Category: Imagery

5 Fun and Festive Marketing Ideas For Your Small Business

Competition is high during the festive period, no matter what industry you are working in. With so many different companies vying for the attention of your target audience it can feel impossible to stand out and be seen – especially if you have the typical tiny marketing budget of a small business!

Even if you don’t know exactly what to do, you know that doing nothing is not an option. You need to get involved to benefit from the extra traffic and spending that happens at this time of year. So here are five ideas for marketing your business in a creative, fun and festive way that should help you stand out from the crowd.

Countdown to Christmas

Two of the things synonymous with Christmas are Advent Calendars and ‘The 12 Days of Christmas’, and both give you the opportunity for a ‘countdown’ campaign. Maybe you can offer 24 days of deals, or 12 free training videos, or maybe even a prize draw every day for customers who purchase.

A countdown campaign is a great way to engage your audience and remind them of who you are every day of their shopping calendar.

Help a Good Cause

This time of year is not just about consumerism, it’s about gift-giving and hospitality, so highlight the values that your company stands for by partnering with a charity or supporting a relevant organisation during the holiday season. Not only will it help you get on the Nice List, but it will also give your customers a great reason to do business with you. 

Whatever you decide to support, remember to do it with sensitivity. The current cost-of-living crisis will make the Christmas season especially difficult for a lot of people. Your audience may even be the recipients of the help you are giving. Focus more on the importance of helping than how wonderful you are for doing it!

Make Christmas Greener

Did you know that at Christmas in the UK 114,000 tonnes of plastic packaging goes to landfill?  Consumers are becoming more aware of the problem of wasteful holiday packaging and are paying more attention to the environmental impact of the holiday season. That makes it a great opportunity to highlight your business’s green credentials, and promote what you are doing to reduce your environmental footprint over 2023.

Get Interactive

The Christmas period is definitely a time when we feel like we’re being yelled at by every shop we’ve ever bought from, so instead of shouting about your latest deals, give your audience the opportunity to get involved and take action.

Interactive content could include polls and surveys, quizzes, calculators and games. Anything that stops the scroll and gets visitors involved with your content is a winning campaign.

Don’t Stop on December 25th

When you’ve worked so hard to gain momentum over December, don’t stop! Make sure that your campaigns carry through the weird pause between Christmas and New Year when we all forget what day it is and struggle to eat anything that isn’t candy cane shaped. Give all the people who engaged with you the opportunity to take action again with more interactive content, chances to give back and countdown to New Year and beyond.

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 up your marketing game during the festive season we’d love to hear from you. Contact us at here for more information or give us a call on 01600 891525.

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.

 

Repurposing content

Constantly coming up with new content ideas for marketing can be tough, especially if your brand is in a niche market without huge scope for diversity of topics. However, if the content you are promoting is useful, popular and insightful, it would be a shame to let it fade to the back!

One way to get the most out of ideas is through repurposing content. The idea of repurposing is to target different segments of your target market by presenting your valuable information in ways in which they will engage with and respond to.

Why should you repurpose content?

 

Reach new audiences

Some people will respond better to visual infographics, while others might engage with the same content written in blog form. Some people prefer to listen to a podcast, others a video. Repurposing your content to adhere to these different preferences will give you a better chance of widening your reach and enhancing engagement.

Refresh old content

Bringing previously successful content back to the forefront of your marketing could be a way of reigniting popular content, ensuring that those golden nuggets aren’t forgotten!

Get the most out of every idea

Rather than racking your brain for new concepts and running dry, utilise every idea and create a number of content pieces from it. One topic could be turned into a podcast, whitepaper, infographic and blog article!

Boost your SEO

Having various types of content around a certain subject can give you more opportunities to target a particular keyword or phrase. This will increase the chances of ranking highly when it comes to search engine results.

Ways to repurpose content?

-Take an old blog article and create a podcast around the topic

-Split an infographic up into individual Twitter posts

-Transform your popular content into an email series

-Convert testimonials into content

-Simply re-share and re-post popular content on social media

Here at LimeGreen Marketing, we can develop strategies that not only come up with new content, but utilise it to reach your target market in ways that make them respond. Get in touch today to get started.

The Language of GIFs

If you haven’t used GIF’s in your communication before now, then there’s no doubt that you’ve seen them around. GIF’s have grown in popularity so much that you can even search for GIF’s quickly with a shortcut on many smartphone keyboards and on most social media platforms.

What exactly is a GIF? A Graphics Interchange Format is, in official terms, a bitmap image format for files that supports both animated and static images. In layman’s terms, it is, in essence, a digital flip book of images going around in a loop.

The popularity of the GIF is quite ironic, because GIFs were actually invented before the internet itself! The first GIF was created in 1987 by Steve Wilhite.

Twitter introduced GIF search back in 2016 in a bid to keep moving forward with culture. David Macintosh, CEO and co-founder of Riffsy, a GIF library platform, expressed his feelings towards the move; “So much can be expressed with GIFs, and the key is to find just the right one in the moment that quickly and efficiently expresses your emotions.”

Now, Riffsy has been re-branded as Tenor, and Google bought the popular GIF platform so that users can even search for them in Google Images. Our digital culture has GIFs ingrained in it as part of the language, and the marketing industry is jumping on the bandwagon more and more.

Why? Unsurprisingly, marketeers aren’t just using GIFs because they’re fun (but that is a bonus), GIFs make for much higher engagement rates and allow brands to express a lot in just one image.

Here’s just a few reasons that GIFs work so well for marketing:

They’re Easy to Consume

Keep Scrolling

With our attention spans getting shorter and shorter, conveying a message that’s easy to consume is more important than ever. You can convey a message to users without them even having to stop scrolling with a GIF.

The internet likes GIFs

The file size of a GIF is significantly smaller than that of a video, so upload time is much quicker than it would be for a video. The internet reads it as an image, whilst we get the benefits of a video.

They’re cheap and easy

The design and creation of GIFs is miles easier than video. It takes less time and less money, the two most crucial elements of a marketing strategy.

GIFs Add Personality to your Brand

Brand personality

People are much less receptive to traditional methods of marketing than they used to be, and they crave creativity and personality. GIFs are a great way to feed this need and can encourage more sharing and engagement.

We could go on with the list of benefits of GIFs, but we’ll just leave you with this:

If you’d like some help with your marketing strategy and the integration of modern trends, then please contact us and we’ll see how we can help.

5 Reasons You Need to Think About Your Images

In the world of digital marketing, there is no doubt that content is key. While most of us will spend time perfecting copy and keywords to improve our website’s SEO ranking, or social media search results, we should be paying equal attention to our imagery – and here’s why…

 

 

1. 90% of information transmitted to the brain is visual and visuals are processed 60,000 times faster in the brain than text.

 

2. Using images in your social media posts improves engagement. On Twitter engagement on posts including images is 35% higher than those without. Whereas Facebook users will see 53% more likes on posts with an image which in turn are 84% more likely to receive a link click.

 

3. Images help your audience remember your message. We remember 10% of what we hear once 72 hours have passed. If we’ve seen a supporting image, this increases to 65%.

 

4. Images help with your organisations visual identity which is just as important as your brand voice.

 

5. Images have a strong emotional factor which can bring out emotion in an audience and encourage them to act.

 

 

For more information email info@limegreenmarketing.co.uk or call us on 01600 891525 to book your place now.