How IKEA Successfully Integrated Its Direct Mail with Digital Channels

Image for How IKEA Successfully Integrated Its Direct Mail with Digital Channels
  The words on every marketer’s lips these days are multi-channel marketing (MCM). This means the use of a combination of channels for reaching your target audience, and it works well when it incorporates traditional methods of direct marketing. As part of IKEA’s comprehensive integrated marketing plan, the furniture giant recently set out to “re-invigorate” the mailbox by leveraging digital channels. Read More

How the Financial Services Industry Uses Direct Mail to Reach Consumers

Image for How the Financial Services Industry Uses Direct Mail to Reach Consumers
  Every industry uses marketing methods in different ways, and sometimes there are benefits to be gained from knowing what others are doing. The financial services industry makes good use of direct mail, particularly when marketing to millennials. This flies in the face of current thinking that younger audiences are only reachable through digital marketing channels, so we took a look at how the industry is doing it and how well it’s working. Read More

Marketing Mobilely – Using Apps As Content

Image for Marketing Mobilely – Using Apps As Content
  Mobile devices are becoming more and more prevalent in our world. From smartphones to tablets to mp3 players and more, people want the ability to stay connected, wherever they are and whatever they’re doing. In fact, it’s been estimated that 2014 is the year that mobile browsing will actually overtake desktop browsing in popularity. What does that mean for you as a marketer? It means that if you want to promote your brand successfully online, you need to have a mobile app. Here are 3 strategies for using apps to promote your brand.  Read More

Contribution Marketing – Spreading Your Message By Making a Difference

Image for Contribution Marketing – Spreading Your Message By Making a Difference
  The public has always been wary of marketers. We don’t have the best reputation—obviously, promoting our product to you means all we want is to separate you from your money. We interrupt the program you’re watching in order to force our message on you, and we’ll say anything, true or not, if it means getting your attention for 30 seconds. In the public’s eyes, we are evil, soulless people. One of the things content marketing seeks to do is to change that line of thinking. Instead of interrupting the content people want in order to give them our message, we find ways of turning our message into the content people want. Through the Internet, we’ve been able to create an entirely new paradigm for brand promotion. Read More

How To Align Your Content Marketing Strategy To the Buying Cycle

Image for How To Align Your Content Marketing Strategy To the Buying Cycle
Every consumer goes through the buying cycle when thinking about a purchase, whether they are buying a $10 product or spending thousands on a renovation. If you align your content marketing strategy to this cycle, it's easier to make people in your target audience aware of your services. Get results by using strong visuals and appealing content to make buyers want what you're offering. Read More

Content Marketing Trumps the Super Bowl – Part 2

Image for Content Marketing Trumps the Super Bowl – Part 2
  The Super Bowl is probably the biggest marketing event of the year—so much so that we couldn’t cover all the brilliant content marketing tactics in a single blog post. Yesterday, we talked about how Doritos and SodaStream used online content to promote their Super Bowl ads. Today, we present two more companies, who switched things up and used the Super Bowl to promote their online content. Newcastle Brown Ale – If We Made It Read More

It’s Official: Content and Social Media Trump the Super Bowl for Marketing Power – Part 1

Image for It’s Official: Content and Social Media Trump the Super Bowl for Marketing Power – Part 1
We’ve often talked about how traditional forms of advertisements such as TV commercials are no longer effective. People mute them, change the channel, or just don’t pay attention to them. But there’s one magical time of year when that’s not true: the Super Bowl. The Super Bowl Ad phenomenon is truly a stroke of marketing genius. Everyone looks forward to them—even those who don’t necessarily watch football. They’re clever, funny, have high production values, and often feature A-list celebrities. In fact, ads are so widely viewed that 30 seconds of Super Bowl airtime this year cost companies about $4 million. Read More

How Xerox Is Helping People Get a Handle On Healthcare

Image for How Xerox Is Helping People Get a Handle On Healthcare
  Jan. 1, 2014 was the all-important, looming deadline for everyone to be registered for health insurance. For many Americans, details about the new healthcare law and what it meant for them were vague at best. What did they have to do before the deadline? What would happen if they didn’t? What options were there available? Lots of people had lots of different questions. But the answers came from a rather unexpected place: Xerox. The company most famous for its copy machines now hosts a website called HealthBiz Decoded. And not only is it clear and helpful, it’s an example of content marketing at its finest. The site features copious amounts of articles on every conceivable healthcare topic. There’s information on doctors and providers. There’s information for doctors and providers. There’s information on payments, procedures, the latest technological innovations, and much more, along with plenty of articles about the new law. Read More

“It’s Too Expensive!” – 4 Objections Bosses Have About Content Marketing And How To Change Their Minds

Image for “It’s Too Expensive!” – 4 Objections Bosses Have About Content Marketing And How To Change Their Minds
  It’s a new year, which means a new budget. So it’s time once again to renew your pleas to your boss, to let you have some money for a quality content marketing strategy. And once again, it’s time for your boss to ignore your requests and tell you that it’s too expensive. There simply isn’t the money for such nonsense! But you can’t just let it go at that. You know that content marketing is the most effective way to promote your brand. You just need to be able to convince your boss of it. So here are 4 common objections that CEOs and other executives have to content marketing, and what you can say in response. “It’s not worth the money!” Content marketing is new, which tends to mean more money spent. Your boss isn’t about to pour company resources into some hair-brained scheme. How do you even tell if it’s working, anyway? “So we’ve got a blog. Can you really measure its success in terms of sales?” Yes. Not only does content marketing produce better, more accurate statistics for measuring ROI than traditional forms of marketing, but content also produces better overall results, for considerably less money. “It’s just a fad!” Creating a brand new marketing strategy for your brand is a big commitment of time and resources. Every other week, some new approach is touted as the greatest marketing tactic since sliced bread. Your company isn’t going to overhaul its entire strategy to implement some technique that everyone will forget about soon afterwards. But content marketing isn’t just some passing fad. It’s here to stay. It’s been building up momentum for years, and is rapidly becoming a mainstream marketing method. So if your company doesn’t get onboard soon, it’ll be left behind by those who do. “This content is irrelevant to our brand!” So you start a blog. You give people advice about how to do certain things. You keep them informed about the latest news and events in your industry. It’s a nice thing to do for people, but what good is it to your company? Where’s the part where you say, “This is our company! This is our product! You should buy it!”? And how will people know to buy from you if you don’t say that? In fact, that sort of blatant, in-your-face advertising is exactly what people don’t want. It turns people off and drives them away from your brand. But content marketing targets the people who are already looking to buy your type of product. It engages them and steers them towards your company without hitting them over the head with branding. By providing them with the content they need, it creates a face the customer can trust, and will thus be more willing to buy from in the long run. “The marketing strategy we’ve got works just fine!” So content can help you make sales. But you’ve already got a traditional marketing strategy in place. It’s served you well for years. It brings in new customers perfectly well. Why change things? Because “perfectly well” isn’t really good enough. Your company is under constant pressure from its investors to improve sales. Content marketing can increase your company’s growth much more effectively than traditional marketing tactics. Read More