June 2021 - Stevens & Tate Marketing

How Facebook Advertising Helps You

June 30, 2021/in Articles, Directors, Social Media /by Nicole Wagner

Facebook has had its share of controversy over the past few years, yet it remains as popular as ever. As of this year, there are roughly 190 million Facebook users in the U.S. alone. Worldwide, the monthly user base is approaching three billion. As such, Facebook advertising continues to be an effective way to reach your target audience and to generate leads for your business. If you’re not using Facebook Ads as a part of your social media marketing strategy, then you should consider changing that, immediately.

The Benefits Of Using Facebook Ads

There are plenty of PPC (Pay-per-click) advertising options available across the Internet, including Google Ads. However, there are a number of reasons why you should use Facebook Ads in particular.

Reach Facebook users with greater success – There’s no guarantee that the content you post on your page is seen by your audience. Followers may not be online when you post and even if they are, there’s no guarantee your posts show up on their feed. Facebook Ads lets you target specific followers to whom your ads will be relevant so that they will be sure to see them.
Remarket to users who engaged with you previously – Facebook users who may have visited your Facebook page or website previously won’t always re-engage. Facebook Ads allows you to target such users to re-engage with them, thereby helping ensure that you don’t miss out on potentially high-quality leads.
Facebook Ads are very cost-effective – Like all PPC ads, you can set your bids per click and you will only pay for the actual clicks the ads get. This makes it much easier to control how much of your budget you spend on your ads — and also ensures that you’re only paying for results.
Generate new leads on Facebook – Besides being able to target specific users from your follower list, you can also use the “Lookalike Audiences” feature to find and target users that are similar to your followers, thereby allowing you to identify and reach new potential leads.
You can scale your Facebook Ads to build on any success – You can scale your ads. This means that if an ad is doing particularly well, you can put more money into it in order to build on its success. Once it’s no longer performing the way you want it to, you can simply stop them. You can also take an ad that’s been successful and duplicate it. This allows you to target a different audience with the same content.
Facebook Ads Manager offers in-depth analytics – The analytics tool makes it easy to track and compare ad performance, allowing you to make adjustments to your strategy on the fly.
Facebook Ads Manager makes ad creation easy – Facebook Ads Manager makes it incredibly easy to create content for your ads, tailor your ads to your needs, and target specific audiences.

Ready to read more about the benefits of Facebook Advertising ?

How To Use Facebook Ads Manager

Facebook Ads Manager is the feature that will let you create and run your Facebook Ad campaigns. Follow these easy steps to find Facebook Ads Manager:

Ad Center > All Ads > Ads Manager

Once you select Ads Manager, you’ll be directed to the Facebook Ads Accounts page. Here, you can add users to your account and choose roles for each user. These roles can be Ad account admin, advertiser, or analyst.

Creating Ads In Facebook Ads Manager

Once you’re on the Ads Manager page, you shouldn’t have much trouble figuring out how to create ads. There’s a Create Ad button at the top right corner. Once you click on it, you’ll be provided with 15 different ad objectives to choose from. You’ll then be presented with a variety of options for customizing your ads. Options include choosing CTA buttons, images, and more. On top of that, you’ll be able to set the budget, the schedule, and your targeted audience, which can include:

Users who visited your page
Users who engaged with your content
Users who clicked on a CTA
Users who sent you a message
… and more

Once you create your ads and your campaign, you can edit your campaigns, ad sets, or ads. One at a time or in groups. For instance, you can:

Edit the campaign, ad set, or ad names
Edit your budget
Switch on and off
Edit the target audience
Edit the schedule
Edit the ad placement
Edit the individual elements of the ad

Leverage Facebook Advertising This Year

Facebook Ads are a great way to engage your followers as well as generate new leads. The customization options and reporting features provided by Facebook Ads Manager make advertising on Facebook a user-friendly experience. As such, be sure to implement the use of Facebook Ads into your social media marketing strategy if you haven’t done so already.

Integrating Social Media & SEO Efforts For Enhanced Search Engine Results

Your Brand Reputation and Public Relations

June 28, 2021/in Articles, Brand Development, Directors /by Nicole Wagner

Public relations (PR) traditionally consisted of press releases and news conferences, and very little else. However, these days, PR has taken on greater importance, especially when it comes to your marketing strategy. After all, you’re now able to engage directly with consumers across many different online channels. As such, digital public relations are essential for improving and maintaining your brand reputation.

What’s The Difference Between Digital PR And Digitial Marketing?

At first glance, it might appear that there is some overlap in terms of what can be defined as PR and what can be defined as inbound marketing. After all, content creation is a vital component of inbound marketing strategies. Yet, press releases are a form of content. Additionally, the content you create as part of your inbound strategy does impact your brand authority – and, therefore, its reputation. The main difference between digital PR and inbound marketing is in the goal. The goal of inbound marketing is to generate leads and eventually to close sales. This is not the goal of digital PR. Instead, the goal of digital PR is to improve the perception of your business. Although different, in achieving the goal of PR, you contribute to the success of your inbound marketing efforts.

The Benefits Of Digital Public Relations

The following are some of the reasons why digital PR can be beneficial to your brand:

Improve credibility – A good digital PR strategy can help you secure more media coverage. For instance, sending out press releases to various online media outlets. As a result, when consumers are doing research into your brand, they’ll discover a wealth of coverage from reputable sources, which will lend your business credibility. Such credibility helps boost brand trust and makes it easier to generate leads.
Generate more brand awareness – The more coverage you obtain from online media outlets, the more brand awareness you generate. On top of that, PR-related content that you publish online, whether on your website or on social media, can be shared. When such content is shared, it can boost awareness even further.
Increase organic traffic – First of all, any press releases or PR-related content that you write, you can optimize for SEO. This will help boost traffic to your website. Secondly, any media coverage you get can boost traffic as well. Not only can readers who were unaware of your business do a search based on press coverage, but many online media outlets will link their coverage of your brand to your site.
Maintain a positive reputation – Digital PR also involves addressing negative comments on review sites and on social media. Trying to resolve issues that customers had with their experience online (in view of the public) can actually boost your reputation. Ignoring negative comments will only hurt your reputation.

Learn More About Public Relations

Examples Of Digital Public Relations Strategies

There are many different things that you can do to improve your PR efforts online. The following are just a few examples of digital PR tactics that you could implement:

Press announcements on social issues – When you make changes within your company to improve corporate and social responsibility, you should announce them to the world. For instance, if you’re making a switch to a more sustainable manufacturing process to become more environmentally friendly. Even just announcing your support for a social movement or cause can help increase the reputation of your brand.
Video content of community involvement – Showcase how your business gets involved in your community by filming it. For instance, if you encourage employees to do community service, or if higher-level employees regularly participate in community-related events, then you should film it and post those videos online, whether on your website or on social media.
Social media engagement – Social media allows you to connect with your audience directly. As such, you can leverage social media to talk to your customers and show them that you’re present and that you care. Ask questions about their experience with your brand. You should also address negative comments in an attempt to turn negative customer experiences into positive ones. Not only can this help you from losing a customer, but it will also show the world that you care.
Company interviews – Set up interviews with experts within our company. For instance, let them speak to influencers within your industry for an interview published on a website, for a video, or for a podcast. Doing so helps to generate awareness of your brand and can boost your brand authority as well. Not to mention that putting a face on your brand will make your business more relatable to your audience.

Implement A Digital PR Strategy Today

Public relations is critical to maintaining and improving the perception of your brand. The stronger your brand reputation is, the better your chances are of being able to successfully market your business. As such, it’s vital that you implement a digital PR strategy.

How To Develop A Solid Inbound Marketing Strategy

June 28, 2021/in Articles, Directors, Inbound Marketing, Marketing Strategy /by Nicole Wagner

Do you have a favorite sport? Maybe it’s something popular like football or hockey. Perhaps a more dignified pastime such as golf or horse racing better suits your style. Whatever your preference may be, do you ever wonder how your favorite athletes (hopefully!) win more than they lose? Most likely they are playing with a strategy. It may seem obvious, but strategy – even in a sport like racing – is essential to victory.

The same is true for your business website. Without a strategy, your website will fall behind the competition. Don’t let this happen! Many companies fall into the trap of creating a website for nothing more than an “online presence.” With inbound marketing, websites can do so much more than they could 20 years ago. With inbound marketing, businesses are seeing more online traffic that results in more customers and sales. But without a strategy, even inbound marketing has its limits.

Read More About The Benefits Of Inbound Marketing

Inbound marketing benefits from a well-developed strategy. There are three aspects to creating a well-developed inbound marketing strategy.

1. Create website goals

What do you want your website to do for your customer? That’s the main question that should be asked before a website is developed. Without a clear goal, a website could be published without having any significant benefit to the owner or the visitor. If a website generates most of its sales after visitors view a product information page, the goal of the website should be to create more product information pages, increase traffic to these pages, and streamline the ability to go from product information to product purchase. Inbound marketing benefits from having a website with clearly defined goals. If you are wondering about your website, try having a friend or colleague take a look at it. Ask them if they felt your website had clearly defined goals. Once you’ve determined you have the right goals in mind, it’s time you ask yourself if you have the right person in mind.

2. Create a Persona

Creating a persona is a powerful way for a business to better understand its customers. Without a persona, businesses have an incomplete idea of who to market to. So what is a persona? A Persona is the ‘ideal’ customer that a business wants to reach out to. Personas are defined by many things – ethnicity, location, motivation – but what they all have in common is that they help shape the strategy used by a company to achieve its goal.

Read more on Why Buyer Personas Are So Important

By creating a strategy with a specific end-user in mind, we are better able to understand what their problems are and how we can help make their lives easier. Don’t get too attached to your persona though! You will likely find that you may need to update them as you gain more insights on your customers. You may even considering adding an additional persona. Once you have your persona or personas created, you can move on to the next step.

3. Get to know your persona

Now that you have a persona, ask yourself, how well do you know him or her? It may seem like knowing a pretend person’s upbringing and background is a little silly, but it can go a long way with customer satisfaction. By constructing your persona’s life story, you are better able to understand their motivation, needs, and desired outcome in life. If your persona is looking for a product that satisfies a long-term need but your business only sells products for immediate use, you’ve just gained valuable insight. You’ve recognized a need your typical customer has as well as an opportunity for your company to grow. By using information gathered from our personas, we can update and adapt our company strategy to best fit our customer needs.

Download A Free Template For Developing Personas

Just like in all sports, strategies continue to adapt as they encounter new problems and opportunities. You will likely find that a strategy created today might not work for you a year from now. That’s okay! Revisiting your goals, updating your persona’s attributes, changing their background and desired outcomes; these are all essential to a successful business. Just remember, inbound marketing benefits strongly from a well thought out strategy. How do you think your company’s online strategy is? If you’d like a free consultation, please check out the link below.

How To Create Content For Each Sale Funnel Stage

June 25, 2021/in Articles, Attraction Marketing, Blog, Content Marketing, Directors /by Dan Gartlan

Even though you may not realize it, you go through a process before buying something, unless, of course, you are an impulse buyer. This process is called a sale funnel. It refers to “the buying process that companies lead customers through when they are purchasing products.” But for any company to succeed, its process must have quality content. Having quality content is having leadership, which is a part of attraction marketing. Here is how to create quality content:

Phases of a standard funnel

Top of the funnel (TOFU): awareness stage

At this point, your followers do not know they have a problem or are just now realizing they do. TOFU involves driving traffic to you as well as providing free surface information with “how to”, “improve”, and “prevent” content.

Middle of the funnel (MOFU): consideration stage

When a potential buyer gets here, they graduate to a potential lead. They need the best solution for their problem and are willing to make possible future purchase commitments. For this stage, begin providing deep content with a wide coverage of topics.

Bottom of the funnel (BOFU): decision stage

Here, someone is making a final purchase decision. Still, there is no guarantee. A little nudge from the right content and assistanced from a call to action will win the customer over.

[Read to learn about the importance of lead generating content marketing]

Creating sale funnel content for each stage

TOFU

Content can be in the form of an eBook, checklist, podcast, whitepaper, etc. It should be rich with key words, compelling, informational, correctly format, and delivered in a timely manner. Do not attempt to sell at this stage because the potential customer is not yet considered a qualified lead. Make your content both easy to understand and enjoyable to read. Try to obtain the potential customer’s personal contact information at this point through forms and landing pages to use later in the lead qualifying process.

MOFU

As your visitors transition to this stage, your content should transition with them. This content can be in the form of case studies, demonstration videos, trial offers, cost estimates, etc. You should offer expert, in-depth content. For example: “The Complete Checklist for a Refurbished Phone.”

As they look to expand their personal understanding, usher in lead nurturing techniques such as personal engagement and email marketing. This is usually the longest phase because potential customers need to weigh their options and research further. However, an advantage to this wait is that you can take time to filter out unqualified leads and instead focus your resources on marketing qualified leads.

BOFU

When your leads reach the final stage, you will probably be a little anxious, but don’t push too much. Offer content to make them understand why you are the best best option for them. Position yourself as a solution to their problem. Be careful not to sound too much like a sales person, and focus your content on their needs. “Guidelines For Success” or “How to Implement Inbound Marketing Strategies” are some examples of content you should provide in order to convert your leads into sales.

Effective Inbound Marketing Strategies

June 24, 2021/in Articles, Directors, Inbound Marketing /by Nicole Wagner

Successful inbound marketing depends on your ability to engage your leads and to nurture them through their buyer’s journeys. However, you’re going to have to attract leads first. Because technology keeps evolving and the way that people use the Internet keeps changing, it’s vital that you continuously update your inbound marketing strategies so that you can continue to attract high-quality leads. With that in mind, the following are a few inbound marketing strategies you should consider implementing this year:

1. Focus On Optimizing Your Content For Featured Snippets

Although you can still attract a lot of high-quality leads by ranking first through third on Google’s SERP, it’s no longer the first thing that users see. Instead, the first thing that appears on Google’s SERP is their featured snippets. Websites listed in featured snippets tend to get a boost in organic traffic since searches often click on the website links listed on the snippets.

Learn More about Google’s SERPs

2. Develop Relationships With Micro-Influencers

Social media influencers have massive followings. This means that if they highlight your brand on their channels, it could significantly increase your company’s exposure. However, such social media influencers tend to have broad audiences, which means many of their followers may not fall within your target audience. On top of that, it can be difficult for a small to a mid-sized company to get the attention of such an influencer, much less to convince them to promote your business.

Instead, you should consider finding micro-influencers. These are influencers with smaller audiences that focus on more niche subjects. You’ll have a better chance of building a relationship with a micro-influencer — and their audience will probably have greater overlap with your target audience as well.

3. Create Short Video Content

Although long-form video content is certainly effective, it tends to work better as an engagement tool rather than an attraction tool. Short-form video content does really well on social media especially. People are more likely to watch through the entire video and share it with others on their social channels if it’s on the shorter side. Social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok also focus on short video content, and those sites have skyrocketed in popularity over the years.

4. Consider Using Progressive Forms

Potential leads are often discouraged from converting through opt-in forms if there are too many questions. If they feel like the offer isn’t worth the information they have to give up, they’ll just leave your site without converting. You can solve this issue by using progressive forms. Progressive forms require that leads fill out a new form every time they download a new resource instead of asking for one form to be filled out upfront. The advantage of doing this is that you can just ask for a couple of details each time so that it doesn’t feel like they’re providing that much information to you.

5. Optimize For Voice Search

Voice assistants, such as Siri and Alexa, have drastically increased the number of voice searches performed over the past few years. While text-based searches are still the most popular way to perform a search online, voice searches continue to increase. In 2019, a third of the U.S. population used voice search. As such, you may want to begin optimizing for voice search. You can do this by adding a voice search snippet to your blog posts. You can also begin writing content in a more direct and conversational way.

6. Optimize Your Website For Mobile Use

There are now billions of smartphone users in the world today. If your website isn’t optimized for mobile use, it’s going to hurt your search rankings. Additionally, mobile users who do stumble onto your site are going to have all kinds of trouble navigating it. This is because a site not optimized for mobile use won’t display correctly on smaller screen sizes.

7. Adjust Your Content Strategy Around The Use Of Clusters

Topic clusters are a more organized way to create content. Essentially, you create a pillar page on a certain topic, then create separate pages (such as blog posts) that cover related subtopics. These pages are then all linked to your pillar page, creating a cluster of content. The reason this is so effective is that it leads to a higher number of internal links. As such, visitors have an easier time navigating through relevant content, while search engines have an easier time identifying context, which can lead to boosted rankings and more organic traffic.

Finding new ways to attract your target audience is critical to your inbound marketing efforts. Because people change the ways that they use the web as they adapt to new technology, it’s important that you continually revisit your inbound strategies. As such, consider implementing some of these inbound marketing strategies to attract new leads in 2021.

The Brand Identity Prism

June 22, 2021/in Articles, Brand Development, Directors /by Mark Beebe

When you think of brands, there are probably a few that come to mind. Brands that you use and see every day are the most prominent; Coca-Cola, Tide, Apple. These multi-billion dollar companies have worked tirelessly to reach their consumer base, and build strong a strong brand identity, and that is a large part of why they’ve prospered. It can be a little harder to narrow down a B2B brand that is as recognizable as the one mentioned above. Simply put, B2B brands spent less time focusing on brand development, and more time building impressive service packs and data for clientele. That is a big mistake; even B2B companies can significantly benefit from better brand identity. After all, the B2B space can be a crowded one, and the best way to set one’s self apart from the pack is by offering a unique and easily recognizable brand.

Why is Brand Development Important in B2B Marketing?

Brand development is what will set you apart in an often crowded marketplace. B2B consumers are drowning in a sea of sameness. In short, most B2B companies lack personality, which is a driving force behind consumer sales, and what makes the companies mentioned above so successful. To set yourself apart from the crowd, you should build a brand with a personality, with identity, and with something just a little flashy to get a foothold in an over-saturated market.

How is a Brand Identity Developed?

Developing a brand identity takes time and thoughtful consideration. Branding Specialist, Jean-Noel Kapferer has suggested every brand should use the brand identity prism to improve and alter their image. This prism includes personality, physique, culture, relationship, reflection, and self-image.

Personality is the way in which the world sees your brand. A b2b brand might want to be seen as cutting-edge or high tech. This character can be portrayed through logos and writing styles.
Physique is the physical manifestation of a brand’s identity. Strong, stoic or hip are all physique aspects that can be portrayed. This is done through color schemes, graphics and packaging art.
Culture is the way the brand interacts internally and with the world around them. Social media interaction and engagement is a good way to develop a brand culture, and allow other businesses behind the curtain to see what makes your company tick. When businesses and consumers engage with a company via social media, their personal perception of the brand identity improves.
Relationship is developed through interactions with current and potential clients. Branding and endorsements can be used to highlight the collaborative relationship businesses build with one another.
Reflection and Self-image go hand-in-hand. As a brand, you’ll want to reflect the values and characteristics you clientele wants to see in themselves. With the self-image part of the prism, you’ll also want to reflect how you feel about your own business. A prideful company is one that can be trusted, according to recent research.

To learn more about brand strategy read our article “Share Your Message With A New Brand Strategy “

Branding and identity does not happen overnight. Companies like Apple, Intel, Mastercard, and Coca-Cola have spent decades honing their brand and building an identity. Reaching a myriad of buyer personas, and identifying your needs as a business are the first steps in the construction of a branding strategy that will set you apart from the crowd. Utilizing the prism for development, however, will get you off to a good start.

New Social Media Channels and Clubhouse

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

Social media marketing is an essential way to expand your reach, increase your brand authority, build relationships with your audience, and drive traffic to your website. This is no secret to anyone, which is why businesses of all sizes have established a social media presence on some of the more popular social platforms, including Facebook and Twitter. However, as important as it is to market on the biggest social media platforms, you should always keep an eye out for newer social media channels. Ignoring new platforms in favor of focusing on the most popular social media sites can cause you to fall behind quickly. After all, platforms such as TikTok can gain massive traction over as little as a year. With that in mind, we recommend that you consider the Clubhouse app.

What Is The Clubhouse App?

The Clubhouse is unique in that it combines the social aspects of an online forum with the conversational aspects of a podcast. If you’re confused by this description, don’t be. To break it down further, it’s basically an audio-only social media network. The way it works is simple — there are different Rooms that you can join. In each Room, a live audio conversation is going on. You can listen to this conversation as well as join in.

The Clubhouse is a little over a year old, but it’s already gaining notice after both Bill Gates and Elon Musk appeared in Clubhouse rooms. One of the things that makes the Clubhouse app attractive to many users at the moment is its exclusivity. While there are over 10 million users, the app is currently only available on iOS. Additionally, you can only gain access to the social media platform through an invitation by a user.

How To Use The Clubhouse App

Users build their profiles based on their interests. They can then search the app for Rooms that focus on their interests, follow individuals on Clubhouse, and send messages. The Clubhouse homepage displays Rooms that are live at the time and that are related to the user’s interests (or that are being run by people the user is following). There’s also an Explore feature that let’s users scroll through suggested people, Rooms, or Clubs to follow.

Each Room is basically a live conversation that you can listen to or participate in. As you might imagine, it could get quite hectic if there are hundreds of people trying to talk over each other in any given room. To avoid this, users who join the room are muted automatically. The people who are running the room essentially have the floor. Users can then click on the Raise Hand button if they want to contribute to the conversation (such as by asking a question). One of the people running the room can then unmute that user if they want to hear what they have to say. Attendees can only see the profiles of the moderators and speakers, unless another user is invited to speak after raising their hand, in which case their profile can also be seen.

Starting a Room is easy. There’s a Start a Room button on the app’s homepage. You can start a closed chat (open to specific users), a social chat (open to followers), or an open chat (open to anyone).

How Can Clubhouse Help Your Marketing Strategy?

In the beginning, Clubhouse was meant as a social media platform for industry elites, such as CEOs, social media influencers, and celebrities. This is no longer the case, although general users are attracted to rooms being run by such members. The question is, how can joining Clubhouse be of benefit to your business? Essentially, Clubhouse could help you to connect with your target audience and expand your reach. More importantly, you could use Clubhouse to boost your brand authority.

For example, a small group of accountants might hold a discussion about taking deductions on your tax return. Such a discussion is going to be very informative for people who are looking to save money on their taxes, especially if it’s tax season. Not only will listeners be able to learn about the subject by joining the room (and listening as well as asking questions), but the accountants will get some exposure for their business as well. If their discussion proves informative, listeners who weren’t familiar with them might check out their website and connect with them further off of the app.

Read More About Posting on Social Media

Paying attention to new social media platforms over the years is vital to keeping your social media marketing strategyrelevant and fresh. Not only can you continue to reach a larger audience by expanding your presence to new channels, but new social media platforms like Clubhouse often provide new and innovative ways to connect with your audience.

The Benefits of Inbound Marketing

June 18, 2021/in Articles, Content Marketing, Directors, Inbound Marketing /by Nicole Wagner

Inbound Marketing is all about empowering potential customers. It provides a shift in marketing tactics that can make a real difference in how consumers react to a company. Inbound strives to create marketing that people will love. The goal of inbound marketing is to give consumers content that will be helpful to them, rather than simply giving them a sales pitch. The following are some inbound marketing benefits.

How to Use Color Psychology in Marketing

June 16, 2021/in Articles, Color Psychology, Directors, Media, Visual Marketing /by Terry Becker

When it comes to building your brand, don’t underestimate the importance of color. The colors you choose are crucial to your brand identity. Just think about some of the most famous brands out there and the colors associated with them, such as Nike and black, Starbucks and green, and Target and red, just to name a few. The colors you choose will always be associated with your brand, which is why you need to choose them carefully (and why they need to remain consistent across all of your branding efforts). One of the most important things to keep in mind is that color isn’t just an aesthetic choice, it’s a psychological one too.

Using Color Intentionally

There are two primary ways to use color in your marketing efforts. The first is to make certain marketing elements stand out. For instance, adding a colored call-to-action button at the end of a blog post instead of using regular anchor text. If the button stands out from the background, it will immediately draw the eye of the reader so that they don’t miss out on your CTA.

The colors you choose for your website’s background and text is crucial as well. Not only does it impact the overall aesthetic of your website (which is important as it reflects on your company’s professionalism), but it also affects the ease of use. If you use two colors that are too similar (such as yellow text on an orange background) it becomes incredibly difficult for visitors to navigate your site. Your color choices should provide enough contrast so that foreground elements stand out from the background.

Finally, don’t overuse color. For example, choosing to use five different colors throughout your home page will create visual clutter that will overwhelm visitors. It works better if you choose no more than two colors that combine to create visual balance.

Digitally transforming your website with things like visuals isn’t easy. Read here to begin your digital innovation.

Using Color Psychology

Different colors elicit different feelings. By using certain colors, you can engage your audience by making them subconsciously feel a different way. Most successful brands choose their colors based on this idea. Take for example McDonald’s. As everyone knows, they use two colors: red and yellow. They complement one another aesthetically and are chosen for their psychological meaning. Red is often associated with friendliness, while yellow is associated with happiness, both of which are emotions McDonald’s embraced as a major part of their brand voice. Red also happens to be a very stimulating color that’s meant to trigger feelings of hunger. Combined, they attract attention from hungry customers.

Color Breakdowns

All colors have some sort of effect on the psychology of consumers. With that in mind, the following are a few of the different colors you could use in your branding and the psychological meaning behind them:

Orange – Orange is associated with physical comfort, motivation, and positivity. Payless Shoes and Home Depot use orange as their primary color for these reasons.
Green – Green represents harmony, peace, health, and growth. Financial institutions use green to promote growth (of wealth), while many health products and stores use green to promote health (such as Whole Foods).
Blue – Blue is closely linked to trust and dependability. Many technology companies use blue to promote the idea that their products are dependable, such as Dell, GM, and Honda. Companies like Facebook and All-State also use blue to promote trust.

Brown – Brown is used to create feelings of trust and security. It’s why UPS prominently uses the color for everything, including their uniforms and trucks.
Purple – Purple is associated with luxury and royalty, which is why brands that promote their products as luxurious use purple, such as Cadbury, Hallmark, and Louis Vuitton.
Pink – Pink represents compassion, love, and empathy. Pepto-Bismol and Victoria’s Secret both use pink to this effect for different reasons.

Choose Your Colors Wisely To Improve Your Marketing Efforts

As you can see, the use of color is incredibly important to your marketing efforts. Not only do your color choices affect the aesthetic of your website (as well as its ease of use), they are also vital to defining your visual identity. As such, be sure to choose your colors carefully as they will have a psychological impact on your audience.

Baby Boomers Represent A Wealth Of Opportunities For Homebuying

Marketing Real Estate to Baby Boomers

June 15, 2021/in Directors, Homebuilder Marketing, Marketing Strategy /by Debbie Szwast

Gen Y may have surpassed Baby Boomers as the largest share of the home buying population, but Boomers age 51 to 69 still have significant influence and buying power. According to the National Association of REALTORS®, these “older” buyers have built up equity and are twice as likely to purchase a $500,000-plus home than a Millennial. This is why you should be marketing real estate to Baby Boomers.

Boomers fall into two categories—younger who were born between 1955 and 1964, and older who were born between 1946 and 1954. Combined, they make up the largest segment of home sellers and account for 39% percent of the nation’s homebuyers. Most are married but few have children living at home. They are suburbanites—half live in the ‘burbs while less than 12% choose the city. They purchased now because it was “the right time”—affordability, financing and home availability all ranked low on their reasons to buy. Read more