The Culture Index: Transforming How Marketing Teams Work Together

Effective marketing requires a combination of strategy, operations, and detailed execution. Because of this, most marketing teams are best equipped when people function in a variety of roles. As Seth Godin puts it, you need a scientist, an engineer, and an operations manager. The challenge, of course, stems from ensuring that your people are in the right role and know how to work together in order to achieve your goals. Workplace culture is created through the everyday interactions and experiences that team members have with each other. 

Green Apple Strategy is a hybrid agency, so the culture we cultivate with our team is incredibly important. We’ve worked hard to build a structure where people are working out of their strengths and communicating effectively to serve our clients. The Culture Index has become one of the most helpful tools for achieving this goal. It’s something we discuss on a regular basis. We’ve also included it as part of our hiring process to ensure we find the right people for each new role. 

In this article, we wanted to provide an overview of The Culture Index and highlight a few specific ways it has transformed the way we work together as a marketing team. 

An Overview of The Culture Index

The Culture Index Survey is an assessment that evaluates how people communicate, solve problems, and use or alter their innate traits to adjust to their work roles. The Culture Index Survey can help you assess:

  • Do you prefer to work alone or collaboratively when solving problems?
  • Are you more likely to follow established processes or think outside the box to create a campaign?
  • Do you work quickly or need time to methodically think through an idea?

The survey allows you to identify patterns for each team member based on these traits. From there, it allows you to analyze the findings in a peer-to-peer format and provides an action plan for how your team can improve processes. The ultimate goal is to transform the way you work and create a more productive and enjoyable environment. 

How The Culture Index Can Transform Your Marketing Team

Here are a few specific ways the Culture Index has transformed the way our team works together: 

1. You can recognize and understand personality differences.

Most communication breakdowns between team members stem from differences in personality, approach, and personal strengths. One of the greatest benefits of the Culture Index is that it helps you recognize how another person operates. This creates greater empathy and understanding among the team rather than staying in a constant loop of miscommunication and frustration.

2. You can maximize your team’s impact by allowing people to capitalize on their strengths.

The Culture Index Survey helps you get a full understanding of employee satisfaction and experience within your company. If a team member is frustrated by their day-to-day experiences, they may not mention that to leadership. The Culture Index is a low-pressure way to shine a light on where your team members fit and what type of role they might enjoy best. As Jim Collins famously explained, it’s important to get the right people on the bus. But getting them in the right seat is another important step to ensuring your employees are more engaged and happy at work.

3. Your team is equipped with resources to resolve conflict.

Any time you work with someone for a period of time, there’s bound to be conflict. It’s important to normalize this reality. When conflicts arise within your marketing team, it’s important to address them promptly. Your team can refer to the Culture Index Survey to better understand the root causes of the conflict and develop targeted strategies for resolving it. 

4. You can enhance strategic planning for your long-term goals.

Every marketing team requires strategic planning. The Culture Index allows you to maximize your planning efforts by allowing people to focus on areas in which they’re naturally gifted. It also allows you to give plenty of time for those who rely on methodical thinking to discover ideas while allowing others to respond in real time. 

We’re incredibly grateful for the way The Culture Index has shaped and supported our team. If you’re looking for insights on how to create a marketing team or are interested in joining our team at Green Apple, we’d love to connect. You can check out our current openings or learn how we can be a marketing partner for your business.

Marketing and Customer Service: Improve Collaboration to Enhance Experiences

Overhead shot of two people working on laptops

Businesses need both marketing and customer service to survive. While each team’s day-to-day activities look very different, both play an important role in engaging clients, increasing new sales opportunities, and generating more profit.

Collaboration between your marketing department and customer service team is critical for creating a more customer-centric culture. But where do you start? In this article, we want to unpack a few helpful principles we’ve learned over the years when it comes to collaborating with our clients’ customer service teams to enhance the experience for their clientele.

3 Reasons to Cultivate Collaboration Between Marketing and Customer Service 

Before we dive into the “how,” here are a few important reasons to break down the silos between your marketing and customer service teams:  

1. It’s more profitable to retain current customers than acquire new ones.

Let’s face it. Attracting new customers is hard. It requires a lot of time, energy, and resources to engage a prospective customer all the way through the sales cycle. In fact, numerous studies have found that it is 6 to 7 times more expensive to acquire new customers than it is to keep a current one. On the other hand, a 10% increase in customer retention levels results in a 30% increase in the value of the company. Because of the role that marketing plays within the organization, it can be a valuable asset when it comes to developing an intentional retention strategy. 

2. Marketing can learn from customer service to develop smarter campaigns. 

Your service team has a front-row seat to understanding how people really feel about your products and services. They know the challenges your customers face every day. They also know how people use your solutions to make their lives better. This information can be an invaluable resource for your marketing team as they develop marketing campaigns that speak directly to the pain points of prospective customers. 

3. You offer the same personal experience and congruent messaging for your customers.

The last thing you want your clients to feel is that you only cared about closing the sale. That’s why retaining business requires as much involvement from marketing as it does from your service team. Today’s consumers expect a consistent journey from the brands they support. In fact, 78% of customers expect consistent interactions with your business from the time they first engage your brand until they become a customer. Combining the efforts of marketing and service not only benefits your customers, it ultimately impacts your bottom line. 

5 Ways Marketing and Customer Service Can Make Each Other Better

If you’re looking to create more collaboration between your marketing and service teams, here are a few best practices to consider: 

1. Ensure your product marketing resonates with new and prospective buyers. 

Creating buyer personas is an important part of building a marketing strategy. If you want your messaging to resonate, it’s important to know what prospective (or current) customers are thinking, feeling, and facing on a daily basis. Because your service team is talking to your customers all the time, they likely know more about them than any other department in your company. Make time for these two teams to work together to create buyer personas. Their collaboration will make sure your marketing materials are targeted and relevant. 

2. Leverage the expertise of your service team in your content creation.

Your customer service team also knows your products and services better than anyone else. They’re often the ones helping clients find ways to solve challenges or provide helpful information. That’s why they make incredible thought leaders within your company. Your marketing team should collaborate with your service team around content ideas to capture helpful best practices and share valuable knowledge about prospective customers. 

3. Collaborate to monitor and respond to customers on social media. 

Social media put the power of brand perception into the hands of your clients and customers. Today, people can leave comments or reviews on social media platforms, Google, or industry-specific message boards. Many times, it’s the marketing team’s responsibility to monitor these channels. But working with the customer service team is key for transforming a negative comment into a more positive experience. 

We all know when a brand’s social media response seems cold and canned. Developing a process for marketing and service to respond collaboratively, even personally reaching out to the customer through their email, can make a tremendous difference when it comes to reputation management.  

4. Capture client success stories and testimonials for marketing collateral. 

While learning from complaints is important, capturing positive feedback can be just as valuable for your marketing efforts. When customer service and marketing work together, it helps the marketing team find testimonies or case study candidates more efficiently. This is particularly helpful if you want to turn customer reviews into a solid content marketing plan for your business. 

5. Create exceptional experiences for clientele with a loyalty program or a “surprise and delight” campaign. 

Your service team spends most of its time “in the weeds,” supporting customers. Finding the time or mental capacity to consider outside-the-box ways to strengthen the bond with clients can be difficult. As a department that’s generally known for being more creative, your marketing team can help enhance your customer experience with surprise and delight efforts. 

Despite having different job responsibilities, marketing and customer teams share common goals of attracting and converting new visitors into customers and providing exceptional service to retain those customers. To learn more about how we can help your internal teams cross-pollinate, reach out to schedule a meeting with us.

Scaling Smart: How Marketing and Operations Can Grow Together

People sitting around a conference table with laptops

Once upon a time, marketing and operations existed in separate universes. Marketing focused on brand awareness, lead generation, and campaigns. Operations handled logistics, fulfillment, and customer experience. But today, those old silos don’t reflect how businesses works. Everything is marketing, and the way your business operates directly impacts how your brand is perceived.

Whether you’re launching a new product or streamlining the customer experience, marketing and operations need to move as one. When they don’t, businesses struggle to scale effectively. In this article, we wanted to offer some critical insights we’ve learned from walking alongside our clients to ensure their marketing and operations teams work together in tandem. 

Why Marketing and Operations Need to Be in Sync

Here are a few reasons why getting these two teams in sync is essential:

1. A Marketing Disconnect Is Expensive—Really Expensive

Nearly 60% of companies admit they struggle to link their marketing efforts to overall business goals. The result? Wasted resources, disjointed messaging, and frustrated customers. If marketing is driving leads that operations can’t support, or operations are making changes that impact the brand without marketing’s input, growth becomes chaotic instead of strategic.

2. Silos Stunt Success

Businesses with aligned marketing and operations strategies are 67% more likely to outperform their competitors in revenue growth. When these teams collaborate, marketing efforts become more effective and operations can scale smoothly to meet demand. Simply put, alignment isn’t just a “nice to have”—it’s a competitive advantage.

3. Adaptability Is Everything

Markets shift, customer expectations evolve, and new competitors emerge. If marketing and operations are disconnected, your business risks falling behind. Companies that align their marketing and business plans can pivot faster, stay relevant, and seize new opportunities with confidence.

At the end of the day, the two can’t afford to operate in isolation. Marketing should drive growth, but operations should be equipped to handle that growth. Likewise, operations decisions impact the customer experience, which falls under marketing’s domain. 

4 Keys to Scaling Successfully with Marketing & Operations

So, how do you get marketing and operations working together for scalable success? Here are four essential strategies:

1. Know Your Ideal Customer—And Make Sure Everyone’s on the Same Page

Marketing is often laser-focused on generating leads, but what happens next? If operations isn’t prepared to handle an influx of new customers—or if marketing is attracting the wrong type of customer—it creates friction.

By aligning around your ideal customer persona, both teams can work toward sustainable growth. Marketing understands who to target, and operations ensures they can deliver on the promise. This prevents mismatched expectations and helps optimize the customer journey from first touchpoint to long-term relationship.

2. Align Your Tech Tools—Because Clunky Processes Kill Growth

Marketing and operations often rely on different software, from CRM platforms and automation tools to inventory management and customer service systems. If these tools don’t communicate, you’re left with inefficiencies, data silos, and frustrated teams.

While you don’t need a perfectly integrated tech stack, the core systems should work together seamlessly. When marketing and operations share aligned tools, automation becomes easier, customer data is more accessible, and teams can make faster and smarter decisions.

3. Use Data to Drive Mutual Decision-Making—Not Just Reporting

Both marketing and operations collect a goldmine of data. Marketing tracks campaign performance, customer engagement, and conversion rates. Operations gathers insights on fulfillment speed, product demand, and customer service trends. But raw data isn’t enough—it needs to be translated into actionable strategy.

The key is to define shared business objectives and determine which metrics matter most. What data points will help both teams make better decisions? By aligning on key performance indicators (KPIs), marketing and operations can create a data-driven culture that fuels sustainable growth.

4. Communication Is the Secret Ingredient

The biggest reason marketing and operations fall out of sync? Lack of communication. If these teams only meet once a year (or only talk when there’s a problem), alignment is impossible.

Instead, there should be a continuous feedback loop and ongoing communication between teams. Marketing should regularly update operations on upcoming campaigns, customer insights, and shifting market trends. Operations should provide marketing with data on product performance, customer feedback, and any challenges in scaling. Regular check-ins, shared dashboards, and open dialogue ensure everyone is moving in the same direction.

Need Help Aligning Marketing and Operations? We’ve Got You.

If there’s one thing we’ve learned at Green Apple Strategy, it’s that marketing doesn’t exist in a vacuum. To build a scalable business, marketing and operations must work hand in hand.

That’s why, when we develop marketing strategies for our clients, we make sure operations has a seat at the table. Because a rising tide should lift all boats—without capsizing one in the process.

If your marketing and operations teams aren’t on the same page, we can help. Reach out to us to learn more about our strategic approach and how we can support your business growth. 

How Businesses Can Use TikTok for Marketing

Photo of a phone on TikTok's TikTok profile on the screen

There’s no denying that TikTok has become the social media platform that’s garnished the most attention within the past couple of years. And it looks like it will continue to be one of the B2B social media trends in 2023 that businesses should consider. Whether you personally love it or hate it, business leaders and marketers are wrestling with the question, “Does our company need to be on TikTok?” 

As with any social media platform, investing in TikTok for marketing really comes down to whether it can help you reach and cultivate relationships with your potential customers. It’s also important to note that TikTok will continue to change and evolve as more innovations roll out, so you’ll have to stay updated on the changes to this platform.

4 Ways Businesses Can Use TikTok for Marketing

As we’ve worked alongside clients to determine how they can use TikTok for marketing, we’ve found a few helpful tactics that seem to work best for businesses. If you’re looking for a way to leverage TikTok for your brand, here are a few ideas to consider based on the latest trends: 

1. Post Educational Content 

TikTok can be a great way to educate current and potential customers with helpful insights about your products, services, or industry. According to Vidyard’s 2021 Video Benchmarks report, the most common types of business videos are product demos, followed by how-tos and explainers. Because of its visual nature, TikTok provides a way for you to create informational videos at a relatively low cost. You don’t have to invest in expensive cameras or editing software if you have someone with an engaging personality who is good at keeping people’s attention and teaching your audience. 

2. Find Your Target Audience 

One of the unique features of TikTok is the subcultures and threads that have been created around specific industries and areas of interest. For example, #BookTok and #MoneyTok are two distinct subcultures that make it easy for users to connect with like-minded people who share their interests and passions. One of the best ways to reach new customers on TikTok might be to invest time in developing a presence in a particular subculture that aligns with your business or industry. 

3. Invest in Influencer Marketing 

Sometimes the best TikTok strategy isn’t creating your own content but instead partnering with influencers who have already built an audience. The platform has proven to be a creative incubator for rising thought leaders and industry influencers. If you recognize that there is potential in reaching your target audience on TikTok, but you don’t have the time or resources to launch your own channel, it’s worth exploring how to identify and connect with influencers to promote your brand.  

4. Share “Behind-the-Scenes” Content 

In addition to providing the opportunity to educate customers, TikTok is also a social media platform that can humanize your brand. While every social media platform was created to help humans connect with one another, content that businesses create for Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter can still feel very corporate and sterile. In many ways, TikTok opens the door to reconnecting with your audience in a way that feels authentic and not overly formal. You might consider sharing “behind the scenes” content for your brand or creating a “day in the life” video that features an employee. You can also collaborate with current customers or community members to feature their videos on your profile.

Social Media Best Practices when Using TikTok for Marketing

As with any social media platform, it’s important to understand what makes marketing on TikTok effective. Here are a few basic best practices to follow when creating videos for TikTok: 

1. Make sure your content is authentic and represents your brand.

Becoming a thought leader in your industry requires authenticity and approachability, but don’t take yourself too seriously. Humorous, light, fun content works really well on TikTok. 

2. Engage with your followers so they feel valued. 

One way to increase engagement is to interact with your audience directly on the platform. People love to feel valued and heard.

3. Use data to consistently evaluate your investment. 

While you may not experience instant success, it’s important to always ask yourself, “Is this helping us work towards our larger marketing goals and objectives?” Asking the right questions to evaluate your social media content is an important way to make sure you’re maximizing your ROI.  

4. Test often to see what works and what doesn’t. 

You may be surprised by which ideas work and which ones fall flat. Don’t be afraid to experiment. 

While we don’t recommend TikTok to every client, it might be the best way for your business to get outside of your comfort zone this year. Once you’re ready to dive in, don’t forget to use TikTok Analytics to evaluate the success of your social media strategy and identify the type of content that can get you the greatest results.

Connecting to our Community: Thistle Farms

Green apple team

Generosity and making an impact on our Nashville community are two values that shape our work at Green Apple Strategy. We don’t want to be an agency that’s simply known for our work. We want to be known for making a positive difference in our community. From the founding of our company we’ve offered pro bono services to nonprofits and organizations serving people across Tennessee. We’ve also encouraged our team to take time off to pursue volunteer opportunities. Our new partnership with Thistle Farms in Nashville combines both of those values into a relationship we’re excited to grow. 

Thistle Farm’s Mission & Impact in Nashville (and Beyond) 

Thistle Farms is a nonprofit social enterprise dedicated to helping women survivors recover and heal from prostitution, sex trafficking, and addiction. The organization was founded in 2001 to offer women sisterhood and a safe place to heal. Today, it supports hundreds of women across our community by providing a safe place to live, meaningful work, and other resources to gain financial independence. The organization has become a staple of our community in Nashville and is widely known for its remarkable self-care products and welcoming cafe. 

The company also supports women around the world through its social enterprise efforts that span 21 countries and support 1,400 artisans through product sales and small business development.

Green Apple’s Desire to Help Them Grow

While there are dozens of incredible nonprofit organizations in our area, we were particularly inspired by the way Thistle Farms raises up women in our community. Their mission is to empower women who have been through extremely difficult times. Thistle Farms’ commitment to helping individuals get back on their feet resonated with our whole team.

Green Apple began volunteering with Thistle Farms in 2022. As our relationship has grown, we wanted to provide additional support. Currently, we’re collaborating with leadership to envision how we can deepen our commitment through quarterly team volunteer days and ways to serve their mission. 

Thistle Farms has helped thousands of women flourish because its leadership recognizes that healing love is the strongest force for change in the world. It’s an honor to partner with such an incredible organization.

How to Strategically Think About Your Annual Marketing Budget

Overhead shot of a group looking at charts

Creating and getting approval for your annual marketing budget is one of the most important (and often difficult) tasks for an in-house marketing team. It takes a lot of time to analyze results from the previous year, gather anticipated costs for new ideas, and finalize a budget that works within the limits of your business. The challenge becomes even greater in seasons of economic uncertainty, and the threat of a recession can create budget cuts at any point.

Over the past decade, we’ve had the opportunity to walk with dozens of clients through the budgeting process. We’ve helped start-ups looking for creative ways to maximize their resources. We’ve helped million-dollar companies navigate uncertainty during the pandemic and make marketing budget decisions during a recession. If you think of an issue or question, we’ve likely faced it. 

How to Strategically Think About Your Annual Marketing Budget

For this article, we’ve asked Senior Client Relations Specialist Marcie Prescott to share the wisdom and insight she’s learned from decades of experience developing marketing budgets. Here are the four best practices that Marcie shared to help you think more strategically about your annual marketing budget. Her tips can help ensure you stay on track toward your goals: 

1. Make sure your budget is connected to your objectives, goals, and key metrics. 

Your marketing budget should be closely integrated with your annual marketing plan. Every line item in your budget should be connected to a tactic. It’s also important to identify the success metrics you’re going to use to determine if your investment was worth it. 

If you can’t look at your budget and answer, “What are we wanting to achieve with this investment?” then take a step back and clarify your annual marketing goals and objectives.  

2. Recognize the common pitfalls that sink your marketing budget.

A big part of managing your budget is knowing what obstacles and roadblocks to avoid. Here are a few common pitfalls that can sink your marketing budget:

  • Failing to identify your target market and audience. It doesn’t matter how big your marketing budget is if you don’t connect with potential customers. 
  • Putting too much effort into big budget marketing efforts. If you’re gambling with your marketing budget, you’re doing it wrong. Instead, it’s important to diversify your marketing spend so that you’re not putting too many eggs in one basket. 
  • Underestimating the amount of work involved in a marketing campaign. It’s easy to develop an annual marketing strategy and budget without recognizing all of the time, energy, and resources that it will take to implement. Before you finalize your budget, it’s important to ask, “Can we really do this?” Getting input from your team is also important.
3. View your marketing budget as a fluid asset. 

If there’s one lesson we’ve learned, it’s that your budget should be a fluid document that is reviewed and updated regularly. Neither your annual marketing strategy nor your budget should be written in stone. You can pivot your marketing without abandoning your entire strategy and make necessary changes to your budget. 

Fluid marketing budgets allow companies to redirect marketing to tactics that perform well and channels that suddenly offer new opportunities. This is even more important during a recession, when potential cuts may be required. 

4. Embrace a mindset of continuous improvement toward your strategy and budget.

Marketers should constantly be learning, testing new ideas, and finding ways to maximize the ROI of their budget. Rather than using last year’s budget or “institutional wisdom” to drive your decisions, embrace a mindset of continuous improvement to develop a marketing budget based on where your business is headed. Just because something worked well five years ago doesn’t mean that it’s the best way to connect with today’s customers.

You don’t have to wait until the end of the year to be more strategic with your marketing budget. Whether the year is winding to a close or just getting underway, it’s always a good time to think about your budget and consider how you can be more strategic with the resources you’ve allocated.

Our Top 10 Marketing Insights & Topics from 2022

2022

2022 provided its fair share of challenges for marketers. Many businesses were still navigating the ripple effects created by the pandemic — whether it was learning how to promote new services or balancing business development needs with operational capacity. Economic obstacles and the fear of an impending recession caused some companies to tighten their marketing spend or focus on fundamental strategies. Companies learned how to embrace the “new normal” of virtual team meetings and hybrid work models.  

Despite these challenges, our team at Green Apple, and the clients we serve, have discovered valuable insights to propel our work forward. As Albert Einstein once summarized, we’ve found that “in the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.”

As we reflect on everything we’ve learned from 2022, we wanted to recap the insights and articles that our audience found most helpful throughout the year. As you’ll see, they cover a variety of topics in almost every aspect of marketing. We believe this goes to show the integral role that marketing plays in every area of the business. Without further ado, here are our most popular blog posts from 2022.

1. What Not To Do During a Zoom Meeting

We’ve all seen or experienced our fair share of Zoom faux pas over the past few years. But an embarrassing interaction isn’t the only thing that can derail a Zoom meeting.

As a virtual agency, our team has learned A LOT about maximizing Zoom for productive team meetings. This article outlines some common mistakes to avoid. 

2. 7 Key Elements of Eye-Catching Content

Marketing has always been about capturing attention. How can you do that in our world that seems busier and noisier than ever? This article highlights some helpful design tips to consider whether you’re creating a social media post, print ad, or sales collateral.

3. Why Corporate Social Responsibility Should Be on Your Radar

Social responsibility platforms have become a priority for businesses in almost every industry. How can you leverage it to connect with customers and prospects in a more meaningful way? This article outlines a few key ideas to consider. 

4. 5 [Virtual] Client Appreciation Gifts for 2022

The pandemic created the need to find ways to show appreciation virtually. But as the way business has evolved, virtual appreciation gifts are also great for clients you might have in other parts of the country. This article highlights five of our favorite ideas. 

5. Frustrated by the Fact That Marketing is Constantly Evolving?

We understand that it’s easy to get frustrated by the constantly-evolving nature of marketing. This article offers some encouraging reminders for business leaders or marketing managers who are frustrated by the fact that nothing seems to be working like it once did. 

6. Is Print Advertising Still Viable?

Print advertising isn’t dead. In fact, we’ve found that print advertising has some advantages over digital features depending on our client’s target audience and goals. This article shares a few benefits of print advertising and strategic ideas for integrating it into your marketing efforts.  

7. Enneagram and Marketing: The Creative Beauty of Type Fours

The enneagram has become one of our team’s favorite tools and topics to discuss in recent years. This article describes how an Enneagram 4 — also known as “The Individualist” – provides the much-needed creative ideas and spark for your marketing. 

8. 20 Questions to Ask Yourself That Will Improve Your Customer Profiles

It’s essential that you know your customers if you want your marketing to resonate. As a result, every business should develop customer profiles or buyer personas for their key target audience. This article unpacks 20 different questions that will make that experience more effective. 

9. 4 Factors for Creating a Customer-Centric Culture

The experience you provide customers directly impacts your bottom line. How do you go about creating a culture within your business or organization that values the customer experience? While the specific tactics or strategies may evolve, this article shares four key factors that you need to create a customer-centric culture.

10. Enneagram and Marketing: How Type Threes Move Mountains

Enneagram 3’s (also known as The Achiever) offer essential traits and skills that can be helpful for managing your marketing efforts. This article unpacks the traits of The Achiever from one of the Enneagram 3’s on our team, our Founder and Chief Strategist, Samantha Pyle. 

Get the Latest Marketing Insights & Trends

At Green Apple, we’re constantly looking for new sources of marketing inspiration for our clients. We typically share what we’re learning each month through The Core, our monthly newsletter. Sign up to get the latest marketing insights and inspirations delivered directly to your inbox. 

5 Best Practices for Marketing Project Management

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Let’s be honest – managing all of your marketing efforts is tough. There are dozens of steps to move a single project from an idea to a completed deliverable and requires collaboration between multiple parties. While there can be a lot that can go wrong, the good news is that there’s a way to bring order to all the madness that marketing campaigns bring with them – marketing project management!

Project management is more than a way to make sure your team is staking on time and budget, it actually increases the ROI of your marketing efforts. Marketers who plan projects are four times more likely to be successful.

At Green Apple, we’ve learned quite a bit about the foundational principles and best practices for effective marketing project management. While some of the lessons we learned the hard way, others were discovered through the creative problem-solving of our team. Today, we’ve built a team of gifted client relations specialists whose primary focus is to execute an effective project management process. 

For this article, we’ve asked one of our assistant client relations specialists, Kayla Reyes, to share a few insights she uses when it comes to “keeping all the plates spinning” for our clients.

5 Best Practices for Marketing Project Management

There are dozens of elements that go into managing your marketing projects effectively. From creating your overall structure and procedures to defining the communication processes, there’s a lot to consider. But how do you go about implementing these foundational principles for marketing project management? Here are a few best practices we’ve learned over the years:

1. Hire the right people.

Many of the tasks and responsibilities of a project manager require a certain mindset and skillset. Some people are big vision, whiteboard dreamers. They typically make better strategists that project managers. 

At Green Apple, we use a couple of tools to assess a team member’s project management acumen. For example, we have several enneagram ones who embody the characteristics of being honest, detail-oriented professionals. We also use the Culture Index to evaluate the interpersonal skills that are required for project management. 

2. Find tools to help.

Once you have the right people in your project management role, it’s important to equip them with tools that can help them be successful. In today’s digital-first world, this often means finding the right project management software for your team. As a hybrid marketing agency, we’ve found a lot of success in using tools like Basecamp and Asana for project management and collaboration with clients. 

3. Build consistent processes and systems around your tools. 

Investing in project management software is only helpful if your team knows how to use it. It requires intentional planning to discover how the match the features that are available in a project management tool with the internal processes and structure of your team. Training is another important factor to ensure everyone has what they need to fulfill their task and nothing slips through the cracks during a project. 

4. Take a detail-oriented approach to execution.

Organizing and streamlining ideas and projects is essential to keep on track with deadlines. This is even more true in a fast-paced agency environment when you’re serving multiple clients at once. 

While moving a project through the stages of development is one key, making sure it’s done well and nothing is overlooked is another. The people who are really great at what they do focus on executing – not just the big things but also on all the little details. A good project manager recognizes that even the tiniest details matter. They make sure everyone has what they need for their specific task and address any mistakes that are made along the way.  

5. Periodically ask what’s working and what’s not.

Consistently asking, “is this working?” is just as important with your project management process as it is with other areas of marketing. At Green Apple, we make sure our project management approach integrates with our client’s internal processes. We’ve found it helpful to host quarterly meetings with our project managers and Orchard members to identify ways to improve our project management processes internally. 

“As a project manager, I love getting into the weeds to help our clients launch a strategy or create a campaign that makes a tangible difference in the world,” Kayla described. “It’s always meaningful to look back and celebrate the hundreds of steps that are taken — and all the people who are involved – to execute all of the marketing efforts for our clients.”

You can learn more about Green Apple’s unique approach or connect with our team to discover how we can become your marketing partner. 

B2B Social Media Trends for 2023

Phone with Instagram Aanalytics on the Screen

B2B marketing is often a complex and complicated practice. This can especially be true when it comes to social media. As the social media landscape has evolved over the years, B2B marketers have to determine which social media approaches  to implement and which to leave out. As we look towards 2023, B2B marketers will still need wisdom when it comes to deciding how to use social media to connect with customers.

Before we get into the trends, it’s important to remember a key principle: Consider social media marketing trends carefully and identify the best platforms to engage customers and foster customer relationships. Does your company need TikTok? Maybe. You should only be on a platform if it helps you connect with your customers. 

Here are a few social media trends for 2023 to be mindful of: 

Trend #1: User-generated content continues to produce engagement. 

Sharing content from customers or followers has become an increasingly popular tactic because of social media’s increasing role in cross-channel B2B marketing. This content is known as user-generated content (UGC). Currently, 85% of consumers find UGC more influential than branded content. This includes testimonials, case studies, reviews, or other assets produced by your customers. 

So how do you go about obtaining and sharing user-generated content? Here are a few ideas for reaching out for testimonials or content ideas from customers. 

Trend #2: Find creative and unique ways to partner with influencers.

One of the biggest B2C trends that made its way into B2B successfully has been influencer marketing. But identifying the right influencers to partner with is essential. The good news, especially for B2B marketers, is that you don’t need to find an influencer with millions of followers. Instead, consider the voices in your industry that customers trust. Don’t discount the importance of micro-influencers.

Trend #3: Continue to create shorter, more visual content. 

The average human has an attention span of just 8.25 seconds, according to recent studies – 4.25 seconds less than it was in 2000. This is evident if you take one look at your social media feeds. 

At Green Apple, we’ve been exploring ways to create shorter, more visual content for our clients. The social infographics we’ve created have generated significant increases in reach and engagement. 

Trend #4: Be strategic with your social advertising budget.

As attention on social platforms becomes increasingly competitive, paid advertising will play a more significant role in B2B social media marketing in 2023. According to recent studies, 84% of B2B marketers use paid social for their content marketing efforts.

Most businesses still have a limited social media advertising budget, so it’s important to invest your money wisely. The good news is that you can be incredibly targeted with your ad spend on popular B2B platforms. As you advertise on platforms like LinkedIn, be sure to use targeted ads based on data like location, industry, company, and job title.

Trend #5: Focus on metrics that matter. 

Measuring social media efforts has always been important, but determining the true impact of social media is key. Measuring the right metrics is key. In addition to tracking metrics such as follower growth, engagement, and reach—consider the more qualitative insights such as relationships that have been developed or customers that have been served through social media. 

New B2B social media marketing trends surface every year. Some trends have been there for a long time but have evolved. As a B2B marketer, you need to be prepared and ready to adapt to new changes in your industry. Hopefully, this post helps you get up to speed!

7 Marketing Mistakes to Avoid in the New Year

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The new year often provides a fresh start for people and companies. This is especially true for marketing. Many companies start the year with a fresh marketing plan (or at least a few adjustments from their current efforts). Most of the time, there’s a level of energy and excitement as you start the year with 365 days to achieve your marketing goals.

As marketing continues to evolve, it’s important to understand and implement the basic principles for earning attention and inspiring action. Failing to embrace the core principles of marketing might lead to mistakes that cause you to invest time, energy, and resources into marketing tactics that don’t move the needle. 

7 Marketing Mistakes to Avoid in the New Year

After more than two decades in the industry, here are a few common marketing mistakes that businesses are prone to make in the new year:

1. Focusing on “tactics” rather than your strategy.

One of the most common mistakes business owners make is to focus too much on tactics and not enough on strategy. As a marketing agency, people often reach out to us and ask for help building a new website or a stronger social media presence. While these are admirable goals, they must be based on a strategic plan to truly return the best ROI for your business. 

If you’ve struggled to generate results and wonder why your marketing isn’t working, it likely has to do with prioritizing tactics over strategy. 

2. Getting comfortable with the status quo.

“The job isn’t to catch up to the status quo; the job is to invent the status quo.” – Seth Godin

Doing things the way they’ve always been done is tempting because it’s safer. But in a world that’s changing faster than ever, sticking with the status quo only creates an opportunity to get left behind. 

It’s important for B2B companies and marketers to get out of their comfort zone. Embracing a mindset of growth and change is one of the best ways to ensure your marketing efforts continue to produce results year after year. 

3. Failing to recognize how marketing is interconnected with other areas of your business.

At Green Apple, we often say that “everything is marketing.” This is a mindset we bring to every meeting and every marketing strategy we create for clients. Failing to recognize how marketing impacts sales or operational decisions could quickly create breakdowns in other areas of your business. Additionally, developing a marketing strategy without considering other key initiatives in your company might lead to a lot of “spinning your wheels.” 

4. Being too rigid with your marketing plan and failing to adapt.

If there’s one thing we’ve learned in recent years, it’s that businesses must be willing and prepared to adapt. In some cases, you can pivot your marketing tactics without abandoning your entire strategy. Sometimes, if there’s a major shake-up in your business or industry, you might need to overhaul your entire plan. 

5. Defining what your customers want without asking them. 

Marketing is all about helping customers understand how your business can help solve their challenges. It’s relational. And every good relationship is built on communication. If you want your marketing to resonate with customers, listen to them. Taking time to understand their challenges and create messaging built around their current reality is key to creating a more customer-centric culture. 

6. Talking about your products and services in a way that confuses an audience. 

Using complex phrases or industry jargon is one of the quickest ways to lose potential businesses. Customers will disengage if they can’t understand or relate to your message. 

If you work in a detailed industry, it’s important to find effective ways to explain the complex products or services that you offer. Making it simple for people to understand how they can become a client or customers is one of the easiest ways to gain potential business. 

7. Identifying the wrong KPIs or forgetting to measure results. 

Successful marketing initiatives often require the use of lessons learned from previous experiences. This means identifying the marketing metrics that matter most to the overall success of your business and developing the habit of measuring them on a regular basis. 

Green Apple Can Help Your Business Avoid Costly Marketing Mistakes

Everyone, from professional marketers to small business owners, makes marketing mistakes. But even if you make some mistakes, you should be ready to learn from them. If you’re looking for a 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.