Category: Marketing

Keeping Your Marketing Message Simple and Impactful

With any marketing message, your goal is to educate, entice, and retain customers. No matter how complex your core products and services are, there’s always value to be gained by keeping your marketing message both simple and impactful. Minimalist marketing makes your message easier to understand, and it also helps to keep it strongly implanted in the mind of your audience.

Find a Simple Idea That Sticks

Think about your offering and what it provides to consumers. What need does it serve, or what kind of emotional response can you gain from consumers who are exposed to your offering? Flush out your key marketing messages in detail, and then take the most important ones and condense them into something short that tells consumers exactly who you are, and why your product and value proposition is best suited to their needs.

Communicate Key Aspects of Your Message

Keep your message simple when it comes to communicating your business marketing

Once you’ve consolidated the key aspects of your brand and offering into a simple message, it’s time to share that across all of the platforms that are available to you. Your website, social media, digital advertising, and traditional advertising. All platforms need to carry a consistent message based on a simple idea.

Take Simplicity to All Areas of Your Marketing Presence

The benefits of a simple slogan and short form advertising could be undone if you don’t carry a minimalist message throughout all of your copy. Print media advertisements, radio spots, and your online presence should all be aligned to the concept of simplicity.

When you over complicate your pitch, you’ll lose the attention of your audience. Consumers do want to know about your offering and the benefits they can gain (especially when you aren’t an established company), but they will need to be able to take away the key points, even from a relatively short exposure time. Again, these aspects of your message are most important.

Who you are.

  • What you are offering.
  • Why it’s the best option/solution for your market.

Focus on these key features in all of your marketing, and you’ll have a better chance of engaging with new leads who have taken interest in your brand.

Coca-Cola, The Epitome of a Simple Message

Coca-Cola is one example of a company that truly understands a simple message. The core of any Coke campaign has been fun and enjoyment. In fact, the company used the simple slogan of ‘Enjoy’ throughout the early 2000s, and in print and visual media, they used simple imagery of people and families enjoying their product in everyday situations.

Coca-Cola didn’t focus on their ingredients, or even the taste of their product. The message was simple – Coca-Cola is something that is ubiquitous with good times.

You might not sell soda or even be involved in the beverage industry, and not every company will be able to take a marketing message down to a single word or sentence. However, you can easily appreciate how such a simple message can be used to grow product sales and keep the brand relevant to existing consumers. Continuing in more recent campaigns, Coca-Cola has again aimed for simplicity and fun, with marketing focused around slogans like “Life Tastes Good”, “Open Happiness”, and “Taste The Feeling”.

Rely on a Professional Marketing Team for a Simple Message That Works

If you’ve found it difficult to communicate your brand and your products in simple terms, it’s time to seek the help of a professional marketing team. Blackstone Agency can help you to refine your marketing message, providing you with a complete strategy that covers all aspects of your local, online, and traditional media presence.

New Marketing Ideas for 2019

Each year, just like the last, there are plenty of new marketing and advertising concepts that are thrown at business owners. Some perform well and well….others fail miserably and should never be re-visited. Here are three effective new marketing ideas for 2019 that you may want to consider if you haven’t already.

Pinterest for Business

This is simply a personal bulletin board where you can pin photos and share ideas. Pinterest allows you to discuss whatever you want with other individuals who follow you on the site. For example, you may want to share your images of an exclusive event such as a marriage, party, grand opening or anything else you want. You can give your followers ideas on how to use your products and services in the best way possible. Photos really do say a thousand words – and it has been proven time and time again that great images resonate with people much better than just text.

As a user, you can surf bulletin boards that other individuals have designed. Pinterest for Business is an excellent way to share great content and allow people to bookmark or pin it. This may also encourage others to view your content as well.

Mobile Marketing

mobile marketing for your business

A mobile promotion has exploded in the last few years, so much so that many individuals are often using it as their primary place of promotion. In mobile marketing platforms, you have the flexibility to target different types of users and devices which can give you significant advantages in a way that no other marketing provides. As more individuals use smartphones and other mobile devices, the potential for this kind of marketing will only continue to improve and be able to be delivered to the best target audience for your product or service.

In the US, 46% of individuals own a smartphone and that number continues to grow every day. One-third of all smartphone users have made at least one purchase via the internet on their phone. Some do it consistently as the comfort of doing it improves. As this becomes more and more common, marketing opportunities increase and improve.

Content Marketing

How to create quality content for marketing your business

Content promotion, while not new in itself, is more essential than ever before because of all the changes search engines have made, such as its popular Panda and Penguin algorithm updates. There is much more focus on the value of content on a website than ever before. The search engines want to provide a good user experience. Online searchers do not constantly want to revisit old content again and again. People need to see targeted and relevant content on all sites they check out so they can make educated decisions whether it is to make a purchase or get information.

Essentially, marketing will always change and improve with the times. Smart business owners will change with the times or get left behind in the dirt of their competitors that are doing a better job of tracking what their consumers are looking for and delivering it.

Let us help you get more out of your marketing.

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Timing is Everything

As a small company, you might think advertising is going to cost a vast amount of money. The truth is that today, the best and most cost effective advertising in the world is social media marketing. Whether you’re paying a marketing company to do formal social media or you’re doing it yourself, over time there are a few things that you should know about social media. What you write and when you release it to make a big difference.

Most people visit and view social media during lunch time and at or just after dinner time. You’ll get more views if you pay attention to when most people comment on your social media and time your releases to those time slots. You’ll have more people viewing it when it is fresh, and that may direct more traffic to your home page or products page.

The same goes for email marketing and direct mail. Days of the weeks, weeks of the month all play a strategic part in the most effective time to send a campaign. Of course there are general statistics and best practices but the real optimal time is discovered by really digging into your analytics and what your followers trends are. There may be a lot of missed opportunities and more so sales you are missing because they are missing you.

Start off your new year right and look really dig into the last 12 months of marketing data to know where you should be focusing on. If you need help analyzing your data and when is the best time to do what let us know. We are here to serve.

How to create an effective marketing strategy

Creating an Effective Marketing Plan

Whether you are starting a new business or are just planning for the upcoming year for an existing business, one of the most crucial elements will be your marketing plan.

Regardless of how awesome and unique your product or service is, you will not be able to be profitable in your marketing efforts if you can’t effectively target and reach your prospective client base.
As one of the creative agencies in Fort Lauderdale, we have developed many different types of marketing plans and strategies for businesses of all types, sizes and at different stages of growth. We understand that a carefully researched, planned and executed marketing strategy is imperative to the success of any business that wants to grow.

The many successful Marketing campaigns we’ve developed and managed all consist of certain key elements which include the following list below.

Top 7 Key Elements For Creating an Effective Marketing Plan:

  1. Situation Analysis – You need to understand your industry’s current market landscape (competitors, target clients, business needs, etc.)
  2. Market Opportunity – In your marketing, what niche exists for you to tap into? What is your forecasted revenue? Can you build your company’s market share?
  3. Objectives – What goals is your company trying to achieve via its marketing efforts? Are you trying to grow market share, expand your reach into existing core customers, expand into new markets, increase your sales, or…?
  4. Messaging – You need to think through how your business is different and create statements which position your business in a unique way compared to your main competitors
  5. Marketing Strategies – What marketing channels and approach will you take to effectively achieve your objectives? For example: if one of your objectives is to expand into new markets, then a supporting strategy might be to run an email marketing campaign with a targeted, purchased list from an outside source that you have never marketed to previously.
  6. Marketing Tactics – You should strategize and choose the specific tactical actions you are going to take such as creating newly designed ads to appeal to certain target audiences. Whatever tactics you choose, make sure they are in line with your end objectives.
  7. Execution – In terms of planning, you need to assign a target completion as well as execution dates to each action item you have outlined and stick to them as closely as possible.

Overall, this may seem like a lot to do for an effective marketing plan, however, it is important to plan and execute with forethought, strategy and measurable goals so that you know whether or not your efforts are successful.

Creating an Effective Marketing Plan

If you want to start on a new marketing plan for 2019, we would be happy to assist you with starting off on the right foot with a solid plan for a successful and profitable year.

Branding and marketing

Branding and Marketing – A Look at the Big Picture

There are many different angles in branding and marketing campaigns.

A customer may have seen your ad in a newspaper, online, or a social networking link. One angle of a marketing campaign that most companies attribute converting a prospect to a customer is email marketing. This can be misleading though, because one or more of the angles listed above can be responsible for influencing that customer to make a decision, and surprisingly it rarely JUST your e-mail marketing by itself! Don’t let that scare you however, because combining email with analytics can help increase the efficiency of your program as a whole.

The best way to get started when combining analytics with your email marketing is to start with Google Analytics as well as with your email marketing program’s built in analytics. Marketers can use metrics from both channels to determine who is clicking through and where customers go once they do click through to your website. These metrics help marketers make informed decisions about enhancing the website and future branding and marketing strategies. When combining web analytics with email analytics you are able to determine how the most profitable customers are being acquired. Essentially by combining these analytic tools marketers are able to track their users and use their entire angle in their marketing strategy to the best of their ability.

If you want to enhance your overall branding and marketing strategies by using email marketing combined with other multi-channel marketing efforts but don’t know where or how to get started, contact us! We can help you get on the right track.

the roles advertising and marketing agencies have

Advertising Marketing Companies – What is their Role?

In years past, it would have been difficult to imagine a company not doing all their work themselves, including their marketing ventures. Bu, the fact remains that in today’s economic situation, if one company decides to do all the work themselves, then the company will likely not be sustainable at all. Certain work is best left to experts and that is precisely the reason why there is advertising agency pole.

What Are Advertising Marketing Companies? And What Do They Exactly Do?

There has been confusion surrounding work that is done by advertising marketing companies, but when you think about it, it is pretty straightforward.

Think of advertising marketing companies as a car. While strictly a branding company would provide you with the general design of the car, advertising marketing companies give you much more – you get all the parts you need to get where you want to go. After all, you can only get so far with just the basic layout and design.

By definition, advertising marketing companies are in a service business that is dedicated to creating, planning and handling advertising (and sometimes other forms of promotion) for its clients. The main aim of any advertising marketing company is to ensure that the client and their products are visible to the general public with the aid of advertisements.

Main Reasons Why There is a Need for Advertising Marketing Companies

Main Reasons Why There is a Need for Advertising Marketing Companies

In this rapidly changing environment, there is a need for advertising marketing companies to be publicized and to improve their advertisement so as to ensure that they are always on the minds of their consumers. It all comes down to the fact that even a small change of words makes a huge difference. The process of changing those few words or making little tweaks to the layout is what makes the advertisement spectacular.

Although it might sound simple enough, words can be deceiving, and those few words and much-needed tweaks, along with the graphical or the designing part, require experts who know what they are doing. This is where an advertising marketing company comes in.

What is the Process of Making of an Advertisement?

An advertisement is made only with the cooperation of all the departments that form an advertising marketing company. The idea of the ad is complete only after the client servicing executives have briefed the creative department as to what the client wants.

The overall briefing that is given by the client is the key to the making of advertisements. As a rule of thumb, an advertising marketing company cannot go against the client’s wishes but can always suggest better ways to boost the promotional aspect.

Even if the product is very mundane, prior market research has to done, in order to ascertain who the competitors are and how they promote their product. Once all that is done the promos and ads have to be such that they speak of something different.

The client servicing executives of an advertising marketing company act as coordinators between the client and the creative section, while the marketing executives fix up the budget. The client agrees with the deal and then the process of creating an ad is initiated.

The Layout, Designing and Finally Hitting the Market

Once all the steps are in place, the creative team undertakes a brainstorming session to look into various aspects of the brand and the product. Once an idea is cleared, a lot of factors such as an advertisement’s reach and effectiveness are examined. Once an advertising marketing company has decided that a particular ad fits the bill and effectively reaches the target audience, they move on to the next step.

The next step involves choosing the particular medium in which the ad is going to appear. This is very important due to the fact that some ads work well in certain mediums and not so well in others.