Category Archives: Marketing
Same Table, Different Side
During my senior year of college, I was the Vice President of the Saint Mary’s College American Marketing Association Collegiate Chapter. Every year we would organize the Meet the Firms event, which allowed students to get a glimpse into the real working world by asking questions that will prepare them for a professional career in marketing. They also got an opportunity to network with firms and alumni in order to land a possible internship or a full time job.
Three years later, I found myself back on campus attending the event with my colleague, Erik Rivas (also an alumnus), but this time we were on the other side of the table. It felt gratifying giving advice and interacting with eager college students because I was in their shoes three years ago. A few other companies that attended the event include Kara’s Cupcakes, Target and LinkedIn.
If you are a student looking to gain real world knowledge in marketing, I recommend becoming a member of the SMC AMA and attending networking events just like this one. Not only will you be part of a group of people who are passionate about marketing, but you get the opportunity to network with professionals, attend workshops, seminars and special events. Learn more about SMC AMA.
Photos Credit: SMC AMA Facebook Page
Trends in Branding this year: What are the hot topics?
Most marketing professionals would agree — there isn’t anything much more important than your brand because it’s your face to the outside world. As far as what you need to know to help shape and maintain your brand, Landor, the brand strategy firm responsible for creating the image for a number of our clients, including Procter & Gamble and John Deere, provides a look at current trends in branding with a series of articles and videos, including gamification, brand purpose, Asian luxury, packaging, data, China and design.
I think that the following five are the most relevant for the balance of this year and into 2014.
Photo Credit: Landor Associates
1. Gamification
Gamification is poised to be as important this year as social and mobile were in the past, according to Jason Bice, Landor’s senior manager of verbal branding. “Gamification could be considered the third component of a new ‘holy trinity’ of digital marketing,” Bice says. The question that all small-business owners must ask is: How do I turn a virtual achievement in a real one?
Find out the answer and more about Bice’s take on Gamification here.
Be a Grammar Rock Star
I recently read a story about Van Halen that prompted me to ponder the importance of grammar in the workplace. It seems unlikely that these infamous 80’s rock gods would have anything to do with something as mundane as workplace grammar, but in reality, it’s a great lesson in the importance of client details.
Over the past three decades, one particular story has circulated about the band’s outrageous contract rider demands. The now infamous demand was hidden deeply inside the pages of the contract, and stated that brown M&M’s were strictly forbidden backstage.
7 Great Tips for Marketing Strategy and Building Your Brand
You don’t need the luck of the Irish to find the pot o’ gold this St. Patrick’s day. KRT is here to remind you about “The Seven Golden Rules of Marketing” that will help you get lucky when it comes to building a stronger brand.
The seven golden rules, provided by The Brand Factory, remind us that a strong marketing strategy is essential for a successful business. At KRT, we specialize in recruitment marketing, where we apply these “golden rules” to create a strong brand that candidates will gravitate to. Below are the 7 Golden Rules with a KRT twist:
- Highlight your uniqueness – Avoid talking about what it is you do. Focus more on what makes your services unique compared to your competitors. Instead of discussing what you offer, talk about how you offer it. You might have a special way of presenting clients’ accounts or a system of assessing their advertising needs. At KRT, we take an organized and creative approach that shows our clients exactly what kind of ROI they are getting from our vendors.
- Be consistent – Once you’ve presented your unique selling proposition (above), apply it! Don’t be tempted to leave old messages out there. New prospects can come to you from all kinds of ways – business card, website, phone call, newsletter, blog, print, online ads and so on. Read the rest of this entry
Did Someone Say “Spring Training”?
I know the first thing that popped into your mind was the excitement of baseball, the anticipation of the new season and the smell of ballpark snacks. What about “Spring Training” for your talent acquisition team?
Today’s media platforms are ever-changing and improving their tools to assist your recruitment teams in “catching” the most QUALIFIED applicants. Just like choosing a great ball team, you only want the “best of the best” to come to the tryouts or be screened for the application process.
We at KRT think that setting up trainings for your team is essential for a great recruiting season!
LINKEDIN
Depending up your level of comfort, LinkedIn has training for everyone! From showcasing your employment brand, to spicing up your recruiter profiles to turning your team into a recruitment machine, LinkedIn has the training to get your staff into pitch perfect shape! http://help.linkedin.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/530
INDEED
If you weren’t aware that you could get FREE access to Military personnel resumes, or any resumes in Canada or India, you haven’t been through a recent Indeed training. What are you waiting for? You’ll hit one out of the park with this training session. http://www.indeed.com/resumes
SOCIAL MEDIA
Wondering how to hit a home run with your Social Media recruitment plan? Let KRT’s Social Media experts join your team as a clutch hitter and train your team to hit one out of the park!
Contact KRT today to get you recruitment team ready to have a winning season!
Walk into 2013 with a BRAND new YOU!
Many of us enter the New Year with resolutions to lose weight, save money, take a trip, etc., but the truth is, most of us never stick to these resolutions. So, here’s my real challenge for the year – to get rid of empty resolutions, and focus on improving my personal “brand.”
I recently attended the “Dine with Alums” event at Saint Mary’s College, and the keynote speaker was Susan Chritton,.Ed.- she wrote the book, Personal Branding for Dummies in which she explains why branding is so important for corporations, celebrities, and ourselves. (Did I mention that she is a Saint Mary’s alumna?) According to Chritton, branding helps position us for success through image transformation and self-prominence.
Here are ten cool tips from Chritton’s book to help you build your personal brand:
Who Still Reads the Newspaper? The Relevance of Print Advertising in the Growing World of Internet Marketing
In this day and age, it takes a certain skill to grab the attention of readers and passersby in our bustling lives. With so many things working against the future of classified print advertising such as social media, it is more important than ever to know how to maximize your reach for potential candidates in print media. We at KRT continue to place ads for our clients.
Bourbon Street, Beignets and Branding: AMA Symposium for the Marketing of Higher Education 2012
What does Bourbon Street, branding, a hip-hop President, and beignets all have in common? They were all a part of the American Marketing Association’s Symposium for the Marketing of Higher Education conference in New Orleans! Since my work in the higher education space has increased over the past few years, I was really interested in learning about the industry specific trends from some of the most innovative marketers out there! What better way to capture all of the great information that I learned than highlight reel of my favorite tweets from the conference.
First, congratulations to the top conference tweet of the event:
Today, more than 50 million Americans have student loans, which is more than people on Medicare. The value of education is under pressure now more than ever. Institutions must prove their value to prospective student to get ahead.
The Weather is Getting Colder…Keep those Potential Candidates WARM!
Ahhh, the age-old question, which are better recruits….active or passive candidates? Sourcing for passive candidates puts the recruiter in the driver’s seat. What’s the best way to find the strongest passive candidates, you ask? That is a great question with a very simple answer – compile and then source from your own talent pool of WARM CANDIDATES. A warm candidate is, at the very least, aware of your company’s employment brand. If you are lucky, you have captured potential warm candidates in an environment in which, you can communicate with them on a regular basis.
Keeping your talent pool warm is a little like dating. Your talent pool is your “little black book”, but, just because a person is in the little black book, it is not a guarantee that they will remember you. To keep candidates warm, you must stay in contact with them. Drop them a line every once in a while, show them the best of your employment brand, and keep them up on to date on what your organization is up to. Not all “first dates” turn into life-long relationships and instead, they take time to nurture and nudge along.
If you need help building your candidate pool and keep them warm, please contact KRT Marketing today.
Mobile Optimizing Your Recruitment Strategy With SMS
When was the last time you were more than 10 feet away from your phone?
With 91% of U.S. mobile owners keeping their devices within reach at all times and 7.8 trillion SMS trillion messages being sent in 2011, It’s no wonder that 66% of U.S. marketers plan to spend between 1% and 24% of their 2012 digital budget on mobile, compared to 50% in 2011. (Sources: EMARKETER, 3/12/2012; Portio Research, 2012; CONVONIX, 04/17/2012)
While there are many ways companies can leverage mobile SMS advertising for their marketing needs, in this blog post I want to specifically focus on how recruitment HR professionals can leverage SMS into their recruitment strategies. The thought for many recruitment professionals of including any type of mobile advertising into their marketing plan seems too expensive and really far-fetched. While it’s definitely not cheap, it is a smart investment into the future of recruitment advertising.
Now with new mobile recruitment technology like Jibe, you can direct candidate from your text message to your career site and apply for a job straight from their phone.
Here are some other ideas that recruitment professionals can use to leverage mobile SMS advertising:
- Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
- Building Your Pipeline
- Brand Awareness
- Sending Job Alerts
- Promoting a Job Fair/ Event
- Sharing a Story
- Cross Promotion of Social Media Channels
- Can you think of anything else?
I’ve put together the info-graphic below to show you a visualization of how the SMS data gets setup, stored and used.
To learn more about SMS and how it might fit in with your company’s marketing strategy comment on this post or email us at info@krtmarketing.com
