Jordan Forbes is the Assistant Client Relations Specialist at Green Apple Strategy, a marketing agency in Nashville. She is a liaison to clients and provides project management and administrative support.
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YouTube Shorts continue to grow in popularity. Green Apple Strategy shares how creators can use short-form video content to increase brand engagement.
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Planning a special event can be overwhelming if you’re not sure where to start. Green Apple Strategy has more than a decade of experience solving problems through a variety of strategies and tactics—including event planning. From conceptualization to day-of logistics for in-person or virtual events, our team has learned many valuable lessons along the way. Here are our pro tips to make the most out of your next event!
When planning an event, it’s tempting to jump straight to fun stuff like decorations, color schemes, and signature cocktails. But in the words of Stephen Covey, let’s put first things first.
Before contacting venues and vendors, the date, time, approximate guest count, and budget need to be locked down. Now is a good time to start a spreadsheet to track invoices and payments from the very beginning. Next, create a timeline to help everyone involved stay on track throughout the planning process. Finally, think through items that will need to be designed. This may include save-the-dates, invitations, event logos, menus, branded items and décor, programs, handouts, signage, name tags, and other print or digital materials.
Once the date, time, budget, and guest count are determined, it’s time to move on to the details. Begin by asking your client to create the guest list and, if needed, offer your suggestions of people who should be included. If the event should be pitched to the media, you can include them on the invitation list as well.
Select a venue and determine food and beverage options. It can be helpful to ask the venue if they have any preferred vendors, as well as what chairs, tables, and linens they already have available. You also want to consider your venue when choosing entertainment, or vice versa. Consider music, photo booths, videos, and speeches. Each has different AV requirements to consider for making your event a success.
Now that your key decisions are made you can begin communicating with invitees via a platform that makes sense for your event. You may need one with just RSVP capabilities, or you may need to sell merch and tickets, too. Plan on sending invitations at least 30 days before the event. Follow up with a reminder email two to three days before the RSVP deadline, a second reminder email two weeks out from the event, and a final reminder email the day before or the day of the event.
Finally, it’s time to add extra details that help make your event one of a kind. Consider creative décor and meaningful gifts for guests. Photography and videography can also surprise and delight if used correctly, such as part of live social media feeds, as complimentary takeaways, or in post-event videos.
Now is the time to begin planning your PR strategy, so you’ll need to determine what press releases will go out, when they’ll go out, and what venues they’ll be featured in. Social media strategy is also a key part of event promotion. Create a content calendar to begin attracting attention well before the event is scheduled. And don’t forget about short videos! These can be used on several platforms to increase anticipation and serve as a sneak peek of the event. Finally, an email marketing strategy should be planned, designed, and deployed to pique the interest of your client’s email list. Don’t be afraid to provide multiple reminder emails with key pieces of information that attendees will need.
Before the big day arrives, think through key logistics. Planning a couple of walk-throughs well in advance will help you mentally plan out the space before crunch time, including check–in and parking. You’ll need to plan where guests will enter and what they will do immediately upon arrival. Will they need wristbands, tickets, or an ID? Do you need a scanner, a cash box, or additional supplies for a smooth process?
Regarding parking, consider whether self-parking or valet will work best for your event—and let guests know ahead of time. You can even station event staff in the parking lot to assist if needed.
As part of your post-event follow-up, take to social media to recap the event. Plan out and schedule content, photos, and captions to build engagement with attendees and spread awareness for next time. It’s also a great practice to send thank you notes to everyone you worked closely with, including colleagues, clients, and vendors.
Sometimes things happen that are beyond your control. Even the best-laid plans can be subject to bad weather, health concerns, or scheduling conflicts. If the decision is made to cancel or postpone the event, there are steps you can take to mitigate confusion and keep your audience informed.
Special events are a powerful tool that can be used to enhance your marketing goals. If you’re ready to build connections while increasing brand awareness, reach out to us for a consultation.
The first quarter of the new year has passed. You’re gathering data from your marketing campaigns so you can use it to inform your next move. With so much data readily at your fingertips—from sales to social media interactions—it can be difficult to determine which data to focus on and how to use it to improve your marketing ROI.
Marketing analytics can help you assess the performance of your marketing campaigns, identify areas of improvement, and drive conversions. Now is the perfect time to assess your Q1 data and reports to reset or adjust your marketing goals for a successful 2023.
There are different types of marketing analytics insights that can be used depending on what type of information you want to gather. You could review data related to digital marketing efforts, content marketing, social media ads and interactions, customer preferences and feedback, and even competitor data. Each data source offers its own unique insight into the successes and challenges of your marketing campaigns. While data is immensely helpful to glean what worked and what didn’t, it can also help you identify ways to improve moving forward.
The first step in gathering any marketing analytics insights is to review conversions. Depending on your business, this could be leads generated or actual sales made. If these numbers are on track to meet your goals, it’s a sure sign that your marketing strategies are working. But if these numbers fall short, you can take a deep dive into your campaigns to find out what isn’t working and take the necessary steps to make a change.
Data from customer interactions such as sales calls, support chats, social media interactions, and onboarding calls can offer insight into your customers’ opinions about your product or service. Gathering this information can help you find out what your customers need to know in order to fully appreciate what you have to offer. For example, if they are upset over or do not fully understand a product’s complex features, you could create an informational campaign highlighting the area in question—and alleviating an otherwise frustrating experience in the process.
Digital marketing efforts make it easy to see what competitors are doing and the impact it has on customers. Take a look at your competition’s product reviews and social media pages. Make note of common themes among commenters. What do they like? What are their complaints? What type of content is getting the most interaction? Use your findings to fine-tune your own plans and stay ahead of the curve.
Knowing your customers’ pain points and assessing the competition also helps you understand what potential customers prefer. This can make it possible for you to deliver the right message to the right audience at the right time. Say your product has a feature that a competitor’s product does not. You know this is a feature that can meet an unmet need for your target audience. You can use this information to craft digital marketing efforts that position your product as a much-needed solution.
When it comes to websites, customers like an easy, user-friendly search, shopping, and checkout process. But is your website set up to optimize customer experience, or are potential buyers getting lost along the way? Knowing how your customers navigate your website can provide insight into why they may not be taking the actions you want them to take. By determining which pages users are viewing and what links they’re clicking, you can design, update, and optimize your site to keep your prospects on the right track.
If you’d like help maximizing your marketing efforts, contact our team today. We’d love to help develop a customized, strategic approach for your business that gets you the results you want.
Green Apple Strategy’s Samantha Pyle developed an innovative work model to benefit clients, employees and contract talent. The team shares lessons learned as a hybrid agency.
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Since its launch in November 2022, ChatGPT has produced a lot of chatter among marketers and small business owners. Social media conversations, web articles, and meetings are filled with curiosity, excitement and apprehension around this new, state-of-the-art technology.
At Green Apple, we’re here to solve your problems through marketing strategies and tactics, and we want you to feel empowered when it comes to new trends that could impact your business. We want to equip you with knowledge around this new language processing tool, and its impact for business so that you can access and use this innovative technology.
ChatGPT is the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot that was released by OpenAI, an AI research and deployment company based in San Francisco, CA. Since its launch in November 2022, the chatbot has taken the technology world by storm.
ChatGPT is powered by cutting-edge language processing AI models—called generative pretrained transformers—that are capable of producing human-like, conversational interactions. Because the bot was trained on a diverse array of websites, books and more, it can provide text responses to a wide range of questions and prompts.
While other tech companies like Google and Meta have successfully produced their own large language models, ChatGPT is the first of its kind that allows the general public to experiment with it directly. ChatGPT can write resumes, poetry, stories, and essays. It can also solve math problems and even code an entire website based on a simple, hand-drawn sketch.
As with any new technology, there has been a lot of discussion surrounding how ChatGPT could impact the business world. And it can be challenging to explain this complex tool to your colleagues in a meaningful way. Will the bot replace jobs? Should content creators be concerned? Or is it simply a new tool that can be used to streamline and simplify tasks?
According to Martech Series, “ChatGPT has demonstrated the ability to build complex Python code and compose college-level essays in response to a prompt, raising concerns that such technology may probably replace human workers like journalists or programmers.”
But even with all of its encyclopedic knowledge, ChatGPT is limited to the information used to train its neural network. It has also produced incorrect or nonsensical—albeit convincing—answers to user prompts. This has spelled bad news for businesses who have tried to use the bot to interact with customers in real time. Additionally, the bot lacks the ability to empathize, think critically, give personalized advice or speak to future events—all key traits necessary for successful marketing professionals.
Given the strides made by AI companies in recent years, ChatGPT is likely here to stay. As marketers and small business owners, there are multiple ways to embrace this tool and use it to your advantage.
ChatGPT makes an efficient search engine. Content creators can ask for information on a certain event or subject matter and receive paragraphs of data within seconds. This can replace hours otherwise spent scouring various websites to find the information you need. The cost of time saved on research and outlining can be passed on to clients.
Similar to its use as a search engine, ChatGPT can explain complicated topics in a brief, easy-to-understand format. If you’re looking for in-depth information on specific events or subjects, the bot can help as long as the information you need was collected before 2020.
ChatGPT can be a helpful starting point for writing assignments. Give it a try the next time you experience writer’s block. While ethical issues and the possibility of plagiarism prevent you from using the content “as is,” it can certainly help get your creative wheels turning.
Users have also had success getting ChatGPT to produce websites, write code, and gather statistics for presentations. Working late? ChatGPT can save you a trip to the grocery store by suggesting step-by-step recipes if given a picture of what’s in your fridge, among other creative uses.
OpenAI allows users to try ChatGPT for free via the company’s website. Each user helps provide valuable feedback that will enhance the bot’s performance.
New users receive $5 worth of free tokens to use during a three month trial. All prompts and responses require the use of tokens. Different versions of the language model require a different number of tokens. Fees are also involved when using OpenAI for business purposes. Fortunately, fees are only charged by usage, and you will only pay for the version of the language model you choose and for the number of tokens, or short paragraphs, resulting from the interaction.
Sometimes new technology can push us out of our comfort zone. If you’re looking for an innovative way to take your marketing to the next level or simply need help managing everything that is required for reaching your goals, our team can help. Contact us to learn more about our unique approach and schedule a discovery call with our team.
CaringWays is a medical fundraising platform specifically designed for cancer patients, people seeking addiction recovery, or individuals who’ve experienced a health-related emergency. Unlike other crowdfunding platforms, CaringWays offers a focused and secure way for patients and their families to raise funds for health-related expenses.
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Within a month, Green Apple created a strategy for CaringWays to pursue a B2B business model with an integrated marketing approach. This included new messaging on the website, an animated explainer video, and business development assets. Green Apple also worked with CaringWays to streamline the onboarding process for new B2B partners.
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The team at ATECH quickly identified a new business opportunity — offering planned maintenance services for restaurants and commercial kitchens — and turned to the Green Apple team for help. Our team designed and implemented a comprehensive marketing strategy that promoted the new service to current clients and potential customers.
This included a website redesign, marketing collateral, local SEO, and lead generation campaigns to drive business for planned maintenance. The effort led to tremendous growth and new business opportunities, which created a new challenge: staffing all their planned maintenance requests. Green Apple then pivoted to support ATECH’s new HR needs. Our team worked alongside ATECH to implement an additional marketing strategy for recruiting employees. Our strategy included event planning, tradeshow campaigns, technician spotlights, and social media management.
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Silicon Ranch Corporation has provided light and energy to thousands of people through its solar farm systems. As its leadership planned to expand its reach, they recognized the need for an enhanced digital presence.
Silicon Ranch reached out to Green Apple to help refresh its brand and design a new website. That initial project, paired with an updated approach to an annual trade show event, could help confirm Silicon Ranch’s presence and position as an industry leader and convert more leads.
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Before creating the new website, Green Apple conducted a digital audit and a UX audit. The data collected helped inform the design and the SEO strategy used to improve search engine rankings. The audits also identified several practical and actionable ways for Silicon Ranch to drive more leads.
Green Apple also supported Silicon Ranch’s business efforts with event planning services. In 2018, Green Apple helped plan and execute a special evening at the historic Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville, featuring award-winning singer-songwriters and hundreds of industry professionals. We took the event to Orlando, New Orleans, and back to Nashville in the years to follow. It became a major annual event in the industry, solidifying Silicon Ranch’s reputation with the members of NRECA and others in the field.
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By partnering with Silicon Ranch for its brand refresh, website development, and trade show event planning, Green Apple was able to set the company up for a bright and successful future.
63% increase in yearly website visits
44% increase in unique page views
Connected with 300+ business leaders through annual event
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Survivor Fitness helps cancer survivors regain their health and wellness through one-on-one personal training and nutritional support. A nonprofit organization that relies on the generous giving of others to provide scholarships to participants, Survivor Fitness has invested in an annual GivingTuesday campaign to jumpstart their year-end fundraising efforts.
Survivor Fitness has been participating in GivingTuesday since 2019 and recently connected with Green Apple Strategy to help design a campaign theme and social media strategy for GivingTuesday.
Heading into the 2022 giving season, the leadership team at Survivor Fitness wanted to capitalize on the momentum they gained throughout the year and create a unique campaign to help them reach their $7,500 goal. The team collaborated on ideas and developed a theme to capture the impact people could make by donating to Survivor Fitness. In 2022, that theme was “Give Help Today. Give Hope Tomorrow.”
After finalizing the GivingTuesday campaign messaging, Green Apple worked to design and develop all digital marketing assets to launch the campaign successfully.
Survivor Fitness reached the original $7,500 goal within hours of launching the campaign. This prompted their team to increase their fundraising goal that day.At the end of the campaign, Survivor Fitness raised more than $20,000 in just one day through its Giving Tuesday campaign.
In 2023, the Green Apple was thrilled to support the next GivingTuesday campaign. “Because of You” was the 2023 campaign—crafted to highlight the special relationship between donors and participants. Green Apple created a comprehensive social media campaign that included content, graphics, and captivating videos for Instagram and Facebook. We also created a social media tool kit for Survivor Fitness partners and board members to share on their personal channels.
The results from the 2023 campaign raised more than $18,500 in a single day, including matching donations. Another noteworthy highlight from the 2023 campaign was the number of participant applications Survivor Fitness received on GivingTuesday. In just over two days, Survivor Fitness received 18 new applications from cancer survivors interested in participating in the program—a new 24-hour record for them!
Each year, the impact of this one-day campaign has grown. Over the past two years, Survivor Fitness has raised more than $38,500 from their GivingTuesday campaigns. Through those donations, the organization can provide more than 1,000 training sessions to help cancer survivors face the future with hope.
Survivor Fitness and Green Apple have gained valuable insights through crafting numerous GivingTuesday campaigns together, showing their dedication to constant learning and improvement. This ongoing process has led to more effective campaigns, advancing their mission with impactful messaging and strategic implementation.
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