Brand Marketing: Your Secret Weapon for Modern SEO
In today’s AI-driven search model, brand visibility is essential to long-term organic traffic.
Brand marketing is a strategy that focuses on promoting and building brand awareness to create a positive perception among target audiences. The goal is to establish a strong and distinctive brand identity that sets a product or company apart from competitors. Brand marketing goes beyond just advertising products or services; it encompasses the overall image, values, and personality of a brand.
The Elements of Brand Marketing
There are many things that go into a brand’s overall design. Brand recognition is based on the repetition of brand elements. Some brand marketing elements include the following.
Logo and Visual Identity
The design elements associated with a brand, including its logo, color palette, and visual style, play a crucial role in brand marketing. For example, the golden arches of McDonald’s or the swoosh of Nike are instantly recognizable symbols.
Advertising Campaigns
Brands often create advertising campaigns to showcase their products or services in a way that aligns with their brand identity. For instance, Coca-Cola’s holiday-themed advertisements featuring the polar bears have become synonymous with the brand during the festive season.
Content Marketing
Hey, this is what Seven Oaks Consulting does – content marketing! Brands create and distribute valuable and relevant content to attract and engage their target audience. This can include blog posts, videos, social media posts, and more. Red Bull, for instance, is known for its content marketing through extreme sports events and sponsorships.
Social Media Presence
Brands use social media platforms to connect with their audience, share updates, and humanize their brand. Wendy’s Twitter account, known for its humorous and witty responses, is an example of effective social media branding.
Sponsorships and Partnerships
Associating with events, causes, or other brands can help build positive associations. For example, Nike’s partnerships with athletes like Michael Jordan have significantly contributed to its brand image.
Customer Experience
The way customers experience a brand, from product quality to customer service, contributes to brand perception. Apple, for instance, is known for its sleek and user-friendly products, contributing to its brand image of innovation and quality.
Public Relations
Managing the public perception of a brand through media relations, crisis management, and community engagement is a key aspect of brand marketing. When a company responds effectively to a crisis, it can positively impact its brand image.
Influencer Marketing
Brands collaborate with influencers to promote their products or services to a wider audience. For example, fashion brands often partner with influencers to showcase and endorse their products.
Overall, successful brand marketing is about creating a consistent and positive image that resonates with the target audience, fosters trust, and encourages brand loyalty.
Strengthen your content. Strengthen your business. If you’re ready to build a content marketing program that actually supports sales, improves brand trust, and drives long‑term results, Seven Oaks Consulting can help. We specialize in strategic, high‑quality B2B content that reflects your expertise and speaks directly to your customers’ needs.
Contact Seven Oaks Consulting to start building a smarter content marketing strategy.
The Four Ps of Marketing: Pillars of a Successful Marketing Strategy
What Are the Four Ps of Marketing?
When I was in university studying for my Masters in Direct and Digital Marketing, our general marketing course began with the fundamentals: the four Ps of marketing. Although others have said over the years that there are three, five, or any number of Ps, the four Ps remain the foundation of all marketing. Therefore, it's vital that anyone in the marketing role understands the four Ps of marketing and how the interplay shapes marketing strategies.
So, what are the four Ps?
- Product
- Price
- Place
- Promotion
Let’s dive into the significance of each of the Four Ps and understand how their interplay contributes to the success of your marketing strategy.
Product: The Heart of Your Offering
At the heart of business and marketing lies the product. It's not merely about having a product; it's about having one that resonates with customer needs and distinguishes itself in the market. Continuous product development and innovation take center stage, emphasizing the place of products in the marketing mix.
Price: Finding the Right Balance
Determining the optimal price significantly influences how a product is perceived. Prices must be aligned with customer expectations, market averages, and the costs of goods sold. Using pricing as part of a marketing strategy is truly an art that must be refined over time. Prices can undoubtedly influence perception, as can many aspects of marketing. It can be used as a leverage point, a selling point, a competitive point, and more.
Place: Reaching Your Target Audience
Place among the Four Ps of marketing refers to where you market your products and to whom. That's your target audience, and I've written a lot about target audiences over the years. It also refers to the marketing channels you choose to reach your target audience. The goal of "place" in the marketing mix is to find the right combination of channels and tactics to reach your target audience effectively.
Promotion: Building Awareness and Desire
Promotion extends beyond mere advertising; it's a multifaceted approach that includes public relations, social media, and content marketing. Understanding the target audience is vital, so tailor promotional efforts effectively. Integrated marketing communications (IMC), too, remains an integral part of the promotional mix, ensuring that all messages, no matter what channel is used, remain consistent and appealing to the target audience.
The Marketing Mix: Examples of How the Four Ps Are Used
Companies use the four Ps differently. Some products or companies emphasize one or the other.
Tiffany: Emphasis on Product and Promotion
Tiffany, the famous Manhattan jewelry store, uses product and promotion heavily in their marketing, with price as another factor. Place for this venerable upscale brand is essential, but their emphasis is on the products (diamond jewelry), pricing (high), and promotions (exclusive and branded with the trademarked blue color.)
Dollar General: Emphasis on Place and Price
Dollar General, the ubiquitous variety store found in every small town in America, leverages price and place heavily in its marketing mix. Price is obvious; it's even in the store name! Everything is inexpensive and priced at a round number - $1, $5, etc. The company has gone on the record about its strategic use of place, building stores in underserved rural communities throughout America to ensure access to basic groceries and household items for all. The company rarely sponsors promotions. The stores feature commodity products found in most variety stores and supermarkets. It heavily uses price and place as its marketing focus.
Use the Four Ps of Marketing to Your Advantage
By understanding and effectively managing the Four Ps of marketing, professionals can create a strategic marketing mix that resonates with their target audience and positions their products or services for long-term success in an ever-changing business landscape.
What Is B2C Marketing?
Business-to-consumer marketing, or B2C marketing, is a term used in the business world to describe the tactics and strategies a company uses to promote products and services to individual people. Think healthcare, health and beauty products and tourism. Both brick-and-mortar and online retailers can have B2C target audiences.
Similarities and Differences Between B2B and B2C Marketing
While there are similarities to B2B marketing, B2C marketing is its own discipline. That’s because consumers have different needs and expectations than people who make purchases for their employers. For instance, consumers often want to act quickly on a purchase and they tend to not research to the extent that someone would when representing a company’s interests. This means B2C marketers don’t have as much opportunity to influence consumer behavior. Depending on the product, the sales cycle may be shorter, with fewer touchpoints and it can be more challenging to get the timing right.
B2C Campaigns Evoke Emotion to Sell Products
With this reality in mind, successful B2C campaigns typically evoke emotional responses, while the B2B model speaks to logic and reasoning. Grasping these differences and implementing changes to your B2C marketing strategy can help you lead with the right message at the right time.
Simple B2C Marketing Funnel
That said, B2C marketing success begins with a simple marketing funnel that helps you connect with consumers strategically. For instance, you might:
- Introduce the prospect to your company
- Encourage them to engage and interact with you
- Guide the potential customer towards a purchase that fits their needs
For more information on marketing funnels, see:
Content Marketing vs Traditional Marketing
Content Marketing vs. Traditional Marketing: Navigating the Modern Marketing Landscape
Content marketing vs. traditional marketing is the most recent debate in the evolving marketing landscape. Some argue that content marketing is merely a tactical channel rather than a strategy. In contrast, traditional marketing, with its emphasis on the four Ps of marketing (product, price, place, and promotion) as the fulcrum of lead generation and sales, is the only valuable marketing approach. The truth is that either approach can be effective if chosen wisely. Here, we dive into content marketing vs. traditional marketing, and why a modern marketing plan may include both rather than focus solely on one.
Content Marketing vs. Traditional Marketing: Understanding Traditional Marketing
Technically, the definition of traditional marketing is marketing offline – that is, non-digital media. Think direct mail, print advertising, television, or radio commercials. It’s the kind of marketing that’s been around for decades since the first business published a newspaper ‘advertisement’ touting hair tonic, ladies’ dresses, or the latest shows or entertainment. Even as far back as ancient Rome, people used advertising – for example, bread preserved in the volcanic ash in Pompeii displays a maker’s mark on the top. It was a form of advertising used by bread makers to distinguish their product from another’s bread, similar to how we might use a wrapper or label on products today.
The Evolution of Web Marketing
Because I am as old as dirt (well, not that old), I remember the early days of internet marketing. Just as the first automobiles were called ‘horseless carriages’ because the carriage was all people understood as a conveyance, marketers transformed print ads into digital formats. Behold: the banner ad.
The banner ad appeared in the early days of the internet, like a print advertisement in a magazine. Static, except for this incredible thing we called click-through. You could click it and be taken directly to the product page. Wow!
You are probably laughing at this mental picture, but I assure you, back in the late 1990s, it was the ‘right’ way to advertise. Of course, we still have some static ads – my blog, Home Garden Joy, displays two in the sidebar for affiliate programs we belong to. I do this for a simple reason: I am very choosy about my advertisers, and so are my readers. I was unhappy with the quality and quantity of ads displayed by Google’s algorithm technology, so I switched to tightly controlled advertising. It works for me, and my readers seem to appreciate it.
Evolution of Digital Marketing
That brings me to my next point. The evolution of traditional marketing into digital marketing is more complex than one might assume. The two areas overlap. Like content marketing vs. traditional marketing, digital vs. traditional marketing is a false dichotomy. There’s no need to choose between them. Instead, finding the right blend of online and offline advertising, choosing narrow tactics like cause marketing or broad tactics like social media, and incorporating successful content marketing strategies and tactics into the overall marketing plan may be the best way for your company to obtain leads and sales.
The Right Marketing Approach Depends on Target Audience
Choosing the right marketing approach, whether it’s traditional marketing, digital marketing, content marketing, or a combination of all three, depends on one thing: your audience.
Advertise Where Your Audience Is
You must fish where the fish are biting. This means you must market to your target customers in ways that appeal to them and in places where they are spending time. Depending on your target audience, this may mean:
- Print advertisements in magazines or newspapers
- Radio commercials on traditional local radio, national radio, or digital broadcasts
- Google advertising or other search advertising
- Social media advertising
- Direct mail
- Outbound calling (“cold calling”)
- Events and conferences (attending, presenting, a trade show booth or sponsorship)
- Sponsoring the local sports team
- Billboard ads
- Become part of a trade organization (chamber of commerce, etc.)
- Affiliate marketing
- Content marketing, including case studies, white papers, videos, and more
- Coupons, sales, and rebate programs
I’m sure I have forgotten traditional, digital, or content marketing methods, but the point is that the list above is not a ‘one size fits all’ list.
The Best Marketing Plan Is Created Just for Your Business
The best marketing plan is one that suits your business. It is a plan created by researching the product, its place in the market, and its competitors. It is a plan that draws from market research into what your customers – not your competitors, not anyone else’s, but YOUR customers – want and need from the product or service. A good marketing plan charts a roadmap to position your company among a sea of competitors so that it stands out and helps develop recognition, awareness, leads, and sales.
Content Marketing vs Traditional Marketing: Let Common Sense Be Your Guide
So, regarding content marketing vs. traditional marketing, here are the similarities and differences.
Content Marketing:
- Focuses on awareness, education, and sharing information to empower customers
- Does not overtly ‘sell’ with a call to action
- Provides useful, desirable information
- Meets the consumer need at the point of interest
In sum:
- Educates customers on how to use products or services
- Provides increasingly detailed information to bring customers to the point of sale
- Highly targeted to specific customer groups called “personas.”
Traditional Marketing
- Focuses on generating awareness and a desire to own a product
- Does “sell” or calls to action: buy, call, click, etc.
- Motivates through emotional appeal
- Promotes to a mass market or large targeted market to generate interest
In sum:
- Generates interest to generate leads and sales
- Appeals to emotions (keep up with the Jones, look better, feel better)
- Often mass market or to a large audience, but can also be targeted
Content Marketing vs Traditional Marketing: We’re All About Content Marketing
At Seven Oaks Consulting, we have over 20 years of experience in all aspects of marketing: content marketing, traditional marketing, and digital marketing. We specialize in business-to-business content marketing and can provide this service to your company. If you feel content marketing is a helpful adjunct to your marketing program, call us, and let’s discuss your ideas. We’re honest. If we think we can help you, we’ll tell you. And, if we believe content marketing isn’t helpful, we’ll let you know that, too.
Also Read…
What Is BOFU?
What Is BOFU?
BOFU is a marketing acronym for “bottom of the funnel.”
This term is derived from a marketing framework known as the sales or marketing funnel, which describes the different stages a potential customer passes through before making a purchasing decision.
The stages are categorized as follows:
- Top of the funnel
- Middle of the funnel
- Bottom of the funnel
The BOFU - the bottom of the funnel - is the final stage of the buyer’s journey and is where the marketer focuses on turning the already nurtured lead into a customer.
Decision-Making Stage Content
Prospects at the bottom of the funnel are at the decision-making stage of the buyer’s journey and only need an extra push from the marketer in the form of discounts, rebates, testimonials, etc., to make a buying decision.
Besides the incentives the marketer offers here, one of the major characteristics of BOFU is the type of content the marketer publishes.
Here, the marketer focuses on publishing materials that help the prospect make a decision.
These can include case studies, product demos, trials, customer stories and reviews, and even initial consultations to clarify any doubts or questions the prospects may have.
This is where the marketer provides a detailed description of the products or services and the benefits customers stand to gain.
Metrics
The metrics for measuring the success rate of BOFU strategies and content include:
- Conversion rate
- Customer lifetime value (CLV)
- Average Order Volume
- Return on advertising spend (ROAS) and
- Cost per acquisition (CPA).
- Customer retention rate
- Sales cycle length
- Case study views and downloads
For more on marketing funnel content, please see our article on TOFU: Top of Funnel.
What Is TOFU?
What Is TOFU?
TOFU is a marketing acronym for “top of the funnel.” It is the first stage in the marketing framework, known as the marketing or sales funnel, which represents the customer’s journey to making a purchase decision.
Prospects at the top of the funnel are at the beginning of their buyer’s journey.
At this stage, the prospect knows they have a problem and need a solution but is unaware of the solution they need or the brand that offers it.
Here, marketers try to create awareness and attract attention to their brands or products.
They position themselves as industry authorities, providing valuable information relevant to the needs of TOFU prospects to make them interested in knowing more about the solutions.
The information becomes their first contact with a marketer’s brand, and if they’re interested in learning more, they go further down the marketing funnel into the middle of the funnel.
Marketers don't attempt to sell to their prospects at the TOFU stage of the buyer’s journey. Instead, they nurture the prospects by providing educational and informational content that answers their most dominant questions and gives them insights to understand their problems better.
Content for TOFU Marketing
TOFU content includes blog posts, infographics, social media posts, videos, e-books, and whitepapers.
After the TOFU in the marketing framework is the middle of the funnel (MOFU) and bottom of the funnel (BOFU), which describes the points when the customers are aware of brands that offer the solutions they want and when they’re making comparisons to choose the most suitable option for their needs.
Metrics to Assess Top of Funnel Success
The metrics for measuring the success rate of TOFU strategies and content include:
- Bounce rate
- Time on page
- Clickthrough rate (CTR)
- Lead generation
- Social media followers, etc.
Creating high-quality, search engine optimized top of funnel content is an art. A good content marketing agency can help you quickly fill your TOFU content for optimal results.
Content Marketing vs SEO - Which Is Better for Marketing?
Content marketing and SEO are digital marketing strategies that guarantee optimal online visibility, engagement, and overall success for any B2B company. However, some content marketers and B2B companies are confused about the similarities and differences between the two strategies and which to devote the most effort to.
Three key questions remain:
- Is one of these strategies superior to the other, or do they function better when integrated?
- Should B2B companies focus on one or leverage both for overall company success?
- What’s the best way to approach SEO and Content marketing?
Understanding the distinct attributes of each strategy and the potential synergistic power of both remains the only way to determine the answers to these questions.
Content marketing and SEO complement each other, and research has shown they work best when integrated. B2B companies that resolve how to complement both strategies make the most of their powerful synergy and stay ahead.
What Is Content Marketing?
Content marketing involves creating and distributing valuable content in the form of blogs, videos, eBooks, and podcasts to educate or inform an audience. Companies leverage it to educate and inform their audience about their products and services, helping them understand how the company stands out from their competitors.
By consistently publishing and distributing valuable industry information, B2B companies present themselves as reliable go-to resources for industry thought leadership information. This helps the company build trust and authority, enabling them to convert their prospects easily.
To excel with content marketing, you need an efficient content marketing strategy that includes plans for audience research, content planning, creation, distribution, analytics, and others.
What is SEO?
SEO, or search engine optimization, refers to the strategies and techniques used to improve a website and its pages to rank at the top of search engine result pages (SERPs). Ranking high on SERPs increases a website’s visibility, as research has shown that most people don’t go beyond the first page of a search engine when seeking information.
The increased visibility generates more traffic, increasing the website’s leads and conversion rate. The primary aim of SEO is to increase the quality and quantity of traffic to a website from search engines.
Companies adopt SEO to increase their company’s, product’s, or service’s awareness, improving their revenue generation chances.
To execute SEO successfully, you must have a robust SEO strategy that includes plans for keyword research, link building, competitive analysis,on-page optimization, off-page optimization, and technical SEO, amongst others.
Difference between Content Marketing and SEO
While content marketing and SEO are similar or complementary, they have differences in their goals, scope, and the role search engines play.
The Goals of Content Marketing and SEO
Content marketing aims to build brand awareness, establish industry authority, and build solid and beneficial relationships across all marketing channels with potential customers. To achieve this goal, companies create relevant and educational content that resonates with their target audience, depending on the marketing channel.
However, SEO aims to increase a website’s visibility and rankings on search engines, enabling it to attract high-quality leads. Companies achieve this goal by optimizing various elements, such as website load speed, meta, and title tags, HTTP status codes, mobile friendliness, backlink structure, etc.
SEO significantly increases the chances of success on one vital content marketing channel – search engine marketing.
The Scope of Content Marketing and SEO
Another difference between content marketing and SEO is their scope. Content marketing focuses more on content creation in various formats and distribution through multiple channels, such as social media, blogs, search engines, emails, etc.
On the other hand, SEO involves all technical, on-page, and off-page activities in helping a website achieve the most content distribution and visibility on search engines.
Role of Search Engines in Content Marketing and SEO
This is a more subtle difference between content marketing and SEO. Content marketing emphasizes creating high-quality, relevant content that addresses the target audience’s needs, preferences, and pain points. When content marketing involves website content, the content might help the website rank on search engines.
However, SEO is more direct in helping websites rank on search engines. It focuses on the website’s technical sides, content structure, and other on-page and off-page elements like keyword research and integration, quality backlink building, user experience, etc. All these help search engine algorithms understand a website’s relevance and rank it at the top of SERPs for those searching for related information.
Content Marketing and SEO: How They Complement Each Other
Content marketing vs. SEO shouldn’t be the question. The better question should be how can both work together for optimal results. SEO and content marketing complement each other, from keyword optimization to brand and product visibility, user experience, and link building.
Keyword Optimization
Keyword optimization is one of the most vital ways SEO helps actualize content marketing goals. When users seek information on search engines, they do so with keywords. Identifying and optimizing for these keywords is only possible through extensive keyword research, an SEO activity.
To rank high and generate traffic from search engines where prospects actively use these keywords, companies create relevant content that addresses prospects’ needs and pain points and integrate these keywords naturally into them.
Improved Visibility and Brand Awareness
Content marketing and SEO work hand in hand to improve a company’s website’s visibility on search engines, creating awareness for its products and services. SEO is used in content marketing to help search engines identify and index well-written content that addresses customer needs.
The more readers find the content useful, the more search engines will help push it to a larger audience. Content marketing efforts are more fruitful when the content reaches a broader audience, and SEO helps achieve this by pushing the content higher in search rankings.
Quality and User Experience
Content marketing and SEO also work together to improve content quality and user experience.
By conducting extensive keyword research and SERP audits, companies gain more insight into their target audience’s expectations. They can then create content that addresses those expectations.
The quality of a piece of content depends a lot on how relevant it is to the readers. And the more relevant the content is, the better the user experience.
Engaging, informative content improves a website’s search engine rankings. It keeps readers hooked on your website longer. And the more people stay on your website, the greater the odds they’ll contact you.
Increased Link-Building Opportunities
Great, informative, and exhaustive content attracts backlinks from other websites. The more backlinks content receives, especially from authoritative sources, the more search engines recognize the content and website as relevant and trustworthy. And this makes the search engine algorithms push the content higher up on the SERPs.
Great content and SEO marketing strategies lead to more organic link-building opportunities. In turn, this increase a website’s ranking, visibility, traffic generation, and ultimately lead generation and conversion.
Integrate Your Content Marketing and SEO Strategies and Achieve Optimal Results
Undoubtedly, optimal online marketing results come with integrating SEO and content marketing strategy. An extensive content marketing strategy without a complementing SEO strategy is ineffective. You can miss out on many organic leads and leave a lot of money on the table. Similarly, a robust SEO strategy without solid content marketing backing it up is almost futile.
The ideal approach is to develop a complementary SEO content marketing strategy that includes content marketing and SEO plans. Smart B2B companies integrate both strategies to give their brand, products, and services much-needed organic visibility, ultimately increasing revenue-generating opportunities.
Content Strategy Tips - Owned vs Rented Land
On our brand new YouTube Channel, Jeanne shares her thoughts on Joe Pulizzi's famous quote, "Don't build your content house on rented land" - as well as why you should actually have a strategy for sharing content on 'rented land'.
What Is "Owned" and "Rented" Land in Content Marketing?
In content marketing, we talk about owned vs. rented digital land. This is an analogy to building a house. When you build a house, you must own the land you build it on - or else the owner of the land can kick you out of the house at any time.
If you build your digital version of a house, that central place where you direct your customers, clients, and readers to, on a website you neither own nor control, you are at risk of the site owner cutting off access at any time - the digital version of a landowner kicking you out of the rented land!
I've seen this a lot with small business owners who build their 'house' or digital business presence on a Facebook page. They even go so far as to put the page URL on their signage or business cards. That's not bad, per se, but using only Facebook as your online presence is very dangerous. Facebook can at any time cut off your access to the page, shut your page down, or decide to charge high fees. If you build your online or digital presence on a website that you own or control, you're assured it will be there as long as you want it to be there.
Marketing Agency Vanity Awards
(And Actual Awards You Can Win)
I had no idea that marketing agency vanity awards existed until this year when I almost fell prey to an award scam. They're out there - beware.
Since responding to the first group, I've been targeted by two others. Here is my story. Don't fall prey to the marketing agency vanity award scam!
Note: This is a true story. I have redacted the name of the "conference" and the dates, along with individuals names, but the facts are accurate.
At the end of this article, I include a link to download a free copy of an ebook we published with legitimate marketing awards and conferences you can enter. I hope you download it.
The Marketing Agency Award That Isn’t
My scam radar is pretty good. I’ve got that cynical edge that looks at every opportunity from two lenses: what’s in it for me and what are you trying to get from me. So, when the following in-mail appeared in my LinkedIn account, my scam radar was on high.
“Hey Jeanne, I'm glad to inform you that you have been shortlisted for the 'Outstanding Leadership Award', set to be conferred at the [Redacted] Conference in (City and date redacted) 2022).” The note included a link to a video of a past conference.
I fired back a response:
“Seriously? Where is this listed? And can I promote this? Quite a lovely surprise.”
And then…crickets. Nothing. Days passed, and the woman who had contacted me never responded.
Now, if you were hosting an awards competition, and you’ve just notified the winner, and they responded like this, wouldn’t you respond quickly? I would think so. My scam radar was on high once again.
However, the LinkedIn profile of the woman who had contacted me checked out. She was indeed affiliated with the conference mentioned and received excellent LinkedIn recommendations from previous companies who had hired her to coordinate conferences and events. I assumed she was on the conference marketing team and had been hired to reach out to people to get them to attend the conference. How, or why, the conference organizers thought I was nominated for a Marketing Leadership award was beyond me, so I wanted to know more.
I cautiously made an appointment to speak with the woman who had contacted me. She let me know that a colleague from the nominations committee would join the video call. Fair enough.
“Thanks for booking the calendar for Monday.
Also, apologies for the delay in response as I was not active here due to some reasons.
You have been invited to participate in the nomination process for the "Outstanding Leadership Award" by our research team on the basis of 5 below-mentioned criteria: 1. Leader’s Reputation 2. Educational Background 3. Professional Experience 4. Creative Thinking 5. Decisive Leadership
We have a procedure which we follow for selecting our awardees, for that we have an application form.”
However, she still hadn’t answered some of my questions about how my name had come up, who had nominated me, etc.
“Meanwhile, please refer to the deck attached.”
The attached deck was nothing more than a glossy promotional piece, mostly filled with images from their previous event, which looked good but could easily be stock images of a conference. Who knows?
Remember, I’m from New York City. Home of street cons and a thousand get rich quick schemes.
I decided to attend the video call to see what this was all about.
The Committee Meeting and the Sales Pitch
We met on July 11. The half-hour video conference was bizarre. I immediately told the two people from the conference award committee that I needed to know this was not a scam. I must have asked a dozen times if this was a sales pitch. They assured me that it was not – that it was a genuine award.
They then proceeded to weave a compelling sales pitch, alternately hyping the award and the resulting promotion for a small marketing agency like mine and the potential for reaching hundreds of other marketing leaders by accepting the award at their conference and paying the additional fees for their marketing package, which include press releases, badges, and the ability to conduct a session at the conference.
The catch? I was expected, as an award winner, to pay $2,000 for my conference ticket. I would also have to pay for my own airfare and hotel.
The conference dates backed right into Christmas. I was already reluctant to commit, given how close these dates are to both Christmas and a close family member’s birthday. The thought of missing both events due to canceled flights or weather delays, both real possibilities at that time of year, troubled me. Additionally, as I mentioned to the committee, I wasn’t keen on attending in-person events due to the potential for COVID. They said it wasn’t an option; I must attend in person to receive the award.
But how, I asked, had they found me in the first place? Who had nominated me?
After much discussion, they admitted that a “computer algorithm” had selected my profile as a nominee for the “marketing leadership award” based on “criteria outlined” in their deck, which they could only cite but not explain.
Throughout the call, the pair stressed “mandatory attendance” at the conference in order to ‘receive the award.’
I’ve won several marketing awards, including the New York University Award of Excellence and the Lester Wunderman Award for direct marketing excellence, and in both cases, if I wasn’t able to attend the award ceremony, no one threatened to take back the award.
Both previous awards also came with prizes. The award committees didn’t ask me to pay for my promotions; they promoted the event themselves, only asking for my permission to use my photograph and name in their publicity, which I gave them.
In the case of this award, however, the committee stressed that purchasing a $2,000 ticket to the conference was mandatory to receive the award. I balked at the price. I pushed back on the other expenses: airfare and hotel fees. They said they would give me the ticket for $1,500 and reduce the hotel fee to $65 per night. I began to feel a surreal sense that I was haggling over the price of a flea market find.
Again and again, the duo stressed that attendance at the event was mandatory to receive the award. If I wanted to publicize my award, I’d have to fork over more money for a press release, “award badges” to put on my social media profile, and other fees to leverage the award.
Still skeptical, I heard out their pitch to the end. The call ended with them urging me to pay a $50 entry fee and complete an application. It wasn’t much money to see what would happen next, so I completed the application, paid my fee, and shrugged. It was a long shot anyway since the pair assured me that from 1,000 shortlisted names, only 500 would make it to the nomination round, with 60 in the final round for the single award.
After filling out the application, I dug deeper into the conference through my old friend Google Search, but still couldn’t turn up any dirt. I could find no evidence online that either the two people I met with were scammers or that the conference was anything but a legitimate professional development event. The only catch was the odd emphasis on me, the award winner, paying the fees to attend, speak, and promote my award. The hard emphasis on conference attendance was also still nagging at me as a catch that seemed out of sync with an actual award, but I couldn’t see how it was either illegal or a scam, just an oddity that I disliked.
You’ve Won a Major Award!
(Is it "frageeli"? Bonus points if you get the Christmas Story reference)
In less than one week from meeting with the pair and completing my application form, the following appeared in my email in-box on July 19.
“Hey Jeanne Grunert,
Hope this email finds you in the best of health and spirit.
The [Marketing Conference Name] primarily comprises achievers from the industry whom we recognize for their contributions while providing a platform for networking and knowledge sharing amongst this elite group of high-performing individuals and companies.
We received a lot of incredible applications this year and choosing the Honorees for the category "Outstanding Leadership Award" was a very tough job for our Assessment Committee (chair and management). All nominees were adjudged on 5 parameters, namely:
- Leader's Reputation
- Educational Background
- Professional Experience
- Creative Thinking
- Decisive Leadership
After careful consideration and research, our Assessment Committee (chair and management) rated each applicant on every criterion to reach the final list of honorees.
We are happy to let you know that you have been selected for the Outstanding Leadership Award recognition, to be conferred at the [Name Redacted for this article] in [Name redacted for this article]. Please find attached with this email your Assessment Report for your perusal.
Please pick a convenient date and time using the following calendar link, for our team to get in touch with you and confirm your participation at the event.
We congratulate you on your wonderful achievement and look forward to seeing you at the event!
Best Wishes,
Assessment Committee”
Whoa! How did go from one of 1,000 shortlisted nominees on July 7 to the winner by July 19?
It made absolutely no sense. Why did I have to meet with them to “confirm my attendance”? Why the rush to confirm my attendance for a conference occurring five months in the future?
The “Assessment Report”
The so-called “report” attached to the email also made no sense and read like a form letter. The criteria listed each had a ranking factor next to it and a brief paragraph about my so-called skills in the respective area.
But what had the committee looked at to rank each factor? I checked with the three people I had listed on my references to see if the committee had contacted them , and not a single person had been contacted.
The ranking factors included things that could only be determined and evaluated by looking at my agency’s actual client work: marketing plans, content marketing campaigns, and results achieved. But this information is not available outside of my agency. Only I could submit this information to them, as is typical of marketing awards where the participants must submit campaign examples and results as part of the application process. But I hadn’t submitted anything.
Now I was seriously concerned. What was this award? Why did the entire approach feel like a scam but the conference seem like a legitimate event?
I tried calling the previous award winner to ask her about her experience with the conference. I found her name in press releases mentioning the award and found her company online, where she had shared another press release citing this conference and the award. I left a voice mail saying I received notification that I’d won the upcoming award and wanted to hear about her experiences with the conference and award.
She never returned my call.
More suspicious than ever, I returned to searching online. Something was seriously wrong with this picture, with pressure mounting from the nomination committee to confirm my attendance at the event. I didn’t return their emails or LinkedIn messages.
Marketing Agency Vanity Awards
It took me a while to uncover two articles online – just two – explaining why I felt this was a scam of some sort. While not technically a scam, the award process itself is fraught with problems, and provides a meaningless vanity award to the winner while ensuring the conference has attendees eager to be there.
In his article The Agency Award Scam and How It Works, Jason Yormark explains how other conferences and industry magazines prey upon small marketing agency owners’ natural desire to grow their agencies through publicity.
While not an outright scam (agencies are certainly receiving something for the money they pay) the award itself is based on useless, made up criteria.
Yormark delineates a process that is the mirror image of the process the “nominations committee” used to solicit my response. He ends his article by wondering why no one is unmasking these awards for what they are. I know why.
People like me who almost fall for them, or who do fall for them, are too embarrassed to admit it. I’m not. I want you to know this, and I want every marketing agency owner to know this so they don’t waste their time on bogus awards.
The growing realization that I almost fell victim to a vanity award made me very angry. What made me angrier, however, is the fact that very few people online were calling out these companies for the shady business practices they employ.
The Conference Is Legitimate – But the Award Is Meaningless
Is it a scam? Is the conference real?
The conference people I spoke with did indeed offer me an award with the condition that receiving the award was dependent upon attending the conference. That isn’t illegal, as far as I can tell. Any award committee can set whatever criteria they want upon an award. It’s their award. And the conference itself appears to be a genuine professional development event, a typical marketing conference with speaker sessions, workshops, and so on.
However, the value of the award itself, the nomination process, the evaluation process, and the “pay to play” mentality surely puts this award and others of its kind into a gray area that taints it.
I never returned the committee’s more urgent messages, choosing instead to wait to see what would unfold.
I’m Shortlisted – Again!
Then – surprise! – on July 27, I was contacted via email by someone claiming to be from “The Advertising And Marketing Forum” with a Virginia address stating that I was nominated for an award for Outstanding Marketing Leadership!
There was a disclaimer and a huge copyright notice at the end of the email, with no link to the disclaimer, no link to their website, and no more information about this magical award – just a demanding tone to make an appointment now or lose the award. No mention of where the magic award would be given, either.
Not surprisingly, the pressure began just a day later. On July 28, the piece de resistance – an email from the same award conference that had contact me via LinkedIn but from a different person, following up on the July 27 email, to tell me I was shortlisted for the award.
- July 7: Contacted on LinkedIn about being shortlisted for the Outstanding Leadership Award
- July 11: Met with Award Committee, told I could apply for nomination.
- July 19: Received email with report saying I was the winner but must confirm my attendance at the event to receive the award.
- July 27: Received another email sequence from a different person (but this time in the state of Virginia, where my agency is located) saying I was shortlisted for the Outstanding Leadership Award…for the same conference, the same award..
- July 28: Received a second email encouraging me to meet with them to continue the nomination process.
It was, almost word for word, the same pitch.
“Hey Jeanne,
Greetings from [Conference Name redacted]!
I hope you are doing well. This is regarding your reply to my colleague Eliza about the upcoming conference.
The Winter Edition of our [Name Redacted] is taking place at [Name Redacted] on December X. We'll be hosting insightful panel discussions for marketing professionals and showcase some exciting innovations from exhibitors and speakers alike.
We are delighted to inform you that you have been shortlisted as a potential nominee for the 'Outstanding Leadership Award', I would be delighted to discuss further the opportunity if we can connect for a brief call at your convenience.”
Well, isn’t that special! It was, word for word, point for point, the exact same pitch and details as the person had sent me via LinkedIn, except this time it was via email.
Here's my response. This person never pestered me again.
“According to what was already sent to me by someone else, I've already won. So, which is it?”
Follow Up: September 2022
These people don't get the message. Through August, the original duo continued to demand a response from me and my payment to attend the conference. Additionally, despite numerous requests to be removed from their mailing list, they continued to email me.
Follow Up: October 2022
Since the original approach in July, I’ve now received two other approaches for various “awards”.
Here’s one example. They never stop.
Hi Jeanne,
Trust this mail finds you well.
We have an excellent opportunity we would like to share with you– a prestigious felicitation program (A “felicitation program” What is that?) is confirmed to be a part of our marketing event’s schedule (What marketing event? They never cite it by name) in the USA later this winter.
As we went through your portfolio (What portfolio? My marketing work is done under tight NDAs for clients and it never listed in a portfolio online) we recommend that you show your earliest interest (What the heck is “show earliest interest"?) in the program as you have a high chance of getting an accolade (getting an accolade” - again what accolade, why, and from whom?) owing to your unparalleled contributions to the marketing sector.
If you think you might be interested in going forward (If it is a legitimate award, you win it - you don't have to "go forward" with anything. You are told you are the winner and if you accept, they give the award), let us know so we can schedule a call as soon as possible to discuss the opportunities this two-day marketing summit beholds for experts like you.
While on call (grammar mistake), our experts will also guide you through the application process step-by-step.
Let’s connect this week?
Best,
B (name redacted)
(and sent from a gmail address with no signature line - no organization, no conference listed, no name)
Legitimate Marketing Agency Awards
We've put together a free ebook of LEGITIMATE marketing awards you can win. Just sign up for our newsletter and you can download your very own copy. Plus, we'll throw in our free content marketing playbook, too.
Average Social Media Marketing Costs in 2022
Social media marketing costs depend on several factors across platforms and industries.
According to the Search Engine Journal, 84% of the US population use at least one social media channel. The active number of users worldwide stands at 57.6%, which means at least half of the population uses one social media channel a month.
Brands are monetizing social media more than ever, making it an essential part of their content marketing strategy. As a result, companies are spending more on social media ads, with a projected ad spending of US $0.23 M in 2022.
This leads to the question: How much should you expect to spend on social media marketing?
This guide will help you uncover the typical social media marketing costs, the amount organizations spend on it, and the factors that can affect the spending.
What are the Average Social Media Marketing Costs?
Social media marketing costs vary based on what services you need and how frequently you need them. Here's what you can expect to pay local US professionals:
- Average cost (per month): $400 - $650
- Minimum cost (per month): $295
- Maximum cost (per month): $1000+
- How Much Do Organizations Spend On Social Media Marketing?
The marketing spend is influenced by several factors such as the company size, the industry, the services offered, and the total revenue.
On average, businesses invest $4000 to $7000 per month on social media marketing, which includes advertising on one or more channels. If outsourcing, the social media cost ranges from $900 to $20,000 per month and $75 to $500 per hour for a consultant or freelancer's services.
What Changes The Cost Of Social Media Marketing?
The amount you'll pay for social media marketing depends on the following factors:
1: Taking It In-House
Average cost: $30 - $100 per month
If you're planning to create and manage everything yourself, set aside a minimum amount to get started. You can use this to build knowledge or purchase tools to help you get started.
As a one-person team, you must create content, keep up with posting on social media, respond to mentions and comments, and track the critical KPIs.
There are affordable subscription-based services that can help to automate social media marketing. Tools such as Buffer have a scheduler to create and schedule posts in advance. Hootsuite tracks all the social feeds together, so you don't have to open activities in different tabs.
If you're looking to take your social media in-house, consider investing in free or paid tools to help you ideate, plan, and manage content marketing, so you have time to look into other business areas.
2: Outsourcing on a Smaller Budget
Average cost: $500 - $1000 per month
Small businesses have tight budgets, but it's possible to outsource social media marketing to an agency on a limited budget.
Agencies have different packages and pricing models that you can choose from depending on your budget. In addition, each agency charges differently depending on expertise since there is no standard industry pricing for social media marketing.
Seven Oaks Consulting offers outsourced social media post creation and adding posts to scheduling tools at prices within this monthly range.
3: Outsourcing on a Larger Budget
Average cost: $1500 to $5000 per month
If you have a larger budget, the world is your oyster. You can opt for a superior, more expensive agency with a faster turnaround and more resources dedicated to your account.
But hiring an expensive agency might not always translate into results. You want to hire an agency that is credible and has significant achievements to show. A good marketing agency will ask you about your niche, industry, current marketing strategy, and previous marketing failures. Make sure the agency you choose can deliver consistent results while staying true to the brand vision.
Hiring a Social Media Expert — Is It Worth The Investment?
If you lack the resources and expertise to manage social media channels, getting an expert on board is worth the investment. They can plan the content for social media channels, schedule them, and monitor the performance.
Maintaining an edge via social media can be tricky, but experts can help to streamline content based on the target audience to get the most from your buck. A dedicated social media expert can help you determine what works for your brand on different platforms and how you can maximize the revenue with current strategies.
If you need help with social media marketing, Seven Oaks Consulting can help. We are a full-service marketing agency specializing in social media marketing and content creation. Contact Jeanne at (434) 574-6253 or email jeanne@sevenoaksconsulting.com for more information on our social media post creation and scheduling services.
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