Do you know why testimonials are so important? Say, you’re walking down the street and a bus passes with an ad on the side promoting the “best coffee ever,” do you believe it? In all likelihood, you probably instantly think “Pfft. What a load of bull!” This is one of the biggest problems facing advertisers nowadays. Countless people are so instinctively distrustful of marketing that they dismiss any claims made in ads as exaggerations or outright fabrications. Even if the product is genuinely the “best coffee ever,” the average person probably isn’t going to believe it until they try it…
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Do you know what a hashtag is? Or how to use them? Do you remember the very first time you heard the term “Hashtag?” Nowadays, if you are even slightly aware of social media, then you know what a hashtag is. Not only have they become a key component for getting your marketing message out on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and other social media platforms, but the word has even been added to the Oxford English Dictionary! You may know what hashtags are, but do you know how to use them? Well, here is a quick primer that will explain everything…
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How exactly do you go about building a brand for your new business? Over the last few weeks, we’ve been taking a look at the various aspects of brand building. This included the basics of branding, graphic design, and how to rescue a struggling brand. But you might be wondering, but how do I start building a brand from scratch? Well, help is on the way! What is a Brand? As I’ve said before, a brand is like a container that holds all of the assets, both tangible and intangible, of your business. Everything from your logo and color scheme…
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What happens when a brand gets a “bad name?” I consider a brand to be a container that holds everything about a business, both tangible and intangible. From logo to customer service to reputation, your brand encompasses all of the qualities that your customers think when they see the name of your company. The problem happens when some of those qualities are less than desirable. Maybe in the early days of your business, your customer service needed a little more work. Or that your prices were just a little too high. After enough time, many of those negative qualities got…
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When I’m working with a client to either create a new brand or reimagine their existing one, a common question I hear is, “What’s the difference between graphic design and branding?” Conflating the two is an easy mistake to make. After all, when people think of brands, they think of logos. Coca-Cola, McDonalds, Nike… All of these brands have logos that instantly identify them. At a glance, a customer knows everything about those businesses, just by seeing their logo. However, logos and other graphic components are only one part of branding. As I’ve said in the past, think of a…
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Ok, pop quiz time! What exactly is branding? I wouldn’t bother trying to look online for the answer. You look at 100 marketing websites, you’re going to find at least 100 slightly different ideas. Why is it so difficult to nail down a single definition of branding? It’s because branding… is huge. It’s massive. It encompasses everything about your business. Trying to shrink that down to a single sentence is nearly impossible. So I’m not going to try! Instead, I’m going to break it down that massive concept into some smaller pieces, helping you understand what branding means for YOU…
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Writing a Facebook Ad is easy, right? You throw together some text with an image and watch the clicks roll in! Uh, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but that’s a surefire way to end up with a Facebook Ad disaster! Social Media Ad creation is an art onto itself. Much like writing all kinds of social media, it’s a unique mixture of both marketing copy, target research and graphic design meant to attract the eye, intrigue the mind, and eventually, lead the user to your Website or Landing Page. There are a total of seven elements…
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How much time do you spend on Facebook every day? I’m not just talking about your personal account, but also your professional one. If you’re a small business owner, then you should absolutely have a significant professional presence on Facebook (and other social media networks). Facebook is one of the most popular social media channels in the world, with over 2.4 billion users and over 1.56 billion daily users. There are 9.3 million in Florida alone! That’s a lot of horn honking Floridians! Those kinds of numbers can give you a massive reach to connect with both current and potential…
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Do you remember MySpace? How about Friendster? Or a more recent example, Google Plus? These were some major players in the social media scene but today? They’re gone, replaced with newer, better social networks. It’s incredible how even giants can be worn down by time and innovation. Perhaps even… Facebook? Facebook is still the king of social media and should be a key component of every small business’s social media strategy, but it isn’t the only one out there. Other social media networks are popping up every year, looking to dethrone the king. As a marketer, I need to be…
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Cross-country marketing can be a fascinating thing. Companies can take the exact same product but market it entirely differently depending on the country they are in. For example, there might be completely different advertising campaigns for a product like Pepsi in Mexico, Canada, and the United States. This is despite the fact that they’re all located on the same continent, two of them primarily speak English, and it’s the same product. It all has to do with local conventions of the media, cultural differences, and values when it comes to marketing. Marketing on social media is a little bit like…
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