Do your clients really understand what sets you apart? If your message is muddled or blending into the noise, it’s time to rethink how you communicate. It’s not enough to just say what your insights company does and how it helps clients, your content and strategy must clearly communicate this. That’s where positioning comes in.

In the fourth and final instalment of the Marketing Applied series on Greenbook’s Grow Your Insights Businessexpert channel, Iosetta Santini cuts through the fluff to show you how sharp positioning can set your brand apart… And keep it memorable. You’ll learn how to craft a value proposition that speaks to your audience, align your message across every touchpoint, and internalise your positioning so that everyone in your team tells the same story.

If you want your brand to resonate rather than just exist, this is one you can’t miss.

Read the full article: Marketing Applied Part Four: Stop the Fluff, the Art of Positioning

The post Stop blending in: Master the art of positioning (As seen on Greenbook) appeared first on Keen as Mustard Marketing.

Without a clear strategy, marketing efforts can become scattered and ineffective, so how can you fight this?

In this third instalment of Marketing Applied series on Greenbook’s Grow your insights business expert channel, Iosetta Santini emphasises the importance of diagnosing challenges, setting objectives, understanding the market, and targeting the right audience before jumping into the implementation phase.

Strategic marketing requires intentional choices: deciding what to do and not do, anchored by a well-thought-out objective. By kicking off with diagnosing your product and market, you are ensuring you have defined the right goals so everyone can align their efforts to lead to real impact – not wasted resources.

Want to maximise your marketing success? Start with strategy.

Read the full article: Marketing Applied Part Three: Tactics Without Strategy Is the Noise Before Defeat

The post Why great marketing starts with strategy, not tactics (As seen on Greenbook) appeared first on Keen as Mustard Marketing.

Are you struggling to make your brand stand out in a crowded market? Are you focusing too much on hyped up consumer marketing mantras and not enough on getting long-term impact?

If your feeling lost on the way to the top of your buyers’ shortlists, then you need to rethink your approach to brand awareness. On Greenbook’s Grow your insights business expert channel, Iosetta Santini breaks down why the journey to being remembered is just as important as being found in part one of her Marketing Applied series. Learn how to stay top-of-mind with potential buyers, create lasting impressions, and ensure your brand is in the conversation before the search even begins.

Find out how your insights company can stay revenant on our Marketing applied part one: Why we’re obsessed with brand awareness.

The post Is Your Brand Built to Be Remembered—or Just Found? (As Seen on Greenbook) appeared first on Keen as Mustard Marketing.

So, 2013 was the year of the twerk and the selfie. Now 2014 looks set to be a pivotal, self-celebratory moment of a different kind. Economists predict a brighter financial situation and as the economy is set to prosper, so should your agency.

It’s no longer possible to opt out of social media. You might not see it as a way of delivering clients but you’d be wrong; in the latest GRIT report, LinkedIn was named as the second most influential source of information, and Twitter ranks 18th, higher than Research-Live. Furthermore, 24% of research buyers consume information through blogs, and 37% through the email delivery of blog subscriptions. With the plethora of social media communications, what can your agency do to stand out? Here are a few tips from Mustard:

1. Your agency isn’t what you say about it, it’s what Google says about it. Look at how your company is doing on Google Trends. This will tell you how much you have been Googled through time and related search terms. You can also see how you are faring against competitors. Good looks like a positive correlation – anything else means that there’s work to be done.

To improve the visibility of your company on Google, the first thing to do is to define your keywords – the related search terms from Google Trends can help you out here, so can Google’s Keyword planner and of course always have a list of the business’ services at hand. Say you’re a qualitative research agency, ‘qualitative research’ would be up there (genius). Make sure these are reflected in your website copy and content.

2. Make your website a content hub. When you’ve decided on those keywords, you need to create content that includes them in the title (and in the URL to match). Don’t leave your readers guessing what the blog post is about but do take into consideration that the longest titles are not always the best. For example, the Daily Mail’s stinker of a headline: ‘Children shouted “Moobs!” at me in the street, but now I model in catwalk fashion shows’: Bullied teenager lost 9 stone in 18 months and now wants to encourage others’

Take time to produce a flow of interesting blogs (bearing in mind that you are writing for your readers and not just a search engine).

3. Don’t forget to use external platforms. External platforms, such as Twitter and Google+ increase the reach of your internal content and the traffic to your (wonderful, content rich) site. Take it a little bit further by creating a content plan, and establishing a tone of voice and themes: it is also important to be a curator of valuable information over social media – don’t just share your own content. Spend 15 minutes a day finding inspiration and useful articles to share, and use your existing snappy and eye-catching statistics with relevant hashtags to gain followers.

Another useful external platform is Slideshare, which allows you to share interesting findings with the rest of the World. Edelmen Insights does this brilliantly (check out their channel here) and have had over 360,000 views on their presentations over the last 6 months.

Hopefully this puts you on the right tracks for 2014! If you’re interested in increasing your profile you might also be interested in Lucy Davison’s post on using market research to get coverage in the media.

The post Marketing your market research agency in a digitally connected world appeared first on Keen as Mustard Marketing.