January 2018

Music and jingles have been a part of advertising since the very early stages of mass communication. This is because advertisers know that consumers form an emotional connection to music, much more so than regular text-based advertising. So how exactly does this process work?

Here are a few ways lyrics and songs can be used to advertise your business:

Emotional Persuasion

It is well known that a “feel-good” song can be used to advertise to listeners and associate feeling “happy” with your brand. From a scientific perspective, this is because musical communication creates a deep empathic and neurologic connection in a potential buyer. Due to this, music can be used to evoke an emotional connection in a few different ways.

How to Create Emotional Connections With Music

Use songs to create an emotional connection with your target audience through positive associations with your brand. Although positive music is not required to create a successful advertisement, the basic rule of thumb is to use music that reflects the emotion you would like your customer base to associate with your brand. From there you can alter your music to achieve specific goals in many different ways, such as:

Adding lyrics to specifically mention your brand and build awareness.
Using well known public domain music to grab the attention of listeners who are familiar with it.
Creating unique and catchy compositions that separate your brand from the crowd.
Utilizing tempo to focus on your specific customer base. For example, a fast-paced song may be ideal for an upbeat coffee commercial. In contrast, a relaxing rhythm may work better for a travel agency offering vacation getaway packages.

Instrumental vs Lyrical Content

Both the lyrical and instrumental aspects of music play distinct and powerful roles in the persuasive effect of an advertisement. While both lyrical and instrumental content use music as an advertising tool to make meaningful impressions, there are some key differences between them.

Lyrical Content

Lyrical content can help achieve the “song-stuck-in-head” syndrome that helps engrain a brand within a consumer’s memory. People are far better at remembering things when they can place a beat or rhythm to them. Musically wording a certain message assists brand recall and recognition. Listen briefly to the lyrics in the following advertisement, created by Honda for the 2017 holiday season, to see this effect in action:

Honda Holiday Commercial

This advertisement featured lyrics that were relatable to the customer base Honda was trying to reach, those who needed a family friendly vehicle for traveling and running errands. The catchy beat and the fact that it is rehash of a well-known song make for a memorable advertisement.

Instrumental Content

Instrumental content, on the other hand, is more impactful when it comes to reaching a customer’s emotional side. Note the following two contrasting, yet similarly designed advertisements:

U.S. Army Commercial

Animal Shelter PSA Commercial

Both use plain-spoken language and an instrumental backdrop. The Army commercial features instrumentation that instills feelings of greatness, empowerment, and strength while the animal shelter commercial uses melancholy instrumentation that invokes sympathy. Both instrumentals work towards the advertiser’s goals of instilling an emotion that encourages action. The actions and messages in these particular cases are joining the military to be part of a greater cause and donating to help animals because of empathy for their condition.

Length

Length is an important factor when it comes to how songs can be used to advertise. Consumers are often faced with multiple forms of media competing for their attention throughout their day. As a result, consumers have very short attention spans when it comes to advertising. Short and to the point is the most successful form of musical content in advertising, so leave your power ballads at home for this one.

Remember, there are many ways to get in touch with your customer base. Using an optimal advertising strategy, specific to your target market, is key to growing your brand and achieving your business goals. If your business is in need of a new marketing plan to promote your brand, contact Jessica Chabot, Vice President, Client Services of Millennium Agency at www.mill.agency.

About Millennium Agency

Millennium Agency is a nationally recognized, top woman led B2B branding, positioning, and digital marketing firm who knows how to create value that emotionally influences your customer’s buying decision, giving you the competitive advantage. As your trusted partner in B2B software technology and manufacturing, we provide the branding and positioning framework that make an impact – so you can focus on what you do best – run your business successfully. With offices in Boston and New Hampshire, and a worldwide presence, the professionals at Millennium Agency would like to learn more about your business.  Visit www.mill.agency or book time here.  

With so many ways to market your business, it’s important to have the right consumer data. You may have heard the term “big data,” but are not sure how to take advantage of this data to learn about your potential consumers. Here are three proven strategies for gathering viable consumer data:

Email Segmentation

Your customer base is diverse, and it is important for your email marketing efforts to reflect this. Utilizing email segmentation helps your content resonate with consumers. For example, suppose that your business sells LED light products with a variety of industrial, household, and automotive applications. Segmenting your email content by audience will help you reach your customer base with relevant information.

Believe it or not, even subtle segmentation can be very effective. For example, “How XYZ lights keep the road ahead visible for you and your family” may resonate better with family-oriented customers than simply, “How XYZ lights keep the road ahead visible.”

Moreover, there are a few things to keep in mind when it comes to email segmentation:

Monitoring your segmented email success rate will give you actionable data on your customers. Much like A/B testing, small tweaks and changes will help you connect your message with the values of your customers.
There is no such thing as too much segmentation! The more personal the email, the better the chance of connecting with your audience.

Keyword Research

Keywords are “key” when it comes to reaching the right customers. Roughly 50% of search queries are under four words, which makes it important to identify which keywords work and which ones aren’t as effective.

Thus, enhancing your keywords is central to the cause of improving your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and increasing sales. Consumers rely almost entirely on the internet for information on where to buy what they are looking for.

Additionally, by monitoring data on your keyword conversion rates, you can enhance your business’ SEO and reach a larger population of potential customers.

Closed Loop Marketing

Closed loop marketing is another strategy for gathering customer data and learning more about what converts users to leads. Today, there are four steps to closed loop marketing that provide highly useful data on consumer behavior:

Visitor arrives on your site: Can be used to determined how users find your website. Perhaps they entered through a search engine, by clicking on an email link, or through links from content/social media. Whatever the source, you can learn more about how people are hearing about you from this step.
Visitor browses your site: Provides data on where the user travels on your website before they become a lead. This data demonstrates what works on your website for visitor conversion and what elements could be improved.
Visitor becomes a lead: A visitor can become a lead by filling out a submission form, creating an account, or signing up to receive emails. Regardless of how they become a lead, this step will provide you with valuable data on who your customers are.
Visitor becomes a customer: Monitoring data on visitors who become customers is critical to learning about their buying journey. Follows buyers from their first point of contact with your brand up until their purchase of your product or service.

Utilizing and researching email segmentation, keyword research, and closed loop marketing can provide valuable consumer data that can help you expand your customer-base and achieve your business goals. If you feel that your business could use assistance gathering actionable consumer data, contact Jessica Chabot, Vice President, Client Services of Millennium Agency at www.mill.agency.

About Millennium Agency

Have you noticed that most businesses include articles and blogs on their websites, and post frequently to social media? The internet has changed the way businesses reach out to and communicate with consumers. Blogs, articles, posts, and more are part of a business’ content strategy. Content development helps brands retain their current customers as well as connect with potential customers. In addition to lead generation, there are many other benefits of having a content creation strategy.

Here is why reaching out to a skilled content development team is a great investment that can help your brand succeed:

Stay Current

Constant creation of well-written material on your website is essential to staying current on the web. By updating your site with relevant information, you can increase the flow of traffic to your pages and educate prospects about new and exciting topics related to your brand. In addition to new customers visiting your website, providing consistent, memorable content will help your business stay in the forefront of your existing customers’ minds.

Having content developers produce current information for your business is also beneficial for search engine optimization (SEO). Search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing place regularly updated websites at the top of their search results. This is because they want to provide the most useful information to their users, and updated sites are often the best source for new information.

All too often, a good business that produces an excellent product or service will come up lower on a search engine’s list of results, simply because their website has not been updated with recent information. A great way to ensure that your business has the best possible SEO is to invest in skilled content creation that keeps your site flooded with interesting information.

Promote your Brand

Skilled content development will help you place your business in the industry spotlight. For example, if your business produces anti-virus software, it is important to show your customers and social media followers that you are a thought leader in that field. Posting articles and blogs that detail new and exciting industry information shows your readers that you are a key player in your field. Content development also enhances word-of-mouth advertising from your readers sharing your insights with others.

Reach a Diverse Customer-Base

A skilled content development team can help you produce content that appeals to a broad customer base to stimulate lead generation. Experienced writers know how to develop messaging that resonates with a diverse customer base and can write professionally about a variety of different subjects. By diversifying your content and utilizing targeted writing strategies, you can achieve recognition from readers who may not have previously shown interest in your business.

The digital era has changed the way businesses communicate. By investing in skilled content creation, you can ensure that your business stays current, promotes your brand as an industry thought leader, and diversifies your audience. If your business could utilize new content creation strategies, contact Linda Fanaras, President/Strategist of Millennium Agency www.mill.agency.

About Millennium Agency

Blogging is easily one of the biggest marketing trends of the decade. It is well known in the marketing world that there are a variety of benefits blogging creates for business. Just a few of the benefits of starting your own blog include:

Establishment of a business as a thought leader in their industry
Higher credibility with customers/readers
Increased brand awareness through a variety of mediums such as social media
Increased Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

If you interested in starting your own blog to take advantage of some of these benefits, here are a few tips to help you begin:

Style and Format

One of the first steps to starting your own blog is to choose a style and format. Consistency is important when it comes to the display of your blogs because you will be using the same style and format for all future blogs further down the line. It is also important that this display lines up with your overall brand image. If your brand and logo incorporate the colors green and blue, then your blog design should reflect this.

It may sound like a lot at first, but don’t sweat this step too much. The most important part of your blogs is the content, so a simple design that doesn’t distract your readers with too many visuals will do just fine.

Tagging and Links

If you are serious about starting your own blog, be sure to set up a tagging system. Tags allow readers to quickly find relevant content, and a few solid tags relating to your blog topic will go a long way. It can be easy to go tag-crazy if you write about a large variety of topics but only a few are necessary per blog. Sweeping tags that encompass the basic premise of your blogs will do just fine when it comes to searchability. Remember, tags can always be added if you do feel that you missed something, but tags are difficult to remove because this could affect the tagging on content created prior.

Links within your blogs are also important because they will help direct the reader to other useful content either on your webpage or on another site. For example, if you are reading this blog now and would like to learn more about Millennium Agency or perhaps other useful marketing information, these links will help you easily get through to useful content. Another major benefit of having links on your blogs is that your SEO gets a big boost.

Authorship and Comment Sections

Setting up author profiles and comment sections are an important part of starting your own blog. Author profiles encourage recognition of the author of each blog for their work and help the readers form a more personal connection with each blog. In addition to this, there is an added benefit of increased SEO for blogs with author profiles. These profiles don’t have to be very long or extensively detailed, a few descriptive words as well as links to personal social media pages work just fine.

Comment sections also allow readers to form a deeper connection to the blogs by posting their reactions. These reactions can be a great source of feedback for future blogs as well as an opportunity to learn more about your customers. Comment sections are very flexible in how they can be displayed and managed. If you decide to add a comment section on your blogs, you can decide things such as whether you want to screen comments or not, how many comments are allowed, and how many levels of comments there are so that you can address each post individually.

Sharing Options for Social Media

This tip is short and sweet. Social media is the one of the most used platforms for sharing news between consumers. In fact, 72% of adult internet users use Facebook. With over one billion active users per day on Facebook alone, that’s a lot of sharing.

Including social media sharing options when starting your own blog is exponentially helpful when it comes to brand awareness. By including these links, readers can share with friends and help provide free promotion for your content as well as your overall brand.

Subscribe Options and Calls-To-Action

Including options that encourage consumers to subscribe is beneficial when it comes to creating regular blog readers. This can open the door to email marketing efforts as well. When a reader decides they would like to subscribe, you can present them with options detailing how often they would like to be notified as well as what type of promotional emails they would like to receive from you.

The final tip we have to offer you on blogging is to include at least one call to action (CTA). CTAs can be considered any type of writing or blurb at the end of your blog that encourages your reader to either read on or utilize your business’ products or services. Of all the people who read your blogs, it is very likely that a portion of them would be interested in learning more or perhaps doing business with you, which is why it is important to include the option for them to do these things. If you’re not entirely sure about how to create a CTA for your blogs, check out ours below:

Not every business may realize it but featuring a blogging initiative on their website is extremely beneficial for a variety of reasons. Utilizing these tips and creating powerful, unique, and enticing content will help you design blogs with maximum impact. If a new blogging strategy is something that you think would be advantageous for your business, contact Linda Fanaras, President/Strategist of Millennium Agency www.mill.agency.

About Millennium Agency

Have you ever heard a friend rave about how much they love a certain store, product, app, etc. and then decided to check it out for yourself? This is what happens when a business has converted a customer into an influencer for their brand. When a customer becomes an influencer for your brand you reach a larger audience and when you reach a larger audience the possibility for more sales is increased. So how do you get customers talking about you? Good PR.

A good PR campaign can effectively build strong, genuine relationships between your business and your customers. Here is how it’s done:

Messaging and Positioning

Good PR is about sending the right message to consumers. While you want to provide the best possible products and services, it is important for your business to have a personality as well. Providing messages that make your business both relatable and understanding of customer’s needs will help you achieve recognition with your customer base and get them talking about you.

Positioning is also key to getting through to consumers. You need to make sure that your business not only has a personality, but also that it has the right personality. Market research is very important when it comes to positioning, knowing the values of your customer-base will help you position your business in a way that properly expresses those values.

Both messaging and positioning for your business can be established by developing unique selling propositions, talking points, and news release footers for use by the media. Consistently and frequently creating messages for release to the public will help increase brand awareness. Establishing a unique position will also help your brand differentiate itself from others in a competitive market.

Press Releases

Press releases help convert customers into brand influencers. Releasing a steady flow of positive and relevant news will allow you to target your specific audience and reach them with the right information at the right time. Releases for new products, special events, and new features are just a few examples of news that will help spread brand awareness and give consumers talking points for your business.

Press releases also let you share who you are, what you do, and why it is important, all from a position of authority. We live in a very news-oriented society, which is why it is important to integrate your own updates and contributions into the flow of information. It is important to follow certain steps to ensure that your statement is “news compatible” while also getting your main points across to consumers.

Media Lists

Creating media lists is a key factor when it comes to targeting the right audience. Each market has its own specific media channels and it is important that you reach out to the right contacts. Be sure top industry influencers are included in your media list.

Forming a media list allows you to tailor your news and content based on the needs of your business. An added benefit to having specific media sources is that you can monitor your outreach efforts to ensure that your investment is helping you achieve your public relations goals. Getting consumers to talk about your business is all about reaching them in the right way through the right medium, and media lists are truly beneficial to this process.

Feature Articles

Lastly, feature articles are part of the foundation of good PR. Creating content with enticing information related to your industry gains the attention of consumers. Feature articles show that you are a thought leader in your industry and provide an educational component for your customers. For example, if your business produces mechanical or electrical elements used in the automotive industry, producing an article titled New Automotive Design Trends for This Year will appeal to your audience. In this way, related content can help get consumers talking about your brand.

When consumers discuss your brand with others, a unique marketing effect takes place. People become more aware of your brand and trust is established through positive word-of-mouth advertising. People who have heard good things about your business are much more likely to utilize your products or services as opposed a business they have never had any contact with. Influencer conversations stem from impactful messaging/positioning, press releases, media lists, and feature articles, which are all key elements of a good PR strategy.

If it’s time for your business to implement new strategies to reach your customer base and convert them into influencers for your brand, contact Jessica Chabot, Vice President, Client Services of Millennium Agency at www.mill.agency.