The Wax Blog

05 Jan

Posted at 17:21h in The New Entrepreneur by
  We've all seen news stories about bloated compensation for America’s top CEOs. The stunning (and growing) salaries beg the question - can one person be worth such an enormous amount of money?   The Return on Leadership, a new book by business expert D.L. Brouwer describes a new way to measure whether CEO salaries are economically sensible. Think about the best leaders you know. What traits do they embody? It’s clear that certain skill sets like organization and creativity often lead to better outcomes for a business. But leadership assessments can only provide so much information. Until now there's been no concrete way to equate a person’s leadership skills to the actual value they’ve contributed to the organization. Brouwer makes the refreshing case that ‘leadership’ is not as abstract and unquantifiable a concept as it may appear.  t.  In The Return on Leadership: A Three Step Plan to Navigate Change and Unlock Hidden Growth,  Brouwer uses a straightforward metric to gauge the impact of CEOs on their companies. It's also valuable as a comparison on how a CEO may be doing performing relative to  their peers. And it's incredibly easy to calculate.  Dividing the change in a company’s market capitalization (information that's easily available for public companies)  by its CEO's salary results in a Return on Leadership (RoL) Ratio. To us, since a company’s market cap is a strong reflection on the foresight of its CEO it makes sense to use it as a barometer for rating CEO performance. 

03 Jan

Posted at 09:15h in Content Marketing, SEO by
How to gain success with SEO in 2018 by engaging your target audience and he right kind of content. Technology improves at an amazing rate every year and it's important to consider SEO for 2018. To keep a marketing website relevant and on top of the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) it is vital to stay current in Search Engine Optimization (SEO). 2017 brought in a lot of new things. SEO for 2018 heralds the arrival of even more. Some are expansions of last year’s trends while others are new ways of doing things that are emerging in the marketing world. Here are some ways to ensure success with your SEO in 2018:

Understand Mobile Marketing

More people are relying on cell phones, tablets, and other mobile devices to do their browsing, shopping and communicating. This trend is showing no signs of slowing down - the experts predict that the mobile market will continue its rapid expansion in 2018. What this means for websites is that not only do they have to be compatible with this format, or responsive in other words. They need content that is mobile-friendly as well.

07 Dec

Posted at 12:15h in Content Marketing by
Content marketers often use popular stories and news to create visual content for marketing purposes. Creating fresh topics is always a struggle whereas trending news presents an easy and effective way to engage users and bring more traffic to your site. Even though finding ideas for content is easier when you leverage trending news, it also presents a range of challenges. Firstly, news hijacking is not a new content marketing technique. A plethora of brands are using it on a regular basis, so consumers are well aware of the trick. Secondly, there is always a risk of being too late or undermining customers’ trust with content that isn’t consistent with the brand’s image. Despite the obvious drawbacks, news hijacking is a highly effective method when it comes to boosting traffic. Evergreen and long-form content form the core of the website, driving loyalty and trust, while content based on trending news can provide bursts of new traffic. The inspiration for visual content for marketing can come from many different places. This article explores how to create content that naturally incorporates trending news and stories into a brand’s own story. Of course, part of the success with creating content based on popular stories relies on design. You can use online tools to help you align content with the brand’s image and story.

Why visual content for marketing should be built on popular stories

We all love to learn new things and expect brands to provide new educational materials. But familiarity has its own place in content marketing and our brains. Here is why familiar stories work:

29 Nov

Posted at 17:39h in The New Entrepreneur, Uncategorized by
[caption id="attachment_13722" align="alignright" width="300"] Great advice to protect your business from security threats.[/caption] Security threats are rampant these past few years, with global ransomware predicted to exceed $5 billion before 2017 ends. Just last year’s breaches is devastating itself — 95% of the breached records were from the government, retail, and technology sector. These three sectors have our information in store that can be used against us. They can easily create fake accounts, make fraudulent purchases in our name, and more. It doesn’t stop there; it’s alarming that among the thousands of global organizations, only 38% of them have handled cyber-attacks well. What happened to the 62%? It’s one of the biggest dilemma faced by businesses worldwide. There’s an insufficient amount of statistics proving that this problem can be dealt with accordingly; cyber-attacks are continuously happening around the globe as you read this article. Billions of dollars have already been lost; and billions of dollars more will be lost if we cannot at least hamper these hackers from infiltrating businesses and stealing private information. As the world becomes more tech-savvy, it’s proving to be more difficult to protect data from hackers who want nothing but to do no good. Businesses should learn how to defend and protect themselves from these increasing cyber-crimes, especially those that happen due to the lack of information on the basics of web security. It’s more than just a complicated password or a premium firewall subscription — here are 8 ideas to protect your organization from security threats brought to us by the team behind Local SEO Search Inc.:

1. Get to know what you need to protect: data

14 Nov

Posted at 16:07h in IMC by
If you haven’t noticed the rise of influencer marketing campaigns, you haven’t been paying attention. Influencer marketing is the cousin of celebrity endorsement — updated for today’s consumer. With traditional celebrity endorsements, you’d have a well-known person appear in your TV commercial or ad. With influencer marketing, you’re playing more to authenticity by getting well-known figures to integrate your product into their daily lives and share the result on social media, YouTube, and in blog posts. The end goal of both is the same — selling through social proof. But the difference is palpable — 92 percent of people trust an influencer over an ad or traditional celebrity endorsement. As a result, influencer campaigns are going to become more and more important in the coming years. Savvy marketers need to strategize a plan of action. If you’re not sure where to start, take a page out of the book of these three successful influencer campaigns and the lessons they teach us.

Glossier

Glossier is a beauty brand that’s seen exponential growth since its launch in 2014. Four years prior to its launch, the brand’s founder, Emily Weiss, began building a content site — Into the Gloss — which is a destination for reviews and profiles on all things beauty. The brand has used the power of their content platform to turn everyday people into influencers. Using the hashtag #ITGtopshelfie, Into the Gloss asks its audience to share a glimpse into their beauty cabinet or bag via a photo on Instagram. The best shares are turned into blog posts that highlight the person’s story and beauty picks. Regular people are elevated to celebrity status and each of their individual networks are tapped as a sphere of influence. Glossier also has influencer marketing campaigns with well-known individuals and these two approaches in tandem have been the main driver of their growth thus far. Takeaway: You don’t have to have a Kardashian on speed dial to create a successful influencer campaign. Certainly, the bigger following an influencer has the bigger the impact, but marketers know that targeted is better than broad. Sometimes putting your own audience members in the influencer seat can drive authentic connection that yields results.

Blue Apron

Blue Apron is a meal-in-a-box delivery service in an increasingly saturated market. Most of these services offer similar pricing and models, so Blue Apron needed a way to stand out. They started as most influencer campaigns do — with blogs and social media (nearly half of marketers using influencer campaigns use blogs and 87 percent create content on Facebook and Instagram). Posts of everyone from former contestants from The Bachelor to Olympians such as Michael Phelps cooking Blue Apron meals became so ubiquitous, that brand awareness couldn’t help but grow. And by providing each influencer with a unique promo code, Blue Apron created a low barrier to entry and the ability to track each influencer’s impact. Most recently, Blue Apron has started turning to podcasts to find their influencers. They not only sponsor the content, but get the hosts excited about the product and talking about it in their own unique way.   Takeaway: Influencer marketing campaigns aren’t one and done. Repetition is the key to memory so plan your campaign to build upon a customer journey. The more they see your product, the less they’ll be able to ignore it. Covering multiple channels at the right intervals will require the power of a marketing automation tool, so be sure to have the right one in place before embarking on your campaign.

I Am a Witness by Ad Council