Category: Consumer Insights

Post date June 10, 2014

Why Automobile Marketers 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!

Audience Consumer Insights

Post date June 5, 2014

How to Understand Consumer Behaviors

Imagine that I owned a store next to your office, where you would occasionally drop in to buy candy. Imagine I were to tell you that you could buy some candy today for full price, but that you could come back tomorrow and all the candy would be 75% off, chances are you’d wait until the next day to buy that candy (unless you were seriously craving some Hershey’s Kisses!). After all, you can save a lot of money that way, so it seems like the rational thing to do.
However, the entire story changes when the dates matter. Imagine I told you that candy would be cheap tomorrow, February 15, because it’s the day after Valentine’s Day. If you were standing in the store on February 14 because you hadn’t already gotten your partner a gift, you’d gladly pay full price.

While it seems technically irrational, it’s a matter of understanding the emotional needs of a consumer. A person isn’t necessarily always driven by the lowest price —there are so many competing factors that brand managers need to take into consideration when they try to comprehending consumer behavior.

Luxury brand managers are able to do this with expert finesse. People will often irrationally spend money on impractical items simply because of the prestige that comes with owning such a product. Think of a wedding ring. People are willing to pay so much for diamonds because of the symbolic representation of what a big, beautiful ring implies.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that you have to be a luxury brand to be able to capitalize on human emotions. People purchase Nike shoes because they feel inspired by the brand, the brand’s image, and the brand’s commitment to improving individuals through athleticism. Or, a person may choose Coke over Pepsi because of the element of nostalgia that comes with purchasing a Coke.

[quote]The good news is that by tapping into consumer behaviors, you can also learn to influence their purchasing habits.[/quote]The team at our Florida marketing agency sees this as the entire rationale behind marketing —how can we convince people to spend their dollars with us? The best way to know where to start is to explore differentiation, which means creating and defining a distinguishing characteristic about your business and highlighting it.

Brands with a defined point of view tend to see more success than competitors. Think about any brand you love and think about why you choose it over alternatives: it might be that it’s cheaper, it tastes better, it’s more convenient, or it simply looks more interesting. Emphasizing what sets your business apart from others is the best starting point to build a bigger strategy for your brand.

From there, you can design marketing campaigns around that distinguishing feature. Taking into account these human emotional behaviors, you can create a campaign that’s aspirational, inspirational or just funny —these are all types of things that might encourage a person to use your item or service over a lower-priced competitor.

For more information as to how you can use customer insights to create a marketing strategy, contact our Florida ad agency for a consultation.

Audience Audience Analysis Consumer Insights Media & Analytics Search Engine Optimization

Post date February 25, 2014

6 Jaw Droppingly Simple Marketing Tidbits We Bet You Didnt 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!

Audience Consumer Insights Content Marketing Creative & Production Tourism Hospitality Convention

Post date February 11, 2014

How Resort Marketers Can Turn Small Budgets Into Big Results 1200x600 c default

In the hospitality business, it’s sometimes necessary to slash budgets, and unfortunately, sometimes the people who suffer that the most are the people in the marketing department. Hotel and resort managers may be hesitant to invest money in projects unless they can see a clear return on investment, which is sometimes not easy to prove in the world of marketing, and in social media marketing in particular.

However, companies that are struggling with small marketing budgets should look at this as a competitive advantage. At the outset, it seems counterintuitive: with large budgets, shouldn’t the businesses be able to spend more money to get the things they need?

Smaller budgets push hospitality marketers to work more creatively. It allows them to focus more closely on one facet of marketing that is often overlooked by larger corporations: the people.

That’s right. Sometimes, hotel chains or mega resorts become so big that it seems as though they somehow forget about the community that got them there in the first place. By thinking small and using it as an advantage, these smaller businesses are able to facilitate more direct relationships with their customers, something that larger businesses try unsuccessfully to do all the time.

For tourism and resort marketers and others in the hospitality industry, here are a few tips from our Florida ad agency that will help guide your resort marketing efforts, even if you’re working on a shoestring budget.

1. Be Genuine

There’s something humbling about receiving an email from a mom and pop, independently owned businesses that take pride in offering visitors impeccable service. People in these types of businesses are there because they want to be there; unlike at some major chains where people are simply there because they need the job.[quote]By putting the emphasis on the relationship with the customer, the smaller shop has an advantage in that it can tailor its service to the needs of the individual.[/quote]

2. Use Social Media as a Way to Engage the Community

When dealing in social media, the only budgetary restriction is time. But, the platform itself is free, and by investing in a good social media manager, a company can reap the rewards of someone who is skilled at interacting with people, who is also a customer service master and a pro brand advocate.

Since some of the best marketers a brand can have are influencers within an engaged community, allocating some investment in social media can help the company grow its social media presence, thereby helping it stay connected to its audience. For resort marketers, this is especially valid, as your audience may be comprised of people from all over the world.

3. Show That You’re Reliable and Trustworthy

Another advantage that smaller resorts have over big chains is that they have a more intimate connection to their customers. Who hasn’t tried to contact a large hotel chain and ended up feeling like more of a robot than a human being? Resorts that offer a hands-on approach to marketing and customer service can prove they have their customers’ best interests at heart. And, at its core, real resort marketing is about being authentic, and going above and beyond customers’ expectations.

4. Keep It Simple

So, you don’t have it in your budget to run a big TV ad takeover or a massive billboard campaign. That doesn’t matter, because working with a smaller budget allows resort marketers to tailor their marketing efforts to the people who are most likely to offer a return on that investment. Rather than trying to copy the pros, try instead to simplify marketing efforts to see how members of the community react. Chances are, they will appreciate the attention to detail that goes into these types of marketing efforts, and will reward your business by thinking of your resort first when it comes to making travel plans.

In these days of high-tech services and constant distraction, sometimes people just want to make a connection with another human being. People are hungry for this social connection that seems to be lost in the digital age. For large businesses, that connection can seem impossible, but for smaller resorts, it seems like a natural way to allow employees and staff to be truly authentic in their communication and marketing efforts.

The team here at our Florida marketing agency can help your resort marketing team to grow the brand on any budget. For more ideas and suggestions as to how to establish authenticity in your brand, contact us for a consultation.

Audience Audience Analysis Consumer Insights

Post date October 21, 2013

trending celebritybabies – The Power of Using Babies to Market Your Brand 1200x600 c default

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!

Audience Audience Analysis Consumer Insights

Post date August 19, 2013

Hot Trends in Hotel Advertising Subtlety Works Best 1200x600 c default

“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!

Audience Consumer Insights Market Intelligence

Post date June 24, 2013

Marketing Smarter With Business Intelligence

Business intelligence sounds like something out of a spy movie. Throw in a few fancy gadgets and an alpha male protagonist, and it could be the premise for the next James Bond flick. In actuality, the practices associated with business intelligence may not, at least on the surface level, be as glamorous as the plot of Skyfall. But, with effective business intelligence practices, companies can make strategic decisions that result in savings of thousands or even millions of dollars over time… and THAT sounds pretty glamorous, now doesn’t it? The folks at our Florida advertising agency think so!

First of all, let’s talk about what business intelligence actually means. According to Wikipedia, business intelligence is “a set of theories, methodologies, processes, architectures, and technologies that transform raw data into meaningful and useful information for business purposes.” Put in plain English, that means using data to make factually based business decisions.

It often surprises me how many business owners neglect to put business intelligence at the core of otherwise sophisticated marketing strategies. They’ll hire marketers to spend thousands of dollars on campaigns, only to find themselves on the losing end of a major marketing push because the marketing team didn’t take the time to assess the ways in which people interact with their brands.

Successful companies analyze business intelligence at both micro and macro levels. On a micro level, analysts can pinpoint exactly what steps an individual used to make a purchase, from that person’s first impression to what drove his or her impulse to make a purchase.

On a larger level, business intelligence analysts can explain trends across time. Why do sales suddenly spike at a particular department store during the fall? What will the financial standing of the company be in a decade? This kind of information helps businesses executives make smart choices about where to allocate resources, and where to pull the plug.

Of course, business intelligence practices almost always hinge on the quality of the data. How can business owners be sure they’re capturing the correct data about the correct consumers and practices? In some cases, this comprises an entire subfield of business intelligence. After all, it’s worthless for a company to have a lot of information about the wrong type of consumer.

So how can a team of executives gain business intelligence insights? Typically, marketers collect and store this information through a mix of spreadsheets, reporting software, digital dashboards and other systems. These tools range from simple to complex, and offer insights into a range of information about user behavior. Sometimes this extends into internal practices as well.

The business intelligence field is vast, and there’s always a new way to approach the data. But, a strong team of strategists on your side can help you sift through the junk, in order to find the information you need.

Sophisticated business intelligence practices can help a marketing team design a digital strategy that helps the business reach out directly to a target group, in ways that emphasize the ways in which those individuals consume. However, it takes significant skill to be able to effectively gauge and predict the outcome of campaigns based on business intelligence data. If you’re struggling with how to help boost your bottom line using business intelligence insights, the team at our Florida advertising agency has a few ideas to help your organization thrive! We do this for companies and organizations all over the country, let us help yours.

Audience Consumer Insights Digital Targeting Services Media & Analytics

Post date April 11, 2013

In A League Of Her Own Reaching The Female Sports Fan

In popular culture, it’s common to see television shows where a man sits around watching football, while his wife stands around complaining. These images that are ingrained in our cultural behavior show men drinking beer and watching the big game, with the women in the corner, cleaning up the mess.

Because of the often masculine appeal of most sports, it’s common to confuse their primary audiences with people of the same gender. But the reality is that this is not so.

In fact, more than one half of tennis fans are female, a fact that tennis marketers appear to recognize. Many female tennis spectators are also players (certainly plenty of our Florida advertising agency team members love to get outside for a good match!), and as such, companies continue to invest money in creating fashionable products and apparel for the female tennis enthusiast.

Others are not quite as obvious.

For example, NFL games are dominated by male-leaning television commercials and sports coverage. However, more than a third of the people who identify themselves as football fans are female. As such, there seems to be a disconnect between the methods of sports advertising and this demographic.

[quote]It’s important to remember that, from an ROI perspective, women account for 85% of all purchases in all categories, including automotive purchases, apparel, household goods, and food purchases.[/quote] Being able to hone in on the potential female customer can greatly increase the opportunity for successful commercial advertising during primetime sports slots, increased awareness through sponsorship activities and for cultivating ongoing relationships with the female sports enthusiast.

A common misconception is that women who are sports fans are also somehow tomboys, and that, if given the choice, they would choose hoodies bearing their teams’ logos instead of cute sundresses that show the same logo. There aren’t many companies that have successfully tested this theory, but a sports apparel company catering to creating high fashion lines for females might actually do quite well! But, leaning too much in this direction can also be polarizing;… working off the assumption that every ladies’ night at the ball game should be about pink bows and jewelry raffles can be just as belittling.

As with most categorizations, classifying a group as “women” is just one categorization of a number of broader subsets of personalities and interests. It’s important for sports franchise marketers and sports brands to think creatively when trying to reach the female target consumer.

Perhaps the number one marketing sin is forgetting that she exists. Alienating the female sports fan by creating ads that are masculine-learning or blatantly sexist effectively costs sports marketers revenue and goodwill in the eyes of the female consumer.

Instead, sports marketers should take heed of some useful advice to help market to the female sports fan.

Develop Audience Insights: Using social media listening tools, sports marketers can garner significant data about their female consumers. Are they using Pinterest, or are they more Twitter-friendly? These insights can help sports marketers craft campaigns that offer maximum exposure.

Develop Products Designed for the Female Sports Fan: Thinking outside the box to create products such as colorful iPhone sleeves bearing a team’s logo can help the female sports fan to express herself, while also giving her something that offers practicality and functionality.

Encourage Engagement: An article published on The Next Web last year noted that women are “more likely” to make your social media campaign go viral. Make the most of your female fans by encouraging them to share.

For more ideas on how to reach women in sports, contact our Florida marketing agency for a consultation, and learn how we’ve helped numerous entertainment businesses grow through integrated marketing efforts.

Audience Audience Analysis Consumer Insights Market Intelligence

Post date January 16, 2013

A Facebook Only a Mother Could Love How Social Are Moms

When Facebook first began, it was a tool for students to connect with one another, typically within a limited age range of about 20-30. Later, when Zuckerberg opened up the Facebook forum to people of all ages, more people learned about the value of reaching out to one another using what is now the world’s largest social network. What was once seen as cool and limited to a select group of people who were “in the know” became open to everyone. A college student would cringe to open up his friend requests to see, smiling back at him, an image of his own mother.
But these days, it’s the norm for mothers of all types to connect with their children and with other moms using Facebook, Twitter and other popular social networks. As women are seeing the benefits of technology, more of them are also investing in tablets and smart phones, which provide ways for them to stay connected.

Facebook is a revolutionary tool for mothers, who often post pictures of their children and families to share with friends. In fact, many young mothers make their living from blogging and working remotely in social fields, as doing so allows them the flexibility to stay home with their children while still allowing them to earn a living. Older mothers have found the value of using Facebook to help them stay connected to business contacts.

[quote]For advertisers, moms are a highly coveted demographic, as they are often the ones who have the power to make purchasing decisions for items such as diaper brands, video games, and children’s cereals, among other things. [/quote]It seems like a no-brainer that these mothers would engage in significant social sharing activity – through social networking sites, they stay connected.

At a recent BlogHer conference sponsored by a number of mommy-friendly companies like Diet Pepsi and Johnson & Johnson, hundreds of moms got together to discuss trends in social media and digital networking. These aren’t your traditional soccer moms – many of these moms were urban professionals who make a living in the digital media industry, networking to reach out to other moms to create and maintain a community.

Sites like Babble.com cater to what they call “a new generation of parents,” writing articles with titles like “18 Ways to Keep Yourself Feeling Sexy During a Dry Spell.” In essence, this ain’t your mama’s website…. Except actually, it is!

So, back to the core question – how social are moms? In a word, incredibly. Neilsen reports that moms are some of the biggest influencers out there, and use social media to stay connected to one another. They are:

– 81 percent more likely to become a fan of or follow a brand online

– 86 percent more likely to post a status update

– 84 percent more likely to comment or post content than the general population.

Of course, there may be demographic shifts due to the age of the parent, location, household income and a host of other factors. But, the mother of one four-year-old I know has hundreds of connections on LinkedIn, due at least partially due to her propensity to use LinkedIn as a networking tool to help her grow her small business.

As social media continues to grow and expand, so too will the ways in which mothers reach out to one another through social media.

To learn more about how you can market to moms in order to create brand preference and instill brand loyalty, check out our Florida marketing agency’s recent whitepaper on marketing to moms, which discusses strategies for segmentation, creating appeals and assessing your own brand to determine the right moms for your business.

Are you a socially savvy mom? Connect with us on Facebook!

Audience Branding Consumer Insights Persona Building

Post date January 14, 2013

Developing a Brand Persona – Part I 1200x600 c default

People who love their brands have an emotional attachment to them that’s almost impossible to match. Give an Apple enthusiast a Samsung Galaxy to play with, and watch him politely decline to try the $700 phone. Whether it’s Target for reliability and quality, Neiman Marcus for luxury goods, or JetBlue for affordable airfare, people stick to brands when there’s trust and loyalty between the brand and the consumer.
But how can a marketer with a new product, service or feature create and instill brand loyalty and a brand persona into its users? After all, the business owner is typically working in a competitive landscape – while the brand may offer a superior product, the business owner unfortunately still must rise above the noise to get potential customers to convert to loyalists.

Brand strategists have discovered that they can do this through creating a strong, unique brand persona. By addressing a few key concerns, they can rise above others in the field to establish a strong brand presence, as well as a loyal customer base.

Tips from Our Florida Advertising Agency

Here are some tips from the pros at our Orlando marketing agency that business owners can try in order to help create a strong brand identity:

Know Your Audience: Truly understanding your audience is two-fold. Data helps provide insights about your target demographic – perhaps they are female smartphone owners, aged 25-35, who enjoy cooking. But once you know your audience based on consumer insights, you might simply begin to develop gut instincts about them. There’s a fine line between giving your consumers what they want based on your analytic data, and giving them features and services they love that they didn’t know they wanted.

Create an Ideal Customer: If mom-to-be Hannah Jones, who lives at home with her husband in a middle class home in the suburbs is your ideal client, then perhaps you’re doing yourself a disservice by heavily marketing in urban areas. Our Florida advertising agency warns against attracting customers that are not ideal, you may also damage your business by potentially causing dilution of the brand name. Take some tips from the brand Airwalk, which quickly fell downhill once it stopped making its line of specialty shoes aimed toward teenage skateboarders and available only at specialty stores, and accidentally began reaching the thrift consumer instead.

Know Your Product: If you’ve developed a high-end service for luxury watch owners, then chances are that your brand voice doesn’t need to seem as though it’s wired on Mountain Dew. Instead, look closely at the types of publications and blogs that cater to your ideal customer, and review them to learn about what’s popular with your demographic in the moment. If your product doesn’t seem to be an appropriate fit with your target, then you may need to pivot your business or your strategy in order to keep in line with what your target needs.

Once you’ve addressed these items, you can then begin to create your own brand persona. Part II of this article offers ways in which you can begin to develop a campaign around your target consumer.

Part II is coming tomorrow…

To learn more about our branding services, please contact BIGEYE today at 407-839-8599.

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