It’s Time for the Offensive Line to Take the Field

Scott Dieckgraefe Insight

Marketing communications, like all good contact sports, offers a time to play defense and a time to play offense.  Since the pandemic hit in March, many companies (B2B and B2C) shifted to play defense, cutting back their ad spending, which resulted in local TV and radio losing nearly $20 Billion in ad revenue, and Google and Facebook losing a combined $44 …

Shop Talk: The Benefits of Marketing Research For Your Sales Team

Scott Dieckgraefe Insight

In this piece we examine how marketing research can pay big dividends to your sales efforts.  Analysis of qualitative and quantitative data about your industry, company, brand, products/services and pricing provides you with an informed definition of who you are, a specific sense of where you are, and a roadmap to guide you where you want to be.  At the very least, …

How Manufacturers Should Use Social Media

Scott Dieckgraefe Insight

How Manufacturers Should Use Social Media While most B2C marketing and sales pros realize the benefits of social media platforms, many of their B2B peers in manufacturing either dismiss social media’s value or fail to take a strategic approach to creating and placing content properly optimized to the respective channels. Here, Studio/D focuses on the benefits of social media for …

DMUs: How Sales and Marketing Pros Can Meet the Multi-Headed Challenge

Scott Dieckgraefe Insight

At Studio/D, we love diving into the uniqueness of B2B sales and marketing; the things that challenge, confound and reward our manufacturer clients in ways you don’t see in the consumer world. Case in point: DMUs, or Decision-Making Units. Philip Kotler, marketing author, consultant, and professor at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, defines DMUs as a collection …

Leverage 2020’s Six Key Communication Trends To Your Advantage

Scott Dieckgraefe Insight

The pace of change throughout the communications industry has only intensified over the past several years. To help you  ramp up for 2020, Studio/D  identified six key communication trends, together with a game plan for how to leverage each to your advantage. Just being heard will be difficult.  In 2020, we will experience  a national fall election, plus other unique events such as the Summer Olympics, …

Sales & Mar-Com Shop Talk: Earned Media

Scott Dieckgraefe Insight

Studio/D’s “Shop Talk” column examines how communication strategies should bridge across sales and marketing functions, providing tangible benefits to each while providing maximum impact to your organization.

Align Marketing Communications and Sales Efforts To Maximize Revenue Growth

Scott Dieckgraefe Insight

Most manufacturing-based companies emphasize sales efforts over marketing communications, and in doing so, they unknowingly cap their sales growth opportunity. This emphasis probably results from being more familiar with sales processes than communication strategy, and while deemphasizing marketing communications is unintended, its minimized role hinders revenue growth over what is typically a long sales process. See if this captures your …

When Bad Marketing Happens At Good Companies

Scott Dieckgraefe Insight

If we were to ignore problems caused by poor leadership, bad financial management, and inferior products/services, most other business problems are marketing-related. Each of these mistakes take an incremental toll on a company’s success and can make the difference between an awful year and a record-breaking year. Your path to success isn’t clearly understood – Ask key employees to express your …

A Leader’s Paradox: How to Be Happy, While Being Driven to Improve

Scott Dieckgraefe Insight

As a leading full-service agency, we’re constantly asked by our clients to provide more.  More followers, more leads, more applicants, more conversions, more renewals, more sales.  Then, once we accomplish those tasks, we’re asked for more again.  I’m certainly not faulting our clients for this – they’re all driven leaders, and that’s our task as leaders – to continuously improve.  Our team at Studio/D …

Will Fear of Success Hold You Back This Year?

Scott Dieckgraefe Insight

In this new year, some companies will succeed and grow, while others will flounder and shrink. The difference between success and failure is often a factor of the company’s leadership, vision and drive. Certainly, there are real tangible issues that companies must address to grow, but there are also less tangible issues that can hold leaders back. “Fear of Success” …