Articles Archives - Page 27 of 62 - Stevens & Tate Marketing

Choosing HubSpot CRM As Your CRM Solution

March 14, 2023/in Articles, Directors /by Dan Gartlan

If any business wishes to collect customer data, monitor customer interactions, and ensure that their marketing and sales teams are properly aligned, it is necessary to have a CRM (customer relation management) platform. However, there are a lot of different CRM software solutions to choose from. For good reason, HubSpot CRM tends to be one of the more popular options. The following six reasons are why you should consider implementing HubSpot CRM into your marketing strategy:

Why To Choose HubSpot CRM As Your CRM Solution?

1. HubSpot is Available For Free

When comparing CRM solutions, you’ll find that most of them cost money. Although many of these solutions have free trials or even free versions, they are often limited in their number of usable or accessible features. HubSpot provides its CRM solution for free. While they do have paid versions available with added features, the free version is absolutely packed with features and almost no limitations. For example, your HubSpot CRM platform will be accessible to unlimited users, and stores upwards of one million contacts.

Similar Article: Using HubSpot Lead Flows to Improve Conversion Rates

2. HubSpot is Packed With Features

For a free CRM, you’ll be surprised at the number of beneficial features you can use. These include a standard dashboard, ticketing, tasks, deals, email scheduling, upwards of five email templates, team email, live chat, conversational bots, external form tracking, pop-up forms, company records, contact management, contact and company insights, and more.

3. HubSpot is Scalable

As expected, your business will grow over time. Therefore, whatever CRM solution you implement, you should make sure that it can handle significant increases in customer data. Even HubSpot’s free version is capable of doing this. It is, after all, able to handle upwards of one million contacts. This is enough for even the world’s biggest corporations. Should your business expand to the point where you need added functionality, you’ll probably be at the point where your budget has no problem accommodating one of HubSpot’s paid versions.

4. HubSpot Can Be Easily Integrated

Due to HubSpot CRM being designed to integrate with a wide range of applications, you should have no issue integrating it with your existing marketing technology stack. Some of the other applications that HubSpot CRM can be integrated with include Dropbox, Gmail, Outlook, MailChimp, WordPress, Salesforce, Facebook, and more.

Similar Article: What Are The Benefits of Using HubSpot Marketing Automation Tools?

5. HubSpot is Extremely Intuitive

Next, HubSpot CRM was designed to be user-friendly. Your team members can easily obtain the data and functionality they need, as a result of the intuitive menus containing only the most useful elements. Additionally, the dashboards make it easy to align your marketing and sales goals, along with establishing who is responsible for what, and identifying the current state of your marketing and sales efforts in real time.

6. HubSpot Will Improve Conversions

Finally, HubSpot provides tools that allow for tracking leads as they navigate your website. You can monitor what actions they take to determine how ready they are to be engaged. In fact, this makes HubSpot particularly effective for both marketing and sales teams. Your sales personnel will be able to identify the highest quality leads, and use information gathered by your marketing team. Subsequently, this will help them nurture the lead and close the sale (such as what products the lead has viewed the most, for example).

Even if you’re running a smaller to mid-sized company, you will not want to go without a CRM platform for long. Implementing a CRM solution is going to make your marketing and sales efforts much more efficient and, therefore, effective. As far as CRM solutions go, you can’t go wrong with HubSpot CRM. This highly advantageous CRM tool understandably continues to be one of the most popular options on the market.

Inbound marketing will help you grow your business by attracting website visitors, converting them into leads and closing leads into customers

A Guide to the Consideration Stage of the Buyer’s Journey

March 10, 2023/in Articles, Attraction Marketing, Behavioral Marketing /by Nicole Wagner

Once you’ve managed to draw new leads to your brand by presenting content that helps consumers navigate their problems through the awareness stage, you’ll want to make sure that you have content living on your site (and on other channels, such as social media and email as well) that addresses the consideration stage of the buyer’s journey.

What Is The Consideration Stage Of The Buyer’s Journey?

The consideration stage of the buyer’s journey follows directly after the awareness stage. Once a consumer has a better understanding of what their pain point is as well as of what the potential causes of their problem are, they will begin searching for solutions. It’s during the consideration stage of the buyer’s journey that they will begin to explore their purchasing options.

At this point, you will want to explain what types of solutions will help with their specific problems as well as what their options are and present your products and services as a potential solution.

Let’s say the consumer has decided that they need to replace their current computer, which keeps freezing. They already know that they need to replace their computer and why they need to replace it. If you’re selling brand new computers, then you’ll want to present content that helps provide information that will help guide them to making the right purchase. They may have questions that include:

How much do new computers cost?
What kind of computer do I need?
Should I buy a new or used computer?
What brand is the best brand?

Content that addresses these questions is going to help consumers make a more informed decision about their purchase, thereby helping to get them closer to making a purchase.

How do you create great content with the help of the buyer’s journey?

Creating Content For The Consideration Stage Of The Buyer’s Journey

You will want content on your site that specifically addresses the consideration stage for consumers who have been doing research on your site from the beginning of their buyer’s journey. However, this content will also help attract consumers out there who already know what their problem is and are performing research for potential solutions from the get-go.

While you’ll want to present your products and services as a solution, you’ll want to make sure that your content is still on the informative side and not the promotional side. The more helpful your content is in explaining what the consumer’s options are, the more they will trust your brand’s authority, which will help make them more likely to choose your solution.

You’ll want to create a variety of content, including short-form and long-form articles, videos, case studies, demo videos and more. Topics you may explore that help inform consumers looking for a new computer could include:

The Pros and Cons of Used vs. New Computers
Mac vs. PC vs. Chromebook
Buying a New Computer on a Budget
What to Look For in a New Computer

Other forms of content to consider creating include product webinars and FAQs that consumers can explore to see what your company has to offer in terms of solutions to their problems.

During the consideration stage of the buyer’s journey, you’ll want to provide content that provides consumers with information about potential solutions to their problems while also introducing them to your specific products and services. The idea is to give them enough information so that they will feel comfortable making an informed purchase.

Learn how to maximize your New Year marketing budget

How to Create a Senior Living Marketing Plan

March 8, 2023/in Articles /by Dan Gartlan

You must invest in a robust senior living marketing plan if you want your senior living facility to stand out from the competition. Statistics show that approximately 2% of seniors live in assisted living facilities in the United States, translating to about 810,000 people.

This population lives in nearly 30,000 assisted living facilities. Competition is stiff among service providers as the demand for assisted living facilities and services continues to grow.

A well-defined marketing plan can be the answer you need to beat the competition. It should clearly define your objectives and explain them in a way that boosts your return on investment. This post guides you on developing a senior living marketing plan that works.

The Importance of Marketing for Senior Living

Retirement communities and senior living facilities are among the expensive and lifelong financial decisions people research extensively before making a decision. With the advent of the internet and other technological solutions, 40% of seniors can now use the internet to research their options.

Therefore, consider having a digital marketing plan that makes it easy for seniors and their loved ones to find your senior living community. The following tips can increase interest in your senior living facility and boost occupancy levels.

1. Define Your Business Goals

When marketing your senior living facility, your marketing plan must have specific, strategic, and measurable goals. Create a list of what you want to achieve through your marketing strategy, for example:

Increase brand awareness
Increase sales
Improve your facility’s online presence and drive more traffic
Build and nurture relationships with the current community
Attract and convert new prospects
Improve retention rates

Each of these objectives may require a different approach to marketing. While identifying the objectives, establish what’s missing, what you could do better, and where your facility falls short. Your marketing plan could help you work on these areas for more effectiveness.

2. Update Your Website

Ask yourself how easy it is for people to navigate your website and find the information they need. Even for individuals who are not tech-savvy, using your website should be seamless. It also should load quickly, given that most websites have an average bounce rate of 45% on mobile devices and 43% on desktops.

Your site’s bounce rate indicates the number of people who land on your site’s landing page and then leave immediately. If your site takes time to load, visitors are likely to leave as soon as they open the page, which is bad for your marketing efforts.

As the virtual door to your senior living facility, ensure your website meets the following qualities:

It has a friendly and simple design
Is visually appealing, with attractive brand colors and images showcasing your facility’s amenities
Quickly loads on different devices
Has freshly updated content, images, and information
Downloads quickly to enhance Google’s ranking metrics

If you don’t have a website already, consider creating one. You could hire a senior living marketing agency to do the work. Experts can get you a customized website that stands out from the crowd and sets you up for success.

3. Use Content That Resonates with Your Audience

Your audience craves content that educates, engages, and informs them about various aspects of your senior living facility. Your job is to ensure that you avail it to them in the form of the following:

Blogs with keyword-rich content
Premium content that entices readers to share their email addresses
Social media content
Automated email marketing

This list of content marketing strategies isn’t exhaustive. It would help to brainstorm with your marketing team about the other types of content you can incorporate into your senior living marketing plan.

4. Focus on the Potential Return on Investment, Not Just the Budget

Marketing a senior living facility is a financial concern because it costs money. It’s natural to worry about the marketing budget, especially when it’s insufficient. Sadly, cutting corners or scrimping can cost your marketing efforts in the long run. A marketing plan should be extensive enough to reach the following:

Seniors and families who have just started considering assisted living as a retirement option
Potential residents looking to sign up for your services
Seniors who are comparing different living facilities
Families of seniors already living in your facility

With such a large audience to reach, your marketing plan should entail various marketing approaches to satisfy the needs of the different groups. That translates to a budget of between $20,000 and $30,000 to initiate a marketing plan. You also must inject an additional 6-10% of your annual revenue for ongoing marketing.

When you consider all these expenses, it can be tempting to drop your senior living marketing plan. However, that should be the last thing on your mind. Instead, focus on the return on investment you can potentially gain from your marketing plan. Partnering with a reputable marketing agency can help make this a reality instead of a far-fetched dream.

5. Check What People Are Saying About Your Senior Living Facility Online

Negative online reviews can dramatically hurt your marketing efforts and damage your reputation. Ensure you have someone in your marketing team respond to the concerns people raise as soon as possible.

Doing so creates the impression that your community is willing to make things right when they go wrong. Your viewers and potential clients would rather see a good response to a bad review than no response at all.

Getting Started with Your Senior Living Marketing Plan

Your strategy for marketing the senior living facility is crucial to improve its occupancy. At first, everything can feel overwhelming, and you may not be sure what to do to achieve tangible results. Above are a few tips that could bring your senior living facility to the forefront and create brand awareness.

The list isn’t exhaustive, and there is much more you can achieve with the help of experts from a senior living marketing agency like Steven & Tates. With a multi-disciplinary marketing team on your side, it’ll be easier to think through a marketing plan that works.

6 Best Practices For Using Facebook Video Ads

February 21, 2023/in Articles, Directors, Marketing Strategy, Social Media /by Mark Beebe

As you may already know, Facebook Ads can be a very effective advertising platform, especially when you consider its overall cost-effectiveness (it’s a pay-per-click advertising platform, after all) and the ability to target audiences based on a variety of criteria (from demographics to location to interests and more). Facebook Ads has a lot of features that you’ll want to take advantage of, including their Facebook Video Ads feature.

6 Practices For Using Facebook Video Ads

The following are six Facebook Video Ads best practices that you should be sure to implement:

1. Get Your Message Across Immediately

Don’t just assume that your viewers will stick around until the end of your video ads. According to Microsoft, around 19 percent of online viewers lose interest in video content after 10 seconds. Keeping this in mind, it’s a good idea to get to the point as quickly as possible so that your viewers know why they are watching. Try to get your message across in the first ten seconds.

2. Optimize Videos For Lack Of Sound

A lot of people watch videos with their sound off. You want your videos to not only get the message across even if they’re silent, but to engage the viewer to the point that they will turn the sound on. To optimize for the lack of sound, show captions, add text overlay, and be sure to use powerful, moving images.

3. Keep Mobile Videos Short

Although some viewers may be more willing to watch a longer video ad on their desktops, this is not so for mobile users. Mobile users are often on the go, which means that they’re not going to have the patience to watch a video that’s minutes long. Try to keep videos under 15 seconds long to help ensure that mobile users actually watch your whole video.

5 Types Of Marketing Videos You Should Think About Using

4. Customize Thumbnail Images

Many Facebook users will turn off autoplay on videos. However, just because some people won’t see your video ads play automatically doesn’t mean that they won’t watch them. You need to spark their interest by choosing a thumbnail image, which is a static image representing your video. Facebook will provide a number of options of still images that it pulls from your video ad. However, you’re not limited to these options–you can also upload a custom thumbnail instead. Make sure the image you use is of high quality and that it’s relevant to your ad.

5. Test Your Video Ads

To make sure your Facebook Video Ads perform to the best of their ability, perform A/B testing. You can create several versions of your video ads through Facebook by changing the creative, the placement, the product set, optimization events, and the audience. Test your ads for three to 14 days to get the most accurate results. Use the results to optimize your video ads so, thereby increasing their chances of performing successfully.

How Facebook Advertising Helps You

6. Analyze Performance

Make sure to analyze your video ads as you run them. The data you collect should help you when it comes to creating future video ads. For example, track which video ads had the highest levels of engagement, what times of the day your audience engaged with your videos, how many viewers visited your landing page after viewing a video ad, which videos were watched from beginning to end, and more.

Considering how effective video marketing is in general, you should be sure to take advantage of Facebook’s Video Ad feature. These are six Facebook Video Ads best practices that you should be sure to take note of before launching a video ad campaign on Facebook.

Utilizing PR Tools When Growing Your Company’s Brand Recognition

February 17, 2023/in Articles, Blog, Brand Development, Public Relations /by Dan Gartlan

Public relation is vital for a successful business marketing campaign. While marketing involves multiple bits and pieces, public relations ensure your target audience is receptive to your marketing messages by establishing higher brand recognition.

Successful public relations strategies can boost customer trust and convert potential customers into loyal followers. However, it’s critical to understand how PR works and how you can execute a successful campaign.

Define Your Value Proposition

Building an irresistible brand requires a unique value proposition that resonates with existing and potential customers. A value proposition defines your business and differentiates it from competitors.

The USP should focus on the target market, solutions to customer problems and overall benefits of your offer compared to the competition. Typically, brainstorming the answers reveals a pattern that helps you fine-tune the value proposition. The process requires diverse input to ensure the USP is unique and appealing.

Also, every business must formalize the offer in a mission and vision statement. While the documents may seem simple, organizations should strive to create a clear picture of their ideal brand. It can be hard to develop and cultivate a positive brand image without formal documents communicating your unique value proposition.

A refined value proposition helps you develop appropriate messages to promote to potential customers. Once you have a unique message, you can earn important media initiatives and boost brand recognition.

Establish Industry Thought Leadership to Gain Trust

Getting involved in your industry is critical for any business. You can start by identifying the media outlets and social media platforms your target audience uses and establish yourself as an industry expert. This way, media outlets, and journalists will want to tell your story.

Regardless of the size of your business, you can build brand recognition by dominating the news in your industry. In addition, it’s important to identify media outlets covering your industry and reach out when you have newsworthy announcements.

Getting your business featured in a popular industry trend can boost brand recognition even when multinational corporates dominate the landscape. For instance, a small financial organization can level the playing ground by securing consistent appearances in the media.

In addition, using public relations strategies to publish featured content can elevate your brand. However, scanty appearances may not be effective, so you may need to partner with a PR company to ensure consistent results.

Collaborate With Media Outlets

Building brand awareness requires positioning your company in front of your target audience. The digital landscape has made it easier to identify markets and effective media outlets for your campaigns. You can build a list of niche publications and media outlets focusing on your target audience.

And since PR is about relations, ensure your company introduction is attractive. Whether you want to appear in digital media or traditional advertising, ensure your offer is captivating to dominate the media.

Reporters get numerous pitches and story suggestions. Whenever your correspondent is interested in your story, act quickly by scheduling an interview or providing supporting information.

The goal is to establish your reputation as a media-friendly company that embraces reporters. Most media professionals are under enormous pressure to deliver results amidst resource cuts. Therefore, demonstrating your friendliness and collaboration traits can go a long way.

When a story has a high potential of creating brand awareness and benefiting your audience, make it easy and interesting to cover. Besides targeting the pitch to appropriate contacts, establishing great media relationships can help improve your PR strategy outcomes.

Studies show that 76% of journalists prefer brand press releases, and 57% want to get expert sources and data. Also, most journalists will quickly cover a brand story with multimedia.

Ensuring outstanding media collaboration means embracing targeted outreach with concise pitches. In addition, provide data and sources to back up new information.

Use Unique Stories to Highlight Your Brand’s Strengths

Your audience loves current and unique stories. Similarly, media outlets embrace timely stories with a unique twist told to the right audience.

Every business has a positive story about how its offers connect to the consumer and the pain points they serve. Therefore, focus on your brand’s users and find opportunities to craft stories highlighting your business and its solutions.

Regardless of the content, strive to educate your audience by contributing informative content on local press and websites. In addition, you can host a special event and shed light on trends and issues affecting your industry.

Alternatively, community activity sponsorships can be cost-effective opportunities for attracting attention from local media outlets. When you choose your media outlets well, experiential marketing and other events can boost your brand reputation over time.

Bottom Line

Successful PR programs may not be an overnight sensation, but long-term commitment can complement other marketing initiatives and ensure higher brand recognition. Since branding is critical in marketing, incorporating PR in your strategy can help your business establish industry authority and deeper customer connections.

Improving User Experience With Good Website Navigation Design

February 14, 2023/in Articles, Directors, Lead Nuturing, Website Design /by Terry Becker

It’s not a stretch to say that your website is one of — if not the — most important element of your inbound marketing strategy. Without it, there’s very little that you can do. Because of this, it’s essential to make sure that poor web design doesn’t frustrate your visitors. Content quality will not mean as much if visitors have trouble viewing your pages or finding what they’re looking for. This is why you need to make sure you focus on creating a user-friendly website navigation design.

Making Your Website Easy To Navigate

When someone visits your website, no matter how they got there, you’ll want them to spend as much time on it as possible. The more they engage with your site, the easier it becomes to nurture and eventually convert them. As such, you’ll want to make navigation through your website easy. Good website navigation design makes it easy to find links to your site’s main pages, as well as being able to navigate to those individual pages, conveniently.

Even if you do have a navigation bar with drop-down menus, it is important to note that most users, today, tend to prefer scrolling. They’ve become accustomed to scrolling because of the way most social media channels work. Therefore, instead of visitors clicking through your drop-down menu, a scrollable menu allows them to simply move their mouse over the menu to make it automatically drop-down. This way, they don’t have to click three or four times to get to the page they want to go to. Alternatively, they can just scroll through their options until they find the actual page they want to click on.

It’s a better idea to keep content on one page instead of breaking it up on multiple pages. Even if it’s a long-form piece, forcing the user to click on buttons at the end of each page that says continue to page 2, page 3, etc., is a hassle. Since they have to click to get to the next page, in addition to waiting for that page to load as well. Simply allowing them to scroll through the entire article will make your page more user-friendly.

Growth-Driven Web Design – Is It Right For Your Company?

Tips for Good Website Navigation Design

The following are a few more examples of how you can create a good website navigation design that will improve your user experience:

Use a responsive design – Your website navigation design may be well thought out for your desktop users, but it may not translate well to mobile devices. This happens due to the fact that most websites use a horizontal design, whereas screens on mobile devices are vertical. By using a responsive design, your navigation menu can be designed to turn into a mobile friendly hamburger-style menu.

Incorporate breadcrumbs – Breadcrumbs allow users to see what links they have followed to get to the page they are on. This makes it easy for them to backtrack to a previous page they were on if they got lost going through your site.

Link logo to your homepage – Make sure that the logo at the top of your page links to your homepage. This makes it easy for visitors to go back to the beginning, without searching for a link to your homepage.

Always display a link to your contact page – Displaying your contact information at the top of your page along with a link to your contact page makes you easier to reach.

Make links easy to click for mobile – Use buttons for CTAs that are easy for people to click on when using mobile devices.

Do You Need to Redesign Your Website

When designing your website, make sure that you carefully consider your website navigation design. Easy to use and clear navigation will help to improve your user experience, thereby making it easier to keep visitors engaged and on your website.

25 Website Must Haves For Driving Traffic, Leads & Sales

A Guide to the Decision Stage of the Buyer’s Journey

February 10, 2023/in Articles, Behavioral Marketing, Blog /by Nicole Wagner

After helping consumers learn about their problem and how they can solve it, you will want to present your product or service as the best option for that specific solution. It’s at this point that consumers are in the decision stage of the buyer’s journey.

What Is The Decision Stage Of The Buyer’s Journey?

The decision stage of the buyer’s journey is the last stage, the stage in which you close the sale. However, there’s still work to be done. Although the consumer has decided on a solution by this stage, they have yet to decide on a product or service or the vendor that they will purchase from.

During the decision stage, they will be doing research into the products and services that they are considering as a solution to their pain point. They will also research vendors that provide those products and services to determine if they are trustworthy. For example, if the consumer has decided to purchase a new computer, they may be looking to answer the following:

The pros and cons of different brand computers
The type of warranties offered by different computer vendors
The expected lifespan of different computer models
The different features of different computer models
Customer reviews of different computer vendors

Creating Content For The Decision Stage Of The Buyer’s Journey

You’ve done a massive amount of work to help nurture your leads through the first two stages of the buyer’s journey. You’ve done so by publishing a variety of different types of content addressing the awareness and consideration stages. At this point, you’re trying to get your leads over the finish line. This is why you need to have content that presents your brand as a trustworthy and reliable vendor and your product or service as the best option for their specific needs.

How do you drive website conversions throughout the buyer’s journey?

While this means that some of the content you’ll want to have available on various channels (from your website to social media to your emails) will need to be promotional, you can still provide more informative content as well. Types of content you’ll want to offer during this stage include downloadable white papers, case studies, use cases, which show off the benefits of your products or services. You’ll also want detailed product or service videos that include video demonstrations if possible.

Also, you will want to showcase exactly why they should choose to purchase from your business. This should be done by publishing customer reviews on your website and by encouraging reviews on social. You should consider creating customer testimonials as well–video testimonials tend to be extremely effective during this stage.

Creating Reasons to Choose Your Company

Last, but not least, give consumers a reason to choose your product or service over another brand. You can do so by offering a free trial of your product or service or a free consultation. This way they will get in touch with you. Services like Netflix and Amazon offer free 30-day trials. People jump on the chance to take advantage of such services for free and often end up purchasing the service in full at the end of their trial as a result.

The decision stage of the buyer’s journey is the third and last stage. You’ll want to encourage consumers to choose your company’s product or service by not only promoting your products and services, but also by informing the consumer about your products and services as well as about your company. The goal is to convince them that they can trust your brand. It’s also to show them that your product or service will meet their specific needs more so than any other option out there.

Download Our White Paper Guide To Learn How To Perfect Buyer Personas For Your Business

Why TV Advertising Remains Effective

February 3, 2023/in Articles, Directors /by Dan Gartlan

Over the past decade, there has been the perception that inbound marketing tactics, such as publishing blog content and expanding brand recognition by maintaining a strong social media presence, has eclipsed many outbound marketing tactics; however, this isn’t altogether true. Businesses are still having a lot of success with outbound marketing, especially TV advertising. The following are a few reasons why television ads can still play an effective part of your marketing campaign.

People Still Watch TV

While it’s true that many people (especially younger people) are spending more of their time watching streaming services, that doesn’t mean that there’s no audience to reach via TV advertising. Plenty of people still watch TV even though viewership has declined over the past decade. In fact, according to a UK study done last year, people still watch an average of 3 hours and 49 minutes of TV a day.

People Watch Live TV

While streaming services are attempting to build up their content libraries, there is one area in which they still lag behind TV, and that’s in the realm of live TV–specifically, sports. Live sports games broadcast on TV are still an enormous draw and an excellent way to reach certain audiences. Just take for example the Super Bowl, which allows a 30-second ad to reach roughly 100 million viewers. There’s something immediate and social about live TV that few streaming services have managed to replicate.

How To Transition From Traditional Advertising to Inbound Marketing

TV Can Benefit Inbound Marketing Strategies

The use of TV advertising can actually compliment your inbound activities. For example, you can use hashtags in your ads or display website addresses to encourage viewers to seek out more information online — something that’s easy for viewers to do since they often watch TV with their smartphones or tablets on hand.

Why Inbound Marketing Solutions Are Integral To Your Success

TV Will Never Die, It Will Evolve

Abandoning television advertising simply because you think it’s on the way out is not a good idea. Viewership may be trending down slightly and streaming channels may still be figuring out ways to eclipse their TV counterparts (for example, Amazon recently begun streaming NFL games), but that doesn’t mean TV is dying. An industry as big as TV doesn’t just go away–it evolves.

One of the reasons why streaming services are so popular is because they provide more customizability to their viewers. Viewers get to choose what they want to watch from the content that lives on each streaming platform instead of being forced to watch whatever’s programmed at certain times. TV has been resisting change for some time, but it won’t be long that the way TV works evolves; for example, once channels become available piecemeal (which seems inevitable) instead of grouped in packages, people will have much more control over what they’re paying for. This will also benefit advertisers since you’ll be able to more effectively target your demographics.

These are just a few reasons that you should still be investing in TV advertising as it remains and will most likely always remain an effective marketing technique.

What Experiential Marketing Companies Can Gain By Blending Experiential Marketing With Digital Works

January 27, 2023/in Articles, Directors /by Mark Beebe

Experiential marketing is becoming a popular tactic among companies who realize that audiences connect with brands more successfully if they are able to participate or engage directly with the brand. A great example of experiential marketing is Samsung’s efforts at the 2012 Olympics to introduce consumers to their new Galaxy S3. They set up booths throughout London where they allowed consumers to play with the phone or to have pictures of themselves taken with the phone that were then turned into personalized badges.

While experiential marketing is a very effective tactic in itself, experiential marketing companies should be sure to incorporate digital marketing to help increase the impact that it can have. The following are a few ways that experiential marketing companies can use digital technology to improve their experiential marketing efforts.

Promote Your Events

Using experiential marketing to engage your audience isn’t going to be very effective if you don’t have much of an audience in the first place. You should use digital marketing to promote whatever events you’re holding. For example, if your company is putting up booths in multiple locations during a specific event (such as the Samsung example during the London Olympics), then you’ll want to not only promote when you’re doing it, but the exact locations and times that you will be there.

You can do this by promoting the event on social media where it will get the most exposure. Make it possible to RSVP to the event so that you can track the number of attendants that you’re expecting. You could even promote the event, but not reveal the time and place unless someone RSVPs to create a more exclusive feeling. You can also use your email list to notify people of your event and what they can expect there.

5 Storytelling Techniques You Should Use

Create Real-Time Content

Creating content during the event can be helpful for a number of reasons. First of all, it gives audiences who weren’t able to attend a chance to see the effort you’ve put into creating an experience. While they won’t have the full experience of attending, they’ll get a general idea of what it was like and will be able to learn about whatever your event was about. For example, you could live stream parts of the event.

Besides providing more exposure for your event this way, it can also help convince audience members who didn’t attend to show up to your next event (or if your event is being held over multiple days, it could convince people to show up at the next scheduled event).

Encourage User-Generated Content

Use the content that your audience creates at the event to promote it. This can be especially effective for demonstrations of new products. Simply have a hashtag available that everyone can use to tag the content they create, such as pictures or videos recorded on their phones. There are other ways to encourage users to create content as well. For example, one food company had a professional photographer at their event to teach audience members techniques for taking pictures of food. They would then post the pictures they took on Instagram using the official hashtag that the company created.

Experiential marketing is a fantastic way to engage consumers, but you should be sure to leverage digital technology to get the most out of your experiential marketing efforts. These are a number of ways that experiential marketing companies can use digital technology to help increase the overall impact of their experiential marketing efforts.

Inside Adwords: Exploring The Differences Between Smart Display Campaigns & Custom Intent Campaigns

January 20, 2023/in Articles, Directors, SEO /by Nicole Wagner

The use of PPC (pay per click) advertising can be beneficial for countless reasons. Not only are PPC ads a great way to bring in more traffic, they are incredibly cost-effective and are particularly useful for trying out new keywords or copy. It’s why Google AdWords continues to be popular with advertisers. Let’s take a closer look inside AdWords to discover some of their newer PPC options, including their smart display ads and their custom intent ads.

Inside AdWords’ Smart Display Ads

Smart display ads are ads that are automated by Google. This helps to make creating display ads much easier since all you’ll need to do is submit your creative assets (such as images, headlines, subheaders, and copy) along with your cost-per-acquisition (CPA) goal and Google will determine what the best possible combination of these elements are in order to meet your CPA. Google will also automatically find placements for your ad.

There are a number of advantages to creating your ads this way. For example, benefits include:

The ability to test out different ad elements for other ad campaigns.
Test ads that haven’t been working to see if any elements are salvageable.
Find new placements.
Spend less time optimizing and managing your own ads.

However, it’s worth noting that there are a few drawbacks. Namely, you’re giving up a lot of control over your ad. For example, you can’t bid down, you can’t exclude placements, and you don’t have control over the devices your ads are placed on.

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Even though you do give up some control, what makes smart display ads worth using is the fact that Google will automatically test out different elements of your ad to find the best possible combination.

Inside Adwords’ Custom Intent Campaigns

The custom intent audiences option now offered by Google AdWords provides a more accurate way to target consumers who are looking to make a purchase right now. It’s the equivalent of being able to walk up to a customer who is browsing items inside of a physical store and engaging with them. Using custom intent audiences, you’ll have a much better chance of closing a sale since the audiences your ad will be targeting will be looking to buy something that’s similar to your product or service.

For example, if you’re marketing an airline service and want to target customers who are going on vacation, you could set your customer intent to target people who are looking to go on vacation in Hawaii. Not only can you target potential customers searching for flights to Hawaii on Google using keywords like Hawaii vacation or flights to Hawaii, but you can also reach them on YouTube while they are watching Hawaii travel videos.

Adwords’ Custom Intent Makes Finding Your Audience A Breeze

Using the custom intent audience feature is easy. When creating a display ad, simply select “target” and choose “intent.” You can then choose either ‘DIY” which allows you to combine links and topics in order to pursue customers who are most likely looking to buy what you are selling, or you can choose “Auto-generated,” which leaves the work to Google’s machine learning technology in order to create audiences that are exclusive to the data of your brand based on inference.

When creating your new audience, you’ll name the audience, enter any keywords or URLs that are related to your target audience, and then create it. Based on the custom audience you’ve created, you’ll be provided with useful information like estimated reach, associated keywords, and potential audiences according to phrase.

Although the custom intent audience feature can be extremely useful in reaching customers who are looking to buy immediately, it’s worth noting that this feature is only valuable as a short-term strategy. If you’re looking to nurture leads over the long-term, using this feature is not the best option.

Choosing Between Smart Display Ads and Custom Intent Audiences

When looking inside AdWords to determine what the best PPC option is for you, you need to figure out exactly what you’re goal is. If you’re trying to boost sales short term, then using the custom intent audience feature can be quite valuable. When it comes to smart display ads, there’s much more that you can use them for, whether it’s attracting more long-term leads, finding new places to reach your target audience, or identifying what elements of your ads are the most effective to help with future ad campaigns.