We can all agree, creativity isn’t a linear process, and brainstorming is a great example.

In a good session, ideas abound, leaping off each other, morphing into different viewpoints and even bordering on the ridiculous sometimes! (…as it should be…)

Brainstorming is about the good, the bad, and the downright ugly, or silly, or “what the heck did he just say?”. You need a mix of people who bring different perspectives. It’s the antithesis of group think. You want people to expand on the ideas of others. You need people to disagree and push the envelope.

Writing is poetry, regardless of what type of piece you are creating. With the onslaught of content marketing, and the push to be SEO-optimized, some of that seems to have been lost in translation.

Writing should evoke an emotion. But all too often, marketers create content that they think will resonate with their audience, just to find that they missed the mark.

Having worked in the business to business world for the past few decades, it is always interesting to see companies try to apply consumer-based principles directly to B2B programs. While there is a component of B2C marketing that carries over to B2B, the tactics need to be applied in a way that makes sense for this particular business segment as well as the intended audience.

Take social media as one of the more recent examples. A few years ago, our clients gave us questionable looks when we said we needed to get their social media profiles in order. What could it possibly have to do their businesses? They mainly target the industrial and electronics folks, which is a very engineering-focused crowd.

While sitting in my office today, my office mate looked at me holding up a picture of a map with lines running across the page and up and down the page. She pointed to the lines and said, “What are these called? I can’t remember. I’m having a mental block.” I told her that they were longitude and latitude lines. I further explained that I would NEVER forget the names and directions of the lines, because my 7th grade social studies teacher taught me that the ones that go up and down the page are longitude, the LOOONNNGGGG lines (long is in the word longitude) and the ones that go across the page are latitude (And the way to remember them is to remember how the two t’s are crossed in the word latitude (latitude lines go in that direction).

After explaining how I’ve remembered this information for countless years, she looked at me and said, ‘Oh, that’s right! I learned to remember latitude by saying lat is flat (meaning the latitude lines are flat).’

So, you have a new product and you need to figure out how to market it to the masses. You decide to call a brainstorming session in the conference room with a group of your most creative, smart and thought-provoking colleagues.

You all sit around the table and throw out ideas, cut the ones you think won’t work, keep the ones you think will. Whittle them all down to one and there you have your idea. Right? Wrong!

“Social proof” is a modern, digital age term, but the concept is one we all know. Back in the day we called it being a follower. Not like a ‘follower’ of today where you follow a story, a tweet, a Facebook page, but following along with everyone else’s actions and thoughts. Not making a decision based on your knowledge or knowledge that you garnered through research, but just following along because ‘everyone else is doing it’.

As modern marketers in the age of ‘brand globally’, we truly understand the need for visual consistency and message clarity across business units, different geographic regions and even from tactic to tactic. This ensures there is continuity across a company’s internal and external touch points.

But it doesn’t mean your marketing materials need to be dull. It should be a formula that still adds up to your full brand identity when the right variables are used.

Those of us in marketing are looked upon to be equal parts creative and logical. Develop imaginative concepts for meeting the goals of very organized and results-oriented strategic marketing plans. This is usually the result of a team of people working collaboratively to meet all those criteria. Most people are not usually an even mix of those attributes every day or on every project.

Let’s start by saying we are very excited about the software, apps and programs available to help facilitate and analyze marketing and communications activities. But, let’s also keep in mind that marketing software tools are designed to augment a well-defined strategy, not replace it. In fact, if not used properly, marketing tools can actually hurt your bottom line. A solid marcom strategy still needs to lead the way.

Unfortunately, we’ve seen it before in marketing programs. Great concepts, great creative, great intentions…marginally acceptable implementation! Many times, deadlines, pressures from the powers-that-be, and the urge to start seeing results can push marketers to cut corners on some pretty important aspects of proper marketing communications campaigns.

This topic of conversation comes up quite often around here. How long should a URL be for it to get the most traffic? Oftentimes, it seems like companies don’t put much thought into their URLs. In fact, many times, they are just completely overlooked…

So…you’ve decided to begin using a marketing automation platform to help you gather leads with gated content. Great!

…Now what?