Team DG’s 500 Miles Challenge for Birmingham Children’s Hospital Charity Digital Glue wanted to be a bit more active through December so we decided to merge exercise and raising money for charity to get us up and off our sofas! What better motivation is there than raising money for charity. What was the charity challenge?  We set out to walk 500 miles (and possibly more) in the month of December to raise money for our chosen charity, Birmingham Children’s Hospital. For every mile we walked, Digital Glue donated £1 to our chosen charity and between the 25th to 31st this was doubled with £2 being donated for each mile. The team could walk, run, cycle or use any other way of getting around as long as there was no motor involved in the transport. We chose Birmingham Children’s Hospital as our charity for this month’s challenge through a vote. We believed it was important for the team to have a say in which charity we should raise money for to help motivation. What is our chosen charity about? Birmingham’s Children’s Hospital provides a vital service to many sick children. The charity helps those children and their families have a better experience by providing some of the little extras that make the hospital seem less scary. How much did we raise? In total Team DG managed to raise a whopping £874.00 for Birmingham Children’s Hospital through online donations and our efforts combined! All together as a team we managed to cover 680 miles across the West Midlands with 174 miles completed in the last 6 days of the month. Who were the top scorers? This challenge really brought out the team’s competitive side. Not to mention the evident rivalry between Lukasz and Javan to see who could cover the furthest distance. Lukasz came out on top with a bike ride of 48.19km and Javan came out second with a distance of 42.16km when running the equivalent of a marathon.   Some of the team decided to use this as a way to raise money through leisurely activities rather than bring out their competitive side. For example, this gave Anika an opportunity to track the distance she would be willing to walk for a cookie. Whereas Claire got into the festive spirit and did some jingle bell jogs and school runs in her Santa outfit.   Click here to follow our Twitter or LinkedIn to keep updated with our other fun challenges we have in store for 2021. Visit the DG Blog or signup to our monthly newsletter for more news and exclusive tips.

This year has been a strange one to say the least. We all set off in our stride, to live 2020 with fun-filled times and adventures. Little did we know, within a matter of weeks, a pandemic would swarm the globe, and put the lives of almost every civilisation on hold. Practically all travel came to a halt, all non essential stores closed and most businesses ‘shut up shop’. During this time we saw a large number of marketing campaigns which were seemingly created to spread a little hope, as well as to convey the importance of the ‘stay at home’ message. For a blast from the past, you can see which our chosen campaigns were for 2018. Alternatively, here is a selection of our most memorable marketing campaigns of 2020 and why: Burger King Back in 2019 Burger King had the bright idea of the ‘Stevenage Challenge’. This campaign illustrates the power of creative marketing and digital artistry. Take a look at this video for how: This creativity continues today, when we saw the announcement that Burger King is now also a proud sponsor to the Stevenage Women’s team. This saw a redesign of the brand logo for the burger giant to ‘Burger Queen’. This sends powerful messages of equality to the viewer. Something which many people of the nation are passionate about. This was not all we saw from our flamin’ good favourite this year. In November, just before the UK’s second Coronavirus lockdown, Burger King took to ethical marketing and urged its customers to buy from their rivals while they are shut, in order to support the industry and the thousands of team members within them. BK followed suit on this charitable messaging, with a marketing campaign which dedicated their social channels to independent hospitality venues which are closed due to Covid-19. This was accompanied by a promise that during this period BK would not be posting their own material. We are particularly fond of Burger King’s marketing efforts this year because they all convey the brands care and appreciation. This is something which can be very difficult to comminicate in a truly genuine manner. We feel all of their efforts come across as genuine, with no obvious ulterior motives. Just Eat The pandemic brought a number of challenges to practically every household in the country. One of which was a safe and ‘COVID’ secure way of getting food outlets operational. Just Eat presented us all with this amazing ad, which identifies the ease and variety of ordering food for delivery on their platform. We like how the Just Eat brand has signed an iconic rapper to portray their message. This ad was hugely popular and certainly appeals to a wide array of their target audience. Not to mention the fact that the tune and slogan “Did somebody say Just Eat”, sticks in all of our minds, especially at lunchtime. KFC We are all guilty of a chicken fix from time to time. The challenges of 2020

In September, we held a series of webinars focused on ‘The Power of Messaging’. We continued our series by asking “How can your website and digital marketing attract new business?”. We discussed core messaging on your website, creating a user journey, having the right calls-to-action to get results, SEO and more!  This blog will touch on the questions that were asked during the webinar. If you want to download and watch the full episode that goes into much more detail, you can do so here.  How can I do A/B testing and for how long? A/B testing can be done really simply. Using a tool called the Google Optimizer, you use it to give two versions of the same landing page through two different URLs.  You can choose from there where to send the users to which page based on different interests, demographics, age groups and sources. For example, a different landing page from Google, a different landing page from Facebook, or it can be a different landing page from a mobile or desktop device. The direction of that really depends on the visit. So, for example, if you get lots of visits every day, you can complete A/B testing with 1,000 users in up to five days, or if you’re a smaller business, you can have that running for 30 days to reach the milestone of 1,000 users. So, it depends on your business and on your website visits of how many users you want to have on your website to make a conclusion. How can you make sure that your website sends a clear message? And what’s a simple test to find out? Have a family member or a friend go onto your website and ask them what your business is about. If they’re not able to find this out, then there’s something wrong and you will need to start thinking about changing key aspects of your website.  What’s a good size for a CTA? This depends on the devices used to view your website, but we would say between 30 and 60 characters. Examples include: , “get a free trial”, “start today” or “get in touch” as these are small and captivating. Strong verbs such as ‘learn’, ‘get’ or claim’ also work well.  I understand A/B testing involves setting up two ads. How do I differentiate the two campaigns? This is based on pay per click (PPC) and having two different ad sets into one ad group.  Below we break this down into two sections; first on Google search and the second on social media.  On Google search, the campaign settings allow ads rotation, and you have Google serving the best performing one with the ability to rotate ads evenly or to not rotate them at all. When you have set that up and have it running evenly for a certain amount of time it allows you to see which ad performs better. This is only for the search engine as with better copy on the ad,

Being a business to business (B2B) company, having a lead generation strategy should be a part of your marketing plan. Especially if your company’s industry is technology, having a multi-channel approach to it is a must nowadays. You want to leverage multiple channels in order to maximise your potential and your results. A multi-channel approach is the future for lead generation. Luckily for you, it is not as difficult as it sounds. In this blog we’re going to discuss the specifics of a successful multi-channel approach to lead generation. More specifically for B2B technology companies. This will consequently show that having a clear approach, identifying the right networks, with the right messaging is essential for campaign success. Multi-channel approach for your technology company The technology market is crowded with the majority of companies offering services and products similar to yours. It can be very challenging to acquire new customers, to demonstrate what makes your offerings valuable to new customers. As well as why they should choose you instead of the competition. While this multi-channel lead generation strategy applies to all markets. Our main focus for this blog will be technology companies and the struggles they face in their lead generation campaigns. What is multi-channel marketing? First of all, let’s cover the basics by explaining in simple terms what a multi-channel approach is. A multilevel approach is utilising all your marketing channels and networks, more specifically Facebook/Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter and Google. It can be offline and online channels, however this blog will focus on an online multi-channel approach. This will include the different touch-points users must work through before being your customer.  Why should you consider multi-channel marketing? Utilising a multi-channel approach in your lead generation strategy for your technology company has many benefits. It enables you to engage with your prospects seamlessly throughout the sales funnel and across multiple online channels. In addition to this, your brand name can remain in their eyes at all times. This ensures that when they are ready to make the buying decision, they will be potential customers to your company. With so many online marketing channels around today. Having a presence in the right ones based on your target audience is essential. For instance, once a user stops interacting with your company on LinkedIn, for example, you can capture them on Facebook or Instagram.  Is multi-channel online marketing measurable? The most critical aspect of multi-channel online marketing for your technology company is the tracking potential. Tracking and measuring unearths a huge amount of data as different users interact with your business. There are many ways to do this, including the use of tracking links and analytics solutions. The most common analytics solution that can track all your efforts is Google Analytics. You can use Google Analytics to track which channels your users are coming from by utilising tracking links. Tracking links allow you to track specific sources of traffic, such as a button click on an email newsletter or interaction from a particular social