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We make marketing delightfully uncomplicated so that our partners gain improved clarity, direction, and peace of mind.
My seashore... As cheesy as it sounds, Seafoam has been my seashore lately. The past few months have been a little rough. I think almost everybody knows that I was diagnosed with breast cancer in early summer and tackled it as best I know how: like a steamroller, which is what I do.
Seafoam has been more than just a job to me. It's been my family. I work with an amazing team of people — truly special, and the amount of love, and care, and support that I've received over the past several months has been life-changing. It also helps that I love my job. I really do like what I'm doing, and it's been a great and welcome distraction from lots of doctor's visits, and surgeries, and treatments.
So yeah, Seafoam has been my seashore, and hopefully will continue to be for years to come.
When we launched The Weekly Crest in June 2017, we had a simple goal in mind: to share the latest marketing industry news and developments with our family of readers.
The marketing industry changes quickly; even for people whose lives are embedded in the very fabric of the marketing world, it can be difficult to stay on top of Google’s new Search algorithms, design trends in online customer experiences, content best practices, and social media trends.
So we set out to build a free newsletter that was designed to be a valuable resource to everyone — a way to keep long-time industry experts in the know about the latest marketing developments while also providing an educational tool to marketing novices just getting started with their careers.
Since June 2017, this goal has largely remained unchanged. We are as devoted to sharing our marketing knowledge as we’ve ever been.
But in the last year and a half, we’ve also learned quite a bit from you, as well. For instance, your feedback has shown us that you’re interested in what’s going on at success for our marketing partners.
The new Weekly Crest aims to blend our initial goal with the lessons you’ve taught us: we’re still going to share the latest marketing news on a weekly basis, and we’re also adding in several sections that will help you get to know the Seafoam team even better. We’ll discuss our personal thoughts and share our own unique insights that you can use to improve your own understanding of your brand’s marketing strategy and even your marketing career.
Subscribe here to get The Weekly Crest sent to your inbox every Friday morning for FREE. You don’t want to miss out on the things our team has to say.
Not sure if you want to subscribe, yet? Try out your sea legs before you hop aboard! Check out the latest edition of The Weekly Crest right now. After you enjoy what we have to say, subscribe via the link at the bottom of the newsletter.
Thanks for joining us!
New Look for Autumn | The Weekly Crest 2.39
The Weekly Crest is a recurring email resource that contains the latest marketing news, updates and trends as they pertain to your business.
Digital marketing can be complicated.
At any given time, there are a near infinite number of factors that determine how a customer engages with your brand’s products/services, message, and goals via an avenue of content, SEO, social media, and your website. To make matters even more complicated, digital marketing is in a state of continuous evolution, meaning that the success your brand achieves with its marketing strategy today may not work out as well tomorrow.
Keeping track of how these pieces work together for any brand is nearly impossible without a dedicated teammate to gauge each component of a brand’s digital marketing strategy and make the necessary changes for maximum effectiveness.
To get an idea of what it takes to accomplish such an ambitious task, we hung out with Seafoam’s Digital Marketing Analyst, Matt Lodge, the man in charge of monitoring, measuring, and adjusting our clients’ marketing strategies to ensure they’re poised for future success. Here’s what he had to say...
I am the Digital Marketing Analyst at Seafoam Media. It’s my job to look into all the data surrounding a client’s web traffic and to try to optimize their websites for search engine results, ad clicks and conversion. I basically optimize every step of the marketing funnel.
Digital marketing is, in a lot of ways, replacing traditional marketing as means for businesses to grow their brands — to grow their customer bases. The essence of that is trying to find ways to optimize their online presence so that they’re getting the maximum exposure and also the right kind of exposure — putting your product in front of the right people so that the right people purchase from or interact with your brand. I think that using data-driven techniques or methods helps Seafoam deliver on what we set out to do for our clients.
I make sure our clients show up on the first page of Google, so when people are searching, they find our clients and not their competitors.
I think my role evolves as the internet evolves. It’s about constantly adapting to the different trends online — how people are searching, how people are engaging with brands online. Just staying on top of that evolution and making sure that Seafoam is on the cutting edge of digital marketing.
Looking at the whole picture instead of getting bogged down in one particular metric is important. You kind of have to take everything and put it in context so that you’re actually getting as close to the truth as you can in terms of where your website is and where your product is online. Don’t get caught up in one particular metric; look at all of them together.
Brian knows everything. Ask Brian.
You know what my seashore is? It’s the muddy Mississippi River. God, what a powerful body of water that is.
I like to sometimes sit back and think about just the number of boats that have sailed down it over the years. I mean, from Minneapolis to New Orleans with a stop over in St. Louis — you can’t beat something like that.
Sometimes I’ll sit back and I’ll just dream about rivers, but I always come back to the Mississippi.
Sure, the Amazon River is really popular. The Nile, that’s over in Egypt. But only the Mississippi River is right here. I get a little emotional thinking about it, because it’s just so nice watching the barges just sail down.
God, I love that river. That’s my seashore. Thank you.
My seashore is really books and reading. I’ve always been a reader. In my family, it sort of became a joke, even when I was young, that my cousins would be out playing around, and I would be in a corner with my nose in a book. Luckily, my sweetheart likes walking through bookstores as much as I do, because we do that together, and he doesn’t mind when I’ve got a stack of books next to the bookshelf because they won’t fit on the bookshelf.
I just feel better with books around, and I love reading. I’ve brought a few of my favorites.
Some books that I loved when I was growing up: “Their Eyes Were Watching God,” “Tender is the Night,” if you love Fitzgerald, “The Heart is a Lonely Hunter;” if you ever want your heart broken in the most exclusive, beautiful way, it’s a great book. I actually studied poetry when I was in graduate school, and these were two of my favorites:
I met Jean Valentine, actually, and I turned into a total fangirl when I met her; it was embarrassing. And Claudia Rankine; if you haven’t checked out one of her books, you should do yourself a favor. These just blew my mind in the best way. They’re not Robert Frost, you know; they’re amazing things.
Nowadays, I read for different reasons, I guess. I used to read to escape or to enter a fantasy world, or to experience the profound depth that poetry can give me. Now, I like to read historical fiction, and I like to read nonfiction. I read now because I’m a writer for a living. I read nonfiction to figure out how to get better. This author, Timothy Egan, wrote a really great book called “The Worst Hard Time” about the Dust Bowl, and I read his prose and I’m like, “How do you do that?”
So yeah, I read for instruction, and I read for fun, and I read because it’s like an old friend. That’s it. That’s my seashore!
The present defines the future. The future builds on the foundation of the past. – Lailah Gifty Akita
Once every quarter, the Seafoam team pauses to reflect on our past success and to strengthen our path forward.
Here is a quick look back on everything that’s happened in the Seafoam community since our last Seafoam Day!
The biggest achievement this quarter is that we’ve added to our team! Depending on how closely you’ve been watching our social media channels and our newsletter, The Weekly Crest, you may already know our Brand Engagement Specialist, Holly Wentworth, and our new Digital Marketing Specialist, Matt Lodge.
If you’re not familiar with either of these sharp minds, check out their employees bios on our website. We’re stoked to have them in the Seafoam family!
Some Office UpgradesWe’ve officially been in our office on Sutton Blvd. for a bit over a year, and we’re still not done making it feel more like home.
Last quarter, we revamped the front lounge to make it more comfortable for our guests.
The Seafoam office is also slowly being outfitted with gear to share with our teammates and our marketing partners. So far, we have our official mugs and pens, and there are even more items on the way.
What’s in our future?Some things never change, like our team working hard on building and maintaining marketing strategies for our partners. First and foremost, we’re dedicated to brands that want to lead, and we’re grateful for these brands that continue to work with us.
But there’s more going on at Seafoam than what our partners see on the surface. For starters, we have some updates to our Seafoam Sessions series that we’re excited to share with you on our next episode.
Second, this quarter, we’re breaking ground on a new project that will add some additional space to our office. There’s not much more that we can say about it right now, now, but the new space will be featured in future content from Seafoam, so stay tuned!
Finally, we’re drawing closer to unveiling a project that’s been in the making for almost a year. Will it finally be ready to show off this quarter? Time will tell!
There’s only one way to make sure you have the latest updates on everything happening at Seafoam. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, or Google+. Check out the latest videos on our official YouTube channel. And finally, receive the latest marketing news in your inbox every Friday by subscribing to the The Weekly Crest; it’s free!
Thank you to our proactive team and our dedicated partners for going on this incredible journey with us. We couldn’t be here without you!
Hi, I’m Holly, and my seashore is Ellie!
Basically, she’s my seashore, because at the end of the day, I know that as soon as I open that door to come home, she’s going to go wild — sprinting all around, so excited, licking my face as soon as I pick her up.
And she’s also that calm piece that I need, too. At the end of the day, I know that when we snuggle up to go to bed, she’s gonna be all sweet.
It’s almost like she’s my kid at this point; that’s how close I feel to her. She’s been there for me at my lowest of lows, my highest of highs. I just know that she’s always got my back, and I’ve got hers!
I think my seashore is exercising outside — specifically running and biking. I get kind of two different things from each of them:
For biking, I get a real sense of freedom. I can go out, and I can ride 40 miles, and I can travel to all different places around the city just being on a bike. There’s that feeling of going down a hill, and you’re going 25-30 miles an hour, and there’s a part of you that’s going, “Oh, this is a really stupid thing to do,” and then there’s another part of you that just feels this overwhelming sense of freedom when you’re out doing that. Being able to use your own energy to travel that far in the city is just – I don’t know – it’s a cool feeling that I get every single time I ride my bike.
On the running side, I get a lot of clarity and serenity from that. You know, the first 10-15 minutes of a good run, I’m kind of sitting there going, “Oh, my knees hurt. My legs hurt. I wish this were over. Why did I wake up this early?” But as you kind of get into the flow of it, something just kind of happens where your body’s all moving in one; there’s nothing there to stop you. I don’t know — I just develop sort of a really nice flow that’s – not to sound too cheesy, but – sort of a physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual serenity working through that.
Both running and biking for me, I can do inside when I need to. During the winter, I’ve got a trainer in my basement for biking. But really, so much of that freedom and clarity and serenity come from being outside. I think I spend so much of my day in front of a computer or indoors, whether it’s at work or at home, that having an hour or two hours when I’m running or biking outside, being able to almost sort of get distracted with the clouds in the sky or the trees that I’m running through, feeling the sunshine kind of beat down, even on a really hot day, being connected to nature for at least a little bit of my day is so beneficial, I think. It really kind of puts things into perspective and allows me the opportunity to rest my brain for a little bit and just be a part of the rest of the world and be a part of nature for awhile.
One of my favorites parts of every day, after I go for a run or after I bike, I’ve got about 20-30 minutes afterwards where I just feel like I’m on top of the world. Everything feels very calm; I feel like I have the right type of energy to work through different problems, come up with different solutions. There’s just a very clear state of mind that I get after those, and it’s nice to get that from something that’s also pretty healthy.
Content creation comes in many different flavors.
The tried and true methods that all brands should have in their back pockets are blog articles and social media posts. If your business isn’t currently doing both of these, you are missing out on showcasing your industry knowledge and engaging your fans.
But like everything else in the world, content marketing has evolved beyond these mediums. Now, brands also need to be able to produce videos, design custom graphics, and have a continuous pulse on their audiences’ online needs.
Enter Seafoam’s new Brand Engagement Specialist, Holly Wentworth. To see how she leverages the power of content creation to engage with our clients’ customers, we sat down for a quick chat. Here’s what she had to say...
I am the Brand Engagement Specialist here at Seafoam Media. My role basically revolves around content creation. I take photos, film videos, design graphics and write catchy captions for our clients.
I come from a video production background, so for Seafoam, I think it’s good that we’re investing in a new dimension of building marketing strategies. For marketing in general, I think that video and multimedia is becoming so big that the older forms of marketing aren’t enough anymore; if you don’t have videos that showcase your company, you’re missing out on potential customers.
I like to immerse myself in each brand I work with, down to even the smallest details: their brand colors, fonts, and things like that. More importantly, I try to think from their customers’ perspectives — how these small details catch their attention and help them engage with our clients. Finally, it’s important that we don’t just post random content; our efforts should answer any questions or concerns our clients’ audiences may have about the products or services they’re looking for.
I would really like Seafoam to be able to build a video marketing team. That’s my goal. I’ve always wanted to be a producer. So, one day – if and when we have a dedicated video marketing team – I could manage our editors and videographers. I would like to schedule out the types of content we need for our clients, along with a budget and the types of equipment we need for each project. That would be my dream!
At Seafoam, we strive to be more proactive about our work instead of reactive. We like to try to stay ahead of the curve of our clients’ needs and how they pertain to the latest developments in the marketing industry.
Yes! So, I didn’t really come from a marketing background at all; it was very video, media, graphic design, and photography-based, which I now know blends very well into the content marketing side of our industry. I’ve learned a lot in my month and a half here — even more than I did throughout my education. I know so much more now than I knew before.
I love The 1975!
I thought so hard about this, because everybody in this office knows I don’t just like things, and I don’t just dislike things. I’m on both ends of the spectrum. I either have to be really obsessed with it or just be neutral, like “Oh, okay.”
So everybody knows that I have one thing in each genre of things that someone could have, so the only way that I was really going to be able to answer this question was if I literally phrased it as Nikki has always told us the story, which is, “How do you want people to feel?”
The only thing that came to mind that made sense to me was how I feel when I go see my favorite band, which sounds really cliché and really kind of almost juvenile, but there’s no other way to describe the feeling of when I go to these shows. The best way to describe it is they have this humming sound that happens before they come on: the lights get dimmer and the sound gets higher, and it’s meant to start getting your senses going. That’s impacted me so much that I know what’s going to happen next; there was a similar humming sound in this office to a point where I was psyched up in here. And that’s what I want to feel all the time.
When I go to these concerts and I go see this band, they come on and I just start crying, almost like it’s the Beetles in the 60’s. I react that way to everything, but the person that I am in that space where I’m with people that enjoy it for the same reasons, and I’m there seeing people who have profoundly impacted my life, it’s a feeling of happiness that I don’t know how to describe and have never been able to describe. That’s how I want people to feel when they come in and talk to us. It’s just one of those things: you love being there, and you’ll do it again, so much so that I’ve seen them nine times total, seven times in the timeframe of 2016 to 2017. I just kept going; I didn’t stop.
It’s one of those things where you get the little piece of it, and then you just keep wanting it, and you want to keep going back, and you want to keep going back to experience it. And what’s so great is they’ve been on hiatus for a year, and now they’re coming back here next January. So here in the next year, I’ll be doing the same thing: following them around the midwest, trying to see them as many times as I possibly can so I’ll still have that feeling.
So my seashore is not a seashore, but it’s in a crowded crowd of – more than likely, for most shows that I go to – girls that are under the age of 22. It’s just a sea of people that are all there for the same reason, screaming lyrics to a band from the UK that really no one understands half the time anyway. But it’s that feeling of community and that feeling of being somewhere where you feel a happiness that you don’t feel anywhere else.
When I was starting Seafoam, I knew why I wanted to start it, I knew how I wanted to start it, but I needed a company name. I must’ve gone through 50 different options. I’m still pretty convinced – even after having named my first child – that naming a company was maybe a little bit more difficult.
So I must’ve come up with 50 different options, and I would send them around to friends and family, and inevitably, at least one person had something negative to say about every different name option.
“Oh, this makes me think of this.” “You shouldn’t do that.” “There’s a company that’s kind of named like that.” — All different reasons for hating these ideas.
So, I had recently graduated college, and I was able to go on a trip to the beach with my now spouse; we’re sitting on the beach, and I’m trying to think of names, trying to think of names, and eventually she said to me, “Maybe you’re going about this the wrong way. Instead of trying to think of a cool name or a super-descriptive name” — none of which had been working for me with my prior 50 tries, she said, “Why don’t you think about how you want your clients to feel when they’re working with you.”
And I kind of looked out at the water, and I said, “Well, to be honest, if they felt anything like I feel right now, sitting on this beach, that would make me a very happy person.”
Thus, Seafoam Media was born.
There’s a good chance that your team doesn’t don capes and fight crime on the weekends. You probably don’t have super powers and don't go toe to toe with the biggest, baddest villains the world has ever seen. There are, however, some lessons you can take away from the wildly popular superhero movies.
While things like courage, perseverance, and the will to help others are all great lessons, there is an entirely different moral to the tales being spun by Marvel and DC — one that may not be obvious on the surface but that is extremely valuable from a branding perspective.
Late last month, we sent around a survey that asked you who your favorite superhero was and why. You all voted, and a massive number of you agreed that Wonder Woman was the most prominent hero on our list, followed by Deadpool, Spider-Man, and Ironman.
Superhero Poll Results:
As you can see, you all had a lot to say about the best superheroes of the modern day — and rightfully so! Between various comic book, television, and movie franchises, there’s a vast universe of heroes and the villains who try to thwart them.
The moves Marvel and DC have made speak volumes about each brand's business strategies.
Marvel, a box office heavyweight, is renown for kicking out blockbusters on a yearly basis. Aside from that, however, Marvel does something that their competitor currently doesn’t: all of their movies exist in the same “Marvel Comic Universe.”
In other words, every single superhero movie they’ve released over the last several decades have all been linked to each other in some way, shape, or form. If one of their films doesn’t have a cameo from another superhero within the main content, you can almost bet that there is an Easter egg after the credits that teases another hero or villain that will be connected in the near future.
This consistency and connectivity is a compelling and winning strategy for Marvel. It works for other brands, too.
Unlike its sworn enemy, DC Comics take a different approach to their movies. Instead of weaving their characters into the same universe, DC have made it a point to focus on each character’s individual stories. The success of this strategy can be seen by how the majority of our voters chose Wonder Woman over any other hero.
From a storytelling standpoint, focusing on individual heroes is a great way to better develop individual characters and build their story arcs. From a branding perspective, however, this approach leaves something to be desired.
The goal of any brand is to engage its customers in a way that builds trust and cultivates a loyal fanbase.
This goal can be achieved by engaging your customers with a unified message. Your brand and everything it does should be connected; it all needs to lead back to your goal.
Returning to our Marvel vs. DC analogy, these two companies have approached a similar market by using two very different strategies, and despite their best efforts, there is one brand that is evidently coming out ahead.
Marvel has managed to engage a wider range of people and bring them all into the same Marvel Comic Universe where they can interact with one another and celebrate their love for the characters Marvel has created. Now, instead of just leaning on one or two movies a year with great singular characters, Marvel is able to build plausible unions between these characters, such as with The Avengers series, so that they can unite fans of their individual characters into one gigantic mashup of drama and value. This, in turn, strengthens the bond their fans have with their products (i.e. the superheroes and their stories) and the Marvel brand.
That’s not to say that DC has done a poor job. They have mastered the art of building strong individual characters with unique traits and motives. But from a branding perspective, this strategy is disparate at best. It is a much stronger business model to spread your brand’s success across a range of cohesive products and services than it is to rely on one money-maker and hope for the best.
At the end of the day, the one thing about your brand that will encourage customers to stay are the senses of engagement, community, and connection you cultivate with them.
When we develop marketing strategies for the brands we represent, we use a wide-angle lens. We consider goals, target customers, and brand values, and then we utilize all the tools in our toolbox as we make a plan. We believe in putting forth a consistent message that will propel your brand forward, superhero style.
Curious about how you can increase your fanbase? Let's connect.
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