We are excited to announce our latest campaign launch for Spontex, the UK’s No1 Cleaning Tools brand – ‘Little Wins!’
Spontex asked us to create a digitally led campaign to promote sales across the Spontex range in stores.
The latest campaign is all about celebrating life’s little victories; where something as simple as a freshly cleaned oven, or a clean, sparkling floor can provide that little moment of satisfaction. It’s often the small things that offer the most joy!
The insight is brought to life through a series of short social films in which various small victories are celebrated by a quirky and eye-catching dancing hand.
To add further joy, the campaign features a promotion with daily ‘Little Wins’ up for grabs, with dozens of little daily prizes to deliver a little bit of joy to each day – just like Spontex products’ cleaning power does.
Throughout the promotion, shoppers will have the chance to win retail gift cards worth up to £100 every day by purchasing any Spontex product over the campaign period. We think these prizes provide nice little wins to help shoppers in the current climate!
For those Spontex shoppers who aren’t lucky enough to win a retail gift voucher, they will be given a 20% discount code to use on Spontex products online.
The competition runs from the 17th of April up until the 5th of June. So be sure to purchase any Spontex product and enter online with your receipt at http://spontex.co.uk/littlewins for a chance to win.
Mentor Digital has announced the appointment of Dan Watt as its new Digital Marketing Director.
Dan brings a wealth of experience to the Mentor Digital team, having previously worked as a Senior Strategist at Google and Managing Partner at McCann. In these roles, he was responsible for developing and implementing digital marketing strategies for some of the world’s largest brands.
At Mentor Digital, Dan will be responsible for leading digital marketing services and driving growth for new and existing clients. He will also play a key role in developing and executing the overall business strategy for Mentor moving forwards.
Under Dan’s leadership, the digital marketing services at Mentor Digital will increase in scope to become a holistic offering, encompassing all elements of paid digital media, SEO and analytics.
Dan’s team is equipped to provide consultancy across the entire spectrum of digital media: from initial auditing, planning and forecasting through to campaign delivery across paid search, social and display platforms, alongside technical SEO, content strategy and production. As well as paid media and SEO, the team also offers end-to-end analytics services, from auditing and scoping tracking requirements through to tag implementation, data visualisation and reporting.
Dan is a highly skilled and experienced digital marketing professional, and the team at Mentor is thrilled to have him on board. His expertise and leadership will be invaluable as they continue to expand and grow their business over the coming years.
If you would like to get in touch regarding any digital marketing projects, you can fill out a contact form here or call into their Bristol-based office on 0117 305 8900.
You can visit Mentor’s website here: https://www.mentordigital.co.uk/
We all know that the shorter working week has had proven success in other countries. 86% of Iceland’s workforce, for example, have either moved to a shorter working week or have the right to request shorter hours. So as Bristol tentatively dips its toe into the sea of change with a pilot scheme rolling out across businesses in the city, here we are five years into our four-day working week with some (hopefully) helpful reflections.
Why did we do it?
Life is short and we want it to be excellent. Every bit of it. We’ve found that since allowing more space for our brains to process, stray, absorb and even rest (what a thought, we know) this has enabled better ideas to flow, calmer attitudes to influence the team and ultimately a higher level of productivity during the time spent at our desks. Don’t get us wrong, we believe in working hard to deliver excellent, refined work – the only difference is that we think it can be achieved successfully within four days. No extra hours, just four normal days.
How does it work for our clients?
From a client’s perspective, you wouldn’t know any different. At the start of every project we create a timeline that our clients are happy with and that’s the timeline that we work to. Emails are answered from Monday to Thursday and we’re here to chat over the phone on any of those days too!
How does it work for the team?
Every team member works the same four days which allows for collaboration and efficiency. What each team member does on Fridays is completely up to them. And then after a year of working for Studio Floc, all staff get paid the equivalent of a five-day working week for just four days. It’s our way of saying thank you for the hard work that everyone puts in.
A win-win
Excellence can be achieved in so many ways. For us, a four-day working week helps us accomplish this – and we don’t just mean in the workplace – but in every aspect of our lives. we would consider that a win-win.
Driven by purpose, we use creativity to enable the makers, equip the innovators and empower the world-changers. We specialise in branding, print and digital design.
Have questions about our four-day working week? Looking for help with branding, print or digital design work? Let’s chat! Get in touch at [email protected]
As more and more businesses shift towards digital platforms, data analytics is becoming increasingly vital for ensuring customer retention through a smooth and effective onboarding process.
A well-designed onboarding process, optimised through careful planning, testing, and data analysis, helps customers quickly understand your product or service, leading to long-term success with your business.
How do I begin?
Data analytics can seem scary at first. But it’s one of the most powerful tools in marketing and will help you generate a strategy that works and keeps on working.
So, here are five brief tips (see our website for them in full) for using data analytics to improve your onboarding process while enhancing your customer retention:
It’s all well and good saying analyse your data… But if you haven’t got any to start with, that’s going to be hard.
To begin with, identify which metrics are most important to track, these will be your KPIs (key performance indicators).
A/B testing is vital to help you refine your process by allowing you to test different approaches and identify which ones lead to higher conversion rates and engagement.
Using Google Analytics, you will gain insights into which areas may be causing confusion or frustration, which may lead customers to drop off.
With this knowledge, you’ll find ways to improve the process and make it more user-friendly.
While looking at your numbers is beneficial, so is hearing directly from your customers about their experience. Gathering qualitative feedback, such as customer comments or surveys, gives you insights into specific pain points or areas for improvement.
It’s important to continuously iterate and improve to keep your customers engaged and satisfied. Keep analysing data and gathering feedback to identify areas that need refining.
If you’d like to see our tips in more detail with examples, head over to our website.
Using data analytics to refine your onboarding process is essential to keep your customers happy and coming back. So be sure to keep improving to ensure a smooth onboarding experience that sets you and your customers up for success.
At Bopgun, customer retention is our bread and butter! If you’re feeling stuck and need some expert guidance, don’t hesitate to reach out to us.
Chancellor Jeremy Hunt delivered the government’s 2023 Budget on 15 March. Here’s a round-up of measures relevant to businesses in the creative industries.
If you’re a Bristol Creative Industries member and you’d like to share your view on Budget 2023, email Dan.
Describing his speech as a “Budget for growth,” Jeremy Hunt referenced the creative industries twice:
“Our film and TV industry has become Europe’s largest, with our creative industries growing at twice the rate of the economy.”
“I also want to make our taxes more competitive in our life science and creative industry sectors.”
In the full Budget document released after the speech, the government references the creative industries as being one of the five sectors it is focusing on for growth. The others are green industries, digital technologies, life sciences and advanced manufacturing.
The document says:
“The government will turn its vision for UK enterprise into a reality by supporting growth in the sectors of the future. There are opportunities to accelerate the progress of the technologies that will define this century by encouraging investment and smarter regulation.”
In terms of specific announcements for the creative sector, the Budget includes the following:
The government is reforming audio-visual tax reliefs into expenditure credits with a higher rate of relief than under the current system. This follows the government’s consultation last year.
The changes are as follows:
- 34% credit rate for film and high end TV and 39% for animation and children’s TV via the Audio-visual Expenditure Credit
- 34% credit rate for eligible video games projects via the Video Games Expenditure Credit
For the Audio-visual Expenditure Credit, the minimum slot length for high end TV will be reduced to 20 minutes, and applied on an episode-by-episode basis.
The government will put a definition of ‘documentary’ into legislation based on guidance by the British Film Institute (BFI):
“a factual or realistic programme based on real events, place or circumstances and intended to record or inform.”
The documentary definition will apply to the audio-visual expenditure credit and the current high end TV tax relief.
Final wording and exclusions to the definition will be published as part of draft legislation in Summer 2023 for comment.
The £1m per hour expenditure credit threshold for high end TV will remain unchanged.
Eligibility criteria for the Video Games Expenditure Credit will require a minimum of 10% of expenditure to be on goods or services used or consumed in the UK.
The new expenditure credits can be claimed from 1 January 2024, but there will be a transition period to allow companies to adjust:
- From 1 April 2025, claims for new productions and games must be made under the expenditure credits system.
- Film and TV productions that have begun but not concluded principal photography, and video games that have begun but not concluded development on 1 April 2025 may continue to claim relief under the current system until 31 March 2027.
- Any expenditure incurred from 1 April 2027 must be claimed under the expenditure credit regime.
Commenting on the change, Ben Roberts, CEO of the BFI, said:
“We welcome the chancellor’s news of the reformed expenditure credits across our screen industries, a testament to how crucial they are to the UK’s economy and growth. Combined with our extraordinary talent, infrastructure and technical and creative expertise, the screen sector tax reliefs – now remodelled as expenditure credits – have super charged our industry on an unprecedented scale.
“The news will ensure the UK remains a truly globally competitive production hub, giving us economic recovery and growth, creating thousands of jobs for people up and down the country and enabling creative talent and storytelling to thrive. It’s good news that the high end TV threshold has been preserved.
“I am particularly heartened to see a much needed boost for children’s television and animation as two areas of cultural and societal importance in which the UK excels creatively, but that still have significant growth potential.”
The temporary higher headline rates of relief for Theatre Tax Relief (TTR), Orchestra Tax Relief (OTR) and Museums and Galleries Exhibitions Tax Relief (MGETR) will be extended for two years from 1 April 2023
The headline rates of relief for the TTR and the MGETR will remain at 45% (for non-touring productions) and 50% (for touring
productions). OTR rates will remain at 50%.
From 1 April 2025, the rates will be 30% and 35%. On 1 April 2026 the rates of relief for TTR and MGETR will return to 20% and 25%. The headline rates of relief for OTR will return to 25%.
The government said its new chief scientific adviser, Professor Dame Angela McLean, will oversee a review into the creative industries.
In the November 2022 Autumn Statement the government said that from 1 April 2023 the SME research and development (R&D) tax relief scheme will decrease from 130% to 86%, while the SME credit rate will decrease from 14.5% to 10%.
This led to criticism from many organisations about the potentially negative impact on UK innovation. In response, the 2023 Budget includes the launch of a new SME R&D scheme from 1 April 2023 although it only benefits around 20,000 businesses. Loss-making companies that spend at least 40% on R&D will be able to claim £27 from HMRC for every £100 of R&D investment.
Among the businesses the government says will benefit are around 4,000 digital SMEs from the computer programming, consultancy, and related activities sector.
Speaking during the Budget, Hunt said:
“To strengthen our position in artificial intelligence (AI), in which the UK hosts one third of European companies, I’m accepting all nine of the digital technology recommendations made by Sir Patrick Vallance in the review I asked him to conduct in the Autumn Statement.
“I can report that we will launch an AI sandbox to help innovators get cutting edge products to market. We’ll work at pace with the Intellectual Property Office to provide clarity on IP rules so generative AI companies can access the material they need. And we’ll ask Sir Patrick’s successor Dame Angela McLean to report before the summer on options on growth duty for regulators.”
The government will also award a £1m prize every year for the next 10 years to researchers that drive progress in critical areas of AI. It will be known as the ‘Manchester Prize’, named after the world’s first stored programme computer which was built at the University of Manchester in 1948.
Creative businesses and individuals from the south west who take part in Edinburgh’s annual festivals may be interested in new government funding of up to £8.6m.
The Budget said the money “could help build a permanent headquarters for the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and create year-round opportunities for local artists and talent across Edinburgh festivals”.
Although none are in Bristol or the south west, there could be some benefits for local businesses with connections or offices in the regions chosen for the government’s new investment zones.
The zone will focus on the government’s “priority sectors”, which includes the creative industries. They will each receive £80m for tax reliefs, improving skills, providing specialist business support, improving the planning system, or boosting local infrastructure.
The English zones will be in:
The following are announcements not specific to the creative industries but are of interest to businesses in the sector.
The previously announced increase in corporation tax from 19% to 25% for businesses with profits over £250,000 will go ahead as planned from 1 April 2023.
Companies with profits of £50,000 or less will continue to pay corporation tax at 19%. Companies with profits between £50,000 and £250,000 will pay tax at the main rate reduced by a marginal relief providing a gradual increase in the effective corporation tax rate.
There is more advice on what the corporation tax changes mean for businesses in this post.
The £2,500 Energy Price Guarantee (EPG) for households in Great Britain has been increased for another three months from April to June.
No new energy support was announced for businesses. The Budget confirmed that the Energy Bills Discount Scheme will replace the Energy Bill Relief Scheme from 1 April. The new scheme, which runs until 31 March 2024, is significantly less generous.
Jeremy Hunt announced several measures aimed at helping the unemployed, parents and the over 50s to get jobs or increase the hours they work.
This includes extending free childcare to working parents of children from nine months old. The changes will be rolled out in stages:
For the over 50s, new ‘returnerships’ will bring together the government’s existing skills programmes. They will promote accelerated apprenticeships, Sector-Based Work Academy Programme placements and Skills Bootcamps to the over-50s.
All the labour market announcements in Budget 2023 are outlined here.
In a shift to focusing on local authorities having powers to deliver activity such as business support, the government said it intends, subject to consultation, to withdraw all remaining central support for Local Enterprise Partnerships from April 2024.
The Budget said: “The government is committed to empowering democratically elected local leaders at every opportunity.”
The new full expensing 100% first year allowance will be introduced from 1 April 2023 until 31 March 2026. This means that companies across the UK will be able to write off the full cost of qualifying main rate plant and machinery investment in the year of investment.
The annual tax-free allowance for pensions will increase from £40,000 to £60,000.
The £1.07m lifetime allowance will be scrapped completely. This is the maximum amount of tax relievable pension savings an individual can benefit from over the course of their lifetime.
If you’re a Bristol Creative Industries member and you’d like to share your view on Budget 2023, email Dan.
In this article, we can show you how we create some of our best email newsletters and the process behind them. This blog post will be an organised explanation of how you can grow your business through email newsletters and the services we provide in order to help you do so.
Email newsletters are a great way to advertise and showcase your company’s successes and services while keeping customers updated on any improvements and changes within the company. Nearly 5 Billion people worldwide use email, according to mailChimps blog post on writing email newsletters. Weekly emailing can raise your chances of reaching a higher percentage of these people each week. Whether you want to advertise a new product, service or event, email marketing/newsletters can be an easy and effective way to capture customers’ attention and drive more traffic to your website. Therefore resulting in more sales or higher interaction with your customers.
Keyword research is a practice that professionals in marketing use to use terms, phrases and words that users might enter into a search engine to find information on a particular topic, subject or object. Using words specific to your topic or product within your email newsletters can optimise traffic and reliability, ensuring that people feel you are a source they can trust when looking into a particular topic. Audience research and keyword research is a great ways to kickstart your email newsletter; they can allow you to adapt and change your email newsletter to your specific audience. Ensuring you get the reactions you are hoping for.
The subject line of your email is what is going to be the part that draws attention to your email and catches the attention of your audience. This will be the first aspect of your advertisement that your audience sees. Therefore you will want to ensure you fill it with keywords, and relative content and present it in an inviting manner to ensure it grab their attention. Make sure you include the information of the sender and recipient of the email, the date and any other vital information surrounding the content of the email.
Creating a good header and introduction is vital when grabbing the attention of your audience and getting them to stay interested throughout. During your audience research, you will discover how long your clients spend reading an email and gauge how much time people have to spend reading email marketing. If people have busy schedules that involve a lot of email traffic, then you will want to keep your advertisement short but effective. You can do this by ensuring your header is clear and concise and include all vital information quickly in your introduction. Images and infographics can also be a good way of engaging people while also delivering information quickly.
To ensure that your content is going to be useful and effective, you need to ensure you follow some simple steps.
One of the most important things is to create an email that isn’t overloaded with text and information. When advertising a product, service or event, people can get carried away with wanting to give all the information in a dense and lengthy email. People want to have content that is easy to digest, simple to read and full of the necessary information. Try not to go overboard with text unless the information you are writing is vital for your clients.
You can use infographics and images to help show key information in a clear and concise way.
There is no point in making an advertising email newsletter about an event, product or service that was relevant two weeks ago or is happening the day after they receive the email. You want to ensure that your audience has time to react to the information they have been given. Whether it’s a product you want them to buy, an event you want them to be a part of or a service you provide, you want people to have enough time to purchase, sign up, ask questions or react to your email.
There are some useful methods that you can find on our email marketing page, that show you how you can personalise your email newsletters in order to be sent to specific groups of people. You want the right advertisement to be received by people who are most likely to interact with that content. This links back to audience research/ keyword research and ensures you know what your audience is looking for.
Make sure that the tone of your email newsletter matches the tone of your current website/ online presence and service you provide. Someone advertising days out at a waterpark aren’t going to have the same tone and use the same language as someone advertising Luxury spa days or luxury wine. Know your audience and create a tone that they will understand. Ensure not to use phrases and words that your audience may have trouble understanding while also ensuring to be polite and pleasant with the way you communicate with people.
Imagery and the layout of your content can be one of the first things that grab your audience’s attention. You can also create content that incorporates important information to make sure your customers can clearly find key information they might need.
Following these steps when creating content can help you get more out of your content and email newsletters overall. Email newsletters are one of the best ways of reaching audiences all over the world. Ensuring that the content you provide is well-designed, personal, relevant, not over complicated and has the right tone can help you get the best results.
Here at Fanatic, we offer Email Marketing services that include creating engaging, eye-catching written and visual content, and bespoke email flows and we can also analyse email performance to ensure we are doing all we can to optimise your email Newsletter campaigns. For more information, please refer to our email marketing and email newsletters here. Feel free to get in touch to see how we can help you with the services we provide.
Last month the team worked on several exciting projects making updates to the product pages for Effect Doctors, finalising a project they have been working on with DAZN, and creating a new and improved website for them. Stathis and Ian also visited the Somerset and London venues for Artfarm, taking time to walk around their lovely Piet Oudolf-designed garden and re-visit Mount St Resturant.
After a productive brand presentation for a new seafood restaurant, we enjoyed a lovely cocktail with our clients from Aqua Shard, Micah and Marie. We also welcomed Mary to our Digital Marketing team this month! You can see how she’s getting on further down!
This month one of our largest website projects has gone live. The website is for DAZN, a market-leading sports broadcaster in Italy, Spain, Germany, Portugal, Belgium, Japan and Taiwan but is known largely for its boxing proposition in the UK.
We built the new corporate site for the DAZN, which communicates how they have brought a new way of watching live sports such as boxing, formula one and football to viewers.
It was important that this website communicates the multi-threaded nature of today’s viewers, who want to simultaneously consume sports across multiple devices. They view and interact with the platform through multi-game/sports views or in-game bets. This is a fast-moving space, and the corporate site is there to communicate how DAZN are changing the face of sports streaming.
It was great to work closely with the in-house brand team, as well as the DAZN management, to bring together a website design that not only hits the right message but in the right tone and with the right energy for this fast-paced brand.
Naturally, the site uses a lot of videos and features a lot of movement as the visitor scrolls down the page. The site has also been challenging for our developers, who love something new to challenge them to bring a more conceptual design to all browsers and devices.
In January, we made some improvements to the product pages on a long-standing client’s website, Effectdoctors.com. The product pages were several years old and had been updated many times as A|B tests and UX updates mean a busy eCommerce site is consistently being evolved. There’s only so far a page that can be modified both in terms of keeping a clean UX and for the cleanliness of code behind the scenes, so a fresh build is required occasionally. After using the previous product pages for a few years, they were overwhelmed with many added features and content over time, affecting their user experience.
We reevaluated which features were essential and created a plan to simplify the content of these products while maintaining depth and detailed descriptions of each product. These changes and adaptations to the product pages resulted in a much simpler-to-use WooCommerce management experience and a much clearer User Experience for their customers.
We have been steadily expanding our work with Artfarm’s Somerset venues over the last year or so. Last month, during a visit to the venues, we took time to slow down and walk around their on-site, including the pleasure of taking in the artwork in the Hauser and Wirth gallery, a walk in their Piet Oudolf-designed garden featuring artworks such as the sculpture by Smiljan Radić, that was previously located at the Serpentine in Hyde Park.
We then had our regular meeting with our Artfarm clients over lunch in their Roth Bar and Grill, looking at design work for various projects before visiting their farm shop, for which we run eCommerce marketing campaigns.
We were also able to indulge in a fondue hat! YUM!
It was an excellent way for us here at Fanatic to become more immersed in how all the venues fit together within the Artfarm location, an essential element when creating content and expressing the brand through our multiple marketing campaigns.
We also re-visited the Mount St. restaurant in Mayfair, which we visited in the summer of 2022 as a building site. The finished Audley Pub, Mount St. Restaurant and connected private dining rooms are one of the finest examples of exquisite dining venues we have seen in over 20 years worth promoting F&B venues, with the Art engrained in the very fabric of everything we see and touch!
We currently run and manage multiple digital channels to drive bookings for the venue and love working on projects for Mount St. restaurant.
This month, there have been several updates from the world of Digital Marketing. Microsoft Bing launches ChatGPT, the EU rules that Meta’s ad practices are illegal, Google agrees to pay up in a 12-year-long lawsuit, and Apple ads network could bring new opportunities to marketers worldwide. Meanwhile, Google optimise is set to be removed this year, and Twitter is rolling out keyword ads to advertisers. More details can be found in this article.
Microsoft Bing with ChatGPT reportedly launching in March 2023
Bing has announced the integration of OpenAI’s ChatGPT Chatbot technology, enabling the site to answer search queries with complete sentences rather than just suggesting links and generic search results. Expected to launch towards the end of March 2023, it is intended to give Microsoft that significant edge over Google. It is creating a new level of rivalry between the two search platforms.
Microsoft already has a partnership with OpenAI. Microsoft already utilises Open AIs technology through OpenAI’s cloud services in tools that let users create text, code and imagery using instructions and learning models using internet data.
Microsoft has reportedly drawn a lot of attention to the platform within the tech community, specifically, after they announced that Microsoft was in talks to make a second, tens of billion-dollar investment in the AI business back in October 2022. Although it needs to be clarified whether the current version of GPT will power the service, Microsoft continues to collaborate with OpenAI on ways to integrate GPT into Bing with hopes of improving its user experience.
After Microsoft announced that it supports Open AI’s ChatGPT in BIng and edge browsers, Google retaliated by revealing its language model called “Brad”. However, it didn’t quite go to plan for Google as the AI chatbot gave incorrect answers during live demonstrations. The Bing ChatGPT is not available for everyone yet, and users must join a waiting list to join to use the tool.
You can try it out using the link here: https://www.bing.com/new
After seeing a 10x increase in Microsoft app downloads (according to data.ai.), could this be the beginning of the end for Google’s dominance over the search engine landscape and the start of Microsoft’s takeover?
The European Union ruling could change the faces of Facebook and Instagram’s ad business. After the EU regulators found that Meta had illegally forced users to accept personalised ads, Meta was fined 390 Million Euros.
Meta was fined for using language within their terms of service that implied that users must allow their data to be used for the personalisation of ads or stop using the platforms altogether; users were left with no choice but to accept the terms to continue using the service. Meta has been given three months to outline how it will comply with the ruling. This could result in Meta allowing users to choose whether they want their data to be used for targeted ads; this puts Meta’s ad revenue at risk, putting about 5-7% of it at stake.
People advertising within the EU could be affected. Still, the changes Meta may have to make will potentially impact users in the United States as well, as many companies apply E.U. rules globally because it limits them from being affected within Europe.
Consumers that say Google shared their queries with third parties without permission have finally ended a 12-year-long class action lawsuit. The lawsuit alleged that Google went against the Stored Communications Act, which governs access to records held by internet services in California.
The Customers affected will receive a $23 million payout, which is still under court consideration. Google must also provide added disclosures to consumers about sharing search terms. Privacy has become critical when running a website/ online business. With companies unsure how this will affect the future of advertising, privacy issues are still a hot topic.
You can read the settlement details here to learn more about the case.
Apple is again making waves, but this time it is its ad network getting attention. Apple is now placing greater emphasis on prioritising its services category over its consumer products, focusing on aspects such as search ads and App Store.
Google and other major brands at the top of the search market, such as Amazon, are usually the first places people go; however, these brands have been under severe scrutiny lately from the government and consumers. Google has been dealing with antitrust battles in Europe and the U.S. and the hefty fines accompanying the rulings. Amazon has also suffered lousy press recently with a $1 billion antitrust case in the UK and false advertising surrounding Prime Day.
With both its main competitors under scrutiny, Apple has the opportunity to work its way up the search market. Andrew Lipsman from Insider Intelligence stated, “I can easily imagine a scenario in which Apple grabs 10% of Google’s nearly $150 billion search ad business, which would translate to a $15 billion opportunity”.
Despite this, Apple filed a new class action lawsuit against itself back in November 2022, claiming that it continued to track users even after disabling tracking in device settings. This
led to the case stating that Apple’s promises about their privacy settings were untrustworthy.
Apple has now stated that its goal is to triple its advertising revenue and has already made some significant steps in the right direction, paving its way with diversified revenue streams. However, Apple’s privacy settings and measurement efforts will continue to affect consumers and marketers.
From the 30th of September, 2023, Google Optimize and Optimize 360 won’t be available to run user experiments and personalisations; however, the ones users have set up already will continue to run until that date. These changes may affect marketers’ ability to conduct A/B testing and optimise their website or app’s user experience.
Google has decided to do this to better serve users by investing in solutions that give customers access to more robust and trustworthy A/B testing capabilities. They made a statement that they want to focus on ways that can improve users’ experience and through improving tools through Google Analytics 4. At the moment, it’s unclear whether this means that Google Optimize’s A/B testing facilities will eventually be available in GA4.
In news from the world of social media marketing, Twitter has introduced a new ad unit called “Search Keywords Ads”, where advertisers can promote sponsored tweets in search results. Giving them the ability to reach further audiences, they can now pay for their tweets to be shown further up the search results page for specific keywords.
This update is similar to the promoted tweets that appear in users’ timelines but allows them to appear in search results. The new update is there to drive conversions to advertisers’ websites, and if users use Twitter Pixel or Conversion API on their websites, it can also maximise their relevance.
Reports have shown that ad spending on Twitter dropped by 71% in December 2022, mainly due to the top advertiser’s reduced spending on social media after Elon Musk took over. The company believes that this update will reinvigorate its ad revenue stream.
Bristol-based web design and brand agency, Squarebird, have evolved a new look for the biggest player in space sector recruitment, EVONA, to better echo their established impact and vision.
EVONA is disrupting the recruitment scene, a consultancy team of space sector specialists with strong beliefs in the progression of knowledge and unlocking the potential of humankind. As they say, it’s in the name: EVO – to evolve, ONA – people.
Telling the true story of space sector recruitment was vital. As all of us use space every day – to navigate, use our phones, and even watch TV – an optical style was needed to rewrite the narrative and open the industry to all.
Working with their existing branding, Squarebird explored the visual limits they wanted to push through style tiles, helping them move towards a clean, dark, space-inspired look. A tone of voice workshop allowed the team to discover the personality of the brand, bringing the notion to existence. The developed visual style was rolled out across the website using a cinematic, aspirational style – perfectly reflective of their vision and ambitions.
“Developing a strong online presence is central to our Marketing strategy as a space company on the forefront of innovation, so there was a lot riding on getting this right. Predictably, Squarebird have delivered an exceptional website that not only stands out amongst the competition, but functions far better than previous versions. The team got our vision very quickly and worked with us to develop a website to be proud of that was close to the brand direction we wanted to move in.
Working with Squarebird has been a great experience; the team are knowledgeable and their skills diverse enough to handle any of the issues developing websites could throw up.” – Adele Fox, Marketing Director at EVONA
From extensive image manipulation, to editing and icon creation, every aspect of the website worked holistically for a cohesive brand experience. The website was brought to life in a collaborative way, ensuring the visuals, and ever-evolving message, aligned with the technical functionalities of the site. Integrating with multiple recruitment and marketing platforms, the website plays a functional role in streamlining their operations and ensuring a platform that better aligns with EVONA’s growth and maturity.
“Having known and followed the EVONA crew since inception, it’s been amazing to grow alongside them, and be a part of their next stage of expansion. From the USA, UK and beyond, EVONA is – and will continue to be – a driving force within the space sector.
It was a pleasure to take their objectives and messaging and create a visual masterpiece to do it justice.” – Nick Bird, Managing Partner at Squarebird
View the full case study here.
You may have seen that UWE Bristol recently ran a 12-week bootcamp for employees of SMEs to study the internationally-recognised DMI Professional Diploma in Digital Marketing.
Well, the good news is that we are now inviting expressions of interest to form another cohort. The next course is expected to last for 10 weeks (one day per week) and employers are likely to pay no more than £400 in total.
Spaces will be limited. At this stage, if you would like to learn more and record your interest, please email: [email protected]