Passion for Advertising is Becoming Passion for Social Media

Posted on June 18, 2010 by Andrew Rushmore

I want to begin by greeting our readers, as this will be the first post I have had the honor of contributing to our company’s blog since I came to Steketee Greiner and Company (SGC) almost six months ago. It’s been an amazing journey and I’ve been thrilled to be a member of such a dedicated team of professionals.

In my professional development, before being an employee with SGC, I joined a local organization called Ad 2 West Michigan; in a year I was elected to the role of Chair of Public Service, where I have worked with my friend and professional club associate Ray Cashbaugh (Chair of Creative), as well as the handful of dedicated, to build our charity campaign for the Wealthy Theatre (located in East Grand Rapids).

Ad 2, a division of the AAF (National), is a club for young professionals in Advertising, Marketing, and Public Relations between the ages of 18 and 32. In light of my involvement, I had planned to join the AAF and Ad 2 for their National Conference in Orlando, Florida, as a representative of Ad 2 West Michigan even before my employment with Steketee Greiner; imagine my pride to represent not only Ad 2 West Michigan, but also a rapidly growing company driven by an innovative spirit. The passion I have for my relationship to SGC allowed me to network with professionals in the Advertising industry with a vigor that perhaps Seth Godin would be proud of. Continue reading →

Consumers LOVE the word “free.”

Posted on March 5, 2010 by Jill Wolgemuth

Consumers LOVE the word “free.” Even more so in recent years. We love it so much that we go out of our way to get some freebie that we don’t even need. Free pen? Yes please. Free t-shirt? Sure! Free dessert? I’m full from dinner and really don’t need… well okay, it’s FREE!

On the flip side, someone has to pick up the tab; when paying for the free ‘swag’ companies often find it difficult to see the value in giving things away for free (rightfully so). In the past, we could only assume that our message would get out there to increase brand awareness and visibility. What if you were able to measure the number of impressions you gained to truly gauge the value of the campaign? With the addition of online forums, social venues and blogs, it’s now easier than ever to measure success and ROI even when you’re giving it away for free.

Continue reading →

New Strategies for Managing Social Relationships – SRM

Posted on January 4, 2010 by admin

Back in 2002, when we were trying to get our new catalog company off the ground, we quickly learned the value of a customer. The old saying “it is easier to keep a customer than get a new one” came to life when we were buying names of prospects and less than 1.2% of them became customers. The house list was our bread and butter and we learned how to squeeze every last drop of value out of it. We quickly became experts in segmenting our list using the RFM model: Recency, Frequency and Monetary value. It worked well. A new customer was a live customer and we did everything we could to let them know they were valued and keep them engaged. We incentivized heavily to increase purchase frequency and treated our best customers like royalty. Now, segmentation goes much deeper and CRM models have become much more sophisticated, but the same fundamental principles still apply. Today, with brands engaging customers through social channels, how are these relationships managed? What are the rules in a world driven by return on engagement not return on investment? Social Media is changing the brand-to-consumer relationship driving the need for new strategies to take advantage. We call this new strategic approach Social Relationship Management (SRM). Continue reading →

AGENT X home

Tag Archives: advertising

Consumers LOVE the word “free.”