Next-Mark Shines at Suncoast Advertising Awards

The Sarasota-based marketing and communications agency earns a company record of 13 awards for creative excellence.

Next-Mark, a full-service marketing and communications agency serving clients in Florida and nationwide, announces it earned a company record of 13 ADDY® Awards at the Advertising Federation’s annual competition hosted by AdFed, the Florida Suncoast’s regional AAF club.

The awards span multiple categories that directly impacted the success of Next-Mark’s clients. Clients for whom Next-Mark won awards include: St. Armands Circle Business Improvement District, Sweet Sparkman Architecture and Interiors, CMX CinéBistro, Elsevier, The Met Sarasota, and Next-Mark’s own marketing. Categories of excellence included integrated marketing campaigns, video, ambient media, branded content, and digital media, among others.

Specific work recognized included the CMX CinéBistro Coastland theater launch in Naples, St. Armands’ “Sol of the Circle” event series, The Met Sarasota LookBook, the Sweet Sparkman Architecture and Interiors website along with three architectural videos, an Elsevier tradeshow design, and Next-Mark’s capabilities LookBook.

“We are committed to delivering impactful creative content driven by a strategic business approach across client categories” said Next-Mark president and founder, Joseph S. Grano, Jr. “To be recognized by our peers is a testament to our results-driven process, as well as the commitment of our team in delivering exceptional work on behalf of our clients.

About Next-Mark
Next-Mark, LLC is a full-service, award-winning marketing communications agency based in Sarasota, FL. It helps business leaders beat their growth targets by delivering better competitive insights, more powerful branding, stronger strategies and faster results. Breaking away from the constraints of traditional marketing service organizations, the Next-Mark team facilitates new conversations about a client’s brand, integrating experience, analytics and innovation in developing strategic marketing solutions to meet clients’ individual needs. Next-Mark focuses on internationally and nationally recognized brands along with growing companies across a broad spectrum of categories, including healthcare, technology, hospitality and entertainment, technology, tourism, retail, destination, real estate, environmental, marine products and tourism. With clients from Beverly Hills to Amsterdam, its roster includes industry leaders such as Comcast/NBC, LexisNexis, Elsevier, Neuroflow, Nuance Communications, CMX/Cinebistro, Medecision, CGI, California Pizza Kitchen, along with Florida-based clients including The City of Sarasota, St. Armands Circle, Sweet Sparkman Architecture and Interiors, Sun Protection of Florida, Yarnall Moving and Storage, CitySide Apartments, and The Met Sarasota among others. For more information, visit its website at www.next-mark.com.

Ever Considered Podcasting as Part of Your Digital Marketing Strategy?

by Travis Cornwell

Have you thought tirelessly about how to enhance your digital marketing efforts? Ever consider launching a podcast? A podcast can provide your business with a tremendous amount of upside potential. When done properly expect not only a great ROI but an increase in your brands’ awareness and additional traffic to your website.

Starting a podcast can be challenging, but it deserves a place in your digital marketing strategy. First, consider what you will need to get started. Whether that be equipment, booking guests, planning out the content, or writing the scripts; you should know what your budget is and go from there. Once those are established, just go for it and have some fun along the way.

Measuring Growth

When you have successfully launched your podcast keep in mind that it will take time to see results. The three biggest ways to measure the success of your podcast can be the number of subscribers, the number of listens/downloads, and social media engagement (shares, comments, likes, etc.)

Driving Traffic to Your Website

Podcasts are a searchable form of content. Implementing them into your SEO strategy offers your clients a new and exciting form of content other than just a blog post. When your customers see a podcast link, hopefully, they will subscribe. Launching a podcast can help support your current SEO strategy and then help it skyrocket. The more website traffic you attract, the more Google takes notice and helps your algorithm overall. As you build an audience and attract more website traffic, you’ll soon turn those visitors into paying customers.

Building Your Brand

Sharing your podcasts on multiple channels allows you to build up your brand awareness. The more often people see your company name online, the better. With every episode they listen to, they pique more interest in your brand. Which builds loyalty and trust for your consumers.

Consistency is Key

Make sure you stick to a plan and be consistent with the process. Regular content provides a way to keep people connected with your brand. If you are consistent, over time you will build more awareness around your brand. Which will, in turn, result in more profit. Make sure you continue to measure your growth and make changes if necessary. If it’s not broken though, don’t fix it. As you make more and more episodes, compare and contrast your website traffic before the launch and after. An audience that regularly listens to your show will continue to come back to your website. This leads to increased revenue overall.

Three Predicted Marketing Trends for 2022

by Kristen Lundy

The best marketers always look to the future. Since consumers’ preferences constantly evolve, marketing professionals have to anticipate what’s next. Each year brings its own set of challenges that marketing plans must adapt to. It’s no secret that these past couple of years have changed the dynamics of the industry. Understanding future marketing trends and how they shape strategies is crucial for a company’s success. Next-Mark team members believe in staying ahead of the curve to remain competitive. We always ask ourselves “what’s next?”—which is why we put together some marketing practices that we believe will trend in 2022.

Hybrid events

Despite obstacles presented with the pandemic, live events are back and better than ever. However, some individuals aren’t ready to get back into crowds, whether that be due to health concerns or travel restrictions. The solution to those who want to experience an event without having to actually attend one in person is hybrid events. A hybrid event combines both an in-person experience with virtual elements. Additionally, hybrid events allow people to attend from anywhere, which ensures the audience can participate in activities while working within their comfort zone.

With these notions in mind, we believe there will be a growth of hybrid events, as they offer many benefits for an organization. According to Brella, some of the benefits of organizing a hybrid event include increased reach and attendance, higher audience engagement, more sponsor opportunities, and reduced costs. In addition, a hybrid event allows for the capture of more content throughout the event, which will aid in content creation and implementation for months post-event.

Adapting content for shorter attention spans

Due to the contemporary digital era, content marketers find it harder and harder to have the full attention of consumers. Individuals are surrounded by screens almost every minute of the day. In fact, the average American spends about 7 hours and 11 minutes looking at a screen every day, according to data from DataReportal. With social media and digital news, there is hardly a time throughout the day that we aren’t enticed to look at a screen. HubSpot states that the attention span of the average individual has fallen to just 8 seconds. Additionally, more than 59% of people share Twitter articles without reading them in full, and more than half of page views last less than a minute.

What does all of this mean for marketers? It’s simple. We have to adapt our content to this reality when developing content marketing strategies. A few ways you can achieve this is by creating quality and visual content, investing in thought leadership and meeting readers’ attention spans half way by using headers or summarizing long pieces of content. By using even a few of these elements you will be able to grab the attention of your consumers, get your point across and make an impression to your targeted audience.

Personalization becoming more prominent

Through a variety of mediums, we are flooded with all sorts of information. Whether it be through social media, billboards, TV commercials or emails, brands compete for our attention. Due to this (sometimes) overwhelming circumstance, individuals tend to tune a lot of it out. This means that creating impersonal content when trying to reach your target audience most likely won’t end with consumer engagement. Using personalized content allows your audience to feel a deeper connection to your brand.

According to PieSync, marketing personalization means interacting with your audience and customers in a way that feels personal and human, taking into consideration their interests and preferences. The average customer wants to have a personalized experience. In fact, research conducted by Salesforce found that 58% of respondents view personalization as very important when engaging with a company. Creating a personalization strategy can include personalized ads, custom email campaigns and tailored content. By utilizing personalization in a marketing strategy, companies have proven to increase conversions and customer retention.

With 2021 coming to a close and 2022 right around the corner, it’s important that we, as marketers, anticipate fundamental changes in the way we do our job. Over the next year, we are ready to learn and adapt to this ever changing industry. Our evolving techniques help take our clients’ success to the next level. At Next-Mark, we will never stop perfecting our practice and looking to the future. If you’re looking for an agency that will take your marketing plan to the next level, engage with us today. We’re ready for what’s next. Are you?

In Conversation Series with Joseph Grano

Over the next few months, we will focus on insights from our team members. We kick off this series with Next-Mark President and Founder Joseph Grano. Joe dishes on what makes him tick, offers some advice for success in business and discusses the importance of trusting your gut.

What are some lessons learned after 16 years in business?

The single biggest lesson I’ve learned is to stick to your core competencies, the things you do well. Sometimes, especially when yours is a new business, you’re tempted to take on projects you’re not ready for or that fall outside your current level of expertise. I think that’s how a lot of businesses get lost in the weeds – trying to be all things to all people. It doesn’t work that way. You have to be ready when you say “yes” to something. 

Once you understand your core competencies, another big lesson is to seek out clients that align with them. For me, I have an MBA that helped foster a more strategic approach to marketing. I seek out clients that are willing to be strategic and go on a longer journey with us. While I am confident we’ve done exceptional work for all our clients over the years, the best work we’ve done is with clients that have a longer view for their company and value the arc of a business relationship. A good campaign is about more than picking out colors and having strong creative components; it’s about telling a bigger story and aligning with the strategic direction of the business.

What do you think has helped set Next-Mark apart from other firms?

First, we’re very agile. We don’t have a monolithic organization weighed down by unnecessary systems and protocols that can bog down processes, as is the case in some corporate cultures. This enables us to have a short turnaround time for our deliverables, with the time spent actually doing the work. Something else that sets us apart as that we stay engaged with our clients at all levels and through all stages of the relationship. I’m personally in the trenches every single day with our clients, and I expect the same of our team. When clients see that the owner is involved in the day-to-day operation of a service partner, it sets the tone for accountability.

You mentioned accountability and agility. Are these things you look for when building a team, as well?

The single most important trait I look for is kindness. I don’t care how much talent someone has if they aren’t a genuinely kind person. But accountability and agility are definitely two requisite components of the collaborative approach we take here. We want employees who know how to function as part of a team and work collaboratively with each other and with clients. At Next-Mark, we check our egos at the door and truly listen to client feedback and direction. It’s also important that people love what they do and eager to see what each working day brings. That all lends to flexibility of thought that, in my experience, elevates our work to a sum greater than its parts. It’s about finding the right balance of humor, hustle and heart.

What concerns you most in business today?

In today’s digital age, people are allowed the emotional distance to feel comfortable in detaching themselves from others, which in turns makes it acceptable to ghost them. Although we hear about ghosting a lot in social media, I’ve seen it in business, as well. One day, you’re engaged with a client or prospect and the next day they’ve stopped answering calls or emails with no explanation. Business is still very much about relationships, and burning bridges is never a great way to operate. I completely believe there is a beginning, middle and end in all business relationships and true professionals understand where they are in that lifecycle. It’s always hard when relationships end, but it is critical to be transparent, honest and accountable.

As the industry and world continue to trend digitally, what comes next in Marketing?

The digital ecosystem of marketing has forced agencies to keep their eyes just over the horizon. We need to always be looking six months to a year or more out to make sure we’re prepared for change. I think the internet age has taught us that things can change remarkably fast with no warning, and it can feel sometimes like what you do today is obsolete tomorrow. So, one of the things we’ve tried to do is diversify. As a company, strategic marketing communications and public relations has been a powerful and productive niche, but now we have added another dimension to our business becoming a Certified Salesforce Partner creating new and innovative opportunities to better serve our clients.

What do you love about the work?

Honestly, my Instagram profile says it best: “I am a steward of creativity and a purveyor of ideas.” I love the creative process, especially when it’s part of a business strategy. I’m energized when we’re all in the room together brainstorming ideas for campaigns. I am a pathologically positive person; I can always find a silver lining. This industry is as much an emotional fit for me as it is a practical one—I genuinely love what I do and am excited about coming into work every day.

In high school, I had this history teacher that had a story for every lesson he taught. It didn’t matter what time period the historical event happened in, he always had an anecdote for the class. While students with other teachers were failing each exam, his students aced the class with ease. This is because the stories he told committed each historical concept to his students’ memories.

Never underestimate the power of a good story. Since the dawn of humanity, people have told stories as a way to connect and remember details of our past, present and future. Being told a story, rather than just a fact or statistic, allows the individual to step into a world that isn’t their own. It permits them to see life from fresh perspectives.

Storytelling is all around us in our everyday lives. Whether we notice it or not, we tell stories every day to convey the happenings of the world around us. Stories trigger dopamine and oxytocin within the brain, evoking emotion from the individual and helping them remember the message. According to Jerome Bruner, a Cognitive Psychologist, facts wrapped in stories are 22x more memorable.

Now that we know the how unforgettable stories can be, what subject did my high school teacher teach again?

Today, storytelling has evolved into one of the main tactics for most brands’ content marketing strategies. If executed correctly, it allows a company to present its brand in a lively and genuine way. Storytelling lets your targeted audience form an emotional connection with your brand, whether that be by making them laugh, cry, grin, etc.

As easy as telling a story sounds, there has to be a sound method set in place before you launch your storytelling campaign. Lucky for you, our marketing experts at Next-Mark put together a few tips on how to seamlessly incorporate storytelling into your company’s marketing approach.

Be authentic

When conveying a story, you want to avoid it sounding like a sales pitch. By telling your story in a genuine way with creative elements, you not only gain the attention of your targeted audience, but you also gain their trust. Moreover, the story you tell has to be fact based. You want to provide your readers real evidence about your brand, but in an interesting way that provides them a deeper understanding.

Evoke emotion

You want your consumers to feel something from the story you’re telling. They should be inspired by your brand and what you have to offer. An excellent way to tell a compelling story is to make your customer the main character, where your brand is the resolution to their conflict. This notion enhances the customer’s impression of using your goods or services, creating an impact on the long-term reputation of your brand.

Include a call-to-action

A call-to-action (CTA) is the next step you want your audience to take after receiving your story. Your desired CTA is probably the most crucial aspect of storytelling, as it determines how you want the story to end. The CTA should be subtle but also give the consumer direction to the next step of your customer journey.

Tell your story through the right channel

A story can be told through a variety of mediums, such as print, film, social media, etc. By tailoring your narrative to the appropriate medium, you will ensure you’re getting the desired reaction from your targeted audience.

At Next-Mark, we believe in the power of storytelling. We help our clients create dynamic storytelling campaigns, to increase their brand engagement and conversion rate. Let us help your brand captivate its targeted audience through the magic of storytelling. We would love to help! Engage with us here.