While there have been numerous shiny new marketing objects and strategies deployed this year, leveraging channels that have proven successful year-over-year is a great foundation to set your business up for success in the months (and years!) ahead.

Now is the time to assess what worked and what didn’t work in 2021 and aim to patch any gaps that exist in your communication and marketing strategy in order to achieve target goals and objectives in the new year.

Formulating a cohesive marketing effort to retain or earn market share is crucial in the coming weeks and months. For many businesses within many industries, competition is steep. However, there are ways to creatively and effectively separate your organization from the crowd.

Below, we’ve outlined three strategies that have led our clients to success this year and will serve as a launchpad into 2022.

The Value of Email Marketing for Your Brand

Email marketing has withstood the test of time in the world of marketing. This is largely due to the fact that email marketing can be utilized within any vertical and benefits any company that needs to boost brand awareness and traffic (in-person and digitally). In fact, according to a report conducted by Litmus Software, 4 out of 5 marketers surveyed stated that they would sooner give up social media over email marketing.

Email marketing is a platform that can be used in a wide variety of manners for a wide variety of campaigns. For example, various email marketing campaigns that can help to nurture leads and facilitate the progression of a prospect through the modern consumer journey include:

• Welcome Emails

The first email that a new email subscriber or customer receives from your organization sets the foundation for developing a strong, long-term relationship through various marketing channels including an email program. While there is little doubt that welcome emails provide value, Experian’s welcome email report concluded that such emails have transaction rates that are nine times higher than bulk emails. In addition, there is increased revenue associated with welcome emails. According to the same study, average revenue associated with welcome emails is eight times higher than revenue associated with bulk emails.

• Helpful Content

As email marketing is a great strategy to increase brand visibility, incorporating quality content and information within this communication tool allows your organization to build relationships with both current and future customers. By delivering messages directly to their inbox, valuable material can establish brand credibility and expertise and in turn improve consumer trust. Furthermore, as email is all about improving engagement and getting results, developing email marketing campaigns (both business-to-business and business-to-consumer) that include interactive elements (such as hover-over imagery, GIFs, polls, etc.) tend to earn better results.

• Limited Time Promotions

While we noted above the value of welcome emails, we would be remiss not to note the value of including an offer or a promotion in both welcome emails and real-time emails alike. According to Experian’s welcome email report, emails that included a “free shipping” offer had the highest transaction rates across the board. In addition, a “15% off” promotional offer had one of the highest revenue values per email for both welcome emails and real-time email campaigns.

Reaching people via email is critical as today’s consumers are always on the go and constantly connected with their digital devices (mobile device, tablet, etc.). Email marketing is a cost effective, highly targeted, measurable advertising medium to reach ideal audiences locally, nationally or globally.

Podcast Advertising

According to recent data released by Edison Research, there are over 1.5 million podcast shows and more than 34 million episodes available to download (as of October 2020).

The power of podcasts has been growing steadily over the course of the past few years. The strategy is extremely versatile and above all, educational. Podcasts allow brands to communicate their message and mission directly to consumers in an engaging, easily digestible manner. In addition, podcasts have become an increasingly trusted news source. By advertising on such a platform, this in turn improves the positive reception of an ad. As marketers, doing our due diligence to position our partners near relevant, trustworthy content is our top priority. While branding has always been a delicate business, authentically advertising on appropriate mediums with powerful messaging is a winning combination.

So, how can your business incorporate podcasts into the marketing mix? Below are a couple of tactics that can be deployed to take advantage of the advertising platform.

• Create an Audio Ad

Generally, an audio podcast ad consists of a short (10-15 second) read pre- and post-podcast that allows your company to share valuable content to listeners in order to establish a connection.

Audio ads are generally a lower-cost option and can be easily moved or removed, depending on ad content.

• Sponsor a Podcast

Although typically a pricier option, sponsoring a podcast generally affords your business increased exposure and a higher ROI than an audio ad alone. In essence, sponsoring a podcast is advertising your brand on a specific show. As there is usually only one sponsor per show, your brand’s name and message will be associated with the show in the minds of listeners. Organizations like ZipRecruiter and P&G have successfully sponsored podcasts that aligned with their target audience in order to increase brand awareness.

If you’ve been on the fence about using podcasts as an advertising method for your brand, talk to us today to help ease some of your concerns!

Display Advertising

Through display advertising, you can ensure that your company’s message is reaching those most likely to engage with your organization.

Typically, display ads are banner ads (graphics and text) that appear on websites and social media platforms. Display advertising allows you to reach your target audience efficiently and cost-effectively. Plus, with our data-driven approach to finding your ideal consumer through our four main targeting solutions (geotargeting, contextual targeting, retargeting, behavioral targeting), we can help you get the most out of every ad impression by selecting the audience with the highest likelihood to respond to your advertising. By employing engaging creative to emphasize your brand’s exclusive opportunities, rates, packages, etc., and appearing adjacent to relevant content, display advertising can assist in generating new business.

While third-party data has been the foundation of tailored and targeted marketing approaches for many years now, consumers have begun to sour on the fact that advertisers know more about them than they had originally bargained for. As a result, major regulatory changes have been made and are continuing to be made to third-party data policies – namely restricting the data that can be collected.

As Hearst is the eighth largest company in the nation based on internet reach, this provides us with unique and invaluable opportunities to reach a large audience. Hearst and the Times Union Media Group have recently made significant investments in an effort to gather crucial first-party data from our audiences in order to strategically build and optimize advertising campaigns to deliver the best results for our clients and ensure an optimal return on investment.

The Times Union Media Group can leverage the audiences from Hearst’s various media properties (including television stations, magazines and more) and the data behind these audiences to create an archetype of your ideal customer. By working with us here locally, we are able to tap into this massive audience to in turn, help your business reach more consumers and as a result, drive more business. We believe that reaching people at the right time, on the right platform, with the right messaging is crucial.

Stay Tuned for Part Two Next Week: Check back with us for part two of four of our top holly jolly essential marketing strategies!

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