Jack Smith, Author at Smith Marketing

6 Tips for More Intimate Marketing

by Jack Smith | Feb 7, 2022 | Marketing, Marketing Awareness, Marketing Strategy

Is your content connecting with customers?

Effective marketing is — and likely always will be — a distinctly human-to-human endeavor. It’s important that your content cultivates intimacy with your audience and engages in a way that builds trust. And that’s not something you can fake (or pass off to AI robots).

So, how do you get more personal? Here are six tips to get you started.

1. Start with customer-first policies and practices.
If you start from a place of genuinely wanting to provide your customers with an authentic and positive experience, the content you create will naturally reflect those goals.

2. Stay in the conversation.
Don’t just put out content and call it a day. Stay engaged and moderate conversations as needed to ensure a welcoming environment for your audience.

3. Add context to data.
Talk to your customers like people. Try to humanize data with context instead of just throwing out stats and numbers and letting your audience fill in the blanks.

4. Tell customer stories.
Use narrative case studies to show the human element of your product or service, as well as to illustrate that there are real people who rely on and benefit from what you do.

5. Embrace micro-communities.
Going micro with your targeting is essential to making strong and sustainable connections. It can also help make your marketing more effective since the engaged individuals are more likely to be interested in your brand.

6. Reward loyalty, and say thank you.
Say you care — and show it, too. Loyalty programs are a great way to build positive relationships with your customers. And saying a genuine “thank you” is as human as it gets.

For help creating a more intimate marketing strategy, get in touch with us.

Is Your Marketing Strategy All-Inclusive?

by Jack Smith | Jan 18, 2022 | Marketing, Marketing Awareness, Marketing Strategy

By now you’ve probably realized that consumers expect more diversity from their favorite brands’ marketing content, images, social media, community initiatives and offerings.

If you’re not considering diversity and inclusion with thoughtfulness and intent, you’re losing out on a big opportunity to connect with your audience. And you might even be losing customers.

Here’s why diversity in marketing matters — and a few action steps to take.

Audiences Want Diversity

Everyone wants to feel like they belong. Yet, many consumers don’t find themselves accurately portrayed in marketing, if they can find themselves there at all.

A majority of Americans (61%) believe that diversity in advertising is important, and 38% say they’re more likely to trust brands that do a good job at it. Likewise, consumers report being more loyal to brands that make a commitment to addressing social inequities.

Now more than ever, diversity has a direct impact on brand reputation. Your audience wants to be represented, and if they’re not, they’ll find somewhere that they are.

Action Steps

Define what diversity is. Diversity in skin color is a great start but go further than that. True inclusion involves a diversity of disabilities, religion, gender, body types, and all other things that make people unique.

Walk the walk. Your audience can see through a shallow social justice campaign. Prioritize diversity throughout your organization, including not just your marketing materials but also your company and team.

Diversify your content. Before greenlighting a piece of marketing content, ask yourself: Is the language inclusive? Are the images diverse? Is the copy human and empathetic? You want people to feel welcome and understood by your ads — not left out.

It’s never too late to bring diversity into your marketing. We can help, so get in touch today for additional guidance and advice.

Tips for Adapting to Email Privacy Changes

by Jack Smith | Jan 11, 2022 | Email, Email Marketing

Are you up to date with Apple’s latest email privacy changes?

Last September, Apple made some pretty big changes to the iPhone’s Mail App. The most notable change for email marketers: a “Mail Privacy Protection” feature that lets users hide their activity from third parties. And this feature, which rolled out with the iOS 15 update, is one that will definitely require you to adapt your email strategy.

What is the new privacy feature?

Mail Privacy Protection is an opt-in feature that provides users with more control over their personal data by allowing them to hide certain activity from third parties. Unfortunately for marketers, this includes data around location and open rates.

This has a few major implications. For instance, if you send an email to a user with privacy protection on, the message will be marked as opened even if they never see it. Along with a lack of location data, this makes it harder to track true opens, segment lists, A/B test subject lines and optimize your content for each subscriber.

What should you do?

Privacy protection is already an option for users with iOS 15, so if you haven’t started making adaptive plans now is the time. Here are a few places to start:

Prioritize other metrics. Open rates may be unreliable, but there are other metrics you can use to track performance. Pay more attention to clicks and conversions.
Remove hard bounces. List hygiene is a little trickier with this feature. Set up automatic removals of hard bounces if possible to help protect your IP reputation.
Focus on high-quality content. You’re hopefully doing this anyway, but it’s extra important now. Personalize emails based on the information available to you, and make sure there’s value in every message you send.

3 Ways to Consolidate Your Marketing

by Jack Smith | Dec 7, 2021 | Consolidate Marketing, Consolidate Your Marketing, Customized Marketing, Marketing Consolidation

Marketing best practices are always evolving. And if you want to keep up, you need to make sure you’re on top of the trends — particularly the ones designed to help you boost efficiency and spending. Enter consolidation: a marketing tactic you can apply to ensure you’re making the most of your efforts.

Here’s what to know.

What is marketing consolidation?

Consolidation is a strategy that involves trimming excess marketing tactics and paring them down to their most impactful parts. The goal is to remove the things that don’t serve you and improve the things that do, ultimately leaving yourself with a simpler (but more efficient) overall strategy.

So, what does that look like? Hop on the consolidation trend in one or more of these key areas:

Content: Feel like you’ve already covered every topic under the sun? Instead of constantly churning out new content, rework what you already have to create higher-quality, higher-ranking pieces. This includes taking various posts on similar topics and combining them into one piece that’s longer and more authority-driven than its predecessors.
Data: Stop digging around for data. Consolidate all of your analytics onto one dashboard, including your CRM, content metrics, and general site metrics. You’ll save a lot of time, and you’ll also get more useful insights out of the data you track.
Digital and print strategies: Try to avoid siloed strategies. As we head into the new year, make a point of looking at the big picture with both print and digital, focusing on the tactics that work best for both and putting everything else on the backburner. It’s a great way to stretch your budget further — and to stop wasting time on dead ends.

6 Must-Follow Holiday Marketing Tips

by Jack Smith | Nov 15, 2021 | Holiday Marketing Tips, Marketing Strategy

Is your marketing strategy ready to “sleigh” this holiday season?

If you want to make the most of the holidays, you need to go in with a plan. And fortunately, it’s not too late to put marketing practices into place that will help you generate buzz and keep up with customer demands.

Here are six things that you can (and should!) start doing right now to make the season your best yet.

1. Set a Schedule
Don’t just wing it. Schedule out your holiday campaigns and content so that you’re not left scrambling and trying to come up with ideas on the fly.

2. Follow Your Customers’ Lead
It can be a fight for customer attention this time of year. Make sure your brand’s voice is heard by using analytics and surveys to figure out exactly what content your customers want and need — then provide it to them.

3. Share Valuable Content
You don’t want to be too pushy (or try to reach out too often). The goal is to provide high-quality, well-timed resources that offer real value to those who engage, so aim for quality over quantity.

4. Create a Gift Guide
Help your customers out by creating and sharing gift guides that feature your product or service alongside other relevant (but not competing) ideas.

5. Offer Safe Shopping Options
If you’re marketing a brick-and-mortar store, make sure to let your customers know their safety matters. Mask protocols, ample hand sanitizer, and curbside pickup options are a great place to start.

6. Optimize Your Website
Make sure your website is updated, accessible and ready to handle higher traffic. The last thing you want is to bring more eyes to your site only to have it crash as a result.

Need more guidance ahead of the holidays? Get in touch and we can help.

815-355-6892
info@smithmarketing.com

6 Tips for More Intimate Marketing

Is Your Marketing Strategy All-Inclusive?

Tips for Adapting to Email Privacy Changes

3 Ways to Consolidate Your Marketing

6 Must-Follow Holiday Marketing Tips

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