March 2021 - Stevens & Tate Marketing

How to Use TikTok to Reach Your Engagement Group: An Insight Into the Algorithm

March 29, 2021/in Articles, Digital Media, Directors, Media, Social Media /by Nicole Wagner

Arguably the primary goal of social media marketing is to reach as many people in your engagement group as possible and to interact with them. As such, it’s important that you establish a presence on social channels on which this is possible. While almost all businesses use social platforms like Facebook and Twitter, there are a few others to consider as well; for example, TikTok.

What Is TikTok?

TikTok is a video-based social platform that has exploded in popularity over the last couple of years. What makes the platform so unique is that users can only upload videos that are 15 seconds long. There is, however, an option to edit together multiple 15-second clips into a minute long video. It gained traction among teens because they could upload videos of themselves lip-syncing, doing comedy bits, and dancing. At first, the marketing opportunities on the platform seemed limited. However, the size of the audience simply cannot be ignored:

There are over one billion monthly active users worldwide.
There have been over 2.6 billion downloads of TikTok since its creation.
In January 2021, there were 62 million downloads of TikTok alone.
Users spend an average of 52 minutes on TikTok every day.
83 percent of users have posted videos to TikTok.

TikTok’s advertising strategies are becoming more common. Read more here.

Why Should You Market On TikTok?

Advertising on social media platforms can cause numerous issues for users. The user experience can often be disrupted for the sake of the ad. Users on those platforms are often less likely to engage when annoyed by a barrage of advertising. TikTok is different in that ads are almost no different than the regular content posted on the platform. They can’t be longer than 15 seconds and they’ll appear on user feeds just like regular videos do. The user experience is not hurt because of this, as they appear just like other videos.

Why Should You Consider Using TikTok for Your Engagement Group?

Many people do not even realize they’re watching ads (especially if the content created by the brand is of particularly high quality). With this in mind, the following are just a few other reasons to consider using TikTok:

Reach younger generations – Younger generations rarely want to follow in the footsteps of their parents, which is why you won’t find a lot of Generation Z users on Facebook or Twitter. Instead, you’ll find them on TikTok, which is where a lot of Millennials are fleeing to as well. If you’re looking for a younger audience, TikTok is where you’ll find them.
Multiple marketing options – Despite the platform’s limitations (which were by design), there are still a few ad types that you can choose from, including in-feed videos, branded augmented reality (such as custom filters, stickers, and more), TopView ads (which appear at the top of user feeds), branded hashtag challenges, and sponsored content.
Flexible CPM – The cost-per-thousand impressions becomes cheaper the broader your audience is. The more you target your audience, the more it will cost; however, the ads will be more effective at engaging users as a result.
A level playing field – TikTok’s algorithm is based on identifying content that’s based on each user’s location, preferences, and viewing patterns. That is why user-created content goes viral so often on TikTok and it is why marketing businesses have a better chance of going viral as well.
Better chances of engagement – Outside of the algorithm, TikTok also allows you to go live once you reach a thousand followers. What makes this option particularly effective is that you can see how many followers are currently active so that you can determine when the best time to go live is.

Tips For Using TikTok To Reach Your Engagement Group

There are some serious benefits to using TikTok; however, your success depends on your ability to leverage the platform effectively. The following are a few basic tips for using TikTok:

Know your audience – Develop your buyer personas so that you can more effectively target users that will be more likely to engage.
Identify influencers – TikTok influencers often have millions of followers. You can get them to post sponsored content that their users will see.
Create challenges – TikTok users love challenges. Branded hashtag challenges are a great way to get people to engage with your brand without being overly promotional. It’s also a great way to generate user-made content.
Go live – Going live on TikTok at the right time can make it easier to engage with followers who will drop everything to view to ensure that they don’t miss out.

Leverage TikTok To Reach Your Engagement Group Today

TikTok has a massive audience and is growing significantly year-by-year. Due to the algorithm’s design, companies have a level playing field against other businesses that already leverage TikTok. Just keep in mind that if you focus on creating high-quality content that engages your target audience, the chances of success on TikTok will be much greater.

How to Use Hubspot to Connect Social Media Accounts and Flourish Relationships

March 29, 2021/in Articles, Directors, Hubspot, Social Media /by Nicole Wagner

HubSpot is one of the many CRM (customer relationship management) solutions that is available on the market; however, it is also considered one of the best. There are many reasons why you should consider implementing HubSpot, from the many features available to the customization options. It can even make managing your social media presence easier and more efficient than ever before. This is because HubSpot lets you connect social media accounts, thereby allowing you to access your social media pages from one centralized location.

How HubSpot Increases the Efficiency of Your Social Media Management

When it comes to social media marketing, there is a lot to do. Maintaining your social presence typically requires daily activity. Not only do you need to regularly post content to each platform, but you also have to engage with users. Whether it’s by addressing comments, answering questions, or contributing to other posts and conversations, the engagement is important. Not to mention that you’ll want to use each social media platform’s analytics to monitor your brand’s performance over time.

All of this requires that you log in to separate accounts multiple times throughout the day. By connecting your accounts to HubSpot, you can do everything you need to do while remaining on the HubSpot platform. As a result, managing your social media presence will be much more convenient. You’ll also be able to stay on top of what’s going on with your social media pages, thereby allowing you to make changes and engage with followers in a timely fashion. Instead of bouncing around from one social media account to the other, you can optimize your time better.

The following are just some of the things you can do when connecting your social media accounts to HubSpot:

Publish new content – You can easily publish or share new content on any of your accounts from HubSpot with just a click of a button. In fact, you can even schedule when you want new content to be published. This means you can set up a publishing schedule for all your social media pages for the upcoming month and not worry about it.
Monitor your social mentions – Using HubSpot, you can track engagements with your brand automatically. Simply choose what keywords you want to track so that you can monitor social mentions. Not only does this allow you to have a finger on the pulse of your brand reputation and awareness, but it gives you a chance to respond quickly if there are ever any negative mentions.
Track relevant metrics – Monitoring the performance of your social media pages and of the content you’re posting is crucial to determining how effective your marketing efforts are. You can use HubSpot’s metrics to monitor your performance on various social media platforms.

Here are five additional reasons to use HubSpot for your business.

The benefits of being able to manage your social media accounts from one location are obvious. But actually setting up your HubSpot solution to be able to do so is a different matter. Fortunately, it’s not that difficult. The following are the steps you should take to connect your social media accounts to your HubSpot account:

Go to the main settings page on HubSpot.
Navigating through the menu, select Marketing and then Social.
Click on Connect account on the top right of the page.
Choose which accounts you want to connect.

Depending on the social media account you choose, you may have to take additional steps. For Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn, the process is pretty self-explanatory. For Twitter, you’ll need to authorize the app and then select whether you want all publishing data to be reported or just the data collected from posts published on Twitter through HubSpot.

Finally, if you’re connecting your YouTube account to your HubSpot account, you’ll need to make sure your account is a brand channel not set on private, and that you have at least one video uploaded.

Managing Your Social Media Accounts

Managing all of your different social media pages can be a challenge, especially if you have more than one social media account (which you should). However, maintaining your social presence is critical to your ability to keep followers engaged and to broaden your audience online. Fortunately, HubSpot makes it much easier, and therefore less time-consuming, to manage all of your social profiles from one centralized location.

Integrating Social Media & SEO Efforts For Enhanced Search Engine Results

How to Increase your Social Media Presence in 2021

March 22, 2021/in Articles, Blog, Directors, Social Media /by Nicole Wagner

Social media usage has increased exponentially over the years, to the point where there were over 3.6 billion people using social media in 2020. This number is expected to grow by almost a billion more within the next five years. Social media has become a part of everyday life for most people, especially during the pandemic. As such, maintaining a strong social media presence has become even more essential to the success of your business than ever before. Keeping this in mind, the following are a few tips on how you can increase your social media presence in 2021:

1. Interact with your followers

The easiest way to build your audience on social is to engage with your existing followers. The more engaged they are, the more likely they are to share your content with others, thereby driving growth organically. As such, you need to interact with your followers on a daily basis, whether it’s posting new content, asking questions, responding to questions, or engaging in discussions with your followers. The moment you stop being active is the moment your followers will forget about you.

2. Host contests

Encouraging people to engage with your brand isn’t always easy. Not everyone will take the time to post replies to your questions or comments. The most you might get out some people is a like or two. However, one of the most effective ways to get people to engage is by hosting a contest on your social media platforms. For instance, a caption contest or a photo contest. You could also allow your audience to vote for the winners themselves. If there’s a prize at stake, more people will be willing to engage. You could even require them to follow you in order to participate.

3. Create video content

Humans are visual creatures, which means that their attention is easier to capture and hold using visual content, especially in the form of video content. Both long-form and short-form videos are popular, as evidenced by the success of video-based social media platforms like YouTube and TikTok. Even platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and even Twitter, have embraced video content creation. Video content also makes it easier to deliver information as well as show off the personality of your brand, making it easier for audiences to relate on a personal level

Using Storytelling In Social Media

4. Avoid sales pitches

Social media is not the place to advertise new products and services. If you’re constantly trying to pressure followers into buying something, they will eventually unfollow you. They’re already bombarded by ads everywhere else they go (both online and offline), the last thing they want is to voluntarily subject themselves to even more of them. Use your social media presence to build relationships, not sales.

5. Build relationships with influencers

Influencers are people with massive audiences on social media. By building a relationship with a social media influencer that’s relevant to your industry, you can gain access to their audience. For example, they can post a product review or even a link to your content on their page, thereby increasing brand awareness substantially.

6. Use your analytics

The last thing you want to do is to pour time and effort into your social media presence only to see it have little impact. Understanding where to focus that time and effort is incredibly important. Use your analytics tools (most social platforms offer their own tools that you can use) to monitor various performance metrics. Doing so will allow you to identify what types of content appeals to your audience, which social channels your audience uses most, what time of day you should post to reach the biggest audience and more.

7. Live stream events

People love live stream content because it allows them to interact with an actual person on video in real-time. Not to mention that live content attracts more viewers due to the fear of missing out. You can also use live stream events to capture new leads (by requiring viewers to RSVP). Some events you can live stream include new product launches, interviews, Q&As, behind-the-scene tours, panels, and more.

Don’t just assume that customers and leads will find you on social media. Direct them to your pages wherever you can. You can do this by adding social buttons and links to your website, to your emails, and to local online directories. You can even advertise your social presence on your business cards, newsletters, physical media ad copy, TV commercials, and more.

These are a few tips to help you increase your social media presence this year. When it comes to maintaining an engaging presence, remember that you must stay active and consistent. Understand that when it comes to social media, the goal is to engage your audience, not to close sales. Only then will your social media presence grow.

Village Green Real Estate and Development hires Stevens and Tate Marketing to Help Meet Expansion Goals

March 15, 2021/in Articles, Directors, Press Releases /by Nicole Wagner

Village Green Real Estate and Development has added Stevens & Tate Marketing to its team, handing over the advertising reigns for its senior living properties. The agency is tasked with developing a strong marketing program to meet expansion goals for The Carolina Highlands and The Carolina Inn. Marketing both together, Stevens & Tate is repositioning them as one all-inclusive senior living environment in the Village Green neighborhood of Fayetteville, North Carolina. During its Competitive Advantages Discovery process, Stevens & Tate found each property has a unique selling proposition yet both share several reasons to buy. New messaging combines both to create an overarching brand with the ability to promote properties individually. Stevens & Tate is mixing traditional media such as newspapers, direct mail, and directories with digital and social media campaigns plus outreach emails to communicate with seniors as well as their adult children. Google Ads are a key component to reaching all audiences who are actively seeking more information on independent and assisted living. Complementary designs visually tell the all-inclusive story in new brochures and on all-new websites.

The Carolina Highlands and The Carolina Inn are operated by Village Green Real Estate and Development. As part of the Village Green neighborhood—Fayetteville’s senior living destination—they offer access to a continuum of care with independent living in The Carolina Highlands, assisted living at The Carolina Inn, and skilled nursing and rehab.

4 Tips to Lead An Agency Review to Find New Marketing Agency

March 15, 2021/in Articles, Directors, Marketing Strategy /by Debbie Szwast

Do you know if it’s time to start looking for a new marketing agency? These three questions will help you understand if your team is working for you; and if not, how to look for a new agency partner.

Are you getting the results you need? Most clients and agencies set goals at the beginning of their relationship or at the start of a new campaign. For example, you may agree that success is measured by an increase in website visits and conversions, a certain number of on-site traffic or customers per store, more social media interactions and engagement, or incremental sales. If your goals are not being achieved and your marketing agency is not proactively seeking new ways to help you reach them, it may be time for a change. Read more

How Marketing Automation Can Improve Lead Nurturing Process

March 12, 2021/in Articles, Blog, Directors, Lead Nuturing /by Nicole Wagner

One of the most important aspects of successfully nurturing your leads through the buyer’s cycle is understanding that each lead is different and that your marketing efforts need to be tailored to the needs of each lead. This can be quite difficult to do manually, which is why most businesses are turning to marketing automation.

What is Marketing Automation?

Marketing automation is an automated process that allows you to target leads based on their behaviors at different points in the buyer’s journey. It allows you to make your marketing more personal by delivering content to your leads that suits their needs or interests. This, in turn, makes it easier to build a real relationship with them, helping to drive them towards the conversion and closure stages of the buying cycle.

Not only does marketing automation help free up resources, it makes your marketing efforts much more effective. How effective? According to one study, businesses that use marketing automation increase their qualified leads more than fourfold.

So how exactly does it work? Take for example a lead that has just submitted a form from one of your landing pages opting into your email list. Using marketing automation software, this action can trigger an automatic email sent to them thanking them for signing up. It can be automatically personalized based on what landing page they converted from.

In fact, you’ll be able to personalize your content to your email list by using the information that they submitted on the opt-in form. Using this information, you can segment your email list to automatically send content at specific times that’s relevant to their interests and needs. For example, if you’re a pet food company and a lead lets you know that they own a dog on their form, then you won’t want to send them content you’ve written about cats. Using automation, you can make sure they get the right content, which will not only help build your relationship, it will reduce opt-outs.

If you’re uncertain as to the difference between marketing automation and CRM, be sure to read through our detailed article on the subject.

The Benefits of Marketing Automation

The following are some of the benefits that you’ll be able to take advantage of when implementing marketing automation software:

1. Improve productivity

Instead of sending emails out on scheduled dates to your entire email list by hand, you can schedule emails to be set out automatically by certain times on certain dates to certain segments of your email list, thereby improving your productivity significantly.

2. Increase revenue

Studies have proven that marketing automation does increase revenue if used properly. In fact, B2B marketers have reported an average of 20 percent increase in their sales opportunities as a result of using marketing automation to nurture their leads.

3. Improve customer retention

By being able to target your leads more effectively with personalized content, you’ll reduce the number of leads that you lose.

4. Improve customer relationships

By being able to personalize your interactions with leads, you’ll improve customer relationships. Not only does this help with customer retention, it will help with building your brand reputation. Building good customer relationships can help to improve repeat business and can also generate positive word-of-mouth.

5. Collect better data

Marketing automation software can help you monitor responses to your various marketing campaigns based on the specific parameters you’ve established for success or failure. This data can then be leveraged to improve future marketing campaigns.

For more in-depth information, check out our post on the benefits of marketing automation.

Marketing Automation has more benefits! Check out this article to learn more.

How to Use Marketing Automation

There are many ways that you can use marketing automation. Besides using it to segment your email lists, it can also be used to provide data on what types of content helps move leads from one stage of the buying cycle to the next, which allows you to create higher quality content to attract higher quality leads. In fact, you can also use marketing automation to score your leads based on their behaviors on your site. Scoring leads lets you identify what leads have the best chance of converting, allowing you to more effectively use your resources to target those leads.

One thing to keep in mind is that marketing automation isn’t just limited to your email campaigns or to your website — it’s channel-agnostic, meaning that it can be used on any platform. Read through our article on B2B vs. B2C marketing automation for more in-depth advice.

Marketing automation is proven to be successful, which is why businesses of all sizes have started implementing it into their online marketing strategies. There’s no reason not to use it, all it will do is make your marketing efforts more effective and more efficient, thereby allowing you to capture more leads and close more sales.

Top 5 Reasons of Proof That Brand Marketing Works

March 5, 2021/in Articles, Brand Development, Directors, Marketing Strategy /by Mark Beebe

I hear these three words every month, DOES MARKETING WORK? I can give you five reasons that support the answer of “absolutely”. Brand Marketing is as powerful as being number one or number three.

Reason 1) If you are a woman, what lipstick do you wear? What Shampoo do you use? What brand Jeans do you own? Women spend an average of $15,000 on makeup in their lifetimes. Beauty manufacturers spent $2.2 billion on advertising last year. Marketers allocated most of their ad spend to TV (42%) and print (54%). So what makes you buy the brand you purchased? Whatever your answer, it stems from marketing. The formula to penetrate into your mind is a complex one. But you have been brainwashed whether you accept it or not.

Reason 2) Typically, if you are of age, you are driving your car. Why are you a BMW or Volkswagen driver? Does not every brand have some sort of emotional and intellectual connection with you? What are your thoughts on a Mercedes Benz driver? The reason you have these thoughts are because of this fact:

General Motors spent 3.5 billion on advertising last year
Ford Motors spent 2.7 billion on advertising last year
Fiat Chrysler Automobiles spent 2.2 billion on advertising last year

Automakers sold almost 18 million vehicles. Do you think they would do all this advertising if it didn’t work? Marketing is the driving force to give you a lasting impression when it comes time to purchase your next car. You probably already know what vehicle represents who you are. Brand loyalty is also a big piece of the advertising puzzle and they spend millions to keep you coming back.

Reason 3) You’re hooked on some television shows? Why is that? How did you find out about them? The advertising to capture an audience of a certain demographics has become easier with all the analytical data thats accessible. You may of picked a show just because you liked that actor or actress. They too are a brand. I want to focus on one show and one show only, NFL Programming. NFL are branding machines. They encourage Fantasy Football, they can charge up to $600,000 for a .30 spot on Sunday Night Football, they have begun to market to women and they have the best branded show in the history of shows, the Super Bowl. Why then are they losing shares at the end of 2016?

Factors for decline:

The Chicago Cubs win
Donald Trumps Election (this took shares away from everyone)
Deflate-gate debacle
Stand on Domestic Violence
The respect of the American Flag

Americans are standing up for what they believe in. Colin Kaepernicks kneeling at the American Flag has still left Colin a free agent who is not signed. He is not liked and this is linked to the NFL. The NFL needed to take a stance and speak out on the issues pertaining to this behavior. They remained quiet and seeing how that impacted them must be painful. How smart proof is your company? New factors always pop up and how you address them might mean your brand lives on, or dies over time. Don’t get me wrong, the NFL will bounce back since they have a great cash surplus. They just signed a deal with Amazon for the rights to Thursday Night Football. Now that is re-inventing yourself while keeping your brand.

They do have the strictest guidelines when it comes to using their brand. I respect them for protecting their assets, for making counterfeiters go to jail, and great product placement with partnerships. Who else could have every football team on a BudLight can? But always remember your demographics. NFL might just have lost that reality when they don’t take a stand on players actions. Never take your eye off the ball.

Learn more on Defining Your True Brand Story and Bringing it to Life Online.

Reason 4) The grocery store is a subject of brands. I want to focus on just beer. How is it that Bud Light leads the beer division. If you drink beer, you have a favorite. The reason might be image or taste. But you tried other beers because of marketing. If you say no to this idea, how did you hear about the other beers in the first place? If your answer is friends, that is also marketing. Word of mouth marketing is still the most powerful marketing this century. And your friends received the marketing somehow. Alcohol ads have increased 400% over the last 40 years. The industry spends around 89% of its advertising dollars on television, according to research done by Citigroup. Bud Light spent 85 million dollars on TV ad placements in 2014. Today Anheuser-Busch spends 1.68 billion in all advertising spends. They have averaged 1.4 billion over the last decade. It’s the reason they have 48% of the beer market. How else would a company stay above the rest in the highly competitive beer category?

Reason 5) Fast Food. McDonalds has a value of 88 billion and next on the list is Starbucks with 43 billion. To understand this slightly better, Burger King has a value of 3.6 billion. A huge wide difference. So why the separation you may ask? McDonalds spent 5.9 billion on advertising in the United States alone. Burger King spent 255 million on advertising, which has contributed to the separation of these two brands. Marketing obviously works or McDonalds would not continue this spending trend for over a decade. I do wonder, if Burger King had good marketing and spent what McDonalds spends, if they would jump over Starbucks? Product is still king. There is a connection of why Coca-Cola and Bud Light are both the most valuable soft drink and beer brands in the World. Marketing, and marketing dollars allocated.

Those are five samples of how creative marketing builds brands to lead a nation. Marketing + Strategy + Creative + Execution = A powerful formula for elevating your product or brand. I will agree that all samples above have unlimited budgets. My point to this blog was to simply support the concept that you are a victim of marketing and strong marketers seem to rise above the competition. What is your company doing to rise above?