10+ Awesome Social Media Marketing blogs Everyone Must read

4 Ways to Improve Your Brand’s Earned Media Strategy

September 19, 2024/in Articles, Directors, Media /by Mark Beebe

Earned media is coverage of your brand that you did not pay for. It can come in the form of reviews, mentions, and word of mouth just to name a few. While earned media can easily be confused with owned media and paid media, it is important to understand their differences. Paid media is coverage of your brand that you did pay for, like an advertisement. Owned media is coverage of your brand through means that you control, such as posts on your website or your social media accounts. Customers often view brand coverage that the brand did not produce or purchase for themselves as more trustworthy. Therefore, a good earned media strategy is crucial to a brand’s success.

Here are 4 ways you can improve your brand’s earned media strategy:

1. Be on the First Page of Search Engine Results:

Your content can’t be shared if it can’t be found. If your content is buried in search engine results, it is much less visible to other websites, journalists, and bloggers. If they can’t see your content, they can’t share it with their audiences. Being on the first page of search engine results increases your discoverability, therefore increasing the chances that other websites, journalists, and bloggers will find your content and then share it. Increase your SEO to get on the first page of search engine results. Identify the words your target audience is searching for, and then integrate these keywords into your meta descriptions, headlines, subheadlines, and alt text for images.

2. Make Content:

You want people talking about your brand, but they can’t do that if there is nothing to talk about. In order to give people something to talk about, you have to create content. Creating content will also showcase your industry knowledge. Content can come in the form of videos, blog articles, podcast episodes, social media posts, and so much more. Once you have content to share, it’s important that you share it well. Don’t limit yourself to one method of distribution. Instead, share it using multiple social media platforms as well as via email. You can also establish content partnerships with other brands to create and share content. This will allow you to access their audience as well as your own. Additionally, you should share your earned media coverage on your social media accounts to increase its visibility. You can also share this earned media coverage on your website.

3. Encourage User-Generated Content:

User-generated content (UGC), like social media shoutouts and reviews, is content that is created by users. In this case, the users are your customers. UGC is authentic, and therefore great for your brand’s credibility. To encourage more of your customers to create UGC, feature already existing user-generated content on your website, marketing materials, or social media accounts. An additional way to display this content is to create a gallery of it on your website. Showcasing UGC shows your appreciation for the content your customer created, as well as the consumer themself. Another way you can encourage UGC is by offering customers the chance to win a prize if they post about your brand.

4. Use Trends:

Participating in trends is a great way to get more people to notice your brand. It also helps your brand become part of the conversation about the trend. Since trends reflect current interests, you show your audience that you are up-to-date when you participate in them. Participating in trends gives you the opportunity to go viral, meaning that your content will be widely shared and therefore reach a wide audience. Monitor social media platforms to identify emerging trends. Once you identify a trend, check to see if it aligns with your brand’s values. If the trend aligns with your brand’s values, you should start using or doing it as soon as you can, whether the trend is a hashtag, social media platform, or content style.

By ensuring that you are on the first page of search engine results, making content that prompts conversation around your brand, encouraging user-generated content, and participating in trends, you can improve your brand’s earned media strategy. A good earned media strategy will increase your brand’s trustworthiness in the eyes of your audience, and increase your brand’s overall success.

Learn how to maximize your New Year marketing budget

How to Use Color Psychology in Marketing

September 3, 2024/in Articles, Color Psychology, Directors, Media, Visual Marketing /by Terry Becker

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

The Power of Color: How to Use Psychology in Marketing

Using Color Intentionally

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

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

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

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

Using Color Psychology

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

Also Read: The Strategic Difference Between Branding and Marketing and How They Work Together

Color Breakdowns

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

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

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

Choose Your Colors Wisely To Improve Your Marketing Efforts

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

Three Videos Every B2B Website Should Have

June 27, 2024/in Articles, B2B Marketing, Directors, Media, Video Marketing /by Mark Beebe

Research shows that relevant, compelling content is a key ingredient for making your website stand out. While some websites may have great landing pages, they may lack other types of content. If you want your B2B website to beat the competition and increase sales with an effective video marketing strategy then you should include these 3 video types.

Visual is rapidly becoming the most effective technique in the web marketing mix. Video content can increase your online traffic by more than 40%, as it adds personality, digestibility, and context to your website. Here are three types of video you should include in your website in order to increase search engine visibility.

Three Types of Video for B2b Website

1. Customer case studies

A great way to market your business is through word-of-mouth from satisfied customers or business associates. Referrals enhance the element of trust that potential clients are looking for in a business. To create a case study video, request some of your satisfied customers to create a case study video, where they can describe the services or products that you offer and express their satisfaction. A case study video could convince your undecided leads that your business is the right fit for them.

[Read about Integrating Story Branding With Your B2B Marketing Strategy]

2. Your team in action

You can increase your prospects by visually portraying how your company performs a service. Potential clients want to know if you have the resources and the expertise to meet their expectations, and you can prove this via video. If you provide manufacturing services, for example, you can capture how specific machinery works. If you’re a marketing agency, you can post a video demonstrating how your team goes from brainstorming ideas to producing your final product. For potential clients, the sight of your employees in action offers a glimpse inside your business.

3. Instructional videos or tutorials

One way to demonstrate your expertise to potential customers is to produce instructional content. Create visual cues on how to carry out a certain service related to what your business does for other businesses. For example, if your company provides home decoration services, you can produce a video explaining the remodeling process. You can demonstrate how your crew handles equipment for the job, as well as “before and after” images of a remodeled house.

Read Also:Types Of Marketing Videos You Should Use

Every B2B website should include compelling video content to capture the interest of prospective business partners. These days, the majority of online users would rather watch videos than read about a product or service. Capitalize on this powerful but affordable medium in order to drive leads and increase sales.

Optimizing Your Advertising Budget: 5 Essential Factors for Success

November 22, 2023/in Advertising, Advertising Agency, Articles, Directors, Media /by Dan Gartlan

The media landscape is constantly changing. New technologies and trends are emerging rapidly and existing platforms continue to evolve, providing more ways to spend your advertising budget. Today’s media plan looks far different than even last year, with more media channels, more devices, and even more opportunities to connect with shoppers. How do you find the most effective balance with an advertising budget and media plan that make sense now? Read more

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.

Media Mix Marketing: What Is It and What Are the Benefits?

February 22, 2023/in Articles, Blog, Directors, Media /by Nicole Wagner

The marketing world is dynamic. New marketing tactics and trends constantly change how businesses market themselves. Consequently, marketers have embraced media mix marketing. Statistics show a 14% growth rate in digital marketing budget spending between 2020 and 2021 across industries. Besides, forecasts show a digital marketing annual growth rate of 9% from 2020 to 2026.

These figures encompass a mix of media marketing strategies available today. Businesses no longer rely on a single media marketing tactic to achieve their objectives. They can leverage a media mix marketing strategy for more versatility and visibility than traditional marketing methods.

Understanding Media Mix Marketing

Media mix marketing is a crucial part of business marketing and advertising. It combines all the channels a company can use to achieve its marketing goals and boost the branding message. It entails both online and offline media, such as the following:

The business’ website and social media channels
Email marketing
TV ads
Radio ads
Newspapers
Billboards
Direct mail

Leveraging a marketing media mix is a practical and effective way of reaching a wider audience. Besides, a media mix enables a brand to try new things confidently. For example, you may have tried to promote your brand through digital displays and seen results.

However, you may be interested in trying TV ads to test the response while keeping a safety net. Digital advertising isn’t static, so you must evolve your strategy to keep up with the competition.

Benefits of a Media Mix Marketing

One benefit of media mix marketing is enabling you to deliver the right marketing message to your audience. For example, if you want to target a broad market across the country, a media mix of national newspapers, television, and radio may be the right fit.

To reach a specific group of decision-makers, a mix of media marketing might include specialists’ magazines or exhibitions specifically for that target audience. Direct mail or a briefing session could be more effective for a smaller target audience of decision-makers.

Better Returns on Investment (ROI)

A compelling media mix can improve your business ROI while enabling you to test new campaigns. It prevents you from putting all your marketing or advertising budget in one place or relying on one method to reach a broad audience.

You can determine the best-performing method and invest more to balance out the underperforming ones for a better ROI. You can decide whether to optimize or eliminate ineffective marketing methods depending on the outcome.

Creates a Strong Brand Message

When you consistently use a combination of media channels to promote your company, you enhance your chances of creating a consistent brand. Sharing your brand logo, colors, message, and tone across different media platforms makes it easier for people to recognize it.

Better Understanding of Market Trends

As you try to mix different marketing techniques, you gain a better understanding of what other brands are doing in the market. You also learn how different channels affect your business and how trends keep changing with time. Creating new marketing strategies that work best for your brand is easy with this knowledge.

Improved Planning Through Predictive Analytics

Predictive analytics provides more insights into what the future of an organization’s marketing efforts looks like. Combined with artificial intelligence and machine learning, you can account for many variables, such as seasonality, industry trends, and the impact of advertising.

The data enables you to predict the effectiveness of campaigns for a clearer view of what to expect from your mixed media marketing strategy. It becomes easier to anticipate customers’ needs and desires for more personalized campaigns.

How to Choose the Best Media Mix?

When choosing a media mix, remember that the goal is to establish suitable communication channels to improve your customer base and sales. That is only achievable by paying attention to the following components of a marketing media mix:

People: Carefully consider the audience you want to reach with your messaging through your media mix. Do you want to reinforce a specific message to your existing customers or test a new market segment? Your marketing objectives can largely influence your decision.
Product: What do you intend to sell or market through your chosen channels? How effectively can you demonstrate what it offers through your preferred medium to fill a market gap?
Place: Place is the location where customers can purchase your product or service. While this may be a physical store, your mix of media marketing may comprise your social media platforms and website as the place where customers can buy.
Price: As you mix your media marketing channels, you can quickly determine the price in several ways, including factoring in the cost of the media mix. Remember to include other expenses like labor and distribution.

Ultimately, getting your media mix right requires carefully thinking through the strategies based on your budget, brand, product, audience, unique selling proposition, and in-house skills. Some tips to help you along the way are the following:

Consider your primary marketing goals
Think through the marketing funnel as different channels are effective at various points of the buyer persona journey.
Invest heavily in tracking and analytics to gauge the impact of each marketing channel.
Ensure you monitor the same metrics across the various marketing channels.
Validate the lessons you pick along the way by optimizing your media mix.
Analyze your target audience based on their pain points, location, demographics, and preferences.
Harmonize your mixed media marketing channels to boost your ROI.

Getting Started with Your Media Mix Marketing Strategy

With 84% of media planners already leveraging a media mix marketing and getting positive results, there’s no reason you shouldn’t do the same to boost your brand. Determining the best mix may be an uphill task, but not impossible. Analytics tools are available to help you improve and fine-tune the mix. Once you establish how changes in the blend affect the results, you can reallocate your budget to enhance the mix for better marketing performance.

Using The Right Media Mix During Each Stage Of The Buyer’s Journeys

November 29, 2022/in Articles, Directors, Marketing Strategy, Media /by Nicole Wagner

Not all buyers are created equal, and depending on what stage in your sales funnel a buyer lands can dictate the type of marketing they’re ready to receive. And while old marketing practices preached broadcasting a message to the masses, using a media mix to nail down a lead at a specific point along their buying journey is crucial and proven to be more effective to converting leads into sales.

Inbound marketing is about just that: tailoring exactly the right content to your buyer precisely when they need it. In order to accomplish this, though, you must know exactly who your buyer is, where they are in your sales funnel, and what content they need. To do this, you must first understand your buyer personas. From there, you can begin crafting a targeted, personalized, and efficient marketing campaign keeping your buyers in mind.

In order to find the right media mix for your buyers, though, you need to better understand your buyer’s journey stage by stage.

Awareness

Awareness is just the beginning of your buyer’s journey. At this stage, potential buyers are becoming aware they have a problem and begin their search for a solution. This is a perfect opportunity for your brand to be the first thing they see, and plenty of juicy, easily-consumed, educational content will satiate their desire to learn more about their problem.

The awareness stage is at the top of your sales funnel, so buyers are most likely ready to receive a media mix of keyword-focused and successful blogs, PPC and SEO to drive traffic to your site, and mass media to get your message across. Essentially, your buyers will become information consumers and it’s your job to be the content expert they turn to during this initial information gathering phase through your sales funnel.

Your buyer’s awareness of having a problem, incidentally, coincides with your own company’s brand awareness which is the cornerstone of helping curious buyers find their way to your content. Learn how to build that foundational content in the second part of our attraction marketing series: How to Drive Brand Awareness.

Consideration

Once a buyer has been made aware of their problem, the consideration stage of their buying journey begins. At this point, buyers truly begin to shop around for a solution to their problem and it’s extremely important for you to deliver authoritative, trusted solutions as they matriculate through your sales funnel. Here your brand becomes more distinguished from your competitors.

This is where granular, tailored messages begin to take on a new life and a new role for your buyers media mix, typically in the form of targeted emails that trigger actions from the buyer. Drip emails and lead nurturing campaigns (when used correctly) will become the staple media mix for these buyers entering the middle of your sales funnel. From those emails, a buyer should be able to download content, sign up for a webinar, or read a case study.

Naturally, once a potential buyer filters their way into the middle of your funnel, they must be nurtured in a way that will keep them thirsting for more content and information about your brand. The third part of our attraction marketing focuses on exactly that: Using Lead Nurturing During the Consideration Stage of the Buyer’s Journey.

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

Decision Making

This is where the rubber meets the road for your marketing and your buyer’s journey. If your buyer has made it this far, then you’re on their short list and it’s time to make all of those hard-fought marketing efforts deliver by closing your lead into a sale. Now, you should prove why your brand is above and beyond your competition and establish an emotional connection with your prospective buyer.

At the bottom of the funnel, the best types of mix media marketing for your lead are retargeting and one-to-one connections. Retargeting is where you reconnect with your site visitors and offer a fresh look at your brand while one-to-one connections make a personal connection with your buyer through emails, phone calls, or customized demonstrations of your products or services. These are make-or-break tactics, and implementing them very well could make the difference in making a sale.

For some marketers, picking up the phone and calling a prospective sale can strike fear into their hearts at first glance. Nevertheless, the final piece of the attraction marketing puzzle comes by Using Personal Selling During the Decision Making Stage. Here, we will discuss how to successfully make those personal connections and close your qualified leads into sales.

The Best Strategies for Website Engagement in 2021

June 14, 2021/in Articles, Directors, Media, Website Design /by Terry Becker

The way people engage with businesses tends to evolve over time. At no point has this been more obvious than during the past year as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. More people were either unemployed or working from home than ever before, resulting in more time being spent online. Because many people have transitioned to work-at-home, there’s a good chance that they will remain there. Because of this, website engagement is as important as ever.

However, this doesn’t mean that you automatically have their attention. You still need to find a way to engage them — and to keep them engaged. This is especially true when you consider that the average person spends no more than 15 seconds on any given website before they leave. With that in mind, the following are a few effective strategies for boosting your website engagement this year:

1. Eliminate Technical Issues

Knowing that the average user is going to have a short attention span, the last thing you’ll want to do is waste their time with technical issues. Technical issues, such as broken links or slow loading times, will frustrate visitors — especially first-time visitors. Most will leave your site a few seconds after encountering a technical problem, and odds are they’ll head straight to the site of a competitor. Make sure that all of your pages load within a few seconds and that there are no broken links.

2. Create Relevant Content

A technically sound website will help prevent visitors from becoming disengaged immediately; however, good content is what will keep them engaged for longer. Do not focus on promotional content. Online users are constantly bombarded with ads wherever they go, which means that if they go to a site that feels like it’s trying too hard to sell something to them, they will leave. Instead, create content that addresses their problems and needs. Good content that educates visitors will build your brand authority and trust as well. As a result, not only are they more likely to stay on your site for longer, they’ll be more likely to come back — and even to share your content on social media.

There is a lot of competition in websites between businesses. Here are more tips to keep your site competitive.

3. Make Your Content Easy To Read

Even if your content is of high quality, visitors may give up on it if you don’t make it easy for them to read. For instance, if your main page is just a wall of text, it will give visitors a headache as they try to read it. You should break your content up using headers, bullet points, numbers, and supplementary visual content. The easier it is for visitors to read your content, the more likely they’ll be to read it through to the end.

4. Optimize Your Website Engagement For Mobile Use

Despite the fact that more people are online from the comfort of their own homes than before, many of them will still be surfing the web via their mobile devices, such as their smartphones or tablets. On top of that, the country has slowly been getting back to normal since the vaccine rollout, meaning more people are leaving their homes with their mobile devices. As such, you need to make sure your website and all of your content is optimized for mobile use. Otherwise, it won’t display properly on smaller screens, making it a pain to navigate. Mobile users won’t stay on websites that aren’t mobile-friendly for very long as a result.

5. Add Video Content

Human beings are visual creatures. As such, they tend to absorb visual information better. While written content is still quite effective, you should also invest in video content. People are more likely to watch through a short video than they are to read through a written blog post. This is especially true for mobile users.

Adding social proof to your website will create trust in new visitors. Most people will be a touch skeptical when they visit a new website they’ve never been to before. Social proof helps to reinforce your reputation. For example, positive reviews from well-known sources in the industry or social media influencers can help boost your trustworthiness, as can customer reviews or customer testimonials. The more social proof you have on your site, the more at ease visitors will be, making it easier to obtain website engagement.

7. Implement A Chat Feature

A live chat feature or a chatbot can go a long way towards making sure visitors stay engaged while checking out your site. With a chat feature, you can engage visitors the moment they arrive on your site. A chat feature can also help guide visitors by helping them find what they’re looking for, thereby making sure that they don’t leave out of frustration.

Keeping your visitors engaged is essential to making sure you don’t lose any potential leads. The more engaged your visitors are, the better of a chance you’ll have of nurturing them through the sales funnel. As such, be sure to consider implementing these strategies to help improve your website engagement in 2021.

25 Website Must Haves For Driving Traffic, Leads & Sales

5 Types Of Marketing Videos You Should Think About Using

June 1, 2021/in Articles, Directors, Media, Social Media, Video Marketing /by Nicole Wagner

Year after year, marketing videos grow in importance. Video has never been easier to consume for Americans, especially when considering the increasing quality of smartphones and tablets. Video is also the easiest way for people to absorb information. Additionally, according to a prediction by Zenith, the average person will spend around 100 minutes a day watching videos in 2021. The pandemic certainly had an impact on these numbers as well. People have more time on their hands to watch video content, especially those who have switched to a work-at-home environment.

Because of this increase in video consumption, a video marketing strategy is an absolute must. The following are some of the different types of marketing videos that you should consider producing this year.

1. Educational videos

Educational videos should be used to help inform your audience about a particular subject. No video marketing strategy will be successful without them. This is because the more informed your audience is, the more confident they will be in making a purchasing decision down the road. Educational videos provide them with the knowledge they need to understand your business and the solutions you offer. There are several types of educational videos, including:

Demo videos – Videos that demonstrate how your product or service is used.
Explainer videos – Videos that showcase why your product or service is needed.
How-to videos – Videos that provide step-by-step instructions on how to do a specific task.
Animated videos – Animated videos are a fantastic way to deliver information in an entertaining way, whether they’re explainer videos or how-to videos.

When is the Best Time to Post on Social Media?

2. Interview videos

Interviews are an excellent way to provide detailed information about certain subjects to your audience while also providing a personality to engage with. You can film interviews with both employees and upper management as well as experts that are relevant to your industry. What’s great about interview videos is that they are incredibly easy to produce.

3. Event videos

Certain events, like industry tradeshows, conferences, fundraisers, and round table discussions, can reveal a wealth of information. Film these events and edit them into event videos for your audience to enjoy.

4. Case study and testimonial videos

These types of videos focus on customers and their experiences using your product or service. Not only can you use them as social proof that your products or services work, but they make it easier to build trust with your audience. Potential customers are much more likely to relate to and believe what previous customers have said, after all. Using case studies and testimonial videos, you give customers the chance to explain what their challenges were and how your product or service solved those challenges.

5. Behind-the-scenes videos

A big part of creating a successful brand identity is presenting your company as being relatable. You don’t want your audience to think of you as a big faceless corporation, after all. Creating videos that depict your company behind the scenes is a great way to do this. It shows that there’s a human element behind the business. There are tons of ways to go about creating behind-the-scenes videos. A video of the day-in-the-life of the typical employee or a video of the manufacturing process of a product are great examples.

These are five different types of marketing videos you should consider creating in 2021. As you develop your video marketing strategy, remember that the quality of your content matters — and so does the audience that you’re creating it for. Always keep viewers in mind to ensure that your video marketing efforts are relevant.

3 Ways To Use Targeted Marketing To Reach Qualified Prospects

April 1, 2021/in Articles, Directors, Homebuilder Marketing, Marketing Strategy, Media /by Debbie Szwast

Imagine, if you will, walking out of a model home and before you know it…you see an ad for a builder just down the street appear on your cell phone. You think to yourself, “Hmmm…coincidence?” It’s not. With targeted marketing, you can pinpoint potential customers down to an address where they have visited.

Targeted marketing is nothing new. Agencies and companies have been doing it for years. First through direct mail, then via email, using data points such as zip code, gender, household income, marital status, and age. But now, we have the ability to narrow our scope even more to truly reach those most qualified to purchase.

Recently, a new client came to Stevens & Tate needing to attract more students to its private school. We discovered several factors that determined whether parents chose to send their children to this school. They could afford it. It was close to their home or work. And it provided the type of education they wanted for their child. To reach this very specific audience, we advertised on social media. Social media sites such as Facebook gather a great deal of information about their users from information the users provide themselves. These sites also monitor behavior patterns. As a result, we were able to do niche marketing, advertising to select neighborhoods around the school and in local employment corridors. And we focused our message on the benefits this private education offered. After the first month, the school recorded an increase in attendees to the parent information sessions.

Learn more about Effective Marketing Strategies For A Changing Economy.

Targeted Marketing On Radio? Yes.

One of Stevens & Tate’s clients needed to build ticket sales for its classical music concerts. After researching the prior season’s data, we discovered that the majority of concertgoers came from a 20-minute or less drive of the venue. So we incorporated online radio into the media mix to aim our message at those who would have an affinity for the brand. The beauty of this targeted marketing plan was that we could reach listeners with a preference for classical music. We were able to narrow down our audience not only to those who lived in a specified geographic area but also to those who exhibited classical music listening habits. The result was a 25 percent increase in year-over-year show attendance.

Hyperlocal Marketing Pinpoints Your Audience

For a Chicagoland homebuilder with a new property in the city, we wanted to reach home shoppers living near the neighborhood as well as those holding certain job titles. Rather than choose a medium to advertise on, we chose a very small group of people to reach out to. Using a digital hyperlocal marketing campaign, we were able to serve ads to a very niche market segment—including those who had recently used a home finder app. We served ads to these individuals multiple times via multiple vehicles including desktop, mobile and in-app ads; emails; social media newsfeeds; and native content based on online search history. Since launching the program, sales at the community have increased 50 percent.

These are just a few examples of the power of a targeted marketing campaign. And new digital technologies are being unveiled all the time. At Stevens & Tate, we partner with multiple media sources to devise just the right targeted marketing campaign for each of our clients. If you are looking for an agency that can help you move from a shotgun to a rifle approach to marketing, contact Stevens & Tate and see if we are a fit.