Tag: Customers

Attract Your Target Fanbase: Use These 7 Summer Marketing Lessons

July 19, 2024

Is your summer marketing campaign fully primed to take advantage of the season? If you’re located in the Midwest or a similar climate, then you know about the power of seasons. But it may mean taking additional measures to entice your target audience before fall arrives.

1. Warm Weather Events Make Excellent Branding Opportunities

The first step in a marketer’s summer campaign should be to prepare themed merchandise to coincide with seasonal events. In many parts of the country, the number of in-person gatherings spikes exponentially in June, and so do opportunities for capitalizing on concerts, parades, street parties, water activities, and outdoor sporting events.

2. Branded, Outdoor-Themed Giveaways Are Simple and Effective

Your business doesn’t have to align specifically with a branded product to use it to your advantage. You might be surprised at the number of low-cost goods that can carry your company name, convey a good time, and help create lasting memories. Just a few examples of summer-themed marketing merchandise HYPTE could hook you up with include:

  • SPF lip balm
  • Wide-brimmed hats
  • Summer apparel
  • Refreshing beverages
  • Hand-held fans
  • Water bottles
  • Bottle openers

Want to boost your ROI? Use co-branded items with the world’s most popular logos on them.

3. Where Will Your Target Audience Be This Summer?

Not everyone experiences summer the same way. Smart brands give people more ways to celebrate and enjoy life wherever they are. Spotify knew this last year when they launched their “bummer summer” campaign, aiming playlists of moody tunes at Gen Zers.

As always, keep your target market in mind. Spotify’s campaign captured the essence of a specific generation tied to a desirable audience. It wasn’t just the catchy name that helped boost their strategy, but the fact that music accompanies young people everywhere they go – especially in warm weather months.

4. Summertime Consumers Want to Be Entertained & Engaged

Look for opportunities to incorporate interactive tactics. One significant branding trend has been through experiential marketing, creating an experience that makes people want to know more about your brand. In a LEGO store, this might translate to a workshop setting that allows customers to build their own LEGO creations. Retail brands in particular are rethinking floor designs that involve customers instead of simply advertising to them. If there’s a way you can incorporate an engaging outdoor display – even better.

5. Create Virtual Summer Experiences Through Social Media

Not every company has a storefront. If not, those experiences you’re creating may need to take place virtually, and social media will play a vital role in making that happen. Encouraging people to share live experiences as “stories” on Instagram or Facebook is more fun for consumers than telling them what to buy.

Additionally, no matter where a campaign takes place, there are ways to weave it into your social media calendar. As always, show, don’t tell. Displaying your Insta or Twitter handle alongside a branded hashtag to coincide with an event will get people to spread the word.

6. Get Out and Leverage Local Business Partnerships

What makes your business unique? Find local businesses that want to promote one another mutually by sharing leads. There are hundreds of professional networking groups in any large city with meet-and-greets in full force this time of year. If you’re not taking advantage of all that networking energy, you’re missing out on potential business leads.

7. Include Lasting Barcodes or Tags for Affiliate Partners

Once you’ve established some helpful business relationships to leverage during your campaign, be sure to implement tools that will boost those ties. For example, long-lasting barcodes or pixel tags for your affiliate partners is a simple but effective way to build on your successes. These types of tools are becoming fairly ubiquitous in society, even among older consumers. Set them up so that referrals will be active for long periods of time to make these two-way relationships worthwhile.

HYPTE Branded Solutions Creates Cool Summer Merchandise + Fun Business Experiences

If anything has a vibe, it’s summer. The digital marketing experts at HYPTE Branded Solutions will help you inject the right vibe into your summer marketing campaign, whether through targeted events, e-commerce channels, social media, or something else entirely.

Contact HYPTE for help at any stage of your marketing campaign. Call us at 708-343-9730 today to get started!

5 Ways to Make a Lasting Impression with Your Customers

June 18, 2024

If making a positive lasting impression with customers feels elusive, it’s probably time to focus your efforts somewhere else. There are efficient ways to make good impressions at every stage of the business cycle, but it can be challenging to recognize these opportunities and then act to take advantage of them.

Sometimes it’s easy to spot a specific moment that can be tied to an engaging event and put your name in front of a whole new audience of prospective customers. For all the moments in between, keep in mind five rules of thumb that can help shine a better light on a struggling brand.

1. Show Customers You Learn From Your Mistakes

It has been said that people remember how others make them feel much longer than they remember what was said to them. Apply that philosophy to your brand’s behavior and you will master at least part of your game – and retain loyal customers. Everyone makes mistakes. So do companies. What customers don’t forgive is a brand that refuses to learn or improve.

There are plenty of real-world cautionary tales of avoidable branding missteps that can serve as teachable moments for the rest of us. Unnecessary brand reinventions. Tone deaf attempts at advertising. Remember Juicero’s failed foray into juice-squeezing technology? It could have been walked back had the company recognized its error. Instead of digging your heels in when times get tough, show potential and current customers that you get it and are willing to evolve when the chance presents itself.

2. Get Professional Help from a Marketing Expert

One common mistake that businesses with limited resources make is trying to do all of their marketing and advertising under one roof. They overlook the power of outsourcing in today’s world, not realizing that handing over these time-consuming tasks frees up hours they can use to expand on what they already do well.

A whole range of solutions can help create and maintain the impression you want, which is why more companies are employing the services of a qualified branding professional to fill in the gaps. When you partner with HYPTE, you get more than marketing assistance. You outsource a range of tasks to experts that would otherwise become major distractions:

  • Branding Services
  • Marketing
  • Consulting
  • Merchandise Development
  • Warehouse Fulfillment
  • Logo Design
  • Logistics

3. Use Branded Merchandise and Experiences More Creatively

Hoping to save money, companies will often select cheap product manufacturers to produce caps, totes, and other branded merchandise, unaware of what they want and need. The problem is that expectations have risen in this area. Savvy consumers can tell when businesses cut corners by ordering cheap T-shirts, useless trinkets and other substandard products.

An experienced branding expert knows which methods can help businesses outshine the competition. Combining humor, a multilayered approach, and unique, memorable ideas is one way to accomplish that. Take a look at how HYPTE used branded motorized scooters and leveraged its relationships with the media to promote Coors Light during one campaign. It’s that level of professional creativity that companies need to strive for if they want their campaigns to make a splash instead of a whimper.

4. Improve Your Customer Service: Be a Leader

As much as customers want to be heard, they appreciate and need leadership – more than you might think. According to one analysis reported in the Wall Street Journal, the vast majority of shoppers preferred customer service reps who were “outspoken and opinionated,” qualities that the same study showed are almost always overlooked during the hiring process. You are the expert in what you offer, and your target audience needs to see that as well.

5. Consult with HYPTE About Better Marketing Solutions for Your Brand

Cool new swag can often be a fun, cost-effective way to stay top of mind. But at HYPTE Branded Solutions, we recognize that a lot more goes into discerning what your needs are and what combination of methods are a match for your long-term goals. That’s why each project starts with a thorough consultation to find out as much as we can about each specific client.

Contact HYPTE online for more information about what we offer, or talk to a branding specialist at 708-343-9730 today to find out how your future campaigns can leave the impression you’ve always wanted for your brand.

The Unique Power of Experiential Brands

May 15, 2024

When it comes to experiential brand marketing, engagement is the name of the game. That’s why all kinds of brands today are discovering the power of events and other popular, interactive ways to get noticed.

Businesses Celebrating Their Brands

Certain brands have enough cache that it feels like an event when a new product or generation of one is announced. But the truth is, anytime people are using a space connected to a particular brand they’re having an experience, whether they’re interacting with the Geek Squad at a Best Buy, testing products at Apples stores, or working virtually from a Starbucks. Any fun event combined with the announcement of a new service or store location will get your fans involved in a more emotional way than, say, a typical TV ad or email.

The Power of Experience in Marketing

In reality, experiential marketing isn’t exactly new. It’s just that brands are becoming much savvier about how they can immerse potential consumers in a way that can have a huge impact on business. However, while the data on experiential marketing show a higher success rate than other approaches, not every experience is guaranteed to deliver a desirable outcome. Businesses can boost their odds by using the services of a qualified branding professional to create experiential campaigns that are most likely to succeed.

Creative Events That Leave a Positive Impression with Customers

At this point, marketers commonly incorporate some form of experiential advertising in their campaigns. What’s changing is the variety of paths that businesses take to ensure they leave an impression. Some effective ways you can create interactive branded experiences include:

  1. Celebrating milestones big and small
  2. Conducting online workshops and events
  3. Hosting contests and flash sales on social media
  4. Handing out swag at events and festivals
  5. Doing demos in public spaces
  6. Offering samples at local stores
  7. Taking advantage of special days from Earth Day to the Fourth

Keep in mind: the power of these types of experiences will lie in the small moments that leave lasting, positive associations with your name and your key messages.

A Presence in Public Spaces

Where is your target audience? Brands ranging from dating apps to branches of the military find ways to set up shop on university campuses to drive awareness. And there’s a reason for this. According to the website G2, 91% of consumers would be “more inclined to purchase a brand’s product or service after participating in a brand activation or experience.” Many respondents also reported feeling “more loyal” to brands once they’ve participated in something, which says a lot about the power of getting potential consumers more involved in any way you can.

How Experiential Branding Expert HYPTE Creates Success for Clients

There is a wide gap between events that create a splash and those that don’t. This is why HYPTE Branded Solutions has had the fortune of providing solutions for a roster of impressive brand names. Our team understands that words like “branding” and “experience” can be abstract when it comes to making real-world plans. For a bit more clarity, check out some examples of the highly creative and interactive approach to branding we have achieved for clients in the past:

  1. Creating ingenious bottle openers for Dos Equis that enticed customers at bars
  2. Helping BBC America rebrand a new show in a fun and engaging way
  3. Generating buzz through motorized “cooler scooters” for Coors Light
  4. Creating a variety of swag used at a Los Angeles Dodgers fan convention
  5. Producing tents, table covers, flags and custom changing tables for a Pampers event

Talk to the Specialists at HYPTE for the Best Experiential Marketing Solutions

As you can see, there’s no one way to be experiential. It requires a combination of processes to create the kinds of experiences that will match your messaging. At HYPTE Branded Solutions, we start by getting to know you, the client, and diving into your needs and business goals. Then we think outside of the box to produce highly innovative ideas that will tap into whatever it takes to create new fans. Contact HYPTE online, or talk to a branding specialist at 708-343-9730 about the best ways to start creating experiential branding today.