Directive Blogs

Marketing is incredibly important for your business’ success, but only if your marketing is reaching your target audience. How do you do this? You need to relate to your clients and potential clients. It’s like when you’re looking for a new sitter for your child, you don’t pick the first person you talk to and your clients aren’t going to just pick you because they see you first. You’re going to interview and talk to the potential sitters and see which seems like the best fit for your child - who likes to go outside and play, who knows CPR and actually gets along with your child. The same thing goes for your clients and potential clients - they want to make sure you value the same things they do and that you care about them.

Chances are, you’ve received direct mail marketing, and it may have led you to consider utilizing it as a marketing tactic yourself, but you might have questioned how effective direct mail would be, and how you could possibly track its return on investment. The good news is that (if planned correctly) direct mail can have a significant, measurable influence on your marketing.

When marketing your business, the general wisdom is that inbound marketing is a good thing to include in your overall strategy. This is because it effectively draws in your most interested audience, in addition to usually being more cost-effective than most outbound avenues. Today, we’ll focus on what your inbound strategy should be based on, as well as a few actions to take as you implement it.

As any business owner would tell you, a satisfied client or customer tends to be a loyal client or customer. The right marketing initiatives and activities can help to maintain that satisfaction, which is a crucial element in business. In today’s blog, we’ll review why it is so important to nurture your customer/client satisfaction, as well as how to measure it.

One of the best things about marketing is that it is a very fluid process, heavily informed by how an audience reacts and responds to an initiative. This means that it is very important that you identify what marketing choices will optimize your impact. The process of A/B testing can help with this.

Here, we’ll discuss A/B testing in the context of email marketing to set a familiar scene for our examples.

Whenever a major holiday is coming up, you’re likely confronted with multiple reminders of it in your daily lives. You may see commercials on TV, receive emails from companies, get flyers in the mail. You’ll see specialized packaging for brands you buy every day that reflects the upcoming holiday. It makes sense why companies are doing this - holidays celebrated by the general population give a business an excuse to get in contact with the consumer. And, this often leads to an uptick in sales.

You can do the same for your small business. The key to succeeding with holiday marketing is framing your marketing correctly in terms of your language and the imagery you use.

Marketing collateral is a collection of media that is used to support the sales of a company’s products or services. The primary purpose of marketing collateral is to showcase your business’ products and services in an informational but attractive way, while at the same time expanding your credibility. The collateral you use should support your overall marketing efforts.

A logo is one of the most potentially powerful elements of a company’s branding. We say “potentially” because there are many ways that a logo can be designed, and a misstep or poor choice can make it ineffective. However, how can you make the right choice if you don’t even realize that there’s a choice involved?

When enacting a marketing strategy, it is of considerable benefit to pay attention to metrics—key data and measurements that can provide you with invaluable insights. However, not all data qualifies as a metric, and not all metrics will make sense for all of your initiatives. As a result, it is crucial that you identify the metrics and key performance indicators that apply to each initiative.

The 80/20 marketing rule is based on a century-old economic principle that, despite drastic economic and technological changes over the past century, continues to be effectively leveraged by businesses of all sizes and industries. Conceived in 1906 by famed Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto, the Pareto principle observed that about 80% of Italy’s wealth belonged to 20% of the population.

Twitter has been transformed by the B2B marketing community by offering another platform to engage with your audience, to address their questions, to contribute valuable knowledge, to accentuate what your company stands for. Every day there are opportunities that you could be embracing from being active on social media. Whether you turn these opportunistic moments into high-quality leads, well that is your prerogative.

After witnessing the viral social media impact of United Airlines most recent disaster involving forcefully removing a passenger from an overbooked airplane -- we figured it would be a good time to talk about what you can do to successfully manage a social media disaster. So, like they always say “Don’t be scared, be prepared!” 

Part 7 of 7 - Expand your Reach with Lookalike Audiences on Facebook [Series]

Facebook Advertising is an excellent resource for business owners. Everything you need to run a successful advertising campaign is all in one place, including your audience. Did you run a successful advertisement, and aren’t sure where to turn? Re-run that campaign to the same audience, well it’s clone, with Facebook’s Lookalike Audiences!

Part 6 of 7 - Which Ad Works Best on Facebook? A/B Testing; [Series]

Facebook Advertising is a great way to raise brand awareness and increase your Facebook following. Sometimes your first advertisement might not yield the response you were hoping for. Wait! Don’t get rid of it, rework it with A/B testing.

Part 5 of 7 - Measuring the Performance of your Facebook Advertisement  [Series]

ROI is always top of mind for business owners. Often it is difficult to calculate an accurate ROI for social media marketing. Luckily, Facebook makes tracking ROI simple with Ads Manager. The following will help you review the success of your Facebook Advertisement using Facebook’s Advertising Metrics (KPI’s - Key Performance Indicators).

Part 4 of 7 - Determining Your Facebook Advertising Budget [Series]

In the first part of this series, you may remember us discussing the affordability Facebook offers businesses. In fact, that is one of the many reasons Facebook advertising has become so successful. Any budget can be supported, but how far can your budget take you? 

A candidate with a great campaign strategy will, more than likely, win the majority vote in an election. The same is true for your marketing campaigns! If you’re not constantly and consistently monitoring and refining your campaigns, it will be incredibly detrimental to your company winning the majority of the clients or potential clients you’re targeting and hinder your marketing success.

Part 3 of 7 - Creating an Ad [Series]

Facebook Ads have the ability to transform your company and dramatically increase your leads without destroying your budget. If you want to reach 1.55 billion Facebook users that could potentially turn into your clients, then Facebook Advertising is right for you. The following will tell you the preliminary steps you need to know to create a Facebook Advertisement of your very own! 

Part 2 of 7 - Terminology [Series]

Even for an experienced marketer Facebook Advertising can be a little daunting without first understanding the basics. The first real step to learning anything new is understanding the terminology. When you’re setting up your first advertisement you’ll hear things like “custom audiences”, “impressions”, and “auto bid” and even in the appropriate context there might still be some confusion. The following is a brief overview of commonly encountered Facebook Advertising terminology to assist you in your Facebook Advertising endeavors.

Part 1 of 7 - Why should I Advertise on Facebook? [Series]

You might be a bit, or a lot, skeptical of Facebook, not to mention using it for Advertising purposes. You’ve probably heard horror stories of a people losing money by advertising on Facebook. If so many people are losing money with advertising on facebook then why has it grown by 680% since 2010? It’s because it works! Want to know why it works?