Oh, Marketing. How Do We Love Thee?

In honor of Valentine’s Day today, we wanted to share some of the things that we absolutely LOVE about marketing. We cover many aspects of marketing in our day-to-day business with clients. We use tried-and-true marketing strategies and tactics that are the bedrock of a solid marketing plan. And there are also trends that we love, so we take advantage of those for our clients as well.

These Marketing Things Are Both Tried-and-True and Also On-Trend

Incorporating these marketing things (strategies, tactics, platforms, approaches) in your business of marketing for a client, is a win-win. First, your clients see results. Then, you look smart. And finally, you’re both successful at growing the business.

Email Marketing

Clients are reaping results from email marketing campaigns. So having the right content and creative are critical. Companies can build a relationship with their customers when email marketing is executed with the reader in mind. Be informative and helpful vs. direct selling, and see an impact on business.

Strategic Paid Traditional and Digital Media Campaigns

Linking these two strategies (traditional and digital) is more effective. First and foremost, invest to meet the target where they are. Approach them in the right mediums. Earn more quality customers by thoughtfully targeting your messaging to impact sales more effectively.

Marketing Leaders Asking the Right Questions

We love this marketing thing: smart leaders. Our clients are smart marketing leaders who are thoughtful in their approach. To start with, we see them asking the right questions. But then we’re asking them the right questions too. This collaboration pays off for both businesses. They want a plan over time, not a one-off initiative. Thus, they are in it to win it for the long haul, and so are we.

Re-evaluate the sales funnel

The sales team might be engaged in selling one-on-one. But it might not be utilizing technology, processes and other tools to continue to engage and grow the engagement. Successful customer engagement and retention includes tactics at every point in the sales funnel. And utilizing powerful tools to scale and automate in conjunction with smart, thoughtful strategies make sense.

Client Loyalty and Retention

It is easier to grow existing business than gain new business. Enter the customer loyalty program. The trend in loyalty and customer retention programs will continue, blurring the lines between physical and digital as 2023 progresses, making customer retention a seamless experience. Loyalty programs incorporate email, text messages, and even print. Clients can grow their infrequent shoppers into brand fanatics using loyalty programs.

Ready to Love Your Company’s Marketing Things?

Think deeper in 2023. Really focus your attention on your customers. Ultimately, create a marketing ecosystem that keeps them informed. Give them insider information. And make their lives easier. This approach is a sure way to see your business grow this coming year. And we would love that for you!

Attend marketing conferences to learn, grow and connect with other leaders.

Attending a branding or marketing conference can not only expand your knowledge, it can expand your network. It can also broaden your opportunities and your outlook! To begin with, when you go to a conference, you’re hanging out with people who do a job like yours. These are people who face the same leadership challenges that you do. You have similar interests, as far as work goes, so you can all learn from each other. At a marketing conference, you can share experiences and gain best practice knowledge from others who do your job.

Improving your knowledge is another reason to attend branding and marketing conferences. For instance, you might learn new cutting edge information about your profession. Or you can learn how to enhance the work you are already doing. The impact on your upskilled performance is worth the price of admission.

Gain valuable insight into your industry, profession, or specific job.

First of all, attending conferences gives you the opportunity to meet people who do what you do now. And secondly, you’ll get a chance to network with people who do what you’ll do next. Meeting people you admire in person gives you the chance to ask questions, have a chat with them, and get to know them and how they think. The best leaders surround themselves with other experts.

Marketing conferences to attend as a senior professional:

Senior Leadership

CES: CES is the most influential tech event in the world — the proving ground for breakthrough technologies and global innovators.

This is where the world’s biggest brands do business and meet new partners, and the sharpest innovators hit the stage.

World Business Forum: Organized and curated by WOBI each year in cities across the Americas, Europe and Asia, World Business Forum is a two-day event that brings together thousands of restless minds united by their passion for business.

• Learn from and be inspired by some of the world’s most renowned figures from business and beyond. It’s a blend of content comprised of CEOs, entrepreneurs, innovators, thinkers, artists and sportspeople.
• The conference focuses on the issues most relevant to today’s businesspeople, stimulating new thinking and inspiring action.

It provides a unique networking environment to connect with like-minded professionals.

CMO/Senior Level

B2B Forum by MarketingProfs: The B2B Forum is a great space for B2B executives to meet and share advice on the best digital marketing tactics and technology.

While at the conference, you will get the chance to network. And you can connect with other driven marketing and business professionals. The sessions cover authenticity, logic, empathy, and building trust with your potential and existing clients. Overall, the program gives insights into your marketing style and what could be missing.

B2B Marketing Exchange: This is a core event for B2B marketing, covering the current issues in B2B, including Demand Generation, Messaging Frameworks, AI and Audience Centricity. Is there yoga in the morning? You bet.

Meet amazing B2B marketers and stay in touch with everything B2B.

BrandSmart: BrandSmart 2023 will be structured as 10+ TED Talk-style presentations. They’ll feature leaders from all over the world. They will be talking about the cornerstones of brand resilience. They’ll discuss the most recent trends and innovations, and give out the BrandSmart Awards. This conference lets professionals network in a uniquely styled format. Featured speakers include executives from Edelman, American Dental Association and SiriusXM & Pandora.

Strategic Marketing 2023: A Reuters Event, Strategic Marketing 2023 brings together leaders from the world’s most recognizable brands to define the future of marketing. This is the global platform to inspire and empower marketing leaders. Map the digital DNA of your consumer, foster brand loyalty and community, and unlock innovation.

Hyper-digitalization is driving an overload of online content. So marketers must stay ahead of industry trends and champion creativity as we look towards 2023. 

Join CMOs, trailblazers and experts at SM23 for the most crucial learning and networking opportunity of the year.

Take a step toward growth and learning this year at a marketing conference.

Make a commitment in 2023 to grow as a senior professional by attending one of these valuable conferences. Start finding your peer group. Then learn best practices. Maybe discover a new vendor. There are many benefits to including attending a senior level conference in your growth plan this year.

Put Your Marketing Must-Have Plan in Place Now.

Are you ready to tackle your company’s marketing must-have plans for next year? You’re in luck! We’ve simplified that list for you, to get you started. Your business success can be mapped out ahead of time with these five guideposts put in place to execute against.

Having a plan means you know what to do to build your business according to seasons, holidays, business cycles, trends and more. And, if you need help formulating any of these must-haves — or executing them, please ask us!

The Marketing Must-Haves:

1. Marketing Plan

What are your 2023 business and marketing goals? Define them now. Make a marketing plan. Then add in audiences, competition, SWOT, strategies and tactics. Know who you are and what you’re doing. Know what makes your company unique, and what your brand’s biggest benefit is.

2. Content Calendar

This important calendar includes social media and blogging as marketing initiatives. Know what you’re going to talk about every month and every week using this calendar. Take advantage of social media trends. Every content strategy needs a roadmap with dates, and this calendar is super helpful for engaging your consumer on a regular basis.

3. Marketing Timeline

Calendarize key events pertinent to your business, down to the day. Know what events to capitalize on for business success. Plan out when you will carry out campaigns for advertising, digital or print, as well as event pushes, PR and media relations, holiday and event marketing and more.

4. Marketing operations — including people, technology and analytics

Do you have the right team in place? Do you have enough team to get the job done next year? What tech and analytics tools do you need to execute and then evaluate the effectiveness of your strategies against your goals?

5. Marketing Budget

Once the four above have been defined, put numbers to each of them. Create a marketing budget that maximizes your impact. Plan for this budget quarterly, and then, manage to it monthly. Staying on track will pay off.

No matter the size of your business, start on your marketing must-haves now.

Take the guesswork out of what to do next week, next month, or just next with these five marketing must-haves for planning your next business year! We’ve seen our clients grow year over year when we help them set these must-have marketing goals in place. Then, we work together diligently all year to execute against them for business growth and success. It can work for you too.

How can your company create better social media content and increase engagement? A cost-effective marketing strategy that is often overlooked today is employee — we prefer “team”— activation. Not only can employee activation, hence forth, team activation, benefit brands externally but internally as well.

What is Team Activation?

Team activation provides team members with social media guardrails. This approach allows them to share content and ideas on social media that align to their interests and professional goals.

More than 10 years ago, employee advocacy was popular. Team activation is similar but more engaging and collaborative. Employee advocacy forces team members to blast boilerplate messages and brand content to their social networks. The generic approach and efforts of employee advocacy fizzled out over time.

But team activation encourages employees to authentically create and share content that aligns with their company, on their own channels. If done properly, team activation benefits brands from employee engagement and communication to marketing and sales. As well as much more.

How does this work on different social channels?

Team activation works across all the social networks, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, TikTok, Twitter, YouTube, etc. Over the past few years, according to our clients’ successful team activation campaigns, we have found:

• Team members grow to consistently like brand posts on Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest.
• Whereas they like LinkedIn posts and tweets, they also reshare or RT the information to their personal accounts.

How does this help the brand internally?

When team members are socially engaged, they are more likely:

• Stay at their company
• Optimistic about the company’s future
• To believe the brand is more competitive

How does this approach help the brand externally?

Here’s a fact: sales reps using social media as part of their sales strategies outsell 78% of their peers. According to Social Media Today, content shared by employees receives 8x more engagement than organic content shared by brand channels. More and more, social algorithms bury a company’s page posts, tweets, pins, etc. And, people believe individuals’ social media posts and engagement are more authentic and creditable than a brands’.

Done well and right, your team becomes real brand advocates. Think less expensive form on influencer marketing. We can help. Front Porch Marketing holds collaborative in person or virtual team workshops. Also, we do one-on-one team member training.

Successful email marketing can be a cost-effective way to market your business. When done right, you’ll be keeping your brand top-of-mind and become a trusted resource for your customers. They’ll look forward to your emails because you’ll be sharing your knowledge and solving their challenges.

Keeping your audience engaged with email marketing, as a part of your overall marketing strategy, is an excellent way to introduce new products, solve an on-going pain-point for customers, give a tutorial, keep your customers up-to-date about the industry, and more.

How Do You Do Successful Email Marketing?

There is a lot to designing an effective and efficient email campaign to be successful. The most important question to ask yourself: Are you leading with the audience in mind? Everything you do should be from THEIR perspective. It’s for them. Help them. Guide them. Solve their problems.

Then ask yourself: Are you overselling? Your brand and your products do not always need to be the hero in email marketing. Afterall, this is an on-going dialogue you’re having with your customers. Establishing a relationship is a longer-term proposition. Don’t oversell. Again, be helpful. Put yourself in their shoes and ask yourself: What do I need? What will make my life easier or better?

Getting Started With Email Marketing: Do This Not That

Your email marketing is a fail if it doesn’t contain these four elements. Set yourself up for success by making sure these four things are included thoughtfully in each email you send:

1. Look professional — Make sure the email platform template is set for your brand fonts and colors. Design is key to successful email marketing as well — design a nice header and footer. Link to your social channels in your footer. Stay consistent from month to month with this template and your customers will start to recognize your email and your brand, and look forward to your next email.
2. Have a call to action — What can readers do to learn more? Use a button in your email that links back to your website where the reader will read more, download something, watch a video, contact you for more information or order a product. For instance, if you are linking to a blog post, tease them in the email, but don’t reveal the real scoop…ask them to “Read More” and click the button to go to your website for the rest of the insight.
3. Date and time — When do users want to engage and not unsubscribe? Many email programs like Mailchimp will tell you when the best time is to send emails to be successful. Statistically, Tuesday mornings are the day most people open their emails.
4. Don’t try too hard to sell — Engage your audience and don’t make the email be all your company. Again, be helpful: share hints, tips, tricks. Give away your knowledge and they’ll see you as the industry leader and come to you to solve their problems (with your products or your service.

Most Importantly: Be consistent.

Successful email marketing campaigns provide content to make readers’ lives better. They are informative, not sales-y. Email marketing campaigns provide value, real value, to customers’ lives consistently. Create a schedule using Google Sheets and plan each month’s topic, date, and assign responsibilities. After a while, it becomes easier and easier to stick to your schedule and create smart, thoughtful, nicely designed emails that make your brand the one that customers turn to again and again.

I get asked what it’s like to work with my mom, the boss of Front Porch Marketing, Chief Rocker Julie Porter. Well, let me tell you. It’s a lot harder than you would expect. Why? Because she expects so much more out of me and she knows that I’m capable of doing almost anything and everything.

Is work easier when your mom is the boss?

A lot of people usually say “oh she definitely lets you slack off” or “oh I bet it’s so easy”, but they couldn’t be more wrong. It adds a lot of pressure on me when I do work for my mom’s company, because I want to do my absolute best in order to impress my mom. I want to live up to her expectations of me. But, it is also very comforting to know that my mom is the boss and CEO. 

The boss always has your back

While she is always challenging and expecting the most out of me I know that she will always have my back and be the most understanding when it comes to work. No matter what, there will always be someone in my corner. She also tends to have a great support system.

She surrounds herself with the very best team members which makes my situation a lot more comforting. Seeing her support all of her employees, and create a successful remote working environment makes it a lot easier and more fun for me to do work for her, and the other Front Porch Marketing team members. I don’t say it a lot but when it comes to working with and for her sometimes, I can be a little excited. While she has taught me a lot about marketing, she’s also taught me about running a business. Because she is good at this.

Takeaways from a summer internship with a parent

All in all, this summer has been great so far and it has been a pleasure to heighten my business relationship with my mother. I’ve learned so much from my mom the boss, that I can apply to college and my future job endeavors. I owe it all to her and I love her so much. Thanks mom!

Marketing leaders, what are you doing to nurture relationships with your customers?

Consistency and connection nurture relationships. Sure, loyalty and points programs are tactics that bring brands and customers closer together.

But genuine allegiance is an outcome.

A recent conversation with a marketing leader provided inspiration. This marketing leader has had some challenges. But realized the value of marketing.

The company had cut the marketing budget. All the momentum that person built was put to a halt. And then the company brought in a consultant. First, he asked her what was happening on the marketing front. To which she replied, “Nothing.’ And, obviously he was shocked.

How to foster genuine relationships.

Business leaders do these four things:

1. Conviction – Know the brand. Marketing leaders walk the talk. And they demonstrate it every touchpoint. Then, clients and their customers can see it and feel it.
2. Consistency – Do you have a message map for your client? Share the value proposition of the brands you work on, on every platform, consistently.
3. Communication – Know your audience. Then recognize: how do they want to communicate? It isn’t about you. It is about what works for them. Marketing leaders will recognize this and pivot messaging to solve clients’ problems in a way that is meaningful and relevant to the client.
4. Connection – If there is consistency communicating the message, then the connection will happen. But as a marketing leader, how do you deepen the ties with your client and their customers?
   • Weekly meetings with clients
   • Weekly catch-up calls on both status of projects, and how pain points with consumers are being addressed
   • Notes on special days to recognize achievements
   • Boundaries set on both sides, so that both marketing and client are set up to succeed

Marketing leadership: Take inspiration. Deepen connections. Accelerate growth.

We love to partner with smart leaders who value marketing. And, if we can help, let’s talk about mutual partnership to grow top line sales.

Recent readings over Spring and Easter Breaks provided four great reminders for me as a business leader. And I hope they do the same for y’all too.

For those of you who do not know, one half of my heart – my son – attends Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida, right outside Orlando.

We stayed at one of my favorite beaches over Easter, New Smyrna Beach, which is a hour drive from my “son~shine.” And, where I purchased a beach condo, aka short-term rental investment property, earlier this year. It is affectionately deemed the “money pit.” But that is a blog for another day. I digress.

Reminder One: Be a GD Cheetah

A beach read was Glennon Doyle’s Untamed. She shares a visit to the zoo and the Cheetah Run. The cheetah, Tabitha, is tamed. She performs on queue.

A little girl asked, “Doesn’t she miss the wild?”

Zookeeper comes back with a BS answer.

Doyle writes that Tabitha would sigh and say, “I should be grateful. I have a good enough life here. It is crazy to long for what does not even exist.”

“I’d say: Tabitha. You are not crazy. You are a GD cheetah.”

That had such a profound effect on me. I later cried as I read the excerpt aloud to my daughter. Without the GD, of course. And I asked her to promise me to always be herself. To be a cheetah.

Reminder Two: Finding Leverage

Not as an emotional experience for me, but profound none the less. Reading the latest issue of Entrepreneur Magazine.

Time is our inventory.

An article by Adam Bornstein explores business growth by not necessarily adding more people. Rather, exploring this. “Smart growth is not about spending more time, nor is it about maxing out your time. It is about finding leverage.”

Reminder Three: Damn the Sycophants

I cannot remember what the article was about. It was the word. The word I had to look up.

I was reminded, although sometimes painful, I treasure those around me who are not this.

Surround yourself with talented people. Those who are smarter than you. Formidable team members push back. They may not think like you. But they make the organization better. These folks fill in for your short falls.

Reminder Four: Being Too Efficient

In a past life, I was ultra-organized. I am a Franklin Covey Planner Training Course graduate for heaven’s sake. Organized all the things in my office and life.

Then, I started Front Porch Marketing. And, had my second child at an “advanced maternal age.”

Words quoted from Edward Tenner in another Entrepreneur Magazine article spoke to me. In summary, big business always has the advantage. However, entrepreneurs combine technology with connection to people. Something big companies cannot do.

Jason Feifer, author of the article, cited Blockbuster and Netflix as an example. Early in my career collaborating with folks at Blockbuster and Viacom shaped me into who I am today. And I am eternally grateful for those experiences. I saw how they tried to evolve. As well as saw what was attempted and did not happen. These learnings were invaluable.

So I hope these four reminders for business that I learned this spring will resonate with you too!

How to make working together easier.

When you’re working together, the key to a successful partner relationship between an agency and an in-house marketing client is articulating goals on both sides. What does the in-house marketing director want out of the partnership? What role(s) will the agency fill? And for those on the agency side: what is the expertise that you are offering and how will it fit into the work and process of the in-house marketing department. Ultimately, what common goal is everyone working toward?

3 traits of a successful in-house marketing director (when working with an agency):

1. Treat the agency like a partner. Be available. Share the wins and the losses. Exchange information and best practices. Work united toward a common goal.
2. Let people do their job. It has been said many times – surround yourself with smart people and let them do their jobs. This is very true when working with an agency. You, as the in-house marketing director, know your brand better than anyone. But the agency will have deep knowledge in how to market your brand to the right people, at the right time, and in the right place. Take advantage of this expertise.
3. Be clear, concise and direct. Communication is key to a great in-house/agency working relationship. Having clear goals and being able give good feedback will make the process of creating great work run smoother.

3 traits of a successful agency (when working with an in-house client):

1. Be transparent. Give real world examples with data and KPI results to show that you know how to do this work successfully. Show and tell your successes that relate to your new client’s business to increase their confidence in your expertise.
2. Flatten your organization when it comes to direct contact. Allow clients to be able to communicate directly with different members of your team if they need an opinion on a specific matter. Shielding most of your agency from the client and running everything through gate-keeping account service people prevents deeper brand knowledge and deeper connections.
3. Prepare to collaborate. Including your client in the creative process will not only make the working relationship work better, the client will have the opportunity to “own” the idea with you. Then, you’ll have no better champion for your idea than your client as it moves up the C-Suite approval chain.

Growing your partnership and working together – in-house and agency – requires determination. First, be determined to recognize the value of the people that you are working with. And then, be steadfast in your determination to succeed together.

Business growth is always top of mind for me. Bringing it to the forefront is the fact that I am 2/3’s of the way through my Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses Back to the Classroom program. Back to the Classroom is an opportunity for 10KSB alumni to reconnect with the lessons and concepts of the 10KSB program as we navigate the current economic situation and our next business opportunity.

Each week of the four part series addresses the key learnings from program modules. For each session, we are required to attend webinars and growth group meetings.

In between sessions, we have homework. We continue to refine our new business opportunity.

And, unlike my last 10KSB experience, this one is national. Every section of 10KSB Back to the Classroom includes alumni from across the country. I engage with small business owners from Alabama, Maryland, Missouri, New York, North Carolina, Ohio and Oklahoma every few weeks. This is probs my favorite part.

Key Takeaways Thus Far From Back to the Classroom

1. Networking, even virtual, is a good. Even though this group might not be my buyers, they are inspiration. They know people who may be buyers.
2. Brainstorming with other small business owners who work in other industries is priceless. This group is energized and excited to help each other. The ideas shared and problems solved big and small help refine and shed new light to the strategy and execution.
3. Run the numbers. Work the scenarios. It is painful, like stick a needle in my eye, torture for me. However, with help from my business advisor, the time spent doing this was invaluable. The financial exercises are proof of my concept. The numbers less daunting than I expected.
4. Keep reading. Even if you don’t have the time, make time. I have four new books on my desk suggested by this group. Three I have never heard of.

Lastly, don’t undervalue the power of collaboration. I collaborate with my team on the daily. And, for that, I am blessed. But, collaborating with this group reminds me how valuable that is.

For business growth, you need lifelong learning. You need motivation. Small business owners are equally interested in positive outcomes for other small business owners. Keep calm and collaborate on.