From Instagram to AI – how Levo helped businesses navigate a decade of change

Posted by Anya Sleezer << back to blog

Last Updated on September 24, 2024

Levo Marketing and Design is celebrating ten years in business

Ten years ago, business owners were figuring out how to enhance websites for newly- released tablets, post photos and sell to baby boomers. One decade later, it’s all about the smartphone, AI and zoomers (Gen Z). In the middle of all of that has been Anya Sleezer. In 2013, the senior marketing executive decided to start Levo, a marketing and design agency, to help businesses meet new tech and marketing challenges while keeping their eye on the ball – the customer. The decade flew by as fast as a Tweet. With Anya at the helm, Levo has kept clients ahead of the tech and marketing curve while staying true to the heart of sales; relationships and storytelling.

When Anya founded Levo, she implemented a groundbreaking and trustworthy philosophy called the #RallyPoint. The method combines a business’ story and purpose to generate a powerful reason for customers to believe in, purchase, and stay loyal to its services and products. And it works. #RallyPoint, along with Anya’s creativity and strategic thinking, has driven huge results for her clients. Today, Anya leads a worldwide network of talented people to create the perfect team for each job.

To celebrate one decade in business, the Levo team interviewed Principal and Chief Innovation Officer Anya Sleezer about the exponential changes in technology and marketing.

Anya, what are the top ten marketing shifts you’ve seen in the last decade?

Mobile Became King: While mobile optimization and responsiveness were nice-to-haves 10 years ago, they are now essential. Today, people carry their smartphone with them everywhere. They conduct business, banking, take photos, shoot videos, shop, read the news, monitor their health, play games and more – all from the palms of their hands.

One decade ago, 35% of Americans had smartphones. Today, the vast majority of Americans, 97%, have a cellphone, according to Pew Research. Far from just making calls, nearly 60% of all website traffic today starts with the phone. That’s a 75% increase of mobile internet traffic since 2015. In fact, 15% of Americans have ditched their traditional home broadband service today and use their phones as their primary means of online access. This trend has forced marketers to build for mobile first.

One of the key drivers of this shift was Google. In 2015, it included mobile-friendliness as one of the crucial search engine ranking factors. Then in 2018, it employed mobile page speed ranking factors and mobile-first indexing. Google now sees the mobile version of any website as the primary version of that site and even penalizes companies that don’t comply. These shifts and the growth of the smartphone market have altered how marketers built websites and forever changed the face of digital marketing.
Social Media Skyrocketed: While many social media platforms appeared in the 2000s and 2010s, they have only skyrocketed in growth and popularity. In just a decade, social media went from a place where you can contact your friends and relatives to a media outlet where you can brand yourself and your business. DemandSage.com studies show the average person interacts with about seven social media platforms for 2.5 hours every day. Social media are quickly becoming the way people also shop. Social media platforms are predicted to become the entry point for everything online, growing three times as fast as traditional e-commerce to $1.2 trillion by 2025, according to a study by Accenture.

New social platforms launch every day and the OG platforms like Facebook are becoming more powerful and influential. They have the power to influence news, sway elections, and win the hearts and minds of their users. They mine huge amounts of precious data, and include robust functionalities and advanced advertising capabilities. That’s why U.S. companies this year are expected to spend about $63 billion dollars in social media advertising; nearly 12% more than last year. Brands know that social media is an essential way to connect with customers and have doubled down on ways to use it to generate stronger relationships, brand awareness and revenue.
Video and Live Stream is now Mainstream: Brands know that videos are one of the best ways to increase engagement, connect with others, and promote products. Ten years ago, video was primarily reserved by big brands with large budgets that could afford to produce high-quality, cinematic videos. However, with the increase in internet speeds and smartphone usage, easy editing apps, and the increasing popularity of channels like YouTube, Vine, TikTok, and streaming services, the demand for video has accelerated dramatically. Statistics show 86% of businesses now use video as a marketing tool to drive consumer traffic, which is 15 times more than in 2017. These advances in technology make it easy for bloggers, reviewers, influencers, and brand ambassadors to create and upload their own video content and permanently transform the online content landscape.
The Rise of the Digital and Mobile-First Generation: The way brands need to reach their audiences now compared to ten years ago has drastically changed due to a couple of factors. First, Millennials and Gen Z control the majority of the buying power ($65 billion and $100 billion respectively.) As baby boomers age and retire, the buying power rests primarily in the hands of the younger generations who grew up in a digital world. They demand more from brands and expect interactivity, personalization, customization, instant gratification, excellent customer service and authenticity. They are also more likely to buy from user-generated content, customer advocacy, influencers, and word of mouth than from traditional advertising slogans and messaging. This means that brands no longer control the conversation and frustrated consumers now have a way to get their grievances heard.

To stay relevant, brands have increased their digital marketing spending over that of their traditional advertising and pivoted to focus more on personalization, authentic experiences, and customer relationships. Some argue that traditional advertising is now obsolete because digital marketing can target a specific audience and allow businesses to engage with customers in real time. Digital advertising is expected to exceed $537 billion this year and make up nearly 71% of global spend by 2025.

New platforms that help customers connect directly with other customers and bypass the old traditional intermediaries in the supply chain such as retailers, wholesalers, distributors, and advertisers are on the rise.
True Omni-Brand Experiences: Though shopping online was common ten years ago, 70% of the U.S. population (and 27% of the global population) shops online today, with global online sales expected to reach more than $5 trillion this year, according to TIDIO.com. Customers can research multiple products, compare prices, compare competitors, and browse reviews in seconds. This, coupled with the rise of the millennial generation’s buying power has led to a greater distrust in brand messaging and increased the power of peer recommendations. Today’s consumers expect independent, frictionless shopping experiences that are consistent across all countries, devices and platforms. To stay on top, brands have to stay nimble and allow people to come to the table as they are, wherever they are. However, physical retail is not dead. Many complex goods and services still require human interactions. This continues to force companies to work smarter and discover efficient ways to offer both, without losing value or compromising the brand experience.
Big Data Ushers in an Era of Personalization and Automation: Ten years ago, companies and marketers began tapping into new ways to harness data on the web, including segmentation, personalization, and customer insights. Today, customer data is one of a brand’s most important resources. Companies have more data than ever before to run smarter and more effective campaigns. Add to that the rise in CRM and inbound sales tools such as Salesforce, Hubspot and more. These tools close the loop between sales and marketing and make personalization even easier. All the insights marketers need to make smart decisions is now right at their fingertips. This has also paved the way for automation and machine learning to play significant roles in marketing’s evolution. Ten years ago, artificial intelligence (AI), automation and machine learning were not commonplace.

Today, many brands are using AI technologies to personalize content and generate customer insights using predictive analytics. AI funding doubled in 2021 over 2020 according to CB Insights. Experts predict artificial intelligence will continue to transform all aspects of business and marketing. It can automate time-consuming manual processes like split A/B testing, ad personalization, and drip email campaigns and turn them into effective marketing tactics that brands can implement at the push of a button. In fact, 91.6% of Fortune 1000 companies are increasing their investments into AI and big data because it will help them stay competitive. Experts predict the AI industry will reach a value of $500 billion by 2024.
Smarter, More Evolved Content Marketing: While content marketing had a place in most marketing strategies a decade ago, it was just a fancy name for blogging. The name of the game used to be quantity over quality. Now, not only has the quality of what brands post changed, the strategy behind them and the types of content have evolved as well. One size-size-fits all no longer applies. Brands are expected to turn out relevant and engaging content to the right audience consistently and authentically. Of all the digital marketing strategies, studies show content marketing has the highest return on investment (ROI). Hubspot reports businesses that blog (content marketing) experience 126% higher lead growth than those that don’t. The most effective content marketers identify their target audience, use big data to identify and segment them, put together a robust content strategy completed with content calendars, and powerful online distribution tactics.
Sophistication of Search Engine Optimization: Google’s Panda update in 2011, which clearly labeled Black Hat SEO tactics, changed landscape of SEO forever. Search engines started rewarding companies that provided true value for their audience and filtered out those that didn’t. In short, SEO became what it should always have been about: content. Local searches also became a primary focus after 2014 with Google’s Pigeon update. It rewarded well-optimized websites with an advantage over non-optimized competitors in local SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages). This improved location-specific searches and location-based mobile browsing. Search engines’ prioritization of https encrypted websites over non-encrypted websites also gave businesses better rankings and started the conversation around consumers’ right to privacy and security while searching online.
The Pandemic that Changed the World: We can hardly talk about trends without mentioning the COVID-19 pandemic. It left nothing untouched, impacting every industry, business, country, and person, permanently shifting the way the world does business. Many companies were unprepared for the speed of the digital transformation required to stay afloat. As we know, the unprecedented circumstances forced all non-essential employees to work from home and unilaterally changed how the world conducted business. It created a dramatic increase in digital ad spending, a sharper focus on analytics, an onslaught of online shoppers, an unprecedented demand for ultra-convenience services, a rise in telehealth, higher consumption of digital content, and a remote workforce. All of this changed and advanced marketing in ways we never imagined. A CMO survey reported that 72% of companies viewed the role of marketing as more important after the pandemic. Most business said they focused on building better customer-facing digital interfaces and investing in new automation technologies to improve virtual communication with customers.
DIY Marketing: The new technology helps businesses get on their feet and market themselves better than they could without these resources. We’ve had multiple clients come to us that handled all their own marketing and made some progress doing so. I think self-marketing is a great option for small-budget, startup brands.

However, there comes a point when a business outgrows this and needs to bring in experts to reach the next level. A client came to us recently with this exact situation. We reviewed their current marketing efforts, tactics, strategies and collaterals and saw many opportunities for growth and identified many practices and techniques that needed to be corrected because they were actually hurting their efforts. In today’s world, marketing channels are very specialized and technology moves so quickly that one person, or even a small marketing team cannot be experts in everything. Bringing in an outside agency or expanding your marketing team to include more specialized experts increases your capabilities and increases your opportunities to gain more business. Marketing professionals are experts in their relative fields and stay up-to-date with the latest changes in technology, algorithms, trends and more and so are uniquely positioned to capture more opportunities than DIY marketing efforts.

One of the other major benefits of hiring an agency is the outside perspective we can bring to the table. We look at your marketing with fresh eyes, new perspectives, and bring new ideas, and out-of-the-box thinking to the table. We look at the big-picture and how everything about your company interrelates and might influence your marketing and branding efforts. This includes the actual marketing itself, sales, customer service, internal structures, employer brand and more. Why? Because at the end of the day, it all influences your customer’s experience and your brand. See the graphic below which demonstrates this point.

Which new methods have you implemented into your strategies for clients and why?

Marketing is an ever-changing, ever-growing field and therefore demands that our agency keeps up with the trends to help our clients stay relevant. We have implemented many methods over the years and evolved or updated them as new information and trends emerged. We strive to provide cutting–edge, effective marketing services that produce results. If we don’t keep up, our clients’ businesses suffer, which in turn, hurts us. This continuous pursuit of knowledge and excellence is one of the things that makes marketing an exciting and rewarding career.

Are there some new techniques in marketing that are not effective or don’t work? Tell me about those and why people shouldn’t adopt them.

Each client is unique, so there is often some initial trial and error until we can pinoint what works and what doesn’t. A technique that works well for one client may not work well for another. It all depends on a client’s industry, their target audience and their goals. While there are some techniques like the old black-hat SEO tactics that are now not effective and regarded as “bad,” the truth was that at the time, those tactics were the accepted practice because they worked. So many agencies adopted them. At Levo, we didn’t because we felt that they violated consumers’ trust, watered down the brand, and damaged the customer- brand relationship. So, we were one of the few agencies that guided clients away from these tactics and instead created good-quality content and websites. However, our work still had to compete against companies that used these tactics and so we did our best to still deliver results. In the end, it paid off. Those that used these tactics had to scramble to save their reputations and regain rankings and our clients didn’t.

What are the top three marketing basics or actions that you think will never change (that are staples) to drive new customers to a business?

My answer may surprise you. Marketing tactics, channels and strategies come and go. Technology and the world changes and evolves rapidly and continuously. It’s the brand reputation that matters most. Trust, relationships, and the value you provide. If you provide a product or service that’s valuable to people, build authentic relationships and win people’s trust, you are set up to win big. These are the marketing basics that will never change. All the rest is just the semantics of how to best get the word out with the current trends and tools available.

Levo focuses on clients having a #RallyPoint to target the perfect customer. What is Levo’s #RallyPoint? Asked another way, who are you trying to serve and why? Also, has your client focus or purpose changed since you started the business ten years ago?

We believe people don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it. This central #RallyPoint permeates everything we do for clients, from how we conduct ourselves to the actual work we deliver. Our target audience is mid-sized companies with annual sales between $25M – $75M, because over the last decade we’ve learned that we are uniquely positioned to help this subset most. They are large enough to value the expertise we bring to the table, have existing robust marketing budgets and tactics in place, and are yet small enough to appreciate our outside perspective and expansive network of experts who can fill in the holes in their internal marketing teams. We also specialize in vegan marketing, as I am a vegan myself. My personal experience as a vegan uniquely positions us to better understand and help other vegan and plant-based businesses.

Our focus and the clients we serve have definitely changed over the years. As we’ve grown, so have our clients. We’ve also put many more internal processes in place and have a clearer vision of who we are, what we want to do, and who we like to work with. After I went vegan a few years ago, we started focusing more on carving out a niche for vegan companies because it’s a personal passion of mine, while still serving our regular clients.

What is the most fun part of your job?

I get to innovate and be creative every day!

Most people don’t know how involved Levo is in the community and that you can act and sing! Tell us why you think it’s important to stay connected to your community.

I believe our communities are part of who we are, and we in turn are a part of them. We make them, and ourselves, better when we give back, participate, show up, volunteer, connect, and support those around us. In today’s digital world it can be easy to disconnect from people and what makes us human, so I think it’s important to stay grounded and connected any way you can.

What do you think will happen with marketing in the next decade?

Technology will continue to advance and reinvent all aspects of marketing. Automation, AI, personalization and data will play an even larger role in marketing and allow us to do things we never dreamed of before. In this digital, AI driven-future, I think it will be more important than ever for brands to also hold onto their humanity by really connecting with people and their communities and continue to build authentic, long-term relationships with their customers. That will be what separates the companies that just do OK from those that excel and thrive.

What are your plans for Levo in the next ten years?

I plan to continue to innovate and incorporate new trends, technologies and tactics as they arise. We will continue to grow, expand, change, think outside the box and innovate. We will stay on the cutting edge, but continue to apply common sense, good strategy and always do what’s best for the brands we serve. Our goal is to deliver a fantastic customer experience and measurable ROI for our clients.

Anya Sleezer

Anya Sleezer is the owner of Levo, a full–service marketing agency, focused on helping companies from all industries who are concerned with their marketing results, traffic, branding, advertising, or websites.

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