Category: Branding

3 Ways to Build Brand Authenticity

Brand authenticity is when your customers, and potential customers, believe that your business is being genuine about its products, services, actions, and promises and that every part is in alignment with who you claim to be. But why has being an “authentic brand” become the holy grail for a modern business?

The simple answer is, that customers are losing faith in brands. For decades, businesses have got away with “talking the talk” – in other words, just saying they believe in something, support a cause, or generally do something positive. Now, the power of the internet makes it hard for brands to hide anything from their customers, so talking just isn’t going to cut it! 

In general, people are more sceptical and devote a lot of time and energy to researching brands, products, and services online. If you are perceived as untrustworthy, they will simply find a different brand that they do trust. To be authentic you need to “walk the walk” as well. For instance, if you say your customers are at the heart of everything you do, you better make sure every question or concern is answered on your social media channels!

What makes a Brand Authentic?

 

There are three elements to Brand Authenticity:

Continuity

A brand is consistent with its beliefs, values, and goals in all that it does.

Credibility 

A brand is rooted in reality rather than aspirational marketing, in other words, they walk the walk!

Integrity

A brand that is honest, and motivated by its responsibility to its customers, and often the wider community and environment.

How to Increase Your Brand Authority 

 

Start with your customers

When planning a marketing strategy with Brand Authenticity at its heart, don’t start with “how do we sell this?”. Instead, identify who you are marketing to and what they want, and then speak to them about their needs and how you solve them. A customer-first approach is the best first step.

Be consistent

Whatever your values, story, and message are, you need to make sure that this is consistent across all of your marketing. This helps your audience to see you as reliable and perceive your message as honest.

Get Involved

 Finally, you need to speak to your customers. Listen to them and engage with them. Deliver great service, be transparent, and be approachable. Whatever your values are, whatever you are selling, by humanising your brand and engaging with customers you will go a long way to improving your brand authenticity.

Brand Authenticity helps you stand out from your competition. While your competitors suffer at the hands of spam filters and ad blockers, your customers will be your advocates, sharing your message with others. By building stronger connections with your customers, you can generate long term brand loyalty, and that is always the goal of good marketing. So put the effort in and your authentic brand will reap the benefits.

If you’re interested in talking to our team about how we could help you build brand authenticity, we’d love to hear from you. Contact us here for more information or call us on 01600 891525.

Is it Time for a New Website?

If you ask a car salesperson if it’s time for a new car, they are going to tell you “of course!” without even looking at what you are driving – this will probably be true if you ask the salesperson of a web design agency if it’s time for you to get a new website! But if you ask a designer, a developer, or a marketer at the same agency you will get different answers – so how do you know if it’s really the right time to invest in a new website or refresh your existing site? There are a few benchmarks you can check your website against to see if it’s ready for an update, or if it’s already in peak condition.

  1. Is your site user-friendly?

In 2006, having a user-friendly website meant having one that you could use on any browser. Ten years on it was about having a mobile responsive website that could be used on any device. Now accessibility is the benchmark we are measuring the internet against. If your website isn’t inclusive and meeting basic accessibility criteria, it is showing its age!

  1. Does it match your business branding and messaging?

If the main message of your business has evolved, or the industry you are working in is talking about things differently, then it’s time to at least address the content of your website. Your photos, imagery and branding should also be assessed to make sure they are showing your business in the best possible light.

  1. Do you dread updating your website?

Content Management Systems (CMS) like WordPress, Magento, Joomla, Drupal, Shopify and all of their friends are constantly being updated, so if making basic changes to your website is costly, time-consuming or just plain clunky and awkward, it could be time to get an update.

  1. Is your website performing at its best?

Your next checkpoint involves digging into your statistics. If your traffic is less than it used to be, or your conversion rate has started to decline then something is wrong. These symptoms are not necessarily going to be cured by a new website, but they are not to be ignored. It’s time to put your detective hat on and start to investigate what’s going wrong and how you can solve it.

  1. What are your competitors up to?

While your detective hat is on, have a snoop on your competitors’ websites! Have they redesigned their site recently, or given their brand a facelift? If so, what changes have they implemented?  If not, what are they talking about and what types of content are they using? Of course, it’s not a substitute for real market research, but it’s better than none at all!

If you are still on the fence, there is a simple test – do you cringe at the thought of your customers going to your website, or do you beam with pride and encourage people to head there whenever you can? An honest answer to this question will tell you all you need to know.

Are you feeling inspired and thinking of injecting some fresh thinking into your website, or creating a new one from scratch? Get in touch with our team and find out how we can help. Contact us here. 

Energise Your Business With Fresh Thinking in 2023

As another year kicks off, with another set of January sales, and another year of well meaning resolutions, what’s going to be different for your business this year?

Whether your working paradigm has completely changed over the last few years, or stayed rigidly the same, the new year is always an opportunity for reappraisal and setting some development goals for your brand, marketing and communications.

Continue Creating

Let’s be honest, it’s unlikely you are alone in your niche. Other companies will provide products or services that, while not as good as yours, speak to the basic needs of your audience. So how do you differentiate?

Creativity

There may be ten companies who do a version of what you do, and while things like price, insight and proof all matter, if you can’t grab attention then it’s harder to get that information in front of your prospects.

Create a table, list your competitor set in the first column and look at all the ways they present online or in print. This gives you a handy overview of what your competitors all do, allowing you space to differentiate, but also a series of jumping off points, how can you take the ideas one step further, how can you make something that catches the eye visually or with a bolder set of words?

People Preferences

2023 will see a continued interest by consumers into the operations and ideals of the brands and businesses they buy from.

Whether it’s the security of personal data, recruitment policies, working practices or the sustainability systems, CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) should be a clear part of your offering to customers and figure clearly in your communications.

Sustainability in particular offers a broad range of opportunities to differentiate yourself from competitors. Where do your materials come from? How can they be recycled or disposed of responsibly? What’s your roadmap towards increased sustainability?

Having an open conversation about the impact your business has on the environment (and all businesses do impact on the environment) allows you to align what you’re doing today with an idealised future that your audience are also invested in.

Video Viewership

As internet speeds continue to grow, and more of your audience has more reliable internet, video content is becoming more and more popular and as a tool for engagement, it’s second to none. It can also be expensive, so how do you get good ROI on video content?

Make 2023 the year you start to use regular video content and make sure you repurpose it effectively.

Film a main video, whether you do this yourself or with a production outfit, this video will be broken out into multiple forms. The first, and easiest of which are social media snippets, little extracts that go on your social media channels to drive people into the main video.

Next use some of your video script, or a transcript of your video, to create a blog on your site and in the conclusion link to the full video.  Where appropriate you can also take the audio from your video and post it to social audio sites, such as Clubhouse, with other links such as the video and your site. 

The more you repurpose video content to create new streams for the audience to grow their awareness, the better your ROI.

Niche Interests

More than ever 2023 will be a year for businesses to not just have their commercial niche but start to explore their marketing niche. 

Whether you do that through comms, imagery, CSR, video or audio, don’t just set your business apart with what you offer but also how you talk about it and the method you use to communicate with your audience.

And remember there’s support available to help you at every stage if needed. If you’re interested in talking to our team about how we could help you energise your business with fresh thinking in 2023 we’d love to hear from you. Contact us here for more information or give us a call on 01600 891525.

How do you include Halloween in your marketing plan?

It’s October, the summer is over but it’s a little early for festive cheer, so what better way to fill the gap in your marketing plan than with a Halloween themed campaign? It sounds good, but for many small business owners it can seem a bit uncomfortable – how on earth could they link their business with Halloween? And why should they bother?

Simply because you can. Marketing for small businesses can get stale quickly with repetitive, predictable campaigns. By keeping your marketing flexible, and reacting to the season you can keep things fresh, and keep your customers engaged all year round. With that in mind, here are our top tips for a scarily good Halloween marketing campaign.

  1. Keep it simple

If you are a small business, focusing on B2B clients, don’t spend time trying to work out how to make all of your service offerings sound spooky! As you would with any campaign, keep the plan focused.  For instance, if you are an accountant, you could just plan around ‘making tax less scary’; or if you build websites you could offer one ‘horribly good’ deal for the week.

The same goes for B2C like hospitality and retail businesses. If you are a restaurant owner, you could have a spooky-themed menu for one week, or some Halloween themed cocktails; or in a retail store you could choose one small group of products to promote using your Halloween theme…which brings us nicely to…

  1. Choose a theme

No, Halloween is not a theme – it’s too broad!  If you choose a more specific theme, like scary movies, or Frankenstein’s monster, or even pumpkins – it will help all of the planning go a lot quicker and help you create a more coherent campaign. Step one is what you are promoting, step two is how you’ll promote it.

  1. Don’t just decorate your campaign

Don’t limit the Halloween theme to your campaign-related graphics and print work or it will feel completely out of step with your brand. If you have a physical location that customers come to, like a shop or restaurant, then get to work on the Halloween décor. If you are online only, you can get creative with your social media graphics, website banners, or even a temporary themed logo or profile picture. By spreading the theme subtly across all of your marketing, you will make it feel less jarring and more part of the bigger plan.

  1. Plan where and when to reach people

The next step is to plan out your campaign and include all of your marketing channels (e.g. social, email, video, website, direct mail, POS etc.) then plan the frequency of contact on each. Don’t go overboard with lots of extra posts or emails as you’ll frighten more people away than you’ll attract.

  1. Get creative

Just because Halloween isn’t an event that you automatically associate with your business, doesn’t mean you can’t have some fun with it! Halloween is a fun time of year when you can get away with things being a little messy, so embrace it and test out some fun new ways to market your products.

If you’d like to speak to one of our team about how we could help you create a spooktacular Halloween marketing campaign, you can get in touch here. Alternatively, pick up the phone and call us on 01600 891525 – we’d love to hear from you!

 

How to Spring Clean Your Website

Do you carry out a ‘spring clean’ ritual in your home?  Taking the time to clear out our items that have not been used, worn or even seen the light of day in months?  The same principle can be applied to your website, and the best bit is – it is usually much quicker and easier than de-cluttering your home!  Here are some easy steps you can take to Spring Clean your website:

CHECK IT IS UP-TO-DATE

Step one is to make sure that all of the information on your website is up-to date.  That includes contact details, members of staff, and that all products and services advertised have not been discontinued. Try to avoid adding dates, if they are not needed e.g., “Popular Activities in 2019”- even in your blog, as this can make your content look outdated even if it is still relevant.

FIX BROKEN LINKS

Working links are vital to a website; they allow people to navigate it and find what they are looking for. Step two in your Spring Clean is to ensure that all links on your website are still relevant and not broken.  There are few things more off-putting to a potential client than clicking a link to find the 404 error message appear on their screen!

As well as reducing your credibility, broken and outdated links can also harm your SEO and online visibility. Checking for broken links can be handled easily with free broken link checkers available online.

CHECK MOBILE VIEWS

It is likely that a high volume of page traffic is via mobile devices, like a phone or a tablet, so make sure that your website is viewed easily on them.  You can look yourself, ask others to check the mobile version of your site, or even use Google’s Mobile-friendly Test.

AUDIT YOUR CONTENT

Are you sure that the content of your website is good quality?  Look at your pages and evaluate their performance: how many page views; average time spent on page etc.  High-quality content brings in the most traffic, and anything that is low-quality can be disposed of.  Do not dismiss average quality content as this can provide the opportunity for improvement.

INVESTIGATE YOUR ANALYTICS

Web analytics allows you to understand how well your website performs.  If you have a version installed, then look into abnormalities – like unusual bounce rates,  or keywords that compete with other pages. Are you getting more hits from your desktop website than your mobile? Is your content engaging enough? It is best to keep on top of your analytics regularly, rather than checking once a year, but a Spring Clean is a good time to dig deeper!

RE-DESIGN

Just like a house, websites can benefit from a regular face-lift.  If you feel that your site is starting to look a bit stale in comparison to the competition, then invest in creating a whole new look.  Change colour schemes, the layout or refresh the images; have a look at current trends in websites design and see what can stand the test of time.

If you’d like to speak to one of our team about how we could help give your website a spring clean, you can get in touch here. Alternatively, pick up the phone and call us on 01600 891525 – we’d love to hear from you!

Top Graphic Design Tips for Small Businesses

Design is probably not a priority for your business, but it should be. In fact, graphic design should be vital. It is what can make your business stand out from all the others. Without design there would be no logo for your company; your website would look boring; the packaging for your product will be overlooked. All in all, design is rather important.

For small businesses, design can present some challenges that may not be a problem for larger companies – for instance, budget size. Steve Jobs reportedly spent $100,000 for the Apple logo; this is a luxury that not every business has. However smaller bank balances do not mean that you cannot compete with the big boys.

Here are a few tips that you can take away to make sure that you get the most out of your graphic designs:

THE OBJECTIVE

Do not go into any design project without knowing exactly what you want to achieve. A clear objective is key to a successful design. What is it you are aiming for: raising brand awareness? Increase website traffic? Increase profits? Who is your target audience?  If you know what you are trying to achieve, you will be able to assess if the finished product has met your goals.

THE DESIGN

Now that you have your objectives, you can work on the design.  Here are some tips for ensuring it is a success.

Design trends – look at current trends and watch how this can change to keep your brand up to date. For example, popular trends this year include muted colours and clever typography.

Colours – try to keep the number of different ones used to a minimum; and if you have brand colours, make sure that you use them.

Colours can have meanings, e.g., green tends to be associated with health, growth and nature, so depending on your message, you could find a colour to match the theme of your design.

Fonts – like colours, do not use too many different fonts. By sticking with a couple, making sure they are the same as your brand usually uses, and ensuring that they are easy to read, your design is more likely to be successful.

Keep it simple – this does not mean plain. As the saying goes: less is more. Stick with clean lines and try not to add any unnecessary words or images; remember that every element must have a purpose in great design.

White space – do not think of this as empty space, use it to your advantage. Pick an image for the background; a colour or pattern; or even incorporate white space into your logo. By ensuring there is plenty of space around your message, you will make it easier to read.

BE INSPIRED

Looking at the designs of larger businesses can be beneficial.  Companies like Apple, Nike, McDonalds, have millions to spend on their design work and keeping up with the latest trends, so take a look at what they are doing and see if it inspires your work.

USE TOOLS

Hiring a Graphic Designer would be ideal, however, some budgets may not be able to stretch to that, so take a look at the online tools that are available to help you do it yourself. From photos to software, there are plenty of resources that can help small businesses produce high-quality designs and graphics.

Alternatively, if you’re looking for something bespoke and original, get in touch with our team and discuss your requirements. Contact us here or pick up the phone and talk to us on 01600 891525.

Your Website is Your Shop Window

Can you remember a time when you were drawn into a shop by a clever window display? Or perhaps put off from entering somewhere new by a confusing store front?  This power of first impressions applies to the online world as much as it does to the high street, and it doesn’t just concern ecommerce stores.  Service businesses should be equally aware of the impression that their website gives to potential clients, in particular your home page which is where the majority of visitors will likely enter your site.

You wouldn’t expect customers to visit a dated shop, and you wouldn’t invite clients into an unkempt office.  So if you present your potential customers with a tired, difficult to navigate  website, don’t be surprised if they don’t stick around.

Anyone who is undecided about your business can be drawn in or put off by your website, gleaning all that they feel they should know from a simple glance.  So does your website communicate your brand values, current offers, or popular services? If you are unsure, let’s dive into how to create the ‘shop window’ experience for your website.

Think about your customers

Firstly, before you get carried away with any big changes, make sure your website appeals to your target market.  Just as the window display of a baby clothing store is made to make new parents go ‘aww!’ so your website should draw in your target audience. Think of it as your business values meeting the values of the customers you want to attract.

Move with the times

For ecommerce stores, ensure that your home page reflects the current events and seasons, whether it’s a Valentine’s Day banner, or a badge supporting an awareness month.  Just as you would change a physical shop window display to keep up with the seasons, make sure your website stays relevant.

While you may not have a Valentine’s Day special for your service based businesses, keep up with the changing times, and make sure the first image your visitors see isn’t a dated award nomination!

Update your website regularly

That doesn’t mean that you have to wait for a special occasion like Christmas to change things on your website.  Instead you should make sure to refresh your offers, banners, products and news articles regularly.

As well as enticing new customers to explore further, repeat customers will learn that visiting your website frequently will be of value.  If the home page looks the same every time they stop by, there is little chance of them becoming regular visitors.

Updating your imagery and text regularly will not only encourage visitors to come back again, it will also assist your SEO efforts as search engines prioritise fresh content.

Stand out from the crowd

Finally, don’t look like everyone else.  Imagine your website as a store front on a packed high street – how will you make it stand out from the shops around you?

It may seem like a lot of effort, but the more work you put into your website ‘shop window’ on a regular basis, the greater rewards you will reap.

Are you feeling inspired and thinking of injecting some fresh thinking into your website? Get in touch with our team and find out how we can help. Email info@limegreenmarketing.co.uk or call us on 01600 891525.

 

Unlocking The Mystery of Social Media Marketing

Why are there so many social media platforms? How do you know which is the right one for your business? Should you pay to boost your content? 

 

Social media can seem mysterious to the business person who wants to use it for promoting their business. But much of what they do can be demystified with the three A’s, attention, audience and assessment.

Social media networks, like the news networks before them, are focussed on attention. Specifically, getting long bouts of attention from users. We hear a lot about how social media is ruining attention spans with short blips of content, but users can spend hours a week, if not a day, scrolling through the endless stream of content.

With your business posts you are looking to interrupt this stream with something that grabs the attention. This doesn’t have to be something outlandish or shocking, it can simply be something that stands out for your audience. 

Depending on the social media network the audience may be seeing things about their friends and family circle, the celebrities they follow, their interests. Then there’s your post, what can you do to make yourself seem different to these other posts? How can you annex some attention?

A core part of attention is interest, when you’re establishing your social media presence you want to do so where your interested audience is.

 

This can vary by industry and social media platform so it always requires some research before you start but a key indicator is to do some competitor analysis. Where are businesses like yours set up on social media? What does their follower audience look like?

This will give you an idea of what is working but it also gives you a basis from which to ask, does this audience exist somewhere else where my competitor doesn’t have a presence? Can you be first to contact an audience via a different channel? This certainly gives you an opportunity to find new customers and clients. 

Once you’ve thought about how to grab attention and who to aim it at, you should engage in continual assessment of your posts.

Look at what gets engagement and what doesn’t. When you pay to boost posts, how do the results compare with your expectations? Were the results bad, or your expectations high?

You will never stop assessing your posts, measuring them, understanding what performs and what doesn’t. 

 

The idea that there is some concrete formula that will see you right for social posts, that will bring business flooding in every time, is a fallacy. The networks themselves change modelling and algorithms on a frequent enough basis that any formula would be short term, but what they cannot change is what an audience is looking for on social media. 

Define your audience, talk to them in a way that differs from the rest of the content they’re encountering and keep assessing what you do to ensure you maximise your potential, that you explore new ideas and give your audience a reason and opportunities to connect, engage and do business with you.

If you’d like a hand solving the mystery of social media marketing, then get in touch and we’ll work it out together.

Thinking Out of The Box With Creative Marketing

How can a smaller company hope to compete in their industry when they are at such a big disadvantage when it comes to marketing?

Larger companies have big budgets and a greater number of staff dedicated to all aspects of the marketing process: From advertising, to customer service, and even production. For smaller companies, they don’t have the same luxuries – budgets are vastly smaller and usually a lot of the work must be done by a handful of people, or even fewer!  In order to grab the public’s attention – and hold onto it – smaller businesses must be more creative in their approach and offer a unique selling point in the hope that they can beat the big guys at their game.

So, what can you do?

 

SOCIAL MEDIA

 

Social media can be a great platform for exposure whatever size you may be; it is relatively inexpensive and can reach a vast number of potential customers quickly. With different platforms to choose from, you can use them all for different purposes.

LinkedIn has 756 million members, is specifically a business and professional network and is uniquely suited for B2B lead generation. It enables you to easily target, connect and engage with your target audience. If your business offers a solution to your customer’s needs, LinkedIn is the best environment for attracting their attention.

Twitter is brilliant for interacting with other people and can be used for customer service; this is a method that has already been adopted by many companies.

Instagram specialises in photographs – this can be ideal for showing off the visual aspects of your business: different products; the views from your B&B or glamping pod. Social media can also allow other forms of interaction – invite them to post photos of themselves with your product; have a hashtag and offer a reward. You could even run competitions.

 

VIDEO

 

Not everyone wants to read an article about a product; maybe the individual does not get the same feeling or experience from written words that they require to make a purchase.

Millions of videos are viewed daily on the internet, and this can be a great avenue to expose your products and business.

Consider uploading a video of your product, like a demonstration or being used by a model, to your website or a social channel like YouTube.  Or you could make a virtual tour of your restaurant, holiday let, office or workshop.  The visual effect of your product could be more enticing to your potential customers, and you can help increase trust by being part of the video yourself. 

Allowing your customer to see the face of the business can bring about a more personal touch, and a lasting impression – you could even go viral!

 

CHANGE WITH THE SEASONS

 

Consider taking a seasonal approach.

Throughout the year, there are various holidays and events, that you could use to inspire you. Food and drink-based companies can capitalise on holiday days like Valentine’s Day – bakeries offering sweet treats; restaurants selling special offers for couples. Change menus to suit the summer weather; BBQ offers; sell cocktails or mocktails.

Adapt your products to seasonal change: Sell hot drinks and baked goods in the winter; cooling drinks and ice cream in the summer; anything with pumpkin spice in the autumn!  Run vibrant swimwear campaigns during the summer holidays or winter campaigns that position hats and scarves as great gifts. A Christmas Countdown, with Black Friday incentives – whatever your business, seasonal promotions can boost your creativity and your sales.

Just because you don’t have a big budget, doesn’t mean you can’t be creative with what you have.  Work out what matters most to your customers and support them in that, and never underestimate the power of the personal touch.

If you’re interested in talking to our team about how we could help you induce some creativity into your marketing we’d love to hear from you. Contact us here or give us a call on 01600 891525.

The Value of Clear and Consistent Marketing

Have you ever wondered why the Coca-Cola logo has remained largely unchanged since 1887?

 

Consistency is vital to the success of marketing, and there are few better examples than the world’s number one soft drink brand.  So what is it about a consistent approach to marketing that delivers so much value for your business?

Whatever size your business is, your brand is one of your most important assets because it is the personification of your business.  It gives your organisation a look, a feel and a tone of voice that, in turn, create an impression in the mind of your target market.  By using the same design and imagery wherever a customer is likely to come across your business, you ensure that they recognise your company every time they see you.

Brand recognition is perhaps the most obvious and important value that comes from consistency in your marketing. 

 

By seeing the same look over and over again, the visual elements of your marketing become ingrained in the minds of consumers, and they are more likely to remember your brand and recognise it when they come across it on different channels.

This recognition through the use of consistent marketing helps to make you more visible to your customers and can help to create customer loyalty.  It also helps to build credibility and a trustworthy reputation.  If customers have the same experience every time they come in contact with your brand, they are more likely to trust your business and invest in it.

Maintaining a uniform visual aesthetic is not the only important aspect of marketing consistency, voice and tone are just as valuable in creating trust and generating sales.

“Many factors contribute to a brand’s success, but perhaps one of the most valuable is content consistency. From social media and blogging to responding to customer reviews and replying to emails, your content needs to maintain a consistent voice, tone and style.” Forbes

In other words, a company must be consistent across the brand experience. 

 

To continue with the example we used at the start of this article, you never open a bottle of Coca-Cola and wonder what it will taste like this time – brand consistency ensures that it is always the same, no matter what country you are in. 

Or if you were told that a restaurant had ‘wholesome values’ and then were snapped at by a waitress wearing something more appropriate for a nightclub than a family restaurant, the entire illusion of the brand would crumble for you.  If instead someone dressed appropriately, approached you with politeness and courtesy, your confidence in the brand would grow.  Marketing consistency has to continue through every aspect of a business to be effective.

It takes effort, but it’s worth it. 

Clear and consistent marketing will help your business to communicate with the people you need to reach across all the media that you use.  

 

All aspects of your marketing will start working together so that your business becomes visible and recognisable, driving customers to respond positively to your brand.

Learn more about How LimeGreen Marketing can help you to be clear and consistent in your marketing here and if you’re interested in talking to our team contact us here or give us a call on 01600 891525.

 

The 3 Core Elements of a Successful Brand Strategy

Your brand is more than your logo or your name; it should be the whole experience that your customers and potential customers receive when they come in contact with your business.  Your brand strategy is the definition of what your organisation stands for – its values, the promises you make to your customers, and the personality that you deliver your work with.  Yes, it includes your colours, fonts and logo, but it also has something more than these aesthetic elements, it has your tone of voice, attitude and identity. 

A successful brand strategy is the key to you being able to communicate more effectively with your customers and potential customers.  It should direct all of your interactions with them, and shape how you are perceived in the marketplace.  You should carry out a brand strategy as the very first stage in setting up your business – before you even come up with a company name as it can inform all of the decisions you make from day one.  So what are the core elements of a successful brand strategy?

  1. Your Target Customer

It is the crux of all marketing and sales techniques – it’s easier to hit a target if you know where it is!  In order to build a brand strategy, you need to know who it is supposed to appeal to.  You should know what your customer needs, and how you solve that problem. 

There are many ways of defining your target customer.  Some businesses like to focus on an area of interest, or a geographic location, whereas others define one or more very detailed customer avatars.  If you are already trading, look back at your customers to date and use what you know about them to help inform your strategy going forward.

  1. Your Competition

Who are your customers considering alongside you?  Who are you being measured against? Once you know this you can look at how your competitors are positioning themselves in the marketplace and make decisions on where you measure against them.  Will you stand out or blend in?  What sets you apart?  Remember, you don’t need to focus only on your local market, look at your national competitors to see how they are positioning themselves.

  1. You

The final element is the biggest of all – who are you?  In order to create a successful brand strategy, you need some self-awareness regarding your business and its products or services.  This should include the absolute basic information about what your business does and how it does it, as well as more ‘intangible’ information, for instance, the emotional benefits that your business provides.

Brand Strategies tend to include your brand story, and positioning statements that will inform how your staff speak to your customers and how you interact with people on social media and other public forums.  All of these things are developed through a combination of knowing and understanding your target customer, your competition, and your business.  So start with the basics and it will grow from there.

If you’re interested in talking to our team about how we could help you create a winning brand strategy we’d love to hear from you. Contact us at info@limegreenmarketing.co.uk or give us a call on 01600 891525.