How to Create a Marketing Moat 

In the ever-evolving world of marketing, businesses are constantly searching for ways to stand out from the competition to achieve long-term growth. Just as castles were fortified with moats to protect against attacks, today’s business owners can create their own “marketing moats” to maintain a competitive edge and better protect their market share.

Build a Strong Brand Identity

The impression that your brand makes on a customer can help you stand out from competitors. Develop a memorable brand story. Brand storytelling explains your differentiators and humanizes your brand. It helps customers understand who you are and why your business exists. Building a strong brand or achieving brand recognition can create a marketing moat that keeps customers returning because people prefer brands they recognize. 

Another impact of building a compelling brand story is creating a bond with your customers. This connection can foster trust and loyalty, which can turn into positive feedback and testimonials. You can use this feedback to promote the strong relationships you build with customers, which strengthens your marketing moat. 

Clearly Define Your Unique Value Proposition

Identify what sets your brand apart from competitors and communicate why customers should choose your products or services. Here are a few ways to identify your unique value proposition:

1. Understand your target audience. 

2. Analyze the competition and identify gaps in what they offer. Capitalize on these gaps.

3. Determine what makes your business unique and highlight those aspects.

Be sure to integrate your unique value proposition into all of your marketing and messaging consistently. Check out Green Apple’s approach to building a marketing strategy for tips to ensure your strategy is set up for success from the start. 

Invest in Consistent Content Creation

Produce relevant and engaging content that resonates with your target audience. This can include blog posts, videos, curated social media content, paid media efforts, email marketing, and more. Establish credibility by positioning yourself as a thought leader in your industry and offer valuable insight through white papers, webinars, online courses or trainings, and free consultations. All these resources can be promoted on social media and through email marketing. A well-executed content calendar and email marketing strategy can help you plan and organize your content so it remains relevant and consistent.

Work With Us To Build Your Marketing Moat 

At Green Apple, we help business owners execute ideas with a solid strategy behind our approach. Let us help you build a marketing moat that will lead to long-term success by establishing a presence that stands out from the competition. To learn more about our process and discuss how we can help, contact Green Apple Strategy. 

From Idea to Impact: How to Develop a Memorable Brand Story

Every successful company started as an idea. 

Whether it was a concept sparked by a business conversation or originally written down on the back of a napkin, every brand has a story to tell about how it evolved from idea to impact. As a marketer or business leader, your ability to tell that story (i.e., brand storytelling) affects how well your potential customers remember who you are, connect with your mission, and care about your products or services. 

Brand storytelling not only explains how you differ from your competitors; it also humanizes your brand in a way that allows people to relate to it. It helps customers understand who you are and why your business exists. 

For example, Green Apple Strategy was founded as a marketing and PR agency that builds marketing strategies with the entire business in mind. Rather than offering “one-off” marketing projects like creating a website or managing social media, we come alongside businesses to develop and implement marketing strategies with their “core” business areas in mind. As a result, a big part of our work has been helping businesses find their “story” and tell it effectively in today’s digital age. 


Develop a Blueprint for Memorable Brand Storytelling

After working with dozens of clients in various industries over the years, here are a few best practices we’ve learned when it comes to developing your brand’s story:

Discover your why.

To borrow the famous adage from Simon Sinek, “People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.” Discovering your why when marketing your business should always be step one. Rather than leading with your products, services, or solutions, take a step back and examine the motivation behind your actions. It’s more than just making a profit (or at least, it should be). It’s the big, bold vision that motivates your company.  

Help your audience see themselves in your story.

While your brand story unpacks your origin and unique differentiators, it’s essential to remember that the best marketing makes your audience feel like the hero in the story. It’s important to make sure your audience can see themselves in your brand story. That means highlighting their specific challenges or obstacles and why you care about helping them solve the problem.

Make sure your brand story aligns with your business goals. 

Your brand story should align with your business goals and integrate into all areas of your business—including marketing, sales, and all internal and external communications. Potential goals to build your story around include revenue growth, clarifying what your business offers, differentiating from other companies, or growing brand awareness. 

Don’t forget to be human. 

Remember, people connect with people. Your brand story should have personality. Boring books don’t attract readers. In the same way, your brand story should be inspired by the presence of people who participate and develop your company — written with the specific personality that represents your company. 


Questions to Help With Brand Storytelling

As we work with brands, we get to know their history, unique value proposition, ideal target audience, and dreams for the future. Each of these impact the brand story we craft. While it’s important to create a unique narrative, here are a few helpful questions that could help you identify the important elements and narrative arc of your brand story: 

1. How and why was your company founded? What inspired its creation?

2. What were the specific challenges or problems your company sought to address in the market? How does that connect with the problems you seek to address today?

3. Were there any significant events, experiences, or turning points that shaped the early days of your company?

4. What were the core values, principles, or beliefs that guided the founders in establishing the company?

5. Did your company experience any transformative moments or breakthroughs that set it apart from competitors?

6. Who is your target audience? How does your product or service positively impact the lives of your customers? 

7. What is your company’s vision for the future? How do you plan to evolve and make a positive impact?


Take Your Brand Storytelling to the Next Level

Creating a compelling brand story is worth it because it becomes something to reinforce in every marketing campaign. If you’re struggling to identify a brand story or marketing message that resonates with your audience, our team can help. Reach out to our team to learn more about our process or schedule a time to chat. 

Marketing and Customer Service: Improve Collaboration to Enhance Experiences

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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.

Mood Boards: The Secret to Successful Branding & Creative Marketing

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Branding and creativity are two core elements of successful marketing. While most people think the creative direction is the fun part of marketing, the reality is that making a final decision on creative elements for clients is hard work. You have to consider brand perception and how to differentiate your client from competitors. Getting everyone aligned around a final decision can also be challenging. 

Over the years, we’ve learned a few tips and tricks to navigate the complicated creative process. Mood boards have become one of our favorite tools. Mood boards can be a valuable tool whether you’re looking to refresh your entire marketing plan or find the next angle for your marketing campaign. 

What is a mood board and why are they effective?

In short, a mood board is a visual representation of ideas gathered from a variety of sources to help you find the best idea for your creative marketing project. 

While most companies utilize mood boards for big branding projects, they can also be helpful when redesigning your website, developing your social media calendar, or for something as simple as designing a company t-shirt. 

Here are a few reasons why we love using mood boards with our clients:

1. Find and cultivate inspiration.

The best creative ideas come from collaboration. Because everyone has a unique perspective, certain images, words, or colors might resonate differently with your audience. Mood boards provide a way to capture a variety of ideas that can help you build a creative campaign that reaches different audiences

2. Get everyone on the same page.

Collaboration is an essential part of marketing. Ideas need to be heard and considered by every member. A mood board supports the collaboration process by providing a framework for people to operate within. It provides clarity within the collaboration process that ensures everyone is working in the same direction. 

3. Ensure you’re developing a cohesive approach.

It’s important for your marketing to tell a cohesive story. Mood boards help by allowing you to see how various elements work together to develop a narrative. 

4. Make it easier to gain buy-in from stakeholders.

Making a final decision can be one of the most challenging aspects of a branding or creative project. Your design team could work for hours only to get an idea nixed by the CEO or final decision-maker. A mood board mitigates that risk by gaining buy-in early on in the process. It also provides a more visually appealing way to present your ideas. Mood boards can help you explain your ideas or direction in ways that words can’t. 

How to Create a Mood Board

There’s no one right way to create a mood board. But here are a few helpful steps to maximize your effectiveness: 

1. Find a tool that works for your team.

It’s important to find an approach that works best for your team. You can create a physical mood board in your office. There are also a variety of online tools that make it easy to create digital mood boards. These are helpful if you’re working remotely or hiring a freelance designer for your project.  

2. Define your goal and audience.

Taking a moment to identify who you’re trying to reach and what you’re trying to achieve can provide clarity for your team. Doing this on the front end can help save a lot of time and ensure everyone is working in the same direction. 

3. Identify elements to include in your mood board.

What you include in your mood board will depend on the nature of your project. Most mood boards include images that convey the look and feel you’re hoping to recreate with the final product of that project. But you can also add colors, font families, or certain keywords or phrases that capture what you’re trying to communicate. 

4. Invite others to share inspiration.

Once you’ve set some parameters, it’s time to invite others into the collaboration process. Encourage participants to include anything they find that feels like a visual representation of your brand. While this might come more naturally for some than others, don’t discount the feedback and perspective from people you might not consider to be the most creative individuals on your team. Invite everyone to look for marketing inspiration that is all around them. 

5. Identify trends. 

After everyone has had a chance to add ideas, it’s time to start narrowing your focus. Are there certain visuals or elements that seem to stand out more than others? What elements might work well together and appeal to your audience? Take this time to cut any ideas that might seem out of place. 

6. Balance a final decision with continued inspiration.

Once you feel like you’ve narrowed down your mood board to its final stage, ask yourself: Does this provide enough clarity and direction to begin executing our project? If so, you’re ready to get started. 

As an aside, some companies curate mood boards to capture ideas on a regular basis. These can be helpful to use as guideposts for driving brand and design decisions in the future. 

Feel stuck in your branding efforts or creative marketing project? Our team can help. Connect with Green Apple to learn more about our unique process. We’d love to discuss your needs and develop a strategy based on where you want to go.

7 Marketing Tools Your Team Can’t Live Without

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Executing a marketing strategy is a lot like climbing a mountain. Both are focused on an audacious goal that requires effort and dedication to achieve. You need an intentional plan for how you’re going to climb the mountain. There will also be unexpected obstacles and unexpected turns along the way. Sometimes you have a clear path to reaching the summit. Other times, you may need a guide to help you navigate new terrain. 

And just like mountain climbing, you need a variety of marketing tools that can help you along the way. These tools may help you assess your current situation, work more effectively, and take the right steps toward reaching your goal. Each tool might serve a different purpose, but they’re all essential for your survival. 

7 Marketing Tools Your Team Can’t Live Without

Here are seven types of tools you need to execute successful marketing campaigns: 

1. Collaboration Tools

Executing a marketing plan requires significant collaboration. When you’re managing all the elements for your content marketing campaigns or seeking input on an important design project, there are numerous stakeholders and steps that need to be addressed. 

At Green Apple, our hybrid office model has trained us to become experts in marketing collaboration. Here are just a few of the collaboration tools that make it easy to collaborate with clients, team members, and freelancers in the Green Apple Orchard from across the country:

  • Google Workspace — Google’s collaborative tools such as Docs, Slides, and Sheets make it easy to create, approve, and deliver assets in a timely fashion. Rather than tracking multiple documents or attachments through email, Google makes it easy for team members and clients to collaborate in the same documents in real time. 
  • Basecamp —  Project management is essential for streamlining work and optimizing efficiency. Basecamp rolls all of the core necessities of project management into a browser-based tool that makes it easy to track campaigns from start to finish. We’ve used Basecamp for years, and it has become an integral tool for our team.  
  • Zoom — Video conferencing became an essential business tool during the pandemic. We’ve found it incredibly helpful for improving our team’s virtual meetings, meeting with clients in other cities, and connecting with The Orchard, our remote contract team members.
2. Design Tools 

The image you portray is important. The good news is that it’s easier than ever to find affordable design tools that make your brand stand out and look professional. Tools like Canva can be incredibly helpful for designing eye-catching graphics and images for social media. However, knowing when to use Canva and when to outsource to a professional can be essential to maximize the impact of graphic design for your brand. 

3. Digital and Social Media Management Tools 

With all the various social media platforms, it’s almost impossible to manage all of your content production needs without a social media management tool. Social media management tools help you plan, schedule, and monitor your social media posts. These tools also give you the chance to review and analyze your audience engagement on multiple channels. 

At Green Apple, Sprout Social is our social media management tool of choice. It makes it easy to manage various social media accounts for all of our clients. It also provides comprehensive reporting that provides a detailed look into content performance through competitive analytics and strategic insights.

4. Online Advertising Tools 

Online advertising has exploded in recent years. In fact, digital advertisements will account for more than 66% of the total global advertising spend by 2023. It allows you to create targeted messages to reach and expand your audience, improve your brand awareness, and generate more qualified leads.

At Green Apple, our digital marketing team collaborates with online advertising specialists to design and implement online advertising campaigns for B2B and B2C clients. Some of our favorite tools include Google Keyword Planner and Adstage. 

5. Lead Capture & Nurturing Tools 

If you rely on inbound marketing to generate sales leads, you need a marketing tool that captures potential customers and guides them through the marketing funnel. The good news is that most tools integrate with your website to create a seamless user experience.

Over the years, we’ve used lead-capturing tools such as Unbound and Leadpages to capture leads. We’ve also worked alongside several clients to leverage marketing CRMs such as Hubspot to track and manage marketing leads.

6. Website SEO Tools

Whether it’s keyword research, content optimization, or checking your current page rankings, every marketer needs a go-to tool for planning content and optimizing it for SEO. 

Green Apple recommends SEMrush, the top-rated keyword tool we use for our clients. We’ve found that it’s the best tool to implement SEO tips that actually work. Their platform offers comprehensive reports to monitor competitors’ backlinks and offers backlink audits for sites that have already linked to your website with an anchor text. 

7. Customer Experience & Testimonial Tools

In today’s digital world, consumers hold the power when it comes to your brand reputation. A negative customer review or poor client experience can have a devastating impact on your brand. At the same time, testimonials and feedback can be some of the most beneficial assets for brand management.

At Green Apple, we’ve worked with a variety of customer experience and testimonial tools to capture feedback for our clients. Delighted is a customer satisfaction platform that allows you quickly and easily capture feedback through customer surveys. LoyaltyLoop is another tool we use to better understand and improve upon the customer experience. 

Finding the right set of marketing tools can be overwhelming. It’s important not to lose sight of the forest through the trees. Focus on your end goal and then find the tools that will help you get there. Our team at Green Apple can help you determine which tools are a fit for you. We’d love to take a look at your marketing goals and help you design and execute a strategy to meet them.

5 Ways to Repurpose Your Outdated Content

Let’s face it. You put a lot of time, energy, and effort into creating content for your audience. As time goes on, it can be deflating and frustrating to see the shelf-life of your content become outdated. But that doesn’t always have to be the case. Finding ways to repurpose your outdated content is a great way to get the most out of your content marketing and be more agile in your marketing efforts.  

Why Repurpose Your Outdated Content?

Here are a couple of specific reasons we love helping our clients find ways to repurpose content:

1. Repurposing content enables you to maximize the investment you’ve already made. 

Rather than crafting every single piece of content from scratch, repurposing outdated content enables to you tweak what you’ve already created. This saves time, energy, and money. In most cases, you don’t have to do a complete overhaul, (although that’s also an option). Repurposing content enables you to take what’s already there and make sure it appeals to today’s audience. 

2. Repurposing allows you to maximize your best content for new audiences. 

Repurposing content can help you take your great, old content and give it a breath of fresh air (and some much-needed visibility). It’s also worth considering updating calls-to-action to articles that are still generating traffic to help you increase lead generation potential.

5 Ways to Repurpose Your Outdated Content

There are several approaches you can take to repurposing content. Here are a few tactics we’ve found to be most valuable. 

1. Conduct an SEO Audit to Determine Which Content to Update

The first step in repurposing outdated content is to identify which blogs or resources are the most beneficial to refresh. This is where a content audit can help. An SEO content audit is a process of assessing existing content on your website to determine how you can get more and better quality organic traffic to each blog post or resource.

2. Add New Ideas or Project Examples to Your Content

One simple way to make outdated content more relevant is by updating it with new insights or portfolio examples. More than likely, the majority of your content is evergreen. Why throw out the whole post when only 20% is outdated? Updating your content could be as simple as adding a few recent statistics or highlighting a new “tip or trick” based on the latest industry insights. 

3. Turn Content into Infographics, Videos, or Podcasts

Transforming written blog posts into videos or podcasts is a great way to extend the shelf-life of your outdated content. These are also helpful ways to repurpose content for different audiences. Some people prefer visual infographics over text statistics. Others choose podcasts over ebooks. Reformatting your content for different mediums means appealing to more audiences and extending your reach.

4. Utilize Content in Email Series

If you’ve written a few blog posts on the same topic, consider repurposing them into a newsletter series or email course. An effective marketing E-newsletter can showcase your best blog posts and resources. You can send this on a monthly basis or create custom email journeys for different personas as they’re added to your email list. 

5. Add Guest Posts or Third-Party Articles to Your Site

If you’ve already been guest blogging as part of your digital PR campaign, why not maximize that content by adding it to your site? All you need to do is to ask the owners of the sites if they’re comfortable with you republishing the content on your own blog. This also provides them with added exposure to the post if you include a link back to it saying where it was originally published.

When it comes to maximizing your content marketing effort, find ways to work smarter, not harder. These tips will help you develop a strategy to repurpose outdated content and reach more people. Any effort will be worth it as it gives you a chance to help others, build your audience and grow your business. For more help in optimizing your content efforts, reach out to us to schedule a strategy session.

Hit the Mark: How to Align Your Marketing Goals with the Big Picture

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Setting annual marketing goals can often feel like a game of darts in the dark. You might have a general idea of where you want to aim, but without a clear understanding of the big picture, it’s easy to miss the mark. For many small to mid-size businesses, identifying the right goals is challenging. Goals might not align with overall business objectives, or silos between departments leave marketing disconnected from the company’s bigger picture.

At Green Apple, we believe that effective marketing goal-setting requires a holistic approach: evaluating what’s worked before, collaborating with key stakeholders, and aligning your goals with broader business strategies. The following secrets will help ensure your annual marketing plan stays focused and realistic.

Pro Tips for Building Smart Marketing Goals

1. Get a Clear Understanding of the Previous Year

Reflecting on the previous year is essential. Start with a SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) to review which campaigns performed well and where there were gaps. Use data and performance metrics to understand what drove success—and more importantly—what didn’t. This will help you avoid mistakes and double down on what worked.

For example, if email marketing campaigns generated the highest ROI, you’ll want to incorporate them into your updated strategy. If social media ads fell short, dig into why. Was it the platform, targeting, or creative? Reflection is key to building smarter goals.

2. Make Sure You Understand the Big Picture

Marketing doesn’t exist in a vacuum—every part of your business affects (and is affected by) your marketing efforts. Your marketing goals need to align with key business objectives in order to be successful. Think about how marketing connects with operations, customer service, and product development. For example, if the business aims to scale operations, marketing needs to focus on lead generation or brand awareness campaigns in a way that can support sustainable growth.

It’s essential to align your marketing goals with what’s happening across departments. When marketing, operations, and customer service are in sync, it’s easier to ensure a seamless customer experience and create a brand that customers love.

3. Review Your Mission and Vision Statements

Everything you do should reflect who you are as a company. Ask your team and yourself questions like, “What do we value?” “What differentiates us from the competition?” or “Why do we exist?” It can be easy to get caught up in following trends, but don’t forget about what makes you stand out from the competition. Your annual plan should always incorporate concepts that demonstrate your differentiators. 

4. Get All Stakeholders Involved in the Process

You don’t want too many cooks in the kitchen, but it’s critical to involve the right people when setting marketing goals. Collaborate with decision-makers who can offer input on key priorities. This includes leaders from other departments—like sales, operations, or customer support—who can inform your strategy.

Additionally, make sure you have buy-in from the leadership team. It’s frustrating to finalize a marketing plan only to discover the CEO’s vision wasn’t factored in. Involving stakeholders from the start ensures alignment and makes it easier to execute your plan with confidence.

5. Set Realistic, Achievable Goals

Ambitious goals are great, but it’s essential to be mindful of your resources—such as team size, budget, and time. A single marketing person wearing multiple hats won’t be able to launch a robust, multi-channel campaign without proper support.

Set specific, measurable marketing goals that stretch your team without overwhelming them. Use the SMART framework—goals should be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. A good example might be, “Increase website traffic by 15% in Q1 through targeted content marketing efforts.”

6. Think Beyond Sales—Focus on Engagement and Brand Awareness

While revenue is often the end goal, not all marketing campaigns need to focus on immediate sales. Some of the most effective strategies aim to build brand awareness or increase customer engagement. If your business is planning to enter a new market or launch a product, creating awareness might be more important than direct conversions.

Consider how marketing efforts like thought leadership, social media presence, or community involvement can contribute to long-term success. These types of campaigns build trust and loyalty, which will ultimately drive future sales.

7. Stay Flexible and Adapt Throughout the Year

No matter how well you plan, things will change. Market trends shift, new opportunities arise, and unexpected challenges can disrupt even the best-laid strategies. Build flexibility into your plan so you can pivot when needed.

One way to stay agile is by setting quarterly check-ins to evaluate your progress and make adjustments. If a campaign isn’t delivering the results you expected, don’t hesitate to tweak it or try a different approach. Flexibility ensures your goals remain aligned with both business needs and market conditions.

Five Questions to Fine-Tune Your Marketing Goals

Here are some questions to help you align your marketing goals with the big picture:

  • What worked well last year and what didn’t?
  • How do your marketing goals align with the company’s broader business objectives?
  • Are there any operational or customer service challenges that marketing can support?
  • Which stakeholders need to be involved to ensure alignment and buy-in?
  • What metrics will you track to measure success throughout the year?

These questions will help you identify gaps, refine your goals, and ensure that your marketing efforts support your company’s larger goals.

Closing the Gap Between Marketing and Strategy

Setting annual marketing goals that align with your business strategy doesn’t have to feel like guesswork. With thoughtful reflection, collaboration, and a focus on realistic, actionable goals, you can build a marketing plan that supports both short-term wins and long-term growth.

Need help aligning your marketing efforts with the big picture? Contact Green Apple Strategy today to learn how our strategic planning services can help your business grow and thrive. Let’s work together to build a plan that makes next year the best one yet!

 

How to Generate More Google Reviews

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In a world where word of mouth and consumer feedback guides the decision-making process, Google reviews are critical when it comes to driving business to your company. As if a positive response from current customers isn’t enough, these testimonies can also go beyond their original purpose and be doubled as free marketing content for your other platforms. Who doesn’t love a twofer?

We’ve sourced some helpful directions on how you can generate more Google reviews, today. Let’s get started. 

Understand Google My Business

To begin with, be sure your business is registered and that you have taken all of the necessary steps that are needed for someone to be able to leave a Google review. Already have that under control? Great! If not, don’t worry, we’ve got you covered here.

Ask Directly

The answer is always no if you never ask, right? If you know or realize that a customer is satisfied with their purchase or service, simply ask them if they could leave a review about their experience. You can also use your social media accounts to invite people to leave a review, this isn’t as direct as an in-person request, but is still beneficial if you have a loyal and engaged audience. 

Make It Easy

When you’re asking for a review, you’re asking for someone’s personal time. In order to make the reviewing process as simple as possible for your customers, plan out a user-friendly process that will quite literally take them one minute of their day. 

Here are a few methods to try that save consumers time:

  • Texting or emailing a direct link after their purchase
  • Utilizing a survey platform, such as Typeform or Loyalty Loop
  • Creating QR codes that lead directly to your Google Review page

Utilize Your Platforms

Strategically place and plan where to include a review request. You can encourage your customers to leave reviews without being pushy. 

  • Digitally: Incorporate your Google review links in your email signatures, website, or landing pages.
  • In-person: Use QR codes in your waiting rooms, check-out counters, or menus. 

Ready to Plan a Reputation Management Strategy?

If you need more help creating your digital PR strategy, we’re ready to help you build your new marketing plan. Contact us today to schedule a consultation. 

How to Find the Angle for Your Next Marketing Campaign

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Have you planned your next marketing campaign? 

Your brand’s growth is reliant on a comprehensive set of tactics to educate and engage your clients. How you plan your campaign, and how you execute that campaign, will make all the difference in your brand awareness, sales, and customer retention. But, how do you find the best angle? How will you catch your audience’s attention? 

We’re here to help. When you sit down to plan your next marketing campaign, use the following tips and points to guide your strategy. 

Find Your Audience’s Pain Points

When you put yourself in your audience’s shoes, you can begin to determine what their pain points are. Try to identify what motivates them to buy your product or service and what problem of theirs you’re trying to solve. 

At the foundation, your campaign should speak to those pain points to show your audience that: 

  • You understand their issue
  • You’re here to solve it, and 
  • You can do it better than your competitors. 

Before you can present yourself this way, you must first thoroughly understand how your audience is feeling. If you’re having trouble putting yourself in your customers’ shoes, try building a customer profile with these 20 questions. 

Lean on Your Analytics

The numbers don’t lie! Your analytics can serve as a guide as you build your campaign. Review your numbers across all tactics (e.g., email marketing, blogging, website visits, social media, etc.) to analyze what is working, what isn’t, and where there are untapped opportunities. 

From these numbers, you can see which topics and conversations garnered the most interest from your audience and what fell flat. Are your customers most interested in a certain area more than others? Maybe that’s a good place to start when planning your next campaign. 

Talk to Your Audience

Market research is now easier than ever, thanks to social media platforms and survey strategies. When planning your campaign, look to your audience to learn what they want to see from you and what they would benefit from. Depending on your social media platform of choice, this will look different. For example, if your audience frequents Instagram, you can easily set up a series of stories that poll your followers. However, on LinkedIn or Facebook, that may look more like starting a conversation with those in your industry. 

Take a Look at Your Competitors

Though you don’t want to emulate your competitors, you do want to make sure that you have a good understanding of what they’re offering your audience. This analysis helps you see what you can improve upon and how you can take your offering a step further. 

Put Your Differentiators at the Forefront

Your brand’s differentiators are what sets you apart from the crowd. It’s crucial that they’re at the forefront of your campaign, as these are your primary selling points. No matter how this campaign takes shape, ensure that your audience is always aware of what makes you different and how those differences serve them. 

Have Fun with It

Create a campaign that they’ll love! Your customers have enough of the mundane in their lives. By creating a marketing campaign with an element of surprise and delight, you can engage your audience and make them excited about the customer experience—and set them up to look forward to what they can expect from your brand in the future. 

Need Help Planning and Executing Your Next Marketing Campaign?

Are you looking for a strategic, full-service marketing firm to plan and execute your next campaign? 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 each and every one of them.

Frustrated by the Fact that Marketing Is Constantly Evolving?

walkway in a black space with white light beams on sides


When it comes to marketing, the only constant is that it’s an industry that’s always changing. Think about it. Less than a decade ago, businesses were thriving because they were posting on Twitter, getting tons of comments on every blog post, and sending a monthly e-newsletter. Today, those tactics aren’t producing nearly as much engagement. 

As the owner of a marketing agency, I understand why it’s easy to get frustrated by the constantly-evolving nature of marketing. I’ve had dozens of discussions with small business owners over the past seven years who tell me their marketing isn’t working. They express that finding a marketing tactic that works and provides the reach or scalability needed to drive results seems impossible. For small businesses with limited resources and budgets, this can be maddening. For everyone else, it makes business development hard to sustain for an extended amount of time.

4 Principles to Remember as Marketing Continually Evolves

Here are some encouraging reminders I share with business leaders or marketing managers who are frustrated by the fact that nothing seems to be working like it once did: 

  1. Embrace the fact that marketing always changes. The reason marketing seems to be evolving so quickly is because customer behaviors are rapidly changing. Today’s customers have an incredibly finite amount of time and attention to give to something. Rather than getting frustrated by this fact, embrace it. Recognizing we only have a few seconds to capture our audience’s attention opens up creativity to solve this new challenge.
  2. Stop looking for the silver bullet. There isn’t a single marketing tactic that is guaranteed to work without fail for the next five years. Just because your competition is trying something doesn’t mean it’ll work for you. Instead, focus on what your customers want. Your customers need solutions to their problems, not more information about your brand.  
  3. Focus on strategy, not tactics. Wondering why your marketing efforts aren’t working like they used to? When most businesses say their marketing strategy isn’t working, what they typically mean is that the tactics aren’t effective. Rather than focusing on tactics, it’s important to recognize the underlying strategies the tactics are built upon—and hold onto those rather than the tactics themselves. 
  4. When all else fails…be human. Certain marketing principles are timeless. Remembering to be human is one of them. What works today—something that has always worked—is grassroots, person-to-person, authentic, transparent actions. Creating personal and meaningful connections with potential customers will always work when it comes to growing your business.

The world of marketing is undergoing a profound evolution. Things that worked yesterday won’t work as well today. But, that’s a good thing because we know there will always be new tactics and strategies we can deploy to appeal to basic human emotions of potential customers.