Wheelhouse Marketing Blog

The New Year is slipping away, and we are about to jump into Q2. It is always helpful to take an introspective moment to understand why we're operating the way we are, but making sure your reaching for the right goals is something to re-visit before too much of the year passes. Lots of buzz starts early, picking up steam in mid to late December and exploding onto the scene in January. But like most ambitious, life-changing endeavors, the efforts are short-lived if we don't check-in and hold ourselves accountable. 

For small to medium-sized businesses, having the right tools can mean everything when it comes to their success. When you're running an SMB (small to medium-sized business), there are always more tasks than can be done, more hours required in a day than are realistically available. With business owners facing such an enormous amount of responsibility, the tools they employ become indispensable. Business is a battle, and going in with the wrong tool can be like jumping out of the trenches with no more than a water gun in your hand.

So, your sitting in a meeting and someone starts dropping acronyms like there's no tomorrow... You're reading the P&L, making sure you've got enough ROI on your SEO, and your COO starts talking about Q2 returns YOY, and how your MQLs have been outperforming your SQLs while your COS is climbing.

The term Agile Marketing is by no means a new one within the business world. The odds are that even if you aren't actively using an Agile approach to your business, you've heard of it in some way, shape, or form over the last few years. It was born in the world of software development, coming to life in IT departments as they worked quickly to address issues, test their methods, and weigh the results.

While it’s still unsure how Instagram’s latest like policy will change the face of influencer marketing, we think it’s safe the say that the marketing niche certainly won’t be going anywhere. So much so, that by 2020, influencer marketing is projected to be a $10 billion industry. That’s billion. With a “B.” With so much focus (and budget) on influencer marketing, you’d assume that most marketers can track what the ROI of their influencers are. But you know what they say about assumptions.

Across the country, there is a unique class of folks that stand out as anomalies from the digitized masses. They aren't hard to recognize. Often, they're using aging tech or a non-smartphone, they would rather get dirt under their fingernails than be on social media and have little to no idea what a meme is. Often referred to in the marketing world by the kind euphemism of late adopters, this group of hard-working, rarely online folks typically has some of the sparsest resources when it comes to their marketing, design, and demand generation. 

They tend to occupy more trade, agricultural, and specialized skill forms of business, be it guiding, farming, construction, charter services, commercial supply, or more industrial-focused work. For many of these people, they have the "been doing it this way for 30 years, and it's worked well for me" byline, and business typically comes from a real word of mouth route. But, like all good things, the days may be numbered for continuing this way in a world going ever faster and faster toward the interconnection of things. Today we're looking at why every single individual, even these late adopters, can benefit from a strong marketing game.

There are loads of responsibilities that come with being a good Chief Marketing Officer. One that may not be listed on a job write up but is vitally important is the need to constantly have your eye on market trends and what they mean for your department. That’s why we’ve put together the top five trends we think any CMO worth their salt is watching this year. Let’s go!

If you’ve got a website up and running, congratulations, you’ve entered into the 21^st century. If you’re collecting data on that website, double kudos. You’re doing more than the average small business, as only 45% of them actually track their data. If you’re actually assessing that data to improve your overall marketing, well then hot dang, we think you deserve all the gold stars. But if you’re sitting in your office, heaped in data that’s drowning you, we’re here to help! Today’s blog is the lifeboat that will steer you to five strategies to analyze your traffic, asses your data, and untangle your results for a better overall strategy. So pick up that icy whistle and blow, because we’re coming for ya!

Fact: writing a white paper is no joke. It’s certainly one of the bigger sorts of projects a marketing team will work on and will require some serious leg work. White paper’s require hours of research, a healthy dose of timely and reliable sources, a research position and tone of voice, a dang good subject. It typically will be anywhere from 3000-5,000 well thought out words and an all-hands on deck approach from more than one of your marketing team members

As a business owner, it’s a given in today’s world that you need to have a social media presence. If you’re still thinking about social as something that Millennials simply spend too much time on, it’s time to think again, friend. Not only do you need to be on social media, but you also need to have a strong plan about how you’re going to use it, who you want to talk to, and what you want to get out of it.