Why is Your LinkedIn Page Underperforming? (and How to Improve It)

A man checking his social media on a tablet

While social media trends have evolved over the past few years, LinkedIn is still the essential platform for marketing and business development growth, especially for B2B brands. Every marketing department and business development professional should take time to consider how to use the platform, especially if you’re concerned that your LinkedIn page is underperforming.

There are a few good reasons why a strong LinkedIn Page is absolutely essential. According to an article from Hubspot:

  • 4 out of 5 people on LinkedIn “drive business decisions”
  • Companies that post weekly on LinkedIn see a 2x higher engagement rate
  • 40% of B2B marketers surveyed indicated LinkedIn as the most effective channel for driving high-quality leads

Improving Your LinkedIn Presence Can Go a Long Way


Investing a little attention and effort into transforming an underperforming LinkedIn profile can make a tremendous difference for your brand. Not only do the statistics prove it, we know it from our own personal experience. Last year, our team at Green Apple decided to collaborate on a strategy that would enhance our LinkedIn company page.  

A year into our strategy, we’ve seen exponential growth:

  • Increasing our number of followers 5x in six months. 
  • Increasing our reactions by 4,872%.
  • Increasing the number of times someone shared our content  by 2,566% 

While we are constantly looking for new ways to improve our strategy, we’ve learned some valuable insights so far. Here are a few takeaways we discovered when it came to transforming an underperforming LinkedIn presence.

Common Reasons Your LinkedIn is Underperforming 

Here are a few common reasons a company might struggle to create results from their LinkedIn activity: 

  1. You haven’t identified your target audience and their daily challenges and obstacles.

One of the most common reasons a business doesn’t get a lot of traction on LinkedIn is because the content they’re creating doesn’t resonate with their audience. It’s important to consider how you want to add value to your audience when determining if you should be on any social platform — including LinkedIn. Without taking time to identify who you’re trying to reach and understand the challenges they face on a daily basis, you’ll likely waste a lot of time creating content no one cares to read. 

  1. You lack a plan that helps you create a consistent presence. 

It’s important to have a consistent presence for your brand on LinkedIn. We’ve all had the experience of stumbling upon a company LinkedIn profile that’s updated once a month or, worse, hasn’t been updated in months. Creating a LinkedIn presence but not maintaining it is often worse than not having one at all.

  1. You are taking a “hard sell” approach that isn’t working.

There are plenty of people who take a hard sell approach on LinkedIn. These are the people who are often pushy with their tactics or are only sharing sales-oriented content on their company page. While these efforts occasionally work, most of the time they do not.  As with most social networks, it’s important to embrace the motto, “always be helpful,” rather than overwhelming your followers with self-promotional content.   

  1. You are posting content, but you aren’t engaging with others.

LinkedIn serves as a platform to help business professionals connect and engage with one another. As such, it works best when you invest time interacting with others. If you’re posting regularly, but you aren’t getting the most out of your LinkedIn presence, it’s likely because you’re missing an opportunity to create more meaningful connections with your audience by engaging with their content as well. 

How to Enhance Your LinkedIn Presence to Achieve Results

If you’re looking to take your LinkedIn presence to the next level, here are a few keys we learned from our experience: 

  1. Optimize your profile

According to Hubspot, companies with an active LinkedIn page see 5x more page views than those with inactive pages. Any given LinkedIn page contains a series of subsections. Businesses should ideally fill all of these sections out completely, with the exception of the “Jobs” section if you aren’t hiring.

  1. Get your team involved in content creation.

Because LinkedIn is primarily a platform for business connections, your employees can play a critical role in broadening your reach and strengthening your network on the platform. Your LinkedIn marketing strategy should include involvement from your employees. For our team, that meant collaborating on content creation and being strategic in how we worked together to promote the posts Green Apple was sharing. Taking the time to develop a strategy for employee advocacy is an easy way for your organization to expand its reach on Linkedin. 

  1. Use a variety of videos and images to create higher visibility.

Adding custom images can get you twice as many comments on your posts. Additionally, sharing a video drives up your engagement rate by five times. Both highlight the fact that varying the type of content you post is a critical part of your LinkedIn marketing strategy.

  1. Constantly test ideas and analyze your efforts 

As with any marketing strategy, it’s important to test and optimize your efforts along the way. The native LinkedIn analytics data gives you an in-depth look at how your posts are performing. Schedule a time to check your performance data regularly and formulate strategies for improvement.

Turning Around Your Underperforming LinkedIn Page is Easier Than You Think

It doesn’t take magic to transform your LinkedIn presence. There are simple techniques you can use to optimize the power of LinkedIn. All it takes is a little attention and effort on the front end and a commitment to evaluate your efforts along the way. If you need guidance on turning LinkedIn into a lead generation tool, Green Apple can help. Let Green Apple Strategy craft an innovative approach to your social media channels so that you can start targeting and attracting new team members. Reach out to us today for a consultation.

Reflections & Celebrations as Green Apple Celebrates 10 Years

tree with rings and a leaf

They say you can learn a lot about the life of a tree by studying the rings produced from each year of growth. We think the same can be said for a marketing agency. This year, Green Apple celebrates ten years as a full-service marketing agency in Nashville.

As in any business, the past decade has been filled with innumerable highs and some difficult lows. There have been pleasant surprises and unexpected challenges. The marketing world has evolved dramatically over the past ten years. COVID-19 drastically changed our world. All of these realities have shaped and impacted the way Green Apple has grown.

Recently, I had a moment to sit down and reflect on some of the most meaningful moments we’ve experienced since starting Green Apple Strategy. Here are ten of the most significant highlights and milestones from the past decade.

1. Creating an agency based on a long-term, strategic partnership approach. 

I worked in multiple marketing and PR agencies throughout my career — all of which had a specific niche for supporting clients. When I started Green Apple in 2012, I wanted to build something different. I wanted our agency to be a strategic partner for clients, not simply helping with their immediate needs. This approach has shaped everything we’ve done – from client onboarding to staffing — and has made a tremendous difference for both Green Apple and our clients.

2. Helping clients find their “story” and tell it effectively in the digital age. 

Storytelling has always been an important part of marketing and advertising. When Green Apple was founded in 2012, businesses were trying to navigate the new digital landscape. It was incredible to walk alongside our clients as they navigated how to tell their stories more effectively — creating dynamic websites, leveraging the power of social media, investing in content marketing as a way to draw potential customers into the brand.

3. Being able to constantly optimize our efforts and prove marketing’s impact on the bottom line. 

As marketing evolved, so did our ability to measure it. We were able to define key performance indicators that would make a tangible difference in our client’s bottom line and then make data-driven decisions. It is still an incredible feeling when we can sit down with a client and see the direct impact we had on their growth or work alongside them to evolve our strategy based on what we’re learning. 
 

4. Developing and evolving our partnerships with clients. 

The longevity we’ve had with clients is one of the accomplishments I’m most proud of. Because of our partnership approach, we’ve adapted our services for clients as their businesses evolve. Because of this, we have several clients that started with Green Apple when we were a young company.

5. Working alongside a team of good people. 

It’s almost impossible to say what’s made the most difference between our approach and our team. From the beginning, I wanted to create a stable agency for our employees. I wanted to provide and give our team as much as we did to our employees. I’m incredibly grateful for all the team members, past and current, who partnered to help make Green Apple a great place to work for the past ten years. I always believed that hiring good people who want to help will make a tremendous difference. After ten years, I’m more convinced of that than ever before.

6. Starting the Green Apple Orchard. 

From the beginning, I wanted to create “the Orchard” as a team of freelance specialists that could serve our clients by doing what they do best. The Orchard has transformed our ability to work with top talent and provide clients with a team built just for them based on their needs and goals.

7. Partnering, learning, and growing from an incredible network. 

You don’t grow a business by yourself. As I reflect on the past ten years, I’m incredibly grateful for all of the valuable connections and meaningful connections I’ve had. Grabbing lunch with a potential client after being recommended by a mutual friend is still one of my favorite activities. But it’s more than referrals – it’s also milestones like contributing to the national Business Journal network and joining an entrepreneurial coaching group, which have helped me grow and learn.  
   

8. Evolving our agency into a hybrid office model. 

Staying connected has always been an important value for our team. While we began testing a “hybrid” office model in 2019, COVID completely changed the game when everyone was asked to work remotely. It was a difficult decision at the moment, but shifting to a hybrid office has been one of the biggest game-changers for our agency. This has opened up our ability to hire really great talent from anywhere. Right now, we have full-time employees based in Tennessee, Alabama, and North Carolina.

9. Joining EO Nashville in 2019 & winning Best in Business in 2020. 

One of my personal goals was to achieve $1 million in revenue before our 10th anniversary. We were able to hit that milestone in 2019 — which has created an incredible opportunity to join EO Nashville. While Nashville has become an “it city” for big businesses, joining the EO has opened up an opportunity to connect and learn from other Nashville-based business owners who care about making a difference in our city. The following year we were honored as one of the best marketing agencies in Nashville. Both of these milestones are markers of many of the highlights from the rest of this list.

10. Navigating all of the challenges and complexities of the past two years. 

The pandemic has changed our lives ­— personally and professionally. Almost every business suffered somehow, and navigating the challenges with our clients was no easy task. While several clients had to pause their marketing efforts because of the pandemic, we’ve started working with them to regain their footing. While most agencies were forced to furlough or lay off staff, our team has actually grown. As I look back over the past two years, I’m incredibly grateful and proud of the way our team has navigated the challenges of the past two years.         

As I “study the rings” from Green Apple’s ten years in business, the overwhelming emotion is gratitude.

I want to thank all of my team members, Orchard contractors, clients, networking connections, and friends who have worked with or simply mentioned Green Apple over the past ten years. You have all carved your initials in our tree.

How To Write Subject Lines That Increase Your Email Open Rate

mailbox with green filed in the background

 

Do you remember the last email you opened from a brand or company compared to one you automatically deleted? More than likely, it was the subject line that was the difference. In today’s digital age, effective subject lines are essential for writing the perfect marketing email. 

Why Effective Subject Lines Are Important for Email Marketing

Here are a few reasons why your email subject lines matter more than ever: 

1. Your audience is flooded with emails every day.  The average person sends and receives 121 business emails every day. The emails you send have significant competition when it comes to earning the attention of your audience.

2. Your subject line is the primary driver of email openings. According to research, 64% of readers make the decision to open an email based on the subject line alone.

3. Bad subject lines could impact your deliverability rates.  69% of email recipients report emails as spam after reading the subject line. If your subject line could potentially be considered spam, your deliverability for all other emails moving forward could suffer. Spam traps can cause your domain or IP address to be denied, affecting your email deliverability rates and sender reputation.

4. Emails are still the most effective way to stay top-of-mind. While it has become increasingly difficult to stand out in your audiences’ email inbox, email is still the primary way you can stay top-of-mind for potential customers. In fact, 99% of email users check their inbox every day, with some checking 20 times a day. Of those people, 58% of consumers check their email first thing in the morning. Your email could be the first thing they see when they wake up.

5 Types of Subject Lines You Can Use

Now that we’ve outlined the importance of crafting the right subject line for your email, let’s talk about some various tactics you can try. Here are a few different types of subject lines we’ve used with our clients over the years:  1. Listed Subject Lines  There’s a reason lists have grown so common in content marketing: they work. Lists provide content in a short, simple, and skimmable format. As human brains are naturally drawn to digits, lists are an easy way to pique a reader’s attention. 2. Scarcity Subject Lines Humans have a deep fear of missing out—on anything. Email subject lines that mention scarcity tend to perform well because they create a sense of urgency for your audience to open the email. 3. Personal or Local Subject Lines People are looking for content that is most relevant to them. This is why crafting email subject lines with unique and specific information can create a sense of personalization. 4. Clever & Witty Subject Lines A witty subject line can stand out among the scores of boring ones around it. If you know your audience well, a clever joke can get your email opened and shared. 5. Emoji Subject Lines Recent studies show that emails with an emoji in the subject line show a 56% increase in open rates. Using emojis can help your subject line stand out, as long as you don’t overdo it.

5 Keys to Craft the Perfect Subject Line for Your Marketing Emails

We’ve identified a few different directions you could take with your subject lines. But how do you know what will work best for your audience? Here are a few best practices to craft subject lines that will stand out and elevate your email marketing campaigns: 

1. Take Time to A/B Test Your Subject Lines Effective marketing is all about experimentation. This includes the subject lines you use in emails. Constantly experimenting and analyzing your subject line strategy through A/B testing is a great way to optimize your email campaigns. Compare open rates, and try to understand why some subject lines are more effective than others.

2. Use Segmentation and Personalization As we highlighted above, personalized subject lines can be a great way to stand out. This is where segmenting your audience based on location, preferences, or interest can be a great way to add personalization to your subject lines. According to Campaign Monitor, using the recipient’s first name in the subject line increased the chance of the email being opened by nearly 15%.

3. Make It Short and Sweet (and Mobile-Optimized) Most people’s attention spans are very short—so generally it’s a good idea to keep your subject lines brief and to the point. The most effective subject lines are typically no more than five or six words. It’s also important to remember that people are most likely checking email on their phones. Brevity is especially important since most screens only display 30-40 characters in a subject line.

4. Start with Action-Oriented Language Actionable subject lines can often inspire people to click on your email by instilling urgency and excitement. For example, in an email inviting people to an open house at your new office, the email subject line might read, “Enjoy free drinks at our new office!” rather than a more generic (and less actionable) “You’re Invited to our Open House.”

5. Tell Your Audience What’s Inside the Email If you want people to take action, it’s important they know what to expect if they open your email. Make it clear what’s waiting inside the email. This is something your audience wants to know, and it can be the difference between an email that is opened and one that isn’t.

Email Marketing Strategies That Stick

At Green Apple, we’re constantly working alongside our clients to stay updated on the latest email marketing trends as they evolve and change. By using some of our tips, we hope you can come up with creative and engaging subject lines of your own. Reach out today if you need a reimagined and effective email marketing strategy.

How Green Apple Works to Build Your Perfect Marketing Team

iPhone and imac and hand working at a desk


When Green Apple was founded in 2012, we started with the commitment to always find the best way possible to serve our clients and support our staff. Rather than striving to become an agency with large office space, we wanted to stay nimble and find workspaces that were collaborative but not constraining. Instead of hiring dozens of full-time employees and trying to find ways to keep their plates full with projects our clients potentially didn’t need, we wanted to create a model that embraced the growing freelance economy to work with specialists who were building their businesses. 

That’s where the concept of the Green Apple Orchard began to take root. The Orchard allows us to build the perfect marketing team for our clients by working with some of the industry’s top creative talent. 

How the Green Apple Orchard Produces Even Greater Results for Our Clients 

  1. We employ a team of freelance specialists to offer the best talent.

    The Orchard is comprised of writers, print designers, web designers, web developers, photographers, and videographers who serve on our accounts as Green Apple team members. Many of the Orchard members have decades of experience in their areas of expertise. Some would be too expensive to hire on their own, but we have access to their services because they enjoy working alongside Green Apple’s clients in addition to their other commitments.

  2. We match you with team members with the experience or expertise you need.

    The Green Apple Orchard becomes even more valuable as we begin to work with new clients. Each client that comes in at Green Apple undergoes a thorough onboarding period. During this process, we select Orchard members who will fit best with those accounts for the services they need (writing, photos, web design, web management, graphic design, etc.). We’re able to work with specialists from various backgrounds who often have direct experience related to our client’s industry.

  3. We can grow our team quickly as your needs expand.

    Your marketing strategies and tactics should evolve as your company evolves and trends change. This is where hiring an internal marketing team can become tricky. For example, if you want to drastically shift your approach from an inbound content marketing approach to a more targeted account-based marketing strategy, your internal team might not have the experience or skills to deliver. Because of the Orchard,  we’re able to adapt our teams and services with clients as the relationship grows or your needs expand.

4. We maximize our hybrid model to meet your needs from around the world.

For the past decade, we’ve worked with specialists and talent from around the southeast. At the beginning of the COVID 19 pandemic, Green Apple officially embraced a hybrid office model that allowed our entire team to work virtually but still have access to a central meeting space for meetings, brainstorming, team building, open-space working, and team collaboration. 

As a hybrid agency, we’ve become incredibly skilled at working with Orchard members from across the country. This allows us to tap into resources from literally around the world to meet our clients’ needs. 

Grow Your Business Through the Orchard

Are you looking for a strategic, full-service marketing firm that has the experience and adaptability to meet your needs? Contact Green Apple Strategy today to schedule a consultation. Our team is happy to sit down with you to discuss your goals and how we can help you achieve them.

A Marketing Agency’s Review: Delighted Survey Platform


It’s a dilemma many businesses face: how can you capture accurate customer reviews without being invasive? For B2C businesses, review platforms like Yelp and Google Reviews do provide some feedback. How can B2B companies also leverage the type of feedback B2C organizations have more access to? While we’ve used several survey platforms to capture customer responses for our clients, Green Apple recently began using the Delighted survey platform. What were our experiences? Keep reading to find out! 

What Services Does the Delighted Survey Platform Offer?

Like many survey providers, Delighted offers seven different types of customer surveys, which include simple visual assessment measures. These include a smiley face scale, a thumbs up/thumbs down indicator, and a five-point scale survey. At Green Apple, we often use their more advanced survey types, which allow our clients to track things like a customer’s Net Promoter Score (NPS), a Customer Effort Score (CES), a Product Market Fit (PMF), and a Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT). These data points can help our clients make informed decisions about product or service changes they plan to implement.

Delighted Provides Powerful Data Analytics

Green Apple originally chose Delighted because it’s user friendly and cost effective, but we’ve been impressed by the data and report options available. We also appreciate the email reports and the ability to track keywords in survey responses.

We’ve been able to really dive into the metrics offered by the platform by segmenting the customer responses and isolating specific keywords. We can also isolate reviews by the employee for the customer served. We have been able to track and report how well that employee has performed with customers. We have recently started reporting on this data monthly to show the client the top technicians and their NPS score or customer feedback. The client has implemented this data into their internal review efforts. 

Delighted Offers Multiple Survey Styles & Delivery Methods

Green Apple’s Digital Marketing Specialist Katie Jackson likes that Delighted offers multiple survey options, including SMS, surveys through a website, email surveys, brick-and-mortar kiosk surveys, and iOs in-app surveys. She finds the Delighted dashboard “simple and easy to understand” and says, “It’s very easy to upload and send customer surveys to our client’s customers!” Katie also appreciates the value-add that Delighted brings to our clients. 

“I think that Delighted has brought value to our clients because they are able to reach out quickly to the customer to fix any issues they may have if they leave a poor review. This has created better relationships with our clients’ customers because they are reaching out quickly after they submit a survey. We have also learned that SMS surveys have a really great response rate and customers like being able to text their responses back rather than going to a link in an email,” she says.  

Delighted Surveys: Our Takeaway

This survey platform has been a positive pivot for our Green Apple team. It allows us to gauge and track NPS metrics and offer actionable data to our clients. We’re also able to easily track data for customer responses through the platform. Over the past five months, we’ve come to appreciate all that Delighted offers. 

Want to Capture More Customer Reviews? 

Green Apple Strategy uses responsive, well-designed tools to help our clients gather and analyze essential data points. If you need more insight into your customers’ pain points, our experienced team can help provide you with the right data to make key decisions. From blogging and SEO to PR and social media management, Green Apple Strategy can craft a marketing approach to help you attract and retain qualified leads. Reach out to us today for a consultation.

Case Study: How We Increased LinkedIn Followers 5X in 6 Months

linked in logo on an app icon


LinkedIn is an essential platform for many B2B companies, and there are several reasons why:

  • 4 out of 5 people on LinkedIn “drive business decisions.” (Source)
  • 33% of B2B decision makers use LinkedIn to research purchases. (Source) 
  • 80% of B2B social media leads come from LinkedIn. (Source) 

There is no denying that LinkedIn is one of the most effective social media lead generators for B2B marketers. Since LinkedIn allows users to generate content and create engagement, it makes sense for those involved in the B2B industry to remain active on LinkedIn. 

Recently, our team at Green Apple collaborated on a strategy to enhance our LinkedIn presence that increased our followers by more than 500 in less than six months. 

The Challenge: Testing Ideas to Transform Our Strategies

We often help clients use LinkedIn as a marketing tool and find effective ways to optimize B2B LinkedIn pages for business. We also believe to serve our clients effectively, we should always be looking for ways to test ideas and strategies ourselves. Understanding the ways brands use LinkedIn gives us insight into how we can integrate new approaches into the social marketing strategy we create for clients.

In May 2021, we sat down to develop a year-long plan that would help us learn new tactics and achieve specific growth, interactions, and engagement goals. We started with a little more than 100 followers on our LinkedIn page. 

Our Approach: Collaboration & Content to Accelerate Connection & Growth

To test ideas and strategies, we worked through the same strategic marketing process we use with our clients: 

  • We identified a goal and created a feasible strategy — We started by setting a goal to have 1,000 followers by May 2022. This seemed like an audacious but achievable goal. We also wanted to develop a strategy that would be reasonable for our team to execute. We know our team is primarily focused on client goals, so we collaborated on a feasible strategy that was highly achievable. 
  • We used our team strengths to devise a plan — The strategy we created was built to maximize our team’s unique strengths and gifts. One of the things that makes Green Apple unique is that our team is diverse in experience and expertise. We wanted to highlight this by encouraging team members to be present on LinkedIn. We also wanted to give our insights into the marketing industry, share what our team members are learning, and highlight the milestones our team reaches. 
  • We created a team-oriented approach — We knew that collective buy-in would be essential for achieving our goal. From the very beginning, we rallied the team behind the goal and provided ways to engage with our content, share their own content, and grow our network. We also wanted to share content highlighting the “everyday” aspects of our team — including behind-the-scenes photos and personnel updates from the Green Apple Orchard. 
  • We evaluated and re-evaluated our content each month — It’s important to constantly measure your efforts and tweak your strategy based on what you’re learning. Each month, our team would spend time reviewing the content we posted. The insights we discovered based on the performance of the various topics or types of posts allowed us to adjust our strategy along the way.

The Results: Discovering the “Link” Between Intentional Effort & Exponential Growth

Six months into the strategy, we’re well on our way to achieving our annual growth goal. We’ve also experienced exponential growth in our engagement. We’ve increased our reactions by 4,872%, comments by 7,800%, and shares by 2,566%. Along with these quantitative results, we’ve also created deeper, more meaningful connections with people on LinkedIn we hadn’t experienced before. 

If you want to learn more about our approach or discover how you can leverage LinkedIn for growth, reach out to us to help establish a strategic social media plan. Also — if we haven’t connected on LinkedIn yet, we’d love to share our content with you. You can find our LinkedIn page here.

Client Surveys: The Secret Ingredient for any Successful Agency Partnership


Client satisfaction is an essential ingredient for a successful partnership between a marketing agency and the businesses they serve. Whether it’s creating a website or driving your lead generation and brand awareness campaigns, marketing agencies exist to help your business achieve more than you could on your own. At Green Apple, we firmly believe that if our clients aren’t benefiting from our partnership, we want to know. This is where client surveys have become an essential tool for creating successful partnerships with clients.

Over the years, we’ve helped our clients to build customer surveys that produce the highest return on investment. Recently, we’ve decided to integrate that approach into our own workflow. In this post, we wanted to outline a few specific ways that client surveys align with our values as an agency and why we see them as an opportunity to continually learn, grow, and improve to serve others more effectively. 

4 Ways Client Surveys Help Marketing Agencies Improve 

Here are a few specific ways that client surveys help marketing agencies in the work we do each day: 

  • Client surveys provide insights that help assess client needs and identify effective solutions. It’s difficult to know what’s working and what’s not without qualitative and quantitative feedback. We believe in the value of making data-driven decisions based on campaign results. We also value the qualitative feedback of our clients. Client surveys are a way for us to assess client needs and identify solutions. To formulate our approach, we combine what the survey metrics are showing with what clients express through the surveys.
  • Client surveys provide perspectives on how to better serve and engage clients. Client surveys provide a valuable opportunity to assess how we’re working with our clients, in addition to evaluating the work we’re doing for them. Ultimately, they allow us to assess everything from internal processes that support the work we do to the dozens of interactions we have with clients in a given month.
  • Client surveys give direction for change and improvement. We believe that our clients’ opinions and feedback are two of the most important factors that validate the decisions we make for our business. For example, a few years ago, a significant number of our clients needed more sales-enablement resources than general branding materials. This allowed us to find creative ways to change directions in our service offerings to invest more in sales-enablement strategies that benefited our clients’ needs.
  • Client surveys capture a big picture perspective & track change over time. We’ve had the benefit of working with several clients for numerous years. Client surveys allow us to uncover seasonal trends or see how any recent changes have affected our client experience throughout our partnership together.

Why We Invest in Client Surveys to Enhance Partnership with Clients

Here are a few more specific reasons we’ve decided to invest in client surveys to enhance the partnership we have with clients. 

  • We want to live out our values in every aspect of our business. One of our core values at Green Apple is to put the client first in every aspect of our process — that is our bottom line. We believe client surveys are one of the best ways to do that. Assessing client experiences allows us to listen to clients, hear their feedback, and work with them to help them face their specific challenges.
  • We want to continually look for ways to create strong partnerships with our clients. Partnering with an agency that has a general philosophy and approach to business that is similar to yours is key for effective partnership. Client surveys provide a way for us to make sure we’re in sync with how our clients want to achieve their goals. 
  • We believe that open and honest feedback is key to a successful relationship. Effective agency partnerships are based on achieving results and effective communication. Client surveys provide a way to create stronger partnerships with our clients by providing an anonymous way for them to clearly share their thoughts. 
  • We want to continually learn, grow, and improve how we serve clients. Continual learning and growth are essential in the marketing world. This is just as true in how we serve clients as it is how we keep track of the latest marketing trends. We believe client surveys are a way for us to continue to add value to our clients’ strategies because they provide a way for us to continually learn and improve. 

If you’re curious about Green Apple’s approach to partnership and how we work with brands, check out our services page or portfolio of projects to learn more.

Why Corporate Social Responsibility Should Be on Your Radar in 2024

woman speaking at gathering

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is an important concept for every business to consider in 2024. Over the past decade, many companies have adopted socially responsible policies. One report found that 92% of S&P 500 companies published reports charting their efforts related to CSR and sustainability in 2020. That figure was less than 20% in 2011, indicating huge growth in this area. In addition to helping the community through beneficial services and products, this approach also serves as a powerful marketing strategy and brand differentiator.

Large businesses aren’t the only ones benefiting from creating a corporate social responsibility platform. Many small and mid-sized companies have found creative ways to adopt a socially responsible approach to positively impact others in ways that go beyond jobs or service creation.

During a recent Green Apple Lunch & Learn, our very own Olivia Cooper shared her thoughts on the importance of corporate social responsibility platforms. Here are a few interesting insights she shared that might be helpful for your business to consider this year.

 

What is Corporate Social Responsibility?

Essentially, corporate social responsibility is a concept in which businesses value activities that benefit society on a local, national, or global scale. It’s an approach in which businesses are equally concerned about bettering society as much as they are profitability and other business functions.

Approaching business with a socially responsible mindset has become an important priority for many of today’s consumers, investors, and employees. According to this Aflac survey, 70% of Americans believe it’s either “somewhat” or “very important” for companies to make the world a better place, while just 37% believe it’s most important for a company to make money for shareholders. With this in mind, it’s easy to see why every business owner and marketing manager could make the case for integrating corporate social responsibility.  

 

Why is Social Responsibility Relevant for Marketing Your Business?

Here are a few specific ways a corporate social responsibility platform can impact your marketing efforts: 


CSR can help you recruit and retain top talent. 

Attracting talented and motivated people is essential for your bottom line. A CSR strategy shows a company is compassionate and treats all people, including employees, well. 

A survey of nearly 25,000 people aged 18-35 revealed that 40% believe making an impact is one of the most important criteria they consider when choosing a career opportunity, and 55% of employees would choose to work for a socially responsible company, even if it meant a lower salary. 


CSR can help attract investors. 

Corporate social responsibility has become an increasing priority for investors as well. 73% of investors state that efforts to improve the environment and society contribute to their investment decisions. 41% of Millennial investors put significant effort into researching a company’s role in improving society and the environment before deciding to invest.


CSR shows consumers you care.

A CSR strategy can help you improve your reputation with consumers — earning their trust and loyalty. According to a 2015 survey by Nielsen, more than 50% of consumers are willing to pay more for a product or service if the business prioritizes sustainability.

Consumers admire businesses that take positive steps toward improving the world. A commitment to corporate social responsibility might earn their trust and attention over another business offering similar products or services. 

 

How to Create a Social Responsibility Platform that Works for Your Business

Being socially responsible can mean a lot of different things for various businesses. If you’re interested, here are a few ways you can adopt a social responsibility platform:

  • Ethical Responsibility — This approach is committed to the ethical treatment of all stakeholders, including leadership, employees, investors, and suppliers. ABLE is a local business here in Nashville that is one of our favorite examples. 
  • Economic Responsibility — This approach isn’t about maximizing profits. Instead, it’s about positively impacting whoever is most important to your business.
  • Philanthropic Responsibility — This is a corporate responsibility platform that is built on using profits or business functions to make the world a better place. TOMS shoes has been a long-time example of this type of social responsibility. 
  • Environmental Responsibility — This is a commitment to positively impacting the world by adopting an environmentally-friendly and sustainable approach to business. Blueland is one of our favorite eco-friendly brands making a difference in the world.

Not everyone needs a social responsibility platform, but it’s an important concept to consider for your brand. Finding a way to incorporate social responsibility into your business has the potential to completely transform your business (and the lives of others) for years to come.  

Getting the Most Out of Your Content

video editor working on a laptop

\
Content marketing might be evolving, but it’s not going away anytime soon. According to the latest research, 82% of marketers report actively using content marketing in 2021, up 70% from 2020. Yet, the constant demand for content can be exhausting for businesses. Finding creative ways to get the most out of your content marketing is often one of the biggest challenges companies face in today’s marketing world.

Recently, our senior content strategist, Skylar Wooden, had an opportunity to educate our team on the latest trends in content marketing. She highlighted specific ways our clients can continue to get more out of their content marketing efforts. We wanted to take a few minutes to share her key insights and takeaways in this post. 

How Today’s Audiences Are Consuming Content 

Businesses need to know the variety of formats that are driving most of today’s content marketing. A decade ago, most marketers focused primarily on written content, whether online or in print. Today’s businesses must consider the way content marketing has evolved. Here are the three primary ways today’s audiences are consuming content based on statistics  from a 2021 Hubspot report: 

1. Written Content — This includes content like blogs, e-books, and articles. 61% of marketers are paying more attention to writing these. Of the written content formats, the top 3 content types are social media content (95%), blog posts (89%), and email newsletters (81%).

2. Audio Content — Many businesses have turned to podcasts as a way to reach their audience in recent years and for good reason! In under three years, podcast listening in the United States has increased by more than 60%. The podcast market is expected to reach more than 2 billion by 2023, meaning that marketers are preparing to devote significant time and money to the channel.

3. Video Content — Video is now the primary form of media used within any content strategy. According to the report, video was the most commonly used form of content marketing in 2021, overtaking blogs and infographics. So, how do you get more out of your content marketing efforts in 2021 based on these statistics? Here are a few important insights we encourage clients to consider:

  • Consider Your Audience’s Preferences — Meet your audiences where they are, not where you want them to be. This is the most important principle to keep in mind when developing content. An estimated 68% of Baby Boomers prefer traditional content formats such as news articles, research reports, blogs, e-books, and email content from commercial brands. If you want your content marketing to make the biggest impact, you need to meet your audience in the channels they use (social, email, etc.) with the types of content they prefer (written, audio, video). 
  • Remember that Video Covers All Three Content Types — One unique aspect of video is that it allows you to diversify your content into all three formats. You can start by posting the video, pulling the audio for a podcast or recording, and formatting the transcript to create a blog post or infographic. As video becomes increasingly important, this is an easy way to reach your audience by repurposing and reformatting.  
  • Know that the Future of B2B Marketing is Audio — While video might be the most popular format of content today, businesses should pay attention to the increased interest in audio content. According to statistics shared at the 2021 Inbound Conference, 57% of the American population listened to podcasts last year and weekly listenership doubled from 2020 to 2021. Additionally, more than half of consumers say they consider buying from brands they hear on podcasts.  

How to Diversify and Maximize the Content You Create 

With these trends in mind, it’s important to consider all three formats of content in 2022. We also recognize that creating a new piece of content from scratch can be time-consuming. So, how do you diversify and maximize your content? 

  • Supplement Blogs with Audio & Visual Content — Is there a way to include a video or audio podcast into the blog posts you create to maximize content? Find ways to integrate audio and visual content into the online content you’re creating.
  • Maximize the Reach of Podcasts through Show Notes & Additional Resources — If you’re creating podcasts, leveraging the show notes is a great way to maximize your content and drive your audience deeper into your content marketing funnel. Providing a way for your audience to download additional resources can also supplement your podcast efforts and increase engagement with your brand. 
  • Repurpose Resources into Shorter Audio or Social Content — You can easily repurpose, repackage or expand every piece of content that you produce to get the most out of your investment. For example, if you’ve created a piece of long-form content such as a video or e-book, consider how you can repurpose key ideas and concepts for other channels such as social media or email. 

As content marketing continues to evolve,  brands need to stay nimble. Remember, the most important way you can get the most out of your content marketing efforts is to ensure you’re meeting your audience where they are. Taking these tips into consideration will help you stay ahead of the trends when it comes to creating content that impacts your bottom line. 

Need Help With Content Creation? 

Our strategic, full-service marketing firm can help you plan and deploy an innovative content marketing approach to court customers and build brand loyalty. Contact Green Apple Strategy today to schedule a consultation. Our team is happy to sit down with you to discuss your marketing goals and how we can help you achieve each and every one of them.

A B2B Guide to Marketing Automation

women having a business meeting a cafe


As a brand, connecting with your target audience is crucial. In order to connect with your target audience effectively, you need to know what content resonates with your target demographic, their sales cycle, and what they value most about your product or service. This type of in-depth research can be difficult to reproduce at scale, but marketing automation can be a powerful tool. Marketing Automation can help you identify your potential customers’ needs, establish several touchpoints on their sales journeys, and bring more sales to completion.

What is Marketing Automation?

Marketing automation refers to a set of tools and processes that are used to communicate with existing leads, bringing them closer to the point of buying. Any time a customer adds an item to a cart, leaves the page, and later receives an email with “Forgot Something?” in the subject line, that’s marketing automation at work. Setting up a series of processes, emails, reminders, or follow-ups can help you increase communication with your customers without taking the additional time or requiring you to hire new talent. Instead, marketing automation uses well-designed processes to help you discover potential customers, replicate high-performing practices, and encourage repeat purchasing behaviors. 

Marketing Automation Saves You Time and Overhead

Marketing automation has numerous benefits, but the most important is the time you save by streamlining your sales cycle. Rather than spending hours identifying and contacting qualified leads individually, it gives you the capacity to reach out to leads at the ideal point in their purchasing journey. There’s no need to manually import customers into your database. Instead, an automated marketing tool can identify and label leads for you by tracking a user’s interaction with your brand. 

Marketing Automation Can Strengthen Your CRM

Marketing automation also increases the power of your customer relationship management (CRM) tool, such as Salesforce. In tandem with a CRM, marketing automation can help you build a customized onboarding process and follow-up communication for clients in order to strengthen your customer relationships.

Especially in B2B industries, having a personalized connection can make or break a sale. Because automation analyzes your audience’s actions, it actively nurtures your leads by personalizing their experience and automatically segmenting their journeys. Marketing automation can monitor behaviors such as clicks, site visits, or purchase histories and provide your leads with information and opportunities that are customized to their needs. You’ll see improved conversion rates, and you’ll be able to assess and improve your sales pipeline with actionable data. 

How You Can Implement Marketing Automation

While marketing automation can be immensely effective, you need a strong foundation to see powerful results. This includes a reliable contact list, an up-to-date website, active email marketing tactics, and social media management. If you need a starting place, try refreshing your current marketing by conducting client interviews or researching SEO best practices.

Once you’ve established reliable groundwork, you need to indicate your specific goals. Your goals may include an increase in subscribers, clicks, sales, or page likes. After you’ve determined your goal, decide what platform you want to use.

There are several MA systems available, but consider your preferred budget, ease of use, type of marketing automation, and customer service when deciding which one is best for you. Finally, you should determine if you want to implement alone or hire a professional marketing company to begin your process. 

Iterate and Improve Your Marketing Automation

Nothing works as well in a silo as it does when combined with other tools. To continue achieving marketing automation goals, you should pair MA with inbound marketing and CRM tools to increase its reach.

You’ll also want to include other team members in setting up and improving your processes. Sharing reports with senior executives and data with your sales team will allow you to collect and implement their insights into the sales funnel. With the feedback and assistance from various departments, plus the results from your marketing automation tool, you can optimize your content, messaging, and strategies to retain your current customers and attract more.

Need Help Getting Started with Marketing Automation?

Marketing automation is a powerful tool that can be complex to implement. Green Apple Strategy is a full-service marketing agency that helps clients communicate effectively to their desired audience. Are you interested in learning more about how we can help you start your marketing automation journey? Contact us today for a consultation!