Brightside Marketing Solutions

Brightside Marketing is dedicated to creating solutions for our customers. We are focused on immersing ourselves in to your business and the day to day in order to develop creative solutions to grow, expand and develop. We specialize in comprehensive marketing plans that will drive your business toward your end goal. And if you're not sure what that end goal is, we'll help you define and work toward it.

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Interesting read about email marketing open rates and how to improve them. Take a 👀.

All about email open rates

The complete guide to email open rates: what they are, what a typical open rate is, and most importantly, how you can increase your open rate.

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5 Creative Social Media Trends

We've been loving animated stories on IG, but check out this interesting read  on creative Social Media trends.

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Trying to think of your next social media campaign, take a look at this idea from Applebees. Using the hashtag they shared fan generated content. Why? User generated content is more likely to drive audience engagement than content created by a company. Take a look at some more awesome examples of social media campaigns here, http://bit.ly/2DtC3uF

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Social Media Scheduling Tool

Are you looking for a tool to schedule your social media?  Take a look at one of my favorites called CoSchedule.  It's a great online social scheduling tool that saves you time and has some automatic features that take the guesswork out of social.  Read my review of this tool on my blog

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If you're reviewing your leads and marketing, start with some of the simplest components. Messaging and Communication. Do your potential clients even understand or receive some of the basic key advantages of your product or service?

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Our Best Recommended Social Media Scheduler

Get the whole review of our social media scheduler here.

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Tips for a Successful Customer Event

Regardless the size of the event you are throwing there a few key items to pay attention to in order to make sure it’s a success.

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Cable TV Losing Ground

   The recent ESPN layoffs are just another example of how the cable tv industry is changing.  Streaming tv options have been expanding and the viewership is growing.  I recently jumped ship as well, moving to the new DirectTV Now app and I am not looking back.       

Consumer Marketing    

As more consumers move toward the on-demand and streaming tv, how do we reach those consumers and engage them with our brands and products?    There are certainly still a number of ways to achieve this and most important of all is to have a comprehensive plan that engages them at different points and in a variety of ways.  If relying on cable to be your main source of promotion anyway, then you would probably have found that your return on investment was not very high.  If you were able to truly determine that at all.      With the technology behind digital advertising, marketers are able to serve messages to the right customers at the right time.  Seeking out your potential customers and drawing them in to your product or service is the most effective method.  This can bring about the best return on your investment.  As a contractor, do you want to serve ads to a recent college graduate living in an apartment.  No!  But that homeowner who has some renovations on their mind but aren’t sure where to start?  Targeted digital ads would be a great service to make them aware of what is available.      Facebook advertising is one of the examples that I love.  Their resources to target your audience, allows you to engage with customers who might truly be interested in your product or service.  And I as a marketer, that is what I want to do.  I don’t care about hitting a huge number of people.  I want the exact and precise audience that wants my product.  I’ve found great success in Facebook advertising and I highly recommend it as part of your digital marketing campaign.    The ESPN layoffs are a sign of the evolution of media consumption.  People now have a choice.  Appointment TV.  I love this term.  And that is exactly what is happening.  People can watch at their own convenience.  Companies need to understand and evolve.  

Brightside Marketing    

Brightside marketing has helped our customers use digital marketing, social media marketing, and Facebook marketing to help customers find and attract their true target customers.  As consumers move toward appointment tv, we can use digital marketing techniques to better attract them to our brands.  Brightside marketing can evaluate what your goals are and seek different digital marketing methods to most effectively achieve these goals.  Streaming TV provides a robust amount of options to target customers and shouldn’t be considered a barrier.  Instead it needs to be embraced and understood.  As we’re seeing through initiatives like the espn layoffs, cable tv is on the decline.  But it can still be a huge asset in your overall marketing plan depending on what your goals are.  If you have any questions or want to learn more about what opportunities are available in digital marketing, social media marketing or even Facebook marketing reach out to us.

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Creating a Trade Loyalty Program

Creating a loyalty program is a great tool to add to your marketing plan/program.  A loyalty program for your trade customers adds value to your partnership and establishes “you” as an important industry professional if it is done correctly.  Below are some guidelines to consider in your Trade Loyalty Program.

Learn from your customers first

         Take the time to do your homework on this and figure out exactly what your customers are looking to you for in your loyalty program.  You could conduct a small focus group and get some ideas from your key customers.  Investigate what your competition is doing, what are they doing right and what are they doing wrong.  Do a quick survey or poll amongst your customers and see what they’re needs are.

Create a sustainable program

         When you’re developing your program, make sure to consider what the program will look like 3-5 years down the road.  You need to have steps and milestones for your customers to achieve for sure, but you also want to make sure it stays fresh and evolves.  Even if your 3-5 plan for the program changes, it’s important to at least keep that at the forefront of your mind.

Keep it Simple Stupid

         Don’t overcomplicate your program.  Make it easy, not only for the sake of your customers, but also for your staff and people as well.  How can your people promote/sell the program if it’s too hard for them to understand.  They won’t!  I’m a Marriott Rewards member, and the reason I’m such a good member of the program is because I don’t have to do anything besides book my hotel room.  My points get added to my account for me, and all of the staff at the hotels provide me all my perks.

Don’t dilute the value of your program

         Once you build the requirements of your program, stick to them.  It’s an elite status right?  And you want people to want to join the club right?  Well once you start making exceptions or if you let everyone in on the top status, then you lose value and credibility in the program you developed.  

   These are just some key points that have helped me establish successful loyalty programs. If you have any ideas to add please comment below!  

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Finding Your Creativity

Sometimes Your Bookbag Is A Jet Pack How to launch and kickstart your creativity?  There are so many ways to seek creative inspiration so this photo I took at the beginning of the school year reminded me of that and inspired me to share my process.  No matter where you are at, physically or mentally, you can find inspiration and below are a couple of ideas to nudge you along ☺ Google Images This is where I start with everything!  It’s my go to spot for creative inspiration because I am a visual person and I believe that is why Google created the image search engine, for visuals like myself.  I need to see before I start any project.  So I usually pull up Google image search and just start typing in something I’m thinking about or something I’m looking for and before you know it, I’ve been at the computer for 2 hours with 30 pictures that I’ve downloaded as inspiration for my next project.  Give it a shot.  Hey, why not just start by typing in “inspiration” and see where the search leads. So I did this and I just found an image of a map within an image of 2 hands and it reminded me that I wanted to do a project like this, so I then searched google image for “image within silhouette image photoshop” and I found what I was looking for!  I learned that the technique is actually called a double exposure in Photoshop and from this search I ended up making this.  You can see my post on the double exposure here if you want to do something similar. Problem Solving I once read that the best business ideas/inventions come from solving issues that you are currently faced with.  So when it comes to finding your creativity and your next idea, think about something that is giving you a hard time.  Find a solution to a problem you are facing and you just might find the next big thing. Problem solving is my favorite thing to do.  I know I’m a geek.  But really it feels good to identify an area of trouble and work through solutions and then finally finding the best fit solution.  I love doing this at work and at home.  Enough already, I know I’m geeking out. So think about some of the things that annoy you, maybe at work, maybe around the house.  Once you’ve got that pesky situation identified do a Google search (my favorite spot).  Maybe someone’s had the same problem and you can see some ideas on solutions.  Maybe others have the same issue, but no one has yet identified the perfect solution, you have the opportunity to be the hero on this one! Take a Shower So not too long ago I was thinking about how I get some of my best ideas in the shower.  So I did a little peeking around and found this great article about it.  And the idea being that when we are doing something that allows our minds to drift and wander, it provides the best playground for our ideas to come forward.  So not an intentional sit and try to think of things, but more so when you are on autopilot doing a mindless act, your ideas can bubble to the top.

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Working Smarter, Not Harder

I’m actually sick of this saying but as a lover of organization I can’t help but click on an article that talks about working smarter.  And I’m glad I clicked on this one!  

I always feel that if you can walk away with one key change that you’re gonna make, then it was well worth your time.  The point on handling email in the Forbes article linked below is a great idea!  I am so guilty of getting bogged down by email.  I’ll look back on my day and think, “Hey, I was really busy and I feel like I was extremely productive today.”  But in actually I never accomplished one key task for the day because I was so busy reacting to emails.  

And it’s tough, especially in a world where I hear, “You never got back to me,” and it involves an email they sent a little over an hour ago.  People are used to hearing back from people instantaneously and this is a poor habit to create.  It makes people think that you are a call center, just waiting to respond instantly to their request.  

Instead I like the idea of setting aside specific time intervals of when you are going to review emails and organizing them by when you need to handle.  Check out the article.

6 Tips on Working Smarter, Not Harder This Year

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