Beyond Pumpkin Spice: How Seasonal Trends Can Make Your Marketing More Relevant
There’s a reason marketers love seasonal trends. They give us a ready-made conversation. They give audiences something familiar to react to. And they make a brand feel like it’s part of the moment rather than simply broadcasting a message to its audience. But there’s a difference between being timely and chasing every trend that comes […]
4 Ways to Achieve Scary Good Marketing This Halloween
Halloween is one of those rare holidays when people actively want brands to have a little fun. That doesn’t mean just slapping a seasonal graphic over your regular content. It’s a real opportunity to lean into the more creative side of business marketing. Here are four ways to embrace the holiday spirit to elevate your […]
Stop Celebrating Birthdays—and Start Celebrating Wins
Let’s start with a disclaimer before HR comes after us: We’re not anti-birthday. Cake is wonderful. Balloons are fun. We love celebrating each other at Mad 4 Marketing! But ask yourself this: Which is more likely to strengthen your business, celebrating something that happened by chance, or celebrating something that someone intentionally accomplished? One is […]
Here’s What You Should Steal From Your Competitors
Let’s get something out of the way right up front: No, we’re not suggesting you copy another company’s logo, website, or clever tagline. We’re not going to tell you to poach their employees or their customers. We haven’t been at the top of our game for almost 35 years by copying others, and we’d never […]
It’s Time to Turn Old Clothes Into New Outfits—But With Your Content
If you’ve ever stood in front of a closet full of clothes and thought, “I have nothing to wear,” you’re not alone. Of course, that’s almost never true. You have plenty to wear. You just haven’t looked at it with fresh eyes. The same thing happens in marketing. And that’s why we want to help […]
The Marketing Audit That Only Takes 1 Hour and Sets Up a Successful Q4
Marketing has a funny way of accumulating clutter: A landing page gets built for one campaign and never updated. A call to action made perfect sense last spring but now promotes an event that’s long over. Three social platforms are being maintained because they’ve always been maintained—even though only one is bringing in meaningful traffic. […]
What Does It Mean to Develop Your Brand’s ‘Personality’?
Yes, your company name is important. Your logo needs to make sense. Your brand should be recognizable and stand for something meaningful. But what are we really talking about when we’re talking about the fullness of a brand? One thing: personality. Your brand personality is the feeling people associate with your business beyond the products […]
The New Small Business Advantage Is Speed
For a long time, larger companies had the advantage in marketing. They had bigger budgets, bigger teams, bigger ad campaigns, and more resources overall. Small businesses often struggled to compete with that kind of scale. But something has shifted. Today, one of the biggest competitive advantages a small business can have is…speed. Large organizations tend […]
Why Marketing Agencies Keep Talking About ‘Owned Audiences’
We cringe when we hear the phrase “owned audience.” People don’t own others, and businesses certainly don’t own people. But we can dislike the clunky term and still embrace its place in today’s marketing ecosystem. First, let’s talk about what people actually mean when they say “owned audience.” When marketers talk about an “owned audience,” […]
Search Marketing Is Everywhere, Now
For years, digital marketing revolved around one central assumption: When people wanted information, they went to Google. Today, people go looking for information…well, everywhere! That still includes Google, of course. But marketers who start and stop with Google search marketing tactics are missing out on a whole world of opportunities. And as we all know, […]