Curated Guide to Research
MediaPost's comprehensive guide to current research in the marketplace.
Search results for "content marketing"
- The acceleration of streaming this past year has made video even more critical to a brand's growth strategy. Lexmark's director of marketing operations, Mike Dattilo, shares how he's successfully targeting SMB users to expand their audience and increase brand awareness and conversions through performance video.
- More than half of marketers said their audiences tend to engage more with UGC than branded content.
- Visible Wireless, a retail brand of Verizon, doubled down on social channels to find and cultivate communities that wanted an alternative telecom model. And in turn those communities have informed everything about how the brand grew - from product development even to media planning. Visible's digital marketing lead, Sarah Baker, shows us what a grass roots media strategy looks like?
- Although commercial and public service broadcasters' content spend remained below 2019 levels, SVODs upped their spend by 20% vs. 2020 and 50% versus 2019.
- What do you do if your company is being described as "stodgy" by Millennials? How do you attract a younger audience without alienating your Gen X and successful Boomer clients? That's what Windermere Real Estate was facing. With a nearly 50 year legacy and flashy brands like Zillow and Redfin invading their space, Windermere needed to step up their game. Easier said than done when your budget is limited, and you're up against VC-backed and publicly traded companies with plenty of money to spend. So they needed to get creative and find a space where they could stand out. That space was Spotify. The music platform, a favorite among Millennials, gave Windermere the space to create their own branded station with home-themed playlists that could appeal to all generations. Spotify also provided branded QR codes to directly engage consumers with Windermere's station in an off-line environment, i.e. OOH, business cards and TV ads. Since launching their branded station, Windermere has earned more than 100K monthly active users and seen an 18% increase in direct traffic to their website. Spotify now plays an integral role in Windermere's media strategy.
- GoodRx launched GoodRx Health on Thursday to provide research-based answers to vital health questions.
- Thanks to White Castle's QSR roots, social media has long been a significant part of their grocery division's marketing mix. CMO Lynn Blashford talks strategy, and how not only the channel, but the content, plays a crucial role in expanding audience reach to younger consumers. She also shares how embracing the fight against social injustice opened doors for the family-owned brand.
- Among the top 22 market-share holders in skincare, 17 are publishers or informational websites -- capturing 62.34% of available search traffic.
- In this week's analysis of Bombora's Company Surge data, "real-time personalization," "brand voice," and "content personalization" were among the top five trending topics among the MediaPost 500.
- Every click is a hurdle, not an invitation for users. And every form to fill is a mountain for them to climb. EIS veteran Chester Bullock explains how reducing that friction has increased email's effectiveness in driving qualified leads and at the same time leveraging customer brand loyalty.
- When Policygenius streamlined its manual insurance matchmaking process and redesigned its email program, the brand needed to maintain its roots in human connection while providing expertise to guide customers through the insurance shopping process. Sometimes it's the little things, it turns out, that keep messaging personal, not just personalized.
- Who would have known the launch of a chicken sandwich would be the QSR story of the year? Apparently, not even Popeye's own marketing team. Brand Lead Lisa O'Brien shares what happens when consumers take over your launch, blow up the media plan, and create success and PR challenges that were truly unprecedented.
- More than a "campaign," Pancheros' recent brand push put digital and data at the center. But how do you reorganize diverse franchisees around social-first local tactics, and relaunch an app so that it nearly doubles participation? The QSR brand's marketing team leveraged data to unlock the power of fanatical customers in a digital-first brand makeover.
- To ensure accurate portrayals of women and girls, the Ford Motor Company team followed insights provided by the ANA's #SeeHer movement. The result was a campaign created by and for Black women, affirming the automotive brand's commitment to supporting the advancement of positive representations of them in media and advertising, both in front of and behind the cameras.
- With a Net Promoter score of 92, the Tecovas brand clearly captured the hearts and minds of boot fans. CMO Rich Lesperance explores how the company thinks beyond the bottom line and invested in the delight metric, both online and in store.
- When Wakefern Food Corp. set out to redefine their Own Brands, they went to their consumer - and let insights drive every step of the process. From brand positioning to packaging design to brand activation, Wakefern treated the launch of Paperbird with the same respect as a best in class CPG brand. Laura Kind, VP of Brand Strategy, shares how her team translated the consumer emotion around messes into highly relatable Paperbird brand work.
- Cadillac skews more heavy to multicultural buyers than other brands, so a lot of its overall marketing plan has that emphasis. The brand's partnership with Regina King, Diddy and Spike Lee give a clear indication of how important it is for the brand to connect authentically with multicultural customers. Not everyone can hire a-list stars and give Diddy a car but there are key takeaways that Alexis Kerr, head of multicultural marketing at Cadillac, shares to help other brands activate on a smaller scale.
- The sheltering-at-home lifestyle saw consumers watching more video than ever before, including expanding their viewing habits to new platforms like TikTok. Direct-to-consumer contact lens brand, Hubble Contacts, decided they didn't want to be beholding to just FaceBook and took advantage of the new trend. Hubble's Senior Marketing & Creative Director, Dan Rosen, shares how he tested the short-form mobile video platform and discovered a new audience, success and scale.
- The importance of cultural connection points in advertising still holds true to build upon the equity in any established consumer relationship. Lexus 0to60 was created to illustrate how "performance" could create greater affinity within the Black consumer mindset for the Lexus brand.
- As a QSR brand, White Castle was at the forefront of using social media to promote their restaurants, but they didn't stop there. The family owned company also extended its social prowess to their CPG side of business. So when COVID hit, White Castle was well positioned to ride out the storm. Selecting influencers, creative concepts, personas, PR- - its marketing team flipped the traditional media mix to elevate and leverage their message well beyond social.
- Advertisers are generally more negative about their ad budgets than their agency and media supplier counterparts, a global survey of 325 ad and media execs fielded by World Media Group finds. The study, conducted as part of WMG's new report "What's Next For Content-Led Marketing," represents an improvement from where the respondents said ad budgets netted out for 2020.
- How does a new film attract the attention of moviegoers when it's competing with a franchise that garnered more than one BILLION dollars at the box office? Lionsgate Films had to contend with just that when they released their murder mystery "Knives Out" on the same Thanksgiving weekend as "Frozen 2". Not only that, they're also both family-friendly films competing for much of the same audience. Their solution? A "gamified transmedia" experience. In partnership with AvatarLabs, Lionsgate created puzzles for fans to solve using the "Knives Out" marketing materials; including its trailer, posters and red carpet events. Each puzzle was coordinated with the film's paid creative, where participants could find clues to the mysteries. Each solved mystery earned entry into the $250,000 grand prize sweepstakes. To kick off the promotion they scripted a custom shot trailer with talent, created an Instagram story and launched an interactive campaign hub that drove fans to every element of the larger marketing campaign. For maximum impact, they ran instant-win prizes to further incentivize people to enter. They offered an array of puzzles and difficulty levels to engage with a broader audience through a variety of touch points and platforms, while also leveraging publicity opportunities for cast participation.
- What happens when a retailer's business model is completely upended, and they need to transform a marketing plan that once drove foot traffic into one that effectively drives digital customer journeys. Pandora Jewelry faced just that with only two months to Mother's Day, their biggest sales period. Their solution was a "full funnel" approach pivoting from a strategy that drove store traffic to one driving e-com. Pandora quickly shifted to a digital-only strategy.
- SEMrush's report analyzes data on Google, Twitter and other platforms as well as visits, backlinks and social shares and the correlation between metrics and elements such as text length, headlines, structure, the presence of visuals, the price of terms and the perfect length for descriptions.
- Theatrical ticket data showed gamers comprised 25% of the audience. Historically gamers have proven to be more likely than the general online population to purchase media and entertainment products. Given this, Sony Pictures Entertainment set out to reach this lucrative segment on Twitch; the gamers go to social channel. This was no easy task, since gamers are a tight knit group filled with habitual ad blockers, typically impervious to traditional advertising.
- A survey by content marketing company NorthStar on the state of the SEO industry and the cost of bias and diversity, published by Moz, provides a snapshot of SEO professionals' thoughts and feelings.
- After years of double-digit percentage growth, U.S. content marketing revenues are expected to decline 6.8% due to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, according to PQ Media.
- Do marketers really know how their target audience feels about their products, or about topics related to their brand?
- Industrial firms are cautious as businesses start to re-open, IEEE GlobalSpec finds in new research.
- With so many options, do consumers still fall in love with their brands? Is there loyalty or are people just looking for the next best deal? Beardbrand founder, Eric Bandholz's, believes it's the former. His plan was to build a brand that his target market identified with right away. So staying true to his commitment to making men "awesome" and a prolific YouTube strategy, Beardbrand quickly became the go-to source for the underserved bearded community.
