Instagram & Facebook – Why?


A few hours ago I read that Facebook had acquired Instagram for $1bn… aptly enough, this news came to me via my Facebook feed. There’s also an official release here from Mark Zuckerberg My first thought once I checked the legitimacy Read more

Return On Influence: The New ROI


There is not a single activity in business which is exempted from a query regarding return on investment.  Focused strategic planning and expenditure to optimise your e-commerce mix is known to be an investment worth making for product and Read more

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Digital Marketing

Myth, legend and lore… With so much of it out there, what exactly is e-marketing?

Posted on March 18, 2010 by John King in Digital Marketing Tips, Events, Keywords, Link Building, Seminars | Leave a comment

Archived; click post to view.
Excerpt: Tell me… Could you describe and explain social media and online marketing to your grandma, in such a way that she could confidently use it to potentially better a business? I know I couldn’t. I did however go to a seminar today on this very subject that did exactly that! No the room wasn’t full of ‘grandmas’, but it did break down the mysterious lore that is social media and online marketing into easily digested nuggets of knowledge. This seminar was hosted by Generate UK at the spectacular Donnington Grove in their ‘Cloud Suite’. The ‘Cloud Suite’ is a luxurious room lined with lovely old paintings, overshadowed by a fantastic painted ceiling. There was free tea and coffee, there was glorious sunshine and there was a friendly buzz as attendees began to arrive. We were all seated in some rather fancy chairs and we covered a variety of things from e-marketing myth busting to the fundamentals of the ‘twitterverse’. I already knew some of the basics that were covered but it was nice to see that all the fundamentals were explained so that everyone else understood the more advanced things that were to follow. Overall it was very well presented and it left no one guessing. Over the course of the morning I mentally noted a number of clever marketing devices for later use. I learned that no more are the days where one could simply post a few thousand identical links all over the Internet to rank their page from ‘unheard of’ to…


Ten Reasons why I like Sitekit Content Management System

Posted on March 1, 2010 by Mike in Content Management Systems, Digital Marketing Tips | Leave a comment

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Excerpt: I’ve personally been involved with 3 fairly sizeable Sitekit projects in the last few months and I have to admit that the more I use it, the more I like it. I don’t always feel that Sitekit gets the recognition it deserves though. Strangely, you could not call Sitekit a cool product, it’s not web 2.0, it’s not built by a community, and it does not have a vibrant following….. Yet it does what it sets out to do, it is a really great content management system. I am now on a mission to make Sitekit the coolest CMS out there…. especially the latest version 9. Ok, the title suggests 10 reasons why I like Sitekit, so here goes: 1. As a project manager, it’s nice to know that my back is covered when it comes to support. With the best will in the world, it is impossible to know everything about a piece of software. So it is reassuring that you’re only ever a step or two away from the chaps responsible for building and maintaining the software. 2. The audit trail functionality is very powerful. It is one of those features that appeals to larger organisations with extensive publishing processes. However, the ability to roll back to previous versions of content is a great feature for medium sized organisations too. Also, it’s always nice to know who made that fatal change! 3. We’ve built Sitekit websites with version 8 and version 9 and it is no surprise to know that version 9 is an improvement on…


Favourite marketing campaigns of the 20th Century

Posted on January 22, 2010 by Ian Fergusson in Digital Marketing Tips, Other stuff, Web News | Leave a comment

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Excerpt: I have decided to create a series dedicated to the best marketing campaigns of the 20th century. Each Friday for 6 weeks a different member of the Generate UK team will discuss one of their favourite campaigns explaining why it stands out against its competition and what makes it so successful. This series will reveal some of the most creative, successful and the just downright weird campaigns to have been launched in the last 10 years. Name: Ian Fergusson Position: Marketing Executive Campaign of choice: McDonalds Billboard (2008) McDonalds does not have a good reputation in the fast food world as being ‘healthy’! In fact it has been sued a number of times for its advertising targeted at kids and for promoting un-healthy living. During the ‘noughties’ we saw a massive boom in healthy living and keeping fit, in my opinion borderline obsessive with fitness videos and new diets advertised wherever we looked. McDonalds clearly felt that if they didn’t alter their reputation soon, profits could ‘dip’. They left it up to the wonderful Leo Burnett to get across to the public that McDonald’s salads really are fresh! Leo Burnett created a Billboard that over time grew lettuce, to form the words ‘Fresh Salads’. Creatively I feel this is ingenius. In a sense we see here the first ever living billboard. This wasn’t the fastest campaign ever launched, the sign took 3 weeks to grow, but the message delivered is clear and strong, If McDonalds can get fresh lettuce on a sign, surely that leaf…


Top 20 Digital Marketing Ideas – Number 14 – Affiliate Marketing

Posted on November 1, 2009 by Mike in Business Development, Digital Marketing Tips | Leave a comment

The benefit of adopting the affiliate marketing model is that it’s an extremely low risk way to open up new sales channels. The downside is that it works best with a product or service that is more of a commodity than a bespoke solution. Many of the world’s largest organisations operate their own network or belong to an affiliate one.  The main reason for this is that the cost to enter is minimal and the business method is simply that you pay based on performance. This means that as long as the affiliate meets your branding and quality criteria, you are in the beneficial position of only needing to pay once a sale has been completed. There are two ways to approach affiliate marketing; either by joining a larger well established affiliate network, or by creating and managing your own program. Both have their merits and are worth considering in more detail. Econsultancy.com recently predicted the UK market for affiliate marketing to grow to £4bn in online sales in 2009. This is an extraordinary figure and demonstrates the size of the channel available. If you are considering an affiliate marketing scheme we would suggest:

  • Create objectives for setting up an affiliate program.
  • Identify products, services or solutions that could be used.
  • Gap analysis on sales training material available and other sales tools.
  • Explore your own affiliate network or join a larger established one.
  • What are the rewards and criteria for being an affiliate?


Top 20 Digital Marketing Ideas – Number 14 – Forums

Posted on October 16, 2009 by Mike in Business Development, Digital Marketing Tips, Internet Marketing | 1 Comment

Forums have been around since the birth of the internet and Wikipedia states that it is ‘the modern equivalent of a traditional bulletin board’. Forums can be useful and are much underestimated.  Meeting like-minded people and helping those out, through sharing content through knowledge, can be exceptionally powerful. It certainly helps your perceived leadership position within your industries and often information is forwarded on.   Within forums, most people have a user sign off and this is the opportunity where you can leave a link back to your website. Do you have a forum? Do you ever post on relevent business forums? Have your say by posting a comment below.


Top 20 Digital Marketing Ideas – Number 15 – Email Marketing

Posted on September 16, 2009 by Mike in Business Development, Digital Marketing Tips, Email Marketing | 5 Comments

Archived; click post to view.
Excerpt: You’re currently reading Generate UK’s Top 20 Digital Marketing ideas. Over the course of the next month, we’ll be sharing our experience to help you marketed your business on the Internet. Email marketing is now one of the most cost effective ways to market to your potential customers; as a result, it is no surprise that the UK market grew from a value of £221m in 2007 to an estimated £274m in 2008. Despite the economic doom and gloom, this growth is expected to rise further in 2009. There are a number of reasons which are contributing to this continued rise: The economic climate is putting pressure on everyone’s marketing budgets, however at the same time there is a need for an increase in retention marketing, which email marketing is perfect for. There is an increased number of email service providers, which is bringing down the cost and adding value to the marketing department (in most cases anyway). We’re all beginning to see the benefit of email marketing from a return on investment perspective. This is certainly the case when measuring the cost of the campaign, however it’s fair to say that many businesses need to go one step further in terms of measuring their campaigns with the amount of business it produces. Most businesses recognise that they have to work harder for their slice of the cake and as a result there is a greater focus on building email lists and encouraging email sign ups from webmasters and marketing managers. Email marketing offers businesses the opportunity…


Top 20 Digital Marketing Ideas – Number 16 – Social Bookmarking

Posted on September 12, 2009 by Mike in Business Development, Digital Marketing Tips, Social Media, Web 2.0/3.0 | Leave a comment

You’re currently reading Generate UK’s Top 20 Digital Marketing ideas. Over the course of the next month, we’ll be sharing our experience to help you marketed your business on the Internet. If you’re not currently book marking your online collateral we ask the question why not? It’s free and Social Bookmarking provides you with the opportunity to share your own website content and collateral with the public, through social bookmarking sites. The main one being Delicious.com There are over 15 billion web pages published on the World Wide Web and this is growing daily. People are using sites like del.icio.us every day to bookmark their favourite pages and check out other peoples favourites. So, by bookmarking your own content, making it available to others, increases the opportunity for people to find it. In terms of increasing your Internet Footprint, it is a no-brainer and will help to drive targeted traffic to your site. Why not click on the social media links below and investigate how it can help your business. Alternatively, we’d be very happy to have a conversation with you on 01635 550431.


Top 20 Digital Marketing Ideas – Number 17 – News Feed (RSS)

Posted on September 1, 2009 by Mike in Digital Marketing Tips, Link Building, Web 2.0/3.0, Web News | Leave a comment

You’re currently reading Generate UK’s Top 20 Digital Marketing ideas. Over the course of the next month, we’ll be sharing our experience to help you marketed your business on the Internet. Feeds are also known as RSS. There is some discussion as to what RSS stands for, but most people opt for ‘Really Simple Syndication’. In essence, the feeds themselves are just web pages, designed to be read by computers rather than people.  News feeds allow the user to see when websites have added new content. The user can receive the latest headlines and video in one place, as soon as it’s published, without having to visit the websites you have taken the feed from. The big benefit to RSS is that individuals can opt-in to content of interest and totally control the flow of information that they receive. If the quality of the content in the feed declines, users simply remove the feed from their RSS reader and they will not receive any additional updates from that source. The RSS reader acts as an aggregator, allowing users to view and scan multiple content streams in a timely fashion. If you would like to learn more about how RSS feeds can help your business, contact us on 01635 550431,


Top 20 Digital Marketing Ideas – Number 18 – Web site health check

Posted on July 13, 2009 by Mike in Business Development, Digital Marketing Tips | 2 Comments

You’re currently reading Generate UK’s Top 20 Digital Marketing ideas. Over the course of the next month, we’ll be sharing our experience to help you marketed your business on the Internet. We do advise any company to carry out a regular health check upon their website, although many businesses do struggle to find the time and resource to carry out this activity.  This is understandable due to the day to day pressures of running a company or a marketing team, however this exercise can be invaluable and is critical to understanding how your website is performing against a number of set criteria. These fall within a number of areas i.e. SEO – is your website performing within the search engines, locally and nationally? Usability – how long are people staying on your site? Navigation – are they finding the content they need? Design – does your website provide a good reflection of your business?  All these types of questions need to be asked and analysed on a regular basis. Have your say… Do you agree with what we say, have we missed anything? Would you like to share anything with our readers; now is the chance to post your comments below.


Top 20 Digital Marketing Ideas – Number 19 – CRM

Posted on July 10, 2009 by Mike in Business Development, Digital Marketing Tips | 1 Comment

Once you start to build a useful data base utilising it correctly is critical to managing your communications, both internally with your colleagues and externally with your prospects, customers and partners.    A CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system will help with this process. Knowing which CRM system will suit your company in terms of requirements, functionality and budget is again a process you need to research. There are many CRM systems in the market place, built using different technology platforms offering a number of different business applications; some offering complete integration with marketing suites and data bases; some financially free and some very expensive.  Often this is dependent upon the number of users and the technology chosen? This again is mission critical and should not be taken lightly, as it will determine how your business moves forward. If you choose the wrong path it can be a very costly exercise it terms of time, resource and money, however if you chose well it can make your company exceptionally effective and efficient. If you would like to learn more about CRM tools in general, please feel free to contact Generate UK. We’d be happy to provide you with an overview of the market and some ideas about which tools could fit your needs.


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