Inbound Marketing Blog

A mission statement can set the course for how a brand will treat its customers and behave in the outside world or it can languish in the "About" section of a company’s website. It can either act as the driving force behind a brand or it can be treated as an afterthought. I’m sure you’ve seen plenty of both types (though you probably only remember the good ones). The most effective mission statements help define a company’s actions and inspire customer loyalty.

Sixty-four percent of consumers worldwide will make a purchasing decision based on a brand’s social or political position, according to the 2018 Edelman Earned Brand study released this week.

If you’re a marketer focused on the social media space, you know the daily struggle of jumping into the noisy and ever-changing arena and grabbing consumers’ attention. Having a static social strategy just doesn’t cut it. We need to be listening to our consumers and constantly adapting to their needs so that we can be giving them what they really want when their precious seconds of attention fall on our brands.

I think it’s safe to say that social media has taken over (almost) everyone's life. Think about it; how many times a day do you open Instagram or Facebook casually just to see what your friends are up to? I know I’m on there at least 20 times a day mindlessly scrolling and brands are smart. they’ve caught on to this behavior. That’s why while you’re scrolling through your friends post you’re likely to see a brand’s pop in there every so often. Typically they’re easy to pass over, but then there are some that really catch your attention. that’s the whole goal, right? But, what if they catch your attention for the wrong reason? Like offending your values or making you feel totally alienated from their brand?  

For brands, follower engagement on social media is a key element to visibility and success. As a marketer, I know this inherently because I spend much of my time monitoring engagement metrics, and while engagement is typically positive, it is practically guaranteed that at some point, a brand will face negative feedback. Determining the right approach to handle negative engagement on social media is a challenge, however, with a recent ruling from a federal judge in Manhattan, precedent has been set for how not to deal with it.

Not all company swag is created equal. It may seem like an obvious statement, but there are thousands of offices all over the world that are putting up with sub-par swag, usually only because whoever is ordering it doesn’t know any better. There’s a huge difference between being thoughtful with your company swag items and just throwing your company logo on the cheapest thing you can find, and the benefits of doing the former  go way beyond what you might think. Both internally at your company and externally, when you’re thoughtful with what you put your brand on, it’s going to pay off.

For any of you watching the Super Bowl this Sunday, I'm sure you're excited about spending quality time with family and friends enjoying great company, good food, and ice cold drinks. In addition to this, as a marketer, I couldn't be more excited about the commercials. 

So, tell me this hasn’t happened to you. You’re starving. You meet up with a friend and they drag you to a small, sketchy restaurant where the menu’s falling apart, prices are scratched out and handwritten back in, the lights buzz, and you’re afraid you might get mugged in the bathroom. Pretty much, things couldn’t look worse -- but after a few bites, you realize they also couldn’t taste any better. We hear it a lot in business: even great marketing can’t help a bad product, but what about the opposite?