You send out emails announcing new products or sale events and, while email marketing is relatively inexpensive, you wonder how well it’s been working. This blog will look at why email is a great marketing and sales tool, and what companies can do to increase the effectiveness of any email campaign.  Is Anyone Reading My Email?   Do you ever check your spam or junk folder? Of course not. Why would you? It’s junk, right?  When your company sends email marketing, do you ever wonder how many junk folders your email is being directed to? Ever wonder how many recipients will nev ..read more

The natural course is that every generation has a period of influence before being replaced by a younger generation. Advertisers have ridden the ups and downs of this transference of influence for decades. Now, however, the biggest demographic in history is starting to exert its spending power, and companies need to be ready to cater to the quirky whims and desires of Gen Z if they want to stay profitable. The Torch Has Been Passed… In his 1961 inaugural address, John Kennedy told the world that “the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans.” Kennedy had a good reason for saying ..read more

A good landing page can be one of the most productive ways of increasing sales for your business. Unfortunately, there’s a misconception that just about anything can be a landing page. Here are a few things that are not landing pages: homepages, “About” pages, and “Contact Us” pages.  So, what is a landing page and what makes it such a valuable tool? What Does Your Advertising Link To?  You send out an e-blast, create a paid search ad, or post a banner on your homepage saying this: When people click on the above link, where does it take them? To be effective, it must take them to a ..read more

Podcasts aren’t only for news and entertainment. They’re a valuable marketing tool that people can listen to in a car, bus, train or plane; while hiking, running, or biking; when drifting off to sleep or getting ready for work; and they’re one of the few ways that companies can develop a personal relationship with customers by speaking directly to them. How Does Your Company Connect with Customers?  Adding a personal touch in advertising has always been important. Here are three last-century examples of business owners who became the advertising face of their companies, giving consumers t ..read more

It seems counterintuitive in a digital world, but print media still has a powerful grip on the general public. What makes ink-and-paper, direct marketing collateral still so effective, and how can it be used to promote your business and increase sales?  We Never—Or Almost Never—Look Back Technology has always been a driving force in every culture. From Egyptian pyramid building, to Roman aqueducts, to virtual and augmented reality; technology carries us forward. And, as we progress, we tend to eschew older and outdated technology.  Not many of us have landlines, and phone booths disappeared m ..read more

Why do some websites invite visitors to stay and make a purchase, while others can’t maintain a visitor’s interest for more than a few seconds? As with any other sales tool, it relies on the right combination of form and content. This blog will examine the good, the bad, and the ugly of web design.  Why Do You Like What You Like?  After 25 years of being on what was once quaintly called the World Wide Web, we’ve all seen thousands of websites and we are all able to spot a good one from a bad one. Is that just personal preference, or can you define what makes a website good or bad? To paraphra ..read more

This blog will discuss: How individuals deal with pre-crisis preparation and risk management Examples of poorly managed corporate crises Companies successfully navigating through a public relations disaster Steps needed to control the narrative How an advertising agency’s public relations and social media specialists can manage any crisis Preparing for a Storm There are over 21 million people living in Florida. If you were one of those people, you’d probably be aware that Florida gets hit by hurricanes. And it isn’t difficult to imagine that every responsible Floridian has some kind of hurric ..read more

If you think voice search is the latest thing, consider this: 90% of all information received by the brain is visual 62% of Gen Z and millennial consumers want visual search more than any other technology Pinterest processes more than 600 million visual searches per month The image recognition market is expected to be worth over $77 billion by 2025 By early 2021, websites that were early adopters of visual search will increase digital commerce by 30% You’re walking down the street in a strange city and see an interesting looking building you’d like to know more about. You could type the addre ..read more

We’ll tell you why these are going to be the trends to watch in 2020: No-click Searches Custom Website Frameworks Voice Search The Internet of Things Expanding Use of Video Content Personalization Artificial Intelligence People love predicting the future, which is odd because almost no one ever gets it right. Still, if one were to browse end-of-year blogs, most would probably list their predictions for 2020. And most, when 2021 comes around, will have been proven wrong. But we’re willing to jump into the fray and—since we’re hardly ever wrong about anything—offer a prediction of six trends th ..read more

Toward the end of 2018, we posted a blog which predicted the biggest trends for 2019. Now as we approach the end of 2019, we can see that one of the trends on last year’s list should not only get the top spot on anyone’s list of trends for 2020, it really needs its own blog. Virtual reality and artificial reality have moved from novelty to a marketing necessity in just a few years. We’ll look at them individually and give examples of how each are being used in various industries to increase sales. Virtual Reality Virtual reality (VR) is a totally immersive experience. It shuts out the real, p ..read more