Useful Websites and Must-Read Blogs
In this section you will find an abundance of websites and blogs that Chaffey and Smith have highlighted as must-reads to help any marketer with their digital marketing. All the websites are hyperlinked and broken down by relevance from:
Must-read blogs and forums to articles, case studies and best practices to e-marketing tools and site design to statistics, data, reports and research.
Click on the tabs below to view the links for each topic.
Articles, Case studies and Best Practice
ClickZ: www.clickz.com
Articles and statistics on a wide range of e-marketing tactics.
E-consultancy: www.econsultancy.com
Detailed insights and events about e-marketing best practice.
Marketing Sherpa: www.marketingsherpa.com
Case studies and news about e-marketing.
New Media Age: www.nma.co.uk
A UK digital marketing trade weekly.
New Media Knowledge: www.nmk.co.uk
Articles and events about new media developments.
Revolution magazine: www.revolutionmagazine.com
Keep up to date on e-marketing best practice for the range of new media with the UK trade monthly for digital marketing.
Introduction to the Marketing Mix: http://businesscasestudies.co.uk/business-theory/marketing/marketing-mix-price-place-promotion-product.html
The Times 100 – a student and teacher business studies resource centre that has a basic introduction to the marketing mix and case studies of it in practice.
Smart Insights Marketing Mix Advice: http://bit.ly/smartmix
A collection of articles applying the marketing mix to e-commerce, content and social media marketing.
Personality Not Included: http://www.personalitynotincluded.com
Site supporting the book by Rohit Bhargava showing examples of how brands are transforming their personality to support social media engagement.
A List Apart: www.alistapart.com
Explores the design, development, and meaning of web content, with a special focus on web standards and best practices.
Boxes and Arrows: www.boxesandarrows.com
A collection of best practice articles and discussions about Information Architecture.
iMedia Connection: www.imediaconnection.com
State-of-the-art articles and guidance on interactive advertising techniques.
Bizrate: www.bizrate.com
An example of an online shopping comparison site.
Email Marketing Best Practice: www.smartinsights.com/email-marketing
Advice on best practice.
Database Marketing Institute: www.dbmarketing.com
Great practical guidelines and presentations on traditional database marketing and online marketing using email and web personalization.
Email Marketing Best Practice: www.smartinsights.com/email-marketing
Advice on best practice.
DMA Email Blog: www.dmaemailblog.com
UK advice from the email marketing association.
Email Experience Council: www.emailexperience.org
A US organization with compilations of practical tips on email marketing.
Peppers and Rogers One to One Marketing: www.1to1.com
Contains interesting articles, case studies and supplier guides.
E-Loyalty: www.e-loyalty.com
An introduction to achieving online loyalty by Ellen Reid-Smith.
MyCustomer.com: www.mycustomer.com
Portal focusing on traditional and online CRM.
Marketing Experiments: www.marketingexperiments.com
Gives examples and explains best practice for optimizing digital marketing.
Harvard Business Review: www.hbr.org
Harvard Business Review strategy advice.
Smart Insights: http://bit.ly/smartstrategy
Articles about the need for and methods of e-planning.
McKinsey Quarterly: www.mckinseyquarterly.com
Business strategy.
New Media Age: www.nma.co.uk
A UK digital marketing trade weekly which has interviews with practitioners discussing their strategic approach to digital marketing.
The Next Web: www.thenextweb.com
Digital technology developments.
CIM 10 Minute Guide to the Marketing Mix: http://www.cim.co.uk/filestore/resources/10minguides/marketingmix.pdf
A fairly detailed introduction to the marketing mix, with further links.
New Media Age Awards: www.nmaawards.co.uk
Has awards in innovation across different business sectors.
Emarketing Tools
Doubleclick Adplanner: www.google.com/adplanner
Use this to find sites related to your sites, competitor sites and relevant media sites. Review the most popular sites within different interest categories.
AM Navigator: www.amnavigator.com/blog
Advice on managing affiliate programmes from Geno Prussakov.
Smart Insights Online Revenue Model Spreadsheets: www.smartinsights.com
Excel spreadsheets for modelling visitors’ volumes and campaign response.
Google Webmaster Tools: www.google.com/webmasters
Provides a useful set of tools for sites verified by their owners, including index inclusion, linking and ranking for different phrases in different locations.
Search Engine Watch: www.searchenginewatch.com
This is the premier source for keeping up to date on the significance of different search engines and the techniques they use.
Email Marketing Tools: http://bit.ly/smartesps
A compilation of tools for managing email broadcast and deliverability.
Digital Marketing Sources: http://bit.ly/smartsources
The leading sources of digital marketing sources and a custom search engine to search them compiled by Dave Chaffey on Smart Insights.
Dave Chaffey Digital Marketing Strategy: www.davechaffey.com/guides
A summary of strategy and tools available for the full range of digital marketing channels.
Must-read blogs and Forums
PR Smith’s blog: www.prsmith.org
Insights on the development of SOSTAC® plus videos from the marketing experts.
Dave Chaffey’s blog: http://blog.davechaffey.com/
Smart Insights: www.smartinsights.com
Updates on digital marketing methods on site edited by Dave Chaffey.
Chris Anderson’s Long Tail blog: www.thelongtail.com
In-depth blog by the author of the long tail, which relates to the Product element of the marketing mix.
PaidContent: www.paidcontent.org
Discusses the economics and revenue models for online publishing.
Connected Marketing: www.connectedmarketing.com
Edited by Justin Kirby.Blog and community supporting the book about approaches to viral marketing and achieving advocacy online.
Hitwise blog: http://www.experian.com/blogs/hitwise/
Sample reports from Hitwise on consumer search behaviour and the importance of different online intermediaries.
Net Promoter Score Blog: http://netpromoter.typepad.com/fred_reichheld/
Blog on achieving advocacy by Fred Reicheld and other specialists in the field, such as Dr Paul Marsden.
Rough Type: www.roughtype.com
Nicholas Carr’s blog on how technology is disrupting business models. Carr was formerly Editor of the Harvard Business Review.
Wikinomics.com: www.wikinomics.com
The blog for the Wikinomics book by Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams.
Chris Brogan: www.chrisbrogan.com
Foremost commentator on the development of social media marketing and its application in business
Dan Zarella: www.danzarella.com
Dan summarizes experiments on what engages audiences through the main social networks.
Brian Solis: www.briansolis.com
A foremost commentator on the development of social media marketing and its application in business.
Digital Buzz Blog: www.digitalbuzzblog.com
Daily inspiration with examples of social media campaigns on this video blog.
Viral and Buzz Marketing Network: www.vbma.net
A European-oriented community of academics and professionals for discussion of the applications of connected marketing.
Word-of-Mouth Marketing Association: www.womma.org
A US-oriented community of word-of-mouth marketing specialists.
Sitepoint: www.sitepoint.com
Online publisher with a range of blog articles in all web design categories.
Zeldman.com: www.zeldman.com
The blog of web standards advocate Jeffrey Zeldman.
A4UForum: www.a4uforum.co.uk
Used by affiliates to discuss approaches and compare programmes.
Search Engine Land: www.searchengineland.com
Blog by Danny Sullivan, the leading commentator on the search engine industry, containing updates on all major, and many minor, developments.
O’Reilly Radar : http://radar.oreilly.com
Commentary on the development of Web 2.0 technologies from publishers O’Reilly, whose founder Tim O’Reilly coined the term Web 2.0.
CustomerThink: www.customerthink.com
Forum, plus blog advice.
JimNovo.com: www.jimnovo.com
A specialist on online CRM, Jim’s site has many practical insights about analysing and following up according to online purchase behaviour, including the excellent ‘Drilling Down’ guide.
Net Promoter Score Blog : http://netpromoter.typepad.com/fred_reichheld
Blog on achieving advocacy by Fred Reicheld and other specialists in achieving advocacy, such as Dr Paul Marsden.
Optimize and Prophesize: www.optimizeandprophesize.com
A blog focusing on practical optimization approaches for paid search and landing pages.
Avinash Kaushik’s: www.kaushik.net
As Digital Marketing evangelist at Google, Avinash is an expert in web analytics, and his popular blog shows how web analytics should be used to control and improve return on e-marketing investments.
Convince and Convert: www.convinceandconvert.com
Analysis of social media marketing concepts by US commentator Jay Baer.
Site design
Disability and Discrimination Act: www.disability.gov.uk/dda
Code of practice including reference to websites.
Jakob Nielsen’s UseIt: www.useit.com
Despite the antiquated design, the detailed guidelines (alertboxes) and summaries of research into the usability of web media are still referenced widely.
User Interface Engineering: www.uie.com
Articles on usability that often provide a counterpoint to those of Nielsen.
Royal National Institute for the Blind: www.rnib.org.uk/accessibility
Web accessibility guidelines.
Step Two: www.steptwo.com.au
This design company has introductory outlines and more detailed articles on information architecture and other aspects of usability.
Usability Net: www.usabilitynet.org
A portal about usability with good links to other sites, and an introduction to usability terms and concepts.
Usability News: www.whoishostingthis.com/resources/usability/
A compilation of articles from different sources, plus jobs and events.
Webby Awards: www.webbyawards.com
The Oscars for the web – international.
Web Standards Project (WASP): www.webstandards.org
A consortium that promotes web standards.
Worldwide Web Consortium: www.w3.org/WAI
Web accessibility guidelines .
Statistics, Data, Reports and Research
E-marketer: www.emarketer.com
A compilation of research reports showing trends in Internet adoption and usage.
International Telecommunications Union (ITU): www.itu.int/ti/industryoverview/index.html
Choose internet indicators. This presents data on Internet and PC penetration in over 200 countries.
Net Imperative: www.netimperative.co.uk
Updates and reports on the UK new media landscape.
Emarketer: www.emarketer.com
Digital market research studies and reports.
Forrester: www.forrester.com
Digital and technology market research studies and reports (free content on blog).
Social Media Governance: http://socialmediagovernance.com
We recommend this database of social media governance policies, where you can learn from approaches defined by others.
Mashable: www.mashable.com
Site focusing on developments and statistics related to social networks.
The Interactive Media in Retail: www.imrg.org
Trade body for e-retailers reporting on growth and practice within UK and European e-commerce.
Ofcom: http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk
The Office of Communication has an annual Communications Market report on the adoption of digital media including telecommunications and the Internet (including broadband adoption), digital television and wireless services.
Eurostat: http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu
European Commission Eurostat.
Market Research Society: www.mrs.org.uk
Research News: www.research-live.com
UK Market Information: www.statistics.gov.uk
Internet Advertising Bureau: US: www.iab.net UK: www.iabuk.net
The widest range of studies about Internet advertising effectiveness.
European Commission Information Society Statistics: http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/digital-agenda/index_en.html
Reports evaluating e-business activity and consumer adoption across the European Union.
Econsultancy: www.econsultancy.com
Research, best practice reports and supplier directory for online marketing.
University-Sponsored Research Projects on e-Business and e-Commerce:
Centre for Digital Business @ MIT http://ebusiness.mit.edu
Created by MIT Sloan School of Management.Contains summaries of over 50 research projects.
IAB (Internet Advertising Bureau UK): www.iabuk.net
Statistics to support investment decisions on digital vs traditional advertising.