Refuge Marketing Blog

Mobile Marketing: The Changing Demographics

Posted on May 16, 2012 by Ana

If there’s anything traditional marketing can be adversely good at, it’s alienating an entire demographic that isn’t moved by a blanket message. Remember those burgeoning billboards on the sides of highways in the middle of nowhere? They’re still around, but they’re not as relevant as they used to be.

Smartphones and digital communication are now facts of life, and in trying to adapt to this not-so-new-fangled form of connecting, marketers are faced with changing their strategies and revised metrics. Again. Buckle in – it’s going to be quite a ride.

Device Demographics

Gone are the days when an audience could be neatly packaged into factors like “gender,” “age” and “ethnicity.” Some truisms may exist, still. iPhone users are more likely to be young and affluent more than Android users, but their spending habits and the information they consume is vastly different.

We communicate, consume, share and advertise digitally. That part’s easy. What becomes difficult is bridging the gap between ROI insights and adjusting strategies in real time. As marketers, we’ve always faced a lag between traditional advertising and the feedback we receive.

Device demographics are making advertising much more relevant and targeted than it ever has been. Marketers can now customize the content and experience for their audience for each mobile device available, and as it turns out, the trend is sticking around. Consumers are beginning to prefer targeted ads that are sleeker, have higher definition and are more interactive.

One Step Up

Targeted or even preferred content isn’t just for social media platforms anymore. Everything that you do with your smartphone offers an insight into who you are and where your interests lie. From status updates and geotagging on Facebook and Twitter to the kinds of utility or gaming apps you use – we were all here for the Angry Birds fever – every activity leads marketers to create an experience that’s tailored uniquely to you.

There’s a side of the fence that believes these rapid changes are exciting and revolutionary. How do you feel?

Posted in Branding, Campaigns, consumer behavior, Marketing, Mobile Advertising, Social Engagement, Uncategorized | Tagged branding, Campaigns, communication, consumer behavior, marketing, mobile advertising, Social Engagement | Leave a comment

Summer 2012 Internship: Digital Marketing Intern

Posted on May 9, 2012 by Ana

The REFUGE Group, a rapidly growing integrated marketing strategies firm, is looking for a Houston resident who is proficient in and an active user of digital and interactive media. The ideal candidate will be creative, self-motivated, have excellent written and oral communication skills, and will possess a positive and professional approach when working with a variety of people.

To perform well in this internship you need to enjoy using and have working knowledge of social and news bookmarking sites as well as understand the power of a social media presence for brands and products. Students working toward a college degree in marketing, advertising, communications, public relations, or journalism are preferred.

Job Description:

● Learn how to create and maintain an effective marketing campaign across all interactive media including client websites, Google, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and blogs

● Learn the nuances of client management from sitting in on meetings to hands on account administration experience

● See the principles of marketing in action for both interactive and traditional marketing

● Contribute to our clients’ and our own social networking initiatives, including Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and YouTube updates and maintenance.

● Explore new digital communication mediums, including blogging, podcasting, mobile applications, etc.

● Proactively create and maintain online conversation.

● Ensure all technical aspects of the websites are functioning correctly and offer solutions as they arise

● Track, analyze, and report the results of marketing campaigns

For the right candidate, there is an excellent opportunity to grow with the company. This is an unpaid internship (application for school credit encouraged) for a minimum 15-20 hours per week at an office in the Washington Corridor/Memorial Park area. Please provide resume and cover letter citing examples of social media usage to acormierhill@refugemarketing.com. If you would like additional information, please feel free to email or call Alexzandria Cormier-Hill at (713) 528-0200 x 103.

Posted in Interns, Marketing, Refuge, Social Media, WEB 2.0 | Leave a comment

The Right Splash of Color

Posted on May 9, 2012 by Ana

If you’re trying to launch a sleek, aesthetically compelling campaign, hire yourself a professional graphic designer. Why? Because they’ve been trained in color theory and color placements and know exactly how certain colors are perceived.

Choosing campaign colors is more than just splashing paint across a canvas – it’s a very deliberate choice. Especially because your colors become a strong component of your brand identity and image. From brochures to TV and print ads and even business cards, you communicate your brand ethos at every step.

Color. Theory?

Not really. Iconic brands have used color placements to hammer in a wedge in their audiences’ consciousness. Do you shop at MetLife? Their sky blue “If” campaign against a white background is nothing if not memorable. Do you like Cadbury’s? If you do, chances are you’ve tried to hunt down the purple wrapper when hunger struck.

Theory 101

Colors are divided into three groups – primary, secondary and tertiary. Red, blue and green are primary colors and creating varying combinations of the three makes all other colors. Secondary colors, i.e. orange, green and violet, are halfway between the primary colors on the color wheel and tertiary colors are the ones created when primary colors are mixed with their adjacent secondary colors.

Why Does It All Matter?

Colors carry innate connotations, so bright colors like red, orange or purple indicate action and forward motion. A good choice, possibly, for sports related events or any event that might gather people around a happy occasion.

Are you trying to lure people into taking a vacation far away from the hustle and bustle of a big city? Try placing blues, greens and perhaps a pink against a neutral background. Blues and greens are receding colors that make people feel calm, relaxed and happier.

Aiming for luxury? Try combining a deep red or a deep purple with touches of gold. If you’re aiming for somber or piety, try a darker color palette with grays and blacks.

Of course there are cultural norms that determine how some colors will be perceived with certain audiences. For instance, while a color scheme dominated by white might work for a Western wedding, Eastern cultures will reject it as a nod to mourning.

Leave us a little note – we’d love to hear what your favorite campaigns have looked like and the colors they’ve incorporated.

Posted in Campaigns, Graphic Design, Marketing, Personality, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Refuge Marketing: On the Inside

Posted on May 3, 2012 by Ana

At Refuge, we’re proud of being able to attract creative and intelligent people who understand that the heart of marketing lies in connecting with people. Our internship program allows us to work with bright and dedicated minds before and we thought it would be a great idea to introduce them to you.

Candace Espinal has enjoyed working with our long-standing clients, Eye Elegance and Cabinets & Designs. Her focus has always been ensuring that our clients’ requests are handled as professionally as possible. She has been vested in their success and attempted to provide them with equal attention to maximize their profits.

She was also very focused on Social Media deliverables. Candace can see the potential that SM channels provide in taking away communication hierarchies. “People want a personal connection with businesses, and social media is doing that” she says.

On the way, she’s learned the importance of time management and building relationships for the long haul. Candace says she will miss “hanging outwith the girls in the office” because she has “enjoyed getting to know the interns and the people who work for The Refuge Group”. Thank you, Candace! We’ll miss you too!

We’d also like to introduce you to our intern, Orpha Palomares, a Junior at the University of Houston. Orpha is majoring in Public Relations with a minor in Business Administration and decided to look for a marketing internship to learn more about the online creative process of marketing.

She wanted to delve into not just website design and online ads but social media and its connections to communicating with an audience as well.

Her success stories at Refuge lay with the Billiard Factory SM account where she has managed to identify and engage with a targeted audience and cater to their needs directly. For Orpha, interacting with clients and their products was fun and seeing the work translated into results that met with their approval was “even better”.

Orpha, who is a professional photographer and a poet, will use her time post-internship to expand her photography business where she can directly apply her newly gleaned marketing skills.

Good luck to you both, Orpha and Candace! Thank you for being a part of the Refuge team and we wish you all the very best for your futures!

Posted in Facebook, Interns, Personality, Refuge, Social Media, Uncategorized | Tagged Facebook, Interns, personality, Refuge, social media | Leave a comment

Cult Personalities

Posted on April 25, 2012 by Ana

Sometimes it’s good to be different. No, scratch that. It’s always good to be a little different, a little edgy, a little bit kooky and a lot bit silly. After all, it wasn’t the straight-line thinkers who developed the best fan following. Harley-Davidson is a shining example. So are brands like Apple, Jones Cream Soda and Krispy Kreme donuts. They may be mainstream now, but takes a certain chutzpah to develop the fan following that these brands have.

In the lives of all cult classics, however, comes a tipping point when the core group of followers must be abandoned for higher profit margins. It’s when they risk losing their edginess to go mainstream because early adopters have paved the way for widespread acceptance.

Perhaps we can’t recreate the precise magic – or the endless lines of customers who camped out in front of their stores and wrapped around blocks – that these brands came with, but we decided to delve a little deeper into their workings and see what made them tick.

The lessons we learned?

1. Quality is Everything What would Apple be without stellar design or products that worked on a sub-par level? Possibly not the cult classic many people have grown to know and love.

2. Keep it Simple, Son Imagine, if you will, the simplest of life’s pleasures – a light and puffy donut fresh out of the fryer, drizzled with the simplest syrup and served to you while it’s still warm.

Do you know why, when Krispy Kreme announces the opening of a new location, lines of customers wrap around a few blocks?

That’s why.

3. Reach for the Early Adopters A true measure of success is when the brand’s name becomes a verb. The people who catapulted Google out of the stratosphere were the early adopters who preferred simple design over Yahoo’s “everything and the kitchen sink” home page. Here we are years later and we’ve swapped “look it up online” for “Google it.”

4. Don’t Mass Produce If you’ve ever had yourself a bottle of Jones Soda, you know you can’t find it on grocery store shelves everywhere. This Seattle-based company began catering, with limited production, to a very discerning audience in its early days and has tried very hard to keep itself from going mainstream. The result is legions of followers who swear by the drink and refuse to imbibe anything else.

And there you have it. Simple ingredients, high quality, niche audience and early adopters who think you’re too cool for school. It’s a winning recipe, really. What are your favorite cult classics?

Posted in Branding, communication, consumer behavior, Marketing, Personality, Uncategorized | Tagged branding, communication, consumer behavior, cult, marketing, personality | Leave a comment

Non-Traditional Marketing

Posted on April 18, 2012 by Ana

So, we’re all in a field where the jargon of the landscape is littered with phrases like “thinking outside the box” and “being different”. With marketers scurrying around trying to find faster, snazzier and more exciting ways to sell the latest gimmick, some of the best ways to connect with an audience get left by the wayside. Lately though, we’ve been of the opinion that if people are brought together with a greater sense of affability, the profits follow along.

A Pen for Your Thoughts?

Of course that requires a little creative thinking on everyone’s part, and perhaps even a return to the basics. Really, when was the last time you wrote a letter or sent a card to thank your client or vendor base?

Effective non-traditional marketing can be as simple as picking up the phone to say hello and see if things are going well with your clients. But since we’re extolling the virtues of creativity, perhaps we can move past a phone call or a hand-written card and throw a little character and personality into it.

Take, for instance, this photo-blog of very creative direct-mail pieces sent out by a number of vendors. We tried to pick a favorite but a quick gander at the post reveals how hard that really is!

Go Guerilla

Guerilla marketing can have a negative connotation attached to it for obvious reasons, but the concept is more about surprising people with a strong message in unexpected places than it is about attacking them with a product. Have you ever thought about orchestrating a flash mob? Flash mobs are nothing if not memorable, and if you’re looking to make an impact, they’re the place to begin.

Too risqué? Put your creative minds to work to come up with billboard ads, or better yet, make the medium the message.

And while you’re at it, let us know how far you’ve taken your non-traditional marketing strategies. We love a good conversation around these parts!

Posted in Advertising, Campaigns, Guerilla, Marketing, Non-traditional | Tagged Advertising, Campaigns, guerilla marketing, non-traditional marketing | Leave a comment

Posted on April 11, 2012 by Ana

Driving Audience Engagement

It sounds elusive at the offset, doesn’t it? Where do you go and how do you create or source the kind of content that might spark multiple love affairs with the market you’re in? Despite the staggering odds (we’re in the mood for a little drama today!), the forecast looks favorable. Because it’s clearly achievable, since brands out there who aren’t Lady Gaga have managed to swing it.

Beyond alluring and high-quality pictures lie a few principles that are a little more fundamental and time-tested, at least as far as communicating with your audience is concerned. Because, let’s not forget, a large part of the current audience demographic still lives away from social media or any other form of electronic engagement. Some people still prefer to communicate in an “old-fashioned” medium and we need to bring them into the conversation as well.

How though? Glad you asked.

1. Engage the Senses. All of them. When you’re trying to grab attention sans the hard sell, use your message to engage all the senses with your viewers and target audience. The objective is to provide them with an immersive experience that’s hopefully memorable. The conversation should follow along organically.

2. Make Participation an Option, but do this encouragingly. With a myriad of technologies with usability ease at our fingertips, building a virtual community is now much easier. Bear in mind that these tools can be used to augment the impact of a physical experience as well. Between webinars, videos, texting and surveys, as long as you give people the ability to opt in or out, you could be seeing some terrific numbers with audience engagement.

3. Test the Content on yourself and your coworkers/employees. If the creators of the message aren’t able to engage or critically analyze the message being disseminated, what are the chances of the audience being able to stay engaged with it? Most adults have a 20-minute attention span, beyond which focus and retention begin to dwindle. If your message extends far beyond the 20-minute window, start looking for ways to keep people around through questions, content variety and ice-breakers (conference settings).

Posted in Campaigns, Consumer Engagement, Marketing, Personality, Social Engagement | Leave a comment

Meetup Marketing

Posted on April 4, 2012 by Ana

Meetups – groups of people brought together by common interest through an online and social portal – have become a great way to network with the local shared-interest community and a cost-effective way to find a niche market. Granted it requires a little effort to lift-off, but then what doesn’t if it’s worthwile.

The best part of organizing a Meetup group is the minimal cost of customer acquisition. Although signing up at Meetup.com is a free process, you always have the option of charging for your events, which is what many people choose to do.

While the initial time commitment is high, the pay-off seems to be worth the effort required. But isn’t that the case with any networking platform? It may serve you well to begin with a little groundwork to see whether what you’d like to offer through your Meetup group already exists. If it does, then think and search a little harder to see how you can offer something more unique. If your niche group hasn’t coagulated yet, then you’re good to go!

Things to Keep In Mind

1. Look for quiet spaces that can comfortably accommodate the size of the group you’re hosting. Bars and restaurants can be tempting venues, but if the objective of your networking session is to share information and gain contacts, you’re more liable to have a higher success rate if people can hear each other talk.

2. As an alternative to a purely work-related event, consider organizing a Meetup session that’s in tandem with your own interests. Conversation flows freely when it’s centered on informal gatherings. Remember, providing an environment where people feel at ease is equally important.

3. Incentivize your gatherings. People love being able to grab a free deal, so if you’re organizing a series of Meetups that you charge for, consider a rewards program to sweeten the deal.

4. Time Check Working people gathering after hours are tired people. Keep your Meetups limited to no more than 90 minutes, networking and speaking time included.

5. Stay away from the hard-sell. This is a time for you to plug in the issue/topic at hand, not your business. Offer a service for nothing more than a networking opportunity and you’ll generate enough goodwill and leads that you can follow up with.

Posted in communication, Marketing, Meetup, Offline | Tagged communication, marketing, Meetup, Offline | Leave a comment

How Much Klout Do You Have?

Posted on March 28, 2012 by Ana

Because there weren’t enough social media channels and antics to keep track of, we’re going to tell you about another one. As their site, very boldly, declares, Klout is the Standard for Influence. How does it work? Klout pools together your conversations and interactions on your social media channels and determines, on a scale of 1 – 100, how wide your spheres of influence are.

If you don’t know what your Klout score is, finding out about it involves a fairly simple sign-up process. You fill in your details using your Twitter or Facebook account, answer a few questions and presto, you have a Klout score on hand. The higher your score, the higher your Klout – or social media presence and influence.

Getting Better At It

How do you end up with a high Klout score? You build it, just the way you’d build any network, physical or virtual. The key lies in communication, really, and letting go of any control you’d like to wield. To be liked, you have to be likable. And ease up on the aggressive marketing techniques.

How To

1. Interact with everyone. Don’t be afraid to begin conversations with people who have low Klout scores. It increases score rankings of all parties involved.

2. Content, content, content! Make your own, borrow from someone else, link, re-link and repost good content. Because nothing takes its place if it’s good quality.

Consider any of these for good content: niche posts, photographs and videos. Nothing says “engagement” like pictures that inspire humor, laughter and wit.

3. Engage with Influencers without stalking them or posting links to their account with annoying frequency. They’ll listen and re-engage with you, and up goes your Klout score.

4. Persistence & Perseverance pay well in the long run. Yes, we’re in an age of click-button communication and instant statistics are great to have. But it’s important to remember that relationships develop over time – not overnight.

Posted in communication, KLOUT, Marketing, Social Engagement, Social Media, Uncategorized | Tagged communication, KLOUT, marketing, Social Engagement | Leave a comment

Does Your Brand Have a Personality?

Posted on March 21, 2012 by Ana

If ever there was space to show and express yourself instead of telling people about it, this is it. Over the past decade marketers and organizations have discovered, sometimes painfully, that a brand’s personality and identity can prove to be more important and valuable than just brand recognition.

A positive display of brand identity and personality tend to encompass a wide range of factors, especially those pertaining to the intangible side of marketing. How ethical are your corporate decisions? How much do you value a human connection with your customers? How much of an emphasis do you place on expedient, polite and resourceful customer service? Can you gauge how much goodwill you’ve created amongst your customers?

Don’t know? Then it’s time for a soul check for your organization. Whether you realize it or not, your clientele is personifying your company’s performance, and words like “trendy, “innovative,” “friendly,” or worse, “boring” are being tossed around when you’re not listening.

If you’re just beginning to discover your brand’s personality, your litmus test might be your own employees. You may think you’re “caring” and “involved” but the reality may differ vastly from your own perception of yourself.

Why?

Well, why not? Your brand’s personality is what sets the tone for every interaction that your organization will have, beginning with frontline staff. It’s the point where you begin to determine everything from your communication materials to your visual style. For some brands, edgy and risk-taking is always better. For instance, imagine a Ferrari dealership extolling the virtues of playing it safe and coloring inside the lines.

Tools for Testing

If you’re ready to dip your toes into evaluating your personality, it may help to arm yourself with a few tools that might make the journey easier. If the most you can do is aggregate anonymous responses, The Financial Brand has a list of adjectives that you employ. Be warned, however, that this exercise may expose a few brand gaps of perception.

If you’re looking to delve deeper, exploring marketing archetypes might be a good idea to get started. Keep a pen and paper handy, however. You may find yourself redrafting your image very soon.

Posted in Branding, Marketing, Personality | Tagged branding, marketing, personality | Leave a comment

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The Right Splash of Color

Cult Personalities

Non-Traditional Marketing

Meetup Marketing

Does Your Brand Have a Personality?