Archive for the ‘Marketing Strategy’ Category

How-To: Build a Thoughtful Marketing Budget

Ready to build your marketing budget but not sure where to start? Establishing a strong marketing strategy that boosts your brand and propels your business starts by synchronizing your goals with your marketing budget. Check out our tips to help kickstart this process.

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A Tale of Two Pelotons

A little over a year ago, Peloton ran “the ad.” Most people know what you mean when you mention it — the ad where a wife receives an exercise bike for Christmas from her husband and keeps a video diary (aka cry for help) of her efforts, looking a bit afraid and nervous despite already appearing to be in great shape. Most people also know the heat that Peloton took in the press, social media and the stock market.

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Finding Comfort in Many Different Flavors

Getting different perspectives is one of the coolest things about working with the folks at Reuben Rink. Everybody brings their own ideas and tastes to the table (albeit virtually, at the moment). Sure, it makes it tricky to agree on what to fill the growler with at City Beverage, but it makes the work interesting and better.

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Pushing Past “Here for You” Pandemic Messaging

Getting your brand noticed is all about breaking through the clutter to arrive at messaging and positioning that is unique, memorable, and compelling. During the current pandemic, there are many brands – large and small – who have lost sight of this at a critical time. You may have noticed that so many ads look and sound remarkably the same right now. In fact, it’s difficult to tell them apart. If you’re not quite sure what I’m referring to, all you need to do is check out this video mashup, care of YouTube’s Microsoft Sam.

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Silver Linings: Disruption Could Make Us Better

The current disruption in all our daily routines reminded me of a TED Radio Hour episode released almost a year ago. I caught a rebroadcast of it in late February and it turned out to be quite timely. The episode is called “Jumpstarting Creativity” – and the whole episode is worth a listen – but the first segment is what got my attention as especially relevant to our current stay-at-home situation.

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Shifting Gears: Managing & Maintaining During a Time of Crisis

There is no global playbook to manage a situation like we’re experiencing now with the COVID-19 pandemic. While every business is different and is dealing with unique implications and repercussions, we are all facing some common challenges. There are certain things that every business needs to consider and address during a time like this. We’ve put together a few recommendations that we hope you find helpful as they may apply to your organization.

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Spice Up Your Life – The PSL Craze

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Nothing marks the return of fall quite like the return of the Pumpkin Spice Latte (PSL) from Starbucks. Introduced in 2003, the PSL has become the coffee giant’s most popular seasonal drink, selling roughly 424 million worldwide.

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Thoughts on Advertising: The Power (And Danger) Of “Free”

It’s long been said that one of the most effective words you can use in an ad is “free.” The idea is that people love getting stuff for free, so offering them something for free will get a big response. It’s a rule a lot of companies still follow. How many TV ads do see that say “buy one, get one free” or offer something like a “free credit report”? How many online ads say “download our free white paper” or “get your free sample” just for giving them your email? And that’s the problem – these days it seems like virtually everyone is offering something for free, so “free” isn’t considered as powerful as it once was.

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4 Tech-Driven Content Marketing Trends We Like

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Written by Kit Falvey

If you engage in content marketing, i.e., creating and sharing content, you’ve likely noticed the increased effect that technology plays in your marketing strategy—from PR and social media to advertising. If not, you will. Technology is driving content marketing and will continue to do so as we increase our consumption of content on mobile devices, and as improvements in reporting tools and personalization, mobile optimization, and virtual reality continue. Here are a few developments that we think are interesting that were recently discussed in a Forbes article. (more…)

4 Tips for Organizing A Large, Complex Marketing Campaign

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Written by Amanda Marshall

A large, comprehensive marketing campaign is a bit like a three-ring circus – there are a lot of pieces and parts to manage, and they’re usually all going on at the same time. For that reason, the idea of launching a large, complex campaign may be overwhelming and cause a business owner to just not do it. Instead, they stick with the one or two types of marketing they’re comfortable doing. But these days customers get information from too many channels for business owners to simply rely on one or two types of communication. An effective campaign has to reach people using many different types of communication. The key is to organize your campaign so it’s manageable, even if you have minimal marketing staff. Over the years I’ve relied on a few tips to help keep large campaigns organized and on track, and they can help you do the same. (more…)