Name: TriMark Digital
Brand: TriMark Digital
Rating: 5 (13 reviews)

How to Leverage ChatGPT in Your Marketing (and Pitfalls to Avoid)

Recently, companies in many sectors have explored using ChatGPT in place of a full in-house marketing team. Though AI is advancing rapidly, it’s best to proceed with caution; tech still isn’t a replacement for a trained digital marketer.

Humans will always be the heart of marketing. We’re real people, sharing with other real people the products and services that enhance our lives. But that doesn’t mean we can’t leverage the power of AI to make parts of marketing planning faster or more streamlined. Here’s how you can leverage ChatGPT as an enhancement tool to support your human marketing team.

What Exactly Is ChatGPT?

ChatGPT is an AI-powered tool that generates human-like text based on specific prompts. As a chatbot, it can converse and answer questions in several forms, from essays to emails. This is similar to chatbots seen on retail websites but with a more human-like response, thanks to the advanced data it’s trained on.

Created by OpenAI, an artificial intelligence research and deployment company, ChatGPT depends on a type of machine learning known as deep learning to understand queries and supply relevant responses.

Other Renditions of AI-Powered Chatbots

In response to OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google has developed its own AI chatbot, Bard. This tool uses the Language Model for Dialogue Applications (LaMDA) and is linked to the internet, where it can access real-time data. Bard has a more relevant data set than ChatGPT, which is trained off sources from 2021. It’s a tool to augment Google Search for more contextual search results.

Similarly, Microsoft Bing helps users get more from their web searches. Bing, also known as Bing Search, examines search results for your question and summarizes them based on your needs.

How ChatGPT Can Elevate Your Marketing

Research & Strategy

The beginning stages of audience research and content analysis are perfect opportunities to test AI’s marketing capabilities. ChatGPT can:

Provide a simple analysis of your topic of choice
Perform SWOT analyses (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) to tighten up your future marketing efforts
Identify related topics or products for co-marketing opportunities with related companies
Pick out keywords to target in campaigns, including clustering keywords semantically or generating related keywords

For example, while outlining an article about the current state of digital marketing, we asked ChatGPT to generate ten keywords for “digital marketing in 2023.” Here’s what it returned:

ChatGPT's response to a prompt to list keywords about digital marketing

Once ChatGPT gave us a list of ideas, we examined each item to determine whether it was a relevant topic we wanted to include in the blog. It also helped spur a few ideas of our own, such as new video content creation tools. When conducting your own brainstorming session, these lists can be a springboard to build on your existing knowledge and research.

Now that you have your keywords, what about your personas and audience segments? If it’s time to reassess who is interested in your product or explore potential new target audiences, ChatGPT can help. When asked to generate a persona who would be interested in researching current digital marketing tactics, ChatGPT came up with “Sarah”:

ChatGPT's generated digital marketer persona named Sarah

With her goals and challenges laid out, we can now determine how to best relate and communicate with our target audience persona, “Sarah.”

Want to gauge how your consumers feel about your latest products? ChatGPT can help you build a survey or poll. You can ask for recommendations for types of questions to ask, such as a 5-point scale, or have it generate questions about a specific topic.

We asked ChatGPT the following prompt: “List 5 questions on tools digital marketers are using in 2023.” Here’s its response:

AI-generated questions that digital marketers are asking

From here, we could select the most relevant questions for our survey and weed out any that are repetitive or off-topic.

Productivity & Creativity

ChatGPT is frequently used for content generation, but how reliable is that content? This is where people often get into trouble, relying too heavily on AI to generate content without then applying critical thinking to create a full picture.

ChatGPT even admits this if you prompt it to talk about its current writing capabilities:

ChatGPT listing its capabilities and limitations

That doesn’t mean ChatGPT can’t help reduce writers’ workflows and allow them more time to be creative. There’s plenty that AI can do to help creatives in the content creation process:

Gearing up for a brainstorming session on product names, article titles, blog ideas or a social media tagline? ChatGPT excels at this kind of idea generation.
Ask ChatGPT to create an outline for a writing prompt. You can get more granular with this by inviting an SEO expert to add relevant keywords to the outline. This will give you plenty of information to write a fresh, data-driven piece of content.
Have a jam-packed schedule for an upcoming event? ChatGPT can analyze relevant keywords and hashtags in your event’s social space to give you plenty of social content ideas.

What to Watch Out for When Using ChatGPT

Since ChatGPT pulls information from the internet, its results may not be 100 percent truthful or dependable. Also, the data it uses to generate responses is from up to 2021, so some information could be outdated. While OpenAI announced a new plugin to retrieve live data, it currently has limited availability. Keep these limitations in mind as you conduct keyword research and competitor analyses.

Because ChatGPT is a chatbot, it lacks the human touch that traditional content marketing requires. The AI isn’t sophisticated enough to tailor content to your brand’s tone and voice. It’s also challenging to convey emotion and engage with your unique audience with chatbot-generated content. It also isn’t SEO-friendly, as Google classifies fully AI-generated content as spam.

Since ChatGPT’s output relies on your prompt, another challenge is ensuring your prompt is concise yet detailed so it can create relevant content. It may take a few tries to get your query just right.

We asked some TriMarkers to share example prompts they’d use to support their work. Here’s what they said:

“Name a new golf package for a golf resort based on the 2024 U.S. Open”
“Create a new tagline for a power company’s generators”
“Explain the biggest needs of executive building owners”
“Write 10 different headlines for an ad promoting membership to a country club. Each must be under 40 characters”
“Outline a site page that describes the financial value of replacement windows to new homeowners and potential home buyers”

While ChatGPT will respond to these prompts, the ones with the clearest guidelines or instructions are likely the ones that will receive the most useful results.

Start Using ChatGPT to Aid Your Marketing Strategy

When given a prompt, ChatGPT quickly replies with relevant information to help you get your job done faster. When paired with a marketing team, it can play a helpful role in letting your creatives do what they do best—creating human-centric content for other humans.

7 of Our Content Team’s Favorite Summer Reads

As you gear up for warmer weather, barbeque nights and poolside reclining, we wanted to share some of our content team’s favorite books to help you prepare your summer reading list. See the criteria we used to narrow down our list and why we recommend checking these out ASAP.

What Makes a Book Our Favorite?

Whether they have endearing characters or captivating plot lines, these are reads you won’t want to put down.

Many of these titles became our favorites because they help us grow both professionally and personally. As content writers, these books teach us important lessons in storytelling structure, a device we use in our marketing content daily.

Common elements of our favorite books include:

Memorable characters
Engaging plots
Descriptive scenes and settings
Life lessons

The Content Team’s Favorite Books

From novels to memoirs, our team has diverse tastes in their favorite books.

“Bel Canto”

Ann Patchett

“Every sentence of this book feels like feasting. Ann Patchett turns the quietest moments and feelings of the human experience into singular examples of magic. ‘Bel Canto’ reminds me that there is something divine, something worth protecting and holding gently in everyone.

Lesson: When writing, set your content apart from the ChatGPT era by channeling the human experience to relate to your customers and appear more personal.”

—Caroline, Senior Content Writer

“The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself”

Michael A. Singer

“Whenever I need a break from myself, I come back to this book. It’s a gentle yet firm reminder for me to take part in self-reflection and rest. This simplistic masterpiece encourages readers to come as they are and let that be enough. If you’re looking to transform the relationship with your mind and the rest of the world, I highly recommend it!

Lesson: As a writer, we all have thorns and self-made fears that get in the way of our flow, but we can learn to remove them to create great content.”

—Felicity, Content Writer

“The Luminaries”

Eleanor Catton

“Before I read this book, I would never have thought a novel detailing Gold Rush-era New Zealand would have caught my interest. I still remember how I paced around holding this book, wolfing it down, the first time I read it. Part detective novel, part ghost story, part exploration of the period, ‘The Luminaries’ is an expansive but tightly woven narrative.

I’m fascinated by how Catton created a huge cast of characters (each inspired by an aspect of the astrological chart) but made them all so memorable it was easy to keep up with what was happening. I could talk about this book all day.

Lesson: Structure matters. Whether it’s an 800-page novel or a 750-word blog post, structuring your writing in clear, cohesive sections is the difference between someone reading, skimming or skipping.”

—Cameron, Content Writer

“My Life in France”

Julia Child and Alex Prud’homme

“Julia Child had such a big personality, and her memoir oozes with that charm, even though she worked on it in the last year of her life, with some of it completed by her nephew after her death. It is a masterclass in translating personality to the page. She also describes her life in France, including the food and scenery, so vividly without being overly flowery.

She describes the process of developing recipes for her first cookbook, something that could be boring, in just enough detail to interest and entertain. The entire book feels like a long letter written to a friend, which is impressive for any memoir, but especially so for someone as iconic as Julia Child.

Lesson: Don’t let your writing stray too far from your actual voice. Of course, this is different when writing for clients because each one has a different voice. Still, don’t overcomplicate things. You’re still a person talking to other people.”

—Megan, Content Strategist

“The Count of Monte Cristo”

Alexandre Dumas

“Full of adventure and surprise, intrigue and a cast of characters spanning every walk of life in 1830s France, ‘The Count of Monte Cristo’ is storytelling at its finest. It’s a long, long novel, yet for all its depth offers a highly readable page-turner.

‘Monte Cristo’ is one of those classic books you wish you could read again for the first time, as much for the narrative insight as the experience of getting to know so many interesting characters up close. Dumas takes you everywhere, from masked balls and the idyllic countryside to the high seas and depths of prison. This book tells a heroic tale of love and justice brimming with life.

Lesson: The book ends with the following quote: ‘All wisdom is contained in two words: wait and hope.’ This is a great reminder when casting the net for a new campaign as you step back to see how your audience responds to the information you present them with.”

—Andrew, Content Writer

“The Elementals”

Michael McDowell

“‘The Elementals’ pairs Gulf Coast summers with subtle-yet-sublime horror to create a standout haunted house book. And while certainly not the first or last of those, the author escalates the subject matter with unique flair and mastery of naturally escalating suspense.

Lesson: Pacing is incredibly subjective, but being conscious of how you’re creating atmosphere and intrigue (and when and when not to ramp it up) will grab people actively and subconsciously. You don’t always need to do something entirely original: you just need to do it better.”

—Marcus, Content Writer

“Damnation Spring”

Ash Davidson

“Set in California in the late ’70s, ‘Damnation Spring’ tells the story of a small town and its dependence on logging. Though a bit slow at first, the plot kept me engaged, as I wanted to find out how the community would overcome a halt to their logging productions when environmental activists tried to intervene.

I particularly enjoyed the back-and-forth narration between the two main characters as it gave a deeper look into the drive behind their actions. Ash does a marvelous job developing the characters to showcase their human qualities and flaws. By the end of the book, I felt like I truly knew this cast of characters and didn’t want my time with them to come to a close.

Lesson: When writing to a specific audience, keep in mind what motivates them to make what you’re saying more relatable and more likely to perform your desired action.”

—Marissa, Content Writer

Your Guide to Creating Social Media Content on a Budget

Everyone’s on social media, from friends and family to businesses large and small. However, many brands may be looking to jumpstart their social media presence without breaking the bank on advertising and expensive photo shoots. Let’s look at five low-budget ways to create impactful content for your organic social campaign.

1. Choose the Right Platforms for Your Audience

Knowing your audience is key to the success of your social media strategy. Choose the social media platforms where your customers and audience congregate. Look to competitors if you’re unsure of where to start. This is the foundation for your strategy and will determine how and where you spend your budget—no matter how limited.

Consolidate Your Efforts

While it can be tempting to sign up for every platform (or go all-in on one and ignore the others), pick two to three channels to focus on.

This makes optimization easier, saves time and allows for some split testing. For example, you can compare engagement between Instagram, LinkedIn and Facebook and alter your content strategy accordingly.

2. Set Your Budget

Even if you’re not running paid ad campaigns, it’s still important to know your budget for organic social media. Setting a budget helps you determine what you can and cannot accomplish, saving time in the long run through smarter planning.

One simple way to budget is to use buckets. For example, divide your spend into categories such as subscriptions and software, photography and video shoots, wages, upfront equipment costs and even travel expenses. If your budget allows for it, having a dedicated social media manager on your team can streamline this process, resulting in increased content consistency and more strategic spending.

3. Create Killer Content

And now comes the fun part! Set a plan, establish a routine and start posting.

Don’t underestimate the importance of high-quality content when trying to make the most of your budget. Combine quality content with a solid, data-informed strategy and you’re well on your way to seeing success on social and driving meaningful engagement.

Examples of budget-friendly, impactful strategies include things like content repurposing, personalization and consistency in posting. Let’s break it down.

Content Repurposing

You’ve probably come across this before, but we’ll say it again. Content repurposing is your friend! It gives new life to your work, allowing you to reach new eyes and shed fresh light on your ideas.

A few examples of content repurposing are:

Making a Twitter thread from a blog, using the blog’s headers as guidance for dividing up talking points per tweet.
Turning key statistics or research notes into an infographic.
Creating video cutdowns from longer-form videos. For example, turning a six-minute product video into a 30-second showcase optimized for Instagram Reels.
Taking information from polls and marketing quizzes and sharing your findings with followers in an informational post. This works especially well on LinkedIn!
Reposting content from your network and influencers. For example, if someone dines at your restaurant and tags you in their Instagram post, reshare it to your story! Remember to be mindful of resharing others’ content and personal information. When in doubt, simply like their post or drop a comment, rather than resharing it fully.

Personalize, Personalize, Personalize

What you post on social media should speak to your specific audience and encourage their engagement, such as watching a video, leaving a comment or clicking a link to purchase your latest product.

If your audience is split—such as at a tennis club with followers who are both members and non-members—strive to create posts that speak to both parties to avoid alienating followers.

Remember: every post on social media doesn’t have to sell something. Building your brand and communicating with people is equally important, as it gives someone a more emotionally driven reason to become a customer beyond the facts and benefits. The results? More authentic engagement, real-time feedback on your brand and developing a customer-centric reputation.

Be Consistent

Since you’re trying to maximize your effectiveness on a budget, consistency is key. Posting three times in a week and then dropping off for two months is no way to build a following.

It can be helpful to set a weekly reminder to post, as well as use scheduling tools like Meta Business Manager or Sprout Social.

How frequently you post depends on your industry, the platform and your own availability. There’s no hard rule, though once or twice per week is a good benchmark. Remember to keep a pulse on your notifications to reply back to comments and engage with followers.

Consistency also applies to the content you create—match your brand’s visual style and tone with each post, paying attention to what performs best and adapting as needed. This allows you to avoid wasting time and money on less impactful content going forward.

Managing audience expectations entails meeting those as much as breaking them. Keep people on their toes. A spontaneous look into the daily routine of your business pairs well with your more planned out, curated content.

Don’t Forget Best Practices

Regardless of your focus metrics and strategy, best practices on social media will help you do more with less.

For content creation, these include using crisp, high-definition images and videos; writing captions and copy that are clear, to the point and in-line with your brand’s established tone; using targeted hashtags and incorporating a dynamic mix of content types—from stories and posts to Twitter threads and polls.

Each platform has their own best practices, so be sure to follow those and plan accordingly. Low-stakes is okay when planning! Not every post needs to go viral and astound viewers with dazzling creativity. (But some should!)

4. Harness the Power of Video

Whether you’re building out your YouTube presence with videos, or simply posting in-feed and on stories, video offers a high-powered and emotionally compelling way to tell stories online.

Alternate your video posts with image and text-based posts, especially if you have a limited number of videos to share.

Video helps you showcase the people and places of your brand in new ways, whether you write a script and have people on camera talking or simply add music over footage. You can also go live, post short in-the-moment clips with a simple caption and share BTS shots at an event—all low-cost ways to use video.

But Isn’t Video Expensive?

No video production team, no problem. With a plethora of free or mostly free tools available—combined with your smartphone camera—you don’t need a fancy setup or the latest, Lamborghini-level editing software to succeed.

Yes, expensive tools are worth it for creating videos at a high production level—and in some cases you should absolutely make that investment—but on a budget you can still make something that rocks.

Video Examples

Creating a mix of short and long-form video is sure to get your viewer’s eyes. As mentioned, maximize the video you do capture through repurposing. Below is an example of the long, then short version of videos our video team at TriMark Digital created for Firestone Country Club. Yes, these were higher-budget productions, but the same concept can be applied to budget-friendly videos too.

Long-form version:

7:33

0:20

Short-form version, optimized for social and using audio from the original:

5. Choose Your Toolkit – Free & Inexpensive Social Media Tools

From analytics platforms to tools for designing content, your social media strategy is only as good as its execution. Here are a few of our favorite free and inexpensive social media tools for making the most of your content on a budget. You can also check out Toools.design for a list of 1,000+ design and content resources.

Canva – FREE, with Additional Paid Plan Options

Canva is a quick and simple-to-use graphic design tool that offers a wide range of customizable templates. Whether you’re creating a photo collage or getting more elaborate with their video editing and collaboration features, it’s no wonder why Canva has over 100 million users.

Adobe Express – FREE with Adobe Subscription

If you already have an Adobe subscription, Adobe Express offers a no additional cost tool. It’s simple to use, and similar to Canva just with slightly more robust capabilities. You get full design capabilities for static and video content, plus a free content scheduling feature for all major social platforms (this is RARE!).

TubeBuddy – Inexpensive at $4.80/mo. Minimal Plan Option

TubeBuddy is a browser extension and mobile app designed to help you optimize your content, grow your YouTube channel, find target keywords and create better videos. For people trying to get into producing content on YouTube, this tool offers a lot of helpful guidance for a beginner or intermediate user.

ezGIF – FREE

Convert screen recordings, mp4s and other videos into GIFs with ezGIF. In addition to creating GIFs, you can resize, crop, reverse, optimize and apply some effects.

GIFs are visually engaging, and great for Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. You can also embed GIFs into other content, such as blogs, emails and presentations.

A quick look at the ezGIF interface.

Meta Business Suite and Business Manager

Schedule your Facebook and Instagram posts, launch ads and oversee all of your accounts and business assets in one place. Meta Business Suite is free to use with your Facebook login. You can also access analytics and audience insights.

Social Media and Beyond

Are you looking to learn more about how to level up your social media and marketing strategies? Continue reading with a guide to brand strategy versus marketing strategy, tips for developing marketing campaigns in the off-season and 5 reasons why you should be using video in your digital strategy.

Why You Should Migrate to Google Analytics 4 ASAP

In a world, where data privacy is more important than ever.

Where marketers are saying goodbye to third-party cookies.

Only one data insight tool can bring the answers you need.

Google Analytics 4.

On computer screens this summer.

What is Google Analytics 4?

Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is a digital customer insight tool used to track website activity. Companies can use this service to measure customer usage metrics, like bounce rate and conversion, to help them measure the success of their marketing campaigns. This data is then stored and processed via data architecture for future use.

GA4 vs. UA

GA4 and Universal Analytics (UA) are both measurement tools for tracking website traffic. UA is the predecessor of GA4, and as such, it has some more limitations than GA4.

First, since UA depends on “cookie-based” tracking, it offers less data privacy than GA4. It’s also centered on sessions, whereas GA4 is centered on events and users.

While UA tracks views in separate mobile-specific properties, GA4 allows reporting and analysis across mobile apps and web pages with its cross-platform reporting capabilities.

New GA4 Features

Back in October 2020, Google launched its fourth version of GA to include new modeling capabilities that can fill gaps in customer behavior. This iteration came with several added features:

Cross-platform data unification
AI-driven insights and predictions
Audience Trigger
Access to BigQuery streaming export
Advance Analysis tool

GA4 is more customizable than previous GA versions and has consolidated a lot of its other products into one. For example, instead of having Google Analytics for your website and Firebase for your app tracking, they are now integrated.

Why GA4 is Important for Your Business

GA4 is the future of data measurement and gives you information on your customers so you can provide them with the information they need at each stage of their customer journey.

“The benefit of using Google Analytics is that it’s your own data,” says Conor Dalton, TriMark Digital Director of Organic and Data. “You really know why and how and if customers are going to your website. It’s still a free tool. It’s the most user-friendly and civilian-accessible customer insight tool.”

From an SEO perspective, this allows companies to forecast using predictive metrics and gain precise insights into user behavior through custom events and measurements. GA4 also helps “position your company to be on sound analytics footing with minimal gaps in data upon the sunset date,” says Tim Succetti, TriMark Digital Director of Technical SEO.

On the Horizon

Universal Analytics will be retiring in July 2023, making it important to act quickly in modernizing your data and analytics strategy. Unfortunately, many brands are vastly underprepared for this transition and are at risk of losing important data.

Dalton and Succetti recommend being proactive and setting your analytics strategy up with an experienced professional who can ensure you’re prepared. Keep in mind, when setting it up yourself, you may miss out on collecting the right data if you don’t configure your properties correctly. For many, the process is proving more complicated than initially expected, making it helpful to rely on an expert.

“We have a lot of experience. We’ve done it for all our clients on many different levels,” Dalton says.

A marketing agency can help brands export and warehouse their historical data for long-term use. They can also make sure a brand’s properties are configured properly.

“A reason to be proactive and have a professional do it is that you get it set up and QAed, and you ensure that everything is flowing as comparatively as possible as in UA,” says Dalton. “Even though things are going to look and feel a little bit different, it’s set up as apples to apples as you can get it. The reason you do it soon is that you want to have them running in parallel to have some sort of continuity.”

Getting Ahead of the Curve

Being forward-thinking allows you to identify any major issues and address them early. It also makes future analysis easier since it means you’ll have more insight and information to rely on. The sooner you set up your GA4, the sooner you’ll start collecting data and using it to your advantage. After all, the worst-case scenario would be to realize your data is no longer accessible after the UA phase-out.

To make the transition to GA4, follow these steps:

Set Up Your GA4 Account: Sign in to your company’s Google account and go to the Google Analytics homepage. Click “Start for Free” and answer the three prompted questions.
Create Your Data Stream: After logging onto your GA4 dashboard, set up a data stream to set parameters for the data you collect from your site.
Begin Gathering Data From Your Site: Add an Analytics tag to your web pages to collect data from your website.
Configure Your Setup: Set up your configurations under the “Configure” icon to customize your data.
Confirm Your Setup: Go to the “Reports” section of your GA4 dashboard, open your “Realtime” report and verify that you set up your account correctly.

Ready or not, GA4 is gearing up to replace UA. Taking a few proactive steps today can ensure that your business is ready for the new age of data strategy.

GA4 Migration Services

From training your organization on how to use the GA4 platform to setting up your Google Tag manager and making sure it’s operating as close as possible to your UA account, TriMark Digital offers a variety of migration services. Contact us to learn more about how we can help you spring ahead and prepare for the shift to GA4.

How To Do “Scary” Marketing

No, don’t recheck your calendar. While we’re still half a year away from Halloween, there’s power in “scary” marketing at any time. Horror creates a unique audience connection that can capture attention and prompt reactions. Tapping into this in your own marketing can create excitement, engagement and urgency for your brand.

Beyond just filling your advertisements with ghosts and goblins, your marketing can incorporate strategies that horror media and horror-minded marketers have long leveraged. It’s no coincidence that 1999’s “The Blair Witch Project,” which was as much marketing buzz as it was a movie, is still one of the most profitable and seen films for its budget. Wondering how to similarly thrill, grab attention and raise some pulses? Here’s how to do scary marketing on your terms.

5 Ways To Do Scary Marketing

There are shades to scary marketing, meaning yours doesn’t have to be outright horrifying to be effective (in most cases, this isn’t even preferable). Over the years, scary marketing has taken all different shapes to appeal to audiences:

For help finding the just-right balance of frights, here are 5 different scare tactic options to consider.

1. Pair Scares With Laughs

Horror and comedy are a pairing that’s consistently popular in marketing, and for good reason. The juxtaposition of these two polar opposites allows for a lot of fun, tongue-in-cheek scenarios that can set a brand apart. Plus, comedy makes horror much more approachable and capable of having a wider audience appeal.

Notable Example: “Good Choice” Geico Commercial

This commercial takes the cliche of horror movie characters making poor decisions and cleverly makes saving money with Geico as much of a given.

2. Make Choosing Something Else Scary

Even if you don’t want to inspire fear, maybe alternatives to your products or services can. By frightening people with the negatives of opting for another option, you can playfully build trust in what you offer.

Notable Example: “Dream Vacation” Hilton Commercial

This commercial creates fear around rental options to build up Hilton’s uniformness and reliability.

3. Get Mysterious

When done correctly, a horror-informed angle can keep your audience guessing and wondering where you’re going next. Cryptic teasers, intriguing launches, surprising sales: anything that effectively uses mystery can be ideal for generating hype and interest.

Notable Example: “Smile” Guerilla Marketing Campaign

@screenoffscript
“Smile” is out in theaters this weekend 😁 #Smile #SmileMovie #Horror #Marketing #Cinema #Movies #Film
♬ original sound – Screen Off Script

The on-brand and viral strategy for the horror movie “Smile,” involving actors with eerie smiles being in crowds at different events, was a creative way to get national news coverage and build traction on TikTok.

4. Resolve the Fear

Understandably, sometimes the best thing to do with fear is take it away. By showing and then deflating the fear or concerns your customers could have about your products, services or brand, you mitigate negativity that could be holding your business back.

Notable Example: “Strangers” AirBnB Commercial

It turns out renters aren’t so scary after all in this creative spin on how we may think of strangers in our home and what they’re really like.

5. Tell a Scary Story

Scary stories are a staple of our culture, and storytelling is key to marketing, so this can be a real winning pair-up. Do this in a way that feels genuine to your branding and voice, and you can really capture an audience that otherwise might not be as attentive.

Notable Example: “Scream” TikTok ARG Campaign

@toobrashsarah
Details revealed! #savewoodsboro #screammovie #ad #paramount
♬ original sound – TooBrAshSarah

The rollout for the fifth film in the “Scream” series included an alternate reality game based around a “real person” who lived in the movie’s setting, helping to build up the world and get people invested in the new cast.

Scary Marketing Can Be Successful Marketing

When done in the right context, scariness can be the secret to giving your marketing some out-of-the-ordinary oomph. The key is ensuring your scary marketing campaign happens in a way that’s genuine to your brand and doesn’t feel out of line with your image. It’s best incorporated in the context of your goals and achieved with services that cater to your unique circumstances and needs.

The Surprising Benefits of Quiz Marketing

You’ve probably encountered a marketing quiz before, whether or not you realized it was meant for marketing. BuzzFeed personality quizzes helped popularize the format over the last decade, though quizzes aren’t limited to entertainment alone.

As a marketing tool, quizzes are a great way to inform potential customers about your brand and provide personalized insights and product recommendations based on their responses.

Companies use marketing quizzes across industries to engage audiences, capture leads, drive conversions, reduce bounce rates and boost social shareability through fun, lighthearted content. Quizzes also focus the content on the user rather than the product or service offered. Keep reading below to learn more about how to use quizzes in your marketing strategy—the answer may surprise you!

Why do marketers use quizzes?

Marketers use quizzes for a variety of reasons, from gathering customer insights and information to engaging audiences and creating buzz. Quizzes integrate easily into multi-channel strategies, are relatively simple to set up and provide users with a playful way to learn more about a brand offering, product or service.

Plus, quizzes (if done right) are easy for customers to complete in a matter of minutes. Quizzes aren’t rocket science but can go a long way in driving results and diversifying your content strategy.

Two men having a conversation at a kitchen table

In what stage of the marketing funnel are quizzes most effective?

In most cases, quizzes work best in the awareness and consideration stages of the marketing funnel. Quizzes that are lighter and more entertainment-forward help create brand awareness and drive engagement, especially on social media.

On the other hand, quizzes linked with making a purchase decision (like the examples below) are effective at the end of the customer journey—when someone has purchase intent but doesn’t know which product to purchase.

What are some examples of brands that do quizzes well?

From small businesses to large corporations, the application of marketing quizzes is only as limited as your imagination. Some of our favorite quizzes—those that are both innovative and effective—range across industries.

Hyundai SUV Selector

Build-your-own car “quizzes” are nothing new. In a fresh spin on this classic format, Hyundai took to Instagram to help followers pick the perfect SUV for their needs. The goal was to boost social engagement while increasing brand awareness and, ultimately, car sales. Useful? Yes! Strangely rewarding, even if you’re not buying an SUV? Also yes!

As you’ll notice, each quiz question occupies its own Instagram page. For all its uniqueness, this quiz is among the more elaborate in terms of setup.

Take the quiz here. Note that you must be logged in to Instagram. All you need to do is tap the image to answer.

KOHLER® LuxStone® Shower Quiz

TriMark Digital created a quiz for client KOHLER to engage site visitors and help them discover their shower design style.

Users answer a series of lifestyle and design-related questions (favorite patterns, decor style, colors, etc.) to help them choose the right KOHLER LuxStone shower for their home. You can take the quiz here!

After completing the short six-question quiz, the user enters their email address to receive results and draws one step closer to making a purchase decision. This quiz has become one of our most successful organic lead-generation tools on the website, with high email engagement and conversion rates.

Beardbrand – What’s the Best Beard Style for You?

Quizzes don’t have to link with product recommendations by default. Men’s grooming company Beardbrand created a quiz to help would-be beard growers find their distinct beard style. Like a personality quiz, users answer a series of work, wardrobe and lifestyle-related questions.

Rather than trying to drive conversions to purchase, the primary goal of this quiz is to get email newsletter sign-ups.

Of course, after a brief description of what kind of beard is best for you, Beardbrand lists related product recommendations and packages: trimming scissors, beard oil, you name it.

What are some different methods for using quizzes?

Part of what makes quizzes effective is how well they integrate with other marketing initiatives, such as blogs, email campaigns, social media and organic search.

Quizzes come in all shapes and sizes; which quiz you use depends on your audience and business objectives. In addition to product-focused quizzes, other methods for using quizzes include social media polls, questionnaires, slider responses to gauge excitement about an upcoming event and so on.

What may start as a marketing initiative can soon evolve into new ways of reaching your audience and communicating your brand value. A musician could post a short poll on social asking where they should tour next, with response insights informing venue locations and deepening audience connection. The drawback to this more informal approach is it won’t always lead to as much information gathered.

Three people sitting on a couch looking at a laptop

Here is one more example to help illustrate how quizzes integrate with broader marketing initiatives:

A new parent knows they want to buy a stroller but isn’t sure which one to choose. They may start by searching online for things like “best strollers of 2023,” “best strollers for new parents,” “budget friendly strollers” or even “what are the different types of strollers?”

If you’re a stroller company or retailer, you could create a quiz designed to help parents choose between stroller models and then post it on your site, landing page or in a related blog. Quiz questions could relate to the parent’s lifestyle, activity level, frequency of travel and so on. This method also works for matching services, online courses, and other “products” with user preference.

Integrated Marketing 101

Want to learn more about the ins and outs of integrated marketing? Level up your email nurture strategy, discover strategic influencer programs or read our blog for tips on how to launch a successful product marketing strategy.

And if you’re ready to create a marketing quiz of your own but don’t know where to start, we’re here to help.