Brands and marketers often pay lip-service to the idea of building a community, but very few businesses actually devote efforts and resources to this part of their marketing. Fans sometimes self-organize, but without leadership, attention, and nurturing, a brand community is unlikely to have value.
Mega Cat Marketing: Hulu Has Live Sports
Hulu recently rolled out a brilliant campaign designed to spread awareness for a new Hulu offering: live sports. They built a simple but entertaining infinite runner, integrated it with Twitch, and then used a mix of influencer marketing and digital advertising to drive players to the game. Instead of just plastering generic ads everywhere, Hulu used their game to generate an actual conversation, and that’s huge for engagement.
Marketing Monday: Non-Traditional Media
Traditional media like television, radio, and billboards are not immune to market forces and to innovation. Savvy marketers are finding new ways to layer digital tracking and targeting on top of these mediums to make ads there more effective, more engaging, and more measurable. If your business relies on this kind of advertising, you should be exploring these options as soon as possible because your competitors are likely heading this direction already.
Marketing Monday: When the Good Go Bad
A common pitfall for businesses and marketers looks like this: You spend a bunch of time and resources to get a piece of marketing to work, it does great for the business, and then no one pays attention to it anymore, assuming that since it’s working today that it will still be working tomorrow. If you aren’t careful, a part of your new business engine can break for all sorts of reasons and the longer it takes you to recognize it, the more damage it does to your bottomline.
Marketing Monday: Repetition Is Not Branding
Many marketers mistakenly believe that repeating logos and taglines is the heart of branding. The research disagrees. Real branding, the kind that builds legendary companies and products, is emotionally-driven, which means that your marketing needs to reinforce that emotion, not just your brand identity.
Marketing Monday: Retargeting Ads
Retargeting ads can be the smartest ad spend in your marketing budget for several reasons: They are often cost effective, they make your highest value web traffic even more valuable, and they allow you to target the right prospects with the exact messages they need for where they are in the customer journey.
Marketing Monday: How to Address Growth Plateaus
Plateaus are a normal part of any marketing and growth strategy. No matter how good your marketing is, you will eventually reach a point where you have to do something different, where you have to make changes. The problem, however, is that many brands don’t actually address their plateaus and instead start to drift into decline.
Marketing Monday: The Missing Link
One time we had a client whose marketing looked great, but their sales were not improving. After a lot of tests and troubleshooting, we tracked down the problem to a disgruntled sales associate driving customers away. And this is why you need to look beyond your marketing when you assess its performance.
Marketing Monday: TwitchCon and Boldly Going Where Your Brand Has Not Gone Before
I had a minute before the doors opened on that last day TwitchCon in San Diego, so I wanted to share a few observations from the brands I talked to at the event. Major brands like Statefarm, Honda, St. Judes, and Make A Wish were there showcasing the success they have found on Twitch and in gaming, but many of the brands I spoke with (many of whom are at or near that same scale) were candid about being new to Twitch and not fully understanding the community or the platform.
Marketing Monday: Interactivity in Marketing
The most memorable brands foster and nurture fan participation. Starting with your social media and blog content, invest in creating and continuing conversations with your customers and prospects to make your marketing more engaging and more effective.