Did you miss Marketing Week Live 2013? We've asked one resident of this year's 'Ask the Experts' Zone, Brett Sammels to give us the inside scoop.

Brett is Client Services Director at full service advertising and marketing agency, LAW Creative.

We were digging around the back catalogues the other day and found this arther provacative article, which made our eyebrows, and we're sure those of marketing agencies everywhere, raise a few inches. Kevin Roberts of Advertising Agency Saatchi & Saatchi makes four big claims in his article entitled ‘Marketing is dead’. These are:

1. Strategy is dead
2. Management is dead
3. The big idea is dead
4. Marketing as we know [it] is dead

It's quite a statement, but reading further, we find ourseves agreeing with Roberts’ support points. Cynically, however, we suppose, in true Saatchi style, his headline points were meant to provoke. The social movement has changed the face of marketing and of the marketing agency. As did the internet. TV. Radio. Moveable type, etc.

If Roberts’ goal was to shock and generate discussion around the change that the industry is experiencing; he succeeded.

But, it’s our view that brands will continue to engage with audiences in order to drive sales and as the industry fragments further, moving from one to many communications toward one to one interactions, the role of the marketing agency and advertising agency will become more important. While the current marketing landscape and social tools allow the top 10% of brands and products to generate organic awareness and interest, this won’t be the case for the majority of firms and products. Most will still look to specialist firms to save themselves the learning curve of implementing full marketing programmes internally.

What do you think? Is marketing dead? How do you think the role of the marketing agency change in the years to come?

Keith Sammels is the Executive Creative Director of LAW Creative, a full service Advertising and Marketing Agency.

Read what CEO UK and Ireland of Branding Agency, The Brand Union, Toby Southgate has to say about 'Experience' and how a holistic marketing approach could fix your brand-consumer comms.

Daniel Bradley is an Account Manager at Monitor, a full service marketing agency based in Manchester.

The reports are clear. Mobile internet traffic is set to overtake desktop traffic by 2014. Are you ready? Here are 5 good reasons why you need to develop a mobile strategy so you don’t get left behind.

1. Mobile internet use is rising dramatically
   The world has gone mobile. Mobile and tablet device sales are incredibly strong and as a result mobile Internet usage is increasing rapidly. Websites are seeing a dramatic increase in mobile traffic. If forecasts are to be believed, by the end of 2013 and start of 2014, we’ll all be accessing the internet on the move rather than from our desks.
   
   
2. Social media is driving mobile expectations
   Along with email, social media is the most popular activity on mobile devices. The major social media websites such as Facebook and Twitter are all optimised for mobile. When you develop your mobile strategy by sure to bear in mind that users of social media networks now expect this from social media sites as a standard and it’s only a matter of time before they expect it from every website.
   
   
3. Most website mobile traffic grew by over 50% in 2012
   The increase in smartphone and tablet sales means many more mobile Internet users. This number is likely to grow even more in 2013 as smartphones and tablets continue to saturate the market. We’re seeing the figures reflecting the change. A number of websites we currently manage have seen their mobile traffic increase over 500% since 2011 after developing a mobile strategy.
   
   
4. Your competitors are going mobile
   Going mobile is a hot topic of conversation at the moment whether it’s about creating mobile websites or dedicated mobile apps. Even if you’re not planning to focus on mobile soon, or develop a mobile strategy, chances are your competitors will be.
   
   
5. There are more devices connected to the Internet than there are people on Earth.
   An astonishing statistic that says it all. And it’s going in one direction given the influx of smartphones, tablet devices and the increasingly popular Smart TV.

Key Steps to Starting Your Mobile Strategy

Know your audience

What are your customers looking for on their mobile devices? You need to find out so you can create features they find valuable – features they can’t live without. Review your analytics, filter the mobile traffic and see what sort of content mobile users are looking for on your site.

Know your starting point

Take a look at your current online presence on a mobile and tablet device. How does it look? Is your web experience fully optimised across all devices?

Know your competition

Take a look at your competition online. Do they have a mobile strategy with mobile-optimised messages and apps? Set clear goals Once you understand where you are now and what your customers are looking for from their mobile devices, the next step is to focus on your core goals. Don’t make the mistake of changing your business to become mobile. Mould a mobile strategy to fit your goals and make the move to mobile work for you.

Gary Stringer is the Digital Marketing Manager of AccuraCast, a Digital Marketing Agency focussed on web traffic and customer engage engagement.

People ask me a lot, how can I tweet effectively and what are your best tips for using twitter?

What is customer insight and how has it changed the digital marketing landscape?

Phil Wright is the Director of creative comms agency WrightObara.

By definition the term ‘social currency’ suggests it has an implicit value. But as with everything in life, to realise this value takes effort. But how can a business start to create - and benefit from - social currency?

It’s my experience that businesses know that they should be engaging in social media, but most aren’t sure why or how to go about it. Up until recently most social engagement has been an extension of a brand’s above the line campaign, a drive to collect ‘likes’ or an attempt to go ‘viral’ with a humorous but ultimately juvenile stunt. This isn’t social currency.

Pass it on

This article was written by Ryan Hickling, Head of Email at Digital Marketing Agency, TMW.

One question I’m often asked is, “What email marketing tips do you have/ how can I make my emails stand out from the crowd and what are the latest cool/sexy techniques that I can build into my email campaigns?”

Email marketing tips and best practices

From an implementation point of view there’s a huge variety of different methods you can use to engage your audience and I’ll briefly cover off a couple of ideas under Cool Functionality below.

However, people continually overlook the basics of great email content like those seen within the Copy and Design sections in this post. Regardless of the type of email campaign or subject matter, you need to be thinking of the following when going into the design and copywriting phase of your email build. Here are a couple of basic email marketing tips to help you get started: