Blog Archives

April 23, 2024

Leveraging Social Media To Boost Your Organic SEO

The relationship between social media and organic search engine optimization (SEO) has become increasingly intertwined. Social media platforms serve as more than just channels for connecting with friends or sharing cat videos – they have evolved into powerful tools for increasing visibility while driving referral traffic to your website. Couple this with Google serving up […]

April 12, 2024

Six Low-Cost Marketing Ideas You Can Do Yourself (And One You Shouldn’t)

There’s an old saying that goes something like, “Make hay while the sun shines.” The gist of this is, of course, when the opportunity presents itself to do something like grow your business, you should probably do it because we all know the sun won’t shine forever. Whether you are a small business owner or […]

April 4, 2024

Top Five SEO Issues That Could Be Hurting Your Lead Volume (And How To Identify Them)

Many small and mid-sized businesses, including personal injury law firms, put a lot of effort into organic search (SEO), but many aspects of SEO that may lurk beneath the surface often hold businesses back from reaching their full ranking potential. In this edition of Plain Talk, we’ll review the top challenges that can have a […]

March 29, 2024

Do Americans Want Brands To Be Assertive Anymore?

In their 2021 book Brandsplaining, Jane Cunningham and Philippa Roberts dig into how advertisers traditionally have viewed and judged women from a male perspective (and still do) as vessels to be filled. The authors state near the end: “To succeed in this new context, brands need – to put it bluntly – to get down […]

March 8, 2024

Does Your Personal Injury Law Firm Know Your SEO Cost per Case and ROI?

The value that SEO contributes to personal injury law firms is undeniable, but measuring ROI and cost per signed case can be a challenge, and not understanding cost per case and ROI for SEO can lead to not truly understanding how SEO is contributing to your overall marketing mix and signed cases. In this Plain […]

February 27, 2024

Why does SEO for personal injury matter (and what am I getting out of my investment)?

Personal injury law firms operate in one of the most competitive marketing environments of any profession. In that environment, nothing is more competitive than the battle for the prospects who are looking for legal services and find your firm through organic web searches. These leads can drive down your cost per case, deliver valuable referral […]

February 9, 2024

Using SEO for Competitive Blunting

As Sun Tzu so eloquently stated in “The Art of War,” “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.” This ancient wisdom still resonates today, but perhaps not in the way Tzu envisioned. When it comes to SEO and digital marketing, knowing your competition […]

February 1, 2024

The Do’s and Don’ts of Implementing a CRM System

As a full-service agency with more than 80 clients, we often get asked our opinions on which CRM solution is best for a given client’s situation or if a certain CRM software is any good. While we have our favorites and can often provide insights on which is best for a client’s needs, the answer […]

January 19, 2024

Is Your Digital Marketing Plan Missing Twitch?

In the dynamic world of digital marketing, platforms continually evolve, and with over 140 million monthly active users, Twitch has emerged as a powerhouse for brands seeking to engage with diverse audiences under the age of 45. In this edition of Plain Talk, we’ll discuss the following: What is Twitch? Who is Twitch’s target audience/demographics? […]

January 5, 2024

Is Google Gemini the New CHATGPT? An Interview with Google Bard.

One of the more intriguing changes expected to hit the marketing landscape in the coming year is the anticipated growth of generative AI capabilities. An exciting toy to play with in 2023, few marketers were using AI to make meaningful advertising work beyond the PR value of saying, “Hey! We made an ad with AI!” […]

December 18, 2023

Perfect Pairings – The Importance of Finding the Right Nonprofit/Corporate Partnerships

Peanut butter and jelly. Taylor and Travis. Sun and sand. Coca-Cola and the Olympics, Lowes and Building Homes for Heroes and other veteran causes. Some things just go better together. For nonprofits and corporations yet to form a strategic alliance, a considerable opportunity awaits. There are many obvious (and less obvious) benefits, including brand perception, […]

December 8, 2023

Silent Switching – How Can Primary Banks Combat the Threat

What is Silent Switching? Silent switching, also referred to as silent attrition and silent churn, is when customers of a bank fragment their banking activities by using secondary institutions for financial services offered by their primary institution. This growing phenomenon is tough to detect because the customer doesn’t close their account at their main institution, […]

November 30, 2023

Is TikTok the New Platform for Infomercials?

You may be as surprised as I was to find out that the infomercial industry is said to have generated nearly $250 billion in sales globally in 2022. In the U.S. alone, infomercial sales are expected to hit $11 billion this year, a 10% increase from 2022. As a millennial, I don’t watch much terrestrial […]

November 21, 2023

The Critical Importance of Brand Authenticity

In Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad (1886), the Supreme Court held that the Fourteenth Amendment applied to corporations, legally establishing what is referred to as corporate personhood. While this decision was based strictly on legal reasons, nowhere does the personhood of a corporation ring truer than in its brand. In previous articles like […]

November 9, 2023

Is Your Website YMYL? Demystifying Google’s YMYL Guidelines and How To Follow Them

Show of hands if you’d watch a reality show called “Your Money or Your Life.” I mean, who wouldn’t?! I can picture the beautiful, backstabbing cast now. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately), in this edition of Plain Talk, we’ll talk about how Google protects your money and your life when you’re searching online. More importantly, we’ll […]

November 2, 2023

3 Things All Marketers Can Learn From Pharma

We’ve all seen them – 60-second commercials that pop up during our favorite TV shows where everyone seems to be dancing, mountain biking or kayaking to happy music while the list of potential side-effects is described in the background. With revenues exceeding $600B, it is not surprising that pharmaceutical companies shelled out almost $8.1 billion […]

October 5, 2023

When Stock Photography Fails, and Can AI Save It?

Recently, we onboarded a new client with a rapidly growing technology company. The company needed help in several areas, but most importantly, they needed a new website. In reviewing their current website, we noticed a stock photo we laughed about because we were certain we’d seen it many times before. After a quick Google Images […]

September 28, 2023

SEO for Financial Services: 10 Key Considerations

“It takes as much energy to wish as it does to plan.” While this sentiment, credited to Eleanor Roosevelt, is often expressed when discussing finances, I like to think the same can be said for financial services SEO. From investment strategies and risk management to services for individuals, businesses, nonprofits, and governments – money and […]

September 21, 2023

Are WordPress Websites Secure?

Every year, CMOs, IT and agency folks like us are asked to deliver websites that are great looking, offer a great customer experience and accessibility, and ultimately drive business. Part of that process always includes the selection of a content management system (CMS) that will make the site easy to update and maintain but that […]

September 8, 2023

Are Gen Z Tax Refunds on Your Marketing Radar?

Does Gen Z spend their tax refunds differently than older taxpayers? The simple answer is, yes! Is now the time to talk about how tax refund season can fit into your marketing plans? Also, yes! After all, you know the old saying “in this world nothing is certain, except death and taxes.” So in this […]

August 29, 2023

Social Media SOS: Turning Customer Concerns and Criticism Into Opportunities

For most of us, social media is an integral part of our daily lives, and it certainly plays a pivotal role in shaping public perception of brands and businesses. While positive feedback and glowing customer reviews can boost a company’s reputation, negative reviews and customer complaints can spread like wildfire and lead to a full-blown […]

August 17, 2023

Mobile SEO: 6 Ways to Future-Proof Your Website and Enhance User Experiences

Pinch. Tap-tap. Swipe. Spread. Tap. A new take on Morse code? A video game character’s ultimate move sequence? Slightly naughty dance moves? Nope. Just some typical user behavior when interacting with a mobile version of a website. Over 60% of searches happen on a smartphone, which is why Google switched to mobile-first in 2016. As […]

August 11, 2023

Is Threads the Missing Thread to Your Social Media Strategy?

Just when we thought there were enough social media platforms (or maybe it’s just me), Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg rolled out “Threads,” a new text-based app that was likely intended to give the very similar Twitter (now known as “X”) and its CEO, Elon Musk, a run for their money. A spinoff from social media […]

July 20, 2023

Here’s What They Don’t Want You To Know About WordPress “No-Code” Builder Plugins

What is this “No-Code” tool, Tyrus? “No-code” WordPress website builder plugins have gained popularity in the past decade for their shiny promise of simplicity and ease in creating decent-looking websites without the need for coding knowledge. Most of these tools offer things like drag-and-drop interfaces, pre-built elements, and quick “canned” design options that cater to […]

July 14, 2023

The Rise of Generative AI in Search – What You Can Do Now

This year at Google’s I/O 2023 conference, Google unveiled a host of new products and features, and unsurprisingly, the focus was on efforts and advancements made by leveraging artificial intelligence (or “AI”). It was so important to Google to establish expertise, authority and trust (sound familiar?) in all things AI that Google execs used the […]

July 6, 2023

Why YouTube should consider bringing back the traditional banner ad for Gen Z

YouTube has more than 2.68 billion active users as of 2023. Baby Shark Dance alone has been viewed on YouTube 12.3 billion times. Yet despite having 2022 revenues of $29.24 billion, YouTube’s revenues have dropped for three quarters in a row! So, while they didn’t ask, we’re offering a suggestion that might help – bring […]

June 22, 2023

Employee Engagement in Healthcare: 4 Ways to Reconnect

It’s a big challenge for many workplaces—how to effectively engage and connect with your employees through internal communications. During the pandemic, employees in countless professions leaned on internal communications to find out what was happening at the office when they were away. People came and went. Staffers heard through the grapevine about a new employee […]

June 16, 2023

The Slow Death of Advertising’s Doofus Dad!

The doofus dad stereotype, which was a negative and inadvertent byproduct of the explosion in social change in the late 20th century, saw dads in not just ads but all media slide from their status as head of the household to the bumbling dads in popular TV series and commercials beginning in the mid-50s with […]

June 13, 2023

Bank Promotional Strategies That Put off Summer Vibes

Ah, summer … the weather is warmer, schools are out, barbecues are firing up, vacations are occurring, and pools and camps are opening. All these good vibrations have a ripple effect, though, as they create behavioral, economic, and psychological shifts in society that financial institutions must be mindful of for a few months on an […]

June 8, 2023

Gen Z and the Case for Out-of-Home Media

When you think of Gen Z (age group 11-26) and media, a litany of words come to mind: social media, influencer, TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, video games, Netflix, podcast, livestream, etc. But as far back as early 2017, research by Kantar Millward Brown found that 55% of Generation Z respondents view out-of-home (OOH) positively. This is […]

May 16, 2023

Law Firm Essentials – Building a Strong Relationship With the Media

If you’re reading this article, you know that running a law practice is about as competitive an industry as there is. How competitive, exactly? Try 1.3 million lawyers in the United States today, according to the American Bar Association. Couple that with the Princeton University study that placed lawyers among the least trusted professionals in […]

May 11, 2023

An Advertising Mom’s Mother’s Day Wish for the Marketing Community

Happy Mother’s Day! Mother’s Day is fast approaching, and an estimated 84% of U.S. adults will be celebrating this year. This day can bring a variety of emotions, and it can mean different things to different people, but at its core, it’s a day to celebrate the motherly figures in our lives and share our […]

May 5, 2023

Why Nurses Week Should Be Important in Your Healthcare Recruitment

As frontline healthcare professionals, nurses play a critical role in our society, providing essential care and support to patients in hospitals, clinics, and other healthcare settings. Every year, National Nurses Week begins May 6th in the United States. This week is an opportunity for healthcare organizations and the general public to recognize the contributions of […]

April 21, 2023

Marketing Pros and Cons of the Latest AI Tech

Just about the only person in the world who hasn’t heard of ChatGPT, GPT-4, or OpenAI is this woman who quite literally has been living under a rock for the last 500 days, having spent that amount of time in a cave! Depending on whom you are listening to, artificial intelligence (AI) is either going […]

April 13, 2023

Why Aren’t Bank Marketing Budgets Budging?

In October 2022, as bankers were facing some uncertainty about what 2023 would look like, Steve Cocheo at The Financial Brand and Gartner’s Jason McNellis shared a great POV about bank marketing budgets and the critical role marketing plays in bank growth. They talked about the need to be “surgical” when considering possible budget cuts […]

April 4, 2023

Taking Your Public Relations Team off the Sidelines

These days, the marketing discipline of public relations is increasingly stepping into the spotlight. With growing social media platforms and new generations of audiences, the looming wave of cancel culture is keeping a close eye on every single decision your brand makes, and for a good reason. As we discussed previously, the slightest misstep in […]

March 28, 2023

How To Use ChatGPT and Google Bard for Personal Injury Lawyer SEO Marketing

Personal Injury Lawyer SEO Marketing For injury law firms, ChatGPT and Google Bard are already making an impact, and if you haven’t heard of these tools, no matter what industry you’re in, in this edition of “Plain Talk,” we’ll get you up to speed. Both AI models are in their early stages, but we’ve already […]

March 21, 2023

The Value of Media Training

First Impressions Have Lasting Impacts Have you ever watched a talk show and noticed a guest fidgeting with their hands so much that you forgot what they were even talking about? How about a politician with a blank stare who appears to be reading from a cue card or a CEO who refuses to answer […]

March 16, 2023

How Banks Can Turn Holidays Into a Pot of Gold

Every bank and credit union communicates with customers/members around holidays, whether it’s because of holiday promotions, bank holiday hours, or just fun social posts tying into the spirit of the season. In this edition of Compound Interest, we will discuss strategies that financial institutions can implement to make the most of these communications. Spring Into […]

March 14, 2023

The Silicon Valley Bank Crisis Explained: 10 Crisis PR Tips for Banks From the SVB Failure

If there is a big news story in banking so far this year, it’s the failure of the 16th largest bank in the United States, Silicon Valley Bank out of Santa Clara, California, that took place on March 10, 2023. The SVB collapse, which took place over the course of roughly 48 hours, reverberated through […]

March 9, 2023

Reaching Gen Z: The Case for Paid Media

1.3 seconds – that’s how much time businesses have to capture the attention of potential Gen Z consumers, according to a recent study by OMG, Yahoo, and Amplified Intelligence. As the first true digital natives, Generation Z (born 1997 – 2012) is the first generation that grew up with the internet, where news, information, entertainment, […]

March 2, 2023

SEO Image Optimization for the Semantic Web

In his 1990 Canon ad, Andre Agassi famously stated, “Image is everything!” This is especially true when trying to impress Google with your newly created “Helpful Content.” So, why would you carefully handpick custom images and forget about image optimization? In today’s edition of Plain Talk, we’ll have a peek at image optimization to help […]

February 21, 2023

Diversity and Marketing

We’ve come a long way, and while there are many things we as marketers have done to advance diversity and inclusion in positive ways, there is still room for improvement, and our journey has not been without its missteps. This Plain Talk article will not only recognize the progress over the past 50 years […]

February 14, 2023

Stop Me if You’ve Heard This One Before… Why Humor Was King in Super Bowl 2023 Ads

It’s that time of the year in ad land when we take a look at the commercials produced at exorbitant cost and placed at, well, exorbitant cost to give brands (and ad agencies) their thirty seconds of Super Bowl fame. But something seemed a little different this year, and it’s not just the absence of […]

January 26, 2023

Is Google Keyword Ranking still important in evaluating SEO?

Since its beginning in 1997, the goal of SEO has been to prioritize keyword rank position, but should that continue to be the standard as Google continues to weigh personal factors and individualized results? In this edition of Plain Talk, we’ll discuss if keyword ranking is still the best way to measure your SEO and […]

January 17, 2023

The Importance of Evolving Your Skill Sets in Public Relations

Public relations touches all facets of marketing. Gone are the days of traditional earned media practices, so how are professionals supposed to succeed in an ever-changing landscape of increased expectations and noise? The only solution is to stay on top of technologies and trends and constantly innovate and evolve. In today’s edition of Plain Talk, […]

January 3, 2023

Are You Ready for the 2023 Social Media Trends?

Now that it’s 2023, it’s time to discuss this year’s new social media trends! Social media environments have drastically changed in the last year, focusing on short-form videos, viral video views and the utilization of influencers of all sizes; however, 2023 will continue to shake up social media and how we interact with brands and […]

December 8, 2022

Make Your Nonprofit Stand Out on Social Media

Whether helping homeless individuals, providing a safe place for stray animals or feeding the hungry (the list goes on and on), nonprofits do great work for our communities in countless ways. While they may have different missions, many nonprofits fall short in the same area – their presence on social media. There are many reasons […]

November 18, 2022

6 Watchouts When Hiring Someone to Build Your Next Website

Depending on your level of knowledge about the specifics of website development, the process can seem like a black box. Having a good working knowledge of the parts involved can save your company from ending up in a situation, months or years down the road, where you find out you don’t have access to or […]

November 3, 2022

Trust In Distrustful Times

You already know the importance of trust but are you thinking about this important form of capital the right way? In this edition of Plain Talk, we’ll explore brands looking at trust as something to be built rather than just simply something to protect. For many years trust was viewed as something individuals or groups […]

October 24, 2022

Three Advertising Scams that May Be Ruining Your Campaign

Brands spend a ton of money getting the word out, driving engagement and generating sales, but fraudulent practices are costing advertisers billions every year. In this edition of Plain Talk, we’ll talk about three shady practices separating you from your hard-earned ad dollars and costing you sales. We’ll discuss: What are click and form fraud, […]

October 10, 2022

Effective Marketing Messages – 5 Tips for Bridging the Gap Between Media and Creative

So, you have the insights to drive your media plan and your messaging but are you really using media “right?” In this edition of Plain Talk, we’ll talk about how to ensure your creative content is made to work ideally with each medium in the plan to maximize the power of your campaign with effective […]

September 29, 2022

Online Reputation Management Tips: 4 Common Questions

Practicing online reputation management and using reputation management software is nothing new. Millions of service-oriented companies like medical and dental offices, law firms, restaurants, retailers, roofers, and more have benefited from improved reviews and ratings by surveying customers and clients after each touchpoint and enabling them to quickly and privately address complaints as well as […]

September 21, 2022

Do You Have Too Much Focus on Online Retail?

Online sales are booming! E-commerce is the way! Brick-and-mortar stores are over! To these paraphrased headlines, I have two words – Amazon Go. Here are another two – Amazon Style. And two more – Amazon Fresh. Yes, the world’s largest e-commerce retailer is actively pursuing a physical retail footprint, and they aren’t the only ones. […]

September 1, 2022

How Will Google’s “Helpful Content Update” Affect Law Firms?

For years, writing articles to help your website rank on Google has been important for generating traffic. For just as long, being found online has sometimes taken a divergent path from providing the most topical content for the user. If you haven’t heard, on August 18th, Google announced their “Helpful Content Update.” This might prove […]

August 25, 2022

7 Reasons to Make Black and White Advertising in a Full-Color World

Many of our articles are about tangible topics, with acronyms like ESG, ABM, or GBP. Marketing, though, is about the mastery of both the objective and the subjective to help you best sell your products or services. In this edition of “Plain Talk,” we’ll discuss black and white advertising and why your brand might choose […]

August 18, 2022

Google Updates And Your Marketing Strategy

Good SEO has always provided the best bang for your buck in LeadGen. As SEO becomes increasingly more sophisticated and users demand better and faster answers to their queries, Google has a difficult job uncovering high-quality content and promoting the most relevant results for a user’s intent. Continuing our discussion of The Evolution of Modern […]

August 11, 2022

Battling the Social Media Burnout

Burnout has impacted so many people over the past two years (if I’m being honest, including myself). It’s a topic that hit home with many people from all walks of life and across all industries throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, leaving them feeling overwhelmed, emotionally drained, and unable to keep up with the constant demands of […]

August 4, 2022

Why You Need to Tame Your Digital Spirit Animal Now

Yes, you have a digital spirit animal. We all do. The question is, how do you know which one you are, and how can you keep it from messing up your digital marketing efforts? In this edition of Plain Talk, we will define the most common digital marketing biases (spirit animals) and give you a […]

July 28, 2022

Invited Personalization and the Invisible Battle for Your Attention

There’s an invisible battle being waged for your attention in the background of the internet. Brand websites, social media apps, and search engines are all vying for your attention by applying algorithms that facilitate showing you content based on the probability that you’ll want to see it. In today’s edition of Plain Talk, we’ll walk […]

July 21, 2022

Tips for Building a Content Strategy for SERP

Businesses today are investing an increasing amount of effort, strategy and creativity in the content they produce for existing customers and prospects. In this edition of Plain Talk, we will talk about some of the top content marketing tips to consider when developing your marketing content strategy and how to ensure your content is developed […]

July 14, 2022

CX Beyond Your Assets and Problems With Programmatic Advertising: Is Your Media Placement Damaging Your Brand?

Have you ever been to a webpage that wasn’t optimized for your phone properly, and the ads blocked the content? Have you had the page collapse on your article, then the banner ads block the scrollable part of the article? How about waiting so long for an ad to disappear that you clicked on the […]

June 30, 2022

5 Ways To Keep Mortgage Marketing Hot While the Market Cools

Inflation is everywhere. Mortgage rates have increased by more than 2.5 percentage points this year. There’s a shortage of housing inventory. The housing market is cooling off quickly. We’ve all seen the headlines, and it does paint quite a picture, but it isn’t time to liquidate your mortgage marketing and lead-gen strategies just yet. It […]

June 23, 2022

Targeting Gone Wild: 3 Targeted Marketing Mistakes Hurting Your Media Campaigns

In media, understanding a consumer target can ultimately mean the difference between success and failure. Understanding who your ideal consumer is, how they use media, how they spend their time, what their interests are, how they behave, and what they believe all help build a picture of who is most likely to use your product […]

June 13, 2022

Advertising to the Real Self vs. Ideal Self – When Do We Become Friends?

In 1990, the Canon EOS Rebel camera ad featuring tennis star Andre Agassi boldly told us, “Image is Everything!” Back then, it certainly was something, but was image more important than it is today? You needn’t look any further than your friend’s and family’s social media pages to realize that the “ideal self” is still […]

June 2, 2022

ESG Branding: 11 Ideas for Leveraging Your ESG Practices

It seems like we are always being introduced to important new business acronyms. We’ve got Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI). Then there’s Return on Ad Spend (ROAS), CMOs are now CROs, and the alphabet soup goes on with CRM, CX, UX, CTR, CPC, SEM, SEO, and so on. However, one […]

May 17, 2022

B2B Digital Marketing Today – 3 Critical Things You Need to Know

During the two years that were the pandemic, we were forced to stay home and not travel. Business was anything but “business as usual.” The B2B world overnight had to grow new synapses to remotely reach, educate, and sell to new and existing clients. While the phone and Zoom calls picked up much of the […]

May 11, 2022

When In-House Marketing Makes Sense: An Ad Agency POV That May Surprise You

For many years brands, and not surprisingly, the advertising industry shared the opinion that it was between difficult and impossible to bring the services that a traditional marketing agency provides “in-house” to the client company. There was pretty good evidence that this was the third rail of advertising as many large companies tried to build […]

May 5, 2022

For Mother’s Day, Mom Really Wants Better Marketing

As a daughter, I’ve shopped for Mother’s Day gifts for my incomparable mom, Kim, for as long as I can remember. Today, I’m a mom to the cutest two-year-old this side of the Mississippi (maybe both sides), and I’ve gained a whole new perspective on what Mother’s Day and Mother’s Day gifts are all about. And then, as […]

April 28, 2022

Google 101, The Evolution of Modern Organic Search

“I’ll just Google it” has become instilled into every aspect of our lives, and for some reason, we place unconditional faith in computer code that has no face, personality, or distinctive trait that conveys a trustworthy outcome. Yet we continue to rely on the Google Search algorithm for daily wisdom, a great spot for pizza, […]

April 21, 2022

Influencer Marketing and Social Commerce – Is Now the Time?

Influencer marketing is here to stay. Let me repeat this one more time for the people in the back. Influencer marketing isn’t going anywhere. We all probably thought that influencer marketing was a fad at one time. We saw social media influencers first start on Facebook promoting products, then came the thousands of long-form reviews […]

April 14, 2022

Law Firm Community Engagement – Growing the Firm Through Corporate Citizenship

Community is a multifaceted word. There are hundreds of touchpoints where your firm can connect with and do good for your local communities. Every day the phone rings or something arrives in the mail with a new suggestion on how your firm can help and give back to your community. In today’s Plain Talk article, […]

April 7, 2022

Six Steps to Business Growth Through Better CX

The chatter about Customer Experience (aka CX) has been growing for the past few years. Initially, this was an offshoot of user experience (UX) for e-commerce companies but quickly grew to be the catchphrase that seeks to map the activities in each consumer funnel, quantify their quality and measure their impact. This has been critical […]

March 31, 2022

Your Brand is Naked

Protecting Your Brand in an Age of Increased Exposure Your brand is the aggregate of what you say it is and what regular people on the street, or probably more correctly, the internet, say it is. In fact, there has never been a time when consumers had more power over what a brand “means” than […]

March 23, 2022

Banking in the Metaverse: Finding Practical Opportunity Within Virtual Complexity

Over the past year, the hype around the metaverse has accelerated at a dizzying pace. With all the talk, it was natural that speculation would run wild with what this means for various industries. In this article, we will look at what it means for the financial services industry. In today’s edition of Compound Interest, […]

March 15, 2022

Is Anyone Paying Attention to Your Media?

We’ve all heard more than once that people today are overstimulated with information, and their attention is stretched thin. We all feel it, too – the subconscious tug of a thousand different things vying for our attention. In a single morning in a household like mine, kids are repeatedly asking the whereabouts of their favorite […]

March 7, 2022

Customer Loyalty Now and the Future of Customer Retention

It’s a question that we as consumers get asked several times a day – “Would you like to sign up for our rewards program?” In fact, it’s become a key part of the customer checkout experience. Rewards and loyalty programs have long been a way for companies to connect with their customers in a unique […]

February 28, 2022

Storytelling in B2B Marketing: Why It Matters

Few marketing tropes have been thrown around over the past several years quite as much as “storytelling.” Many a book, webinar or convention speech has talked about the nature and importance of storytelling, but more often than not, that content has focused on storytelling for consumer brands. Clearly, storytelling is important. We learn about our […]

February 14, 2022

Shake it! – Why Super Bowl Advertisers Bet Big on Nostalgia Tunes

It’s been a few years since we’ve seen this much effort and creativity invested in Super Bowl ads. Maybe it’s because the pandemic funk is lifting. Maybe it’s because 30 seconds cost advertisers an extra $1.5 million this year, but man, there were some great ads! While we are still having trouble unseeing the awkward […]

February 8, 2022

Three Tips to Recruit and Retain Great Teams

Let’s be honest. The last two years have been brutal. The COVID-19 pandemic continues, a lot of us haven’t seen a majority of our co-workers in person since 2020, and many businesses continue to cut back, not by choice but as a result of the hard hit they’ve taken to their bottom line. What, if […]

February 1, 2022

Consumer Engagement in 2022 – A Revolution of Necessity

When COVID first hit in 2020 it brought a lot of uncertainty and along with it a lot of changes to the way people, brands and companies were engaging with each other. As the world collectively began to come to terms with the pandemic, we started to see a lot of brands and companies making […]

January 27, 2022

The Metaverse and Your Brand

Recently, a 13-year-old in your world may have asked for and received a popular virtual reality (VR) headset. You’ve seen them game in it. Maybe you’ve even ventured into their game world out of curiosity. Then, at the end of 2021, Mark Zuckerberg unveiled a rebranding of Facebook into “Meta,” its new parent company focused […]

January 19, 2022

How Will Website Accessibility Standards in WCAG 3.0 Affect Your Business?

In the interest of time, if your website is currently WCAG 2.1 AA or AAA compliant, and you’re reading this article because you’re worried about the new imminent WCAG 3.0 compliance threshold, or you think there will be negative SEO ramifications for not immediately adopting these new standards, you can stop reading now. Your website […]

January 11, 2022

Drive Depositor Growth Through Digital Targeting

Discussions around digital marketing have left financial services marketers with a lot to keep up with as of late. While the robust landscape of tools that digital marketers have at their disposal is at an all-time high, the restrictions and policies affecting third-party data around online privacy have been evolving at an equally rapid rate. […]

January 4, 2022

New Year, New Social Media Trends

What to Expect in 2022 As we head into 2022, it’s time to refresh your social media strategy and make sure you are up to date on the latest social media development and management trends. In this edition of Plain Talk, we’re diving into five popular and influential trends to consider including in your New […]

September 30, 2021

Top Email Mistakes That Kill Lead Gen Efforts

There’s no question that maximizing your email marketing as part of a robust performance marketing program is one of the smartest and most cost-effective things you can do to help boost your marketing horsepower. In fact, we’ve got a great article stuffed with tips for high ROI email campaigns if you’d like to check it out. However, […]

September 8, 2021

Performance Marketing vs. Brand Marketing: Weighing Your Priorities

In 2015, super brand Adidas realized they had a problem—they were optimizing their marketing efforts against the wrong metrics. Yikes. They discovered they were overinvesting in performance-based digital marketing and underinvesting in brand building. They prioritized efficiency and real-time attribution of digital media and ignored brand impact and brand desire. Since then, Adidas has been […]

August 31, 2021

How to Win Trade Media Friends and Influence Sales

Several years ago, a marketing professional from a large company told me trade media simply wasn’t worthy of their marketing plan. Talking about their product in trade media before it was available to consumers didn’t make sense to them. They had a sales team to handle getting the word out. No offense to their team, […]

August 26, 2021

Social Media Trends – Fishing for Success in Crowded Waters

Comparing TikTok and Instagram Reels The average adult begins to lose concentration after just eight seconds, according to a 2020 study performed by Microsoft. In other words, we have a shorter attention span than a goldfish. When considering social media for customer engagement, our short attention span is further complicated by the glut of channel […]

August 16, 2021

Beyond Job Boards – Is Your Recruitment Marketing Missing Something?

Recruiting applicants should be an easy process…you post a job listing, you send it out on all the major job platforms, maybe have your employees share it on social media, and you’re done. Right? Well, not exactly. As many business owners have experienced in 2021, hiring quality applicants is getting harder and harder. In this […]

July 15, 2021

Today’s Biggest Threat to Business Recovery

The pandemic is slithering slowly away and economic factors seem favorable in the U.S., so it looks like we’re going to be OK. So, what could go wrong? If you are like many companies, a return to normal means staffing up to pre-pandemic levels as we bounce back; however, in many business verticals, something’s different. […]

July 1, 2021

Voice Search, is it Time to Panic (Again)?

In a September 2014 interview with Fast Company, Andrew Ng, Chief Scientist at Baidu went on the record to state that in five years he anticipated 50% of searches on Chinese search engine, Baidu, would be image or voice searches. This prediction was concentrated into an article, which implied that “in five years, at least […]

June 15, 2021

C-Stores In An Omnichannel World

According to the National Association of Convenience Stores (NACS), 21% of c-store operators have recently shifted to curbside pickup, while 14% are focused on drive-thrus. These growing numbers are due to COVID-19 consumer trends and falling fuel sales. This results in what NACS describes as “pushing the industry further into the omnichannel universe.” Over the […]

June 3, 2021

Can You Bank On Your Brand?

Balancing Innovation and Branding for Long-Term Growth For traditional banks and credit unions that enjoy strong name recognition, the value of their name carries equity. For many years, this has been a fixed dynamic that isn’t lost upon anyone in the industry. Over the last few years, traditional institutions have been finding themselves having to […]

May 18, 2021

Will Trade Shows Still Be Your Super Bowl?

According to the Center for Exhibition Industry Research, there were roughly 9,400 business-to-business trade shows in the U.S. in 2019. These trade shows by some estimates represented a $15 billion industry that was forecast to exceed $17 billion in 2021. More importantly, these shows routinely represent critical sales opportunities for businesses of all sizes. Then […]

April 22, 2021

Customer Journeys and Lessons From the Links

When I was a kid, my near-scratch golfer dad spent a lot of time trying to teach me his passion. There were many steps on how to approach the ball. And there were corrective instructions for most practice swings, but when it came to the actual swing, there were only two things I was told […]

April 15, 2021

Fish Tails, Fans and Foes: The Importance of Online Reputation Management

In today’s hyperconnected, digitally focused world, reputation management is a 24-hour job. With countless social media platforms available for both fans and foes to say anything, anytime about your brand—like that they found fish tails (well, shrimp) in their box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch—these posts can easily influence a company’s success and even redefine a […]

April 13, 2021

The Rise of Micro-Influencers in Healthcare Marketing

When we think of online influencers, it’s easy to instantly think of a celebrity or someone on Instagram with a blue checkmark by their name and one million plus-followers; sharing their favorite makeup or facial cleanser – but in reality, these types of influencers aren’t what’s driving the high user engagement rates – rather their […]

April 8, 2021

Sticky Post-Pandemic Behaviors

First a Story The first restaurant I remember going to was the Howard Johnson’s on Route 9 in Framingham, Massachusetts. They had great fried clams and terrific ice cream, and I remember when I was five years old going for the first time with my grandmother. She was a very stern and prim Irish Catholic […]

April 1, 2021

Do Your Content Assets Satisfy Skyrocketing Web Use?

Brands globally worked to build or upgrade their websites and online stores in response to the pandemic, which is no surprise with the closures of brick-and-mortar businesses. However, what many brands did not prepare for was the impact that skyrocketing internet use had on the relevance of their digital image and video asset library. In […]

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