Directors Archives - Page 14 of 52 - Stevens & Tate Marketing

What’s Trending In Marketing July 2023

July 3, 2023/in Articles, Directors, News & Insights /by Nicole Wagner

Introducing our monthly newsletter, which is dedicated to bringing you the latest marketing trends and updates from around the world. Exclusively tailored for our valued subscribers, this newsletter serves as your go-to source for staying informed and up-to-date in the dynamic marketing landscape. As we delve into the intriguing rebranding journey of Peloton and the cutting-edge updates unveiled at Google Marketing Live 2023, we invite you to join us in exploring the exciting world of marketing together. Let’s embark on this journey of knowledge and discovery!

Noteworthy Marketing Trends and News

Peloton to relaunch brand as company continues to struggle

Peloton aims to reposition its brand to appeal to a wider demographic. While the brand is known for its at home bike services, the company looks to re-shift the brands image to be more welcoming to new users. The new brand identity and creative campaign of Peloton aims to convey an inclusive and dynamic image of the company, which showcases the company’s new offering for all ages, levels and sizes. Pelotons relaunch is an example of the importance of adapting and evolving to reach new audiences. Click here to read more.

Bandaid named most trusted brand.

Band-Aid has reclaimed its position as America’s most trusted brand, surpassing Amazon, Lysol, and UPS. According to Morning Consult’s Most Trusted Brands report for 2023, this reaffirms consumer preference for established brands. Notably, among the ten brands listed, four belong to the self-care category, further emphasizing consumer trust in longstanding personal care products. The success of Band-Aid and other trusted brands serves as a compelling example of the enduring value consumers place on reliability and familiarity. Read more here.

NFL plans to grow global markets

The NFL takes proactive steps to expand its global markets program, seizing lucrative opportunities in untapped markets. This strategic initiative allows NFL teams to gain access to international markets, enabling them to secure marketing rights and engage fans on a global scale. In the upcoming 2023 season, 21 teams will actively participate across 14 distinct international markets. Furthermore, by promoting the game of American Football worldwide, the NFL’s Global Markets Program seeks to forge strong connections with fans across the globe. Read more about the NFL global markets expansion here.

Find these articles interesting? You may like: 4 essential Brand Components.

Improving Your Marketing Program

5 Strategies to Gain More YouTube Subscribers – June 27, 2023

Video content tends to engage audiences much more than any other type of content. It’s why YouTube and other video social media platforms are so popular. YouTube is not only one of the internets most popular social media platforms, but it also ranks as the second largest search engine globally, right after Google. With that being said, YouTube is a power marketing tool that you should be utilizing today! Check out our recent article to learn how to attract a YouTube following and boost lead generation.

Examples Of How Smart Goals Should Align With Your Business Goals – June 23, 2023

In todays dynamic marketing landscape, setting clear objectives is paramount. That is why aligning SMART goals with your business objectives is crucial to the success of your brand. This article dives into the significance of aligning SMART goals with your business goals, as well highlighting the synergistic relationship between the two. By understanding how SMART goals can drive brand growth, you’ll gain valuable insights into optimizing your strategies and achieving measurable results. Read the full Article here.

4 Strategies of a Successful Attraction Marketing Formula – June 21, 2023

It’s no secret that inbound marketing plays a vital role in brand success. which is why it’s important to take a strategic approach in order to maximize your results. That is where attraction marketing comes into play, by shifting the focus onto your audience, your brand awareness will increase. In this article, we explore the four key strategies that form the foundation of an effective attraction marketing formula.

Recent Marketing Trends, Reports, and Updates

The Email Marketing market is poised for significant growth in the near future.

According to a recent GlobeNewswire report, email marketing continues to prove its effectiveness and resilience as a marketing strategy. Furthermore, the global email marketing market has experienced substantial growth in 2022 and is projected to keep growing. In fact, with a valuation of 911.3 million USD in the previous year, the market is expected to reach 1.08 billion USD by 2029. These projections, based on in-depth analysis of the market’s current size, as well as trends and economic factors, highlight the enduring relevance of email marketing in the digital landscape. Specifically, email marketing offers direct and personalized communication capabilities that resonate with businesses and their target audience. Moreover, it provides an effective means of reaching and engaging customers in a highly competitive market. While email marketing has been around for some time, its continued growth and success demonstrate its enduring value in the marketing world.

Forbes predicts 10 marketing trends for 2023.

Forbes has created a compelling list of the top 10 marketing predictions for 2023, as outlined by industry experts. Notably, companies will prioritize digital expectations, authority, AI concerns, and accuracy. These insights highlight the need for adaptation and innovation in marketing strategies. Furthermore, exploring these predictions provides valuable insights into shaping the marketing landscape. Moreover, adapting to evolving consumer behavior will be paramount. This includes prioritizing seamless physical-digital experiences, embracing social commerce, integrating video content, optimizing selling processes, and emphasizing customer retention. In conclusion, these emerging trends highlight the significance of meeting digital demands, building credibility, fostering transparency with AI, catering to evolving consumer preferences, creating cohesive brand experiences, utilizing social commerce platforms, and maximizing customer relationships. To read more, click here.

Google Marketing Live 2023: Here’s what you need to know

The Google Marketing Live conference, held in San Francisco, showcased updates on Google’s marketing landscape. With a primary focus on integrating AI into Google ads, the conference unveiled new opportunities for advertisers. Notably, one innovative feature introduced during the conference was the Google Search Generative Experience (SGE), which leverages AI to integrate ads into conversational chat, creating a more engaging and personalized user experience.. SGE offers personalized recommendations based on previous interactions, delivering relevant assets. In conclusion, this conference exemplifies AI’s influence in marketing, driving innovation and transforming audience engagement. AI continues to reshape marketing practices. For more insights, click here.

5 Strategies to Gain More YouTube Subscribers

June 27, 2023/in Articles, Directors, Search & Social /by Nicole Wagner

As you probably know, video content tends to engage audiences much more than any other type of content. It’s why YouTube is so popular. However, what you may not realize is that YouTube is not only considered one of the most popular–and biggest–social platforms, it’s also the second biggest search engine on the web behind Google. As such, YouTube is not something you can ignore. In order to leverage YouTube to attract more leads, you’ll need to gain more subscribers on YouTube. This is a lot easier said than done. After all, just posting videos will not increase subscribers. To do so, follow these five ways to gain YouTube subscribers outlined below:

1. Create Content Worth Subscribing To

You’d be surprised how many people make the mistake of thinking that quantity is more important than quality. You might manage to get more views by uploading more videos, but nobody is going to subscribe to your channel if your videos are average at best. Put more time into creating good content — this means making sure your videos are relevant and informative and that they are highly produced–and you’re more likely to gain subscribers. A subscriber is worth way more than a view, after all, since subscribers are more likely to keep watching your videos.

2. Organize Playlists By Engagement

Organizing your videos into playlists makes it easier for viewers to consume your content. When creating your playlist, organize your videos by engagement. This means putting the videos with the highest audience attention rate at the top of your playlist. The reason you should do this is because viewers who finish a video will be shown the next video on the playlist. They are more likely to watch through the video if it has a high audience attention rate (it’s usually an indication of its quality). Videos with the lowest audience retention rate should bring up the back of your playlist. Essentially, your goal should be to hook your viewers by showing them the very best of your video content. Youtube Icon

3. End Your Videos With A Subscription CTA

Always end your videos with a call-to-action (CTA) asking the viewer to subscribe. Viewers who watch all the way through your videos obviously kept watching it for one reason or another and as such, are more likely to subscribe to your channel in order to have easy access to new videos as they come. It might seem obvious, but this is one of the best ways to gain more subscribers since not all viewers will think to subscribe if not encouraged to after watching a video.

Check out our article: Powerful Call-to-Action Phrases to Increase Clicks

4. Optimize Your Videos With Relevant Keywords

Just because a video is visual content does not mean it can’t be optimized for SEO using keywords. You can attract subscribers to your channel by properly optimizing your videos and your channel using relevant, high-quality keywords. You can use these keywords in your videos’ titles, descriptions, transcription files, thumbnail files, and video files. Remember, YouTube is a massive search engine in itself, so you’ll want to make it easy for your content to be found.

5. Use Vibrant Thumbnails For Your Videos

You’re not going to get subscribers if users don’t click on your video links. Take care to choose high-quality and relevant thumbnails for your videos. This will help your videos stand out on YouTube’s search page.

YouTube can be a very effective platform when it comes to attracting new leads, especially if you manage to gain subscribers. Be sure to use these five tips to gain YouTube subscribers to your company’s YouTube channel.

Learn To Use Social Media To Find New Leads

Examples Of How Smart Goals Should Align With Your Business Goals

June 23, 2023/in Articles, Directors, Inbound Marketing /by Dan Gartlan

One of the most important things a company can do is set regular business goals. They point the business in the right direction and keep activities focused on achieving specific objectives. Now, writing down a general goal is a good start, but to make them happen, you must take action. And that is why your SMART goals must align with your business development goals. You have more than likely heard of SMART goals. They are goals that are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time bound. Here are a couple of SMART goal examples to get you started.

5 Smart Goal Examples For Business Development

Example #1: Expanding your wedding business’s regional footprint

Let’s say you want to expand your wedding business’s geographic footprint to open up new markets and to increase revenues. Here is an example of how a SMART goal would align with this business goal.

Specific: I will lease a 2000 square-foot storefront in downtown Chicago.
Measurable: The lease will be signed no later than January 15th.
Attainable: I will contact three leasing agents who specialize in storefront properties in downtown Chicago and make a trip specifically to the area to find the ideal property.
Relevant: I have bridal customers and consultants from the Chicago area asking if I would open another location in their area to make it easier for them to shop. This opens up a new market and customer base, with a high probability of successful growth.
Time-Bound: All of this must be done by January 15th, to allow for the store to open in early February, near the start of the Spring bridal season.

Example #2: Lower Shipping Costs

Let’s say you want to lower your shipping costs but want to do it without lowering customer satisfaction. Here is an example of a SMART goal that aligns with this business objective:

Specific: I will switch all of my shipping from UPS to Fedex.
Measurable: I will complete the transition to Fedex by July 1st.
Attainable: I will contact Fedex and set up a new merchant account to start the process. I will also order the appropriate labels and software updates to make this transition as easy as possible.
Relevant: Fedex’s rates for shipping to the region of the country where most of my customers are is 20% lower than UPS. They also deliver within 3 to 5 business days, which is the same as UPS. The lower cost and same delivery time should maintain customer satisfaction levels while lowering costs.
Time-Bound: I will make the change by July 1st to coincide with the beginning of the new quarter to allow clean tracking of the impact this change makes to shipping costs and customer satisfaction.

These SMART goal examples should help you develop your own. When you align your actionable goals with your broader business goals, you will see progress. Can you give any other SMART goal examples that align with your business objectives?

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

4 Strategies of a Successful Attraction Marketing Formula

June 21, 2023/in Articles, Attraction Marketing, Directors, Marketing Strategy /by Dan Gartlan

Almost every business engages in inbound marketing in one way or another–and they should. Inbound marketing is an effective way to increase your brand awareness, build authority, and find new leads. However, it’s extremely broad. For instance, you could set up a social media page and that would be considered inbound marketing. To truly get the most out of your inbound marketing efforts consider engaging in attraction marketing, which emphasizes a strategy that focuses on your audience. The following are the four main strategies that make up an effective attraction marketing formula:

Focus on Story Branding

Storytelling is an essential way to connect or relate with audiences. One of the common challenges businesses face is finding a way to not only engage with their audience, but to connect on a personal level. Using storytelling to get your message across is one of the most effective ways to do this. In particular, you should focus on story branding. Story branding involves sharing information about your brand through the power of storytelling.

For example, instead of just saying “our company provides the best product,” story branding would involve explaining why your company was established (to provide a service or product missing on the market), what your values and beliefs are, what your goals as a company are, and how you plan to accomplish those goals. This allows you to connect on a more emotional and relatable level.

Strengthen Thought Leadership

Position yourself as an authority within your industry by producing content that is relevant to your target audience and that is more helpful than promotional. The stronger your thought leadership is, the more you’ll be trusted by potential leads. Not only can you strengthen thought leadership by regularly publishing high-quality content, you can also do so by regularly engaging with your audience on social media, answering questions or concerns that they have, contributing to group discussions, contributing to posts by followers or by other thought leaders, and more.

Nurture Leads

Capturing a lead isn’t equivalent to closing a sale. You can’t just assume that they are ready to buy if they’ve given you their email address. You need to nurture the leads that you’ve captured until they are ready. A good way to get a lead to unsubscribe from your email list is to immediately send them promotional content pressuring them into purchasing something. Instead, send them more in-depth content based on their past level of engagement with your site (and the information they’ve provided in your opt-in form). The goal is to build a relationship so that by the time they do make a purchase, they’re more likely to stay loyal to your brand.

Focus On Customer Service

Last, but not least, focus on customer service. Don’t just dismiss your leads once they turn into customers because you’re chasing the next sale. Increasing customer loyalty is important. The better their experience is (and continues to be) the more likely it is that they will stay loyal and even recommend your brand to friends and colleagues.

The most effective way to implement inbound marketing into your marketing strategy is by focusing on this attraction marketing formula. Doing so will help you attract leads, connect with them on an emotional level, and build lasting relationships with them.

How Interactive Content Can Boost Your Inbound Marketing Efforts

June 15, 2023/in Articles, Blog, Content Marketing, Directors, Inbound Marketing, Marketing Strategy /by Mark Beebe

Marketing has changed drastically over the years, and as a result, marketers are finding new ways to stay relevant in an increasingly competitive landscape. The need to catch the audience’s attention has never been more intense. One technique that has proven quite effective is using interactive content to drive up inbound marketing efforts. In the sections below, we’ll discuss how interactive content works, its benefits, and some strategies you can implement to boost your marketing.

What is Interactive Content?

Interactive content is an engaging form of content that requires the audience to participate. That means instead of just reading or watching something passively, the audience must interact with the content somehow.

This particular type of content is so effective because it creates a more immersive and personalized experience for the audience. With this type of content, your audience isn’t just consuming the content but being an active participants. This makes the content more memorable and enjoyable.

So, what are some examples of interactive content? Well, if you have ever been on your favorite social media platform and seen a post that compelled you to engage in one way or another, that is one perfect example. More often, this content comes in the form of a survey, social media polls, quizzes, games, or interactive maps.

Why Invest in Interactive Content?

Modern-day marketers leverage interactive and personalized content everywhere, from landing pages and blog posts to social media channels. Here’s how using this content will enhance your marketing plan:

Better Insights into Consumer Preferences

With interactive content, you can leverage the data obtained from quizzes, polls, and surveys to understand your audience’s engagement rates. This understanding helps you tailor your content to your audience’s preferences, resulting in more effective marketing and lead nurturing.

Boosts Conversion Rates

Since interactive elements demand user engagement, your target audience is more likely to take action. Brands like IKEA and Facebook have used interactive elements, such as virtual and augmented reality, to increase their reach and achieve higher click-through rates. If implemented correctly, interactive content can also be useful in your senior living marketing campaigns.

Unleashes Creativity

The opportunities for creativity with interactive content are limitless. With these elements, you can create a unique brand experience that sets you apart from the competition. Many interactive and evergreen content pieces have reusable value, meaning consumers may return to engage with the content multiple times, driving continued engagement.

Improves Audience’s Experience

Interactive and highly personalized content can enhance a prospective customer’s experience by providing useful information or tools that can help solve their problems. By providing valuable interactive resources, you can strengthen your authority in your industry and build a more loyal audience.

Better Brand Awareness

Interactive, branded content can help drive brand awareness by providing viewers with a unique, memorable experience. As more people find value in your content, they’re more likely to share it on social media, generating word of mouth and referrals.

Levels up Your SEO Game

Interactive content can help improve your website’s SEO by encouraging visitors to engage with it. As a result, the time visitors spend on your site increases, signaling to search engines that your content is engaging, informative, and of high value.

Interactive Content Strategies to Consider

If you want to enhance your inbound marketing strategy, tap into the various interactive content strategies. From polls to interactive landing pages, these strategies can help engage consumers, collect information, and increase sales. Here’s what to implement and how:

Quizzes/Surveys

Quizzes or surveys are fun and engaging forms of interactive and personalized content that are becoming increasingly popular in inbound marketing. They are commonly used to educate, engage and entertain the audience, and when done creatively, they have a good chance of going viral.

For instance, social media polls and surveys offer an effective way to encourage audience participation on a given topic. The quizzes can capture valuable insights into the audience’s maturity in the subject matter and can help boost your inbound marketing strategies.

Interactive Infographics

Approximately 1 in 3 marketers admit that attracting user intention is their biggest marketing challenge. That is why interactive infographics have become increasingly popular in recent years. Unlike static or traditional infographics, interactive types use buttons, statistics, and quizzes to grab the audience’s attention and engage them deeper.

These infographics keep the readers on your site longer, increasing the chances that they will convert into leads or customers. The interactive elements also make your content more shareable, which can lead to increased brand awareness and improved search engine rankings.

And while creating interactive infographics may require more time and resources than traditional infographics, the benefits can be worth it. By providing an immersive experience for your audience, you build a stronger relationship and stand out in a crowded digital landscape.

Interactive Landing Pages

In today’s highly competitive digital landscape, interactive landing pages have become a crucial element of inbound marketing. The goal of a landing page is to generate conversions. Adding interactivity to landing pages can trigger a visitor’s desire, increasing engagement and the likelihood of conversion.

Interactive landing pages enable visitors to engage and participate, creating a unique user experience that differentiates your website from competitors. Thoughtfully incorporating visual and animated content will enhance your landing pages. This increases click-through rates and ultimately generates more leads.

The above techniques are a few interactive content marketing strategies you can implement in your business. Other options include the use of interactive tools such as calculators, interactive PDFs, interactive videos, interactive presentations, etc.

Bottom Line

For the longest time, inbound marketing has become integral to nearly all major businesses and industries. The simple reason for this is that, unlike advertising, inbound marketing focuses on creating value for the prospect and building long-term relationships. However, competition is quickly catching up, and marketers turn to interactive elements to make their marketing techniques more creative and innovative.

When creating interactive content, it’s vital to take a customer-centric approach. That means understanding the audience’s needs and preferences and creating content and experiences that speak directly to them.

50 Most Powerful Call-to-Action Phrases

June 13, 2023/in Articles, Call To Action Phrases, Direct Marketing, Directors, Inbound Marketing, Lead Nuturing /by Nicole Wagner

Are you looking to increase your conversion rate? Call-to-Actions are an essential part of the conversion process, but what kinds of Call-to-Actions should you put on your website? CTAs should be simple yet effective, and should catch the attention of your visitors. The formula for a successful CTA page title consists of combining such sales buzzwords as “free,” “discount,” “offer,” “gift,” “guarantee,” with action-oriented words like “click,” “download,” “request,” and “send.” Listed below are 50 powerful Call-to-Action phrases that visitors can’t resist clicking on.

50 Powerful Call-to-Action Phrases

Download now
Click here
Join now
Download here
Start now
Click here for details
I urge you to…
Get a free…
Talk to an expert
Immediate download
While supplies last
Money back guarantee
Money back guarantee, no questions asked
Get it now!
Act quickly
Free shipping
Shipping discount
Come in for a free consultation
Come see us today
Reserve your spot now
Come in today
Start your trial
Start your free trial
Offer expires…
Satisfaction guaranteed
We’d like to hear from you
I can’t wait to hear from you
Limited availability
Limited time offer
Best value
For more details call…
Please don’t hesitate to call
We’re waiting for your call!
Send for our free brochure
Send for our free catalog
Subscribe to our email list
Subscribe to our newsletter
Send in your application today!
Apply here
Order now and receive a free gift
Tell us what you think
Take our quiz!
Sign up online at…
Get started today
Request your FREE quote today
Just reach for your phone
Members only/Subscribers only
Contact us
It’s important that you respond promptly
Download our eBook for more information

Click here to learn more about powerful CTA phrases that increase clicks!

Now that you know what attention-grabbing Call-to-Actions look like, you can implement your own. Don’t just copy and paste the CTA phrases from the list above. Tweak the CTA phrases so that they apply specifically to your company and your products and/or services. For example, instead of just saying, “Start your free trial,” you can say “Start your free trial with (insert company name here) so your CTA is more personalized. Use these phrases/Quotes as a template for your website’s CTAs, sit back, and watch the clicks roll in!

What is Ingredient Branding & How Does It Work?

June 9, 2023/in Articles, Brand Development, Directors, Marketing Strategy /by Mark Beebe

There are many different marketing strategies to employ to increase the value and name recognition of your business. There are traditional marketing strategies, like commercials, billboards, and events. Then there are digital marketing strategies, like social media advertising, contests/giveaways, and community engagement.

Each of these methods can be a great strategy for getting your business name out there, generating new leads and customers, and growing your business. If you’ve been in business for awhile and already have an established business name, then you have some potential advantages for increasing your business’s value and brand recognition. One of these advantages is a strategy marketers call ingredient branding.

What is Ingredient Branding?

Ingredient branding is a marketing strategy where a component of the business is branded as a separate entity. This helps to add more value to the parent company and make their product/service seem superior to its competitors.

You’ve probably seen this strategy in use several times before without even realizing it. Here are a few examples of ingredient branding by large brands:

Dodge’s Hemi engines
Citgo’s TriCLEAN fuel
Dupont’s Teflon
Intel’s Intel Inside

Intel Inside is actually credited with the conception of ingredient branding back in the ’90s, and was the first success story of having an ingredient helping to promote their business.

How Does Ingredient Branding Work?

Each of these ingredients were developed and branded separately from the main business to make their product seem better. Dodge put together an entire campaign around “That thing got a Hemi?” to help promote the engines they use in their trucks. When Citgo started branding its TriCLEAN fuel, it was able to focus more on the quality of its fuel over its competition, rather than only competing with gas prices.

These two cases are specifically about an already well-known company branding an ingredient that it already uses to help increase value of its product.

But there are other ways that ingredient branding can work. Some products are already ingredients in and of themselves. Let’s think of a few:

Tide detergent
Arm & Hammer baking soda
Splenda sweetener
OnStar
Oreo

And so many more.

Let’s dive into these examples. Tide detergent is already a well-known brand. However, you’ll often see other cleaning supplies that contain Tide. Since these products know that consumers love Tide detergent, they’ve worked with the company to include Tide as an ingredient and help promote their product.

This works both ways, though. Including Tide as an ingredient in another company’s product, it receives even more promotion for their own brand. So essentially, the financial deal struck between the two companies is mutually beneficial.

Arm & Hammer is another popular ingredient brand. You’ll see products like cat litter, toothpaste, and more that contain Arm & Hammer baking soda. Splenda sweetener is another ingredient brand that consumers will commonly see promoted among other products.

Back to vehicles, customers see OnStar’s security service as an amenity when buying a car. This means that customers will pay more for a car with this feature installed, which can be pretty valuable for an automaker.

And finally, Oreo is a popular cookie that is sometimes used as an ingredient in other products, like cookies and cream ice cream, McDonald’s McFlurries, and coffee flavoring.

Learn more about 7 Steps To Launching a Packaging Brand

Can Ingredient Branding Help Your Business?

If your business isn’t prominent enough to be branded as an ingredient, perhaps your business is one that can benefit from including an ingredient in its product or service. By including a well-known ingredient in your business model, you’re able to promise a level of quality that is already well-known to consumers.

One example of an ingredient in the digital marketing world is social media scheduling tool Buffer. If possible, many new SaaS companies in the digital marketing will offer Buffer integration with their service because they know how popular Buffer is.

Offering a well-known ingredient in your product or service can be a great way to promote your product to consumers who already use that ingredient in other products.

Ingredient branding is a great way to provide more value and marketability to your business. What are some popular ingredient brands that you’ve heard of?

4 Essential Brand Components

June 6, 2023/in Articles, Blog, Brand Development, Directors, Marketing Strategy /by Dan Gartlan

There’s a common misconception that many people have that a “brand” is basically just the name of the company and the logo that they use. While these elements contribute to the overall brand of a business, the term “brand” is actually much more comprehensive than that. It involves many different components, which is why it takes a lot of thought in order to successfully develop your brand. The following are the four main brand components that you will need to address when building your brand and what kinds of strategies you can put into place to further develop those components.

1. Brand Identity

Your brand identity is how you want your brand to be perceived. It’s important that you know what your brand identity is and what you want it to be. If you don’t, how is anyone else supposed to know? You’re going to have a tough time generating brand awareness if you lack a strong brand identity. The following are a few steps that you should take to establish your brand identity:

Identify your mission

What was the reason you established your company in the first place? What is your company’s goal? Consumers want to know what your mission is (and they don’t want to hear that it’s “to make a profit”) and it will reflect who you are as a company.
Establish your unique value proposition

Your unique value proposition is what sets you apart from your competitors. It’s a statement of how your offer benefits your customers, how you will meet the needs of your customers, and what makes your offer unique. Every marketing campaign you run should align with your unique value proposition.
Create your brand’s visual identity

The visual elements of your brand certainly factor into your brand identity. Just consider the logos and color palettes of some of the biggest companies out there, from Facebook’s simple logo and use of blue to McDonald’s golden arch and yellow and red palette. A strong logo that’s instantly recognizable is important, but so is choosing your colors. Different colors have different meanings and the colors you choose can have a psychological impact on your audience as well. For example, many fast-food restaurants use red and yellow because that combination of colors is thought to stimulate the appetite. Just keep in mind that consistency is key. If you decide to use shades of blue in your logo and on your website, then you should use those same colors for your social media pages, email newsletters, and physical location as well.
Increase brand recognition

It’s going to take some time to get your vision of your brand identity out to the masses. You’ll want to generate awareness of your brand to do this through a variety of marketing efforts, such as building a website that emphasizes your mission and unique value proposition, creating content that’s optimized for SEO, using social media to engage with consumers and to post your content, and more. It’s also vital that you make sure your mission, unique value proposition, and visual identity are consistent across all platforms. If it’s not, it will end up hurting your brand identity.

2. Brand Image

Your brand image is similar to your brand identity in that it deals with how your brand is perceived. However, whereas your brand identity is how you want your brand to be perceived, brand image is how your brand is actually perceived. Consider your brand image as the reputation you currently have with the general public. Take for example United Airlines. Not long ago, they updated their brand design in an attempt to strengthen their brand identity as a “thoughtful, modern, and innovative airline.” However, their brand identity and brand image are currently quite different from each other after numerous massive PR failures regarding their customer service. Keeping that in mind, the following are a few ways to build and maintain a positive brand image:

Spread your message via PR

Use public relations to spread your key messages as well as relevant news concerning your company. You can do this through news outlets, trade publications, and even online blogs. Public relations will help you raise awareness of your brand and what you’re doing, thereby helping to improve your brand image.
Establish a social presence

Social media is an incredibly effective way to build your brand image, whether it’s by sharing content with consumers, keeping consumers up to date on the latest news and product launches, spreading awareness of your message, and engaging with consumers on a personal level. In fact, you can even use social media to address negative comments. It’s a good way to repair potential damage done to your brand image as a result of a poor customer experience by showing that you care and trying to correct the situation.
Create high-quality content

Content will help to increase brand awareness by bringing in more web traffic. However, it can also help to build your brand authority. By publishing content that is relevant to your company and to your audience (and that’s of high quality), you’ll become a trustworthy source of information, which — in turn — will help improve your reputation and increase brand trust.

3. Brand Culture

Brand culture refers to your company’s core values and how you set an example for those values. Businesses have always

emphasized certain values; however, those values were often things like “reliability” or “honesty.” Values that are more equivalent to basic ethics. While those are important values to hold onto, more and more businesses have begun taking moral stances as well as political stances in addition to generally accepted values. These types of values feed into your brand culture as well. Take Nike for example. They have taken strong social positions by running commercials backing Colin Kaepernick and recently touting the importance of the women’s U.S. soccer team’s World Cup win. These are branding efforts touting their championing of equality, which has become a part of their brand culture. The following are a few tips to help you establish your brand culture:

Define your values

Define exactly what your values are and how your company lives out those values. Don’t be afraid of taking a stance if there’s a particular stance that you want to take. Using the Nike example again, their backing of Kaepernick was considered controversial and plenty of consumers did not agree with their position. However, those that did agree with their position became even more strongly aligned with Nike’s brand. You can’t please everyone, but by sticking to your values, you’ll be more likely to strengthen your relationship with many of your customers.
Spread awareness of your values

Let consumers know about your values by declaring them on your website or by encouraging discussion about your values on social media. Publishing content that backs your values is an effective method as well.
Ensure that your company reflects your values

There’s nothing consumers hate more than a hypocrite. If you’re flaunting your support for equal pay across social media and in your marketing efforts, then you better be practicing what you preach. Your brand culture is incredibly dependent on your ability to embrace your own values within your company.

4. Brand Personality

Your brand personality refers to the human characteristics that your company has. Developing a brand personality is vital to connecting with your audience on an emotional level and for making your brand relatable. Because of this, make sure that you use the following tips to develop your brand personality:

Learn who your audience is

Understanding your audience is something that you need to do from the very beginning. It’s an important step in building your brand identity as well. However, it’s particularly important when it comes to developing your brand personality. The way you present yourself and the way that you communicate should reflect not only who the audience is but what they expect. For example, if you have a younger audience, then a dry, formal tone may not resonate with them. However, if your audience is older, using younger slang and current pop culture references may go over their heads.
Engage with your audience

While you can get your personality across in the content you write, it’s easier to do through engaging with people. It’s why using social media is so important. Your entire audience sees your interactions and it helps establish your personality a certain way. For example, Wendy’s has a reputation for having a playful personality because of their use of humor and the pretend feuds that they get into with other brands on Twitter.
Be consistent in tone

If you’re going to be funny and informal on one platform, you need to make sure that personality carries over to all of the other platforms you use, both online and offline. If you’re inconsistent, it will hurt your ability to develop a cohesive brand personality, which will only confuse your audience.

These are the four main brand components that you will need to address when developing your brand strategy. A strong brand requires a strong brand identity, brand image, brand culture, and brand personality. Implementing a successful brand strategy that develops all four of these components increases brand trust, loyalty, and awareness.

Digital Communication Tools to Help Build a Human Brand

May 30, 2023/in Blog, Digital, Directors, Inbound Marketing, Marketing Strategy /by Mark Beebe

Whether you’re a brand looking to establish a human connection with your audience or an individual seeking to engage with peers and build professional networks, leveraging these digital communication tools will undoubtedly enhance your ability to connect, collaborate, and succeed in the digital age.

The success of your brand depends on much more than just convincing a potential customer to try your product. While in the past the customer experience has been based around the product being offered, these days, you need to look at the big picture. It’s not just about the customer experience in regards to your product. It’s about the emotional connection that they are able to form with your brand.

Customers don’t just want a product, they want a relationship with the brand that is selling them that product. You need to focus on fostering an emotional connection instead of just trying to build awareness for a certain product. Fortunately, building an emotional connection with your audience is easier than ever before with the number of digital communication tools that are at your disposal.

The Importance Of An Emotional Connection

Customers are human beings. They have hopes, dreams, and feelings. In a world where their product choices are practically limitless, they will want much more out of a brand. They do not want to engage with a corporation. Customers want to engage with a brand that’s relatable on a personal level. Their desire for connection in such a world is not surprising. A brand that is able to touch them emotionally is going to make them more engaged.

There are many ways that you can do this; reinforcing the beliefs or perspective of your audience, supporting the goals or perspective of your audience, or challenging your audience to do greater things.

Creating a Brand with Social Listening and What Tools To Use

How Digital Communication Tools Can Help Foster An Emotional Connection

Engaging on an emotional level with your audience is easier than it’s ever been, as long as you make the effort to do so. The following are just a few ways that digital communication tools can help you to connect with your audience emotionally and to build meaningful relationships with them:

Video content – When it comes to content, few other forms are able to engage audiences on an emotional level like video content. There are numerous reasons for this. First of all, people consume visual content much more easily than written content. Secondly, you can use actors or even real figures that audiences can relate to on a personal level. Thirdly, you can emphasize certain emotions much more effectively through the production of video, from the look of how it was filmed to the type of music that’s used to how the video is edited.
Segmentation – Segmenting your leads and customers based on the data you’ve collected (via opt-in forms, surveys, and more) will provide you with valuable insight into who your audience is and how you can connect with them. It also allows you to personalize your content much more effectively, which will make it easier to drive engagement.
Social interaction – The use of social channels makes it easy to engage with your audience directly. Direct interaction makes it easier to build meaningful relationships. You’ll have a bigger emotional impact on those who witness the interactions on social media as well.

How to Improve Your Social Signals for SEO

Building a human brand will help you build long-term relationships with your audience based on real emotional connections. Use the digital communication tools available to you to emphasize emotion in your marketing efforts. Doing so will help your audience relate to you on a more personal level, thereby driving engagement with your brand.

Brand Leveraging: Partnering with a Positive Brand Brings Attention to Your Own

May 23, 2023/in Articles, Blog, Directors, Media /by Dan Gartlan

Brand leveraging is quickly becoming more common as it becomes harder for messages to break through the clutter. This marketing strategy uses the power of an existing brand to support a company’s entry into a new, but related product category by communicating valuable product information to the consumer.

Utilizing recognizable pop culture can help you establish credibility. It adds emotion, and further draw in a potential customer- and more and more companies are jumping on the bandwagon.

Incorporating Recognizable Visual Stimuli in Brand Leveraging

Combining your product with recognizable TV and movie characters has a great impact on a customer.

For example, In Walmart’s recent commercial the owners of notoriously famous cars use their Grocery Pickup service in preparation for Super Bowl LIII. As Gary Numan’s futuristic song “Cars” plays in the background, drivers race to Walmart in iconic vehicles, including the “Ghostbusters” car, Lightning McQueen from “Cars,” Batman’s Batmobile, the “Dumb and Dumber” dog car, KITT from “Knight Rider”, Scooby Doo’s Mystery Machine, the “Back to the Future” DeLorean, and even Cinderella’s pumpkin carriage. Every generation can recognize this ad, there is something for everyone.

Walmart’s U.S. Chief Marketing Officer Barbara Messing said in a statement on the store’s website that this ad is the “biggest and first-ever cross-platform national marketing campaign for Walmart Grocery Pickup.

Five Great Examples to Improve Brand Marketing Strategy Using Amazon Alexa

Familiar Celebrity Voice Endorsements in Brand Leveraging

When a celebrity endorses a certain product, you can’t always see their face. Sometimes, the only thing you can recognize is their voice. However, this still has a powerful effect on potential customers.
If you’ve ever watched a television commercial and felt for sure that you knew the voice-over artist from somewhere, chances are, you’re right.

John Hamm’s Voice for Mercedes Benz

John Hamm, known for his role as Don Draper in Mad Men, voices Mercedes Benz commercials. His soothing and yet serious voice is hard to miss, further drawing in the potential customer. It also leaves the viewer curious and perhaps wanting more. The mystery of a faceless celebrity seems to have an effect of intrigue on viewers.

Julia Roberts for Nationwide Insurance

Without being in front of the screen, Julia Roberts can be heard discussing the benefits of being a member of Nationwide Insurance in some of their recent commercials. “When we were considering how to bring our message to life, we were looking for a familiar voice that would bring our brand attributes to life,” Jennifer Hanley, senior VP-brand marketing for Nationwide, said in a statement to Ad Age. “Julia Roberts’ voice brings an assuring, and confident tone to the campaign that resonates well with our target audience.”

Using Memorable Songs in Your Ads

Though large brands are known for their products and services, it is often the experience they create that actually builds loyal consumers and brand advocates. And what better way to strengthen a brand’s customer experience than to incorporate music within their ads.
It has the ability to create a wide range of emotions, tell a story, and can even reinforce the sale.

Queen’s “Don’t Stop Me Now” song in Toyota Camry Commercial

Many generations recognize this classic song and it’s easy to sing along to. It may even get stuck in the viewer’s head, which Toyota is definitely aiming for. It shows different people zooming off to various destinations in the 2018 model of the Toyota Camry. The timing of this song being is also significant, and the Bohemian Rhapsody movie has been widely popular in recent months. With the anthem “don’t stop me now” repeating itself in the background, this song was chosen to add to the ad’s overall message – which is – driving the Camry makes you want to say “let’s go places”.

Meghan Trainor’s “All the Ways” song in Target’s Same Day Delivery Commercials

This upbeat, positive song gets the attention of people of all ages, and not just the young ones. People describe Meghan Trainor’s music as uplifting and wholesome. Target was quick to involve her music in to their advertisement campaign. The commercial highlights “all the ways” Target can assist you.

No matter the tune, music is a brand’s leading tool to create an experience.