“Brand development” is often thrown around as a buzz word for companies that are looking to generate more business, but often there is no clear definition for the brand creation strategy or goals. If your company is looking to diversify its market next year, increase service offerings or product lines or even begin a brand creation strategy, keep in mind that the first step of any shift in the brand perspective of your target market can affect business negatively as well as positively. The trust factor between you and your customers is crucial to the success of any brand development exercise to effectively generate more business.

All the graphics have been built and all your selected social media sites like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter are in place along with your profiles on niche blogging and article marketing sites. You’ve decided on your marketing message and have worked up your target keyword list. Checking off the first few points on your marketing strategy is an effective step to garnering results. However, now you’re faced with the difficult task of building the content that supports your online marketing message and goals.

We’ve talked about many aspects of a business marketing plan, from Mobile Strategies to Social Media to Web Design and SEO, but there is one underlying factor that can unravel the best business marketing strategy.

With the plethora of media options available today, from the old-stand-by’s like print and direct mail, to the newest media options like mobile marketing, social media and video, it can be hard to select the right marketing mix for your company’s marketing budget. Here are a few of the Pros and Cons that come with 3 of the more popular media options available today.

For brands using Social Media as an aspect of their web marketing plan, their social media strategy is the driving force behind how they approach their target market in the social media space. Without being redundant, it is important to remember that this strategy is the plan set forth at the initiation of a social media marketing plan detailing the content, networks, timeline and execution meant to gain the attention and response with social media. In other words, your social media strategy notes the Who, What, Why, How, and Where of this portion of your web marketing plan.

“Content is king”. “Target your content to your audience”. “Use keywords in your text”.  We’ve all heard of at least one of the rules surrounding writing online content, and to be honest, a lot of the basic writing platitudes (K.I.S.S. – Keep It Simple Stupid) tend to get thrown in when we question how to go about populating our websites and blogs with text. However, writing for the web is not a matter of just putting content onto a web page or blog. The thought process needs to begin before a single word ever gets typed onto the page, because as a medium, the web is alive and requires a very different perspective to writing than print.

You consider yourself a marketing “guru”. You’ve worked in or followed the marketing industry for years and understand the important of research to build a strategy for your marketing goals, who you are targeting, how you plan to reach them and what you’re going to say. Would it surprise you to learn that this process almost goes completely out the window when company’s turn their focus to Social Media Marketing?

As corporate America continues to invest in Social Media Marketing, the board room discussions have turned towards the management of the new media sources being implemented into existing marketing plans as well as how the new media outlets change their internal marketing processes.

Mobile marketing is pushing forward full-steam ahead. While it has been used primarily as a B2C tactic, as executives become more reliant on their smart phones, there is a very real need for detailed and targeted mobile marketing strategies for all companies, B2C and B2B alike.

Five years ago, it was not uncommon to land on a website and have the benefit of facing brightly colored flashing or scrolling graphics promoting services or products. Websites were entertaining and drew the attention of visitors, but the current market and savvier online shoppers asks more of websites. Due to the increased volume of sites and the ongoing move from pc based websites to mobile sites for smart phones has made Flash based web pages obsolete, if not harmful, to businesses online marketing plans.