brand marketing

Call it customer retention, customer loyalty, or brand affinity: what we’re really after as marketers boils down to one word, and that word is love. There’s nothing so powerful in marketing as the love of a customer, but fostering that kind of love takes patience, time, and maybe a little automation. How to Build and Promote a Customer Loyalty Program Using a Marketing Automation Platform Your marketing automation platform isn’t just a lead nurture platform. If you want to improve customer loyalty, you can apply the same principles and tactics […]

Welcome to the age of the influencer, where consumers trust online reviews as much as a personal recommendation. For marketers, that means what those reviews say—and what we do with them—has as much to do with our marketing strategy as it does with our customer service record.   According to the most recent BrightLocal Consumer Review Survey, 74% of consumers say that positive reviews help them trust a business more, and nearly 54% of people will visit that company’s website after reading those positive reviews (how’s that for inbound?). Consumers […]

So, You Decided to Run Terrestrial Radio Ads… Why: You wanted to achieve mass reach, with a low CPM, to reach a captive audience. You know your target demo is there, and 93% of U.S. adults still listen to AM/FM radio each week! It’s a no-brainer, right? Right? Radio listening is quite literally “wireless”. There is no meter to measure actual usage. There are no tickets sold, there are no circulations audited. There is no quantifiable “click-through” to point back to. The ratings systems of Nielson, Arbitron and holding companies […]

It is all too common that digital marketing agencies narrow their focus on only the trendiest marketing tactics. Everyone is buzzing about the latest feature of SnapChat or the newest PPC ad style on Google. You see countless blog posts, social media posts and think-pieces hailing the next great thing in marketing. What’s worse is that so many of these digital marketing agencies then push their clients toward executing these “Tactics of the week” without a full understanding of what they can actually do for the client and the results they can deliver. It’s the marketing equivalent of throwing stuff up against a wall and seeing what sticks.

It’s never too early to start forecasting what’s going to be ‘the next big thing’ in the digital marketing and tech landscape in 2017. emfluence has compiled trends and expectations from across our agency team members to bring you an array of predictions for what to look for, and more importantly plan for in 2017. The boldest prediction of all? 60% of the time our predictions are right, every time.

Is it obvious that Instagram Stories is a Snapchat rip off? Absolutely. Does it matter? Not in the least. If you already have Instagram, you now have the feature power of Snapchat behind it. Without the trouble of building and managing a completely separate channel and audience.

If you are a digital marketer, then odds are that you touch content production in one way or another. That also means that you're well aware of the myriad of tools out there that can help streamline development and help you produce like a pro. This post highlights a few of my favorite "content things" that I use on a daily basis to improve and streamline the production process. Let's get one thing out of the way: these are not content hacks. These are tools, plug-ins and browser extensions. "Hacking" […]

You can blog and publish content regularly. However, if your site content isn’t converting your website/blog readers into actual contacts – then what’s the point or value behind it? Every marketer inevitably hits a content wall and bandwidth restrictions to keep churning out blog posts, social posts, infographics, videos, podcasts…you name it. The key is to keep the content and conversion wheels in motion, even while you’re not at the actual wheel creating it.

Joe’s Kansas City Bar-B-Que, a long time fixture in National Barbeque Capital Kansas City, has come a long way from it’s humble roots in a neighborhood corner gas station. Joe’s has turned into a famous spot for BBQ aficionados, celebrities and fans alike. With their growth, Joe’s Kansas City recognized that their brand was underserving one large area of their growing fandom: the internet. In early 2016, Joe’s Kansas City Bar-B-Que tapped Kansas City-based digital agency, emfluence, to bring Send Joes KC BBQ to life online.

We’re currently in the midst of a social arms race around live video streaming integrations and roll-outs across Facebook, Twitter, and other major social players. Live video streaming, amongst other next-generation Web innovations like virtual reality headsets, the Internet of Things (IoT), and other wearable technology, all make up what many digital experts and Web data scientists like John Markoff and Tim O’Reilly experts have already dubbed “Web 3.0.” Web 3.0 can be summarized as the “connective intelligence and learning of all Web users and devices – or all of your things talking to the other things about all of the things.”

The 2016 KCDMA AMBIT's Award show was a great night for the emfluence team and our wonderful clients! This year, the gala was held at the Overland Park Convention Center and was themed with Broadway musicals. Our team selected the musical "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying" because…why not, it's important to have a little fun when celebrating all that hard work!  Best in Show! Tyler and I took home the Best in Show award for our social media campaigns and analytics dashboard work for the Center For […]

Today Instagram announced that it will be lifting its previous 15-second cap on video capabilities in favor of the new 60-second format. For a long time brands have been confined into figuring out ways to share their message on the creative social media giant in a 15-second format. With 4x that amount now available, brands have more time to get inventive but why the big change all of a sudden?

Boaty McBoatface sounds like something a kindergartner would say, or it may remind us of Theodore Tugboat, but it probably shouldn’t be the name of the $300 million dollar research vessel. As the latest instance of the internet getting the best of an advertising campaign, Boaty McBoatface takes the stage as one of many well-planned engagement campaigns that had an unplanned outcome.

How the Zero Moment of Truth Paradigm is Shifting to Micro-Moments

What You Need to Know About Facebook’s New Audience Optimization Tool

As a marketer, you've been hit over the head with the value and importance of a well-rounded content strategy for a few years.  It's the topic of conversation because it's one of the most critical pieces of a sound inbound marketing strategy. In Digital Marketing, it's an arms race to get eyeballs and no matter what your weapon of choice you're going to need ammo, and there's no cheat code for unlimited ammunition (if there IS a cheat code, drop me a line). Suffice it to say, having to reload […]

It’s been a year full of knowledge on our emfluence blog page where we covered everything from Email send best practices to Minions! If you missed some of our top posts from this year now is your chance to get caught up. Below you will find a quick recap of our top 10 ranked blog posts of the year and links to the original articles, enjoy!

If you’re like me, and check Instagram a few (hundred) times a day, you have probably noticed that your feed has included a lot more “Sponsored” posts, aka “ads,” recently. That’s because, in September 2015, Instagram gave access to all brands to advertise on their platform, opening up a new way for companies to engage in the social space. Its no longer just a way to build a brand by having a profile; it now allows brands to push products and promote themselves to just about anyone. Instagram advertising is […]

No matter what your situation is, no matter how large or small your company is, viewing the big picture is key to creating an all encompassing content strategy.

Not too long ago (a decade or so), being in SEO meant figuring out the best “link farms” to submit your site to as well as trying to load each of your pages with as many keywords as possible. While some of these strategies are still around, they are usually not recommended. Keywords still play a very important part in your SEO strategy and, of course, having the right links to and from your site is critical, but not in the way it used to be. It is no longer […]

Over the last year, I’ve attended a few banking conferences and a hot topic that’s often brought up is the future of the bank branch. In a recent survey performed by Javelin Strategy and Research, 23% of consumers said they prefer to bank online over the in-branch experience. 40% of millennials would consider banking without a branch, according to Accenture. While banks have responded to the growing demand for online banking preferences, such as mobile deposit, the big question is what is to become of branch banking? Source: Accenture Last […]

With Techweek concluding recently, here is a run-down on some cool tools you can use for your business with helpful advice from Techweek speakers. So, you are in the process of creating your own business. You’ve spent countless hours brainstorming ideas, building the website, designing and re-designing, and getting the final product out of the window.  You’ve made it this far, but you could use a little help on some internal aspects: organization, SEO, content creation, possibly building tools for your site, or even email marketing. Seems like a lot […]

Buzzsumo, a content research platform, recently released a new feature in their arsenal of content measurement called SumoRank. This new addition aims to fill a gap in content research by allowing you to search your own company Facebook page. Previously, you had to combine a list of data from various sources (Buzzsumo included) to get a holistic idea of what your content strategy should be for a specific client or company. I still believe that gathering your data from multiple sources is necessary (although challenging, see blog about Digital Dashboards […]

A key part of any brand is consistency. We regularly work with brands to help ensure their voice, image, and communication mediums are reliable. The key to consistency is standards – easy to find, understand, and follow. If you don’t keep it simple, you’re bound for failure. That’s why an early part of any web development project should be establish the style guide for your project. Style guides are not sheets of paper, or creative briefs. If that’s where your head is at, you’re stopping too soon. You, the marketing […]

Instagram recently issued an update on their picture sharing capabilities saying that you will now be able to change the formatting of your pictures and videos! “you can now share photos and videos in both portrait and landscape orientation on Instagram. Square format has been and always will be part of who we are. That said, the visual story you’re trying to tell should always come first, and we want to make it simple and fun for you to share moments just the way you want to.”-blog.Instagram.com   No longer […]

At the intersection of relevance and creativity, it is easy to get frustrated with how much work can be involved in creating compelling visual content. Fortunately, there are tools to help alleviate some of your stress and provide you with high quality content all at once! Below, you will find a list of my top 5 tools for creating infographics (although there are many more out there) and the ways that each of them varies. Each of them has something special to offer with increasing features and involvement as you […]

Here's how to implement an effective content strategy solution for the busy content creator! We all know content is the key building block to a successful web presence. Your users want to enjoy good quality content created with the reader in mind. There are many content strategy methods. Some you might have heard of include the skyscraper method, the cluster method, and drip down strategy. These strategies are all very effective when trying to create an effective blog. The toughest part, however, is planning the time to write your initial […]