The Best Platform for Your Business and Target Demographic

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From helping brands keep in touch with their audience to promoting themselves to more potential consumers, the only way that your company can truly succeed in today’s market is by taking the initiative in creating a strong online presence; marketing companies exist to help brands, no matter how big or how small, build brand recognition and a solid reputation.

So, where exactly do you start when it comes to making your online presence known?

Well, the first step is deciding what social media platform is going to work best for your business. Marketing companies will do all the research necessary to help you identify your preferred and most efficient platform. Here is a quick guide to finding the best social media platform for you.

Facebook

With over two million users, Facebook lets users share text, images, videos, articles and links to other forms of content. The social media giant has a strong presence in 137 countries and beats out all other social networks in 127 of them, making it a strong candidate for your social media go-to. Of course, it’s also important to take demographics into account. About 60 percent of the Facebook population are females, while about 40 percent are male. Further studies show that 65 percent of those users are over the age of 35.

So, if your brand is attempting to reach a more mature demographic, Facebook might be your best bet.

Instagram

Instagram will introduce your brand to a much younger demographic and primarily focuses on the sharing of photos and videos. The amazing thing about Instagram is that there are more than 500 million daily users, which makes this platform perfect for brand recognition. But just because there is an abundance of users doesn’t mean that your brand is going to see quick results. You have to be smart about posting content and know what demographic you’re attempting to target.

Marketing companies have come up with some numbers that show 72 percent of teenagers use Instagram, while adult users reached 35 percent in 2018. It is also worth noting that young adults users total 71 percent of all users. If you’re targeting a younger demographic, Instagram should be your primary focus.

Twitter

Facebook has cemented itself as a hybrid platform where users can share text, photos and videos, while Instagram has taken text out of the equation. Another semi-hybrid platform you should look into is Twitter. While the platform is primarily text-focused, users can still share videos and photos on the platform, making it a versatile option for marketing companies.

Twitter has a more mixed demographic, with 40 percent of users being between the ages of 18 and 29, and another 43 percent being between 30 and 49 years old. Marketing companies can be sure to find their fair share of older and younger consumers.

All of these platforms bring their own unique strengths, and it might be a wise move to utilize various different platforms when it comes to marketing your brand. However, you should analyze what platform your demographic spends the most time on and make it your primary focus. If you’re looking at marketing companies as a way to simplify the process of narrowing down what platform works best for you, make sure to give us a call here at Fusion 360 Studios.

Advertising Methods You Should be Using

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Advertising is always changing, and marketing companies know that to stay relevant in today’s industry, they have to be able to keep up with those changes. While there are staple methods that don’t change much, things like social media algorithms are constantly evolving, making it hard for marketing companies to thrive if they keep producing the same content and using the same strategies.

If your brand has been struggling to see results, you might want to take a step back and reconsider your current marketing strategy. Marketing companies can help you out and they’ll most likely recommend that you use a few of these advertising methods.

Use Banner and Display Ads

In a time where video is dominating the market, some marketing companies might forget that static, visual content like banners and display ads can still produce serious results. These types of ads are an extension of search ads and follow a PPC model, however, instead of text-based ads, users are presented with a more visual advertisement. If marketing companies have talented graphic designers, this is a sure way to drive more traffic to your client’s site by providing consumers with fresh visual content.

Try Appealing to Emotions

Commercials by organizations like The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA), tend to appeal to consumers’ feelings. Though some of the commercials might be hard to watch, they tug at your heartstrings and make you more likely to donate to the organization.

This example is used to emphasize the fact that people rely heavily on emotion just as much as they do research. Marketing companies cannot forget about this. If you’re looking to mix up your advertising approach, try creating content that might emotionally appeal to your audience.

Give the Bandwagon Effect a Go

It’s human nature for people to want to fit in, so if someone sees a group of people using a specific service or buying a certain product, they’re more likely to invest in that service or product as well. For example, Maybelline has been established as “America’s Favorite Mascara” because their top-selling mascara is purchased every two seconds. If your brand can offer a top-quality product or service and you come up with a solid marketing strategy, people will start spreading the word around and you’ll see the bandwagon effect in action.

If you don’t make an attempt to switch up your advertising game, you’ll soon find yourself falling behind. Marketing companies like Fusion 360 are here to help your brand come up with new strategies to help keep your brand relevant in an evolving industry.

Why You Need a Video Distribution Strategy

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Everyone knows just how important videos are when it comes to marketing, but do you know how to fully utilize your completed project to get the results that you’re looking for? Video production companies work hard to create high-quality videos that help brands reach new audiences and connect with their current consumers, but it takes more than just uploading your video to YouTube and Vimeo. This is why video production companies use what are called distribution strategies.

Distribution strategies are the reason marketing companies are so successful. The way that a company strategically distributes their content is what draws in audiences and keeps current ones loyal to your brand. If you’re looking to use video content to market your brand, here is why you need a video distribution strategy.

It Targets Your Users

Distribution strategies make it easier to target users that will potentially be interested in your content. It also helps your brand easily recognize what these potential viewers want to see, which helps video production companies create the perfect content tailored to those audiences.

When posting on social media, tools like Facebook’s Ad manager can help you target certain interests or likes so that you can build up an audience and increases your post engagement. You should also use SEO strategies to optimize your videos so that your search engine ranking rises.

You Can View Metrics

Outlining your metrics is essential in creating a solid distribution strategy. Once your video is posted online, you’ll use the metrics to gauge your videos’ success. While looking at the videos’ reach and engagement is important, you should also pay attention to stats such as the number of video starts, average view times, and the number of viewers.

You’ll Achieve Your Marketing Goals

Creating a distribution strategy also helps you achieve your marketing goals. Video production companies will always ask you what the main purpose of your video is, and that will determine what approach they will take in creating your video project. By creating a quality distribution strategy, you’ll be able to narrow down the appropriate platforms to post on.

Going Viral Takes Work

The most experienced video production companies know that going viral is a lot harder than it sounds; going viral isn’t a strategy, more so a goal. You have to ask yourself questions such as how you’re going to achieve that goal, how you’re going to reach your audience, and if you’ll use paid or earned media.

Creating a distribution strategy will help your brand grow indefinitely, and you’ll see an opening in your creative and communication channels. If you’re in need of a professional video production team to help you create a distribution strategy, give us a call here at Fusion 360 Studios.

How SEO Works

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When it comes to building your brand’s image, you want to show the public what you are all about in the best possible way. A good way to do this is through efficient, on-brand marketing. It might seem simple, but it is more than just plastering ads everywhere and building your social media presence. One of the most important things you can do to build your brand is to use SEO. In order to use SEO you have to know how SEO works. Marketing companies use SEO to effectively build their brand’s image.

So, if your company is still learning the ropes of content marketing, here are some pointers when it comes to SEO.

What SEO Can Do

Implementing SEO tactics is the organic way to increase the visibility of a company’s link on search engines. This includes image, video, news, academic and local searches. If a company takes time to optimize their site, it will be seen as more reputable by search engines. The more SEO content you create, the higher you will rank and the more you will appear in relevant searches. Marketing companies use the tactic of Search Engine Optimization heavily in order to keep your business on top. The SEO process is a measurable, repeatable process used to send signals to search engines indicating that your site is worth showing in Google’s index.

Optimization

So, how do you optimize a website? Creating high-quality infographics, video, images and blogs that include keywords is the first step. After that, marketing companies can edit a site’s HTML and associated coding to also increase its relevance through keywords. Search engines look at factors like these in order to analyze where a site should fall in its search results.

How to Utilize SEO

Another element considered in SEO is the speed of the webpages. If your site doesn’t load quickly, visitors won’t stick around and search engines won’t appreciate it either. Marketing companies use these tools in order to utilize all the benefits that SEO can bring for a company. These basics are determining factors in SEO and can greatly affect your website’s traffic.

If you are looking for a professional digital marketing company to manage your SEO campaign, it is important to find a marketing company that can help you. Marketing companies like Fusion 360 can help you to build your SEO and in turn, successfully build your brand’s online image.

The Benefits of Hiring an Agency

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When it comes to your brand’s image, you want to show the public what you are about in the best possible way, and the only way to do this is through efficient, on-brand marketing. Sounds simple, right? Just start plastering ads all over the place; spam your social media and bother the living daylights out of people online. Well, it doesn’t quite work like that. There are proper ways to market your brand, and some of the tasks that come with it might be best if left to professional marketing companies.

So, with that being said, here are the benefits of hiring marketing companies like Fusion 360 instead of trying to do everything on your own.

You’ll Save on Salary Expenses

Let’s face it, you can’t just dump all of the marketing tasks on your current employees — they have other things to do and doubling their workload will burn them out. The next option that you may consider is hiring a team to do marketing in-house but that might not be the best idea either. Unless you’re prepared to shell out hundreds of thousands of dollars each year, this idea might not work. By hiring a marketing company, you won’t have to pay a yearly salary, all you have to worry about is the contract pricing.

You Get a “Package Deal”

When it comes to marketing companies, you’re paying for a wide array of services that are going to boost your brand’s image. Agencies are usually comprised of content writers, SEO teams, social media experts, graphic designers, web designers and videographers. If you choose to build an in-house team, that’s a lot of salaries you’ll have to cover, and if you want the best of the best, they won’t come cheap.

You’ll Get Top-of-the-Line Tools

Marketing companies don’t mess around when it comes to their client’s success. Hiring a marketing agency will guarantee you the latest tools and technologies in the world of digital media so you can reap the benefits of beautiful content. These tools aren’t cheap; your company will save big on these tools by hiring an agency.

Marketing Companies Don’t Need to be Trained

If your current employees don’t possess the necessary marketing skills to successfully market your brand, you’re going to spend a lot of time and money as you experiment with your own marketing ideas. Instead, just hire a marketing agency ⎯ they require no training, which means you can get to marketing your brand sooner.

You’ll Benefit from an Outside Perspective

Lastly, by hiring a marketing company, you’re going to benefit from an outside perspective on current techniques, style and branding. By bringing in a marketing agency, they can help you brainstorm new ideas and provide their input on what you can do to improve your brand.

There are so many benefits that come with hiring marketing companies rather than trying to do everything yourself. If you’re in need of a marketing agency to help build your brand, contact us here at Fusion 360.

Apps and Sites to Track Your Social Media

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The most successful marketing companies are constantly tracking their social media statistics in order to achieve greater success online. Social media stats help brands see what they’re doing right, as well as what they can improve on to boost their engagement. This is why marketing companies help their clients by utilizing proper tools provided online.

If you’re looking to expand your social media arsenal, we can tell you what tools to look for.

In-App Statistics

Social media platforms such as Instagram and Facebook provide companies with in-app statistics that they can use to get a general idea of how their content is doing. These stats will show you things such as website and profile clicks, as well as impressions. The reports are not as detailed as a full web report but they still give you quick and convenient information.

Some of our favorite apps include Analytics Pro, Hootsuite and Reports Plus.

Google Analytics Pro: an app for the popular web application Google Analytics that presents data in a meaningful way, rather than just simply listing your data in an unorganized fashion.

Hootsuite: A Social media management platform used to submit messages to a variety of social media services including Twitter, Facebook and Google Plus.

Reports Plus: An app that allows a business to securely access and transform data to gain new insights on content performance.

Website Tracking

If you’re looking to get a more detailed social media report, you may want to consider using websites to analyze your statistics. Marketing companies often opt to use websites such as Social Bakers, Sprout Social, Report Garden and Google Analytics to examine social platform growth. Another great thing about these websites is that they can self-generate a report for you, which compares growth from all your accounts.

Social Bakers: A global, AI-powered social media marketing company that measures everything from social media to your audience in one simple place.

Sprout Social: A website software that helps your brand improve in social engagement, social marketing, customer care and data intelligence.

Report Garden: Aids marketing companies in creating performance reports, invoices, campaign budgets, site audits and more.

Google Analytics: Perhaps the most popular statistic tracking website out there; it tracks and reports all website traffic.

There are tons of tools out there that are available to help marketing companies track their statistics. While these are some of our favorite tools, you should definitely experiment with several apps and websites to find out which one works best for you. If you need help managing your social accounts and tracking analytics for your accounts, make sure to contact us here at Fusion 360, we can help take your company’s social media to the next level, it’s what we do.

Evolution of Advertising

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Even though advertising agencies have been around since 1864, advertising itself has been around much longer. Advertising can date back to the Egyptians carving public notices on steel in 2000 B.C. Since then, it has progressed to the age of the internet and digital marketing agencies.

Before

The age before the internet is what we would call traditional advertising. This was when advertisements were on the radio, between TV shows, and on billboards lining the highways.

Whether it was cigarettes, body soap, or an alcoholic beverage, characters were built around brands. The idea was consumer connection. The consumer could connect the character to whatever brand or product they were trying to sell. An example of this is Tony the Tiger on Frosted Flakes. Even today, Tony the Tiger is still on every cover of Frosted Flakes cereal.

Now

Now, advertising has changed entirely. The motives of advertisements have completely changed. Instead of selling a product, advertisements now provide the solution to whatever the consumer’s problem may be.

There are still traditional advertisements on TV, but we live in an age of internet and ad blocking. Audiences are choosing to not watch commercials. Anyone who gets on the internet is bombarded by advertisements. On platforms such as Hulu, consumers can pay to not have to sit through ads. So how are digital marketing agencies supposed to reach consumers?

Now, consumers don’t trust advertisements as much. The best way to reach a consumer is to build trust with them. Consumers have become a part of advertising and not just an onlooker.

A good example of this is GoPro. GoPro releases videos of user-created content. They release a few ads saying, “buy our product”, but the rest of the content is created by the consumer. The biggest change from traditional advertising to now is that people trust people, not brands.

Resources: https://www.marketingweek.com/2010/11/09/brand-characters-can-bring-home-the-bacon/

http://mashable.com/2011/12/26/history-advertising/#SrCn6B4NU5q2

Smartphone Apps and Advertising

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Advertising agencies have to constantly keep up with the changes in technology and how to reach their audience. Advertisements first started with billboards and magazines, then moved to Television. Now, there are so many ways digital marketing agencies can reach their audience, and it’s hard to know which one is best.

Smartphone

Smartphone usage has increase significantly. Since 2001, usage has increased from only 35 percent of Americans owning a cell phone to 64 percent. Many Americans rely on their cellphones for Internet usage. People are constantly looking up their baking online, checking their e-mail, checking social media, playing games, finding driving directions, and many other tasks.

Because of this, digital marketing agencies have needed to shift their campaigns to a mobile direction. They are not only having to create a webpage for a desktop computer, but also developing it to be mobile-friendly as well.

Smartphone Apps

Smart phone apps are another way digital marketing agencies can reach their audience. It is another direction communication with the consumer. People, on average access 30 apps on a monthly basis. While all smartphones come with pre-installed apps, about half of apps users are accessing are ones they have installed on their phone personally.

There are so many different types of apps digital marketing agencies can reach. From gaming apps, educational apps, lifestyle apps, entertainment apps, utility apps, travel apps and everything between, there are so many opportunities to reach the consumer.

The world is changing and improving every day. There will always be the up and coming ‘next great media’ opportunity or up and coming distribution channel. At digital marketing agencies, it is important to stay on top of these up and coming trends to find ways to distribute and communicate with your audience. Smart phone usage is only going to continue to grow so be sure you are finding your audience and leaving them with a relevant message.

Resources:

Report: Smartphone owners are using 9 apps per day, 30 per month

Why in-app ads may be the future of mobile advertising

Advertising for Self-Confidence

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If you’ve ever accidentally started a movement by not wearing makeup, you know what it feels like to be Alicia Keys right now. It all started with a simple letter for Lena Dunham’s Lenny Letter. Her focus on natural beauty has left every advertising agency from Utah to Pluto scrambling to follow suit.

Alicia Keys and the Movement

Fifteen Grammys in a 20-year career — Keys has always been a great example of empowerment. She is the epitome of equality and #BlackGirlMagic. Through admitting that she’s struggled with self-esteem issues during this wildly successful career, we love her even more (if that’s possible). By being honest about the way she hid her true self, intelligence, thoughts and feelings, she’s been able to reach women of all ages.

In her own words, this movement isn’t “anti-makeup,” rather a “you do you” kind of attitude. She was brave enough to attend the MTV VMAs fresh faced, making it easier for the average woman to brave the grocery store without her face on. I’d go as far as suggesting that confidence is the true movement — she never once seemed out of place, even in pictures with Queen Bey herself.

Dare to Bare

The latest no makeup movement is hardly the first of its kind. Over ten years ago Dove’s advertising agency released the “Campaign for Real Beauty,” promoting the use of real people instead of photoshopped models. Their efforts didn’t stop there, as they released videos displaying “The Evolution” behind retouched ads.

As the pace picks up, we see celebrities going out of their way to expose over-edited photos (you go Zendaya!). American Eagle has gone as far as encouraging women to upload un-retouched photos of them as part of the “The Real You Is Sexy” campaign.

We are at a tipping point for women. Empowerment is all around us, and the advertising agency employees who catch on will go down in history for creating timeless content. May the odds be ever in your favor as you take on this newest endeavor.

Social Media at Advertising Week

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Advertising week has once again wrapped up, leaving us with several nuggets of wisdom to digest. The strategies and tactics imparted upon us are the perfect ammunition for digital marketing companies to load up on for the next year.

The heart of the advertising industry has always been about bringing people together, no matter the product. However, creating emotional connections in the virtual world is no easy feat. It’s high time for companies to put social media first in their advertising plan instead of leaving it as an afterthought.

Social Media Marketing Requires Meticulousness

With the birth of new social media platforms comes the opportunity for creativity and, in the words of Apple, “Courage.” It feels as though companies like Snapchat are rolling out new features weekly.

Your social media marketing plan will fall apart if you don’t understand why your target audience is using each platform. When you understand the subtleties of how these folks use each program you can better reach them. A precise plan will lead to stronger connections with your target audience.

Consistent Communication

According to the professionals at Advertising Week, there are two kinds of media, aggregate media and human conversation. Aggregate media is the data analysis side of it — purely number crunching. Human conversation on the other hand, is the feeling that another person is getting your message and you aren’t just talking into the great void that is the internet. The most successful digital marketing companies use both types of communication to create campaigns.

Great Content

Digital marketing companies with great content will build better connections with their followers. The advertisements that tend to stick with us are the ones that hit close to home. This emotional connection builds a relationship that lasts longer than the 30 seconds that the ad does.

Your social media platform is useless unless your audience feels like you’re hanging out with them every day on social media. Be the Milhouse to their Bart. Make the relationship matter.