Tag Archive for: digital marketing

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Atlanta’s Woodall Creative Group Welcomes Jim Balke as Lead Designer

Award-Winning Digital Marketing Agency Rounds Out Design Team with Seasoned Industry Veteran Who Has Led Campaigns for Coca-Cola, Chick-Fil-A, The Home Depot, MetLife, Porsche and UNICEF.

 Atlanta, September 10, 2018 (Press Release) – Jim Balke has joined the design team at Woodall Creative Group (WCG). A graduate of the Art Institute of Atlanta, Balke has served such recognizable brands as Coca-Cola®, Chick-fil-A®, The Home Depot®, MetLife®, Porsche® and UNICEF®. In his new role as Lead Designer at WCG, he will be implementing design trends and strategy throughout the full suite of marketing services WCG offers to its clients.

“There is a rare culture of mutual respect and dedication to the clients here,” said Balke. “I find myself among like-minded design strategists who love what they do. Accustomed to giving 200% to my clients, I value the fact that WCG really connects with the small businesses and brands it serves through a personalized, service-oriented, above and beyond approach.”

Balke defines his foundational career strength as an artistic approach to design. His love of typography has been honed into a true forte that has been used with great success for a wide variety of clients and projects. Included among his career highlights to date are his role as a two-time winner of the Peachtree Road Race T-Shirt Design, five-time winner of the Graphic Design USA Award, and his work with both UNICEF and Chick-fil-A.

“The addition of Jim to our award-winning team further solidifies our position as one of Atlanta’s most exciting digital marketing agencies and reaffirms our dedication to serving our clients in the best possible way,” said Tracy Woodall, Founder and President of Woodall Creative Group. “In addition to his incredible talent as a consummate artist, Jim is a seasoned marketing veteran with more than 25 years agency experience – ten of those years spent in senior-level management. In just the short time that he has been a member of the team at Woodall Creative Group, Jim has already proven himself to be a real asset – not just for his artistry, but also for his ideas. He works beautifully with the rest of the creative team – as we fuel one another to reach even higher levels of excellence in the work we produce for our clients.”

Born and raised in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Balke eventually migrated south to the foothills of North Carolina before moving further south to Georgia to attend classes at the Art Institute of Atlanta. Today, he lives in Lilburn with his wife Cathy and their two children, Bryce and Grace. Three cats, one dog and a bird round out the Balke family.

About Woodall Creative Group: With over twenty-seven years of award-winning strategic marketing, Woodall Creative Group has the expertise to catapult brands for success. The expert graphic designers, copywriters and programmers at Woodall Creative Group excel in implementing dynamic creative design, website development, marketing, social media content and corporate branding campaigns. The Atlanta-based agency has served a wide variety of clients from a broad array of industries. Included among them are Kids ‘R’ Kids Learning Academies, Service First Pros, Southside Church, Hallco Community Credit Union, Clayton Signs, Weener & Nathan Law, CBP Engineering and BM&K Construction. WCG will make sure your project gets the full creative attention that ensures success! Contact Woodall Creative Group by calling 706.658.0244 or e-mailing support@woodallcreative.com.  To learn more about Woodall Creative Group, interested parties are invited to visit www.woodallc.wpengine.com.

Why Your Social Media Presence Should Never Take a Vacation

The key to success in social media marketing is CONSISTENCY – particularly for any company that puts a lot of stock in its social media presence!  Strive for consistency in your company’s brand image, consistency in your messaging (which should always sound as though it is coming from the same centralized figure/being/collective group), consistency of response times and – most importantly – consistency in the number of posts you share with your audience each week. While the statistics may vary with regard to timing and frequency, once your company has found its sweet spot (which often varies by industry and region) – STICK TO IT! In other words, YOU may take a vacation, but your social media presence should NOT. You’ve fought long and hard to build up a following on social media, it would be a shame to lose touch with your core audience – even for a week – only to potentially face weeks of fighting to get in front of them again. That valuable time lost when your competition might have gotten the upper hand! Fortunately for all of us who yearn to put our toes in the sand or ski the slopes from time to time, there are some really great options that mean your social media presence will never have to skip a beat. To save you some time and research, Woodall Creative Group has compiled a number of those options for you here:

  1. Look to Your Creative Partner:  If you already collaborate with an agency on the design of your social media graphics and/or messaging, you may want to look to them to “housesit” your social media accounts while you’re away. You might be pleasantly surprised by the results and may even want to consider making that a permanent gig for them – allowing you the freedom to focus on other more pressing aspects of your job. If they’re really good at what they do (like the award-winning creative team at Woodall Creative Group), they’ll be able to study your posts from the past, discover what resonates most with your core audience, channel the brand image you’ve worked so hard to build and maybe even try a few new tricks to grow and engage your audience. Having a strong social media partner that can get results is worth its weight in gold.
  2. Tap a Social Media Savvy Member of Your Team:  Not that we’re ever ones to stereotype, but millennials are typically social media savvy and may prove a great resource for when you’re going to be out of the office on vacation. However, you don’t want to run the risk of a potential “house party” while you’re away – possibly alienating your core audience with some inconsistent messaging and/or graphics that doesn’t quite jive your brand image. Assign your most reliable team member who ALSO knows their way around your social media channels to pull together 5 to 7 days of messaging and accompanying images PRIOR to your departure for your approval. Once approved, they can stick to the agreed upon plan and post every day that you’re away, giving you the peace of mind you deserve to enjoy your vacation. If they do a good job, you know you can rely on them again during your NEXT vacation.
  3. Build a Social Media Calendar and Automate:  In the event that you manage more than one social media channel and you have yet to discover the joys of automation, be prepared to have your mind blown! In #2 of this list, we suggested you have your social media savvy team member pull together 5 to 7 days of messaging. In the event that you DON’T have a social media savvy and reliable team member to whom you can turn (or you just prefer to do things yourself), YOU can be the one to plan ahead, pull together a social media calendar of 5 to 7 days of messaging (or however long you plan to be gone) and upload/schedule those messages through an automation tool such as HootSuite, Sprout Social or Loomly. Not only will they allow you the freedom to pre-schedule your posts, but they will also allow you to post content to multiple social media platforms. While this may mean more work for you in the days leading up to your vacation, at least it assures you a stress-free, well-deserved break from the office once that glorious time arrives. Best of all, many of these automation tools offer free trial periods. You can try several to see which proves the best fit for you and your needs. You may find one that you love SO MUCH that you continue to use it after your vacation – cutting your posting time dramatically and providing you with valuable insights.

Now that you know the reasons WHY you can’t let your social media presence lapse – even for a week – AND three potential ways to cover your social media responsibilities while you’re away, Woodall Creative Group wishes you a peaceful and relaxing vacation! Bon Voyage!!!

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To learn more about Woodall Creative Group and the many ways we can help your company promote its unique brand – both in print and in the digital space – we invite you to visit us online at www.woodallc.wpengine.com.

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Plant Marketing Seeds Now – Harvest Customers Later

The Importance of Consistency and Multiple Touchpoints in Marketing

Rolling out an effective marketing plan is not unlike planting season on a farm. If executed properly, you’ll get to reap the rewards later for all of the preparation and promoting you do today. Just like at a farm, you till the soil, sow your seeds, keep watch to ensure growth and prepare for the harvest.

Dr. Jeffrey Lant – professor, author of more than 60 books and internationally renowned expert on the subjects of marketing, business development, copywriting and more – put forth the “Rule of Seven” marketing principle decades ago. The principle dictates that it takes an average of seven touchpoints before a customer remembers your brand message and feels compelled to act.  That’s a lot of marketing seeds to plant. While the advent of the internet and social media has served to speed up the process considerably from the original 18-month period for the Rule of Seven to take root, there are a number of things to take into consideration when planting those seeds…

Tilling the Soil: When planning your marketing campaign, make an effort to really stir things up. Do your research to see if there’s an audience segment you may have missed with prior campaigns who might be the next great thing for your brand. Also, dig DEEP to come up with a marketing campaign that will really grab your intended audience’s attention. Phone it in, and that will not only come through in your less-than-stellar messaging – but also in customer’s response.

“In a crowded marketplace, you want your message to stand out,” said Tracy Woodall, founder of Metro Atlanta-based Woodall Creative Group. “Be sure to outline all of the differentiators that set your company apart from the competition – everything that makes you ‘special.’ Stay true to the look and feel of previous campaigns for brand consistency, unless it’s time for a complete company rebrand – which is an excellent way to really shake things up and attract members from a new, previously underserved market.

Sowing the Seeds: Once you have a fairly clear plan in place, it’s time to start sowing the seeds through the design of your campaign and identification of the various modes of delivery you will use to reach your audience. Rather than planting just ONE kind of seed, use a variety of means to get your message out there. Think of the rows in your garden as streams of communication: website, digital marketing, e-mail marketing, social media, direct mail, print ads, TV commercials, radio ads, billboards, promotional items, experiential marketing and MORE. Because today’s marketplace is so crowded and noisy, multiple touchpoints are the key to success. Don’t merely select one avenue at one time – it will be the marketing equivalent of shouting into the wind. After you’ve identified the best modes of delivery, start creating designs to fit.

“If design is not your strength, consider outsourcing to an agency,” shared Woodall. “You may be highly skilled at identifying your audience, brainstorming ideas and media buying, but if you’re lacking in the design department – your entire campaign will suffer. To compound matters, you may even be compromising your company’s brand image. Professionally designed digital and print pieces can have a completely opposite effect, propelling your brand in a positive direction in the eyes of your audience.”

Keep Watch to Ensure Growth: Once you launch your campaign, don’t take your eye off the ball. Track results and make adjustments when necessary. If you notice that your digital efforts are really taking off, whereas your print campaign might be falling short – you may want to reallocate any remaining budget to the digital side for continued traction.

“Many companies miss this step,” said Woodall. “They send their campaign out into the world, then watch their sales results to measure its success. There are a variety of ways to track results and measure success – not merely by watching one’s bottom line. “

Prepare for the Harvest: Another often overlooked step many companies miss is to communicate the upcoming campaign to its employees. It’s SO IMPORTANT to share your marketing direction with the folks in the trenches.

“An internal campaign rollout is a great way to get team members excited and to encourage them to reinforce that same messaging to customers,” suggests Woodall. “Try to practice patience. The results won’t always be immediate. However, if your marketing campaign is truly successful, your employees will be better prepared for a bountiful harvest of happy customers. Not to mention the fact that your product or service had better live up to the hype, or that new customer you just worked so hard to earn might not return in the future.”

Begin Planning for Next Year’s Planting Season:  Once your campaign has hit the market and you’ve begun to reap the rewards of your hard work, it’s not time to rest on your laurels. It’s time to start projecting and laying the groundwork for NEXT YEAR’S marketing campaign.

“Take a look at your tracking to assess what worked and what didn’t,” said Woodall. “If everything worked, pat yourself on the back and determine what had the strongest impact on your campaign’s success: mode of delivery, audience identification, the message itself or a combination of all of the above. If some elements were stronger than others, start considering ways to make the weaker elements stronger the next go-around for even BETTER results next year.”

Woodall Creative Group is a trusted resource for marketing managers and company leaders throughout the Southeast seeking a creative partner to share their company’s unique brand story with the world. If you need help planning for a harvest of your own, contact the team at Woodall Creative Group at 706-658-0244, info@woodallcreative.com or via our convenient online contact form. To learn more about what we do and sneak a peek inside our extensive portfolio, visit www.woodallc.wpengine.com.