Posts in Marketing Industry/Trends
The Do’s and Don’ts of the RFP Process

When clients have marketing challenges, they often look to an agency for help. Often the best way to determine if a marketing agency is qualified to deliver quality work on time and within budget and scope is through a Request for Proposal (RFP).

Here are the Do’s and Dont’s to making a RFP successful…

Read More
The Five Marketing Agency Compensation Models for Brands

If a brand is considering hiring a marketing agency, it is important to set aside appropriate budget. Depending on the scope of needs, some financial plans are more necessary than others but, ultimately, it is up to the client and agency to decide how they will price fees during their agency-client partnership. Read more about the pros and cons of different compensation models in the agency-client relationship.

Read More
Marketing Attribution: Tracking Touch Points Throughout the Customer Journey

Attribution fills in gaps in the story by assigning value to certain touch points during the consumer’s journey. Attributing value to each touch point helps marketers map out which marketing tactics are  working during the buyer journey so that the marketer can adjust their strategies and better prove their worth to the C-Suite. ..

Read More
Best Email Marketing Practices for the Typical Marketer

How can marketers grasp their consumer’s attention or stand out in a unique way without coming off too strong or obnoxious? How can marketers inform their email marketing strategy to attract more leads and subscribers? What deters consumers? What drives consumers to click the “subscribe” or “unsubscribe” button?

AgencySparks turned to the expertise of our agency partners, DEFINITION 6 and Response Media, for the answers and insights on best email marketing practices.

Read More
The Effectiveness of Direct Mail Marketing

Remember the excitement when a letter arrived in the mail? Or a packaged box full of mysteries inside just waiting to be opened? Email and digital marketing is effective, but it is not the only method to reach consumers and generate leads.

While marketers may be concerned about the effectiveness of direct mail and whether or not they can properly track it or afford the costs, there is plenty of evidence to support this “traditional” marketing strategy.

What are the benefits of direct mail as part of a marketing strategy?

Read More
Erosion of Brand Trust in the Marketing Industry

Consumers have become more skeptical of brand promises since technology access has made it easy to detect a brand’s lies via social media. It takes time to develop a trusting consumer relationship by nurturing it through the customer journey, but it can take only seconds to kill that relationship and even more time to mend. 

Facebook, Amazon, and Uber are great examples of brands that have disappointed their consumers in the past few years and need to work harder to regain consumers’ trust. They are few of the many brands that have lead to a nationwide decrease in consumer trust.

Read More
What Happened to Brand Loyalty - Is La Croix in Trouble?

La Croix was delightfully marketable, visually pleasant, affordable for young consumers, and different from it’s bubbly counterparts...until PepsiCo’s Bubly launch in February 2018. There isn’t complete evidence that one is superior to the other since preferences rely entirely on tastes. This upstart competitor brings into question whether or not the consumers’ brand loyalty is real.

Read More
What’s Old Is New Again - Reviving Legacy Brands

In nature, if an animal does not adapt, it becomes extinct. As technology and consumer behaviors continue to evolve in the marketing industry, brands are challenged to adapt to survive.

Brands like Lego or IHOP must innovate to better tell their brand story or reform their entire look and feel, or product to become more relevant to modern day consumers.

How do legacy brands overcome challenges to stay relevant?

Read More
Marketing Mysteries Uncovered for Generation Z

Move over millennials, Generation Z has taken flight and, by 2020, will be half the population with 40% of the purchasing power. At the risk of falling behind, marketers must learn everything that is important about the powerful consumer that is Generation Z.

Read More
Pairing Technology with Marketing Strategy to "Activate" Growth

At its core, the Activate conference was all about how to activate company growth by pairing technology with marketing strategy. In today’s cluttered, chaotic marketing landscape, the playing field is finally level. The little guys can outshine the big guys if they’re smart… and that’s an exciting prospect.

To illustrate the lessons I learned from Activate, I’ll need to borrow an equation from Ann Handley, Chief Content Officer at MarketingProfs and author of Everybody Writes to tie together my takeaways from each speaker:

Data x Listening X Instinct = YASSSSSS

Read More
The Importance of Communicating the CMO Role to the C-suite

Remember Mad Men? Well, it’s time to forget it because CMOs no longer rely on “gut feeling.” Since data is more accessible and consumers are at the forefront of decision making, the role of CMO is more important than ever before. The CMOs’ understanding of consumer data and interpretation of analytics makes the Chief Marketing Officer one of the most vital members in the Chief Executive Suite.

Read More