One Thing Your Marketing Strategy Needs in 2013

January 2, 2013 By 4 Comments

Don’t ever be afraid just because you’re not the first business in a niche. Burger King obviously weren’t put off by McDonald’s being in the market and neither were Max here in Sweden or Hesburger in Finland.

Over Christmas I found myself in a shop on Södermalm in Stockholm and although the clothes weren’t really my kind of thing there in the background was a piece of country rock playing that I just loved.

I sat down and listened, trying to figure out the title of the song. After a bit of digging I found it on Spotify and favourited it on a playlist so I could find out more about the band when I got back to my desk.

The song was “I Run to You” and the band are Lady Antebellum.

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Level 42 Don’t Dream Crazy

October 30, 2012 By 5 Comments

Mark King, Mr Thunderthumbs, back in the old days


I’m a massive Level 42 fan. Have been for years. One of the reasons I started playing bass is Mark King. Mr Thunderthumbs’ thumpingly funky bass lines were a constant companion in my head during my teens.

Level 42 are playing in Stockholm this week and, even though I’ve not managed to persuade anyone else at Jontus Media Towers to come along, I’ll be there grooving along to those famous basslines.

The band are playing all the tracks from their 1987 album Running in the Family; yes, it’s a twenty-five year anniversary celebration.

Apart from the fact I can’t believe the last twenty-five years have zipped by as quickly as you could say “The Pursuit of Accidents” – my favourite Level 42 albumn – there’s a marketing message in what the band from the Isle of Wight are doing.

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it

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Filed Under: communication strategy

How to Be an Actionable Marketer

March 14, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Does your online marketing persuade prospects and customers to engage with your business? Does it inspire them to action? If not, you might want to think about actionable marketing.

If you’re not sure try assessing your digital marketing in terms of how actionable it is, how much it invites prospects to engage with your business online.

Are You Addressing Your Target Audience

It’s essential that your digital marketing speaks directly to each segment you are selling to. Brand personas are instrumental in helping us focus as they can make us feel like we’re talking to a particular customer, not customers in general.

If you understand exactly who your target customer is – what their unique needs are and how you can align your services or products with them – you can tailor your marketing so it speaks directly to them.

As an example, look at Internationella Engelska Gymnasiet‘s front page where you’ll see that the slider and graphics we developed shows each target audience, creating a point of connection with each segment, soliciting the click-through.
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Filed Under: communication strategy, marketing

How to Develop an Editorial Calendar Template

January 11, 2012 By 23 Comments

The better your editorial calendar template, the better the implementation of your business blog strategy is likely to be.

Developing a successful editorial calendar, however, is not always easy. What’s more it is often much more complex than just putting a bunch of dates and preliminary titles for blog posts together.
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What Your Business Can Learn from P2P

November 26, 2011 By 4 Comments

NewImage

I’ve spent the last three days working for a client at a recruitment fair. We did a fully integrated marketing campaign including website, newspaper ads and then the posters and flyers for the fair.

Watching people at the fair talk to each other, really engaging and speaking passionately about something they truly believe in, I couldn’t help but be impressed and caught up by the energy of the event.

With the emergence of social media there was so much talk of genuine online engagement and dialogue; however, it’s only really face-to-face that this kind of energy comes alive.
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What Teens Know About Twitter Backgrounds That You Don’t

November 23, 2011 By 14 Comments


Regular readers of this blog will know that I like to work with students from time to time on communications and marketing projects.

This semester I’ve been working with students from Internationella Engelska Gymnasiet again (read about a student social media case study here).

This week they’ve been giving presentations on their first taste of a Twitter campaign.

After reading the excellent Tao of Twitter they started out analyzing how a number of big brands including Starbucks and Subway were using Twitter. They then ran their own campaign to help promote a study programme at IEGS.

All the groups struggled to achieve their goals but one thing that stood out for me was the significance of having a great Twitter background. Starbucks, Subway, and so on tend to have impersonal backgrounds. Sure, they brand the profile for coffee or sandwiches, in this case, but they don’t engage. They are a visual turn off.

Many of the students went for similar, less personal backgrounds, believing it was better to go with a snazzy visual.

However, unlike the groups that went with what was basically relatively anonymous branding, Lovisa and Edward (pictured) along with Isabell and Olof, put themselves out there with a great picture that oozed personality and set the tone of their “brand”.

Although they were marketing to an incredibly difficult audience – 16 year old teens – the background oozes “approachable” and “fun”. Not bad for students not majoring in design.
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