For many businesses, it’s vital to generate high quality leads, but it’s easy to feel at a loss about how to do that. It turns out you’re probably not making enough of the leads you can generate from your existing website. Here are some tips to get started with a smart, data-powered method of identifying the best sales leads for your business.

Most businesses know that they should have a website and a social media policy. But it is all too common, for SMEs in particular, to simply nominate a tech-loving member of staff to take care of the company’s social media profiles, and to then forget about the issue of social media altogether. This is a big mistake, It means that not only is there the risk of an off-hand comment or thoughtless retweet turning into a PR-disaster for the brand, but you could also be missing out on some valuable traffic sources and information.

With more than 1 billion websites online today, how is it possible to ensure yours is the one that potential customers go to? There are a number of creative ways businesses drive strong visitor traffic, and we'll be covering these in later blog posts. Today, we're focusing on the kings of the castle, search engine optimisation tips.

If your business has an online component, integrating analytics and CRM can provide you with a lot of incredibly valuable information that you can use to grow and build your business.

Google Analytics defines a bounce rate as the percentage of single page visitors to a website. It calculates a bounce rate based on whether a person visited another page after their first. The aim of the game here is to get your traffic to ‘engage and convert;’ to go to another page and start buying something, download something, fill out a form, or whatever other goal you consider would make for a successful website visit.

Marketing automation can occasionally be a little too much like factory automation. Prospects get popped onto a conveyor belt and poked and prodded by robots as they make their way towards a potential purchase.

Content-Driven Marketing is a well-documented response to the changing nature of purchasing in the digital age.

The digital era hasn’t just created new channels of communication, it has radically altered the structure of the sales funnel.

Last night I had cause to call my bank. Unusually, for a call to a customer services line it was a rewarding experience. Even more unusually, I enjoyed being sold to.

Most marketing techniques are ‘scattershot’. You could try to communicate with only the people you know are interested in your product, but then you’d probably communicating with a very small audience. And, barring referrals, you’d be unlikely to reach people who might be interested in your product but just don’t know about it yet.

Select from your CRM a selection of companies you would love to work with.

In Part 1 of “Removing uncertainty” we discussed how to de-risk sales, marketing and lead-generation at the top of the sales and marketing lead generation funnel.

Strange, but good, things happen when you stop considering sales as an event, and instead regard it as a longer range and unique process combining blended sales and marketing expertise to get a cold lead through a robust sales and marketing funnel to a position where a commercial transaction can take place.

Is sales an art or a science? We asked. You answered loud and clear. Thank you!

Is there a room for change?

Sales 101, you can’t cry about the sales you didn’t get from the work you didn’t do.

The sales team is the lifeblood of every business. They are the engine that keeps the company going. They are at the frontline fighting the battle. And the struggle is real. But salespeople are lazy, right? They are indulged and spoilt. When it comes to it, anybody can do sales… Right?

Throughout the sales process, there might be moments when you think that your prospects have lost their way or direction back to your company. You don’t know whether they are still looking for you or interested in you unless they say so themselves. It’s a frustrating position to be in. But you’re not alone. So many businesses out there face the same frustration - how do you get people back on track to buying from you?

Last month we brought to you new email notification look. This month we are announcing a soon to be launched feature of CANDDi which is super exciting and will make our clients' life much easier! As the title suggests we are about to automate...

Welcome to the second question in our Prospect FAQ series! Today, we are looking at - why would I call somebody if they haven’t asked me to call them?

Another sector that CANDDi caters to is the specialised software. It can be anything from cloud-based product development for various businesses, recruitment software for a specific industry to creating software that uses geo-location to help collate data to create meaningful business information. All of these businesses have their particular niche and a particular target market that they are operating in. Here is where they find value in CANDDi.

There is no one email to satisfy every single person. But there is a method to craft an almost perfect email with hooks to grab attention of various personality types.

Daily, our sales reps are being asked some interesting questions by our prospects. It ranges from GDPR oriented questions to why should you even care about tracking. In this following Prospect FAQ series, I’ll take one question at a time and provide you with an answer to satisfy your curiosity. On today’s list we have - do prospects get creeped out?

Everything I do in CANDDi is customer facing, from my sales role to customer research. In every single role, I come across GDPR questions from prospects and current clients alike. I'm anticipating that more people are going to be asking about this topic more often the closer we get to 25th May 2018. Hence, I've put together this blog that answers questions that are asked the most to put your mind at ease.

In a recent post, I wrote about how high technology such as virtual reality might be used in marketing or sales. Today, I will focus on artificial intelligence and the effect it has and will have on businesses in the future as it advances.

Many companies don't seem to understand the importance of their own website. They pour money into it to look pretty, to be easy to navigate, sometimes they even try to get people there. With that level of investment, why are they still refusing to reach the website's full potential? Are you ignoring it too and unintentionally harming your own business as a result?

Today’s market is saturated with multitudes of tools that can help you track your website. How do you make the right decision when they all look kind of the same or seem to be doing the same thing? Look no further. I've put together a quick guide to help you in the struggle.

Recently, I have been hearing a lot of buzzwords flying around relating to advanced technology with relation to sales and/or marketing. Words like Mixed Reality, Augment Reality, Virtual Reality,… What's the hype about? And more importantly, should this matter to business owners?

Over a week ago, Google has released a post about their new parallel tracking for their AdWords. Many of you might be wondering if any of that has/could have any effect on CANDDi. Let me put your mind at ease. CANDDi tracking has not and will not be affected at all. Here is why.

Do tradeshows like a pro and don't lose out on opportunities and prospects. Here is how we do it in CANDDi. A method tested, perfected and proven to work.

When asking businesses about their lead generation process, I’ve heard "word of mouth" more times than I can count. Word of mouth is important to any business for many reasons - reputation, a source of deals, and more. However, the digital world is not even considered to be part of that strategy, despite a substantial part of our daily communication happening right there.

Trade shows are ultimately about getting business. Yet, there is much more to them than that simple aim. There is valuable information and other opportunities that you might have been missing. Until now...

It has been a while since we made a public announcement about a new release. This time, we are bringing to you brand new email notifications!

Among the various clients we have, here is where manufacturers find value in the system.

An insight from Chris Murray's sales training that could help you tweak your sales technique.

Don't we all like a fully identified profile where we know who it is we need to speak to? Well, let me tell you that even company profile can be hidden diamonds.

CANDDi might be predominantly a B2B tool, but our B2C clients find value in the system as well. Here is where.

At CANDDi we are always looking for ways to help you get more sales. A good start to this is to help you keep your web visitors visiting!

Here we look at some social media mistakes that could end up losing you sales. Some are easily avoided, others take time and effort to build on to avoid. By sticking to all of them, you will have a much better experience with social media, as will clients and prospects.

What do you know about your customers? There might be things you haven’t even realised you’ve gathered. You might even be pondering delving into the world of behavioural data but haven’t got a clue where to start! We’ve attempted to simplify why and how you can gather intent data and use it for your business.

Here we’re taking a look at getting more creative with the web forms used on your website. The “Contact Us” form is a given on any site, but how do you expect to truly increase your conversions without thinking about ways to incentivise visitors to engage? We’ve broken down four ways that might get you to start increasing those numbers!

Where does the sales cycle truly being? Is it when a prospective buyer has called in to enquire? The first email your sales team has sent? Or is it built up over time with the various interactions and experiences with your brand, even online? Here we’ve taken a look at the opportunities that “digital touchpoints” provide businesses to leave impressions on their market, ultimately leading to a fuller sales funnel.

With so many resources, ideas and variables out there on improving how you email market, it’s easy to forget the simple stuff. Here we’ve put together 8 simple steps that will ensure you get yourself on the right track and achieve the goals you’ve set out for your email campaigns.

Split testing (also referred to as A/B testing) is a method of conducting controlled, randomized experiments with the goal of improving a web based metrics. But how many of us are doing it? Do we know what we’re looking for? Here are 6 tips for running effective split-tests to help guide your expectations!

When deciding to use Analytics for your website and business, it’s difficult to decide exactly what you do with the intelligence you’re presented with. Unless you have a clearly defined plan, there are always new things to use that data for. Here we’ve taken a look at some of the key questions you might want to be asking when it comes to looking at Analytics for your website.

If you’re near Manchester, Blackburn or Glasgow in May here’s where you’ll find your CANDDi fix...

CANDDi are hiring! We’re expanding our sales team and I’m spending all my time focusing on recruiting - CANDDi is an amazing company to work for and we’ve got a fantastic culture which I’m incredibly protective about...so we’re being very picky on who we offer the job to.

Aah the web enquiry form… perhaps one of the most important functions of a website yet with surprisingly regularity, the most overlooked.

You’ve probably heard it, but how can we use it? This entry is a look at the famous “Pareto Principle” (otherwise know as the 80/20 rule). What does it mean? How could we apply it within an everyday sales context? Our CANDDi Consultant Brian has broken it down and even given an example of his real life experiences with it.

We’re extremely excited to be exhibiting at The University of Manchester’s Graduate Fair this Spring. It’s on Thursday 4th May 2017 at the Armitage Centre in Fallowfield and will be open from 10:30am to 4pm. We’re looking for the next generation of CANDDi Sales Superstars to join our growing team based in the Northern Quarter in Manchester. We’ve currently got 20 members of staff, and are planning on having 40 people working here by the end of the year.

Whether you’re yet to dip your toe into purchasing data, or you’re seasoned in acquiring your prospect lists. We’ve called upon Gareth Perry, Sales Director of our preferred partner at Databroker to give his top tips on sourcing quality B2B data.

Much has been made and said of GDPR in terms of how it is going to affect businesses and their ability to market to clients and customers. There has also been some confusion as to what it means for us, so our data expert Ed has taken a look at some of the most relevant principles of the Regulation as it looms closer and how we will or won't be affected.

I first met Carol Griffiths at a previous company, I was part of the telesales team and she'd been bought in by the higher ups to pretty much restructure and turnaround the sales function. I can remember finding her incredibly direct, efficient, and if I'm honest I was shit scared of her. The sales team were not delivering and wasn't as profitable as it should have been - Carol was brought in to troubleshoot and solve this problem. It wasn't pretty, it was frustrating at times, but she wasn't there to make friends and was completely focused on fixing the business problem, and it wasn't personal.

I’m Maddy, I’m currently in Year 10 at Levenshulme High School and I’ve recently finished a week’s work experience at CANDDi. When we were all told we would be doing work experience, I thought it would be boring and that I’d hate it, but I loved every single second of it and would love to do it again.

The words “join us” and “sign up” appear in email campaigns all the time and have the same purpose generally i.e. give us your email address - but do they say the same thing?

As we’re expanding our Sales Team at CANDDi, I’ve been communicating with a lot of candidates to arrange interviews etc (read about our hiring process here) and a question that is coming up quite a lot is “What is your dress code?” because I’m answering this quite frequently, I thought I’d let you all know...just in case you end up in our hiring process at any point!

We’re going through an interesting time at CANDDi in terms of sales. We’ve never had a problem actually selling the system, it solves a huge problem for businesses and there is definitely an appetite for it, where we’ve historically struggled is scaling our sales team - we’ve done some things really well, and other things we’ve messed up on.

Often asked is “how can we better improve engagement on our website?”. Albeit a simple question, it doesn’t always warrant a simple answer. There are a large number of ways in which you can improve web engagement. Here we take a look at some of the most fundamental and “must do’s” in terms of getting what we want from our visitors!

There are four main ways in which businesses opt to market online. In terms of generating traffic however, it typically comes down to two key options. PPC or Email? Here we take a look at the pro’s and con’s for both and what the best way forward might be.

We at CANDDi put a lot of emphasis on the power of email marketing. However, we often come across similar concerns or negatives associated with it. Here we take a look at some of the most common objections or “myths” and debunk them to show you the value it has!

We recently attended the annual WhatNext? Conference 2017, a student conference organised by the Manchester Entrepreneur Society. There were a number of great speakers lined up, and the event was jam packed with hungry minds. Read on for words of wisdom from Maria Stukoff, John Kershaw and Tim Langley.... Tim), the venue was awesome, and the audience was packed.

For various reasons (Tim is training for a marathon in April, I've had a minor stroke, Brian is sleep deprived with his new baby etc) we are all trying to get a bit fitter here at CANDDi HQ...

The Email Marketing Industry Census was recently published and has revealed the benefits of an effective strategy. In comparison to other marketing channels from SEO to Social, email marketing is measured to provide a better return on investment than any other.

I'm Jack and I've just completed a summer internship in the dev team within CANDDi. I've learnt more lessons than you could shake a stick at in my three months here. Being a web developer requires a lot of skills, and surprisingly, knowing how to code doesn't count as much as you'd think.

How useful is it to pay attention to click-through rates if over half of the clicks on your site are generated by bots? A study conducted by Integral Ad Science in September 2015 found that marketers actually increased the likelihood of attracting bots if they developed their campaigns around mouse-based metrics.

Even experienced marketers can be baffled by Google Analytics sometimes. Make sure that you’re using it to its full potential by paying attention to the following reports.

SEO is greatly aided by data, but finding the correlation between the two can be a difficult and complex task for website owners to contend with. In this piece we’ll look at how web design fits into this puzzle, and how it can help boost your SEO efforts.

The media landscape has changed greatly in recent years with the rise of mobile internet, and many organisations now have a mobile-first focus. For media organisations, this has raised questions about what kind of news content consumers want on their smartphones - is the trend of short “snackable” content prevailing in this sector, or do mobile users want greater depth?

Google has updated the Search Analytics report in its search console, changing the way that they calculate clicks and impressions in the Search Analytics report. They have added some information about the change to their Data Anomalies page, where they explain that users may notice that the clicks, impressions and CTR values seen in the report may appear different.

CANDDi is are going through an exciting period of growth, and as such are looking for backend PHP developer.

Most webmasters understand how goal tracking, reporting and analytics tools can be useful for identifying problems with their websites and increasing their conversion rate. However, there is on tool that is often overlooked and that people view as a curiosity rather than something of real value, which is unfortunate given that it is such a powerful and flexible one. It is real-time analytics.

CANDDi are going through an exciting period of growth, and as such are looking for creative front-end graphic designer / product designer / user experience team member.

The next Google Performance Summit will take place on May 24th, and Google will be live-streaming the event, which will begin at 9am PT.

Google Analytics is gradually rolling out the User Explorer feature - a new feature which allows website owners to see specific visitor interactions across their website on an anonymised basis.

There is no denying that ‘Marketing Automation’ is a hot topic, however research shows that only 26% of users of marketing automation software fully adopt it, and whilst 39% didn’t use the software they purchased at all.

When it comes to analytics and information gathering, one thing that we often forget is the humble survey. Tools such as Survey Monkey make it very easy for business owners to ask questions of their users and collect important information, but until recently, they have primarily been a tool for desktop-based surveys, sent out via email.

Website Tracking Software has been around for years, in many forms. But here’s what the immediate future holds, and how you can prepare.

Big data is becoming an essential tool for understanding your customer base and how they interact with your brand and other brands. In fact, thanks to the power of analytics we can now find answers for questions that we didn’t even realise we wanted to ask.

Google has just unveiled a new Analytics 360 Suite which is aimed at enterprise-level users and features six products which can be integrated with DoubleClick and AdWords. They can be used both on their own and as a combined toolkit. They include a landing page testing tool, a new DMP and more.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise has rolled out a new version of its search and analytics platform for enterprise. The latest update has an increased focus on cloud-based machine learning and unstructured data and helps to speed up the development of both mobile applications and enterprise applications.

Google has announced a new analytics tool to help developers of the Google Cast software. Google Cast helps people to stream media from their PCs and even mobile devices to a TV or a speaker set-up.

The overall goal of content analytics is to take digital content and then examine it through the lens of business intelligence so that business owners can get actionable insights into their data. This is something that has been a fairly constant thing over the last few years - the idea of content analytics is nothing new - but the types of content and the sheer volume of content being produced have changed a lot recently.

My name is Janie and up until just recently, I must admit that I had little idea about what I wanted to do or what the real world was like. But thanks to CANDDi, I can now brush the dust of my shoulders and say; “はい、分かってるよ！” Yes, I am a near graduate from the University of Manchester, majoring in Japanese studies. Please don’t be shocked, I have no idea myself how I made it this far.

Google has just updated its analytics portfolio, releasing a new tool called Autotrack for analytics.js which will give developers some easy ways to track data. Since the first iteration of Google Analytics was released, the web has changed a lot.

Big data is something that is becoming more and more accessible to organisations of all sizes, and there is a strong trend towards functions being carried out in the cloud. This is good news for organisations that want to revamp their analytics approach, because it means that they can take advantage of the massive processing power of cloud servers, and use tools that they would otherwise never have access to.

The Business Information and data analytics market is expected to reach $16.9 billion this year, but the amazing growth is not a guarantee of success for vendors. Companies are becoming increasingly sophisticated in what they want from their analytics, and only the vendors that offer the option to pull from multiple data sources are likely to achieve success.

Analytics tools are now so common and so affordable that every business could - and should - be using them. However, big data is useless if you don’t use that data to ask and answer the right questions. One prominent data mining expert, Mr Tom Khabaza, has put together nine laws that he believes are the foundation of good analytics.

As we head into the new year, we can expect to see a lot of innovations in the way that big data and analytics are used, not just when it comes to business but also for things such as sport and politics.

Microsoft recently released the R Server, a server based on software from Revolution Analytics and designed for use in statistical analysis. Microsoft acquired Revolution Analytics in April of last year, and has released “Microsoft R Open” as a server for Windows, SUSE Linux and Red Hat.

Google began its rollout of Universal Analytics back in 2012 and has slowly but steadily been adding new features to the platform, but it was only at the end of 2015 that it completed the rollout, and automatically upgraded all users of the analytics platform from Classic to Universal Analytics.

Big data analytics has become a buzz-word in almost every industry. In many ways, the idea of analytics today is like the idea of having an online presence in the late 1990s. Everyone knows that it would be a good thing to have, but few people really understand why it matters and what it could do for them.

This past year has been a big one for analytics, with some revolutionary advances in terms of how we track users as well as how we reach them. It’s not just the technology that has changed, either. The way that users engage with content has changed too, and people are now ditching their desktops to use mobile devices. In addition, whatever platform we are using, fewer and fewer of us are willing to wait for slide shows to load. We are an always connected generation, but one that is more demanding and less patient.

Google has been gradually rolling out Universal Analytics since 2012, and it has only been in the last year that the transfer from Classic to Universal Analytics was finished.

Facebook Pixel is an interesting new tool that Facebook launched earlier this year. It allows advertisers to track and monitor customer activity and re-target to a customer’s Facebook feed.

Google recently added a new tool to its analytics suite which allows users to create custom metrics based upon the existing information in the software.

Data is, by itself, just a mass of zeros and ones that is displayed to us by a computer or in some other form. Data by itself is not very useful - it is what we do with it that makes a difference to our business.

Google’s analytics and trends data can provide some interesting information about shopping, searching and even which stores people are visiting when - not just online, but in real life too. One thing that people forget when they’re thinking about analytics is that Google doesn’t just provide data about website visits; it has access to the location data of a huge number of Android device owners - and that location data includes things like what stores people are visiting, and when.

Way back in 2003, Google purchased Urchin Software and then used their technology to launch the first free analytics platform that offered commercial-grade analytics. The platform is now one of the most well-known and frequently used analytics tools in the world (perhaps more accurately, it is the most used), but it has now grown so big that most people still don’t really know how to use all of the features.

When Tim asked if I wanted to go the Thinking Digital Conference the other week I was like “Yes, that’d be awesome!” as I’m on maternity leave it wouldn’t be like I’m missing a day of work, my 5 year old would be in school, and my 8 week old….crap….how would I go to a business conference with an 8 week old? What if she cries during a talk? Will they have baby changing facilities? How am I going to manoeuvre the pushchair around loads of people? I guess I could have just told Tim it’s probably a bad idea...but that’d be boring, right?

Google has been making it increasingly difficult to view query data, but that doesn’t mean that you are forced to blunder in the dark when figuring out what consumers are searching for. While it’s true that finding out what is going on in terms of organic data is now difficult, you can easily get information about history data thanks to the Search Analytics Report.

On November 5th 2015, it’s Bring In Your Parents Day and we thought we’d join in...virtually! We didn’t have time to arrange for all of our parents to come in, so we decided to ask them a few questions and write it up instead!
I hope you enjoy reading, it was lovely going through the questions with our parents and seeing what responses we all got…

When it comes to analytics, most webmasters focus on conversion metrics and look for actionable data that will improve their CTR and their conversion rate. While these metrics are indeed important, the end-user experience is about so much more than that.

As the spookiest night of year approaches once again, the time has come to dust the cobwebs off your website, scare off those ghouls that spoil your party and welcome into your home those phantom visitors than drift across your site and leave without trace.

The e-commerce industry has changed a lot in the last few years. Today we still have the big players of a few years ago - Google is a major ad platform and Amazon and Facebook have their devotees as well. However, there are new players such as Pinterest and TripAdvisor that cater to specific niches and are becoming an increasingly important way of driving audience growth.

It seems like a no-brainer doesn't it? I mean, if the question is "Would you rather have 1000 or 10,000 hits on your website?" who wouldn't choose the latter?

After a fantastic experience last year, CANDDi are returning to the Digital Marketing Show at the ExCeL in London on 18th - 19th November 2015 and would love to catch up with customers and prospects alike.

Over the last few years, analytics have become incredibly powerful, and companies know more about their customers, their supply chains and their businesses than ever before. However, as the technology for data collection has improved, the amount of data out there has increased at a similar rate - creating a paradox where we know more than we did a few years ago, but the gap in our knowledge has increased at an even bigger rate, meaning that compared to the big picture, we remain clueless.

Rosie Leach, née Moth was raised by bootstrap entrepreneurs in the town that Disney built. Customer service and community development are at the core of everything she does. She is the co-founder and marketing director of a Business VoIP Carrier & Service Provider based in Manchester. She feeds her nomad spirit with frequent travel, yoga and an eternal search for self discovery. She doesn’t sleep much.

In the most basic marketing schools of thought, we think of consumers as a large, single group. In general, consumers do all behave in the same sort of way. They respond to discounts and promotions and act in different ways at different times of year. However, there is more to consumer behaviour than that basic pattern, and thanks to modern analytics tools we can develop a better understanding of those consumer behaviours. We know that not every consumer is exactly the same and that if we can segment consumer behaviour, we will be able to achieve much better conversion rates.

As you know, we’re always improving and tweaking things (almost always driven by client feedback) and here’s a summary of some new stuff we’ve recently rolled out…

When most people think of analytics, the first thing that comes to mind is traffic tracking. They use it to test the performance of their marketing campaigns and to see which products are converting the best. You can do so much more with analytics, however. In the right hands, if you ask the right questions, it can be a tool for improving the overall end-user experience.

The data platform company Looker has just announced a new product, called Looker Blocks, which it hopes will help to simplify business analytics. Looker Blocks are reusable and customizable apps which will provide easy access to common components of business logic, such as lifetime value and churn prediction. The goal is to offer business owners access to that data quickly and easily so that they can analyse the needs of their organisation.

The CANDDi office warming party was awesome, thanks so much to all that attended. It was really lovely to celebrate with friends and family...apologies for the overly hyper children who were running around amongst you all.

As some of you may know, I've recently had baby number two. Sophia was born on 4th September, a week late, weighing in at a mahoosive 10lbs and 12oz! Apart from being perpetually exhausted, and my flat being a complete pink mess at the moment, all is going great.

Digital analytics is a complex field, and all too often business owners pay for complex analytics packages but then fail to make good use of them because the data being presented is not actionable or easy to understand.

Analytics has been the “next big thing” in the world of IT for a long time now. Every few months a new technology comes along that experts promise will revolutionise the world of data. From Hadoop and Apache Spark to more futuristic ideas such as the predictive technologies of the “Internet of Things”, it’s hard to know what’s just hype and what will really deliver.

If there’s one company that has definitely led the way when it comes to analytics and retail, it is Amazon. Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon, once said that what is dangerous is to “not evolve”, and you can see this in everything that Amazon does, from their retail business to their media dealings and their technology services.

Tim Langley spoke at Directors Cut on how to build stronger relationships by understanding your web visitors.

Sorting the data within CANDDi is a brilliant way of segmenting data, organising it, and separating out exactly what you want to see. But when you’ve got millions of streams, it’s really difficult to keep on top of them all.

What are you doing on Tuesday 22nd September 2015? Coming to the CANDDi Office Warming Party? Yay!!!

If you work in marketing or run a small business, the chances are you think about visitor analytics on an almost daily basis.

According to a recent study conducted by Venturebeat, major brand owners plan to increase their analytics spend by up to 73 per cent over the last three years. In fact, the owners of some of the world’s biggest B2C companies are planning to double their analytics spend over that time.

Bing is planning to make several improvements to its Merchant Center, including improvements to the tracking and analytics features. The Bing Merchant Center is used to create stores and catalog feeds which can provide information for Shopping Campaigns as well as Product Ads.

According to some research conducted by Adobe and published in their latest Digital Advertising Report, CPC growth on desktops has declined over the last year. However, smartphone growth appears stable.

Today, almost every device that you can imagine can be connected to the internet, and this presents some interesting opportunities for all kinds of business. From wearable tech to Wi-Fi-enabled fridges, the Internet of Things spans all industries and offers business owners the chance to learn about customer behaviour, predict customer demand and engage with consumers in a range of new and innovative ways.

Analytics is far more than just a buzz-word these days. Analytics tools are essential for business owners who want to be able to take advantage the data that is being created, in real time, as people use your website and interact with your brand online.

Online shopping has become so popular that traditional retailers are looking to modern analytics tools in order to help them remain competitive. Robert Hetu, a research director at Gartner, noted that consumers have taken control of the shopping process and that the way we shop is changing.

Accenture has launched a new cloud-based analytics system which is designed to offer real-time insights in a simple, easy to understand and actionable format. The Accenture Insights Platform comprises an integrated suite of analytics tools as well as enterprise support for users. The tools will offer insights in a way that can be used effectively by data scientists, marketing managers and C-level executives to help them make informed decisions.

Manchester based startup, CANDDi, accused of putting customers before staff. A heavily pregnant staff member was told "Put your feet in a bucket of cold water if it's too hot, and get on with keeping customers happy!" by slave-driver CEO Tim Langley.

It’s well known that having a good understanding of your audience makes it easier for you to reach them and turn them into loyal customers, and the value of analysing your direct competitors is something that most marketers do appreciated. But one area of market research and analytics that is often overlooked is that of your indirect competitors.

Tracking transactions that are completed using more than one device is something that has been problematic in the world of analytics and online marketing for some time, but that is all set to change as Google is looking to add cross-device management to its DoubleClick program.

LinkedIn announced the development of the Pinot analytics software in September 2014, and the news generated a lot of excitement in the world of big data, because the professional networking website has always had a good reputation for its skill in handling huge amounts of information and using it for the enrichment of its own applications.

If you are committed to increasing your search ROI, then it is important that you focus on finding high-value targets. Those targets are the ones that allow you to build engagement and improve your website's performance in general - things such as having fresh, relevant content, a high quality score and highly optimized content and marketing.

The dust is finally starting to settle after “mobilegeddon” - the recent Google update which was designed to prioritise websites that are mobile-friendly and penalise websites with non-responsive layouts or layouts that are difficult for mobile users to navigate.

The prevailing perception of analytics is that it is something which is useful only for tracking online visits and conversions. While it’s true that it is certainly easier to track clicks and website visits, Google does make it possible to get an idea of the real-world performance of your ad campaigns.

Today was the first ever TMRW conference, and it was AWESOME. It was a one day event at Manchester Central, and is apparently a place where ‘those defining the future meet those ready to embrace it’ - it left me feeling inspired, a little bit freaked out, in awe, and generally very enthusiastic about both tech and about Manchester!

If there’s one area where analytics is incredibly important, it is understanding the performance of your search marketing campaigns. If you are going to spend money on paid search, then you need to have some strong goals in mind so that you can accurately measure the performance of your campaigns and optimise them effectively.

When Tim Langley, from website and prospect identification company CANDDi, was in the process of revising his marketing strategy, PR was in his opinion a ‘bit of an indulgence’. The company had tried a traditional approach to public relations in the past and ended up with lots of noise but very little in terms of ROI. Tim, a Cambridge mathematics graduate and digital entrepreneur, is a self-confessed geek with an analytical mind that looks for quantifiable returns from any investment.

Earlier this month Google launched a new Search Analytics report option within its Google Webmaster Tools platform. The report is intended to replace the existing Search Queries report, and Google plans to remove this from Webmaster Tools in about three months time.

In preparation for the WWDC Developer Conference, which is set to take place in June, Apple has opened up the beta program for its new iOS app analytics service. The service is simply named “Apple’s App Analytics”, and it will offer mobile app developers access to detailed insights about the way that people use their apps.

As budding marketers, we all know the importance of an effective Google search presence...whether that be Search Engine Optimisation or Pay Per Click. Like it or not, nearly all modern day purchases seem to include a cheeky Google search at some point. And being proudly sat in those golden SERPs when prospects come hunting is a central focus for most aspiring marketing campaigns these days.

The benefits of analytics as a tool to help webmasters understand where their visitors are coming from and how they behave on their websites are clearly known and understood, but what many people don't realize is that analytics has other benefits too. Through the use of tools such as personas you can build up a clearer profile of your target audience, allowing you to not just get more traffic,but get better traffic - traffic that will more easily convert.

The analytics market is becoming quite mature, but many people still underestimate the value of it. Your website is your online store front - the most important part of your customer acquisition strategy - and while analytics may not be the “hot new trend” any more, it is still an essential part of your data-gathering efforts. Analytics can feed other tools which help to improve engagement on your website.

Microsoft recently released Power BI, a browser-based platform for data visualization which is capable of pulling data from a range of other tools, including its own Dynamics CRM platform as well as Google Analytics, Twilio and Salesforce. Power BI is based in the cloud, and it assimilates data from several streams, producing graphs and charts for businesses to explore. It does this rapidly, without relying on old-fashioned relational databases.

Any business with a website offering payment processing should be pursuing all possible ways to maximise customer purchases. In a world where internet is increasingly accessed on-the-go, it is more important than ever to ensure crucial pages in an ecommerce site are optimised for mobile devices.

A lot of organizations simply don't have the time, computing resources or expertise to handle big data processing in-house. They may have tried to take on some internal big data projects only to find that the expense of the project outweighs the benefits, or that they end up failing to meet important deadlines. Their lack of resources and expertise leaves them with the impression that analytics is a waste of time for their company.

Big data is something that has been a core part of every enterprise strategy for a long time now, and the technology behind it is finally becoming accessible to smaller companies as well. We can expect to see some huge steps forward in the use of big data over the next year, with smaller companies being able to take advantage of analytics, tracking and sophisticated marketing techniques on a whole new level.

The importance of web analytics is well understood. Tracking who comes to your website, when they come, how long they stay and what they do is essential if you want to optimize the performance of your site. However, that is not the only use of analytics. The most successful brands also use analytics for their mobile apps and for social media too.

It’s no secret the internet is the primary destination for all shoppers these days. From luxury Caribbean holidays to fancy Jimmy Choos and offices to rent. It’s all there. All waiting. All competing for buyer’s attention. Quite naturally, just like their high-street counterparts, online shoppers like to do some looking around. They like to shop for bargains. They like to make the right purchases. Typical online shopppers might visit 4, 5 or sometimes more websites going through their researching and buying decisions.

Big data and web analytics are becoming an increasingly important part of online marketing - not just for web-only businesses but for almost every company. Gartner predicted that by 2015 there would be around 4.4 million jobs in the big data industry, and that only one third of those jobs would get filled successfully. This puts companies in a difficult position. Can you find the talent to handle your analytics in-house, or should you outsource your analytics to companies that already have the right expertise? Should you be spending money on analytics at all?

Analytics are not simply a “nice to have” part of a business plan; they are essential to the growth and sustainability of any business. They offer clear, hard facts and insights into the profile of and the behaviour of your customers. They allow you to get both quantitative and qualitative information about where your visitors come from, how they behave and the things that they like and dislike about your website.

An invitation from Royd Brayshay turned into an evening not to be missed ....

Google has added a new feature to their Google Analytics suite which allows users to recover data that has been accidentally deleted and even recover deleted accounts.

Analytics have become the core of the online marketing strategies of many brands, but are we using them as effectively as we should be, and are the numbers as useful as we wish that they could be?

With more than 1 billion websites online today, how is it possible to ensure yours is the one customers go to when researching your products and services? There are a number of creative ways businesses are driving strong visitor traffic and we'll be covering these in later blog posts. But today we're focusing on the kings of the castle, search engine optimisation tips.

Watch our 1 min 13 sec video to learn the five way's CANDDi identifyies the actual visitors on your website

Filmed at the Digital Marketing Show 2014 - CANDDi CEO Tim Langley talks about Do you want to see who is on your website?

When most people hear the word analytics, they immediately think of Google Analytics, Sitecatalyst, Alexa and other tools for gauging web traffic. The world of analytics is much bigger than this, and if you really want your online brand to succeed you should look beyond simple referrers, hits and visits and look at some of the other metrics that are out there. Here is a quick overview of some of the other analytics metrics that could be valuable for your business.

CANDDi Partner, David Gilroy from Conscious Solutions, talks about how adding one line of code to your website, spending one hour working the data, leads to one extra client per week

Most webmasters are well aware of the value of analytics for their desktop website, but have you ever considered analytics for a mobile app? Mobile analytics can help you to track consumers from the moment they discover your app up until the moment they make an in-app purchase or decide to remove the app from their device.

Looking to make the most of your website? Then you need to be utilising web analytics tools. Besides everything, they can help you to understand who is visiting your site and why, so that when it comes to planning your sales and marketing activities, you can know who you're reaching out to, why and how.

Google Analytics has become even more valuable for bricks-and-mortar store owners, thanks to a new service which offers insights into which products are driving store visits. The new “store visit measurement” metric in AdWords is a part of the Estimated Total Conversions tool, and it offers a holistic view of how customers are engaging with your business.

Meet Ben - he runs a UK business. Learn more about how CANDDi can help your lead generation activities with our 44 second explainer video

Would you like to convert more sales? Would you like to learn from CANDDi experts top tips how to increase your sales-team's effectiveness using Visitor Tracking? Read more...

Search marketing is the process of getting people to come to a website, but what about once people are there? It takes a lot of research and user tracking to understand how people engage with a website, and it can take some tweaking and testing to figure out why users abandon their carts.

The big data and analytics fields are growing rapidly, and both the International Institute of Analytics and the IDC believe that the markets will expand massively in 2015, reaching a total value of around $125 billion worldwide.

Imagine if you could predict product demand and price changes, understand how the changing seasons would affect your business and model possible scenarios that could benefit or threaten your business. That is exactly what big businesses are doing, and it’s something that smaller companies should be working on too.

Even the smallest businesses are learning to take advantage of web analytics today, thanks to the power and ease of use of tools such as Google Analytics, but most businesses don’t realise that there is more to analytics than simply traffic sources and keyword data.

Most businesses know that they should have a website and a social media policy, but it is all too common for SMEs, in particular, to simply nominate a tech-loving member of staff to take care of the company’s social media profiles, and to then forget about the issue of social media altogether. This is a big mistake, because it means that not only is there the risk of an off-hand comment or thoughtless retweet turning into a PR-disaster for the brand, but it also means that you could be missing out on some valuable traffic sources and information.

Posting to your blog on a regular schedule is important if you want to make sure that your visitors keep coming back. Google tends to favour sites that regularly post fresh content, too. These tips will help you to keep a steady supply of fresh ideas for content.

Myself and @Saadia_Choudry attended the SASCon Beta conference yesterday… I thought I'd do a quick blog post to share the Manchester SEO love.

Ever been jumped on by a shop assistant 'trying to help you'? Of course you have. And you probably remember the feeling it gave you.

If you want your website to perform well, then you will need to understand your visitors — why they come to your site, what they are looking for, how they use the site and the reasons that they leave. This is what analytics tools can help you with.

Another year - another fantastic experience at the Digital Marketing Show

Chris said "Come to a business meeting in Rochdale, you'll be surprised." (And I was ...

If your business has an online component, then integrating Analytics and CRM can provide you with a lot of incredibly valuable information that you can use to grow and build your business. Most online businesses use a combination of PPC, SEO, email marketing, display advertising and social media marketing to reach their target audience.

Google Analytics is an incredibly powerful tool, but it is something that a lot of webmasters overlook, as they assume that getting the full benefit out of it is simply too much effort. Webmasters who choose to ignore Analytics, however, are missing out on some important and valuable information that they could use to reduce their bounce rate, improve their advertising ROI and generally make their website friendlier to visitors and search engines.

We're looking for an experienced Account Manager to come and join our team based in Central Manchester.

After a fantastic experience last year, CANDDi are returning to the Digital Marketing Show at the ExCeL in London on 19th - 20th November 2014 and would love to catch up with customers and prospects alike.

Analytics and tracking systems are some of the most powerful tools in the arsenal of the modern webmaster. If you have ever found yourself wondering what your visitors are doing, where they are going on your website and why some visitors are leaving without completing a purchase, then you will benefit from analytics.

Do you recycle at home? Do you put empty cans in public recycling bins? Of course you do - we all do. Why then don't we carry on this noble practice when we're online?

If that sub-40% bounce rate was a great white whale, the rest of us would all be Captain Ahab, feverishly chasing it through hell & high water to get visitors to our sites and blogs to stay longer. That said, bounce rates are serious business.

It seems like a no-brainer doesn't it? I mean, if the question is "Would you rather have 1000 or 10,000 hits on your website?" who wouldn't choose the latter?

Our free event "How to turn your existing online presence into a Growth Engine". This event is for B2B SMEs with growth aspirations, who have a website and are interested in increasing their ROI from existing marketing activity.

Although there are tonnes of opportunities to network and meet-up with fellow starter-uppers, it’s almost always over a beer and in a pub - and even if you’re able to get to them (which is nigh on impossible if you’ve got kids or family commitments)

If you’re considering working at a startup, or are still finding your feet working at one, here are my 3 p’s that may help...

Getting the balance right between productivity and reducing missed opportunities is key to a business and it can be a struggle achieving this equilibrium.

The landing page is a businesses online store window; the centre of all inbound lead generation efforts and the link back to every campaign that you are running.

With so much choice out there, it sometimes gets difficult to distinguish the right company or product for your needs (try typing “website analytic tools” into Google and you will see what I mean). Businesses are becoming more aware of their social presence and the importance of great feedback.

An interview with Rachel Collinson, Freelance Consultant and Strategist for Engaging Networks talking about how nonprofits can get more results using CANDDi.

We were asked a lot of questions at the show and thought it would be a good idea to share with everyone!

As social media is an essential part of marketing today, we at CANDDi carry on proving that we are an innovative tech company by using Snapchat to market our business and generate leads.

We are fortunate to work with fantastic clients who love our product and use it in great ways! We caught up with Catherine Carlyle, Marketing Communications Manager at Caltech and found out how businesses can get the best out of CANDDi.

CANDDi are striving to make it easier for our customers to run CANDDi alongside their email marketing. We have now created a feature that will allow CANDDi customers to get the most our of their campaigns.

We thought we would take a look at the ways startup's can get more exposure and look at the example of businesses that didn't quite get it right.

Katie will be interning at CANDDi for the summer taking particular interest in YOUR opinions of what CANDDi has to offer. Follow her progress through 'Life As A CANDDi Intern'

CANDDi will be attending Marketing Week Live on the 25th - 26th of June! Winner of the 2013 Most Innovative Tech Company of the Year Award, CANDDi is set to reveal the latest features of their leading website analytics products.

A business requires different leadership approaches and models at the different stages of its growth, but it’s an element of growth strategy are often overlooked. However, research shows that if you don’t evolve your leadership focus, style and characteristics as you grow, it becomes one of the biggest obstacles a business encounters.

Three things.
1. Reports are great.
2. People don’t always know how to get the most out of them.
3. So in turn they get ignored/ deleted.
This is an overview of how you can get the most out of them.

Running a tech-start-up is rarely glamorous

But an invitation to join 350 top British start-ups at Buckingham Palace definitely makes the slog worth while

Three things.
Reports are great.
People don’t always know how to get the most out of them.
So in turn they get ignored/ deleted.
This is an overview of how you can get the most out of them.

It is great creating interesting content that drives in traffic and engages your customer base but it is important to capture this data when it comes in. These leads will be your sales and with an effective capture system on your website, you will be able to build a database of potential customers. Marketing will be happy because there will be tangible results and Sales will be happy because they will have warm(er) leads.

Can you remember a time when you would report people that were following you, no one knew what a hashtag was, and a selfie was...well…you get the picture.

If I am being honest, telesales never really made my list of alternative career paths...

We expect stores to supply a range of different styles and sizes so why is it any different for your website. Benefits of Segmenting Your Customer Base. Here is an example. You have the sudden urge to buy shoes today...

Do we really understand web tracking and is there a dangerous side to this tool? After reading the article on BBC news about the pair of Scottish pranksters who mocked up a murder scene on Google Street View, it got me questioning the impact of tracking.

We have now launched the new CANDDi Admin and Streams Dashboards for all CANDDi users. These dashboards will make it easier for you to control your streams and your sales team leads, manage settings and run your inbound inquiry process with more efficiency.

As data collection becomes more vast and website audiences become wider, businesses can run the risk of losing sight of who their customer is, what they want to know and making sweeping generalisations in their marketing approach to try to cover all but instead alienating everyone.

Automotive businesses are always looking for ways to convert website leads into sales just like in their dealer showroom but are faced with the dilemma of the unknown visitor and the dreaded cold call. CANDDi provides the answer.

Sometimes we find it hard to make an impression on the right people, it is not usually through lack of trying but standing out from the crowd can be a difficult thing.

A chance to hear from CANDDi Chairman, Ian Brookes and his experience working with a tech Startup.

In business, there is always a large focus on gathering more leads but to fund the strategies and bring in the revenue, these leads need converting.

With news this week about eBay being hit by one of the biggest hacks this year, millions of people around the world have had their personal details including home addresses, phone numbers and passwords exposed. How can you protect yourself on the internet?

It is a fact that companies with high retention rates grow faster and there are opportunities for all of us to make the most of the customer base we have on board.

Interested in attracting more website visitors? Check out the following techniques for a few easy wins on how to help increase traffic.

A quick and easy guide to getting the most out of your email campaigns.

An insight into working for a startup company. But after being inspired by reading my CEO’s journey, I thought it would be a good place to start by sharing my first few weeks of working for a tech startup.

The internet has been a fantastic tool in expanding business opportunities and interaction with global audiences but as well as being liberating, it has also created more pitfalls that companies can fall into by alienating their customer base with irrelevant, impersonal information.

A judgement by the European Union Court of Justice has ruled that Google must adhere to the “right to be forgotten” law after a case was brought to the courts.

Twitter announced yesterday that a new tool will soon be available for all users.

A quick insight into tag clouds, what, why and how to use them effectively.

With over 80% of users not recognising Google Adwords as adverts, it's time to invest some time and thought into building a strong PPC campaign. Read more to find our CANDDi's top tips.

The latest LinkedIn update for users promises to turn tips into profile views.

CANDDi CEO Tim Langley presenting his experience as founder of a Tech Startup, the pitfalls and successes and how to enjoy the journey.

An overview on the first Great Preneurs event in Manchester where CANDDi CEO Tim Langley shared his journey as founder of a tech startup.

CANDDi tags can be very powerful but it can be a pain to keep CANDDi up to date with CANDDi. With Jekyll you can automatically tell CANDDi to add the same tags as your pages in jekyll.

Alice Flook has joined the CANDDi Team! Read more to find out about her.

Find out about how Google has stopped sharing search query data for PPC ads and what that means for your business.

Seems a simple enough question. And for most of us, the answer should be pretty simple. Yet even in this age of enhanced interaction and increased competition, many of us still regularly experience terrible prospect service.

Google is adding an unsubscribe button that automatically appears at the top of emails. What does this mean for your business?

Like the rest of the world, you've probably got hundreds of Linkedin connections.

Like the rest of the world, you’ve probably got hundreds of Linkedin connections. But did you know there’s a smart way to extract the contact details ....

Let's face it, life as a blogger can be tough. Devoting hours of your life to the keyboard, not knowing if anyone’s really reading.

All marketers like to know stuff about their customers; and Google is no different. Which is why they commissioned an extensive study into how your customers are researching your products before purchasing online.

Yes, you can see who clicked through. But what does that tell you? Well, it tells you who clicked an email link. That's it.

Who is visiting my website? The question on every marketer’s lips. And we’re not talking “Which businesses are on my website?” We’re talking real people here.

Reducing latency, load and costs all by switching a small part of CANDDi to use Node.js

Running a technology start-up is fun
but eventually you have to build a business which generates profit and self sustains.

Remember that scene in Back to the Future when Doc Brown and Marty found the broken DeLorean boarded up in the abandoned mine?

Why would a code version management technique be good for website content, and how do we use it here at CANDDi

CANDDi has been selected as one of the "Greatest Early Stage startups" to exhibit at the Web Summit 2013 in the city of Dublin, Ireland.

Google's decision to encrypt all organic search data means the search keywords that led to a website without clicking on a paid advert will no longer be available to website owners.

Marketing automation software offers the potential for sales nirvana- an automated flow of qualified leads. But the pain required to reach that nirvana can be too great for many companies.

IP Lookup- How It Works, Without the Smoke and Mirrors

CANDDI coverage in MY CUSTOMER titled "Five ways to ensure sales make the most of visitor analytics" ...

CANDDi’s public-facing corporate website recently made the switch from a dynamic, PyroCMS powered site to a static one generated by Jekyll. The process was surprisingly simple and hugely worthwhile.

People are complex, which makes measuring their behaviour hard. That's why marketing metrics typically take a reductionist approach.

It's really hard to do personal service on a large scale. Once a store or chain gets to a certain size, with a large enough number of staff, it is next to impossible to get know each customer. Unless of course you systematise the process of getting to know customers- enter the reward card.

Demographics are a key source of targeting data for marketers planning mass campaigns. They are also useful as evidence in decision making- we use them to enhance lead data.

The latest Internet Statistics Compendium from eConsultancy contains some fascinating numbers.

CANDDi coverage in Huddled titled "Manchester technology start-up poised for growth" ...

CANDDI coverage in Manchester evening news titled "CANDDi is providing a sweet service" ...

CANDDi Insights’ latest update brings powerful automated filtering options based on actions performed by…

We need committed people who want to develop large-scale web applications and deliver a great service to our customers to join our Development Team in Newcastle upon Tyne.

I've just completed the first wave of a social sales campaign using CANDDi, Wordpress, Bit.ly and LinkedIn. So far the results have been encouraging. Here's what I did.

The PRISM furore has reignited people's fear of being tracked online. Somehow - in part thanks to the media - people's ire has been largely directed at the private companies named as participating in the monitoring, rather than the government agencies.

CANDDi was at the Sales Management and Performace (SMP) trade show in London on 6-7th June 2013. Here's what you missed if you haven't seen us.

However you use analytics today, here are some tips for getting the most value from your data - and your time.

What do you do with your analytics data? It's rare that a website is set up these days without some sort of analytics behind it. So you should be getting regular reports on the number of visitors and what they're doing, whatever your connection to making sales within your business.

We all like a 'sure thing'. And much of the time that's what CANDDi gives us- named individuals who have shown a clear interest in our product. But every now and then we have to take a leap of faith. This happened recently, and if things go to plan, our response may land us our biggest name customer yet.

Email. It may be the bane of our working lives but we still rely on it. And it remains among the best methods for reaching our prospects.

Tracking and optimizing conversion rates remains an overwhelming obsession for a majority of Digital Marketing Teams despite the disproportionate time spent getting this one single metric right, the actual definition of conversion rate remains largely vague and poorly defined resulting in misguided optimization strategies and measurement programs

Press press press: Insider News cover CANDDi's recent Innovation Award

Don't you just hate it when a lead goes cold? You have a great conversation and then...nothing. But what if that lead wasn't really as cold as you thought? This is the second in a series of posts about how we use CANDDi Insights within our own business (click here for Part 1). And use it we do- this example has helped us close more than one deal, and we know of multiple examples from our customers of the same experience. Here's how it goes.

There are many analytics solution, but what's the difference between IP tracking, cookie tracking and visitor level tracking?

CANDDi updated its CANDDi Insights suite with Notify Me, a powerful email alert system for sales people who now can be notified in real time, directly in their inbox, when a prospect is back on the website.

Eat your own dog food. It's an unpleasant phrase encapsulating valuable advice. How can we sell our product to you if we're not actively using it ourselves? Well we do use CANDDi. We use it every day. And that's how we know its power.

We need committed people who want to develop large-scale web applications, and deliver a great service to our customers, to join our Development Team in Newcastle upon Tyne.

Guest post- What turns 'big data' into 'big impact'? This is a question that has been orbiting my mind for a long time. It has been brought crashing into focus by the work I've been doing around the future of retail.

CANDDi Lands Innovation Prize at Northern Tech Awards 2013 for its real time visitor level web analytics software

CANDDi is growing, we're hiring a telesales executive -)

Our core product is a real time visitor level web analytics. In this post we'd like to tell you how we are using it in the context of B2B lead generation to help our sales team.

Google just announced a major change to Adwords with Enhanced Campaigns, a move that has two simple objectives- make ad relevance easier for advertisers and provide better convenience to web users.

Improving conversions and retaining customers is the holy grail for e-commerce websites and other e-businesses. Here are my thoughts on what is changing at the moment and why some companies are building a tremendous competitive advantage.

Last week I (Tom) spoke at a conference run by the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales about five trends that will shape the way we do business in the future. I've posted the deck on slideshare and turned my notes into this piece.

Questions are important in sales because they make the conversation about the purchaser and not the product. They stop us as salespeople telling the buyer what we want them to hear, and force us to focus on their needs.

CANDDi announced a major step forward in its development today with the launch of Version 2 of the CANDDi Core Prospect Analytics platform, and three new Intervention modules.

People place much greater value in a product or message that is personal to them, than they do in one that is aimed at everyone. Whether you are selling broadsheets or boots, magazines or microprocessors, targeting your product, content and message at the specific members of your audience makes that message more appealing to them.

Ten years after the term 'blog' had been coined, still the bulk of the UK population certainly those in business didn't really know what it meant.

Creating rich customer experiences is taking the place of the conventional customer relationship model.

Marketing is no longer the simple three-step process of stimulus, shelf and experience. Add influence to the list...

CANDDi has closed a 370,000 pound investment round led by Northstar Ventures, and added experienced executives to its advisory board.

How can SMEs take advantage of the opportunities presented by Prospect Analytics and the rise of 'big data' when many SMEs aren't online at all?

Selling business-to-business offerings has always been complex. But a new technology might offer a simple solution.

CANDDi continues to grow with the appointment of Frederic Abrard from Google.

CANDDi's Top Tips on Lead Generation

Check out CANDDi's top tips for succesful customer profiling

Measuring marketing goals effectively is key to securing competitive advantage.

Managing the valuable data from your firm's prospect Analytics is vital...and not as difficult as you may think.

Marketing is growing ever more complex. How should marketers respond and change to the new conditions of data explosion, unstable consumer demographics, the growth of channel and device choices and the explosion of social media?

When talking to our prospects we've now had the same question a few times- "I can see the value of the data you're giving me, but who is going to manage it? It's true- most companies don't have someone with an existing role that covers Prospect Analytics. But we now have lots of answers to this question that don't require changing someone's role or recruiting someone new.

What proportion of the people on your website do you know? How many of them could you put a name and some form of contact details to?

For years website owners have been giving away far too much for free. Just look at the effort that goes into websites compared to the rates at which they convert visitors into customers.

The digital era hasn't just created new channels of communication, it has radically altered the structure of the sales funnel.

Content-Driven Marketing is a well-documented response to the changing nature of purchasing in the digital age. Intelligent Content-Driven Marketing takes the CDM principal one stage further...

Marketing Automation can occasionally be a little too much like factory automation. Prospects get popped onto a conveyor belt and poked and prodded by robots as they make their way towards a potential purchase.

Last night I had cause to call my bank. Unusually for a call to a customer services line it was a rewarding experience. Even more unusually, I enjoyed being sold to.

On Friday, almost exactly one year after the EU Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations were implemented, and one day before the 'cookie' element was due to be enforced, the Information Commissioner's Office updated its guidance on how companies must comply with the new law. Here's our take.

When you need to vent, it's great to have a blog. If your need to vent is related to the topic that blog addresses, then so much the better. So when I got this email this afternoon, I knew just what to do.

I've worked with a number of corporate marketing departments in the past across a wide range of industries. I can't think of a single example where the company was happy with the way they managed and monitored customer and prospect relations.

We're recruiting at the moment. Did we mention that already? (Good people please send CVs and pithy intros to tim@canddi.com). Anyway, it has thrown up a rather interesting set of selection criteria one in particular.

There comes a time in a company's evolution where the possibilities start to become realities. CANDDi is at that stage today.

Our work spans the worlds of marketing and technology. We notice a lot of differences between the ways the two worlds operate, but also some similarities.

Like most start-ups, we're finding that our product is evolving pretty quickly and not always in the direction we might have forecast when we started out. The most recent evolution has seen us recognise that today CANDDi has two distinct functions and slightly different audiences for those functions.

Our favourite web news source eConsultancy carried a piece on its blog this week about what automotive brands can do better on their websites. Having had some experience in this area - and done a lot of research around it - in the recent past, I thought we ought to craft a response.

We're recruiting again and this time we need a JavaScript genius. Someone who has the aptitude, the experience, and that vital start-up work ethic, to help us make CANDDi even more awesome.

This may sound obvious, but when you have a nut to crack the best solution is usually a nutcracker. When it comes to technology though, we seem to lose sight of this simple guidance. We are much more likely to seek out an industrial nut-sheller than seek out the tool that we really need.

I am about to fall out with a claims management company in Swansea in a big way...

Chris Green, co-founder and sales director at motoring.co.uk was quoted on MotorTrader.co.uk last week as saying that- "the motor industry is seen to be lagging behind in online marketing by those in and outside the sector."

So a man walks into a bar - bear with me- this isn't the start of a joke. The bar is his local, and the landlord Dave knows his name. Let's call our man Bob.

I spoke on a panel last week at new marketing event The Feed. The topic was the use of new technologies in marketing and the brief took me back to the age-old adage- "I know I'm wasting half my marketing budget, I just don't know which half."

Today we're formally announcing investment from Northstar Ventures' Finance for Business North East Proof of Concept Fund - here's the press release in full.

Spending a lot of time in the car market at the moment, we're very aware of one of the big news stories for the sector. Tesco is moving into cars.

Yesterday I was asked to submit some costs for some consultancy work... but where did the lead come from?

Much of my past consultancy work has been with brands and agencies delivering, or looking for, content-driven marketing strategies. This approach of attracting prospects with a rich pool of content that educates or entertains is increasingly the de facto approach for companies' online marketing, and I remain a huge advocate. I've created and assisted with campaigns on this principle that have delivered fantastic results in terms of large volumes of high quality leads. But that's not to say that content-driven marketing couldn't be improved.

There's lots of talk about 'lifecycle marketing' in the business media at the moment. It seems to be this year's big trend. But unlike some fads that fly through the marketing industry, this one seems to have real benefit.

In October last year we participated in an event looking at Social Media Measurement, Tools That Help Us series hosted by Claire Thompson from Waves PR and Alexander Nikolov from NinetyTen. The event featured a range of suppliers of social media measurement tools to the PR industry, including Radian6, Onalytica and iVantage (a Google Analytics specialist). CANDDi isn't a social media measurement tool specifically, but that is one application of its powerful ability to track individuals across time and platforms, so we were happy to be invited along.

Both as a way to introduce the team and to capture some of the discussions that are going on as the company develops - discussions that we think/hope are interesting - I'll be interviewing the members of the team over the coming weeks. First up, Tim, the CEO and my co-founder.

There are all sorts of nuances when it comes to describing the sales cycle. When does a suspect become a prospect? When is a lead truly 'qualified'? What counts as a lead? There's often a discrepancy between what the people generating leads would like to call a lead, and what the people receiving them might agree counts as one.

90% of car buyers research their next purchase online. Dealerships have woken up to this fact and are rapidly moving ad spend from their traditional offline venues to the digital world. Understandably they want to know what return they're getting on their investment.

CANDDi has added two key team members in recent months- Jim Mann as chairman and James Tew as key advisor for the automotive sector. Here's a little bit about them and their roles in the business.

We - the CANDDi team - have been pretty quiet these past few months. Not because we have been in some Secret Squirrel, sneaky stealth mode, but rather because we have been busy developing both CANDDi the product, and CANDDi the company. From this point on we will be rather more vocal about our progress, initially through the channel of this blog.

When the idea for CANDDi first began to crystallise, we had a very specific type of customer in mind- companies selling lower volumes of high value goods, usually as part of a complex (rather than simple retail) sale. B2B examples might be consultancy services or financial products, B2C examples might be high-end consumer electronics or cars.

There's a lot of great content on the web from entrepreneurs and the people who surround them about the best approach(es) to a successful web startup. My favourites today (thanks to my co-founder for pointing me to these) are this..

Designing a good user interface is as much about language as layout. The better you can name and describe the elements of your software product, the more intuitive it will be to use. This is the challenge that I'm wrestling with early on a Sunday morning.

We've been thinking so much about our proposition over the last few weeks that I almost lost track of what we set out to do. So I was enormously gratified to get a full on 'lightbulb moment' from a client the other day.

Part of my role in this whole CANDDI enterprise is to secure the feedback of prospective customers - both informally and formally, as part of our forthcoming beta programme.

I have worked in marketing for over a decade. I have created campaigns across PR, DM, email and the web (though I confess, not advertising). I'm no guru, but I have a reasonable amount of experience.