All Marketing Strategy (3) Blogs

VIth Sense: It’s So Good to Hear Your (Brand) Voice

There’s a simple rule about consistency in advertising design: Each execution should have a similar look so that your campaign becomes recognizable, benefitting from the frequency of each impression with your target audience. Consistency results in familiarity, which leads to trust. We marketers know it and live it. That is, until it comes to the voice of the brand. Then, consistency hardly exists for most of them.

Brand voice is just as crucial to marketing communications as design, yet most people fail to define how their brands are represented in the written or spoken word.

Pause for a moment and listen to what’s going on in your office or home. You recognize the voices without even seeing who’s talking. The same should be true for your brand. Your prospects and customers should be able to get far more than words from how you ‘speak.’

Your brand voice represents your style and attitude.

The personality and tone of your ad copy, social media posts and website copy should become synonymous with your brand.

Posted Aug 23, 2018

How to Turn Data into Marketing Strategy

As a marketing strategist, or anyone who is working towards marketing goals, your marketing mix should strategically ladder up to your objectives. Finely crafted marketing strategies should guide every touchpoint you have with your prospects and existing customers. For example, if a tactic effort you are considering doesn't fall under one of the strategies you’ve chosen, you shouldn’t do it.

Strategies are the how to help you achieve your objectives.

Okay, so how do you get there? A strategy should never be a guess, an assumption or just an idea you've brainstormed. Success as a marketer requires many things, but without data and proper marketing planning, you're really just planning to fail. 

Posted Aug 2, 2018

VIth Sense: Tracking KPIs to Improve Marketing ROI

There is ever-increasing demand these days that marketing produces a provable ROI (return on investment). And rightfully so. Marketing is indeed an investment that should pay off. And since we can better measure the effects of our marketing activities each day, it’s right to expect proof of success from our marketing spend. We provided a simple formula in our blog about how to track marketing results.

Posted Jul 24, 2018

Planning for the Consumer

As marketers, we face the challenging reality that consumers have more control now than they’ve ever had before. Consumer feedback by way of ratings is drastically shifting how we satisfy our basic human needs. Yelp! influences where we eat. Uber, how we move. Rotten Tomatoes, how we’re entertained. Travelocity, where we vacation. Rate My Professor. how we learn. And perhaps most importantly, Amazon influences what we consume. The consumer’s search for transparency has collided with humanity’s advances in technology. Digital tools of due diligence, like Amazon reviews, have drastically narrowed the gap between consumer needs and the right product or service.

Advanced Customer Experience

Customer experience is the new competitive advantage. According to a 2017 Gartner Customer Experience in Marketing Survey, in two years’ time, 81% of marketers expect to be competing mostly or completely on the basis of CX. On paper, this stat can seem ridiculous. But in practice, it couldn’t be more intuitive.

Posted Jul 7, 2018

Age Groups Respond to Messages Differently — Are You Prepared?

A study done by the Pew Research Center in 2010 asked four different generations what made them unique. The answers varied by generation, except for one thing — each generation said they were “smarter.”This was the first thing I found when researching various generations, and it was both a funny and interesting place to start.

Posted Jun 29, 2018

VIth Sense: If You Want to Track Marketing Results, Listen to Your Customers

The modern marketer believes that marketing is so much more difficult today than ever before. There’s no captive audience watching one of four networks during primetime. There’s no printed circular that bumps your sales each Wednesday. No radio remote- broadcast from your store where people flock to meet the deejay and maybe get a free t-shirt. No e-mail blast that overloads your website. Man, it’s hard… until you start listening to your prospect.

Posted Jun 26, 2018

VIth Sense: Ecommerce Business Changes in an Instant

Never go to the grocery market hungry. If you do, you'll come home with much more than you went for, and with some items that you would never buy. That’s because when you’re hungry, everything sounds good, right? And you’re not finished shopping until you’ve grabbed a few of the impulse items at the checkout stand. It’s too easy to grab the Kit Kat and throw it in your cart.

Posted May 23, 2018

VIth Sense: Marketing Data Is Creeping Along

When we discuss targeting capabilities of various digital platforms, clients often use the term ‘creepy.’ People can be a bit uneasy with the realization that they are being targeted with ads based on their own actions, purchases and self-reported information.

Posted Apr 17, 2018

Utilizing Multiple Media Tactics to Create a Successful Digital Campaign

A few months ago, eMarketer reported that U.S. adults now spend an average of 12 hours and seven minutes with media each day. This is a double-edge sword for marketers. We know that people are highly engaged with media, but where do you start in reaching them effectively?

Posted Mar 29, 2018

VIth Sense: Bank on Bank Research

You know most of what you need to know about your industry, your customers and your competition. You could look at a survey and predict 90% of the answers, right? That’s the story of my career. I know my clients and their industries very well. But I keep pitching primary research to them. And it’s all so that I can make a buck!

Posted Mar 29, 2018

3 Social Media Tips to Make 2018 Your Brand’s Best Year Yet

With the constant changes in social media, it’s harder than ever to figure out exactly what you should (or shouldn’t) be doing for your brand. Lucky for you, I’m here to lay it down, with a few simple tips that will make 2018 your best year yet! 

Posted Mar 1, 2018

VIth Sense: Top 5 Factors of a Weak Brand

You might agree that a strong brand leads to more sales and customer loyalty. But, how do you know if your brand is weak or strong? I recently wrote about the top 5 factors of a strong brand. Here’s the list that you don’t want to relate to.

Posted Feb 27, 2018