Why the Title of Your Content Is Everything

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Content: It’s Not Another Channel

Think content is a channel that should be departmentalized? Think again! Rebecca Lieb explains why team members across your marketing organization need to collaborate and align on content.

Please visit Marketing Land for the full article.

5 Bold Predictions from Oracle CEO Mark Hurd

Oracle CEO Mark Hurd addressed the 70,000+ Oracle OpenWorld attendees at his keynote with some of the top concerns that CEOs today face. The reality, says Hurd, is that many CEOs don't have the luxury of thinking 5-10 years out. Rather, many focus on moving fast and delivering short-term revenue results. Survival is ultimately the only goal.

Research from S&P says that from 2008-2015 revenue has only grown 1%, with earnings growing only 5%, forcing many companies to pull back on their spending. They estimate that IT spending has declined 5% in the last 5 years alone.

The average age of applications in the U.S. today is 20 years. The needs of 1995 don't resonate with the needs of today. Ultimately, the current on-premise IT operating model is unsustainable. Companies must modernize in order to survive.

80% of millennials want an integrated, seamless experience, regardless of the channel. With this high demand from consumers for companies to be real-time, a move to using cloud technology isn't trendy, but necessary.

"We are going to lead a decade-long transition to the cloud," Hurd announced.

Hurd offered his 5 bold predictions of what that transition will look like:

1. Suites of best-of-breed SaaS applications will win. Cloud and on-premise need to coexist. (Tweet this)

2. By 2025, 80% of all production applications will be in the cloud. (Tweet this)

3. By 2025, two suite providers will own 80% of the SaaS market. (Tweet this)

4. By 2025, 100% of new testing and development will be in the cloud. (Tweet this)

5. By 2025, virtually all enterprise data will be stored in the cloud, and enterprise clouds will be the most secure environments in the world. (Tweet this)

General Electric CIO Jim Fowler backed up some of these predictions, saying that GE is undergoing the biggest transformation in its entire 130+ year history. Fowler said that GE recognizes the importance of becoming a digital industrial company, and it's the cloud that will enable them to make this change. Where they only have 20% of their apps running in the cloud today, Fowler predicted that by 2020 that number will increase to 70%. By moving their HR to the cloud, GE will be able to add 10 million new recruits.

Whether or not you agree with these predictions, one thing is clear: cloud is changing the game for companies today and everyone needs to get on board. As marketers are thinking about their budgets for the coming year, review the Econsultancy Marketing Budget Report to get a better sense of where other marketers are spending their money as digital and cloud change the face of marketing.

Marketing Day: Facebook Search Updates, Instagram’s Boomerang & Why You Need A Data Scientist

Here's our recap of what happened in online marketing today, as reported on Marketing Land and other places across the web.

Please visit Marketing Land for the full article.

Instagram Releases New Stand-Alone App, Boomerang

How Recommendation And Remarketing Tools Can Boost Your Sales

How Recommendation And Remarketing Tools Can Boost Your Sales written by Guest Post read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Up until fairly recently eCommerce recommendations and remarketing were only possible for large eCommerce sites. However, the emergence of recommendation and remarketing tools and service providers over the last two years have made these sales boosting benefits accessible to even small businesses and marketers.

In this article we will look at what recommendations and remarketing are within the field of eCommerce, before looking at how they can benefit your business and boost your sales.

What Recommendations & Remarketing Mean

Recommendations have long been a core component of Amazon’s website, with up to 70% of Amazon’s home page dedicated to recommendations.  There are three primary types of recommendations:

• Generic: These recommendations are seldom influenced by your past browsing and shopping history, and often show what other customers are currently looking at, or what the top-sellers are in general, or by category.
• Complementary: These recommendations are directly influenced by your current and past behavior on an eCommerce site, and will be made up of items that complement or enhance the items you are currently looking at.
• Alternatives: These recommendations are alternatives to what you are currently looking at, or what is already in your cart. Alternative recommendations can be used to either upsell or to retain a customer where the product they were originally interested in is out-of-stock.

Remarketing is primarily about having your online ads displayed to users who have previously visited your site, as they browse other websites. However, remarketing can also be used in tandem to recommendations by showing visitors to your site products they have viewed on other sites, and even items that are relevant to their current geographical location.

Both recommendations and remarketing rely on you having a substantial amount of data regarding your customer’s behavior and history, and the arrival of recommendation and remarketing tools and service providers gives small businesses access to this, along with access to 3rd-party data that enhances what they have already collected.

Photo Credit Think with Google

Using Recommendations to Increase Average Basket Size

Careful implementation of complementary, and even generic recommendations, can lead to an increase in your average basket size, with a McKinsey case study showing that cross-selling techniques can increase sales by 20%. The focus should be on items that enhance what the customer is looking at; for example, if the customer is looking at a shirt, complementary recommendations would be pants, shoes and even socks that create a complete outfit.  However, there shouldn’t be too many recommendations or you risk losing the customer. Generic recommendations in this context can encourage customers to explore your site more, possibly finding items they want, but weren’t actively looking for.

Photo Credit Think with Google

Using Recommendations to Increase Conversions

Countless sales are lost each day when the item the customer is looking for is out-of-stock; but alternative recommendations can help you. Whenever an item is out-of-stock, ensure that you display at least three alternatives, using a good, better, best approach. Caution must be taken when setting up your alternatives since they should closely match the original; if the customer was looking for a light switch, don’t offer them a new lampshade as an alternative.

Photo Credit InfoSys

Using Recommendations to Improve Customer Loyalty

Personalization plays a critical role in fostering customer loyalty for online stores, and personalizing some of your generic recommendations is one way to start. Generic recommendations are shown when you don’t know what the customer is actually looking for, but once you have some history on a customer’s past behavior you can, in addition to the standard generic recommendations, show a list of items they bought recently, or buy frequently. This is particularly appropriate for FMCG and other items customers need to buy regularly.

Amazon’s recommendations are said to generate up to 30% in additional revenue for the company, and while they have been doing this for quite a few years, any online business, big or small, can realize a boost in sales through the proper implementation of their own recommendation and remarketing strategy. The only requirement is that you start now.

Przemyslaw Mankowski as a CEO of QuarticON concentrates on company’s further expansion on the market, lead International business strategy and develops business partnerships in CEE and worldwide. He has been working in New Tech industry for several years. Prior to joining QuarticON.com, he was Sales Director in Agora and Member of the Board in Trader.com (Poland). He was also CEO at Passus and NextWeb Media.