Tag: marketing

When You’re a Marketing Team of One

When you’re a marketing team of one, things get more complicated. Things like schedules and strategies and goals can quickly get usurped for the latest marketing fire unless you’re able to get ahead of the rest of the organization. I should know –  I was a marketing team of one for a good chunk of my career before joining the O’Keeffe tribe.

Here are the top five things I wish I’d known early in my career as a marketing team of one.

  1. Documentation is your best friend.

It sounds like a no-brainer, right? Document things. Easy peasy. But when you’re a team of one, you’re likely juggling priorities across the business and, depending on the history of the organization, and who you report to, you may be dealing with conflicting ideas on how you should move forward.

Hence documentation.

It’s more than just a recap of emails after meetings (although those are essential). Think about how you can best communicate your strategy and your wins across the business. Would a monthly report help? How about a note breaking down wins via email with a why it matters summary? Find ways to bring your leadership and the rest of your organization along on this magical marketing journey with you.

  1. Stay connected within the marketing community.

As a marketing team of one, you will likely be the only person who gets excited when a significant client tweets at you or when you double your open rate on that biweekly email send. Find your local marketing community and make nerdy friends. Sometimes a lunch spent talking segmentation is the boost you need to push out your new content strategy. Your local AMA is an excellent resource for this, but so are Meetups, user groups, and events or conferences.

Make friends, and you’ll always have someone to call to celebrate a big victory or talk you off a ledge when Salesforce breaks.

  1. Keep a roadmap.

Depending on the nature of your organization and whether you’re setting the long-term strategy, you’ll need to keep an eye on your initiatives. Sometimes you’ll be working through a tough time with your sales team, and you’ll need a way to refocus on what’s next. Your roadmap will be your strategic marketing bible and help you cut through priorities. It’s easy to get overwhelmed as a team of one. Being able to reference that roadmap can help your leadership stay focused on where you can make the most impact.

  1. Do the math.

Let’s face it: pulling your monthly analytics isn’t a high priority when you’re managing a giant marketing strategy. But it’s also the one thing that will help you see the light at the end of the long, complicated white paper you’re writing. Being able to see your progress is hugely motivating, and that process of continual optimization isn’t possible without a historical perspective on your efforts. It’ll also save you if you ever want to find a new home because showing concrete results is the best way to land your next gig.

  1. Find time to get creative.

When all of the pressure rests on your marketing shoulders, it’s easy to stay head down and ignore the outside world. You’re just trying to knock out this week’s social posts – there isn’t time for nerding out with a whiteboard and reviewing your personas. The single best way to stop stress and burnout is to stay creative and engaged in your work. Make the time to develop new strategies, review fun ideas, and learn skills that help set you apart. It keeps your brain fresh and your marketing strategy even fresher.

Being a marketing team of one isn’t easy. I’d wager that it’s one of the hardest roles to fill as a marketer. That kind of ownership and responsibility can be insanely fun if you’re able to ride through competing priorities, times of loneliness as you long for a team, and all those conversations explaining just what exactly you do to the rest of the organization.

Did you read this and think, gosh, I wish I had a marketing buddy like the O’Keeffe tribe? We’d love to work with you and help you tell your story. Send us a quick message and let’s talk.

Why your business needs visual content

Regardless of the industry you work in, you’ve probably already heard that visual content is an effective form of communication. Actually, in my opinion it’s becoming the most effective form of communication.

Whether you’re in B2B or B2C, it’s still H2H (human to human). Humans are visual beings, and in today’s world of information-overload, visuals can help your message rise above the clutter.  If you aren’t focusing on visual content for your marketing, social media or email campaigns, it’s probably time to start.

Visuals grab our attention.

There are 1.5 billion units of content generated each day. With so much information floating around online, businesses need to find ways to grab the attention of their target audiences. Using visuals, rather than text, is a much more effective way to accomplish this.

We remember visuals.

Did you know that people retain 80 percent of what they see? This is compared to 20 percent of what they read and ten percent of what they hear. Big difference. If you want your audience to remember what you are communicating, show them using visuals.

Visual content gets more views.

Content featuring compelling images averages 94 percent more total views than those without. It’s also 40 times more likely to be shared on social media than posts with only text. By including an image, you can drastically increase people’s willingness to read, listen or see what you have to say.

Visual content can influence human emotion.

Images, videos, infographics, and other forms of visual content include color that can appeal to your target audience’s senses and influence their emotions. Studies show that colors not only affect emotions, but also influence how people will take action. Additionally, visual content acts as a universal language and can appeal to all audiences and emotions.

To practice what I preach, I’ve included an infographic that brings this message to life.

 

Infographic from Ethos3
Infographic from Ethos3

 

Is Your Brand Utilizing Facebook Live?

As of June, 2016 Facebook reported over 1.71 billion monthly active users. As you can imagine, when the company launched Facebook Live, it peaked the interest of marketers everywhere. Whether you are a B2B or B2C company, these real-time video posts can create real opportunities for your brand to engage with your audience. If your company hasn’t tried using Facebook Live yet, it might be a good time to start.

What is Facebook Live?

Facebook Live videos are real-time video posts that show up in your followers’ Facebook news feeds. Your page can broadcast in real time for up to 90 minutes. While broadcasting, your company can keep track of how many people are viewing the video, read and monitor comments and respond to them directly. Your fans can even subscribe and get notified the next time you start a live broadcast.

Facebook Live can help your brand:

Reach a wide audience.

Video is King, and there are plenty of statistics to prove it. And, Facebook has recently tweaked its news feed algorithm to prioritize live video because of research that shows users spend three times longer watching a live video compared to a pre-recorded video. This means that your brand’s video will show up on more news feeds than a typical Facebook post, and your organic reach will be much higher.

Target the right audience.

Facebook allows you to target who your live stream will reach. You can target by age, gender, language or location, so your video will reach those who are relevant.

Be more human.

Facebook Live is just another tool for you to showcase your brand’s personality. Your audience will get to know your brand better and feel better connected with live video, which will make them more likely to come back to your pages for more.

Understand your audience.

By listening to their real-time reactions and comments, your brand can test new ideas and get immediate feedback. You are also able to see the total number of people who watched at least a portion of the video, along with how many viewers you had at different points in time during the video. This information is helpful to determine when your audience is on Facebook and what they want to see.

Should my company use Facebook Live?

Facebook live can offer plenty of benefits for both B2B and B2C companies. But, with all social networks, it is important to think about where your audience lives. If you have customers, potential customers or industry peers who are active on Facebook, then Facebook Live is a great tool to use to answer questions, hear what’s on their mind and share new information with them.

For example, if your company offers business classes or workshops, you can broadcast interviews with attendees about the best tips they received during the session. As a construction company, you might broadcast a drywall installation or a walk-through of a completed project or building. If you are a restaurant, you can broadcast a “how-to” video of your chef cooking a quick and easy dish.

Live streaming is all about connecting and engaging with your audience in real time. Facebook Live breaks down barriers and creates a connection that traditional marketing cannot. So, go ahead and give it a try!

Can Old Ideas Become New Again?

Recently, O’Keeffe relocated to newer, shared office space in Over-the-Rhine. In a word, our new space is way cool. That’s two words, but you get it. The space is an open-floorplan renovation of a turn of the century weigh station serving the canal freight traffic that once sailed what is now Central Parkway. The giant scales are still here. Like I said, way cool.

The first week in new space shared with another creative group, we all gathered for lunch in the central meeting area to introduce ourselves, and get to know each other. The other folks are a creative group comprised entirely of very talented and successful Millenials. I’m thrilled to be among so much energy.

While I am not a shy person, I found myself conversing with professionals young enough to be my grandchildren, as we all shared our backgrounds, schools attended, degrees, and experiences. Yes, it’s still Cincinnati, and high schools were mentioned before universities.

Needless to say, my curriculum vitae is significantly longer than theirs simply because I have been doing this 40 years longer than they have. I was quite surprised that, to a person, they all showed a great deal of interest in my agency experience, and asked very interesting and probing questions. As lunch came to a close, a young lady said, “Wow. I wish you had been here when we first started the company. We were all fresh out of college, and didn’t know how to do anything or how the business world works.”

What an amazing statement. Consider its implications. What is the balance between the way things were done in the good old days, versus today’s digitally connected world? Are the principles of marketing communications somehow different today than yesteryear? Is the late David Olgilvy, hailed as the Father of Advertising, and his seminal work that became the textbook on the fundamentals of good communication still valid today?

The short answer, yes, now more than ever. The only difference is that we have more channels available than ever before to communicate with our audience. As content marketers, we can learn a lot from the legendary Mr. Ogilvy, whom I had the pleasure to meet in person in 1972. Here are a few of his guiding principles:

He was one of the pioneers of information-rich, what he called “soft sell” that didn’t insult the intelligence of the prospect.

Ogilvy believed cleverness doesn’t sell products and services. Original thinking in marketing is great, but not just for the sake of being witty or clever. If you aren’t thinking about connecting with your audience, building trust and selling your products or services when you sit down to create content, you need to reexamine your motivations. Don’t just create content to get credit for being clever — create content that will be helpful, insightful, interesting and connects with your target audience.

Learn the language of your audience, and write in their vernacular.
It is vitally important to research and understand how your audience thinks, speaks, and searches, so that we can use that language in our headlines, blog posts, sales letters, and e-books. The better we understand how our readers think, the better we’ll be able to connect with them.

Anyone who is a fan of the TV series, Mad Men, can conjure a mental picture of what the ad business looked like in the late 60’s and 70’s. I’m here to tell you Mad Men is accurate in their depiction of the social interactions of that era.

The principles of modern marketing communications were also created during that time, and remain the same today. Great marketing is a direct communication between your brand, and your customer. You will learn what your customer is looking for in your product or service, what makes an emotional connection and what doesn’t, and the language that will resonate with that customer if you take the time to listen. We simply distribute these messages through exciting, new digital channels.