As the calendar flip races upon us, it’s time to once again check in on your marketing game plan. The ODEA-ites have rounded up their top tips as we all buckle up for what appears to be a wild ride in 2025. READ MORE >>
For one week, let’s tally up all the unsolicited emails and voicemails offering to help us sell our business or buy another. We could even turn it into a contest—think “guess the number of jellybeans in the jar,” but with unrequested pitches instead of jellybeans. Closest guess wins! With $796 billion US dollars worth of deals announced in the first quarter of 2024 (and forecasts showing the momentum to continue into 2025) thanks to Boomers and elder Gen X’ers stepping back, businesses are changing hands again after a slow 2023. Consolidation is touching every industry we know so, like us, READ MORE >>
At first, I was telling my team I thought professional services, such as marketing firms like us, would be transformed by AI but those of us 50+ could keep on (largely) as we were. It would take years for what we do to be taken over by the AI bots. The 20- and 30-somethings were the ones who needed to reinvent themselves. Or so I thought. Then ChatGPT came on the scene. Then Claude. And Gemini. And too many others to name. I slowly realized the transformation I originally thought would take at least a decade was happening in months, READ MORE >>
I read a recent Gartner report that proposed the new role for B2B sales teams was “sense-making”. Their research indicated 44% of millennials did not want to interact with a sales rep at any phase of their B2B buyer’s journey. That means B2B sales pros must reinvent their role. Gartner proposed their best way to service prospects was to make sense of all the content we marketers have been producing for years now. This is an interesting concept for sure. But shouldn’t we marketers be helping to make sense throughout the buyer’s journey as well? We already know B2B buying READ MORE >>
I know. We should have told you. You may not have even noticed. But we took a break during the second half of 2022 – from social, from blogging, from everything involved with our own marketing. Why? I can blame it on “busy”. I can say we concentrated on clients’ projects instead of our own. I can justify it as “research” on what happens when you stop marketing. And all that is true. But equally true is that we were short-staffed, still working out the kinks in our “new normal”, and more often than we liked, we were feeling drained, READ MORE >>
Why would a marketing firm become a member of a global non-profit whose vision is to maximize steel’s contribution to a sustainable society? Because it is the right thing to do. If you know us ODEA-ites, you know we love to geek out about industries others often consider dull, like steel. We are proud to say we’ve had a steel client, or a few, on our roster for as long as we’ve been in business. We also wholeheartedly support organizations that emphasize the importance of ESG (environment, social and governance) pillars, which we believe are the lens consumers now use READ MORE >>
We Want You: Graphic Designer WHO WE ARE A small-but-mighty virtual marketing firm with team members spread from Illinois to Ohio to Michigan to Arkansas. We execute branding, marketing strategies and niche projects for (mostly) B2B clients clustered in areas like manufacturing, industrial tech, professional services, family businesses, niche start-ups, etc. Our focus is on brand and storytelling via digital and the free/earned media side of the biz; web, content marketing, media relations, event marketing, nurture, social, marketing automation, etc. We serve as the outsourced marketing department for many of our clients – developing brands, strategies and plans then sticking READ MORE >>
Tradeshows are back baby! It’s been a long year of working from home and nowhere to go. But lucky for us, it’s time to be a carnival worker again! ODEA is fortunate enough to have some seasoned tradeshow vets on our team and we thought we’d let you in on some tips and tricks of the trade(show). Check out what our gurus have to say and your tradeshow mojo will be back in no time! Getting ready to rumble! ODEA-ite Chelsi is a behind-the-scenes kind of gal when it comes to tradeshows. She’s all about the magic that happens before READ MORE >>
I have to believe I’m not the only one in the world who’s seen the amount of LinkedIn messages I’ve received triple since March of 2020. For a moment, my LinkedIn-loving heart was so happy – folks are finally embracing LinkedIn! And then I click into the messages and those joyous feelings begin to dissipate. Generic messages, lengthy novels, or never-ending requests for time on my calendar are what I find repeatedly. I understand. The once dried-up pipeline is now bursting at the seams. So many people to connect with, so little time! But we can’t let this be our READ MORE >>