DIGITAL MARKETING BLOG 

In my time creating content for our clients, I have spent far too many hours staring at blank screens. It’s an incredibly discouraging feeling, and sometimes you just wish the screen would put words on itself. After years of battling writer's block, I developed a 4-step system that would help me get my ideas flowing.

So your company is growing and you’re thinking about enlisting the help of a marketing agency to accelerate this growth. But there are endless types of marketing - and therefore agencies - and it can be hard to know which path to pursue. Do you go with a firm that specializes in traditional marketing, or one that has more expertise in digital marketing? And before deciding that, do you really know which type of marketing will serve your particular business and ideal personas best?

It’s not hard to see why the most successful businesses also tend to have the most thriving company cultures and internal alignment among team members. If a workplace is harmonious, it’s only natural that it will fuel stronger relationships, more collaboration, and more wins. But if this isn’t the case within the walls of your business, you might be running into the age-old sales vs. marketing showdown.

We had a blast at the International Health, Racquet & Sportsclub Association (IHRSA) annual conference in sunny San Diego, CA. Jay partnered with Meredith DeAngelis, CMO of the Village Health Clubs & Spas, to speak about how worked together to drive new memberships, increase sales and deliver a strong ROI of almost 1,400 percent.

Oh, ROI. How many times have you been in a meeting, excitedly sharing your ideas for your company’s next campaign - just to hear your CEO say, “what’s the return on marketing investment here?” This is a very important metric to track, but can be difficult to determine how to track it correctly. Measuring ROI is not always a cut and dried process. It can take many forms, vary in accuracy and be a bit of a pain to figure out. But, it is nonetheless a crucial part of every smart and strategic marketing department.

There’s been a lot of talk in recent years about better aligning sales and marketing teams in order to get better overall results. But even though the recurrence of this conversation has been a giant step in the right direction, HubSpot recently found that fewer than half of marketers would describe their companies' sales and marketing teams as "generally aligned."

Maybe you have a strong social media strategy in place and have used it as a tool to capture more leads. Or maybe you’ve been beating the drum about social media to the rest of your executive team, only to be told you can’t get the resources you need to effectively manage and improve your digital presence. Either way, you might be thinking there’s more untapped opportunity in the social landscape. Can you really use social media for business growth? Is it possible that pursuing this the right way could actually increase revenue?

We wanted a better understanding of how long it takes health clubs to respond to new member leads, so we decided to do a little secret shopping and conduct our own research. We reached out to over 500 health clubs across the U.S. as an interested prospective member and tracked how long it took to receive a response. The results were shocking. Check out our infographic below with the data.

As a company, we place a huge emphasis on our Values. And not just talking about them and making a pretty graphic, but actually living by them and even being rated on them during performance reviews. We take them very seriously, even though we often can be a pretty silly bunch. We don’t just act on our values in the office, we take them out of the office as well. When it comes to “Bring Solutions, Not Problems,” we work to be a part of the solution. For us that means as a company, we volunteer at least once per quarter.

After reading through the recent Google research that covers digital insights and trends from 2018, I shared with our team sparking a lively discussion about how these could be used. We decided to pull out a few of these consumer trends and buyer insights that might matter most to us and you, our clients.