Archive for the ‘Marketing and Branding’ Category
Thursday, June 21st, 2018
by Justin Grensing, Esq., MBA
We often hear narratives about how online retail is replacing traditional brick-and-mortar businesses. Online is more convenient and has much lower overhead. At the same time, others point out that brick-and-mortar still makes up a strong majority of overall retail sales. Customers prefer the tactile experience, the ability to talk to sales representatives and being able to take their purchases home when they walk out of the store instead of waiting for packages to arrive by mail.
The truth is that both sides of this debate are right. (more…)
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Tags: Amazon, brick and mortar, online shopping, retail experience, retail store closings, showrooming, the death of retail, webrooming
Posted in Business Development, Internet Marketing, Marketing and Branding, Small Business Strategy | No Comments »
Tuesday, June 19th, 2018
by Justin Grensing, Esq., MBA
We keep hearing about how the growth in online retail represents the ultimate demise of the brick-and-mortar retail store. We hear how online retail giants like Amazon are killing Main Streets across the country, and we hear anecdotes of local brick-and-mortar businesses closing their doors, blaming the rise in online retail. But does that common sentiment assign blame where it belongs? (more…)
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Tags: brick and mortar, consumer experience, experiential marketing, online shopping, retail experience, retail store closings, showrooming, the death of retail, webrooming
Posted in Business Development, Innovation, Internet Marketing, Marketing and Branding, Small Business Strategy | No Comments »
Friday, June 15th, 2018
by Justin Grensing, Esq., MBA
When we hear news stories about a local brick-and-mortar business closing its doors after being in operation for generations, the presumed culprit is often the growth of online retail, which grew by 16 percent between 2016 and 2017. People just don’t want to go to a store to make purchases anymore, the logic goes. Online shopping offers far more choices than can be offered in a physical location — which can’t store infinite inventory — and it’s so much more convenient to shop online instead of going to a store.
But don’t make the mistake of writing off in-store shopping. You may be surprised to learn that consumers still predominantly favor the in-store experience! (more…)
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Tags: Amazon, brick and mortar, e-tail, retail experience, shopping online, showrooming, the death of retail, webrooming
Posted in Internet Marketing, Marketing and Branding, Sales, Small Business Strategy | No Comments »
Wednesday, June 13th, 2018
Sales professionals will be quick to tell you that a positive customer review goes a long way toward converting prospects into eventual customers. What better way to convince the market that you can walk the walk than to have satisfied customers tell your story for you? Conversely, negative reviews can be quite damaging. Data suggests that positive reviews influence the purchase decisions of 90 percent of respondents, while negative reviews influence around 86 percent.
But negative reviews and customer complaints can actually be good for business. Before your head explodes, let’s look at some intuitive reasons why. (more…)
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Tags: customer feedback, managing customer feedback, managing feedback, negative reviews, online reviews, positive reviews, Yelp
Posted in Brand Management, Client Relations, Community Relations, Customer Communication, Customer Service, Marketing and Branding, Sales, Small Business Strategy | No Comments »
Thursday, May 24th, 2018
Savvy marketers are always on the lookout for new media through which to promote their companies. From print media, to radio, to television, to the Internet, it hasn’t taken long historically between the development of a new media technology to the adoption of that media by marketers.
In an article for Entrepreneur, Aj Agrawal makes the case for podcasts as the next potentially lucrative marketing channel. (more…)
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Tags: content marketing, Marketing, marketing media, mass media, podcasts
Posted in Content Marketing, Marketing and Branding, Marketing Communication | No Comments »
Tuesday, May 22nd, 2018
Most small business owners are heavily focused on their core skillset. They are bakers, event planners, lawyers – insert job – first, and accountants and marketers second. As Pamela Slim writes for Entrepreneur, “Most small business owners aren’t marketers by trade, but almost all (95 percent) do some form of marketing for themselves, and many need to master what can feel like a very steep learning curve quickly. Most entrepreneurs and small business owners (64 percent) are self-taught and less than half (46 percent) consider themselves ‘marketing savvy.’” (more…)
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Tags: content marketing, Marketing, pr, professional services, professional services marketing, publicity, thought leadership
Posted in Business Development, Content Marketing, Marketing, Marketing and Branding, PR and Media Relations, Strategic Communications | No Comments »
Tuesday, May 8th, 2018
There’s an old saying that has been used to describe exceptional salespeople: “They’re so good that they could sell ice cubes to Eskimos.” The point being that Eskimos, living in a cold climate, really don’t need ice cubes, and are likely an audience that is going to be tough to crack. But, great salespeople could crack them.
Our perspective: Why? (more…)
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Tags: creativity, effective mearketing, Marketing, marketing effectiveness, segmenting, strategic marketing, target audience
Posted in Marketing and Branding, Marketing Communication, Strategic Communications, Strategy | No Comments »
Sunday, April 15th, 2018
In the world of sales and marketing, we often hear the terms “value” and “price” used interchangeably. Specifically, many people think that the lowest price option is the best “value” because it’s the cheapest. That may be true in the narrow context of commodities – $100 for X amount of ABC grain is a better value than $150 for X amount of XYZ grain, because for true commodities, there is no difference between ABC and XYZ brands. But for non-commodity products and services, value and price mean very different things, and marketers need to be aware of the difference. (more…)
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Tags: consumer value, how to establish price, marketing fundamentals, pricing your products and services, value vs. price
Posted in Marketing and Branding, Small Business Strategy, Strategy | No Comments »
Thursday, March 22nd, 2018
Webinars are still widely promoted online, but does the format still resonate with end users and, if so, which ones? Can webinars reach, and influence, a B2C audience or are they primarily used for B2B outreach? What emerging technologies are moving into the webinar space? These are questions marketers need to be asking themselves. (more…)
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Tags: e-learning, employee training, on-line learning, sales and marketing, sales tools, training and development, webinars
Posted in Business Development, Content Marketing, Sales, Technology | No Comments »
Branding is an area we explore regularly with clients – conducting brand audits, developing brand positioning, etc. Some of the most common errors we see are:
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Brand Evaluation
CONTENT CREATION
PR/MEDIA RELATIONS
SOCIAL MEDIA
STRATEGIC PLANNING
