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September 30, 2026

Why Most Giveaways Fail to Generate Long-Term Customers

A giveaway wraps up. The entry count looks great, and the team calls it a win. Then three months pass, and none of it shows up anywhere that matters. No bump in repeat purchases. No real growth in the customer list. Just a folder of names nobody opens again.

This happens a lot. Giveaways are easy to run and easy to measure right after launch. Entries are visible, they’re easy to count, and they look great on a recap slide. But entries are not customers. Treating them like the same thing is the root of the problem. The mistakes that cause it aren’t new, either. The same few show up in giveaway after giveaway, and most of them have a straightforward fix once a brand knows to look.

The Prize Attracted the Wrong Crowd

The most common mistake starts before the contest even launches: the prize itself.

A gift card, cash, or a popular gadget with no real link to the brand pulls in a huge crowd. It also pulls in people who have zero interest in what the brand actually sells. These are the accounts that follow every giveaway on their feed, enter dozens a week, and unfollow the moment the winner is picked. Lots of entries, very little interest, and almost no chance any of them become a paying customer.

A prize tied to the product does the opposite. Fewer entries, sure, but the people who show up already care about the category. They’re not there for a free gadget. They’re there because they actually want what the brand makes.

Picking a Prize on Purpose, Not by Habit

This is a tradeoff brands need to make on purpose instead of stumbling into. A big generic prize will always win on raw entry numbers. A relevant prize wins on the number that actually matters six months down the line: how many entrants turn into customers.

Entry Mechanics Never Asked for Anything Useful

Plenty of giveaways ask for the bare minimum. An email address, maybe a follow, maybe a tag. That’s fast for the entrant, but it leaves the brand with almost nothing to work with once the contest is over.

Now compare that to an entry form with a short preference question, a product pick, or a quick quiz. Same effort from the entrant, but now the brand actually learns something. Which product they like. What problem they’re trying to solve. What kind of message might land with them later.

Without that extra layer, every entrant looks identical on paper. A brand has nothing to personalize a follow-up with, so everyone ends up getting the same generic email. Generic emails get generic results.

The One Question Most Forms Skip

A lot of teams drop this question from the form on the assumption that any extra step costs entries. That assumption rarely holds up. One short question barely moves the total number, and the payoff down the line outweighs whatever small dip it might cause on launch day. A brand that asks nothing upfront ends up guessing at everything downstream. A brand that asks one good question skips the guessing entirely.

This has to be fixed at the entry form, not after the fact. Once the contest closes, there’s no way to go back and ask people questions they were never asked to begin with.

The Follow-Up That Never Got Built

This mistake shows up more than any other, and it’s rarely about effort. It’s about where that effort went.

Almost all the planning time on a giveaway goes toward the launch. The creative, the prize, the entry flow, getting the page live. The period after the winner is announced usually gets one “thanks for entering” email and nothing else. Not because anyone decided that on purpose, but because the team is tired, the budget’s gone, and announcing the winner gets treated as the finish line.

But the interest a contest builds doesn’t disappear the day the winner is picked. People who entered are still paying attention right after that announcement. That’s exactly the moment a brand needs a real follow-up plan, and it’s exactly the moment most brands leave empty.

A giveaway with no post-contest plan isn’t really a customer acquisition campaign. It’s a short spike in attention with nothing built to hold onto it.

Everyone Got Treated the Same Way

A flat list of entrants isn’t really an asset yet. It only becomes one once it’s split apart by how each person engaged.

The winner deserves a different message than someone who only submitted an email and did nothing else. Someone who answered a product quiz deserves different follow-up than someone who spent ten seconds on the page. And any existing customers who happened to enter shouldn’t get pushed into a generic “welcome to the brand” series they don’t need.

Skipping this step means every entrant gets the exact same email no matter how engaged they were. That makes a genuinely interested entrant feel like just another name on a list, and it wastes whatever signal the entry form managed to collect.

The Follow-Up Was One Email, Not a Real Sequence

Even brands that do send something after the contest often send just one message, usually the same day the winner is announced. That single email tries to do everything at once. Thank people, promote a product, ask for a follow, and push a sale, all in one shot.

What a Real Sequence Looks Like

A real sequence starts somewhere, builds, and ends somewhere else. The opening message tells people who won, thanks everyone for showing up, and leaves them with a reason to stick around. A second message goes out a few days later with something for everyone who didn’t win, usually a small offer that rewards them without asking for a full purchase. Only after that does the sequence move into an actual product message, ideally tied to whatever the entrant showed interest in during the contest.

Cramming all of that into one email doesn’t just weaken the message. It burns through the best window a brand has to keep the conversation going, since entrants are only paying close attention for a short stretch right around the announcement.

Retargeting Stopped at the Entry List

A lot of brands treat the entrant list as the whole audience worth retargeting, which leaves a big chunk of interested traffic completely untouched.

Anyone who landed on the entry page and left without finishing is a warmer prospect than cold traffic, even if they never actually entered. So is anyone who clicked in from an ad but bounced off the landing page. None of that traffic shows up in the entrant list, but all of it saw the brand and showed some interest.

The other common mistake is running the same ad creative for weeks after the contest ends. Entrants have already sat through a lot of the brand’s messaging in a short window, so that creative goes stale fast. Once the contest wraps, the ad message should pivot toward an actual product or offer instead of repeating a pitch people have already seen.

Lookalike Audiences Get Skipped Too

There’s a second retargeting mistake that’s easy to miss because it doesn’t involve the entrant list at all. A well-run contest produces a useful seed audience for lookalike targeting on paid social, and a lot of brands never build one. The entrants who converted into customers, not just anyone who entered, make the strongest seed group. Skipping this step means the brand only ever markets back to people it already reached, instead of using the contest to find new prospects who look like the ones who actually stuck around.

User-Generated Content Went Straight Into a Folder

If the contest asked people to submit photos, videos, or captions, that content is usually the most wasted asset from the whole campaign.

Real customer photos make better social proof than studio shots most people don’t fully trust anymore. UGC often performs better than polished brand creative in paid social. A recap post brings back people who didn’t enter this time but might next time. None of that happens if the submissions just sit in a folder after the winner is picked.

The other piece brands miss is permissions. Reposting UGC on social and running it in paid ads usually need different levels of rights, and that has to be checked against the official contest rules before any of it goes back out. Skip that check, and content that could have been an asset turns into a legal headache instead.

The Data Never Made It Into the CRM

Even a contest with good segmentation and a solid follow-up plan can still fail long-term if the data dies with the campaign. Contest data sitting in its own spreadsheet, cut off from the brand’s real CRM and lifecycle marketing, is only useful for as long as that one email sequence runs.

Tagging contacts by entry source lets a brand compare contest-driven leads against other channels later on. What matters is how many entrants become paying customers, not how many opened an email. Get quiz answers and preferences into the brand’s personalization work, and a contest stops being a one-off and starts paying off long after it ends.

Nobody Defined What Success Meant Before Launch

The last mistake is the quietest one, and it’s why so many giveaways get called a win when they really weren’t. If a brand only decides what success looks like after the campaign wraps, entry count becomes the default measure, since it’s the easiest number sitting right there.

Setting a thirty- and sixty-day checkpoint before the contest even launches changes that. A target open rate for the follow-up emails. A conversion goal for the retargeted audience. Several UGC pieces cleared for reuse. Picking those numbers ahead of time is what forces a team to actually check back in two months later, instead of letting the whole campaign’s success rest on how big the entry count looked on day one.

Measuring the Right Numbers

Part of why entry count sticks around as the default metric is that it’s the only number that exists the moment the contest closes. Email engagement by segment, retargeting conversion, repeat purchases among entrants, and cleared UGC all take weeks to show up, and by then attention has usually moved to the next campaign.

That’s a reporting problem more than a results problem. A brand that builds a short checklist ahead of time, reviewed at thirty days and again at sixty, gets to see the real outcome instead of guessing at it.

Did entrants from the relevant-prize group convert at a better rate than the ones chasing a generic prize? Did the segmented sequence outperform a single blast email? Those answers only exist if someone bothers to check, and checking only happens when it’s built into the plan from the start rather than left for whoever remembers later.

Fixing the Pattern

None of these mistakes are really about the entry phase. That part usually works fine. Brands are good at getting people to enter something when there’s a decent prize attached.

Where things fall apart is everything the entry phase was supposed to set up. A prize that attracts the right people. An entry form that collects something useful. A segmented list. A real follow-up sequence with an actual arc. Retargeting that reaches past the entrant list. A plan for the content people submitted. And a way to feed all of it into the CRM so it doesn’t disappear the moment the campaign ends.

A giveaway that skips all of this can still hit its entry goal and still fail at the one thing that actually matters: turning a stranger’s five seconds of attention into someone who sticks around. The entry count was never the finish line. It was just the point where the real work was supposed to start.

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  • eMail Marketing, Marketing, Marketing Communications, Sales

Why Traditional Lead Generation Struggles to Hold Attention and What to Do About It

Mass emails, banner ads, cold calls – all the classics are starting to blend into background noise. People don’t reject them outright. They just stop noticing them. Cold calls barely register anymore. Most emails never get opened. Not because the channels are broken, but because attention is. At the same time, the average cost of one lead across different industries is about $198, and companies generate around 1877 leads each month. Attention has become the scarcest resource in marketing. And it’s getting more expensive to earn every year.

At the same time, the problem is not in lead generation itself, but in how it is implemented in practice. The modern user expects personalization, relevant content, and interactivity. Today, we will break down why traditional methods have lost their relevance and offer a number of strategies that will help you retain audience attention and increase conversion.

The Attention Crisis in Modern Lead Generation

Marketing isn’t short on tools; it’s short on attention. Email newsletters, cold calling, and banner ads are capturing and holding the audience’s attention less and less often. People scroll, swipe, close, ignore – all within seconds. Not because your message is bad, but because there are hundreds of others competing with it. The average open rate for marketing emails worldwide is about 32%. And the average click-through rate is only 1.4%. All of this indicates that most users do not interact with your advertising messages at all.

This isn’t just ad fatigue. The problem runs deeper and is rooted in how people consume information today:

  • An excessive number of informational signals. Social media, messengers, pop-up notifications. It is simply impossible to process all incoming information, and as a result, users begin to ignore a large flow of messages to cope with the overload.
  • Declining trust in traditional advertising. Fewer and fewer users consider standard advertising formats relevant. More and more people use ad blockers, which is reflected in reach.
  • Changes in user behavior. The modern user prefers mobile devices, social media, and short videos. Therefore, long texts or cold commercial messages simply push them away.

Common Pitfalls of Traditional Lead Generation

Most lead gen problems aren’t new. Companies keep repeating the same mistakes and wonder why results stall. We have also provided examples so that you understand how each of these missteps “kills“ the attention of a potential customer.

Using Outdated Scripts and Templates

Templates save time, but they also scream, “This wasn’t written for you.“ And people feel that instantly. This “mass text“ effect reduces interest in the advertising and triggers rejection even before the dialogue begins. For example, cold calls annoy people. In practice, cold calling often requires up to 18 calls of attempts just to get a reaction, which explains why response rates keep falling.

Ignoring Personalization

If you send the same messages to everyone, be prepared for them to go unanswered. A potential customer will not respond to your mailing because they will not see anything useful or relevant for themselves in it. In B2B, poor segmentation quietly turns leads cold before any real conversation even begins.

Lack of a Multichannel Approach

If a business relies on only one advertising channel, for example, only calls or email marketing, it automatically loses part of the audience. Buyers don’t live in a single channel; they move between platforms throughout the day, and brands that show up in only one place are easy to miss. If you do not meet the needs of the audience, you remain unnoticed.

Overly Aggressive Sales

Aggressive sales pressure early on rarely accelerates decisions and more often pushes potential customers away. Potential customers shut down and leave. Too much pressure, especially in cold mailings and calls, leads to rejections and loss of loyalty.

It is worth noting that the listed mistakes are not uncommon even among experienced marketers. To fix the situation, modern companies are increasingly shifting to smart and personalized approaches. When generating leads, they pay special attention to the value of messages and a respectful tone in communication with customers.

Why Attention Matters More Than Ever

In practice, attention has become one of the clearest indicators of whether marketing efforts will lead to revenue at all. If a potential customer is engaged, they are highly likely to become your buyer. And it is a completely different situation with those who did not keep their eyes on your ad for at least a second. According to statistics, 79% of leads never convert into sales without ongoing interaction and nurturing campaigns that are able to maintain interest at different stages of the sales funnel. In simple terms, without intentional retention, 4 out of 5 of your potential customers will simply disappear from the funnel.

Why is this important? When a person shows interest in your product, for example, subscribes to a newsletter or leaves their contact information, it does not guarantee a purchase. If the content that follows turns out to be irrelevant, without value and engagement, leads will lose interest and leave.

Modern Strategies to Capture and Keep Attention

Markets today reward relevance, timing, and consistency, not louder messages or higher frequency alone. Below you will find effective strategies that will work where traditional methods no longer deliver results.

Personalization and Segmentation

Personalization works because it respects context: behavior, intent, and timing, rather than treating every lead the same. A modern company must implement personalization for leads based on customers’ behavior, interests, and geographic data. Personalized companies increase revenue by an average of 10–15%, and in some cases, the figure reaches 25%.

Interactive Content

This is not just text or an image; these are elements that engage the customer in action. Bright examples are quizzes, surveys, ROI calculators, assessment tools, or interactive tests. With this approach, your customer stops being a passive viewer and becomes an active participant, which increases engagement. Practice shows that implementing gamification in social media can increase engagement by almost 60%.

Multi-Channel Approach

A multichannel approach allows brands to stay visible across touchpoints without forcing users into a single communication path. To avoid losing attention, you must be where your audience is. Good companies combine activity on social media, messengers, and mobile apps with classic email campaigns. As a result, it becomes possible to create a continuous interaction journey and “reach“ the customer where they are most active.

Storytelling and Value-Driven Messaging

Stories work because they translate value into real situations, helping potential customers see themselves in the outcome rather than in the pitch. Instead of dry facts and standard advertising promises, use stories about how your product helped real customers. This way, you can create an emotional connection and increase trust in your company. This approach is called storytelling; it replaces aggressive advertising with narrative. It inspires and holds attention.

Tools and Technologies That Help

To effectively attract and retain the attention of leads, modern marketers use not only ideas and strategies but also advanced tools and technologies. With their help, it becomes possible to automate processes, improve analytical visibility, and enhance the quality of interaction with potential customers.

CRM Systems (Customer Relationship Management)

Personalization will break down without a CRM. Consistent follow-up depends on remembering who the lead is and what they interacted with. CRMs simplify interaction management and optimize the sales process. Examples of CRM systems: HubSpot CRM for small and medium-sized businesses and Microsoft Dynamics 365, a powerful enterprise CRM with analytics and AI tools for large teams.

Marketing Platforms and Automation

Automation platforms matter not because they send emails, but because they allow timely follow-ups at scale. These tools become the foundation for personalization and follow-up communication with leads, which is important for retention at every stage of the sales funnel.

Chatbots and Live Chat Platforms

Chatbots help interact with visitors to your website. They perform initial lead qualification based on clarifying questions and 24/7 data collection. A chatbot can be used in a messenger app, on a website, or on social media.

Analytics and Data Visualization Tools

You need data to understand what works (and what doesn’t). Web analytics, such as Google Analytics, are used to monitor the activity of the users on your site. You can keep track of the amount of time they use on the pages of your site, what they do and at which point they lose interest. We also suggest the use of visualization such as Power BI or Tableau. Their assistance will simplify the creation of reports and forecasting future trends.

How to Measure Success?

Want to know whether the new lead-generation strategy works as intended? You need to measure and interpret the results. Below are the key metrics:

  • CTR (Click-Through Rate). It is the percentage of people who clicked on an ad. In Google Ads campaigns, the average CTR is usually 1–2%. On social media, it’s around 0.5–2%. If the rate is lower, you need to improve the content.
  • Dwell time. The time spent on a website or content. The longer a person stays, the more engaged they are. That means the higher the likelihood that they will become a lead or a customer.
  • Conversion Rate (CR). The percentage of users who completed a target action (left contact information or made a purchase) out of the total number of visitors. A high rate is a sign that the audience is engaged.
  • ROI (Return on Investment). A measure of return on investment, how profitable your marketing investments are. It helps evaluate which channels and approaches generate profit and which have no value.

Conclusion: Where Lead Generation Breaks – and What Actually Fixes It

Traditional lead generation methods are now less effective because they lose the most important thing – the audience’s attention. Generic messages no longer create lasting interest among users. Now, the key to success is personalization, interactivity, and a focus on value. Study new strategies, experiment with formats, segment your audience, and test approaches. Only this way can you turn interest into real value and sales.

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  • Marketing, Marketing Communications, Promotion

9 Marketing Campaigns That Will Crush Your Goals

Marketing campaigns come in various forms, each designed to achieve specific objectives, whether it’s driving sales, boosting brand awareness, or fostering customer loyalty. Over the years, certain types of campaigns have consistently proven to be exceptionally successful. In this blog, we’ll explore 10 examples of highly successful marketing campaigns that have left a lasting impact:

Cause Marketing Campaigns

Toms Shoes “One for One”: Toms’ “One for One” campaign was a popular and innovative philanthropic initiative launched by the American footwear company Toms Shoes in 2006. The core idea behind the campaign was simple: for every pair of shoes that Toms sold, they would donate a pair of shoes to a child in need. This unique business model aimed to combine profit with social impact, and it gained significant attention and popularity.

Results of the Toms “One for One” campaign:

  1. Donations: Toms claimed to have donated millions of pairs of shoes to children in need worldwide. This helped protect vulnerable children from diseases, injuries, and other health-related issues associated with walking barefoot.
  2. Awareness: The campaign significantly raised awareness about the importance of philanthropy and social responsibility in business. It encouraged consumers to consider the impact of their purchases and support companies with a strong commitment to social causes.
  3. Business Success: Toms experienced significant growth in its business as a result of the campaign. Many consumers were drawn to the brand not only for its stylish and comfortable shoes but also because they wanted to be part of a company that was making a positive social impact.

Engagement-Driven Campaigns

Coca-Cola’s “Share a Coke” campaign was a highly successful and innovative marketing initiative that aimed to connect with consumers on a personal level by personalizing their product packaging. This engagement driven marketing campaign was originally launched in Australia in 2011, the campaign eventually rolled out to many other countries, becoming a global phenomenon. The core idea behind the campaign was to replace the traditional Coca-Cola logo on bottles and cans with people’s first names, encouraging consumers to share a Coke with friends and family.

Results of the “Share a Coke” campaign:

  1. Increased Sales: The campaign had a significant positive impact on Coca-Cola’s sales. In many markets where the campaign was implemented, Coca-Cola reported increased sales and market share. The personalization of the bottles and cans made the product more appealing and shareable, leading to higher consumption.
  2. Brand Engagement: “Share a Coke” was incredibly successful in terms of consumer engagement. The use of personalized names and social media sharing encouraged consumers to interact with the brand in new and meaningful ways. It created a sense of personal connection between consumers and the product.
  3. Social Media Buzz: The campaign generated a massive amount of social media buzz. The hashtag #ShareACoke was widely used on various platforms, with consumers sharing photos of themselves with personalized Coca-Cola bottles. This organic user-generated content helped promote the brand even further.
  4. Global Expansion: Due to its success in Australia, the campaign was eventually launched in over 80 countries, showcasing its global appeal and effectiveness in different markets.
  5. Awards and Recognition: “Share a Coke” received numerous marketing and advertising awards for its creativity and impact. It is often cited as one of the most successful and memorable marketing campaigns in recent years.

User-Generated Content (UGC) Campaigns

GoPro’s “Photo of the Day”: GoPro’s UGC campaign encouraged customers to share their action-packed photos and videos taken with GoPro cameras. This not only showcased the product’s capabilities but also built a passionate community of brand advocates. The campaign was designed to showcase the incredible photos and videos captured by GoPro users while using their cameras in various adventure sports and activities. Each day, GoPro would select and feature a standout user-generated photo or video on their website and across their social media channels, celebrating the creativity and adventure of their community.

Results of the “Photo of the Day” campaign:

  1. Increased Brand Engagement: The campaign significantly increased user engagement with the GoPro brand across various social media platforms. GoPro’s social media accounts saw a substantial increase in followers, likes, shares, and comments due to the daily featured content.
  2. Inspiration and Aspiration: By showcasing captivating photos and videos from real users, GoPro inspired its customers to capture their own adventures and share them with the world. This served as a powerful marketing tool, encouraging potential buyers to see the possibilities of what they could do with a GoPro camera.
  3. Community Building: “Photo of the Day” played a vital role in fostering a sense of community among GoPro users. This community aspect helped in retaining loyal customers and building brand advocates who shared their passion for adventure and photography.
  4. Content Library: Over time, GoPro amassed a vast library of user-generated content, which they could repurpose for various marketing materials, including commercials, product demonstrations, and promotional videos.

Influencer Marketing Campaigns

One of their notable influencer campaigns was the “Taco Bell Hotel” pop-up experience in 2019, which was a unique and immersive promotional event. Taco Bell transformed an existing hotel in Palm Springs, California, into “The Bell: A Taco Bell Hotel and Resort” for a limited time in August 2019. The concept was to create an immersive Taco Bell-themed experience for guests, combining the brand’s food, style, and culture.

Taco Bell collaborated with several social media influencers and content creators to generate buzz and excitement around the hotel. They invited influencers known for their love of fast food, travel, and quirky experiences to attend the opening and stay at the hotel.

Results of Taco Bell’s “The Bell” influencer campaign:

  1. Buzz and Media Coverage: The campaign generated a significant amount of buzz and media coverage, drawing attention not only from influencers but also from traditional news outlets. The unique concept and immersive experience made it a memorable event.
  2. Brand Exposure: Taco Bell’s branding was prominently featured in the content shared by influencers, increasing brand exposure and driving conversations about the brand.
  3. Social Media Engagement: The campaign resulted in high levels of engagement on social media platforms, with many users sharing, commenting, and tagging their friends in the influencer-generated content.
  4. Sold-Out Reservations: The limited-time hotel experience sold out within minutes of reservations becoming available, demonstrating the demand and enthusiasm for the Taco Bell Hotel concept.
  5. Positive Brand Image: The campaign contributed to Taco Bell’s image as an innovative and fun-loving brand that is willing to go above and beyond to create unique and memorable experiences for its customers.

Storytelling Campaigns

Dove’s “Real Beauty” Campaign:

Dove’s “Real Beauty” campaign is one of the most iconic examples of storytelling in marketing. The campaign was launched to challenge conventional beauty standards and promote self-esteem and body positivity among women. It featured real women of various shapes, sizes, and backgrounds instead of professional models.

The campaign told stories of the featured women, highlighting their personal journeys, insecurities, and the importance of self-acceptance. These narratives resonated with viewers on an emotional level, as they could relate to the struggles and triumphs of everyday women.

Results of Dove’s Real Beauty Campaign:

  1. Positive Brand Image: The “Real Beauty” campaign helped Dove establish itself as a brand committed to promoting self-esteem and body positivity. This positive brand image resonated with consumers and contributed to increased brand loyalty.
  2. Global Recognition: The campaign received international recognition and numerous awards for its impact on advertising and social change. It was seen as a groundbreaking example of how a brand could use its platform to address important social issues.
  3. Consumer Engagement: The campaign encouraged consumers to engage in discussions about beauty standards and self-esteem. It sparked conversations on social media, in classrooms, and in families, promoting dialogue about body image and self-confidence.
  4. Educational Programs: As part of the campaign, Dove launched various educational programs aimed at building self-esteem in young people. These programs provided resources and tools for parents, teachers, and youth leaders to address body image issues.
  5. Research and Insights: Dove conducted extensive research on self-esteem and body image, which provided valuable insights into the impact of beauty stereotypes on individuals’ self-perception. This research contributed to a broader understanding of the issue and informed Dove’s campaign strategies.
  6. Evolution of Advertising: The “Real Beauty” campaign influenced the advertising industry by challenging the use of overly photoshopped or airbrushed images in advertisements. It prompted many brands to consider a more authentic and diverse representation of beauty in their marketing materials.
  7. Real Women in Advertising: Dove featured real women of different ages, sizes, and ethnicities in their advertisements, challenging the traditional use of professional models. This approach resonated with many consumers who appreciated seeing themselves represented in beauty advertising.
  8. Continued Impact: The “Real Beauty” campaign continued to evolve and adapt to changing cultural and societal norms, remaining relevant and impactful over the years.

Airbnb’s “Belong Anywhere” Campaign:

Airbnb’s “Belong Anywhere” campaign is another compelling storytelling example. The campaign aimed to convey that Airbnb isn’t just about providing accommodations; it’s about fostering connections and a sense of belonging.

Airbnb showcased a series of heartwarming stories from hosts and guests who had shared unique and meaningful experiences through the platform. These stories ranged from families finding a home away from home to travelers connecting with locals and experiencing culture firsthand.

Results from Airbnb’s Belong Anywhere Campaign:

  1. Brand Recognition and Awareness: The “Belong Anywhere” campaign helped increase Airbnb’s brand recognition and awareness. The tagline “Belong Anywhere” became synonymous with the brand’s mission to provide unique and immersive travel experiences.
  2. Emotional Connection: The campaign successfully created an emotional connection with potential travelers. It resonated with those seeking authentic, local experiences, which differentiated Airbnb from traditional hotel accommodations.
  3. Increased User Engagement: Airbnb’s marketing campaigns, including “Belong Anywhere,” encouraged user engagement on social media and other digital platforms. Travelers and hosts shared their stories and experiences, further promoting the brand.
  4. Global Reach: Airbnb’s campaign was rolled out globally and localized in various languages, making it accessible and relatable to diverse audiences around the world.
  5. Community Building: The campaign emphasized the role of hosts and guests in building a sense of community. It encouraged hosts to share their unique spaces, traditions, and local knowledge with guests, fostering connections between people from different backgrounds.
  6. Impact on the Hospitality Industry: Airbnb’s “Belong Anywhere” campaign played a role in disrupting the traditional hospitality industry. It encouraged travelers to consider alternative accommodations, such as staying in homes or apartments, and contributed to the growth of the sharing economy in travel.
  7. Social Impact: The campaign highlighted the potential for Airbnb to positively impact local communities by bringing tourism dollars to neighborhoods that may not have benefited from traditional tourism.

Contests and Giveaways

Doritos “Crash the Super Bowl” Contest:

Doritos, a popular snack brand, aimed to create buzz and excitement around their Super Bowl advertisements while involving their customers in the creative process. Doritos launched the “Crash the Super Bowl” contest, inviting consumers to create their own Doritos commercials for a chance to have their ad aired during the Super Bowl. The winner not only had their ad featured but also had the opportunity to win a cash prize.

Result of Doritos Crash the Super Bowl:

  1. Consumer Engagement: The campaign engaged consumers in a unique and participatory way. It encouraged creativity and user-generated content by inviting people to produce their own Doritos ads.
  2. Viral Sensation: Many of the user-generated Doritos commercials went viral on social media platforms and video-sharing websites like YouTube. This organic sharing and engagement extended the campaign’s reach far beyond the Super Bowl broadcast.
  3. Cost Savings: Doritos saved millions of dollars in advertising costs by crowdsourcing their Super Bowl commercials. Instead of hiring a traditional advertising agency, they relied on their fans and consumers to create the content.
  4. Prizes and Recognition: The campaign offered substantial cash prizes to the creators of the winning commercials, including the chance to work with top directors and producers. This incentivized participation and attracted talented filmmakers and creators.
  5. Cultural Impact: Some of the winning commercials became culturally significant and memorable, such as the “Doritos Time Machine” ad, which received extensive media coverage and discussions.
  6. Annual Tradition: “Crash the Super Bowl” became an annual tradition, building anticipation and excitement among viewers who looked forward to seeing which user-generated commercial would air during the Super Bowl.
  7. Sales and Brand Awareness: The campaign contributed to increased brand awareness and sales for Doritos. It kept the brand top-of-mind during the Super Bowl and generated buzz and conversation.
  8. Legacy: “Crash the Super Bowl” is often cited as one of the most successful user-generated content campaigns in marketing history. It inspired other brands to explore similar crowdsourcing and consumer engagement strategies.
  9. Consumer Empowerment: The campaign empowered consumers by giving them a platform to showcase their creativity and potentially reach a massive audience. It reinforced the idea that consumers can have a significant impact on a brand’s marketing strategy.
  10. Retirement of the Campaign: Doritos retired the “Crash the Super Bowl” campaign in 2016, ending its decade-long run with a final user-generated commercial aired during Super Bowl 50.

Red Bull “Flugtag” Contest

Red Bull, known for its high-energy branding, aimed to engage fans and create a memorable event that would generate widespread attention and brand loyalty. Red Bull organized the “Flugtag” (which means “flight day” in German) contest, where participants built homemade, human-powered flying machines and attempted to fly them off a platform into the water. Teams were judged on creativity, showmanship, and the distance they achieved.

Impact: The “Flugtag” contest became a global sensation, attracting participants and spectators from around the world. It embodied the adventurous and daring spirit associated with the Red Bull brand. The event not only generated immense social media buzz but also garnered significant media coverage, reinforcing Red Bull’s image as a brand that supports extreme sports and innovative endeavors.

Limited-Time Offers (LTOs)

McDonald’s “McRib”: The McRib’s periodic return creates a sense of urgency and excitement among customers, driving traffic and sales during its limited availability.
Experiential Marketing Campaigns:

Red Bull’s Stratos Jump: Red Bull’s sponsorship of Felix Baumgartner’s historic space jump created a thrilling, immersive experience that resonated with its target audience and reinforced its brand image.

Email Marketing Campaigns

Amazon’s Personalized Recommendations: Amazon’s email campaigns, featuring personalized product recommendations based on user behavior and purchase history, contribute significantly to its sales.

Content Marketing Campaigns

HubSpot’s Blog and Resources: HubSpot’s content marketing strategy, offering valuable resources, blog posts, and webinars, has established the company as an industry thought leader and driven leads and sales.

Successful marketing campaigns often share common elements, including a deep understanding of the target audience, creativity, emotional appeal, and a clear call to action. Additionally, modern campaigns leverage technology and data-driven insights to personalize content and measure results accurately.

Ultimately, the most successful campaigns are those that not only meet their immediate goals but also leave a lasting impression on consumers and build strong brand loyalty. These campaigns inspire trust, engagement, and positive word-of-mouth, setting the stage for long-term success in a competitive marketplace.

 

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  • Gamification, Loyalty Marketing, Marketing, Marketing Communications

Retaining Customers: Adding Fuel to the Fire

Retaining Customers in a Competitive Market

In the dynamic landscape of retaining customers, businesses are on a perpetual quest for strategies that not only entice customers to return but also cultivate profound and enduring connections. Below, we present a comprehensive roadmap of effective customer retention strategies that transcend mere transactions, fostering authentic loyalty.

Mission-Inspired Connections

Forge a deeper connection with customers by sharing your brand’s mission and values. Create an emotional bond that extends beyond mere transactions, aligning your brand with their beliefs and aspirations.

Patagonia serves as an exemplary case of a company that has successfully forged a deeper connection with its customers by wholeheartedly embracing and promoting a strong brand mission and values. At the core of Patagonia’s brand identity is a commitment to environmental sustainability. The company has consistently and passionately communicated its mission to “build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, use business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis.” This environmental focus is not just a marketing tagline but a deeply ingrained mission that guides every aspect of Patagonia’s operations.

Patagonia doesn’t merely talk the talk; it walks the walk. The company has taken concrete actions to align its practices with its values. For instance, in 2011, Patagonia pledged to donate at least 1% of its sales or 10% of its profits, whichever is more, to environmental causes. This commitment is part of the “1% for the Planet” initiative, showcasing the company’s dedication to making a positive impact beyond its own bottom line.

Patagonia actively engages its customers in its environmental mission. The company urges customers to buy only what they truly need and offers repair services to extend the life of its products. The “Worn Wear” initiative encourages customers to buy used Patagonia items or trade in their old gear for store credit, promoting a circular economy and reducing overall environmental impact.

Memorable Experiences and Positive Associations

Craft memorable experiences around your brand, leaving customers with positive associations that inspire a desire to return. These experiences contribute significantly to building a lasting emotional connection.

Disney is a prime example of a company that excels in crafting memorable experiences around its brand, leaving customers with positive associations that inspire a strong desire to return. Disney’s theme parks are renowned for their ability to create magical and immersive experiences that contribute significantly to building a lasting emotional connection with visitors. Disney theme parks, such as Disneyland and Walt Disney World, are synonymous with creating magical experiences. Every detail, from the architecture to the landscaping, is carefully designed to transport visitors to a world of fantasy and wonder. The immersive environments, enchanting attractions, and iconic characters contribute to an atmosphere that captivates visitors of all ages.

Disney’s commitment to entertainment is unparalleled. From parades to live shows, each element is crafted to provide a magical and memorable experience. The attention to detail in performances, costumes, and storytelling contributes to an emotional connection that lasts beyond the visit.

Disney hosts special events and celebrations throughout the year, adding an extra layer of magic to the experience. Whether it’s holiday festivities, character meet-and-greets, or exclusive events, these occasions create memorable moments that stay with visitors long after they leave the park.

Many visitors have a nostalgic connection to Disney, often rooted in childhood memories or family traditions. The sense of nostalgia, combined with the continuation of beloved traditions, fosters a deep emotional connection that spans generations.

Subscription Models for Enhanced Experiences

Embrace subscription models not just for regular business but also to enhance the customer experience. Curate content and provide personalized offerings through subscriptions, adding value beyond the basic transactional relationship.

One standout example of a company that has successfully embraced subscription models to enhance the customer experience is Netflix. Netflix, a leading streaming service, has revolutionized the way people consume entertainment by leveraging subscription models to curate content and provide personalized offerings. Netflix offers a vast and diverse library of movies, TV shows, documentaries, and original content that caters to a wide range of tastes and preferences. The subscription model grants users unlimited access to this extensive content library, creating a value proposition that goes beyond a one-time transaction.

Netflix offers multiple subscription tiers, allowing users to choose plans based on their preferences and budget. This flexibility adds an extra layer of personalization, enabling subscribers to tailor their experience according to factors such as video quality and the number of screens.

Surprises that Exceed Expectations

Go above and beyond routine transactions by surprising customers with unexpected perks, discounts, or personalized gestures. Exceeding expectations is a powerful driver of customer loyalty.

Lululemon, the popular athletic apparel brand, is a notable example of a company that exceeds customer expectations by going beyond routine transactions. The brand’s commitment to surprising customers with unexpected perks, discounts, and personalized gestures contributes to a unique and memorable shopping experience, fostering customer loyalty.

Lululemon’s Sweat Collective is a membership program designed for fitness professionals. Beyond routine transactions, members receive exclusive benefits such as a discount on Lululemon merchandise, early access to product launches, and invitations to special events. This personalized approach recognizes and supports the active lifestyle of fitness professionals, creating a sense of community and exclusivity.

Many Lululemon stores host complimentary in-store yoga and fitness classes, providing customers with an unexpected perk beyond shopping for activewear. These classes contribute to the brand’s commitment to promoting a healthy and active lifestyle, creating a holistic customer experience that goes beyond traditional retail transactions.

Express Gratitude and Exclusive Offers

Thank your customers for their loyalty through personalized thank-you notes or exclusive offers. Demonstrating their value to your business fosters a sense of appreciation.

Sephora demonstrates the expression of gratitude by thanking customers for their loyalty through personalized gestures, specifically within its Beauty Insider loyalty program. The brand goes beyond routine transactions by expressing gratitude in the form of personalized thank-you notes and exclusive offers, fostering a sense of appreciation among its valued customers.

Sephora’s Beauty Insider program is a tiered loyalty system where customers earn points for their purchases, receive exclusive benefits, and move up in status based on their spending. This program serves as the foundation for expressing gratitude and personalized appreciation. Sephora often includes exclusive product samples or early trials of new releases in the purchases made by Beauty Insider members. This not only serves as a token of appreciation but also allows customers to experience new products firsthand, creating excitement and loyalty.

Sephora occasionally sends personalized thank-you notes to its Beauty Insider members, expressing gratitude for their loyalty and continued support. These notes may be delivered via email or included in physical mailings, creating a sense of individualized acknowledgment.

Sephora is bringing it with gratitude and exclusive offers – learn from the best – Kudos Sephora!

Anticipate Needs with Incentives

Anticipate customer needs and offer incentives or exclusive benefits to prevent churn. Proactive measures to retain customers before issues arise can significantly bolster loyalty.

Peloton strategically designed their customer retention practices to proactively anticipating user needs and offering incentives to prevent churn. Through personalized fitness experiences, exclusive content, and value-added benefits, Peloton has successfully retained a dedicated user base in the competitive home fitness industry.

Peloton offers a wide range of live and on-demand fitness classes led by expert instructors. This exclusive content not only caters to diverse fitness preferences but also creates a sense of community. Users feel a connection to Peloton’s exclusive classes, making it less likely for them to explore alternative fitness platforms. Peloton incorporates gamification elements into its platform, allowing users to participate in challenges, compete with others, and earn badges for achievements. This proactive approach taps into users’ desire for a sense of accomplishment and friendly competition, preventing boredom and maintaining user interest.

Gamification and Referral Programs

Gamify the customer experience and incentivize referrals to turn engagement into a rewarding and interactive journey. Encourage customers to be active participants in your brand story.

Fitbit gamifies the customer experience through its activity tracking devices and incentivizes referrals, turning engagement into a rewarding and interactive journey. Fitbit encourages customers to be active participants in their health and fitness journey, fostering a sense of community and achievement.

Fitbit’s devices track users’ physical activity, including steps taken, distance traveled, and calories burned. The data is presented in a gamified interface where users set goals, earn badges for achievements, and compete with friends in challenges. This gamification element transforms the pursuit of fitness goals into an engaging and competitive experience.

Fitbit facilitates challenges where users can compete with friends or join community challenges to reach collective goals. Whether it’s a step challenge or a weekend warrior competition, these challenges encourage users to stay active and connected with the Fitbit community.

Fitbit awards users with virtual badges for hitting milestones or achieving specific fitness targets. These badges serve as a form of recognition and reward, tapping into the psychological aspects of gamification by providing a sense of accomplishment. These badges are also made readily available for social sharing and bragging rights. “Climbed to the top of Mt. Whitney – In awe of the beauty I am fortunate enough to witness. #humblebrag” – this is what Fitbit is trying to elicit from their fandom.

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  • Marketing, Marketing Communications, Trade Shows & Events

How to Accelerate Your Pipeline

Accelerating Your Sales Pipeline

Imagine having a crystal ball that can predict which prospects are most likely to become customers and when. That’s the power of a sales pipeline – a visual roadmap to guide your sales team toward success. This is the foundation for understanding how to address the pipeline and how you can expedite certain parts once you understand the process.

A sales pipeline is a visual representation of the stages that a prospect goes through as they move through the sales process, much like the customer journey. It is a systematic approach to selling, where each stage of the pipeline represents a different step in the process of converting a prospect into a customer. Typically, a sales pipeline is divided into several stages, including lead generation, lead qualification, prospecting, presentation, negotiation, and closing. As a prospect moves through each stage, they become more qualified and engaged, and the likelihood of them becoming a customer increases.

Sales pipelines can be used to help sales teams manage their leads, forecast revenue, and identify areas for improvement in the sales process. By tracking the progress of each lead through the pipeline, sales teams can identify bottlenecks and areas of opportunity, and adjust their strategy accordingly.

Accelerating your pipeline refers to increasing the speed at which leads move through your sales funnel. By doing this, your sales pipeline can have a significant impact on your business, increasing revenue, improving customer satisfaction, and boosting overall efficiency. By shortening the time it takes to convert leads into customers, you can increase the number of deals closed and generate more revenue in a shorter amount of time. This not only benefits your bottom line but also improves your team’s morale and motivation. Additionally, a streamlined sales pipeline can lead to better customer experiences, as prospects receive quicker responses and more personalized attention. Finally, by identifying areas of inefficiency and continuously optimizing your sales process, you can improve your team’s productivity, reduce costs, and ensure sustainable long-term growth for your business.

Here are five ways to accelerate your pipeline:

  1. Qualify leads effectively: Develop a clear and effective lead qualification process to quickly identify the most promising leads. Here are three specific ways to qualify your leads:
    1. Use a lead scoring system: A lead scoring system allows you to assign points to each lead based on factors such as their level of engagement, budget, job title, and company size. By prioritizing leads with higher scores, you can focus your efforts on those with the greatest potential for conversion.
    2. Conduct thorough research: Before reaching out to a lead, conduct thorough research to understand their needs, pain points, and goals. This will allow you to tailor your approach and messaging to their specific needs, increasing the likelihood of a successful conversion.
    3. Ask qualifying questions: When engaging with a lead, ask open-ended questions that allow you to gather information about their needs, budget, timeline, and decision-making process. This will help you determine whether the lead is a good fit for your product or service and allow you to tailor your pitch accordingly.
  2. Nurture leads with relevant content: Create targeted and personalized content that addresses the needs and pain points of your leads. Use email marketing, social media, and other channels to deliver this content and keep leads engaged with your brand.
    1. Personalized communication: Tailor your communication to the specific needs and interests of the lead. Use their name, reference previous conversations, and highlight how your product or service can address their specific pain points.
    2. Provide valuable content: Share educational content that is relevant to the lead’s interests and stage in the buyer’s journey. This can include blog posts, whitepapers, case studies, and webinars. By providing value upfront, you can build trust and establish yourself as a thought leader in your industry.
    3. Offer a free trial or demo: Depending on your product or service, offering a free trial or demo can be an effective way to move a lead closer to a purchase decision. By providing hands-on experience with your offering, you can demonstrate its value and address any concerns or objections the lead may have.
  3. Automate tasks and processes: Use marketing automation tools to streamline tasks and processes, such as lead nurturing, scoring, and follow-up. This can help reduce the time and effort required to move leads through the funnel.
  4. Use sales acceleration technology: Implement sales acceleration technology, such as predictive analytics and AI-powered lead scoring, to identify high-value leads and prioritize them for your sales team.
  5. Optimize your sales process: Continuously analyze your sales process to identify bottlenecks and areas for improvement. Use data and analytics to understand how leads are moving through the funnel and make adjust to accelerate their progression.

By implementing these strategies, you can accelerate your pipeline and convert more leads into customers in less time, giving you a healthier bottom line with a map for success.

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  • Loyalty Marketing, Marketing Communications

Loyalty Programs that Move the Needle

Once your sales funnel has done its job and converted a lead into a customer, how do you encourage them to return? Customer loyalty is good for business because it is much easier to re-engage a previous customer than convert a cold lead into a first-time customer. By focusing on customer loyalty and retention, you keep them coming back.

With a loyalty program, you can grow your customer retention rate by making customers feel valued and offering perks, contests, and discounts to encourage repeat business. Our engaging and unique services create the best customer experience, increasing the value of your marketing campaigns.

What Is a Loyalty Program?

A loyalty program is a marketing approach that rewards existing customers with incentives. For example, you could offer a 10% discount after a customer spends $100.

Prompting customers to repeat purchases is the goal, and discount codes or redeemable point systems encourage long-time customer engagement. Eighty-eight percent of customers consider themselves loyal to a brand after three or more purchases, and loyal customers make up about 8% of US retail customers but make up a whopping 40% of the revenue! The bottom line? Loyal customers are valuable customers.

The benefits of customer loyalty programs include:

  • Helping your customers feel appreciated and more likely to return
  • Promoting word-of-mouth marketing
  • Driving growth because loyal customers spend more than new customers

To benefit from a loyalty program, you must personalize your brand—creating a strong enough hook to keep customers returning and purchasing, and a loyalty program is an easy way to do that.

Types of Loyalty Programs

A loyalty program tells your most loyal customers how appreciative you are. Successful companies will use a combination of strategies in their loyalty programs to gain the best customer reach.

The O.G. Loyalty Programs

Rewarding customers for their loyal business did not start in retail. It started in bars – you order a few drinks and next thing you know, your bartender sets an upside down shot glass down in front of you – good for a free drink. After this, small local restaurants started offering loyalty cards that they would stamp with an ink stamp or punch with a unique hole punch. Loyalty programs are as old as the day is long. And you may recall collecting stamps you could redeem for product – same exact principle, rewarding folks for trying to shop with you more to meet a  goal.

Since the beginning days, they have become more complex, more options, and more small print.

Subscription-Based Loyalty Programs

Although a newer customer loyalty strategy, subscription-based loyalty programs are only growing; unlike other rewards systems, subscription-based program range from monthly to annual services. One of the most popular, Amazon Prime, will have special benefits such as free shipping, percentages off every order, and cheaper, fixed prices on certain products.

Point-Based Loyalty Programs

The most common loyalty program, point-based systems, has existed since the 70s. It’s simple—the more a customer buys, the more points they can redeem. Customers can redeem free products and unlock exclusive benefits and perks.

Point-based loyalty programs are also a great way to draw in potential customers. Leads who have yet to make purchases at your company can gain discounts through social media engagement, games, or a free birthday reward.

Tiered-Programs

Tiered loyalty programs allow customers to choose their level of benefits. There are usually three tiers representing loyalty status:

  • A free-to-use tier that gives a limited amount of perks
  • A middle tier that unlocks at least half of listed perks based on the target amount spent
  • A premium tier that offers all perks and benefits

Tiered programs promote access and encourage new customers to spend more to receive special offers. The more they spend, the more they get back.

Gamified Loyalty Programs

Nothing is more fun than a gamified loyalty program—it is the ultimate engagement tool for all types of customers. Gamified programs include instant-win games, giveaways, sweepstakes, contests, and big prize awards. Your company can make any game free to enter or reward existing customers with entry into a specific, exclusive contest.

Value-Based Programs

Value-based programs satisfy customers who wish to support charitable causes. If you need help highlighting your brand’s core values, this is also a perfect loyalty strategy. For example, a beauty company that does not test on animals could donate a percentage of each purchase to support animal rescues.

Successful Merchant Loyalty Programs

There are hundreds of thousands of different programs amongst the global merchant make-up; from card stamps to sophisticated app based loyalty programs, they each have their benefits and their limitations. Brands cannot afford to break the bank in rewards – after all, the goal is to gain more sales than you give away. Let’s review some of the more popular programs out there so you can pick and choose the features that will move the needle for your brand.

Amazon Prime Loyalty Program

Amazon Prime is a loyalty program offered by Amazon that provides members with a range of benefits, including free two-day shipping, access to streaming services, and exclusive discounts on select products.

Amazon Prime has been highly successful since its launch in 2005, with millions of members worldwide. According to a report by Consumer Intelligence Research Partners (CIRP), as of April 2021, there were an estimated 147 million Prime members in the United States, accounting for more than 70% of Amazon’s customer base in the country.

Amazon Prime members spend significantly more annually than non-members. According to a report by Statista, in 2020, Prime members spent an average of $1,400 per year on Amazon, compared to $600 spent by non-Prime members. This demonstrates that the program has been highly effective in driving customer loyalty and repeat business.

In addition to generating revenue through increased customer spend, Amazon also charges an annual fee for Prime membership. The annual fee for Amazon Prime is currently $139 (moving to $179 soon) in the United States, with additional fees charged in other countries. While Amazon has not disclosed the exact revenue generated by Prime fees, it is estimated to be in the billions of dollars annually.

The cost of operating the Prime program is also significant, with expenses related to shipping, content licensing, and other program benefits. Despite the significant costs associated with operating the Prime program, it has been highly successful in driving customer loyalty and generating revenue for Amazon. As the program continues to evolve and expand, it is likely to remain a key driver of customer acquisition and retention for the company.

Starbucks Loyalty Program

Starbucks has a highly successful loyalty program called Starbucks Rewards. The program was launched in 2009 and has since grown to become one of the largest and most successful loyalty programs in the world. The program is simple, like airline rewards programs, spend money and earn points. Points can be redeemed for product. You need a certain threshold of points to redeem for a coffee, and another for food, etc.

As of 2021, Starbucks Rewards has over 24 million active members in the United States, accounting for over 50% of all Starbucks transactions. Globally, the program has over 25 million active members. This indicates that a large percentage of Starbucks customers are members of the loyalty program.

According to data released by Starbucks in 2021, Starbucks Rewards members spend on average 80% more per year than non-members. On average, a Starbucks Rewards member spends around $620 annually, compared to non-members who spend around $340 annually.

The Starbucks Rewards program is designed to incentivize customers to make repeat purchases and increase their overall spend. Members earn points, called “Stars,” for every purchase they make at Starbucks, and these Stars can be redeemed for free drinks and food items.

While Starbucks has not disclosed the exact cost of running its loyalty program, it is estimated to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars annually. However, the program’s success and ability to drive significant revenue growth for Starbucks make it a worthwhile investment.

Overall, Starbucks Rewards has been highly successful in driving customer loyalty, increasing spend, and driving revenue growth for the company.

American Airlines Advantage Program

American Airlines operates a loyalty program called AAdvantage, which is one of the oldest and most successful airline loyalty programs in the world.

As of 2021, AAdvantage has over 115 million members globally, indicating that a significant percentage of American Airlines customers are members of the program. The program has been successful in driving customer loyalty and repeat business for the airline.

AAdvantage members are estimated to spend more than non-members on American Airlines flights. According to a report by Airlines Reporting Corporation (ARC), in 2019, AAdvantage members spent an average of $906 per ticket, compared to $590 spent by non-members. This shows that the program has been successful in incentivizing customers to spend more with American Airlines.

AAdvantage members earn miles for every flight they take with American Airlines, which can be redeemed for free flights, seat upgrades, and other travel-related benefits. Members can also earn miles by using American Airlines’ co-branded credit cards, shopping with partner retailers, and participating in other promotional activities.

While American Airlines has not disclosed the exact cost of running the AAdvantage program, loyalty programs are generally costly to operate, with costs running into the hundreds of millions of dollars annually. However, the program’s success in driving customer loyalty and repeat business makes it a worthwhile investment for the airline.

In summary, American Airlines’ AAdvantage loyalty program has been highly successful in driving customer loyalty and repeat business, with a significant percentage of the airline’s customers being members of the program. AAdvantage members spend more on average than non-members, and the program has been effective in incentivizing customers to spend more with American Airlines.

Tips for Designing a Successful Loyalty Program

The most innovative customer loyalty programs use the brand’s strengths to establish innovative programs.

If you want to move the needle in your retention or revenue through loyalty programs, you must focus on your customers. A successful loyalty program can push sales forward and engage your audience.

  1. Know your customer. Analyze your target audience’s motivations for purchasing your products. Not only will this increase a better customer experience, but it will make you aware of what will attract future purchases.
  2. Personalize the experience. Many brands selling higher-end products allow customers to accumulate exclusive freebies and choose what benefits they want. These elite memberships are often that of a tiered-loyalty program.
  3. Incentives are gold. Customers enjoy the appreciation for using your services. By providing rewards, they will count your business as a good experience. Many fashion retailers incorporate a point-based program, offering cashback rewards for every dollar spent. This successful tactic works as customers receive a store credit reward for every item they buy.

By implementing customer loyalty strategies like loyalty programs, contests, and surveys, you can drive growth and build your base of loyal customers.

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  • Digital Marketing, Direct Marketing, Marketing, Marketing Communications, Sales

2023 Marketing Initiatives: Adapting to the Changing Values of Customers

2023 Marketing Initiatives: Adapting to the Changing Values of Customers

When you consider what marketing covers, you often don’t recognize how far the marketing reach is. It is everything that influences a customer – it reaches far beyond advertising. It’s the entire experience of brand, pricing, customer service, engaging experience, and more. After the most recent years of transactions, consumer behavior as well as merchant services has taken a real dive into how to pivot while facing extreme challenge. Most businesses worked hard to meet the demands to stay in business – fairly remarkable. And during the pandemic, while consumers and businesses learned the new normal, plenty of families also re-evaluated their needs and changed. There are significantly fewer 2nd income earners in families today than 2020. Getting back to basics and priorities really hit home during this global challenge for obvious reasons. And it’s here to stay. This is why 2023 marketing priorities look different than most years.

One of the many changes in behavior over the pandemic led to the customer demand of having customer service employees that are knowledgeable and supportive for the service being offered.  While many people have decided not to go back to work, it leaves the business in the lurch – and now customers are more demanding, wanting the people present to really care for their job, service, and brand they support. Bad employee attitude is the number one, unacceptable behavior for what drives customer to leave a brand. This is a testimony to personality testing, and really spending time getting to know your potential front-line team in an interview – it can cost the business much more than employee turnover as the customer acquisition cost gets lumped on top of that. This reason is closely followed by 3 other similar issues:

  • Unfriendly service
  • Untrusted company
  • Unknowledgeable employees

It looks like consumers did some looking inside during the pandemic to decide what really matters to them; getting back to human basics really were revealed. Consumers want service folks to be committed to their job, try hard, and deliver good service based on these principles. After all, these are founding principles of the American dream of opportunity – hard work pays off.  73% of people say that customer experience is an important factor in their buying decisions, but currently only 49% of US consumers say that today’s companies provide a good experience.

 

Visual Learning

Visual Learning is another trend that has staying power. We have learned a lot from infographics – it’s a communication tool that combines images and data to tell a story; women prefer reading and men prefer, images; therefore you are capturing 100% of your audience while providing data and content that is easy to consumer.  Visual storytelling also can use color which elicits positive emotions from people. Impacting emotion during your storytelling is the very basics of marketing – impact your consumer. Visual assets can be delivered in many formats, from slideshows to infographics, to sell sheets, and video story telling. Research shows that consumers are 85% more likely to buy your product after watching a video about it. That’s a compelling stat.

 

Personalization

Personalization is another trend that gets more interesting as technology evolves. It started with merely using a customer’s name and offering them a birthday gift. Now technology is enabling a lot more with personalization. From buying history and artificial intelligence in eCommerce to in-person, AI – the ability here is growing vastly. Users expect that brands know who they are and that they treat them as this same person across platforms, from ecommerce, to in store, and kiosk locations. Quick service restaurants are leveraging kiosks to enable service while there’s employee shortages. The kiosks have proven to be a very successful option from both the merchant side and the consumer side. Consumers have claimed they prefer kiosks so they may keep control of their order, understand all the personalization options, and ensure their order is accurate. Kiosks also offer up-sells and cross sells reliably, whereas humans do their best but ultimately are not as reliable as computers. Additional AI being used enables the kiosk to recognize the consumer using a camera and retrieve their past order, offer additional items that consumers also enjoy with this selection, and show their loyalty points and offer. This experience is being widely appreciated by consumers and adding to the average ticket by up to 40% in some QSR locations.

 

Conversational Marketing

Conversational Marketing is another trend that consumers are demanding – they want to have conversations and not be talked at. The idea that they are a part of the conversation gives the consumer the acknowledgement they want. Years ago, sales folks addressed consumers as sir or mam and now they are chatting with them at the sales counter asking about their kids – and when online they are chatting with them about how they can help and adding the friendly touch of how are you today, what will you be using this product for? This informal approach makes the brand human and shows how they care for the buyer and actually engage. Data gathered here is also valuable as consumers will disclose more when having a conversation versus processing a transaction.  These learnings can be used in future opportunities with the consumers. Tracking and saving this data in your CRM is key.

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  • eCommerce, Loyalty Marketing, Marketing Communications

Customer Journey Mapping: The Ultimate Guide

How to Create a Customer Journey Map in 2022

While most companies get the strategic value of optimizing the customer experience (CX), far too few go through the process of breaking down what a good customer experience looks like from the vantage point of their actual customers.

This is why the customer journey map exists —a visual representation outlining how your customers experience each stage of their journey interacting with your brand, from engaging on your social platforms to purchasing online, and beyond.

In an era when customers value experience over price or even quality, understanding and influencing your customers’ journey can pave the way to your company’s success.

Let’s review how to develop a comprehensive, effective customer journey map that will bolster the CX and your bottom line.

  1. Set clear objectives for your map

Before you dive in, it’s important to get clear on your “why.” Most organizations use customer journey maps to identify and remedy any gaps or sticking points in the customer experience. You want to get as specific as possible, both to achieve your end goals and to avoid scope creep. Your first go around will be purely documenting the current experience as you methodically navigate your marketing in the shoes of your different personas.

Once you see what you have today, you may start defining new journeys with specific goals in mind —improve conversion rates, expand your audience, or perhaps find ways to break down silos within your organization?  You may find in your current customer journey that you have low social followership – identify where integrating your customer into social makes sense and add that element with an inducement. You will continue to elevate your gaps or deficiencies and identify where these fit into your perfect customer journey.

  1. Identify your buyer personas

If you haven’t already, you’ll want to define your buyer persona/s. Knowing who you are engaging is essential for establishing how best to engage them—this includes demographics, psychographics, socio-economic factors, as well as previous customer interactions. When done well, your buyer personas should capture a lot of essential information that will feed into your customer journey map.

Most likely, your audience is made up of more than one persona, which you want to consider when mapping out the overall customer experience. That said, incorporating too many personas into one journey map could dilute your results or overwhelm your capacity to implement viable change.

You want to consider the various perspectives but narrow your focus to the most common customer personas and how to best optimize their path to purchase experience.  Below you will see an example of a Buyer Persona Template to help you build out your buyer personas. You may download the Buyer Persona Template here.>>

Customer Journey Mapping

3. Talk to your “personas”

Regardless of how developed your buyer personas are, you still need to consult your prospects and current customers to get feedback on what is and isn’t working at each stage of the journey.

You can use everything from questionnaires and surveys to good old fashioned phone calls and one-on-one interviews.

Some good questions to ask include:

·         How did you hear about us or find our website?

·         What needs/problems led you to look for us/our products?

·         Have you purchased our products/services before? If so, what influenced your decision?

·         How was your purchase experience?

·         Did you find it easy to navigate and purchase on our website? Why or why not?

·         Do you have any recommendations or complaints you want to share with us?

4. Factor in customer emotions and stressors

“People don’t buy for logical reasons.  They buy for emotional reasons.”  – Zig Ziglar

Most every purchase decision a customer makes is motivated by emotion…as is every decision not to make a purchase. This is why it’s not just important, but essential to uncover what, why, and when emotions are triggering your customers.

If this seems daunting, remember that emotions are usually driven by an acute need or desire in the present, a pain point experienced in the past, or a perceived stressor that might happen in the future.

5. Capture every possible touchpoint

Touchpoint analysis is another crucial process for capturing a 360-degree view of your customers’ entire journey. This is important, because each of your touch points, no matter how fleeting, has an impact on the overall experience…and each has the potential to make or break your customer relationship.

Start by brainstorming at all the ways in which your customers or prospects might find and interact with you throughout their entire journey, both online and off. (Be sure to include a list of those not being used, as well).

Here’s a list of key touch points to get you started:

You can use the template below to document all the touch points you have at each stage of the customer journey.  Click here to download the Customer Journey Mapping template now.>>

customer journey mapping

6.    Optimize your CX across touchpoints

After you have a complete picture of your customer journey, start to finish, it’s time to take action.

You should have a detailed list of all the improvements you need to make at each touchpoint. You’ll also want to take inventory of the resources you have and the ones you’ll need. Whether it’s new technology, data, or human resources, if your investment results in a more personalized, meaningful experience for your customers, it’s worth it.

And don’t worry if you can’t tackle everything at once. Ideally, you’d want to prioritize what will have the biggest impact. But even small changes can strengthen trust and build rapport if you are genuine, transparent, and consistent in your efforts.

And remember, companies that leverage tools like customer journey maps reduce their cost of service by 15-20%.

Forging the Path to Customer Success

Mapping your customer journey isn’t necessarily the easy path, but it’s the best route to longevity, success, and satisfaction, on all sides. No matter how big or small the initial changes may be, you can act with confidence, knowing you delivering the right message at the right time to provide the ultimate customer experience.

Mission accomplished.

 

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  • Advertising, Marketing Communications, Promotion

Get Your Podcast on Spotify in 5 Simple Steps

Making Your Podcast Successful Through Distribution

You finally took the leap. You created a podcast that you hope will contribute something unique and meaningful for the masses (or at least those in your targeted niche). And if you have not gotten your podcast off the ground yet, our friends at Forbes have the perfect guide to starting your podcast here.>>

Now, for the next challenge: actually reaching your targeted listeners, preferably on a mass scale.

This is where getting your podcast on Spotify becomes your mission — the perfect platform to spread your content far and wide, reaching new listeners while also boosting your credibility. In fact, Spotify has quickly become the go-to platform for podcast listeners across the globe, now consisting of 389 million listeners and counting.

Even better, it’s quick and easy to broadcast your podcast, with no advanced tech skills or fancy equipment required.

Whether you’re a well-established podcaster or planning your debut, here’s what you need to know to leverage Spotify’s ever-expanding platform.

How to Meet Spotify’s Podcast Requirements

To be clear, Spotify doesn’t host your podcast, it streams your episodes from your podcast host. However, Spotify recently developed its own hosting platform Anchor.fm, allowing you to produce and share your podcast in the same location if you choose.

But there are numerous other hosting platforms (with free and premium options) offering varying degrees of storage capacity, analytic features and monetizing capabilities— Buzzsprout, Libsyn, Rss.com, and Podbean ranking among the top favorites.

Regardless of which platform you go with, you need to make sure your podcast meets the following requirements:

  • A high bitrate MP3 audio format (128 kbps+) or MP4 with AAC-LC uploaded to your host
  • An episode length that doesn’t exceed 2GB (roughly 12 hours)
  • An original podcast title, podcast description, and high-resolution cover art (with 1:1 ratio) saved as a JPEG, PNG, or TIFF file

For more specifics, check out Spotify’s official Podcast Delivery Spec guide.

Upload your new podcast on Spotify in 5 steps

Now that you’ve set everything up, you’ll be surprised how easy it is to list your podcast- in just a few steps and a matter of minutes, your episode will be ready to launch!

1. Create a Spotify account.

This goes without saying, but if you’re new to Spotify, you’ll need to create an account. You can sign up in seconds using this form.

2. Open Spotify for Podcasters page

Once you’re logged in, go to Spotify for Podcasters and click the icon, “Your Dashboard.” This will take you to the following page, where you’ll click, “Get Started.”

3. Copy/paste your RSS feed link.

Your RSS feed is essentially the host address for your podcast, which Spotify will prompt you to submit. Make sure to read the guidelines, then click “Next.”

Spotify will send you a code via email to verify that you own the podcast (most likely using the same email registered on your hosting site).

Note: You only need to go through this process once, after which Spotify will automatically pull from your RSS feed each time you upload new content on your hosting service.

4. Fill in your podcast info

After your podcast is verified, you can add all the essential information—including country of origin, primary language, hosting provider, primary category, etc.—then hit “Next.” Remember to be very descriptive and use your keywords well here – after all, it’s this copy that will be used to match with your target audiences search terms. Also remember you are meeting new folks, be sure to show your personality here and provide the value and benefits your listeners will get. This is your marketing platform, use it!

5. Review and submit your podcast.

Just like that, you’re ready to launch! Just double-check your entries and hit “Submit.”

Assuming everything is in line with Spotify’s guidelines, your podcast will be available for the masses, usually within a few hours.

Important side note: For whatever reason, Spotify doesn’t notify you when your episode goes live, so you’ll have to keep checking back to confirm.

Closing thoughts & Bonus step…

And that’s it, in 5 easy steps, you’re up and streaming! Now for the fun part—promoting your content with a vengeance. Be sure to leverage Spotify’s “Listen on Spotify” badge bolster your promo efforts on your website and social channels. You can easily add a hyperlink to your Spotify URL to give your followers a visual reminder and easy access to your new content.

Listen on Spotify Badge

To download your “Listen on Spotify” badge, go to the “Details” tab located on your Spotify dashboard page.  And finally, don’t forget all your existing channels as each of your current listeners are a free amplification tool.  Be sure to share on social media that your podcast is now available on Spotify (This also acts as social proof to your existing listeners, elevating your position in their minds). Ask your followers to like and share your Spotify announcement on social for an opportunity to be featured on your show. Be sure to send an email blast to your followers letting them know to enter the contest on social and follow you on Spotify.

You are well on your way to growing your following and elevating your audience listenership to the next level.

 

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  • Digital Marketing, Marketing Communications, Social Media

The Ultimate Instagram Strategy Guide

Instagram is the Fastest Growing Platform for SMBs

Instagram is an online photo sharing app that allows users to share photos and videos with friends and followers. It was created by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger in 2010. Since this time, the service now boasts over 1.21 billion monthly active users worldwide, accounting for 28% of all internet users. Sixty percent of users login daily while 80% of Instagram users follow a brand. With this type of traction, it’s not a platform to ignore. Yet it is an entirely different social animal with its focus being on vivid imagery and less text. The key here is knowing the intricate operations and all that you have available to you while marketing on Instagram.

When thinking of Instagram KPI’s you want to focus on reach and engagement like any other platform.  This guide will provide you the best methods to increase both of these metrics.  One of the most foundational pieces of supporting any of your social channels is to market it on your products.  If you offer services instead of product, you want the social icons on all printed and digital material – this is the visual cue to your customer that they may contact you and engage with you on these platforms.  Be sure these are at the top and bottom of your website while also in your email signature.  Those email signature links drive more traffic than you may think; consider using a tracking URL to see just how much traffic is driven from different placements.

They Keys to Instagram Engagement

You want to present your brand with a clear and consistent brand message. What feelings, thoughts, and emotions are you trying to elicit? Be sure this is clear in your bio. You have 150 characters to clearly convey your value. Remember some people will follow you because they know you and some will be top of funnel and not know you, so this is very important. There are some cool tools to increase your bio functionality that we will share shortly. Professional quality imagery is not necessary as users want beautiful imagery but not so much as to make it unapproachable. And personality sells – this includes faces – lots of faces, people love looking at faces.

  1. Use Link.tree for your bio link – this is a service that is free at the basic level with upgrades available. Link.tree enables you to provide multiple links by going to an index page – easy to use and expands your functionality.  Best practices include a link to sign up for your newsletter in exchange for a discount, link to your product or service, link to your loyalty program, and link to your about us or explainer video.
  2. Add links to stories and highlights. While your bio only allows one link, you can use as many as you want when you use a link service, stories and highlights enable another unique link by using the icon button you will have the option to select link with a destination URL – great way to promote events. Try linking to specific pages on your website, YouTube extended play video, educational seminars, podcast episodes, or current promotions using story highlights.
  3. Amplify your tags. Users often tag brands and you can amplify this message and show how many of your followers are bragging on you by sharing the message to a story and adding a high five or tag other accounts to bring attention to your story. You may have sister brands or just a simple thanks to the original poster with an @ tag. Users love getting attention from brands and you will find this is one of your most engaging opportunities to get folks to want to interact with you.
  4. Find your audience. Birds of a feather flock together.  This is true most everywhere – one and offline. Identify brands that would be complimentary to your products and organically respond to posts with compliments or questions to engage the user.  You’ll find this person will go check out what your brand is all about.  You can do this with hashtags as well.  A successful implementation for fixmyglasses.com was to search #brokenglasses and respond to consumers sharing pictures of their prized glasses smashed. Fixmyglasses.com simply responded, we can fix that – check us out, most glasses can be repaired for $69.99. This increased followership and sales significantly within 2 weeks of launching the program. Try finding new pages or hashtags each day and spread your seeds.
  5. Location matters. Be sure to use the location tag in each post that is local. If you have a store front, this is very important. People often search on locations to find new businesses in their area. HubSpot reports that posts with location tags receive 79% more engagement than those without an Instagram location tag. Go the extra mile and use localized hashtags. Consider finding your Instagram community page and see which hashtags they are using on their most liked posts.  Start using these and testing your reach, impressions, and engagement with the localized tags.
  6. Include Instagram on your website by using a feed widget that shows a few rows of your Instagram page, giving your visitors a taste of what they can expect in your feed.  This is an excellent way to attract new followers. Show them your feed and lead then to your Instagram water. Instagram reports that 50% of users that see a brand story go to the website – that’s a pretty staggering statistic and one you want to get in on.  Now start telling stories and include your link!
  7. Instagram take over or partnership. Consider finding complementary brands and doing exchange takeovers. These will include several complementary posts, videos, and engaging each other’s audiences and typically lead you to a great growth in followership. Consider including both brands in the take over as a thank you and consideration to your host page.  Another version of this would be to invite / hire an influencer. The influencer will have their own audience and you can take over their page while you have yours taken over by them.
  8. Use Instagram poll features to learn from your audience what they like – this or that is an incredibly simple and engaging Instagram story. Post 2 pictures with the question, this with an arrow to one image or that with an arrow to the other – poll results will show upon submission and IG’ers love this type of engagement.
  9. Tagging influencers and micro-influencers is a great way to find a celebrity that jives with your brand. You never know when you may trigger something that earns you a spot in their story or feed – and these organic references earn you a lot of exposure as well as Instagram algorithm goodness – popularity breeds the same.
  10. Make your Instagram Shop. You can now create a shop on Instagram and lead your followers right where you want them to go. Go to “Settings” and scroll to “Business Settings” and click “Shopping.” Now you can set your brand store up and create images for your users to shop on your Instagram page. This also enables your store to feature in Instagram’s Explore which would open you up to hundreds of thousands if not millions of users that may not know your brand. When featured in Explore, there will be a small shopping bag in the upper right portion of your image to indicate its shoppable.

Over 70% of shoppers say they go to Instagram to consider their next purchase. For the millennials, it’s their first stop when learning more about a brand – what is their image or story? Instagram will tell it. Be sure you are clear with your messaging and use these tried and true tips to grow your content marketing strategy, your audience, and your revenue.

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  • Live Promotions, Marketing Communications, Promotion, Trade Shows & Events

10 Marketing Conference Promotions that Deliver Attendance

People remember 80% of what they hear, read, watch, and experience. Beyond that, 88% of consumers say a brand’s marketing approach has convinced them to buy. Our attention has always been limited, valuable, and scarce. But what distinguishes the present day is that technological advances have made an overwhelming amount of information available, strategically aimed at capturing our attention; this is a double-edged sword. As for the general public, it has never been easier to garner such personal levels of attention but for your targeted marketer audience, they are on their feet and see through simple ploys.  Let us show you how to get through to the influencing audience.

#1 Social Media is Your FRIEND

So go beyond creating infographics, testimonials, contests, advertising, and hashtags to post on your social media channels. When we go on the internet, we typically have a goal in mind, like finding a conference. Once we obtain what we want about the upcoming venue, we typically leave the site. However, social media keeps us on the platform longer and wanting more. Once we see a platform, event, or user we like, we “subscribe” to them on YouTube, “become friends” with them on Facebook, or “follow” them on Instagram or Twitter. Thereafter, anything that entity posts will appear on our feeds as well. Anyone can set up an account and have the opportunity for their marketing conference to be seen by millions through millions on social media.

#2 An Upscale, Unusual & Intriguing Web Site

While event goers will not find you based on design, it will contribute to your user experience and combined with a valuable brand and SEO, this will land conversion. An intriguing event website is one that is designed to capture the attention of people who are seeking valuable educational opportunities.  The use of motion graphics, nobs, and levers that personalize the experience will further engage and provide the social proof to earn you that conversion.

Think about what you want to say to each persona you have identified. Create a consistent message on your web page how you want to sell your event to them. Start to segment your audience according to the different types of stakeholders you have identified. By doing this, you can then begin to personalize your communications through other means.

#3  Influencer Speakers Speak for Themselves 

Once you decide what type of conference you want to host, consider how much you need to invest in order to make it successful. Promote your event through influencers to speak at your event. Influencer marketing is a powerful way to generate buzz and interest in your marketing conference. Invite local businesses to sponsor your event because local businesses are often willing to support events hosted by their peers.

People buy from people – and people with a story resonate. Search your industry for influencers with stories as this is what people crave. They want a brand with a story, mission, and personality.  Go find yours and you’re on your way to, “getting yours”.

#4 Offer Early Registration at a Discounted Price – Countdown Clock

Early bird registration is a period when people can sign up for your next marketing conference before ticket prices go up. It sometimes launches during a current live event or shortly after. Consider tapping into that fear of missing out by adding a countdown on your registration form indicating how many more days, hours and minutes are left to get the discount. Scarcity is especially powerful. So, similarly, offer a limited number of tickets to your event. People will place a higher value on something when they’re in limited supply. Offer a VIP experience or other perks to entice people to buy now and really capture multiple client segment data.

#5 Email Marketing

Email marketing is an effective and economical approach to promote your marketing conference. But you must avoid transmitting standard, one-size-fits-all, email messages. As a substitute, opt for a more tailored methodology. Eighty percent of individuals say they’re more likely to make a purchase if they get a customized feel. Increase your conversion rates by segmenting your database to recognize people who have shared marketing responsibility interests by job title; communications, demand generation, PR, analytics, etc.  Now your message lands softly with people seeking more information on making their job more successful with the proper advanced information you can provide from experts in the industry.

# 6 Host Online Before – In Person Always

Hosting an online webinar is one of the best ways to generate leads and build relationships with your audience before you meet them at the marketing conference. Hosting a successful webinar doesn’t have to be expensive or timely. But if you’re looking to host a webinar that will help your next marketing conference grow, choose a topic that will appeal to your audience. You’ll need to consider what topics your audience would find interesting and relevant. If you are marketing for the automotive industry, surely floral arrangements would not be the best marketing advice to this group. Talk cars to bring people to the cars.

#7 Make The Press do The Work for YOU

Press releases are an important tool for businesses looking to gain exposure online. They’re also a great way to build relationships with journalists and bloggers. Press releases are a powerful way to promote your next marketing conference. However, if you don’t write one correctly, it could be a waste of time and effort… You need to choose a targeted audience when writing a press release. This means choosing a group of people looking to attend a marketing conference. If you write a press release targeting everyone, no one might read it due to it landing in unrelated publications.

# 8 Hire Professionals

Hiring an agency to help you with your next marketing conference can certainly make a difference. Event planners can save time and stress by hiring everyone you haven’t thought of for the conference. Trust us, these people will be needed from start to finish. If your budget and time allow, use the experience of a specialist to lead (and execute) the undertakings of your conference. Sometimes unfamiliarity of a city can throw the entire marketing conference askew. Locals will help.

# 9 Host a Happy Hour the Night Before

Happy hours are a great way to network with people who might become future clients. If you chat the night before, loosening up with a glass of vino and an appetizer will definitely make tomorrow more comfortable for all. Just remember to set boundaries regarding alcohol intake by you, your coworkers, and your guests. Set a time limit and a monetary amount so things stay professional.

# 10 The More The Merrier

Going back to #1 and Social Media, Influencers can be beneficial for many products. When running a future marketing conference, think about the “big names” in the business. Obtaining Seth Godin for your marketing conference might be a longshot but look back to all the networking you and your group have been doing naturally all your lives. Reach out to the talent pool you already have. And if you can pull off a celebrity, or a well-known person to your cause, that will be paramount to reaching high volume attendee numbers!

Overall, follow what promotional strategies work greatest as you work to achieve high attendance at your next marketing conference. Then, adjust your methodology established on your understanding of the past events. Using others, as well as pre-planning through your website, blogs, podcasts, and offers will all create the buzz to bring the crowds to life in real time!

 

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  • Marketing Communications, Social Media, Trade Shows & Events

2022 Top 5 Marketing Conferences

Marketing conferences are making a comeback; the long-awaited reprieve from COVID is shining through.  In person conferences are starting to be acceptable to many businesses and industries; don’t get left behind this year while folks are gathering for the 1st time in two years to share successes, pivots, fails, and new best practices that have been learned by the army of marketers fighting the good fight through the pandemic.

Some marketing conferences that are traditionally held in Q1 were canceled or delivered digitally, which as we all know from the past two years, not quite the same as in-person engagement; these same conferences have shown their commitment and eagerness to return by scheduling their 2023 event details this early.  Congratulations Social Media Examiner for planning a full year in advance – you will be sure to be on our 2023 Top Conferences to attend.

Top 5 Marketing Conferences in 2022

Media Post’s Email Insider Summit in Hilton Head, South Carolina: May 1-4th, 2022

Marketing Conference Admission Cost: $4,995

Media Post promises three days filled with speakers, case studies, roundtables, presentations, and group conversations among marketers.  The platform may have taken on plenty more tentacles outside of email for communication, but the challenge is the same – speak with your customer where they are at to personalize their experience, engage and entertain until they are ready to convert.  At which point, you provide a convenient and safe method to transact the order.  They will address how multi-touch messaging is changing content creation, content creation teams, and the KPIs that formerly measured email marketing initiatives also need to expand.  You can follow the marketing summit conversation with this hashtag: #MediaPostInsiderSummits

Digiday Programmatic Marketing Summit in Palm Springs, California:  May 4th – 6th

Marketing Conference Admission Cost: $3,195

The programmatic media market is as volatile as tech stocks these days. The industry continues to be shaped by data privacy laws, competitive blocks on platforms with policy changes, consumer advocate groups, lobbyists and more; learn which legislation and platform changes will impact your abilities and prices in programmatic marketing.  How will this trickle down to Over The Top media buying and specific libraries of targeting.  Industry leaders from the IAB, Bayer, Captify and many more will discuss the challenges and strategies necessary to overcome.  Find out what the roadmap for programmatic looks like so you may plan ahead and capture audience while the rest of the pack are learning to catch up with the programmatic shifts in policies and operations.

ContentTECH in San Diego, California: May 31st – June 2nd

Marketing Conference Admission Cost: $2,099

ContentTECH seeks to provide answers to savvy content marketers that know they need to provide epic value-add content experiences to their marketing funnel.  They will address content technology and showcase tools that will make your job easier with more insights as a content marketer.  They will declutter the space so you can draw your laser focus on exactly what you need to do for your brand at each stage of the funnel on each platform.  The executives speaking at this conference are well accoladed and carry some brand weight you will not want to miss.

Marketing Analytics Summit 2022 in Las Vegas, NV: June 20th – 23rd

Marketing Conference Admission Cost: $2,000

This analytics conference is sure to not only get you brushed up on opportunity but show you some real hands-on experience to better optimize your analytics stack and introduce you to professionals that can help your organization get a running start with decades of consulting experience.  Below is a small sampling of the speaker content that will be hosted at the Marketing Analytics Summit 2022:

  • Becoming a Data Informed Organization
  • Online Optimization
  • Behavioral Analytics
  • Personalization Proficiency
  • Omni-Channel Attribution
  • Programmatic Advertising
  • Marketing Intelligence Integration
  • Attribution Management
  • Testing Methods and Practices
  • Finding Insights and Stories from Data

In addition, there will be five distinct workshops you may also attend:

GOOGLE ANALYTICS 4 – THE NEW GA WORKSHOP

CARE AND FEEDING OF DIGITAL ANALYSTS

INTRO TO AI FOR MARKETING WORKSHOP

SQL ON GA IN BQ: BIGQUERY FOR DIGITAL MARKETERS

DATA LITERACY AND VISUALIZATION – THE NEW BIG DATA SKILLS

This conference looks to be the data powerhouse of the year for the data heads in the crowd.  In addition, we were provided this handy discount by our friends at MarketingTerms.com, Marketing Analytics Summit discount code: MARKETINGTERMSMAS to save 15%

MozCon in Seattle, Washington:  July 11th – 13th

Marketing Conference Admission Cost: $1,499

Moz Con has become synonymous with incredible amounts of fun combined with the best SEO knowledge you will find descended on one place at once time – the great city of Las Vegas will host some of the most passionate SEO professionals you will find for these three days.  The schedule is still being developed, though if you have been or heard of this event, you know you do not want to miss this opportunity.  CEO Rand Fishkin does not disappoint during this conference; you can be sure that the speakers will be flooded with big brand talent as well as ground-up talent that consults for the best of the best in search engine optimization.

This year will be a good primer to see how many people feel comfortable socializing again to venture out to these marketing conferences – how much personal engagement you may receive as a result of slightly smaller shows… or will they be? People may be so excited to get out that we find these conferences oversold or sold out in short order.  Be sure to get your tickets early to gauge – and be sure to share where you are going on social media so you can help drum up the interest which typically helps sell to speakers and get more valuable content and speakers presenting at the event.

Wishing everyone safe travels as we traverse the new post-pandemic normal.

 

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  • Marketing Communications

Content Marketing Master Class

This single focus fuels almost every single piece of marketing you do.  Copywriting is one of the most complicated and most compensated jobs in the industry due to just how powerful words are.  Words matter and advertising works. Add in that a picture is worth a thousand words and we have storytelling at its best.  Welcome to content marketing in 2022.

Copywriting testing can yield wildly significant results – remember when testing your copywriting that all other variables must remain consistent.  You must use the same image, same color graphics, same font type and only different words; results may vary into the thousand percent range that one set of copy earns over another.  Go ahead and start counting the profits of ensuring you are always using the BEST copy.  You must always be testing and learning in an iterative process to keep copy fresh and your audience engaged.

Now since we are referencing content marketing, it is much more than just copy — this in fact is your storytelling tools, including imagery.  So just as you would isolate copy as a variable in your ads, you will also isolate your imagery in one set once you found your best copy to see which imagery resonates best.  And continue further with your color scheme once you have identified the right image and copy.

One of the greatest parts of content production in 2022 is the methodical approach to research, construction, and development of the copy, assets, imagery, and theme.  Each piece of content can typically be repurposed into many relevant and interesting content pieces that resonate through different mediums to different audiences.  Also, consider that the content will be marketed on different platforms that may have different tones.

Your most foundational piece of content will be a blog based on research; people love factoids and information that is unknown.  Wrap your brand around that and share information that will surprise and endear your audience. Do this in an authentic style with a brand personality that is positive and provides value and you may find yourself with a fan club.  Now consider this blog can be turned into any and all of these additional content elements and you find your economies of scale in content production.  However remember, anything worth doing is absolutely worth doing the best you can – do not skimp on design or repurposing… these are your fans after all.

Video / Commercial / YouTube

One of the most important items when shooting video is to get your primary and secondary footage.  The secondary footage is called B-Roll and used often in transitions, backgrounds, and used as context for part of your storytelling.  Keeping a well-stocked library of B-Roll will make your video production so much easier.

Slideshow

One of the easiest types of content repurposing for storytelling is a slide show; simply shorten your copy or story and add an image per slide and voila, you have a new type of content that requires engagement to consume the slides.  The user must select next on each slide, and this ever so slight engagement makes them more endeared to the brand than no engagement.  And as we all know, engagement leads to conversions.

Infographic

An infographic is genius at its core.  Men prefer to consume images and women prefer to consume words or read content. Now combine both the words and imagery into one content format and you are appealing to 100% of your audience.

FAQs

This is the perfect place to brag a little.  Pose your question with a tilt towards the value proposition you offer, and your FAQs may well become sharable brags that folks find interesting enough to repeat and share.  There’s a famous mattress retailer that did this in a television commercial quoting how much skin debris settles into your mattress over 10 years – you can bet this drove quite a bit of sales from the phobic.

Top 10 List

Everyone loves a Top 10 list and these are often viral.  Top 10 Marketing Tips, Top 10 Skin Care Tips, Top 10 Dog Training Tools, Top 10 Restaurants, etc.  Be sure your list always compliments your product or service.

Crossword Puzzle

Another extremely engaging marketing tactic is to provide a crossword puzzle with hints all relevant to your brand.  Consider someone focused on your brand for over an hour.  You may combine this with another tactic and turn it into a contest and provide for uber engagement and attention.

Must-have E-book

Create longer form content, add images, calls to action, QR codes and more to provide a meaningful piece of content that may be downloaded in exchange for contact information; add that directly into your CRM and start dripping your way to conversions.

Quiz

Another powerful engagement tool that puts your customer in the right spot to soak up information while they imprint your brand in their mind.  Offer points, rewards, or leaderboard to your quiz and you’ll see how the impact of gamification can play with your customers, engagement, conversion, and loyalty.

Quotes

Another simple and understated way to elevate your brand by aligning with famous industry leaders and their words.  From Maya Angelou to Henry Ford, there are plenty of colloquial references you may find that will ignite thoughts in your customers of virtues your brand represents.

Press Release

EXTRA EXTRA, READ ALL ABOUT IT: Newsworthy and ready with a press release; this content has so many legs it’s uncanny.  You can send this over the wire, tweet it to your favorite journalists, post on your website, and share via email with your client database.

Meme

Humor has a way – and memes are the new-fandangled way to humor and entertain by pairing images with short humorous copy.  The more clever you are, the more likely this meme will be shared.

Each of these asset types has a purpose and should be considered when you decide where you will post these items.  Not all platforms serve all content, so some of this will fall into place without expertise; though you should test and track all postings for your reach, impressions, engagement, and conversion.  After all, we’re here to do business.

Consider a strategy that uses all forms so you may maximize your learning opportunity to understand what resonates with your audience. You should now be set with some foundational pieces to start your branded storytelling journey.  Happy Creating!

 

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  • Digital Marketing, Loyalty Marketing, Marketing Communications

Why You Need an App

Apps is short for applications, which we all know have been around since software was created. After all Microsoft Office is an application just like Word Perfect is a former application we used for word processing in 1992.  Apps are the new hip term for software and have altered the colloquial definition for such software to be the software or a software shell accessible from a bookmark on your phone.  The difference between software and software shell on your phone is determined by whether you need the internet to access the software; you need the internet to use Pandora, therefore this is merely an icon used to access the mobile version of Pandora the website.  An app that would not require the internet would be a self-contained game like Dots.

Now that we know what an app is, let’s think about creative uses for apps – as you need one!  The reason you need one is that consumers are now spending 90% of their phone time on mobile apps.  And consider if your prospect adds your app to their home screen; your opportunity is even greater when they can see your icon right when they tap their phone.  Let’s talk about what gets folks engaged on apps.

There are the obvious utilitarian apps; banking, airlines, review sites, career sites, and investments sites.  These are sites that you need to use daily or get valuable information.  Checking your bank balance, planning travel, checking frequent flyer points, finding a new restaurant or handyman, following up on a job lead, and seeing how much you’re worth is very utilitarian and something you may do daily. Your business may qualify for a utilitarian app. Consider whether you could make your basic desired behaviors better with your user interface optimized solely for phone engagement – would this make your prospect and client experience better?  You may have your base app foundation here.

If you do not believe that your product or service would benefit from a consumer app that enables utilitarian behavior for frequent access, then we need to start looking at our business for opportunities.  Just like the pandemic brought back QR codes and made them utilitarian for menu retrieval at restaurants to be touchless, we can also pivot and find something you can brand an app to make your brand be found on the home screen of hundreds of thousands of users.  If you’re a retailer, it may be a great place to save wish lists, collect coupons, buy gift certificates, and access your loyalty program.  If you provide services, it may be a great place to enable your clients to access your calendar to schedule services, review loyalty points, and buy gift certificates.

Let’s consider neither the retailer nor service provider works; consider something that you think may not work, an attorney.  Let’s flip this will all the tools available in your phone. Scanning, photos, copy, paste, etc. An attorney or insurance company may leverage the technology to use an app as your communication tool to share evidence, upload notes, and communicate statuses with your client.  The same type of communication tools could be used by your remodeling firm, your doctor, your esthetician, and your dentist.  Another potential use is if your product has refills, enable you to have your customer login and get their refill.

Let’s say you’re in the fitness market – apps are built for this market, but not something that has been done, how many steps until you need to replace your shoes. How many sleeps on your mattress produces skin debris build-up?  How many toothbrush uses with the same toothbrush head?  Daily companion quotes that are complementary to your product or service. All of these are simple timers for ensuring you know when to replace a product.  Consider a retailer that offered all of these in their app or each brand that is important to you offering them.

Another fantastic use for an app is an event; your brand hosting a unique event will not only want the app to support it, but now you have an app you can repurpose for any event. Remember technology can be used for different purposes and save money on reinventing the wheel. You will want to have your event schedule, map of the event, social media posts with event hashtags scrolling, hostess FAQs, and contact the hostess.  You may also have event surprises that include treasure hunts, challenges, ice breakers, and more.  You may even use your app for a virtual event.

And if you do not have a loyalty program – now is the time. This is a fantastic way to announce your program – you must sign up for the program with your app; you may ask the benefit to this and that is that they now have it on their home screen and just as we know advertising works, that little icon on their phone will make them access your brand that much more.  Though you do need to incent users to continue to use the app.  Consider making this the preferred points tool with gamification – doing any interactions on the app will multiply rewards, making users continually engage with your brand in an easy and intuitive format.  A marketers dream.

Now that you have some creative solutions for your app, you will want to be sure to get in front of the folks that want your app.  Forty percent of app users find apps in the app store; this means there really are app enthusiasts looking for apps that make their life easier. Can you imagine finding these folks looking to be a regular user of your app. These same folks that seek out apps consider themselves influencers and share their favorite apps with friends. You want to be that app!

Of course, you also want to go to your gravy base and offer it to your customers.  You will also want the refer a friend option in your app to give your users the ability to also become micro-influencers. Each referral can earn you more rewards or coupons based on your brand goals.  You should be well on your way to noodling a genius app for your brand; when you are ready to add gamification to your app, give us a ring and we’ll be sure to help make an app that keeps them coming back!

 

 

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  • Advertising, Digital Marketing, Direct Marketing, Marketing Communications

eMail Platform Selection: What’s the Right Size?

eMail Platform Selection: What’s the Right Size?

Every brand should have email marketing for both pre-sales, post-sales as well as transactional emails confirming the purchase and shipping.  Determining which email platform is right for your brand is quite the daunting task as you see the matrix above has hundreds of options for email service providers; and sometimes it’s more than just email you’re diving into as some of these platforms are full customer relationship management platforms.  We’ll help you look into the top providers by need.

Brands that are offering services will want a different type of email platform than eCommerce providers.  When marketing a service you are typically building your relationship through value add content. When you are selling online, you want to position your products in your email and this uses a different type of platform.  Also, be wary of the platforms that say they do it all.  Niche always outperforms the generalist.

And don’t think because everyone uses it that it must be the best. Mailchimp was early to market and made available for free to clients with less than 2,000 connections.  First thing is that the cost should be a low priority when deciding who to use for email marketing – you will earn your costs back ten-fold when adding email marketing to each step of your funnel.  You want a dynamic email platform that integrates well with your existing website or CRM.  Or maybe in fact you need a CRM; and you do if you are offering services.

Determining whether your transactional emails come from your email service provider is a financial choice (typically upside) that you should run the numbers on; oftentimes your eComm provider has limitations in what your transactional emails can do.  This will also give your branding a boost as you can smarten up how your emails display and provide more value with content that takes your customers back to your website for further branding.

eMail Platforms for Service Providers

Service providers want an eMail platform that enables customer segmentation to market to different segments with different content and offers.  You will want to associate click level data with your prospects rather than aggregate data.  Your emails should have the capability of being extremely dynamic with content that could reflect personal data, such as looking forward to seeing you at (insert the event you know the client registered for) and a personal note or incentive to get in touch at the event.

Sales Force eMail Studio

Sales Force eMail Studio is a module in Sales Force cloud with mobile responsive interface that supports in email video delivery.  Your brand can create timely and highly relevant messages to engage and re-engage customers. Drag-and-drop tools make it easy to create emails using simple content blocks.  Sales Force eMail Studio enables you to use advanced segmentation for unique content blocks and multi-variate testing.

Marketing Cloud Email Studio email content builder screen displayed in a laptop device

Constant Contact

Constant Contact is a top performing eMail platform provider that enables easy drag and drop eMail communications builder.  You may segment your lists by finding like qualities in behavior and create targeted sends. However, you must manage your own cadences as there is no smart sending that prevents over-mailing.  However, there are some fun bells and whistles that come with this email platform; you can build landing pages to collect eMail or provide a highly customized experience.

You can also share your emails to your social channels – though this would not be a best practice as now you are speaking to your whole audience when hopefully your email is segmented to speak to one of many audiences in your segmentation.

Sendinblue

This is your low-cost leader with the maximum bells and whistles. Sendinblue has very low subscription fees along with drag and drop email creation. You may use an existing template, build your own, or drop in html.

Sendinblue’s real power comes from the flexible and versatile marketing automation platform. The Sendinblue Tracker script lets you track web behavior from your contacts and use this information, as well as email engagement and data from your contacts, to create complex automation workflows that can save you time and help you scale and grow your business with no work at all.

eMail Platforms for eCommerce Providers

When you are selling online and looking for the ultimate in email opportunity, you really want to check under the hood. You want an eMail platform that hooks right into your eCommerce. At a minimum you want to load products directly from your catalog in your segmented blasts. You also want to be sure to have the following automations available:

Abandoned Cart eMail

Browse Abandon eMail

Welcome eMail

1st Purchase eMail

Back in Stock

Listrak

This advanced eCommerce email platform provides everything you need to intelligently market to your prospects and customers alike.  From easy drag and drop creation which is the least of folks worries these days.  This email platform also includes insights, accelerated growth email collection tools for your website, behavior triggers, and customer unification.

Klaviyo

The whole shebang.  Klaviyo allows all the automations referenced above as well as the opportunity to create your own custom flows. Klaviyo also has advanced insights into your customer data.  You can go to your customer activity and see who has been on your website in the last several hours, frequency of visits, source of acquisition, and email opens and clicks at the user level.  The data is extremely rich here and with an analyst may help you create rich customer segmentation.  Klaviyo has many pre-built templates with drag and drop functionality as well as the ability to connect your eCommerce store directly to Klaviyo to populate SKUs.  Klaviyo also has smart sending to help you keep your list healthy.

While there are many options with different nuisances, the one sure piece of advice is to start emailing; once you start the basic, you can only go up from there.  Start a drip campaign to your prospects and then you may start customer segmenting, automations, and advanced analytics to really sell to your prospects, customers, and uber fans in the best possible way.

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  • Advertising, Marketing Communications

The Psychology of Storytelling

Storytelling is powerful – beyond what you may understand.  While it has become popular in marketing to use storytelling to build your brand, this is not new, just being talked about in a new light. Storytelling is as old as it gets and how we find the oldest writings on rocks to tell the stories of our ancestors.  So why has this age old method of communication started to be talked about as though it was “found” in research in the past decade?  Because of its age old power to appeal to your emotion.

And when you feel connected to a story, you become emotionally involved… and we know that 86%+ of all purchases are based on emotions.  This right here is exactly why it is being talked about – marketers are learning something we have known but not as elaborately nor have we had the place until the internet to tell a story about our brand, product, or service.  Packaging has not lent itself to long form content generation, but blogs, social media, and storyboarding media using cookies to deliver parts of your story to users at different times in the sequence you want them presented.

Because stories are authentic, they make us feel connected to the characters in the story; in real-life stories you are connected to the characters as these are your family, friends, and inner circle that create your story.  And storytelling is being craved like it has never been before – or maybe we did not know how much we craved it until binge watching became available.  Consumers of all ages are binge watching, reading, and listening to content at stifling rates.

Hill Holiday’s Origin research conducted a study to learn why stories have such an effect on consumers.  The Origin research recruited 3,000 participants between 23 and 65 to review products paired with feature and benefit descriptions as well as products with more in-depth stories. The results were identified quickly that stories were much more effective at selling products.   Origin displayed the findings of their study in an infographic shown below.

The results indicate that storytelling not only has a higher conversion rate but that the perceived value is greater when storytelling tactics are involved.  A fictional story also had an even greater impact almost doubling the perceived value of spoons with eBay bids up to 84% greater than non-story telling ad copy.

The Real Story on Using Storytelling to Sell Products [Infographic]

Storytelling has another incredibly valuable psychological effect and that is retention; people retain information at a much greater rate when it is presented as a story as opposed to a list of facts and figures.  Harvard Business Publishing reports that researcher Leo Widrich notes, “The Science of Storytelling: What Listening to a Story Does to Our Brains”, that there’s research to suggest that when we hear a story, “not only are the language processing parts in our brain activated, but any other area in our brain that we would use when experiencing the events of the story are, too.”  This suggests the sensory cortex becomes active as well as the motor cortex based on the words we’re using to tell the story. Your prospect starts to envision the story and this makes it more concrete in their cognition and memory.

Researchers have also found cortisol, dopamine and oxytocin are released in the brain when we’re told a story. These are meaningful for brand recognition in the fact that cortisol is known to help form memories and we all know as marketers, taking up memory share is one of our main goals for brand recall.  Oxytocin is associated with empathy which helps us build meaningful and lasting relationships, yet another goal of marketers. And finally, dopamine aides in keeping us engaged which may as well be the jackpot these days in marketing. We have learned engagement is a key indicator of impending conversion.

Further support of storytelling comes from Harvard Business School as they encourage its use in education. For all the reasons it works in advertising are the same reasons it is beneficial to teach using storytelling. Students connect with characters, engage with the storyline, and feel a part of the story when learning in this capacity.

And if there has ever been a time where storytelling has its own home, consider your social media platforms. These platforms are built for storytelling. From words based to image based to audio based, there are platforms for every medium of storytelling. Never before have brands been set up for storytelling success so well.  Each place your brand advertises is yet another place to tell your story.  Make it memorable.

 

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  • Direct Marketing, Marketing Communications

Your Omnichannel Marketing Strategy Checklist

Master Omnichannel Marketing with These Tactics

There are so many ways to reach your target audience these days that you need to be sure you have the optimal set of tactics aligned with your message. The entrance of omnichannel marketing tries to assimilate an order to your media strategy while maximizing impact and minimizing costs. Some media tactics are better than others depending on whether you are selling a product or service or selling to another business or consumer. We’ll be sure to call out the differences in the checklist to help you determine what’s best for your brand.

Omnichannel marketing is the practice of reaching your audience through multiple touch points where they typically go – this can be a physical, digital, televised, audio, and more pending your target’s job role and consumer behavior. From outdoor marketing you see at a bus stop or behind a plane at the beach to experiential trade shows and everything in between, we’ve got a comprehensive list of ways to reach your audience.

Omnichannel marketing became popular because of the many ways in which shoppers can now buy; you want to be sure to reach your audience where they are.  Harvard Business Review found that 73% of all shoppers shop across channels.  You don’t want to miss out on that market share!

Another key opportunity when testing media is to identify a geographical location where you will excel by building critical mass with flawless execution. It’s fantastic to hear from clients, “We see you everywhere.”  This can be accomplished by targeting a region where timeliness and support are 100%; this will make all customers in the region satisfied and enable you to focus a smaller budget in a smaller region to reach critical mass to look much bigger than your brand may be. To determine your critical mass geolocation, you will want to consider where your service agents are or where your warehouse is. You want fast service with excellent satisfaction as this will also support word-of-mouth marketing and loyalty, which are just as important as the first sale.

Next, you’ll need to recognize the difference between where and with what. We can reach our audiences in different places which covers targeting.  What we say to them and how we serve it to them is the creative, which is an entirely different discussion. Today we will focus on targeting your audience.  Start by defining your audience.

  1. Is your audience a consumer audience or business audience?
  2. Who is your audience? What is their average age? Is it both men and women?
  3. Is your product category widely known or new? (hint: You may need to create a broader awareness campaign to identify who needs your product / service)
  4. Where do they go to find information on your product / service?
  5. Where does your audience spend time geographically?

Today you have so many ways to target your audience on so many different platforms. From broad (which works for many brands such as insurance and toothpaste) as you are looking for adults that use a product that has very broad demographics to insanely specific targeting to identify patients with a rare illness that your product helps.  We’ll cover all of the targeting methods available and what they are good for.

Keyword Targeting

Keyword targeting enables you to create a list of keywords and upload them into your ad platform. This will target individuals searching on these keywords.

This is good for both broad and specific.

Keyword Retargeting

Keyword retargeting enables you to upload your list of keywords and have your ad served to individuals that have searched on these terms in the past 30 days.

This is good for both broad and specific.

Demographic Targeting

Demographic targeting enables you to select priority demographics such as age, income, home ownership, presence of children, luxury car driver, and much more.

This is good for both broad and specific.

Native Targeting

Native targeting is where your content is published among similar content on other websites. This is to make your content appear organic and appeal to the audience already reading similar content, while in fact, your content is paid.  Your content will be labeled as a sponsorship yet typically gets more engagement since it is native content.

This is excellent for very specific targeting where you want to be among the content these readers are already consuming about your niche.

Geoframing

Geoframing is the ability to target folks that have been in a specific location at an earlier date with digital ads once they have left the location.  An example of this may be the Chicago International Home Show is the world’s largest tradeshow attended by some of the most powerful buyers in the world. While they are far too busy at the show to be engaging with ads, you may serve these ads for the next couple of months to anyone that was at the show during the event timeframe.

This is very specific as you have identified the audience you know you want and now you are employing a unique tactic to reach these folks.

Geofencing

Geofencing is the practice of identifying locations and serving mobile ads to users at the location or within a specified number of miles from that location. An excellent example of this would be the coffee shop chain that advertises between 6-10 am when you are within 1 mile of one of the locations. The coffee shop owner may offer a BOGO coupon to persuade you to try their coffee shop.

This is less specific than geoframing but more specific than generic targeting – as folks that all go to the same location typically have some things in common but maybe not as much as those that go to the same convention.

Conquesting

Conquesting is the practice of stealing customers from your competition. You may simply provide a list of websites that you would like to advertise to their traffic and identify which sites may be available in your ad servers platform.

This is great for almost every product and service you may think of – get their attention and let them know how big the market is and what their options are.

Lookalike Modeling

This would include uploading your client list so that machine learning can identify more folks that look like this so you may grow your reach without wasting impressions on audience members that do not have similarities with who you know buys your products.

This is as targeted as your list is – if you have a list of realtors, this would be much more specific than folks looking to buy a home merely by nature of having the same career.

Retargeting

Retargeting in the general sense is serving ads to customers that have visited your site and not purchased. You will serve ads to these users reminding them of your product or service. Ladies, we’ve all had that shoe ad follow us around for days until we finally agree… we cannot live without these shoes.  This is one of the most successful ad tactics around, delivering more conversions than most.  Important to note that the cost to convert should include up-front advertising as omnichannel marketing must account for all expenses to convert a customer.

This is very specific as you are getting folks that already have shown interest in you to look at you again.

Cross-device

Cross-devise targeting ensures you get your customers not only on mobile but also on their desktop and connected TV where the display and engagement stand to tip the scales much more than the small screen of your phone.

This is another specific target as you are getting a second exposure from folks that saw your ad on their desktop and now will see it on their phone or vice versa.

Email Targeting / CRM

Reaching customers and prospects in email is another one of the tactics your brand cannot stand to miss out on. Adding a drip campaign may be decades old at this point, yet it’s surprising that over 50% of all brands do not employ this tactic.  As simple as uploading your list and staying in regular communication can change your sales landscape drastically.

This is very specific as you already know who you are speaking to and at which stage in the marketing funnel they land.

Event Marketing

Does your product or service speak to a tradeshow like venue? This is typically a B2B product or service and has an entire industry dedicated to supporting the networking and sales opportunities of items you traditionally would not buy online. This includes multi-million dollar software applications, service providers, industry specific technology, mass purchasing opportunities, and a lot more.

This is another vertical that is very much like native advertising but in person at a convention; you are reaching your target buyer in a specific niche – they call this shooting fish in a barrel.

Outdoor Advertising

This world has definitely changed but outdoor advertising is as viable as ever – just ask Times Square. From digital billboards, cars wrapped in brands, bus stops, wrapped store fronts, sporting event venues, mobile billboards, benches, sponsored highways, and more, there is plenty of physical space to ensure your exposures are reinforcing your message in your target market so that your brand recall is high.  High brand recall makes you the brand of choice when purchase time comes around.

This is a very low target – excellent for insurance, toothpaste, banking, got milk, movies, and more.

Direct Marketing

We have learned that history repeats itself and that plenty of tactics can get diminished when the tactic has become saturated. At one point in time we had more “junk mail” or highly targeted direct mail as we like to call it, than real mail and it became a blinder – we stopped reading it. Now that our email box has become overwhelmed, direct mail is coming back around to be a popular method of alerting folks to new products and services.  The Direct Marketing Association found that oversized postcards have the highest response rate of all mediums available – that’s pretty impressive in this day.

Combine this with EDDM (every door direct mail) available by USPS or any print shop, will save you money by sending your postcard via carrier route without postage. Now you have the highest response rate with more affordable delivery rates – something to write home about.

This is a lower target based on the lack of information you have on mail carrier routes.

Print Publications

Another tactic that may seem dated and overpriced, but it’s not is print ads.  Advertising in a relevant magazine with a product or service that resonates with that audience brings validity to certain audiences.  You will also find that these publications typically have digital associations that will make your purchase more efficient by reaching the same audience on different platforms, giving you the multiple exposures you need to convert a customer.

And let’s not forget that the pandemic brought QR codes back to life in a more useful way – drive customers to meaningful and complimentary content from your print ad – offer surprise discount or free gift with purchase when the QR code is scanned.

This is another lower targeting opportunity as your demographics may be generic unless you are in a native publication and then you’re back to shooting fish in a barrel.  An example of this would be selling your camera in a photography enthusiast magazine as opposed to selling it in People magazine.

Partner Opportunities

There are so many complimentary opportunities to products and services that we really need to think inclusively to identify complimentary opportunities; these may be reciprocal or may be self-serving. This only impacts price as you may find a brand where you can swap email ads and include each other in emails or inbox flyers as well as you may find a one-way opportunity to pay to be included in another brand’s marketing or charge to include others in yours.  An example of this would be a meal subscription service where the subscription service includes an inbox flyer for a kitchen equipment supplier with a discount and the kitchen equipment supplier includes a value add coupon to the meal subscription service.  Both brands come out looking great offering complimentary discounts and that’s the only cost associated with this program.

This can be as targeted as your partner is.  If you have a very niche partner, chances are this will be excellent high quality and detailed targeting.

Public Relations

Let’s not forget the power of the pen and the media. All brands should be using press releases and media exposes to share product launches and big news with the industry of relevance. If you launch new products at a tradeshow, it most certainly is newsworthy and should be published over the wire. In addition, you should make industry relationships and send certain publications and influencers the release directly.

This is much more generic and should be hand distributed to journalists in your niche.

In Conclusion

Reaching your customers where they shop has certainly changed over the decades; though with this handy guide you should be set to start your omnichannel marketing plan to hit them where the shop and live just as though it was 1988. Be sure to consider your messaging and storytelling based on the medium you are engaging. Each platform should have a different tone with different goals for each stage of the marketing funnel.

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  • eMail Marketing, Marketing, Marketing Communications

Pipelines: Why Drip Campaigns are Worth it

You’ve heard the hype about drip campaigns – how they can keep your sales pipeline full, automatically converting relevant leads into loyal customers with no direct interaction needed on your part. Sound too good to be true?

Read on…

When done correctly, drip marketing will streamline your sales process into an automated converting machine…but there is a method to the magic. Here’s how to build a drip campaign that will have your audience swooning and your conversion rates soaring.

What is a Drip Campaign?

A drip campaign consists of a series of automatic emails sent out at strategic times to accomplish a specific goal. Drip campaigns are primarily used with the aim of leading customers further down the sales funnel, but they are also used for other purposes, such as welcoming new customers, reconnecting with inactive ones, or increasing following.

Although typically email-based, drip campaigns can also incorporate other communication channels, such as text messages and social sites.

How Does a Drip Campaign Work?

Drip email marketing campaigns can send messages or other content based on parameters like time or action. For example, a time-based drip campaign would include a series of emails sent out in relation to specific event dates.

In contrast, an action-based campaign would create automated responses based on customer behavior or triggers. A scenario might include when a customer leaves a site without purchasing the item in his or her cart. You might schedule an email reminding them they left something behind, and then follow up with a text message offering a limited discount code to complete the purchase.
A second example might look like this: a new subscriber signs up and immediately receives an email with a clickable discount offer. Once clicked, the subscriber is added to a new customer list that receives periodic emails with special offers.

Why are Drip Campaigns Effective?

The best reason to use drip campaigns is because they’re effective. Market research shows that targeted emails generate 18x more revenue than generic emails with an increased click rate of 119%.

  • Increased brand recognition through reiterated contact
  • Strengthen customer relationships through increased, meaningful engagement
  • Build trust with valuable content
  • Result in 45% higher ROI for businesses

5 Ways to Perfect Your Drip Campaign

There are a lot of moving parts to an email drip campaign, but here are the principles the most successful campaigns have in common:

1. Zero in on your target

This one goes without saying but can’t be left out: your messaging, timing, and trigger points should target your ideal customer based on customer data and research. From the type of offers that you include to the time and day you send them, every detail of your drip campaign should be centered around your specific demographic. Otherwise, you risk wasting your effort or worse, annoying (and losing) your customers.

2. Start Slow & Steady

Pace yourself when implementing your drip campaign. You want to establish consistent contact, but also leave customers wanting more. The idea is to slowly build trust with new customers, sweetening the deal until they are ready to make a purchase. Ultimately, you want your new followers to experience the best of what your brand has to offer with the feeling of instant VIP status.

3. Keep content short & sweet

You want your content to be valuable and on point to avoid losing your reader in the details. This goes for the headline, as well. Grab the reader’s attention with a captivating statement or intriguing question that makes your email impossible to delete. Keep the content length to 2-3 paragraphs so the reader arrives at your CTA as efficiently as possible. But be careful not to push too hard before you establish sufficient trust with your new subscriber.

4. Make your CTA count

This leads us to the star of the show- your call to action. There should be a clear CTA at the end of every drip email that aligns perfectly with each stage of the buyer’s journey, both in content and timing. Whether you want readers to visit your website, sign up for a newsletter, or buy a product, they should know exactly how and what to do at the end of every message.

5. Test, test, test…

Your drip campaigns are automated, but they shouldn’t be on autopilot. Continuously test your emails to see which performs the best so you can continue to improve your results. Testing not only allows you to determine the best time and day to send your emails, but it also allows you to see what word choice and format works best for your CTA. You will be amazed at how dramatically you can improve your results by simply replacing a word in your CTA!

***

There’s no question, successful drip email campaigns require patience, nuance, and skill. But the end results will be well worth the effort. And before you know it, your conversion and revenue rates will take on a life of their own…just like magic.

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  • Marketing Communications

6 Copywriting Tips Guaranteed to Convert

Great copywriting is the powerhouse of any marketing campaign, and when done right, can ramp up 3 times the amount of leads over other marketing hacks for 62% less cost.  Great copywriting provides great content which fuels most of the marketing we do.

Regardless of what your official title is, if you are creating content to raise brand awareness, increase following, and generate revenue, you are, in fact, copywriting.

Copywriting does require a certain level of skill, but the secret to mastering it is in the approach. As David Ogilvy, points out, “The trouble with many copywriters is that they don’t really think in terms of selling.”

Yes, you want to connect with and engage your audience, but ultimately, you want your reader to take action towards your desired goal. This touches on another subject we have covered, pre-framing, where we prepare our reader for what we want to happen next. Like we said, copywriting touches almost every part of marketing.

Don’t know where to start? Here are 6 proven copywriting strategies to turn your marketing campaigns into profit-generating machines.

1. Clear, Magnetic Headlines

Your headline is one of the most critical components of your copy, because if it doesn’t grab your customers’ attention, your content won’t get read. This means you have to both pique your reader’s curiosity and convey authority on the subject at hand in about 6 to 8 words. You’ll learn in email marketing that your “headline” is your subject line and determines where your customers click in your email.

So how do you craft killer headlines that will entice your readers to read on?

Clarity is key. It’s tempting to conjure up something clever, but if people don’t immediately know what they are investing their time in, they won’t. For example “How to beat the bulge in a pinch” might seem catchy, but “10 tricks to lose belly fat in 2 weeks” tells the reader exactly what they are getting. Time and again this proves true online driving journalists crazy that are used to writing magazine headlines that are put in front of folks at a check out stand. You have to understand the internet folks are searching for content whereas in a store it is push marketing where it is presented to the reader; very different context and marketing initiative between push and pull marketing.

Here’s a great example of a clear, concise headline that instantly draws the reader in (presented on cbr.com):

Fairy Tail: 10 Hilarious Memes That Will Make You Cry Laughing.

Start collecting a list of headlines that catch your attention and incorporate these tips to help guide you:

  • Limit your headline to 6-8 words
  • Include targeted keywords for clarity and SEO
  • Include specific numbers at the beginning of the headline
  • Use power words like “Secret, Tricks, Free, Fail-proof, etc.”

2. Write Copy that is Easy to Digest

The good news is, 8 out of 10 people will usually read your headline. The not so good news is only 2 will keep reading. And since the average person’s attention span has dropped to around 8 seconds, you need to work fast.

This means you need to hook them in the first few sentences with intriguing offers, interesting stats, or thought-provoking statements.

And although you want to present yourself as an expert, research shows that content written at a third-grade level receives 36% more responses. This does not mean, however, that you can write like a third-grader. Fifty-nine percent of consumers claim they avoid doing business with brands that have spelling and grammatical errors in their content.

Basically, you just want to write in a way that is accessible to your readers. Keep vocabulary simple, paragraphs and sentences short, and avoid jargon or technical terminology that’s not widely used.

3. Separate Features From Benefits

This can be a tricky one but learning how to distinguish between features and benefits can be the difference between a sale and a bounce.

Features can sound like benefits, but here is the main difference: features are what your product does and benefits are how your product will improve the lives of your customers.

Many businesses make the mistake of showcasing how awesome their product is and forget to demonstrate how it will impact the consumer. Great copywriting brings the reader into the experience of a product and the positive emotions that come with that experience.

For instance, let’s say you sold a unique blend of coffee from Peru. You could list off the rich aromas and unique flavors (features). Or, you could transport readers to a tropical paradise where every sip invigorates their senses and rejuvenates their spirit (benefits). See the difference?

4. Focus on The Customer & Their Desires

Marketing guru, James Gilbert, claims that good marketers don’t sell products, they create desire.

Our emotions have more power over our decision-making than any other factor. And our emotions are what fuel our desires. Writing persuasive copy comes down to understanding what your audience truly wants and then eliciting the right emotions to inspire a call to action.

Get inside your readers’ head- identify their dreams, challenges, and pain points- and use strong trigger words to provoke an intense reaction (like bold, daring, overcome, reclaim, safe, helpless, etc.)

5. Craft a Compelling CTA to Inspire Action

One of the most unfortunate mistakes marketers make is neglecting their CTA, which should be one of their primary motivations for creating copy in the first place.

Creating a compelling CTA doesn’t have to be hard, just make sure it includes these 4 components:

  • Says exactly what the reader will get
  • Reiterates how/why the reader will benefit
  • Tells the reader exactly what to do next
  • Removes any hesitation or last-minute doubt

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6. Measure Your Copy for Maximum Performance

At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter how amazing your writing or copy is if you can’t demonstrate what was effective and why. Even if it feels like yet another task, sometimes changing just one word can mean the difference of thousands of dollars.

Black & Decker’s DeWalt demonstrated the difference a word can make by changing their CTA from “Buy Now” to “Shop Now.” After running an A/B test, the marketing team discovered the change resulted in 17% less click-throughs, which would have cost them six figures in revenue over the course of a year. “Buy Now” is the winner and relates back to pre-framing. Preparing your customer for the next step is essential and why words matter.

***

Whether you are writing a social media ad or your quarterly newsletter, these 6 copywriting tips will help you become a modern marketing master- harnessing the power of words to ramp up your traffic, engagement, and revenue.

 

 

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  • Marketing Communications

How Brands are Changing the Game with Omnichannel Marketing

According to Google research, 90% of users switch between 2-4 different devices a day just to complete one task. And since the average person’s attention span hovers around 8 seconds, a customer’s path to purchase can start and end at anytime, anywhere, and on any device.

This is why more businesses are switching to omnichannel marketing, to guide customers effortlessly along the path to purchase based on their individual needs and preferences, regardless of what platform they are using. Technology is making this easier every day with the ability to track users across platforms.

And the results are telling. Data confirms omnichannel customers are spending 15 to 30% more than single or multi-channel customers. And, according to a Google-backed study, 75% of consumers are more likely to visit a physical store after viewing local retail information online within one hour of researching.

The reality is, if you want to thrive in this ever-changing, tech-driven climate, omnichannel should be a part of your approach. Here are how brands are using omnichannel marketing to wildly improve their customers’ experience and their bottom line.

What is omnichannel marketing?

Omnichannel marketing is a holistic approach that coordinates ad messaging across platforms and devices based on what an individual needs at any given time during their customer journey. So, when a user engages with your ad or site, their other channels automatically update with content that leads them to the next step in their journey.

For example, let’s say a customer signs up for your mailing list and opts in to receive text messages. She immediately receives a welcome email, followed by a text message with a discount code for her next purchase in your store.

This omnichannel approach is proving to be a gamechanger for enhancing the customer experience. By leveraging data that reflects each individual’s experience, you are not only making your customer’s path to purchase seamless, but you are also building trust, avoiding irrelevant or redundant messaging that seems disingenuous or just annoying.

And customers agree. Research shows a 23 x higher rate of customer satisfaction experienced by companies with omnichannel strategies.

Steps to Build Your Omnichannel Strategy

Switch to Customer-centric Model

Instead of focusing on maximizing conversions on a specific platform, omnichannel marketing takes a customer-centric approach, encouraging customer conversion, regardless of platform. So since it’s now all about the customer, the best place to start is in the shoes of your customer.

Using your buyer personas to guide you, map out your buyers’ journey, including all the potential decision-making touchpoints they might encounter along the way.

Think of it like orchestrating a scavenger hunt, envisioning the route your customers will take, and what clues or incentives you can plant along the way to make their journey fun and engaging.

But remember, gone are the days when you can send the same post to Facebook and Instagram and call it a day. You need to adapt your content to accommodate the nuances of each platform. For example, Instagram doesn’t allow clickable links in its captions, so what are other ways to lead viewers to your site, or should you focus to boosting brand awareness and engagement instead?

Create Content for Context

Once you have a blueprint of your customers’ journey, you want to present content that leads them effortlessly where you want them to go. With omnichannel marketing, timing and messaging are critical.

After the initial contact, consider whether you should welcome them with an email or text, for example. Should you offer a free product or special offer and on what platform? Or, if a customer leaves an item to their cart on your website, consider whether you should send a message via text or email to encourage them to finish their purchase.  Consider asking how they would prefer to be contacted to begin with and use that preferred method with appropriate message length for the format; email marketing or text message.

Get Serious About Your Data

Your omnichannel strategy will only be as good as the quality of your data. Great data is critical for creating a deeper, more personalized connection with your customers, as well as greater influence over their decision-making process.

Your brand’s internal data is always the most valuable, next to second-party data from platforms like Google and Facebook. If needed, you can fill in any gaps with third-party or purchased data from aggregator sites. The most important areas to focus on include identifying your ideal customer, effective engagement, predicting behavior, and monitoring the omnichannel process flow.

You will also make your life easier and your strategy more efficient by integrating each of your platforms’ data into one centralized system, giving you a birds-eye view of your customer journeys. This means planning, be sure to collect the data you want in micro-events and save to your CRM. Micro-events mean smaller conversions that aide a real sale. Registration is an example of micro conversion, next would be augmented data such as how many employees or company revenue.

Measure Everything for Maximum Results

Just like any marketing approach, if you aren’t analyzing your results, you are most likely shooting in the dark and throwing ad money out the window. Testing and measuring your content and approach will help you to determine which areas you need to focus on or change to get the best results.

If your head is spinning, don’t panic. A data management platform (DMP) can do the work for you- gathering, aggregating, and analyzing your consumer data, as well as presenting a multi-dimensional view of your campaign’s performance.

Yes, it’s an investment, but worth it. Brands and marketers who fine-tune their omnichannel strategy report an 89% customer retention rate compared to 33% retention for those who don’t!

***

In a rapidly changing digital landscape, omnichannel marketing will keep you a step ahead of your customers, enhancing their shopping experience while optimizing profitability. Whether you decide to tackle it internally or seek external experts, an omnichannel strategy will uplevel your marketing campaign ensuring you deliver the right message, in the right way, at the right time.

 

 

 

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  • Marketing, Marketing Communications, SEO, Social Media

How Influencer Marketing Can Dramatically Improve Your SEO

Love it or hate it, search engine optimization (SEO) is hands down the best way to drive traffic to your website, broaden your audience, and increase your sales. The reason it’s the best  is that you OWN this – you are not buying your spot over and over again like you do with advertising. You earn this and keep it with a slick SEO strategy. That’s why you need to travel the SEO road, but how to is where you face challenges, as you may have already. Pinning down the best way to do this can feel like catching an eel.

SEO is indeed a living thing- constantly evolving to meet the latest algorithm requirements of leading search engines (mainly Google). This is why it’s essential to keep revising and strengthening your approach.

And like it or not, you’re probably going to need a little help from your friends…preferably ones with a good amount of influence.

Influencer Marketing: Your SEO Superpower

Influencer marketing has proven to be a SEO superpower, proving its strength in numbers for reaching new audiences and elevating brand credibility.

If you are new to the game, influencer marketing entails partnering with popular social media personalities to promote your brand’s products or services across their social platforms. There are several levels of influencers, from celebrity mega-influencers like Kylie Jenner or even her uber influencer sister Kim Kardashian to smaller but mightier micro-influencers (those who have 100,000 followers or less).

And as it turns out, micro-influencers carry out 90% of successful influencer marketing, primarily because they have earned their followers’ trust and respect based on their level of expertise in a certain niche area.

How Influencer Marketing Works

Influencers Increase Your Visibility & Credibility

The most obvious reason influencer marketing works: they know people, and those people trust them. Add in the power of social media, the potential for spreading the word about your brand is endless.

If you get an influencer to retweet or share your content, you gain access to a whole new set of people eager to share the love. And the bonus increase in revenue can’t be ignored. Nearly 40% of Twitter users say they’ve made a purchase as a direct result of a Tweet from an influencer.

Influencers Help Build a Diverse and Strong Link Profile

Influencer marketing can be a gamechanger for building a quality link profile (the quantity and quality of backlinks to your site), which has a major impact on your search engine ranking.
There are a number of ways marketing influencers can help strengthen your link profile. Again, because they have established themselves in their niche, people trust them and are likely to want to share their content, i.e. your links, with others who might benefit.

And to your benefit, your influencer is probably connected with other high-authority sites, so there’s a good chance they will pick up content that links back to you, which Google ranking will also pick up on. See how it works? Kind of like the old high school popularity contest but online and the world is your student body.

The power of influence in action

WordStream created a piece on a trending topic, shared the link on Twitter, and tagged a number of influential journalists. The link was retweeted enough to go viral, eventually receiving an editorial link by the New York Times. As a result, the site received a massive increase in referral links from high-profile domains.

Something to note in the influencer world and backlink value is that newspaper publications, news channels, non-profits, and educational institutes have a high influence link value as opposed to regular brand and retail sites. You can find authority everywhere you look when trying to reverse engineer the Google SEO algo.

Influencers Provide Fresh Unique Content

We’ve said it before, content is king for winning over your audience and improving your search engine ranking. Teaming up with an influencer- whose sole purpose is to produce engaging, shareable content- will give your followers new and compelling material to enjoy while strengthening your credibility in the process.

And, as we’ve just seen, influencers give you a boost by exposing your posts to their followers in spheres you wouldn’t otherwise be able to access. If your influencer convinces their followers to create new content with your company’s branded hashtag and links, your reach gets amplified further, which means your following will too.

Inviting an influencer as a guest blogger to your site is another great way to give your content a fresh look. You can leverage your guest blogger’s influence and impact with a few simple steps:

  • Create a bio for your influencer that matches your target audience’s interests
  • Include links to their site and social media pages
  • Build it up on your social media posts and include their handles
  • Repurpose content for future posts, always including their handles

How to win over your Marketing Influencer

If working with influencers sounds too good to be true, it’s not. But first you have to find one who wants to work with you. You’ll want to spend some time researching them to make sure they are a good fit for your brand. You’ll also want to present them with a partnership that benefits both of you, not just your brand.  And you will most likely have to court them for a bit- share their content or mention them in yours.

And yes, your new relationship will most likely cost you. But if you find a person who resonates with your vision and target customer, the rewards will be sweet…

The 2019 Influencer Marketing Hub Survey revealed that businesses are making
$5.20 for every $1 spent on influencer marketing.

 

If you’re feeling stuck with getting your brand on the map, it’s time for action. And the right social influencer could be the superpower you need to take your ranking, following, and revenue leaps and bounds beyond what you ever thought was possible.

 

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Engage. Capture. Convert.

Your Partner from Concept to Completion.

End-to-end promotional marketing solutions that bring strategy, creative, technology, compliance, administration, and fulfillment together.

Explore
Company
Popular Products
Get Started

Have a promotion in mind? Tell us what you’re trying to accomplish.

Let's Talk

Protected by U.S. Patent numbers 7,162,433, 8,019,641, 8,655,715 B2, 10,891,642 and pending applications.

Copyright © 2000–2026 Contest Factory. All Rights Reserved.

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