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Is Your 2022 Marketing Strategy on Target?

Here are 3 questions mid-size brands should ask themselves to find out.

Growing a middle-market brand is no small feat. You’re often competing in markets that are dominated by big players and saturated with energetic startups.

Many of our clients come to us looking to solve this challenge through marketing, trusting we’ll turn their promotional budget into maximum ROI. An iron-clad marketing strategy is key to keeping any organization afloat, but how do you ensure lasting impact over time?

By always understanding your audience.

If you don’t know what matters most to your key demographic, and how they learn and consume information, you will lose your relevance. Why should they keep you on their radar if you cannot empathize with (and solve) their problems?

My goal is to help our clients ask the right audience-first questions to keep their marketing strategy on track. So, let’s run through the three questions you should ask yourself when putting your own strategy under the microscope.

Are you driving value for your audience?

The entire purpose of a product is to solve the customer’s problems. If your customer-facing content doesn’t focus on how your product can ease their burdens, you will lose their attention, fast.

And that would be a simple charge if you served just one audience, but that’s often not the case. Organizations need to spend the time to understand each audience (their hopes, obstacles, and behaviors), understand their potential impact to your organization (lifetime value), and prioritize marketing spend accordingly.

Thankfully, if you’re already in business, you likely have ready access to your customer base. If you ask them to help improve your services, they’ll often be more than happy to oblige.

An in-person or online customer survey is perhaps the simplest branding “health check” you can conduct. Ask customers whether you’re meeting their needs and, if not, what you can do to fix it. (And it never hurts to offer participants a small incentive as a thank-you.)

Is your message relevant to your audience?

There are two types of relevance to consider: cultural relevance and industry relevance. As the speed of business and culture continues to quicken, it’s important to show customers that you’re in touch with what currently matters in a way that separates you from the competition.

Culturally relevant brands share their messages in a way that customers resonate with and understand. This extends beyond simply using keywords, phrases, and concepts your audience is familiar with; you should mirror their values as well.

A brand’s cultural involvement drives a whopping 25% of the average consumer’s purchase decision. If your brand gives back to the community, supports social issues, and otherwise conducts itself in a way that matters to customers, they will notice.

Brands should also maintain industry relevance by taking note of major changes, challenges, and opportunities in the marketplace. A brand that adapts its messaging to respond to its audience’s excitement or concerns about these changes will come off as trustworthy and well-adjusted. COVID-19 is a great example of this – brands that pivoted to meet their audience during this unique time earned brownie points in dividends.

Marketers can pursue both cultural and industry relevance by simply keeping a steady eye on conversations in the news and on social media. It also helps to study the discourse between your competitors and their audiences to determine what works and what misses the mark. Brands that want to stay in the know should consider regular assessments of competitors’ websites and social channels to gain a quick view of market conversations and untapped opportunities.

Are you using your audience’s chosen platforms?

Every brand has a customer base that interacts with the world in a unique way. We know millennial moms are oftentimes driven to the stimulating visuals of Instagram while their boomer parents tend toward more traditional social channels like Facebook. When you focus the bulk of your budget and energy on your audience’s chosen mediums, you can maximize your marketing impact.

Also ask whether your activity on those platforms is driving the actions you want in your business. Are your customers being led to your website? Does that, in turn, lead them to make a purchase or ask for a quote? Conduct quarterly and annual analyses to see whether your strategy is yielding the desired business outcomes, not just marketing outcomes.

An effective marketing strategy requires dedicated attention to many different aspects of your audience and brand. Asking yourself these three questions – on a daily basis, not just once or twice a year – is critical to identifying diverse strategies and creating holistic solutions that may be grounded in marketing but are revenue-generating – which is the ultimate goal for all middle-market brands.

How the search for clarity fueled our latest brand refresh

A lot has changed in the past year for Dotted Line: our size, our clientele, our growing presence in the Richmond marketing space. But one thing that we didn’t expect to change as much as it did was our brand identity.

Earlier this year, as we began re-assessing our target audience, we tapped one of our brand strategists to simply crisp up our message – we expected a refresh at most. However, once we dug into insights collected from our clients and network, we realized an equal need to more clearly define Dotted Line’s product offerings and perspective.

And now, months later, perhaps you’ve noticed the fresh look of our website, but that’s just one result of our dedicated efforts to update Dotted Line’s brand positioning and messaging.

Of course, you might think that a marketing firm has the ready tools and resources to consistently update its brand, but a targeted exercise ensures you’re doing that strategically and effectively. At the same time, we saw the opportunity to practice what we preach to our clients about continuing to analyze your brand. So, we invite you to peek behind the curtain on our process and re-walk that journey with us.

The meaning of meaning

The secret to effective branding is creating authentic, personal connections between the business and the customer to foster greater trust in the buying process.

Studies show that 84% of millennials don’t trust advertising, but that 82% of individuals base their purchases on reviews and effective content that engages with consumers. In short, consumers trust other people’s perspectives before they trust a company’s paid message. Brands that communicate like people wanting to help other people create trust more quickly – facilitating a faster, more effective sales process. And the positive effects of these brand touchpoints last long after the immediate sale.

We all know actions speak louder than words. People trust actions, not lip service. Demonstrating that your organization is oriented toward its stated goal by living it through your work and beyond is the best proof point you can give a consumer.

At Dotted Line, the insights we collected – which prompted a search for deeper clarity – led us to develop a set of belief statements to serve as a North Star for Dotted Line’s brand and our team’s day-to-day work.

Beliefs fuel brand identity

Our first step was to ask ourselves some central questions. To name a few: What has happened in the past to drive our passion? What’s happening now in our world that gets us fired up? Why do we exist? And what really matters to us?

From there, we dug into what our target clients care about. We interviewed several core clients and augmented that research with team observations, which informed the creation of several target personas.

Ultimately, we arrived at four powerful belief statements:

We put creativity to work to grow businesses because problem-solving is the fastest way to achieve ambitious growth.
We start by putting the dots in a row because we know a strategically led approach fights inefficiency and ineffectiveness for our clients’ marketing.
We bring together top performers in new and traditional media to execute omnichannel campaigns.
We are people who care as much as you do. Strategic partnership requires co-ownership of goals and results.

By determining which beliefs drive meaning for our agency, we could then analyze our visuals, messaging, and client experience to see if they were consistent in executing our ideals. Moving forward, we’ll continue asking ourselves what actions we can take to generate the right moments that prove our beliefs, and how we’re teaching and reinforcing these beliefs to our team.

Brand building is never finished

The operative words in that last sentence? Moving forward. As Dotted Line continues to grow and evolve, we’re always working to build our brand: enhance our visual identity, sharpen our message, and create meaningful moments for clients.

It’s tempting to view brand building as a destination, but it is, in fact, a journey. A company that consistently evaluates its own beliefs, and whether those beliefs drive its brand identity, is better equipped to drive traffic, leads, and conversions.

That’s not just conjecture. Lucidpress and Demand Metric found in 2017 that brand consistency drove an average 23% revenue increase for companies. If your beliefs don’t align with your messaging, identity, and moments, it’s time to consider a shift.

As a team of creative, content, and brand strategy experts, Dotted Line is equipped to build your brand through collaborative, research-driven methods that yield lasting results. Click here to reach out.

Tuesday Thought: Re-Engineering Our Habits for Success

“Vision without action is just a dream.” – Joel Arthur Baker

“Destiny is not a mystery. Destiny is daily habits. It’s mind over matter. It’s nurture over nature. It’s a daily grind in the same direction. Show me your habits. I’ll show you your future.” – Mark Batterson

•••

I’ve never been a big fan of setting ambitious goals or dreams without having a supporting action plan. I talk with many people who share grand hopes for the future, but in follow-up conversations a year or two later, I learn most didn’t achieve what they’d dreamed.

Days turn into months, and behavior changes never happen to instigate the necessary activities that turn actions into outcomes. For example, a big problem with New Year’s resolutions is that we fail to consistently practice the action that’s needed for us to succeed. Whether it’s getting out of debt or getting into shape, the habits we adapt dictate our progress.

A recent Duke University study shared that 45% of our daily behavior is automatic. So if we want to see meaningful change in our lives, we must reverse-engineer the steps toward a goal to put the right habits in place to achieve that desired outcome. As I think about some of my goals this year – for me personally, for my family, and for our agency team – this topic of habits and building a successful system is top of mind.

I recently heard author Mark Batterson talk about how he thinks about his habit formation, as he explores more deeply in his newest book, Do It For a Day. He assesses his habits with three questions: “Are my habits measurable? Are they meaningful? And are they maintainable?”

Measurable: We map miles, count calories and budget dollars. Our habits are quantifiable.
Meaningful: If I take on the desired persona, I believe I can do it. I believe I am a runner, so, therefore, I am able to run 30 minutes today.
Maintainable: Can I do it for one day? If so, I can do it again tomorrow. I spent time writing today, so, therefore, I can also write tomorrow.

Batterson looked at the habits of some of the most successful leaders in American history to hack their routines. What he found is that the top trend across all of them was their ability to focus and put discipline around their daily habits. Batterson shares that we often overestimate what we can do in a year or two and vastly underestimate what we can do in five or 10.

The encouraging news is that you’re always only one habit away from any goal you set.

In those moments when I feel like I just don’t have the time, I remember that a friend told me the average person spends two and a half hours per day on social media. That’s 15% of our typical waking hours. Unfortunately, when I look at my weekly iPhone activity report, my social media usage isn’t far off (even if some of it is work related).

So how do I accomplish big goals? This week, I’m focusing on one new habit to integrate daily.

What one habit could you adopt this week to see if it makes an impact in a month?

Six Ways to Produce Award-Worthy Marketing Content for Clients

Getting to great work starts and ends with a trusting and collaborative relationship.

The most memorable modern marketing campaigns (the Geico Gecko or Progressive’s Flo come to mind) are the ones that play off relatable, human interactions and remind audiences a bit of themselves. These and other popular advertising mascots show us that, behind the brands we trust, there are people with personalities and ambitions just like us, and we bond with them emotionally.

But one-on-one connection (simulated or otherwise) doesn’t just play a role in the final commercial, print ad or radio spot; it’s a crucial tenet across the entire marketing lifecycle. Great business is built on strong and trusted client-account relationships that form with time, patience and dedication.

In my 20-plus years in account-based work, I’ve found that behind every award-winning marketing campaign is an account team that’s committed to maintaining a healthy and collaborative relationship with the client.

Here are six relationship-based approaches every account team should take toward delivering top-notch work for clients.

Communicate and over-communicate.

Nothing leads to a great relationship than clear communication. If everyone understands each client request, its individual components and the implementation plan, the resulting product will be more cohesive and powerful.

Consider Commander’s Intent, a military principle by which leaders outline the who, what, when, where and why (five W’s) of a mission’s execution plan. While your approach to team-based organization may differ slightly, the longstanding success of Commander’s Intent demonstrates the usefulness of detail-oriented planning and communication.

Communication also enables deepened personal relationships with the client, making them to feel seen and appreciated for their vision and goals. This requires patience (it took months to break through to one of my most demanding former clients), but the quality content and friendships that result are well worth it.

Keep an open mind.

Great ideas can come from anywhere. Whether a spectacular vision for a marketing campaign comes from you, the client or the most junior member of your account team, don’t ignore it, especially based on seniority. It may just become your client’s next great claim to fame.

Be detail oriented.

Details are the backbone of any successful process. Account leaders should take the time to develop and implement protocols and tools for every team member, so that even the minutiae of a client-facing project are fully addressed. From holding kickoff meetings, briefs and check-ins to setting deadlines and conducting follow-ups, each step in the process pays dividends when executed well.

Stay positive.

Not every marketing project can be award-worthy, but it’s an account leader’s job to believe it can be and look for ways to make it so. By showing enthusiasm, providing the tools and language needed to succeed and removing team members’ barriers to success, leaders create an environment most likely to foster greatness.

Even when a client gives undesirable feedback or a final product doesn’t remotely resemble its far superior storyboard, take the challenge or disappointment as a learning opportunity. The lesson learned will ultimately fuel the quality of your next piece of creative or content.

Build trust.

Keeping a client up to speed on the agency team’s every development ensures nobody is left in the dark, waiting to be delivered a product that’s vastly different than what was initially pitched. Meanwhile, providing clear expectations for team members and welcoming all questions, doubts and requests for help creates trust on the account side. The best work happens when even the most outlandish ideas can be freely and comfortably shared.

Be honest and direct.

Don’t be overly sensitive or cautious with your feedback — we’re all adults, so let’s treat each other that way. Understanding one another’s priorities, even if those priorities clash at first, is the first step toward aligning the client’s goals with that of the account team.

And if someone in your charge delivers sub-par work, the most helpful response is always constructive criticism, never disingenuous praise. Otherwise, you put the quality of the final product — and thus the client relationship — at risk.

Getting great work can seem increasingly complex with so many marketing tools and tactics at your disposal, but it can and should be pretty simple by following these steps. While it’s the account team’s responsibility, every agency team member — creative, strategy, media, etc. — can apply these key principles to improve outcomes and outputs of any client relationship. After all, we’re all in this together.

Announcing PR Daily’s Content Marketing Awards Finalists

For its lead-generation campaign for Tech Knowledge Associates (TKA), Dotted Line has been named a finalist in three categories of PR Daily’s Content Marketing Awards. The agency is up for Content Marketing Strategy of the Year, as well as the year’s best B2B campaign and best use of content marketing for the purpose of lead generation.

Continue to PR Daily.

12th Annual “Best Places to Work” List

Dotted Line snagged the #62 spot on Virginia Business’ 2022 Best Places to Work list in the small-employers category. Its selection was based on employee surveys that benchmarked Dotted Line on a list of core values, including leadership, corporate culture, work environment and overall engagement. The agency competed with more than 200 companies to be included and is one of only five advertising, PR and marketing companies in Virginia to earn a spot on the small-employers list.

Continue to Virginia Business.

Lauren Sweeney of Dotted Line: 5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Became a Founder

Since starting Dotted Line in 2014, CEO Lauren Sweeney has learned countless lessons as she built the company into a mid-level marketing agency. She shares how finding A-player team members, sharpening her influence skills and reframing her relationship to failure have shaped her into the leader she is today.

Continue to Authority Magazine.

Getting to Know: Marci Schnur with Dotted Line

In her 25-plus-year career, Dotted Line Managing Director of Client Services Marci Schnur has led numerous large-scale campaigns and built lasting relationships with diverse clients. She reflects on her most significant learning experiences, her best and worst business decisions, and offers her insights for the industry’s current and future challenges.

Continue to the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

Winning Ad Themes from the Super Bowl

The 2022 Super Bowl featured two unexpected teams that reinvented themselves and evolved throughout the season to get to the big game. Similar to the Los Angeles Rams and Cincinnati Bengals, businesses looking to take advantage of the hype around this perennial celebration of broadcast advertising prowess approached this year a little differently, operating with a greater level of intentionality to make sure their message reached their target audience. And with the price for a :30 spot crescendoing this year at a cool $6.5 million, it’s no wonder big brands took the time to ensure they were leveraging their media dollars in the most strategic and effective ways.

Below, we have outlined some of the most prevalent themes and highlighted an ad or two that we feel did an exemplary job of following through on the execution of each.

Not Joining the Party

Sometimes the best move is not to play at all. That’s what Hyundai thought at least. Given timing uncertainty around whether the Ioniq 5 would be on the market in time for the game, the longtime Super Bowl advertiser opted to stretch beyond the edges of the nearly 4-hour telecast with several smart tactical moves. While it still produced two smart (and epic) spots – check out History of Evolution – with familiar brand spokesman Jason Bateman, it was able to leverage the NFL playoffs and consumer focus on ads during the big game to its advantage.

In the weeks leading up to the Super Bowl, the brand focused its media relations message about the decision to sit out, citing the need to balance its marketing priorities. Being based in Los Angeles (where the Super Bowl was held) and leveraging its existing sponsorships with both the NFL and SoFi Stadium, the brand opted for OOH (Out of Home) paired with a product placement on the ABC sitcom Black-ish.

Know Your Audience – Part I. Millennials

Although Gen Z commands much of the silver screen these days, there is still a fervor within the advertising world to engage with the juggernaut generation: millennials. No brand capitalized on that opportunity more than Expedia during the big game.

A core value of most millennials is valuing experiences over possessions or purchases, so in Expedia’s Stuff spot, they cast Ewan McGregor to speak specifically to this sentiment. Over the :60 piece, Ewan poses a philosophical question around consumerism and the impact of those items on our legacy…setting the brand up as the hero that can provide its audience with the things that matter.

In addition to speaking directly and effectively to their audience, Expedia also hit the nail on the head by capturing the anguish that many of their prospective clients may be feeling from not being able to travel freely during the pandemic, strengthening an already persuasive message.

Know Your Audience – Part II. Gen X

No, the Super Bowl advertisers haven’t forgotten about you, Gen Xers. In fact, this demographic was the main target in what most are viewing as the best ad of the 2022 Super Bowl. The spot that sits atop this throne is Dream House with Anna Kendrick and Barbie from Rocket Mortgage.

Just as Expedia tapped into a core value for many millennials, Rocket Mortgage crafted a message that struck the nostalgia chord for Generation X and also spoke to a relevant topic most in that demographic are familiar with: how gosh-darn-it to buy a house these days.

As USA Today commented, the brand left “no stone veneer uncovered,” attempting to solidify its top ad position from several angles. By casting Anna Kendrick as a celebrity spokesperson (and having her tweet consistently in the lead-up to and during the game) and pairing her charm with a comedic, yet realistic view of the current housing market, Rocket Mortgage was able to ring the pop culture gong in their :60 spot and keep them talking long after the game had ended. Another lead-up activity included an Easter egg listing on the Rocket Homes site, and then the brand brought it home at the end of its spot with a fixer-upper castle on the Homes sub brand.

Going Beyond

More so than in years past, advertisers focused on how to expand their messaging through third screen experiences. From omnichannel offers to in-app experiences and contests, brands wanted to leverage their audiences’ fractured attention spans to capture engagement in as many places as they could.

No Super Bowl advertiser did that better than Coinbase with their bouncing, multi-colored, screensaver-esque QR code. Also making a nostalgia play that harkened back to prestreaming DVD days, Coinbase’s low production spot (whose simplicity was shocking unto itself) paired the gamification of chasing the moving target with a contest tie-in. And other brands took notice…quickly and comedically playing off the messaging.

(Captain Morgan was one such brand that shortly after tweeted out a black screen with a floating Captain Morgan logo bouncing around and changing colors à la the Coinbase QR code.)

While not necessarily a fan favorite, Coinbase’s ad has drummed up a lot of excitement and their success is quantifiable. Curious internet sleuths quickly broke down just how successful the ad was in the first day since it aired.

Ad Cost: $14M

• 117,000,000 people watched the spot

20% scanned the QR code (The site had 20M visits in the first minute)
10% signed up
20% linked their bank account – which equates to ~500K new customers

500K new customers are worth a lot to Coinbase. But exactly how much?

According to their last quarterly report, the average customer generates $90 in revenue per year. If the customers who came from the Super Bowl spot are even 50% as valuable, then we can assume $45 of annual revenue from each. 500,000 new users x $45 = $22.5 million. That certainly covers the cost of the spot, and then some.

Creative Spotlight

In lieu of a fifth theme, we opted to highlight one of our Creative Director’s favorite spots from the Super Bowl, a throwback to his childhood, in Irish Spring’s Welcome to Irish Spring.

Over the decades Irish Spring, a very utilitarian consumer packaged good, has always been unabashedly over-the-top, even stereotypical, with its “Irishness” and laser focus on getting you clean and smelling fresh. Their first foray into Super Bowl advertising is no different. But they’ve taken it one step further. Along with their nod to the Emerald Isle and hyper focus on the importance of smelling fresh, they’ve added a cult, led by a white rabbit, that believes in ridding the world of all things smelly. The result is a twisted and funny touch of spring.

The Bottom Line

While Super Bowl spots are an opportunity for brands to briefly steal the spotlight from one of the nation’s most-watched annual broadcasts, smart advertisers are using the moment to extend beyond :30 or :60, attempting to form authentic connections with their most important audiences and sustain that electricity well past Sunday.

Dotted Line Rounds Out Executive Leadership Team with Key Hires and a Promotion on the Heels of Record Growth

Dotted Line’s leadership team has grown to include Managing Director of Client Services Marci Schnur and Creative Director Jason Anderson, while Emily Shane has been promoted to Strategy Director. They’re lending 60-plus years of combined marketing experience to help develop highly effective solutions for clients while bringing a clear vision and passion to the agency.

Continue to AdForum.