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8 “Simple” Questions Brand or Product Managers Must Ask

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The 8 “SIMPLE” questions every Brand Marketer or Product Manager needs to ask themselves about their strategy in order to build proper tactics.  When it comes to digital marketing & strategy - the best flashlight is a well-formed question. Below are a few “simple questions” that cross both product and business...

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Data Science Team - Build or Rent?

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There are numerous reasons why a company may decide to develop a data science team in their organization. The skills an in-house team brings can enable organizations to turn raw data into strategic assets. Their skills lead to better use of data assets including understanding customer behavior, error detection, automation of...

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Welcome to Matters. v3.0

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Many of you will know us as Confluence Digital from years ago – almost 12 years now – when we began. In 2014 we also launched Canna Ventures to provide data-driven branding and marketing to the emerging cannabis and CBD/hemp industry. Now we’ve consolidated both missions into one as – The Matters Group.  It’s been an interesting journey, to...

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Truth to Marketers: AI is a Tool, Not the Solution

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Okay, we're going to be blunt here. Fellow marketers time to “get over” the artificial intelligence (AI) hype. Time to stop thinking it’s all about “disruptive,” complex technology on the bleeding edges of a new frontier. The unfamiliar terminology. The unseeable interactions between variables lead to discovering solutions. The ridiculous and...

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Beware Using Tactics Without a Strategy for your Digital Marketing

Beware Using Tactics Without a Strategy for your Digital Marketing

Transactions Come in All Sizes & Shapes and Are All Motivated by Customer Pains and Where They Are in Their Buying Cycle Understanding the motivation of your most valuable target personas is essential to developing the strategies needed to define tactics to execute. Marketing or advertising without considering these crucial factors...

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Latent Effects Modeling + ML for Deep Insights

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We’ve been posting opinions and comments that urge marketers to “get over” artificial intelligence (AI). To dive into AI’s veritable treasure house of research tools and insights, instead of circling it warily, for fear of banging into a “disruption” moment.  So, we hereby plant the flag of AI for the regular...

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About AI: Let’s Disrupt your Idea of Disruption

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The marketing industry has been bombarding itself  for years with ways to “manage” or “harness” the “disruption” brought upon us by artificial intelligence, machine learning, and the like.  What do we mean by “disruption?”  We mean “OMG, scary, out-there science that’s escaped from the lab and now everyone has to wear...

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Developing A Content Marketing Plan For Your Cannabis Company

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Content marketing is made up of two parts: content and marketing. Once you have developed original content and optimized it for search, it’s time to start thinking beyond inbound traffic to promotion and outreach for that content. Not everyone uses the internet the same way, and so while many people may be finding your...

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The 9 Acceptable Uses of Personal Data under California's Privacy Act

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Digital marketing professionals who are using the personal data from California consumers need to make sure that they are up-to-date on the impending restrictions associated with the California Privacy Act of 2018 that went into effect on January 1, 2020. In many ways it makes Europe’s GDPR look tame! At its...

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Get More Out of Your Cannabis Content

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​The great thing about content is that it can always be revisited, refined, and re-purposed for multiple business and content objectives. In this blog post, we’ll take you through three steps for making sure you’re getting the most out of your cannabis content. Modifying Content for Additional Mediums Not all content...

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Questions B2B Marketers Need to Ask

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In its simplest terms, branding is having the courage to stand for something, ensuring, of course, that the target market both wants it and, preferably, is not currently getting it. This is the basis for a long-term relationship that the most successful brands understand connects on both a rational – “I...

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Targeting the Cannabis Industry on LinkedIn

LinkedIn is the platform we get the most questions about from our B2B clients focused on lead generation. At Canna Con in Seattle this weekend, most companies with booth space were companies marketing their services and products to Cannabis producers and processors. Including all types of businesses, from soil and seed...

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Applied AI in Marketing: Healthcare Product Management

Applied AI in Marketing: Healthcare Product Management

Here’s a case where AI rolled into the ongoing rollout of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). To avoid getting lost in the weeds, let’s just recall that there were big-money battles involving healthcare providers, the Federal government, and the confused, newly ACA-insured and wanted-to-be insured.  Problem: Two very large healthcare providers urgently...

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Get More Out of your Cannabis Content

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The great thing about content is that it can always be revisited, refined, and re-purposed for multiple business and content objectives. In this blog post, we’ll take you through three steps for making sure you’re getting the most out of your cannabis content. modifying content for additional mediums Not all content...

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Finding the Right Agency For Your Business

Company Seeking Long Term Relationship with Talented Agency Finding “the one” is hard, especially if you’ve never worked with an agency before. And hey, maybe working with an agency isn’t for you and your business. That’s okay. We just hope this blog post can help answer some of the more common questions...

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Advanced Data Science Services in Cannabis Industry

Successful series of studies on the Cannabis Consumer results in pioneering strategic partnership to deliver Fortune-500-caliber market insights. SEATTLE, WA March 20, 2018 – Seattle-based Matters Group and Cascade Strategies, Inc., have formalized a partnership to deliver advanced data science, sophisticated analytics and market research services to the emerging cannabis industry....

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How to Make the Most of Your User Testing

One question I often get when I discuss user testing with a client is “but… we already have Google Analytics well-configured with Goals, and we do rigorous A/B testing, is that not enough”? It’s a valid question, so I thought I would address that. I recently had the opportunity to participate...

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Cannabis Brand Advertising...What to Consider Before Launch!

Advertising cannabis and CBD brands present their own unique set of challenges, and we blogged about this some here and here. But if you’re beginning to think about advertising your product/service, let’s talk a bit about what a brand should consider first. Or, put another way, let’s have at least thought about the factors...

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Sexy vs. Sexist Cannabis Advertising

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Picture the scene… It is CannaCon, a respectable B2B cannabis industry tradeshow in Denver, Colorado. I am walking and talking with Morgan, at the time President of the MJBA, later Founder and CEO of the Cannabis Women’s Alliance. We were discussing what topics we should discuss on an upcoming panel about...

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Adult Use Cannabis & Google: A Match Made in Hell

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When I wrote this post nearly two years ago, it was with the expectation that I would be able to update it with “good news”, that cannabis businesses are able to take advantage of the powerful AdWords platform, running ads on Facebook, Instagram and the like, and the rest of us...

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