The Inspire Blog

Hospitals are forced to compete against each other in a marketing arms race where old media tools just aren’t up to snuff. ...

Don’t be fooled by a logo’s simplistic appearance. It’s simple design does not denote a simple process. Maybe it’s because of their size, but logos and their creation are often underestimated. They’re small, yes,but they are mighty. And designing one tends to take a lot more time than one would think.
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We have been in business in Wilmington for over 10 years now. Over that time we have learned a lot about our competition and have built a pretty good understanding of the local advertising agency landscape. Sometimes we run into situations where we have conflicts of interest and can not take on a new client that is in direct competition with one of our existing clients....

It’s no surprise that with all of the information that we now have access to, sometimes your voice gets lost among the rabble, even if you have something really great and inspiring and insightful to say. But the problem isn’t what you say — it’s how you say it. And a soapbox to stand on is not going to cut it....

Just eight days ago — we launched a music video for one of our healthcare clients. Usually, eight days is not enough time to calculate a significant enough outcome to warrant a blog post, but the results are in, and we cannot wait to tell you about it! Clients sometimes struggle with taking a leap of faith and moving outside of their comfort zone when it comes to marketing their organization....

When Inspire was faced with the challenge of creating a cost-effective marketing strategy to inspire Columbus County, N.C. residents to shop local businesses as opposed to “the other guys,” they crafted a custom social media campaign dubbed #KeepItColumbus.

In keeping with the origin of the county’s name, the #KeepItColumbus campaign centers around a YouTube video featuring none other than Christopher Columbus himself — strolling through the charming local shops, praising the economic benefits of shopping locally. And not just shopping locally, but supporting local businesses in general...

Whether you’re trying to gain some traction for a new (and perhaps obscure) product, or you need to spice up what might otherwise be considered a mundane, run-of-the-mill product or service, humor can prove a powerful tool for garnering some much-needed attention.

For instance: heating and air conditioning. Not the most exciting stuff. But — it’s a pretty essential service, is it not? Especially if you live at the beach, or in the mountains, or anywhere where it gets uncomfortably hot and/or cold. So, how do you distinguish yourself from the pack? With a penguin costume. Naturally....

Being involved in a small-town business community in Whiteville, NC, we hear a lot about the importance of shopping locally and avoiding sending our money out of the county and state through online shopping. We know that shopping locally keeps more dollars circulating in our county’s economy, and shopping with a locally-owned establishment circulates even more...

Let’s face it. There have not been a lot of positives for the U.S. Postal service to hang their hat on these days. They are often on the receiving end of jokes on how not to run a business; however, they deserve a lot of credit for developing a new marketing service for business that is a more cost-effective way to reach potential customers than traditional direct mail. Every Door Direct Mail (EDDM) allows businesses to geo-target customers that are physically located near their location based on specific cities, zip codes, or carrier routes without having to purchase a mailing list...

Auto parts e-commerce can be a complicated business. There are so many ways to optimize a part for search engine rankings, that it can be hard for an e-commerce manager to know where to begin. You should always start by putting yourself in the shoes of your customer. After all, Google has optimized their search engine to work not for your business, but for the search engine user...

A recent survey indicated that about 20% of employees care about the company they work for. About 20% could care less. It’s the remaining 60% that are on the fence and it’s part of your job as a manager, owner or HR professional to get them on your side. Sure, you’ve made it a policy to treat everyone equally. That sounds nice but not everyone is equal; some produce more than others...

This year, the Telly Awards received more than 12,000 entries from all 50 states and numerous countries around the world. The winning entry features a retired couple confident about their future because CCU’s better banking options made their transition to retirement a little more manageable. This is the third Telly Award in three years that Inspire has received for CCU commercials...

This is our first blog post in our Facebook Marketing series where we will show you step-by-step how we plan Facebook campaigns for our clients. It's important to know what you will be measuring before you get started with any kind of marketing. Facebook should be no exception. This is a reference article. Nothing very sexy or awe inspiring about it, but you'll want to come back to this when we get into real campaign planning and management in our up coming articles...

Inspire co-founder Jonathan Medford is coming back to the company after a three year stint growing a start up e-commerce and wholesale distribution business in the automotive aftermarket industry. Medford oversaw the development of DMA Goodpoint’s e-commerce efforts and was an integral part of growing the company into the top sellers of shocks and struts on the Internet. He was also the Director of Marketing for the wholesale distributor side of the business where he led a team that won an aftermarket industry award for Best Marketing/Merchandising of a Product Line for their “I Need Options” print campaign....

During my stint as Ecommerce Director for an online auto parts store I lobbied my executive team to invest in a YouTube video campaign. My concept was pretty simple: drive sales by shooting how-to / DIY / installation videos of our Sensen Shocks & Struts so that our customers can learn how to install the products themselves (or show them that it’s clearly beyond their mechanical ability!). We would include a promo code in the video and try to drive sales to our website www.apxautoparts.com....

Blogging is an essential tool in today’s virtual marketplace. Almost every business has a website or at least some form of web presence, so it’s time to stop patting yourself on that back. Utilizing social media and keeping up with the latest search engine optimization (SEO) techniques are both extremely important (in most cases) for exposure, but are you really connecting with your audience...

Inspiration is a funny...and sometimes fleeting thing. With our attention firmly on our clients and their goals, we sometimes lose focus of our own objectives and image. This spring we’re refreshing our brand and even rolling out some new marketing products and advertising services. With the start of our 8th year in business, we figured now is as good of time as any to introduce InspireNC.com 2.0...