• Your Media Measurement is Broken – Here’s How Matter Can Help

    Your Media Measurement is Broken – Here’s How Matter Can Help

    If you’re noticing that B2B buyer behavior is becoming harder to keep up with, you’re not alone. Buyers are under pressure to move fast, but they also can’t afford to make the wrong call. Reports from G2, Gartner, TrustRadius, 6sense, and McKinsey all highlight the same trend: B2B buyers want safe choices they can feel confident about, tools that help align their teams and buying experiences that don’t slow them down.

    Here’s a breakdown of the latest shifts in buyer behavior and what marketers can do to make it easier for buyers to say yes.

    Tired of guessing whether your marketing budget is actually working? Does your board ask for deeper insights than what the monthly click-through rate is? If you’re starting to think you need better answers, you’re not wrong. Basic reporting metrics like clicks and impressions are no longer cutting it. They don’t tell you what’s working, what’s not, or where to go from here.

    In a fragmented, privacy-first digital world, businesses and marketers need measurement strategies that deliver actual insight, not just surface-level stats.

    At Matter Communications, we’re focused on more than just proving ROI. We’re here to help you advertise strategically, adapt more efficiently, and scale sustainably. Here’s how we approach media measurement that drives meaningful results:

    Define Success with Strategic Clarity

    1. Establish clear objectives (growth, awareness, conversions, efficiency)
    2. Collaborate across teams (marketing, media, product, strategy) to deliver on shared goals
    3. Build a measurement framework that’s actionable

    Why?

    When clients and agencies align on clear goals, measurement and strategy become tools for growth, not just boxes to check. Before you start measuring, make sure everyone agrees on what success actually looks like.

    Build for Scale and Adaptability

    1. Use third-party solutions for efficient implementation and added capabilities
    2. Enable “real-time” reporting for campaign optimization
    3. Create customizable dashboards deliver a fuller picture and empower clients with insights

    Why?

    Measurement should be accurate and actionable. Our tech stack is built on tools like Looker Studio, Supermetrics, Google Meridian and more, that help teams evaluate performance and effectively optimize their programs.

    Prioritize Data Quality and Integration

    1. Automate data integration across platforms to reduce errors and fragmentation
    2. Implement data governance for consistent naming conventions, formatting and more accurate reporting
    3. Conduct regular audits to catch discrepancies early

    Why?

    Flawed data leads to flawed decisions – and wasted budget. Clean, integrated data builds trust with clients by providing clear narratives and better outcomes.

    Adopt a Layered Measurement Framework

    1. Recognize that there is no single source of truth – and that’s okay
    2. Blend attribution models (multi-touch, time decay, last click) with a mix modeling (MMM) and incrementality testing
    3. Use brand lift studies to evaluate top-of-funnel efforts offered by media partners

    Why?

    No single attribution model tells the whole story. We use a layered framework to deliver a fuller picture while respecting privacy and platform limitations.

    Design for Incrementality, Not Correlation

    1. Use geo-testing, audience segmentation or test groups and conversion lift studies to prove true media impact
    2. Design campaigns with testing in mind from the start
    3. Focus on demonstrating causal impact, not just correlation

    Why?

    Vanity metrics can’t tell you what’s actually driving campaign lift. Incrementality testing can. It helps you build the story your stakeholders actually care about.

    TL; DR:

    Media measurement today demands more than counting clicks and impressions. At Matter, we help brands build media programs with strategic alignment, layered methodologies, and data quality from the start. We help you move beyond reporting to uncover what truly drives results, so you can spend your marketing dollars where they’ll deliver the biggest return. Ready to transform your media measurement and unlock the true impact of your marketing?

    Ready to transform your media measurement and unlock the true impact of your marketing? Let’s talk!

    Jordan Pinelli

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  • Changing Trends in the B2B Buyer Journey

    Changing Trends in the B2B Buyer Journey

    If you’re noticing that B2B buyer behavior is becoming harder to keep up with, you’re not alone. Buyers are under pressure to move fast, but they also can’t afford to make the wrong call. Reports from G2, Gartner, TrustRadius, 6sense, and McKinsey all highlight the same trend: B2B buyers want safe choices they can feel confident about, tools that help align their teams and buying experiences that don’t slow them down.

    Here’s a breakdown of the latest shifts in buyer behavior and what marketers can do to make it easier for buyers to say yes.

    What Buyers Want Now

    1. Awareness isn’t optional

    If buyers don’t know who you are, you’re not even in the running. TrustRadius reports that 78% of buyers only consider vendors they’re already aware of. For enterprise buyers, that number jumps to 86%. Awareness remains the unavoidable starting line. Without it, you won’t have the necessary foundation of trust buyers need before they’ll even consider your brand.

    2. Buyers want control but they also want clarity

    Gartner reports 75% of buyers prefer a rep-free experience. But when they go fully self-service, purchase regret skyrockets. Hybrid experiences (think self-guided demos backed by accessible support specialists) lead to better outcomes and higher quality deals.

    3. The buyer journey is messy and multidimensional

    With an average of 11 stakeholders involved in each B2B purchase, decisions rarely rest with a single advocate. The journey isn’t linear and buyers tend to revisit key stages multiple times as they make sure everyone on their team is caught up to speed. What they need now isn‘t a hard sell, it’s proof points, shareable resources and content that helps teams validate decisions and align internally.

    4. Search and peer voices are doing more of the heavy lifting

    TrustRadius reports that 93% of buyers start with search, and many prioritize peer reviews and community input over brand-owned channels. If your customers aren’t telling your story, your story isn’t reaching the buyers who need to hear it.

    5. AI isn’t just for show

    Buyers have come to expect the ROI benefits of AI, but you’re not going to sell them on it just because it’s cutting-edge tech. B2B buyers are looking to invest in AI functionality that’s tied to clear gains. Show them how AI helps them move faster, work smarter and deliver results, and over two thirds of buyers say they’ll pay more for it.

    What This Means for Marketing Teams

    1. Build for brand, demand and proof

    Brand building and demand generation aren’t separate strategies. They need to work together. Awareness and trust put you on the shortlist, but proof points get you across the finish line. Your campaigns need to build recognition and credibility while also delivering clear value buyers can see and demonstrate to their team.

    2. AI for Analysis, Humans for Connection

    AI should help you personalize messaging, analyze behavior and surface insights at scale. Let AI handle the data crunching so your team can focus on creative that actually connects with buyers.

    3. Plan for paths, not funnels

    Buyers aren’t moving neatly from awareness to consideration to purchase – they’re bouncing between education, validation, internal alignment and back again before making decisions. Build your content strategy to match the reality of how buyers move: make it modular, snackable, and easy to share across stakeholder teams. Bonus points for interactive tools that help buyers build internal business cases.

    4. Treat credibility like a channel

    Customer stories, reviews and community voices should live alongside your product pages and campaigns. Make it easy for buyers to find credible proof that helps them feel confident saying yes.

    The Bottom Line

    Buyer expectations have changed. The strategies that worked three years ago – linear funnels, volume-first content and treating brand and demand separately – aren’t built for today’s cautious, collaborative buyers who want clear, low-risk paths forward.

    They’re looking for safe choices, credible resources and proof that your solutions will deliver. By combining brand and demand, using AI with intention and prioritizing trust, you can meet buyers where they are and guide them through complex decisions.

    Need a partner to bring this strategy to life? Our team is here to help.

    Get in touch.

    Wyatt Craig

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  • Why SEO is Important to Public Relations (SEO for PR)

    Why SEO is Important to Public Relations (SEO for PR)

    SEO has been a well-established practice for many years, yet it remains a mystery even to those thoroughly steeped in the art and science of promotion. This is a problem because the absence of SEO can negatively impact otherwise well-thought-out sales strategies, marketing campaigns, and even brand positioning. With every day that passes, it becomes more and more important for public relations pros to understand the significance SEO carries in crafting a smart strategy.

    First, some basics.

    What is SEO?

    SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It is the practice of increasing content’s visibility with search engines (e.g. Google and Bing) through efforts like incorporating relevant keywords into content, writing descriptive metadata, tagging images, and much more.

    Why should marketers and PR pros care?

    Optimizing content for search engines increases visibility, thus increasing the number of people exposed to your messages – i.e. the most important thing we do.

    “Content”, by the way, is anything you’ve designed to be seen by your target audiences. Your website, your whitepapers, your press releases, your social media channels, your thought leadership articles, your webinars – everything that requires a description, be it a handful of tags or a boatload of text, will benefit from being optimized for search.

    If what you’re saying now is “But what does that actually get me in the end?”, consider key learnings like:

    When a question or need arises, our phones are far and away our most trusted resource, with 96% of people using a smartphone to get things done.

    To meet these needs, people are at least twice as likely to use search than other online or offline sources such as store visits or social media. Not only is search the most used resource, it’s the resource 87% of people turn to first. 

    think with Google, September 2016

    And if what you’re saying now is…

    “But I’m not an SEO expert. How am I supposed to help with any of this?”

    Here’s your answer:

    • Bulleted text. Breaking up text into bullets and numbers makes it easier to read. The longer your audience spends on your content (i.e. the better the user experience), the better it will rank in search results.
    • Keywords/keyphrases. At the start of any PR program, you should decide on the keywords, keyphrases and topics that are most relevant to your brand. Their relevancy is determined partly by how you want to describe your brand, partly by how your direct competitors describe themselves, and partly by the specific terms your target audiences are using when they search for the products and services you provide. Make sure your content thoroughly (but not obnoxiously) incorporates the terms you’ve deemed important to your positioning.
    • Links/backlinks. Search engines decide content’s value by the number of outside sites linking to it. If you want your content to perform better in search, make sure your various online properties, social channels and media friendlies link to it as much as possible.
    • Descriptive anchor text. Search engines pay attention to the specific text you use when you hyperlink to outside content. As always, they’re looking for keywords, so be descriptive. “Click here” is wrong. “Read our latest eBook, Why SEO is Important to PR, by Matter Communications” is right.
    • Image titles. Surprise! The file names of the images you use are important to SEO. Just like with anchor text, make sure the file names of the images you use online are descriptive and use hyphens, not underscores. “Why_SEO_is_Important_to_PR.jpg” is wrong, and for that matter, so is “pic for blog thing.jpg”. “Why-SEO-is-Important-to-PR.jpg” is right.
    • Social Media channels. Remember the rule about how everything that requires a description will benefit from SEO? Social profiles are no exception. Make sure they feature keywords and appropriate links, and keep your activity up so the channels steadily grow over time. Engagement, however, is absolutely paramount. The more people you have engaging with your content – liking, sharing, commenting – the farther your content spreads, and the more links you have telling search engines that your content is valuable.

    As you can see, there are a lot of little things we can all do to positively influence the visibility of the content we write, place and promote. You may now go forth, and optimize.

    If your curiosity is decidedly piqued, however, remember that some very knowledgeable, very talkative PR and SEO people are just an email away.

    How do PR and SEO work together?

    PR and SEO work together by creating high-quality, newsworthy content that naturally attracts backlinks from authoritative media outlets and industry publications, which signals credibility to search engines and improves organic rankings. PR efforts amplify content visibility through media placements, social engagement, and brand mentions, while SEO ensures that content is optimized with relevant keywords and technical elements so it can be easily discovered by target audiences searching for related topics.

    How can PR and SEO teams integrate for maximum impact?

    PR and SEO teams can integrate by using keyword research from the SEO team to inform media pitches and thought leadership content. PR teams should target topics that audiences are actively searching for while securing high-authority backlinks from media placements that boost search rankings. Additionally, PR amplifies SEO-optimized content through earned media coverage, social engagement, and brand mentions, creating a unified strategy where PR drives awareness and credibility while SEO capitalizes on that interest through organic search visibility.

    What’s a common misconception about SEO that PR teams often (incorrectly) assume?

    A common misconception PR teams often (incorrectly) assume is that acquiring a high quantity of backlinks from any source will automatically and instantly boost SEO rankings. You have to focus on those tier 1 (Forbes, FastCompany, Fortune) and tier 2 (niche publications- think like https://www.printweek.com/ for printing companies) to boost rankings, visibility, and domain authority. In addition PR links, natural links like directories, partner businesses, and blogs from other websites should be monitored and pursued (when appropriate) by your search team.

    Vanessa Boynton

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  • How to Identify Your Target Audience: Marketing Tools & Tips

    How to Identify Your Target Audience: Marketing Tools & Tips

    You can’t build your marketing strategy on guesswork. Whether you’re launching a new product or revamping your marketing strategy, knowing exactly who you’re talking to, what resonates with them, where they spend their time-consuming content and how they make buying decisions is imperative. 

    But let’s be real: marketing is expected to show results quickly and comprehensive market research or custom surveys can be expensive. Not every brand can invest years and spend $100k + on research projects. The good news? You don’t have to. There are smart, data-backed ways to zero in on your target audience using tools and tactics that are more accessible and just as effective when applied strategically giving you the opportunity to sale your research to balance your need for speed, depth and investment. 

    Here are some of the best tools and tactics to help pinpoint your target audience and craft a marketing strategy that will drive results. 

    1. Brandwatch: Social Listening at Scale

    • Discover trending topics among online chatter and news that would impact buying behavior before they hit mainstream  
    • Understand which social platforms your audience interacts with the most help to inform your paid and organic social strategy and where it is worth investing your marketing dollars  
    • Identify niche conversations and emerging themes online among your key stakeholders allowing you to tailor your campaign messaging to exactly what your audience is looking for 
    • Uncover demographic breakdowns of your target audience for smarter segmentation of your campaigns to ensure your message is getting in front of the right eyes 

    2. NetLine Audience Explorer: B2B Insights, On the House

    For B2B marketers, NetLine’s free Audience Explorer tool is a hidden gem. It allows you to dig into target audiences by job function, seniority, company size, industry, and region allowing you to better understand the behaviors of your specific audience. NetLine provides real intent data allowing you to fully build out your buyer personas and truly understand what they care about based on their latest content consumption habits.  From there, it gets even more useful: 

    • See what content formats your audience prefers 
    • Uncover trending research topics 
    • Align your content strategy with message themes they’re actively consuming 
    • Determine areas in the country your audience is most prominent in 

    3. Stakeholder Interviews: Get the 1st-Party Intel 

    Hearing directly from your customers and/or former prospects provides highly valuable nuances you can’t always get online. Talking to your audience in real-time gives texture to the data insights you obtain elsewhere, further bolstering your overall strategy. It is important to select key players from a variety of teams such as marketing, sales, customer service, operations and C-Suite in order to gather well-rounded insights. 

    • Identify core pain points and motivations 
    • Discover messaging nuances that resonate 
    • Pinpoint key opportunities or challenges from the people in the trenches 

    These conversations can shape everything from brand positioning to campaign strategy. 

    4. Job Postings: A Surprising Source of Insight 

    Think of job descriptions as mini roadmaps into your audience’s world. They reveal: 

    • Day-to-day responsibilities 
    • Skill sets and strengths 
    • Who the decision-makers are and what matters to them 
    • Potential gaps in their day-to-day responsibilities your product or solution can help fill 

    If your audience includes IT Directors or Marketing Managers, for example, their job listings can guide messaging that speaks directly to their goals and day-to-day tasks. 

    5. Industry Forums & Chat Groups: Where the Real Talk Happens 

    Spaces like Reddit threads, Slack groups, and Discord servers are full of organic, unfiltered discussion. Monitoring these spaces gives you: 

    • A window into ongoing challenges, questions, and frustrations 
    • Cues on tone, language, and community norms 
    • A sense of what topics are top of mind for your audience 
    • Unfiltered feedback on opportunities for growth and what matters the most to your audience 

    If your audience includes IT Directors or Marketing Managers, for example, their job listings can guide messaging that speaks directly to their goals and day-to-day tasks. 

    Flip your weaknesses into strengths
    byu/Torholic inmarketing

    These insights can help inform everything from thought leadership to ad copy, so you’re not just heard, you’re understood. 

    6. Surveys: DIY Doesn’t Mean Low Quality 

    Yes, full-scale survey panels can get pricey. But targeted stakeholder surveys (think: past clients, current customers, newsletter audiences) can still deliver high-value insights: 

    • What is the biggest problem they are looking for your product or service to solve? 
    • What pushed them to choose your product or service? 
    • What kind of content do they trust most? 

    Keep it short, focused, and value-driven to get the answers worth acting on. 

    7. CRM Data: What’s Already Working (or not) 

    You probably already have a goldmine of audience data sitting in your CRM that is unique to your exact audience. Take a peek under the hood and dig into: 

    • Identify themes in the types of organizations or job titles buying your solution to better inform campaign targeting 
    • Reveal which campaigns and content are consistently found in the buyer’s journey and should be prioritized in future content initiatives 
    • Identify which prospects may not be converting and decide if they may not be a fit for solution right now  

    Pair this with lead scoring or email engagement rates to learn which segments are moving and which need more nurturing in real-time. 

    8. De-Anonymizing Web Visitors: Turn Intent Into Action 

    There is no better way to identify your target audience than to see who is already organically researching your brand. Platforms like Apollo and Propensity can tell you who’s showing research intent and visiting your website, even before they fill out a form. That means: 

    • You can see which companies are checking you out 
    • Understand what pages they’re engaging with most 
    • Refine your outbound and content strategy accordingly 

    It’s a modern way to bring your audience out of the shadows and into the pipeline. 

    Final Thought: Strategy Over Single Tactics

    Audience insights don’t live in a silo, they fuel every smart, integrated marketing plan. From brand storytelling to media buying, knowing who you’re talking to is the first step in showing up the right way. The right mix of tools and tactics will lead to a smarter approach and allow you to thoughtfully apply findings quickly to your next marketing campaign. 

    Want help building a research-backed, insight-led strategy that actually moves the needle? Let’s talk.

    Melanie Orcutt

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  • Building a Strong Brand Strategy: The Key to Business Success

    Building a Strong Brand Strategy: The Key to Business Success

    A well-defined brand strategy is more than just a nice-to-have—it’s a fundamental element for everything your brand does. It communicates your brand’s mission, what makes it different, and why your buyers should care. We take brand strategy very seriously, using a research-heavy approach to uncover key insights and determine exactly what your customers are looking for or what is currently missing from the market to drive winning brand positioning strategies. Let’s dive into the seven critical components of a robust brand strategy and explore how each element contributes to your brand’s overall success.

     .1 Understanding Your Brand Identity

    The first step in building a brand strategy is determining who you are and want to be as a company. What purpose does your business serve? What are your values? These are the questions you need to determine to build the foundation of your brand strategy.

    Core Brand Purpose

    Your brand’s core purpose is its reason for existence beyond making a profit. It’s the driving force that inspires your team and resonates with your customers. By clearly defining this purpose and aligning it with your customers’ needs, you lay the foundation for a brand that truly matters. When your purpose speaks directly to what your audience cares about, it fosters a deep, emotional connection.

    Brand Values

    Your brand values are the guiding principles that define your brand’s character and decision-making. These values should reflect your brand’s personality and be evident in everything you do. Whether it’s integrity, innovation, or sustainability, your core values should resonate with your audience, building trust and loyalty over time.

    Brand Personality

    A distinct brand personality is crucial for creating a unique identity in the marketplace. This personality is the human side of your brand—how you “speak” and “behave” as an entity. By developing a brand character that your audience can relate to, you strengthen the bond between a customer and your brand. Having a distinct personality has become especially important in the digital age of artificial intelligence and automation.

    Brand Voice

    Your brand voice is how you communicate with your audience. It’s essential to establish a consistent tone and style that reflects your brand’s personality across all platforms. Whether your brand is formal and authoritative or casual and playful, maintaining consistency in your brand voice ensures that your communication always feels authentic and on-brand.

    2. Defining Your Target Audience

    Understanding who your audience is and what they are looking for is imperative to constructing a thoughtful brand strategy that will resonate with them. That is why leveraging insights provided directly from your key target audiences through surveys and real-time testing is key to determining if your messaging is the best fit.

    Deep Audience Understanding

    Understanding your target audience is a non-negotiable step in crafting an effective brand strategy. Conducting thorough qualitative and quantitative market research on your brand, competitive landscape, and buyer profiles allows you to get inside the minds of your customers. This deep understanding enables you to tailor your messaging and offerings to meet their specific needs, desires, and pain points.

    Building Empathy

    Empathy is key to creating emotional connections with your audience. By genuinely understanding your customers’ challenges and aspirations, you can position your brand as a trusted ally in their journey. This connection is what turns one-time buyers into loyal, repeat customers.

    Ensuring Relevance

    To stay relevant, your brand must evolve alongside your customers’ expectations. Tailoring your brand messaging and offerings to address current customer needs and emerging trends ensures that your brand remains top-of-mind in a crowded market.

    3. Crafting Your Brand Positioning

    When crafting your brand positioning, it is important to combine qualitative and quantitative research to uncover what differentiates your brand from what is already out there. It is important to conduct a thorough analysis of your competitors, determine where there is whitespace in the industry and craft meaningful, unique brand positioning and messaging strategies.

    Unique Selling Proposition (USP)

    Your Unique Selling Proposition (USP) is what sets your brand apart from the competition. It’s the distinct value that only your brand offers. By clearly identifying and communicating your USP, you give customers a compelling reason to choose your brand over others.

    Value Proposition

    Your value proposition goes hand-in-hand with your USP. It clearly articulates the benefits your customers receive by choosing your brand. A strong value proposition shows how your brand solves problems or improves your customers’ lives, making your offering irresistible.

    Competitive Analysis

    Understanding your competitive landscape  is crucial for effective brand positioning. By analyzing your competitors, you can identify opportunities to differentiate your brand. This differentiation is what will make your brand stand out in a saturated market.

    4. Developing Effective Brand Messaging

    It can be tough to stand out in a crowded marketplace, and turning your brand positioning into a captivating story can be even tougher. The key is to develop creative messaging that addresses your strategic insights while also bringing your brand position to life.

    Clear and Consistent Messaging

    Consistency is key when it comes to brand messaging. Your key messages should align with your brand identity and be consistently communicated across all channels. This consistency helps reinforce your brand’s value in the minds of your customers.

    Compelling Storytelling

    Storytelling is a powerful tool for engaging your audience. By developing brand narratives that resonate with your audience’s experiences and emotions, you can create a deeper connection. Stories make your brand relatable and memorable.

    Visual Identity

    Your brand’s visual identity—logos, color schemes, typography, and imagery—plays a significant role in brand recognition. A strong visual identity  enhances your brand’s visibility and ensures that your brand is easily recognizable across all platforms.

    5. Delivering Exceptional Brand Experiences

    Once your brand’s story is brought to life, it is important to determine how and where you will share the message with your target audience and ensure it is consistent throughout every interaction your user has with your brand.

    Mapping the Customer Journey

    Understanding your customers’ interactions with your brand from start to finish is essential for delivering exceptional brand experiences. By mapping out how you wish for your customers to interact with your brand whether it be email, your social accounts, etc. and identifying key touchpoints, you can ensure that every interaction reflects your brand’s values and meets customer expectations.

    Ensuring Consistency

    Consistency in your brand experience is crucial for building trust and loyalty. From the first interaction to post-purchase support, every touchpoint should deliver a seamless and positive experience that reinforces your brand’s promises.

    Prioritizing Customer Satisfaction

    Customer satisfaction is the ultimate goal of any brand strategy. By prioritizing customer feedback and continuously improving your offerings, you can build a loyal customer base that advocates for your brand.

    6. Measuring and Adapting Your Brand Strategy

    We believe the proof is in the data, so we constantly evaluate, re-evaluate and optimize to improve our KPIs and ensure our brand strategy is leading to better results.

    Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

    Tracking the right KPIs is vital for measuring the effectiveness of your brand strategy. Whether it’s brand awareness, customer engagement, or conversion rates, these metrics provide valuable insights into your brand’s performance.

    Market Analysis

    Staying updated on industry trends and emerging opportunities allows your brand to remain agile. Advanced market research tools allow brands to analyze millions of websites and assess brand sentiment, emerging industry trends, and more to inform data-driven content, media, and messaging strategies. Regular market analysis helps you identify areas for improvement and ensures that your brand evolves with changing market conditions.

    Brand Agility

    Continuously adapting your brand strategy to align with new challenges and opportunities ensures that your brand stays relevant and competitive.

    7. Additional Considerations for Brand Success

    Below are some other areas to consider when launching a new brand strategy. It is important to craft brand narratives that will drive future campaign concepts, ensure your internal team is up to speed and in support of your brand strategy, and that it filters down to all of your digital assets and campaigns.

    Brand Storytelling

    Leveraging storytelling to build relationships is a powerful way to humanize your brand. Engaging brand narratives can make your brand more relatable, helping you connect with your audience on a deeper level.

    Employee Advocacy

    Your employees are your brand’s most significant ambassadors. Empowering them to live and breathe your brand values fosters a strong internal culture and amplifies your brand message externally.

    Digital Strategy

    In the digital age, a robust online presence is non-negotiable. Effectively utilizing digital channels ensures that your brand reaches its target audience and remains top-of-mind in a competitive landscape.

    _______

    A well-defined brand strategy is the cornerstone of business success. By understanding and integrating the various elements—from brand identity to customer experience—you create a cohesive and compelling brand that resonates with your audience. Implementing these strategies will elevate your brand, ensuring long-term success and growth.

    Interested in Brand Strategy Services? Matter’s strategy department specializes in ideating impactful campaigns based on data-driven insights. Learn more about our Brand Strategy services.

    Matter

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  • Top 10 Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) Best Practices to Elevate Your Marketing Strategy

    Top 10 Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) Best Practices to Elevate Your Marketing Strategy

    In today’s digital landscape, the belief that marketing programs can always be refined is fundamental. Capturing, synthesizing and understanding all available data is crucial for identifying areas of improvement whether you are targeting consumers directly or influencing the C-suite buying committee. Marketing performance typically lags in three key areas: brand strategy, awareness and the marketing funnel.

    Why Every Marketing Program Needs Continuous Improvement

    No matter how advanced your marketing strategy is, there’s always room for improvement. Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) is the key to analyzing the performance of your marketing tactics across the conversion funnel, helping you identify steps to boost the percentage of site visitors converting on landing pages or from one stage of the funnel to the next. By leveraging a set of tools and harnessing the vast campaign data they are already generating, marketers can significantly enhance their marketing programs’ performance.

    Before diving into your optimization efforts, it’s essential to conduct a thorough marketing strategy audit. This will help you pinpoint any gaps in your marketing programs and identify key areas for improvement. Once you’ve identified these areas, it’s time to start optimizing your marketing performance. Here are 10 conversion rate optimization best practices MatterMKTG prioritizes for clients:

    Brand Strategy: Setting the Foundation for Success

    1. Evaluate Your Competition

    To ensure your brand stands out, regularly assess your competition. Are you differentiating your message effectively? By identifying the core messaging of your competitors, you should see how you can make your messaging unique and stand out in a crowded marketplace. 

    2. Re-evaluate Your Audience

    Knowing your audience is key. Are you addressing their needs and concerns? If you aren’t speaking directly to your buyer’s most critical pain points, no mix of media and content will help improve conversions. Re-evaluate your messaging and buyer personas to ensure it resonates with what they care about. Once you are confident you know your audience and what your competition is doing, bring these insights together to develop new brand messaging that is meaningful (important to the audience) and unique (stands out from your competitors).

    3. Test Your Messaging

    Experiment with different messages to see what resonates best with your audience. This could involve split testing headlines, value propositions, or CTA buttons either on your website or through user testing tools. The audience must be intrigued by your messaging to want to learn more and be provided with enough information to know what you do and how you can help them.

    Brand Awareness: Maximizing Your Reach

    4. Media Mix Analysis

    Examine your media mix to spot weaknesses. Are you leveraging SEO, social media, PR and paid advertising effectively? Each channel plays a critical role in driving brand awareness. If you aren’t getting the impressions or website traffic you expect, you may need to rethink your media strategy.

    5. SEO Strategy

    Revisit your content and keyword strategy. Are you optimizing your product pages and campaign landing pages? Consider using SEO tools like SEMrush or Moz to identify opportunities for improvement.

    6. Paid Media Campaigns

    Many brands make the mistake of thinking their organic channels can drive new leads alone. Paid campaigns play a critical role in reaching the desired audiences directly and more frequently. Even a small paid media campaign can drive significant traffic to key landing pages. Invest strategically to boost visibility where it matters most.

    Marketing Funnel and Conversions: Driving Results

    7. Conduct a Closed-Won Audit

    Analyze your successful deals to identify which industries, job titles or media channels are driving the most business. Understanding the factors behind these wins can inform your CRO strategy. Go a step further and analyze what drives conversions in each step of your funnel. This process will uncover patterns, such as a certain piece of content that consistently converts with certain job titles or industries.

    8. Heat Mapping and Website Flow

    Utilize heat mapping tools to understand user behavior and how site visitors interact with your website. Heatmapping can reveal deeper user insights, like what information a visitor is spending time reading or which CTAs they click. This data can highlight areas for improvement helping you enhance user experience and improve conversions.

    9. A/B Testing Lower Funnel Offers

    Split testing is crucial for optimizing conversion points. Experiment with different offers and CTAs in the lower funnel, limiting your variables to one focus area at a time to see what drives higher conversion rates.

     10. Implementing CRO Best Practices

    Effective CRO requires a strategic approach, focusing on continuous testing and optimization efforts. By regularly evaluating your brand strategy, enhancing brand awareness, and fine-tuning your marketing funnel, you can achieve higher conversion rates and overall marketing success.

    Remember, every element of your marketing strategy can be optimized. By leveraging data, testing different approaches, and refining your tactics, you can elevate your brand and achieve better results. Start your CRO journey today and see the difference it can make for your website visitors and long-term growth.

    Wyatt Craig

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  • How to Drive Your Business Forward with Data-Backed Intelligence

    How to Drive Your Business Forward with Data-Backed Intelligence

    In a Harvard Business Review Survey of 10,000 senior business leaders, 97 percent believe that being strategic is the leadership behavior most important to their organization’s success — yet 96 percent lack the time for it. We hear this firsthand from marketing leaders and their teams who struggle to step out of daily execution and into deep, strategic thinking to position themselves for long-term success. So what’s the best way to kickoff that moonshot marketing plan?  

    The answer is: data.  

    With this powerful tool, CMOs can help guide their brand to success using the roadmap of actionable insights developed by a team of strategists leveraging real-time customer, industry and competitor data. Sounds great! But before we begin the countdown to your brand’s ignition, let’s start with the basics. 

    What is data intelligence?

    According to Brandwatch, data intelligence, “enables organizations to adapt to a fast-changing world by connecting decision makers to strategic insights derived from a combination of real-time online data, customer data and marketing intelligence.” This means brands can gather information across all media publications, social media, blogs, forums, reviews and any other internet source, and turn this data into actionable insights that drive real business impact for their brand. Marketing intelligence gives brands a holistic approach, combining all key performance indicators across earned, owned and paid media to develop strategic, data-backed insights. 

    Why is a data-backed strategy so important?

    Basing strategy on data removes guess work — validating decision-making, yielding more successes, increasing program ROI and minimizing risk. 

    Data-backed strategies guide marketing teams on how best to optimize program ROI by consistently measuring against key KPIs. Data uncovered from intelligence programs can reveal how a company is positioned and where there are areas of opportunity. This concrete information grounds a strategy in truth, minimizing a company’s risk.  

    competitive landscape data

    In this industry, nothing is set it and forget it.

    The market and competitive landscape are constantly evolving, so it’s essential that strategies remain agile to ensure they’re resonating with your target audience, reaching KPIs and optimizing ROI. Every integrated marketing campaign, creative asset and tactical activation should be continuously analyzed, measured and adjusted to hit your indicators. An effective strategy and intelligence team knows how to act nimbly and shift budgets to maximize each tactic and boost every channel, ensuring the program continues to reach the client’s main goals. By constantly assessing campaign effectiveness and holistic business trends, brands can meet their goals in an efficient, affordable manner – no matter how the market evolves.

    trending hashtags across key brands

    Putting data intelligence to work

    Regardless of your vertical, your brand or your offerings, the marketplace is a maelstrom of competing brands struggling to stand out to an increasingly fractured audience. Whatever channels or tactics you turn to, you’re up against your direct business competitors and countless others to capture your audience’s attention and differentiate your brand. In today’s dynamic and ever-evolving landscape, brands are always looking for ways to remain nimble and align with messaging that captures their target’s attention. That’s why top brands across B2B and B2C are increasingly leveraging marketing intelligence to inform their strategies.

    Through foundational competitive research and continuous data analysis, strategies can be adapted, ensuring they are optimized against the competition. Whether making a micro adjustment to monthly or quarterly spend or a yearly modification to the plan, strategy and intelligence teams leverage data insights to ensure the brand’s goals are achieved. 

    audience entertainment data

    Here are the six ways decision makers are leveraging intelligence to drive real impact for their brands:

    • Brand Analysis: Glean critical insights about your brand and products from your target market. Quickly analyze brand sentiment and message penetration, evaluate top-branded mentions, and measure brand affinity to benchmark your brand’s overall health.
    • Competitive Analysis: Review competitive SOV broken down by channel and analyze key competitive messaging, positioning and campaigns, so you can develop a unique market position.
    • Communications + Crisis Management: Identify any major flash points, controversies or spikes in negative sentiment in real-time, so you can craft a response immediately and accurately measure its impact.
    • Campaign + Event Analysis: Evaluate sentiment around key events or activations; measure organic reach, conversation volume and buzz; and identify key media pickup, reach and impressions.
    • Target Audience Analysis: Identify the channels, websites and publications where your consumers talk about your brand and the industry. Identify key topics, keywords and hashtags relevant to your industry. Understand your target’s media consumption habits, wants, needs, as well as any myths and stigmas they hold about your brand or your industry.
    • Industry + Trend Analysis: Keep a pulse on key industry trends in real time; benchmark trends year-over-year and quarter-over-quarter to inform future campaign strategies; identify key influencers and authors in the space.
    target audience analysis data

    Strategies work best when they are constantly being optimized. Our intelligence programs give us a clear view of your company, the industry and your competitive set, so we can position your business to stand out in an ever-changing market. Whether it’s understanding the intricacies of your key personas, assessing public sentiment and conversation on industry topics, or uncovering emerging industry trends in real time, Matter’s highly knowledgeable Strategy + Intelligence team ensures every decision is data-driven to optimize ROI.

    With countless successful missions under our belt, leading B2B and B2C companies partner with us to plan, create, launch and optimize their campaign success.

    Interested in seeing how marketing intelligence can elevate your brand’s strategy? Check out our Intelligence page or reach out below to learn more.

    Matter

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  • 5 Ways to Take Your Email Strategy to the Next Level

    5 Ways to Take Your Email Strategy to the Next Level

    The reality is, most leads aren’t ready to buy the first time they interact with your brand. Buying cycles fluctuate among industries, services and products, which is why lead nurturing is such an essential part of your digital ecosystem. Email marketing is one of the fastest and most cost-effective forms of lead nurturing to date.

    To run an effective email marketing program, it’s important to make sure your organization is utilizing automation to its full potential. Understanding and implementing email best practices can significantly elevate your email strategy and deliver a clear ROI for your business.

    Whether it’s Constant Contact, Hubspot, Pardot or another email marketing system, segmenting and nurturing your leads with email workflows is a huge driver in building relationships and moving leads down the funnel. If you want customers to buy from you, you must stay top of mind by getting in front of them multiple times. 

    Here are the top 5 ways to ensure success: 

    1. Segment Your Audience’s List

    Segmenting your email lists allows you to develop targeted messaging for your audience personas. Marketers have noted a 760% increase in revenue from segmented campaigns. Through segmentation, you can achieve high levels of personalization by collecting data on individuals who are interested in your product or service. 

    2. Focus on Personalization 

    In today’s marketing climate, the answer to delivering emails that successfully drive conversions and brand awareness is personalization. Start the email with a first name personalization token and use insights from behavioral or web analytics to customize the content throughout the email. You should also include personalization in the subject line, as it’s proven to increase open rates exponentially.

    Here are three different ways to use web insights and behaviors to segment and personalize your email communications to make your customers feel like you see them as a human and not a number:

    Demographics

    The first way marketers can segment emails is by using demographic data — such as age, gender, company position and income level — to tell you about a contact’s needs and interests. For example, if you’re hosting a local event in Boston and you know a segment of your audience lives in the city, you can target them with a specific email. Gather demographic information and behavior through forms on your website with tools like HubSpot or Mouseflow

    Email Engagement

    Email engagement is another easy way to segment your lists — and it can have a huge impact on your overall email campaigns results. 

    You can create a re-engagement email campaign for inactive users that can include a coupon or discount to get these contacts to re-engage, or you can create an email offering VIP access to products for users who consistently engage with emails. And in most email marketing platforms, you can create lists based on email marketing activity – last email open date, click date, etc.  

    email marketing lists

    Website Behavior

    Keeping track of a visitor’s website behavior is another simple way to get more information about visitor interest. Website behavior is an extremely powerful data set to utilize, and in some platforms, you can easily view a contact’s behavior on your site. 

    track website behavior

    You can trigger targeted email workflows based on a page view or specific form fields submitted by users: 

    • Individuals who visited one page but missed another related page 
    • What videos people watched or what buttons they clicked
    • Content they downloaded 

    3. Add Visuals to Your Emails

    While your emails should be informational, it’s important to provide as much information as you can through visuals — be they graphics, videos, infographics, gifs or images. 

    Most individuals skim through emails, so having visuals that will catch their eye and make them read the content is critical. The examples below show how updating an email with a few images, CTAs and graphics make a big difference in the overall look and feel of the email. 

    text email vs email with visuals

    4. Automate Your Email Campaigns

    Creating quality leads that convert prospects should be the main goal of any email marketing program. Automation helps move leads down the funnel and into various stages of the buying journey in a scalable way. 

    Automated emails help deliver consistent brand messaging at the right time for each individual. Effective automated campaigns help move people from awareness to consideration to the decision stage.  

    Some automated email workflows that work well for B2B and B2C organizations are: 

    • Welcome Workflow: A top-of-funnel workflow used to bring new leads into the funnel who may not be looking at specific products or services. Often triggered by a sign-up form on the homepage or highly trafficked webpage.
    • Abandon Cart Workflows: Used mainly in B2C to remind consumers they left an item in their cart, offering an incentive to purchase. 
    • Post-Purchase Workflow: Builds brand awareness and loyal customers through continuous engagement after users have purchased.

    Amongst these highly effective workflows, there are others — such as post-event, product-specific, industry-specific workflows — that all enable a strong email marketing program. 

    email workflow chart

    5. Test as Much as You Can

    Many email platforms allow you to test various parts of your email to understand which content resonates most with your audience. A/B testing subject lines can help increase open rates, while testing CTA buttons helps you to analyze what language made your readers click through. It’s essential to utilize data to continuously optimize and improve your email campaigns.  

    Ready to level up your email campaigns? Fill out the form below and our email experts will be in touch.

    Kendall Pope

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  • Why Every Marketing Strategy Should Start with an Audit

    Why Every Marketing Strategy Should Start with an Audit

    Before you go to the grocery store, you check your fridge to make sure you don’t wind up with four cartons of eggs – again. When you build a marketing plan for your brand, you’re going to want to conduct an audit. Brand audits are the fridge-checks of marketing. 

    In marketing, audits reveal areas of opportunity, trends in the market, background on an industry, target audience information and unique brand features. The details and insights your brand may uncover during an audit are extremely valuable when it comes to developing your brand and marketing strategy. Similar to taking fridge inventory before shopping, you may review your brand’s Instagram posts to get a sense of the messages, images and brand info that’s been shared to determine if it’s resonating with your target audience, if it’s following best practices and if it’s driving results for KPIs.

    Ultimately, the goal of a brand audit is to provide a holistic view of your marketing operation, analyze your competition and inform a brand and marketing strategy that positions you to reach your goals. 

    Main types of marketing audits:

    An audit can include many things, and the type of audits you execute may vary depending on your brand’s needs or project goals. When beginning any form of an audit, it’s important to conduct one-on-one interviews, focus groups or research studies with both internal subject matter experts at your organization and with your customers. You should ask them questions about your brand and products or services, and try to learn more about their experiences. Additionally, ask them about their pain points, goals and values. Gathering information directly from your customers can help you build buyer persons, plan for messaging and more.  

    Next, you’ll want to conduct various audits of your existing marketing. For our fully integrated clients, we recommend the following types of audits:  

    1. Messaging Audit: Analyze the messages and sentiments in the marketplace about your brand and your products or services. Understanding how your brand is being portrayed will help to identify areas of opportunity, as well as highlight what’s being done successfully. ​ 
    2. Content Audit: Review the content assets being used to drive your marketing objectives. Whether it’s to educate prospects on your solutions or drive leads to convert, this is a crucial step in understanding how to best leverage your current content, and how you can improve new content. All these details will inform your content marketing strategy.
    3. SEO/SEM Audit​: Assess your website’s organic and paid search rank in a search engine to provide insights and optimizations that will improve how your prospects find your brand. Additionally, you’ll be able to understand where you rank for the keywords that are relevant to your industry. An SEO/SEM audit can also provide insights into what your audience is searching for.  
    4. Social Media Audit​: A brand’s social media presence often influences a prospect’s first impression of the brand, meaning it can provide key insights for important optimizations. The audit should include both paid and organic social media to provide a holistic view of how the brand comes across to your customers.  
    5. Email/Marketing Automation Audit​: A lead-nurturing program using email is one of the best tactics to include in your overall marketing strategy to reach your goals. Review your current CRM/MAP to look for areas of opportunity to optimize emails, workflows, lists and your overall marketing automation system that fits in with the larger lead nurture strategy, content promotion plan or customer engagement efforts. 
    6. Website Audit​: This can encompass a variety of exercises, from audits of a website’s messaging and content, to branding and design, to UX and technical audits. This in-depth exercise provides a 360-degree view of how your brand comes to life on one of the most important owned channels: your website.  
    7. Competitive Audit: After you’ve conducted the above audits for your brand, it’s important to  take an in-depth look at your competitors so you know where you stand against them — and how you can stand out in the market. Look at their website, messaging, positioning in the market, content and media channels (organic and paid search and social) to provide insights into how you can improve your presence and representation in each area. This can be as intricate as necessary and should focus on providing insights for the main goals for your marketing strategy.

    To gather the details necessary for a holistic marketing strategy that will help you achieve your goals, consider tapping into third-party research tools. These tools can provide the data needed to fully round out your strategy and support the insights gathered for the internal and external interviews and other audit findings.  

    Once you complete your audit, you’ll have a holistic understanding of your position in the market, how best to highlight your unique value propositions to resonate with your buyer personas, clear direction on content and messaging, and so much more. 

    Brand audits are highly strategic and can be a cumbersome project for an in-house team to produce. Audits require a large time commitment, the right third-party tools and the brand strategy experts to conduct stakeholder interviews and research, analyze the marketing efforts, contextualize the data, and produce actionable insights that will help you develop a strong brand and marketing strategy. At Matter, our team of strategists help brands at all stages achieve their goals through these methods. Interested in learning more? Contact us today!  

    Sara Roberts

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