Marketing Archives - Page 8 of 18

Demand Generation 101: Build a foundation for a strong program

Small and growing businesses are often laser-focused on demand generation. They want more “at-bats,” or opportunities, for their sales team. But demand generation isn’t as simple as putting your company’s message out into the marketplace. Demand generation is the process of creating brand awareness with relevant, targeted stakeholder groups (i.e., prospects) and then building on this awareness by nurturing prospects to create new revenue opportunities. (more…)

What should growing businesses include in their entrepreneurial marketing plan?

We start many blog posts with a similar story because it resonates with the many businesses struggling to drive alignment, accountability, and activation in marketing: A business has ambitious ideas for its growth, but leadership hasn’t agreed on or documented a clear vision with achievable goals that the entire company understands. Downstream, this lack of clarity and direction leads marketing to develop a plan based on wishful, hypothesis-driven thinking. (more…)

How to hire a marketing leader: A guide to discover what your business needs

The task to hire the right marketing leader has become increasingly difficult. Growing businesses need experienced marketing direction, and they can’t afford to get this hire wrong. A bad hire in the marketing leadership role is not only painful from a talent turn-over and expense perspective, but it runs the risk of damaging the company’s overall brand reputation, culture, and revenue potential. This reality begs some important questions, which we’ll address in this Guide to hiring a marketing leader: Why is it so hard to hire a marketing leader? How can you confidently bring strong marketing leadership to your table?…

Random Acts of Marketing Guide

It’s a story we hear all of the time: A business grew rapidly in its first years by focusing on sales and pursuing whichever opportunities came its way. Eventually, though, growth leveled off. The company needed to do something to jumpstart its sales and fuel its next-level growth. Executives recognized it was time to invest in marketing. (more…)

What’s to come with corporate events? 4 Considerations for Business Leaders

Many of the businesses we work with at Authentic have long relied on traditional, paid corporate events to increase brand awareness and support business development efforts. Nearly every Authentic client has (or had) a line item for events on their budget. The future of corporate events and their role in a company’s marketing strategy got thrown into question in March 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic halted all travel and in-person events. Some businesses quickly, nimbly, and effectively pivoted in-person events to virtual ones, while others canceled their participation in events altogether. Today, as the world begins to return to its…

How to Harness Trust to Build Brand Equity and Grow Your Business

There is nothing more valuable to a business, its relationships, and its brand than the trust it creates and maintains with its stakeholders. Trust is your most valuable brand currency, one that builds on itself over time to increase your brand equity, the brand’s worth in and of itself. Companies with higher brand equity experience all types of financial benefits: greater profit margin and better customer acquisition and retention. Building brand equity through trust can be an overwhelming effort for company founders and CEOs. But as a business leader, you don’t need to strive to achieve the brand equity of…

How Business Leaders Can Build a Personal Brand

Your personal brand is how you show up in the world personally and professionally. It extends beyond what you do for work to encompass deeper and more personal attributes, including your hobbies, passions, values, and beliefs. But too often, business leaders stop short of developing and sharing their authentic personal brand. Instead, they tie their personal brand exclusively to their employer’s brand, limiting it to what they do for work, who they work for, and the organization’s values. The trouble with this approach is that your brand isn’t really your personal brand; it’s simply how you relate to your employer’s…

Should we fire our marketer?

Growing businesses commonly reach out to Authentic because they aren’t sure if they have the right marketing resources on staff. Typically they’re facing one of two scenarios: The business has capable and skilled “doers” who are loyal to the company and willing to work hard but aren’t strategic.The business has strong marketers and marketing leaders, but they don’t feel like marketing is progressive enough; their marketers aren’t pushing the bar or bringing enough fresh ideas to the table. Business leaders at these companies often come to us faced with a stressful decision; should they fire their doers in favor of…

Brand Messaging Guide: 9 Moments to evolve your brand narrative

A brand narrative is the story your brand tells the world. It serves as the foundation of your marketing and communications strategy. This story should concisely describe why you do what you do, how you do it, and what makes you stand out from the sea of sameness. Most importantly, the story must be framed with your target audience in mind: helping them to “see themselves” in the narrative. When you create a brand narrative, it’s important to remember that it’s a journey, not a destination. The lifecycle of a business includes a tremendous amount of change: from launch, through…

How to build an effective on-demand marketing team

The modern marketing ecosystem has changed the way businesses market themselves. Marketing programs now require an entirely different array and a longer list of skill sets than they did 20 years ago. The agency of record no longer makes sense because one agency cannot provide all services a business needs or provide all of them effectively. Companies now need access to a long menu of service providers skilled in various areas, including content, creative, search, paid media, events, analytics, and more — and they need different services at different stages of their growth. But not all businesses have the strategic bandwidth or experience to…

Category: Marketing