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With the staggering amount of internet data currently being generated, it’s no surprise that marketing tools and channels are such a critical part of our marketing lives. The sheer volume of data available to us means that marketing a product or service often requires innovative thinking: using cutting edge tools like social media, building interactive websites with mobile-friendly design, or coming up with new strategies for e-commerce.

A study by Hubspot found that companies typically use around 12 different tools at any given moment to collect and collate data from the various digital channels that they may be employing. But the collection and analytics processes can be both time consuming and confusing, and it comes as no surprise that over 60% of marketers want better integration between processes for sharing information between these tools.

Due to the influx of information now being taken in, it is becoming tougher than ever for marketing teams to recognise valuable insights from data. The number of data points available to companies has grown exponentially and marketers need an intelligent nerve centre that allows them to track digital moments and integrate with platforms such as Instagram and Facebook where their customers are spending more time than ever before.

It’s within this tech landscape that many marketers are recognising the importance of a digital command centre to allow their teams to identify and understand KPI’s that can help them determine the impact of certain ad campaigns, promotions, products or services. CMOs must ensure that relevant insights gleaned from digital channels, such as online discussions, go to the places in the organisation that can use them. Companies that use their digital command center’s intelligence, identify key moments and respond appropriately.

Setting up a digital command centre can be overwhelming, but for many it has been worth the focus, particularly in realising specific business objectives. Recently, more and more CMOs have begun to realise the potential of building a digital command centre, by extracting value from their investment in increased lead generation and consumer confidence.

In lead generation advertising, landing pages play a significant role in converting visitors into leads. A lead is someone that has given you their contact information and opted-in to whatever offer or service you are promoting.

A lead generation campaign’s success relies heavily on the landing page because it needs to be credible enough for prospects to give out their personal info and opt-in – otherwise they will move onto your competition. Here are five ways you can improve the credibility of your landing page:

1: Use real testimonials from real people with pictures or their organisations details

Customer reviews and testimonials on your landing page demonstrate that you have happy customers who use your service or buy from you regularly. If you have real testimonials from customers and not actors, this will lead to a higher conversion rate as prospects will be more likely to believe these are authentic.

2: Add Helpful FAQs

Providing answers to questions that prospects may already have will lead them to trust you more and convert faster because they feel like their doubts have been addressed.

It’s really important to be helpful, forthright and honest with your clients because it can dramatically increase the amount of leads coming your way. Providing FAQs is a great strategy to generate more traffic on your landing page – which you want for lead generation campaigns as an inflow of leads will make a sell much easier.

3: Show Your Main Features Above the Fold

If you offer features such as free trials, money-back guarantees, or flexible plans, then these features should be shown from the moment someone enters your site. This way visitors know what they’re getting into before completing the contact form and converting. It also reduces friction by increasing visibility

4: Display Trust Seals

Trust seals give a sense of credibility to lead generation landing page visitors and pages with trust seals convert better. There are a number of ways to display trust seals on lead generation landing pages, but experts agree that the most effective way is by using logos and badges from established organisations like TRUSTe or BBB Online with your lead generation advertising campaign’s logo.

This technique implies two things: firstly, your lead-generation ads have been approved as trustworthy; secondly, you’re not in it for the money alone – there must be something more important at stake than just getting people to click through. As such, this method works well if you want visitors feel confident about parting with their personal information when they buy products from you–they know where their data will go and what it’ll be used for (even though you may have already stipulated it in your lead generation landing page’s Privacy Policy).

5: Increase Page Load Speed for Greater Impact

Sometimes people are apprehensive about lead generation landing pages because it takes too long for the content to load. If this happens, then not only will those potential leads leave without converting but also those reading reviews may not want anything to do with your business after reading negative comments from others who experienced lengthy loading.

This is why lead generation landing pages with a fast loading time are more likely to perform better than those who don’t. But, if you’re not sure how long your lead generating landing page takes to load on an average computer, then try using the Google lighthouse page speed application that measures website performance and provide suggestions on how you can improve your landing pages speed.

You need to make sure your website is fast, informative and trustworthy. Ask yourself the following questions when it comes time to design a new site or update an existing one. 1: Do you have testimonials from real people with pictures? 2: Does your main features and benefits appear above-the-fold? 3: Are there trust seals displayed prominently such as VeriSign Secured Seal Certificate? 4: Have you tried using Google PageSpeed Insights Tool in order to optimise load speed times for greater impact?”

If these five tips have been helpful then I hope you will check out our other articles ‍about how to improve lead conversion rates.

The renowned contrarian Bob Hoffman and other traditionalist Don Draper-style marketers may have a point when they say that advertising is being replaced by so-called ‘Maths Men.’ They may say this with a snarl of condescension, but the fact remains that digital advertising, and more particularly the digital feedback loops associated with it, is doing wonders for advertising creativity.

Current-day marketers know and understand that the advertising industry is in a state of flux. Gone are the circulation numbers to sustain certain newspaper titles and traditional TV viewership is busy taking a series of unrelenting body blows. The facts are inescapable. Today’s audiences are consuming their news and viewing pleasure via the internet and, as a result, advertisers are finding themselves in an unfamiliar environment where there’s little to no control over what people see and when they see it. Enter programmatic!

Programmatic advertising is becoming increasingly popular as a way to regain this lost control by using data to create targeted ads that will be shown at optimal times for specific audiences. While programmatic advertising provides better creative intelligence, it’s important not to get too carried away; it should NEVER be allowed to replace creativity and the human touch needed for effective marketing campaigns as data can only offer so much insight into an audiences’ preferences. Effective advertising is all about relevancy to the target audience and, with more people being exposed to this technology on both sides – advertisers and consumers – there may be a rise in creativity that could revitalise the ad industry!

Like all good things in life, there are caveats!

With the development of a more privacy-centric internet, lazy marketers who used broad “set-it-and-forget it” programmatic campaigns with no personalisation, will soon be left out in the cold. Apple’s new iOS privacy changes and the inevitable death of the tracking cookie has forced marketers to make sure that they understand their customers before they use generic messages. Forward-thinking creative agencies will make sure that they understand their clients customers with the first party customer data that they have at their disposal and then design creatives that each market segment would find relevant.

Through a series of strictly monitored campaign iterations, agencies can see what creative executions resonate with particular audiences and then make adjustments to ensure optimal campaigns for their clients, whilst always maintaining agency standards of quality. In a world where there are thousands of ads shown every second, agencies need this data-driven process if they want their work to be relevant!

Technology has made it easier than ever before for agencies to create campaigns tailored specifically for each audience that they’re trying to reach through onscreen media such as video or social media. The data feedback loops from each and every touchpoint the customers encounter through their digital journey, provide valuable insights to the agency. Information such as how consumers interact online when viewing the ads, allows the advertiser to unlock valuable information around consumer behaviour, including purchase and upsell opportunities.

At the risk of over-stating the obvious, the future of digital advertising is the practice of data collection and interpretation in order to generate relevant messages in a creative way. The specific target audience, as oppose to a generic spray-and-pray method like broadcasting to a broad market, will lead to more successful advertising.

To the advertising industry professionals who cling too tightly to the past and advertisers who are not creative enough with their campaigns, digital, and more specifically data, provides hope for all. To the “Mad Men” wannabes who bemoan the “fact” that programmatic has killed creativity, and to the “lazy” spray-and-pray programmatic advertisers, I quote Bob Dylan: “If your time to you is worth savin’. Then you better start swimmin’ or you’ll sink like a stone. For the times they are a-changin’.”

Traditional print advertising is great and it’s been the cornerstone of retail advertising since the invention of the press. However, the sad fact of the matter is that every day brings new challenges to advertisers as they face severe limitations around their print campaigns. They’re currently hard-pressed to find ways to maximise their reach by printing less and, even before the Covid 19 pandemic, they’ve actively been looking for other ways to reach their audiences.

In 2006, the Association of National Advertisers reported that 40% of marketers increased spending on digital media and 38% decreased print by 20%.

The print industry has been impacted by a variety of new challenges that impair its ability to reach demand, such as the scarcity of papers and the high cost of imports due to the global shortage in shipping containers.

These limitations have encouraged many advertisers to increase their budgets for digital advertising instead, which provides more measurable metrics and allows them to better monitor insights such as:

1. Reach VS Distribution

Whilst advertisers are limited to the number of printed issues distributed, with digital it is possible to see how many unique people are reached at an impression level. Additionally, these new metrics may provide better insights and offer more accurate reporting than just “number of printed issues distributed.”

2. Personalisation that scales

Digital advertising provides the ability to target a specific audience better and scale up quickly where necessary, allowing full control over what content goes where without concerns about having enough inventory for print campaigns. This gives advertisers the opportunity to reach different audiences with tailored messaging.

3. Rapid testing of new messaging and ideas

Digital allows advertisers to explore what content resonates with people more than other forms of media, which should ultimately lead them to a better understanding of how best to communicate about their products or services. This means they’ll be able to reduce the time spent on finding the perfect creative message for each campaign since digital is so easily measurable by conversion rates, click-through rates etc.

Digital also allows advertisers to quickly tweak out messages that seem less effective in driving conversions or engagement between audience groups – meaning it doesn’t take long before you know which message or offer has proven most successful at generating results.

4. User share content on social media

Many people are looking to social media, such as Twitter and Facebook, for their news, which means that they are captive audiences ready to soak up information that is relevant to themselves. Added to this, digital content is extremely easy to share across these networks, without having to print out a physical copy of a brochure or catalog.

This has become increasingly prevalent as more and more people look to the convenience of simply going online to get the specific information they require. The ability to share information is an added bonus for users – they can instantly recommend products or services across a broad network of acquaintances, something which is not easily achievable with print broadsheets or catalogues.

5. Cross sell and upsell

Digital marketing has the ability to cross sell or upsell products to users who have bought specific items in the past. Marketers find that this is a great way of keeping these customers engaged with their company; it can also be made into an automated process which means that when customers come back, they are more likely to buy again, as well as recommend the product or service to others.

One is not advocating that marketers should not be using print but there is a strong case for using digital to supplement and amplify print campaigns. There is no arguing the fact that digital advertising has the ability to achieve more personalised content, is highly measurable and ultimately can provide precise metrics such as Return on Ad Spend (RoAS).

When faced with the question of what budget should be allocated for specific campaigns, advertisers should use digital to complement their print in order to drive deeper insights that are not available through print alone. This will help marketers extend their advertising reach with a relatively precise knowledge on the efficacy of their campaign.