In recent years, the marketing landscape has shifted from that of a sole “Agency of Record” to the decision by many organizations to work with a number of different marketing institutions simultaneously in order to better reach their audience using a variety of tactics.

Brands who don’t have the in-house capability or industry familiarity to succeed at driving awareness and engagement across a multitude of touch points require specialized teams who can break through the noise with cutting-edge strategy and maximize results with their deep channel or industry knowledge.

For many small and medium sized businesses, building out and managing all aspects of their organization’s marketing needs simply is not feasible. As such, partnering with a team with deep expertise and agility in specific marketing arenas is an efficient and effective way to keep up with changing consumer behaviors, launch successful marketing campaigns and drive new business.

Below, we’ve outlined a few ways in which business owners, decision makers and marketing experts may want to realign and redesign advertising campaign execution in order to better resonate with consumers.

Stir the (Emotional) Pot

Any solid, successful marketing campaign needs to begin with insight on where prospects are searching for and consuming information. This in turn allows an organization’s internal team and marketing partners to determine the most effective marketing channels and platforms for their business.

However, while knowing where, when and how consumers are choosing products and services is important, knowing why may be even more so. According to Harvard Professor Gerald Zaltman, maximizing customer engagement is directly related to the subconscious mind. Emotion is the true driver of purchasing decisions as well as decision making as a whole. Understanding and utilizing this concept is of great value to any marketing and sales team.

As business owners and marketers, we often get excited over the amazing things our products and services can do – the functional nature of a good or a job. In order to achieve better results, one should carefully consider not only the message, but the message vessel as well.

Omnichannel is Where it’s At

While the pandemic has surely helped to expedite the shift to digital advertising, there have been specific intricacies to such a shift. Largely, the nature of digital marketing tactics utilized are generally more engaging and hyper-targeted to specific audiences. The use of video in ad campaigns and the growth of video marketing as an advertising powerhouse is one such change in order to draw in audiences and… you guessed it… encapsulate a feeling to generate an emotive response.

However, while video marketing helps to generate brand engagement, choosing to only market your products or service on a single video advertising channel (we estimate that there’s about five, yes five, “main” video advertising channels) is simply not a well-rounded strategy.

This is when knowing your audience and trusting your advertising partner(s) is especially crucial. As mentioned earlier, different advertising organizations have different areas of strength when it comes to best utilizing the multitude of platforms available to generate results. And, due to the seamless sharing of information between mediums, reaching customers at each moment within their buying journey has become second nature for marketing experts.

Don’t Uproot the Trust Tree

You have your trusted marketing team in place, you have your marketing collateral that established brand legitimacy and evokes emotion, now where do you place it to move the credibility ball down the road?

Recently, Edelman released their 2021 Trust Barometer which reveals both the levels of trust and mistrust in our societal institutions and in those who lead such institutions around the world. The report recognizes that the biggest opportunity to earn business trust is guarding information quality.

There is quite a bit of false information floating around on the internet and consumers have become increasingly skeptical about brand legitimacy. Forbes recently referred to the increase in fake news as the “infodemic” and we couldn’t agree more with the validity of that term. In such a strained digital environment, organizations that establish themselves as credible gain confidence among consumers.

For businesses running branding and awareness campaigns, partnering with trusted news sources is a great way in which to obtain organic growth. News sources are consumer and community focused. Therefore, by association, brands who advertise within or on news sites are too.

Wrap Up

The way in which organizations and marketing teams interact with one another and interact with consumers is ever-changing. However, the element of trust remains constant. Trust in the hands of marketing experts to produce and share collateral to achieve business results. Trust in the product or service from a consumer lens. And trust in the platform on which an organization’s message is being shared.

As the world slowly begins to return to “normal”, developing a marketing strategy that your organization ~trusts~ is extremely important to retain and earn market share. Now is the time to act and marketing experts are here to help.

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