The growth strategy—and corresponding marketing strategy—of a company has a lot to do with the nature of its industry. When a new market is developed or discovered, we say there is a blue ocean—an unmet demand in a market that isn’t served or is vastly underserved. Market share and sales can be increased by simply letting consumers know that a product or service exists and convincing them that they want the product. By contrast, in a red ocean, the market and the major players are already established, and the market is saturated. The only way to increase market share is to take market share from a competitor. That can be exceedingly difficult to do. (more…)
Archive for the ‘Advertising’ Category
What Beer Companies Can Teach Us About the Dangers of Publicly Attacking Competitors
Tuesday, May 28th, 2019
What Are White-Glove Advertising Services and Should You Be Using Them?
Thursday, January 24th, 2019
Publishers have a lot on their plates these days—from fraud and ad blocking, to Facebook’s recent News Feed changes, to GDPR, increasingly rampant technological innovations and more. On top of the traditional issues related to publishing, publishers also have increasingly been pulled into generating ad revenues through ad tech—a constantly shifting landscape that can certainly be a diversion from creating quality content to meet audience needs.
How are they managing? In some cases, they’re outsourcing this aspect of their ad operations (ad ops) to white-glove consultancy services. (more…)
5 Tips for Crafting Online Headlines
Tuesday, October 16th, 2018
In the newspaper business, the above-the-fold headline is a crucial aspect of grabbing a potential reader’s attention and enticing them to pick up the paper and read on. The same is true of online headlines – the hyperlinks that come up in a list when you search for something in a search engine. In addition to page ranking, an enticing headline is an important way to drive traffic to your site. Here are some tips for generating great headlines. (more…)
Advertising Isn’t About Entertaining Unless it Also Drives Sales!
Tuesday, March 6th, 2018“Dilly, dilly!” It was the marketing catchphrase of the year, according to the Wall Street Journal. And it’s definitely catchy. I love the commercials and the catchphrase and smile every time I hear it. I’m not alone.
Unfortunately, despite the popularity of the company’s new ad campaign, sales are slumping. (more…)
Email Marketing is Not Dead: Why It’s a Top Tool for Connecting With Millennials
Tuesday, February 13th, 2018
You don’t have to be a tech-savvy millennial to set up your email’s junk mail filters to ensure you never see an unsolicited advertisement. But when it comes to millennials, email marketing may be one of the best options available. Matt Bryant, writing for PPR North America, writes that, “millennials, the first generation of digital natives (grew up using computers), don’t respond to traditional advertising and marketing tactics as past generations did. A recent study found that 84 percent of millennials don’t like traditional advertising nor do they trust it.” So, how can you effectively reach this group? You may be surprised. (more…)
Answers to Your Top Questions About Super Bowl Advertising
Thursday, February 1st, 2018
As Super Bowl LII in Minneapolis between the Philadelphia Eagles and New England Patriots approaches, it’s an obvious time to take another look at some of the data on the marketing spectacle that surrounds the event. Here we address some of the top questions many consumers have as they prepare to watch the commercials (er, game…) (more…)
Guiding Consumers to the Bottom of the Funnel (BOFU)
Thursday, November 30th, 2017
The word “sales” often conjures up some very specific images. A man in a suit holding a briefcase going door-to-door selling encyclopedias or vacuums, for example. Or a guy hustling in a car lot. But as we know, sales is, in reality, a process. A process that ends with a pitch. The direct pitch to the customer or the final sales touchpoint is the last step in the sales process and is often referred to as “the bottom of the funnel” (BOFU). It follows TOFU (top of the funnel) and MOFU (middle of the funnel) activities that are designed to move the consumer down a pathway to a purchase. (more…)
How to Market to People Who Hate Marketing
Thursday, November 2nd, 2017
Millennials have changed the face of the world in so many ways: culture, technology and business to name just a few. As this group grows to represent an ever-larger share of the consumer market, one characteristic of this cohort, in particular, can be extremely vexing for marketing professionals: they—even more than previous generations—dislike and distrust marketing and advertising. So what can you do about that? (more…)
Why You Should Build Your Brand Based on Reality—Not Advertising Campaigns
Thursday, August 17th, 2017
Marketers are understandably concerned about building and protecting strong brands. An Economist article from a few years ago discusses the power of brands. “Brands account for more than 30% of the stock market value of companies in the S&P 500 index, reckons Millward Brown, a market-research company. Everyone knows that a Ralph Lauren Polo shirt costs more than a polo shirt; Coke without the logo is just cola.”
But, brand-building efforts are sometimes misguided– (more…)
They Hate Your Ads! Creating Marketing Communications That Resonate
Tuesday, March 7th, 2017
41559931 – advertising word cloud, business concept
AJ Agrawal recently wrote an article for Forbes titled “Inbound Marketing: How To Advertise To People Who Hate Ads.” Agrawal correctly notes that successful marketing “all comes down to one principle. People don’t like to be sold to.” What do they want? They want to be helped to by. “In other words, you are a shopping assistant not a greasy car salesperson,” says Agrawal.
Agrawal offers three strategies for marketers to get their message across to those who hate ads. (more…)
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