advertising Archives - Analyze. Create. Achieve.

August 7, 2023August 7, 2023

Don’t Market Like It’s the Wild West

After an amazing and lengthy trip out west, the idea for “Don’t Market Like It’s the Wild West” popped up. Surprisingly, we found there were other similar comparisons to this blog already written. Pretty much every one of them make great points too. So, we’ll jump in the pool as well, but put our own spin on the topic. You can read one of them here from Social Media Today by Barry Ricks in 2013: https://www.socialmediatoday.com/content/wild-wild-west-social-media-marketing It is an entertaining blog.

Additionally, we’ll share some photographs from the 2-1/2 week trip throughout the post. 2737 miles were put on the rental during this trip. We covered iconic landmarks and parks from South Dakota, Wyoming, Montana, Utah, Idaho, and Arizona. It was an inspiring and eye opening vacation trip.

Don’t Market Like It’s the Wild West

Limitless Territory

The wide open spaces in the west are sights to behold. There are endless picturesque landscapes of deserts, waterfalls, plains, mountain ranges, ranch land, and so much more. If you are an east-coaster and haven’t travelled to the west, PUT IT ON YOUR BUCKET LIST!

Montana

Waterfall-Big Horn

South Dakota

With all of that said, for marketing related purposes, you don’t want your marketing plan to be that vast & expansive. Therefore, you’ll need to tighten up your message. Are you posting about a sale that doesn’t really resonate with customers? Try to restructure the content. You may also have another product or service that should be better promoted. Creating interest is better than spitballing a message out there.

Secondly, you’ll also need to tighten up those strategies that you put your hard earned marketing dollars in to. Does a percentage go to SEO? Are you getting web hits and calls from it? If not, time to examine elsewhere. The world of marketing is almost boundless. That is to say there’s countless opportunities to put your marketing money towards. Basically, at first there’s no need to dump monies all over the place in infinite marketing channels. Some will be successful. Some will not. Tighten ‘er up, partner. Consequently, you’ll start to notice positive results.

Beware, Bandits!

Saloon

Meanwhile, the next topic is touchy. Bandits! Bandits rarely admit any wrongdoing. Likewise some snake oil salesmen “marketers” will knowingly suggest putting your money into areas it shouldn’t be. Instead of finding cost effective ways for your plan to work best, they will “consult” you or even persuade you into spending as much as possible. Don’t let them “bilk ya.” Terrible! Bad business, but it happens. If you come across one of these bandits, you will probably know. Avoid them.

Again, it’s a touchy subject because some can make suggestions based on past experiences or what they think will work best. You can’t fault those for making mistakes. This is true if they have your best interests at heart. Others though, simply know that by getting you to spend more, they will make more. You, as the client, should be comfortable, confident, and even excited to start a marketing plan with whoever you choose to work with.

Instill Rules or Guidelines

Opposite of bandits is the sheriff or trustworthy lawman. They live by a set of specific guidelines and codes that help other people. Create a set of rules for yourself and the marketing company that you choose. Be open and upfront about it. For instance, set a very strict budget that goes only to a few channels you agree upon. See how this works for you for a period of time, then reevaluate. Likewise, again, these are things to discuss openly right from the “git go.”

Mount Rushmore

Ranger cabin.

Following along with a well planned set of guidelines will determine the success or failure of a program. Consistency is the word we probably use most. Consistency will also be important. Within your rules, guidelines, and expectations should be a consistent plan that must be followed strictly. If you are sending out direct mail, make sure the message and content (even visual content) are all cohesive. Further, the same can be said of your social media outline, for example. Stick with messaging that works within your guidelines. This is true for almost any aspect of marketing/advertising.

Grand Tetons

Zion

Bryce Canyon

Time to Skedaddle

In short, we hope “Don’t Market Like It’s the Wild West” gave you some solid info on how to better handle your marketing. We always try to keep our blogs informative and entertaining. Similarly, that’s how we operate our marketing company. If you have questions, want to learn more, or just need a little advice…77 Design Co is a click or call away.

March 13, 2023March 13, 2023

How Marketing Helps Other Areas of Business

“How Marketing Helps Other Areas of Business” is an article discussing the additional benefits marketing has on your business. It’s not just sales that a great marketing plan assists with. There are many other advantages you will find with a creative and well-planned marketing strategy.

How Marketing Helps Other Areas of Business

Customer retention

Even if you do not get one new lead, call, or make one sale through a marketing program, there can still be benefits. Customer retention is at the top of this list. A great promotion of your products & services will keep you on top of mind with your current customers. Of course, the marketing has to be of interest and come complete with consistent professional content, video, or images. Likewise, this leads to repeat purchases from your base down the line. In many cases in our experience, the repeat business alone pays for itself.

Keeping customers is important to just about any business. A solid marketing plan makes this easier and more possible.

Tracking & analytics

Another reason to consider how marketing helps other areas of business is through tracking & analytics. It’s important to realize how your marketing can help you forge ahead with what is working, and what is not. Have you ever looked over your company FB analytics to see how much reach or engagement you get on a particular post? No? Well, you should. For instance, that is just one simple example.

The very idea of tracking what a current customer (or potentially new customer) is interested in should peak your interest. Why? Because this is how you make the connection! Certainly you would want to know who your customer is, what they like, their ages, and as much more as you can about them. Obviously, all of this information can and should be used to tailor your marketing message. You get to know and understand your customer more intimately.

Branding & visibility

Keep colors, logos, and other branding consistent.

Is your business immediately recognized when you meet new people or potential customers? Yes? Alright, feel free to click away. No? Well, time to make it recognizable!

The tagline, logo, and other branding content should be consistent throughout. Every social media page, printed material, web page and all else should look the same or at least very similar. Additionally, Hootsuite offers plenty more here: https://blog.hootsuite.com/brand-awareness/

Analyze. Create. Achieve.

January 11, 2023January 11, 2023

Begin the Year with a BANG!

Begin the Year with a BANG! 2023 is a new year with new challenges which requires some newer ideas to make your business more profitable. If your business is like the countless other small businesses across the country, the last few years may have been difficult. To say the least. No time to sit around. No dillydallying. And definitely no “I’ll do it tomorrows.” Time to kick it into gear and start 2023 off strong!

Get Social

Facebook. LinkedIn. Instagram. Even Tik Tok and Twitter. Yea, that’s right, Twitter. Regardless of all of the politics involving these platforms they can be incredibly beneficial to your business. If you want to begin the year with a bang, and your company is not on social, it’s time to change that. It’s 2023 for crying out loud! Don’t let the idea of not knowing how these channels work scare you into not taking advantage of them.

Many, MANY businesses have been taking advantage of social media for years. In our experience, several even rely solely on social media as their main #1 marketing source. That is to say, social is where they get most, if not all, of their new customers. All in all, most companies can definitely utilize these platforms to their advantage. There are industry specific groups in almost every field you should be sharing information with, or just making connections through. “We don’t think social media is for us.” WRONG! Use it, but use it to its full potential the right way.

Make Rockin’ Videos

Video is still at the top of the mountain for promotion. There’s a ton of different ways to utilize them. So, let’s discuss this. In general video can be used anywhere (other than print marketing) as a great source of marketing. For the most part, almost every marketing expert out in web-land is predicting short video as the go-to marketing resource. Likewise, they may not be wrong.

Short impactful videos can promote your company as, caring, knowledgeable, industry experts, humorous, or just generally fun to work with. So, each one of these traits are helpful in attracting customers. Start a YouTube channel. Create YouTube shorts and do paid promos there. Share short video links through email marketing, social media channels, or even on digital billboards. Make them. Use them. Benefit from those videos.

In short, there are likely other ways you can “Begin the New Year with a BANG” in regards to marketing. These are just a few. So, let us know what you need help with and we’ll make it happen for you and your business!

Analyze. Create. Achieve.

December 1, 2022December 1, 2022

Year-End Marketing Ideas

Year-End Marketing Ideas discusses some useful ideas to better market your business at the end of the year, and into the next. Small businesses all over the world have had some hard times the last few years. It’s difficult to keep up marketing and advertising alongside the major corporations that seemingly have endless pockets. We’ll list some inexpensive (or free) ideas that can make an impact for your business.

Helpful.

Market to be helpful. Not many things are as annoying as being infinitely bombed with sales, sales, sales. As we have said in the past, make your company helpful. Some of these Year-End Marketing Ideas will help your company in the long run. If your company has the ability to assist people with problems share those. This takes us to…

Share Info or Solutions.

Share info and solutions. Is there a big change in your industry? Do you offer something that can truly help others save money, improve health, wealth, or their future? What information at your disposal backs that up?

At this point, it is also important to ensure that your sources are credible and reliable. Try not to use opinion based sources in your marketing message. If you do, on the other hand, make sure they come from reliable industry leaders or news organizations.

What’s the Offer?

Finally, what’s the offer? At the same time as sharing info and being helpful, offer something you truly believe in. For example, is your offer a huge discount? Likewise does it truly benefit the customer? Society? Don’t throw offers out there (especially during the holidays) that are obviously self-centered for business growth. There is a fine line. Marketing is in a sense, self-centered. Its whole purpose is to create growth, attention, and eventually wealth for your business. However, you can market selflessly. Perhaps, you take a little hit on a great customer offer to help growth in the long term. Creating long-lasting customers that trust you will pay off in the end.

Alternate Ideas.

Equally as important as the above categories, establish visually creative messages. If the offer is spectacular and the information is extremely important, none of it will likely matter if there isn’t something great to see. In the past we’ve shared research and statistics about how visuals affect marketing messages. Read more about visual perception, communication, customer psychology, and more from Patrick Mutabazi and LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-important-visuals-marketing-patrick-mutabazi?trk=articles_directory. There’s a ton of factors involved.

Need a helping marketing hand heading into 2023? Drop us a message: https://77designco.com/contact-us-2/

Have a wonderful Christmas & New Years when you get to it!

Analyze. Create. Achieve.

November 10, 2022November 10, 2022

What Marketing Doesn’t Do

What marketing doesn’t do is an article that discusses some things not to expect when hiring a team. There are many wonderful things that marketing brings to the table for your business. Without a doubt! Potential new customers. An identifiable brand. Increased potential business. Or, simply just presenting your company as a creative reliable source. Just to name a few.

Marketing is definitely a benefit to your business. But, don’t expect everything to be the responsibility of marketing.

However, there are also things that are occasionally expected that are not responsibilities of a marketing team. On occasion, a business owner may believe that marketing will solve all of their problems. This may not be the case. We have turned down several contracts over the years due to this inaccurate belief. Let’s get to it.

PR Problems

Marketing MAY be able to assist in some public relations issues. It is not the entire fix though.

A few moons ago we met with a general contractor that believed he needed marketing help. We sat down and discussed their business thoroughly. One of the things he said was, ” I can get all the business we need. I just can’t get my guys to show up on time or stay and finish the job quickly.” “Customers get mad at that.” All of a sudden, things became clearer!

As I have noted, we talked pretty thoroughly about his business for about an hour up to this point. We chatted about the direction of their website, social media, and a few other aspects of promotion. We were there to help narrow down the problem, after all. The main issue was his crews that were on the jobs. They felt that good marketing could quell the negativity they were receiving. While that could help, it’s not the total fix.

At this point we discussed resolving the issues with the crews first. He was ready to pay us whatever in the belief this would help. Not how we operate. We certainly didn’t want to take on an impossible task of building a plan that would inevitably fall flat. In short, please don’t expect that marketing alone will solve an issue such as this.

Closing Sales

Want eyes on your business? Good solid marketing. Looking to increase leads and calls? Ok, same thing. Trying to show the world who your company is? Yep, you guessed the answer.

Need to close that sales deal? Uh, not what marketing does. That is the job of a sales team. Creative and informative promotional marketing will put you on the fish. Now, it’s time for sales to bait the hook and reel them in. Analogous to the PR issues above, not part of the advertising or marketing job. A good way to improve sales and the content messaging is to get both teams together to come up with new ideas.

A Few Other Things

Below are a few other things that should not be expected. Or, at least these should be discussed right out of the gate.

Business management (making decisions on sales, hiring/firing, and more)
Guaranteed new sales (this depends on the effectiveness of the sales team)
Answering calls or messages. At times a general response can be included in a plan or contract. However, (at least in our case) we refer interested customers to the business owner or manager directly. A marketing team may not have the answers to very specific industry related questions or concerns.

In conclusion, we’ll (marketers in general) always do the absolute best we can to ensure your marketing is effective and creative. We always want the company we are working for to thrive even in a down economy. However, there are certain things that may require alternate assistance. If your company is looking to meet new customers, get new eyeballs on your product or service, or just needs brand identifiability drop us a line anytime here: https://77designco.com/contact-us-2/

Analyze. Create. Achieve.

April 27, 2022April 27, 2022

Let’s Talk Marketing & Strategy

Let’s Talk Marketing & Strategy is a blog about exactly what marketing is. We’ll also cover some simple strategies you can take to improve the marketing of your business.

Firstly, let’s use the definition from a HubSpot blog and Dictionary.com, “the action or business of promoting and selling products or services, including market research and advertising.” It and more can be read here: https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/what-is-marketing

There it is. Consequently, the definition is a little broad. We create content, images, video, and do design work. We also do market research and a little advertising. The initial definition is a bit blurry in our opinion though. Thats marketing for you. For example, there is no mention of brand, creativity, or messaging. These are essential pieces of marketing too. However, the description does get a bit more detailed further in the read.

Purpose.

So, let’s move along. As you can see in the HubSpot link above, they describe the purpose of marketing thoroughly. There’s not a whole lot that we would add.

However, our idea about marketing is much more primitive…”get more eyes on your product or service.” Truly we believe this is the main purpose. Yes, <caveman grunt> our views can sometimes be uncouth. We can assure you though that your marketing will never be. Also, if done correctly, marketing will substantially increase leads, referrals, and visibility.

Marketing’s main purpose, we believe, is to get more eyes on your product or service.

What next?

Next, now that we’ve got an idea about the definition and purpose of marketing, we can turn to the strategy. HubSpot has an extensive list of the forms of marketing. They are all in the article above. Some of these are, blogging, social media, SEO, video, and more. Additionally, there’s newer forms of marketing popping up yearly. Influencer, VR (Virtual Reality,) text, and alternate forms of digital marketing are some of the most recent types.

Traditional forms like print and social media also still make HUGE impacts. Of course, all of this depends on the style of message(s) your company puts out. Tags, links, images, designs, offers, and much more all are relevant to the strategy success. More than we could explain here.

Simple strategies we’d recommend include:

Keep the website simple. Update it regularly. Of course, make sure it’s mobile/SEO friendly. Change content and images often. Additionally, ensure there are no broken links or inaccurate info.

Images for the site and all social media posts should look and feel professional. Eye catching photos and designs attract more clicks. They also increase the length of time a reader views the page. Don’t believe us? You don’t have to. There are so many studies that back up this claim. Google it.

Hire a professional photographer. That is, hire one with experience in product or commercial photography. A wedding photographer, for example, will shoot things in a completely different manner. Likewise, with graphic designers. One that routinely creates bright elegant invitations will have a different style than one who works with industrial clients. Many in these fields won’t admit that they aren’t jack-of-all trades, but the final work will showcase the varying differences. Ask for examples of work.

Social media channels should be posted on regularly. Find the ideal post times. Or, hire an individual or team capable of making excellent social media posts. Create a buzz! Make posts that are interesting and informative. Use these channels to be a help. Highlight your team. Highlight your company’s product or service. Show off customers. These are just a few ideas.

Need some help developing a successful marketing strategy? Drop us a line https://77designco.com/contact-us-2/ for a free consultation. We are always excited to learn about your business!

Analyze. Create. Achieve.