time you use them. In This Episode How AI skills differ from prompts, projects and agents. Why reusable skills help create consistent marketing outputs across teams. How to build a brand skill that captures tone of voice, design principles and coding standards. Using skills to create websites, dashboards, articles and creative assets that stay on brand. Why updating a skill after every use makes it progressively more accurate. How skills can be shared between team members and even moved between AI platforms. The relationship between ChatGPT Agents, Claude Projects, Gemini Gems and Microsoft Copilot. How to turn your best prompts into reusable skills. Why marketers should organise AI conversations more deliberately as AI memory improves. Practical advice for creating libraries of reusable marketing workflows. Key Takeaways: Develop your best prompts first, then convert them into reusable skills. Treat skills as repeatable processes rather than one-off conversations. Build separate skills for different purposes, such as branding, content creation, web development or analysis. Use multiple skills together to combine different areas of expertise within a single task. Continuously refine your skills by asking AI to update them after each iteration. Think carefully about when to use a prompt, project, skill or agent depending on the task. Organise your AI workspace to avoid confusion as conversations and memories accumulate. Create shared skills that help maintain quality and consistency across your entire marketing team. 📥 Access the show notes, tools, and links at: https://targetinternet.com/resources/how-to-create-ai-skills
Why do so many beautifully designed websites, ads and digital experiences still fail to convert? In this episode of The Digital Marketing Podcast, Daniel Rowles is joined by Kramer Reeves, CEO of EyeQuant, alongside neuroscientist Professor Peter König, one of the company's founders and a leading expert in visual attention and cognitive science. Together, they explore how neuroscience and AI are reshaping the way marketers, designers and brands understand attention. The conversation dives into the hidden mechanics behind how people actually experience digital content. From subconscious processing and visual saliency through to cognitive overload and design clarity, this episode challenges many of the assumptions marketers make about what users notice, understand and act on. The discussion also explores how AI-powered predictive attention modelling can help teams test creative assets before launch, reducing guesswork and improving performance across websites, ads, landing pages and social content. If you work in UX, creative, digital marketing or conversion optimisation, this episode offers a fascinating blend of neuroscience theory and highly practical design advice. In This Episode Why the human brain is poorly adapted to navigating modern web experiences What happens cognitively in the first few seconds after landing on a webpage Why designers often view their own work very differently from first-time users How "system one" thinking drives most user behaviour online What visual saliency means, and why it matters for conversion How cluttered creative and overloaded messaging dilute attention Why visual hierarchy, contrast and scale shape user behaviour The importance of creating a clear visual storyline through a page or ad How AI models can predict where users are most likely to look Why neuroscience is becoming increasingly important in modern marketing and UX How EyeQuant uses predictive attention modelling to help brands optimise creative before launch Why objective testing is becoming essential in an AI-generated content landscape Key Takeaways Attention is highly selective. You cannot make everything on a page the top priority simultaneously The brain processes visual information subconsciously long before conscious reasoning begins First impressions are heavily influenced by saliency and visual contrast Designers are often too familiar with their own creative to judge it objectively Reducing visual noise can significantly improve clarity and conversion potential Motion, scale and contrast naturally attract human attention because of evolutionary wiring Effective design is not just about aesthetics. It is about guiding behaviour AI-driven predictive testing can dramatically speed up optimisation workflows Clear intent and defined outcomes are becoming increasingly important inputs for creative analysis Objective attention data helps teams move beyond subjective design debates 📥 Access the show notes, tools, and links at: https://targetinternet.com/resources/design-that-sticks-applying-neuroscience-to-predict-attention
What happens when a global brand hands over its creative control to unfiltered customer feedback? In this episode of The Digital Marketing Podcast, Daniel Rowles speaks with Emily Barfoot, Head of Dove Beauty at Unilever, about a bold and unconventional campaign built on Reddit conversations. At a time when trust in polished marketing is eroding and AI is reshaping how content is discovered, Dove leaned into one of the internet's most unpredictable platforms. By amplifying genuine, unedited user reviews, both positive and negative, the brand not only drove awareness but also delivered measurable commercial impact. This episode explores how marketers can rethink control, embrace transparency, and tap into community-driven credibility. In This Episode How Dove identified an organic Reddit conversation and turned it into a multi-channel campaign Why Reddit's "unpolished" nature makes it a powerful platform for trust and insight The strategy behind publishing the first 50 real user reviews without editing or filtering How Dove balanced positive and negative sentiment to build credibility The role of social listening in shaping campaign direction and optimisation How Reddit content was extended into out-of-home, influencer, and experiential marketing Why transparency and respecting platform culture were critical to success How the campaign delivered over 260 million impressions and triple-digit growth in the product category The importance of many-to-many marketing in modern brand building How Reddit insights fed directly into product innovation and development Key Takeaways Authenticity is not a tactic. It is a strategic commitment that requires letting go of control User-generated content can outperform traditional creative when it reflects real experiences Reddit is not just a media channel. It is a rich source of customer insight and product feedback Brands must respect platform norms and community expectations to earn participation Balanced sentiment, including negative feedback, increases trust and credibility Social listening should be continuous and actionable, not just observational Experiential marketing can amplify digital engagement when it creates shareable moments AI-driven discovery makes community-led content more valuable than ever Strong products and existing brand trust are essential before taking transparency risks Marketing success increasingly depends on enabling conversations, not controlling them 📥 Access the show notes, tools, and links at: https://targetinternet.com/resources/reddit-marketing-case-study-with-dove-turning-real-reviews-into-real-growth
As AI rapidly reshapes how customers discover, evaluate, and engage with brands, marketers are being forced to rethink the fundamentals of the customer journey. In this episode of The Digital Marketing Podcast, Daniel Rowles speaks with Rachel Thornton, CMO of Adobe Enterprise, to explore what this shift really means in practice. Recorded just ahead of Adobe Summit, Rachel shares exclusive insights into Adobe's latest thinking, product direction, and how enterprise marketers should adapt to an increasingly AI-driven landscape. From evolving user expectations to the rise of AI as the primary interface, this conversation goes beyond the hype to examine the real implications for strategy, data, and customer experience. In This Episode How AI is transforming the traditional linear customer journey into something far more dynamic and unpredictable Why discovery and consideration are being reshaped by AI-powered interfaces and assistants What Adobe is announcing at Summit and how it reflects broader industry shifts How CMOs should rethink customer engagement in an environment where AI intermediates interactions The growing importance of first-party data and real-time personalisation How enterprise organisations are adapting their tech stacks to support AI-led experiences The challenges of maintaining brand consistency when AI is part of the customer interface What marketers often misunderstand about AI and where to focus instead How internal teams and workflows need to evolve to keep pace with change Key Takeaways The customer journey is no longer linear. It is fluid, fragmented, and increasingly influenced by AI-driven touchpoints AI is becoming the primary interface between brands and customers, which changes how influence and trust are built Marketers need to prioritise high-quality, structured data to enable effective AI-driven personalisation Speed and adaptability are now critical competitive advantages in digital marketing Organisations must rethink not just tools, but also teams, processes, and skills There is a growing need to balance automation with authentic brand voice and human oversight Experimentation is essential. Waiting for certainty in AI adoption is likely to result in falling behind 📥 Access the show notes, tools, and links at: https://targetinternet.com/resources/the-changing-customer-journey-in-an-ai-first-world-insights-from-adobe-cmo
In this episode of The Digital Marketing Podcast, Daniel Rowles is joined by Kendall Breitman from Riverside for a practical conversation about how marketers can use video without needing a full production team, a huge budget or a complicated workflow. Together, they explore why video has become so central to modern marketing, how brands can use it to strengthen SEO and answer engine optimisation, and why authentic, human-led content is outperforming overly polished corporate production. The discussion also dives into practical ways to build a video strategy from webinars, podcasts, customer conversations and expert interviews, then repurpose that long-form content into clips, blog posts, newsletters and more. It is a useful episode for any marketer looking to make video simpler, smarter and more sustainable. In This Episode Why video is becoming essential for SEO, AI overviews and discoverability across search and social platforms How authentic, human-centred video is replacing overly scripted and expensive marketing production Why social media works better when brands behave more like people than polished corporate entities How marketers can use customer interviews and user conversations as both research and content Why webinars, podcasts and expert interviews can become the foundation of an entire month of content How long-form content can be repurposed into medium-form YouTube videos, short-form social clips, blogs, newsletters and gated assets Why medium-form video is often overlooked, despite being highly effective for search visibility and website engagement The most common mistake brands make with video: failing to record valuable conversations and insights in the first place How video testimonials and advocacy content can support trust, social proof and brand visibility Where AI is genuinely helping video production, from transcripts and clips to editing support and audio clean-up Key Takeaways Video works best when it feels useful and human, not overly produced. A single long-form recording can power a much broader content strategy than a series of disconnected short-form posts. Customer conversations are valuable twice over. They generate insight for the business and content for the brand. Video strategy should be tied to business goals, whether that is awareness, education, trust or loyalty. Searchable, practical content such as straight-to-camera answers and product walkthroughs can deliver strong SEO and AEO value. AI should support storytellers, not replace them. The best use of AI is reducing friction so people can create more authentic content. Brands that build confidence in video now will be better placed as the format becomes even more central to digital marketing. The future of video is likely to be more accessible, more efficient and more human, not less. 📥 Access the show notes, tools, and links at: https://targetinternet.com/resources/practical-video-marketing
What happens when you combine practical digital marketing experience with behavioural science? In this episode, Daniel Rowles is joined by Phil Agnew, host of the Nudge podcast and a specialist in behavioural science, to explore eight psychology experiments and principles that can help marketers create more effective campaigns, stronger customer experiences and more persuasive messaging. Phil shares the original studies behind concepts such as social proof, loss aversion, anchoring and the peak-end rule, then shows how they can be applied in real marketing scenarios, from Reddit ads and SaaS websites to loyalty programmes, pricing pages and customer journeys. The result is a highly practical episode for marketers who want to sharpen their thinking and make better decisions in a world full of noise, automation and increasingly generic content. In This Episode Social proof: why it still works, why specificity matters, and why implying popularity can be more powerful than simply claiming it Loyalty and endowed progress: how giving customers a sense of momentum can make them more likely to complete a journey and stay engaged Loss aversion: why messages framed around what people stand to lose can outperform those focused only on gains The pratfall effect: how showing a flaw, when paired with clear competence, can make a brand or person more likeable Distinctiveness: why standing out matters even more in an AI-saturated content landscape Anchoring: how the first number, comparison or frame people see can radically shape how they judge value The peak-end rule: why customers often remember the emotional high point and the ending of an experience more than everything in between Visible effort: why people value products, services and content more when they can see the work behind them Real examples from digital marketing: including Reddit ad testing, website messaging, social proof banners, pricing psychology and travel search UX Key Takeaways Behavioural science is most useful when it is translated into practical tests, not treated as abstract theory Social proof works best when it feels natural and contextual, rather than overly promotional Small shifts in wording can have a major effect on click-throughs, conversions and retention Customers do not always judge experiences rationally. They remember moments, contrasts and endings Showing some humanity or imperfection can make brands feel more credible and relatable Distinctive positioning is becoming more valuable as AI makes average content easier to produce at scale Helping customers feel progress, momentum or visibility into effort can improve engagement and loyalty Marketers should revisit core psychological principles before chasing every new platform or tool 📥 Access the show notes, tools, and links at: https://targetinternet.com/resources/8-psychology-experiments-for-marketers
What happens when clicks get harder to earn, paid media gets more expensive, and audiences spend less time engaging with static content? In this episode of The Digital Marketing Podcast, Daniel Rowles explores why gamification is moving from a nice-to-have tactic to a serious strategic opportunity for marketers. This episode is split into two parts. First, Daniel sets out the business case for gamification in today's digital landscape, where AI overviews, rising cost per click and declining organic reach are all putting pressure on traditional marketing performance. Then he is joined by Luke Santamaria from PlaySpark, a specialist in branded interactive games, to look at how brands are using mini-games, playable ads and reward mechanics to build attention, loyalty and conversion. In This Episode: Why gamification is becoming more relevant as search, social and paid media become less predictable How owned engagement can become a stronger asset than rented attention What gamification really means in a marketing context, beyond simply making things fun How progress tracking, reward loops, challenge and achievement create stronger audience engagement Why quizzes, assessments, calculators, onboarding journeys and email programmes can all benefit from gamified thinking How interactive content can outperform static pages on engagement, return visits and conversion Why the rise of AI tools and vibe coding has made it far easier to create interactive experiences at lower cost How branded mini-games can support both loyalty and acquisition strategies What Luke Santamaria from PlaySpark has learned from building interactive campaigns for retailers, hospitality brands and loyalty programmes Why prizes and rewards can dramatically increase participation and completion rates How playable ads work across platforms such as Meta and mobile gaming environments What marketers should measure when testing gamified campaigns, from play rate and completion rate through to redemption and sales How personalisation could shape the next phase of gamified marketing experiences Key Takeaways: Gamification is not just about entertainment. It is a structured way to design more engaging marketing experiences. As AI overviews and no-click behaviour reshape digital marketing, brands need to offer experiences that search engines and summaries cannot replicate. Interactive content can help improve conversion efficiency, especially when traffic is harder or more expensive to acquire. Simple mechanics such as progress bars, unlockable content, rewards and challenges can strengthen repeat engagement. Gamification can work across B2C and B2B environments, particularly when the incentive is meaningful to the audience. Mini-games and playable ads can hold attention for longer than traditional ad formats and create more active brand involvement. Measurement matters. Success should be judged using both game metrics and commercial outcomes. New AI-assisted creation tools are lowering the barrier to entry, making experimentation far more accessible for marketing teams. The biggest opportunity may be in combining gamification with owned channels such as email, apps, learning platforms and loyalty programmes. Brands that start experimenting now may benefit from a genuine early-mover advantage. 📥 Access the show notes, tools, and links at: https://targetinternet.com/resources/gamification-for-digital-marketing
In this episode of The Digital Marketing Podcast, Daniel Rowles is joined by Emma Tronson, Deputy Director of Marketing at Aston University, for a practical, honest and refreshingly structured look at how to move beyond AI experimentation and into real organisational adoption. Many teams are stuck in what Daniel calls "pilot purgatory". Everyone is testing tools. Everyone is experimenting. But very few organisations have truly embedded AI into day-to-day operations. Workloads have not reduced. If anything, they have increased. This episode explores what it actually takes to embed AI into a complex organisation with multiple stakeholders, legacy systems, risk concerns and competing priorities Emma shares her step-by-step journey of launching an AI task force, securing leadership buy-in, aligning with institutional strategy, and creating a structured framework for adoption that delivered tangible outcomes within a year.In This Episode: From career setback to AI champion Emma explains how missing out on a promotion led her to proactively position herself as indispensable by embracing AI learning Mission AI Impossible How she pitched a structured AI task force aligned to Aston University's 2030 strategy and secured budget, time and executive support. Why time matters more than money Resource allocation and protected "lab time" proved more critical than financial investment. The six focus areas model Data and analytics, general work support, copywriting, visual and creative, SEO and web, and social and community. Each task force member owned one domain. Start small and build confidence Select staff were upskilled first before launching more widely across the department. Align AI to real use cases Experimentation was always tied to live marketing and admissions challenges rather than abstract testing. Governance before scale Clear internal guidance helped build confidence in responsible AI usage. The system integration challenge Legacy systems and risk aversion slowed deeper embedding, a common challenge across many organisations. Cohort Two and scaling adoption Expansion into wider teams with three new priority workstreams: personalisation, data, and custom builds. Why AI will not replace marketing teams Instead, it will reward those who actively upskill and adapt. Key Takeaways: AI adoption requires structure. Align initiatives to business strategy from the outset. Start with a focused pilot group, then scale. Protected experimentation time is essential. Bring sceptics into the process rather than excluding them. System integration and governance are often the biggest blockers. Innovation must be baked into everyday work, not treated as a side project. 📥 Access the show notes, tools, and links at: https://targetinternet.com/resources/how-to-drive-ai-adoption
In this episode of The Digital Marketing Podcast, Daniel Rowles sits down with Kipp Bodnar, CMO of HubSpot, to discuss what may be the most disruptive year in marketing history. Kipp believes that 2026 could represent the biggest single wave of change our industry has ever seen. Weeks feel like months. Channels are fragmenting. Discovery is shifting. AI agents are entering workflows. And traditional attribution models are starting to break down. From Answer Engine Optimisation to AI agents, rising ad costs to workflow automation, this conversation explores how marketers can stay ahead when the pace of change is accelerating. In This Episode: Why 2026 may be the biggest year of change in marketing history Kipp explains why discovery, personalisation and team workflows are being reshaped simultaneously. Answer Engine Optimisation vs traditional SEO The shift from short keyword queries to ultra long-tail, conversational prompts of 40 to 60 words changes everything. Mentions vs citations in AI search Why brand visibility in ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude is more complex than link-based SEO ever was. The first mover advantage in AI discovery Early adopters can make exponential gains because competition is still low and optimisation is immature. Why AI agents are thriving in customer service but lagging in marketing Marketing problems are less formulaic and more complex, making agent adoption slower but highly promising. The practical AI workflow hack every marketer should try Record yourself completing a repetitive task, upload it to Google Gemini, and ask how to automate it. A simple but powerful shortcut to AI adoption Why attribution is becoming harder again The "golden age" of clean click-to-conversion tracking is fading as AI intermediates discovery. Rising ad costs and the need for new growth channels With paid media inflation increasing, marketers must adopt emerging channels such as AEO and AI-enabled creative optimisation. The importance of strategic conviction AEO cannot be treated as a side project. It must be embedded as a core capability. HubSpot's approach to AI and context Positioning HubSpot as the context layer for AI, enabling agents and assistants to work from real customer data. Key Takeaways: Discovery is changing faster than most organisations are adapting. Answer Engine Optimisation requires different content structures, including FAQs and machine-friendly formatting. Early adoption in AI search offers outsized returns. AI-assisted workflows are often more impactful than fully autonomous agents in marketing today. Marketing teams must bake experimentation and innovation into daily operations. The biggest risk is not AI itself, but failing to evolve working practices alongside it. 📥 Access the show notes, tools, and links at: https://targetinternet.com/resources/the-hubspot-cmo-interview-kipp-bodnar-on-ai-answer-engine-optimisation-and-the-future-of-marketing
AI is accelerating change at a pace most organisations have never had to manage before. For marketers and business leaders, this is not just another wave of innovation. It is a fundamental shift from linear change to exponential change, where familiar planning cycles, transformation programmes, and long-term roadmaps start to break down. In this episode of The Digital Marketing Podcast, Daniel Rowles is joined by Geoff Tuff, Consulting Principal at Deloitte and co-author of Hone: How Purposeful Leaders Defy Drift. Together, they explore why traditional transformation initiatives fail so often, and what leaders can do instead to build organisations that continuously adapt without losing their sense of direction. Drawing on real-world examples, behavioural science, and lessons from Geofff's latest book, the conversation reframes change as an ongoing discipline rather than a one-off event, and offers a practical way to respond to the disruption created by AI and other exponential forces . In This Episode Why AI represents a shift from linear to exponential change, and why this makes traditional planning models fragile Why large-scale transformation programmes fail so frequently, and the hidden costs they create for organisations The concept of "drift" and how companies slowly move away from their original purpose without realising it The difference between sharpening and honing, and why constant realignment beats radical reinvention How leaders can "bake in" innovation so it becomes urgent, not just important Why behaviour, not technology, is the real engine of change inside organisations The role of management systems as the invisible drivers of culture and decision-making What Minimally Viable Moves are, and how they help organisations adapt without overcommitting Lessons from Amazon and Jeff Bezos on designing systems that reinforce the right behaviours How informal signals from senior leaders can unintentionally shape priorities and outcomes Key Takeaways Exponential change makes waiting for the perfect moment to transform a dangerous strategy Most organisations drift off course through accumulated small decisions, not dramatic failures Honing is about continuous, incremental alignment rather than destructive overhauls Leadership power lies less in vision statements and more in the systems that guide everyday behaviour Small, testable moves reduce risk and keep organisations responsive in uncertain environments What leaders praise, question, or ignore can matter more than formal strategy documents Staying aligned to purpose requires constant attention, not periodic transformation projects 📥 Access the show notes, tools, and links at: https://targetinternet.com/resources/dealing-with-exponential-change-leading-in-an-ai-driven-world
The generative AI landscape has shifted again, and at speed. In this update episode, Daniel Rowles breaks down a rapid sequence of releases from OpenAI and Google, explaining what has actually changed, what genuinely matters, and how marketers and business leaders should respond. Covering everything from ChatGPT 5.x and Gemini 3 through to image generation breakthroughs, AI-powered apps, and the rise of accessible 'vibe coding', this episode is a practical briefing rather than hype-driven commentary. Daniel focuses on real-world capability, usability, and where these tools are already changing how marketing teams work, build, and analyse. Rather than asking which model is "winning", the episode reframes the question around task-based selection. Different tools now excel at different jobs, from coding and image editing to workflow automation and reporting. Understanding those strengths is quickly becoming a competitive advantage In This Episode How the AI model race intensified between OpenAI and Google at the beginning of 2026 What actually changed with ChatGPT 5.1 and 5.2, beyond the headline claims Why Gemini 3 represents a major leap in reasoning and coding capability How image generation tools have crossed a new threshold in photorealism and editing What Nano Banana Pro means for branded, on-style visual creation Why ChatGPT connectors becoming "apps" is more important than it sounds How tools like Canva, Adobe, and Figma now integrate directly into AI workflows What vibe coding really is, and why it matters for non-technical marketers How canvas mode transforms the way code, content, and interfaces are created Why AI-powered browsers and agent modes could redefine reporting and analysis Key Takeaways No single AI model is best at everything, and choosing by task is now essential Image editing and brand-consistent visuals are becoming dramatically more accessible Marketers can now create interactive tools and content without traditional development AI-assisted coding is shifting from novelty to practical everyday use Workflow automation and reporting are emerging as some of the biggest wins Understanding interfaces and deployment matters as much as model intelligence 📥 Access the show notes, tools, and links at: https://targetinternet.com/resources/generative-ai-update-what-the-latest-model-wars-mean-for-marketers
Search is changing fast. With AI overviews now appearing in the majority of Google results, the rules of visibility are being rewritten in real time. In this episode, Daniel Rowles explores what answer engine optimisation actually means in practice, and how marketers can adapt without chasing myths, hacks, or constantly shifting theories. Drawing on real testing from Target Internet over the past year, this episode cuts through the noise around GEO, AEO, and SEO to focus on what genuinely works. The result is a practical framework for improving visibility both in traditional organic search and within AI-powered results, particularly Google's AI overviews. If you are worried about falling click-through rates, changing user behaviour, or how large language models decide what to reference, this episode provides clear, grounded guidance. Rather than treating AI search as a black box to be cracked, Daniel reframes it as a probability system influenced by clarity, credibility, and consistency. The five techniques covered here are designed to future-proof your content strategy while still delivering value to real users today. In This Episode Why the industry cannot agree on GEO vs AEO, and why the distinction matters less than you think What current data tells us about AI overviews, click-through rates, and changing search behaviour How question-led content aligns with the way people now search using AI Why inverted pyramid writing is suddenly more important than ever How digital PR and brand mentions influence entity reputation in AI systems The growing role of advocacy, reviews, and online sentiment in visibility Why multimodal content is becoming a core ranking signal, not a nice-to-have How schema markup removes ambiguity for search engines and large language models Where to focus your effort while Google's AI results are still evolving rapidly Key Takeaways Answer engine optimisation overlaps heavily with traditional SEO, so doubling down on fundamentals is still smart Clear, direct answers to specific questions improve your chances of being referenced by AI Brand visibility is no longer just about links, but about being mentioned in the right contexts Positive sentiment and third-party validation increasingly influence AI recommendations Publishing content in multiple formats strengthens your overall search footprint Structured data helps machines understand your content, and humans engage with it more easily 📥 Access the show notes, tools, and links at: https://targetinternet.com/resources/answer-engine-optimisation-aeo-how-to-optimise-for-google-ai-overviews
In this episode of The Digital Marketing Podcast, Daniel Rowles speaks with Phil Treagus-Evans, author of the new book Human First Marketing, to explore why now, in a world dominated by AI, automation, and synthetic content, marketers must rediscover their humanity. As generative AI reshapes how content is produced, and digital channels become flooded with bland, algorithmically generated material, brands risk losing the very thing that makes them relatable: their people. Phil offers a timely and practical guide for putting humans back at the heart of your marketing strategy, from customer research to team culture and executive presence. Drawing on his work at Giraffe Social, Phil breaks down a four-part framework for building trust, fostering connection, and standing out in a sea of sameness. If you've ever felt like your content is just noise, or you're posting because you're "supposed to", this episode will help you hit reset. In This Episode: Marketing isn't working like it used to Phil opens with a bold claim, and backs it up with data on ad saturation, trust erosion, and content homogenisation due to AI. What is Human First Marketing? A new approach that prioritises people over platforms, empathy over efficiency, and purpose over vanity metrics. The four pillars of Human First Marketing People: Deep customer understanding and employee advocacy Authenticity: Real voices and honest content Connection: Interactions over transactions Purpose: Strategy that means something — and gets results Why you should ditch customer avatars Phil introduces his EMPATH framework for audience research that avoids reductive stereotypes and leans into emotional understanding, patterns of behaviour, and real team insight. The power of visibility and vulnerability From CEOs posting on LinkedIn to sharing the full journey of writing his book, Phil explains how authenticity builds trust, and drives results. Why trust is the new marketing currency In an era of deepfakes and automated outreach, being seen as real, consistent and trustworthy is the ultimate competitive edge. AI isn't the enemy, lazy AI is Phil and Daniel agree: AI is a fantastic tool, but it's the human decisions around how, when and why we use it that matter most. How Human First Marketing improves SEO As Google leans into E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trust), human-centred content becomes not just ethical, but algorithmically rewarded. Key Takeaways: Human content performs better - Whether it's lo-fi video or founder-led storytelling, people trust people more than brands. Leaders must be visible - Exec comms and internal advocacy aren't optional anymore, they're how culture scales and trust grows. Culture comes first - You can't fake authenticity. If your team doesn't believe in what you do, neither will your audience. Strategy before content - Don't just post because you should. Post with intent, empathy, and impact. There's power in transparency - Sharing your struggles, your processes, and your people builds emotional equity. Use AI as a creative partner - Not a content machine. Challenge your thinking, spark ideas, don't outsource your voice. 📥 Access the show notes, tools, and links at: https://targetinternet.com/resources/human-first-marketing-why-trust-purpose-and-people-matter-more-than-ever
In this episode of The Digital Marketing Podcast, Daniel Rowles and Ciaran Rogers dive into one of the most significant shifts in digital marketing: the rise of non keyword signals and what it means for search, privacy, and the future of campaign targeting. With AI-powered ad platforms like Google's AI Max and social algorithms driven by behavioural data rather than search intent, the old model of keyword-driven marketing is rapidly giving way to something more opaque, more personalised, and potentially more invasive. Daniel and Ciaran explore how AI systems now use a vast array of signals, from your browsing patterns and email content to your location history and viewing habits, to anticipate what you might want before you even search. But what does this mean for marketers who've spent years honing their SEO and PPC strategies? And what does it mean for user privacy in a world where your chatbot conversations may be fuelling ad targeting? In This Episode: What are non keyword signals? Understand how platforms like Google and Meta are using behaviour, context and historical activity instead of just search terms. Why your impressions are up but clicks are down Learn how AI summaries in Google Search are reducing organic click-throughs, even when your rankings are strong. AI Max campaigns and keywordless targeting Discover how Google Ads is shifting towards AI-led campaigns that rely on intent and engagement signals rather than keyword triggers , and why some brands are seeing 20–30% uplift as a result. What Meta's CMO said about disconnected content Hear how Alex Schultz explained the shift from connected (likes, follows) to disconnected content (Reels, Stories, Shorts), and what that means for social strategy. Privacy concerns and grey areas Explore the implications of Meta's new terms allowing AI chat interactions to inform ad targeting, and whether AI chat data could be inadvertently shared or commercialised. Real-world scenario: Chatbots used for lead capture Daniel raises a powerful example, what if you offered a free AI chatbot to other brands, then harvested user intent data for your own ad targeting? Platform security, data visibility and agent risks From OneDrive access errors to AI agents managing your logins, the hosts discuss the human errors that AI amplifies, and the need for robust security practices. Key Takeaways: We're entering a post-keyword era Platforms are using AI to interpret intent through broader, richer data sources, including chat behaviour, video viewing and app usage. Organic traffic is being cannibalised by AI summaries Even if your visibility improves, actual user clicks may continue to decline. Privacy risks are growing Terms and conditions are changing, and conversations with AI tools may no longer be as private as they seem. Marketing teams must audit how they use AI Understand what data your AI tools are accessing and how that data could be used, now and in the future. Join the conversation This isn't just a podcast - it's an open debate. Daniel and Ciaran want your input, and they're giving away prizes, books and merch to contributors. 📥 Access the show notes, tools, and links at: https://targetinternet.com/resources/the-big-debate-non-keyword-signals-ai-chats-privacy Join the debate: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7403862051749564417
In this episode of The Digital Marketing Podcast, Daniel Rowles introduces us to the process of Vibe Coding, a revolutionary approach to software development that leverages AI to make app creation accessible to anyone, regardless of coding experience. Vibe coding shifts the focus from writing manual code to guiding AI with natural language prompts, allowing non-developers to build interactive apps, tools, and even businesses. Daniel explores the three tiers of vibe coding, from basic one-page web apps to full-scale, secure, AI-powered platforms , and shares practical steps, tools and security tips to get started. The second half of the episode features a compelling interview with Christo Snyman, a podcast listener who used vibe coding to launch his AI assistant platform Traderly.ai. Christo takes us behind the scenes of building a real-world startup with no prior coding background, sharing his full tech stack, hard-earned lessons, and the mindset needed to succeed. In This Episode: What is Vibe Coding? Understand how natural language prompts can now be used to create working code, dramatically lowering the barrier to digital creation. The Three Levels of Vibe Coding Level 1: Build one-page apps using HTML, CSS, and React, no backend required Level 2: Add memory, interactivity, and live AI responses through API access Level 3: Create fully-fledged apps with user authentication, databases, and deployment Practical Use Cases - From interactive Google algorithm timelines to embedded AI tools for keyword research and content planning, Daniel shares how these tools are being used on Target Internet's own website. Christo's Journey - From Idea to Startup. Learn how Christo turned a common business pain point — small service businesses missing leads due to message overload — into a scalable SaaS platform. Discover his full tech stack including React, Azure Functions, PostgreSQL, Firebase, OpenAI, WordPress, and more. Key Takeaways: Anyone can now build apps using AI tools, whether it's a timeline, calculator, chatbot, or full customer-facing product. AI-assisted development removes fear and unlocks creativity, especially for entrepreneurs without a dev background. Start small and iterate, your Minimal Viable Product doesn't need to be perfect, it needs to be useful. Vibe coding is the bridge between ideas and execution - fast, flexible and increasingly powerful. The future of marketing and tech creation is conversational and it's already here. 📥 Access the show notes, tools, and links at: https://targetinternet.com/resources/vibe-coding-how-ai-is-revolutionising-app-development-and-empowering-non-coders 📩 Join the free newsletter for access to monthly live sessions: https://targetinternet.com/newsletter
In this episode of The Digital Marketing Podcast, Daniel Rowles is joined by Matthew Gardiner from World Travel Market for a special look at how the user journey is being radically reshaped, and why the travel industry offers a powerful lens for understanding the broader changes all marketers now face. From AI-powered search and agents, to disconnected content ecosystems, collapsing funnels, and new expectations for sustainability and meaning, the way users discover, evaluate, and buy has shifted. Whether you work in travel or not, this episode delivers insight into how to adapt your digital strategy for a fragmented, AI-enhanced, and purpose-driven customer journey. In This Episode: Why AI is collapsing the funnel Users no longer move in a straight line from awareness to action. Conversations with AI agents like ChatGPT are replacing multi-step journeys. Whoever owns the AI conversation, owns the customer. From connected to disconnected content The shift from traditional, connected social feeds to short-form, algorithmically driven discovery (Reels, TikToks, Shorts) has changed how we build awareness and trust. AI Overviews and Answer Engine Optimisation With 55% of Google searches now including AI summaries, Daniel explains why SEO alone is not enough and how Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) and Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO) are the new battlegrounds. Agents are doing the work From itinerary planning to automated bookings, AI agents are reshaping how users interact with brands, often bypassing websites altogether. The new role of structured data Matthew shares how travel brands must now treat structured markup (schema) as a new kind of distribution, ensuring they are machine-readable to AI systems. Why user testing must change Daniel explains why marketers must rethink usability testing to account for personalised algorithms, behaviour-based ad targeting, and AI-powered search. Brand loyalty as a survival tactic In an age of disintermediation, programmes like Bonvoy are keeping users loyal through gamification and exclusive benefits, offering lessons for all industries. Content strategy for the AI era From FAQs and multilingual support to video answers and UGC, the path to visibility is paved with granular, high-quality, human-first content. Industry Case Study: Travel Through a detailed conversation with Matthew Gardiner, the episode explores how the travel industry has continually adapted to disruption. From the rise of OTAs and TripAdvisor to today’s challenges around AI agents, soft adventure trends, live tourism, and sustainability expectations, travel may be the canary in the coal mine but its lessons are highly applicable to every sector. Key Takeaways: AI is not just changing how people search; it is rewriting how people trust, book, and choose. Being mentioned in AI conversations is the new SEO. Structured data and FAQ-rich content are your ticket in. Agents now do things, not just recommend. Optimising for transactions and post-click experience is vital. Loyalty schemes, brand identity, and customer advocacy matter more than ever to bypass AI’s generic results. Usability testing must reflect real, personalised experiences, not idealised lab setups. 📥 Access the show notes, tools, and links at: 📩 Join the free newsletter for access to monthly live sessions:
In this special episode of The Digital Marketing Podcast, Daniel Rowles sits down with Alex Schultz, Meta’s Chief Marketing Officer and Vice President of Analytics, to unpack the future of digital marketing, and why the fundamentals still matter more than ever. Alex shares lessons from his remarkable journey: from running the world’s top paper airplane website to leading growth at Meta, managing multi-billion dollar ad campaigns, and now authoring the industry-defining book Click Here. With high-profile endorsements from Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman, Daniel Ek, and Matthew Vaughn, the book has already gettimg rave reviews, and Daniel is putting it straight onto the reading list for his students at Imperial College. Together, Daniel and Alex dig into the core principles of great marketing: how to set meaningful goals, measure true impact, build high-performance teams, and embrace AI without losing your strategic edge. In This Episode: Why Alex wrote Click Here and why the industry desperately needed a book that gets back to fundamentals, marketing measurement, and pride in the profession. The power of incrementality: How to run meaningful tests, avoid vanity metrics, and prove real value to your CEO and CFO. Why goals are not the same as metrics and how mixing them up can derail your marketing efforts. The importance of awareness: Why most businesses fail because people simply don’t know they exist. Marketing mix matters: How one newspaper mention outperformed every digital channel—and why the basics still beat the buzz. Mediocre marketing + great conversion = success: Why broken funnels kill campaigns, no matter how brilliant your creative is. How Meta builds defensible growth : What sets their marketing apart, from deep integration with product and engineering, to AI-powered insights. AI’s real impact on marketing jobs: A breakdown of the three kinds of disruption AI will bring, and why the marketers who embrace it will thrive. Paper planes, transparency, and unexpected beginnings: Hear how Alex’s nerdy hobby turned into a viral website, and why he publicly shares his university grades to inspire others. Key Takeaways: Get back to basics: Clear goals, good data, and fundamental models (like the funnel) still win. Measure what matters: Metrics are not goals - incrementality is everything. Focus on defensibility and scale in your marketing channels, don’t waste time on things that can’t grow. AI won’t replace marketers - marketers who use AI will replace those who don’t. Be transparent and human: Success doesn’t require perfection, it requires clarity, curiosity, and continuous learning. 📥 Access the show notes, tools, and links at: 📩 Join the free newsletter for access to monthly live sessions:
Far beyond a productivity hack or sustainability trend, the regenerative mindset offers marketers and leaders a framework to design work, creativity and impact that helps build value. You'll have to listen to find out about the Goose! Drawing from systems thinking and marketing strategy, Daniel and Ciaran challenge the “hustle at all costs” mentality and instead champion a more humane, resilient and adaptable approach to digital marketing. In This Episode: What is a Regenerative Mindset? Understand the key difference between sustainability and regeneration - why one aims to sustain the status quo and the other aims to restore, replenish, and grow. Rethinking Productivity and Growth Explore why traditional productivity models are failing marketers in the age of AI, information overload, and fragmented attention, and what to do instead. AI as a Regenerative Tool Rather than using AI to do more, faster, Daniel and Ciaran explore how AI can help reduce cognitive burden, fuel creativity, and foster experimentation when used mindfully. Designing Regenerative Marketing Systems Discover how regenerative principles, such as reciprocity, interdependence, and feedback loops, can help build more sustainable, and effective marketing strategies. Tools, Mindsets and Micro-practices From digital decluttering to reflective learning and systems thinking, the hosts share practical approaches to integrating regeneration into your professional life. Key Takeaways: Regeneration is not about working less, it’s about working in flow with better results and less burnout Marketers must go beyond campaign thinking and start designing ecosystems of value and renewal Rest, reflection and curiosity are not luxuries, they're strategic assets A regenerative mindset helps you lead through complexity and adapt with clarity The future of digital marketing isn’t just AI or data, it’s resilience, systems thinking, and human-centred creativity. 📥 Access the show notes, tools, and links at: 📩 Join the free newsletter for access to monthly live sessions:
In this episode of The Digital Marketing Podcast, hosts Daniel Rowles and Ciaran Rogers return with a fresh round of insights and hands-on tools to help digital marketers adapt and experiment in the evolving AI-driven marketing landscape. From Google's AI Max campaigns to the explosion of generative engine optimisation, Daniel and Ciaran unpack the shifts happening across search, paid media, and SEO. This isn’t just another roundup of shiny tools, this episode explores how to think strategically about the role of AI in search, the real impact on your organic performance, and the mindset required to stay ahead of the curve. What’s Inside This Episode: AI Max Campaigns in Google Ads Discover how Google’s new AI-powered campaign structure is changing the game. It’s not just another bidding strategy, it’s an integrated layer that leverages keywordless signals, context, and user behaviour across Google properties to personalise campaigns. Learn why separating these into siloed budgets might actually hinder performance and what you need to consider before rolling out. The Vanishing Organic Click While impressions are up, clicks are down. Daniel shares Target Internet’s own data showing a drop in organic click-through rates and explains why Google’s AI-generated answers, Reddit posts, and video content are pushing traditional organic listings further down the page. LLM Refs and the New SEO Frontier With AI overviews, ChatGPT, and other LLMs becoming key discovery engines, how do you make sure your brand shows up? The hosts explore LLMRefs, a tool that shows how different brands are ranking across major AI models, and reveal just how fragmented and competitive this new landscape is. Structured Data, Schema & the Knowledge Graph Daniel and Ciaran highlight the importance of schema markup and entity relationships in Google’s Knowledge Graph, using tools like the Knowledge Graph Explorer to demonstrate how Google perceives your brand and its connections. If you're not surfacing in the right contexts, it could just be due to a missing link, literally. Search Engine Optimization ≠ Generative Engine Optimization The hosts challenge the idea that SEO principles remain unchanged in the world of AI. With so many variables, location, devices, user intent, history, and model-specific behavior, your approach needs to be more agile and nuanced than ever. Key Takeaways: Performance Max and AI Max are now core to Google Ads - understanding signals and context is essential Organic traffic is declining, but impressions may still rise - CTR is the new battleground You can’t game the system anymore with a few smart keywords; LLMs require strong content, schema, and reputation The tools are out there - you just need to experiment, validate, and iterate Don’t fall into the trap of “a little knowledge” - simplifying complex changes leads to bad decisions AI models aren't clairvoyant - you need to structure and declare your content clearly 📥 Access the show notes, tools, and links at: 📩 Join the free newsletter for access to monthly live sessions:
In this episode of The Digital Marketing Podcast, Daniel Rowles and Ciaran Rogers explore one of the most transformative shifts in digital marketing: the arrival of ChatGPT Agent and the rise of agent-based AI. No longer just about generating content, AI is now taking action on our behalf, logging into websites, filling out forms, analysing data, creating content, and even posting to platforms like LinkedIn. It’s here now, and it’s changing how marketing teams work from the ground up. Daniel shares his firsthand experiments with ChatGPT Agent, from connecting it to Canva to create and publish carousel posts, to testing its ability to analyse his entire LinkedIn history and recommend strategies for future content. While the possibilities are jaw-dropping, the hosts also explore the risks, security concerns, talent pipeline challenges, and the long-term implications for marketing roles. In this episode, you’ll learn: What agent-based AI really is and why it’s different from traditional AI chat tools How ChatGPT Agent combines deep research, web browsing, and autonomous task execution Real-world test cases, from generating content to posting directly on LinkedIn Why prompt quality and structure are more important than ever The security and compliance risks of connecting agents to business systems How agent-driven automation could replace many junior marketing tasks Why agility and learning culture are now critical for businesses to survive disruption The ethical and strategic questions marketers need to face around job design and human oversight The discussion goes beyond technology to look at the human side of digital marketing. Daniel and Ciaran debate the future of junior roles, how companies can avoid gutting their talent pipelines, and why brands that lean into humanity, creativity, and trust may stand out in an AI-driven landscape. Key Takeaways: ChatGPT Agent is a genuine step change, going from AI that suggests, to AI that does. Marketing teams can gain huge efficiency, but must double-check outputs and guard against overreliance. Security is now a critical concern, as agents gain access to business-critical systems. Junior marketing roles are at risk, companies must balance efficiency with long-term talent growth. Building an agile learning culture is the best defence against AI disruption. 📥 Access the show notes, tools, and links at: 📩 Join the free newsletter for access to monthly live sessions:
In this episode of The Digital Marketing Podcast, hosts Daniel Rowles and Ciaran Rogers explore one of the most pressing questions facing marketers today: what does SEO look like in a world dominated by AI search and generative answers? With Google rolling out AI Overviews and AI Mode, and tools like ChatGPT and Gemini changing how people search, the rules of SEO are shifting fast. Some publishers report traffic drops of up to 60%, while others in e-commerce are holding steady. So is SEO really dead, or just evolving into something new? Daniel and Ciaran dig deep into what’s happening, separating hype from reality and providing clear, practical advice for marketers trying to adapt. They explain why understanding Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) and AI Overviewsn (AIO) is critical, and how you can stay visible when clicks are disappearing. What you’ll learn in this episode: Why AI Overviews are changing user behaviour, and pushing organic results further down the page How share of voice and brand sentiment are becoming as important as traditional ranking factors Why advocacy and positive online mentions may now trump old-school keyword tactics The growing importance of Wikipedia, Reddit, and forums in shaping AI-driven answers Why updating and referencing your best content is more powerful than ever How no-click searches are rewriting what “success” looks like in SEO Practical ways to benchmark your visibility Why prompt-like queries and longer conversational searches are the new normal How to build trust through Google’s E‑E‑A‑T principles (Expertise, Experience, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) The Future of SEO Episode Mindmap The hosts also explore pitfalls to avoid, from snake-oil SEO sales pitches to rushing into poorly thought-out Wikipedia pages that could backfire. They emphasise a smarter, evidence-based approach: focusing on authenticity, advocacy, and quality content that’s updated, referenced, and truly useful. Key Takeaways: SEO isn’t dead, but competing for the top three AI-sourced links is tougher than ever. Building advocacy and brand mentions is critical to visibility in AI search. Quality and authenticity (with evidence and references) beat quantity every time. Think conversational: searches are getting longer, more natural, and more complex. Following Google’s E‑E‑A‑T framework is the best hedge against AI-driven disruption. If you’re a marketer, publisher, or business owner trying to make sense of the shifting SEO landscape, this episode provides both clarity and actionable steps to future-proof your strategy. 📥 Access the show notes, tools, and links at: 📩 Join the free newsletter for access to monthly live sessions:
In this episode of The Digital Marketing Podcast, Daniel Rowles is joined by Brendan Kane, viral strategist and author of One Million Followers, for a deep dive into the art and science of making content go viral. Going viral often feels like marketing mythology,something bosses ask for, but few can explain or deliver. Brendan, however, has built a career proving that virality isn’t luck. It’s repeatable, measurable, and rooted in storytelling structures that have worked for decades. Brendan shares the behind-the-scenes thinking that led to his experiment growing an audience of 1 million followers in 30 days, starting from scratch, without a team, celebrity status, or advertising budget. More than a vanity metric, the project was a proof-of-concept for a framework that now helps brands, creators, and entrepreneurs reliably generate massive reach and meaningful engagement. In this episode, you’ll learn: Why qualitative analysis - not just views and clicks, holds the key to repeatable success The power of storytelling formats like “Man on the Street” and “Two Characters, One Light Bulb” How to match your brand’s resources and personality to the right format Why volume isn’t the answer, and what quality actually means in the age of AI and infinite content Why originality is overrated, and how proven formats unlock creativity instead of limiting it How even “boring” industries like tax, insurance, and leather craftsmanship can thrive on social media The truth about “frequency myths” and how creators burn out chasing quantity over story Why format mastery trumps trend-chasing—and how sitcoms, Spielberg, and social media are more alike than you think Brendan also breaks down his format-matching process, built from over 10,000 hours of research and analysis of 300+ viral content structures. His agency works with individuals and brands to identify the storytelling structures that resonate most with their audience, and helps them build repeatable, on-brand content that doesn’t just go viral, but converts. This conversation flips conventional marketing wisdom on its head, challenging the obsession with originality and encouraging marketers to focus on structure, story, and strategic authenticity. Key Takeaways: Virality isn’t random, it’s engineered through proven creative models Storytelling formats provide containers for creativity, not limitations Format mastery enables faster growth and deeper audience trust Business outcomes must be baked into your content strategy from day one Social media isn't just another channel, it's the ultimate storytelling platform 📥 Access the show notes, tools, and links at: 📩 Join the free newsletter for access to Daniel’s monthly live sessions:
In this episode of The Digital Marketing Podcast, Daniel Rowles sits down with copywriting and AI expert Kerry Harrison to explore one of the most exciting—and often misunderstood—areas of artificial intelligence: AI-powered copywriting. Together, they dive into how Anthropic’s Claude AI compares to tools like ChatGPT and Gemini, and why Claude is quickly becoming a favourite for writers who care about tone, style, and ethical AI. Kerry, a seasoned copywriter and trainer, shares her hands-on experiences using Claude to create high-quality marketing content. She explains how Claude's intuitive interface, stylistic flexibility, and alignment with ethical AI principles make it a uniquely powerful tool for communicators, marketers, and brands. But this isn’t just a tool review. It’s a masterclass in how to approach AI copywriting strategically. Daniel and Kerry explore a human-first methodology called the AI Sandwich, a practical framework for combining human creativity with AI efficiency. They tackle big questions about authenticity, originality, and prompt engineering, and show how to avoid the cookie-cutter feel that plagues so much AI-generated content. Highlights include: Why Claude’s tone of voice and writing capabilities often outperform other models for consumer copy How to train Claude on your own style and get responses that reflect your brand’s voice How to use Claude’s Projects feature to build custom tools like tone checkers, newsletter editors, and interactive customer personas A breakdown of the AI Sandwich Methodology (Human → AI → Human) for crafting content that feels human, not robotic Techniques for fact-checking, editing, and sense-checking AI outputs to avoid hallucinations and blandness How Kerry uses Claude for marketing strategy, persona creation, positioning, and ideation Tips for integrating Claude with Gmail and calendar tools to improve time management and workflow efficiency This episode is packed with actionable ideas, whether you're a content creator, strategist, marketer, or business owner. You’ll learn how to write better prompts, extract more value from AI tools, and remain fiercely authentic and creative in an age of digital automation. Key Takeaways: Train AI on your tone of voice to stand out from generic outputs Use Claude’s extended thinking and reasoning models for strategic ideation Human guidance (before and after AI) is critical to compelling content Projects in Claude can act like custom GPTs tailored to your exact needs Staying human, thoughtful, and ethical is still your biggest advantage 💡 Whether you're new to Claude or already exploring AI content workflows, this episode will give you a fresh, grounded, and strategic perspective on what’s possible, without losing your creative soul in the process. 📥 Access the show notes, tools, and links at: 📩 Join the free newsletter for access to Daniel’s monthly live sessions:
In this episode of The Digital Marketing Podcast, Daniel Rowles explores one of the most unexpected but powerful business case studies in modern branding: Taylor Swift! Joined by Kevin Evers, Senior Editor at Harvard Business Review and author of There’s Nothing Like This. Kevin dives into how Swift’s career offers a masterclass in brand strategy, audience connection, and long-term business thinking. Why does a global superstar in a notoriously cutthroat industry continue to outperform and outlast her peers? According to Kevin, it’s not luck or fandom - it’s strategy. Drawing on insights from his newly released book, Kevin breaks down the key inflection points in Swift’s 20-year career. From turning down a major label at age 13 to preserve creative control, to executing one of the boldest rebranding and ownership moves in music history with her “Taylor’s Version” re-recordings, this episode examines how Swift embodies the core principles of marketing, product-market fit, and customer obsession. Daniel and Kevin unpack how Taylor Swift: Identified a niche audience when the data said it wasn’t viable Built trust and intimacy into her brand from day one Embraced user-generated content and fan communities to expand reach Navigated multiple brand pivots without losing authenticity Took complete ownership of her brand and intellectual property Continues to evolve while staying aligned to her audience’s needs They also explore how her fandom operates as a distributed marketing engine, elevating everything from live streams to lyric analysis and decoding hidden clues. With references to startup thinking, customer experience design, and even parallels with Jobs-to-Be-Done theory, this conversation turns a pop icon into a blueprint for brand building at scale. Whether you’re a marketer, entrepreneur or brand strategist, this episode offers rare insight into what it takes to build something culturally durable, and fiercely customer-centric. Key Takeaways: Brand clarity trumps market data when paired with conviction Fan communities can become your most powerful marketing asset Ownership and authenticity are strategic decisions, not just personal ones Pivoting is easier when you’ve built long-term trust Obsessing over your audience is a competitive advantage 📥 Access the show notes, tools, and links at: 📩 Join the free newsletter for access to Daniel’s monthly live sessions:
In this special solo edition of The Digital Marketing Podcast, Daniel introduces a new regular feature: a fast-paced roundup of the most critical AI and digital marketing news. With the rate of change accelerating across platforms, tools, and marketing strategy, it’s never been more important to stay ahead, and this episode helps you do just that. Daniel covers the latest developments from Google, Meta, OpenAI, LinkedIn and more, offering practical commentary on what they mean for marketers right now. From ChatGPT’s new operator functions to Google’s AI-powered search evolution, this episode is packed with insight on how AI is reshaping digital marketing roles, content, advertising, and SEO. Highlights from this episode: ChatGPT’s new Connectors and Deep Research tools Now you can give ChatGPT secure access to your Google Drive, SharePoint, email, and even CRM platforms like HubSpot. Daniel explains how this lets you build bespoke knowledge bases and bring real organisational context to your AI workflows. Operator: OpenAI’s first real step into Agentic AI Forget just generating content, Operator can now browse the web and perform actions like posting content or interacting with platforms. Daniel unpacks what this means for junior roles in marketing, and the wider implications for talent development and job design. AI Mode and AI Overviews in Google Search Google is rolling out AI Mode in search results and now has AI Overviews live in 200 countries. Daniel explores what this means for search strategy, SEO, and advertising - especially as Google plans to inject ads into these AI responses. Meta’s Advantage+ and the death of manually-built ads? Meta claims its AI-generated ads are outperforming those built by humans, with 100% AI-driven campaign automation arriving in early 2026. Daniel explores the real ROI implications and the future of agency relationships in a world of automated campaign builds. LinkedIn integrates with Adobe Express Daniel explains how new creative integrations are streamlining video ad production and what that means for in-house and outsourced content teams. Through it all, Daniel calls for a conscious approach to adopting AI: how to upskill teams, protect strategic thinking, and build marketing operations that are more human, not less. Key Takeaways: AI tools like ChatGPT are now organisationally aware - marketers must learn to harness them. Search is changing fast, but traditional SEO fundamentals still matter. Automation is pushing paid media roles toward strategic oversight, not just execution. AI is starting to replace, not just augment. some junior marketing roles. The brands that thrive will be those who rethink job design and talent pipelines now. 🎧 Listen now to get ahead of the curve with the latest AI news and marketing implications. 📥 Access the show notes, tools, and links at: 📩 Join the free newsletter for access to Daniel’s monthly AI agent live sessions:
In this episode of The Digital Marketing Podcast, Daniel, Ciaran, and Louise take a deep dive into the often-misunderstood world of keyword research - one of the most foundational yet complex elements of digital marketing. What starts as a seemingly simple task (“just pick some keywords, right?”) quickly unravels into a minefield of audience intent, brand positioning, search behaviour shifts, and the sometimes soul-crushing reality of traffic that doesn’t convert. The trio break down the full process with real-world insight, humour, and some very candid reflections on what not to do. From teaching postgraduate students at Imperial College to running real commercial SEO campaigns, Daniel shares his evolving approach to keyword strategy - highlighting how brand clarity, buyer personas, and mapping the full user journey are essential to getting keyword research right. What you’ll learn in this episode: Why volume-based keyword selection is a trap How to balance traffic, intent, and competition in your keyword choices Why middle-of-the-funnel content is often your secret weapon How to prune and optimise your existing content for better conversions The problem with vanity metrics (and what to track instead) How new AI-powered tools like Content Raptor and Keywords Everywhere are changing the game The role of search across Google, YouTube, social and even email What to look for in competitor analysis and how to use keyword clustering effectively Louise brings sharp insight into modern search behaviour and the growing importance of voice, conversational search, and featured snippets, while Ciaran opens up about years of chasing traffic volume before realising conversions are what truly count. (Spoiler: a blog about banana peels and Botox might bring in traffic—but probably not sales.) The episode ends with a step-by-step process for approaching keyword research in 2025, including content ideation, testing, SEO hooks, and how to integrate what you learn across multiple marketing channels. Key Takeaways: Keyword research isn’t about finding more keywords - it’s about finding the right ones. Strategic alignment between brand, content, and intent is critical. Most marketers overinvest in top-of-funnel traffic and neglect conversion-focused content. Updating and optimising your existing content can often move the needle more than publishing something new. A good keyword is one that drives results - not just visits. With tools, frameworks, and honest advice, this episode is your ultimate keyword research sanity-check. Whether you’re building a content strategy from scratch or refining an existing one, this is the guide you didn’t know you needed. 🎧 Listen now and get your complete step-by-step guide. You'll find all links on TargetInternet.com Show notes: Have any feedback on the show? Send us your feedback, tell us what you love and what you think could be better. And, if you are really enjoying the show, please leave us a review.
In this episode of The Digital Marketing Podcast, Daniel dives into the world of agile marketing, exploring how a new methodology is helping marketers launch strategic, high-impact campaigns at pace, without compromising on quality. Joined by Peter Abraham (former Econsultancy leader and founder of Crank), alongside Katherine Torrance and Claire Pankhurst, the creators of Supercharged Marketing Sprints, Daniel unpacks a new approach to growth marketing that blends the speed of agile with the strategic rigour marketing has been missing. The team explain how their 5-day sprint framework works in practice - coaching marketing teams to develop and launch live, multichannel campaigns in just a week. Unlike traditional brainstorming workshops that leave great ideas gathering dust, this sprint ends with a live campaign in market, backed by real data and customer insight. Together, they explore how this approach helps businesses: Build high-performing campaigns under intense time constraints Cut through campaign chaos and internal delays Deliver strategic focus without sacrificing speed Align stakeholders quickly around a shared goal Create minimum viable campaigns (MVCs) that actually launch More than just a framework, this is a practical, tested process grounded in real-world experience. Peter shares his initial scepticism, and eventual surprise, at seeing these sprints succeed where other methods stall. Catherine and Claire outline how their structure gives marketing teams space for deep thinking and rapid deployment. They also share how AI tools (like headline generation and campaign planning assistants) are used to speed up the creative process, while still relying on human judgement and strategic thinking. This episode is packed with lessons for marketers frustrated by slow timelines, campaign bottlenecks, and chaotic execution cycles. Daniel and his guests lay out how to shift away from “tactics-first” thinking and instead build campaigns rooted in buyer insight, stakeholder alignment, and clear, testable outcomes. Key Takeaways: Why agile principles need evolution for modern marketing How 5-day sprints help teams go from messy ideas to market-ready campaigns The crucial role of stakeholder alignment and constrained planning How AI can complement (not replace) creative strategy How to build minimum viable campaigns with maximum impact Why fast isn’t enough—campaigns must be focused and aligned Whether you’re a CMO looking for a faster way to deliver results, or a team lead trying to cut through the clutter, this episode offers an inspiring look at what marketing agility really looks like in action. 🎧 Listen now and get your complete step-by-step guide. You'll find all links on TargetInternet.com Show notes: Have any feedback on the show? Send us your feedback, tell us what you love and what you think could be better. And, if you are really enjoying the show, please leave us a review.
In this episode of The Digital Marketing Podcast, Ciaran and Daniel explore the next evolutionary leap in artificial intelligencs - Agentic AI. As tools like ChatGPT and Gemini become more capable, we can go beyond content generation and enter an era where AI can reason, plan, take action, and even deploy code on your behalf. Daniel shares his experience building an interactive Google Algorithm timeline, without any developer or designer help, and explains how tools like Manus (powered by DeepSeek) are revolutionising the way we build websites, visualise data, and even simulate digital marketing campaigns. The duo dive into how agent-based systems can: Solve complex, multi-step problems Deploy fully interactive content and tools Autonomously analyse, design and publish assets across platforms The hosts expplore how this isn’t about using AI to do what you’ve always done, faster. It’s about reimagining what’s possible. They challenge marketers to embrace the creative freedom these tools offer. From timelines and simulations to real-time research visualisations, this episode offers practical insights and inspiration for how to lead anbd not follow the next AI wave. Key Takeaways: Why ChatGPT Operator is a game-changer The future of interactive content powered by AI How to build a personal culture of learning and experimentation Why creativity and human curation matter more than ever 🎧 Listen now and discover why AI Agents will change how you work. You'll find all links on TargetInternet.com Show notes: Have any feedback on the show? Send us your feedback, tell us what you love and what you think could be better. And, if you are really enjoying the show, please leave us a review.
In this episode of the Digital Marketing Podcast, hosts Ciaran Rogers, Louise Crossley, and Daniel Rowles dive headfirst into a topic that’s reshaping the way brands grow online: creating brand advocates vs. hiring influencers. 💬 How do advocates impact GEO and SEO? 🤝 What makes a true brand advocate? 🧠 How do you build authentic loyalty that actually moves the needle? You’ll learn why genuine, passionate brand fans are now more powerful than ever and how their voices cut through the cynicism surrounding traditional influencer marketing. From the rise of Reddit and forum-based recommendations, to the impact of AI-generated summaries and Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO), we explore why building trust and community beats buying attention every time. Expect plenty of insight, some dubious banter, and even a few host mishaps (including a missing Daniel edit!) that prove just how engaged our audience really is. Also covered: Micro-influencers, creators, and the blurry lines between fame and influence Practical strategies to encourage advocacy (without bribing people with mugs… or maybe with them) Real-life stories from Liz Earle Beauty and other brands who nailed word-of-mouth Why being a great friend might just be the best marketing strategy of all 👉 Whether you’re growing a startup or managing a global brand, this episode will get you thinking differently about influence, advocacy, and how to win hearts - not just clicks. 🎧 Listen now and discover why your biggest brand win might be sitting quietly in your DMs. You'll find all links on TargetInternet.com Show notes: Have any feedback on the show? Send us your feedback, tell us what you love and what you think could be better. And, if you are really enjoying the show, please leave us a review.
Join Daniel and Ciaran for a fast-paced episode where they unpack the latest ChatGPT developments and explore their real-world applications for digital marketers. From image generation breakthroughs to AI-driven research and content production, this episode is your essential briefing on how generative AI is redefining marketing workflows. Staying Ahead in the AI Race The pace of change in generative AI is relentles, and this episode underscores why digital marketers must actively engage with the tools at the forefront. Daniel and Ciaran discuss the strategic value of being early adopters and how leveraging these advancements can deliver competitive advantage. But the conversation goes deeper, exploring what happens once AI adoption becomes widespread. It’s not just about using tools, but integrating them meaningfully into brand ecosystems and operational frameworks. Practical AI Use Cases That Deliver Daniel and Ciaran share hands-on examples of AI tools in action, from generating fully branded, photorealistic visuals with minimal prompts, to automating repetitive marketing tasks and research with GPT-4’s latest capabilities. Daniel's experiment using ChatGPT to generate brand-consistent creative assets even passed the scrutiny of a notoriously exacting brand manager, an achievement many designers will appreciate. Ciaran, once an AI sceptic, now openly admits that generative AI is embedded in his daily workflow, dramatically increasing his productivity and creative capabilities as a solo marketer. New Features Marketers Need to Know About This episode provides an authoritative walkthrough of the newest features: 4o Image Generation: Create detailed, accurate, and on-brand visuals with unprecedented text and style control. In-Context Learning: Upload brand elements for on-brand content creation at scale. Image Editing: Photoshop-like features now baked into AI, enabling precision editing directly within ChatGPT. Task Automation: Schedule content generation from custom sources to maintain marketing consistency and reduce workload. Deep Research Mode: Access iterative, multi-step research capabilities ideal for content strategy, SEO, and thought leadership. Knowledge Integration: Tap into Google Drive as a knowledge base for truly personalised outputs, paving the way for CRM and analytics integration. Facing the Challenges and Embracing the Change Amidst the excitement, the hosts tackle difficult questions. What happens to traditional roles in marketing teams? How do we manage the ethical and emotional challenges of automation? The discussion is candid, acknowledging fears while offering a roadmap for future-proofing your skills and your organisation. The key takeaway? This moment demands a culture of continuous learning, innovation and adaptability. Marketers who invest in understanding and embedding these tools will not only survive but thrive. -- You'll find all links on TargetInternet.com Show notes: Have any feedback on the show? Send us your feedback, tell us what you love and what you think could be better. And, if you are really enjoying the show, please leave us a review.
In this episode of The Digital Marketing Podcast, Daniel Rowles sits down with LinkedIn Ads legend AJ Wilcox, founder of B2Linked, for a deep-dive into everything you need to know to run effective, budget-friendly campaigns on LinkedIn.AJ has been living and breathing LinkedIn Ads for over a decade and shares insights honed from managing millions in ad spend. Why LinkedIn Ads Work Differently AJ explains why LinkedIn ads often cost like bottom-of-funnel, but act like top-of-funnel. Understanding this difference is critical to setting realistic expectations and structuring your campaigns for success. Avoiding Expensive Advice From platform recommendations to rep suggestions, AJ breaks down why the default guidance often costs more, and how you can outsmart it. Learn how to bid lower and still reach the right audience with zero drop in lead quality. Smarter Bidding, Better Results Discover AJ’s manual bidding strategy that consistently reduces costs while keeping quality high. AJ explains how to find the sweet spot between visibility and efficiency. Segment for Insight, Not Just Scale Why target your entire audience in one go when you can break it down into microsegments that act like live focus groups? Learn how to build campaigns that teach you as they perform so you improve as you go. Building a Funnel That Actually Works AJ outlines a simple but powerful three-stage funnel: Stage 1: Awareness through video and document ads Stage 2: Engagement with deeper content like podcasts, webinars, or YouTube Stage 3: Conversion via direct CTAs or sales calls The result? Up to 5x better conversion rates without wasting budget on premature CTAs. Ad Formats That Convert Find out why “thought leader” video ads and TikTok-style captions are crushing it at the top of the funnelan, and how to retarget strategically using native lead gen forms or your own landing pages (depending on your goals). Metrics That Matter Impressions and clicks are just the surface. AJ shares the real KPIs you should be tracking, from engagement rates to cost-per-booked-call, and how to calculate custom metrics that LinkedIn won’t show you. Organic and Paid: Better Together Discover where the LinkedIn platform is headed and why your organic and paid strategies will need to work hand-in-hand. From thought leader ads to CRM integrations, the future of LinkedIn marketing is more connected, and more powerful than ever. -- You'll find all links on TargetInternet.com Show notes: Have any feedback on the show? Send us your feedback, tell us what you love and what you think could be better. And, if you are really enjoying the show, please leave us a review.
Updated to fix audio gap on Daniels mic! In this episode Ciaran and Daniel Rowles dive into the most exciting new tools that can transform the way marketers work—from AI-powered social media automation to SEO optimisation and content enhancement tools. They also share a whole range of special offers for listeners for each of the tools. Core topics covered include: AI-Powered Social Media: Powerful Tool or Terrible Content Creator? Explore the rise of AI-assisted tools that promise to make marketing more efficient. From Blaze, an AI-driven social media content creator, to advanced AI-powered image generators like Flux, we uncover how artificial intelligence is reshaping content creation. Mastering SEO with Existing Content Analysis The hosts explore Content Raptor, a powerful tool that analyses your website’s search performance and suggests improvements to maximise organic traffic. Learn how updating your existing content can drive thousands of additional visits. Competitive Intelligence & Market Research Ever wondered what your competitors are doing? Competitors App helps marketers monitor competitors' ad strategies, website updates, social media activity, and even customer reviews—all in one place. Content Creation and AI Detection With AI-generated content on the rise, ensuring quality and originality is more important than ever. We explore Surfer’s AI Detector, a tool that helps identify AI-written content and discuss strategies for making AI content feel more human. The Real Value of Social Media Marketing Is social media still worth the effort? The team discuss why less is more and how businesses can make social content truly impactful rather than just flooding feeds with generic posts. Learn why YouTube optimisation might be a better investment than traditional social platforms. -- You'll find all links on TargetInternet.com Show notes: Have any feedback on the show? Send us your feedback, tell us what you love and what you think could be better. And, if you are really enjoying the show, please leave us a review.
Join the Target Internet team for a lively debate dissecting three of the most talked-about AI models in marketing today. In this episode, the trio evaluates the capabilities of ChatGPT, DeepSeek, and Google’s Gemini, sharing firsthand experiences and expert takes on where these tools excel, where they stumble, and how you can leverage them in your digital marketing strategy. Why AI Matters Right Now Shifting Industry Landscape – The unexpected rise of DeepSeek and the ongoing hype around ChatGPT showcase just how quickly AI can upend existing norms. This accelerated pace is driving new opportunities for automating tasks, improving content quality, and enhancing customer experiences. New Skills for Marketers – From prompt engineering to navigating privacy concerns, marketers need to learn new skills to harness AI effectively. The discussion offers insights on how to develop these competencies and stay relevant. DeepSeek: Surprise Contender or Copycat? Powerful Results – The hosts experiment with DeepSeek and discover its reasoning features can rival—and sometimes mirror—ChatGPT’s output. The free version delivers impressively detailed responses, leading many to wonder if it’s using ChatGPT’s own data. Privacy and Security Concerns – DeepSeek’s privacy policy raises eyebrows by potentially collecting user data ranging from cookies to keystroke patterns. If you’re considering adoption, you’ll want to weigh these risks and possibly opt for local, walled installations. ChatGPT: The Market Leader Evolves Advanced Prompting – ChatGPT’s newest models feature improved reasoning. Tapping into its hidden “chain-of-thought” can offer deeper insight into how it arrives at answers, giving marketers a roadmap for refining prompts. Consistency and Reliability – Despite stiffer competition, ChatGPT still shines for its stable output and diverse applications—particularly if you have a paid plan offering the latest features. Google’s Gemini: A Work in Progress Early Glitches – While Gemini promises powerful integration with Google’s ecosystem, the hosts encounter errors and incomplete results. Patience and continued experimentation may be needed before Gemini becomes a serious rival. Sparking Possibilities – Despite current shortcomings, Gemini’s potential—especially with deep research modes and integrated document workflows—could make it a strong contender once refined. Real-World Applications & Tips Enhancing Content Strategy – AI tools can generate everything from quick outlines to fully fleshed-out articles. However, the team stresses that human oversight is crucial to avoid misinformation and to add original value. Recruitment & Resume Screening – Discover how some applicants now rely on AI to craft uniform CVs and cover letters, creating challenges for hiring managers—and opportunities to innovate in the screening process. Workflow Integration – Explore advanced techniques like building custom GPTs, leveraging keywords-everywhere extensions, and experimenting with local AI instances for improved data security. Tune in now to stay on top of rapidly evolving AI trends. Whether you’re worried about privacy policies or excited by new prompting techniques, this episode will help you navigate AI’s complex landscape and make smarter decisions for your marketing strategy. -- You'll find all links on TargetInternet.com Show notes: Have any feedback on the show? Send us your feedback, tell us what you love and what you think could be better. And, if you are really enjoying the show, please leave us a review.
In this episode of The Digital Marketing Podcast, brought to you by TargetInternet.com, Daniel, Ciaran, and Louise revisit the age-old question: “Is SEO dead?” This time, they look ahead to 2025 and beyond. The hosts examine how search engine optimisation has evolved—and why it’s far from obsolete, despite the rise of AI, generative search, and changing user behaviours. The Big Question: Is SEO Dead in 2025? The team reflect on how this debate has reappeared time and again over the years. Daniel recalls delivering “Is SEO Dead?” presentations for more than a decade. Each new development—like Google’s Search Generative Experience (SGE)—prompts marketers to wonder if SEO, as we know it, is on its last legs. The consensus? While the landscape is changing, SEO is definitely still alive. The Evolution of Search Search Everywhere Optimisation (SEO?) Daniel mentions a Neil Patel reference to “Search Everywhere Optimisation,” suggesting marketers need to ensure their content is discoverable across multiple platforms—search engines, social media, and beyond. While Ciaran pokes fun at the buzzword bingo, this concept points to the wider reality that people no longer rely solely on Google for answers. Search Journey Optimisation (SJO) Daniel also sarcastically floats another acronym—“Search Journey Optimisation”—to emphasise that effective SEO now involves guiding users throughout their journey, from discovery to conversion, across numerous touchpoints. Whether it’s a blog, social channel, or AI-driven tool like ChatGPT, the goal is consistent: be where your audience is searching. Generative AI and the Future of Results Google’s Business Model A student on Daniel’s MSc programme queried whether Google’s focus on generative AI answers might undermine its core income from search ads. Daniel counters that because advertising revenue is so vital, Google will simply evolve how it integrates AI responses in order to preserve those crucial ad clicks. AI is more likely to be blended with paid search than to replace it. User Behaviour in Social and AI From Instagram’s rise as a “second largest search engine” to ChatGPT’s quick-fire Q&A approach, people’s searching habits are increasingly diversified. Still, the principle of discoverability remains paramount: marketers must ensure their content can be found wherever potential customers are looking. Why SEO (Still) Matters While AI-driven summaries and direct answers may reduce clicks for basic queries, the hosts point out that deeper engagement and conversions happen when people actually visit a website or platform. Organisations that offer in-depth, high-quality information will continue to attract meaningful traffic. In other words, SEO is still fundamental—just with a renewed focus on user-centric, valuable content across all relevant channels. If you’re intrigued by the latest acronyms (SJO, SEO, SGE) or want a clearer understanding of how AI might reshape our industry, this episode is a must-listen. Join Daniel, Ciaran, and Louise as they discuss AI’s influence, Google’s motivations, and practical steps to stay competitive. Listen now to find out why SEO keeps being declared ‘dead’—and why, in reality, it’s more vital than ever. -- You'll find all links on TargetInternet.com Show notes: https://targetinternet.com/resources/how-to-rank-in-chatgpt Have any feedback on the show? Send us your feedback, tell us what you love and what you think could be better. And, if you are really enjoying the show, please leave us a review.
In this episode of the Digital Marketing Podcast, hosts Ciaran Rogers, Louise Crossley, and Daniel Rowles unpack the latest insights from Hootsuite's 2025 Social Media Trends Report. Creative Content: Breaking Boundaries Without Breaking Your Brand The discussion kicks off with an exploration of the shift towards entertainment-driven content. Over 60% of organisations are creating content designed to entertain, educate, or inform rather than promote directly. The hosts debate the pros and cons of pushing creative boundaries, citing examples of effective emotional engagement. They also warn of the risks of losing brand consistency and highlight strategies to stay innovative while staying true to your brand identity. Proactive Engagement: Opportunities and Risks The team discusses the growing trend of proactive engagement, where brands interact directly with creators and audiences in real time. With statistics showing that proactive engagement can drive 1.6 times more interaction, they explore how brands can add value to conversations without appearing intrusive or opportunistic. This segment is packed with insights on building meaningful connections while avoiding common engagement pitfalls. Social Listening and Trend-Jacking: Striking the Right Balance The hosts delve into how brands can use advanced social monitoring tools to identify trends, refine their strategies, and increase ROI. They caution against the dangers of "trend-jacking" and the race to viral content, urging marketers to focus on creating authentic, original campaigns that align with their brand values. Generative AI: Creating Better (Not Just More) Content With 83% of marketers using generative AI to accelerate content production, the episode highlights how AI is reshaping the industry. The hosts stress the importance of leveraging AI for quality rather than quantity, emphasising the value of thoughtful, well-crafted content over sheer volume. They also share examples of using AI tools for planning, customer analysis, and segmentation to enhance campaign effectiveness. -- You'll find all links on Show notes: Have any feedback on the show? , tell us what you love and what you think could be better. And, if you are really enjoying the show, please
In this episode of the Digital Marketing Podcast the team explore five essential email marketing stats to boost your campaigns. Highlights include: Crafting Captivating Subject Lines: Discover the magic of "power words" and how small changes can significantly impact open rates. Learn why overusing certain words, like "discover," can diminish their effectiveness over time. Seasonal and Trendy Keywords: Explore data-driven insights on using seasonal terms like "trends" or "forecasts" to boost engagement. Strategic Capitalisation and Personalisation: Learn how mid-line capitalisation can enhance scannability. Insights into using personalisation effectively without breaking trust. The Art of Invitation: The power of phrases like "You're invited" to increase open rates, with advice on maintaining integrity. Comparison Subject Lines: Why comparisons like "How do you measure up?" spark curiosity and engagement. The team also shares practical tools to test and optimise email performance, plus plenty of tips on maintaining audience trust and balancing creativity with authenticity in email campaigns. -- You'll find all links on Show notes: Have any feedback on the show? , tell us what you love and what you think could be better. And, if you are really enjoying the show, please
In this first episode of 2025, Ciaran, Daniel and Louise discuss some essential new years resolutions for marketers in 2025. Covering the impact of generative AI, junk content, aggressive social media algorithms, never ending brand desperation to go viral and much more, they explore the essential techniques to help your digital marketing succeed in 2025. You'll also learn about why Ciaran's energy levels should never be at a 10, how much Daniel sounds like Marvin the Paranoid Android and how Ciaran had no idea his face had been printed n 10,000 mugs! The team are also giving away loads of podcast merchandide, sharing the schedule for our free 2025 live sessions, and we have free copies of Daniel's latest book to give away. -- You'll find all links on Show notes: Have any feedback on the show? , tell us what you love and what you think could be better. And, if you are really enjoying the show, please
In this solo end of year episode, Daniel explores the opportunities and challenges facing digital marketers in 2025 and how to set a strategy for success! From shifting search algorithms to the takeover of generative AI, Daniel shares how to stay ahead in an increasingly competitive environment. He also shares insights into his recent AI panel discussion, highlights key industry trends and offers actional advice for fostering a culture of learning and innovation within your organisation. Tune in today. Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year and we look forward to seeing you back in 2025! -- Show notes: Have any feedback on the show? , tell us what you love and what you think could be better. And, if you are really enjoying the show, please
In this episode of the Digital Marketing Podcast, Louise and Daniel discuss the key insights that Louise took away from Semrush's Spotlight conference, their first ever in-person conference in Amsterdam this October. From the future of search to disruptive marketing strategies, content optimisation to the evolving role of authenticity in branding, this episode unpacks actionable strategies and trends for 2025. Tune in today! -- Show notes: Have any feedback on the show? , tell us what you love and what you think could be better. And, if you are really enjoying the show, please
In this episode of the Digital Marketing Podcast, Daniel is joined by Jay Schwedelson, host of US #1 Marketing Podcast and Founder of Outcome Media and Guru Media Hub. In the episode, Jay shares with us why being real and showcasing your personality is more critical now than ever, how your email database is your most valuable marketing asset, and why casual 'Lo-Fi' content resonates more with audiences. This is not one to miss! If you're looking for practical insights on the top trends and strategies to elevate your marketing game in 2025, tune in today. Show notes: Have any feedback on the show? , tell us what you love and what you think could be better. And, if you are really enjoying the show, please
If you've recently listened to our podcast about new acronym GEO, you might want to sit down for this one. In this episode of the Digital Marketing Podcast, we answer a listener's question about the connection between SEO, GEO and AEO (Answer Engine Optimisation). With search behaviour constantly changing, it's important that marketers rethink their approach to their content visibility online. If you want to know the core principles of the three optimization methods and whether conversational/answer search should impact your strategy, tune in today. Show notes: Have any feedback on the show? , tell us what you love and what you think could be better. And, if you are really enjoying the show, please
What is digital PR and does it matter? In this episode of the Digital Marketing Podcast, Daniel sits down with Jane Hunt, CEO and Co-Founder of JBH, a digital PR and SEO agency based in Manchester. Jane shares with Daniel invaluable insights into the digital PR landscape and how its reshaping SEO and brand building for both B2B and B2C clients, and the techniques that power brand visbility. If you're looking for a strategy to build quality backlinks, measure campaign impact and blend SEO with traditional PR to achieve results, tune in today! -- Show notes: Have any feedback on the show? , tell us what you love and what you think could be better. And, if you are really enjoying the show, please
Does the world of digital marketing need any more three letter acronyms? Apparently so... In this episode of the Digital Marketing Podcast, Daniel and Ciaran talk about the emerging concept of GEO, Generative Engine Optimisation and what it means for the future of digital marketing. As search engines evolve into generative AI-driven models like ChatGPT, Search Generative Experience (SGE) and more, marketeres now face new challenges in optimising content for visibility. Daniel introduces the concept of GEO and highlights some actionable strategies you can use to improve visbility in these AI-powered search environments. Tune in today! -- Show notes: Have any feedback on the show? , tell us what you love and what you think could be better. And, if you are really enjoying the show, please
Is content marketing still relevant in 2024? In this podcast episode, inspired by one of our listeners and insights from marketing guru Rand Fishkin, we dive into how the content marketing landscape has evolved, the challenges of achieving visibility, and why the concept of 10X content is no longer a guaranteed path to success. We also discuss the impact of zero-click behaviour, social media algorithms, digital PR and and give our practical tips for creating content that still stands out. Listen in today! -- Show notes: Have any feedback on the show? , tell us what you love and what you think could be better. And, if you are really enjoying the show, please
How do you revive a brand's iconicity? What's the best way to generate engagement amongst Gen Z? Do movie partnerships help drive sales? In this episode of the Digital Marketing Podcast, Daniel is joined by Ibrahim Khan, Global Vice President of Marketing at the Coca-Cola Company. Ibraham talks to us about his strategies behind Fanta's resurgence, how they are leveraging global marketing tactics to reconnect with Gen Z, and their collaboration with the new film Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. The episode also covers the challenges of engaging younger audiences, the role of social media platforms like TikTok, and Fanta's aim to make Halloween as synonymous with its brand as Christmas is with Coke. This is a great podcast episode packed with takeaways for brands - tune in today! -- Show notes: Have any feedback on the show? , tell us what you love and what you think could be better. And, if you are really enjoying the show, please
We are back with part two of our Digital Marketing Trends episode to celebrate out 400th episode realease! In this continuation episode, we discuss the rise of AI in search engines, the challenges and opportunities it presents for marketers and the importance of brand personality in an increasingly automated world. We also dive into the shift towards first-party data and email marketing as vital success factors, and using LinkedIn's new Business Manager features to help optimise your B2B marketing efforts. -- Show notes: Have any feedback on the show? , tell us what you love and what you think could be better. And, if you are really enjoying the show, please
We have officially released 400 episodes of the Digital Marketing Podcast! To celebrate, we're bringing you a two-part episode on an Inbound Conference Recap and the latest trends in Digital Marketing. Join us as we unpack the latest trends for you, including the ongoing challenges of social media engagement, and the increasing role of AI in content creation. We also take a look at how you can leverage email marketing in a forever-changing marketing environment and how first-party data is becoming crucial for future-proofing your marketing efforts. Part 2 coming soon! -- Show notes: Have any feedback on the show? , tell us what you love and what you think could be better. And, if you are really enjoying the show, please
In this episode of the Digital Marketing Podcast, Daniel is joined by Colin Grieves and Danny Holmes from Experian Marketing Services to discuss life after third-party cookies and how marketers can adapt. As third-party cookies phase out, marketers face new challenges in reaching their audiences. Colin and Danny explain the evolution of cookies, why they're being phased out and the solutions marketers can put in place to prepare for a cookieless world. If you're looking for top tips on how to future-proof your digital marketing efforts, this episode is a must-listen to guide you through everything you need to know. Listen now! -- Show notes: Have any feedback on the show? , tell us what you love and what you think could be better. And, if you are really enjoying the show, please
We love nothing more than tackling a controversial digital marketing topic, and on today's podcast episode, we dive into whether social media is really still worth the time and investment for brands. We explore a wide number of frustrations that marketers face when posting online, from fake engagement to unclear ROI, and debate whether or not influencer marketing is as effective as it seems. Tune in for an honest discussion on the true value of social media and what might be going wrong. Remember, we have partnered Semrush for their in Amsterdam on 30th October, and have an exclusive 20% discount code for our listeners and and a giveaway of 5 free tickets! How to enter in our show notes, found below. -- Show notes: Have any feedback on the show? , tell us what you love and what you think could be better. And, if you are really enjoying the show, please
In this episode of the Digital Marketing Podcast, we dive into the world of GPTs and help you discover the best available for digital marketers. From tools that create visual diagrams and presentations to tools that summarise YouTube videos, this episode is packed with insights to help you streamling your digital marketing efforts. Remember, we have partnered Semrush for their in Amsterdam on 30th October, and have an exclusive 20% discount code for our listeners and and a giveaway of 5 free tickets! How to enter in our show notes, found below. -- Show notes: Have any feedback on the show? , tell us what you love and what you think could be better. And, if you are really enjoying the show, please
We are back with another tools and trends episode and this time focusing on the latest AI tools transforming how marketers work and engage with their audiences. We explore Google's key Gemini updates, including enhanced image generation capabilities and the introduction of 'gems', as well as the evolution of search with ChatGPT's new SearchGPT prototype. We also dive into Midjourney, Leonardo.ai, and the overall rise of AI productivity tools. A must-listen if wanted to stay up to date with the latest AI developements! Plus, we introduce our partnership with Semrush for their in Amsterdam on 30th October, as well as our exclusive 20% discount code and our giveaway of 5 free tickets! How to enter in our show notes, found below. -- Show notes: Have any feedback on the show? , tell us what you love and what you think could be better. And, if you are really enjoying the show, please
In this episode of the Digital Marketing Podcast, Daniel is joined by Abigail Barnes, founder of Success by Design Training and productivity strategist who works with busy, ambitious professionals and entrepreneurs and their teams that want to be more productive without compromising their wellbeing. On the podcast, Abigail shares her inspiration journey that prompting her to reevaluate her priorities and focus on helping others manage their time effectively. She also shares with us practical frameworks for emphasising activity and achieving a balanced and fulfilling life, and discusses with Daniel the impact of AI on time management. Abigail’s insights offer valuable strategies for anyone looking to achieve greater efficiency and balance in their daily lives. Tune in today! Have any feedback on the show? , tell us what you love and what you think could be better. And, if you are really enjoying the show, please
Struggling to craft titles that truly grab attention? That not only stand out, but drive results? Whether you’re creating content for a blog, YouTube, or social media, the title is your first, and sometimes only, chance to capture your audience’s interest. On this episode of the Digital Marketing Podcast, we share insights on why the right title can make all the difference in content performance, including how to optimise them for better click-through rates and why understanding your target audience is key. Tune in today! P.S. as promised, this episode title was created by AI. We'd love to know your thoughts! -- Show notes: Have any feedback on the show? , tell us what you love and what you think could be better. And, if you are really enjoying the show, please
With Google’s recent algorithm updates and the growing impact of AI-generated content, how can marketers ensure their content stands out? In this episode of the Digital Marketing Podcast, we dive into what Expertise, Experience, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness mean in the context of content creation, and why they're critical for ranking, as well as how AI-generated content can either make or break your SEO strategy. From building a strong author profile to leveraging personal branding, this episode is packed with insights that will help you create content that not only ranks but also builds trust with your audience. Show notes: Have any feedback on the show? , tell us what you love and what you think could be better. And, if you are really enjoying the show, please
Are you wondering how sales and marketing are aligned? How you can transform your sales strategy to achieve greater success in your marketing efforts? In this episode of the Digital Marketing Podcast, we take a deep dive into lead generation and account-based marketing, including the shift from cold calling and emailing to a more relationship-driven approach. We stress the need for close collaboration between sales and marketing teams to create cohesive strategies that align with the buyers journey, and how leveraging on your CRM systems can help you streamline your account-based marketing efforts. Tune in today! -- Show notes: https://targetinternet.com/resources/marketing-and-sales-synergy-lead-generation-account-based-marketing Have any feedback on the show? , tell us what you love and what you think could be better. And, if you are really enjoying the show, please
Are you unsure which email metrics actually provide value or how to add that personal touch to your email campaigns? In this latest episode of the Digital Marketing Podcast we dive deep into the current email marketing landscape, from best practices for email content, including how to ensure your emails answer the crucial ‘what’s in it for me?’, to how to leverage email as a social channel, make them more conversational and use them to foster two-way communication with your customers. For marketers or business owners looking to maximise their email efforts, listen in today! -- Show notes: Have any feedback on the show? , tell us what you love and what you think could be better. And, if you are really enjoying the show, please
It has been a while since we have given a performance marketing update so that’s exactly what we’re doing, as well as bringing you the latest trends and ad formats across multiple platforms. We also delve into the role of AI in optimising ad delivery and creative generation across the major platforms. We bring you some internal news and updates as well, including our ‘Persuade Your Boss’ letter template, which you can find down below… -- Show notes: Have any feedback on the show? , tell us what you love and what you think could be better. And, if you are really enjoying the show, please
If you're looking to create events that aren't just memorable, but transformative, who better to hear from than Kelvin Newman, the mastermind behind BrightonSEO, one of the most renowned search marketing conferences globally. In this episode of the Digital Marketing Podcast, Kelvin shares with us his expertise on transforming events from moments into powerful movements that inspire meaningful connections and drive lasting impact long after the curtains have closed. Whether you're a marketer, events organiser, community manager or more, this episode offers invaluable insights on turning your events into catalysts for change. Listen in today! -- Show notes: Have any feedback on the show? , tell us what you love and what you think could be better. And, if you are really enjoying the show, please
Google Tag Manager is an excellent tool… when it works and is used properly. GTM allows marketers to insert code into your website without needing a developer, who are frequently busy. But to a developers fear, GTM lets marketers insert code into a live website. In this episode of the Digital Marketing Podcast, we are joined by digital marketing consultant Becky from Tattoo Ink Marketing, who will help us identify the most common mistakes to avoid with Google Tag Manager and how to fix them. -- Show notes: Have any feedback on the show? , tell us what you love and what you think could be better. And, if you are really enjoying the show, please
Curious about the current state of influencer marketing, and where storytelling fits into community building? On this episode of the Digital Marketing Podcast, we are joined by Jon Davids from influencer marketing agency Influicity, who talks to Daniel about building a community to surirve the wilderness of the internet, why businesses are dangerously dependent on 'rented' platforms and why storytelling is the most important skill in marketing. This episode is packed with loads of insights and tactics to help you in your marketing efforts. Tune in today! -- Show notes: Have any feedback on the show? , tell us what you love and what you think could be better. And, if you are really enjoying the show, please
Digital marketing is an evergrowing industry, especially as more and more businesses use online channels to reach their audiences. However as digital marketing grows and becomes more complex, so does knowing how to get started in your career. In this episode of the Digital Marketing Podcast, we are joined by Rachel Exton, VP of Global Marketing at Pearson, who discusses her journey into digital marketing, including how she transitioned from her previous career, the skills and knowledge that helped her succeed and advice for those looking to make a start. Daniel and Rachel also cover practical tips for job seekers and the value of gaining hands-on experience. Listen in today! -- Show notes: Have any feedback on the show? , tell us what you love and what you think could be better. And, if you are really enjoying the show, please
If tomorrow you had to start something new, what route would you go down? What type of business would it be? What assets would you leverage? A listen to the My First Million podcast got us thinking about what we would do if we had to start a digital marketing based business from scratch, and what lessons we've learnt that we could take and implement to help make it a success. Join us for this episode of the Digital Marketing Podcast where we discuss the pros and cons of different types of businesses and what we'd each do if we had to start a new business tomorrow. -- Show notes: We'd love to know, what would you do if you had to start something new and what lessons have you learned that you would implement? Or do you have any feedback on the show? , tell us what you love and what you think could be better. And, if you are really enjoying the show, please
Our Digital Marketing Skills Benchmark Report that we produce annually, has shown a skills gap in the core marketing principles, and effective digital marketing now often requires a set of skills that are in short supply. Join us for our latest podcast episode where we talk about the state of digital skills across analytics and data, usability, content marketing, digital strategy and more and and what skills you really need to learn in order to boost your digital marketing efforts. Tune in today! -- Show notes: Have any feedback on the show? , tell us what you love and what you think could be better. And, if you are really enjoying the show, please
We all noticed the surge in content being published online powered by generative AI's like ChatGPT. Whilst it is now easier than ever to publish content frequently, that doesn't always mean that it is of good quality. On today's episode of the Digital Marketing Podcast, we're bringing you the latest updates on AI generated content, including a recent Google Core Update which moves to address the quality of content and a drive towards value and trustworthyness. We hope you enjoy! -- Show notes: Have any feedback on the show? , tell us what you love and what you think could be better. And, if you are really enjoying the show, please
It's with no surprise that in the 3 episodes we've not focused on AI, there has been a huge AI update that we have to tell you about... GPT-4o. In this latest iteration, Open AI introduce a host of powerful features that are designed to expand the potential use cases and really enhance the human-computer interaction. Listen in to find out more! We also share some of the favourite reviews that we've received recently that have made us laugh and smile. Do you agree with the Top Gear reference? -- Show notes: Have any feedback on the show? , tell us what you love and what you think could be better. And, if you are really enjoying the show, please
"Thinking is to humans how swimming is to cats, we can do it, but we'd rather not". When humans make decisions, they don't always make those decisions in a fully considered and thought out way, but rather they make quick and speedy decisions. And the way at which we do that, is at the heart of behavioural science. Behavioural science is often overlooked by a lot of marketers. In today's episode, we are joined by author and behavioural scientist Richard Shotton and discuss what behavioural science actually is and why marketers should be using it to get more from our campaigns and overall marketing efforts. You don't want to miss this episode! -- Show notes: Have any feedback on the show? , tell us what you love and what you think could be better. And, if you are really enjoying the show, please
Today's episode is something a bit different. We create loads of content around SEO, AI, tips and tools, latest news, and loads of other technical topics, but how often do we take a step back and look at our wellbeing? Is sitting at your desk for a 9 hours a day helping you be the most productive you can be? The energy that we give to our work, coworkers, meetings and even family and friends has a huge impact on our daily lives and those around us! Tune in to today's episode for an effectiveness and wellbeing chat and to learn how you can dial up your daily outcomes! -- Show notes: Have any feedback on the show? , tell us what you love and what you think could be better. And, if you are really enjoying the show, please
The state of SEO is always changing, and there have been numerous key trends emerging throughout the past year that have impacted SEO significantly, including voice and image search, video SEO and AI integration. On this episode of the Digital Marketing Podcast, we're bringing you all of the latest SEO updates you need to know to maximise your marketing efforts. Join us as we discuss algorithm updates, link building, user experience, core web vitals and of course AI content and EEAT. -- Show notes: Have any feedback on the show? , tell us what you love and what you think could be better. And, if you are really enjoying the show, please
In today's fast-paced digital world, marketing roles are more multifaceted than ever, with responsibilities from content creation to social media management to graphic design (and everything inbetween). This episode of the Digital Marketing Podcast dives deep into our favourite design hacks, spotlighting the best apps, tools and websites for creating attention-grabbing designs and promotional material. Whether your a graphic designer by name or juggling roles, there might just be something here that will enhance your creativity. -- Show notes: Have any feedback on the show? , tell us what you love and what you think could be better. And, if you are really enjoying the show, please
It's without a doubt that AI has changed the game in terms of idea generation, content creation, data analysis, automatic tasks and more, but the art is really in the prompting. When prompts are written effectively, it not only saves time and resources because tasks are finished quickly, but it increases the quality of outputs and performance. Join us for our latest podcast episode for all our best prompting tips and techniques! -- Show notes: Have any feedback on the show? , tell us what you love and what you think could be better. And, if you are really enjoying the show, please
The affiliate marketing industry is growing at a rate of 10% year-over-year. But what really is it? Often branded as 'making money at any time, from anywhere', the concept behind affiliate marketing is that affiliates promote someone else's products and earn a profit for every sale they make. However, it's not that simple. Understanding affiliates, merchants and networks, collaborating with influencers, the rewards and the risks, and potential profit and costs takes time to grasp. Join us for the latest episode of the Digital Marketing Podcast where we discuss everything you need to know to maximise your affiliate marketing efforts. -- Show notes: Have any feedback on the show? , tell us what you love and what you think could be better. And, if you are really enjoying the show, please
There is such a vast majority of digital marketing tools out there, it's really hard to keep track of the best ones to help you in your marketing efforts. And with the exponential rise of AI including generative AI and machine learning, the search for the best tools has become even harder. Join us on our latest podcast episode for our favourite, practical AI tools that we use and love. -- Show notes: https://targetinternet.com/resources/the-best-ai-tools-for-digital-marketing Have any feedback on the show? , tell us what you love and what you think could be better. And, if you are really enjoying the show, please
Conversion rate optimisation can often be an under-focused area for digital marketers; AB testing, multivariant testing, testing the elements on your page, and more. When Google's own online split-testing tool was sunsetted not long ago, they recommended some of the best tools to help you in your CRO efforts. One of those tools was Optimizely, who reinvent how marketing and product teams work to create and optimize digital experiences. On today's episode of the Digital Marketing Podcast, we are joined by Optimizely's Chief Product Officer Rupali Jain, to discuss how we should be approaching CRO, experiementation and what's really important. -- Show notes: Have any feedback on the show? , tell us what you love and what you think could be better. And, if you are really enjoying the show, please
Some of you might of noticed around this time last year we did a FULL rebrand. For some (like us…) letting go of a brand can be difficult, especially when it has been around for years and you've developed a strong attachment. But sometimes, your business has evolved way past what its branding currently represents, and it's time for a change. On this episode of the Digital Marketing Podcast, we are joined by the talented team behind the Target Internet rebrand and leading-London agency Wildish & Co. With clients from all sectors, including start-ups and large global brands, they'll be giving us the low down on their tried and tested branding process that helps businesses cut through the noise and stand out in their space. -- Show notes: Have any feedback on the show? , tell us what you love and what you think could be better. And, if you are really enjoying the show, please
Google Consent Mode (Version 2), New Core Web Vitals, EEAT — as usual, Google is not short of new changes. Join us on our latest episode of the Digital Marketing Podcast as we bring you the latest Google Updates you need to know, so you can always get more from Google. -- Show notes: Have any feedback on the show? , tell us what you love and what you think could be better. And, if you are really enjoying the show, please
In today's episode of the Digital Marketing Podcast we delve into the latest email statistics so you can stay on top of your email marketing game. We've gathered the up-to-date industry averages, including open rates, click-through rates and bounce rates to help you understand where you compare with your industry landscape. We also breakdown the new Email Sender Guidelines, so you're up to date on the best practices on spam, authenticity and unsubscribe rules. -- Show notes: Have any feedback on the show? , tell us what you love and what you think could be better. And, if you are really enjoying the show, please
On today's episode of the Digital Marketing Podcast, we discuss the most drastic change Google has made to its user interface in 25 years, Search Generative Experience. Pushing search results listings further and further down the page, Google's SGE introduces a brand new section of AI-generated information. However, with notable negative feedback from users, it's unclear whether it's something we should be concerned about just yet. Listen in to hear our discussion, but when it comes to producing content, remember our aim should always be making our customers happy, not the algorithm. -- Show notes: Have any feedback on the show? , tell us what you love and what you think could be better. And, if you are really enjoying the show, please
The onset of GA4 hasn't been smooth sailing, it was completely different to the platform we know and loved and it was continually changing. However, the ability to build custom reports completely changed the game. As much as we now love GA4, there was one report we couldn't get our heads around, until now. Join us on our latest episode of the Digital Marketing Podcast as we break down GA4's Funnel Report, so you can see just how many users make it through each step of the online journey and which areas they might of dropped off, needing attention. -- Show notes: Have any feedback on the show? , tell us what you love and what you think could be better. And, if you are really enjoying the show, please
Custom GPTs are custom versions of ChatGPT that Open AI users can create for their own specific purpose. Building your own GPT requires no code, all you have to do is configure the ChatGPT by telling it what you want to create, give it some guidance on tone of voice etc, and the builder will take it from there. Join us on today's podcast episode as we tell you everything you need to know about custom GPTs, including the best custom GPTs in the GPT store and our own real-world use cases of how we've used (and loved) them. -- Show notes: Have any feedback on the show? , tell us what you love and what you think could be better. And, if you are really enjoying the show, please
In this episode of the Digital Marketing Podcast, we delve into the latest updates and functionalities of Google Analytics 4. If you are getting lost in your Google Ads conversions, not sure how to work with secondary dimensions, or need a deeper understanding of user reports, tune in for our latest news, tips and tricks to help you master the platform. If you’re looking for some further guidance on GA4, we have a -- Show notes: Have any feedback on the show? , tell us what you love and what you think could be better. And, if you are really enjoying the show, please
On today's episode of the Digital Marketing Podcast, we are joined by Andy Fowler, CEO and Will Gordon, Director of Marketing at Nutshell CRM, who are the winners the Automation and Personalisation category of the Digital Marketing Toolkit Awards. Nutshell proides an all-in-one growth software featuring CRM, email marketing, and contact management to help sales teams close more deals. With its competitors being big giants such as Salesforce and Hubspot, how do Nutshell compete and continue to scale up? In this episode, Andy and Will discuss with Daniel how they have competed against such huge competitors, how they continue to solve problems in the CRM space and how they've build their product-led software. Not one to miss! Tune in today. -- Show notes: Have any feedback on the show? , tell us what you love and what you think could be better. And, if you are really enjoying the show, please
We are back with another trends episode, and what better trends episode to do, than one at the start of a fresh year, looking at the year ahead. So we bring you our digital marketing trends for 2024! With the phase-out of third-party cookies looming, the cookieless future is fast approaching... join us as we discuss how you can prepare for its impact on digital marketing. We also discuss other emerging trends for 2024, the ride of voice, image and video search, private GPTs and AI (of course) and new types of web interface! Tune in today. -- Show notes: We'd love to hear any of your marketing New Years Resolutions or any feedback on the show you may have. , tell us what you love and what you think could be better. And, if you are really enjoying the show, please
First of all, Happy New Year! We’re looking forward to the year ahead and we’re sure that 2024 won’t be short of new marketing trends and developments. In this episode of the Digital Marketing Podcast, we bring you our (long) list of New Years Resolutions that we will be bringing into 2024, and that we recommend you do to. From updating old content and keeping diaries of who you engage with online, to testing the small stuff, not just relying on GA4 and running SEO audits to get hold of any website issues, tune in to hear our top recommendations to get the most out of your marketing efforts this year. -- Show notes: We'd love to hear any of your marketing New Years Resolutions or any feedback on the show you may have. , tell us what you love and what you think could be better. And, if you are really enjoying the show, please
Attribution modelling helps marketers understand which campaigns or activities were most effective in driving conversions, allowing marketing teams to adjust budgets and other factors accordingly. Sounds like a perfect methodology, but it’s not all smooth sailing. Join us for the latest episode of the Digital Marketing Podcast as we discuss the dangers of attribution modelling, such as overlooking external factors, the hazards of over-reliance on data, issues with cannibalisation and more. -- Show notes: Do you have any feedback on the show? We really would love to hear from you. , tell us what you love and what you think could be better. And, if you are really enjoying the show, please
On today's episode of the Digital Marketing Podcast we welcome Jonathan Lovatt-Young, founder of and user experience expert with 30 years of expert in digital design and brand strategy, to talk about how to review your competitors in an actionable way. If you are reviewing your direct competitors and conducting competitor analysis', great. But what are you doing with that information? Is it valuable? What are you taking away from them? To turn your competitor analysis into actionable insights you need to understand the entire customer journey, so you know how to outperform. Join us as for this insightful episode as Jonathan guides us through his strategies. -- Show notes: Do you have any feedback on the show? We really would love to hear from you. , tell us what you love and what you think could be better. And, if you are really enjoying the show, please
If you’re not yet aware, Google are launching their latest AI development, Gemini — a multimodal artificial intelligence model that can reason seamlessly across test, images, video, audio and code. It is the first model to outperform human experts on MMLU (Massive Multitask Language Understanding), and surpasses GPT-4 in 7/8 capability benchmarks. Gemini is not due to be released to the public until January 2024, but its API is now available to developers and Bard is currently powered by Gemini Pro. Despite numerous reports on Google falling behind in AI compared to others, Google’s Gemini could be the first serious competitor of ChatGPT, which has dominated the AI space since its launch in November 2022. -- Show notes: What are your thoughts on Google Gemini? Or do you have any feedback on the show? We really would love to hear from you. , tell us what you love and what you think could be better. And, if you are really enjoying the show, please
On today's episode of the Digital Marketing Podcast, we are joined by Simon Kemp, Chief Analyst at Datareportal. We're sure many of our listeners will have heard of Datareportal, but for those who haven't, they compile thousands of free reports online on social media use, internet use, digital marketing use and more in every country in the world. Bringing you the latest stats in digital marketing, Simon explores the remarkable growth in digital adoption, the country with the biggest surge in internet users and its impact on the rest of the world. We then turn our attention to Tiktok's continued expansion, and significant growth as a news source for younger audiences. Our journey through the digital marketing landscape wouldn't be complete without discussnig search engines. Is Google retaining search volumes or losing the younger generation to social media networks? Stay tuned! -- Show notes: Have feedback on the show? We really would love to hear from you. , tell us what you love and what you think could be better. And, if you are really enjoying the show, please
On today's episode of the Digital Marketing Podcast, we welcome Elina Vilk, Chief Marketing Officer at Hootsuite, to discuss the latest trends in social media. Elina discusses the importance of forging authentic connections online, sharing her insights on establishing and nurturting two-way relationships with your customers on social media, and how how you can best measure the value and impact of these interactions. Elina also provides a deeper look into what it's like to work as a social media manager, including the notable gender gap and the key actors that influence salary, with findings from their new Social Media Careers Report. -- Show notes: https://targetinternet.com/resources/latest-trends-in-social-media-with-elina-vilk Have feedback on the show? We really would love to hear from you. , tell us what you love and what you think could be better. And, if you are really enjoying the show, please
Do you create content and wait for the magic to happen? Think link building doesn’t matter anymore? Over relying on vanity metrics? Tune into our latest episode of the Digital Marketing Podcast where we debunk six of the most common digital marketing myths. Talking on meta keywords, marketing to your current customers, the effectiveness of social media advertising, Daniel, Ciaran and Louise share insights as to why certain beliefs are outdated and how you can adapt your strategies. --- Show notes: Have feedback on the show? We really would love to hear from you. , tell us what you love and what you think could be better. And, if you are really enjoying the show, please
The world of social media is forever evolving, it's not always clear to see what the future has in store. Join us on our latest podcast episode where we explore and analyse the trends, challenges, and opportunities changing the social media landscape. We dive into X/Twitter's evolution, the dynamics of Facebook, the rise (or fall?) or Threads, LinkedIn's unique position and the controversy of fake followers. -- Show notes: Have feedback on the show? We really would love to hear from you. , tell us what you love and what you think could be better. And, if you are really enjoying the show, please
In today's episode of the Digital Marketing Podcast, we have the pleasure of welcoming back Nicholas Holland, VP of Product at Hubspot, for a second year to reflect on the development of AI and the human touch in marketing. Recorded in Boston as Hubspot's Inbound Conference 2023, Nicholas reveals how Hubspot have leveraged technology to provide new AI capabilities to their customer platform, assisting customers in crafting effective marketing emails to setting up a website. Nicholas and Daniel also address ongoing data and security concerns, the need for AI ethical standards for responsible usage, and the need to show that individual expertise in written content. AI aside, we can't forget the importance of human touch in marketing. Why is influencer marketing continually rising, and what are Nicholas' emerging trends predictions for the year ahead? -- Show notes: Have feedback on the show? We really would love to hear from you. , tell us what you love and what you think could be better. And, if you are really enjoying the show, please
There's always news in the world of digital marketing... and today is no different. In this episode of the Digital Marketing Podcast we explore Performance Max search themes and how they can be leveraged for max performance in your campaigns. We also discuss the latest changes to core web vitals and how this will impact your website's performance metrics, as well as the shift in multi-channel marketing strategies. ---- Show notes: Have feedback on the show? We really would love to hear from you. , tell us what you love and what you think could be better. And, if you are really enjoying the show, please
As artificial intelligence continues to grow rapidly, so do its ethical concerns. In this episode of the digital marketing podcast, we discuss the challenges of deep fake audio and video technology, its societal impacts and the balance between innovation and deception. We also delve into the ethical use of content and training data, highlighting issues of privacy and bias, as well as the need for a comprehensive but transparent AI policy. ---- We are running a coming up on 22nd November for those who are still getting to grips with the new platform. Show notes: Have feedback on the show? We really would love to hear from you. , tell us what you love and what you think could be better. And, if you are really enjoying the show, please
By the time our Chat GPT updates episodes have published, there are new developments that we have to talk to you about. That just shows the rate at which this technology is progressing. Amazing or slightly scary? From the new app, it’s ability to see, hear and think, Dall-e 3’s impressive image generation and its data analysis capabilities… we have a lot to update you on. We have also now automated our digital marketing skills benchmarking tool. Just enter your team details and share the auto-generated link with your teams. Simple! ---- We are running a coming up on 22nd November for those who are still getting to grips with the new platform. Show notes: Have feedback on the show? We really would love to hear from you. , tell us what you love and what you think could be better. And, if you are really enjoying the show, please
In today's episode of The Digital Marketing Podcast, Daniel shares with us his learnings from Hubspot's Inbound 2023 conference in Boston, as well as the latest digital marketing trends and how they're conveying into 2024. With every single talk mentioning AI, including Hubspot's Chatspot, it's clear to see the effect that is has had and will continue to have as it makes further developments. The team also delve into other key topics such as community, AI, algorithms, SGE (Search Generative Experience) and efficiency. -- We are also running a coming up on 22nd November for those who are still getting to grips with the new platform. Show notes: Have feedback on the show? We really would love to hear from you. , tell us what you love and what you think could be better. And, if you are really enjoying the show, please
As Google continually makes frequent changes to its algorithm each yet, your SEO strategy will require constant reevaluation and adjustment. In this latest episode, the team break down the latest update to Google's Quality Rater Guidelines, which they use to determine whether their search ranking systems are providing helpful information. The E-A-T concept has now gained an extra E (E-E-A-T) for experience, to emphasise the importance of first-hand, life experience on a topic. We also delve into some extra Google updates such as 'perspectives' and some hidden 'about this' features you might not have uncovered yet. We have are also running a coming up on 22nd November for those who are still getting to grips with the new platform. Show notes: Have feedback on the show? We really would love to hear from you. , tell us what you love and what you think could be better. And, if you are really enjoying the show, please
In this episode of the Digital Marketing Podcast, we start off with a podcast recommendation for you, the Upflip Podcast. The Upflip podcast is stories, directly from the business founder, of how they grew their business. We've found it really inspiring - it explores all sorts of business ideas but is brutally honest and there are some great human stories. Make sure to check it out. The team then discuss GA4 and its customisation features, including performance max campaigns, standard reports, editing standard reports and using the 'explore' section. We have are also running a coming up on 22nd November for those who are still getting to grips with the new platform. Show notes: Have feedback on the show? We really would love to hear from you. , tell us what you love and what you think could be better. And, if you are really enjoying the show, please
If you're not changing domains anytime soon, you might think this podcast episode is not relevant for you. Actually, migrations come in many different forms (structural changes, hierarchy changes, navigation changes, any major website changes) and we can guarantee these top tips are essential to know. Based off Ciaran and Daniel's learnings from seeing website migrations go horribly wrong, today's podcast episode will talk you everything you need to know and do before hitting the switch. Join us as we discuss the impact website migrations can have on search rankings, paid search and more and the steps you can take to minimise the effect. We also have a gold pass giveaway to the Revenue Marketing Summit in London in November. Details to enter: Show notes: Have feedback on the show? We really would love to hear from you. , tell us what you love and what you think could be better. And, if you are really enjoying the show, please
In times of fast change, if you're standing still, you're moving backwards and digital skills need to be continually updated with a culture of ongoing learning. In our latest episode of the Digital Marketing Podcast, the team share some of the latest insights and findings from our 2023 Digital Marketing Skills Benchmark Report. In it's fourth edition, the benchmark has now tested over 10,000 people's digital marketing skills, highlighting some very significant shifts in skills in the past year and explores the impact this will have on organisations of all types. Download the report here: Show notes: Have feedback on the show? We really would love to hear from you. , tell us what you love and what you think could be better. And, if you are really enjoying the show, please
Welcome to our special Digital Marketing Toolkit Awards podcast episode! Over the last few months we have been running the Digital Marketing Toolkit Awards, recognising the best tools and utilities worldwide within the Digital Marketing industry. We have been encouraging people to nominate, and then vote, for their favourite tool to ensure that they stand the best chance of winning. And now… the results are in! Listen in to find out which digital marketing tool topped the votes in each category and see the bespoke award and other benefits they won. We know that there are a lot of tools available to you in digital marketing, and it can almost be quite overwhelming to know what to use. In this episode we also discuss how to ensure the tools you use are helping you streamline your workflow and if you've not used it in three months... bin it! Didn’t get a chance to nominate, or your own tool wasn’t mentioned? Unfortunately, you missed out for this year, but we’ll be back next year so stay tuned. Enjoy! Show notes - Have feedback on the show? We really would love to hear from you. tell us what you love and what you think could be better. And, if you are really enjoying the show, please
The sunsetting of Universal Analytics and the takeover of GA4 may of passed you by, and it's fair to say the new Google Analytics 4 differs greatly from the previous version we all knew and loved. Although there aren't as many reports in the new GA4 as in Universal Analytics, the power of GA4 is in its customisation and being able to understand key terminology is key to being able to understand your GA4 data. Join us in this episode of the Digital Marketing Podcast to delve into the potential of custom reports within GA4. If you want to take your GA4 learning further, we have an We also have a in London this November, a packed two days of the latest insights, tools and strategies from globally renowned companies including Uber, Pinterest and HSBC. Show notes - Have feedback on the show? We really would love to hear from you. , tell us what you love and what you think could be better. And, if you are really enjoying the show, please
We usually spend our podcast episodes offering practical digital marketing advice to help you enhance your careers, but today we flip the script and take a look at digital marketing problems that plague the landscape. Join us on today's episode as we dissect the lack of control we see as digital marketers and the challenges social algorithms pose. We also delve into the difficulties marketers encounter when trying to gauge the true impact of their effort, as well as the controversial "grift culture" and sacrificing authenticity for short-term gains. This episode is a must-listen - stay tuned! We also have a in London this November, a packed two days of the latest insights, tools and strategies from globally renowned companies including Uber, Pinterest and HSBC. Show notes - Have feedback on the show? We really would love to hear from you. , tell us what you love and what you think could be better. And, if you are really enjoying the show, please
We are back with another much loved digital marketing trends episode! This week, Daniel, Ciaran and Louise discuss Meta’s position in the AI space with the recent launch of their latest large language model (LLM), Llama 2, which has outperformed ChatGPT on most benchmarks. Meta and Microsoft have also announced an expansion of their partnership, allowing developers to choose between Meta and Open AI models… The social platforms have also seem some drastic changes. We can’t shy away what’s going on over at Twitter (or should we say X) and the team share their thoughts on Meta’s launch of Threads. We also have a gold pass giveaway and a 20% discount for everyone else to the Revenue Marketing Summit in London. The Summit returns this November 29th and 30th to the Intercontinental O2 for those of you that want to learn the latest marketing strategies. Visit the show notes on our website to get the discount or enter the draw! Have feedback on the show? We really would love to hear from you. , tell us what you love and what you think could be better. And, if you are really enjoying the show, please Show notes -
Search Engine Optimisation is a huge part of digital marketing, and today we are taking a deeper dive into the world of Local SEO; an SEO strategy that optimises your online presence to increase local traffic, visibility and brand awareness. Any business with a physical location or that serves a geographical area can benefit from local SEO. Have you ever searched for 'restaurants near me' to try and find places to eat in your local area? Local SEO is what will help you appear in these search results, so it's important to understand what it is and what it entails. In this episode, Ciaran is joined by local SEO expert Claire Carlile from Brightlocal, a SEO platform full of local marketing tools to help you you rank higher, grow your reputation and build citations. Claire has been working with local businesses for over 20 years and today, she helps guide us throught the different techniques for mastering the local search results. If you have any feedback on the show, please and let us know. And, if you are really enjoying the show, please
Welcome to another special episode of the Digital Marketing Podcast, where we will be introducing you to the second-half of shortlisted tools for the Digital Marketing Toolkit Awards. Some of them might already be familiar to you, and some might be brand new. All of these tools have been nominated by digital marketers so if there's any you haven't heard of, we suggest you check them out! Have your favourite? Make sure to vote for it before votes close on 3rd September. Visit If you want your tool in with a chance of winning a Digital Marketing Toolkit Award, we'll be back next year so you can get nominating. If you have any feedback on the show, please and let us know. And, if you are really enjoying the show, please
Welcome to this special episode of the Digital Marketing Podcast! We all love a tools episode, right? Today we are introducing you to some of the shortlisted tools for the Digital Marketing Toolkit Awards. We had a huge number of nominations entered into the awards, and after a careful shortlisting process we have our finalists in each category! This episode is dedicated to the first half of the shortlisted tools. Some you might be very familiar with, and some might be brand new to you… but might just become your next most-used tool. Have your favourite? before votes close on 3rd September. Was your tool not mentioned? Unfortunately, you missed out. But we’ll be back again next year where you can nominate your favourite tool and give it the best chance of winning. Part two is coming next week so stay tuned! If you have any feedback on the show, please and let us know. And, if you are really enjoying the show, please
With Universal Analytics having been recently sunsetted in July, some of you might still be getting to grips with the new GA4 and how to harness it to supercharge your data tracking and analysis. Join us on this episode of the Digital Marketing Podcast where we discuss all things GA4 including events, tag management, the crucial differences between dimensions, metrics, sessions and users and our top tips for you. If you have any feedback on the show, please and let us know. And, if you are really enjoying the show, please
Welcome to our latest podcast episode where we dive deep into the captivating world of social media algorithms! Social media algorithms have become the gatekeepers of our social media lives, determining the content we see, the people we engage with, and the brands we discover. Understanding these algorithms is crucial for anyone seeking to make an impact in the digital space, whether you're a business professional, a content creator, or a social media lover. In this information-packed episode, we will be discussing the fascinating mechanics that govern some of the most influential platforms of our time: LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook. If you have any feedback on the show, please and let us know. And, if you are really enjoying the show, please
In this podcast episode, the team delve deep into the realm of personal branding and explore the crucial aspects of establishing a trustworthy online presence. We explore how personal branding builds trust, unlocking SEO secrets for your brand, understanding SSI scores, choosing the perfect profile image, and navigating the complexities of the 'right to be forgotten.' Stay tuned for our secrets to crafting a compelling personal brand that leaves a lasting impact. If you have any feedback on the show, please and let us know. And, if you are really enjoying the show, please
Not only do B2B (Business-to-business) and B2C (Business-to-consumer) companies have different audiences, but their audiences respond differently to each other and so they must use different tactics to capture their attention. In this episode of the Digital Marketing Podcast, the team discuss the main differences between B2B and B2C, what basic principles the two have in common, desired end outcomes and how the marketing funnel applies. If you have any feedback on the show, please and let us know. And, if you are really enjoying the show, please
Picking the right CRM (Customer Relationship Management) can be a game changer for a digital marketer and is packed full of benefits, allowing you to centralise customer data, improve lead management, run effective marketing campaigns and more all from one place. In this podcast episode, we'll explore how you can pick the right CRM for your needs, discussing features, integration, audiences, pros and cons and any hidden costs involved. The nominations for The Digital Marketing Toolkit Awards are also now open! Visit and nominate your favourite digital marketing tool for its chance to win one of our bespoke, beautifully designed trophies! If you have any feedback on the show, please and let us know. And, if you are really enjoying the show, please
The Digital Marketing Channel Mix can often cause some confusion, but it actually focuses on what digital channels are going to be used to engage with your target audience, whether that be SEO, email, social media, paid advertising, or other channels. In this episode of the Digital Marketing Podcast, Daniel, Ciaran and Louise help you have a clearer understanding on what the digital marketing channel mix is, attribution modelling and what the best channels really are. If you have any feedback on the show, please and let us know. And, if you are really enjoying the show, please
Welcome back to another news digest episode for June 2023! Artificial Intelligence is moving faster than ever and we have updates for you on Google AI Search, the rise in podcasting, 3rd party cookies, AI chat search and much more. With lots of popular and upcoming trends this is not one to miss. The nominations for The Digital Marketing Toolkit Awards are also now open! Visit and nominate your favourite digital marketing tool for its chance to win one of our bespoke, beautifully designed trophies!
Before delving into this new episode of the Digital Marketing Podcast, we have a brand new, exciting announcement for you… The Digital Marketing Toolkit Awards! The Digital Marketing Toolkit Awards are a brand new awards recognising the best tools and utilities worldwide within the digital marketing industry, with the winners being celebrated with a special podcast episode in September. Nominations open on 23rd June for you to nominate your favourite tools! Visit to nominate. In this episode, Daniel, Ciaran and Louise discuss the latest updates in the world of Chat GPT and AI… These updates include Plugins and Browsing, meaning that it can now unlock a vast range of possible uses and also browse the internet for information that extends that included in its training data.
In today’s episode of the Digital Marketing Podcast, Ciaran interviews David Allison, author of The Death of Demographics. Where have we been going wrong with demographics all these years? We insist on looking at people on the outside. We put a fence around a group of people and think we understand who they are but we don’t, we understand what they are, and that’s not enough to influence people’s future buying decisions. Humans say yes to things because it aligns with their values. It is behind every decision that we make, so it’s important we understand the shared values of our customers so we know how to get the right people in the room. Listen in to this special episode to hear all about David’s mission and understand for yourself why Ciaran loved this interview so much!
There has never been a more important time to be thinking about innovation as when things in the digital marketing world are moving so quickly. In order to quickly adapt to change and avoid it being disruptive, innovation should be built in and implemented into your organisation. Listen in to today’s podcast to learn how to go about building innovation into your culture and how design thinking can help you solve problems by putting consumer’s needs first.
Handling over 90% of searches, Google undoubtably dominates the search engine market and is consistently a hot topic in the world of digital marketing. However, today, let’s talk about Bing… With 900 million searches a day, Bing is often overlooked when it shouldn’t be. In this episode, Daniel, Ciaran and Louise discuss why they think people shouldn’t forget about it’s family of tools; Bing Ads, Bing Places, Microsoft Clarity and more.
Today Ciaran is joined by CEO and Founder of Enchant Email Marketing Agency, Philip Storey, about why email is as important as ever in 2023 why brands should consider focusing their time and resources into this channel. Philip talks about how we can go about supercharging our emails - where to start, getting practical and bringing 'planning' and 'execution' together as one to bring ideas to fruition. In this episode we also bring you 16 tools that will help you with your email marketing efforts.
In 2022, Google revealed that you weren’t allowed AI generated content on your website. However, in February 2023, Google announced that ‘high-quality content is high-quality content’ and they’re focusing on quality rather than how the content is produced. In this episode of the Digital Marketing Podcast, the team discuss some of their favourite SEO and AI tools to help your content cut above the noise, as well as the findings of a new report on AI training data.
The GOST framework is a model for goal setting, that is split into four components; goals, objectives, strategy and tactics. However, there can be a lot of confusion between on how the components differ and how to work GOST into your marketing plan. In this episode of the digital marketing podcast, the team define each of the four core components as well as give examples of how they would be used in practice to help achieve your overall business objectives.
With AI reshaping the content marketing landscape, the bar has been pushed even higher to create engaging content that stands out from competitors and makes an impact on their audiences. Join us in this episode of the Digital Marketing Podcast where we discuss how to develop effective content plans, from researching ideas through to creating a working calendar for content marketing success.
We are back with a Digital Marketing Trends Update for April 2023, and what trends update would it be without AI? In this episode, the team run through some of the latest Google updates, why you shouldn’t forget about Bing, and some of the latest AI tools to assist you in your marketing efforts. We have also launched our latest version of the Digital Marketing Toolkit which you can download today.
In today's episode, Ciaran is joined by Ben Salmon from We Are Crank, a B2B growth agency focused on measurement and data-driven marketing. Ben talks Ciaran through paid search, conversion rates, joining together online and offline data and how to go about building a culture of measurement within your organisation. Ben's book, (Getting a grip on Data and Measurement to accelerate your Direct to Consumer ecommerce sales) is one of Ciaran's favourites and is a detailed view on what you should be measuring, how you should be measuring it, and how youcan successfully grow your digital business.
91% of businesses now use video as a marketing tool, and 92% of video marketers reported that it gives them a positive ROI. However, the more video content that surfaces the harder it is to get your content to stand out from the crowd. In this episode of the Digital Marketing Podcast, Daniel, Ciaran and Louise discuss different elements that contribute towards running an effective YouTube channel. The team also unveil our new branding that we have been working on over the past few months, developed with branding and creative agency Wildish and Co, which is now live across all of our channels! We’d love to hear what you think.
In today’s episode of The Digital Marketing Podcast, Daniel, Ciaran and Louise discuss the latest trends in Digital Marketing for March 2023. Needless to say Chat GPT has created a storm in the world of digital marketing, and Bing and Google weren’t far behind. In amongst Chat GPT and Bing, is the new Meta Verified membership, which entitles users to a verified badge, impersonation monitoring, prioritisation in comments and more. Other trends discussed include GA4 setup, Twitter blue badge and SEO issues. We hope you love the show! If you have any feedback, please and let us know. And, if you are really enjoying the show, please
In today's episode of The Digital Marketing Podcast, Ciaran speaks to Ben Heath, CEO of Lead Guru, a UK based meta advertising agency that helps business owners, entreprenuers and marketers take their campaigns to the next level. In this insightful interivew Ciaran and Ben discuss Facebook privacy changes, the decline of organic reach and top targeting techniques.
In this episode of the Digital Marketing Podcast, the team delve into Google Web Stories, which are a web-based version of the popular story format. The stories are discoverable through Google Search and the Google App, which can be downloaded via iOS and Android. You can also embed them into your own web pages. Daniel, Ciaran and Louise also explore YouTube’s latest Culture and Trends report, giving some interesting insights into the most notable creators and trends driving video culture.
On 1st July 2023, Google are sunsetting their infamous Universal Analytics and making GA4 the new default, a big move for the 28.1 million websites that use Google Analytics. In light of the change, some users might be researching for other analytics software available. In this episode of the Digital Marketing Podcast, Daniel, Ciaran and Louise their five favourite alternatives to Google Analytics to match your analytics goals, to help you decide which software is right for you. We also have a on these analytics alternatives.
Marketing funnels outline the journey that customers take on their path to purchase, and is a framework that helps yo to consider how to engage with your customers along the different stages of their journey. In this episode of the Digital Marketing podcast, the team discuss the stages of the funnel, confusion at the top and how you can use it together with a user journey map to connect with customers.
Social media can mean very different things to different people based on factors such as their interests, their lifestyle – and often their age. Although overall social media usage has changed dramatically post-covid, there are still large demographical differences between the way users behave online which can help marketers make important decisions when deciding on their social media strategy. You can also check out our We hope you love the show! If you have any feedback, please and let us know. And, if you are really enjoying the show, please
Building community is an extremely effective, but overlooked marketing strategy, as it focuses on establishing real connections with your audience. Building relationships with your users shows how committed you are to understanding their needs, earning their loyalty and trust and can help to improve customer retention. In this podcast episode, Daniel, Ciaran and Louise discuss why it’s important to engage in community building and the different places that community can live. We hope you love the show! If you have any feedback, please and let us know. And, if you are really enjoying the show, please
It is without a doubt that AI is becoming more and more advanced and with AI tools, marketers can automate certain cognitive tasks to help them streamline workflows. With AI assisting in the more repetitive admin tasks, we can spend more time on work that work that requires higher level of attentional and emotional input. In this episode of The Digital Marketing Podcast, the team guide you through a range of useful AI tools, inspired by Get Inference's , a toolkit of all the latest AI tools, all in one place and updated daily. We hope you love the show! If you have any feedback, please and let us know. And, if you are really enjoying the show, please
You might briefly remember Daniel and Ciaran discussing a content sharing tool last year that was so powerful, they were reluctant to tell you about it. Well, that tool is QUUU Promote and on this episode of the Digital Marketing Podcast, co-founders Matt and Daniel talk to Ciaran about social signals, the tool and how it helped supercharge our reach for the podcast. After 8 years of helping promote blogs for social media, Matt and Daniel also advise on what makes content more sharable and really understanding your audience, what they are actually looking for and what problem you are trying to solve. We hope you love the show! If you have any feedback, please and let us know. And, if you are really enjoying the show, please
Happy New Year and welcome back to The Digital Marketing Podcast. It’s the beginning of a fresh year. Usually with this comes New Years Resolutions and we’ve decided to put together our digital marketing resolutions to help you feel prepared for the year ahead. From revising and repurposing successful content, planning customer research and taking a step back to look at OKRs, listen in to this episode for our key themes to focus on throughout the year. We hope you love the show! If you have any feedback, please and let us know. And, if you are really enjoying the show, please
From core Google updates and Google Analytics 4, to enhancemencts in artificial intelligence and emphasis on brand, 2022 has been a non-stop year in the world of digital marketing. In this episode of the Digital Marketing Podcast, Daniel, Ciaran and Louise bring you a 2022 wrapped-up episode, reflecting on and discussing the biggest trends in digital marketing this year. We hope you love the show! If you have any feedback, please and let us know. And, if you are really enjoying the show, please
It is likely that within recent weeks you have come across ‘Chat GPT’, an AI chatbot system developed by Open AI which specialises in dialogue. Since being released by Open AI in November 2022, Chat GPT has gone viral, reaching 1 million users in only 5 days! Although the chat research tool isn’t perfect, it’s a huge development in the world of AI. In this episode of the Digital Marketing Podcast, the team delve into Chat GPT and its uses, as well as giving some examples of when it’s not got it quite right... We hope you love the show! If you have any feedback, please and let us know. And, if you are really enjoying the show, please
There are many different things to consider when trying to improve your email deliverability, including ways to help ensure your audiences are engaged and protocols to implement. In this episode of the Digital Marketing Podcast, the team discuss their recommendations and tools for ensuring that your emails are getting through to the right place. We hope you love the show! If you have any feedback, please and let us know. And, if you are really enjoying the show, please
GA4 is the latest version of Google Analytics and differs greatly from Universal Analytics in terms of its features the the data it collects. Although the new platform currently runs in parallel with the previous iteration of GA, Universal Analytics (UA), UA will stop processing new hits on 1st July 2023, so it’s important that you prepare for the switch. In today’s episode of the podcast, Daniel, Ciaran and Louise guide you through the new default for data analytics, including setup tips, events, and core and custom reports. Do you have any feedback on the show? and let us know. And, if you are really enjoying the show, please
From the phasing out of third-party cookies to mail privacy protection on Mac, privacy changes aren’t going anywhere and it’s up to marketers to adapt to the changing landscape. In today’s episode of the Digital Marketing Podcast, Daniel, Ciaran and Louise discuss privacy changes in iOS, email, browsers, URL parameters and what impact all of this has on trust and brand. We hope you love the show! If you have any feedback, please and let us know. And, if you are really enjoying the show, please
Today we have an interview podcast for you, which we will be launching you once a month along side our weekly video podcasts, with new and exciting guests. Ciaran's guest today is Charlie Blake Thomas, CEO of EyeQuant... Eye tracking studies have become a powerful tool that helps market research professionals understand how customers view their website or advertising material, what elements are most effective and how to optimise it to improve performance, however it can be really expensive and time consuming. EyeQuant is a platform that combines advanced neuroscientific research, artificial intelligence and neural network modeling to simulate how users will react to your design work, with a 90% accuracy, as a scalable, more realistic approach to UX testing. EyeQuant have kindly given our listeners a fantastic offer of a one-month free trial of their full platform, which you can retrieve by emailing with the subject line 'Digital Marketing Podcast'. We hope you love the interview! If you have any feedback on the show, please and let us know. And, if you are really enjoying the show, please
In this episode of the Digital Marketing Podcast, Daniel, Ciaran and Louise discuss all things marketing and artificial intelligence. The team talk about numerous different text-to-image AI tools. Notably, DALL·E, an AI system that can create realistic images and art from a description in natural language and Outpainting, its new feature that is able to continue an image beyond its original borders. Daniel also shares thoughts on podcast.ai, a new podcast generated entirely by artificial intelligence, with the first being a very realistic interview of Steve Jobs by Joe Rogan. The podcasts are now being published weekly. Do you have any feedback on the show? and let us know. And, if you are really enjoying the show, please
In this episode, Daniel, Ciaran and Louise kickstart their new monthly news digests, where they will be rounding up all of the latest digital marketing news and bringing it to you all in one place, to ensure that you are kept up-to-date. The team discuss Publisher Advertiser Identity Reconciliation, or PAIR, a new first-party data solution that gives publishers and advertisers the option to securely and privately reconcile their first-party data for users who have visited both an advertiser's and a publisher's site. Third-party cookies who? They also get take a dive into the Metaverse talking all things avatar's and Meta Quest Pro. And, another month, another new TikTok feature with the introduction of TikTok Now, their BeReal-inspired app (or copy and paste). Have feedback on the show? We really would love to hear from you. , tell us what you love and what you think could be better. And, if you are really enjoying the show, please You can also with the links everything mentioned.
Daniel and Ciaran are back with another favourite tips and tools episode for October 2022. However, this time, things are being done a little differently as the Digital Marketing Podcast comes to you in video format for the first time. We also have a brand new member with us (don’t worry, Daniel and Ciaran aren’t going anywhere), Louise, who will be joining us as the ‘voice of the listener’ and making sure your questions are heard and answered. In this episode, the team share 9 resources that they’ve been loving recently, with a mix of email, data & analytics, SEO, CTA’s, artificial intelligence and interactive tools, so there is something for everyone. To name a couple, the team share with you an email provider that takes personalisation to the next level and a tool for those with subscription based pricing models that provides a home for all of the data on your subscribers in one place. Have feedback on the show? We really would love to hear from you. , tell us what you love and what you think could be better. And, if you are really enjoying the show, please You can also with the links to all of the tools mentioned.
Daniel shares an interview he recorded in Boston with Hubspot's GM of Marketing Hub and VP of Product Nicholas Holland. Daniel and Nicholas explore what they think should be the focus of marketers looking to get the most out of their data, personalisation and automation. We also explore the roadmap your marketing CRM should be focused on. Discover Hubspot's future and what will matter more as we move into 2023 and beyond. Daniel also shares with us what he learned from attending Hubspot's inbound 2022 conference in the US. Community and podcast audiences are the hot tickets every marketer was getting excited about. All subjects Ciaran has been passionate about for over a decade, and Daniel questions if Ciaran is clairvoyant and can see the future. If you want to ensure you get the right message to the right person at the right time and ace personalisation in your market place you won't want to miss this interview. Discover what better systems and collaboration between marketers and sales teams could mean for your business and how you can set about working as more of a team. Are you navigating the right path between the quantity and quality of your marketing and customer interactions? We also share details on our up-and-coming GA4 masterclass, which is now available for podcast listeners to join. Find out more about masterclass Useful Links Library of useful free marketing resources Inbound speaker highlights ( get a free 3 day free pass) Find out more about Inbound 2022
Daniel and Ciaran celebrate the Digital Marketing Podcasts’ 300th episode and over 4 million downloads! Now running for over 12 years, they reflect on 3-ish of their favourite episodes and share a few behind the scenes stories. With 300 episodes released and all still available to listen to, you should never be short of content to inspire and help you with your own digital marketing efforts. We asked the guys to highlight 3 of their favourites but as you will see they have recommended 12 plus the entire category of tips and tools episodes. Delve into the archive and enjoy some of these gems which you may have missed. Also in this episode, Daniel shares a brilliant suite of free online tools he’s been using that help you fix all manner of file and document formatting and conversion issues. Check it out - its really rather brilliant. We have an updated for you all. We also announce our up coming live webinars starting this autumn. to get an invite Have feedback on the show? We really would love to hear from you. , tell us what you love and what you think could be better. And if you are really enjoying the show, please Get the full show notes and mentioned resources here:
Daniel and Ciaran are back with another Tips and tools episode. There is a real mix of different tools both Daniel and Ciaran have been using and found useful. We look into the challenges of changing your web site's DNS settings and how you can monitor what is happening with your DNS propagation on a global scale. Daniel shares a fantastic tool for creating customer personas and user journey maps. We explore how to use both Personas and more detailed user journey maps. Ciaran talks us through a helpful exercise he runs, exploring the user journey using Avinash Kaushik's "See Think Do Care" model. We look at creating the perfect marketing persona and user journey with UX Pressia, and Daniel shares his top tips on upgrading your marketing skills with coding tutorials. Ciaran shares some tools that help you curate amazing content for sharing with your networks and supercharging your PR outreach and journalist network. And finally, we share two of our all-time favourite AI writing tools and explain how we use them. Don't miss out on the 10,000-word free trial of Jasper.ai. We genuinely think this tool will blow your socks off, and that's why we saved it till last! Useful Links and Resources DNS Checker UX Pressia See Think Do Care Model W3 schools- Online coding tutorials Anewstip Exploding topics Quillbot Get your Jasper AI free 10,000 word trial
Your online audience are a tough crowd. They are “!“ So how on earth do you write copy for the web to engage an audience like that who also have a short attention span? Writing Web Content There are so many different angles to web writing. Writing Web content can take many forms but all of it needs to engage your online readers and target audience. For Search engine optimization you need the perfect page titles and Meta descriptions, for blog posts you need the perfect intro paragraph that gets to the point and hooks the reader in. But that is just the start of your challenge. If your reader does engage and read, you also need to make a compelling enough case for them to act upon what they read. Most marketers struggle with writing for the web because it's different than other forms of writing. You have to consider your audience, what they want, and how to deliver that in a way that's effortless for them to consume. Web Writing - The Perfect Web Page In this episode Kim Arnold delivers something of a Writing for the Web masterclass to equip you with exactly what you need when creating content. Packed full of tips and super useful writing frameworks and tools anyone can use to communicate more effectively, this is an episode you really do not want to miss. For full episode notes and links visit
It's hard to know where to start with running highly effective social media influencer marketing. Everyone talks about it, but few have successfully nailed it repeatedly and reaped the rewards Ciaran talks with agency founder Sedge Beswick from SEEN Connects, an innovative that specialises in helping top brands plan, launch and execute highly With a growing stack of successful social campaigns under their belt, SEEN Connects are well placed to talk the talk, and walk the walk when it comes to crafting brand influencer collaborations that scale. Hottest Social Platforms? We explore which are the current hot platforms and trends marketers can leverage in the social space. Is it all still about Instagram or is there a more exciting and innovative platform Sedge thinks we should all be playing with? ( Hint- There is!) Crafting The Perfect Influencer Marketing Campaign Brief Learn the best ways to work with social media agencies and influencers. Sedge shares some of the wisdom she and her team have developed over many years of working with brands of all sizes. We also explore the importance of market research to inform and create campaigns that achieve real results, helping you to win awards and even land your next big promotion... Maybe! ;-)
Nearly every business could benefit from better local SEO, but it can be difficult to know where to start. Most businesses don't even have a Google Business Profile or Bing Places account, let alone taking advantage of the features they offer. In this episode, Ciaran walks us through how to set up and optimise your local SEO using citations, Online directory listings like Google business profile and Bing Places. We also share some great tools to help maximise your local SEO performance and manage multiple listings.
In Part II of our Analytics and Data Masterclass, shares his tips for working effectively with your analytics and analysts. Learn how to ask outcome questions rather than questions about marketing activity. These questions will ensure your focus on the company's most important metrics. Conversion Rate & Customer Satisfaction If you aren't keeping an eye on user performance metrics and conversions, as Avinash learned, you can damage your customer satisfaction. Walking in your Customers' Shoes Avinash shares with us the dangers of over optimising around a specific profit focussed goal! When did you last spend time walking in your customers' shoes and feeling their pain? Start asking more questions about consumer behaviour. This is the path to developing a type of empathy that directly drives profits. Ever felt your data and reports get ignored? Too often, analytics is seen as a necessary evil by marketing leaders - it's something that needs to be done, but it's not always clear how it ties in with overall goals. As a result, analysts can feel marginalised and undervalued. Analytics Data & Business Insights that Demand Action Learn how to ensure your Marketing analytics and reports can command respect and attention and have real influence. Avinash shares three concrete tips that marketing leaders and data analysts can take to communicate more effectively. We also explore the critical relationship between storytelling and compelling analytics insights. Useful Links
You’ve been tasked with increasing the success of your marketing efforts, but you don’t know where to start. Big data and analytics is becoming increasingly important in marketing, but it can be challenging to know how to use them effectively. Recording and gathering data on its own doesn’t get you results. You need to shape all that data into a meaningful story. Learn from Google’s , how to tame large amounts of marketing analytics data and use it to increase your success. Avinash spills the beans on how to start leveraging all your marketing data. Set yourself an effective benchmark for what success looks like. Learn some simple yet creative ways to ensure your marketing efforts suck less next week than last month or last quarter! Predictive Analytics – Predicting Future Outcomes We also explore how to use predictive metrics to get meaningful insights. How helpful would it be to discover patterns that foretell possible excellent or poor future performance before it happens? Advanced artificial intelligence in analytics tools allow us to leverage predictive metrics to see what the future holds before it happens. Of course, that kind of functionality comes at a cost, but anyone can start to leverage predictive insights if they know where to look. Learn how to look at your data in reverse and start making smarter decisions to direct more effective marketing spending, placement, and outcomes. Data And Analytics Before results come. Avinash takes us back to a foundational level and asks, “What are you trying to achieve?” Is that clear? Have you been specific? Stop hiding behind complex concepts like machine learning, structured data, data mining, data warehousing, advanced-data models, and statistical algorithms! None of this will help you if you miss a clear aim that your whole team is focused on. Key Insights Are your Marketing team and Analyst team Do you all have a meaningful target to shoot for? Are you fishing out Dolphins when you wanted Stingrays? Avinash shares his top tips on reading your analytics data sources and metrics. Start turning data insights into action that gets results. Pair up your marketing skills and audience understanding with a great analyst and work together to ensure your most insightful data insights don’t die at the last mile. Unstructured Data? Finally, we explore where leadership and data analysis can collide into a train crash of poor performance. Discover the best way marketing leaders can ensure this doesn't happen. As you will learn - it's all on you as a leader to ensure you ask the right questions! What are those questions? Listen in, discover what you should be asking, and start reaping the rewards.
Display advertising can be a great way to reach your target market, but it's often difficult to measure how effective these campaigns are. Without proper measurement, you can't be sure whether your display campaigns are achieving their objectives. Display campaigns are one of the easiest ways to spend your budget, but often, it’s much more challenging to understand how these campaigns are performing as part of an effective marketing mix. This is especially true if you don't understand the user journey and how people interact with your ads. It doesn’t have to be like this. In this episode, Daniel and Ciaran explore how to make more effective use of display advertising to aid the users' journey. We explore what you can do to better measure display performance and measure results. This starts with understanding what you want your campaigns to achieve. Daniel shares his views on where Display often goes wrong and why he feels it's massively an undervalued channel. Learn how to measure and better attribute your results and make sure that your campaigns are working as hard as they should be. Useful resources
88% of marketers say that video marketing provides them with a positive ROI. So why does video marketing work so well? In this episode of the Digital Marketing Podcast, we welcome back Jon Mowat to discuss some of the psychology and methodology behind video’s success. Jon explains in detail the five key areas that he believes make video so powerful; we can touch and feel it, it moves, the extension of personal self, we can target and we can tell emotional stories. Some of his theories are brilliant… Are people more willing to pay for an object or service they see on their phone than a screen on the other side of the room? If so, what’s the psychological reasoning behind this? This is not one to miss. If you listen to the end, Jon also reveals how to get a discount for his book ‘Video Marketing; Create Engaging Video Campaigns to Drive Brand Growth and Sales’. to get the full show notes and links visit
Video marketing is an area that didn’t really exist until about 5 years ago, but now, more and more businesses are using videos as a way to engage with their customers. So, what actually is video marketing and how can it be utilised to deliver brand growth? In this episode of the Digital Marketing Podcast, Ciaran meets with Jon Mowat, author and founder of Hurricane, a leading marketing agency that offers video strategy, production and activation. A good video marketing strategy is all about making conversation with your audience and comprises of different content types for each stage of the sales funnel. Jon explains how this can be done using three of his popular models; hero hub help go, the digital sales funnel and the fixed vs. fluid platform. Join us next week where we welcome Jon back for a second episode where we dive into understanding of why video works so well. Links
Daniel and Ciaran are back to kick off 2022 with a fresh look at planning and priorities. For the first time, we recorded this episode on video so those of you who want to watch it - now can! Daniel shares his ongoing vision of creation before curation. We explore setting some effective and smart goals and objectives for your year ahead. We also explore some of the new technologies marketers need to understand. We also have quite a heated debate on cookies and the web's reliance on them. Also under discussion on crypto and NFC’s, Daniel rails against ciaran multiple times to convince him that NFC’s are hugely important but in the end, comes to the conclusion he may be banging his head against a brick wall on that front. Finally, we wrap up with some sources of inspiration for looking at your work differently. Daniel shares with us his appreciation of Agile Marketing Management, OKR’s, Project Oxygen. Dig into the resources he shares and invigorate your year ahead with some fresh perspective. Useful Resources Target Internet Youtube Channel This episode as a video Daniel’s Strategy Statement Apple Example A- What you’ll do B- What it will be focussed on C- What it will achieve D- What the market impact will be Apple will launch a full communications assault (a) to challenge the PC/Microsoft Windows dominant position (b) by finding flaws in the PC to contrast with Mac computers’ simplicity (c) to steal significant market share by enticing frustrated consumers to buy a Mac (d). Setting S.M.A.R.T. Objectives First used in the November 1981 issue of Management Review by George T. Doran in an article entitled "There's a S.M.A.R.T. way to write management's goals and objectives". () Specific Measurable Actionable / Achievable / Attainable Realistic and Relevant Time-bound See how much this has been pulled around by different marketers TikTok GA4 Felipe Castro OKR’s Agile Marketing Management Google’s Project Oxygen Benchmark your skills
The skills required to succeed in digital marketing are constantly changing, which makes it very hard to keep up with all of these changes. So how is the marketing industry coping with developing and learning all these new skills? Daniel walks us through what Target Internet's Digital Skills Benchmark results tell us about the state of digital marketing at the start of 2022. Published in partnership with the Chartered Institute of Marketing, the 2022 edition of this report has some interesting findings. With data collated from thousands of marketers across the world, it helps us all understand our skill and knowledge gaps more clearly than ever before. Listen in for the answers and find out what the benchmark level is among your level of seniority and discover how different sectors of our industry have performed. Also under discussion, could Ciaran carry off being completely bald? We also explore, if Daniel and Ciaran were being chased by a Tiger, who would get eaten? Useful Links If you would like to benchmark your own performance you can. It only takes around 30 minutes. If you manage a team of marketing professionals, we are inviting teams of up to 30 people to benchmark their whole team (Usually we limit this to just 10.) To take advantage of this unique offer for podcast listeners, just mention you listen to the podcast in the Subscribe to our
Audience Insight Tools Daniel and Ciaran explore must-have tools for better marketing audience intelligence. These free tools will help you uncover who your website audience is and what they are interested in. Get a greater depth of understanding and clarity than your standard analytics can give you. Discover exactly what your audience do while on your website. Digital Marketing Toolkit UpdateWe all know that digital marketing can be complicated. There are so many tools, and it's hard to know which ones you should use. Our will help make navigating the marketing world easier and more effective for you. This toolkit has been put together by us after years of experience working with businesses of all sizes. It includes all-out favourite Google Chrome extensions and apps as well as some awesome free online resources you won't want to miss. We also announce our new, not to be missed, free monthly event. Make sure you have to ensure you get your invite. Useful Links Consent Permission Optimisation Podcast episode Usercentrics Quantcast Measure: Audience Intelligence Choice consent management tool Descript Audio and Video Editor Bing Webmaster Tools Microsoft Clarity SparkToro YouGov Think With Google Get Our Updated Digital Marketing Toolkit Subscribe to our Email Newsletter
Earlier this week, ethical and global cosmetics brand Lush announced their intention to shut down their activity on multiple social media platforms. “The global Lush brand will be turning its back on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and Snapchat until the platforms take action to provide a safer environment for users. This policy is rolling out across all the 48 countries where Lush operates. “ In the wake of this news, Daniel and Ciaran discuss ‘Is Social Media Toxic?” exploring different angles to the debate. For those who decide it is, what could or should be done about it? We invite listeners to get in touch with their perspectives? What are your thoughts on this subject and how is your organisation or brand intending to work the marketing mix in the current marketing environment going into 2022 and beyond. Listen in and join in the debate. Useful links Lush Press Announcement Understanding Negativity Bias Facebook Experiments into Negativity and Positivity Wall Street Journal article on leaked Social Media research Instagram’s response to the above Wall Street Journal Article CIM IAB Code of Ethics BIMA
If culture is the foundation of every successful brand, is your organisation fundamentally doomed? Does your organisation settle for inadequate employee performance, mediocre outcomes, and unremarkable earnings? It doesn’t have to be like this. We speak to Mark Miller and Ted Vaughn, the cofounders of Historic Agency about their work as a brand strategy company that helps ambitious brands do more good. They believe in mediocrity's potential for greatness through understanding culture at all levels with methods like measuring it so you can understand how your organisation functions from top-down or bottom-up, or both. The Culture of a CompanyWe explore the concepts in their Book ‘Culture Built My Brand’. Discover ways to break through the inertia to engage your team, drive better results, and attract a tribe of loyal customers—by tapping into the greatest driver of brand success: your internal company culture. Passionate about helping ambitious businesses do more good in their communities they love tackling tough problems like how best to measure culture or what actions can lead an organisation towards greatness with its customers at heart. What is Company Culture?Learn how your company culture can help you win more customers and turn them into super fans. Filled with practical steps and case study examples of culture at work, Mark and Ted share the know-how you need to tap into your company culture to create an authentic brand that stands out from the competition. Useful LInks Historic Agency Culture Built my brand Patagonia Patagonia Daycare Nasa Pumpkin Carving Contest The Netflix Keeper Test ( It is a more positive than you think) Tidal High Fidelity Music Sharing service
Are you using the right strategies to get people excited about your marketing content? Daniel and Ciaran take a deep dive into the ongoing issues around creating great Evergreen content that continually works. They explore keyword research techniques and how to create better performing titles, so your stands out among other competing organic content in its niche. Also under discussion - how to craft better hero content by making the most of your Content Calendar. Daniel shares how to further enhance e your content calendar and make use of our free, customisable Useful Resources Target Internet Content calendar Excel Template Rand Fishkin’s 10X content with examples Example of Google Analytics Certification web page Daniel discusses? Keywords Everywhere Answer the Public Target Internet Content calendar Excel Template
How well do your day to day emails work for you? How well do you think they work for those that receive them?! Do they bore or thrill? Do you always get back what you need? Face facts, a lot of those emails you rattled off in a hurry today were pretty awful and they probably had a lacklustre response. What if we could help you change all that? What if, every email you sent out today was awesome and got just the right response? We recruited international marketing, business branding and writing consultant Kim Arnold to help us all to become better communicators via email. An avid listener of the podcast, Kim, gives us a masterclass on dramatically improving the emails you send every minute of the day. This episode will inspire all who listen to be better at their craft so they can master using their work focussed emails as an instrument for change. Dramatically reduce the length of all your emails (80 words is your target!) Save vast tracts of time to do more fun things. Master writing subject lines that get results. If anyone in the team needed this, it was Ciaran! (We have many years of email evidence to back up this harsh claim.) We are happy to report that since this masterclass, Ciaran's emails have improved dramatically. Yours could too. Listen in and find out where it's all going wrong for you every time you hit send. Useful Resources Grammarly Hemingway Editor More about Kim Get Kim’s Book: Email Attraction
How can you use App Store Optimisation to improve your app store rankings? With more than a million apps available on the Apple and Google Play stores, it's hard for users to find the right one. It's even more challenging for developers to get their apps noticed in this crowded marketplace. Leading Global App Store Optimizer, Cindy Krum from Mobile Moxie, gives us a masterclass in how ASO works and how you can use it effectively as part of your overall marketing strategy. Closely related to SEO, learn what matters to the major App store search algorithms. Discover some subtle differences in how the Google Play store and the Apple IOS store use your titles, short descriptions, long descriptions, and keyword tags. Cindy also shares broader strategies on how to use App store Ads, App Pack Optimization and competitive intelligence for a more successful App marketing campaign. We explore some of the top tools that can help you assess your position in different app markets, see what's ranking where all over the world. Gain insight into why one APP might be dominating and learn new ways of getting featured. If you have an App and want to make it more findable, you won't want to miss this episode. Useful Links Sensor Tower Google Natural Language API https://cloud.google.com/natural-language App Rankalyzer https://mobilemoxie.com/tools/app-ranking-tracker/ SERPerator Tool https://mobilemoxie.com/tools/mobile-serp-test/ Page-oscope tool Follow Cindy on Twitter Mobile Marketing Book
Are you looking to transform your business? Digital transformation has been a hot buzzword in the world of business for a while now. It’s a term that describes how companies are using technology to change their operating models and become more agile, responsive, and customer-centric. But it can be hard to know where to start when it comes to digital transformation. This episode highlights a valuable resource Daniel has developed to help any business start or further refine its transformation journey. Digital transformation can be hard to break down into a series of actionable steps. This toolkit solves that. Daniel walks us through a small part of the audit process to give a taste of what’s on offer and the benefits it brings. The complete toolkit includes a detailed audit covering 14 areas to help marketers and business leaders understand all they need to focus on. So listen in and learn how it works and how it can help you to transform your business and marketing in exciting ways. We will be sharing the complete Digital Transformation Toolkit and audit questions in our next Digital Download email newsletter, so subscribe now to secure your free copy Useful Links Simplified Ten Step Digital Transformation Audit Model Audit your skills and sign up for a free account with an interactive version of the audit plus additional learning resources Get a Free Digital Marketing Skills Audit Felipe Castro free ebooks- Help with understanding and setting OKR’s Stephan Tomer Interview ( YouTube) Get the Book: Building Digital Culture: A Practical Guide to Successful Digital Transformation by Daniel Rowles and Thomas Brown.
One of the most exciting announcements at Apple's June 2021 event was that they would be updating their Mail App. As a result, Apple Mail Privacy Protection will soon be an option for Apple Mail users. For Apple Mail users it's all great news on the privacy front but for marketing it creates some issues. This feature will radically change what you can measure with your email marketing. Are you gating your content to maximise the email addresses you can gain? We explore why that tactic could quickly become a lot less effective. Discover the impact these changes will have on your email marketing this autumn. Learn what it means for your business right now and what you need to do before these changes take effect. Useful Links Read the official announcement from Apple in June: Litmus Commentary on Apple Mail changes. Includes more technical insight into how Apple's new Privacy Protection feature in Mail Apple Mail works. Get the latest Data on Global Email Client Share
Recorded just before our summer break, Daniel and Ciaran share a few of their favourite digital marketing tools from our new toolkit. This new toolkit is a collection of marketing tools curated by Daniel's students. The complete toolkit comprises some great tools that we have never mentioned before on the Podcast or Target Internet.com. We are giving it away exclusively for podcast listeners. Get your copy at Target Internet.com/podcast With the tools we share in this episode, you can research the latest and greatest marketing content and research social influencers in a geographical area for any subject. Research a website's backlinks, gain insights into what different audiences think and discuss. Discover how you can quickly create dynamic Html 5 display ads you can use anywhere by using your landing page. We also explore migrating from one website to another. Discover how backlink checking and redirection can help to stabilize your organic search engine traffic. and get even more tools to make your work easier and more fun. If you know of or use a great tool we haven't covered, please get in touch. We love to hear from listeners and always love exploring new tools. Useful Links Right Relevance research tool Seobility Audiense Wordstream Smart Ads Creator SparkToro The fastest growing social media networking 2021 article Essential peanut butter knowledge we made Ciaran read and digest shortly after this recording:
Daniel and Ciaran interview Richard Lucas, a successful business and social entrepreneur from Poland. Joined with a live studio audience of students from the Digital Leadership Programme, we explore the intersect between marketers and the entrepreneurial class. Richard has an extensive background in investing in and supporting small and medium-sized businesses. He knows the ins and outs of how to make business work as well as what can get in the way when it comes time for a company's success or failure. Richard shares invaluable insights about life, business, Investing, and marketing strategies that win over entrepreneurs. His answers to our student's questions are both entertaining and highly insightful. Discover how Richard weighs up an investable business idea. Learn to see marketing and branding through the eyes of an experienced B2B investor. We also discuss what matters to an entrepreneur, hiding your fears from your team, making payroll, and successfully managing large events. Richard leads entrepreneurship workshops at business schools, universities and schools, notably Cambridge University Judge Business School and Krakow University of Economics. He founded CAMentrepreneurs He is active in supporting community building non-profits around the world - notably Village in the City, Open Coffee High School, and Open Coffee Krakow. Useful Links networking meetings organised by and for young people networking meetings for business and social entrepreneurs building hyper local village like communities in cities supporting business and social entrepreneurship among Cambridge University alumni, students and others.
Daniel and Ciaran explore the challenges of email deliverability. It's not enough to just send emails - you need to engage your subscribers from every possible angle, starting with their first impression when they open it up! Deliverability of your emails are heavily dependent on lots of things like list size and frequency as well as the content you use in the email itself. Having a healthy and engaged subscriber list is the key to keeping your email marketing campaign afloat. Find out how you can go about curbing inactive subscribers, ensuring an optimum deliverability rate for all of your emails, and making sure that both business are safe from scammers who might want access to personal information like bank account numbers through fake invoices or surveys. We all know that it’s important to engage and enthralled your subscribers from the first send. But why is this so important? We will discuss how double opt-in processes can help you both improve deliverability while also stopping inactive subscribers and share some technical standards you should apply for better deliverability rates. Email deliverability, safety and security are all important aspects of your email marketing strategy. Luckily there are some simple steps you can take to make sure that these factors remain in tact while ensuring the best possible experience for both you and your customers. Learn how you can protect both yourself as a sender of emails (and messages) but also keep your customers and subscribers safe when they're receiving them. Get the show notes:
Did you know that with tailored AI powered recommendations, your online store might increase sales by up to 30%? Learn what AI could be doing to transform customer preferences into better outcomes for your customers and you. To be successful, retailers must personalise their customer's experiences. To make this happen, knowing the customer's preferences, intent and context are key. Learn how you can leverage machine learning techniques to personalise and improve the shopping experience for your customers. Are you still using rules-based recommendations to power your online store recommendations? Are you missing out on more intuitive analysis that could dynamically improve the personalisation you offer? Are you able to auto catalogue your new products, or are they all catalogued manually still? Can you analyse sentiment in reviews at scale? Explore what to expect and what's possible with AI in the e-commerce space. We also explore where AI may go next and highlight some of the disruptive challenges that all-knowing AI may highlight. Useful Links If you would like to know more about this technology, CartUp AI has produced a helpful guide to complement this interview. Download it here CartUp AI
Is your CRM the great joy or your day or the bain of it? Does your CRM build relationships or hamper them? Marketers are always looking for new ways to optimise their marketing efforts. And often, they turn to CRM systems like Salesforce and HubSpot to do so. In this episode, we explore the benefits of these systems. Can you seamlessly pull together your content management, your email marketing and customer communications? As marketers, we have been on a long and often painful journey with various CRM systems. Choosing the right platform is crucial, but often you end up with something that doesn't quite meet the growing needs of your organisation. Having worked with many different systems over the years, we explore why it's so important to get this one right. As first-party data becomes increasingly important, you can't afford to be without the right CRM. We share our recent journey migrating to HubSpot's CRM and all the benefits that it has brought to our business. Useful Links Sign up for our Marketing Download Email newsletter KInsta Web Hosting Hubspot Salesforce.com Get in Touch
Daniel and Ciaran share some of their favourite recently discovered tools for helping you with email. Discover a more efficient way for tracking all your competitor's email programmes. Learn how to create more effective emails signatures which look amazing. Need more time for your email? Check out the world's Best No Generator. (Well, possibly the world's best. this is the first 'no' generator we have come across.) We also indulge in some fun AI for crafting creative subject lines or headlines. As a bonus tool, we also share a way to get insight into any public-facing Twitter account. OK, it's not email related, but we found it while researching this episode and just had to share it. Know of other fun marketing email-related tools we missed featuring? Please get in touch with the details. We always love hearing about and testing out new tools you find useful. Useful Links Bruce Forsythe Sendview Email campaign Monitoring Gmail Promotion Annotations Probably The Worlds best 'No' generator Litmus Scope Email Capture WiseStamp Email signature generator Calendly Litmus Blog Our Recent Writing Tips and tools episode Active Campaign Subject Line generator
For marketing, words are everything. But how often do you take the time to ensure your copy is speaking on behalf of you and your company the best way it possibly can? Celebrating over 3 million podcast downloads, Ciaran and Daniel explore writing tools and techniques to help you boost your marketing efforts. Are you fine-tuning your written and copywriting skills to give your marketing messages the best chance of being read? If your words don't get read, they might as well not be there. So in this episode, we explore tools, techniques and creative ways to improve your writing and better engage your audience. Spurred on by our big focus this year on conversion rate optimisation, Ciaran has been on a recent learning drive to seek out tried and tested techniques to give your writing the boost it deserves. We have also been experimenting with some great writing tools that help ensure your writing is technically correct and easier to read. We also explore a few tried and tested classic copywriting formulas that can help to bring both clarity and conversion improvements to your copy. Useful Links Sign up for our for more tips and tools.
"Here's how to get good at strategy: words. Start with words, continue with words, and finish with words. You have one job - get good at words." Mark Pollard is a man driven by uncovering the truth. A marketing strategist and podcasting legend he's developed his own unique way to simplify complex strategies. Mark Pollard is used to going off-script when he's not satisfied with something--even if that means offending people or really making them sweat till he gets closer to uncovering the truth he searches for. Ciaran experienced first hand the tremendous power of the '5 Whys" technique, just one of many in Mark's toolkit. Mark shares his own refreshingly different approach to marketing strategy. Learn how he simplifies complex strategies to get at their core bones quickly. Learn how to get to the heart of an issue quickly by using your words as guidance rather than reading lengthy reports or consulting other marketers in an endless round of multi-layered strategy meetings. Want to approach your strategy better? All this and more on this week's Digital Marketing Podcast. Useful Links
"Here's how to get good at strategy: words. Start with words, continue with words, and finish with words. You have one job - get good at words." Mark Pollard is a man driven by uncovering the truth. A marketing strategist and podcasting legend he's developed his own unique way to simplify complex strategies. Mark Pollard is used to going off-script when he's not satisfied with something--even if that means offending people or really making them sweat till he gets closer to uncovering the truth he searches for. Ciaran experienced first hand the tremendous power of the '5 Whys" technique, just one of many in Mark's toolkit. Mark shares his own refreshingly different approach to marketing strategy. Learn how he simplifies complex strategies to get at their core bones quickly. Learn how to get to the heart of an issue quickly by using your words as guidance rather than reading lengthy reports or consulting other marketers in an endless round of multi-layered strategy meetings. Want to approach your strategy better? All this and more on this week's Digital Marketing Podcast. Useful Links
Discover Consent Optimisation Whether you're a large company or small business, the dreaded cookie consent message has become an inevitable annoyance. But it doesn't have to be! Ciaran speaks to Usercentrics, who help companies achieve data permission and compliance that's in harmony with your marketing strategy. Learn how they are changing the way we think about permissions and ensure that everyone is compliant with GDPR and other privacy regulations. Although cookie permissions can be a nuisance to many, they are important and necessary. There are so many potential points of failure on a website, and as the owner, you might be violating user privacy law without even realising it. A good consent management platform enables you to harmonise your marketing and data strategy with legal requirements. Learn 7 GDPR Positive steps Usercentrics use that will keep your users privacy safe and their permissions effectively managed and up to date. Get A Free AuditManaging user permissions and remaining compliant is tough, but Usercentrics offers an easy to implement and compliant way to help you achieve the highest optimisation levels for your website. Request a free audit for your website by emailing Zofia and telling her you listen to The Digital Marketing Podcast and would like some help. Email Useful Links California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) CCPA checklist GDPR compliance Brexit and Cookie Consent Google Consent mode Browser plugins for tracking what is being tracked
Ciaran talk's to Jon Henshaw about 'Core Web Vitals,' Google's favourite new way to measure website performance and user experience. Come May 2021 these metrics will soon influence Google's search algorithm. Learn what Core Web vitals are, why they matter, and how you can measure up your own website to see how it performs using . As the founder of Raven Tools and an expert SEO practitioner, Jon Henshaw is an excellent guide on why this new bunch of measurements matter. Jon has a whole host of ideas and suggestions that can help you to prepare for Google's anxiously anticipated search algorithm update. Listen in and learn what you can do to improve how your site might perform after this 'core web vitals' search algorithm update. Jon also shares with us why he has gone from disliking Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) to embracing the format as a useful feature rich toolset. If you work with a large team of Developers, AMP can help ensure your website stays fast and efficient no matter who is working on it. There are other ways to speed things up and improve, but these won't necessarily stay in place as the site evolves. Listen in for Jon's top tips and resources for making AMP work or taking an alternative non AMP approach to a faster, better website experience. Useful Links Visit and see how your website or those of your competitors stack up to Googles New Core Web Metrics measurements. And for those of you who, like Ciaran, were wondering… it turns out Kludgy is a word! Who knew ;-)
Ciaran talks to Karl Blanks, Co-founder of Conversion Rate Experts and co-author of bestselling CRO book ‘Making Websites Win.’ Karl shares with us their latest big idea, 'The Triple R Technique,' and walks us through how to use it. What Is The Triple R Technique? ‘You can progress much faster if you increase the rate at which you explore avenues and abandon the dead ends.’ Karl shares a simple but incredibly powerful process developed at Conversion Rate Experts to do precisely that. Triple R is a simple, agile and dynamic process and will help you avoid obvious pitfalls. It guides you to find the best way to reduce the risks of your projects failing. Karl shares with us a wealth of smart insights into working more efficiently as a team. Are you protecting everyone in your team from making the same mistakes? Are you syncing with reality as frequently as possible? Is there someone who has tackled something similar that you can learn from? Do you collate all your ideas for a project and rank them on ease of implementation and likelihood to double results? Are you breaking your project down into 'ROI Positive Bitesized Chunks?' We also explore how playbooks can be a great way of boosting the popularity of Standard operating procedures. See an example of this for Webinars [] Learn about Mary's Meals, a fantastic charity, supported by the team at Conversion Rate Experts. Mary’s Meals provides life-changing meals to some of the world's poorest children every day they attend school. Useful Links and get a free copy of their book.
Ciaran talks with Puneet Vaghela, head of innovation at Adzooma about PPC campaigns and how to optimise and refresh your PPC campaigns. Adzooma specialise in creating ai that helps marketers, so we thought their head of innovation would be the ideal person to explore what all marketers can do to further optimise and improve their Ad campaigns. Want to try something new in 2021 rather than stick with what you know and usually do? We explore some of the neglected channels marketers perhaps haven't explored. Have you tidied up the changes made to your account during the holiday season? Are you using audiences effectively? Are you targeting your campaigns as well as you could? Are you improving your ad campaign landing pages, so they convert better? You don't have to use AI to optimise your campaigns. There is a whole wealth of ideas anyone active with pay per click ads could put into practice. We also explore the recently announced changes to Google's keyword matching and talk about the pro's and cons of this big change to how you reach your audience effectively. Listen in and grab a whole bunch of ideas for ways you could further optimise your PPC campaigns for success in 2021. Useful Links Adzooma AI for PPC https://bit.ly/get-adzooma Google's match type keyword change announcement https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/10286719?hl=en-GB Microsoft Ads https://ads.microsoft.com/ How To Create a Winning PPC Strategy for 2021 https://adzooma.grsm.io/tidmpr1 3 Powerful PPC Automation Rules to Start 2021 Right https://adzooma.grsm.io/tidmpr2 How Agencies Use Adzooma https://adzooma.grsm.io/tidmpr3
Daniel and Ciaran cover some bonus material from our recent interview on email marketing. Ciaran explores Philip Storey's predictions for what may develop to fruition in the email marketing space in 2021, including Amp for Email. Also, Philip shares with us an email fantasy he has around pay-to-subscribe emails from brands. Could that become a thing? Stranger things have happened, and it is an interesting idea. If the content is strong enough, then why not? Useful Links Enchant Agency Amp for Email Mark Robbins Runderwear Mark Pollard-The Four Points The Morning Brew
Catch up on what's now on offer from the top email service providers for those looking to up their game on email marketing. Does your ESP still make the grade, or are they holding you back? Philip Storey from Enchant Agency spills the beans on what's hot in the email tech world. Philip shares how some of the brands he works with are using email to solve complex customer problems. We also explore the myth of the customer journey. Could you improve simplify that overall 'sequential journey' by viewing online interactions as a series of micro experiences? Learn about the strategy and technology successful brands are using to engage their audiences better. Explore what's now possible with an integrated website and email automation and a new range of services innovative esp's are developing to improve what's possible. Useful Links Enchant Agency Exponea Emarsys Klaviyo MailChimp Runderwear
How much of your PPC budget gets spent on clicks from people or machines with no intention of buying or converting? Daniel and Ciaran explore the tricky issue of click fraud and how you can help to prevent it. We interview Ilan Missulawin, founder at , one of a growing number of companies who help detect and filter out fraudulent search ad clicks on Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising campaigns. As you will learn, there are all sorts of keyword neighbourhoods that can experience ad click fraud for multiple reasons. Competitors, brand haters, accidental clicks, and even click farms can all increase your ad costs and deplete your daily budget if you let them. Learn how you can help to protect your ad spend using AI software which can automate the process and help prevent your ads from showing to sources of invalid clicks in the first place. Both Google Ads and Microsoft advertising provide help and support to help you catch and stop invalid clicks on your campaigns, and we have directed you to some of their support materials below. Useful Links Other click fraud prevention services you might find of interest:
Daniel and Ciaran are back for the new year and re-evaluating their focus and what is important for 2021 and the new year ahead. Daniel shares his journey into taming his email inbox, which this year has involved an interesting strategic approach rather than one tool to fix things. The results, as you will hear, have been dramatically positive. Ciaran finally gets tough on link building emails. We also share our thoughts on the importance of conversion rate optimisation and the dangers of just focusing on conversion at all costs. The cost can be way higher than you think. Listen in and learn how to navigate the fine line of conversion rate optimization success. Action this and 2021 might just be the year you fall back in love with your customers, or at least start to understand them better. Useful Links Hubspot The 5 AM Miracle Kinsta Wordpress Website Hosting Screaming Frog SEO Spider Recomendo Tim Ferris Blog Conversion Rate Experts Google Search Console Core Web Vital Reports Google Page Speed Insights Marketing Download Email Newsletter
Daniel and Ciaran share the last of their Yulekit tools. Today we share a resource so powerful and useful dare not actually share its name. Used in the right way, this tool really can supercharge your social sharing. The trick as with many things in digital marketing is to make sure that what you are sharing is of excellent quality and useful. ( Caution: It won't work on content where you are 'overly sales-y' or heavily promotional.) We have been using this tool successfully for the last 18 months, and it's so good we have been reluctant to share it for fear that too many users might break it as a method. This year alone, it's helped us to promote 38 different content pieces and achieved over 42 thousand social shares and over 11 thousand clicks to our content across various social networks. Best of all it meant our content got seen by 17 million people! `So, you can imagine we thought long and hard about if we should share it and if so how we would share. As this is our final day of the Yulekit podcasting marathon, we settled on sharing the link for those of you who bother with the show notes. Yes, that's you! So go take a peak and scope it out. We also share the Wayback machine, and some of the useful things it does that can boost your day and your understanding of your marketing results. Daniel also shares some hidden gem features of the tool, including audio archives and retro games archive of working emulators with software. If you get some quiet time over the holiday period its a great way to indulge in some retro nostalgia. Useful Links Super Charge Your Social Sharing With This tool: The Way back machine Wayback Machine Audio Archive Wayback Machine Retro arcade Enjoyed the show this year? Please Leave Us A Review
Day 11 of our Yulekit 12 days of Christmas. Daniel and Ciaran share some of their favourite conversion rate optimisation tools and resources. Pay careful attention. We believe this episode and the advice it contains could make a radical difference to the results you all deliver over the next 12 months if you follow the advice and learning we recommend. Best of all the advice and the resources we are directing you to are free so you really have nothing to loose. Useful Links Convert Flow TypeForm JotForm SurveyMonkey Conversion Rate Experts Making Websites Win Audio Book Making Websites win Ebook Loved the book?- Donate to Mary’s Meals and help alleviate child hunger:
Daniel and Ciaran explore useful tools that automate checking important things at scale to drive improved performance in your digital campaigns. Daniel shares TheChecker which can be used to clean up your email lists. Doing this can save you money, but it can also dramatically improve your open rates and click-through rates for email campaigns. Nobody wants people on their list who are never going actually to get the email you sent in the first place. TheChecker can help you to clean up your lists, avoid ESP blockages and help to protect your sender reputation. Try it out and see if you can improve email inbox deliverability and campaign ROI. For some free credits to try it out, just the link below. Ciaran explores how AI developed by Adzooma can help to improve and nurture your PPC campaigns on Google Ads, Microsoft Ads and Facebook Ads. If you are looking for a digital assistant that can look over your campaigns and suggest things you could do to improve their performance, then take this tool for a spin. Using innovative AI and machine learning, this tool can create, optimise and track the performance of your digital advertising campaigns in just a few clicks, and for free. Useful Links TheChecker Adzooma Advertising AI Assistant Mailchimp's Email Benchmark Report
Daniel shares with us an amazing tool for creating AI generated Video from a script, and ciaran’s mind goes into overdrive dreaming up ways to use this technology creatively in your marketing. We also explore some of the potential pitfalls and ethical questions around using such ‘fake real’ tech. We don’t think it’s quite ready to completely fool the real world yet but it is to our mind ‘fully functional’ and ‘perfectly operational’ as Synthesia’s brilliant beta shows. It’s only a matter of time before real and virtual have very little to differentiate each other. Will technology like this usher in a whole host of virtual personalities? Check out Sythesia’s amazing demo and make your own mind up. The Father Christmas Message has endless possibilities and we have had huge amounts of fun with it so definitely check it out. Useful Links Synthesia.io Santa Message Demo https://www.synthesia.io/santa Synthesis.io Max Headroom Paranoimia by The Art of Noise Staring Max Headroom https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6epzmRZk6UU
Daniel and Ciaran explore their favourite social media listening and monitoring tools and discuss how brands and organisations can get the most out of them. With these tools, you very much get what you pay for. You can of course opt for the all singing and all dancing Brandwatch which really is in a class of its own. However, there are also some great entry-level and mid-level tools that can cover a lot of ground with social listening without blowing your budget. Useful links Brandwatch Brand24 Learn about Social Listening with Hootsuite Mention.com Also, check out Mention's library of resources which packed full of useful educational content on social listening best practice. Don't miss the Brandwatch blog, packed full of learning, best practice and up to date insights and trends.
Daniel and Ciaran take a fresh look at SE Ranking, Our favourite, complete SEO Tool Suite. We use this for all our SEO reporting and focus and have done for many years now. SE Ranking has really come of age this year with a recent overhaul and upgrade of the entire suite. It’s now so much more than just a ranking tool, and it offers all sorts of useful data sets and features at a price everyone can afford. We explore some of the highlights and features we love. If you haven’t already, check out their free demo of the full suite which has lots of useful functionality without you having to set it all up. If only more tool providers did this. In particular, take a look at the Keyword research functionality, which enables you to look at both Organic results and PPC competitor keyword research. We think it’s ace and we hope you will too. Useful Links SE Ranking Try Out SE Ranking Keyword Research Tool Try out the SE Ranking Demo Digital Leadership Programme
Daniel and Ciaran explore VidIQ, a plugin for Chrome and Firefox that gives you a detailed SEO analysis of any video you watch on Youtube. Explore with us how you can use this to analyse your videos to help them surface and get found. It is also amazing to analyse other's videos that are ranking highly in YouTube search. Doing this will teach you a lot about what matters to YouTube and also give a good indication of which videos you might be able to knock off their top spot without too much effort. Useful Links VidIQ plugin Keywords Everywhere Listen to our earlier Interview with VidIQ
Daniel and Ciaran discuss the Oculus Quest 2, the new virtual reality headset from Facebook. If you have only ever experienced mobile phone-based virtual reality, this device is an utter revelation. It's a fantastic gaming platform and a tremendous amount of fun. Nothing you have experienced to date using your mobile phone even comes close to what this hardware can do. We have been exploring how we might use the Oculus Quest 2 for commercial applications. Hear what we found and what surprised us about this incredible piece of hardware. Are virtual reality and mixed reality about to come of age? Will Facebook's new soon to be released Infinite Office change the world remote working and virtual workspaces for the better? Want to join an Oculus Quest Virtual Training Session? Email Ciaran if have an Oculus Quest and want to try out a planning workshop using Spatial. We will pick at random ten listeners who respond before 1st January 2021, so get in touch. Useful Links Oculus Quest 2 https://www.oculus.com/quest-2/ Space Pirate Trainer Virtual Reality Meeting platform Infinite Office Promotional Video
Today we are going to cover a tool we mention a lot, but with a difference. Daniel and Ciaran explore what advantages the offers anyone looking to up their content marketing game. Upgrading to Pro gives you lots of value-added features you won't have seen in the free version you have probably all used. For a start, you get unlimited searches, but for one monthly fee, you also get unlimited users for your organisation. Daniel also shares how you can work this into your content marketing workflow to win lots of additional organic traffic. Daniel highlights that we should all be careful with overly invasive dynamic calls to action which obscure the content users are trying to read. Head his wise words. Both Google and users dislike them! See you all again tomorrow. Useful Links
Daniel and Ciaran share the third of their Yulekit tools. Today we are exploring Datareportal.com, a fantastic compilation of marketing stats on digital audience behaviour covering both global and country specific digital trends. With both global, country-specific and specialist reports and data going back to 2012, this is a marketing data gold mine for anyone creating a digital strategy. With the whole archive now keyword searchable on the reportal.com website, it's even easier to find the data you need to support your strategic approach. Useful Links Data Reportal Statista Paul R Smith's SOSTAC® planning model 'You looked at the Show Notes' bonus! Not mentioned in this recording but also super useful, take a look at YouGov which publishes lots of searchable research and data on global public opinion. Just Visit:
Daniel and Ciaran are back with the second of their yuletide tools. Today, Daniel shares with us an exciting toolkit for upgrading your team's skills. January is always a great time for getting plans like this into place, so we thought many of you would find this super useful. It's everything you could need to audit, monitor and improve your own and your team's digital skills. Daniel also shares some of the challenges we've been having with our CRM system and Ciaran goes overboard with a Rocky training analogy. Are you enjoying our Yulekit tools? Please share any episodes you love on social channels or leave us a review. If you make use of the toolkit, we would love your views on anything in it you think could be better. Contact us with your feedback. Useful Links Rocky Theme Tune (Just in case you need it.) Get In Touch Download our Digital Upskilling Guide for Teams Sign up for our Digital Marketing Download Email if you haven't already:
Daniel and Ciaran launch the first in our festive podcast marathon mini series. Over the next 12 days, each day we will be bringing you a new tool or shedding some fresh light on the occasional old favourite we haven't yet given enough airplay. Daniel also announces the launch of our new email newsletter, 'The Digital Download.' This weekly email newsletter will bring you three key things we think are important. No sales message, no product pushing, just helpful useful bite-sized digestible and actionable content. Initially limited to the first 2000 subscribers, sign up quick to avoid missing out. All subscribers will be sent a copy of our updated Digital Marketing Toolkit. Don't miss this. The Toolkit is packed full of all the tools we love, make use of and highly recommend. See you all again tomorrow :-) Useful Links
We speak to Gil Kahana, Co-Founder of innovative brand ChattyFeet. 8 years ago Gil quit a successful career as a user experience designer to start “ChattyFeet”. The idea was simple. Create socks with illustrated characters that make people feel fun and happy. It grew from an amusing vision Gil had while at a party, staring at his own plain socks and imagining them animated with characters. So many of us have great ideas but unlike the majority of us, ChattyFeet co-founders Gil & Humberto relentlessly pursued this idea and turned it into a successful brand. We explore some of the lessons Gil learned steering this fun start up down a path to greater things. From product development to marketing, Gil shares with us some of the secrets that have helped their brand grow. Discover how they developed their product range from customer insight, and how they used crowdfunding to secure that all important main customer audience. We ask ‘can socks become viral?’ and explore ‘Socks’ as a medium of self expression. If this sounds fun then you should really take a look at ChattyFeet’s product range. Just a quick glance is guaranteed to put a smile on your face and inspire you to an act of unfettered sock self expression. Useful Links Visit or their new - in a relationship with the British Vogue. This is their post. ChattyFeet Christmas hits 2020: , and
When posting on social media, does video really get a higher amount of attention than static images? Video is fantastic for telling stories but what tools can you use to help you create video that helps to stand out on social channels? Daniel and Ciaran Investigate. Over the last few months we been playing around with static images on social vs video and have seen some remarkable results. Ciaran shares exactly how we are doing this, which tools we are using plus top tips on what we have found works. Since recording this we have been trying shorter form videos in the 8-9 second range as discussed. So far the longer variations are performing better. The things one learns when you take the trouble to test! Ciaran also shares an set theory he has on video helping to drive better engagement on web pages. Does adding video help pages to rank because it drives up engagement? Ciaran thinks it does and shares with us why. Download our Final Cut Pro Headliner
As we count down to this year's Ad World Conference in November, we speak to conference speaker Anthony Sarandrea, one of North America's top lead generation experts. Anthony shares with us how his team build and scale social ad campaigns that pull in business at scale. Discover the methodology and formula he uses to create Ad campaigns that drive qualified leads for his clients. Learn how they focus on their audiences needs rather than relying on brand and product features to drive profitable campaigns for their clients. What Anthony shares with us are hyper-effective yet straightforward techniques that anyone can follow. Do You understand who you are trying to reach so you can design campaigns to target them with a relevant and tailored message that meets their needs? Are your campaigns failing because they are just too broadly targeted, too dull or both? Are your Ad hooks strong enough to stop the never-ending scroll on social platforms? Could you grab a prospect's interest without even mentioning your brand or service? Listen in and learn some new ways to approach using social media to reach a more targeted, qualified and valuable audience for your organisation. Ad World Conference 2020 Anthony is just one of over 100 inspirational speakers who will be talking at this year's 3 day online conference. Between the 2nd and 4th of November Ad World will stream 15+ Digital Advertising Tracks, consisting of hyper-focused speeches, workshops and live Q&A sessions all designed to help take your business to the next level. Digital Marketing Podcast listeners can get 15% off tickets this year by using the code DMP to get your discount. To find out more, and book your team tickets visit . Useful Links
Want to learn how we boosted our social engagement 1700% with one social post? "You need this!…." :-) In this episode, we share some of the ways we have been trying to up our game when engaging social and advertising audiences. We all know how vital engaging our audience is. Our content marketing relies on it. Despite this knowledge, how much effort are we putting into finding better ways to grab more of our audience's attention so we can drive up engagement and cut through all the online digital noise? Ciaran and Daniel explore how we can drive up engagement with our marketing. We also investigate what we have learned from experimenting more with our headlines and social posts. Learn some of the secrets of Effective headlines, and discuss effective trigrams which we found boosted engagement performance 300%. Armed with these techniques, you really can gain greater insight into what engages your social audiences. We also explore making use of Power words and Emotional spectrums to drive engagement and help your content and advertising campaigns stand out. Ciaran shares with us how he has been using Twitter video cards and Twitter Ads to multi-variant test social media content and text to find the most effective combination to drive audience engagement. We also discuss clickbait sand how some of the techniques employed by the worst clickbait offenders can be turned around and used for a compelling campaign message. The trick is to deliver on the promise you set up with your enticing or juicy headline/post. Useful Links Perfect headlines article which started all of this. Jon Morrow's Power Words Article Download A Power Words Crib sheet Robert Plutchik's Wheel of Emotion Target Internet Guide to Using Twitter Cards Ciaran's lack lustre video effort Louise's Video which engaged brilliantly Try the Lumen5 Video Maker ( More on this coming soon)
We talk to Mike Baxter, a renowned strategy expert about effective personal and organisation strategy. Mike has spent over 20 years delivering independent front-line consultancy to some of the world's leading companies like Google, Sony Playstation, Cisco and HSBC. Ciaran explores with Mike, what effective strategy looks like, and what kind of environments can accelerate or poison great strategies. Mike shares with us practical steps all of us can take to better align ourselves with all manner of strategies. No matter where you are in an organisational structure, Mike believes we all have a very real opportunity to improve and accelerate results both as individuals and as part of a larger team and organisation. Learn how to adapt and thrive in the changing and challenging environment of 2020 and beyond. How can you leverage on your boss's strategy and or your boss's boss's strategy to achieve further recognition for your own efforts? What are you doing to make your part in what happens a crucial and celebrated success? Mike's new book, "The Strategy Manual: A step-by-step guide to the transformational change of anything", launches on the 28th of September and draws on his many years of expertise and thought leadership. It's a practical handbook for anyone with an interest in the development, management or governance of strategy. Sign up to receive to use in your presentations and strategy documentation. On sign up you'll receive the first of these models and all other models from September. Useful Links Sign up for the Strategy resources Find Mike on LinkedIn
Want some new and refreshing perspective on what really matters to Google Search in 2020? If growing organic traffic and updating your SEO strategy is important to you, then listen up. We speak to Will Critchlow about all things SEO A/B Testing. As a Co-Founder and CEO of Distilled, an award-winning global marketing agency, CEO of SearchPilot and now SEO Partner at Brainlabs, Will is one of the top global practitioners of SEO testing with years of experience under his belt. Will walks us through what SEO A/ B testing is and how it works. He shares some of the lessons he and his team have learned as they rake through the worlds best SEO hunches to prove statistically, which work and which suck . Many things haven't changed in the SEO world for years, but as you will learn, when you start to test out received SEO wisdom scientifically, you can get some surprising outcomes. Still think Javascript is no longer an issue for Google's Indexing? Still referencing H1's and H2's changes in your SEO audits? Obsessing about Alt tags? Do your title tags still matter? Should you or an expert re-write them? Is Schema Markup really a powerful thing? Do voice search results impact on SEO? Do Meta Descriptions still add SEO value? Intelligent and erudite answers to all these questions and more are waiting for you in this episode. Discover how you can apply SEO A/B testing to your own website if you have enough content and trafficWill shares tips on how to go about experimenting to find winning formulas on smaller sites. We also pick Will's brains on what his SEO crystal ball predicts for the SEO landscape over the next 12-24 months. Useful Links Find Will Critchlow on Twitter Brainlabs Distilled SearchPilot SeachLove Conference Causal Impact Emily Potter's presentation John Campbell's slides on Voice Search:
Tasked with a question and a link from one of our listeners, Ciaran and Daniel explore their thoughts on asking "How?' and "How well online advertising works?" We explore programmatic advertising's tendency to just bombard people with ads they ignore. We also explore if advertising is an Art or a Science. We also explore if Digital can work in isolation, as Ciaran shares the results of an interesting experiment, he ran for a large UK brand. Exactly how can organisations better understand the relationship between advertising and customers needs wants and resulting behaviour in both the real world and Offline? Are we all so focussed on digital and big data that we miss the bigger picture? All this and more explored through multiple rants from both Daniel and Ciaran on The Digital Marketing Podcast. As always, we welcome your thoughts and feedback on this episode. Agree with what we have said? Found this episode useful? Disagree strongly or have examples of your own work that shows things aren't always as clear cut? Share and add to the debate. Get in touch. Useful Links Read the Article Andre sent us which spawned our debate https://thecorrespondent.com/100/the-new-dot-com-bubble-is-here-its-called-online-advertising Get in touch https://www.targetinternet.com/contact/
Ciaran speaks to Matt Barnett- founder and CEO of Bonjoro, a platform that helps organisations communicate effectively with individual customers via asynchronous video. Bonjoro has been designed to help you boost customer engagement with perfectly timed personal videos. Matt walks us through how businesses are using personal video messages delivered via email to engage and reward customers and to help them take the next steps in their journey as a new or existing customer. Integrate Bonjoro with your existing CRM workflows to send truly personal videos at just the right moments in your customers journey. Matt shares with Ciaran practical ways marketers can start making use of Bonjoro technology to reach their goals. This type of video is different from other video formats you may have employed. It's quick, informal, it's recorded on the fly, and it has honesty and transparency written all over it for your customers. Matt also shares how you can apply these techniques at scale. If you haven't tried using one to one video for greater customer engagement, then take a look at what Bonjoro offers and evaluate how it might be a game-changer for your organisation. Useful Links Bonjoro Bonjoro's video funnel playbook Superfans by Pat Flynn
We speak to Mark Whitman from Guernsey, who runs Contentellect, a creative content agency helping people build content that not only ranks but that converts. Mark talks us through SEO for Affiliates. It's much like Search Engine Optimisation as we all know it but with a massive amount of competition. As we will learn, to succeed in the affiliate world, you really need to sharpen your keyword focus and SEO skills. Ciaran talks to Mark about what they are finding work and also what steps they follow when trying to get affiliate content to rank organically in the search engines. Listen in and learn how Mark and his team do this and what they have learned works in 2020. How do they go about finding phrases at the near purchase or purchase stage of the user's search journey? For anyone looking to create passive income from Affiliate marketing, this interview is going to be of interest, bit for any brands working with Affiliate marketers. We think you just might be inspired by how Affiliate SEO's go about finding their keywords and using competitors to identify niche content areas you might explore. Mark explores how to compete in the SERPs when increasingly Google serves up ever more content directly to the user as they request it. Learn how you can structure your content and Schema to make your content more visible to users organically plus a whole bunch of useful tips to help your content get noticed. Useful Links Contentellect Website The 4 Hour Work Week by Tim Ferris SERP's Eye Tracker Study Using H Tags/ Header Tags for SEO Featured Snippets WordPress Header and Footer Plugin Google Search Console Inspect URL tool? A-HREFS
Daniel and Ciaran have been exploring what Twitter offers anyone looking to make use of the social network for sharing content and promotions. Ciaran explores how you can make use of more of Twitter's visual features. We've been experimenting with different types of Twitter Cards. Learn what you can do with them and why they are so useful. We explore the promotional mechanisms in Twitter, including Promoted Accounts, Twitter Promote Mode and Promoted Trends. We also explore the multitude of Ad targeting within Twitter, which are powerful and flexible. Have you set up your brands Twitter Pixel? If you want to reach the people who matter to you on Twitter, then you should. We have also been experimenting with what paid for promotion can do for a brands visibility. We all know how poor organic reach can be on social. A little bit of experimentation on Social Ads and promotion has caused us to rethink our social strategies around different social platforms. If you consider the time and effort that goes into your content, why wouldn't you put a marketing plan and budget around every piece you are producing? Ciaran also shares a new tool for creating google analytics tracking. For a long time, we've been using Googles UTM code, and like many marketers, we have a collection of spreadsheet and Google Sheet tools which we put to use when required, but armed with, UTM.io you can finally put the usual UTM code and spreadsheet chaos behind you. Check it out. Useful Links Twitter Ads Facebook Attribution UTM.io
Reuben Milne travels the world, helping marketers from some of the globe's most prominent organisations give better presentations. From corporate keynotes to intensely personal TED-style talks, over the last ten years, Reuben has helped hundreds of speakers translate their thinking into compelling, memorable presentations that resonate for audiences large and small across a vast range of sectors. Join this free masterclass on how to be a better presenter as Reuben shares with Ciaran his top tips. Learn the secrets of delivering fresh, creative, exciting content in a fun and engaging way. Learn what we can learn from master storytellers. From big keynote speeches to smaller one on one meetings or remote presentations, these tips and techniques can help you to have a memorable and positive impact on your audiences. Useful Links Reuben's website 'Made to Stick' by Chip and Dan Heath The Orkney Story Telling Festival Follow Reuben on LinkedIn
Daniel and Ciaran explore the recent announcement from Google that they will be changing how their Algorithm works from 2021. We've never seen them give this much detail this much in advance of an Algorithm change, so we think this could have a big impact when it rolls out. Daniel explores what it is and what we now need to look at in order to ensure our websites continue to feature in google's Serps for 2021 and beyond. Learn how Google announced this, what they have said, and how you can start to measure how your website sizes up to the new measurements Google say they are going to be using. For some of you, this is going to require lots of developer input and time so its well worth understanding. Useful Links Google Web Vitals Announcement Chromium Blog on Web Vitals Web Vitals Chrome Plugin Google Search Console Squoosh App Manual - reduce image file sizes GTMetrix Google Speed Test Benchmark Your Skills Benchmark Your Team
Daniel shares with us some key insights and findings from Target Internet's digital marketing skills benchmark. The digital marketing skills benchmark assesses your digital skills in a variety of digital marketing disciplines against industry standards and best practice according to main job focus, level of seniority and industry sector. Using data from an additional 3876 respondents, Daniel explores what's changed since we last published the report in 2018. The more we dug into the data and segmented it, the greater the insights into how digital marketing knowledge amongst marketers is spread. How hot is the analytics knowledge in your sector of the marketing industry? How up to speed are you on search, social media or usability? Has the industry grown in confidence and abilities since 2018 or is the pace of change diluted the knowledge we have? Is your organisation supporting a culture of learning for all of your marketers including decision-makers at middle to senior management and board level? We see plenty of evidence that many sectors of the industry are not. Listen in to hear which sectors are falling behind or just treading water and which are pushing their knowledge and skills ahead. Learn how the knowledge balance is shifting as younger more junior members of the marketing team like Graduates, Interns and Junior Execs are growing their knowledge, whilst more senior managers appear to be struggling to stay on top of the pace of change in the digital marketing landscape. Useful Links Get the Full Benchmark Report Benchmark your own skills Request a team Benchmark for your whole marketing team Upgrade your knowledge and skills with our e-learning library free for 30 days.
It's been 10 years since we launched the Digital Marketing Podcast, so we thought we would reflect on some of the changes in digital marketing and revisit the tools we highlighted in our very first episode a decade ago. As all but one of them are no longer with us, we revisit what 2020 offers marketers looking to achieve the same ends. In this episode, we share 30 of our favourite digital marketing tools and resources we regularly make use of or have recently discovered. Discover some great ways to aid your keyword and market research, research influencers, improve your podcast and video editing. Monitor Social media, blogs, and competitors improve your email marketing and up your analytics game. Also under discussion, Daniel's lockdown fitness and the shocking secret to Ciaran's apparent access to the mythical fountain of youth. We've tried to include something for everyone in this special anniversary episode, and we hope these gifts from us to all our listeners will be excitedly unwrapped and played with. ( We think that's one of the great joys of tenth birthday!) As promised, we are also including a free copy of The Digital Marketing Toolkit. Especially updated to go out with this episode, its packed full of even more free goodies and resources with explanations of what each tool does and how it can be used. Enjoy. Useful Links SEO tools Soovle Keywords Everywhere Keywordtool.io Answer the Public Twinword Ideas Older interface Twinword Ideas New Interface Social Media Monitoring Klear Sparktoro Sparkscore Sparktoro Upfluence Upfluence Chrome Plugin Market Research Google Alerts Coggle Datareportal Statista Feedly Inoreader Analytics Spurious Correlations Website Facebook Attribution tool Advanced Google Annotations Chrome Plugin Email Tools Email Client Market Share Litmus Scope Litmus Email Template library Mail Tester SEMRush Social Media Poster Google My Business Podcasting Libsyn Podcast Hosting Descript Libsyn The Feed Podcast My Podcast Reviews The Podosphere- Yes. In case you were wondering... It's a thing. 12 Ways to Rank your Podcast Higher Podcast Marketing Strategy Book Audit Your Digital Teams Skills To celebrate our anniversary we are offering all our listeners a free team digital marketing skills audit for up to 10 people in your team. The audit enables you to benchmark your team's digital marketing knowledge against others in the marketing industry. Find out more about our benchmark skills assessment and get your free audit here: Have a can't live without tool or tip you think we should take a look at? Please get in touch. As always, we welcome your feedback and comments and we always love it when listeners get in touch so what are you waiting for?
We speak to children's activity book author Dawn Isaac about ideas for keeping children entertained and happy while you also balance working from home. Dawn shares with Ciaran a whole bunch of creative ideas that both adults and children, and maybe even your co-workers might enjoy given half the chance. Dawn also gives an interesting insight into her own creative process and a writer and author and mother of 3. We don’t quite cover 101 ideas in this episode, but Dawn has provided us with links for this episodes show notes which should give you more than you need in terms of ideas and inspiration, so please do explore these. We are presenting this as a bonus episode as we know it's off-topic from our usual marketing related content and won't be relevant to all our listeners. However, we hope any of you balancing working from home with children will find this useful in combatting the ever raging battle against boredom. Please do share this episode with anyone you think might find it useful. As always we welcome your feedback. Just go to Useful Links Why Don't You TV Opening and End Credits Dawn's Website - Dawn's Books on Amazon - Dawn's Facebook Page with 2 free projects a day for lockdown: - Drawing videos that kids can follow – - great range of manageable family activities Good crafting activities – especially for younger children – often includes how to videos – there is also a book - Frugal Fun for Boys does exactly what it says on the tin Manageable projects and experiments for kids – there is also a book. -
Neal Schaffer talks about The Age of Influence, his new definitive guide to influencer marketing. From Fortune 50 enterprises to Grammy Award-Winning musicians, Neal has helped leading brands reach their next level in social media marketing, with his wealth of knowledge and experience. With influencer marketing being such a buzz word, it's easy to roll your eyes and switch off, but we found Neal's approach to the influencer marketing world both refreshing and exciting. Neal shares with Ciaran his blueprint for successful marketing projects involving influencers Armed with Neal's approach and guidance, we believe anyone can create inspiring campaigns that work for everyone involved. Give it a try. Working with the power of Influencers to elevate your brand, you may well find not only great success, but you might even make an army of new and influential friends along the way. Listen in and let Neal redefine how you view the online influencer space. Discover tried and tested techniques for amplifying your message and reaching audiences who care about your brand and how you work. Useful Links
Ciaran speaks to Digital Marketer and New York Times bestselling author, Neil Patel about , a free SEO tool Neil has been developing since 2017. Neil and his team have been hard at work, developing the toolset's functionality from a simple keyword tool to a full-blown SEO app. If you haven't looked at it recently, we think you should look again. The free version is featured-packed, but the new paid-for version gives you a whole host of new and powerful functionality. In this interview recorded in early March, Neil walks us through some practical, no-nonsense ways anyone can use Ubersuggest to build their marketing traffic and business using the tool's SEO feature-rich toolset. If you are looking for ways to drive more organic traffic to your site, this tool can really help to prioritise the steps you need to take to improve performance. We explore Neil's business strategy around developing Ubersuggest, including some of the running costs behind offering a globally available free tool like this. We also learn about the tool's new paid-for options that greatly open up the toolset’s power and functionality for a fraction of the cost of rival SEO tool suites. Since we recorded this interview, Neil has opened up even more functionality to the free version Ubersuggest to help support businesses through difficult times. See for more details. Useful Links NP Digital Ubersuggest Tool SEO tools comparison Top Tips- A Complete Guide to using Ubersuggest Neil's Running costs for Ubersuggest blog article Brian Dean's Skyscraper Technique
Daniel and Ciaran are back with their top tips on better remote working using video conferencing and live streaming for meetings and presentations. This episode is all about making your remote working self the best you can possibly be. Whether you are running more remote meetings, video chatting with remote colleagues or speaking to a large online conference, these tips will help you to focus your audience on your message rather than 'easy to trip up on' technical failures. At Target Internet, we deliver a lot of training remotely and run our whole business with a dispersed team. Over the last few weeks, we have been pushing the boundaries on what we offer via remote learning in terms of length and scale and exploring how we can deliver a good and engaging experience for all taking part. In the light of recent widespread lockdowns and mass working from home, we thought it might be useful for us to share what we have learned and how we approach this. Under discussion, why we love Zoom, Sound and Lighting hacks, Ways to connect with and keep your audience engaged. Using video and microphone equipment that can help make your life easier. If you have any of your own tips or tricks on this subject, or you would just like to drop us a line to say hello please do. , and we always reply. Useful Links Mark Ritson's rather brilliant post. Children interrupt BBC News interview - BBC News Zoom Goto meeting Google Meet Logitech Webcams Rode Filmmaker Screenflow Camtasia Coggle Collaborative Online Mindmapper Get In Touch
All too often, Marketers in a rush to drive results focus solely on techniques to drive more traffic to their websites, but what if we simply made more of the traffic we already have? Daniel walks us through website user / usability testing and highlights some of the performance improvements it can drive. If you have never engaged in this type of marketing activity, you really should. It's such a simple, straightforward and effective way to drive website improvement that in our opinion every marketer should be regularly practising it. There are many ways to approach user testing. You can employ specialist agencies with dedicated UX user testing labs, one-way mirrors and a plethora of expensive-looking people, gadgets, techniques, and kit. However, why allow them to have all the fun and glory. There is lots every marketer could do themselves if they make the time. All you need are some volunteers, some well thought out tests, a mobile or laptop with some screen-recording software and some regular time slots to run the tests. ( IOHO biscuits can also help the process, but these are optional.) Ciaran and Daniel share some insights from their website user testing and encourage all our listeners to give it a go. The more you do, the easier it gets, and it really can result in some dramatic performance improvements. Explore the techniques and tools you can employ and start saving your customers' from poor website or app experiences today. Listen in and learn how to conduct usability testing for your organisation. Useful Links Target Internet Guide to User-Centered Design Podcast: Mastering Stakeholder Management Conversion Rate Experts Making Websites Win - the book Making Websites Win - The FREE audiobook podcast Don't Make Me Think Revisited
We revisit one of Ciaran's favourite marketing formats, The QR code. With both IOS and Android devices now including default support for reading QR codes, they no longer have the requirement to download additional QR code scanners for your audience to be able to use them. We think that's a game changer for the format. Seeking to update his knowledge of what is possible for marketers considering using the format in 2020, Ciaran speaks to Nils Engelking from QR code specialists . Nils’ company specialise in helping marketers all over the world to get the most from the QR code format. Nils shares with us some of the more innovative ways their clients are using the QR codes. Learn some of the key ways to effectively customise and integrate QR codes into your marketing. It’s a visual technology that anyone with a smartphone can use. Nils shares some core good practice principals of the format to ensure they work for your customers and audiences. QR codes can and should do so much more than link to your home page. Listen in and be inspired by what this format might offer your organisations campaigns. Explore what's possible with both static and dynamic version of the format, learn how you can utilise frames for your codes to drive higher levels of engagement and much much more. Useful Links QR Code Generator Website About Egoditor From the Archive- Target Internet’s Complete Guide to QR codes Google trends showing the growth of 'QR codes' as a global search term
We talk influential blogger and international SEO speaker Cindy Krum from Mobile Moxie about her perspective on how Google is taking steps to better organise and understand the world's information. Discover Cindy's concept of SEO Fraggles and how you can utilise them to show up in Google's search results pages using a variety of different content types. If you are wanting to develop a sharper sense of how Google search is working with and indexing with a wide variety different content types in 2020, spending time listening to what Cindy teaches in this episode will greatly help. Learn how you can structure your content to make it easier for Google to recognise the `useful Fragments "within it so they surface more prominently in Google's Search results We also explore a whole suite of useful mobile SEO tools and App store Optimisation tools that Mobile Moxie offer. Cranberries Update: No, this isn't a Google Algorithm update that you somehow missed. There was, as it turns out, a drummer for The Cranberries. His name was and you can find out more about him here, but facts aside- Cindy's example still works to illustrate her point if you substitute The Cranberries for any of these bands without drummers. See Useful Links Mobile Moxie Google My Business Fraggles in SEO Fraggles In SEO Video Webinar recording Wayback Machine
Welcome to the start of 2020. Daniel and Ciaran are back to explore Daniel's predictions for digital marketing for the year ahead. Avoiding the fanciful future-gazing so often indulged in during January, we are focusing on trends we think will be of the utmost importance to your marketing over the next six months to a year. Under discussion are Social Commerce Posts, Impulse Purchases, Embracing Influencers, Changes to how Google Indexes and serves longer form articles video and Audio. Also under discussion is the ever-increasing importance of Community around digital Content, Conversational design and chatbots as well as the death of programmatic as a blanket term. OK that last one is not so much a prediction as a heartfelt desire of Daniels. We invite you to get in touch if you would like to appear on a future episode exploring and explaining Programmatic Advertising in more detail. (See links below) Finally, we explore what this all means for marketing, summarise and predict the possible death of Digital Marketing! If that shocks you, listen in and this all should make a bit more sense. Useful LInks Get In touch How Machines Learn - Video IAB Programmatic resources VidIQ Video SEO episode Heartificial Empathy Episode Conversational Design Episode
If you enjoyed our interview with the founders of SparkToro, Rand Fishkin and Casey Henry, we have some bonus interview content for you to get stuck into this week. Our chat with Rand and Casey was over an hour long. During that time, we discussed a whole bunch of other things. That's not unusual when we let Ciaran loose with a mic!... but a lot of what that discussion covered was too good to end up on the cutting room floor, so we share it here for your listening pleasure. Under discussion, Is Google Search at risk of becoming a walled garden? Startup investment models, Picking a suitable and memorable brand name, and an exploration of just how Social, Social media channels really still are. Listen in, enjoy and discover how Unicorns differ from Zebras in the startup investment world. Unicorns differ from Zebras in the startup investment world. We also explore some of the flaws in social metrics and how they reward bad behaviour and mislead unsuspecting marketers. We also discuss the SparkScore and the free Fake follower's tool spark toro provide for analysing twitter accounts. Useful Links Our Interview all about SparkToro Rand Fishkin's blog post on Google Search traffic clicks SparkToro Fake followers tool Casey's Twitter account ( follow him!) Geraldine's blog on social media harassment Spark Scores
SparkToro is an exciting new influence search engine which enables marketers to search for genuine areas of influence online. In this episode, we speak to Rand Fishkin and Casey Henry, the founders behind this amazing new tool. If you would like actionable intelligence on what different social and online audiences engage with, you will love this tool. As Rand explains, most marketers searching for influencers base their searches on what the influencers say about themselves. What SparkToro enables you to do is to Identify what audiences passionate about a subject or social account, pay attention to, read, watch or listen to. We are excited by the opportunities SparkToro opens up for Marketing. Listen in and redefine in your mind where influence online really sits. We also explore what some of SparkToro's free tools do and how they can help you to better analyse and measure influence and audiences for any content. Want to get early access to the full SparkToro tool? ( Trust us...You do!) Fill out the email from the Sparktoro team on their official launch. Useful Links SparkToro Rand's 'Lost and Founder' Book Spark Toro Fake Follower Audit SparkToro Trending SparkScore SparkToro Resources Moz Whiteboard Fridays How to create 10X content
Daniel talks us through what he feels is at the root of the current digital marketing skills gap in marketing. In a digital marketing world which is changing all the time dramatically, we explore some of the challenges faced by university education and publishing and organisational structure and individuals, all of which struggle to keep up with current best practice, tactics and strategy. We also explore some of the challenges we face in teaching and training others in such a fast-moving environment. Daniel invites organisations to engage with our students on the Digital Leadership programme, and we would love to know youth thoughts on the challenges we have explored in this episode. Where you think publishing, education industry and individuals are going wrong, and what we can do to improve there so that there isn't this digital skills gap? Useful LInks Contact us Take the Digital Skills Benchmark 2018 Digital Skills Benchmark report ( new report out in 2020) Jersey Digital Leadership Programme
Daniel introduces us to BIMA ( The British Interactive Media Association) who kindly invited us to attend their conference last month. BIMA drive innovation and excellence across the digital industry. While at the conference, Daniel collected a variety of interviews from movers and shakers in the interactive world which we are sharing with you this week. We get to hear from Cindy Rose, the UK CEO of Microsoft. Cindy is responsible for all of Microsoft’s product, service and support offerings across the United Kingdom. She is continuing the company’s transformation into the leading productivity and platform company for the mobile-first, cloud-first era. Cindy explores some of the ways Microsoft is making other people cool, helping the world to collaborate better, embracing diversity, and educating the world on all the new possibilities advances in digital technology are enabling. We also speak to Richard Nockles, the Creative Director of Sky VR on how they are using interactive technology to enhance entertainment in an immersive way using augmented reality and virtual reality. Richard explores with Daniel some of the low cost and creative ways new technologies can be used to engage audiences in exciting ways. Daniel also speaks to William Skeaping, an Extinction Rebellion activist and co-author of " This Is Not A Drill, The Extinction Rebellion Handbook. William explains how Extinction Rebellion is using digital technologies to drive people to take action and to create community. Useful Links BIMA BIMA Digital Day Microsoft Cindy Rose Sky VR Richard Nockles Extinction Rebellion This Is Not A Drill Digital Leadership Programme
Is personalisation something you should pursue whatever the cost to your audience? Increasingly audiences are waking up to how their data might be being used or abused and are increasingly reluctant to share information with marketers. Are too many marketers not using the data they already have to identify users interests from their previous behaviour? We don't need to ask for a thousand bits of information if we make smarter use of the behavioural data we already have. Daniel shares with us a conversion rate optimisation experiment we are running one of our own highest-performing organic landing pages and the platforms we are using to power that. We also explore how conversion rate tricks and automation systems can sometimes work against you. Ciaran explores Micro-content publishing growth, plus we explore how gullible adorable Ciaran can be if you tell him a plausible enough story. Useful Links Advertising Research Foundation Survey How to get Google Analytics Certification landing page experiment Active Campaign Convert Flow Google Search Console Best Dogs for Sailing Get in touch about your CRO successes. We would love to hear from you.
Ciaran talks to Alistair Beech from the University of Manchester and explores how they are using Hootsuite’s Amplify App to engage senior staff advocates to help spread the word on the University’s amazing research and campaign initiatives. Based at the largest single-site university in the UK, Alistair shares with us how his communications team went about persuading influential members of the University’s community to engage with their advocacy programme. How do you go about convincing busy staff members and academics that helping you to share great content about your organisation is a beneficial activity for them to invest their time into? If you are looking at any employee social engagement at scale, Alistair has some great pointers and key learnings that will help you to build a useful and engaging internal advocacy programme. Listen in and learn how to engage at scale. Useful Links Hootsuite Amplify >Hootsuite The University of Manchester Alistair Beech James Baker
Is Marketing in your organisation seen as less important than Finance, Sales, Operations or HR? Distracted by digital, does your Marketing team find itself relegated from the top table of decision-making, focusing purely on Marketing Communications? Ciaran talks to Mike Berry, an author, digital consultant, trainer and academic, about the famous "4P's of the Marketing Mix: Product, Price, Place, and Promotion." We discover that the 4 Ps is still as fresh and relevant today as it was when it was devised by E. Jerome McCarthy back in 1960. However, and worryingly for Marketers, Mike argues that responsibility for the full Marketing Mix has been gradually surrendered, to the detriment of Marketing as a profession. We explore how Marketers can learn to harness this essential framework alongside effective data and measurement of performance, and reclaim all the 4P's, ensuring that Marketing can once more truly champion the Customer! In this episode, we revisit this framework as Mike (controversially) redefines it as Product, Price, Distribution, and Marketing Communications. So could 2 Ps, a D, and an MC be the new rallying battle cry for Marketing? This leads us to an exploration of the story behind Mike's co-authored book: Digital Marketing Fundamentals: From Strategy to ROI and we hear how Mike goes about finding international case studies of great (digital) marketing campaigns we can all learn from. Useful Links Digital Marketing Fundamentals: From Strategy to ROI Connect with Mike on LinkedIn: More Books by Mike Berry Jerome McCarthy Phillip Kotler
With many of you are gearing up around the start of a new academic year we thought we'd indulge in a little future-gazing. This week we talk with Futurist and Angel Investor Matt Ward from The Disruptors.fm podcast. With a background in building and selling ecommerce platforms, and as a podcaster interviewing the leaders in the disruptive space, Matt has a unique take on what the future holds. Which current Sci-fi-Esque developments will be transformational and disruptive? Which technologies should you be keeping a development eye on as a digital marketer? Matt shares his compass on the future that technology is taking us to. Under discussion are many of the usual suspects for digital crystal ball gazing but we'd argue you won't have heard about them talked about and inspected quite the way Matt does. Our future-gazing takes many different turns. Driverless cars, Augmented and Virtual reality ( exactly when these things become mainstream?) The future of e-commerce and how it will evolve. How can smaller startups compete with big online sellers and players? Are the future of social media and blockchain platforms interwound? Finally, as an angel investor, we pick Matt's brains on what he looks for in any investment. If your dream is to create and sell your disruptive solution and retire on the proceeds, we think you will want to hear what Matt has to say. It isn't always the idyllic dream so often portrayed. Useful Links Matt Ward Find Matt on Twitter Listen to The Disruptors Podcast Hear more about Angel Investing in early-stage tech startups with Matt's other podcast,
In a follow up to our last episode on fake social metrics and engagement, Ciaran speaks to Anders Ankarlid from A Good Company, whose original research into Influencer marketing sparked our interest in effective Influencer marketing measurement. Anders shares the full story behind his research and explains how his organisation have changed how they approach influencer marketing as a result of what they learned. Is your influencer marketing programme at risk of being gamed? Listen in and learn how one innovative startup is tackling the issue and seeking out genuine advocates, rather than just chasing gamed and fake influence. Useful Links:- You can read an original, in-depth article, "The 744 Million Influencer Marketing Scam" that we discuss the results from here.
"Fake it till you make it" is how the old saying goes, but have too many social influencers taken that old adage too much to heart in the race to look as popular and as influential as possible? In the wake of some interesting in-depth research into levels of fakery on popular social media channels, Ciaran and Daniel explore fake social accounts and followers and fake interactions. We’ve spent some time investigating the dark side of Social media metrics so we can explore how they get gamed. Ever felt that the reach metrics of influencers don't quite tally with actual business results? Is your influencer marketing programme being scammed by influencers gaming social algorithms with fake followers and fake interactions? Listen in and learn how shady social media practices could be skewing your results and what you might do about it to correct course. Useful Links PRWeek Article https://www.prweek.com/article/1590362/majority-uk-instagram-influencers-engage-fakery-landmark-new-study More detailed write up of this research by Anders Arkalid. https://medium.com/@aa_88162/influencerstudy-agoodcom-4c7ac6c27fae Google Trends https://trends.google.com/trends Keywords Everywhere https://keywordseverywhere.com/ Google Keyword Planner Tool https://ads.google.com/intl/en_uk/home/tools/keyword-planner/ Hype Auditor Slide Deck https://www.slideshare.net/pmievents/influencer-marketing-without-the-proper-checks-transparency-will-not-work PR week Autumn research Endelbach https://www.prweek.com/article/1494118/influencer-campaigns-focus-social-proof-not-reach Instagram crackdown on fake accounts https://techcrunch.com/2018/11/19/instagram-fake-followers New York Times investigation into celebrities buying fake followers https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/01/27/technology/social-media-bots.html What is a click farm? https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-03-30/farming-for-likes-fake-social-media-engagement/10944078 Spark Torro Twitter Follower check https://sparktoro.com/tools/fake-followers-audit Hype Auditor https://hypeauditor.com/en/ Fakecheck.co https://www.fakecheck.co Fakecheck worst offenders https://www.fakecheck.co/bot10-social-engagement#report Fakecheck 10 best accounts https://www.fakecheck.co/top10-social-engagement#report Moz Link Explorer https://moz.com/link-explorer Ubersuggest https://neilpatel.com/ubersuggest/
Discover how can you get the most out of the traffic you already have with effective CRO. To aid us with this task, we speak to Jeff White, a leading conversion optimization specialist from Kula Partners in Canada who focus their work helping B2B organisations and manufacturers. We explore what Conversion Optimization is, and what it can offer marketers brave enough to admit their website and content could be working much harder. If you are interested in learning more about Conversion Optimization and how to go about practising it effectively, Jeff provides a whole host of useful tips, tools and resources to help improve what you are measuring and to help you learn and improve your skills around conversions. Kula Partners Kula Ring Podcast Google Analytics Hotjar Optimizely VWO Conversion XL - Peep Laja’s blog Conversion Rate Experts Also as a bonus thank you for taking the trouble to read our podcast notes- Check out the full audio of their new book Making websites win which they are giving away for free at the moment as a podcast
For any marketer with a heart who wants to connect with their audience, empathy in business has always been important. We explore with Author Minter Dial how empathy is effectively used in the workplace and how important it is as the marketing world embraces artificial intelligence. Are you hard baking enough empathy into the culture of your organisations? Are you exploring how you can work that into any chatbots or AI you may have already launched or are planning to start? Listen in and learn how and why to put heart into your marketing and A.I. Minter Dial's book Heartificial Empathy explores why empathy is essential and how it can be harnessed by businesses that embrace it. Listen in and learn how Minter has gone on his own empathetic journey to help fuel digital transformation projects he’s been involved with. What mistakes are companies trying to harness empathy making, and how can empathy be configured to supercharge the effectiveness of artificial intelligence where it’s deployed? Minter also shares with us his experimentation with an A.I. bot and how that ‘relationship’ radically changed his view on the power of mixing AI with empathy over five days. Useful Links Heartificial Empathy Book Minter Dialogue Podcast Futureproof interview Conversational AI Interview https://www.targetinternet.com/digital-marketing-podcast-episode-197-conversational-ai/
Daniel and Ciaran explore the slightly controversial subject of link building. Inspired by a post one of our LinkedIn group members wrote and shared we decided we should explore some the link building techniques we’ve come across and debate how useful they are in terms of adding value to what you do. In our opinion, effective link building is all about adding value around the content you link from and to. It shouldn't be about gaming algorithms, but as you will see, some of these techniques fall between those two objectives depending on how you approach them. We'd love to hear what you think good link building is about and which techniques you find work. Did we miss any good link building tactics and techniques? Any mentioned here you don't think we should have covered? and let us know. We'd love to hear from you. Useful Links Omer's post on link building techniques https://omerilyasli.com/blog/link-building-techniques/ Target Internet Digital Marketing Benchmark https://www.targetinternet.com/benchmark-digital-marketing-skills-assessment/ Grafiti.io https://beta.grafiti.io/ Grammarly https://app.grammarly.com/ Quetext https://www.quetext.com/ TinyEYE https://www.tineye.com Answer The Public https://answerthepublic.com/ SEO Minion https://seominion.com/ Neil Patel’s -Ubersuggest https://app.neilpatel.com/en/ubersuggest/ Moz Link Explorer https://moz.com/link-explorer Moz Community account https://moz.com/community/q/moz-free-account Libsyn https://libsyn.com/ Ahrefs Blog post on LInk Reclamation. https://ahrefs.com/blog/link-reclamation/ Wayback Machine https://archive.org/web/ Ciaran's in-depth article on QR codes https://www.targetinternet.com/complete-marketing-guide-to-qr-codes-1
Over the last few months, we've been taking a closer look at voice assistant devices like Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant. In this episode, we share how we overcame our scepticism of their usefulness and explore how these devices are used. We also question what effect they might have on future marketing. Ciaran took up a challenge laid down by digital marketing author, speaker and podcast listener, Dr Geraint Evans. Geraint agreed to try and convince Ciaran of the voice assistant's value in an interview which we recorded back in December 2018. As you will hear, Ciaran wasn't having any of it back then, but since spending time with Geraint and playing with a Google Assistant that now lives permanently in his kitchen, he has come around and is a big fan. Daniel's journey with the devices started at Christmas when he obtained both an Alexa device and a Google Home device. Since being installed, he's explored and experimented with these in many ways, including getting them to talk to one another. The global growth in the popularity of voice assistant devices such as the Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant makes them potentially a new and impactful medium for anyone working in marketing. We found you need to own one to understand the effect they have on the user. If you haven't played with voice assistants, we'd recommend you get one and start playing. They are an interesting thing. Useful Links Get In touch with Dr Geraint Evans What Was Google Wave? Google Assistant App Amazon Alexa App Learn how to build an Alexa Skill Interesting Voice Assistant SEO research recently published by SEMRush.
This week we are celebrating our 9th Birthday. 9 years ago this week we launched The Digital Marketing Podcast. We take a look at a couple of news events in the news that week nine years ago and to celebrate with you all we invite you to try out a whole suite of useful tips and tools to give presents to everyone. There are some games to play, ( Pac man is 39 years old this week so happy birthday to him- check the link below to play!) We also have some face changing video apps plus we explore some inspirational sources for display advertising, Security tools, and some new Search optimisation tips and tools for good measure. Ciaran also shares the somewhat misguided experiment he ran this week which proved Daniel's Dog 'Eddie the Beagle' does in fact look more competent, likeable and influential than Ciaran's social media mug shot. We also announce the winners of our book draw from our recent book launch episode. As part of our birthday Celebrations, we are inviting you all to leave us a review either on iTunes or Stitcher if you haven't done so already. Tell us your thoughts on the show, what you enjoy, and let us know how long you have been listening. Leave us a review in iTunes Leave us a review on Stitcher Useful Links Play The Google Doodle Packman Google Natural language API Demo SEM Rush SEO Writing tool Demo Web Page Test Google's Rich Media Gallery AdEspresso Ad Examples Moat Personal Branding Have I Been Pawned Wordfence One Password Mug Life My Talking Pet IOS Android Caroline at Imbue Marketing
Daniel and Ciaran take a closer look at planning with an in-depth interview with Peter Morville, the father of information architecture and the author behind the book Planning for Everything: The Design Of Paths and Goals. Peter walks us through the principles and practices of great non-linear planning, which he uses to help both himself and his clients build a better future. In today's world, almost anything is possible, but to achieve it, you need to know how to plan and how to adjust the plan to fit the rapidly evolving landscape we all live and play within. If you hate planning, Peter would argue you're doing it wrong. Fortunately, planning is a skill, everyone from playful improviser to rigorous planner can significantly improve if they are ready to learn. Discover what better planning might do for you, and your organisation. Listen in and be inspired by learning, adjusting and refining how you approach planning and implementation of your plan. Peter's principles are an excellent springboard to take your ideas and future to a whole different level. Jump on board and see where they take you. Useful Links Semantic Studios Peter on Twitter: Planning for Everything By Peter Morville Information Architecture By Peter Morville Eric Ries: The Lean Startup Charles Snyder: The Psychology of Hope Pema Chödrön Peter Drucker W. Edwards Denning
In celebration of their book launching, Daniel and Ciaran explore some of the strategies that make podcasts such an effective content marketing vehicle for so many businesses. Listen in an discover what Podcasting could do for your business. We want to encourage more people to try podcasting. It's a lot easier than you think and the format is just so flexible. It's also a great way to build an engaged community of listeners in a way that other content mediums never achieve. We also share some of our findings and research compiled while writing the book and invite you to get in touch with your questions on podcasting and thoughts on which podcasts you listen to and why. Your Chance to Win a copy and share with us which podcasts you listen to and why plus we'd love to hear about any podcasts you run or want to create. Everyone who joins in and gets in touch with questions or feedback before the 2nd of May will be entered into our free prize draw for your chance to win a copy of our book. Simply go to Special Listener Offer Order our book with code DIGITALPODCAST20 from Useful Links Target Internet Contact us page Purchase the Book LIBSYN Podcast Hosting BBC Podcasts Masters of Scale Podcast Kelvin Newman Brighton SEO Podcast Ten Words Podcast by Jeremy Waite
Daniel makes a case for the importance of marketing personalization. A lot of this years trend reports have claimed personalization is a big focus for 2019. Daniel shares with us why he thinks this is more important than ever. So exactly how do we provide relevant, personalized content at every stage of our marketing funnel, and how do we take this process and perfect it beyond delivering emails? What systems can we use to provide an improved and more personalized marketing experience for our audiences? Daniel and Ciaran explore a few platforms they have worked with and give some tips on where to start your personalization development journey. Useful Links
We take another look at Chat Marketing with Special Guest CEO of. Ciaran and Daniel introduce this episode and share their journey with Chatbots and explore some of the scepticism surrounding them. If you are cynical about Chatbots and what they might offer your organisation have a listen to this episode and also catch up with our earlier episode on Larry Kim Anyone active in social media in the marketing space cannot have failed to have been influenced by Larry Kim. Famous for his use of Unicorns and Donkeys as a metaphor, Larry is a one-man powerhouse of great digital marketing tips. Always experimenting creatively with his digital marketing, what Larry learns he shares with the global audience who follow him. MobileMonkey and Facebook Messenger Since selling in May 2018 (which he founded in 2007), Larry has been busy building and refining an online chat marketing service called MobileMonkey. His view is that Chat marketing will be one of the next big opportunities for digital growth in marketing and his team is focussed on building the next generation of chat marketing tools. We speak to Larry about how he got interested in Chat marketing and chatbot services and pick his brains on how this new marketing medium and discipline differs from more traditional email marketing which so many businesses rely on for communicating with their customer audience. With engagement rates dropping on email as a channel for many marketers, could Chat marketing offer a viable alternative way to communicate with your online audiences? Larry thinks it will and is putting his reputation and focus behind that belief. Listen in and learn why he thinks that. Useful Links Useful Links
Are you looking for techniques and methodologies to further improve the effectiveness of your content marketing campaigns? This week's podcast guest may well rock your world and open your eyes. ( In a good way) After a successful career in marketing, developing ideas and concepts to engage stakeholders for several hundred organisations, David Allison recognised the need for a more scientific method to determine what influences a target audience. Like many of us, David realised that so many of the demographic and age-based stereotypes just don't work anymore. People of all ages are not conforming to traditionally held aged based groupings that so often are foundational to our marketing and campaign analysis. So David set about getting the data to explore what he was sensing but using big data. 'What We Value Determines What We Do' Working with a university-based social scientist for two years, David built the Valuegraphics Database. The whole process was guided by a fundamental principle of sociology, psychology and consumer behaviour: what we value determines what we do. The result is Valuegraphics, the first big data tool that gives organisations and industries the data they need to motivate a target audience using core human values, an approach the statistics have shown is as much as eight times more effective than using outdated demographic stereotypes. David shares with us how his model helps consultants, advisors, creative teams, marketers and brands use big data to inform their ideas and strategies. Armed with insights from the Valuegraphics database which David and his team continue to grow and expand, they identify the values that determine how people will behave in any given situation, and what will motivate them most. If you have ever been frustrated by the apparent weakness of traditional demographic and age profiling so commonly overused in marketing, we think Valuegraphics will provide you with a fresh alternative for analysing your customer and prospective customer data. Replacing guesswork and opinions with data; this is a methodology designed to help creative content marketers focus on making their best, most motivating work for the audiences that matter. If you want to find out more about Valuegraphics and how it can help you avoid basing your campaigns around outdated and inaccurate age-based stereotypes we highly recommend David's Book 'We Are All the Same Age Now: Valuegraphics, The End of Demographic Stereotypes'. You can find a link to below together with some other resources David shared with us to pass on to you all. Useful Links Valuegraphics Web site: https://valuegraphics.com/ Follow David on Twitter: https://twitter.com/audiencevalues Find David on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidallisonadvisor A short TED-style talk: A recent live TV Interview with David: A short video about why Valuegraphics is important:
Ciaran talks to Matt Green, the Founder and Executive Producer at Evo studios, a Los Angeles based creative content studio. Evo has been creating waves in the video content world since 2011. Their Creative team is trusted by many global brands to produce outstanding content, including Google, The BBC, Samsung, Jim Beam, Victoria's Secret, Reebok and Sky Sports. Matt and his team specialise in bringing first-class creative ideas to life, so we thought we would set him up with Ciaran to delve into how they go about doing that so we can share it all with you. Learn what the essential creative ingredients for producing great video are. What can you as a marketer do to aid the creative process of creating great video content? How should you go about coming up with ideas for your video content? Where can video production all go wrong? How do you stop getting in the way of your film's potential success? How you can work effectively with your creative teams to launch the next 'most talked about' video content sensation. Listen in and learn from Evo, how the magic happens. Useful Links Evo's Film Showreel Original Dollar Shave Club Ad
Do you understand how secure your website is from hackers? If you have never looked into this, it might be a lot more vulnerable than you think! It's so easy to overlook Website security and to tell ourselves it is someone else's problem until the worst happens and you get hacked. At that point, you'll wish you had paid more attention and taken a proactive interest in keeping your site and content more secure. To help all our listeners understand website security and what you can do to improve it, we talk to Alycia Mitchell, Marketing Manager at Sucuri and explore how marketers should be rising to the ongoing challenge of keeping our websites and digital properties secure from unwanted intrusions and hacks. Listen in for some really practical advice on how hackers might size up or start probing your site, and what you can do to ensure you don't invite in unwanted guests with slack practice. Learn what you can do to stay safe and keep the website hackers at bay. Useful Links Get Sucuri guides on a whole host of website security issues and all the major website content platforms and online resources. https://sucuri.net/guides/ Run a free Sucuri Site check on your website Sitecheck.sucuri.net Read the latest updates from the Sucuri blog team blog.securi.net Bing Webmaster Tools https://www.bing.com/toolbox/webmaster Google Search Console https://search.google.com/search-console/about
Daniel and Ciaran discuss the state of content marketing and the ever-changing relationship between content creators and search engine functionality. We also give Ciaran a few moments to explain why he is so rattled about recent video embed changes that have been happening on Youtube. We cover the issues of tracking surrounding dark social and ways to better track which social channels are driving shares that your analytics can't measure the source of accurately without a little help from you. Also under discussion are cookies and some of the issues around 3rd party and first-party cookies that have been going on recently due to changes in IOS and Mac Browser Safari. Useful Tools Brighton SEO talk by Rand Fishkin Neil Patel on Creating A Tool Read our in-depth YouTube Video Embed Article Read more about Dark Social Sharing and how it works How to use Google URL builder Understanding First party and third party cookies
Ciaran and Daniel are back to kick the new year off on the podcast with the exciting announcement about our new Digital Marketing Podcast Awards. We want to hear about your favourite digital marketing tools and resources for our soon to be launched Digital Marketing tools and resources. Just head over to to nominate your favourite and most trusted tools. We also share some new year resolutions with a few changes we are making to the podcast which we hope will make things better and ensure that every week this year from this point on we have new podcast content for you. Have some feedback for us on the show? We'd love to hear from you. Please get in touch Daniel discusses how he is attaining the utopian dream al marketers dream of 'Inbox Zero.' Find out the process he is using Sanebox and some email template tools to speed up dealing with email on a daily basis with a bit of automation, and finally making more use of task lists for anything that needs more than a couple of minutes to complete. Ciaran explores both his poor parenting skills and how social, 'social' media is all in the same story which has led him to question if he needs social media in his life. Daniel shares with us his ruthless Facebook culling of non-friends and creation of a more excellent digital social space. We also explore the overlap between email and social channels. Ciaran and Daniel also explore website middle age spread/muffin overhang when it comes to website image sizes. How many images is your website packing over 1mb in format and is it slowing things down for your website visitors? Find out what's slowing your site with the website speed testing tools in the show notes below. Once you've done that, Cut the image fat with Squoosh, a fab new web page based image compression app that will work wonders on image bloat on your site with a super visual and super easy to use Moz-jpeg compression utility. You can also check out our guide to using Squoosh published on Target internet today and discover some of the new and beautiful web image formats you can start to explore and make use of. Useful Links Digital Marketing Podcast Awards- Enter your favourite marketing tools and resources Sanebox (with a free $5 coupon to get you started) Daniel’s crafty tool for email replies by keyboard shortcut Watch Ciaran's personalised video from Wistia MailChimp industry email stats Feedly News Aggregator Tool Tim Ferris's 5 Bullet Friday Email Submit your tools and Twitter accounts Gtmetrix Google Page speed check Squoosh Target Internet Squoosh User manual https://www.targetinternet.com/a-complete-guide-to-squoosh-what-is-it-and-how-to-use-it/
Earlier this year, Ciaran got to talk with Oli Gardner from Unbounce, a Leading conversion rate optimisation tool. We explored a little of what Unbounce does but mainly focus on an exciting experiment that Oli ran earlier this year on blog content. The aim of Oli's experiment was to see what effect writing a storm of regular content to promote key features their platform offered would have on conversions and the bottom line. The challenge... create content that drives both product awareness and conversion rates through the roof. Being a conversion rate optimisation specialist, Oli was confident he could ace this mission and significantly 'move the needle' of success. However, as you will hear, nothing quite panned out as he expected it to but some fascinating lessons were learned along the way. Join us this week as we explore Oli's story and delve into the key learnings and insights from one man's mission to embark on a veritable marathon of content for conversion. Mr Men landing pages original article Mr Men Landing Pages Podcast Episode Unbounce Dynamic text replacement feature Unbounce Landing page Analyzer Is Content Marketing a Waste of Time and Money? Data and Lessons Learned from 20 posts in 30 days Find out all about Unbounce Follow Oli on Twitter https://twitter.com/oligardner
Daniel and Ciaran discuss the importance of advocates of your brand. How do you build advocacy? How do you keep your online connections genuine and still communicate at scale? We also explore how to deal with both positive or negative feedback while at the same time growing your influence. Are you promoting a purely commercial message or are you also building off the back of smaller steps to deeper engagement like asking for reviews and encouraging engagement and two-way conversations. If you are a fan of the podcast and would like to exercise your advocacy of what we do, please do get in touch with any comments or feedback or questions you have. You can also leave us a review in iTunes, or big up an episode you have enjoyed on your favourite social media channels ( this is a big help in terms of our content reaching more people so please do this if you think what we do is worth sharing) Useful Links Submit Review the Digital Marketing Podcast in iTunes ( choose open in iTunes option and go to reviews section) Seggons the truck driving Vlogger Seth Godin’s 1000 true fans Our LinkedIn Group Target internet Content calendar template FollowerWonk Twitter Analytics https://analytics.twitter.com
Daniel explores how digital marketers can make use of their own personal brand via LinkedIn profiles to full effect. Making your posts personal to you can make a massive difference in how others choose to interact with the content you share. LinkedIn is often a much-neglected channel for digital marketers but used correctly it can be so much more than merely sourcing your next career move. With individual engagement often higher than in other channels, mastering LinkedIn can make a real difference to your ability to communicate and network at scale. Daniel also explores social selling and how to approach selling on LinkedIn without being too pushy. We also discuss changes in LinkedIn Groups, privacy settings, birthday reminders and how others can read between the lines when you post the same content to multiple social networks without really considering what the norms and accepted conventions of each platform are. We’d love to hear how you are using LinkedIn, or what you think the best platform is for online discussion forums. Please get in touch with or post to this week’s thread in our Linkedin Group for the podcast Useful Links If you would like to join in with our LinkedIn Group, please request to join here: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/2785308/
Daniel and Ciaran are back after a short break with a brand new tips and tools episode of tools we have been making use of and loving recently. We have found a whole heap of tools that make use of artificial intelligence tools for helping you analyse your own Twitter feed, investigate recent news sources and links, and perform audio transcription on your video and Audio files. We also take a look at a couple of free digital marketing dashboarding tools which can help save you lots of time compiling stats and results from your marketing campaigns. We also take a look at Auphonic for levelling and polishing your audio levels, share an excellent persona development tool and big up Pixabay for royalty free images. If Facebook advertising is a crucial channel for your marketing you will love AdEspresso’s Facebook Ad Finder and for those of you wanting a reliable voice over IP video conferencing service we big up what we love about Zoom. IBM Watson Twitter analysis tool IBM Watson News explorer Temi transcription service Klipfolio Google Data studio Google Data studio templates for marketers Auphonic Social Bakers Persona Building Tool Pixabay royalty free images AdEspresso Facebook Ad finder Bonus Tool Zoom- video conferencing https://zoom.us/
We speak to Philip Storey from Enchant Agency who specialise in helping brands to improve their email marketing. Philip walks us through the art of email optimisation, exploring some tried and tested techniques and frameworks that any email marketer will be able to take and apply to their own email activity to drive improved results. We explore the culture needed for optimisation to thrive in an organisation and gain a measure of the change getting that culture for optimisation can bring about. We also explore what can be learned from eye tracking studies and Philip shares with us a fab tool for simulating an eye-tracking study on your own emails and online content using advanced AI modelling. 3 Core Elements of Email Content Want to implement Philip’s 3 Core Elements of Content? To save you all playing that section through to capture what Philip said, here’s what you need to focus on for each content block of your email. 1) A short descriptive headline 2) A descriptive proposition that is either 1-2 lines of content, short and sweet and if relevant maybe 2-3 bullet points. 3) A descriptive call to action If you want to try this format, remember to test this it out against other blocks that don't use the format across a number of different emails to highlight and identify how well it works for your audiences. We were serious when we said you need to just start testing things out, so here is a great starter for ten. Develop your optimisation culture. Useful Links Enchant Agency: Email: Twitter: @philipstorey Eyequant - AI-powered eye-tracking study simulator http://www.eyequant.com/
Podcasting continues to go from strength to strength with international consumption of podcasts growing steadily. With such consistent growth in its consumer base, we thought it was time we explored podcasting as a marketing medium with great potential for anyone looking for a new and exciting way to build and engage with a loyal audience. In this Episode, Ciaran speaks to podcasting veteran and expert Rob Walch and VP of Podcasting Relations at Libsyn, the worlds largest podcasting network. An experienced podcaster, author and trainer on the medium, Rob has consulted and helped some of the biggest names in the industry including legendary author, speaker and podcaster Tim Ferris. We explore what it takes to create a hit podcast and get Rob’s take on what podcasting offers brands and marketers interested in making use of this creative audio medium. With an estimated ratio of 1200 active blogs to one podcast, podcasting offers marketers and brands a unique opportunity to create digital content that reaches and engages large audiences way beyond what blogged content can achieve. With a third of adults in the US now listening to podcasts on a regular basis, if you are looking for a way to engage with customer audiences in an entertaining and informational way, podcasts are hard to beat. Useful Links Libsyn Podcast Network https://www.libsyn.com/ The Feed Libsyn Podcast https://thefeed.libsyn.com/ Podcast 411 http://podcast411.libsyn.com/ Today in iOS Podcast http://tii.libsyn.com/ Lore Podcast https://www.lorepodcast.com/episodes/ Selling on Ebay http://sellingonebay.ebay.libsynpro.com/website Inside Trader Joe's Podcast https://www.traderjoes.com/digin/category/Podcast
Back in August, we met up with Bruce Clayton, co-founder of Optimus Performance Marketing, a multi-award-winning affiliate marketing agency dedicated to driving growth and sales for e-commerce business. Specialists in Affiliate marketing, operating across global territories, Bruce and his team have gained an industry-wide reputation for honesty and excellent results. In our first two-part interview in one episode, Ciaran explores with Bruce exactly what Affiliate marketing is and how it works in the first half and then goes on to explore effective tactics and techniques for getting more from your affiliate marketing activities. ( If you are already active in the Affiliate space and want to skip to the discussion on tactics and techniques then skip to 21 minutes in) Useful Links Optimus Performance Marketing Affiliate Networks Awin Commission Junction Trade Doubler Webgains Network Subnetwork examples Viglinks Skimlinks YieldKit Aggregators example ShopStyle https://www.shopstyle.co.uk/
Ciaran speaks to writer and CEO, Natalie Turner from The Entheo Network, a global leadership innovation company that provides consultancy and training services to help individuals and organisations create new products and services whilst building innovation skills, capabilities and culture. We discuss Natalie's book 'YES, YOU CAN INNOVATE', a practical how-to-guide to help you develop your innovation strengths. The book is designed to help people around the world get better at making new ideas happen in times of change and uncertainty and is packed full of insight and guidance on how to innovate effectively. The lessons and models that Natalie has put together can be used to innovate both in your personal life and for your work in organisations. We explore at a practical level, how can we find and nurture great ideas that will positively impact on our work. Anyone involved in creation and innovation can fine-tune their ability to make change happen in an efficient and effective way. It will be of particular interest to anyone embarking on a digital transformation project. We explore with Natalie her 'Six 'I's®' Model and include a visual outline of the Model here in the show notes so you can follow our discussions on it. Useful Links - View Natalie's 'Six 'I's®' model in the show notes Download a sample chapter of Natalie's book Follow Natalie on LinkedIn Find out more about The Entheo Network and their work Discover the 6 'I's® of Innovation https://www.6-i-innovation.com
Powered by artificial intelligence, chatbots are cutting-edge software applications capable of having highly personalised and engaging conversations with your customers in messaging apps like Facebook Messenger, on voice platforms like Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant and Siri, or directly on your website or app. It’s easy to be sceptical about AI and Chatbots and how they have been implemented in a lot of cases which leads to a rather disappointing experience. The explosion of build it yourself chatbots has put powerful tools in the hands of thousands of marketers, without really teaching them the grammar and best practice of good conversational design. So is chatbot AI really as flawed as our experiences of it to date? In a rapidly developing and emerging field, we all need to take a fresh look at what is actually already possible. We talk with Henry Burton from Artelligen who specialise in creating conversational experiences for a range of different use cases. Henry walks us through the business of conversational design and how it helps to develop strong engagement with Ai powered chatbots when designed and implemented properly. Chatbots offer one of the best ways to get in front of the millions of people using messaging apps like Facebook Messenger, Slack, Telegram and Skype. Henry and Daniel explore how to go about designing a relevant and engaging experience for your customers. Listen in and learn about best practice for generating engagement through the effective use of conversational AI and explore what the future of chatbot and voice computing potentially offers marketers. Useful Links ManyChat ChatFuel IBM Waston
Do you properly target your display ad campaigns or do you follow more of a carpet bombing strategy? As marketers, it's easy to get hooked on showing adverts repeatedly to get results and argue how effective this is with your results data. However, given how much aggressively retargeted Ad campaigns are disliked universally it is no wonder that consumers and audiences are fighting back with ad blocking software. Research has shown that 11% of users globally have ad blockers installed on their browsers but for younger audiences, we have found the number is more like 70% plus. Great advertising has always been about reaching the right audience receptive to your message. It’s not about throwing as much content out into the web to beat customers into submission. In this episode, we explore more effective retargeting. Daniel shares with us how to build better audiences and target your campaign more effectively. Done well, effective targeting can greatly reduce your ad spend and massively increase your advert success and engagement rates so what's not to love. Listen in and start making your campaigns more efficient, and more targeted and loved by your customers. Note: Since we recorded this episode Google as you may be aware updated their Adwords product name under the new name Google Ads. Useful Links Google Display Network Analytics Audience Definitions Target Internet Benchmark Report https://www.targetinternet.com/benchmark
If you listened to our recent podcast interview with Michelle Carvill called 'Get Social', you may well recognise this weeks guest. When Michelle and Ciaran caught up to talk about her Book “Get Social, they also talked about all sorts of other things, and one of them was Michelle’s experience working with facebook live broadcasts. It's always great when you get to meet up with other marketers who have learned how to make a new medium work for them through actually experimenting and using it. It's not a medium Ciaran has played with much, so he asked Michelle to share her learning and tips for the medium. With so many social media platforms now including the ability to broadcast live to your audience, we thought you might all enjoy her top tips, so we’ve compiled them into an episode. We’ve also included a summary of Michelle's tips in the show notes so if you don’t always look there, be sure to take a look at this episode just visit Useful Links View some of Michelle's Live Broadcasts John Lesure T Mobile CEO Facebook channel - Slow Cooker Sunday https://www.facebook.com/pg/JohnJLegere/videos/
Daniel and Ciaran take an in-depth look at online tools to help you with any competitor benchmarking you might need to conduct. These tools are all ones we have tried and tested over the years and include a few which were never intended to be used that way but they work and do a good job if you understand what it is you are looking at. Some of them are paid for services but a lot of them are free and all of them are worth checking out. Have we missed any of your favourites? Drop us a line ( @target_insights on Twitter ) and let us know and we may well give you a shout in a follow-up episode. Useful Links We have a lot of links for this episode so please visit our show notes at https://www.targetinternet.com/digital-marketing-podcast-episode-194-competitor-benchmarking-tools-how-do-you-stack-up/
Ciaran talks to Michelle Carvill acclaimed author and founder of digital marketing and social media agency Carvill Creative. We explore Michelle's research for her recently published book "Get Social- Social Media Strategy & Tactics for Leaders." Get Social demonstrates how leaders can use social media to drive effective business results, which we explore with Michelle in this interview.
Daniel shares with us his own approach to stakeholder management with some simple easy to follow guidance on how to go about managing the whole process. Learn how you can put more energy into your projects and less time debating them with detractors with this simple to follow approach.
In this episode, Daniel shares some of the insights the 2018 Digital Marketing Skills Benchmark Report has given on the state of marketing knowledge within the industry, sharing with us 8 key insights the data provided. We also announce the launch of our exciting new Online Learning programme which enables you to train for the CIM Level 6 Digital Diploma in Professional Marketing in bite-size chunks.
We talk with video optimisation expert Rob Wilson from VidIQ. We explore- What makes for an effective YouTube video? How to make good use of video tags and video titles and how to leverage on trending topics? We also explore which metrics matter to YouTube's algorithm? Packed full of examples and guidance on how to be more effective with your video channels,
In this week's podcast, we are discussing all things WordPress, from themes, updates, plugins and security to how to harness the platform for E-commerce. How secure and up to date is your WordPress Website?
Are you focussing enough on promoting the content you are producing or are you in a rush to burn through as much material as you can to get through that week or month? We explore how to make more of the content you are producing and how to track its impact more effectively.
Daniel walks us through strategic positioning an brand purpose, breaking down what it actually means with some simple, practical guidance and examples of various brands who have set about achieving clarity on their positioning by putting a very clear and believable purpose behind all their activities.
Making use of Facebook Messenger and automating a number of one to one conversations using messenger bot services like ManyChat can be a great way to introduce new customers to your product offerings. Listen in and find out how to harness the power of Facebook Messenger for your marketing.
Daniel and Ciaran discuss influencer marketing, warts and all. Ciaran shares why he finds influencers such hard work and in many cases such a poor ROI on the effort that goes into recruiting them. A far more genuine way to get the most out of what is traditionally termed 'Influencer marketing' You get to give genuine fans of your brand a unique experience that they can share. We also share the sad news that Klout is shutting the doors on its social scoring platform and discuss a few great alternatives.
Ciaran and Daniel walk us through how to go about planning and building an effective Adwords campaign using a process that is quick to do and gets excellent results. With a little bit of basic knowledge you can be getting targeted traffic to your website for a fraction of the cost your competitors may well be paying.
Social Media can be massively time-consuming. Unless you have a robust process behind its management things can slip. In this episode, Daniel shares with us an effective way to approach social media to maximise the impact while minimising the amount of time you need to spend processing your social day to day tasks. Ciaran also has some practical tips on how to implement URL Google UTM code tracking in Google Analytics.
In part 2 of this interview, Jon Woodall, founder of Space48 and I continue our discussion on 10 e-commerce myths. We explore the widely held belief that every e-commerce business can become an overnight success. We also discuss some common mobile website conversion myths and explore the strategy of shooting from the hip and not needing a plan. We also discuss how to identify if you are the problem your business is facing.
Ciaran speaks to Jon Woodall, founder of Space 48, an award-winning eCommerce consultancy & Magento Solutions partner for forward-thinking retailers. If you have ever worked within the e-commerce space, we think you will find these myths both entertaining and just possibly a little close to what is often mistakenly taken as gospel truth in some marketing circles.
Ciaran talks to Tom Goodwin, the Executive Vice President and Head of Innovation at Zenith Media USA about his new book Digital Darwinism which launched this month. We explore Self-disruption and what it might offer leading businesses prepared to take the risk to stay at the cutting edge of their industries, and also explore why senior leaders interests and the interests of the business may not be as aligned as many people think.
Ciaran speaks to Richard Jones, the CEO of Wayin, a platform that sets out to help marketers to easily configure engaging digital experiences that can be published to owned, earned and paid channels. We discuss why Richard started Wayin and explore some of the challenges marketers face when trying to connect with consumers in the fragmented digital landscape of 2018.
Through his spontaneous street art, artist Andy Leek has grown a loyal following of over 70,000 followers on Instagram who document and photograph his work when they find it posted randomly around the capital. ( Since we recorded this episode his following has leapt by 4000 followers!) Earlier this month, Ciaran met up and spoke with #notestostrangers Street Artist Andy Leek and spoke to him about his work as an artist and how the whole project which has now become a full-time job came about and took off.
In this episode, we explore some of the commonly misunderstood Google Analytics reports and metrics and how to avoid misinterpreting them. When you are using Analytical data to tell a story, there is a real danger you will come to the wrong conclusions and tell a story that isn't really happening.
Daniel and Ciaran explore the single customer view. What is it, how does it potentially work, and what benefits can it bring to your customer and your business in a progressively noisier and noisier marketplace. Sounds great right? But creating a single customer view is one of the most challenging IT headaches any organisation can face. In this episode, we explore some of the barriers to achieving this marketing utopia and give help and advice on steps you can take to move closer to it.
Daniel talks us through the process of User Journey Mapping, a simple method to get us all thinking very hard about what content we need and where to place it within your content marketing strategy. We talk through building effective persona’s and how to go about making use of those personas to aid building a compelling user journey into your digital strategy.
We speak with Arjun Jolly, COO and co-founder of adQuadrant, about how to go about building effective communities online. We explore how communities form, and how marketers can go about building effective communities. How do you get started from scratch? What techniques can you use to drive rapid growth? What platforms offer the best user experience? Where do companies often go wrong with community building?
Ciaran talks to Philip Storey from Enchant Agency about email marketing and what marketers can do to further supercharge what is traditionally the most productive of the online communication channels. We explore how email and CRM can be fully used at all the stages of the customer buying cycle. So many marketers miss valuable opportunities post-conversion. Discover some of the lost opportunities post-conversion that your email programme may be lacking.
Snapchat Marketing, It's a hot topic. In this Episode, Miri Qylafi from Social Influencer Agency Fanbytes talks to Ciaran about Snapchat. We discuss where marketers and big brands often go wrong when marketing on Snapchat and Miri shares what Fanbytes have found works well for an effective campaign on this youth focussed social media platform.
This episode was recorded back in November, but we have been saving it for the new year as we felt it might well inspire the budding entrepreneurs among you. We were invited to speak at the GDV Dev Fest Event, London. We were asked to talk about 'Mistakes To Avoid When Building Your Business.' What followed was a candid discussion exploring some of the challenges any new start-up company faces and how we overcame them.
We discuss all things Twitter. Under discussion: 280 character tweets, Twitter threads, Twitter assistant, Twitter Promote, Twitter Analytics, Twitter Audiences and demographic reports, Twitter videos beta reporting, The Twitter Tracking Pixel. Daniel also shares a tool which enables you to analyse the words from any Twitter account to give you a summary of the personality of the account.
Daniel and Ciaran discus their 2018 Digital Marketing Predictions, including Artificial Intelligence, AI, Voice Search, Virtual Reality, VR, Augmented Reality, AR, Oculus Go, Facebook Spaces. Which technologies do you think will be the most disruptive or influential in the coming 12 months?
Discover our top tips on producing better and more effective content that gets found, how to stay up to date, how to improve your keyword research and how to approach taming your email inbox throughout 2018.
Daniel and Ciaran take a look at some productivity tips to help you get things kicked off effectively in the New year. We've looked at some of the key lessons we have learned this year and share some of what worked and what didn't to take a view on how to do things better next year.
We take a look at Video Ads with a look at great work that works, not great work that works and ideas that seemed great that didn't work with video Ad examples from across the globe. Some of these advert examples we are sure you will be familiar with and some we hope are new to you. The object of the exercise was to boil what we can learn down into some vital ingredients that successful video advertising has. Listen in and find out what we concluded.
Ciaran talks to Margharite Maspero, from SoAmpli, about effective social selling for B2B businesses. We explore how to use different social channels with the right marketing materials and Margherita shares some practical tips they use within their own B2B sales and marketing teams to build strong and effective connections with a whole variety businesses.
This week Ciaran talks with Joshua March, the founder and CEO of Conversocial. We discuss Joshua's soon to be released new book called "Message Me. The Future of Customer Service in the Era of Social Messaging and Artificial Intelligence" We discuss the role of bots and AI in providing customer service and discuss how these new and developing technologies will impact on the future.
Ciaran talks to Joe Cotellese an experienced digital marketer and founder of the social media tool Sharey. Ciaran explores Joe’s experience in learning more about customers and uncovers how Joe came to better understand quantitative and qualitative data working in the apparel industry while measuring up customers in their underwear. We also explore what Joe learned about marketing personas as a result of failing a Ninja aptitude test.
In this episode, recorded while Ciaran and Daniel were touring the Highlands of Scotland, Ciaran picked out some tenuously spookily named digital marketing tools we think you might enjoy. Nothing particularly scary happens in this episode, but Ciaran was keen to do a Halloween themed show, so we thought it best to let him get it out of his system.
We speak to Michael Morrissey, an expert on GDPR, who shares with us some of the many changes this new legislation brings into force for all businesses both inside and outside the EU and provides some really practical advice on how to rise to the challenges this change creates.
Daniel talks us through the reality behind some of the latest technologies grabbing the headlines in marketing circles and at conferences. It's always worth taking a look at gimmicks vs reality in digital marketing so you can gain a deeper insight into what is happening in between the headline-grabbing stories that are circulating.
Ciaran talks to SEO Entrepreneur Jon Henshaw about how Jon and his team grew Raven Tools into a globally recognised SEO tool and brand over 10 years. If you aspire to grow your own successful online brand we think you should hear Jon's Story.
Ciaran Interviews Jon Henshaw, SEO expert and founder of Raven Tools. In this episode, we discuss AMP ( Accelerated Mobile pages) and it's draw backs and How to make your website faster without needing to make use of AMP.
Daniel and Ciaran discuss where social listening fits into your Digital Marketing Strategy and take a look at 10 different online tools you can make use of. Social Media listening can help you to understand your market and how existing and potential customers are talking about your brand and products.
Inspired by a podcast listener, Ciaran and Daniel explore the importance of testing everything in your Digital Marketing. We discuss both A/ B testing and Muti variate testing. If you start from the position that “You know nothing” it puts you in a good position to gain insights by testing and validating different variations of what you are doing. This technique can be incredibly insightful and because it doesn’t work on assumptions that can be wrong, it can surprise you with the results it can genera
Over the last few months, we have noticed some interesting moves from Google who have taken some steps to try and encourage advertisers to re look at the advert experience and take action to improve it. Do you fully understand how good an experience your advert campaigns are driving? How effective is your Ad tech in delivering effective campaigns that are not just plain annoying? All of this and more is under discussion in this week’s episode.
We talk to Minter Dial about his newest book, co-written with Caleb Storkey. "Futureproof, How to get your business ready for the next disruption," published by Pearson, paints a complete picture of the major disruptive forces currently facing us -defining them, mapping them out and putting them into context. Listen in for some top tips on preparing yourself and your organisation for change which hasn't yet happened.
We talk to crowd funding expert Heather Delaney, a crowd funding PR communications expert from Dynamo PR in San Francisco who specialise in helping companies build and execute successful crowd funding campaigns. Heather launched the world's first crowd funding division of a PR agency and is now a crowd funding veteran with work on over 100 crowd funding campaigns under her belt.
Whether you use an agency or manage your SEO in house, in this episode, we have some top tips to help you with managing your search engine optimisation. Can your SEO link building efforts make the world a better place? Listen in and find out why Ciaran thinks they can and should.
Ciaran and Daniel share some of our favourite team collaboration tools that help get stuff done and keep us together, whatever the distance. Listen in an d reduce your reliance on email.
Daniel talks us through how to go about choosing and creating the best content marketing for your campaigns. What tools can help you refine your content targeting? What should you do post launch as a follow up to optimise your historical content? Listen In and find out now
Daniel and Ciaran talk us through the highs and lows of working with agencies to support you with your projects. A great agency relationship can make an enormous difference to what you can achieve, but these relationships rarely happen by accident. Listen in to get our recommendations on how to find the right agency for you. We also highlight some of the common digital agency contractual issues you will want to avoid. We also share with you some of the challenges that agencies have managing clients and discuss ways we have found that are useful in building that relationship into a very natural and fruitful extension of your team. Check out our top tips for building a productive and harmonious relationship with your agencies. How many of these are you following? Are you your agencies favourite client or brand?
Daniel and Ciaran have an update on some changes happening at Target Internet which we hope you all our listeners will find of value. As you may or may not know, Target Internet produces a whole host of different learning and training materials of which this podcast is just one part. We also publish regular articles in our Resources section which if you haven't dipped in and read recently we highly recommend. You can also sign up for our email updates which are every fortnight, and we also have a digital marketing skills benchmark which will highlight areas you need to increase your knowledge on to be great at your job in digital marketing. Target Internet’s digital marketing skills benchmark assesses your digital skills in a variety of digital marketing disciplines against industry standards and best practice according to main job focus, level of seniority and industry sector. Anyone can take part and it only takes around 20 minutes to complete. At the end of it, you will be given an action plan of blog posts and podcasts and paid subscription-based modules which will help you with knowledge areas you need to improve on. You can take advantage of our paid for online training modules with a free two week trial for those you keen to give some of these online learning modules a go. Daniel also talks us through formal accredited and non-accredited informal training and the pros and cons of both. We also share some of the ways we stay abreast of the learning workload everyone needs to embrace if they are to remain on top of the ever-changing digital space. Links Target Internet resources Skills test benchmark 2 week free trial of Target Internet Online Training Interested in being a guest on the podcast? Have something valuable to share? Get in touch Email: ciaran[at]targetinternet.com
Daniel walks us through some rather clever marketing psychology techniques which can help you to secure more sales and improve your overall online sales results by making use of a number of cognitive biases. We discuss some of the ethical issues surrounding the use of psychological techniques and how they can apply to digital marketing. Techniques covered include: How to use Cognitive Biases How to make use of Scarcity How to use Social Proof How to use Consistency How to use Loss Aversion How to use Confirmation Bias How to use Anchoring How to use the Decoy Effect How to use Priming Useful Links Link to Cognitive Biases Article: Italian driving licence Case study:
This week Daniel and Ciaran have some more tips and tools for you. We start with a brief overview of the new GDPR EU legislation due to take effect in May 2018 and how it affects email marketers. We also discuss nine tools all focused on helping you to improve your website, monitor website downtime as it happens, improve your drawing, measure data in exciting and animated formats from multiple sources, plus we have a quick round-up of our favourite screen capture and video screen capture software. Under discussion this week:- Are you ready for GDPR? Do you even know what it is? If you are involved with email marketing, and you send email to subscribers in the EU, then you need to know all about this new legislation which comes into effect in 2018 and how it affects what you need to be doing now. Nothing to do with discovering magical or mystical objects, New Relic helps you to understand how the code is functioning on your website and flag up any slow code or errors on your web server. Rubbish at drawing? Google Auto draw may be able to come to your aid with artificial intelligence to help your drawing, turning it into something recognisable. Geek out on fun things your browser will do if you push the limits. Monitor your website and get alerted to any downtime for free. Also, take a look at which does a similar thing Now out of Beta and with the 3 report limit removed, Google data studio is well worth investing some time and effort into. An ideal wash boarding tool which you can link up to all sorts of data beyond what you have in Google Analytics. Check it out. Awesome Screenshot and Evernote SkitchNeed to annotate a screenshot to illustrate a point? These two tools are just the ticket. Ideal for communicating visual things relating to your website to developers and co-workers. If you have found some great tools you would like us to cover, please add them to the comments, with your thoughts on what makes the
Daniel and Ciaran are back this week with some of the latest Digital Trend updates. Under discussion are the new Snapchat location update and the geo-sharing privacy issues it highlights, as well as Snapchat streaks which is gamifying the use of the platform. Daniel also takes a look at the trend of stories migrating everywhere and making narrative journeys more interesting with stories now available in Instagram and Facebook. We also discuss some of the recent changes in Google Analytics reporting updates with the new homepage summary data visualisation insights and Intelligent reports allowing you to ask natural language questions which trigger custom reports. Also under discussion is the trend to adopt faster mobile website technology and how your organisations structure impacts on your overall digital results. Is your organisation structurally set up for Omni-channel measurement and success? Are you ready to move beyond the Omni-channel experience? Links Gender EQ App
If you have ever studied marketing you will have come across . But what is SOSTAC® and how can you use it to improve your results in a digital world? Daniel walks us through this daddy of marketing planning systems with a specific focus on how it can be applied to define and improve your digital marketing campaign planning and processes. Useful resources: Download the Target Internet Content Marketing Calendar Useful books by PR Smith is a registered trade mark of PR Smith. For more information on SOSTAC® Planning & becoming a SOSTAC® Certified Planner visit
OK, we know, its a controversial title but in this episode Ciaran and Daniel discuss digital measurement through analytics and look into attribution modelling. How can you best identify the channels and marketing activity which are driving the success of your business, and which factors should you be taking into account when it comes to the all important allocation of time and resources for your digital marketing campaigns? Useful Links: https://www.kaushik.net/avinash/multi-channel-attribution-modeling-good-bad-ugly-models/
Daniel and Ciaran are back celebrating the podcasts 7th birthday and over 1 million downloads with an audio guide to digital failure. Daniel talks us through how to avoid failure by ensuring all your efforts are joined up and resourced properly using 10 key measurement points you can all review and Ciaran shares a soggy anecdote about his first business meeting with Daniel. Find out how to grade your business’s digital capability https://www.targetinternet.com/digital-transformation-the-essential-guide-to-understanding-digital-capability/
Over 5 years ago, a team of marketers at a boutique agency outside of Amsterdam came up with the idea for a digital marketing reporting tool that would save them a massive amount of time, and create customisable reports. Before long they were offering their tool to others looking to solve the same problems and a new start up was born. Ciaran talks with Swydo founder and CEO Jeroen Maljers about the soul-searching and research the company has undertaken to develop its reporting tool, and they take a look at what’s next for their promotion and development as they prepare to reach for an even larger international market. Find out more about Sywdo: https://www.swydo.com/
Daniel is back with an exciting update for all our listeners who responded to our challenge for podcast reviews. Thank you all so much for your feedback. We have a little something for you. Daniel also walks us through a selection tips and tools he and Ciaran have been using over the last few months which we think you might find interesting, useful or just curiously entertaining. (Note: we used one of the tools to create the title for this podcast episode...Clever or annoying?- answers / complaints via Twitter to @ciaraniow please.) Tools covered in this episode Leadberry https://www.leadberry.com/ Youtube to gif convertor. https://makeagif.com/youtube-to-gif Answer the Public http://answerthepublic.com/ Turn text upside down http://www.upsidedowntext.com/ Website visit recorder https://fullstory.com/ Launch your digital nomad lifestyle https://nomadlist.com/ Target Internet Digital Skills Benchmark https://www.targetinternet.com/benchmark-digital-skills-assessment/
Daniel talks about the digital skills gap which many senior marketeers and teams face with the rapid growth in digital marketing tools and technology. This episode introduces Target Internet’s digital marketing skills benchmark assessment. This free online tool gives you the opportunity to benchmark your digital skills in a variety of digital marketing mediums against industry standards and best practice according to your main job focus, level of seniority and industry sector. Find out how you stack up and where your potential skills gaps are and get guidance on how to fill them. Get more details and take the assessment here: https://www.targetinternet.com/benchmark-digital-skills-assessment/
With the launch of his new Book Building Digital Culture. Daniel walks us through the basics of Agile working methodology, a key working methodology for working in a fast changing environment. Learn how you could employ this development philosophy to enhance your digital projects and marketing practices. You can see the book on Amazon here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01N6JRJTJ/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1 ...And you can buy with a 25% discount using the code ‘AFRIENDSOFDT’ on the publishers website: https://www.koganpage.com/product/building-digital-culture-9780749479657 You can see our detailed guide to Agile working here: https://www.targetinternet.com/an-introduction-to-agile-working/
Have you found the direct to website traffic reported in your Analytics has grown and grown in recent months? Daniel and Ciaran discuss the growing trend in direct traffic growth being reported within Analytics and the reasons behind it. Daniel shares some practical steps everyone can take to more accurately measure results. Also under discussion are click through rates and display campaigns.
Daniel and Ciaran take a fresh look at the service formerly known as Google Webmaster tools. Now rebadged up as Google Search Console, this free tool from Google is one to take a fresh look at if you haven't recently. We walk through some of the new reports and data tools which Search console offer, all of them designed to give you insights into how your website is performing in organic search, as well as some brilliantly useful website performance monitoring tools. https://www.google.com/webmasters
Daniel and Ciaran are back after a short break with a news roundup of the biggest stories that have us excited in the digital marketing world this November. Under discussion are:- Gmail’s responsive design updates, Linked in Content search, Automatic Insights for Google Analytics, Facebook workplace and an update on Twitter.
Ciaran talks to Kevin Lindsay from Adobe about data science and how it can bring valuable insights into how to achieve smart results and quick wins with your marketing and customer analytics. Find out how Adobe are bringing data science smarts to marketers everywhere with their innovative products that help tame your big data by doing a lot of the heavy lifting for you. Find out more about Adobe’s marketing Suite at http://www.adobe.com Read the latest digital marketing insights from the team at Adobe at: http://blogs.adobe.com/digitalmarketing
Daniel and Ciaran pose a great local SEO question from one of our listeners to Kelvin Newman, founder and host of one of the world's largest SEO conferences "Brighton SEO" Join Kelvin and the cream of the UK SEO community at Brighton SEO next week for their training sessions on the 1st of September and the full conference on the 2nd of September. It's what weekends and your department's training budget were made for. But hurry, Tickets for this event sell out quickly. Find out more at: http://www.brightonseo.com/
Daniel exposes an interesting Twitter myth around URL shorteners, and Ciaran discovers that Twitter haven't been censoring and editing his posts on the platform, while also getting nostalgic about "you are the hero" books from his childhood. Get our top tips on making the most of your tweets with creative use of URL elements in your tweets.
Ciaran talks to Pete Kluge from Adobe about Programatic Advertising and the movements and growth within the industry. With industry experts predicting 20 Billion spend on programatic, the industry is growing at a phenomenal rate. Pete walks us through how the industry is managing performance at scale using DSP’s (Demand Side Platforms) and Ad Exchanges. Discover what Adobe has to offer marketing teams keen to create intelligent and unique digital customer experiences at scale. Adobe Media Optimiser which enables you to programatically manage all your Search, display and social media advertising is helping marketing teams to gain valuable attribution insights across different channels to help identify how channels are working to create paths to conversion for consumers in the market place. You can find out more about Adobe’s digital marketing platform and latest thinking and developments from Adobe at https://blogs.adobe.com/digitalmarketing/
No adverts - Ciaran talks to Simon Jacobson from Microsoft about how Bing is dramatically growing their share of the search market. Discover how they have set about integrating the search functionality they provide into peoples work flow and daily lives. With some impressive user growth statistics that will take you by surprise, we explore what bing has to offer the digital marketer and ask bing why we should care about what they are up to. Listen and learn a few things that might surprise you. Bing’s brand new insights portal http://advertise.bingads.microsoft.com/en-uk/insights Use this to research Bing Network search volume trends by industry in Europe, Research your target audience by demographics and industry in Europe, Search volume share by device-type and industry in Europe View Bing Brighton SEO slides https://docs.com/bing-ads/6707/brighton-seo-bing-network Get in touch with Bing team via Twitter @BingAds and @simonaldo Or Email BingForSuccess@microsoft.com
Following a question from Rick Toon, podcast listener on our LinkedIn group, Daniel talks us through how he’d approach the essentials of digital marketing in terms of services and essentials you should be using. Daniel also visits Keyword research and its relationship to Hygiene, Hub and Hero Content, Ciaran indulges in a spurious fishing analogy, and Daniel explores some interesting influencer outreach and content curation techniques. Wordpress.com Hosted Wordpress website for those of you wanting to get up and running with a website content hub. Google Search Console https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/ Great tool for understanding how Google search views your website and also gives you the keywords you think your website is about. Google Adwords Keyword tool https://adwords.google.co.uk/KeywordPlanner Ubersuggest http://ubersuggest.org/ Target Internet SEO tools comparison report http://www.targetinternet.com/seo-tools-comparison-raven-seomoz-buzzstream/ Ciaran’s Complete guide to QR codes http://www.targetinternet.com/complete-marketing-guide-to-qr-codes/ http://www.targetinternet.com/putting-your-contact-details-into-qr-codes/ Create a pre written tweet button http://www.targetinternet.com/how-to-create-pre-written-tweet-buttons-and-links/ Feedly https://feedly.com/ Hootsuite https://hootsuite.com/ Sean Greentree http://seangreentree.co.uk
Ciaran talks to US marketing author Tim Matthews about traditional marketing and its links and reach which goes deep into today’s digital marketing mix. We also talk about Tim’s brilliant book (and no we don't say that lightly- it really is a very good read) “The Professional Marketer” which is a custom written guide for anyone who finds themselves working in a marketing role who hasn't had the benefit of studying marketing theory and fundamentals. Get up to speed on developments, techniques and the giants of marketing thinking from the last 150 years while also skilling yourself up with all the essential marketing skills concepts and techniques you hear others talk about which you’ve never really understood. Raise your game and go get yourself a copy. Resources Mentioned:- Conversion XL http://conversionxl.com/blog/ Ted talks https://www.ted.com/talks Every David Ogilvy book ever written UK - http://www.amazon.co.uk/David-Ogilvy/e/B000APAF1O/ US - http://www.amazon.com/David-Ogilvy/e/B000APAF1O/ Being Direct - Lester Wonderman UK- http://www.amazon.co.uk/Being-Direct-Making-Advertising-Work/dp/0394540638 US http://www.amazon.com/Being-Direct-Making-Advertising-Work/dp/0394540638 Crazy Egg - website heatmapshttp://www.crazyegg.com/ Hot Jar https://www.hotjar.com/ The Professional Marketer - Tim Matthews UK- http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Professional-Marketer-Tim-Matthews/dp/0692232850 US http://www.amazon.com/The-Professional-Marketer-Tim-Matthews/dp/0692232850 Matthews on Marketing Blog http://www.matthewsonmarketing.com
Daniel and Ciaran are back with a selection of their favourite digital marketing tool discoveries for you to explore and evaluate. Quill Engagehttps://www.quillengage.com/ English language reports on your Google Analytics. See how well tools can match your report writing prowess without getting tired. Swydo http://www.swydo.com/ Great multiple platform reporting and dash-boarding tool enables you to report on multiple sources of data including Adwords, Analytics, Bing Yahoo, Facebook Ads, Facebook Graph, Google Console,Google Page Speed, Call tracking, and an interface with Twitter Ads coming out soon. Moz Localhttps://moz.com/local A great tool for helping you build links from all the key respected online directories to help maximise your visibility relating to the physical location of your business. Currently only useful if you are in the US or UK. Coggle.ithttps://coggle.it/ Collaborative in the cloud mind mapping tool that Ciaran is clearly very enamoured with. check it out and tell us if its as exciting and useful as he thinks it is. Canva https://www.canva.com/ Online web based graphics platform that enables you to create easily editable templates for all your key placement and social networks. Super simple to use for non graphic people. We have found its a great help for workflow in larger teams particularly if you are not all in the same location.
Daniel talks us through getting leadership buy-in to key digital transformation projects by answering some of the tough questions you might be asked. Ciaran gets a little over dramatic playing the role of a challenging senior team member asking tough questions which Daniel calmly and confidently walks us through. Tough questions Daniel tackles:
How to deal with negative conversations online
How to minimise the chance that social team might say something embarrassing.
How to deal with leakage of confidential information.
How to deal with the disbelief that people we want to reach don't use social media.
How to deal with the risk of law suits from Social Media activity.
How to solve the time lag from your compliance team.
How to spot potential errors or faux pas
How to tie social channel to business results
Take a look at http://socialmediagovernance.com/ for some great resources that will further help you in this area.
Daniel and Ciaran discuss some of the new targeting options available to marketers on Google Adwords, Facebook and other social platforms and the creative ways they can be used to reach the right audience for your business. Gmail Ads https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/6105478?hl=en-GB Facebook Custom Audiences https://www.facebook.com/business/a/custom-audiences Google Adwords Customer Match https://support.google.com/adwords/answer/6276125?hl=en-GB
Ciaran talks to Kristin Naragon, Director of Email Solutions at Adobe, about their research into both consumer and marketing professionals use of email marketing and the interesting insights it provided. With email marketing continuing to be a channel of communication that consistently drives results, we also discuss Adobe’s vision of the tools email marketers need and discuss what their email marketing platform provides. Adobe isn't so well known as an email service provider, but if you have used and love Adobe’s creative suite or analytics platform then take a look at the email solutions Adobe provide. Designed for multi channel marketers keen to further drive performance through better integration of email into online communication strategies, Adobe’s email solutions offer a compelling alternative to better known and less integrated stand alone email platforms. If you are looking for ways to reach your customers with more relevant and effective email campaigns check out these resources: Take Adobe’s free email maturity model online assessment and learn what your email strengths and priorities are: http://www.emailmaturitymodel.com/ Read more on Adobe’s email strategy and platformshttps://www.adobe.com/go/email
Ciaran talks to Daniel about Google Tag Manager and provides us with an outline of what it does and how to use it, and we discuss some of the more advanced features and ways to make use of this fab free tool. If you looked at Tag Manager when it first came out we would encourage you to take a fresh look at the tool and investigate the new Google learning resources behind it which are rather good in our opinion. https://tagmanager.google.com
How do you stay abreast of the constant and sometimes vast changes in the digital space thrown at us every week? Daniel and Ciaran share how they stay up to date with changes large and small in the digital world on a daily basis with some quick and easy to follow hacks from Daniel. Have a trick, tip or hack that helps you keep your ears to the ground and your finger on the pulse? We would love to hear from you. Please share and get in touch. Email: feedback@targetinternet.com
Daniel talks us through what Programmatic Advertising is and tells us how the technologies and three letter acronyms all work! Understand some of the latest advances and jargon used in display advertising on various advertising networks and learn how you can use whats on offer to boost your online visibility. We also discuss best practice with re-marketing and retargeting of adverts and how to use display for brand re-enforcement and content marketing placement.
Daniel and Ciaran discuss and answer some of your most recent questions to us in the first of an ongoing series of listener questions. We look at Analytic goals and their limitations, Google Analytics demographic data, dust off our favourite mac cheat sheets of yesteryear and discuss one of Daniel’s favourite topics: Gadgets and gear to go travelling with! Resources humix.be article http://www.humix.be/en/blog/how-accurate-are-google-analytics-demographics-reports Mac cheat sheets? We found a few! http://edge-cache.lifehacker.com/lifehacker/lh_mac_shortcuts_update.pdf http://www.customguide.com/cheat_sheets/mac-os-x-cheat-sheet.pdf http://www.cheat-sheets.org/saved-copy/OSX_KeyCombo_Reference_Guide.pdf We want to make questions and answers a regular feature of the show so please send your questions to us by email: feedback@targetinternet.com
Daniel and Ciaran discuss Target Internet’s new digital e-learning training programme for individuals. With the launch of this subscription based flexible on demand training resource Daniel shares with us how Target Internet has developed and some of the key learnings from the journey we have been on in developing our own startup. Find our new online relearning training for individuals here and sign up for free sample modules :- http://www.targetinternet.com/online-digital-marketing-elearning-courses/
Daniel and Ciaran discuss ways they have used to create content that continues to drive traffic to their site month after month.Learn about the tools and sources of information they use to identify topics and phrases that are of interest to their audience and will help to impact positively on audience figures.
Daniel talks us through SPAM, Bacon and how to radically boost your email lists performance by applying some clever basic segmentation techniques. Ciaran also quizzes Daniel on his new Apple watch to find out how well it fits into his daily life. Email Segments discussed in case you missed them:
Low open high click - stimulate open High open low click - stimulate click High both open high click - ( these are your email champions) Low open / low click - trigger a reactivation process.
Ciaran and Daniel share their top tips on how to increase the reach of your digital content in Facebook using some simple techniques and measuring what your audience really likes.
Daniel and Ciaran discuss a couple digital marketing tools that we think offer amazing functionality but which need to be used responsibly. Tools explored: snip.ly meetedgar.com
Daniel and Ciaran discuss Email Marketing best practice and share their top tips for effective mass email communication with your highly valuable engaged email subscribers.
Daniel and Ciaran discuss setting up a YouTube Channel highlighting some of the key things they have learned while setting up various channels for Target Internet and Clients.
Find us on YouTubehttp://www.youtube.com/targetinternet
Transcription serviceshttps://www.speechpad.com/captions
Check out our resources to help you get your channel set up.http://www.targetinternet.com/setting-up-a-youtube-channel-tips-templates-and-infographic/
Daniel introduces us to Periscope, a fab new tool from Twitter that enables you to broadcast video events live directly from your mobile. Not only do you now have the ability to stream live events, but you can also save the video to provide recordings of the events you cover. We also discuss similar app Meerkat, and some of the opportunities, implications and challenges that live streaming brings to those both covering and running live events and conferences.
Periscope
https://www.periscope.tv/
Meerkat
https://meerkatapp.co/