What a Creative Advertising Agency Can Learn from Geico
Studying Geico ads, your creative advertising agency can learn invaluable tools for your brand campaigns—making them more effective, memorable, and fun. Everyone knows Geico Insurance. Whether you’re a fan of the gecko, caveman, or another one of their mascots, we’ve all got to hand it to Geico for their incredibly well-done ads. We fully recognize it’s no accident either, they consistently make brilliant, strategic decisions ultimately getting them to where they are today. Our curiosity peaks when we ask the question: What drives those ever-changing concepts? Here’s what we’ve learned. 1. Don’t let the product be the only focus. Let’s be real, insurance is not the most engaging subject. Consumers don’t pay attention to ads centered on jargon and driven by industry best practices; they want to be entertained. Geico’s creative advertising agency does an amazing job of having fun with their product with a purpose. For example, the caveman ads. A campaign that revolved around the concept that cavemen exist today and the slogan, “so easy a caveman could do it” deeply offends them. This has absolutely nothing to do with insurance, any industry has a convenient pull and this could have resonated in any of them. It’s simply that Geico coined it. You can see this idea in most of their ads. However, the product isn’t just tacked on either. It’s a big plot point. Who is saying their product is, “so easy a caveman could do it?” Geico. They are central to the plot but not the only focus. Your campaign strategy should do the same thing. Get a creative ad agency with strategies that will weave your brand into the content in interesting, innovative ways. 2. Put in the resources. Amazing ads can’t be crafted in 2 hours on $10. Giving your creative ad agency the time and resources they need to truly capture your voice and vision is a huge step towards long-term campaign success. According to Forbes, Geico invested $5 million in ad creation for 2017 alone. That’s an astronomical number, but for the breadth of ads, quality content, varied target markets the results show it all. That year, Geico’s brand awareness hit 53%. For context, Progressive’s high-point that year was 43%. Now it’s not all about spending, Progressive had spent $4.5 million and got significantly lower results. The talent must also be there, as well as avid and clear communication on vision and goals. Look at the top creative agencies in your industry, target markets, and locations before you decide which creative advertising agency should get that big investment. Money can only take you so far, you need the right people. 3. Don’t keep repeating the same ad. Even the most energizing and unique concepts can get monotonous and bothersome over time. Don’t make your audience watch the same thing over and over. Whether it’s through one concept with multiple executions or multiple different campaigns running at once, give your audience varied the content. Geico is a great example of both practices. Their creative advertising agency ran many spots featuring their acoustic musicians in ads such as Hump Day and Christopher Columbus. Then ran separate campaigns at the same time by keeping their Gecko ads running while ads featuring fun facts in realistic situations were also on air. More than varied content, you need to also use multiple channels. Geico ads can be found in print, on TV, and YouTube Pre-roll too. Get a creative digital agency that works across platforms. This way, your content will be seen and won’t get stale. The Takeaway Memorable advertising is a complex order, and every brand is different. You can achieve high brand awareness and drive profits with a few key concepts. So, what are the takeaways? Have more than one ad, keeping your consumers engaged demands innovative, plentiful content. Let the story drive the ad, your brand should be a key plot driver but not the only focus. Tell a complete narrative that lets your products shine without being the only concept at hand. Finally, give your agency the time, information, and funding they need to reach your goals effectively. As a creative advertising agency, we understand how vital engaging, varied advertising is to a thriving business. We’re strategy first in all aspects, tailoring our services to your industry, target market, and needs to optimize your ad spend and drive effective results. Reach out to learn about what we can do for you.
Know the Difference, Content Creation vs Content Curation
At our Orlando marketing agency, we know we live in an era where content is key. Good content can help engage your community, keep your business relevant in the eyes of your audience and can even impact your business’s ranking in search. But, good content doesn’t come without a cost, and even within that framework, different types of content generate different types of results. However, one of the questions we come across most frequently in talking about content is whether it’s more efficient to create content, or to curate it. First, let’s discuss the difference between content creation vs content curation. Content Creation Content created by your marketing team or business helps you get your own perspectives into the hands of your audience. This is typically comprised of things like original tweets, blogs, Facebook posts, infographics and all other content that someone creates on behalf of your business that you could potentially share via social media, website or email marketing. The benefit of this type of content is that if it’s shared, it’ll directly point others back to your business. Some studies show that original content is more helpful in creating conversions. This may be because original content about your area of expertise helps to build trust with the audience who will ultimately purchase from your company. [featured] Don’t have the time to create your own content? Let BIGEYE‘s copywriters handle it. Contact us today, and we will set up your business for success! [/featured] However, content creation can take significant effort to maintain. Many people start businesses and plan to incorporate blogs, only to find that blogging takes a lot of time and resources, resources you may not have if your business is working with a small staff. Still, these businesses seek to continue to create content in order to help maintain visibility and establish trust with their audience. Content Curation Content curation is the act of sharing content created by others. This might mean an interesting article, a great visual, an interesting tweet or even just a funny gif. Sites like Twitter make it extremely easy to share others’ content, but even sites like LinkedIn fill their content base by relying mostly on content created by others. For companies that primarily curate content, people can come to rely on your business as a great way to seek content on a variety of relevant topics that reach your target audience. Content curation typically takes less effort than content creation, but it’s still important to take the time to read each piece of content to make sure it’s completely on brand, and proposes an opinion you’re willing to support. Posts linking to third-party content tend to get more clicks. Realistically, the best content on the web probably comes from large media organizations with high brand recognition, so it makes sense that links from smaller sites might not have as many clicks. Content Creation and Content Curation: The Sweet Spot Many effective strategies apply a mix of each of these. Businesses can supplement some original content with content from third parties in order to help keep the original content flowing. This is a solid balance between the struggles of maintaining original content and the more passive engagement of curating content. In terms of conversions, companies that balance both types of content seem to generate the most conversions, according to Convince and Convert.[quote]Simply curating content doesn’t do enough to generate interest in your own brand, while creating all your own content comes across as self-promotion.[/quote] Companies should aim to link to others’content 50-75% of the time. This means that in additional to posting original content on your feeds, you should also be following your favorite companies, brands and influencers, and be willing to share their ideas in order to help your business become a go-to spot for the most current and up-to-date content in your industry. The team at our Orlando ad agency can show you numerous ways to use content to help generate conversions for your business. Contact us, and let us show help show you the sweet spot for content creation and curation that will help generate the most conversions.
6 things to Look For When Selecting Email Marketing Services
Recently, a entrepreneur reached out to me, seeking my opinion on the best email marketing services for his business. It would have been easy to offer up a few answers and tell him to just choose the cheapest option —but at our Florida advertising agency, we’re also strategists, and we know there’s much more to it then choosing the company that’s offering the cheapest deal right off the bat. In this case, this business owner was in need of advice to assist his startup with a small email list. His plan: to generate messaging via a weekly or monthly email newsletter. Sounds simple enough, right? Many people would have directed him immediately to MailChimp, an email marketing service that offers its services for free for up to 2,000 subscribers and up to 12,000 emails a month. And, indeed, MailChimp would be the best service had he been looking to never grow beyond 2,000 subscribers. But we’re marketers, and we know that one of the goals of initiating an email marketing plan is to gain quality new subscribers. There’s a reason MailChimp operates under a freemium business model —its team knows that once you’ve put in the work to build your email list up to more than 2,000 people, you aren’t likely to swap email marketing services because you’ve already taken so much time to learn all of MailChimp’s features. [quote]When deciding which email marketing service works for your business, it’s important to think long-term.[/quote]Where do you expect your business to be in a year? In five years? If you’re a growing commerce business with a popular product, it’s likely that you’ll have well over 2,000 subscribers within the year. So, which email marketing service is best for your business? Well, it depends on your business needs. Many of the email marketing services offer free trials, so it’s worth it to sign up with those and do some investigating on your own. That said, we understand it isn’t always realistic to do months of testing to choose an email marketing service. Here are 6 essentials to look for when investigating the most appropriate email marketing service: 1. Templates: How easy is it to build a sleek, well-designed email? And, once you have that template, how difficult is it to optimize it? If you find yourself wasting valuable time trying to work out the kinks, then you might need to go with a different provider. 2. Analytics: What kinds of analytic data can the service give you about your customers? And, how easy it is to navigate the numbers? Does the tool offer suggestions to help you improve those metrics? Be sure to have a baseline familiarity with the service provider’s analytic features before you commit to the provider. 3. Mobile Optimization: How do your emails look when someone opens them on mobile or tablet? In some industries, more than 50% of email opens are on mobile or tablet (and that number is growing every day). 4. Service: How does the email marketing service support its customers? Even as a marketing pro, you probably still don’t know as much about email marketing than the team that handles your business’s email marketing. That’s why customer service is essential —an email marketing service with pro coaching can help you optimize your emails to get optimal conversion rates. 5. Pricing Plans: Which service provider can give you the most bang for your buck? Because there are so many variances in features and capabilities, it’s important to think long-term rather than going with the cheapest option. Figure out your goals, and then choose the best solution to help you reach them. 6. Ability to Grow: As your business continues to grow and evolve, you’ll become aware of the need for more and more features. Some email marketing service providers remain in close contact with their clients, adding new features regularly to keep up with changes in the email marketing landscape. While we don’t want to advocate for any email marketing service that may not be right for your business needs, here are a few worth checking out. Constant Contact Boomerang MailChimp iContact Aweber Campaign Monitor Are there other things you look for when selecting an email marketing service? The team at our Orlando marketing agency wants to know! Leave your thoughts in the comments below.
Unleashing the Power of LinkedIn for Business Development
It’s no secret that LinkedIn is an incredibly valuable networking tool. However, like all social channels, LinkedIn isn’t simply about the number of connections. Business owners that know how to leverage LinkedIn can build it into their business development strategies, helping them to create strategic partnerships with people who have compelling experience or interesting skills to help grow the business. Business owners who want to use LinkedIn for business development efforts may accomplish this in a variety of ways. LinkedIn offers areas for sponsored content, which means that if you can provide interesting content specific to your industry, you can use paid LinkedIn marketing to grow your business and your personal brand by solidifying yourself as a thought leader in your area of expertise. However, while paid placements can be tremendously valuable, the platform is really about the engagement.[quote]It’s more than simply posting updates and interesting articles, though that’s a great starting point.[/quote] If you want to be truly effective at using LinkedIn, it’s important to incorporate it into your overall business development initiatives. [featured] Check out the ads and marketing campaigns we’ve done for our loyal clients. Get ready to have your mind blown. [/featured] One of the easiest ways to get started using LinkedIn to help grow business is to develop a strategy. This way, you can create goals and desired outcomes, and can even create a playbook of best practices. Because LinkedIn is a professional social media outlet, as opposed to Facebook or Twitter, which are designed more for general interest, it’s easy to overlook the effectiveness of creating a LinkedIn campaign the way you’d create a Facebook or Twitter campaign. But, if you’re planning to attend a conference soon, you can develop a creative LinkedIn campaign to do outreach, with an attempt to set up meetings prior to the conference or introduce yourself to noted speakers. Or, if you’re pushing out a new product, you can reach out to your network on LinkedIn for feedback and validation. Hearing from people in your related field can prove much more valuable than the feedback you might get from friends and family. Active involvement with LinkedIn groups and engagement with your favorite companies is a great way to make the most of LinkedIn. In using LinkedIn as an effective business development tool, it’s important to consider the value proposition you’re offering. You don’t want to waste anyone’s time, and this holds especially true if you’re reaching out to a person in a powerful position to help you achieve your business goals. If you’re asking someone for a meeting, think about what you can offer him or her. Is it as simple as a cup of coffee, or can you offer to introduce that person to someone else who might be in a position to help them? Having an idea in mind of how you can help them is a great way to facilitate contact, and creates a more tailored experience than just a sales pitch. Like any campaign, using LinkedIn as an outreach tool requires testing and optimization. Experiment with InMail subject lines and outreach strategies. Creating goals can help you measure the success of your campaign, and can help you revise future campaigns to make them more effective. If you’re having trouble managing your contacts due to the sheer breadth of them, look into using tools such as Contactually to help store and manage your contacts. This program provides easy ways to keep in touch, so that your contacts remain on your “hot leads” list until you close a deal. Contact our team of strategists today for more LinkedIn expertise!
Caring about your consumers time could change the ad world
It’s a fact that people are inundated with branded content hundreds of times a day. The advertising industry is worth billions of dollars, and brand marketers latch on to this by finding ways to reach you EVERYWHERE, including billboards, television, smartphones, tablets, magazines, websites and search engine pages. If you’re developing an advertising or marketing strategy, then chances are that you’re thinking about how you can get the word out about your brand or business. (Of course that’s what you’re thinking about; after all, that’s the primary goal of the entire industry!) However, as you develop your new video or concept, I encourage you to think carefully about the end result. Many times, the specialists at our Florida advertising agency see competitors carefully craft high-budget interactive media projects without giving much consideration to the most important aspect of the campaign: the end user. If you are creating digital content, you are, in essence, asking people for a piece of their time, which, for many people, is more valuable than money or material goods. As a goods or services provider, once you have peoples’ attention, you are then asking them again to convert; i.e., to make a present or future investment in your product or service. The question then becomes: what are you offering this person that makes it worth their time? [quote]Numerous advertising campaigns fall flat because the advertising doesn’t reach the person in a meaningful way.[/quote] Rather than focusing on companies that have tried to reach their readers and failed, I thought it better to highlight innovating digital marketing projects that have succeeded beyond expectations. If you represent a deodorant brand, you have to work hard to convince your audience that you’re superior to anything else your potential customers may be able to find on the shelf. But, if you’re a company like Old Spice, you’ve managed to prove that you’re a lifestyle brand. After discovering to the interesting insight that women often purchase deodorant for their boyfriends or husbands, Old Spice introduced “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like,” which featured a muscular male model. The campaign proved such a hit that the man soon had his own following. Rather than leaving the rest up to fate, Old Spice took advantage of this and offered opportunities for fans to interact with the Old Spice Man through their website and social media platforms, including a series of YouTube video responses that were extremely popular. Another innovative video concept came from Mitsubishi, in conjunction with B Reel Productions. The project, called Mitsubishi LiveDrive, allowed people all over the world to test drive the Outlander from their own computers, using the buttons on the keyboard to drive. The concept was the first of its kind, and garnered massive publicity, as people were impressed with the ability to control a car from thousands of miles away. When Jay-Z came to Droga5 for ideas as to how to help launch his book Decode, the company partnered with Bing to come up with a concept that offered insight into the places that Jay-Z references in his book, as well as a gamification element that kept people returning for more. The only thing that truly sets these campaigns apart from numerous other failed campaigns is that they all encompass a single quality: an appetite for innovation. Our agency believes that we can also help you develop an innovative digital marketing campaign on any budget. Contact us to help create your own innovative digital marketing campaign!
