Creating a Digital Advertising Strategy
The other day I was doing some basic maintenance on my lawn mower. Everything was going smoothly until I needed to remove a few pieces of hardware that were difficult to reach. Being stubborn, I wedged my pliers in there and tried to remove them. After a lot of time and effort, all I had…
Read MoreFootball & Marketing Agencies – What Could They Possibly Have in Common?
It’s football season and for many people, that means lining up tailgate parties, picking fantasy league teams and making plans for Homecoming (which by the way started in Missouri at Mizzou). Whether you like football or not, we find that it’s a great analogy for our agency and how we service clients. It helps our…
Read MoreNiche Marketing… and a Sweet Tattoo?
Niche marketing is the concentrated marketing effort to a unique and specific segment of customers. Often parts of larger, more broad customer groups, niche markets have a unique set of demographics and/or product or service needs and desires. The practice of niche marketing can have several benefits to your advertising program. The more targeted your…
Read MoreWhere is Voice Search Heading?
Recently we added Alexa to our home sound system. Although she sits inconspicuously in a couple different spots in our house, she stands ready to assist to play music, find recipes, adjust sound levels and serve up any little tidbit of information we desire. What a woman! I’ve been using Siri on my iPhone for…
Read MoreLet Data Drive Your Marketing Decisions
Recently, I watched the movie, Moneyball, again. In case you haven’t seen it, It’s a very entertaining baseball movie based on the concept of tracking everything and making decisions based on what the data tells you. In the movie, the concept proved very successful. But it’s the movies, right? In the old days, baseball managers…
Read MoreManaging a Content Marketing Team
If you’re managing a content marketing team you are likely well aware of the importance of content, and not just content, but really good content. But how can you lead your content marketing team to consistently and efficiently hammer out new, really good content? There’s no doubt this is a challenging question and I’m guessing…
Read MoreUsing Snapchat for Business
Is Snapchat Right For My Business? Snapchat is becoming more and more popular. It’s a common social media platform with the millennial demographic and the older side of the next Generation Z. There’s no denying its popularity or that it will likely be around and a player in the social media world for some time.…
Read More7 Digital Marketing Trends That Should Be on Your Radar
Recently a couple members of the Callis crew attended an AMI (Agency Management Institute) Digital Summit. AMI is a management consulting firm that specializes in helping marketing agencies like us take their performance to the next level—and keep improving. The Digital Summit is an interactive workshop where digital teams come together to learn about new…
Read More6 Tactics to Survive Facebook Algorithm Changes
At the beginning of the year, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg publicly announced that Facebook would be making big changes throughout 2018. The overarching goal is to make Facebook more about personal, meaningful interactions between people. While this is a worthy goal, it does pose significant challenges for anyone using the platform for marketing. It also…
Read MoreDigital Marketing Certifications That Can Improve ROI
Take a moment to reminisce on the year 1988, thirty years ago–George H. W. Bush is elected president, the Los Angeles Dodgers won the World Series, the cost of a Super Bowl ad is $600,000, …. and Google wouldn’t be founded for another ten years. Going online to obtain a marketing certificate was unheard of.…
Read MoreMarketing Insights: A Business Mindset
I’ve been thinking about writing about a business mindset for some time now. In fact, I’ve visited with my team about it on multiple occasions. But I’ve been holding off until I really had a day to remember. Monday was that day. Business is Like a Roller Coaster Let me start by saying that when…
Read MoreCustomer Service Tips: Employee Empowerment
Customer Service Tips from Walt We Can All Learn From Walt I was fortunate to spend a day recently attending the Disney Institute’s Approach to Business Excellence seminar. As expected, customer service tips was a huge part of the presentation. Disney is well known for employee empowerment or empowering their employees to make decisions without…
Read MoreOnline Market Research
Effective marketing is about relevance. The better we can respond to and fulfill the needs of our customers and potential customers, the more effective we will be in driving them to act and make a purchase. Why Customers Buy What They Buy Today, consumers must wade through an avalanche of emails, web pages, social media…
Read More3 Tips to Step-up Media Relations at Tradeshows
Folks it’s here – tradeshow season. For those of us working in the Outdoor industry, planning for SHOT Show, ATA and the agriculture shows is well underway. Tradeshows provide a great opportunity to build relationships with the media, just as you would with your customers and buyers. As you know, your company is way more…
Read MoreWhat Happens if Facebook Goes Away?
I was at a CMO conference this past week for the outdoor industry and a very provocative question was posed to the group. What if Facebook goes away? Hmmm. Interesting. Do you have so much invested in building out your social media channel on Facebook that it could become disruptive to your marketing efforts if…
Read MoreTake Time Off to Get More Done
Wait…what? You may be asking yourselves, “Did I read this title correctly?” Yes, you did. Corona said it perfectly in their popular marketing campaign “Find your beach.” Corona suggests finding your place where you can unwind and rest your mind, and finding your place where you can detach from the busy and stressful world we…
Read MoreThe Benefits of Using an Ad Agency
Ad agencies can be called a lot of things; creative agencies, PR firms, marketing agencies, digital agencies, etc. Some agencies have specialties or focus in specific areas and that is often reflected in what they call themselves. The “definitive” Wikipedia describes ad agencies as “a business dedicated to creating, planning, and handling advertising and sometimes…
Read MoreBe Committed to Marketing
Economic trends are cyclical and ever-changing. Business sales increase and decrease with changes in the market, industry and a wide variety of other factors. There will be ups and there will be downs, regardless of your product or industry. When you find yourself on one of the periodic downward trends and your sales have taken…
Read MoreAre you Overmarketing?
Recently, a prospect used the word “overmarketing” in a new business call when describing what one of their marketing challenges was. I hadn’t thought about overmarketing for a while, and it intrigued me, so I did some reading just to freshen up. One article I read asserted that Overmarketing implies the fundamental difference between selling…
Read MoreConverting Information Overload into Action
We operate in a digital world. As marketers, almost everything we do has some form of digital component. People are online now more than ever; at work, at home, on the go. In marketing communications, it’s our job to reach those people with relevant and engaging marketing and advertising messages. The good news about all…
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