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It can be challenging to stand out in the marketplace today. Having a superior product or service is no longer enough in the modern age of commerce in and of itself. Instead, successful brands rely on a strong sense of authenticity to resonate with audiences and attract customers. In a world where 84% of Millennials say they don't trust traditional advertising avenues, brands need more authentic ways of connecting and reaching their audiences, especially younger generations. Brand authenticity is critical for connecting with target customers and building brand advocates. Here is what you need to know about authenticity in marketing and tips for building authenticity in your branding. Brand Marketing Overview According to branding expert Simon Sinek, a brand is made up of three fundamental parts: • What a business does, • How they do it, and • Why they do it. While most organizations can quickly answer what they do, such as the product or service the...

A marketing plan identifies your target audience, the most effective channels on which to engage with them, and analytical insights to guide future strategy. Businesses need a comprehensive marketing plan to coordinate their campaigns and properly measure their impact. Marketing is a cumulative effort, and a unified plan maximizes the value of every campaign toward a cohesive strategy. This article is for small business owners looking to build an effective marketing plan that achieves higher engagement and fuels business growth. Every successful company needs a well-thought-out business plan to outline its course of action. A marketing strategy is one key part of that plan: It spells out critical information, including how a business will distinguish itself from competitors and what the team will aim to achieve. While marketing plans don’t always produce immediate results, they are still a crucial aspect of a business plan and should be given a considerate amount of attent...

Are you confident that your business can weather a coming recession? Small business owners saw their revenue grow by a staggering 87% in 2022, but profits have dipped by 4%. The reason? Inflation forced businesses to raise spending to cover their operating costs and rise above the competition. CONSTELLATION BRANDS, INC. The good news is that your marketing plan can help you gain traction in an uncertain economy. Here's how to manage your marketing budget during an economic downturn. Set specific marketing goals Start by revisiting your overall business strategy. What goals are you trying to achieve through your marketing campaigns? These goals can help you decide what sort of marketing methods you wish to focus on and can also be used to measure the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns. Many business leaders emphasize the need to set "SMART" goals. These goals are: • Specific • Measurable • Attainable • Realistic • Timely For example, a good goal ...

Angie Noll is the Owner of Reconciled Solutions. She is a Certified Profit First Advisor and has an MBA from Loyola (Chicago). Fall is in the air, and I’m breathing in the scents of fourth-quarter planning. As an entrepreneur, I revel in wiping the slate clean. This is when creativity and dreaming flow. And as the owner of a company that specializes in bookkeeping and profit acceleration, I think this is a particularly good time to create your sales forecast for the upcoming year. Before getting started, I suggest taking stock of the past 12 months, noting market changes and measuring how you were able, or unable, to adapt. Entrepreneurship is a fluid journey, and the outcome of even the best-laid plan will never fully match up with the goals you developed in the prior year. It’s crucial to be able to look back at last year’s plan and identify where changing circumstances made some fluidity necessary. How did shifting your plans impact your volume, margins, energy levels and ...

When used right, social media is a highly valuable and profitable element in every multifamily marketer’s business strategy. But just posting photos with your listings, tweeting from time to time or sharing content is not enough. There are many dos when it comes to generating real estate leads and solidifying your community. And there are the don’ts—mistakes that cost you time, engagement and reach. Multi-Housing News identified some of the common social media mistakes multifamily businesses make, alongside some tips for avoiding these errors. Being too impersonal Sure, promoting your brand and listings is important. However, real value doesn’t come from sharing promotional content exclusively but from genuine interactions with your audience. Multifamily businesses struggle with coming off as too impersonal within the digital realm and renters are weary of businesses that publicize, rather than connect. In order to avoid this common mistake, try putting yourself into y...

We explore four clear-cut SMB marketing strategies you should try, including local, inbound, influencer, and performance marketing. Match the right strategies to your business needs. Let’s get one thing straight before we start: Marketing is an investment. There is no investment without risk, no guaranteed results, no magical solution, that will make your business grow and generate profits without effort. There are, however, increasingly efficient marketing channels that can be addressed without a large in-house team, and without adding costly intermediaries into the equation. What you need is a clear strategy, the right tools to automate your operations, and the capability to measure the outcome of your investment. Small business marketing has a shorter horizon for generating results; business owners must be more selective in their adoption of marketing channels. Whereas large corporations are addressing all the stages of the user journey, the SMB segment of businesse...

If you’ve ever reminded your sales and marketing employees that you’re “all on the same team here,” you’re not alone. This sort of thing happens all the time. It’s easy for team members to zero in on a specific task and lose sight of the bigger picture. That’s why they need you to create collaboration between your sales and marketing teams. Left unaddressed, the tunnel vision that all too often accompanies the completion of skill-specific tasks can lead to open conflict between team members. And that’s the best-case scenario! At least the various grievances are being aired. A far more damaging scenario unfolds when team members grumble silently to themselves and resentments invisibly pile up. As a manager, you know your business needs marketing and sales to work hand-in-hand. Part of your job is to figure out which side of that equation you tend to unconsciously favor — most of us have a bias one way or the other — and take steps to counter it in your approach to build...

Whether big or small, all businesses go through change. In an unpredictable marketplace, the ability to adapt separates success stories from cautionary tales. In defining how businesses adapt to change, Eric Ries ("The Lean Startup") coined a concept that he named "pivoting." According to Ries, and many experts agree, every business reaches a point where it must make a choice to pivot, persist, or just pull the plug! When you choose to pivot, you position yourself to take advantage of market trends and respond to customer feedback. Yet, despite the benefits of pivoting, it can be tough to know when you need to take your dream business in a new direction. Read on to discover the tell-tale signs that it's time to take a fresh approach in your business operations. Competition is too stiff No industry is immune to competition, and if you feel that you are struggling against stronger rivals, maybe it's time you pivot. When you started your business...

Business Published on July 29th, 2021 | by Sunit Nandi Overview The business world is ruled by content. Everywhere you look, content is being used by successful companies on social media, on their websites and even in search engine ads. Podcasts, blogs, articles, surveys, whitepapers, reviews, case studies and infographics have all become commonplace in the stew of media that decision-makers consume on their buying journey. Content marketing, a rare phenomenon ten years ago, has taken the centre stage in the business model of many companies. But what of conventional marketing strategies such as inbound and outbound marketing, is it time to abandon them completely? Research disagrees. Instead, companies must modernize their traditional outbound marketing strategies by including content in them. For technology companies, innovation has always been essential to success, but never has it been so badly needed in the field of tech marketing. What is content marketing? L...

To say that 2020 was a year of ups and downs is putting it lightly. It was especially turbulent if you are a business owner. Your company likely had to contend with some major upheavals, stressors and challenges. In fact, 92% of small businesses reported that they had to “reinvent themselves” in order to weather the Covid-19 crisis.  But it’s a new year, and as we celebrate the deployment of the first Covid-19 vaccines, we’re all hoping that we might be seeing the faintest light at the end of the tunnel. 2021 will be another year of reinvention and, we can all hope, a better and brighter one for the growth of our businesses.   A couple weeks ago, I got in touch with social media guru Luke Lintz. At just 21, Lintz has built the incredibly successful HighKey Clout Inc., a social media, marketing, branding and technology group. We had a great conversation about how to grow your business and your customer base.  I thought I’d take the chance to share some of the insig...