JUMP START Blog and Online Community

What better way to come out of the holidays than to focus even more on food?

Food and beverage manufacturers, distributors and service providers are always clamoring for new ways to better differentiate their products in a consumer-driven, health conscious, and safety- and sustainability-focused market.

Since 2016 brought some tasty and creative food and beverage marketing campaigns to the table, we thought we’d share some choice take-aways with you. Here are the top 5 campaigns of 2016.

Whether B2B, B2C, SaaS, cloud-based software or consulting services, the tech sector is leading the pack in terms of progressive and innovative marketing campaigns and approaches. They're trendy, provocative and mold-breaking tones and tactics command attention and pave the way for other business sectors. As such, we've pulled together a handful of our top 5 tech-based marketing videos from 2016.

Keep in mind, we recognize that the majority of technology-based companies don't have interminal budgets like these forerunners. These are still brilliant representations of companies that see their products and services the way their customers see them, and not the reverse. Even the smallest tech company can learn from these examples. What can you do to mimic their success on a smaller scale or with your current resources?

Albert Einstein once said, "If you can't explain it to a 6-year-old, you don't know it yourself."

I realize this quote is somewhat overgeneralized and oversimplified. If you’re selling a groundbreaking medical device to a neurosurgeon, you’re bound to use technical four-syllabled—and beyond—words that aren’t necessarily rolling off of the tongues of most 6-year olds, or even most adults for that matter.

No, this quote is more about simplicity. Your knowledge of a product or service isn’t based on your ability to use gargantuan (see, it’s easy to do) words. It’s your ability to translate the essence and value of that product or service at the most basic level so that it’s easily digested by all of your audiences.

Sounds simple, right? Pun intended, but no…simplicity is not always as easy as it sounds. Here are some great examples of messaging simplicity at its finest:

A picture is worth a thousand words, and infographics are no exception. There's a reason that most inbound marketers are creating infographics these days: they're very effective and wildly popular with online viewers.

We've scoured the web looking for the most popular infographics about content marketing this month. Whether you're looking for tips on social media tactics, generational marketing strategies, PPC performance or content development, these infographics offer you the best of the best in visual insights for the month of December 2016. Check them out below. 

Are you putting a lot of effort into content marketing and not getting good results?

Undoubtedly, content marketing is an effective way to attract more visitors and transform them into customers. Almost every business wants to maximize its ROI, and so they invest a solid amount of time and money into this endeavor.

However, that doesn’t mean success is guaranteed since there are a lot of variables involved. Content marketing can be tricky, but there are a few ways to quickly address poor results.

We've identified five common issues faced by content marketers, as well as quick ways to resolve them. Follow some of the simple solutions below to improve your results and ROI. 

This is a fun and quippish quote but poignant nonetheless. As marketers, it’s very easy to get swept up by the proverbial brand communication platform. While necessary, our style guides and storyboards can sometimes get in the way of truly relevant and meaningful conversations with our audiences. We’re engrained in delivering perfectly crafted, grammatically on-point messages and sometimes lose sight of what’s important: the customer.

While we’ve come a long way since the inception of content marketing, we can still make strides toward more deliberate and intimate marketing practices. In honor of the companies that are getting that second date, let’s take a look at some campaigns where they opened up the car door, picked up the check and truly listened to what their customers had to say:

#1—Reebok 25,915 Days

This video followed the reverse path of a woman throughout her athletic career. While Reebok’s mission was clearly demonstrated, not a word was used to bring this message to life. The messaging instead honored all consumers in their athletic endeavors.

Where content marketing is concerned, quantifying and producing metrics that count can prove to be quite the challenge. Businesses sometimes experience a slow return on their marketing investment, which can be both stressful and confusing. Once your content takes hold of its intended audience, however, the benefits will most certainly allay any doubts you may have felt.

When we refer to “metrics”, we are talking about those factors that determine what is deemed valuable to businesses, including high-quality content that presents a strong identity, attracts an audience (who have the potential to become customers), builds trust and loyalty, and establishes influence through consistency. Each of these factors represent some sort of qualitative benefit, but executives are far more interested in the quantifying proof of this value.  Thus, you need to track metrics, and you need to be able to interpret them in a way that demonstrates the incredible return.

The use of infographics has become an increasingly more popular and powerful way to present data through the various social media channels.  They are an excellent way to clearly deliver information with a much wider range of visibility, as they present information in a visual manner as opposed to textual.  

Every marketing professional runs into challenges along their path.  Whether you get bogged down in the hiring process, finding top talent, or you have trouble finding the right systems and processes for your marketing needs, it can be challenge in itself to just keep pushing forward.  

The constant need to create new and exciting content can sometimes feel impossible and discouraging.  Often, you’ve spent hours creating something that you think is great only to find that it’s received little engagement, traffic or leads.  You’ve spent the time and effort calculating and creating set goals; you know your target and where you want to go, but you just can’t seem to get traction.

Planning is a universally essential and neglected task. Across every industry and at every level of organizational structure, there are the "bad seeds" who seem to have skipped school the day that planning was taught. Initially, it never really appears to be a problem. The issue will absolutely creep up on the guilty non-planners, though, regardless of their role. Marketers, too, are extremely susceptible to the pitfalls of failing to plan properly. There's a reason that marketing professionals carry on about marketing strategies, editorial calendars, buyer personas, and so forth. While none of it is fun, it's all part of the very necessary planning process.