Brand Ambassador Programs

How Businesses Are Using Brand Ambassador Programs To Increase Brand Awareness And Trust

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Generating brand awareness and building brand trust are two major marketing goals all businesses have. One of the most effective ways to achieve these goals is by encouraging loyal customers to increase brand awareness and trust on your behalf. This is because positive word-of-mouth can be incredibly powerful, and because consumers tend to trust one another when it comes to brand recommendations. As a result, many businesses have established brand ambassador programs in order to turn their loyal customers into official ambassadors.

What are Brand Ambassadors?

Brand ambassadors are consumers who work closely with you to advocate your brand. Companies generally choose loyal customers who already have a history recommending your brand, and also have some online influence. Someone with tens of thousands of followers on Instagram is going to be more effective as a brand ambassador than someone who only has LinkedIn and a handful of connections.

Having brand ambassadors can influence their followers by recommending your products or services, incite conversations about your brand, and create content on your behalf. For example, a brand ambassador on Instagram might post a picture wearing a jacket your company sells.

To take advantage of brand ambassadors, you’ll want to establish a brand ambassador program. You’ll need to do a lot of research to identify individuals who will make good brand ambassadors. Consider making the program membership exclusive. People are more likely to take their brand ambassadorship seriously if they know that not just anyone can be one of your brand ambassadors. Additionally, you’ll need to provide some sort of compensation, whether you actually pay them or you give them free products. Many companies will provide their brand ambassadors with new products before they’re even available to the masses.

Examples of Successful Brand Ambassador Programs

The following are some of the most successful brand ambassador programs launched by some of the biggest companies:

• Red Bull – Red Bull’s brand ambassador program is called the Wings Team. They focus on students who have an exciting lifestyle to turn their brand into a lifestyle brand. Because their ambassadors are students, they are able to reach a college audience much more effectively.
• Lululemon – Lululemon essentially uses its brand ambassador program to sponsor local athletes, yoga instructors, and influencers. They provide incentive by partnering with their ambassadors to support their local philanthropic projects and initiatives.
• American Express – American Express has a brand ambassador program filled with social media influencers. They target travel and lifestyle influencers in particular since they showcase a luxurious lifestyle — one that obviously benefits from the extensive use of a credit card. They not only showcase the use of their American Express credit cards, but the rewards that they can obtain from their regular use as well.

Even the biggest companies in the world recognize the value of a brand ambassador. If you have loyal customers, then you should encourage them to become brand ambassadors by implementing a brand ambassador program. Use these three examples as an inspiration to set up your own brand ambassador program today.

Customer Benefits

What Are the Real Customer Benefits of AI?

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Artificial Intelligence (AI) is becoming more prevalent in the technology of today, from virtual assistants, such as Alexa and Siri, to Google’s self-driving cars. AI also sorts through massive amounts of data for businesses of all sizes. This technology can also eliminate repetitive tasks. Thought the benefits of using AI are apparent for business, it may not be as obvious as to how the customer benefits. The following are a few ways that the use of AI can help your customers:

Improve Customer Service

As much as you would like to have somebody waiting to speak with every person that comes to your website, that’s going to be impossible to do. A queue of users could build up waiting to speak with someone, which could harm their customer service experience. Not to mention that people will visit your site after business hours as well. Chatbots address the questions and concerns of your customers immediately. Chatbots can be programmed to answer basic questions, thereby preventing users from abandoning your site or waiting for a response.

Personalize Your Interactions

Not only can you segment your email list by the information that users have submitted to you, but you can further personalize emails through dynamic content, ensuring that the content users receive will be tailored to their specific needs and actions. You can even personalize interactions through your live chat or chatbots feature by tracking user behavior.

Help Customers Find What They Need

You can trigger certain product or service recommendations based on users’ purchase history or what they’re looking for. AI helps your customers discover relevant products or services they may not have known about.

Improve Customer Experience

There are AI tools that can not only collect user feedback so that you can identify ways in which you can improve their experience, but that can also track user behavior to identify problem areas on your site (for example, maybe a significant amount of people are abandoning their shopping cart without checking out). You can use this information to improve your customer experience.

The use of AI is growing in all facets of life. AI can be especially useful when it comes to providing customer benefits. These are just a few of the ways you can benefit your customers through the use of AI.

marketing trends

What’s Trending in Marketing for July 2019

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Staying current on recent marketing trends is an excellent way to reflect and verify whether your marketing efforts are harmonious with what’s going on in today’s ever-evolving marketplace. We’re aware that keeping up with these trends can often be difficult given the abundance of information thrown at us every day. The following articles come from popular marketing blogs. They highlight current marketing trends that we think are worth paying attention to:

Noteworthy Marketing News

Microsoft Just Dealt A Blow To Google’s Ad Blocking Plans

Google announced their plans to restrict ad blocking Chrome extensions. This means that ad blockers, like uBlock origin, won’t work on the Google Chrome browser. This update will come in the upcoming months and some Chrome users have made it clear that they’ll move to another browser if Google carries out that plan. Microsoft has responded by reaching out to their users to see if they’d like Ad Blockers built into the new version of the Microsoft Edge browser. You can learn more about this story on Forbes.

Instagram advertisers can now convert organic influencer posts into ads

Instagram confirmed in March that it’s testing a new ad format. It’s going to be possible for brands to create ads using organic posts from the influencers they have relationships with. Marketing Land writes, “Before brands can use influencer posts as ads, the content creator must grant their business partners (the brands they have relationships with) access to promote their posts. Once the creator — or influencer — has done this via their Advanced Settings page, brands will see the influencer’s posts in the Ads Manager under “Existing Posts” and can run the content as an ad within the Instagram newsfeed or Stories format.”

Comcast partners with Charter, Cox to advance targeted advertising

Comcast launched an advertising strategy that will target audiences better in an effort to lure more advertisers away from digital platforms like Facebook and Google. The initiative is called “On Addressability” and the aim is to target advertisements to certain households based on their interests. So far, this has only been done on a small scale in TV advertising. TV is the best way to reach a lot of people at once, but it lacks the big data that digital platforms use. Learn more about this story at Yahoo.

Improving Your Marketing Program

Emotional Advertising: How Brands Use Feelings to Get People to Buy

Informing your audience is important. You want potential buyers to understand what their problem is, and how your products or services can solve that problem. Unfortunately, people don’t generally make purchases based on information alone. It turns out that people are more prone to making emotional purchases than informed purchases. It’s why commercials consist of much more than an explanation of a product’s use. Instead they use emotional advertising to target the viewer. It’s effective, and it’s why connecting with your audience on an emotional level will benefit your marketing strategy.

Simple Ways that Small Businesses Can Use Data to Build Better Customer Relationships

In this day and age, it’s pretty difficult for consumers to not be inundated with dozens of advertisements. As such, targeting your audience has become more important than ever, especially when it comes to running a smaller business. The most effective way to target your audience is to make use of the consumer data that you have access to. Knowing how to use the data you have can go a long way towards building customer relationships.

However, having consumer data is a lot different than knowing how to make it actionable, which can make the data you have very intimidating. The following are the three steps that you should take to so that you can leverage your data to build strong customer relationships.

What Are Behavioral Biometrics and How Do They Fit Into Marketing?

Companies often hold focus groups in order to get direct feedback about products, services, and even website experiences. The only drawback to such focus groups is that people often aren’t sure how to articulate what they feel about certain things. However, new biometric technology, such as eye-tracking software, has made it easier to determine exactly how someone feels about a website experience at any given moment–and they can allow you to do so without holding a focus group.

Recent Marketing Reports, Updates, and Trends

Almost 70% of digital ad spending going to Google, Facebook, Amazon, says analyst firm

Google, Facebook, and Amazon are collecting more than 2/3rds of all digital ad spending. Between the 3 companies, this is about $73 billion. Amazon owns 38% of e-commerce, which is down from almost 50% a year ago.

These numbers matter greatly as the Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice will begin antitrust investigation of Facebook, Google, and Amazon in the upcoming 12-18 months. More about this story can be found on Marketing Land.

Political Ad Spending Will Approach $10 Billion in 2020, New Forecast Predicts

A new report predicts that spending on political advertisements will reach a new high in 2020. According to the forecast, political ad spending will total $9.9 billion in 2020. In 2016, $6.3 billion was spent on political ads. Political ad spending in 2018 accounted for 2% of total digital ad spending in the US and it’s projected to increase to 2.2% in 2020. Learn more about this story on WSJ.

Survey finds 89% of marketers seeing increased sales using location data

700 U.S. based mobile marketers from 536 consumer brands and 164 agencies took part in this 2019 survey. The survey found that about 9 in 10 marketers plan to use location data in the future to increase sales. However, of those surveyed, only 24% are using or plan to use location data for store visitation or offline measurement.

This report shows that location data is becoming a popular horizontal tool for audience segmentation and targeting across channels. Learn more about this report at Marketing Land.

Digital Advertising Display

Pump Up the Power of Your Digital Advertising Display

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Display ads are one of the oldest forms of online advertising. Unfortunately, the typical display ad doesn’t have as much of an impact as it once had. It has been surpassed by many other online marketing strategies. This is in part because display ads are often irrelevant to the consumer viewing them, not to mention they may disrupt the consumer’s website experience. But that doesn’t mean that display ads don’t have a place in your marketing strategy. The following are a few tips for using a digital advertising display in an effective manner:

1. Combine Your Display Ads With Native Formats

Using a native format allows your digital advertising display to blend in with the content on the page that they are being displayed on. Whereas users often skip over traditional display ads, they are more likely to read native display ads because they are part of the overall content experience. Several studies have backed this, finding that consumers view native display ads 52 percent more frequently than traditional display ads.

2. Set Targeting Dimensions Of Your Display Ads

Contextual targeting allows you to target your display ads to specific demographics, which means that your display ads will be more relevant to the user experience. Private platforms, such as Google and Facebook, allow for contextual targeting by letting you choose who you want to target (age range, gender, etc.) and when.

3. Test Your Display Ads On Social Media

Because of how social media lets you target specific demographics when running display ads, it’s also a great way to test your display ads. This is because social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook have excellent analytics tools that you can use to measure your advertising outreach’s value. This means you can test different display ads against certain demographics to see which perform better. This allows you to adjust your strategy so that it’s more effective.

Check out our article: What’s New with Google: How Page Speed Affects SEO and Adwords

4. Make Your Digital Advertising Display Mobile-Friendly

Make sure that you design your display ads with mobile use in mind. Some display ads may look great on your desktop but won’t translate as well to a smaller screen. The fact that the majority of your audience is going to be viewing your display ads on a mobile device, it’s incredibly important your ads are built for mobile viewing.

5. Focus On Delivering Your Message Quickly

A display ad functions in the same manner as a roadside billboard. Billboards can’t be jam-packed with text and information because drivers don’t have the time to read it all as they pass by. They must deliver their message within a couple of seconds. The same applies to display ads. Users need to be able to consume the message with a quick glance.

The traditional method for using a digital display ad is somewhat outdated. However, display ads can still be effective if you know how to use them. Follow these tips and your display ads are likely to have a bigger impact on your audience.

What’s Trending in Marketing for June 2019

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Staying current on recent marketing trends is an excellent way to reflect and verify whether your marketing efforts are harmonious with what’s going on in today’s ever-evolving marketplace. We’re aware that keeping up with these trends can often be difficult given the abundance of information thrown at us every day. The following articles come from popular marketing blogs. They highlight current marketing trends that we think are worth paying attention to:

Noteworthy Marketing News

Spotify tests interactive ads that listen for your voice

Spotify is testing interactive ads that can be controlled by users voices. The idea allows a user to say “play now” when hearing a voice controlled ad, which would then take them to the piece of relevant content. Two ads are currently running, one for Unilever’s Axe products and the other for a Spotify podcast called Stay Free: The Story of the Clash. Saying the key phrase during whichever ad is playing will direct you to an Axe-branded playlist or to the advertised podcast. This is just one way digital content allows for the development of new ways for consumers to interact with advertising content. You can read more about this story on The Verge.

LinkedIn refreshes Sales Navigator homepage to put focus on alerts

This is a change to increase Ease of Access when using LinkedIn Sales Navigator. The big news with this latest update to the Sales Navigator platform is that the homepage shift. It is transforming from a newsfeed format to focus on alerts.  Knowing the full-breadth of features offered by LinkedIn Sales Navigator helps marketing teams contribute added value to their sales organization. These insights allow companies to take full advantage of their social media advertising platform and investment. Learn more about this update at Martech Today.

Facebook is getting a redesign

The main takeaway from the new Facebook redesign is that groups will continue to dominate the Facebook marketing space. This is an interesting redesign that comes off the heels of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announcing how a lot of users have started using groups and more private ways for sharing content.

Social Report writes, “But this is no new trend. We’ve been huge proponents of Facebook groups since Facebook changed its algorithm to prioritize content from groups and other “content that matters” on the Newsfeed last year.When Facebook changed its algorithm, it plummeted organic reach for Facebook pages. At the same time, however, Facebook gave groups more organic reach—even if they’re run by a brand. This groups-focused redesign shows us that Facebook is continuing its commitment to Facebook groups, and that we’ll continue to see the platform prioritize content from them indefinitely”.

Improving Your Marketing Program

Developing the Perfect Omni-Channel Marketing Strategy

The buyer’s journey has changed a lot over the years. This is a result of the consumer’s ability to explore multiple channels online and to engage in multiple ways. There is no distinct path that takes them from point A to point B in order to make a purchase. While one customer might begin doing research through a search engine like Google, another might ask their followers questions on social media to identify solutions to their problems, while yet another might stumble on an ad for one of your products in a magazine. Basically, every buyer’s journey is unique.

As such, it’s important that you have a presence on multiple channels. You should integrate all of your channels, processes, and strategies to help nurture any stage of their buyer’s journey. This is omni-channel marketing. The following are a number of tips that you should consider implementing that will help you strengthen your omni-channel marketing strategy.

Factors That Influence Consumer Purchasing Decisions: Rethinking the Marketing Funnel

In order to continue attracting your target audience, you need to keep up with the wants and needs of customers. This can be a real challenge if you don’t understand the factors that influence consumer purchasing decisions. Those factors are a lot different than what they used to be, which means that the customer journey has changed a lot as well. This updated journey is referred to by many as the consumer decision journey (CDJ). What makes the CDJ so different than traditional marketing funnels is that each consumer’s CDJ is unique. Keeping that in mind, the following are three of the biggest factors that influence consumer purchasing decisions in today’s digital age.

How to Outshine Your Competition with Effective E-Commerce Website Marketing 

While not all businesses have an e-commerce page, many do. If you’re selling products or services online, make sure you have an e-commerce marketing strategy in place. If you don’t, it’s going to be difficult to stand out from all the other e-commerce sites out there. Through the use of digital marketing strategies, you can build awareness of your e-commerce page to generate more traffic. Thereby, you can improve your chances of closing sales. The following are a number of e-commerce marketing tips that will help you do just that.

Recent Marketing Reports, Updates, and Trends

Mobile to become the preferred platform for video ads by end of 2019

A new report from PubMatic stated nearly 50% of video ads were viewed on mobile devices0. That is up from from 40% in 2018. Video ads are expected to exceed $29 Billion globally according to this same report. This trend follows the amount of content being consumed on mobile devices versus any other device. With 5G on the horizon, content accessibility will only drive increased impressions and ad dollars. More about this story can be found on Marketing Land.

Universal Measurement Standard for video

For years, media companies have tried to develop a universal standard that allows advertisers to compare video metrics across all visual media. The Media Rating Council is getting closer to implementing a single standard for measuring video across all platforms. A standard metric allows marketers to have an effective tool to independently prove how effective ad performance.

Sarah Fisher from Axios writes, “Last week, the MRC finished collecting dozens of comments in response to its long-awaited draft proposal for the new cross-media audience measurement standard, which imposes stricter rules for digital companies reporting video impressions and stricter rules for how TV report commercial viewership.”

Time spent on Facebook, Snapchat remains flat, but Instagram sees growth

A recent study from eMarketer looked at some of the key players in social media. It’s findings offer an interesting glimpse into what 2019 holds for Facebook, Snapchat, and Instagram. eMarketer reports the average amount of time people will spend each day on Facebook this year will remain unchanged from last year at 38-minutes. That number is expected to drop to 37-minutes per day by next year. This is a downgrade from the figures eMarketer released during the third quarter of 2018.

Overall, eMarketer reports the average amount of time people spent per day on social networks in the U.S. dropped by nearly 1.5 minutes last year. That number will remain “virtually” unchanged this year according to eMarketer’s forecasts. Learn more about this study at Marketing Land.

Developing the Perfect Omni-Channel Marketing Strategy

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The buyer’s journey has changed a lot over the years. This is a result of the consumer’s ability to explore multiple channels online and to engage in multiple ways. There is no distinct path that takes them from point A to point B in order to make a purchase. While one customer might begin doing research through a search engine like Google, another might ask their followers questions on social media to identify solutions to their problems, while yet another might stumble on an ad for one of your products in a magazine. Basically, every buyer’s journey is unique.

As such, it’s important that you have a presence on multiple channels and that you integrate all of your channels, processes, and strategies so that you can help meet the needs and nurture your leads at any stage of their buyer’s journey no matter where they are. This is known as omni-channel marketing. The following are a number of tips that you should consider implementing that will help you strengthen your omni-channel marketing strategy:

Be Consistent With Your Marketing Efforts

Consistency is incredibly important when it comes to omni-channel marketing. This is because your leads are likely jumping from one channel to another. A lead may see a commercial on TV, then visit your Facebook page, then go to your website. If your branding is different (for example, if your message is different, your tone is different, or even the overall aesthetic of your marketing is different), you’re going to confuse consumers and you’re likely going to lose leads.

 Remove Siloed Organizational Structure

Because consumers may be at different stages of the buyer’s journey while exploring different channels, it’s important that your sales, marketing, PR, and customer service departments a

ren’t siloed. You need to make sure everyone has access to customer and prospect data at every stage and on every channel. This ensures that everyone is on the same page when it comes to identifying leads, engaging with them, nurturing them, and closing them.

Create Content For Every Channel

The more content you make available on different channels, the more successfully you’ll be able to reach consumers wherever they are. For example, if you only have a website, then you’re missing out on a lot of leads who use social media to find product or service recommendations. Make sure that you create content for every stage of the buyer’s journey and that you post it on a variety of platforms, including your website as well as social channels such as Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and whatever other platforms your customers use.

Similar Article: How To Create Content For Each Sale Funnel Stage

Optimize Everything For Mobile Use

All of your online content needs to be optimized for mobile use. This is because many consumers may explore your website while on their smartphone or tablet. This is especially true if they are engaging on social media and follow a link back to your site, or they see one of your commercials on TV and decide to do a search for your company (more and more consumers use their mobile devices while watching TV these days). If your online content isn’t properly optimized for mobile use, then it may not load properly or be displayed properly.

 Put Together The Proper Marketing Stack

Because you’ll be collecting data on leads and customers from a variety of different platforms, you’ll want to make sure that you have the tools needed to organize the data and to put it to good use. To do this, you’ll want to build a marketing stack using tools such as CRM (customer relationship management) software, CMS (content management system, analytics and data visualization tools, and marketing automation.

Omni-channel marketing is essential if you want to attract and nurture modern day consumers through their unique buyer’s journeys. These omnichannel marketing tips will help make it easier to reach consumers at every point of their buyer’s journey no matter where they are.

What’s Trending in Marketing For April 2019

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Staying current on recent marketing trends is an excellent way to reflect and verify whether your marketing efforts are harmonious with what’s going on in today’s ever-evolving marketplace. We’re aware that keeping up with these trends can often be difficult. The following articles come from popular marketing blogs and highlight current marketing trends that we think are worth paying attention to:

Noteworthy Marketing News

google ads

Google Launching Policy Manager in Google Ads

Coming in April, Policy manager will be the central spot to manage policy violations.The new dashboard will show any policy-related issues affectingyour ads, keywords or ad extensions. You’ll be able to view and manage disapprovals across your account.You can currently get more details about why an ad got disapproved by hovering over it. Google said, this year, it will continue to add details about why ads were disapproved. Get more information about this at Marketing Land. 

Marketers Say They’ll Adapt to a Changing Facebook

Last week, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg shared his vision for the company’s coming privacy-focused, unified messaging and social networking platform. The CEO said, in the coming years, Facebook plans to rebuild its services and platforms around the following six  principals: private interactions, encryption, reduced permanence, safety, interoperability and secure data storage. Marketing Land goes in to greater detail concerning how marketers will adapt. 

Bing Ads brings 3D ads to Search with Samsung

Users can interact with the desktop ad format to inspect product features and details. In a first for search advertising, Samsung has begun running a 3D ad format on Bing.com to promote the new Galaxy S10 phone. Full screen ads in search results. The format is the result of months of coordination between Bing, Samsung and agency Performics, a unit of Starcom. The ads display in desktop search, and exclusively on Bing. When users search for the Samsung Galaxy S10 or Samsung S9. The 3D unit expands the size of the screen and users can interact with it by rotating and zooming in on the product image to explore features. Users can also click on an image to see product details about the device. Read more about Bing’s 3D ads at Search Engine Land. 

Does Direct Marketing Have A Role In Inbound Marketing?

Improving Your Marketing Program

Buyer's JourneyLearn About the Buyer’s Journey

The general goal of every business is to attract consumers and turn them into customers. The process that a consumer goes through before they make a purchase is the buyer’s journey. As a business, you will need to meet the needs of the consumer as they move through their buyer’s journey. You’ll need to be able to do this at every stage of their journey in a passive manner until they are ready to be engaged.

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

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.

Read About The Difference Between the Buyer’s Journey and Customer Journey Customer Journey vs Buyer Journey

You’ve probably heard a lot about consumer life-cycles, and the different terms used to describe said life-cycles such as buyer journey and sales funnel. Terms like buyer’s journey and sales funnel can be overwhelming.  You might even wonder why some terms seem to describe the same thing, such as buyer journeyand customer journey. Don’t be fooled–the buyer journey is very different from the customer journey and it’s important that you know what the difference is.

Recent Marketing Reports, Updates, and Trends

Expect More Instagram Branded Content Ad Opportunities in 2019

Instagram confirmed it is exploring more ways for brands to amplify content from influencers. The company has tested a new branded content ad format since last year. It will allow brands to turn posts created by influencers into ads on the platform. “We got great feedback from the brands that participated that this ad product is helping with some major limitations that can come with organic branded content including targeting and scale,” said an Instagram spokesperson. Read more about Instagram branded content at Marketing Land. 

Amazon Adds Customer Acquisition Metrics for Sponsored Brands Campaigns

Amazon Featured ImageThe “new-to-brand” set of metrics are aimed to help brands understand how well their campaigns convert first-time buyers. Amazon has introduced new metrics that capture insights on new customers that converted from seller’s ad campaigns. The “new-to-brand” metrics are available for Sponsored Brands ad campaigns — the search-triggered ads that showcase several products and formerly called headline search ads — as well as video and display ads. Find out more about Amazon’s new customer acquisition metrics at Marketing Land. 

Public Google+ Content Gets Archived for Future Generations

Google’s failed social media network could have been a huge step towards internet domination, and thanks to the Internet Archive, we’ll always get to look back on it.As the April termination date for Google’s social network approaches, attempts are being made to preserve public content for posterity.The fatal combination of low user engagement and security flaws characterized the end of Google’s foray into social media. Marketing Land has more information about Google+ content getting archived.

Eddie Bauer’s “Release the Fleece” Ad Campaign

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Eddie Bauer’s recent ad campaign has put an interesting twist on a common seasonal item that many are familiar with: fleece. In their recent “Release the Fleece” campaign, E.B. focuses on the uses of emotional appeal, photography, and typography to draw their customers in and transforms this every-day product into a must-have commodity.

Emotional Advertisementad campaign

Ads that end up making people buy and share can usually be linked back to one word: emotion.

This should come as no surprise. According to Psychology Today, studies show that people rely on their emotions, rather than just information, to make final brand decisions. Emotional responses to ads are more influential on a person’s intent to buy than the content of an ad.

In Eddie Bauer’s case, their “Release the Fleece” focuses on sporty, adventurous, and smiling adults. This is the demographic E.B. is trying to grab the attention of. By showing customers what their fleece products look like “in action” on relatable and similar types of people, this further entices the potential customer to invest in a fleece product.

What Every Creative Advertising Agency Needs To Know To Endure The Digital Transformation

Photography

The power of visual communication has reached an all-time high with the rise of digital and social marketing. This is media that modern marketers use to promote their content and brands. Because of this, photography is becoming even more vital to the promotion of a product than ever before. It catches a customer’s attention, improves understanding, calls for action, and most importantly: it drives sales.

Eddie Bauer’s photographs in their fleece campaign are all outdoors. Whether the models in the fleece are hanging out along a coastal beach, casually strolling in the city, or hiking up the mountains, they make the fabric look modern and chic. This type of fabric is for cooler weather. E.B. intentionally chose the month of February to send out this ad campaign. This helps reinforce to customer that there are only a couple months left to wear fleece.

Typography

When it comes to optimizing conversion rates, marketers are more than familiar with testing various colors, images, and buttons to see how they will affect customer turnover. But what about something as seemingly insignificant as choosing a typeface? You may believe you’re in the clear as long as you’re keeping away from Comic Sans, but typography matters more than you realize. It can add that “human touch” that customers are looking for.

In Eddie Bauer’s “Relase the Fleece”, typography was kept very minimalistic. It is very easy to read in sans serif. The colors of the typography are a cool, mint green and ocean blue, both of which have spring connotations. In fact, the ocean blue hue matches the color of Eddie Bauer’s logo.

b2b marketing

What’s Trending in Marketing For March 2019

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Staying current on recent marketing trends is an excellent way to reflect and verify whether your marketing efforts are harmonious with what’s going on in today’s ever-evolving marketplace. We’re aware that keeping up with these trends can often be difficult given the abundance of information thrown at us every day. The following articles come from popular marketing blogs, and they highlight current marketing trends that we think are worth paying attention to:

Noteworthy Marketing News

The 5 Best Ads of the 2019 Super Bowl

Bud Light, Burger King, HBO, Amazon and Hulu commercials kept things the most interesting during this year’s SuperBowl. These brand’s video ads were the ones to get the most laughs, and they got positive reactions from viewers at home. Watch the commercials and read more about the success of these commercials at AdWeek.

Google+ to Close after 7 years

Google Plus

Learn About Using HubSpot Lead Flows to Improve Conversion Rates

A strategically placed pop-up can actually make it easier to convert your leads. In fact, a recent study showed that pop-ups convert 1,375 percent better than traditional opt-in forms. If you do decide to use pop-ups in an attempt to convert leads, then you should be sure to use HubSpots’s Lead Flow feature.

Check Out the Importance of Implementing Marketing Dashboards

At this point in time, most businesses realize how important data is, and how analyzing the data that they collect can provide valuable insight into the performance of their marketing tactics. The challenge lies in making those metrics easy to access, and easy to read for everyone in your company so that everyone can act on them appropriately. Fortunately, tracking data is easier than ever with the use of dashboards.
Sales lead

Read About a Guide to the Awareness Stage of the Buyer’s Journey

When it comes to addressing the buyer’s journey, making sure that you have content available that addresses the awareness stage of the buyer’s journey is vital if you expect to draw in potential customers. If you try to skip this stage, you will end up losing a substantial number of potential leads.  These leads are still looking for basic information and aren’t ready to make a purchase yet during the awareness stage.

Does Direct Marketing Have A Role In Inbound Marketing?

Recent Marketing Reports, Updates, and Trends 

Visual and Voice Search Are Revitalizing The Role of SEO

The basic parts of a successful search engine optimization (SEO) strategy may have remained consistent for the past couple decades. However, their definition and purpose have changed entirely. Driven by trends like visual search and voice search, the industry’s scope has expanded and evolved into something more dynamic. This delivers on a genuine consumer need. According to a report from Slyce.it, 74 percent of shoppers report that text-only search is insufficient for finding products. Read more about visual and voice search at Search Engine Land.

Nielsen buys Sorensen Media, boosting Addressable TV

Nielsen logoRecently, Nielsen announced that it will acquire Sorensen Media as a a means of providing an all-encompassing addressable TV ad delivery solution. Addressable TV advertising allows marketers to “address” specific consumers with customized advertising messages. By the year 2023, it’s estimated nearly 250 million Smart TVs with addressable capabilities are expected in the market. As read in Marketing Land, Nielsen plans to combine Sorensen Media’s addressable TV platform with its Gracenote automatic content recognition (ACR) technology to “help deliver on the promise of addressable TV advertising.”

Digital ad spending to top traditional for first time

Digital ad spending in the U.S. will exceed traditional ad spending in 2019, according to a recent forecast. Much of that share will come from Google and Facebook, with Amazon gaining speed from behind. The report predicts that digital ad spending will make up more than two-thirds of total U.S. media spending by 2023. Find out more about the growth of digital ad spending at Marketing Land.

What marketers should know about Hulu’s new ‘pause’ ads

A few weeks ago, Hulu unveiled a new “non-intrusive, viewer-initiated” ad type that is displayed when viewers pause their content. Hulu is currently testing the ad with Coca-Cola and Charmin.  Hulu expects to make it available by next quarter. Read more about “pause” ads at Marketing Land.

Stevens & Tate Named a Top Integrated Marketing Company by Design Rush

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Here at Stevens & Tate, our goal is to help businesses of all sizes to improve their marketing efforts in a substantial way so that they can not only achieve their marketing goals, but so that they can set their sights on even bigger goals that they may not have previously thought possible. As such, we are incredibly flattered to be recognized by Design Rush on their Top 25 Integrated Marketing Companies list.

The Top Integrated Marketing Company List

Being named as a top integrated marketing company by Design Rush is an incredible honor. In order to make the list, companies have to demonstrate an exceptional ability to create cohesive digital marketing strategies by blending communication strategies that reflect a consistent message across both online and offline marketing channels. Only the very best integrated marketing companies from around the country are named to the list, so as you can imagine, it’s quite a thrill to be named to the list.

Award Winning Integrated Marketing Services

Although we are very proud of the recognition we have received from Design Rush, it’s not the first time that we’ve been awarded for the services that we offer. We have regularly received recognition as a top ad agency by Clutch as well. Clutch is a third-party company that regularly ranks B2B service providers as a service to businesses who are looking for compatible marketing partners.

Starting 2019 Strong: A third award from Clutch

These rankings are based on the work that ad agencies have done with their clients in the past. Clutch gets into contact with these clients to collect feedback and accurately review the work that was done. We currently have a perfect five-star rating on Clutch, which has earned us three awards as one of the top advertising firms in Chicago. We were also ranked as one of the top 30 advertising and marketing companies by Clutch’s sister website, The Manifest.

Our Commitment to Excellence

We understand that the recognition that we’ve received recently from Clutch in the past and from Design Rush more recently wouldn’t be possible without the strong relationships that we’ve built with our clients over the years. We strive to provide the best possible services to our clients–their marketing success is our success, which is why we will always be committed to maintaining a high standard for excellence.

To find out why we’re recognized as a top Integrated Marketing Company on Design Rush, be sure to check out their website and to take a look at what some of our clients have to say about the work we’ve done and the relationships we’ve built with them over the years.