Gift-giving season is here... But this year, with safety on everyone’s mind and technology readily available, eCommerce is more relevant than ever.  

The competition is fierce out there. And every level of the sales funnel is important to get right. 

But let’s take it from the top. The top of the funnel, that is.  

Here are three ToFu strategies to try for this season and the year ahead.  

As we move into a new decade, marketers are turning to tech more than ever. Notably, marketers are investing in CRM, automation and data. CRM has become a given, as 100% of high-growth companies use some sort of customer relationship management tool. And automation is on track to become just as ubiquitous, with 98% usage.

People-Based MarTech relies on people-based targeting, replacing the need for and far exceeding the power of cookie-based data. Brands unlock a singular view of consumers, one that anchors all of the data discussed to a single email address.

From email marketing to automation, data analytics and innovative uses of artificial intelligence, marketing technologies are helping brands become stronger by engaging and communicating with their target audience on a whole new level.

According to an Econsultancy and Adobe survey of client-side marketers worldwide, 65% of respondents said improving their data analysis is a very important factor in delivering a better customer experience. That was the most popular answer for the second year in a row, up from 63% in 2017.

With the growing number of messages people receive today — online and offline — the importance of delivering a message that resonates with the user has never been more important. Creating a personalized message that creates a connection is critical, and with the increasing amount of data available to marketers, personalization options have only expanded. Personalization needs to be incorporated into all marketing, shopping and service experiences. In many of his presentations on personalization, J&C's CEO Ron Jacobs has referenced the 4 R’s of personalization from Accenture and discussed how they are key ingredients in connecting with prospects and customers. This blog explores these 4 key components of personalization and how you can use them to better connect with your customers.

That’s a wrap! Season one of the J&See: Views on Marketing podcast has officially come to close. Since its inception in May, the podcast has grown into something bigger than we could have imagined. The goal was to get listeners to see how everyone is a marketer in some way or another. To do this, we searched for experts across all industries to show how companies and individuals employ very different — and useful — marketing strategies. Take a look at our season one line-up below — and subscribe so you're one of the first to hear season two. 

Often times companies — especially start-ups — compete in a crowded space with competitors who have similar messaging, services or products. They end up trying to outspend the competition in the wrong places. But you can set your business apart when you know what you're doing. How? SEO, or search engine optimization. SEO is about knowing what your customers are searching for and connecting them with your goods or services.  

In this episode of J&See: Views on Marketing, Meg Goodman speaks with Grant Simmons, a digital marketing expert who specializes in SEO. Grant and Meg break down what exactly SEO is, how it differs from SEM and how companies can take advantage of these each to drive meaningful traffic to their sites. Read on for a few helpful takeaways from his interview. And make sure to subscribe to J&See: Views on Marketing to hear a conversation about marketing like this once a month.

As we head into a new decade, we look back on how marketing has become more digital and more difficult to navigate than ever before. As words like “artificial intelligence” and “big data” enter the conversation, it can be hard to know how these concepts fit into your own marketing strategy. Lucky for us, we have Danny Flamberg, a marketing consultant who specializes in leading businesses into the new, digital age. His book, Dancing Through the Digital Revolution: A Marketing Playbook, serves as a guide for marketers looking to take advantage of the digital marketing wave. In this episode of J&See: Views on Marketing, Meg Goodman talks to Danny about the balance of personalization versus privacy, how data is more than a magic word and the impact of AI on our future. Read on for a few excerpts from their insightful conversation. And of course, make sure to subscribe to J&See: Views on Marketing to hear a compelling interview like this once a month.

Data is at the core of everything Jacobs & Clevenger does. All campaigns, each piece of marketing collateral and every word the agency uses in its messaging is carefully crafted to promote consumer engagement that can be tied back to real business outcomes.