Writing is quickly becoming an important skill for marketers to have.

I’m no writer. Which might become evident as you make your way through this. When I was in college, nobody told me how important writing would be once I landed a marketing job. Maybe they didn’t think it was important because of how fast everything in marketing and advertising changes. But I’ve come to accept my fate as a marketer—I must be a writer. As marketers, we can’t deny it or pretend it isn’t a huge part of our jobs. With marketing and advertising making a shift from traditional to digital, more of our everyday job has become writing. Emails. Blogs. Content. Tweets. Press releases. Proposals. StrategiesRead full post...

Almost 400 people took the Business and Labor Resources Employment Branding Survey this past June. The results highlight the importance of marketing and human resources professionals working together to build and maintain an employment brand.

Slightly more than one quarter (26.6%) of survey respondents said their organization has an employment brand program—i.e., “a program directed at employees and potential employees as opposed to a general brand program directed at the population at large.”

Of those who don’t have a brand program, 40.5% said they plan to implement or are considering one, and 50.7% said they may consider one in the future.Read full post...

Brands don’t happen over night.
image credit: Latimre Appleby

In my career I have built, enhanced and even created numerous brands for multiple organizations in healthcare, higher education, and other industries. And people always ask me, “How long does it take to establish a brand?”

My answer: five years.

In the first phase, you’ll develop your brand. This requires qualitative and quantitative marketplace, stakeholder and competitor research; positioning and brand platform formation; and creative execution, messaging, and brand guideline and internal collateral development. You’ll need careful planning and patience—and about 18 months.Read full post...

I would be wealthy if I had a nickel for every time a member of the faculty, staff, administration or board said, “I didn’t realize you could help with that.”

Far too often, the marcom (marketing/communications) and public relations office is brought into a situation requiring communication to internal and external stakeholders late in the process. I have learned through experience that the more people understand what marcom professionals do, the better the outcome.Read full post...

If you’re a B2B company and aren’t blogging on the reg yet, what in the world are you waiting for? While your competitors are blogging to generate new leads, you’re going to become a victim of falling behind. But I get it – you’re busy – and in charge of everything from strategic planning, running the day to day, your social media, answering to the sales department and having to prove marketing’s ROI to the boss-man. But if a blog is done correctly, it can be a powerful lead-generating tool, SEO booster and all-over knockout way to prove your organization’s expertise and knowledge.Read full post...

Bad emails can ruin your nurturing strategy!

Earlier this week I received the following email, and because of their confidentiality notice I’m just going to paste the copy:

Subject: Additional Sales Leads

Hi,

Are you currently in need of help in generating leads or appointments for your business? We can help you through our Multichannel Marketing Solutions.

I’d be happy to talk to you and discuss our program. Please let me know the best way for us to connect. Read full post...

Inbound or content marketing is nothing new. As marketers, we’ve been creating content — e-books, white papers, webinars, infographics, blogs — for years. What’s new is using inbound to build business. Here’s how: We create content that potential buyers want and need, optimize the website, build trust with the prospect through personalized lead nurturing, and eventually turn that prospect into a customer.

And we do all of this in real time, while we track what’s working and what isn’t, enabling us to show the ROI of marketing. Statistics tell us inbound methods cost 62% less than outbound methods, and generate three times more leads. Those are some pretty awesome numbers.Read full post...

Know what drives your prospects.

As marketers, we need to help our sales teams with longer sales cycles face one of their biggest challenges: staying top-of-mind during a decision-making process that can drag on for months or years. At AB&C, we’ve come up with a process that uses strategy and technology to meet this challenge without breaking the bank.

Step 1: Work with your sales team to identify key drivers in the prospect’s decision-making process.

Read full post...

Tips for your marketing plan in 2015!

If you’re anything like me, you’ve already plunged headfirst into planning for 2015. But with the marketing industry in a constant state of change, you have to hustle to keep up with the latest ways to reach your customers. What will your most effective marketing efforts look like in the New Year?Read full post...

Are you spreading your marketing dollars too thin?

Each year it seems that marketing budgets get smaller. But your boss wants a higher return on everything you do, right? You have to be careful with your budget — and show how your marketing dollars lead directly to an increase in company revenue.

As a marketer, you may feel overwhelmed staying on top of all the new tricks of the trade and figuring out if they’re even relevant for your business. Read full post...

How does an ad agency not become the shoemaker’s child?

By doing its own advertising and marketing. As a 43-year-old agency that expanded into the city of Philadelphia — known for cheesesteaks, relentless sports fans and a statue of Rocky at the steps of the Art Museum — AB&C wanted to be noticed. And kick-ass print ads alone weren’t gonna cut it. Giving back to the community in some way seemed like a bright idea. So we came up with a way to help a local business grow, which in turn would help the community grow: a competition — just like the Hunger Games — to find a great business with an innovative idea. The reward? A year’s worth of free marketing services. (OK, it was nothing like the Hunger Games. That would’ve gotten us noticed for all the wrong reasons.)

Read full post...

Creating a brand promise and reaching out to new niche audiences with that promise is key to the growth of any business, including tourism.

Tourism advertising has changed with the times. Even though people still read magazines and news publications to “think” about where they might want to spend their hard-earned dollars, they do their actual booking and planning online.

Consumers today tune out TV commercials with their DVRs and TiVo’s, opting instead to listen to satellite or Pandora radio. Then they tune out those ads as well.

I’m not suggesting you completely abandon traditional ad venues. But maybe it’s time to reconsider the way you integrate digital and nontraditional advertising into your marketing strategy. Read full post...

“We haven’t killed anybody yet” or “Most people think we’re pretty good!”

Let’s say that you own a grocery store with several aisles of frozen food. Now let’s say that your freezer’s compressor — which works hard to keep your food frozen — breaks down. Maybe, just maybe, you’ll try to fix the compressor yourself. But more than likely you’ll need to call an electrician — an expert — to do the job and get you back in business. You consider him an expert because you found him by Googling “expert electrician.” And he shows you a license and certificate as proof of his training.Read full post...

Using one screen, advertisers will have to conjure a fully immersive visual, virtual and social experience for consumers.

Advertising optimism is on the rise again, and for good reason. Industry segments are hiring again, advertisers and their agencies are regaining budgets, consumer confidence is growing, and the mass adoption of advanced television and entertainment consoles may very well yield the next great surge of creative advertising and media marketing.

We’re heading into uncharted territory, where new mediums will finally marry the benefits of web and broadcast television advertising and revolutionize the kind of creative content we can provide for our clients. This new generation of technology, such as Smart TVs and next-generation gaming/entertainment consoles, should signal a golden age for marketers — particularly strategic- and creative-focused agencies such as ours.Read full post...

Now that we’ve gone over some basics in Part 1, let’s look at how the Agile methodology can work in your agency.

Assemble your team of T-shaped people.

As with any project, your team members are your most important assets. Agile doesn’t call for the smartest, fastest or most specialized team members available. Instead, it works best with T-shaped people. I know what you’re thinking: Great, let’s add another piece of jargon to the mix! An uppercase T has two parts: the horizontal top bar and the vertical stem. The top bar represents a broad range of skills from left to right, and the stem represents the depth of knowledge in a specific skill. T-shaped people — those who specialize in a specific skill but have a broad range of knowledge across multiple disciplines — understand how all of the different skills work together to ensure the project is compatible across all specialties.Read full post...