When Should Your Company Consider Hiring an Advertising Agency? 6 Dec 2024, 6:26 pm

Advertising is a crucial component of any business’s growth strategy. Whether you’re a small local business or a business enterprise, getting the word out about your products or services can make all the difference. But at what point should you consider hiring an advertising agency rather than handling everything in-house? Here are some things to consider.

You Need Expertise and Specialization
Advertising agencies bring a wealth of experience, research, and specialized skills to the table. From crafting compelling messaging to running data-driven digital campaigns, agencies have experts in branding, design, content creation, social media, public relations, and paid media. Instead of spending time and money training an internal team, you can leverage the expertise of seasoned professionals who understand what works best for your business.

Local Agencies Offer Community Insight
If you’re a local business, hiring a nearby advertising agency can be especially beneficial. Local agencies understand your target audience, community culture, and regional marketing trends better than those outside of your region. This is especially important in the Midwest where each city and town tend to have their own little nuances. Local agencies are more likely to create campaigns that resonate with local customers, giving you a competitive edge. Plus, face-to-face meetings and a strong working relationship can enhance collaboration and efficiency.

You Want a Stronger Business Relationship
When you hire a good advertising agency, you’re not just getting a vendor—you’re gaining a partner. Agencies work closely with businesses to understand their goals, challenges, and brand identity. A strong relationship with an agency can lead to better campaign outcomes and long-term marketing success. The right agency will feel like an extension of your team rather than an outsourced service. And, when you find the right agency, the relationship will last a long time giving you the freedom to focus on other parts of your business.

Cost Savings and Better ROI
One of the biggest misconceptions about hiring an advertising agency is that it’s too expensive. In reality, outsourcing your marketing efforts can often be more cost-effective than hiring and maintaining an in-house team. Agencies have access to research tools, advertising platforms, creative suites, and industry contacts, often securing better rates on media placements and ad buys. This means they can get you media at the same cost as if you were to buy it on your own without having to do the work. This can lead to a higher return on investment (ROI) than attempting to manage everything internally.

You Need a Full Range of Services
Many advertising agencies offer comprehensive marketing services, including:

• Branding and logo design
• Social media management
• Content creation and copywriting
• Website development 
• Digital advertising
• Market research and analytics 
• Project management

Having all of these services under one roof means better integration and consistency across your marketing efforts, saving time and improving results.

Scaling Your Business Requires More Marketing Power
As your business grows, so do your marketing needs. If you’re expanding to new locations, launching new products, or increasing your customer base, an advertising agency can provide the resources and expertise to scale your marketing efforts effectively. Rather than overloading your internal team, an agency can help you grow without compromising quality or efficiency.

Hiring an advertising agency can be a game-changer for businesses looking to expand their marketing efforts while saving time and money. If you need specialized expertise, community insights, cost savings, and a full range of services, partnering with the right agency could be the best way to move forward.

Are you considering hiring an advertising agency? Reach out to St. Gregory and see how we can help you achieve your marketing goals!

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Attending StackSocial in Cleveland & The Importance Of Platform Relationships 24 Oct 2024, 3:34 pm

Recently, I was invited to attend an event in Cleveland known as StackSocial, where our preferred programmatic partner brings in industry experts, additional agencies who use the platform in the region, and of course, their staff and leadership to discuss the future of their platform and the industry. As StackAdapt is a programmatic DSP (Demand Side Platform), this allows St. Gregory to directly buy certain digital media for our clients via their platform. They operate more as a platform rather than a managed service, where others are doing the buying for us. St. Gregory directly buys and places media through the platform, optimizes campaigns, and provides insights on performance, the same way we do with many other platforms.

Through this event, I was given insights into how their platform is evolving compared to others in the market, gained key insights into the shape and future of the programmatic spaces, and, most importantly, got the meet with my representatives at the vendor face to face. In many cases, these mainly are remote relationships, meaning more calls and emails and little face time. While remote is a fantastic way to help maintain and grow things, a few days of face time is always welcome to help chat in person, build on those relationships, and get to know them better.

Here are a few key takeaways from my trip.

• The programmatic space is going to continue to grow. Digital Ad Spending as a whole will grow by double digits by 2028. Whether you’re an SMB or a Super Regional company, you should have some presence in the programmatic space.
• OTT / CTV will continue to grow, thanks mainly to declines in cable. Local Broadcast is still declining, but not nearly as quickly as cable. OTT is picking up the slack.
• Leveraging first-party data is going to be essential to successful marketing, even though cookies are not being deprecated. That’s right, Google finally gave in and cookies shouldn’t be going anywhere.

The Importance of Knowing Your Agency’s Vendors

Many factors go into selecting your agency, including the staff, the capabilities, the pitch, and how suited they are to meet your business needs. One thing that doesn’t come up as often is which platforms they work with. While many traditional options are fairly clear (local stations, outdoor placement providers, national platforms, etc.), knowing which digital platforms an agency uses is essential.

At St. Gregory, we currently partner with StackAdapt, a programmatic DSP based in Toronto, among other digital platforms (Google, Microsoft, Meta, the same platforms every agency with digital capabilities works with). A DSP is a Demand-Side Platform, which allows us to buy digital media in-house rather than having a vendor place the buys for us. Through our DSP, we leverage options to buy OTT / CTV inventory, Native Ads, Display Ads, Audio Ads, and occasionally Digital-Out-Of-Home. While some DSPs allow for the purchase of channels like Paid Search and Paid Social, we currently buy those via their individual channels to best maximize their performance.

What We Look at When Choosing a Digital Media Platform

• Capabilities – With DSPs, there are three main areas examined, Inventory, Targeting, and Tracking.
  • Inventory – Will we have access to premium inventory through the multiple channels we’re looking to target? For us, the main area was OTT / CTV, and we were able to get access to multiple premium channels.
  • Targeting – What targeting can be leveraged? We wanted to be able to activate on 1st Party Data, 3rd Party Data, and Contextual audiences, which are available on the platforms we work with.
  • Tracking – Can we track the post-impression experience? This is crucial. Knowing what a user does after they view or click helps prove results from the media tactics we select.
• Spend Minimums – Many platforms have minimum spends, which is important to know. At St. Gregory, we work to partner with platforms that either have no spend minimums or very low spend minimums. Many people would ask why that is important, but it comes down to strategy selection. When we don’t have to worry about meeting a platform’s spend requirements, any client knows the tactics selected were only for their benefit, not to hit a spend threshold.

There literally are hundreds of DSPs currently on the market, so knowing who your agency works with is important. If you’d like to learn how programmatic advertising could help your business, feel free to drop us a line.

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How to Measure Direct Mail and Print Advertising 27 Sep 2024, 7:52 pm

Direct mail marketing and print advertising can be powerful additions to a comprehensive marketing strategy. Don’t believe it? According to Smallbizgenius, people who receive a piece of direct mail spend 28% more than those who don’t.

At St. Gregory, we’ve been helping businesses launch direct mail advertising campaigns and print advertising endeavors for over 30 years. One area where we’ve seen many businesses flounder is with measuring the return on investment of these campaigns. And if you aren’t effectively measuring, you aren’t getting across the finish line!

Below we’ll share two ways we’ve successfully helped businesses measure the impact of their direct mail and print advertising campaigns as well as pro tips to help you avoid common pitfalls.

Call Tracking with Direct Mail Marketing and Print Advertising

Is your business the type that lends itself to phone calls, such as customers calling to make an appointment or reservation? If so, call tracking is an excellent way to measure the effectiveness of your direct mail piece, print advertising campaign or magazine ad.

The concept of call tracking is simple enough; you use a separate, dedicated phone number in the ad and calls to that number are counted. These calls may even be recorded so that information can be gathered about the callers themselves, such as gender and FAQs, and “conversions” can be counted. (Conversions might be the number of callers that actually make an appointment or reservation after speaking with your business.)

Pro tip: Call tracking is a great way to measure the effectiveness of your campaigns, but it isn’t just a marketing tool. Listening to calls is also a fantastic way to collect customer feedback and monitor employee-customer interactions with the aim of improving your business’ overall customer experience. For more information on improving the customer experience (and why it matters) read Customer Experience: Getting the Customer is Only the First Step.

In theory, call tracking sounds great, but how do you implement it? You could do it manually. Get a separate phone number, have your employees count the number of calls and take notes about the outcome of each call. But let’s be real—that sounds like a huge hassle, right?

Luckily, there are much more automated call tracking solutions available. For example, one that we’ve used here at St. Gregory is CallRail.

CallRail allows you to get multiple phone numbers, so if you were doing a direct mail advertising campaign and a magazine ad you could have two separate tracking numbers. The service also records calls so you can listen to them later and integrates with Google Analytics so that you can compare call data with other conversions and compare your various traffic sources.

Pro tip: Call tracking isn’t just for mail and print advertising. You can use call tracking phone numbers in any form of advertising from social media campaigns to television commercials. In fact, CallRail integrates with Facebook and other platforms to make the process as painless as possible.

For more information on successfully implementing call tracking in any of your marketing and media campaigns, call St. Gregory today.

Landing Pages and UTMs with Direct Mail Marketing and Print Advertising

If you plan on using your direct mail or print advertising campaign to drive website traffic, you’ll want to spend some time thinking about the URL that will be in the ad. There are two solid options to consider.

Append UTM parameters to an existing page.

The easiest tracking option is to simply add UTM parameters to an existing URL.

UTM parameters, also known as URL parameters, campaign parameters, and campaign tracking parameters, are pieces of code you add to the end of a URL. This code passes information back to Google Analytics so that you can better categorize and measure the results of your campaigns.

Pro tip: If you’re unfamiliar with UTM parameters and how powerful they can be for most marketing campaigns, dive in with Intro to UTM Parameters.

Not only are UTM parameters free to use, they’re also fast and easy to deploy.

The only issue with UTMs is that they can make a URL very long. A long URL is unsightly, may be difficult to fit on a direct mail or print advertising piece, and may be asking too much of your perspective customers.

In other words, no one wants to try to type in a URL that is 50 plus characters long. And even if your customers are willing to do so, the longer the URL is the more likely it is they will make a typo and end up on a 404 “page not found” error page, which is beyond frustrating!

The solution is to drop your URL, complete with UTMs, into a link shortener tool, such as Bitly, TinyURL, or Rebrandly. A link shortener simply takes a long URL and cuts it down. It does not strip off your UTM parameters or interfere with tracking.

Use a dedicated landing page.

What if you have a special offer or price you want to make available only to the people that receive your direct mail piece? Or for some reason can’t (or don’t want to) use UTMs? For example, if you’re using a web tracking service other than Google Analytics, UTMs might not be an option. In that case, you could create a separate landing page on your website specifically for your direct mail marketing or print advertising campaign.

Whether you are creating a brand new page with unique copy or simply duplicating an existing page in order to measure direct mail or print campaign traffic, there are a few things you’ll want to do:

• Make the page is an “orphan” page. When a page is an orphan, that means that no other page on the site links to it. You do not want anyone to be able to get to the page unless they have the URL, which will only be in your direct mail or print advertising piece.
• Tell Google (and other search engines) not to index the page. Again, you want to ensure that no-one can get to the page unless they have the URL; the purpose of this is to try to keep your data as pure as possible. By telling Google not to index the page, you’re preventing your direct mail or print ad landing page from showing up in organic search results.
• Test your data tracking service, whether this is Google Analytics or some other application. Make sure you are able to collect visitor data.
• Ensure the page has a URL that is easy to type. Keep the URL as foolproof as possible.

Pro tip: If you are duplicating an existing page, avoid duplicate content issues on your site by adding a canonical tag to the original page. Read more about canonicalization here.

By using the methods in this post, you’ll be able to get a much better understanding of just how effective your direct mail and print ad campaigns are.

At St. Gregory, we have talented team members that can help you design a new webpage, write effective sales copy, and implement a solid UTM strategy to get the most accurate tracking possible for your direct mail or print advertising campaign all while driving sales or leads. If you’re ready to see how well your campaigns, direct mail or otherwise, are really performing, let’s talk!

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Don’t Believe the AI Marketing Hype 29 Aug 2024, 7:26 pm

There’s a meme going around using a scene from Wolf of Wall Street. Leonardo DiCaprio gives some poor schlump the famous challenge to, “Sell me this pen.” 

And the response is, “It’s powered by AI”

Since ChatGPT rolled out in the last quarter of 2022, Artificial Intelligence has become the incantation used by just about anybody trying to sell you just about anything without ever explaining how it works. So before you bet your budget (or your job) on AI marketing software, make sure you know what’s actually in the box. 

Most AI systems use what’s called a large language model (LLM), created by scraping up billions of articles, posts, academic papers and whatever other content it can find from all over the Internet. The copyright issues of this aside, the resulting database creates a catalog of source material that allows the LLM to recognize what words and phrases are most likely to follow each word or phrase in the prompt. Essentially it’s pattern recognition software, which done at scale may be pretty impressive, but it’s not likely to replace original thought because the engine is not really doing any thinking. It’s filling in the blanks. 

I saw an example of this a few days ago in an unsolicited email promoting a new business-to-business marketing tool that is – wait for it – powered by AI. If the pitch I received is an example of how the system would work for my clients, it may need another minute or ten in the oven.

Apparently using content scraped from the St. Gregory website, my LinkedIn and other social media profiles, and from various news articles in which I’ve been mentioned, the email constructed an elaborate soft-pitch opening congratulating me for various successes (some pretty obscure in hindsight), before inviting me to reminisce with the supposed author about my glory days in college. 

It was pretty powerful stuff. I got a little misty-eyed recalling all the special events, especially the homecoming parade … at a university that has neither a homecoming parade nor a marching band, let alone a homecoming game or even a football team.

These may seem minor errors in the scheme of things, but they illustrate a very important point about the powered-by-AI hype: artificial intelligence in real-world marketing applications is nowhere near ready for the big game. You will still need original ideas. You’ll also still need to verify your audience, customize your content and importantly fact-check the output. 

All that means the Mechanical Turk still doesn’t really work without the person inside. Y’know, your marketing team.

And that’s not what was on the label.

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Writing for Different Social Platforms 16 Jul 2024, 7:53 pm

In today’s digital era, social media serves as a powerful tool for businesses. With each platform having a distinct audience and characteristics, it’s crucial to customize your content for maximum impact. Grasping the unique nuances of each platform can greatly boost your engagement and expand your reach. A great caption not only helps you get your message across, but the longer someone spends reading your caption and engaging with your post, the better your post will rank with the algorithms.

Here are a few general tips that apply to all platforms:

• Keep it conversational. Cold, robotic captions are a thing of the past.
• First-person point of view generally works best. For example, “We hope you can join us for our webinar!” vs. third-person “St. Gregory invites you to join their webinar!”
• Keep it simple and focused. 
• It should come as no surprise that most users have short attention spans, so having a compelling hook is always helpful.

Facebook: Engaging and Community-Oriented

Facebook is the most widely used social media platform today with over 3 billion users monthly. What was once a platform for connecting with friends and relatives has now transformed into an important channel for businesses to market their brands. Writing successful captions for your Facebook posts can make a huge difference in maximizing conversions for your brand.

Tone and Style: Friendly, conversational, and community-focused.

Content Length:  Facebook allows up to 63,206 characters, but the most engaging posts are typically between 40 and 80 characters.

Best Practices:

• Craft captions around your target audience.
• Keep captions short, simple, and easy to digest while scrolling through the newsfeed.
• Share content that feels relatable and community-driven.
• Add calls to action, questions, and suggestions to provoke conversation.

X: Concise and Real-Time

With X’s short character limit, writing strong messages is crucial. Clear, to-the-point posts receive the best engagement rates. 

Tone and Style: Witty, direct, and timely.

Content Length: Posts are limited to 280 characters, but people still prefer them to be short and sweet. Keeping your post between 70 and 100 characters allows your audience room to add their own commentary when reposting. 

Best Practices:

• Be concise.
• Use hashtags wisely but sparingly.
• Engage in trending conversations and use relevant hashtags.
• Include links to drive traffic to your website.

Instagram: Visual and Inspirational

While Instagram is very visual, captions should not be an afterthought. Captions can be a powerful tool to encourage likes, comments, and visits to the link in your bio. Combining a good Instagram caption with an effective call-to-action is one of the best ways to inspire your followers to comment on your posts. This means even more engagement on your account. 

Tone and Style: Creative, aesthetic, and inspirational.

Content Length: Captions can be up to 2,200 characters, but the ideal length is around 125 characters.

Best Practices:

• Write compelling captions that complement your visuals.
• Write in a polished, yet not too formal tone. 
• Stay on top of the trends—they are always changing, and you want your brand to stay relevant.
• Use appropriate hashtags and consider creating branded hashtags.
• Use emojis. 

LinkedIn: Professional and Business-Oriented

Tone and Style: Professional, informative, and authoritative.

Content Length: LinkedIn posts can be up to 3,000 characters, but shorter posts—around 100 characters—often perform better. The “See More” link appears at about 140 characters, so it’s best to keep posts short enough to avoid being cut off. 

Best Practices:

• Share industry insights, articles, and thought leadership content.
• Use a professional tone.
• Engage with your network by sharing relevant content.
• Utilize LinkedIn Articles for in-depth, long-form content.
• Incorporate relevant keywords to enhance discoverability.

TikTok: Fun and Entertaining

Tone and Style: Casual, trendy, and entertaining.

Content Length: It’s best to keep your TikTok captions short—one or two concise sentences or a short phrase is ideal. A shorter caption also means that nothing from your message will get cut off in the preview. 

Best Practices:

• Follow current trends and challenges.
• Use a casual, conversational tone.
• Engage with your audience and encourage comments.
• Showcase your brand’s personality with creative and fun language.
• Keep in mind that TikTok has a younger audience, so caption accordingly.
• Use emojis.

Writing for different social platforms requires an understanding of each platform’s unique characteristics and audience preferences. By tailoring your content to fit the style and format of each platform, you can maximize your engagement and effectively communicate your message. If you need help with your brands social media, we’d love to chat. Give us a call today! 

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6 Questions to Ask When Interviewing Marketing Agencies 7 Jun 2024, 12:23 pm

You know your business, inside and out, but when it comes to marketing and advertising, a little extra help from proven professionals can go a long way. With the right team at your side, you can increase brand awareness, reach new customers, and deepen your relationship with existing customers. You can also gain valuable insights into your business, products or services, and customer base. Now it’s just a matter of finding the right marketing and advertising partner….

For better or worse, there are a plethora of marketing agencies in Cincinnati, Northern Kentucky, and the surrounding area. (And if you’re in another part of the country or even the world, there’s probably plenty of marketing agencies to choose from there too.) So, how can you make sure you’re choosing the best partner for your business?

Interviewing advertising and marketing agencies in Cincinnati (or wherever you happen to be) is half first date, half job interview. We recommend you ask these six questions when speaking with any agency. Compare their answers to your business needs and goals and see if it’s a match made in heaven.

Question 1: What are your areas of expertise?

This question focuses on services that the marketing agency excels at. For example, some agencies may specialize in public relations but not technical services like on-site SEO (search engine optimization).

How St. Gregory Answers

St. Gregory is a full-service agency, with expertise in both traditional and digital marketing. We’ve intentionally invested in building out both sides of our business because we know that a holistic marketing strategy is paramount to success. And while there are certainly other advertising and marketing agencies in Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky that consider themselves to be full-service, many of them do not have the in-house personnel to do it all, which brings us to….

Question 2: What are your in-house capabilities?

If a marketing agency claims to be an expert in an area but actually outsources all of the work, are they actually the experts? Will they be up-to-date on the tactic in question? Will they be able to make adjustments quickly or will they have to reach out to a third-party?

Another thing to consider when marketing agencies are using many vendors is cost. You may be paying a commission to the marketing agency but then sacrificing more advertising or creative dollars to the vendor (because obviously, those people have to get paid as well).

How St. Gregory Answers

At St. Gregory, vendors are the exception not the rule. We’re proud to say that by far, most of our client work is done in house. Just some of our in-house capabilities are:

• Public Relations
• Broadcast Media
• Paid Digital Marketing (Google Ads and social media ads like Facebook and YouTube)
• Copywriting
• Creative Services
• Video Production

We will occasionally tap a vendor for support if that’s what’s in the best interest of our client, but quality and cost are always top-of-mind in these situations. We’ve tested many different vendors over the years to be sure that those we do occasionally use provide the right level of quality and cost efficiency.

Question 3: Do you work with similar companies?

Do the marketing agencies you’re speaking with have experience with your industry or companies that have similar products or services? If they do, does that present any kind of conflict? For example if you’re a HVAC company talking to marketing agencies in Cincinnati and they already represent a direct competitor how will they serve both companies’ needs?

If the marketing agency does not have experience in your industry or with companies with similar products or services, they may have experience with business who have faced similar challenges or who have similar needs.

How St. Gregory Answers

When it comes to industry experience, St. Gregory has deep roots in:

• Automotive
• Finance
• Consumer Services
• Food Service and Entertainment
• B2B

However, we also work in the legal, medical, trade show/event industries and many more.

Question 4: How do you make money?

What kind of fee structure does the marketing agency have? Is it a flat fee or a percentage of your budget? Does it vary based on service?

It should be a huge red flag if an agency won’t transparently talk about their fee structure. However, just because a marketing agency has a low fee or commission doesn’t mean they are the best fit for you. Something too cheap should also send up a red flag. For example, if all the other marketing agencies in Cincinnati are coming in between 15 and 20 percent but one agency is at 10 percent you need to ask more questions!

Be Goldilocks here—look for something that isn’t too high or too low but rather just right.

How St. Gregory Answers

St. Gregory is happy to discuss our fee structure with perspective clients. Compared to other marketing agencies in Cincinnati, we charge a reasonable percentage based on our services, certifications, and years of expertise.

With St. Gregory, there are no contracts and no hidden fees. When we provide a proposal, that is what you pay.

Question 5: Who will be working on my account on a regular basis?

Some marketing agencies in Cincinnati (and everywhere else) have high turnover. Your account representative one day may be gone the next. If you’re working with a large agency, you may deal with a salesperson and then get turned over to someone else (or multiple people) once you’re onboarded. And you may never get to speak to the individuals that are actually pushing the buttons, so to speak.

Know what you’re getting into. Ask about your point of contact, and meet them before signing on, if possible. And if you’re planning to be hands-on with your agency, which we recommend, ask about other specialists and if you’ll be able to speak with them when it comes time to review strategy and results.

How St. Gregory Answers

At St. Gregory, we know that landing the client is only the first step, and we do everything we can to provide a first-rate client experience. You’ll have a dedicated account executive that you can contact as needed. In addition our media, digital marketing, public relations, and creative specialists love talking about their craft, so if you want to meet them, they’d be delighted.

Question 6: What does your reporting look like?

So you’ve signed up with a marketing agency in Cincinnati, you’ve launched your first campaign, and … now what? How do you know if it was a success? What did you get for your advertising or marketing dollars?

Ask the marketing agencies you’re talking to about what you can expect in terms of a report up front. What will they be measuring? Can that data be validated?

Key point: Sometimes the data you’re given won’t match Google Analytics, which you should definitely be using, by the way. Here are some common reasons why those numbers might not sync up.

How St. Gregory Answers

At St. Gregory, you will get a report. We love data, and we’re proud of the advertising and marketing results we know we’re going to produce. What that report will look like will depend on the tactics used. A broadcast media report will look very different than a Google display ads report.

While we do have standard report templates that we use for various tactics, we’re happy to work with you to develop a custom report that provides the metrics you feel are most valuable. The goals of the campaign and the corresponding key performance indicator(s) (KPI) is something we always define with clients before a campaign launches.

These are just six of the questions you’ll want to ask when interviewing marketing agencies in Cincinnati (or anywhere else). Based on your specific goals and needs, there are more questions that you’ll want to get answers to. Take some time to brainstorm on those before your initial call with the agency.

And if you like how we answer these questions, we’d love to talk to you about taking your advertising and marketing to a whole new level.

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To Know Your Customer, You Just Need to Ask the Right Questions 5 May 2024, 8:12 pm

Ask most business owners who their customer is and they’ll likely point to demographic characteristics or the different types of media they consume to support their answer. While these data points always are important, they’re just that—data points—without a more intimate understanding of what drives your customer to make a purchase decision, and more important, when she or he is likely to make it.

It’s true … we live in a brave new data-driven world that is stunningly (frighteningly?) easy for both ecommerce companies and mass retailers to collect granular details about shopper habits. Data that they can then use to generate insights on their customers’ habits and behavioral attributes.

How do you compete with that technology if you’re in one of those businesses where you can’t obtain a deep customer profiles? Or simply don’t have access to that level of in-depth detail?

We encounter this data disconnect particularly with consumer or in-home services brands. Accurate information is even harder to come by in categories where the sales cycle is longer or more considered, or when purchases are driven by a specific, perhaps acute, need. This is key—because if you don’t truly know who this customer is, if you’re not targeting the type of customer appropriate for your brand, you risk losing them to a competitor who is.

So are these companies destined to be left behind in the data revolution? Not if they use data for what it does best, and trust themselves to continue doing what they’ve already proved they do best.

While it’s not easy to create the perfect data model of your customers, there are still ways to better understand them. The right answers start with asking the right questions:

• What problem is your customer trying to solve?
• What other solutions have they considered (or will they consider)?
• What information do they need before choosing?
• Where do they get that information?
• Do they do their own research, or do they rely on referrals from family, friends or social networks?
• Do they simply follow the brand they perceive to be the market leader?
• Which customers are selecting your competitors over you, and why are some leaving you altogether?

By answering these questions, marketers in less data-rich categories can build a better understanding of their specific customers. Even better, that puts them in a position to target the right customer with the right message—at the right time.

The post To Know Your Customer, You Just Need to Ask the Right Questions appeared first on St. Gregory.

How Do I Know My Marketing Efforts Are Working? 14 Mar 2024, 1:56 pm

The most well-executed marketing campaign can’t succeed unless it begins with a specific definition of what success looks like. Marketers too often start with ambiguous objectives like, “I want to increase leads or phone calls,” “I want to increase revenue,” “I want more brand awareness in the market,” or “I want to improve my businesses social media presence”.

On the surface, these look like rational business objectives. But they are not clearly defined goals. Because there’s no clear definition of success, it is nearly impossible for your business (or any of your marketing partners) to be able to judge the effectiveness of your marketing efforts with any degree of certainty.

• For example, if your objective is to grow leads year-over-year, start with defining a specific number or percentage increase to establish your goal. This goal needs to be rational:
• Is your goal for new leads attainable?
• If your leads increase by the desired amount, will your team be able to manage those new customers while still delivering the same level of quality service?
• Will you need to add more employees to handle these new leads if they convert to booked customers?

Once you’ve clearly defined your goal(s), you can develop the most appropriate marketing strategy and budget to achieve success. While a natural first instinct may be that to increase leads YOY, you need to increase your marketing spend, that’s not always the case. And even if a greater investment is necessary, how do you know to what extent your budget must be increased?

This is where an evaluation and audit of your current marketing efforts can yield significant data points to guide you on how best to proceed. For instance, perhaps your marketing spend does not need to be increased, but rather you need to make changes to your strategy or tactics.

There are several key areas that should be analyzed as part of your marketing evaluation.

Online Reputation

When a prospective customer is searching for you online, will they find glowing five-star reviews or a bunch of unsatisfied one- and two-star reviews? On average, 68 percent of consumers research local businesses online before making a purchasing decision. If you lack a reputation management process to monitor and improve your online reputation, you may be missing leads you’re already reaching through your outbound marketing.

Analytics and Tracking

Are you using UTM parameters, and do you have analytics, as well as conversion tracking properly set up on your website to evaluate your marketing tactics? More than half of small businesses don’t have conversion tracking set up in their analytics, so they are missing out on a vast amount of data. Often when prospective new clients reach out to us at St. Gregory, we uncover that analytics was not set up properly during our evaluation and discovery phase. In these situations, while you may have some theories as to which marketing tactics are working or not, it’s nearly impossible to say with certainty because your marketing team doesn’t have the right information to apply.

Website Performance

How is your website performing, particularly the pages you are driving visitors to? If your website suffers from slow load times or lacks a well-designed user experience, it may not be your drive-to-site tactics that need to change, but rather your website.

Response Time

How much time does your team take to reply to new customer inquiries? Are you driving quality leads to your website but failing to convert them effectively? Customers hate waiting, in fact, 90 percent of consumers say instant customer service is very important. If a customer has to wait more than 24 hours to receive a response from an email/website inquiry or more than three minutes for a live chat, you likely are missing out on converting leads. This is especially true for any business providing urgent-need or emergency services, such as HVAC, pest control, or water restoration.

Just like no journey can be successful without a clear destination, it’s impossible for even the most detailed marketing planning and execution to succeed without a clear objective. If it’s not clear that your marketing results are building your business, or you’re simply seeking an independent perspective, we’d be more than happy to talk about your marketing strategy. Give us a call at 513-769-8440.

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2023: A Year in Review 16 Jan 2024, 8:00 am

The new year is in full swing, and we’re excited about all that it has in store for our clients and team! 2023 was an exciting and memorable one at St. Gregory. We’ve put together some highlights from the past twelve months, read on to see what we’ve been up to… 

A New Home
In April, we moved our offices to the historic Longworth Hall after being in Deerfield Township for a decade. Being centrally located in the heart of downtown and close to so many attractions while also being closer to our clients is a win-win. The flexibility of Longworth Hall has allowed us to create a space that inspires creative thinking while maintaining efficiency and productivity. We were also able to finally build that dream office bar. A goal for 2024 is to have it stocked with the best bourbon we can get our hands on. 

We Love Data
We’ve stayed busy this year and we have the numbers to prove it. Here are just a few fun figures from 2023:
• 215,296,742 Digital Ad Impressions
• 1332 Projects Completed
• 3,259 Cups of coffee
• 40,000+ tailgaters in our parking lot 

Welcoming Fresh Talent
We hired two new members of the creative team. Abigail joined us in June as our newest designer, and Katie came on board in October as Senior Copywriter. Many agencies outsource freelance creative talent, but we prefer to have a full in-house team that is 100% dedicated to and aligned with our clients and their needs.  

A Few Client Highlights
Our clients had an exciting year! It has been an honor to help them achieve their goals and watch their successes. Here are just a few memorable projects and events from 2023…

The People’s Choice
General Electric Credit Union was recently voted Best Credit Union by Cincinnati’s Best: The Official Community’s Choice Awards. This came after our big launch of The Talk Campaign. Our aim with this campaign was to make people question their relationship with their bank. Did you know that on average, people stay with their bank longer than they stay in relationships? Way longer. They’re hesitant to break up with their banks—it’s too much hassle and they’re all the same anyway, right? Imagine if you needed therapy for your relationship… with your bank. Could there be a better match out there, like GECU? 

The scene: Harold and his therapist discuss his relationship woes. It’s clearly not going well for Harold. At first, we—and the therapist—think he’s talking about his romantic partner. It quickly becomes apparent that Harold has another relationship on his mind: his bank. The message is clear—it’s time to break up with your bank. You deserve better. The Talk launched in September and we’re looking forward to watching it continue to roll out in 2024. Watch it here.

State-of-the-Art
Beechmont Automotive Group continued to prove its commitment to customer satisfaction and the community this past year. Both Porsche and Volvo completely renovated their dealerships to better serve their customer’s needs. Porsche’s spectacular new facility boasts next-generation amenities, with a focus on the ultimate customer experience. Every detail of the new space feels luxurious and makes you want to drive away in a new Porsche.

Volvo’s completely remodeled showroom and larger, state-of-the-art service department are now equipped to handle more capacity, with increased loaner vehicle availability and more certified Volvo technicians and service staff than ever before. The new showroom allows the customer to browse all the latest Volvo models in a large, open, and airy environment. 

Big Things Coming
Snappy Tomato Pizza got a rebrand! Our goal was to capture the essence of what it means to be Snappy — quality and freshness being at the heart of everything they do—and translate that to all brand materials, from pizza boxes, to store interiors, to shirts – you name it, we did it. We took a deep dive into the world of Snappy (we had a LOT of pizza in 2023) and developed a comprehensive brand identity to set them apart from the competition. We are incredibly excited about the outcome and can’t wait for the big reveal later this year.

Community Driven
Great Parks kicked off 2023 with a new look that reflects their core values: sustainability and conservation. Our objective was to devise an effective marketing and advertising strategy for 2023 to introduce the rebrand, while simultaneously educating the community about Great Parks’ commitment to the betterment of Hamilton County. We decided to shift from only advertising during the warm summer months, to putting strong media out around their slogan Find Your Wild year-round. The result was an impactful campaign for 2023 with a focus on what sets Great Parks apart from other local parks—130,000 trees planted and counting! 17,700 acres preserved and counting!— and eye-catching imagery.  

We are full of gratitude for another successful year (our 31st!) at St. Gregory. To all our clients – thank you for trusting us with your brand and making some of our favorite moments of 2023 possible. Wishing you all the best in 2024, we’re looking forward to creating more memories with you.

If you’re looking for help developing a custom marketing or advertising strategy for your business, we would love to chat with you. Contact us to explore how we can work together to take your brand to the next level in 2024. 

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Navigating the Political Ad Storm: Strategies to Market Your Company Effectively 30 Nov 2023, 5:43 pm

In marketing and advertising, staying ahead of the curve and being prepared to pivot when necessary is crucial. One challenge that businesses face is how to market themselves effectively when political campaigns are pouring endless amounts of money into media advertising. According to AdImpact, the 2023-2024 election cycle will be the most expensive to date, with a projected $10.2 billion in political advertising expenditures. This is a 13 percent increase over the previous record of $9.02 billion that was set during the 2019-2020 cycle. We can anticipate a media space inundated with political messaging, particularly in battleground states like Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and others.

So how do businesses maintain market visibility during these times? As an advertising and marketing agency, we have some proven tactics to not just survive but thrive amid the political advertising madness.

1. Define Your Unique Value Proposition
   What sets your business apart from the competition? In an overwhelming sea of political messages, it’s essential to articulate clearly what makes your company unique. Start by identifying your core strengths, values, and the benefits you offer to your customers. Craft a compelling message that resonates with your target audience and emphasizes the value you bring into their lives.
2. Consider the Market
   When you are up against wall-to-wall political ads, consider alternative programming, networks, or media. Options include:
   • Radio
   • Independent networks
   • Cable
   • Alternative shows
   • Outdoor advertising
3. Capitalize on Digital Channels
   While political campaigns tend to focus on traditional media channels, many are adopting a digital approach. Moving more of your budget over to digital is a smart move when political spending is heavy, however, there will still be some impact on metrics like CPM (cost-per-thousand reached) and concepts like brand safety. Some tips for optimizing your digital ads:
   
   • CPMs for Display, Video, OTT (over the top), and CTV (connected TV) campaigns will likely spike during political windows regardless of your business type. To avoid higher competition, you can specify a news or political audience as a negative audience and avoid these ads as much as possible.
   • Many political campaigns leverage RON ads (run-of-network), meaning their ads can show to anyone in that channel and there is little to no audience targeting. Focus on your audience to avoid much of the political spending.
   • Try new channels. While political ads tend to adopt newer strategies quickly, the playing field will be more even. Test out Podcasts, DOOH (Digital Out of Home), or even In-Game advertising.
   • Adopt a 1st-party data strategy and use this information for audience building. This not only helps with digital media efficiency, but it can also help to negate political spending windows.
   • Be mindful of the ads and stories your ads are showing against. While candidates and issue campaigns are the primary political spenders, this is also a high time for disinformation, special-interest groups, and outside players to spend on political ads. If a placement or channel doesn’t align with your brand message, cut it.
4. Plan and Buy Early
   Legally qualified political candidates receive lowest unit rates (LUR) for TV ads (60 days before a general or run-off election and 45 days before a primary or caucus election), meaning they get the benefit of all volume discounts without having to buy in volume. The candidate gets the same rate for buying one spot as the most favored advertiser would get for buying hundreds of spots of the same class. By planning and buying early, you can increase your chances of securing a spot and plan your budget accordingly. A general rule of thumb is that the first in = last out.
   
   • Consider purchasing annual packages and sponsorships, as these are protected from LUR periods.
   • Try to avoid the programs that politicians buy, primarily the news and primetime TV.
   • Consider purchasing 15-second spots. Politicians typically run 30-second spots, so those are likely to be harder to secure.
5. Leverage Social Media Wisely
   Social media platforms are a powerful tool for reaching your audience directly. During heavy political spending periods, these platforms can also become crowded with political content. To cut through the noise:
   
   • Timing is everything: Post your content strategically when political ads are less likely to dominate the feeds, such as early mornings or weekends.
   • Paid Promotions: Consider boosting your social media posts to increase visibility. Social media advertising can be highly targeted to reach specific demographics, ensuring your message reaches the right audience.
   • Engagement and Interaction: Make sure you are posting engaging content and interacting with your followers regularly.
6. Influencer Marketing
   Influencer marketing can be a game-changer in a crowded advertising landscape. Collaborating with influencers who align with your brand can help you reach a wider and more engaged audience. Be sure the influencers you choose to work with genuinely believe in your product or service to maintain authenticity.
7. Participate in Community Initiatives
   Participating in local community initiatives can help you create a positive image and build strong connections. These are a few excellent ways to reach a new audience, promote your business, and demonstrate your commitment to the well-being of your target market:
   
   • Sponsor local events.
   • Support local charities.
   • Partner with local businesses to cross-promote your products or services.
8. Monitor and Adapt
   Constantly monitor the political advertising landscape and adjust your strategies accordingly. If certain keywords or topics are dominating the conversation, adjust your content to stay relevant. Additionally, monitor customer sentiment and feedback to make more real-time adjustments to your messaging.
9. Be Patient and Consistent
   It is important to be patient and consistent with your efforts, especially during times of heavy political spending. It may take some time to see results, but if you are consistent, you can reach your target audience.

Successfully marketing your company during an election requires strategy, consistency, flexibility, and a commitment to staying true to your brand’s core values. The strategies outlined here will help your business not only weather the political storm but thrive in an oversaturated, competitive market.

At St. Gregory, we understand the challenge of navigating the ever-changing landscape of marketing and advertising. If you need assistance in developing a tailored strategy to stand out during these times, we’re here to help. Contact us today to explore how we can work together to elevate your brand and achieve your goals.

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