The new year is in full swing, and we’re excited about all that it has in store for our clients and team! 2023 was an exciting and memorable one at St. Gregory. We’ve put together some highlights from the past twelve months, read on to see what we’ve been up to…  A New Home In April, we moved our offices to the historic Longworth Hall after being in Deerfield Township for a decade. Being centrally located in the heart of downtown and close to so many attractions while also being closer to our clients is a win-win. The flexibility of Longworth Hall has allowed us to create a spac ..read more

In marketing and advertising, staying ahead of the curve and being prepared to pivot when necessary is crucial. One challenge that businesses face is how to market themselves effectively when political campaigns are pouring endless amounts of money into media advertising. According to AdImpact, the 2023-2024 election cycle will be the most expensive to date, with a projected $10.2 billion in political advertising expenditures. This is a 13 percent increase over the previous record of $9.02 billion that was set during the 2019-2020 cycle. We can anticipate a media space inundated with political ..read more

I’ve been working in digital since the mid-2000s, and over the years, not only has technology changed and evolved, but I’ve also seen several mistakes. They can range in severity from minimal, like the wrong piece of creative running, to severe, like spending $25,000 in 6 hours on a $1,000 monthly budget. One random mistake many don’t hear about is incorrect URLs. With the advances in email security, links often masquerade as security links. When someone emails you a link, if your email provider is using a security tool like Proofpoint, Microsoft 365, or Norton, the actual link is replaced wit ..read more

Steve Bleh, SVP of St. Gregory, leads a team of Glendale Elementary fifth-graders in a market-audience identification exercise as part of the agency’s Adopt A Class engagement with Mrs. Brown’s classroom. When we introduced new leadership at St. Gregory, my partners and I started looking for new community service opportunities that aligned with the interests of our current clients as well as our team. At about the same time, Bill Burwinkle approached me about St. Gregory joining Adopt A Class. Founded in 2003, Adopt A Class matches teams of mentors with individual teachers and classrooms to ex ..read more

By now, you’ve heard a lot about ChatGPT—the free AI writing tool that can churn out everything from social media captions to TV scripts to longform articles (This blog, by the way, was written by a human). It’s impressively coherent…and can fill a page much faster than a copywriter. There’s real perks to that for efficiency, productivity, and even creativity. But is there a shadow side? Already, some companies are replacing creative roles with ChatGPT, using it as a cheaper alternative to keeping an editor or copywriter on staff. The immediate benefit is obvious: dollars = saved. The less obv ..read more

Google held its annual Google Marketing Live virtual event on May 23rd, and if you’re familiar with the evolution of the Google Ads Platform, you should already know which buzzwords are coming out of it. During this event, the Google Ads (and various other teams) at Google showcase their advancing technologies and its general roadmap for the near future, including what changes are coming to the marketing landscape in Google Search, YouTube, Shopping, and more. There are hundreds of long, detailed reviews and recaps of the event, but these are the key takeaways from the event and how they could ..read more

It’s fashionable for agencies and agency types to pump out whitepapers and think pieces tying any current bit of news to their particular discipline. Open LinkedIn on any given Friday and you’re likely to find deeply thought-out, if not researched, posts like “What Marketers Can Learn from this Year’s Kentucky Derby Winner” or “How Your PR Team Should Respond to Ted Lasso S3.” This is not one of those articles. In fact, the problems at Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) were neither caused by any communication strategy nor is it likely that anything their marketing team said or did could have prevented ..read more

More often we hear stories about local businesses becoming the victims of hackers, losing access to their business’s Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or other social media accounts. Stolen accounts can severely damage any business’s reputation and effectively limit its ability to communicate with customers. The worst part is that if your account is hacked, customer support can do little to help, and it normally takes months to get access restored, if you can get it back at all. Being proactive in defending your social media accounts is essential in the current digital environment, and there are s ..read more

As digital marketing and our Internet culture evolve, so do changes in consumer privacy laws and how small- to medium-size businesses must operate. In a nutshell, these rules and laws create protections for consumers on how companies can use, sell, transfer, and handle their personal information. While there isn’t yet an overall federal regulation standard in the U.S., one law—the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA)—is one of the most comprehensive consumer privacy laws passed in the digital age. The CCPA in particular has helped shape how businesses need to handle consumer information. Whi ..read more

Do just a quick Google search and you’ll encounter hundreds of digital acronyms. With so many options out there, how do you know which are important to understand and track? In modern digital advertising, everything should be data- and goal-driven. If you know these 9 digital acronyms, you’ll gain critical insight into the core goals of your marketing dollars. KPI – Key Performance Indicator – This one is fairly straightforward: It’s the goal for your digital marketing dollars and how they’re performing based on your tactics and activations. If you’re looking to drive users to your website, t ..read more