by tradesmeninsights | Jun 22, 2018 | Marketing Tips, Marketing Trends, Public Relations, Social Marketing, Tradesmen Insights
By Andrew Poulsen, PR Technician
In less than 10 years, social media has evolved from a fun distraction to keep in touch with college friends and distant relatives, to an essential tool needed by any brand looking to engage with its customers or maintain relevance amongst its competitors. Regardless of how millennials feel about the Baconator® or Moons Over My Hammy®, brands like Wendy’s and Denny’s are winning over young people more and more every day with their funny and relatable social media presence. While not every company needs to adopt to the latest meme or pop culture phenomenon to have a healthy online presence, social media has opened the door for brands to be transparent and relatable in new and exciting ways.
By now, companies from international brands to local muffler shops are utilizing Facebook and Twitter to engage and share company news, updates, sales, etc. But over the past few years, we’ve seen more brands incorporating Instagram into their social media plan. What was once considered a platform exclusive to tech-savvy young people with smartphones, Instagram is now just ubiquitous across all demographics as Facebook and Twitter. And businesses across all industries are starting to take notice. That’s because, if used correctly, the app’s photo and video features allow a new way for brands to give their audience a peek behind the curtain. Here are five ways your company can take advantage of the unique features Instagram has to offer.
Give Your Audience Something Different
Facebook, Twitter and Instagram all bring something different to the table, otherwise we wouldn’t need to be on so many different social media platforms. While this seems obvious, companies often make the mistake of letting their social media content be too similar across all platforms. Instead, companies should reward their audience for following all their pages by giving them content exclusive from the other platforms. For Instagram, this can be a fun look behind the scenes of your office, documenting a company picnic, making a short how-to video or hosting some sort of fan-generated photo contest. Just make sure it is unique to the platform in some way.
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by tradesmeninsights | Jun 1, 2018 | Agency Insights, Marketing Tips, Tips, Tradesmen Insights, Traditional Marketing
Multimedia can seem like another of those “marketing buzzwords.” But when it comes right down to it, the key is to effectively use images to tell your product’s or brand’s story, and it can be incredibly successful and easy.
In our latest Tip Sheet, we’ve laid out 6 tips for integrating multimedia into your marketing efforts, and as always, it’s geared toward manufacturers, distributors and others in the B2T marketplace. You can sign up to download it for free here.
Let us know what challenges you’ve had with integrating multimedia and check out our other tip sheets here.
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by tradesmeninsights | Mar 1, 2018 | Events/Trade Shows, Marketing Tips, Tradesmen Insights, Traditional Marketing
By Chris Ilcin, Account Superintendent, Sonnhalter
Hi Sports Blog Fans, time for the annual Sonnhalter Super Bowl, er I mean “Big Game” ad review. As with past years, it’s not on time or really about the ads, but rather the marketing lessons manufacturers can take from all the hoopla.
This year, let’s look at the three main types of ads, and the pros and cons of each.
1) The Big Build Up
This is the type of ad campaign where there’s a buildup, or teasers dropped across different channels that all build up to a big “event” ad during the game. This year’s best example is the Crocodile Dundee movie campaign that wasn’t. Instead it was all just a build up to a new campaign for Australian Tourism.
Pros – Gives your entire message a framework and direction. Sets the tone and content for everything to come for a good long while.
Cons – It works if you’re a country or a well-defined brand. If you don’t have a clear, concise message (or lots of beaches that aren’t going anywhere) and the intestinal fortitude to stick with it past the fourth quarter, you’re throwing away money.
2) The Big Splash
This is the type of ad that seeks to surprise, jar your expectations, or thumb its nose at traditions. It also only typically works during the game. It’s there to cause a splash and get attention right then and there.
For this example, let’s look at what I think was the worst example. For me that would be the Chris Pratt Michelob Ultra commercial. Sure, the setup is kind of funny, the famous actor thinks he’s landed the role of a lifetime in a beer commercial, only to find out he’s an extra. That part is fine, but the second set of ads, with him in the background, only works then and there. It’s a waste of time and money, kind of like telling the same joke twice.
Pros – If done right (like just about any movie ad, but especially The Cloverfield Paradox), it not only works to create buzz, but builds a cascade effect with retweets, shares and mentions.
Cons – If done wrong (I’m looking at you PuppyBabyMonkey), it just leaves people scratching their heads, and makes you look like you were trying too hard.
3) The Big Launch
Similar to #2, this ad type sets a new direction for a brand. This is a big giant “reset” button that seeks to make a splash, redefine who you are as a company and set the stage moving forward. In my opinion, the best example of this was the “It’s a Tide Ad” series. It’s funny, it’s interruptive, it’s designed to make people laugh. But it also serves to show the brand’s strength. By pointing out that in every other iconic commercial, the actors all wear spotlessly clean clothes, they show the importance of their product.
For a bad example, the less said about the tone-deaf Ram Truck commercial, the better. One other ad I found to be a lesson in not what to do was the Kia campaign. Bad CGI, poor use of a celebrity, and overreaching your brand identity don’t make for an effective ad, and now they’re stuck with an expensive launch that was largely overshadowed, if not outright ridiculed.
Pros – Sets up your brand message for years to come. Serves as a flag in the ground (or hammer in the screen).
Cons – Sets up your brand message for years to come. Serves as a flag in the ground (or a Platinum stake in the heart).
The Big Lesson for Manufacturers
Think of the Super Bowl as your biggest industry tradeshow. Each of these campaign styles is also an effective (or ineffective) trade show strategy.
- The Big Build Up – Use preshow emails to preregister booth visits; just make sure you have a cohesive message.
- The Big Splash – Host a preshow breakfast or a press event; but make sure to prequalify who’s there, have a concise presentation and follow up.
- The Big Launch – Build a new booth and launch new products; but make sure the booth supports your message, the products serve a customer need and that those customers are there.
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by tradesmeninsights | Feb 22, 2018 | Marketing Tips, Marketing Tools, Social Marketing, Tips, Tradesmen Insights
By Chris Ilcin
Everyone (and especially marketing communications firms) creates an aura that content marketing is some huge, time consuming mystery. But the real secret is that it’s all about having a clear, consistent message and then placing the right part of that message into the right format. To demonstrate that, we’ve created the following infographic that shows how we repurposed the content from a single, 45-minute interview with our client’s product engineer, into numerous pieces of content across multiple platforms, where the messaging received thousands of views.
Check out our infographic, “A White Paper Life Cycle.”
How are you repurposing content?
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by Sonnhalter | Sep 7, 2017 | Marketing Tips, Tradesmen Insights
By Chris Ilcin, Account Superintendent, Sonnhalter
Last weekend was my high school reunion. Lots of fun and a great time (we even used it as an excuse to raise money for a local charity). And then I read this excellent article on what consumers want from email marketing.
And it occurred to me that the two are pretty similar. Here’s how:
Don’t Overdo It
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by Sonnhalter | Aug 22, 2017 | Marketing Tips, Tradesmen Insights
By John Sonnhalter, Rainmaker Journeyman, Sonnhalter
Content marketing should be a vital part of your strategy to reach and engage contractors and professional tradesmen and move them through the sales funnel. Manufacturers are always focused on leads and will use things like traditional e-books and white papers. Not all activity will result in conversions. We should consider building brand awareness.
Here are five tactics to consider:
- Blog posts.You may already be doing a blog and if you’re not you should consider it. It helps set you up as an industry expert and helps move prospects through the know, like and trust phase of the journey. Include a strong call to action that will hopefully engage the reader to go somewhere or do something. (more…)
