“Dilly, dilly!” It was the marketing catchphrase of the year, according to the Wall Street Journal. And it’s definitely catchy. I love the commercials and the catchphrase and smile every time I hear it. I’m not alone.
Unfortunately, despite the popularity of the company’s new ad campaign, sales are slumping. Continue reading “Advertising Isn’t About Entertaining Unless it Also Drives Sales!”
When you think about the types of companies you typically see ads for, manufacturing firms don’t typically come to mind. That’s because, historically, manufacturing companies haven’t invested a great deal in traditional marketing. They tend to be focused more on business-to-business (B2B) sales, than business-to-consumer (B2C). Their business focus has typically been on achieving operational efficiencies to drive down costs and increase profits. They set themselves apart from competitors by providing higher quality, faster turnaround or lower cost, and they haven’t typically spent much time thinking about the end user consumers of their products. Continue reading “Should Manufacturers Think More Like Pharmaceutical Companies When it Comes to Marketing?”
AJ Agrawal recently wrote an article for Forbes titled “Inbound Marketing: How To Advertise To People Who Hate Ads.” Agrawal correctly notes that successful marketing “all comes down to one principle. People don’t like to be sold to.” What do they want? They want to be helped to by. “In other words, you are a shopping assistant not a greasy car salesperson,” says Agrawal.
Agrawal offers three strategies for marketers to get their message across to those who hate ads. Continue reading “They Hate Your Ads! Creating Marketing Communications That Resonate”
David Meerman Scott, a well-known marketing strategist, coined the term “newsjacking,” which he describes as “the process by which you inject your ideas or angles into breaking news, in real-time, in order to generate media coverage for yourself or your business.” He’s even written an ebook on the topic: Newsjacking: How to Inject Your Ideas Into a Breaking News Story and Generate Tons of Media Coverage.
The concept makes sense, and we all know that a great way to gain relevance online is by leveraging hot topics and news items that are beginning to trend-but it’s a competitive, and fast-moving, field. How do content marketers stay on top of the relevant trends and news in their industries to ensure they’re curating and communicating fresh, engaging content? Continue reading “Content Marketers: What You Need to Know About Newsjacking”
As we move further into 2016, it’s an appropriate time for PR firms to reflect on the changing nature of their industry. What’s changing in the tools available and the expectations of customers? Continue reading “Understanding the Changing Nature of Public Relations (PR)”
by Linda Pophal
As more and more businesses engage in content marketing, studies show that implied endorsements from third-party experts hold more weight with buyers than what companies say about themselves. That makes logical sense. Think about how you are influenced to buy new products, try a new restaurant, etc. Will you be most influenced by their advertisements, social media posts and other self-promotions, or by what others say about them? The latter is likely to be true. Continue reading “The Role of Contributed Content in Your Marketing Mix”
One of the many things I enjoy about marketing is attempting to generate the most results with the least among of time, money and effort. I want to get more for less. From an advertising standpoint, that means, for instance, that just because the Super Bowl pulls in a large audience each year, it may not make sense to put your message in front of that audience unless a significant percentage of it might represent potential customers for your products or services.
Social media is a lot like that. Just because social media can deliver an international audience doesn’t mean that it makes sense for you to be out there communicating with an international audience. In fact, for many businesses, Continue reading “Tweeting Locally”
It seems like just about every week I see a question on social media, or coming through various media feeds that I monitor, asking something like: “What’s the best way to market to millennials?” or “What’s the best way to market to Baby Boomers?” or “What’s the best way to market to mothers?” or…insert any group you can think of.
While I do believe that any question is a valid question, and this one obviously must resonate with many, the question itself points to what would be my key recommendation: Continue reading “What’s The Best Way to Advertise to (Insert Group Name of Your Choice)?”
Nielsen recently released a report, commissioned by inPowered which indicated that content marketing (the current, go-to communication tool for many B2B and B2C marketers) is actually 88 percent less effective than public relations (PR).
The news has the communication community abuzz online with conversations taking place in many of the social media groups I follow. Many are expressing shock, some disagreement, over the results.
But, when you think about it, it’s really just common sense.
Continue reading “PR More Effective than Content Marketing? Probably! But…”
The wide proliferation of social media sites–from Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to Pinterest, Google+ and Instagram–provide a myriad of opportunities for businesses of any size to connect with their target audiences. That can be good news and not-so-good news for marketers. Why? Because while the out-of-pocket costs for using most of these tools is low to none, the time investment can be significant. Add to that Continue reading “How to Use Social Media to Grow and Market Your Business”