By Tom Taylor, Account Advocate. Studio/D Whatever our political affiliation, we can probably agree that the projections based on polling for the last two US presidential elections were way off. This raises the question of whether similar polling errors carry over into all types of surveys – including market research. Luckily, the short answer is “no” – particularly if your …

2020 has been quite the year.  World-wide pandemic, tariffs and international trade wars, racial strife and civil unrest, business closures, limited group gatherings, political divisiveness, unemployment, and elbow bumps. This is not what we planned back in January. We get introspective at the end of every year, attempting to identify the salient learning points of the year, and one word sums up the …

1) Review your wills, trusts, estate plan and succession plan. There is a chance COVID will cause a lengthy absence, disable or kill you, a family member or a potential owner / management successor of your business. Number one on my list is to review your will, estate and succession documents in detail for updates and changes. If they are …

Use The Right Tools For Optimal Results We recently met with a well-respected sales rep who just resumed his traveling. When we asked how his company is supporting him in today’s new sales environment, the question took him by surprise and he acknowledged that he was not provided with any new sales tools to use in today’s completely different selling …

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 …

Make Hay While the Sun Shines: 9 Things Marketers Can Do Now with Newfound Time The slowed pace of business activities due to the coronavirus presents a great opportunity for marketers to tackle the B- and C-list tasks that have been on their to-do list. Most marketers have more time for these tasks, and for many companies there’s easier access …

Virtual is Now Reality The social distancing and shelter-in-place mandates necessitated by the COVID-19 pandemic mean that most of the U.S. workforce must now work remotely.  While this presents challenges to keeping businesses open and moving forward – particularly sales and marketing teams whose work typically requires face-to-face interactions – technology solutions exist to bridge the necessary physical distances between us. …

The World Health Organization just declared COVID-19 a global pandemic, and domestic manufacturers are scrambling to formulate and communicate their response to this situation.   We encourage our clients to approach this situation in a two-step fashion – build a response plan, then work with your public relations team to disseminate it. Proactive businesses can play an important role in information …

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 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 …