Author: Franz Malten Buemann

Review the best online referral programs to make money, including GetResponse, Fiverr, Walmart, Tesla, Robinhood, Spanx, and more.

For a small to medium-size business, affiliate marketing is an easy way to earn some extra revenue while keeping inventory and labor costs to a minimum. It is a marketing strategy that allows you to offer more to your customer base while capitalizing on the efforts of a brand partnership. Interested in learning more? Here…
The post Affiliate Marketing 101: A Guide to Everything You Need to Know appeared first on Benchmark Email.

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Did you know that it takes 5 to 7 impressions for people to remember a brand? With branding, the goal is to continue making those positive impressions on an ongoing basis. One way to do that is through brand activations.

In this post, we’ll dive into what brand activations are, how to strategically plan a brand activation, and give you some ideas to inspire your own branding events.
While a brand activation is a singular event or campaign that is meant to elevate your brand it shouldn’t be confused with ongoing brand strategy. So, what does brand activation strategy look like? Let’s dive in now.
Brand Activation Strategy
Before you get started with planning different brand activation events, it’s important to understand the goal of each separate campaign.
The best way to plan a strategy is to identify your goals. It could be customer acquisition, user sign-ups, social media engagement, etc. Ultimately you’ll want to increase brand awareness, however, narrowing down your goal, even more, will make it measurable and attainable (hello SMART goals).
Once you know your goals, you can begin brainstorming various brand activation events or campaigns that you can do to achieve your goals.
For instance, let’s say your goal is user sign-ups. One brand activation for that goal could be going to a trade show. There you can talk to potential customers and then hopefully sign up users on the spot (depending on your offerings).
Once you have a list of ideas, goals, and metrics, it’s time to begin your brand activation plan. You should decide on one campaign or event to move forward, plan the logistics of that event, and use your brand playbook (with a clear vision, value propositions for key targets, brand personality, character, voice, and experiences). Keep in mind that brand activations don’t necessarily need to be events, but can be sampling campaigns, social media contests, or other digital marketing campaigns.
Now, let’s go over some ideas to help you come up with your own brand activation plan. Below, we’ll have the ideas separated by the goal to give you an idea of how to strategically brainstorm brand activations.
Brand Activation Ideas
Goal: User sign ups

Experiential marketing event
Trade show
Digital marketing campaigns

Goal: Increased impressions/brand awareness

Sampling campaign (giveaways)
In-store/virtual events
Digital marketing campaigns
Influencer marketing

Goal: Customer acquisition

Digital marketing campaigns like PPC, display advertising, etc.
Interactive events
Live demonstrations

Goal: Social media engagement

Social media contest
Social media movement
Behind-the-Scenes series
Influencer marketing

Now that we have some ideas, let’s look at some examples of brands that have run excellent brand activation events.
Brand Activation Examples
1. Vitamin Water | Brandon

Image Source
A colleague, Clifford Chi, uses this as a great example of brand activations. He usually doesn’t pay much attention to subway ads, but Vitamin Water’s “Brandon” was so funny, it made him laugh out loud. Then, a few weeks later, when Chi was walking around Boston, he strolled past Forbes’ Under 30 Summit and saw someone holding a sign that said, “Need Handshaking Tips?”.
That person was a part of Vitamin Water’s “Brandon” marketing campaign. There were also other members of the campaign, handing out Brandon’s business cards, some swag, and even bottles of Vitamin Water.
The funniest (and most impressive) part of the “Brandon” marketing campaign, though, was that the members acted like they actually worked for Brandon.
Vitamin Water’s “Brandon” campaign resonated with so many people because instead of just giving subway riders a quick laugh on their way to work, they made the extra effort to interact with their target audience and bring the ad to life. To make things even more personal, Brandon accepts all of his LinkedIn requests.
2. Revolve | Revolve Festival

Image Source
An excellent example of brand activation is the Revolve Festival that Revolve holds at Coachella each year (or at least has for several consecutive years). This is often known as the celebrity party of the year.
Revolve hand picks celebrities and influencers (macro or micro) to party while the music festival is occuring.
Revolve Fest trends on social media almost each year it happens because of the influencer marketing that the company focuses on. Influencer marketing helps the company bring in sales for its clothing line and more. In fact, influencers drive 70% of sales for the company.
Each of these festivals is a brand activation to bring in sales and drive awareness for the brand.
3. HBO | SXSWestworld

To promote the second season of their hit show Westworld, HBO built a miniature replica of the show’s Wild-West-themed amusement park in Austin, Texas for attendees of SXSW 2018 to explore.
With over 40 “hosts” who guided attendees on their own unique narrative within Sweetwater, the attendees felt like they were actually in an episode of Westworld, traversing a town full of trotting horses, troublemaking bandits, and money-hungry gamblers.
The park also contained clues of season two’s storyline and new characters, which helped generate a ton of suspense and anticipation for its upcoming premiere.
4. HubSpot | INBOUND

Each year HubSpot holds the INBOUND event. This brand activation is a way to drive brand awareness, customer sign ups, and ultimately help our customers in whatever way we can as a company.
INBOUND is an excellent example of brand activation because it’s a singular event each year that drives engagement and interactivity for HubSpot.
With INBOUND, we can provide an experience for our customers and any business that wants to learn from the best of the best.
5. Netflix | Altered Carbon at CES

At CES 2018, Netflix designed one of the most popular booths at the event. But it didn’t showcase the inner workings of their recommendations algorithm or their process for green-lighting shows. It actually spotlighted a concept their show Altered Carbon revolves around — immortality.
In their booth, fictional employees from Psychasec, the company that offers transfers of their clients’ consciousness to new bodies, or “sleeves”, in Altered Carbon, pitched the benefits of their service and even displayed some models of their sleeves.
Netflix deeply immersed CES’ attendees in the narrative of their hit sci-fi show, and it made them feel like they could actually live forever — if only Psychasec’s service was real.
6. CALM | Project 84

In the U.K., suicide is the number one cause of death of men aged 18 – 45. CALM, a suicide prevention charity, decided to spread awareness for the issue by creating 84 life-size sculptures of hooded men, which is the number of men who take their own lives every week in the U.K. and placing them on top of one of U.K.’s top TV network’s building.
Every sculpture is unique and tells the story of a real person who committed suicide. And to produce as much publicity for male suicide prevention as possible, ITV, the TV network CALM partnered with, agreed to air the campaign on their morning show and dedicate three days of programming to male suicide. The campaign also promoted a petition that urges the government to take suicide more seriously and take greater action to help solve the urgent issue.
Brand Activation Takeaways
Putting on a brand activation event or campaign can help you increase brand awareness, impressions, and ultimately bring in new customers. With tactics like experiential marketing, digital campaigns, influencer marketing, and in-person or virtual events, you can engage and interact with your audience in a personal way.
To succeed with brand activation, it’s important to focus on your audience, make your experiences shareable, and be creative.
Editor’s note: This post was originally published in April 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

Interested in helping out and learning about email and marketing automation, but usually people bring up tools such as marketo, salesforce or hubspot. Anyone tried Mailchimp’s certifications and courses before and are they useful?
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I have integrated Facebook lead ads and Salesforce through zapier to pull leads automatically into Salesforce CRM.It was working properly but right now it’s showing an error.any help will be great.I spent hours to fix this issue “Could not create record of the “Lead” object: This source is meant to track Marketing campaigns. Please use different value.” Above error is showing when I test the zap.
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When it comes to social media strategy, most brands know some of the top strategies: Post high-quality content, monitor your brand perception, engage with your audience.

But ever wonder if there are some strategies your social media team has been overlooking?
In this article, we’ll cover some strategies you may not have considered, with some data to support their effectiveness.
1. Leverage small, nano, and micro-influencers.
A 2021 State of User Generated Content report revealed that most marketers (93%) agree that consumers trust content created by people way more than brands.
People trust each other considerably more than they trust brands, and that’s why 75% of marketers are working with small to micro-influencers with followers ranging from 500 to 25,000, according to the study.
Why not mega influencers with millions of followers? Well, besides cost, some brands worry that as influencers become more celebrity-like and grow in popularity, they lose some of their influence – ironically enough.
As a result, brands are working more with small, blue-checkless content creators with great engagement and true influencers in their community. In 2018, an eMarketer study revealed that micro-influencers (between 10K-100K followers) were considered most effective.
User-generated content (UGC) will continue to be a great lead and revenue driver on social media. However, the shift toward smaller influencers may be the more effective (and affordable) way to increase brand awareness.
2. Stick to platform-specific content.
With so many different platforms to post on, it’s very easy to get overwhelmed.
Brands often try to batch-post their content by posting the same content on multiple platforms at once. For instance, the same video may go on Facebook, Instagram Reels, and TikTok.
While it may be a time-saver, it may hurt your brand in the long run. The competition between each social media platform is fiercer than ever before.
In Feb. 2021, Instagram announced it would deprioritize Reels with the TikTok trademark in it.
The trademark shows up when a TikTok user saves a video that was uploaded to the platform. Because TikTok is a direct competitor to Instagram Reels, the brand wants to promote the use of its own short-form software and keep users on its network.
This speaks to a larger effort from social media platforms to differentiate themselves from one another. In that same spirit, brands should follow a specific strategy for each platform, as consumer behavior differs from one site to the next.
3. Show the people behind your brand.
When I went on vacation a few weeks ago, my friends and I spent an hour discussing our favorite Black-owned brands, as Black women do.
One brand I highlighted was the luxury purse brand Anima Iris. I hadn’t even purchased from the brand but I was already loyal and I was eager to spread the word.
A few weeks later, I noticed that one of my friends kept sharing new content from Anima Iris with me. I mentioned that I loved how invested she became in the brand.
She responded, “It’s because I’m invested in her.” The “her” she was referring to is the company’s CEO, Wilglory Tanjong, who was incredibly visible on the brand’s social media.
In fact, the majority of the brand’s social media posts feature the CEO and her journey. Tanjong shares everything from new leathers she’s considering using to her struggle in raising capital.
What’s the point of the story? Well, brands often underestimate the power of transparency.
Back in 2018, a Sprout Social study revealed that 70% of consumers feel more connected to a brand when its CEO is active on social. They listed three reasons why:

It feels like there are real people behind the brand.
Consumers like learning about the leadership team.
Consumers feel the CEO offers valuable insight into the brand itself.

This transparency has helped Tanjong build a community of loyal followers who are invested in her brand and engage frequently with her content.
Marketers often think of data privacy and social responsibility. But it’s also company culture, employees, processes, and everything in between.
In a 2020 study by Havas, consumers shared that they (58%) want brands to be more transparent and honest and their company, including their processes and products.
Transparency builds trust and allows you to speak directly with your audience. What’s better than that?
4. Focus on community, not promotion.
Social media builds brand awareness, true. However, too often, brands focus on output without considering community building.
Annabelle Nyst, senior content strategist on the HubSpot social team, encourages companies to create a community-focused social strategy.
“So many brands see social media as a vessel for promoting themselves and their owned content, without really giving too much thought to engaging or growing their community,” said Nyst.
She adds that brands should be proactive about participating in conversations, finding their facts, monitoring their brand perception, and celebrating UGC.
Takeaway: Get your audience invested in your brand and you’ll have an easier time getting them excited about your products or services.
5. Go live.
Live streaming allows brands to connect with their audience in real-time. In some instances, consumers prefer it over other content channels.
Back in 2017, Livestream found that 80% of consumers prefer watching a brand’s live video than read a blog post or see a social post.
In 2021, 28% of marketers planned to use it in their video marketing strategy, according to Wyzowl.
Other reasons to go live include:

The ability to repurpose the live content into other posts.
The ideas you get generate from connecting directly with your audience.
The trust you can build by showing the faces behind your brand.

Social media is a beast that isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. Don’t be afraid to experiment, as that will help you better understand your audience and identify effective strategies.