Marketing Buzz Archives - Page 3 of 4

How to Create Buzz for Your Event

By: Kylie Hastings

The key to a successful event is to get people talking about it before it even happens. Orchestrating a good buzz for the venue, conference, gala, or whatever type of event you are hosting will increase ticket sales and attendance while also helping you anticipate the success. But where do you start?

Here are five steps for making your event the talk of the town—or the internet:

Put a hashtag on it.

Social media is your first stop when it comes to getting people to talk about your event. Create an event page on Facebook and LinkedIn, then promote on your own Instagram and Twitter accounts. You will also want to create an event-specific hashtag and include it on any social media promotion, including graphics.

This is where your team will come in handy, too. Assign specific tasks to your marketing team so that a strategy can be implemented. For example, acknowledge any posts or comments that are made in relation to the event. Someone should be responsible for monitoring feedback and questions. The better customer service you display on social media, the more interested those who see it will be in attending your event.

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Jessica Bertsch2018-10-25T13:47:06-04:00October 25th, 2018|Marketing Buzz, PowerTips e-newsletter|

How to Use Team-Building Activities to Engage Your Team

By: Angela Caban, MHRM

A recent report reveals business owners are losing trillions of dollars due to lost productivity among team members.

Eighty-five percent of employees are not engaged or are actively disengaged at work, according to the Gallup study. Some team members may say they are just punching a time clock and have no need for work engagement, but research shows that employees who are engaged are more productive.

Team building may be the answer to this current issue facing companies. These types of activities are a great way to develop workplace camaraderie so that employees have a better understanding of each other’s strengths, weaknesses, and interests. It is also a surefire method to improve projects that involve teamwork, resulting in coworkers operating better together. The outcome of team building can be extremely vital to a company’s success and to employee retention.

Some benefits of team-building activities are

Increased workplace engagement,
Improved creativity, and
Enhanced communication skills.

However, many leaders seem to have the wrong idea about what constitutes a fun activity. The common result ends up being that employees feel like they have to get through yet another task, rather than enjoying their time and making proper use of a valuable opportunity. Avoiding this pitfall is as simple as picking ideas that are fun and engaging to the team, while also offering good opportunities to show off some skills.

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Jessica Bertsch2018-08-06T16:22:57-04:00August 6th, 2018|Marketing Buzz, PowerTips e-newsletter|

Five Tips for Creating Branded Content that Grows Your Business

By: Lakesha Cole

It’s no secret good branding is necessary to succeed in business. With visual social media platforms, such as Instagram, growing in popularity by the minute, the shift over to visually stimulating content with catchy copy is no longer something that sets you apart. Rather, it is now a necessity to grow your business and to reach your target market. If you’ve recently opened a business and are searching for a way to market it, consider creating a blog to build brand awareness and amplify a strong brand voice.

Branding isn’t just the visuals. Branding is everything you do—and that you don’t do—in your business. Your brand is more than just your trademark and logo and fonts and colors. It’s how customers associate and connect with your business, or not. It’s not what you sell but more so how you sell it.

With that said, let’s discuss the ingredients for a great blog and how to build one that increases a brand’s following:

Tell Your Story.

Every brand has a story. Write content that tells yours concisely and with passion so that your audience can feel it. Creating your story involves bringing everything that is important in your brand together.

Here are some elements to keep in mind when telling your story:

– Your purpose
– Your vision
– Your values
– Price point & quality
– The customer experience
– Your products
– Your content and copy

A strong brand identity makes customers feel as if they know you or the personalities behind the business, which leads to customer loyalty and more followers. It will keep customers coming back, too, because they are convinced that you are likely to have the things they want to buy, even if they don’t need it.

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Jessica Bertsch2018-04-23T20:19:39-04:00April 23rd, 2018|Marketing Buzz, PowerTips e-newsletter|

How to Pivot Your Business

By: Lakesha Cole

It’s easy to become attached to the business idea you had when you first started. But what happens when that idea isn’t producing the number of zeros you were used to making (i.e., that time I built and ran a six-figure business in another country where I didn’t even speak the native language)?

Bottom line, the market is what drives business. As the needs of the customer change, we must be willing to pivot to continue to accommodate the customer.

Keyword…PIVOT.

In November of last year, we celebrated the one-year opening of She Swank Too in Jacksonville, NC. Despite all of the data and market research we conducted, something wasn’t clicking. Halfway

through the year, we knew we needed to build something that was more than just a place for people to shop. That said, most military towns are known to be more of the same. A mix of low-budget strip clubs, pawn shops, cheap bars and motels, used-car lots, tacky strip malls, big box stores, and way too many fast food restaurants. We had our work cut out for us.

Business wasn’t flowing the way we were used to. Progress was stagnant. We knew we needed to create something more meaningful and valuable: a community. A place where other local entrepreneurs would have the freedom to pursue their business in a professional environment and to perfect their craft. A place where customers felt like home.

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Jessica Bertsch2018-01-17T21:14:35-05:00January 17th, 2018|Marketing Buzz, PowerTips e-newsletter|

Four Reasons to Have Consistent Branding

By: K.C. Hastings

Every minute, there are 290,000 new statuses on Facebook, and in just four years, 16 million local business pages have been created. Meanwhile, the Twitterverse is seeing rapid interaction with over 6,000 tweets per second. In the world of marketing, social media has become a highway with a traffic jam of people trying to get noticed. The question is, how can brands get people to remember their virtual billboard when shopping for their next product or service?

The key is a consistent brand strategy.

Uniform practices across traditional and digital platforms create brand recognition, which, in turn, increases return on investment (ROI). Here’s why:

They remember you.

The moment a need arises, whether it’s for a replacement product or a new dress for an event, potential consumers think about who the go-to person is. If they have seen your marketing consistently on social media—through Facebook-sponsored ads, for example—they are going to remember your company’s name. Instead of searching “place to buy a dress,” they’ll be searching for your store by name. People are more likely to trust a company they have heard of over a company whose advertising they’ve never seen.

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Jessica Bertsch2017-10-30T01:43:30-04:00October 30th, 2017|Marketing Buzz, PowerTips e-newsletter|

Add Video to Your Brand’s Social Strategy

By: Rheanna Bernard

Social media is always changing. Whether you are a blogger, a brand, or a small business, it can be hard to keep up with what’s trending. Just when you feel like you’ve got algorithms down, they change. There is, however, one thing that has been on the rise, and isn’t going anywhere: video.

Video is a key factor in engagement, as seen by every social media platform that isn’t just video—like Snapchat—adding such features to their options. Who remembers that brief second in time everyone made fun of Instagram for launching their Instagram Stories feature? Everyone did, and they made videos about it, too. It was only a matter of time before Facebook rolled out the same thing. Video is king. So how do you do it right?

How you put together your videos depends on the goal of your video and who you are. Bloggers will create videos differently than a brand, but there are some intersections.
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Jessica Bertsch2017-07-17T19:41:33-04:00July 17th, 2017|Marketing Buzz, PowerTips e-newsletter|

Make Your Business Go Viral with a Media Strategy

By: Bianca Strzalkowski

Twice as many people get their news from online media organizations than from people close to them, according to a 2016 survey.

Pew Research Center found that 36 percent of Americans choose to read or watch news online compared to 15 percent who receive it from friends. While word-of-mouth advertising is a lucrative way to multiply a customer base, it seems that media consumers rely on professional organizations as their go-to source for current news. These findings can translate to business growth for companies who implement a media strategy that gets their brand in front of reporters.

Whether you are a brick-and-mortar business or operate solely online, establishing brand recognition can be pricy and take longer than your bottom line can endure. But developing relationships with relevant media outlets offers an alternative way to reach a larger number of potential customers without busting your budget.

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Jessica Bertsch2017-04-30T02:48:02-04:00April 29th, 2017|Marketing Buzz, PowerTips e-newsletter|

A BUSINESS REFRESH

By: Rebecca Alwine

Two entrepreneurs gave their brand a refresh to align their sassy business personality with an evolving vision.

Owners Shiang-Ling Bissonnette and Miranda Perales make up the dynamic duo behind The Hive & Co, a company that provides consultation services to small businesses. The team of two—both military spouses—joined forces after recognizing they each had skill sets that could balance each other out to make a strong partnership. Bissonnette brings the creative side, while Perales has an extensive background in marketing.

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Jessica Bertsch2017-01-23T16:27:52-05:00January 18th, 2017|Marketing Buzz, PowerTips e-newsletter|

Facebook Quantity Versus Quality

By: Angela Caban, MHRM

The days of using Facebook as a free marketing tool are over. However, keep in mind, Facebook is still powerful and, when used correctly, will grow your business and build a loyal following. The saying, “Sometimes your circle decreases in size, but increases in value” is very true. This can also be applied to the world of social media.

While there are still many out there who do believe in putting in the time to increase audience size, don’t fixate on the number of your social following—bigger numbers don’t always equal success. Think about it this way: if the brand does not spend time engaging with their followers, what value does the high volume of those followers hold?

More time should be put into increasing the quality of your content to attract already loyal fans, therefore increasing your metrics and having a better organic reach. Potential followers will see the interaction between the brand and fans, equaling a higher quality page. Ever visit a page with a high following, but scroll down their page and see nothing? No comments, likes, or shares—just a brand posting content over and over, talking to no one. No engagement.
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Jessica Bertsch2016-10-24T17:07:27-04:00October 24th, 2016|Marketing Buzz, PowerTips e-newsletter|

Two Peas in a Pod: How Your Brand Affects Your SEO Rank

By: Angela Caban, MHRM

When I started building my business online six years ago, I hustled to get my Google ranking up. Consequently, I was so focused on bringing up my search engine rank (and crushing it) that I was neglecting my brand and what potential clients would think of me. In many instances, potential clients care more about the reputation of your brand rather than seeing you rank higher in search results. This doesn’t mean you should give up on raising that ranking; rather, you should focus on both. The two actually complement each other.

What is SEO and why is it important?

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of affecting the visibility of a site or page in a search engine’s results. In other words, you didn’t promote or pay for advertisements. Visitors find your site based off of the keywords typed in a search engine. And, as tedious as the process of working SEO can be, this is a vital step in any brand building. You have a golden opportunity to market your brand and build your ranking, especially for those niche brands.

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Jessica Bertsch2016-07-18T15:46:53-04:00July 18th, 2016|Marketing Buzz, PowerTips e-newsletter|