Defining the Buyer’s Journey According to HubSpot, the buyer’s journey is the active process buyers go through to become aware of, evaluate, and purchase a new product or service. This process is basically the same whether a person is making a personal purchase or buying a product or service on behalf of a business. Depending upon the industry, this process can range anywhere from less than a month to a year. The buyer’s journey has been defined in various ways with versions having few as three stages or as many as fifteen stages.......
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Time to Evolve to Opti-Channel Marketing The world of marketing is changing constantly. Historically, CMOs focused on areas such as creative strategy and branding, but as the landscape continues to shift these executives require more agility with technology and data, and the ability to provide a better ROI (return on investment). To achieve this ROI, savvy marketers have changed their marketing strategy over time from a multi-channel approach to an omni-channel methodology and now to opti-channel marketing. Below is more information about how opti-channel marketing can benefit your company. Three Marketing Approaches......
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Time to Retool the Marketing Mix One of the key learnings from an introduction to marketing class is the four P’s – product, place, price and promotion. Marketing professor and author, E. Jerome McCarthy, first introduced the four P’s marketing mix in his 1960 book, Basic Marketing: A Managerial Approach. These elements are still key to any marketing strategy today, but they are especially relevant for the marketing of consumer goods. However, according to thought leaders, Richard Ettenson, Eduardo Conrado and Jonathan Knowles, the four P’s can restrict B2B marketers; therefore, they reinterpreted......
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First Impressions Matter The first website went live on the world wide web in August 1991. And, in 28 years the number of websites has grown to over one billion. This dramatic increase demonstrates that a website has become a key tool for doing business nowadays. However, not all websites are created equal and some can even negatively impact a business’ credibility and perceived quality, ultimately leading to a loss in revenue. In today’s fast paced world, it takes only 50 milliseconds or .05 seconds for most visitors to form an opinion......
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Looking for a Different Marketing Approach? Try Influencer Marketing Influencer marketing may still be a fresh idea for some businesses. If you are not familiar with this concept, influencer marketing is defined as a form of marketing in which focus is placed on influential people rather than the target market as a whole on social media. It identifies individuals who have influence over potential customers, and orients marketing activities around these influencers. Influencer content can be compared to testimonials. Even though Influencer marketing has encountered some negative publicity due to fake followers or influencers acting inappropriately,......
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Five Reasons Why Rebranding can be Good Rebranding your business, product or service can be one of the most important yet scary decisions you will make. A rebranding exercise requires a tremendous amount of time and effort. As you will see from the two examples below, it is critical that rebranding is managed properly. Some brands, such as Old Spice, have rebranded very successfully. Old Spice changed from being a 70-year old brand with products only used by your grandfather to a line of body washes, sprays and deodorants that have experienced......
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Marketing to Generation Z Are you tired of hearing about marketing to Millennials? Well, we are too. They are still a huge force to be reckoned with in the business world, but Generation Z now is starting to enter the workforce and establish buying power. Gen Z, also known as Digital Natives or Gen Tech, number 61 million in the United States today. However, according to Bloomberg research, in 2019 they will become the largest generation in the world, comprising approximately 32 percent of the population; therefore, establishing marketing best practices to......
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Smart Marketers Have the Future in Mind For many, the U.S. economy is humming along. The unemployment rate is 3.7 percent, the lowest in almost 50 years. Manufacturing is returning to the states and is forecasted to increase faster than the general economy. Home healthcare is the fastest growing sector, projected to add 425,000 new jobs by 2026. With this type of rosy economy, businesses may become over-confident and over-optimistic, often forgetting about the bad times. One of the biggest mistakes companies make during a good economy is reducing their marketing efforts......
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Whether your company is a start-up, mid-size business or a member of the Fortune
500, it is critical that you have a core messaging document. Consistent and effective
messaging is one of the most important marketing components a company will possess
yet it is also one of the most challenging to create. However, it is important that every
employee is “on message” when representing your company at a trade show, briefing
an analyst, attending a client meeting, producing collateral, or engaging in a myriad of
other marketing related activities....
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Manufacturing is becoming smarter in many ways, from how machines operate on the shop floor to how marketing reaches target customers. IIOT, or the industrial internet of things, is transforming manufacturing plant floors by acquiring great amounts of data at incredibly fast speeds, enabling organizations to make smarter decisions that drive efficiencies and cost savings....
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