When the first pangs of hunger hit you, a vending machine is often the best option you have. It’s quick, it’s cheap, and it hits the spot.

But for how long?

All too often we hear of companies approaching their marketing strategy like they would some late-afternoon hunger—drop in a few quarters and stave off hunger until the next meal comes around.

Instead of mindlessly snacking from the vending machines of the marketing world, check out 5 reasons why a full service marketing agency can help you keep hunger at bay permanently.

1: Public Relations is Not Easy

You might think that your PR can be handled with a few phone calls and an email or two, but the truth is that it’s much more complicated than that. PR is the art of building relationships within your community and its media outlets.

Are you on a first-name basis with your local news anchor? Do you have the cell phone number of your local paper’s Editor in Chief? If not, you might find yourself struggling to get your latest press release noticed. And most importantly, PR does not exist in a vacuum. It often works hand-in-hand with social media efforts to deliver and reinforce messaging. Shouldn’t those two pieces of your puzzle be working in concert? Which leads to…

2: Social Media is Here to Stay

In the early-to-mid 2000’s, it was tempting to write off social media as a passing fad. Once the phenomenon even seemed to take hold in popular culture, it was still difficult for businesses to envision using it to boost sales and leads.

Those days are gone.

Social media is no longer something you can just have your summer intern handle when they’re not on a coffee run. From building brand awareness to generating new leads and influencing sales, social media has become a robust way to reach your audience with targeted and focused approaches. Platforms like LinkedIn and Twitter have also proven effective for B2B companies in highly niche industries. Even if you’re not on social media, your customers are.

3: “Digital Marketing” is Gone

From SEO (search engine optimization) that makes sure you appear at the top of Google search results to pay-per-click digital ad campaigns that target your audience exactly when and where you want to reach them, digital marketing must be integrated into your marketing plan.

In fact, many of the top industry leaders are arguing that “digital marketing” is even a dated term. Digital tactics must be used in concert with traditional advertising and cannot be thought of as a separate strategy. A full service marketing agency has the power to marry the traditional with the new in ways that your freelance developer and media buyers cannot.

4: You Need a Video Strategy

Back in 2015, The Guardian reported industry analysts were predicting that 69% of all consumer internet traffic would be video-based by 2017. We have no doubts that they were right. Consumers are devouring video in record quantities. If your marketing strategy doesn’t include showcasing your brand through a well-made video, you’re going to find your message getting lost in the rising tide of video.

5: Radio and TV Are Not Dead

We have yet to see a modern day update to The Buggles’s classic “Video Killed the Radio Star,” but if it ever appeared, it might be called “Digital Killed the TV Star.” Well, The Buggles weren’t exactly on-the-money with their prediction, and neither would the newcomers be. TV and radio are still very much viable marketing platforms, and getting your media placed into those ecosystems is not something to be approached haphazardly. It requires a strong knowledge of TV and radio market demographics, listening and viewing patterns, and relationships with the media companies who control what gets seen and heard.

So what’s the moral of the story? Today’s marketing world is a complex system of interlocking tactics. You can no longer afford to address them piecemeal with a half dozen different team players. A full service marketing agency like Bouvier Kelly can handle everything you need under one roof.

Jack of all trades, master of every single one.

Interested in learning more? Drop us an email.

We all know that person. You know, the one with the bright red notification of shame on their email app: 1,463 Unread Emails. In fact, rare is the inbox that doesn’t amass a long list of unread emails each day. (Honestly, though, can’t we keep it under 100 folks?)

We understand, though. On a daily basis, we all get dozens of emails. Yet despite how you may feel about the e-tornadoes crashing your inbox every day, email is still the go-to, tried-and-true, best-all-around channel for digital marketing. The question is: Are your emails getting through to your recipients? It’s not hard to skirt the junk folder, but how can you know that your e-communication is reaching its audience?

Campaign metrics go a long way towards understanding what happens to your email once you send it out into the vast expanse of the internet. Analyzing metrics provides a definitive way to understand how your audience is responding to your message. But not all metrics are created equal. Here’s how we break down the effectiveness of email campaigns.

Industry Analysis

We start by comparing analytics within your industry. Some industries have notoriously poor email performance rates compared with others; retail and media publishing see the lowest open rates of any industry. But you can’t compare apples to oranges, and you can’t compare mice to elephants. We make sure your campaign is keeping up with businesses of similar makeup and size.

Opens & Clicks

We also take note of two important metrics: The Unique Open Rate and the Click-Through Rate. Unique Open Rate is the number of unique recipients who opened your email divided by the total number of emails delivered. Average companies have a 10-15% unique open rate, and top performers can be around 16-20%. The Click-Through Rate is the total number of clicks divided by the total number of emails delivered. Average companies generally have a 2-5% Click-Through Rate, and top performers average 5-10%.

Once we know the percentage of your emails that is escaping the unread abyss and compare them within your industry, we can improve performance with a number of strategies. Simple solutions like sending more targeted communications, changing your “From” name to be more recognizable, and rethinking subject lines can make all the difference in how much ROI you get from your efforts.

So send us an email and we’ll chat about how much better your digital marketing can get. Then start clearing out that inbox! 

There’s a moment in the life of every smartphone user when despite all precautions you might take, the phone inevitably slips out of your hand and hurtles to the floor. Those brief moments always happen in slow motion while your heart seems to stop and your mind races as it imagines the worst case scenario. Regardless of the outcome (and here’s hoping for the best!), this event tells you something about yourself: your phone is your lifeline.

With mobile technology getting more and more savvy, our phones become more and more influential in our lives. There’s so much to do on our phones we tend to take a lot less time to stop and take much information in. We just keep swiping and tapping onto the next thing as fast as we can. These abbreviated periods of time that a person interacts with a device have now been dubbed “micro-moments.” Whether you’re consuming or delivering information, it will inevitably happen rather quickly.

The good news for brands is that the same mobile technology also helps you keep up with lightning fast users. The key is to make your micro-moments influential, giving consumers the opportunity to act on your information immediately. You can take mobile users anywhere you want to with a simple tap of a button. So how do we get them to respond?

Be There 
You can’t make new friends if you don’t show up to the party. This is about knowing where your audience is and getting in the mix of their everyday information intake. If you’re there when your potential customers need you, loyalty has the potential to grow.

Be Useful
Bold, viral marketing is all the rage these days, but in micro-moments it’s more effective to provide something your customer can hang onto. Your customers have questions, you have answers. It can sometimes be the most effective to shoot straight from the get go.

Be Quick
Meeting speed with speed is probably a given, but how does one do that exactly? It varies, but it all goes back to your message. Tell them what you want them to hear in a precise, memorable way and if it is easily accessible, you’ll be more likely to win the race.

Engaging your potential customers in micro-moments is not always easy. We have a lot of experience with getting to the heart of a message and communicating it clearly. Contact us and we’ll be happy to help you communicate yours!

And thank you for lending us your micro-moment to read this blog!