Four States Small Business Blog

Sometimes companies make the mistake of thinking, if they have a great company logo, they’ve done all they need to do in terms of branding. Your logo represents your brand, but it is not, in fact, your brand. In this post, we’ll discuss what your brand is, why it’s important, and why having a good logo is not enough.

Branding is a term that was once reserved for business marketing, but it’s expanded far beyond that now. Celebrities and entrepreneurs have personal brands that are as valuable and powerful as the organizations and companies that fill our marketplace. Recently, however, political branding has taken center stage. Applying brand to a political campaign isn’t actually new, but adapting the corporate terminology that surrounds branding is new in the mainstream. (This is, perhaps, most clearly demonstrated by the film, Our Brand Is Crisis, which centers around two consultants who are, essentially, political marketers.)

At the end of Q2 2017, Procter & Gamble, the biggest advertiser in the U.S.A., announced that due in part to the fact that it cut back its digital marketing budget by as much as $140 million, it was able to beat earnings expectations. Specifically, despite a slump in consumer spending, P&G reported a 15% rise in all-in net earnings to $2.3 billion, or a percentage point of profit margin, and at least half that gain is a direct impact of cutting its digital advertising budget.

When it comes to marketing healthcare, radio might not be the first thing that comes to mind. However, 2017 is a great year for healthcare brands, practitioners, and hospitals to consider marketing themselves on the radio.

Brand awareness plays a vital role in the success of your small business. But how do you know whether your brand awareness strategy is working? Like every other aspect of your marketing strategy, it’s important to track and measure brand awareness to understand if you’re getting the results you want and maximizing ROI. Tracking brand awareness can be challenging, so in this post, we’ve put together some tips for getting started.

There’s something fun and exhilarating about visiting a casino for Americans. In fact, Americans spend much more on casino visits than they do on movie visits, and an annual $59 billion dollars are spent at casinos across the country.

Believe it or not, 18% of small businesses admit that they don’t track any metrics or key performance indicators (KPI) related to their marketing, however, tracking marketing metrics is critical to the success of every marketing campaign, not to mention an overall marketing strategy. That’s because marketing metrics are the only way to know for sure that you’re seeing the results that you need, along with the ROI you want, from each of your marketing efforts. Without them, you have to guess whether you’re reaching your audience effectively, spending your marketing budget on the right channel and tactics, and growing your business. Tracking these metrics provides a history and basis of comparison to ensure you’re improving along the right track.

Every marketing campaign relies on effective advertising frequency, which is to say, the number of times that a consumer is exposed to an advertisement or brand message per week that’s best at effectively influencing them to respond. It may sound like a magic number, but we know what that number is: a frequency of 3. Hearing an advertisement three times builds recognition and trust while inspiring action without the risk of wearout. In today’s post, we’ll talk about three ways to make the most of the first three times consumers are exposed to your marketing in Joplin, Missouri.

It may be strange to think of an industry like home improvement having an “off season,” but it certainly does. Think about it: In spring, people take on projects like painting to help make their home look great for the summer, and in the summer, they take on bigger projects like additions and window replacement because the weather is amenable, the daylight hours are long, and they can go on vacation while the work is being done. In fall, people work hard to wrap up projects and prepare their home for winter. However, whether during the winter (especially snow and frigid temperatures), short daylight hours, a cluster of major holidays from Thanksgiving through New Year’s Day, and the beginning of tax season all make homeowners shy away from home improvement projects.

With multiple universities, colleges, technical and trade schools in the area — it can be difficult for schools to stand out and snag student attention in Joplin. Marketing is an important way to help differentiate your school from the rest and ensure potential students are aware of its best qualities and benefits. Of course, this is a time when people, students especially, don’t want a sales pitch.