Best Free Online Marketing Guide For Online Entrepreneur

As marketers prepare to enter a new era, FCB Inferno managing director Katy Wright outlines how fueling creativity with tech and data can benefit brands and audiences alike. Around the time I left school, I wanted more than anything to be an airline pilot. Really, I did – I received training, and I was utterly serious about a career in aviation. My life ended up taking a different, brilliant path, but that love of the skies is still ingrained in me. I was reminded of that original life goal of mine when reading recently about the impact of data on our industry. When the technology required to fly was first applied to the commercial sector, it heralded a complete revolution and restructuring of the global economy. Businesses were now operating in a world where markets thousands of miles apart from each other could be bridged in a matter of hours, not weeks. There was, quite simply, no going back. Over the past decade, I believe we’ve reached a similar point with technology and da...

Another week, another wave of account news, reviews, agency launches, rebrands and acquisitions. Check out our global round-up to see what business is on the move (and why it matters) below, then head over to our  Business on the Move  hub to read about more market maneuvers. Looking for a new agency partner of your own? Check out  The Drum Recommends , where you can search for trusted partners and access expert industry knowledge that could help you make your selection.  If you’ve got a business on the move story for us, send it to  businessonthemove@thedrum.com  for consideration before next Thursday. Account moves Publicis Groupe has announced the acquisition of CitrusAd, a software as a service (SaaS) platform optimizing brands’ marketing performances directly within retailer websites . With more than 50% of its activities in the US, CitrusAd is present across 22 countries and six industries. CitrusAd provides its world-class tec...

The Drum’s social media executive Amy Houston looks to top brands to assess how they can best use gifs and looping videos to increase awareness, market their products and ultimately have a bit of fun in the meantime.  The humble gif (Graphics Interchange Format) was first developed by computer scientists back in ’87, and similar to the meme  it has come a long way since then. Gifs are used to add some spice to WhatsApp chats or tweets when they are feeling a little lackluster, but there is so much more to these funny short clips than meets the eye. They really are the gif-t that keeps on giving... sorry, I had to. <iframe src="https://ift.tt/3BR53Kp" width="480" height="271" frameBorder="0" class="giphy-embed" allowFullScreen></iframe><p><a href="https://giphy.com/gifs/the-office-mrw-d10dMmzqCYqQ0"></a></p> Last week Spotify teamed up with Giphy  (the world’s largest gif portal) in a new...

Mere weeks after acquiring resale platform Depop for a reported $1.6bn, Etsy, the e-commerce marketplace and popular source for handmade and custom goods, has launched its new television campaign celebrating independent makers and craftsmen. The company’s chief marketer Ryan Scott sits down with The Drum to discuss how Etsy has combated pandemic-induced challenges, why it’s investing in new marketing tactics and what’s next for e-commerce.  Tell me a bit about Etsy’s new ‘Find Greatness in the Making’ campaign . What was the inspiration behind this work?  A key pillar of our marketing strategy is to connect with new audiences and this moment when many are glued to the TV provides an opportunity to introduce Etsy to a wide audience. The creative shines a spotlight on the path –  usually a less popular one – that many creative artists take starting at a young age to become creative business owners.  We’ve focused on shifting to more emotional advertising a...

Amazon has pulled in yet another record-breaking quarter propelled by its surging cloud computing, subscriptions and advertising arms, all of which led the umbrella ‘other’ grouping to revenue growth of 87%. The outsize contribution to the e-commerce giant’s bottom line exceeded expectations, although a weaker-than-expected outlook for third-quarter revenue suggests that the long gold rush may be losing steam. Amazon has posted another set of impressive results for the second quarter, led by a surging advertising business as brands continue to pivot their marketing strategies toward digital. This shift brought in $7.9bn to further swell Amazon’s coffers over the quarter and represents a marked improvement from the 77% growth registered last quarter and 41% growth logged a year ago. Crowing over the figures, chief financial officer Brian Olavsky credited the launch of “over 40 new features and self-service capabilities” for the performance, citing a tool for creating regional sp...

The fast-evolving news cycle, especially during the past year, has made digital PR experts take a step forward in their outreach strategies. With all the changes and breaking news experienced in 2020, digital PRs have introduced traditional PR communications techniques as part of their approach. This is the case with ‘always-on link building’, more commonly known as newsjacking. Always-on is a PR strategy that occurs in two main scenarios. One is when a journalist has a content request, and the PR provides them with information that answers that request and helps them with their piece. With the second, which has a more proactive approach, the PR will be pitching comments to relevant journalists based on recent or upcoming news or events that might be of interest to journalists – even if they haven’t requested that information. For example, as July is ‘plastic-free month’, we created a piece for one of our clients within the packaging and logistic industry bringing awareness to how mu...

Gautham Narayanan, the managing director for Wieden + Kennedy India makes a case for marketing to build a data-driven framework for itself, which would change how it is looked at and help in understanding its impact better.   Marketing constantly searches for the new. We see trends every New Year, we search new routes to market, new technologies, new ways to find, engage and serve content on emerging platforms. It is what our industry is famed for, it excites our people, keeps businesses one step ahead and helps us solve problems in ways that have not been done before.  However, in the chase for the new, have we lost sight of what is right, what is necessary and what is effective?  Is it time for a call for the marketing and agency community to understand what works, why it works, and how we can better our chance of being in the 16% of marketing that is effective (A study of 143 TV ads by the Ehrenberg Bass Institute found that only  16%   of advert...

The era of the 9-to-5 is over. For marketers at least, a new, flexible approach to work is taking over, catalyzed by the events of the past 18 months. This is the key finding of a new white paper published by The Drum and Adobe; Creativity, collaboration and culture: the impact of working from home on marketers and marketing . It shows the marketing industry embraced working from home, and only a quarter expect to go back to their office full-time or most of the time in the future. Instead, over half (56%) of all the people surveyed – and two-thirds of creatives – expect to work mostly from home. This may sound worrying for some employers used to a high level of control, but the research suggests the old days of micro-management and presenteeism have gone. Instead, marketers embraced their new flexibility and the opportunity to spend more time with their families. In return they were more efficient and more productive. Only 16% said they’d found it difficult to work effectively from ...

The burger giants are firing on all marketing cylinders. Yet it’s Wendy’s that seems have some strong tailwinds as it’s passed Burger King for the No. 2 spot. The chain now has dreams of taking the shine off of the Golden Arches. Chief marketer Carl Loredo shares five of the key reasons why Wendy’s challenger brand marketing is winning. 1. Beating McDonald’s to the loyalty game. Yes, McDonald’s rolled out its first rewards program, MyMcDonald’s Rewards, with fanfare this week. But Wendy’s already has 13m downloads of its Wendy’s Rewards app. Users get 10 points for every dollar spent redeemable for free food. It also offers alerts about new products, partnerships such as its T-Mobile Tuesdays and special offers including a free medium fries with the purchase of a sandwich. “There’s a ton of benefit,” says Loredo. “It allows us to get to know you better and you’re first in line when you engage with us digitally.” 2. Getting in on gaming, early. Smashing freezers in Fortnite? Why not...

In 2017 rumors circled that Snapchat might end up in the social media graveyard alongside old app favorite Vine. Call it a comeback, it clung on, recording one of its best ever quarters. As it looks to the future, The Drum talks to chief marketing officer Kenny Mitchell about why Snapchat is launching its biggest global campaign to date. Built for a generation of teens who prefer to communicate with pictures over words, when Snapchat first hit the social scene in 2011 it soon became a firm favorite.  But what was once the new darling soon became sidelined by fierce competition from Instagram, which created a carbon copy of its then-unique Stories feature, and then TikTok entered the fore. Not to mention  that  infamous Kylie Jenner tweet about the redesign that wiped $1.3bn off the company’s market share. In the face of adversity, Snapchat hung on and was dealt a good hand by the pandemic. After it invested heavily...

Specialist death brand Farewill says “fundamental change” is needed to compassionate leave legislation as it develops a policy template and guidelines that any employer can adapt for their own business. New research carried out by OnePoll has revealed that almost 79% of UK workers believe the current government guidelines for compassionate leave should be more definitive. Currently in the UK workers have no legal entitlement to paid leave if their spouse, parent or best friend dies, and any time off given just needs to be deemed ‘reasonable’ by their employer.  The time people are able to take varies greatly based on the industry sector. The marketing and PR industry scored highly as taking the most days off (up to 8), while the media and internet industries took among the least – just 3.5 days.  The vagueness of legislative guidelines, as well as the discrepancies between various organizations’ compassionate leave policies, has led to many workers facing problems in takin...

Shaking off the effects of the pandemic and countless lockdowns, the UK is set to see ad spend grow 18.2% to £27.7bn in 2021, according to the latest report from the Advertising Association and Warc. Never before has such a dramatic surge been recorded by the organization. The Drum explores the findings. This regular expenditure report collects advertising revenue data across the entire media landscape to predict the momentum of ad spend. In 2021 growth is predicted to hit 18.2% – a welcome improvement from the previously forecast 15.2% from April. The momentum accumulated fast too, with an estimated 54.7% rise during the second quarter of the year. This coincides with the roll-out of the vaccination program and the loosening of lockdowns.  It is the fastest ad spend increase on record, making up 2020’s £1.8bn decline. Growth will slow to a predicted 7.7% rise in 2022, taking the market to £30bn. 2021 will surpass the previous high of 15.9% growth from 1988 (records start 1...

As digital marketing agencies and marketers build their e-commerce client portfolios, they are seeing the need for automation solutions to manage and advertise their clients’ ever-changing list of product ads. And with this constant, ever-changing inventory, tasks such as sales promotions and product catalogs cannot be handled manually – making management automation the key ingredient for success in growing your e-commerce client’s portfolio. So what type of automation technology is needed? First, let’s define the topic of  data feed management. This is the process of optimizing and organizing a client’s product data, enabling you to take control and prepare it for advertisements on online marketplaces, affiliate networks and price comparison sites (I will later refer to these as ‘channels’). In most cases, there is one data feed connected to a client’s online shop that can be generated by their e-commerce platform or even a spreadsheet. Believe it or not, product data feeds can...

ITV is pushing its IPs into the metaverse and mobile gaming more strongly than ever before. In its drive to connect with lucrative audiences on other platforms, how is it managing to ensure the new ventures deliver value back to the core business? ITV already has undeniable reach among the 16-34-year-old demographic. That cohort is attractive and valuable for advertisers, and ITV’s IPs like Love Island enjoy significant cut-through among those younger viewers. This is in part why ITV recorded an increase in its ITV Studios revenue in today’s half-year results , with its total revenue up 26% at £798m on the previous year. But what ITV doesn’t necessarily have at the moment is frequency of contact with those younger audiences. Dan Colton, group strategy and transformation director, says that the broadcaster recognizes the need to speak to those audiences on new platforms, rather than relying on those tentpole programs to draw them back to the linear channel: “What all businesses ha...