May 2021 - Stevens & Tate Marketing

How to Improve Brand Recognition in 2021

May 31, 2021/in Articles, Brand Development, Brand Positioning, Directors /by Mark Beebe

Developing your brand is essential to your ability to attract new leads and convert new customers. The more recognizable your brand becomes, the easier it will become to generate brand trust and to build your audience. For instance, if a consumer is searching for a specific solution and they find two or three options, one of which is from a brand they recognize, they will typically gravitate towards that brand. As such, recognizability is crucial. With that in mind, the following are five ways that you can improve brand recognition this year:

1. Identify Your Target Audience

If you can’t recognize who your audience is, you can’t expect them to recognize your brand. All of your branding strategies and decisions depend on who you’re trying to reach. A company’s worth is highly reliant on whether or not they provide solutions that meet the needs or solve the problems of its customers. If you’re targeting people who have no need for your solutions, then those who do are going to be confused about your brand. The more you understand who your audience is, the more likely you’ll be able to build a brand that they will be able to recognize.

2. Develop A Clear Brand Message

You need to be clear about what your objectives are as a brand. This includes your mission, your vision, and your purpose. Think about how Apple’s message is about innovation and creating technology that’s not only user-friendly but essential to a creative and independent lifestyle. This message is clear because Apple has developed and promoted its message since the 1980s. If your message isn’t clear, consumers become confused. An unclear message can send the wrong message, thereby hurting your brand’s recognizability.

3. Build Your Brand Identity

Your brand identity involves a lot of different elements. The most obvious is the logo. If your brand becomes strong enough, a unique logo can be recognized even if your company name isn’t part of it. Take for example Nike’s swoosh. Everybody knows that the swoosh is Nike even if their name doesn’t accompany the logo. Although the visual connection of the logo is important, it’s not the only component of your brand identity. The tone of voice you use in your content, the reputation you have, and the brand storytelling you use to deliver your message are all vital to building a strong brand identity.

Here are 5 additional reasons why brand marketing works.

4. Maintain Branding Consistency

Consistency is key to making your brand recognizable. If your message varies from one platform to another, people are going to get confused about who you are. For example, if you run a clothing company and you position yourself as a luxury clothing brand on Instagram but then promote affordable shoe wear on Facebook, people won’t know what you are or who you’re targeting, making it more difficult to recognize your brand.

Additionally, the aesthetic of your brand and the tone of voice should be consistent over all channels. Use the same colors and logos on every platform. Do not change the tone of your brand to try and fit the channel you’re using. If you use an excited, informal tone on one channel, don’t use a formal, level-headed tone on the other. If you switch tones, people won’t recognize that you’re the same brand using both channels. Consistency across all of your marketing efforts is essential to building a strong brand that’s recognizable across all channels.

5. Develop And Implement A Long-Term Marketing Strategy

Even if you’ve spent a lot of time crafting your brand, you still need to build awareness to boost recognizability. This is where your marketing efforts come into play. You need to figure out where and when you can reach your target audience, as well as what marketing efforts will help to effectively deliver your message and spread brand awareness. Such efforts will not succeed overnight — you need to develop a comprehensive long-term branding strategy to successfully boost your brand recognition.

Building your brand is crucial to your company’s success. Even if your brand has been established for some time, brand development should never stop. You should always look for ways to increase brand awareness, and improving brand recognition is necessary to do just that. As such, you should consider implementing these effective strategies to improve brand recognition in 2021.

Food Retail is Dying to a Millennial Mind

Food Retail Marketing to Millennials

May 27, 2021/in Advertising Agency, Articles, Directors /by Mark Beebe

In 2021, food brands should be targeting Millennials with their advertisements, however the traditional media avenues are not as effective in reaching this younger generation of consumers.

Millennials consume advertisements through technology because it is so integrated into their lives, with 81 percent using televisions, 76 percent using laptops, 40 percent iPhones, and 48 percent using desktop computers. Read more

Out of Home Advertising for Post Pandemic Consumers

May 25, 2021/in Articles, Blog, Directors /by Mark Beebe

The success of digital marketing has been noted for some time now. Every business has some sort of digital marketing strategy. However, during the COVID-19 pandemic, digital marketing became even more effective than ever before. People were essentially trapped inside for more than a year, which means they spend significantly more time online. As a result, they became easier to reach via digital marketing efforts. However, as the pandemic comes to an end, cities will eventually begin opening back up. Knowing this, it’s critical that you begin planning an out-of-home advertising strategy.

What Is Out Of Home Advertising?

Out of home advertising refers to any advertisements posted outside, where countless people will see it. The more people walk or drive by out-of-home ads, the more exposure your brand receives. Obviously, out-of-home advertising was nowhere near as effective during the pandemic as it once was since everybody stayed inside. There are lots of examples of out-of-home advertising — billboards are one of the most common types. Billboards also include murals, posters, and junior posters. Billboards can be both paper and digital as well.

Is Newspaper Marketing still Valid?

The Benefits Of Out Of Home Advertising

In-home advertising, such as digital marketing, TV commercials, radio ads, and the like, are often preferred by businesses (especially smaller to mid-sized businesses). However, you should strongly consider out-of-home advertising as well. While the pandemic undoubtedly hurt the relevance of out-of-home ads, people will be looking to get out and about post-pandemic. As cities open up and people make an effort to spend more time outside, there will be more opportunities to reach them using out-of-home advertising. If that’s not reason enough to begin planning an out of home advertising strategy, consider the following benefits:

Outdoor advertising will be seen – Any person walking, biking, or driving by an outdoor ad, will see it.

Outdoor ads can increase brand exposure – If you put your ads in the right locations, you can reach a larger audience.

For instance, placing your outdoor ad in a location that has a lot of pedestrian traffic will ensure that it’s seen by a lot of people.

Outdoor ads can help bolster digital marketing efforts – Studies have shown that 46 percent of people will perform a search online after seeing an out-of-home ad.

Planning For Out Of Home Advertising

When it comes to successful out-of-home advertising, it’s crucial that you know your audience. If you know who you’re trying to reach, then you can determine where the best place to reach them is. For example, if you’re advertising a high-end luxury product, placing a poster for it at a bus stop in a lower-income neighborhood doesn’t make much sense. Instead, it would be more effective if you put it up in an area of town where there are multiple luxury stores in operation. This way, the customers of those stores will see your ad.

In addition to understanding the audience you’re trying to reach, you will also need to figure out the best placement

for your ads. An ad displayed on the side of a building where it’s difficult for nearby pedestrians to see is going to be ineffectual. You’ll want to make sure you know where the ad is going to be placed and where it will be visible.

Finally, the message is very important. Just because people see your ad as they walk by doesn’t mean that they will remember it. Make the messaging and branding clear. Try to make the ad as memorable as possible. People who see clever or memorable ads while they are waiting in traffic will often share them on social media.

Take Advantage Of Post Pandemic Out Of Home Advertising

As the pandemic nears the end, consumers are going to be making up for lost time by going out, whether they’ll be heading into the city on a night out, going to the park, or traveling to see friends and relatives that they haven’t seen for a long time. Knowing this, there is going to be a huge opportunity to reach a bigger audience using out-of-home advertising.

The Importance of Visual Aids in Senior Living Marketing

May 17, 2021/in Articles, Directors, Senior Living, Senior Living Marketing /by Terry Becker

While senior citizens are not the only audience that senior living facilities market to, it can’t be denied that they make up a massive percentage of their audience. As such, to grow and succeed, you must market to this part of your audience. It’s also important to note that different parts of your audience will react differently to various marketing efforts. When it comes to senior living marketing, we can’t overstate how important it is to use visual aids. Visual aids can greatly improve your ability to communicate with senior citizens, especially when you consider how effective they are in their daily use.

Senior Citizens Understand Visual Cues Better Than Verbal Cues

Verbal communication tends to become more difficult as a person ages. Many healthcare providers understand that effective verbal communication requires the addition of visual cues. There are many reasons for this. Some senior citizens are simply hard of hearing, making verbal communication more difficult. Some have difficulty understanding the main message due to memory issues or other problems. Visual cues can be used to enforce a message or tone.

In real-world conversations, visual cues can include smiling, using eye contact, nodding, and using hand gestures. These visual cues also show that you’re engaged, which will make them more engaged.

Read more here to learn about how to market to senior citizens.

How To Use Visual Aids To Market To Senior Citizens

Reading long walls of text can bring up a lot of challenges for senior citizens. They may have some difficulty following along due to memory issues or simply because they aren’t familiar with some of the terminology or slang being used (which is why it’s so important to write with your audience in mind). Fortunately, you can make it a lot easier to get your message across through the use of visual aids. The following are a few examples of how visual aids can be effectively used:

Photographs That Evoke Emotions – Photographs are a great way to relay the tone of an article to your audience. For instance, an article about senior living facilities can be informative, but a picture of actual residents enjoying those activities will have a much greater impact. Just remember to use real photographs. Stock photos often look fake and can end up hurting your trust.
Infographics That Break Down The Numbers – If you’re trying to reinforce a message using statistics, your readers can quickly get lost in all of the numbers. Support content that relies on stats or numbers using infographics. Infographics help make it easy for readers to better understand the numbers and their context in a less overwhelming way. When creating infographics, make sure the numbers and words are big enough for people with eyesight issues to see.

How to Optimize Senior Living Marketing Using Visual Aids

Use Colors That Aren’t Overwhelming – Many senior citizens can’t navigate websites and pages like younger generations. As such, use color in a way that helps guide their eyes to where you want them to look. Additionally, don’t overwhelm your pages with color, stick to one or two complementary colors that reflect your brand.
Use Slideshows That Are Easy To Follow – Because longer articles can be more difficult for an older audience to follow, slideshows are a fantastic way to make your points easier to digest. Each slide can focus on one point and use its own visual aid. As such, a slideshow is also more engaging for senior audiences.
Use Videos That Are Engaging – Video content is a much more effective way to deliver information to your senior audience. Not only will having a personality on screen be more engaging and relatable, but your audience will have an easier time understanding your message. Not to mention that they won’t have to strain to read anything. Eye contact and hand gestures within the video can help enhance the engagement of the senior citizen.

Use Visual Aids To Strengthen Your Senior Living Marketing Efforts

Visual aids can go a long way towards getting your message across to a senior audience as well as to help evoke emotions. However, having visual aids isn’t going to be enough to sell your message or convey certain emotions. You need to use visual aids smartly and in a way that’s impactful. Senior audiences may have some trouble with their eyesight or may have some memory limitations, but that doesn’t mean they’re not intelligent – don’t make the mistake of dumbing your senior living marketing efforts down. Senior citizens are nothing if not smart and won’t take kindly to marketing efforts that offend them.

What Is The Difference? – CRM vs. Marketing Automation Strategy

May 7, 2021/in Articles, Directors, Marketing Strategy /by Dan Gartlan

Building a relationship with each customer is essential in today’s business world. Without that relationship, you simply aren’t going to have the sales needed to remain profitable. That is why both CRM (customer relationship marketing) and marketing automation strategies focus on building that relationship.

Understanding how these strategies and systems complement one another helps businesses market and sell to their target audiences effectively.

The Critical Customer Relationship

Even with so much being done online these days, customers still want a relationship with the companies they do business with. They want to feel that a company understands their needs and that the company will address them.

How a business addresses the critical customer relationship will mark its success or its failure. Companies need to build and nurture this relationship. They do this by collecting critical data that helps them address their customers’ needs and challenges.

Learn More: How to Create Content for Each Sale Funnel Stage

The Top of the Sales Funnel

The strategies you use at the top of the sales funnel are going to be different from the strategies you use at the bottom. And these strategy approaches define the differences between CRM and marketing automation strategies.

At the top of the sales funnel, you are capturing leads wherever they come from. They can be people with a casual interest in your product or they can be seriously in the market and just starting the research process. The problem is, there is no real way to know which category the lead falls into. This is where marketing automation and nurturing comes into play.

With marketing automation, your strategies are capturing key pieces of information and using them to nurture a lead further into the sales funnel. This could include contact information like name, email address, phone number, company name, and company size; number of visits to the website and which pages are of particular interest, or which premiums they choose.

Each piece of information gathered about a lead brings critical insight into where they are in the sales cycle. Downloading details about a particular product, for example, is a sign of interest in that product or, at least, that product group. This can trigger the marketing automation system to send targeted emails or special offers.

The Bottom of the Sales Funnel

At a designated point in the sales funnel, a lead moves from the marketing side to the sales side. This is when the data gathered indicates the lead is moving towards making a purchase decision. This is where the CRM system comes into play.

That data gathered in a CRM allows your sales force to nurture the lead into closing the sale. It offers a picture of what the customer wants and their history with the company. Your sales team can use it to schedule calls with the lead or to set dates for follow-up.

The good news these days is that there are a growing number of systems which offer both types of functionality. That way, you can leverage both CRM and marketing automation strategies without worry about one system getting out of sync.

Bob Ward Declares Stevens and Tate as Agency of Record

May 6, 2021/in Articles /by Debbie Szwast

Bob Ward Companies has hired Stevens & Tate Marketing to increase brand awareness for the homebuilder in the Baltimore area and drive traffic to its sales centers. Named its agency of record, Stevens & Tate is responsible for media planning and placement for all Bob Ward communities as well as the company as a whole. The firm is overseeing creative strategy and implementation, designing fresh advertising campaigns that include digital display, social media, radio, outreach emails, and print. In addition, Stevens & Tate is implementing a Google Ads program that highlights the key selling points for each of the builder’s properties. To move prospects through the buyer’s journey, the agency is creating and managing a lead nurturing program that communicates with contacts in Bob Ward’s database on a consistent basis.

See Our Other Clients

Bob Ward is one of the largest homebuilders in metropolitan Baltimore with townhome, villa and single-family-home communities in Maryland, specifically in Carroll, Cecil and Harford counties. Since 1983, the company has built nearly 3,000 homes that offer buyers comfort, quality and value. The homebuilding industry, both local and national, has presented some of its most prestigious awards to Bob Ward, recognizing the company’s standards of excellence.

How to Drive Website Conversions with the Buyer’s Journey

May 4, 2021/in Articles, Attraction Marketing, Content Marketing, Directors, Lead Nuturing /by Nicole Wagner

Before any customer commits to purchasing a product, they will have to go through the sales funnel. The sales funnel is comprised of several stages that the buyer will go through, from identifying the problem they have to making a decision. In online marketing, the sales funnel expands from a prospective buyer to a buyer looking to purchase. Marketers are responsible for guiding prospective clients along the sales funnel until they eventually make a purchase. Attraction marketing is what will catch the attention of customers.

Growing social media usage gives marketers a chance to engage their prospective buyers by creating customized content. However, some marketers still find it challenging to identify the most effective content for each step. The following is a guide to creating the right content to drive website conversions at each step of the sales funnel.

Top of the Funnel: Awareness and Research

This is the primary step where prospective customers realize they have a problem or a need to fulfill. Buyers at the top of the funnel are searching for high quality and relevant information to point them towards the solution

Over 80% of buyers research products online before buying. The best way to attract them is by offering exactly what they need: highly optimized content with original research. Additionally, posting explainer videos that contain demonstrations can have a huge impact on your site. Lastly, create attractive landing pages to offer your visitors solutions at the click of a button.

Read More: How To Use The Buyer’s Journey To Create Great Content

Middle of the Funnel: Evaluation

During the second stage of the sales funnel, buyers are trying to sort through their best options that you and your competitors are offering. It’s the seller’s job to explain why they are the best solution for the customer’s problem. The purpose of this section of the funnel is to highlight your expertise and begin the process of lead nurturing.

The best content for this stage are webinars and live communication features. These give the marketers and customers a space to interact with live questions and discussions. Email marketing is also a great way to offer relevant and consistent content. Don’t forget to include clear calls to action that will convert leads.

Bottom of the Funnel: Purchase

At the final stage, the buyer has decided they are ready to make a purchase, but they have not yet decided the source of their purchase. Providing them with access to the solution as well as some incentives will likely turn a prospective buyer to a customer.

Clear calls to action linked to trial offers, video tutorials, and product information can have a huge impact on prospective customers. Aligning your offers with educational and entertaining testimonials is an effective technique. It’s also wise to creating a purchasable demo based on a free plan that entices customers to access its premium features.

Pay Attention to the Buyer’s Journey

Above all, remember to consider your clients’ needs first. From there, develop your funnel in order to fulfill these needs at each stage. If the sales funnel is implemented correctly and your content is helpful to customers, your lead conversion rate will definitely increase.