Why Knowing Your Audience Is the Key to Marketing Segmentation
Only 2% of visitors convert their first visit to most sites. But using marketing segmentation to retarget that remaining 98% can boost conversions by 70%, according to Invespcro. And it’s much easier to accomplish than you think. Establish a relationship with your customers using audience analysis Understanding who you are talking to is the foundation of strong marketing segmentation. Initiate a relationship with your target audience by acknowledging that you understand who they are, empathize with their needs, and have products and services that can solve their pain points. Start by pulling quantitative information about your site traffic such as socio-economic demographics and referring sources, then layer on the behavioral information you can glean from third-party data outlets such as social media and lead forms. This information will allow you to paint a picture of who your customers are, where they spend their time online, and what they need, so you can use this data to create a flawless marketing experience. Translating this data into actionable insights is the most technically challenging part of the marketing segmentation journey, so we recommend partnering with a trusted digital marketing agency like BIGEYE to get you started. When all else fails, ask: Using choice-based marketing segmentation If you are a small business owner or just beginning to flesh out your marketing segmentation strategy, let your visitors simply tell you who your target market is by having them self-identify. As an example, you may feature a drop-down menu on your landing page that allows visitors to share what industry they are in to receive personalized content or encourage them to opt-in through gated content and lead forms. Once your audience has identified themselves, you can accurately speak to them and provide meaningful content without doing as much upfront audience segmentation work. Build marketing segmentation campaigns that fit your audience’s needs Once you know who you are speaking to, begin creating content that is specific, timely, and relevant to your audiences. Use marketing segmentation tools such a retargeted display ads, search, and social media campaigns to ensure your brand stays top of mind and relevant. While hyper-personalization is important, it’s equally important to recognize that site visitors may flow in and out of different personas and audience types as they move through the customer journey or as their individual needs evolve. Work with an agency to find the right blend of targeted content and universally relevant information or use A/B testing to validate you have the right mix. Qualitative research such as interviews and focus groups might also help you understand whether your content is hitting the right tone for the right individuals at every stage of the marketing experience. Contact us today to explore how BIGEYE has transformed brands like yours using these powerful tools and receive a free consultation and audit about how to get started.
Why perfecting the retail marketing mix is important
Contemporary retail marketing is a brave new world. While some basic principles remain when it comes to implementing effective retail marketing strategies, others have evolved to acknowledge and appeal to the new breed of consumer. Does your business have what it takes to succeed in today’s dynamic landscape? Let’s take a closer look at three critical components of the 21st century retail marketing mix. 1. It’s not you, it’s them And by “them,” we mean your customers. While the retail marketing mix involves a number of elements — those trusty, oft-cited “six P’s.” People, product, price, place, promotion and performance should all be focused in one clear direction: your customers. It goes without saying that your customers are your business’ most important constituents, but a shocking number of retail enterprises fail to put them front and center when it comes to developing and implementing retail strategies. Here’s the cold hard truth: the more customer-focused you can make your retail business, the more success you can expect to achieve. Lucky for us, we have more access than ever toward understanding our customers. From tracking in-store footfalls to online conversation rates, the ability to known and learn from customer behavior yields actionable insights into their wants and needs so you can stop wasting your resources on what doesn’t work and instead focus on results. We’re living in an era of “YOU-tility,” and retail organizations are not exempt when it comes to satisfying the contemporary consumer. One common goal shared by today’s successful retail enterprises? To add value across all of the P’s. This can mean anything from implementing point of sale solutions for on-the-go customers to targeting promotions to reach a particular demographic via their preferred means of communication, all without bothering the rest with irrelevant promotional materials. 2. Consistency is key We can all agree that a retail organization which only emphasizes sales is destined to fail. Why? Because retail success also relies upon providing extraordinary customer service every step of the way. Want to gain an inside edge on the competition? Don’t settle for delivering what your customers expect. Instead, strive to exceed their expectations. After all, the ultimate goal is not to make a single sale, but to develop lasting customer loyalty, along with the potential for a lifetime of sales. Because consumer shopping habits have changed, so must your marketing efforts. This means incorporating a complete range of omnichannel marketing methods in order to leverage technology into sales. To maximize your efforts and ensure that your message reaches your target audience in the most meaningful way, your business needs a compelling online and offline presence. Today’s consumers expect the businesses they support to be transparent, accountable and responsive. While these may sound like trendy buzzwords, they’re a very real part of any successful retail marketing mix. This means every communication you send — whether in-store or via digital methods — is aimed at reinforcing your brand sensibility across all touch points. And don’t forget about email. While most people think social media and apps have overtaken email as the ideal means of communicating with consumers, email is still an important way to cultivate and engage consumers. In fact, a recent Inc. article decreed email marketing to be “vital for businesses of all sizes,” for a variety of reasons including its low cost, mobile reach, and impact upon both online and in-store sales. Consistency also means establishing expectations for your staff and reinforcing these expectations so that organization-wide operations are coordinated, streamlined, and cohesive. Every team member should be working toward the common goal of satisfying customers through a well-communicated strategic plan. 3. A new kind of location, location, location The traditional marketing mix has always emphasized location. After all, you’re not going to make any sales if access to your storefront is limited by a poor, inconvenient or incongruent location in terms of your brand and target consumers. And while your physical storefront remains an important concern today, it’s far from the only concern. Why? Because not only are today’s customers more mobile in terms of where they shop, but they also have access to endless e-commerce options. Shopping is no longer about geography. In fact, today’s consumers can get nearly everything they need without stepping foot inside a brick-and-mortar location. In order to keep up with the evolving retail mix, your e-commerce site is as important as your physical storefront when attracting paying customers. Forrester Research’s report, U.S. Cross-Channel Retail Forecast, 2012-2017, predicts that by the year 2017, 60 percent of the country’s total retail sales will involve the web, and a full 10.3 percent will be online purchases. Unless you’re willing to forgo your 10 percent, creating an inviting, accessible, compelling and brand-centric new “location” — ie. your online storefront — is a must-do. While finding the correct retail marketing mix takes some time and effort, it can serve as the difference between standing out from your competition and blending in with the rest. Keeping these three things in mind can help you maximize your retail marketing mix efforts in order to enjoy optimal results across your business, brand, and bottom line. Are you a retailer in search of ways to set your brand apart in a bustling industry? Contact our team of strategists to schedule time to “talk shop” with us today!
Assessing Ello and Emerging Social Media Sites For the New Year
Recently, tech blogs and trendsetters alike have been talking about Ello, a new social media site designed to serve as an alternative to Facebook. In many ways, it seems preposterous that a company would try to challenge – or even potentially replace – Facebook, which is by far one of the largest technology companies in the world. What you might find fascinating, however, is that Facebook’s key target demographics tell a bit of a different story – one that leaves us pondering whether or not the site may eventually be headed in the same direction as Friendster, or a quite possibly, a “pre-Justin Timberlake” MySpace. When I joined Facebook, which by now was approximately eight years ago, it was the quintessential online social media destination for users in their 20’s and early 30’s to communicate with one another. Rarely would you find a parent with a Facebook account of their own, and, in terms of other social networking options, there were a few, but none were so communal. Facebook served as a landing place for all my friends – including those from many different social circles – no matter how I knew them. Times have most certainly changed with emerging social media, and with the rise of Ello, who knows? We might just end up seeing an exciting new shift in the way people access this type of online networking. Most bonafide marketers understand that today’s “young people” aren’t as present on Facebook, and given the host of other options, they’re more likely to spend a bulk of their time visiting Tumblr, Instagram and Snapchat. It doesn’t take a seasoned marketing professional to know that it takes a lot of bandwidth to be everywhere at once. This is one of the key reasons why these days, my peers are generally only active on social networks in which they associate meaning to their daily lives – and, they remain active on forums where people with similar interests tend to gravitate. Personally, I follow a lot of comedians and comedic actors and actresses on Twitter, which is the perfect venue for crafting short, funny “witticisms.” On the flip side, Facebook is relegated to keeping in contact with a wide circle of friends, while LinkedIn assists me in maintaining professional connections, and growing my network. I access Instagram and Pinterest daily, but other accounts such as YouTube, Foursquare, Google+ and Vine tend to go virtually untouched and oftentimes, unmaintained. As a digital strategist, my Orlando advertising agency’s social media team and I truly don’t envision that Ello will succeed in becoming the new “Facebook alternative.” As recourse however, I am placing a pretty firm bet on that notion that it may eventually attract communities of its own – communities made up of Facebook users who may feel as though Facebook is not the best social media site to serve their varying needs. This might be as a result of its use of data manipulation, or perhaps, the addition of an advertising component, or simply, that users may find their personal news feeds to be disinteresting. Whatever the reasons – and there are many – we’re seeing something much larger at play here. [quote]In creating and maintaining a social network, it’s important to know where your audience spends a majority of its time.[/quote] If you look closely enough, you will see that users practically canvas the web – they’re accessing sites of all types. There are entire social networking sites that are geared specifically to peoples’ interests and ideologies. Often times, it may simply consist of a message board of people who are interested in topics deemed otherwise obscure, such as “hula hooping culture” or “18th century songwriting.” Topics that might not resonate with most of us, but as the moniker goes, “if you build it, they will come.” In a similar vain, crafting and maintaining these social networks has a great deal to do with formulating a community, and marketers can utilize this lesson in helping to propagate such communities around their products. Specific audiences may be on Facebook because there’s nothing better, but I’m certain that if you attempt to present them with a dedicated forum – one that speaks directly to their area of interest – I’m sure you won’t be surprised to watch as the population of that social networking community flourishes. As a result, members have the opportunity to create connections both online and off. One such example is Fitocracy, an online forum for self-proclaimed “fitness geeks.” I’m a firm believer that Facebook is here to stay, although with many of the above concepts in mind, the site’s following may have the potential to shrink. This is particularly true as its users find more specialized social networks where they can connect with like-minded people (and not necessarily individuals that they know personally in the real “offline” world). By keeping in mind that a successful social media strategy isn’t limited to the most popular social networks, brands can essentially begin to seek audiences in these not-so-mainstream avenues – which, in turn, might allow them to develop more authentic connections to their own customers. Looking for digital expertise on how to best navigate the social media landscape? Contact us today to form a partnership to chart your course!
Cultivating Community Through an Event Based Strategy
At our Orlando marketing agency, we believe that in building your business, it’s becoming increasingly important to try to build a community around what you do. Building a community fosters engagement both online and offline, encouraging people to share their thoughts and opinions and to make their voices heard. One of the best ways to cultivate a community of people is through an event based strategy. Most of the strongest communities I’ve seen are those in private clubs and membership organizations and are hugely events-based, hosting more than 300 events a year in order to help keep their members and communities happy while simultaneously helping them grow their networks. But even if you’re not a fancy private club or a networking group, you can still take advantage of the sense of belonging that an events-based community strategy offers to your customers. Since the era of social media, the term “community”seems to have taken on a life of its own. To older people who aren’t actively using social media on a regular basis, “community”is synonymous with “social media,”which in reality is only partially true. A community manager’s job is to engage the community, and while social media may be part of that, so is blogging, email marketing and, of course, event marketing. In order to run an effective event-based community strategy, it’s essential to know what your community wants. Do this by requesting information via survey data, with specific questions about what you think they might enjoy. Wine stores might benefit from tasting events and private wine classes for VIP customers, while luxury hospitality businesses might want to woo their customers with formal dining events and open bar cocktail parties sponsored by popular liquor brands. Depending on your business, it’s important to know the time of day people are interested in attending (breakfast, lunch, happy hour, evening or all-day events) and which day of the week they prefer (for instance, people who have 9-5 jobs and small kids may prefer family-friendly weekend events to after-work events). Responding to their needs also shows that you truly understand your target audience, which is extremely important for any business. Oftentimes, businesses that are faring pretty well have no desire to explore other ways to generate more business, particularly because they don’t realize how much more money they can generate by doing so.[quote]The good thing is that businesses of any size can hold events for nearly any budget.[/quote] If you have a space and a reason for people to gather, the potential is there…and things like appetizers and beverages can only sweeten the deal. If you’re using the information from the survey data and you’ve been careful to find out the types of events interest your group, then you should have no problem identifying potential guest speakers or planning leisure activities that can also help facilitate community involvement around your business or brand. The problem for many people is that events aren’t always direct revenue drivers. Take, for example, a lawn care company that hosts a free wine and cheese client appreciation event. This may cost several hundred dollars in securing a location, providing food and beverage, and lost work hours in planning the event. It may be even more if you plan to create signage or need to purchase nametags and other supplies. But, if that small event encourages your clients to share their experiences with their friends and colleagues, and one of those referrals turns into a new client for the business, then it was well worth the time. Events are great because they can build online and impersonal interactions into more genuine connections. From a business perspective, this makes good sense because the more people are engaged with your community, they more likely they are to hang around. We’d love to help you connect with your audience at-large – contact us to determine how we can help craft your engaging event based strategy!
The five Tips for Identifying Your Business’s Target Audience
For most companies, your audience is the heart of your brand. When they’re satisfied, it means that the brand has lived up to its promise. People who love their favorite brands can be some of the best marketing resources you have…and you don’t even have to pay them! When your audience is so impressed with your product or service that they’re sharing it with others, you’ve hit the sweet spot in the market —a figurative bulls eye comprised of finding your target audience and filling their need. But for some companies, the tricky part isn’t necessarily the audience itself; the tricky part is the challenges that present themselves when trying to find the right audience. Your new luxury hotel isn’t going to do so well if you focus all your marketing towards people who don’t travel, and your sports industry business isn’t going to fare well if you spend all your ad dollars trying to reach people who aren’t interested in sports. Seems pretty obvious, right? Unfortunately, it’s not always so straightforward. Take, for example, a business that sells customized staircases to high-end clientele. This is a very niche need, so rather than trying to build awareness with everyone, you’d need to focus your efforts on a group of people with that specific need. You might have a low conversion rate, but even a single conversion leads to an extremely high-value transaction, the goal is to focus on reaching quality potential customers, as opposed to just reaching a high quantity of people. So, how do we go about finding your business’s target audience? Here are a few ideas from our Orlando marketing agency. 1. Market research reports: These days, market research is available all over the web. Some of it you may have to pay for, but it’s usually a wise investment – market researchers from companies like Forrester and Nielsen have already done the hard work for you, so it’s cheaper than spending your own business dollars to try to glean insights into customer behavior. [quote]There are market research reports on almost every topic under the sun: from organic eating habits to people’s growing use of mobile technology.[/quote] Look to these reports to help you understand the consumer landscape. 2. Census data: We often think of the census as that thing the government does every 10 years. However, the U.S. Census website has a ton of interesting demographic information that can be extremely useful in targeting people based on geographical needs. Use this in tandem with other research for best results. 3. Survey data: Companies like SurveryMonkey and Qualtrics are useful for gaining statistical insight into peoples’ activities. Use this information to formulate hypotheses about your target audience, which you can then supplement with research data and test through your communications and marketing strategies. 4. Qualitative data: While often more expensive than the other forms of research listed here, this is one of the best ways to gain insights about your target audience. This is because it frees people to give open-ended responses, giving the person conducting the interview or focus group more opportunities to gain insights beyond a simple yes or no response, as is typically the case with survey data. 5. Online listening: Looking at brand mentions on online platforms can help figure out who influences your brand. By reviewing those peoples’ demographics and their own audiences, you can find out more about them and how they interact with your brand or business. There are a host of online listening tools available, but some favorites here at our Orlando advertising agency are Brandwatch, Radian6 and SDI Social Intelligence. The team at our Orlando marketing agency will be happy to field any questions you may have! We want to help make sure your marketing efforts are 100% on target. Contact us today to determine how we can help!
Why Automobile Companies Must Understand Mom Marketing
It’s a movie cliche we’ve seen a million times: a woman goes to purchase a car, but gets swindled by a sleazy salesman because she supposedly doesn’t know her way around a car. Regardless of whether this was ever an accurate depiction of women’s role in the automobile purchasing process, this is certainly not the case today. To draw on another cliche: the times, they are a-changin’! So, automobile marketers need to embrace mom marketing. A new report from Cars.com shows that 73% of moms consider themselves to be the sole decision-maker in the vehicle shopping process. And, it makes sense — after all, if you’re going to have to haul Sammy and Stella from soccer practice to swim team to ukulele lessons, then it’s important to make sure you’re able to do it safely and comfortably. In the era of smartphones, tablets and lightweight laptops, it’s easy to research a car from anywhere with an Internet connection. And, granted that I can spend close to an hour trying to find a good restaurant on Yelp, I can also spend far more time trying to find the right vehicle to meet my needs. However, the team at our Orlando ad agency has noticed that when you see TV ads for new cars, they’re nearly always marketed toward men. But if moms have so much influence on the car purchasing process, doesn’t it make sense to try to court them through marketing, too? In viewing a compilation of Superbowl car commercials, I noticed that not one of them featured a female driver. Whether this is more of a response to the automobile marketing landscape or simply just the Superbowl demographic, it still seems strange. After all, of the 111.5 million people who watched the Superbowl, 50 million were female. Yet for some reason, these car companies don’t seem to care as much about attracting moms. It’s interesting because moms tend to have a lot of say in most major purchases across the spectrum – we’re not just talking about cleaning supplies these days. The purchasing power of millennial moms is estimated at $170 billion. And, if moms are making the car-buying decisions, then why are these companies trying so hard to sell to dad? Car companies that decide to market to women would have an upper hand in trying to lure their business, since as it stands right now, there is so little competition in that space. And, we’re not talking about trying to sell women on light pink minivans with extra compartments to keep makeup. Women need cars to be useful and practical. Moms tend to be more concerned with safety and durability, and with all the new safety features the car companies are introducing these days, there’s no reason they shouldn’t think about moms in the marketing process. They also care about gas mileage because lugging children around can put a lot of miles on a car. Focusing on these benefits is a terrific start in helping reach the mom market. [quote]Women make up more than half of the world’s population, and drive at least half the cars on the road.[/quote]Car companies are already installing the features that make moms happy. As such, the team at our Orlando marketing agency thinks these companies should spend more of their dollars trying to reach moms, who more than ever, are in the driver’s seat in making automobile purchasing decisions. Contact our team of mom marketing experts today to uncover ways to reach this powerful target audience!
Simple Marketing Tips and Tidbits You Need To Know
As the saying goes, you learn something new every day. That’s especially true in marketing, where sometimes even the smallest steps can lead to the largest payoff. The items below are simple marketing tidbits we’ve learned after endless trial and error, and that we’re passing along to you because we think you can benefit from our Florida marketing agency’s blood, sweat and tears. 1. Putting a site wide search box can offer you great insight as to what people are trying to find when they come to your site, as you can track these searches through Google Analytics. If you run a blog, capitalize on this by producing content in accordance with what you find. 2. Only 9% of U.S. small and medium-sized businesses are optimized for mobile. This is true even though 34% of Americans admit that their cell phones are the primary device they use for going online, and smartphones and tablets accounted for more than 15% of all ecommerce sales in 2013. That number also fails to take into account the large number of people who browsed ecommerce sites from their phones or tablets but waited until they were at a computer or retail location to make purchases. Some experts estimate failure to optimize for mobile may cost these businesses, on average, $40,000 to $60,000 per year. 3. There are dozens of tools to use to determine how well your site functions and to identify problem areas. Try keying your site domain name into http://nibbler.silktide.com/ to see how it stacks up. 4. Maintaining an active Google+ site makes it more likely that your brand page will stand out on search engines. Moz reports that a URL’s number of +1s is highly correlated with its ranking in search. While Google claims +1s aren’t directly tied to search rankings, each +1 creates a link back to the post, which increases a site’s number of inbound links. These inbound links are one of the factors search engine algorithms use to determine the credibility of a site. 5. According to Experian (via Salesforce), $44.25 is the ROI for every $1 spent on email marketing. Even in spite of this, only 11% of emails are optimized for mobile. [quote]Many ecommerce sites don’t even collect emails.[/quote] To get the most out of collecting emails, implement a highly visible, yet non-intrusive email submission form front and center on your homepage. 6. More Facebook page likes doesn’t necessary mean better business for your company. What’s most important is the quality of the follower. Having lots of low-quality followers could actually be detrimental to your brand. Don’t believe it? Check out this article and pay special attention to the video from Veritasim. We’ve actually seen significant success for some brands with Facebook Ads, so take the experiments with a grain of salt. Interested in learning more? Contact us today to start the conversation!
The Differing Appeals of the Healthcare Field in the Mom Market
Once a marketer has addressed the proper mom segment for his product or service, it becomes time for him to create an approach that reaches out to her. Finding an appeal that works to address the target helps generate brand preference down the line. Just as there are multiple methods for subdividing the moms market, there are multiple appeals that are effective within the moms market. These may be appeals rooted in emotions, practicality, humor, fantasy, adventure, or a number of other types of appeals that relate to the needs, wishes and desires of the mom. Different industries will see success with different appeals. A heartfelt appeal may be of less value to a luxury goods manufacturer than an appeal that offers a notion of adventure or fantasy. Industry-specific appeals can help drive the audience’s imagination, thereby beginning the process of instilling brand preference. Below, we will examine the appeals of the healthcare field. People need healthcare services throughout every stage of their lives. Therefore, healthcare organizations tend to be family-friendly, fostering an environment of care and support, much as the family unit does. This also leads to marketers to hone in marketing to moms within this sector by emphasizing a commitment to care and service. However, because of costs, service quality, expertise and other factors, moms have innumerable choices when it comes to providing healthcare for themselves and their families. Healthcare marketers may wish to convert new customers and retain existing ones by marketing in a manner that speaks to either the mom’s rational side or her emotional side. Rational Appeals [quote]Reaching out to moms by addressing their rationality is a strong tactic for healthcare marketers.[/quote]A rational appeal is a grounded approach that backs up marketing information with data-specific information and expertise in order to help sway the mother into making the “best” choice for her family. For example, when a marketer notes that four out of five doctors recommend a product, this appeals to rationality – if the doctors agree that it is the best product, then certainly it’s good enough for a mother and her family unit. Statistics. Statistics are great ways to create a rational appeal. If studies show that your child will be 90% safer with a certain type of car seat, it is likely that a responsible mother is going to be willing to spend extra money to ensure her child’s safety. Expertise. Backing up claims with expertise is also a great tool that marketers in the healthcare field can use to create rational appeal. A product endorsement from a noted physician or health care organization can help increase sales, as people are inclined to respect the product as they respect the noted professionals. An endorsement or testimonial assures the viewer or reader that the marketed product is effective, safe and useful. Emotional Appeals [quote]Designed to reach the mother at a greater level, the emotional appeal should elicit a deep feeling in the mother.[/quote]By nature, mothers are protective and offer a safety net for their children, as a mother is expected to help keep her child away from harm and to foster an environment of education and care. Touching on aspects of the child’s life that may jeopardize those elements will prompt the mom to act in a certain manner, and brands can recreate these feelings to help appeal to the mom, particularly when it comes to healthcare marketing. Fear. No matter how brave we might seem, there are some things that we fear on a daily basis. In the world of healthcare marketing, these items may be as broad as increased risk of illness, or keeping a child away from injury. It may also involve continual monitoring of a child to ensure that he or she is in good health. Marketers can help warn of the potential dangers by using a tactic designed to instill fear into mothers, thereby causing them to take action. Demonstrating dangers and then providing solutions is a solid way for healthcare marketers to make sure that they are sending their messages loud and clear. Comfort, Security and Safety. On the other hand, a strategy that incorporates comfort, security and safety may also provide a powerful incentive for moms to invest resources into healthcare. A hospital that idealizes itself as a caring environment may appear to be better suited for a sick child than a competing hospital that does not offer a feeling of comfort. To learn more about how you can market to moms in order to create brand preference and instill brand loyalty, contact us today! Our team at BIGEYE is prepared to share tangible strategies for segmentation, creating appeals and assessing your own brand to determine the right moms for your business!
Unlock The Power of Using Babies to Market Your Brand
Babies are adorable! There’s nothing in the world as beautiful as a smiling newborn. For years, marketers have caught on to this, providing uplifting content that features babies in the forefront. One example is an Evian campaign that features babies on roller skates, dancing to “The Rapper’s Delight.” The video has over 18 million views on YouTube. Another example is the famous E*Trade baby commercials that we look forward to while watching the Superbowl every year. But beyond just babies, the team at our Orlando marketing agency thinks the fanfare around using babies to market your brand offers opportunities to make emotional connections to their target consumers. By being able to identify with their users, marketers can target the emergence of celebrity baby stories, and can often leverage these no matter what their relationship to baby products. Through Twitter and Facebook, companies attach to celebrity baby stories that seem to fall in line with their brand stories and brand visions. Motherhood and maternity-oriented businesses seem to be especially in line with welcoming newborns, though it seems that broader companies like Target and Wal-Mart could stand to benefit just the same. When the royal baby was born merely months ago, Twitter was on fire with tweets from marketers around the globe. Pampers used the birth of Baby George to promote a video under the pretense of the fact that every baby is a prince or princess, which it had obviously been waiting to push until the moment the Royal Baby arrived. Marketers also catch on the tabloid celebrity baby fads. When Kim Kardashian and hotheaded celebrity Kanye West, recently gave birth to their daughter North West, marketers flocked to the notion that the baby could epitomize what it means to be a luxury baby brand. Additionally, there are rumors that Kim herself is planning to launch a clothing line for babies, attesting to the marketing power of celebrity status and the Kardashian family’s ability to capitalize on it. [quote]The luxury baby market is expected to be a $10.4 billion industry in 2014, with strollers going for as much as $3,000 for an Aston Martin brand leather stroller.[/quote] By latching on to uplifting baby stories, marketers can identify with the emotions behind the brand’s mission. In joining the conversation, these marketers prove they are in tune with things that are happening in the world, and that they are appreciative of the uplifting nature of a good celeb baby story. Be it Alec Baldwin, Fergie or Simon Cowell, fans love and support stars on their mission to start or continue growing their families. By offering comforting tweets about celebrity babies, marketers can seize the opportunity to join the conversation, while also pushing their products incidentally. Brand are solidified based on their relationships with potential customers, so encouraging chatter about celebrity babies and being early informers of such breaking news helps drive a brand’s social media. The best thing about all this is that people aren’t going to stop having babies anytime soon, and as long as there are babies, there will be opportunities for people to love seeing them. The team at our Florida marketing agency thinks celebrity #babies can help brands see #success! Contact us today to learn more!
Hot trends in hotel advertising: Subtlety works best
“I want a feast I want a bean feast Cream buns and doughnuts and fruitcake with no nuts so good you could go nuts. No, now! I want a ball I want a party Pink macaroons and a million balloons and performing baboons and Give it to me now. I want the world, I want the whole world. I want to lock it all up in my pocket It’s my bar of chocolate Give it to me now! I want today I want tomorrow I want to wear them like braids in my hair and I don’t want to share them I want a party with roomfuls of laughter Ten thousand ton of ice cream And if I don’t get the things I am after I’m going to scream! I want the works, I want the whole works! Presents and prizes and sweets and surprises in all shapes and sizes, And now! Don’t care how I want it now! Don’t care how I want it now!” The above song may be a harmonious tantrum performed by one Veruca Salt in the 1971 film adaptation of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, but the lyrics speak to the way a hotel should perceive its guests. That’s not to say that all guests are sniveling, snotty-nosed adolescents, but for an industry that deals in comfort and convenience, it doesn’t hurt to operate under that assumption. The average overnighter takes for granted the luxuries a hotel provides. So when something does go awry, no matter how miniscule, the concierge often takes an ear-licking. Guests expect their stay to go off without a hitch. They don’t want to see an establishment’s seams, so to speak. So, a hotel must present itself as competent, discreet and ahead of the curve. There are numerous approaches that can be taken to this end. Here, we discuss four: 1. Street propaganda: Guerrilla marketing, a low budget, avant-garde approach to self-promotion can be highly effective in portraying an out of the box, curatorial image to a potential client; it also falls into the discreet category. A good propaganda campaign should promote with clever subtlety. Our Florida advertising agency knows the value of this technique lies in its ties to social media marketing. A really creative guerrilla strategy can take on a life of its own by inspiring observers to document their reactions through Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram and countless other social media sites. The following link demonstrates several examples of unique street propaganda: http://www.boredpanda.com/cool-and-creative-street-ads/ 2. Easy online accessibility: Hotel’s must make their website accessible and up-to-date. The site should leave no question unanswered. A customer should be able to book a room, dinner reservation or spa appointment with the touch of a mouse. They should be able to speak to a hotel representative via online chat. Basically, a hotel’s website should act as an interactive reception desk. Daily updates and notices regarding not just the hotel, but also the surrounding area can be helpful as well. It pays to work with a good developer who is aware of the latest advents and limitations of the Internet. 3. Go green image: Environmentally conscious business practices are key. More so than a hotel making sure it’s operating with the tiniest footprint it can muster, it should also promote these efforts to its guests. If the restaurant in the hotel only uses organic, farm-to-table ingredients, this should be made known. If the lobby motif is made from recycled materials, shout it from the rooftops. After all, green is definitely the new black. Guests will respect any effort to that end. 4. Respond to online comments: Yet another cheap and fruitful way to make a positive impression with an audience is to keep up with what that audience is saying. This is sort of a no brainer, but to be truly effective, don’t just keep track of sites like Trip Advisor or Travelocity. Instead, reply to comments, be those comments good or bad, with useful information. If a past guest complained about an obstructed room view, apologize and offer them a room with a better view during their next stay. If another applauds the tuna tartar at your dining establishment, thank them kindly and tell them they’re a real mensch for saying so. This practice makes a hotel seem more human; less like a machine on autopilot. In search of a hotel advertising strategy to ensure that your visitors will also become your biggest fans? Contact our team of marketing experts today!
