My name is Sofia Zipparo, and I am currently going into my senior year at John Carroll University. I am majoring in communications with a concentration in integrated marketing, as well as completing a minor in business. I currently hold two board positions in two different clubs on campus. The first club is the JCU Finance and Wealth Management Association, where I have been serving as secretary for two consecutive years. The second club is the JCU Boler Consulting Club, where I have been serving as the vice president of marketing communications for two consecutive years as well. I was also inducted this past fall into Lambda Pi Eta, The National Communication Association Honors Society.
Since the spring semester of my freshman year, I’ve been working in the John Carroll University Payroll Department within the Accounts Payable department. While being at John Carroll for the past three years, I can confidently say that I have been gifted the ability to make the most of my academic journey. Aside from all of that, I enjoy exploring the Cleveland food and entertainment scene, and overall enjoying the last college year that I have left.
I am originally from Sewickley, Pennsylvania, a small town about 25 minutes northwest from downtown Pittsburgh. While growing up, I was heavily involved within the restaurant scene, as my family owns an Italian-American restaurant; 424 Walnut. While growing up with two older sisters, we were surely utilized by our parents, teaching us the true definition of what a strong work ethic is, especially with an Italian influence; as my father is 100 percent Italian. In addition, I have learned to appreciate the core values of long hours and hard work. From growing up in such an environment, I proudly carry and implement these attributes along with everything I do, especially with starting this internship role.
As the PR intern for this summer, I am anticipating learning all of the ins and outs of the PR world, and becoming well-versed in the real-world experience that Sonnhalter offers its employees. The Sonnhalter team has evidently shown that they aren’t afraid to get their hands dirty and help their fellow employees in any way they can. This includes being given the chance to build my portfolio and showing my potential as a creative asset within this industry. Building my portfolio with blog posts, press release projects for varying brands, social media brand marketing and much more, is an experience that I look forward to, and am grateful for being gifted. I believe that Sonnhalter will be able to prepare me very much, and I am excited to venture down this road with them.
Italian heritage emphasizes the true meaning of joining a family and becoming one with a team. At Sonnhalter, I look forward to becoming a part of this family.
Being able to accurately show how well your efforts impacted a company’s bottom line is one of the biggest challenges marketing teams face every year. For years, the easiest indicator of a marketing team’s success was measured mostly in sales and lead generation. But with the rise of content marketing, influencer relations and social media in marketing plans, it’s sometimes difficult to accurately quantify exactly how all these tactics improve ROI. Regardless of where you stand on the value of these tactics, even the most stubborn skeptics will need to face the reality that content marketing, social media and other tactics for the digital age are here to stay. Unfortunately, most marketing budgets have yet to catch up with the financial and personnel resources necessary to successfully utilize these tactics.
Many of these challenges and concerns were addressed in IEEE GlobalSpec’s “Trends in Industrial Marketing Survey,” which surveyed 326 marketing and sales professionals in the industrial sector on marketing trends within the engineering, technical, manufacturing and industrial communities. Here are some of the most interesting tidbits from the survey:
Breakthroughs in marketing analytics have made it easier to calculate the ROI of a company’s marketing efforts.
“Marketers are under steady pressure to demonstrate ROI for their marketing programs. The need to improve ROI is one of the top challenges industrial marketers face. To meet this challenge, marketers use leads as their number one measure of success. But generating high-quality leads for sales is also one of the top marketing challenges. This may sound like a vicious cycle, and some marketers would agree, but the point is that measurement matters. Other measures of success include customer acquisition and sales attributed to marketing campaigns. Marketing automation software, which can improve tracking and measurement capabilities, is used by only 37 percent of industrial marketers.”(more…)
Running a successful marketing campaign requires a number of different tactics, not just one “silver bullet.” Join Matt Sonnhalter for a Marketing Minute and learn how your company can get the most results out of your marketing efforts by using an integrated campaign.
To view other videos from Sonnhalter, visit our YouTube channel here and let us know if there’s a B2T marketing topic you’d like us to cover.
Do you use a creative brief to guide your marketing plan?
In the most recent Marketing Minute video from Sonnhalter, Matt explains what this useful marketing tool is and the 11 elements that Sonnhalter’s creative briefs include.
Blogs can play an important part in your overall marketing plan. By integrating them with other marketing tools like e-newsletters, other social sites and your existing website, as well as offline activities, you can enhance your efforts and results.
I have found that we are getting more activity as far as page views on our blog than our website.What’s more important is that I have regular readers who view my posts via RSS feeds and everyday, new readers find the site through key word searches.
We have also gained insights into our readers, and by their responses, we know what they want to hear more about. We even use surveys and polls to help us get answers directly from the readers as to what is important to them. We can look at monthly results to see which topics are having more traction than others.
Our long-term plan is to gain the readers’ trust and become their go-to resource when it comes to marketing to the professional tradesmen. By being informative, creative and reliable in what we say, and the examples we give, we build trust with our readers.
Ultimately, we want to gain new business opportunities, and a blog helps you do that. We recently won a few pieces of new business from companies that were following us on our blog. Many are virtual clients who feel comfortable doing business with us even though they never met us in person because they like what we said on our blog.
These are a few things you should expect from a company blog. We use it as a marketing centerpiece that we position our other activities around.
I’d like to hear some of your success stories around your blog successes.
