Activate Buyer Journey
If you find yourself struggling to develop effective content for your business, you are not alone.
If your marketing Rocks are beginning to feel like a heavy burden instead of inspiration, here are a few things you can do to lighten your load and move ahead.
Most companies have a defined and written vision for their business. We have that too, but we also developed a list of core values that help us to make sure everyone is on the same page and consistently stays the course.
Now’s the time for you to take action and launch a strategy worthy of your marketing dollars and your brand. Think of Spoke as your marketing enablement mission control.
Heading to a trade show to network with current customers and meet new prospects? That’s great. Even in a hyper-connected world, trade shows and conferences remain a valuable and necessary staple for businesses and organizations looking to connect with key stakeholders.
Consumers have more power than ever before. When they’re upset, they can do incredible harm to your brand (through things such as online reviews and even your social media), and they have access to more information (mostly true) about your products and services at their fingertips.
Growing share during a booming economy is difficult (everyone is spending). Gaining market share during a recession requires capital, but the eventual ROI can’t be beat.
Most companies have great data. The problem is that it’s stuck in silos (CRM, Marketing Automation, Web Analytics, Accounting, Social Data, Customer Support, etc.). By combining the data into one Customer Data Platform, marketers obtain a Single View of the Customer…and then your marketing can really start cookin’.
If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a lousy stock photo’s thousand words are ‘crap.’ OK, maybe some of them are ‘lazy.’
What was once a simple spike (first attributed to Homer Jones of the New York Giants in 1965) has evolved into a choreographed party – so long as it’s not deemed ‘excessive.’
If you’ve opened a national newspaper, INC, Fortune, Fast Company, Wired or read any news story about fastest growing cities in the last few years, each recognizes Austin as a great place to live. But why? The cost of living is rising, traffic is a nightmare, and the city is in constant change.
You know that saying about the ‘cobbler’s kids with no shoes’ (implying he’s too busy with work to take care of himself). Have you ever noticed that it’s the ‘cobbler’s kids’ and not the cobbler himself? I bet the cobbler didn’t just have shoes, he had really nice ones (for the record, my great-grandfather was a cobbler, and legend has it that he always wore nice shoes).
How our intimate get-togethers turned into a networking party.
For a company whose primary business is dependent upon communication, it seems obvious that being able to write compelling copy for print ads, brochures, TV and radio ads is a basic requirement. Yet, crafting a compelling message can be challenging. Why?
First, let’s get one thing clear; a great brand is no guarantee of success (pets.com was fun while it lasted). As marketing pioneer, Bill Bernbach famously quoted, “a great ad campaign will make a bad product fail faster.” In other words, you can only fool people once.
No, the alien robots from the 1989 video game Zero Wing aren’t coming to get you.
OK, not everyone can be a trendsetter (wrote the guy wearing tattered Chuck Taylor’s and well-worn Levi 501’s). One of the things I love most about our industry is that it’s constantly changing; it requires an unwavering commitment to learning.
You love your new ‘precious’ product, don’t you? It’s okay, admit it. The problem is; nobody knows your product better than you. If you hope to have any chance of selling it, that’s got to change. Like now.
No knock on the promotional products industry, but the sales and marketing effort for your tradeshow shouldn’t revolve around the tchotchke that you give away. I’ve yet to make a purchase decision based on the logo on my squishy ball or pen.
There’s knowing who your customer is, and then there’s knowing your customer (hint: the second one is better).
As we set up clients’ marketing automation programs, we’ve found that many are confused by creating personas. “How is it different than my target market?” Personas aren’t different; they’re better.
It’s the future, and it’s a push-button world. Hovercrafts exist, robots clean our floors (at least until the uprising), and we automate as many tasks as possible in our everyday lives (how dare you suggest that I do manual math like a peasant!). In this world where we consistently choose automation over manual tasks, it amazes me that less than ten percent of companies are utilizing marketing automation.
A great example of using lead generation to target qualified leads to maximize ROI is our client AppointLink. They show that if you build it (correctly), they will come.
Prospects often call us because they want more leads; plain-and-simple. Most of the time, the quantity of leads isn’t the problem. After asking a few questions (using our patented client decoder), we find that they really want more ‘qualified’ leads (after all, why waste your time trying to sell people that have no likelihood of buying?).
You know who you’re targeting for qualified leads and what you want them to do, right? Oh, and you’re converting those qualified leads into sales at a good rate, and high return on investment? Good.
A great (maybe the best) example we have of executing a marketing plan is a campaign we developed for ANOVA. Their marketing plan revealed that landscape architects were a prime target to grow their business. The tactic chosen was a simple (giant) cardboard chair (2 big pieces, two pegs) and delivered it in a giant box, along with assembly instructions and information about ANOVA.
Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat. Sun Tzu – The Art of War
Remember paper calendars? It was always refreshing to start January with a clean slate. The fresh pad always smelled good, too. Like optimism, or something.
The state of Missouri has a program, Missouri Works, that offers tax incentives to companies adding as few as two jobs.
For years, we’ve been thinking, “how could we make Spoke better?” We’ve tried everything, Ouija boards, Tarot cards, sage smudging, and hired a shaman (who turned out to be just a college kid selling CutCo knives). The answer turned out to be pretty simple.
St. Louis, MO (January 22, 2015) — Spoke Marketing, full-service marketing for the emerging and middle markets, is announcing today the agency is expanding into Austin, TX, with the new office being headed by Managing Director Joanna Heinrich.
It’s that time of year; doctors get the call all the time – patients looking for a quick fix to whatever’s ailing them. We get similar calls almost daily (no, not for drugs…not anymore, anyway). Prospective clients call up wanting a solution without knowing the cause of their problem.
Remember in the late 90’s when all anyone talked about was ‘eyeballs’? That was the (really stupid) rationale to invest in dotcoms based solely on the traffic the site would generate (even if the site operated at a loss). It was the reason companies had insane valuations and no real, sustainable revenue model.
What do you think a good direct mail response rate would be? How about 100%? Would that be good enough for you?
For years marketing experts have been stressing the importance of including social media in the marketing mix of small and large businesses alike. How is it, then, that so many companies are still solely relying on their company website and paid media to enhance their online presence?
This month we’ll be looking at choosing the best medium for your advertising. It’s estimated that consumers are exposed to hundreds (likely thousands) of marketing messages each day. Breaking through the clutter is one of a marketer’s biggest challenges, and finding the right media mix is a key ingredient to success.
For years, I’ve been suggesting that marketing students go to dental school. Great money, great hours, and nobody (hardly) ever dies in a dentist’s chair.
Arch Grants Winner CoMo Medical wanted to rebrand…and we weren’t about to stop them.
Spoke has been able to grow during the ‘great recession’ and ‘slow rebound’ not just because we do great work and focus on finding our clients’ fastest path to cash™; it’s through referrals. Literally 90% of our business comes in the door that way.
If The Blessing Basket Project had a hoard of obnoxious groupies, they’d have to get in line behind us. We’ve done multiple projects for them over the years (you try to say no to their founder Theresa…let us know how that goes).
Spoke is excited to start off the fall season with a philanthropic bang! On Friday, September 26, we will be entering our Devil’s Tongue Kölsch beer into the 1st Annual Agency Homebrew Competition to benefit the Megan Foundation.
As summer’s closing (along with our sixth year of the Sprockets program), we thought it would be fun to tell you what (kickass, pro bono) work our interns have been doing for non-profits and start-ups.
Garbage in, garbage out. With direct marketing, having a good list is the most important element (more important than creative).
Yeah, we liked the line so much we trademarked it. But, it really is our key touchstone for every client we work with and something we focus on every day.
In order to get you where you want to be, we need to figure out where you are. Let's talk about creating a fully-integrated sales and marketing program that’s grounded in strategy, and designed for the highest possible return on investment.
Activate Buyer JourneyContact Us
