by Irina Georgieva | Jan 2, 2025
Thousands of businesses compete for the attention of customers every day and it’s difficult to cut through the noise of digital media. This is where marketing campaigns come in. Brands need compelling marketing campaigns to reach new customers, whether they’re selling software, ice cream, or comprehensive access control systems.
Brands’ approaches to marketing campaigns have shifted dramatically in recent years. The straightforward pitches about products and services are a thing of the past. Every year, marketing campaigns are getting more creative as brands try to stand out from their competition. Sometimes these unique approaches can be highly effective, and in other cases, they crash and burn.
Whether it is through TikTok videos, humorous tweets, or attractive billboards, 2021 had no shortage of exciting marketing campaigns. Here are the best and worst campaigns of the year.
5 best marketing campaigns of 2021
We’ve put together a list of the five best marketing campaigns we saw last year. Here is to another successful year of marketing creativity!
McDonald’s – We Deliver
McDonald’s saw a new take on their branding in 2021. In a departure from Ronald McDonald’s days, the campaign adopted a more minimalist approach, and in this case, less was more. While keeping the famous yellow arches, the brand flipped expectations with vibrant colours and clear messaging. The only thing McDonald’s wants its customers to remember is that We Deliver, and they succeeded in this clear message.
Nike – Just Do It
Another great marketing campaign of 2021 was Nike’s Just Do It. We have inextricably linked this simple phrase to the brand’s athletic wear and this year this was solidified further, with Nike demonstrating the value of sticking to a successful brand message.
Few marketing efforts have been as effective as Nike’s long-running Just Do It campaign. By focusing on the feeling people get from working out, these commercials have helped the corporation generate billions of dollars.
Airbnb – ‘Made Possible by Hosts’
As a brand that was hit heavily by the pandemic, Airbnb took a leap of faith for a new type of marketing campaign in 2021 – and it paid off. They permanently and significantly cut their marketing budget, and launched its ‘Made Possible by Hosts’ campaign which featured real photos of genuine guests and Airbnb properties around the world.
Always – Like a Girl
Always’ Like a Girl is yet another famous and trending campaign from last year. Always chose to focus on a current social issue to promote female empowerment and address a problem that teenage girls experience. Always came across as genuine in the campaign, supported by their long record of advocating for puberty education, guaranteeing that their message would resonate with their target group.
Aldi – Free Cuthbert
The UK supermarket chain turned a potential problem into a genius marketing campaign when rival chain Marks and Spencer launched legal action against the company, claiming their Cuthbert the Catepillar Swiss roll was a rip off of a similar M&S product. Aldi quickly got the nation onside with a humorous PR campaign to free Cuthbert that saw them trending number one on Twitter.
5 worst marketing campaigns Of 2021
Not every marketing campaign was so successful. Here are five well-known companies whose campaigns sparked controversy in 2021.
Burger King’s, Women Belong in The Kitchen.
Burger King’s statement last year on International Women’s Day, that “women belong in the kitchen”, caused uproar on social media. It was part of a marketing campaign to highlight the new initiative of the chain in the restaurants to facilitate the female executive chefs.
However, this message did not come through and the original tweet confused thousands on social media. As the backlash grew, the company said that not including the complete program in its first tweet was a mistake – a lesson for us all!
Adidas’, Dare to Create
In 2021, Adidas UK collaborated withEnglish football club Arsenal and launched a campaign on Twitter to advertise their partnership. They discovered the hard way that automation is not always beneficial. The campaign attracted highly nasty handles and hundreds of trolls on Twitter.
Pepsi’s, Live for Now
Pepsi’s Live for Now commercial was undoubtedly one of the most divisive of the year. In the commercial, Kendall Jenner joined a protest and presented Pepsi to a police officer. The ad sparked outrage since many saw it trivialising and capitalising on social justice campaigns.
Victoria’s Secret’s, The Perfect Body
The legendary lingerie and clothing shop was criticised for its advertisement featuring photos of Victoria’s Secret Angel in their lingerie range and the phrase The Perfect Body, in the UK. The ad spawned the Twitter hashtag #iamperfect, and was widely criticised for exploiting fears and handed out negative messages about female body image.
H&M’s, Coolest Monkey in The Jungle.
The UK retail giant’s promotion of a new sweater backfired, thanks to racist overtones in their ad. Customers on social media were quick to condemn the ad and the brand lost a number of celebrity endorsers. Shares of the company even dropped by 40%. Despite all this, the campaign reportedly continued outside of the United States.
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by Irina Georgieva | Jan 2, 2025
A company cannot survive without a strong market presence. The more recognizable your brand is the better your business performs. The right marketing team executes your ideas and strategies to perfection. However, today the challenge is to choose the most suitable digital marketing team structure for your business. Choosing the people with the right skills is just the beginning. More importantly, consider whether you need in-house or freelance team members, and what combination would benefit your company the most.
After picking out the team members, think of how small or big your team needs to be. Consider the number of people working on a task, how much money you are willing to invest, and what the return on advertising (ROA) would be. After you settle all of these factors, you can finally establish your team. According to HubSpot, SEO optimization, content marketing, social media and the like are all widely used solutions by marketing professionals in 2022. The right team and the right solutions will create the perfect structure for your company.
What is a digital marketing team structure?
A typical marketing team has several objectives, depending on different factors. Primarily, the marketing team is concerned with the development of the brand’s e-reputation and generating and retaining qualified leads. Often a marketing team is also concerned with the web management, and the social media profile of the company.
Each member must clearly understand the expectations. To do this, the implementation of a roadmap can be effective. This allows for greater understanding and clarity of expectations. This roadmap, coupled with the KPIs, will be a simple and effective method of prioritizing the objectives. It can be useful to develop a “sprint” strategy in order to really know what to work on for a specific objective. These goals help to build the confidence of team members and, therefore, to improve.
The company’s visibility and e-reputation are also the responsibility of the marketing department. This is why it is not uncommon for marketing to deviate from the conventional in order to be more autonomous. This is where marketing comes in to implement the digital transformation of the company. It is important to have a diversity of skills within the digital marketing team structure to cover a wider range of marketing.
How to create a good digital marketing team structure?
Creating the perfect structure can be a challenge, and yet if you follow these key stages closely, you will be able to surmount most of the obstacles really quickly.
Define a work strategy
This strategy will clearly explain the work to be done and the different ways to achieve it. First, you need to ask yourself a few questions. What is the main objective? How to achieve it? What is the deadline? What are the different supports to put in place? Before embarking on any project, it is necessary to anticipate and analyze the potential difficulties in order to respond to them as effectively as possible. Maintaining good relationships will be essential for the smooth running of the project. The atmosphere must be fun. The marketers very often work together and you have to be able to relax the atmosphere.
Choose the right collaboration tool
Since the arrival of remote work in our daily lives, communication has become essential. You will need to set up marketing tools to carry out your project. A management tool will allow you to maintain collaboration in one place, share documents, and work together. You can simply use a shared drive or even Slack for your internal communication. There are options for all budgets and types of projects, but the conclusion is clear: eliminate wasted time as much as possible to focus on the objectives. You have to be extremely efficient to work in marketing.
Measure efforts
Defined at the start of the project, the performance indicators will be vital throughout the project. The implementation of a document, grouping together the various analyzes and KPIs make it possible to control the proper functioning of the project. This will also help motivate teams to achieve their goals. You will be able to adapt your external communication according to the data on your customers and prospects.
Control and improve
Error is human, so it will be an integral part of your project. But the important thing is to identify errors in order to correct them. The project manager must be able to bounce back and re-motivate his team to focus on the final objective. It is thanks to these incidents that your project will be all the more efficient. It is by using these errors that you will be able to improve.
Who are the marketing team members?
A digital marketing team structure differs from one company to the next. Each business decides on the details of the structure. A role may or may not be more detailed depending on the needs of the business. This list of different positions is not the same for all companies. Depending on the resources, there may be more positions or, more usually, a person who occupies several positions.
Marketing Manager
At the head of the division, the marketing manager will need great managerial skills to lead the various projects. In addition to defining the missions and distributing the tasks, the manager will have to supervise his entire team. It is necessary for him to have extensive training in marketing analysis and management, and to be directly linked to the CEO and the other divisions. This is especially relevant during new products and the launch of larger endeavors.
Data Analyst
A data analyst analyses data sets to find ways to solve problems relating to a business’s customers. A data analyst also communicates this information to management and other stakeholders. The employment of these individuals encompasses many industries, such as business, finance, criminal justice, science, medicine, and government. Role of a data analyst can be defined as someone who has the knowledge and skills to turn raw data into information and insight, which can be used to make business decisions.
SEO Specialist
A Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Specialist analyzes, reviews, implements changes, and most importantly optimizes websites for search engines. Optimization refers to better traffic, or simply put more visitors to your website, by ranking your website higher on the engines. The SEO specialist follows through each step of your content from its conception to its online distribution. For these reasons, in a modern digital marketing structure, this role is not only necessary but essential.
Graphic Designer
By doing social media management, you will need visuals to illustrate your posts. Whether it’s a video, a GIF or an image, these elements are essential for your publications. The graphic designer must master the tools of the Adobe suite (Photoshop, Illustrator, XD…), and they need technical expertise and creativity. Often in contact with the social media manager, the designer will have to anticipate the posts to better prepare his visuals.
Social Media Manager
Social media managers control everything linked to your online presence. They can create and manage content, data, customer surveys, or any other project or campaign. Their work goes far beyond posting on social media. Most of the time they:
- Set social objectives and analyze them.
- Define campaigns and communication strategies.
- Publish and analyze posts on social networks.
- Promote content and improve brand image.
- Monitor the competition and the market.
- Collaborate with other services to adapt its content.
Project Manager
The project manager is the person in charge of leading a project and managing its smooth running. In general, without being systematic, they lead a team for the duration of the project(s) for which they are responsible. All project managers deal with notions of responsibility by practicing project management skills, having good interpersonal skills, as well technical knowledge in the fields of the concerned activity.
The term applies in various sectors, such as translation and interpretation, urban planning, regional planning, construction, industrial engineering, software, marketing, and communication, for the design or modification of products, services, systems, or the implementation of new processes or approaches (for example the quality approach, the improvement of productivity, or the management of customer relations).
Conclusion
Simply put, each digital marketing team has a different structure, but they are all essentially the same. Each team structure needs a range of very diverse resources in order to cover as many missions as possible. Whether there are two or ten members, with an exorbitant budget or not, with the right structure, you will be able to succeed in relevant and effective projects to make your business live on the internet and increase your sales significantly.
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by Irina Georgieva | Jan 2, 2025
When your business relies on others to deliver its services, you can never put too much effort into your relationships. Improving your communication means better services for your customers, higher ROIs, and increased opportunity for both parties. Every organization has its unique voice and flow. This means the relationship you have with each partner will differ. Although your business should always stay true to its values, flexibility will enable you to both broaden and deepen your collaborations with other brands.
7 key factors for improving your B2B partnerships
In B2B marketing, the importance of building long-lasting and sustainable relationships with your business partners is one of the most vital elements. Understanding how to start building relationships can help you have more confidence in your approach and ability to connect with your B2B partners.
Master in-house communication
When a partner reaches out to someone in your company, do they have to reiterate everything they last discussed? Is there always information being overlooked or lost in translation? Your in-house communication heavily impacts the experience others have with your brand. In today’s digital world you need to streamline your online communications as much as possible so that everyone is clear and on the same page. Make sure that you use the right tools and set guidelines. These help employees perform their jobs better while increasing your entire organization’s flow. This, in turn, leads to greater synergy both in and outside of your partnerships.
Define your vision
You know what your business stands for, but how do your objectives align with your collaborators’? Partnerships need to have a shared mission for their collaboration to be successful. Two brands operating independently are bound to encounter issues. You need shared goals, a roadmap, and universal metrics to effectively communicate. Taking the extra steps to establish these factors will lead to much more rewarding relationships.
Know your value proposition
When businesses want to collaborate with another brand, they often fail to present their own value clearly. This can lead to a lot of ignored requests that delay your growth. Another common mistake when asking to collaborate with a business is focusing on what you want. Flip the script, and focus on leading with your organization’s strengths. Your brand’s positioning should pave the way to illustrate the potential benefits of collaborating. This could be:
- Increased marketing reach
- Greater customer engagement
- Better results for less time
- Access to greater technology
- Improved organization
Use a value proposition template to get the ball rolling. Build yours with a close team, and make sure that the values you endorse shine through in your solutions.
Upgrade your resources
You want to position your business as a leader in its industry. You also want your customers to feel confident in your ability to meet their evolving needs. Your partners will also expect the same, only their needs differ. B2B partnerships require pleasing two audiences simultaneously. Even if you share a marketplace, you cater to different segments. You want to create harmony, and that requires having the best possible resources at your disposal.
Let’s say a collaboration results in greater consumer demand. To meet this, you’ll need to have the best fleet management software and streamlined system to satisfy your new consumers. Installing the latest technology, like GPS fleet tracking software, shows partners that you’re serious about delivering the best results. It also enables you to improve your daily operations for lower costs and less time. Successful B2B collaborations flourish most when each organization is already thriving in its respective industry.
Don’t avoid difficult conversations
You may be two businesses, but you’re also run by humans who won’t always see eye-to-eye. Rather than avoid heavy discussions or disagreements, meet them head-on. However, there is a caveat here. Being too forward can come off as aggressive and power-hungry. You want the partnership to always be rooted in equanimity.
Create an open space for both sides of any discussion to garner mutual respect. Make sure that you also have the appropriate parties handling different disputes. Two marketing managers shouldn’t be attempting to resolve issues that fall under finance or IT. Managers should also be heavily invested in all collaborations, and when appropriate, shareholders should be included as well. Openness across every level of the corporate hierarchy ultimately creates higher satisfaction on both ends.
Keep an open-door policy
While there may be certain expectations and requirements for a collaboration, it should never feel like an all-or-nothing deal. Allow yourself and your partners to have exit strategies that minimize conflict and damage to either party. Life happens, and that means circumstances may render either side unable to fulfill their promises. Make sure that in the early days of collaborating, you establish what steps to take if trouble arises.
Respect differences
Embrace the fact that your partners will think differently. They satisfy customers in different ways, and they have their own approach to problem-solving that makes them an asset, not a competitor. Rather than try to make a company align more with yours, find a shared goal and build from there. By working together, you can forge stronger partnerships that help both organizations grow.
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by Irina Georgieva | Jan 2, 2025
For a company to succeed in any meaningful sense, it must have a high-functioning sales department. After all, sales teams are the ones who cultivate relationships, turning leads and prospects into valued, loyal customers and bringing in recurring revenue that helps a business to scale up with time.
The dynamic human aspect of sales is what makes it such an engaging and rewarding task for personnel. However, it’s also at the root of some of the biggest challenges that sales teams face. Every customer is unique, with their own set of needs, priorities, and sensibilities that reps must take into account as they nurture these relationships.
With such a degree of variance to contend with, sales staff need to have reliable, well-optimized processes in place to help them do fulfill their responsibilities effectively. In this regard automating a sales process in Salesforce can be pivotal.
What is a sales process
There are many tasks involved in a typical sales process from lead generation and qualification to conversion. Though entirely necessary to customer progress, many of these processes involve repetitive administrative tasks and make little use of the best abilities of sales reps.
With platforms like Salesforce, companies can create specific workflows to automate these more repetitive actions and streamline approvals processes for discounts and proposals. With a sales process, highly complex processes can be completed automatically. This takes much of the labor out of selling, allowing reps to focus on the art of sales.
In Salesforce, such workflows can be easily created via an intuitive user interface complete with drag-and-drop functionality, making it simple to create bespoke workflows that serve the needs of specific businesses.
How to set up a sales process
Setting up a sales process in salesforce requires a considerable time investment, and the specifics of the task will vary according to the needs of your specific business. However, it’s possible to set up a sales process by the following steps.
Define opportunity stages
Outline the high-level stages of your sales process. Salesforce comes with default opportunity stages, such as prospecting, needs analysis, proposal, negotiation, and more. The stages that comprise your sales process should reflect the nature of your specific business.
Define the different types of accounts for categorizing leads, and lay out the exact criteria that determine progress in your sales process. This will allow a smooth progression and a convenient overview of the status of deals as they move along your sales pipeline.
Customize features
Once you have defined your opportunity stages, accounts, and progression criteria, you can fine-tune your sales process. Salesforce comes with a wide variety of optional customer features to help you manage your sales process.
Carefully select and enable the features that best suit your business’s needs to best optimize your process.
Acquaint teams with the tech
Setting up your sales process is one thing, but for your efforts to bear fruit, you must ensure that staff is up to speed with how they should engage with the platform.
Leveraging guidance and help features in Salesforce can help sales teams familiarize themselves with the software and its role. This will ensure a smoother launch and a better return on investment for your efforts.
The advantages of setting up a sales process in Salesforce
The advantages of implementing a sales process are numerous. The following are a few ways your business can benefit from setting up a sales process in Salesforce.
Improved performance
Implementing a sales process provides sales teams with a clear framework for sales. Your sales process will inform reps and give them the guidance they need to close deals quickly and consistently. Moreover, by utilizing performance tracking with your sales process, you can quickly identify and seize opportunities for improvement.
Accurate forecasting
A well-implemented sales process allows management to have a clear understanding of deal progression so that they can estimate future sales. This enables them to set more ambitious targets, driving sales and improving revenue.
A better all-around CX
In many ways, customers benefit most directly from the implementation of a sales process. When implemented correctly, a sales process can help reps to know the right moment to move forward with a deal, reducing the risk of a breakdown. In this way, it ensures that each customer gets the optimal customer experience for them.
In addition, the speed and efficiency that a sales process brings improve customers’ perception of your business, creating the kind of loyalty that leads to recurring revenue and growth in the long term.
Conclusion
Sales professionals face a wide variety of challenges nowadays. With customer relationships being such an important part of what makes for business success, it stands to reason that you should want to provide your reps with the freedom and support to do their best work.
By implementing a sales process in salesforce, you can streamline functions within your company, accelerating sales to drive your company forward.
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by Irina Georgieva | Jan 2, 2025
As the business landscape continually changes, scaling your operations correctly is the goal of many organizations. Entrepreneurs now find it more important than ever to make sure they are staying on top of the latest technology, as well as doing their best to retain their customers.
Taking your small business to the next level demands patience, planning, and hard work. Moreover, try to have a mindset of ‘scaling’ because there might come a time when you need to grow and change how you are used to managing things.
4 tips for scaling up your small business
Let us have a look at a few creative ways that you can make use of when it comes to scaling up your small business.
Understand the financial side of things
It is important to avoid scaling operations up too quickly, as too much growth too quickly might not be sustainable over the long term. That’s why it is so important to make sure you manage both your team and finances well. By being financially responsible, you can ensure you know what it means to reach the next level. As your business continues to grow and your expenses start to add up, you may find you need to look for other sources of funding. One potential source is your own money. Many small business owners have found they need to invest in their organizations to keep them growing. You might consider refinancing your current student loans to lower your monthly spending and free up new funds for your organization.
Get an understanding of your audience
It’s a good idea to connect with your audience where they are, and this will require you to have a good understanding of them. You may want to take some time to get an understanding of who they are and what they are doing so you can come up with more engaging content. Focus on making sure your customers are able to find you by ensuring your SEO strategy is updated. There are also important website metrics you need to track that can give you data about your audience and reach as well.
Use tools to create a marketing strategy
There is a technology that can help you set your marketing strategy apart from the competition, and automation software can target your marketing to certain demographics. If you are a local business, you may look into geofencing, which allows you to send ads to people based on their location. It can be very precise, so you can ensure your marketing dollars are spent only where they are likely to count the most.
You may consider using software to automate common marketing tasks, which can streamline everything. There is software to manage customer relationship management tasks, such as chatbots, email newsletters, and even pop-ups on your website. While it can be costly to invest in the right types of software, you will save in other areas, such as brand building and advertising. It can also reduce the costs of conversions, allowing more visitors to become paying customers.
Focus on automation and efficiency
If you are relying on technology to help you scale, you will want to focus on efficiency and automation. These things can give you more insight into what is going on so you can look for ways to improve. Consider how efficient each process is and what you can do to make it even more so. You may want to implement automation, which can ensure you get mundane tasks done on time. This frees up time to take on even more work.
Ensure you have factored in workplace safety
Whilst scaling a business brings with it many opportunities, it also brings added risks. Scaling a business may require you to move to bigger premises and will inevitably require the hiring of new staff. This can potentially increase the risk of a fire on your premises. Ensuring you have the right fire systems in place, is a vital thing to get right when scaling your business.
Conclusion
Understanding how to make the best use of your time and resources is vital when it comes to scaling your small business. Get good at everything related to the financial sie of your business and that will help you break down your goals into manageable tasks. Having a clear vision of your audience is key when it comes to marketing your offerings and deciding on which tools you should use to automate part of your day to day operations. Scaling a small business is a marathon and not a short sprint, so in order to avoid any disappointments when success doesn’t come overnight, keep that in mind.
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