Communication Breakdown: Talk is Cheap but Not Talking is Expensive

Did you know that according to research, “the average loss from inadequate communication is $62.4 billion annually for companies with 100K employees?” (David Grossman) The most important thing in a business or anything for matter is good communication! There are many ways for management or upper teams to convey messages and contact others within a company. Texts, emails, calls, weekly meetings in person or via zoom, etc. Being in a top role in a company also means that communication is an essential skill to possess in order to keep your company running smoothly.  You’d be surprised at the lack of communication that exists in companies but it leads to almost every issue within one. It can lead to high turnover rates and cost the brand big time dollars. That said, let’s talk about the positive impacts of good correspondence within a business.

1. Improve employee moral:

   1. Listening to employee feedback: this will boost moral through employees feeling like their needs are being heard and actions are being taken.

   2. Conflict mitigation: any conflicts that may arise in your business can be averted if caught early. Knowing what’s going on with who inside your walls is important to keeping issues from escalating.

   3. Improved job satisfaction: a transparent environment creates trust and will support your employees as they support you.

2. Increase productivity: when employees understand their tasks and what is expected of them they are more productive.

3. Increase Engagement: this can lead to innovative ideas through collaboration efforts between team members. Will inherently improve relationships between all team members as well.

 There are a couple of other things that are important if you’re good to be a good communicator in the work place. The first is active listening. It involves 4 main elements of listening, reflecting, clarifying and summarizing. Paying attention to what the speaker is saying without interjection of opinions or solutions. Reflection means repeating back what they said. Clarifying is then asking the questions for more information. At the end of the conversation summarization with a brief overview of what key points they said. Second, is providing positive feedback and construction criticism. Lastly, in person meetings are a great way to communicate with someone. It’s important for reading body language and getting a sense of the emotional responses they may have. In short, great communication skills lead to a more successful business. Talk is cheap but not talking is expensive.

Customer Relationship Management: Three’s Company

Yesterday we wrote about Increasing Customer Lifetime Value and customer relationship management goes hand in hand with this topic. The goal here is to improve customer service and in turn, improve relationships with the brand audience.  CMR uses technology, practices and strategies to manage and analyze customer interaction as well as their data throughout their lifetime as your customer. It allows insights into past purchases, customer data and interaction history to deeper understand your audience. There are three main types of CMR: operational, analytical and collaborative.

1. Operational: main purpose is to generate leads, create contacts with their info and capture all details about the client in order to provide quality service throughout their lifetime. Focuses on automation and uses tech to do so in most cases.

   1. Sales automation: automate sales process through acquiring new customers and deal with them by organizing their information. This helps meet their needs more efficiently.

   2. Marketing automation: helps find the best way to advertise product/service to potential customers and concerned with campaign management. Will help decide which channels are best to reach your audience.

   3. Service automation: designed to help support customers to increase satisfaction.

2. Analytical: data analysis from multiple touchpoints of customer journey, in order to gain insights about customers in order to better serve them.

   1. Gather data from different channels

   2. Customer acquisition and retention

   3. Profiling customer personas

   4. Attribution

3. Collaborative:  establishes communication from various places related in your organization or those your brand works with closely. This will help streamline workflow since it helps everyone get on the same page.

   1. Enhances interactions between departments

   2. Document management

   3. Channel management

It’s important to understand the brand’s goals when deciding which CRM strategy is best or maybe all of them. Using these will help increase customer retention through a deeper understanding of your customer as well as increased communication within the company about the audience. The more you understand your audience, the better you can serve them. Since personalization is now the norm, this is a must for your brand to create relationships that will last a long time with your customers.

BFF’s Forever: Increasing Customer Lifetime Value

What is customer lifetime value anyway? It’s how much net profit one customer can generate for your brand over time. it’s common sense that a brand wants to keep their customers for a long time. Customer loyalty plays an important role in revenue and word of mouth marketing. So, how do you keep your customers for the long haul? Here are some of our tips to improve your customer lifetime value.

1.     Feature your customers in your content: this will keep your audience engaged and let them know that you appreciate them!

2.     Take your audience’s advice: create polls & surveys to find out what they want. Keep an eye on impressions on social media, comments, reviews, etc. Collect and implement. Again, they will feel heard and appreciated on top of receiving what they asked for.

3.     Personalize! People spend more money on brands that personalize their experience and about 81% of people expect it anyhow.

4.     Great customer service: offer 24/7 service if you can. Make sure that each person on every channel can help them instead of sending them somewhere else to solve their problems.

5.     Give your audience something that others don’t! provide incredible value. Not through discounts but your product/service. Be more convenient than other brands and make quality your top priority. If you have a customer centric approach with their needs at the heart of your brand, it should ensure the right decisions that will keep them around.

Valuing your customers, whether it’s a B2B or B2C situation, will show that you have them at the top of mind when making decisions. They will feel heard, seen and their loyalty to you in return will skyrocket.

Competitive Positioning Strategy

In what ways does your brand stand out from all the others? What’s the value of choosing your brand over your competitors? Competitive positioning is a marketing strategy the refers to how the brand will do just that. The goal of the competitive positioning strategy is not only to increase sales but can guide your brand with purpose. So, in what ways can your brand make itself stand out?

1.     Excellence /Value

2.     Leadership

3.     Niche

4.     Customer service

The benefits really speak for themselves when winning over your customers through positioning but how do you create a good strategy to do so? Here are some point to help you get started.

1.     Study the competition: see how they perform, what are they lacking that you can offer? Perform SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats)

2.     Market research: can help understand size, scope and demographics.

3.     Define your goal: What are the company short and long-term goals? Decide what your brand goal is and this will help the positioning strategy.

4.     Map it out: we mean this literally actually. Create a perceptual graph with two axis and four quadrants. Each line represents an attribute. Remember those x, y axis graphs you used back in algebra. It’s like that. No number though thankfully. Let’s look at an example. One line is for quality and the other price. The positive axis for quality is high quality. The positive for price is high pricing. The negative portion of the axis for quality is equal to low quality and the negative for price would be for low pricing. You can do this to find holes in your particular market niche.

 Ultimately, you started your brand because you knew there was something lacking in your field so finding your niche shouldn’t be too difficult. Mapping out a plan to get others to believe in your dream is another story. It will take planning and time. Make sure to set deadline and goal dates to stay on track. It’s also very motivating for you and your team to see achievement. Happy planning.

Billboard Advertising

Sometimes it seems like our devices can actually read our minds instead of just hear us and send us targeted ads. The other day I was thinking about how much it would cost to advertise on a billboard and if it would even be worth it, as I drove from New Jersey on the Walt Whitman bridge back to Philly. There are tons of billboards as you drive across and I’ll be honest, they do catch my eye. They’re creative and attention grabbing. Not to mention, absolutely massive in size. Shortly after this thought crossed my mind, I got an email from my daily HubSpot with their weekly blogs. Low and behold, there was an article there all about billboard advertising. The web strikes again to read my thoughts and slightly terrify me. Just kidding. But seriously, it turns out this type of marketing isn’t dead. Far from it really. “32% of people like them and 9% like them a lot,” according to a 2022 Statista dataset. Another study from Solomon Partners in the HubSpot blog shows that, when it comes to out of home ads, 86% of people remember printed ads and 84% remember digital.” These are the highest of all types of advertising, which included: T.V. (linear & streaming), audio (podcast & radio), online (mobile & desktop), OOH (print & digital, and lastly, just print ads alone.

There are many benefits to billboard advertising it turns out. It allows brands to target very specific locations to increase brand awareness in that area. There’s also a guarantee that eyes will be on your ad. I know I’m guilty of clicking out of every digital ad that gets in the way of what I’m doing on the web. They’re annoying sometimes. It can help your brand get more exposure and diversify your audience. Oh yea, and they’re up 24/7 for the allotted time frame. Apparently, billboard ads contribute to impulse purchases. For some reason 68% of people make impulse buys while driving (True Impact Media). Who knew right? So, now for that second question. How cost effective is billboard advertising?

There are a few factors to consider when adding up the costs of billboard advertising. Location, demographics of the area, circulation of traffic and impression numbers. These things considered, it can cost roughly $850 for a month. If you’re looking at a rural area it could be as cheap as $250/month. The most expensive places, such as times square could be around $50K.

Impressions are calculate based on:

1.     Circulation of the area

2.     Actual size of the board

3.     How closely it’s placed to the road

4.     Visibility

5.     Traffic speed by the board

So, with all of these factors considered in pricing and benefits, is it worth it? Well, we think so but it will depend on your brand industry. For example, a lot of people learn about local events, insurance, law, etc. if you’re a local venue or business it’s very worth it for your brand. ROI on billboard advertising in general is about 40%, which is actually a little low for advertising standards of 10:1 ratio. You can do the math on those numbers but it isn’t great. There will be many factors to consider when deciding whether or not your brand will benefit from billboard ads. All the information above should be considered as well as your reasoning.

Marketing to Older Populations

Did you know that older generations 50-years and above make up 51% of consumer spending? They also spend more time online than most people think. They are not much different than other groups to market to honestly, but they do have some qualities that differ and it will require some adjustments on the brands marketing strategy. Since they take up half of the consumer spending it’s important you get it right or you’re losing out on some big moola. Here are some ways to ensure that your senior marketing strategy will not be lost.

1.     Use language they understand: don’t use catchy, trendy jargon when trying to market to them. They won’t understand it and they won’t care. They just want to know how your product/service is going to improve their life or solve a problem they have.

2.     Make it easy: although a large portion of seniors are online that doesn’t mean they’re really tech savvy. Confusing choices when making purchases online or even while scrolling your website is a great way to frustrate and lose them. Make the process easy and clear.

3.     Personalization is a must: these groups of individuals remember a time when buying was between the merchant and the customer personally. They like to be regarded as an individual. Not only should your message speak to their age group, if you can get a person on the phone with them or name them directly in emails that’s even better.

4.     This generation is LOYAL AF: they are very unlikely to change brands if you get there first. Research shows that actually, “90% of seniors will keep you as their digital go-to if you provide them with their informational needs first“ (Search Engine Journal).

5.     Use multichannel marketing: although this generation is online they still respond well to offline marketing efforts, such as catalogs, T.V. commercials, billboards, etc.

These are our top five but there are so many more ways to effectively market to the senior populations. It should also be noted that there are different categories of seniors and each must be treated slightly different. There is the group of 50-62, 63-74 and 75 and over. Now, everywhere you look these will be divided slightly differently but as long as they’re similar the grouping won’t matter much if it’s a year or two off. This makes sense though if you think about it, you won’t market to your mom the same way you would market to your grandmother, right? Exactly. If your brand involves selling to the senior population it will require a competent amount of research into the best marketing strategies in order to reach them.

Objectives & Goals

What is the difference between a goal and an objective and how can the two work together? Well, let’s start by defining each one. A goal is long-term and typically a broader outcome whereas an objective is short-term and more specific. An objective can help a brand achieve a goal. They are different but objectives can assist goals if used correctly. So, what are the main differences between goals and objectives? Well, let’s take a quick look.

1.     Goals are higher in order than objectives since they have a broader outcome, where objectives will help attain the whole goal.

2.     Objectives are narrower in specific tasks and goals are broader.

3.     Objectives are also more specific than goals. For example, the goal of the brand is to become carbon neutral. This is broad. Objective will help us achieve how we get there. An objective would be to reduce carbon footprint in the quarter by 15%.

4.     Timeframe is longer for goals and shorter for objectives.

5.     Language describing goals tends to be more conceptual and language used for objectives is more creative.

6.     Goals are harder to measure where goals tend to be more tangible.

There are big benefits to setting goals for you brand. It will give your team a direction, help set priorities, motivate everyone to act, and help the brand achieve full potential. Objectives, on the other hand, can help measure progress toward that goal, give short-term sense of achievement, assist in making difficult decisions and confirm confidence in strategy toward your goals. We have all heard of ways to help set good goals, such as the SMART model but what about setting good objectives? Here are a couple of things to consider when setting objectives to help your brand achieve its goals.

1.     Select measurable KPI’s

2.     Set up different sets of objectives

3.     Refine them through feedback and analysis before setting

4.     Make sure they align with overall goals of the brand

5.     They should also follow the SMART model

6.     Describe desired outcome instead of actions and work backwards

A good example of an objective would be to cut down on production costs by 15% in a year. Now, your team will have to work backwards to determine what actions they can take to do this. This could be in conjunction with your brand goal of increasing revenue by the end of the year. By reducing the production costs your revenue will increase as a result of decreased spending. Another objective would be to increase sales through some type of short-term measure. Both of these objectives would feed into the company’s overall goal to increase revenue by the end of the year. Goals won’t work without objectives but objectives alone won't allow your brand to reach its full potential. Using both together will ensure that your brand reaches new heights.

LOV Movement Fundraiser 2023

Today we’re taking a different take on our blog article in order to promote a good cause. The LOV Movement is a non-profit organization that focuses on love, oneness, and virtue to help real people in underdeveloped communities all over the world. Last year they held their first fundraising event that helped to build a school in the Giotto slum of Kenya for the local children. Here they sponsor fresh, clean drinking water and food. Their mission is to improve lives, and embody them with opportunities such as a higher education. In Los Angeles, they provide food every week to the skid row homeless population as well as water and clothing. 100% of their profits secured go back into service resources for these communities. They are driven through grassroots actions to maximize the value of your dollar. Their next fundraising event will be help May 6th in Santa Clarita from 6-10pm. You can purchase a ticket to attend or sponsor the event HERE. We’re happy to be a sponsor of this event as well as their inaugural fundraiser last year. We will also be attending the event so we hope to see you all there!

Salience Effect: Beyond Brand Salience

Salience is something that has been used for years in marketing techniques. The salience bias is when people tend to focus on items or information that is more noteworthy or unique than those that don’t grab attention. This makes sense if you think about it. With bottles on the shelf that all look the same, your attention will immediately go to the bottle that stands out like a sore thumb. This is great news for brands because that means being unique will help your revenue and reputation. You do this by advertising your product/service as standing out from competition through offering something that they lack and/or design your product so it is visually striking. So, why does this happen? Let’s take a closer look. It arises from contrast between things and their surroundings. It develops as a result of psychological cognitive ease as we become accustomed to our day to day interactions. Think about it like this, you don’t pay attention to the smells around you until you smell something that brings you back to your childhood. It can also come up as something draws us toward a specific aspect of the world. This can be apparent with someone who works in the advertising world and notices catchy and creative ads on billboards while driving. Someone who isn’t in the industry probably wouldn’t notice them unless they’re very striking. No matter what industry you are in, it’s important that you grab the attention of the consumer immediately. Be the brand that stands out as unique from all the rest to harness the power of the salience effect.

Know Your Worth: Value Propositions

We’ve all heard the saying, “Know your worth,” but how can you actually apply this in the business world? Well, one answer could be creating a solid value proposition. A value proposition summarizes why customers should choose your product or service. It will highlight the ways that you stand out from your competition and how that can benefit your customer. A great value proposition is specific, focuses on the problem(s) it solves for the customers and should be front and center on your site. Here are some of our tips to writing a good value proposition.

1.     Use your customers voice: how would your customers describe your brand? How does it improve their lives?

2.     Speak clearly: keep it concise with a few sentences highlighting the product, who should buy it, how it will solve and when it solves their problem and finally, why they should buy it from you and not someone else. Answering these questions will create a solid proposition for your audience.

It seems like a short list but there is a lot of work to be done in these two steps. Identifying your audience voice may require gathering information from them in order to better understand how they feel about you. Once you start to write it, it’s important to answer the questions listed above in bullet point two. This can also take some deeper diving to understand what the answers are and then how to convey them as efficiently as possible. The home page on our Locomotive website is a good example of a value proposition.  We clearly state who we are, what we do and how our business works. This pulls the reader in to diver further down the site for more information on our services. Although our services are catered more to a B2B the concept is the same for any brand.

Anchoring Heuristic in Marketing

As we know by now, psychology plays a critical role in marketing and advertising. Anchoring bias or anchoring heuristic is one of these cognitive characteristics that can be applied to marketing strategies. The anchoring bias describes our human tendency to favor the first piece of information offered about something when making decisions. It is then difficult to part from this once you’ve made up your mind, despite the fact that other options may be more beneficial. Let’s look at an example to further explain how this works. Let’s say that you just went shopping and the first car was a set price. Now everywhere you go look, you refuse to go any higher than this number. This is the base price that has been anchored in your mind. Side note: there are internal and external factors that affect how one uses the anchor based on prior knowledge beliefs, etc. A person’s self-confidence or lack thereof in this case will be more vulnerable to the effect. This type of anchoring bias can be used as a marketing technique for brands.

1.     Higher initial pricing:

2.     Offer packages of services/products at different pricing levels

3.     Persuasive language

4.     Highlight benefits of product/service

Brands should make sure to use social proof when using the anchoring effect. This will establish that others have purchased and believe in the product/service. This will really embed the anchor in their mind. It can help your brand increase sales and let’s be honest, you will get what your business is worth. The anchoring effect can be a very useful tool.

Marketing Attribution

Let’s be real, no one likes wasting their money! Well, maybe those who have it to waste. But most of us will do anything to save a buck in our personal and business lives. Marketing attribution is a technique that does just that in the business world. Marketing attribution evaluates areas of brand marketing strategies during the consumers path to purchase to see what leads to a purchase and what doesn’t. This allows for the brand to allocate more resources to those strategies that lead to revenue and back off on those that don’t. Thus, saving the company more money and ultimately, bring more in. The benefits are pretty obvious in order to optimize resources and budgets. There are a few different models that a brand can follow:

1.     First touch: this assumes that the consumer chose to purchase after seeing the initial ad they encountered. It could be the first time they visited your website or engaged with your brand on social media.

2.     Last touch: as the name implies, this model uses the final touchpoint that leads to a sale.

3.     Linear: this model considers all contributing channels in the buyer journey and considers all interactions equal.

4.     Lead conversion touch: this helps pinpoint the exact moment that a person decides to make the purchase.

5.     Multi-touch: can help the brand understand how all interactions work together. Can allow for tracking of the exact moment that lead to conversion of consumer.

6.     Time decay: focuses on more recent interactions. It gives weight to each purchase touchpoint differently. It will help understanding in which channels are pushing customers toward a purchase.

7.     Position based (U-shaped): it’s broken up like this, 40% at the first interaction, 40% at the final and 20% to the other touchpoints.

8.     Custom: most complex. Gives ability to assign their own touchpoint weights. Very accurate but also hard to set up.

So, how do you know which model to use for your brand? Well, the answer is in your marketing goals. First, ask yourself, what type of sales cycles does your brand use and how long does it run? How much is digital and which channels are used? Now, it’s time to figure out what you want to know. What’s the goal of your current marketing campaign and what type of campaigns have you been using? Here is a short list of questions to consider when choosing an attribution model:

1.     Can you get insights throughout the campaign to optimize or only at the end?

2.     Are you trying to understand how your marketing effort can generate leads?

3.     Are you assessing your marketing strategy?

Picking the right model isn’t an easy process so care should be taken to know what it is that you want to measure. Don’t rush this process so you can align to with your unique marketing strategies and goals.

Programmatic SEO

We all know that high SEO is important for your brand but what is programmatic SEO? Even if you’ve never heard of it, it is quite common practice in the digital space. Instead of spilling a definition at you, let’s look at an example of programmatic SEO and work our way backwards. Imagine you do a web search on best restaurants in (city) and when the results come back with a TripAdvisor page in at least the top 3. The reason for this is that they have a page for almost everything travel related anywhere in the world. They have to create thousands of landing pages in order to increase their SEO ranking. This is programmatic SEO in a nutshell. It is building a database of thousands of pages that are connected to a template in order to rank higher in Google’s search query. They all use similar, long-structure keywords. Brands can use this to write the content and publish for them instead of having to it all manually. So, how do you implement programmatic SEO? Here is a quick tips list to get you started.

1.     Choose your head terms: this is the overall broad categories. Advertising, advertising agency, content agency would be an example of some we would use. These will have a large search volume.

2.     Figure out what the modifier keywords are: Primary: found content agency, user-generated content agency. Secondary: advertising: user-generated content, found content, sourced content.

3.     Put them all together: it’s not uncommon to have 100K keywords.

4.     Do competitive analysis: what keywords and long for modifiers are your competition showing up on with Google search?

5.     Build the landing pages: they will all be a similar template but slightly unique. It’s important for the algorithm so it sees it as a unique value for visitors on each page.

Every brand can benefit from programmatic SEO, because every brand should have an online presence, no matter the size of the company. We live in a digital world, so improving your brand’s SEO will allow it to reach more people, make your site more attractive and the ROI on programmatic SEO is very high. It can also require much less time to achieve results.

Brand Salience

When I say Nike, you think… we’re pretty sure the image that came to mind was the iconic Nike swoosh. This is a prime example of brand salience. It sounds similar to brand awareness but they are different. Brand awareness focuses on measuring overall visibility during the entire customer journey. Salience is a measure of awareness during the actual purchasing decision.  The Nike swoosh might come to top of mind when you want a new pair of kicks. So, how do brands increase their salience?

1.     Tap into emotions: emotion creates a long-term memory. People often buy based on emotion and not logic. UGC found content advertising is a great way to tap into this.

2.     Create memorable branding: memorable images, ads, etc. Uniqueness will make you stand out from the competitors and staying true to your mission.

3.     Expand awareness: brand awareness intersects brand salience. Expanding your brand reach is important to gaining new customers to increase salience.

4.     Consistency is key: use newsletter, digital ads, commercials, social media marketing, etc. Getting your brand out into the world often means more eyes on it more often.

5.     Constantly test and improve: you only stop growing when you stop learning. It’s important to use this mindset in business. The more your brand tests campaigns through Google analytics, surveys and revenue, the more you will understand what works and what doesn’t. this will ensure that you get the right material in front of your audience that will resonate with them on a deeper level.

With fierce competition everywhere, if your brand masters salience it will come to mind first during purchasing decisions. It’s an important factor for brand success In order to become a household name.

Demand Driven Pricing

 Imagine that it’s winter time and you go to the sale rack at the clothing store. There are a ton of bathing suits marked down. This is an example of demand driven pricing. It’s a method that considers fluctuations in customer demand and adjusts prices to fit changes in perceived value of items/services. Let’s think about what goes into the price of an item or service. Looking at an item we have to think about factors, such as manufacturing costs, market, competition and quality. Taking these factors into consideration allows for demand driven pricing tactics as long as the brand is covering their costs to manufacture their product with some profit left on top. There are a few different demand driven pricing tactics to discuss.

1.     Psychological pricing: as the name sounds, this method involves psychology of using certain prices that have a psychological impact. The theory states that prices set at odd pricing, such as $9.99 drives demand more than it would if the number were whole.

2.     Penetration pricing: this method is the opposite of price skimming and sets the initial price below average. This will attract a larger pool of customers at the beginning and is used with brands entering a very competitive market place. It can create traction for new brands through brand awareness. This is a long-term strategy to increase sale volume but can be difficult to raise pricing later due to consumer expectations.

3.     Value-based pricing: this method uses the customer’s perceived value to set pricing rather than historical pricing of the product. This is where products tap into emotional purchasing. For example, in fashion or niche markets where consumers buy for social proof. Therefore, these prices are typically set high compared to manufacturing costs.

4.     Price skimming: this method is where the brand initially sets the price of an item/service higher and will lower it as time goes on. Usually people are willing to pay more initially for a product launch and it will attract high end customers at first. As the pricing is adjusted, it will attract a more price sensitive audience. This will also help the company recover costs quickly.

5.     Yield management: this method involves a strategy to sell a fixed-inventory resource within a limited time frame to match pricing fluctuations of customer demand. A good example of this is when airlines increase pricing closer to the holidays. Hotels will do the same. This is in order to cut their inventory costs in most situations and manage it efficiently. If demand is high then pricing will be high. If demand is low then pricing will be low.

6.     Geo-based pricing: again, as the name implies, this pricing model relies on geographic location to set the pricing. This is typically used by brands that have a global market. Pricing changes based on location due to reasons such as local economy. For example, a product will be marked at a higher price in NYC than it would in Mobile, Alabama.

There are definitely some pros and cons to demand driven pricing. It can help maximize revenue and it can better serve audience through ensuring access to fixed inventory. However, it can be labor intensive and extremely volatile. There’s no guarantee that consumers will pay and it can be tough to predict. It will take thought out strategy to implement if your brand is interested in using demand driven pricing tactics. That being said, it will pay off through immense data collection to understand competitor pricing and market value.

Brand Audience vs Brand Community

Sometimes the line between a brand audience and brand community can get blurred. They are not the same thing. Although, your brand community can also be part of your audience, there are some key differences between the two. A brand audience can be defined as a specific group of consumers who will use your product of service that is decided by the brand based on age, gender, income, location, interests, etc. A brand community is group of individuals who are invested in the brand beyond what is being sold. They become advocates and part of the brand itself. Think of it this way. Your audience is who the brand talks to and the community talks to the brand. Let’s look at what makes these two different from one another.

Relationships: communication with a brand audience is usually from the brand strictly to the audience. One focal point outward to each member of the audience. In a brand community, however, interactions happen from brand to individuals, individuals to brand and also between individuals to one another about the brand. There is much more engagement between all three. Also, relationship building happens differently between communities and audiences. Community members build relationships through a sense of shared passion. Audiences may not share as many characteristics with other members of the audience and might not identify as a part of a “community group” for this reason.

Community:

·      Actively participate

·      Bond with one another

·      Various streams of communications

·      Responsibility and ownership

·      Shared purpose

Audience:

·      Passively consume

·      Disconnected from each other (no commonalities)

·      One-way communication from brand to audience

·      No influence over brand

·      No collectiveness

Growth vs Assistance: when building a community, the main idea is helping those in that brand community. When building an audience, the main goal is increasing the brand reach. Therefore, audiences tend to be larger than communities but communities are far more engaged. So, which is better? The answer is… there is no right or wrong answer.

Having both a brand audience and a brand community are valuable for their own reasons. Having a large audience can increase brand awareness. It’s also easier to increase through paid advertising as well. The benefits of a brand community, we think, really speak for themselves, but we’ll list some here anyway. Building a good community will increase the amount of feedback your brand will receive. If your brand listens, then it will also increase loyalty and further community growth. Those that are part of the brand community will feel a strong sense of connection and therefore, are the best word of mouth marketing a brand could ask for. A great way to think about this is that your audience can be purchased but your brand community has to be earned. The question is, “which do you think is more valuable?”

Consumer Trends March 2023

Trends shift so very quickly in our society today. It’s important to stay on top of what’s hot and what’s not in the advertising world. Every few months we do a dive into what is important to consumers and the trends that they’re following. Here is what we found as we’re about 4 months into the year so far.

1.     Uptrend in social media commerce: Millennials and Gen Z want brands to be where they are and apparently that’s on social media. 50% of adults in the U.S. have already taken advantage of social media commerce and that’s expected to grow (Future of Commerce).

2.     Search engines are still at the top for consumers discovery of new products: HubSpot survey shows that 44% of people still use search engines to discover new products over others. In store comes in at number two with 41%.

3.     Consumers want video content: HubSpot’s survey indicated that it’s important that the video be authentic. This really doesn’t come as a surprise to us. Do I hear sourced UGC advertising anyone?

4.     Adopting cost-saving habits: 96% of PwC’s Global Consumer Insights Pulse Survey either have already or plan to within the next 6 months. It makes sense in the U.S. with financial uncertainties looming.

Staying up with trends is key to understanding how to effectively market to your audience. If social media commerce is up, it’s time to make sure your brand is taking advantage of shopping on social. Consumers want authentic, short-form video content. Give the people what they want in your advertisements. If your target audience is cutting back on spending, how can you let them see that what you have to offer them as a brand is necessity? What problems in their lives can you, and only you, solve?

AR & VR: What is the Difference & Why is it Important in Marketing?

Well, from all the science fiction movies over the years, I think we all understand what virtual reality is. It’s a software that immerses the user completely in a 3-D environment that is interactive in a 360-degree way. A good example of this is the Get Supernatural Fitness experience. Augmented reality is slightly different from that. This virtual space layers elements on top of a real-world scene in order to use the space they’re actually in while changing elements of the experience. Pokémon Go is an example of this digital reality experience. Let’s dive into how each type of these digital reality experiences can be used for marketing.

Augmented Reality:

1.     Try before you buy scenarios: Augmented reality can create a digital shopping experience where the user can try things out before they purchase. For example, they can use a photo of themselves to try on different styles of sunglasses before even stepping foot into the store. It’s already being used in these situations, such as cosmetic sampling and trying on clothing.

2.     Branding materials: Augmented reality can add digital elements to a real-world scene. We see this all the time where video or photos add a virtual element onto the scene.  

3.     Save on marketing costs: Due to the virtual nature of augmented reality, it can save the brand immense amount of dollars on their marketing spend. It creates a targeted and personalized approach without spending tons on traditional media.

Virtual Reality:

1.     Virtual tours: This offers a digital experience in place of a physical one. Augmented reality can use this as well. The difference lies in the immersion. VR takes you fully into the digital alternate world with no sense of the physical around you. AR only superimposes the content over the reality of our physical.

2.     Use it to tell your brand’s story: Creates a high emotional effect on customer and helps your brand stand out from all the rest. Memorable advertising, such as VR are engaging and give a more in-depth look. A study for Omni Hotels showed that those who experienced a VR tour were 67% more inclined to book a room at their hotel (Trade Force 306)

The science fiction of the past has now become a reality in our present. Things that we thought were far-fetched 20 years ago aren’t so far-fetched anymore. It’s interesting to note that people may actually prefer one over the other though. When asked, most people say they prefer VR. “They enjoy it for taking them to a different and entertaining world. An escape from reality if you will. They’re usually more familiar with VR as well and believe that the graphics and visuals are better,” according to Hubspot. While we don’t think that one is better than the other, they both can have a place in marketing and advertising strategies. Cheers to embracing the future!

Jack of No Trades, Master of One: Benefits to Niche Businesses

Sometimes it is better to stop trying to please everyone! I know this might seem counterintuitive to a business, but it is the truth. Jess Wheeler talks about this in his recent newsletter and it has inspired us. We couldn’t agree more. You’re never going to stand out from your competitors if all you’re doing is trying to be like them. It’s time to stop following the crowd and create your own path. The only way you’re going to do this is by making people some type of way. Whatever that way may be, it has to stand out and be memorable to them. So, no matter what business you are in you have to figure out what it is that makes you different and run with it. For us, it’s found content, specializing in UGC, clearing it and slapping a pretty bow on it for our partners to use in their advertisements. We do it like no one else does and while we can’t give you all of our secrets, we can tell you this… We do it honestly (pertaining to our pricing), we do it creatively (singularly source each piece of content personally) and we do it collaboratively by allowing our partners to work with us as a team on every project. All this being said, we can tell that we know for certain we are a master of our trade and not a jack of too many.

If you’re trying to stand out from the mainstream, have you found your niche yet? Think about it and once you have, it will help you build a loyal customer base, reduce competition and increase revenue. It might not be obvious to identify at first but with time and effort you can find it. Here are some tips to get you started.

1.     What are your passions and interests?

2.     Identify the problems you can solve creatively for your customers.

3.     Look at your competitors and see what weakness their brand has. This can show you areas that you can fill where they may not serve their audience.

4.     Is the niche profitable?

5.     Test it!

Most of all it’s important to have a niche that your passionate about within your business. Having a passion for what you do will always shine through to your audience and further your connection with them as well. Like attracts like and having like-minded individuals who support your brand will excel you to new heights. Happy searching!

The Frequency Illusion

We’ve all done this. Let’s imagine that you have recently learned about a small town in Italy called, Positano. You’ve never heard of it before but now you seem to keep seeing things about it everywhere. This phenomenon is called the frequency illusion. It is when you notice something recently and your brain gives more attentional processing and therefore, is more likely to be consciously perceived. So, no, it’s not a sign that you must buy that red dress because you keep seeing red dresses everywhere! You’re seeing red dresses everywhere because since you’ve thought about buying that red dress, it’s at the forefront of your mind. This can also create a confirmation bias in our minds. This phenomenon is interesting because it can be used in marketing strategy. When marketing your brand, the frequency illusion will cause people to notice you more.

In order to trigger the frequency illusion, starting with a strong message. Use powerful, yet concise visuals that are memorable. Invoking strong emotions will cause people to remember your ad. This means making content that’s relatable & relevant. Get your logo everywhere across various platforms. Make sure you don’t fall into the pitfall of being too spammy here though. The real hero is the content itself. It must stand out and create an emotional connection. This is why we truly believe that UGC is a great way to use the frequency illusion in your marketing and advertising efforts. It’s relatable, it’s sometimes funny, which means memorable and it always provokes a strong emotional connection.