Stewart Marketing Group Promotes You!

  Early in my leadership career, I made a common mistake: I assumed my best employees knew how much I appreciated them. They were high performers—dedicated, dependable, and always going the extra mile. I thought my gratitude was obvious. It wasn’t. Over time, I learned that appreciation left unspoken often goes unheard. People don’t just want to know they’re valued—they need to feel it. That realization changed everything about how I lead, communicate, and celebrate others. Gratitude, I’ve come to believe, isn’t just a personal virtue—it’s an organizational superpower. When companies intentionally weave gratitude into their culture, everything shifts. Engagement rises. Innovation follows. Teams grow more connected and resilient because people feel seen and valued. Gratitude also strengthens relationships with customers and members. In industries built on trust—like credit unions, nonprofits, and community-driven businesses—it reminds us that service is both a responsibility and a p...

  Honoring Indigenous Peoples Day : Transforming a Neighborhood Dumpsite Cleaning up trash when I go for a walk is something I do often—just my part of who we are as a company that cares about the planet. This week I decided to celebrate Indigenous Peoples Day by taking a large bag and my trash picker* out for a clean-up walk through our neighborhood. I expected to be able to clean 2 miles and come home with a half bag of trash. My normally neat little neighborhood’s contribution to the debris that makes its way to the river is usually confined to escapees from the morning trashcan pick-up or dropped food wrappers, and (interestingly) “bagged” dog feces from humans that respectively must not be able to bend at the waist, and those that can bend at the waist but lack the hand coordination to carry the bag home to their trash. As I rounded the end of my first block, I spotted a dump site tucked into the edge of a wooded field, a place so often overlooked that...

  Corporate “Greenhushing” is a thing now, where companies are removing references to sustainability practices and results from their websites and reports. Sadly, some are even abandoning their environmental initiatives. Stewart Marketing Group is still committed to our vision of a planet that is even more beautiful and sustainable for our grandchildren and yours than the one we enjoyed when we were young. Sustainability, social responsibility, and environmental awareness are not fads we follow, they are our legacy.

  Transforming Promotional Products into Agents of Change When I was a line of business leader in the corporate world, our marketing departments brilliantly standardized our brand across the organization and educated employees, like me, on how to keep the brand consistent. Most, if not all, of our promotional product were made available through our trained marketing professionals. So, when we went to a conference or an event to promote our company, we (the sales division) chose the SWAG we would use to promote our company from what the marketing department had on hand and based on what seemed most appealing for our prospects and customers. We engaged prospects at the events and rewarded their willingness to connect with the SWAG we selected. This was an effective and common approach to promotional product giveaways at that time. But in today's values-driven marketplace, organizations can elevate their approach by using branded merchandise to issue a call to having an...

  Are you tracking ROI (Return on investment) or ROO (Return on Opportunity) on your promotional product campaigns? It isn't as difficult as it sounds. When your goal is something straightforward—like increasing sales or capturing new leads—calculating ROI is simple. Just use the basic formula:  (Sales Growth – Total Marketing Cost) / Total Marketing Cost = ROI.  This gives you a clear percentage that shows how much return you’re getting for every dollar spent. Tracking direct sales or sign-ups using promo codes, special URLs, or unique offers makes it easy to tie results back to your campaign. But what if your aim is more about building brand visibility, which isn’t as easy to measure in dollars and cents? In these cases, focus on metrics like social media engagement, website traffic, search trends, media mentions, and even survey responses.  The key is to set clear, measurable goals up front—like gaining a certain number of followers or media hits—a...

  "The gap between what's expected and what you deliver is where the magic happens, in business and in life." – Jay Baer If you want to stay up-to-date with us, follow our Blog.