Category: Marketing

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. 

5 Ways to Step Up Your Marketing in 2023

Running a business, your time is valuable – and seriously in demand. You want to build a social media and digital presence, grow your brand and reach more people but there never seem to be enough hours in the day. But focusing on a few key steps can kick-start your marketing growth this year. 

  1. Know your audience

Who are your ideal customers? What are their drivers and why might they come to you? Put together example customer personas for your target groups, and share these across the business to ensure everyone has the right customer insight and that any proposed marketing initiative is tailored to your target audience. 

  1. Get your branding right

Establish a clear brand identity, including design, brand voice and succinct brand messaging. A strong brand is a key differentiating factor to make you stand out from the competition. And if it’s your business, don’t worry about showing a more personal side to your brand – it can have a good impact.

Brand all your communications and make sure your logo, company name, tone of voice and messaging are consistently applied, including on your website, social media and emails. Inconsistency will dilute customer recognition and loyalty, plus variation in company name could negatively affect Google searches for your business.

  1. Engage with social media

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn are all potential marketing avenues for your company. If you’ve never used any of these to promote your business, you’re missing out.

  • Don’t let fear of ‘doing it wrong’ stop you engaging – There are plenty of good free courses available to get you up to speed and comfortable with different social media channels.
  • Target your resources – Focus on the social media channels right for your audience.
  • Put a plan and guidelines in place – So everyone knows what to say and when.
  • Schedule in time for regular engagement – Post regularly and respond to enquiries promptly.
  • Bring in help – Consider enlisting the support of an external social media manager and marketer as a flexible and cost-effective way of maximising social media opportunities. 

  1. Create content

Whether you are posting on your website, putting articles out on social media or sending out e-newsletters, you need regular, valuable content.

  • Make sure your content is engaging for your audience.
  • Vary your content. For instance, add videos, third-party content from credible sources and event information into the mix.
  • Plan ahead with a content schedule and get content ready ahead of busy times, so there is no communication drop-off.
  • Repurpose content in different ways – on the website, in emails and social media posts.

  1. Go direct

Don’t forget the potential impact of direct marketing too. A well-targeted email marketing campaign can be an effective and inexpensive way to reach large numbers of existing and potential customers, to target specific groups using segmented customer lists and potentially build good customer relationships. 

Revitalise your marketing in 2023

 

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 step up your marketing in 2023 we’d love to hear from you. Contact us here for more information or give us a call on 01600 891525.

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.

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.

How to Conduct a Killer End of Year Marketing Audit

How often do you review your marketing?  Ideally you should be looking at your statistics regularly throughout the year, but certainly before you embark on plans for the next 12 months. 

You need to look at what worked this year.  And what did not. 

In marketing, we call this an audit – a systematic review and assessment of what has happened up to this point in the year.

  1. Where are you now?

The first place to start is by looking at where you are at right now.  Get all of the data you can together for your website, your email marketing, your budget and it’s ROI, your social media, your sales and whatever other data you’ve been measuring throughout the year.

  1. Look back to look forward

Step two is to reviewing the marketing plan that you made at the start of the year and seeing where you are relative to what you wanted to achieve.  For each objective and goal that you set yourself, look at the measurements and find the relevant numbers you’ve gathered up in step one to see how you did.  For example, if you wanted to increase the number of subscribers to your newsletter by 25%, go dig out your numbers for January and for now and do the maths. 

The reason we do this before we make our next plan is not just to pat ourselves on the back for the goals we reached, but to help us in setting our goals for the year to come.  Where did we surpass our goals – were the numbers too conservative?  Where did we miss the mark – did we not focus on this area enough or was something else responsible? 

  1. An honest appraisal

Step three requires setting your ego aside, and having an honest look at how your competitors have done in the year. 

How active have they been on email and social media?  If you don’t already follow them on social media, or subscribe to their emails, now is the time to do that! 

How has their website been updated during the year?  Where are they coming up in the search results compared to you – has this improved? 

As well as your own statistics, this information can help you to see where your company’s marketing was lacking and offer inspiration on where to focus attention for the year to come.

  1. Delve deep

Finally, step four is to review all the information you’ve collated.  Dig deep and ask questions on everything you have gathered, like:

  • Why is this number different to last year? 
  • How can we improve on this statistic? 
  • What time of year needs more attention? 
  • Who could we ask for help with this next year?

The answers to these questions will form the basis of your marketing plan for the year to come and create actions that you need to take in order to see improvements and reach your new goals.

If you think your business would benefit from some marketing support this festive season we’d love to hear from you! You can contact us here or pick up the phone and call us on 01600 891525.

 

How You Can Use Christmas to Boost your Marketing

Whether we like it or not, the Christmas countdown is well and truly underway. Some businesses will have had their Christmas marketing action plan finalised months ago, whereas others do their marketing following more of an ‘on the fly’ model. Whilst there is no one way that works for everyone, it’s always helpful to know some handy tips for jumping on the Christmas bandwagon and boosting your marketing.

Pull on heartstrings

We’ve seen the TV ads at Christmas; the tear jerkers. If there’s ever a time to get emotional with your marketing strategy, it’s now. Whether you do something big as a company to support a great charity, or just generally do a little more storytelling and get heart-warming with your content, if you can pull genuine emotion out of your users, then you’ve made an impact.

Start at Black Friday

Actually, start at Halloween, but if that’s a little early for you, Black Friday and Cyber Monday is the perfect weekend to add some Christmas offers. This year Black Friday is on 26th November and Cyber Monday is on 29th November. 31% of consumers in the UK begin their Christmas shopping in November, so Black Friday is more than suitable to start dressing up your offerings as Christmas gifts.

Don’t go too far, though. The line between festivity and tastelessness is a fine one, so make sure you’re really adding value with your offers. Christmas gift bundles, or a simple free stocking filler are great ways to add value.

Update your digital shop window

People travel for miles just to admire well-presented and jaw-dropping Christmas window displays. Your digital shop window should draw the same response. Updating your social media profiles and website in line with the holidays is a nice way to get your brand involved with Christmas.

Send out Cards

If you’re a business that serves your offerings regularly to customers, you build up a rapport and relationship over time. Sending out a card is a simple way of reminding them that you value their custom.

Create an Advent Calendar

If you have an e-commerce platform and can afford to offer promotions every day for a month, then you could create an advent calendar. Anyone signed up to your mailing list could receive an offer a day throughout December (should they wish). This is an incentive for people to sign up to email marketing and will also include some very tempting CTA’s (Calls to Action).

Depending on your already established brand image, you don’t have to use every single one of these techniques or go over the top on the Christmas marketing. Christmas is however, the absolute prime time to up your presence, and not to be dismissed.

If you need any help over the busy period, we can offer short-term help. Get in touch and we can have a chat.

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!

 

7 different ways to advertise your small business

Advertising your small business is stressful – with so many choices and, usually, so little budget how do you choose which channels to use and where to spend your money?  It is important to find the answers, as knowing how to promote your small business in the best possible way sets you on the path to growing your market and expanding your reach.  Reaching the right audience, in the right way, at the right time is the key to successful marketing, and it is different for every business, but there are some general things that can help.

Here are 4 free and 3 paid ways to advertise your small business in a crowded market.

Free Marketing Ideas for Small Businesses

 

Social Media Marketing

LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube, TikTok – the list of social media platforms goes on, with Wikipedia estimating that there are over 130 different ones to choose from now! The key to using social media to advertise your small business is choosing the platform that your customers are using most, and then updating your page regularly.  The only cost to a successful social media marketing campaign is your time investment. 

Email Marketing

If you have a list of customer (or potential customer) email addresses, using them wisely is a great way to market your small business.  Send out helpful articles, sales messages, and rewards to those who sign up and you will create a faithful following that will convert as well as your social media audience, or even better! 

Website Marketing

Don’t overlook your website.  If you are doing all this work to drive people to your website, you need to make sure it converts them into leads.  Make the most of your data and analytics to ensure that it is working as hard as you are.  Search Engine Optimisation is another great way to make your website do more for your business.  By optimising your website to be found in the search engines you can increase the number of visitors, and with no direct costs, your only investment is time and energy.

Content marketing

Another fantastic way to market your business is by creating valuable content.  This could be blog posts, videos, and even podcasts.  It is a great way to express your brand’s personality and help you to find new customers.  It can also support your social media and SEO work, so it’s a great option to use in combination with the other free marketing ideas we’ve suggested above.

Paid Marketing Ideas for Small Businesses

 

Paid Advertising on Search Engines

 

PPC (Pay-Per-Click) marketing is a really effective way to market your business as it allows you to send your message to a highly targeted audience and set a tight budget.  Google Ads and Bing Ads are the most common, and each gives you a chance to test multiple adverts and campaigns to see which performs best for your goals.

Social Media Advertising

 

Instead of relying on organic growth in your social media profiles and pages, you can create very visual social media adverts and display them to a highly targeted audience.  As well as giving you the opportunity to reach a wide number of people for a small budget, the advertising options on these channels give you access to a huge range of in-depth data which can help you to make future advertising decisions.

Remarketing Campaigns

 

If you already have a bank of customer data or have run successful paid campaigns in the past, then remarketing is a great option. Remarketing is usually a cheaper option than other paid marketing options, and has a higher conversion rate.

Whatever your budget, whatever time you have to invest, there is a marketing solution for your small business. Take your time, make a plan and good luck!

If you’d like to speak to one of our team about how we could help you attract new customers with catchy and clever advertising tactics, you can get in touch here. Alternatively, pick up the phone and call us on 01600 891525 – we’d love to hear from you!

What skills do graduates really need for a career in marketing?

With students graduating this summer, we’ve been giving careful thought to the essential skills Marketing Companies look for when recruiting graduates.  And we all agreed that it comes down to a combination of academic ability, soft skills and sheer determination!

 

‘Academic Ability’

It’s not just about getting a First or 2:1 – employers are going to be looking for evidence of your ability to problem solve, understand complex information, work as part of a team, multitask and work to deadlines. Phew, that’s a long list and you thought it was just about writing essays.  Make sure you show how you’ve developed these skills whilst studying or gaining work experience.

Working in Marketing is often all ‘hands on deck’ so having good IT skills is also important. Knowledge of packages such as Photoshop will enable you to create an image for a post quickly. Equally, understanding basic HTML / CSS so that you can make a quick amend on a website will also help your cause.

 

‘Soft Skills’

This is an industry all about communication so great skills in this area are a must.  Marketing involves a lot of writing; blog posts, press releases and pitches, so good writing, spelling and grammar skills (please, no mistakes on your CV!) are critical. Interpersonal skills are also key.  You’ll be working with a team so evidence of work experience, or involvement in events or committees all help to show you have a good grounding in this area.

You will also need to show that you can think creatively.  You don’t need to be an artist, just show you can ‘think outside the box’.   For a start, don’t just send in yet another standard CV – be creative to stand out.  Different paper textures, infographics, layouts – be distinctive.  Can you show how you took a different approach to solve a problem?

 

Sheer Determination

It goes without saying that an interest in people and an awareness of the world around you is vital, Marketing, after all, is all about understanding people’s aspirations and challenges to foster relationships.  Be aware of what’s going on in the news and read widely.   

As a new Graduate, nobody is expecting you to have loads of specific company experience but you can demonstrate your skills by marketing yourself.   

  • Get involved with the marketing of a College Club or local event.
  • Show you can write by having your own blog or contributing to a magazine.
  • Be visible on social media – show your understanding of the essentials of social media but carefully consider what you post and choose to share as more and more employers will check these channels.

You’ve got yourself an interview?  Congratulations!  Make sure you’re prepared. Do your research on the company and the marketplace they work in. Read trade publications, press releases and immerse yourself in Google Search! What about marketing campaigns that have caught you eye, why was that?  What’s memorable and what was a real stinker – again why?  This shows prospective employers that not only do you have a commercial awareness but also are happy to create your own opinions.

 

 

Additional Study

Another option is to keep studying! A professional Marketing qualification or a postgraduate course will certainly add to your academic portfolio.  Ideally though, it is worth getting some experience with the different aspects of marketing before taking the plunge. Many in the marketing industry will take these courses whilst working to further their promotion prospects.

The Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) offers an Introductory Certificate in Marketing. This can be followed at a later stage by other qualifications leading to chartered status.

The Institute of Data and Marketing (IDM) also offers a variety of qualifications for both graduates and industry professionals ranging from masters and postgraduate degrees to professional diplomas.

You can also find affordable online marketing courses on sites such as The Digital Marketing Institute, Hubspot, Coursera, and Copyblogger.

 

All we can say is good luck! It’s a great industry to work in!

Six Sizzling Summertime Marketing Ideas to Grow your Business

Hospitality and retail businesses love the summer – when the weather is good people go out and spend money. Even when it’s not good, they make the most of days off and bank holidays and, hopefully, these industries reap the benefits.  For B2B and service-based businesses, it can be a less exciting time!  When people take holidays and spend fewer collective hours at work it can be a slow time for small B2B businesses.

So what can we do to encourage people to come in from the sunshine and give their time and money to your business, whatever industry you are in?

  1. Welcome the Summer

Instead of trying to pretend people aren’t going on holiday, embrace the fact they are travelling!  People are excited to go to different places again after too long stuck at home in lockdown, so get excited with them.  Find fun ways to encourage them to engage with you – like photo competitions. Imagine getting them to take photos of your product or logo in new places.  Not only will it help to get your customers excited, but it will also help you to create your content for the whole summer months.

  1. Get Retro and Go Offline

If people are spending less time online because of the summer sun, then find them in other places.  Send them something fun through the post, a little gift, a thank you card, a gift voucher – something to make them smile.  Get creative with print advertising and get your business seen in the ‘real world’ where your customers will be.

  1. Make it a Big Event

Have you heard?  We can meet face-to-face now!  It’s been so long that it can be easy to think that any old event will do, but try to think outside the box.  ‘Drinks and nibbles with slides’ is not going to cut it – get people excited and give them a fun reason to come and see you in person again.

  1. Add Some Summer Value

The cost of living crisis is hitting us all and your customers might well be looking to reign in their spending so a discount or offer may be a welcome way to encourage them to make that purchase. But whilst your customers will be looking for the best deals to save pennies, being the cheapest won’t necessarily win you the customer. Consider how you can add value beyond ‘summer sales’ and posters with thermometers on them! 

  1. Make the Most of Your Customers

It’s easier to sell to someone you’ve already sold to, so treat your current customers like royalty with exclusive offers, downloads, content, giveaways or events that spoil them.  Show them you haven’t forgotten them just because the sun is shining and target them with a loyalty campaign.

  1. Make the Most of Referrals

Testimonials and case studies are tried and tested ways of creating trust in potential customers, but they can take a lot of effort to generate.  Word-of-mouth recommendations have a much shorter ROI and can be accomplished with a single campaign.  Encourage your current customers to recommend you to their peers in exchange for a small reward.

If you think your business would benefit from some marketing support this summer we’d love to hear from you! You can email info@limegreenmarketing.co.uk or pick up the phone and call us on 01600 891525.

Why Print Marketing Still Deserves a Place in the Digital World

We live in a digital age, with almost everyone owning a mobile phone or tablet computer.  Since your customers now harness the power of a personal computer in their back pocket, it’s no wonder that digital marketing is very much at the forefront of any company’s marketing strategy. But what about print marketing? In a digital world, do we still need business cards, leaflets and posters and ads in magazines? Print may have taken a hit, but it’s not finished yet!  Print still holds a powerful position in marketing and business, and that won’t change anytime soon, so where should your print marketing be focused in a digital world?

Printed publications have had to change their own strategy as more people choose to consume information from online sources instead of newspapers and magazines. This drop in printed sales is what ultimately led to some media companies, including ESPN, ceasing all print versions of their magazines, and becoming exclusively online.  Then the tables turned again and print magazine subscriptions became popular once more during the global pandemic,  As millions of people across the globe moved to work remotely, having a physical copy of a magazine gave them a much-needed break from staring at a screen.

There is no doubt that digital media is convenient, but it does have disadvantages over print: studies have shown that printed material can help us retain information better. With print, we are not only reading, but it taps into our other senses: touch and even smell. Engaging with the other senses can help to form a connection and leave a lasting impression. For instance, emails can easily be forgotten, especially if a person’s inbox already has a large unread number.  Physical mail is statistically more likely to be read and this applies to all printed promotional materials.

Companies that continue to use print marketing tend to have more trustworthy reputations. Small Biz Trends conducted a survey that revealed that 85% of consumers were more inclined to choose a company that still used some form of print in their marketing; while International News Media Association revealed that 82% of Internet users trusted printed ads over their digital counterparts. Although digital marketing can be brilliant at reaching a vast number of consumers, it does not hold the same level as trust – it is easier to scam via digital.

Viewing digital ads on phones or tablets can often lead them to be ‘scrolled over’ and potential customers can be lost.  Even when watching videos on platforms like YouTube, most choose to skip the ads.  Continuing to have print as part of your marketing strategy will help you to reach audiences that may not be tech-savvy or who may be too tech-savvy and will have blocked your ads or emails!

Rather than saying that one form of marketing is better than the other, print and digital make ideal partners. For instance, printing a QR code in a magazine or a leaflet that can lead to promotion, perfectly blends the printed and digital world. Digital marketing can reach a wide audience both quickly and cost-effectively; print Is still showing itself to be relevant and not quite extinct.

If you’re interested in talking to our team about how we could help you ramp up your print marketing efforts we’d love to hear from you. Contact us here for more information or give us a call on 01600 891525.

Six Reasons Why Webinars Should be Part of Your Marketing Strategy

Webinars are not a new phenomenon; WebEx™ video-conferencing has been around since 1995!  However, there is no doubt that with the COVID pandemic putting a halt to physical gatherings, the webinar has seen a resurgence in the last two years.

A webinar has all the features of the traditional seminar, keynote, or panel session, but with the added ability to reach people wherever they are across the globe.  Webinars are ideal for teaching, carrying out demonstrations, raising awareness, and making connections; meaning they are a very effective marketing tool.  Here are six reasons why webinars should be part of your marketing strategy.

1. VERSATILE

Webinars can be held in a variety of formats.  They can be used for educational purposes, such as employee training; for demonstrations of the products or services that your company provides to generate sales; for interviews, panel discussions, or audience Q&A sessions.

After the main event, the recorded content of your webinar can also be repurposed in the future for blog posts, tweets, explainer videos, and much more.  Any questions from your audience can lead to new ideas and help you to produce highly relevant new content for your website and marketing campaigns.  There are very few other marketing mediums which are as versatile as the webinar.

  1. COST-EFFECTIVE

Webinars are very budget friendly.  Teaching, training or giving demonstrations in a live format involves researching and hiring venues; travelling for both staff and clients; providing catering and accommodation; and plenty more time and resources for all of the preparations involved.  Webinars in comparison require a lot less time, resources, and planning than physical seminars and conferences making them a great choice for small businesses.

  1. WIDE REACHING

Webinars allow you to reach out to an audience that can span the globe, and connect with those that may have been difficult to reach in the past.  Webinars can be streamed live or they can be recorded for people in different time zones to view at their own leisure at a time that suits them. 

  1. HIGH ENGAGEMENT

Webinars present the perfect opportunity to allow your audience to engage with you and your business using features like chat boxes, live polls, social lounges, and Q&A sessions.  A well led webinar can provide a great platform for clients and potential customers to ask questions and voice their opinions.

  1. LEAD GENERATION

Usually people sign up in advance for a webinar in order to receive the information to join the event by email. This is a great lead generator for any business, especially when studies show that between 20-40% of webinar attendees later become leads. Just make sure when collecting that data that your attendees know how you’ll be using their information.

  1. INCREASE YOUR CREDIBILITY

Finally, hosting webinars can increase your credibility with your customer base and, in turn, help you to build trust with them.  This is especially true if your webinar involves guest speakers.  

Hosting regular webinars can raise your company’s profile; and by developing a series of webinars, you can encourage people to ‘tune in’ to find out what happens next, showing off your brand and helping others to learn more about you.

If you’re interested in talking to our team about how we could help you plan and execute a successful webinar, we’d love to hear from you. Contact us here for more information or call us on 01600 891525.

How to Construct Effective Customer Journey Maps

We create sitemaps to help us plot user navigation across our websites. Similarly, a customer journey map plans out the anticipated journey a customer will have with your business. While this is somewhat analogous to your sales funnel, it has a more practical feel to it. Funnel phases such as awareness and consideration are about where your lead is at; the customer journey map will tell us what they are doing, and more importantly, what we as a business are doing.

Journey Map Components

Broadly speaking, there are three layers to a customer journey map:

1. Customer actions

2. Front of House

3. Back of House

While some maps get very granular and specific, these three layers define the actions and interactions for your customer.

Customer actions usually align with the interest phase in our sales funnel. It can be something as simple as a social media follow, website visit, or something more traditional sales-based like filling out a form or requesting a quote.

To do this, our company needs some front-of-house assets (FOH). In the above example, these would be things such as our social media accounts and website. They can also be traditional collateral materials such as brochures or flyers; it’s that first point of active contact (rather than passive awareness) that a customer has with your brand or company.

Behind those front-of-house assets (BOH), we have back-of-house systems. These are how we manage our customers and their interactions with them. For example, that form they filled out on our website might generate a new record in Salesforce or other customer data storage platform. This allows us to cross-reference every later action our customer takes so that we have a complete narrative for them. The more we know about our customer’s interactions with us, the better placed we are to provide the product or service they want, now and in the future.

Practical Customer Journey Map

Let’s take a practical example such as a theatre to tie this all together.

Initially, a customer subscribes to a newsletter on the theatre’s website. They then start to receive the newsletter, and they click trackable links. When they buy tickets, this information gets logged against their profile. Any post-show survey responses record what they like about the theatre, their favourite types of shows etc. These all help the theatre understand its customer preferences.

For this example, our three layers contain:

1. Customer actions: Join the mailing list, open newsletter, click links, purchase tickets, complete survey

2. FOH Assets: Website, survey tool

3. BOH Assets: Mailing tool, sales database

In the most basic sense, the customer journey map, with customer actions at the top, interact with the FOH, which adds to the BOH. But there can be more complexity built-in over time.

For example, after two years, if we see that our patron comes only to watch farcical comedy plays, this BOH information can start to influence the FOH. If the theatre has a big summer comedy on, this is a customer they can target with an increased likelihood of making a sale. A newsletter, or special mailout about this play, can be sent to those who the BOH shows might be more interested than the general mailing list.

Customer Journey Map Evolution

While this has been quite a simple example, it does demonstrate one of the more important reasons to create a customer journey map.

Continual adaptation makes a customer journey map essential for any business. At a functional level, it helps you organise all your assets to work together to serve your customer and your business. Over time, it allows you to map interactions between the different levels that ultimately will drive sales and improve customer satisfaction.

If you’re interested in talking to our team about how we could help you construct an effective customer journey map, we’d love to hear from you. Contact us here for more information or call 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.

A Step By Step Guide to Outsourcing to a Marketing Agency

Like hiring staff, outsourcing is never an easy decision for a business owner to make – there are lots of things to weigh up and consider.  So when you do finally decide to take the plunge and outsource to a marketing agency, it’s worth making sure you are doing everything you can to make the partnership a success.

STEP 1. Decide what you will be outsourcing

As well as defining your budget you need to decide what marketing you can (and should) keep inhouse.  It’s important to be realistic about your resources and your talents.  If you aren’t sure what you can handle, then you should be honest about this when you start to engage with agencies.

STEP 2. Choose your stakeholders

The easiest way to get the best out of your relationship with an agency is to make it clear who will interact with them and who will be required to approve budgets, outputs and anything else.  Clearly defined roles are key to success so nail it down before you do anything else.

STEP 3. Choose the best agency for YOUR business

Just because an agency is the biggest in your city, or has won the most awards, does not mean that they are the right agency for your business.  When you are hiring staff you have criteria that an interviewee must meet, so set similar pointers before you interview an agency.  Engage with a few companies and choose one that you feel a connection with, that you trust with your brand, and that offers the services that you need.

STEP 4. Set Expectations

If you’ve told your agency that you want to increase your social media presence and then you end the contract with them because your sales are the same…you are at fault.  You need to set expectations for what you would like to see done, and what results you would like to see from that work (these may not marry up, but a good agency will advise you on strategy…we’ll get to that in Step 5!).

STEP 5: Make the contract strategy driven instead of task driven

Tasks checked off a to do list is not going to generate business.  If your agency knows why they are doing something, what the goals are, then it will be much more effective.  A good agency will help you create a strategy and plan the actions to achieve it rather than taking a list of actions with no reason.

STEP 6: Keep on top of the results

Reviewing the results of marketing efforts is crucial to the success of any team – inhouse or outsourced.  An agency will be able to report on everything in detail that they were involved in to show what worked, and what didn’t so your next marketing decisions can be evidence based.

Finally – Have respect for the agency

The team members within a good marketing agency live and breathe their profession, so if they advise you that your ideas for a campaign will not bring good results, don’t dismiss them before hearing their reasons.  Respect that you have brought in experts who know more than you and listen to their suggestions.

After all to quote Steve Jobs…

Great things in business are never done by one person; they’re done by a team of people.

If you’re interested in talking to our team about how we could help you step up your marketing in the second half of 2021 we’d love to hear from you. Contact us here for more information or give us a call on 01600 891525.

 

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.

 

Fighting Lockdown Fatigue – How to Keep your Marketing Going

Marketing has been going digital for decades, but now as the rest of the business world is racing to catch up, the huge increase in screen-time means we’re all fighting Lockdown fatigue.  We’re growing tired of webinars, video calls, and endless ‘how to improve working from home’ blogs.  So how do we keep our marketing going when the same audiences who were excited about our innovative ways to attract and entertain them online, are now fed up with anything digital?

Social Media

Instead of continuing to share useful articles on your feed and hoping for people to respond, start engaging with them first.  Get into the comment sections of relevant posts and share your article there.  Add value, give back, don’t keep shouting and hoping you’ll be heard above the noise.

Also, use this time to encourage your employees to grow their social media presence, especially on LinkedIn and Twitter.  Offer training on how to be confident and helpful online; show them how to add valuable insight, and to do it when their network wants to hear from them, not before.

Emails

Emails are still converting as well as they have ever done, but the secret to standing out in a crowd right now is to get creative.  Segregate your audience and send them targeted messages.  The most effective emails right now are highly personalised, and create memorable experiences for your audience, so take the time and do it properly to see a difference.

Go offline

Royal Mail recently did some research with MarketReach, which has shown that physical mail is having more impact on customers than ever before.  Since we are more likely to be home when our mail arrives, we choose when to look at it and if we want to respond to it, rather than throwing it in a pile at the end of a long day.  The research shows that the biggest rise in engagement has been in the 18-34 age group.

The best part of this research?  Mail is an increasingly effective method of driving people online, with a 70% increase year-on-year of traffic driven by physical mail.  Send your customers thank you cards, care packs, physical vouchers – anything that could bring them a smile when they go to the letter box. 

Whatever method you choose to use to reenergise your fatigued marketing, the most important thing is to do something.  Now is not the time to slow down.  It might feel pointless, especially if your business has been forced to stop trading, but now is the time to plan for the future.  When lockdown finally lifts and you are able to reopen, a new marketing strategy will be the last thing on your list!  Market now, reap the benefits later.

And remember there’s support available to help you if needed. If you’re interested in talking to our team about how we could help you keep your marketing going during lockdown we’d love to hear from you. Contact us here for more information or give us a call on 01600 891525.

2020, What a Rollercoaster of a Year! But We Enjoyed the Ride and Have Plenty to Look Forward To

What a rollercoaster year 2020 has been! Normal working practices have been turned on their heads as we’ve had to navigate lockdowns, working from home, travel restrictions and what seems like a different tier for every month. With events cancelled and face-to-face networking banned we’ve all moved online, finding refuge in Zoom, Google Meet, WhatsApp and Teams. We’ve cursed poor internet connections and interruptions from children and animals while craving the company of our friends and family. 

At LimeGreen we’ve been fortunate when so many haven’t. As a virtual agency we’re ideally set up for remote working and so have been able to seamlessly support our clients, helping ensure their brand profiles and marketing messages continue to reach and engage with their audiences.

It’s not been without its challenges but, when we look back on the year, we realise that despite Covid chaos, we’ve helped our clients stay agile and adapt quickly. In fact, together with our clients, we think we’ve achieved some great things.

Pinnacle

Pinnacle helps law firms implement and optimise their critical business applications. At a time when their services have never been in more demand and they’ve been busier than ever, lockdown provided some real challenges. Global annual partner networking events were cancelled, IT implementations had to go live remotely, and their clients had to move swiftly to remote working – not a natural environment for a lawyer. Pinnacle rose to this challenge, for example, partnering with Briefing magazine to create Tiger Teams.  

A Tiger Team is a group of people, each an expert in their field, who come together to solve difficult problems and identify others before they happen. The concept was made famous by NASA when their teams worked as one to bring Apollo 13 safely back to earth after a module malfunctioned during the mission. Briefing and Pinnacle took this to heart, creating a series of webinars and discussions addressing the biggest challenges law firms have faced during 2020. Pinnacle then extended this with their in-house Tiger Teams creating agile new products to improve law firms’ workflows and business development.

We’ve made use of Loom videos to create short demo videos for LinkedIn and Twitter. We’ve created virtual booths, animated PowerPoints and videos for online conferences. And we’ve created a password-protected resource centre so Pinnacle’s clients can remote-access firm-wide vital resources to support their application implementations. 

Orchard House Partners

Orchard House Partners is a specialist leadership and team coaching practice that uses natural spaces, wildwood ecosystems and horses to accelerate leadership development. We designed, wrote and launched their stunning new website at the beginning of the year. And when lockdown kicked in soon afterwards, we worked with them to make sure their brand profile continued to grow online, despite them not being able to hold courses in person. 

During lockdown, the Orchard House team ran online conversations with leaders from across the globe. Their latest programme, Leadership Labs, is an exciting and enlightening series of virtual, small-group experiments that help shared learning, rapid experimentations and fresh insights.

Talk Education

TalkEducation launched this Autumn. This brilliant new concept aims to demystify the British public school system and provide parents from around the globe with the tools they need to find the perfect school for their child. We were delighted to work with the Talk Education team to develop their brand identity and launch strategy. And we’ve been thrilled to see the impact they’ve already created in the marketplace.

Kate Humble

Courses at Humble by Nature, Kate Humble’s working farm in Monmouthshire, may have been put on hold during lockdown but nobody told the animals! Kate was kept busy and her latest series for Channel 5, Escape to the Farm, was filmed at Kate’s farm during the summer. You can find out all about the series on the websites we created for Kate, Humble by Nature and Kate Humble.

Firepits UK

Lockdown and summer sunshine (remember that?) meant we all wanted to make the most of our gardens for outdoor entertaining. Firepits UK was ready, with their range of Firepits and outdoor ovens. In February, we were delighted to project manage their rebrand, and write and launch their sparkling new website. We also helped get them going on email marketing and social media. 

European Principal Group

Relevant to our turbulent times, European Principal Group (EPG) is a group of principals who each lead their own independent consultancy advising on geopolitical, government and public policy issues across the wider Europe area. Their insight, analysis and advice helps chief officers understand the complex political, legislative and economic issues that matter to their business. Our work for EPG is a perfect example of the power of Zoom as we worked with eight Principals across six countries and two time zones to create their brand and deliver what we’re proud to say is one of our favourite websites this year.

We also:

  • Recorded a series of branded Zoom conversations examining Moot Hill’s approach to dispute resolution
  • Designed, wrote and launched an AIM compliant website for Braveheart Investment Group
  • Carried out social media training for the Exate Dental Group three practices
  • Refreshed Optimum Vision Clinic’s website in advance of their practice refurbishment
  • Created a showcase video for Veterinary Research Management to use at virtual conferences
  • Helped SEBDA improve their digital presence
  • Built online table reservation for the Hen and Chicken, Bristol

Looking forward to 2021, January’s going to be just as busy! We have several websites due to go live, an exciting webinar series to launch and a couple of marketing campaigns ready to go.

None of the above would have been possible without the amazing team that supports LimeGreen Marketing.  Sarah R, Sarah L, Graham, Richard, Gareth, Ashley, Sam, Pete, Sophie, Lisa, Ben, Julia and Jo –  to all of you, thank you.   

Which just leaves me to say we wish you a very merry and peaceful Christmas and let’s hope 2021 brings not only vaccinations but the chance to meet in person again soon.

If you think your business would benefit from some marketing support in the new year we’d love to hear from you! You can contact us here or pick up the phone and call us on 01600 891525.

 

4 Small Business Marketing Tips During the Pandemic

Now is an uncertain time with lots of unknowns and small businesses all over the world are scared and worried. 2020 has brought about many changes that are impacting the way businesses communicate and this period of uncertainty is weighing heavily on the minds of customers.

Many businesses have been forced to close as a result of the crisis, many others have lost a significant portion of their customer base and many have been reduced to a 100% remote workforce.

This is the bad news.

 

But let’s talk about the good news.

 

It’s not all doom and gloom, and there is light at the end of the tunnel. The Coronavirus pandemic could present a unique opportunity to reinvent how you market your small business. There are steps you can take to set your business up for success in the long run. The crisis can be turned into an opportunity with the following small business marketing tips:

 

  1. Reach Out to your existing customers

Do your current customers know you are still open for business? Have they been informed of any changes to how you operate? Reach out to them by email, social media, phone or letter. Let them know you are still there for them and happy to offer assistance when they need it. Remember that due to the pandemic, competition is low, so cease this marketing opportunity to get in front of your target audience. Communicate how you can help your customers navigate tough times.

 

  1. Optimise your brand’s online presence

Businesses that rely on offline operations face huge challenges as a result of the crisis. People are still fearful of venturing into public and non-essential stores, so now is the time to shift your focus from a brick-and-mortar storefront to an online presence. Online is more essential than ever when it comes to building your brand and businesses that actively utilise the online space for marketing and customer relations have realised the importance of optimising their online presence. If you want your business to survive and thrive in a post-Covid-19 world, you must adapt and leverage the opportunities brought about by the changing digital world.

 

A few tips for optimising your brand’s online presence:

 

Create compelling content that clearly defines what you do and why you’re different

Make sure your brand looks and sounds clear and consistent

Be active online – post regularly to your website and social media, and regularly engage with your followers on social media

 

  1. Redefine your brand purpose

Why does your business exist beyond making money? Your brand purpose has always been a big deal, but during the pandemic it’s even more important to know exactly what your business stands for. A brand purpose means you always have something to work towards and affects everything from making key business decisions to bringing on board the right team members. Your brand purpose is your ‘why.’ In his book ‘Start with Why’ Simon Sinek says we can define our brand purpose by asking ourselves these 3 questions:

 

Why does our brand exist?

Why would someone choose us?

Why do we do what we do and how do we do it?

 

Consider what makes your business different. There may be many businesses offering the same services or products as you, what makes your brand different is your brand purpose.

 

  1. Send out personal Christmas cards 

Quality business partnerships have a personal element to them. Adopt an old-school personal touch to let your customers know you value them and are looking forward to welcoming them back by sending out beautifully branded Christmas cards. A Christmas card reminds your customers that your business still exists and is an indirect way of getting on their radar without looking salesy or pushy. It’s also a great way to get noticed by clients you haven’t heard from in a while.

 

If you need any help developing a marketing strategy and brand message at this difficult time, get in touch and we’ll work it out together.

What does Emerging Technology mean for Marketing?

In today’s world, there is so much innovation in when it comes to tech, it’s hard to keep up. The way many of us live our everyday lives has completely changed, which has also led to a complete shift in the way we connect and communicate with brands and the internet.

Knowing what technology is worth integrating into your businesses marketing strategy can be tricky. This post highlights some of the most popular technological advancements right now and some statistics that may help you in understanding if they’re worth it for your marketing plan.

Augmented and Virtual Reality

Virtual Reality - The future of marketing

The difference between AR and VR is that augmented reality (AR) adds digital elements to a live view, like some of the filters you may see on Instagram/Snapchat. Virtual reality (VR) is more of a complete immersion of a virtual world, you will wear glasses similar to the image above, and be ‘transported’ to an imagined or real-world scenario.

-The AR/VR market is currently estimated to be worth $1.6 billion (source: IDC)

–61% of shoppers would prefer to shop in stores that offer AR experiences (source: Lumus Vision)

–64% of VR users believe that VR has the most exciting potential in the gaming industry, while 52% believe this for the film and TV industry (source: GlobalWebIndex)

Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence - Emerging Technology

Many of us don’t even notice how much we interact with AI every day. Most of the targeted adverts we see on the internet are powered by artificial intelligence, and a lot of the instant chat facilities we use to communicate with businesses are AI, too.

-It is predicted that by the end of this year, customers’ will manage 85% of their relationships with enterprises without even interacting with a human. (source: Gartner)

-It is estimated that this year, 80% of businesses will have integrated some form of chatbot automation into their communication strategy (source: HubSpot)

–55% of consumers are excited to interact with businesses who use messaging to solve problems (source: HubSpot)

Voice Assistants and Smart Speakers

Voice Assistants and Smart Speakers

A huge number of people now have smart speakers in their home, and if not, then there is a voice assistant built into almost all smartphones. The future of voice searching looks big.

-At the end of 2019, over 20% of UK households had a smart speaker, with over 70% of these owners use them every day (source: Voicebot.ai)

-It is predicted that digital voice e-commerce will rise to an $80 billion industry by 2023 (source: Juniper)

-By 2020, it is estimated that 50% of all internet searches will be done by voice (source: Quora Creative)

Smart Devices and Appliances

Smart TV - The future of marketing

Smart appliances can be seen in the form of smart TV’s, thermostats, kettles and more. Some say it’s going too far, while others believe it’s an efficient and simpler future.

-The number of houses with smart appliances is expected to double between now and 2024, with the average users being 25 – 34 years old (source: Statista)

–The most popular smart appliance is the Smart TV (38%). Followed by lighting (17%), thermostats (16%), and security systems (14%) (source: eMarketer)

-In 2018, 70% of all TV’s sold around the world were smart (source: Statista)

 

The last few years have seen some major changes in the way people live their everyday lives, and the next few years see even more to come. This means the future of marketing will be filled with change and adaptation.

We have to ask ourselves, are television adverts as effective today as video adverts played on catch up TV apps? Do we need to invest as much into voice SEO as search SEO? One thing that’s for sure, it is very important to keep up with the strides of technology and ensure your marketing strategy works for you.

If you’d like to book a strategy meeting and nail down the ways in which to incorporate technology into your brand, then get in touch with LimeGreen Marketing today.

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.

2020 Marketing Trends

With 2019 coming to a swift end we thought it helpful to give you the heads up on some of the top marketing developments to keep an eye on for 2020. From chatbots to voice-assisted search, we cover it here…

Chatbots

2020 Marketing Trends - Chatbots

Over the last couple of years, many companies have implemented a chat feature on their website. Chat allows for quick queries and less email management. More recently, however, chatbots have taken the reins in managing this feature on websites. Chatbots are software programs used to interact with the users of a website.

Bots have taken away the need to pay somebody to monitor and respond to messages, and benefits include:

– They use a natural language tone and respond quickly to messages

– Bots don’t need breaks, they can be available to answer 24/7

– They offer clear and informative responses and don’t have emotional responses

We predict that 2020 will be the year that chatbots completely take over manually managing chat features.

Private Messaging Apps

Marketing Trends 2020 - Private Messaging Apps

WhatsApp Business has made more progress in 2019, and other chat apps are gaining popularity for businesses.

Utilising private messaging apps reduces the need for email. Plus, with 53% of people more likely to shop with a business they can connect with through a chat app (source: Facebook IQ), the conversational methods are proving successful. There is already work underway to monetize these chat apps and soon enough customers will be able to buy products and make payments directly through them.

2020 may be a good year to implement chat apps to your brand communication strategy.

Personalisation

Marketing Trends 2020 - Personalisation

Surprisingly, only a few companies are using personalisation as a marketing tactic. But 2019 has seen it become easier to hyper-target and personalise brand content, so 2020 may be the year that it becomes the norm.

For communications, this means highly targeting smaller groups with emails that address them by name and display specific information.

For E-Commerce, this means suggesting products to customers based on their interests and purchase history.

For 2020, make sure to analyse more data and streamline your personalisation of communication.

Voice-Assisted Search

Marketing Trends 2020 - Voice Assisted Search

Almost all new smartphones now have voice assistants built into them, and their ability to accurately respond to questions is getting much better. For 2020, you should look at an SEO strategy that focuses on voice search results. That way, Alexa might be reading out your content!

Some tips for voice-search SEO:

– Get to know the language – short and concise

– Have a conversational tone to your copy

– Answer questions

Influencer Marketing

Marketing Trends 2020 - Influencer Marketing

2018/19 has shown the rise in influencer marketing and a lot of companies are investing big chunks of money into it. Celebrities with huge followings are taking on the role of influencers and the money they are making proves its success.

The latest development in influencer marketing involves utilising people with much smaller followings to reach a highly targeted and engaged audience. This new trend is especially useful for smaller companies who can’t afford to have the latest Love Island winner promoting their brand (see our blog post for more on influencer marketing).

The marketing landscape is ever-changing, and technological advancements make these changes even faster. At Limegreen Marketing, we can offer consultancy and strategy for implementing not just the upcoming trends, but the tactics that work for your business. If you’d like to know more, then get in touch.

Google’s BERT Update: Explained

You may or may not have heard, but Google has recently rolled out its biggest update in five years, and with 10% of search queries being affected, there’s a good chance your SEO efforts may need to be tweaked.

This update is called BERT. It stands for Bidrectional Encoder Representations from Transformers.

Without going deep into the technical jargon of algorithms and neural networks, we’re going to explain what this means and what can be done to keep your website ranking highly in light of this update.

What the update comes down to is Google building a better understanding of natural language processing. Natural language processing is the artificial intelligence that aims to understand human communication better.

Before the update, Google primarily assessed search queries by looking at single words. It will now look at the entire phrase. Sometimes words like for, to, in etc, can give a sentence a different meaning. This means that Google now emphasizes understanding the context of your search.

Here is an example:

Google's BERT Update example

Source: https://www.blog.google/products/search/search-language-understanding-bert

 

In the search 2019 brazil traveller to usa need visa, the word “to” makes all the difference to the search. Before BERT, the search results would target travellers from the USA to Brazil. If you look carefully, the search is actually the other way around. This is the kind of thing that BERT improves upon.

When people make searches on Google, they will generally come under one of three query types:

Informational
Navigational
Transactional

 

An informational search is when a user is simply searching for information. Perhaps they want to start cooking healthier meals, they might search what are the best healthy chefs. The correct answer may take them to a blog or website provides a list and information of the top healthy chefs.

The next step in this process could be a search for Tom Kerridge recipes. This is a Navigational search. The user knows what they’re looking for here and the search has more focus.

A further search here could be Tom Kerridge healthy book. This is a Transactional search where the user has a clear intent to make a purchase.

The BERT update focusses mainly on the informational keywords and phrases so that people get answers to their questions quicker and more efficiently.

How can I keep my website ranking up? 

 

Well, the short answer to this is to get specific with your content. Answer people’s questions.

In your SEO research, start focussing more on long-tail phrases as well as just words, and start developing very specific content around a topic, rather than one huge page that covers a range of topics and has an endless word count.

It’s about quality over quantity. 

Don’t worry too much

 

Although the BERT update is a big one, it won’t start penalising you for any new reasons, it’s purpose is purely to better understand what people are searching for and why. It wants content that answers questions.

If you have noticed a drop in your traffic recently or would like to get a more in-depth look at your domain and keyword ranking, then LimeGreen Marketing can develop a report that looks into this and can offer up and carry out required tweaks. Get in touch with us today to find out more.

 

Influencer Marketing: The Take Over

Influencer Marketing: It’s essentially celebrity endorsement, put into the modern-day content marketing strategy. Influencer Marketing will usually involve a collaboration between today’s internet-famous and brands. These peoples’ recommendations have proven to have massive impacts on ROI and the tactic has grown hugely in recent years.

To put this growth into perspective, here are some stats and facts:

– 71% of consumers are more likely to make a purchase based on a Social Media reference

– Instagram is the most popular platform for influencer marketing, with a predicted $2.4 billion to be spent by marketers on Instagram in 2020

– 86% of women head to Social Media platforms before making a purchase

There’s huge money in Influencer Marketing, and companies are investing big percentages of their budget into it. 2019 Love Island star Molly-Mae Hague earns around £7,200 for a single sponsored Instagram post, and the most successful influencers such as Kylie Jenner get a whopping $1 million per sponsored post!

Now, these figures may seem out of reach for most Small to Medium Enterprises (SME’s), however the fact remains that Influencer Marketing is not to be scoffed at. If you’re looking to reach your target market directly, this could be an avenue to explore.

However, as influencer marketing is so new, it can be hard to know where to start and what to do. Here are some key tips for anyone getting started:

Find influencers that encompass your brand values

It’s important when searching for an influencer for your brand, not to just look at follower numbers and engagement rates, but to look at their whole brand image. Does it match yours? Do they have the same values as your brand? You want to form partnerships with your chosen influencers, that way they’re more like brand ambassadors, rather than simply churning out meaningless content.

Delve deeper into the metrics

You may think that finding an influencer with a huge number of followers is the way to reach a wider audience, however this isn’t always the case. Big numbers don’t always mean that they’re all paying attention. A lower number of followers could mean that they have a tighter network and bigger engagement rates. If you’re in a niche market, you may be better off going for an influencer with a lower number of followers, but with a good and trustworthy relationship with them.

Work with your chosen influencer(s) to get content that works for everyone

You’ll need to collaborate with your influencers to ensure that they’re posting content that matches both your own and their brand image, as well as motivating people to act. Working together is the best way to create content that is a win-win for everyone; your brand, your influencer, and their followers.

Finding influencers can be a tough job, too. A good place to start would be to search for relevant hashtags to your industry and see who may already be taking an active interest in your brand or products. Build up relationships with these people and do your research to see if they’re the right fit.

If you don’t have the time to put in all of this research, there’s some good tools out there to help you out:

Upfluence – A tool that helps you search for and contact influencers that are relevant to your brand

Socialbakers – A search facility that gives influencers a score based on how they match up to your brand

Influence.co – A free library of influencers that you can search for by category, location and more 

Taking the leap into a new and unknown world can be a big step. But, with these basic tips and tools, you’ll be well on your way. If you’d like any consultation or help with your marketing strategy and tactics, then get in touch with us.

 

 

User Personas: What and How

A customer profile or user persona is a useful tool to help you understand your customers and their behaviours; to understand their needs and wants, so that you can drive sales by connecting with them in a personal and effective way.

Years ago, digital marketing efforts were put together in a standardised way and basically sent out to the masses, with no personalisation or targeting involved. Today, the sheer volume of analytical and data tools available make it possible for us to really refine our marketing efforts. Marketing today is all about providing a 5* experience to our customers.  And to do this means that we need to understand what each of our customers need.

So, this is where user personas come in.

What is a user persona?

A user persona is a fictional, visual representation of your ideal customer. A persona is generally based on customer research and includes the needs, goals, and observed behaviour patterns of your target audience types.

Put simply, a user persona is a set of characteristics that you put to the ideal kind of people who would purchase from your business offerings. A thorough and data-driven user persona can be the key for your business to build more impactful strategies and even assist in the development of your product and services to fit these profiles.

Here’s our guide on building a user persona, to help in gaining a deeper understanding of the customers you want to attract and how they may act

Step 1: Create a general outline of each kind of ideal customer. What do they do? What’s important to them?

At this stage, you will give each type of ideal customer a name, job title, and outline their interests and attitudes towards general products/services in your industry.

Here, you will outline what is obvious about them that means your product/services will benefit them or solve their needs.

Ask yourself:

What are their values?

Do they match your business values?

Do they already use a product/service that your company offers?

If so, are they happy with this product? What does your offering bring that could convince them to switch?

What is their attitude towards products and services like yours in the market?

Are they open to your products and services or is it something that they are apprehensive towards?

 

Step 2: Enhance each customer persona with unique goals and important features

The next step in building your customer profile is where you will begin to add more detailed information. At this stage, it’s important to identify the needs and goals of each customer type, and what features could affect their willingness to choose your business.

 

Answer these questions:

What kind of language would each customer use to identify their problem?

Understanding this means the language that a customer uses to describe their problem can be replicated in your copy.

What is each customers biggest hesitation when thinking about trying out your product/service?

Understanding your customers hesitations will mean that you can resolve these before they dismiss choosing you because of them.

What is the most effective way to engage with each customer?

Everything considered so far in the profile building process will allow you to consider what will be the best way to engage with each customer type. Including how to talk to them and how to answer/resolve their questions.

 

Step 3: Assess how and where each customer type will find your business

Depending on the customer types that you have identified so far, the ways that they could find you may vary.

Important questions to answer here will be:

What websites/online blogs does this customer visit?

Being present on the websites and blogs that your customer will be visiting is great for brand awareness and ensuring you are seen by your ideal customer types.

What kind of search terms will each customer type be using?

Creating useful content that your ideal customer types will actually be searching for could be the key to making your online content seen and shared. At this stage you can decide which customers will be looking for specific, niche content that will benefit them directly, and which customers will be looking for more general and shareable content.

You don’t have to create these personas from scratch, either. There are plenty of both paid and free templates out there that will give you a base for starting:

Building customer profiles for your offerings is one of the essential elements for crafting your content marketing strategies, and it may seem like an arduous task, but the benefits could be genuine conversions on your website from customers that you have targeted effectively.

We’re experts in helping businesses define their market and drill down into the nitty gritty parts of customer profiling. If you’d like any help with this, then get in touch today.

 

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.

Utilising National Holidays in your Strategy

If you were to look it up, the chances are every day is a national, international or awareness day of some kind. Some are serious, the intention to make us think – such as World Diabetes Day on the 14th Nov 2019.  Others are just fun and often a little bit whacky such as national wear your pj’s to work day  (It’s on the 16th April if you’re interested!)

With over 1,000 of these days and months, plus bank holidays and religious holidays, your calendar is jam packed, you could have a theme for each day!

In recent times, lots of companies have jumped on some of these national days and used them for their own marketing, and it proves to be a great way to add some personality to your brand image.

Depending on your business and industry, you can host marketing promotions and events for certain days that are relevant to you. For example, if you have an optical business, National Glaucoma Week could be your opportunity to run an event to educate your customers on the effects and causes of Glaucoma.  Run a bakery?  Then National Donut Day may be the one for you!

There are, of course, more well-known holidays that most businesses will use, like Christmas Day. Utilising the lesser-known holidays are a good way to stand out, though. Why?

– On a national day that is smaller and more unique, you won’t be trumped by huge corporations with an unlimited marketing budget

– The quirkier days can put a smile on your customers faces or brighten up their day, this can put you in a positive place in their minds

How can you use national days in your marketing?

– Create some interesting and relevant content for your blog or website

– Share this content on your social media – remember to alter the content to suit your platform though!

– Don’t forget to use the official and unofficial hashtags which are being used around the day’s theme so that you join in with the conversation

– Add a special sale or offer that relates to the national day – this will entice people to purchase

– Hold an event with a theme for the national day. If it’s a fun and quirky day, then maybe you could hold more of a party style event, if it’s a serious awareness day, then you could hold an educational event

To save you the time in hunting out all the relevant national days that you could jump on board with for your marketing, we’ve put together a handy document for our clients. Not every national day is on there, we’d have to publish a book for that, just some that we think are handy to know. Download the pdf, print it out and stick it up in your workplace, then you’ll know when there’s a date coming up that’s worth shouting about.

Download printable PDF here

When is the Best Time to Post on Social Media?

Are you posting your brand content on social media, and sometimes getting a great response, whilst other times radio silence?

If you’re just posting when you remember, although it’s a good start, you might not be reaching all the people that you could be. There has been lots of research showing that posting at certain times, on certain days, can increase the likelihood of people seeing and engaging with your content.

What’s more, you don’t just have to think about the times that your posting. Different times are more suited to different social platforms. Posting at a certain time on Facebook may not be as productive if posted at the same time on Twitter.

Unfortunately, whilst there’s no exact magical time that will guarantee you likes, comments and 100% engagement there is research which suggests which times and days are best. 

We’ve highlighted the best times for each social platform to help you reach the highest number of people.

Facebook

Wednesday (12pm & 3pm) Thursday (1pm-3pm) have shown themselves to have the highest engagement. The lowest engagement rates are usually between 10pm & 5am (unsurprisingly). The highest levels really are during business hours, it seems there are a lot of people at the office desk scrolling through their feeds!

Good to know – Facebook’s newest algorithm means users see more posts from friends and family than business pages, so your marketing posts may not get as much reach as they once did. Engagement rates consistently peak during midday on weekdays, so Wednesday is a safe day to post.

Twitter

Wednesday 12pm / 3pm / 5pm-6pm are peak moments that content is being shared, clicked on, and commented on (during people’s work breaks). As with Facebook, Wednesday seems to be a safe day to post your content, although it’s good to use Twitter for instant engagement and sharing of industry news.

Good to know – B2B content performs 16% better during business hours, whilst B2C content works 17% better over the weekends

LinkedIn

Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday are all good days for posting. 7am-8am, 12pm and 5-6pm have shown themselves to be effective times to post.

Good to know –LinkedIn usage should be kept to sharing industry insights and sharing company news – try not to sell directly through LinkedIn, although cleverly sharing project case studies is a way of taking people directly to your website, just make sure it’s relevant and topical.

Instagram

The best time to post on Instagram is Wednesday at 3pm, however Thursday is a good day throughout. It’d be safe to post on Instagram during the working hours on Tuesday-Thursday.

Good to know – Instagram has over 1 billion users, coming third behind only Facebook and YouTube, and 60% of millennial’s say they’re more likely to buy from a brand that they actively follow on Instagram.

Now’s the time to think about ‘time’

In short, scheduling your social media activity for certain times is a good way to increase your engagement and brand awareness. Ideally you need to factor this into your social media strategy.   Plan ahead, schedule strategically and follow it through.

If you need any help developing a strategy and working out which social media platforms will work for your brand message and business objectives, then get in touch  and we’ll work it out together.

Why Email Marketing should be an Essential part of your Strategy

In today’s world, email marketing has proven to have stood the test of time. After seeing many a digital and traditional marketing trend come and go, email has remained stable. Developing your marketing strategy with email in mind is absolutely vital. The facts are:

– People send and receive 281 million emails every single day (2018)

– 95% of professionals use email as their focal communication tool

– Consumers sign up to an average up 14 mailing lists on their personal accounts

This being said, that doesn’t mean that you can just send out email and expect a return on investment. Your promotional emails being sent is one thing, but getting them opened is another. Think about your own inbox, how many of them are marketing emails? You really only open a select few that capture your attention from the get go. As a business, you don’t want to join the pile of binned emails because of irrelevant or ‘spammy’ marketing tactics.

It’s important that you develop a well-thought and objective driven strategy for your email marketing. There must be a catchy subject – and once users have clicked in, you must be giving them valuable content.

It’s useful to note that there is a huge list of words that could trigger your email straight to the junk box. Due to the number of viruses and hackers that attempt to gain users details, if an email contains a certain number of  trigger words, it will be deflected from your targets inbox for their safety.

A useful link for these words is:

https://prospect.io/blog/455-email-spam-trigger-words-avoid-2018/

In today’s age, email is still as successful as it has ever been, but to achieve this success you have to be much more strategic in your communications via email.

If you’d like some help with developing your email strategy and defining your objectives, get in touch and we can work together.

 

Secret Agent?

We’ll be settling down in front of the TV tonight to watch Secret Agent Selection WW2 on BBC2 .  Not because we’ve a strong desire to be the next James Bond or Emma Peel (although that would admittedly be quite cool!) but because the series is filmed on Alvie Estate in the stunning Cairngorms National Park. 

It’s not hard to see why the BBC chose Alvie Estate as the location for their series.  Set in the heart of the Scottish Highlands, in the Cairngorms National Park, Alvie House, is an Edwardian shooting lodge with traditional charm and a spectacular setting of the surrounding mountains.  The Estate, family owned, is a traditional working estate with native pinewoods and heather moors. It’s not the first time is been the setting for films and TV. Rumour has it that it was also considered for James Bond’s family home in Skyfall.  

We’ve been helping Alvie Estate to co-ordinate their online presence. They wanted to give their holiday cottages better online visibility and improve occupancy.  In addition to the cottages, Alvie Estate offers a range of field sports and outdoor activities as well as running events in the house.  And, neighbouring Alvie Estate is Dalraddy Holiday Park, a campsite for tents and tourers as well as statics and chalets for rent or purchase . 

Previously Alvie had just one website featuring all the different offerings which made it difficult for visitors to the site to find the information they wanted. So, given the different messages, we decided that the best option was to create three separate but linked websites for the cottages, the holiday park and an overarching website for the Estate itself . 

Working with their incumbent web developer we designed and developed the three sites each featuring the  same design and colour palette.  We wrote the copy for each website to ensure a consistency of tone and voice across the sites whilst promoting the different businesses. And we also refreshed the Alvie and Dalraddy Estates logo.  

Alvie Estate – view website

Alvie Holiday Cottages – HighlandsSelfCatering.co.uk

Dalraddy Holiday Park – CampinginAviemore.co.uk

Since the launch of the websites this year Alvie Estate Office has noticed a signifiant increase in enquiries. So, if you feel you could make the grade as a secret agent why not book a stay on Alvie and test your spy skills! 

You can catch a sneak preview of Secret Agent Selection WW2 on the BBC

The Things We Learned in 2017

At LimeGreen, we’re delighted to have had the pleasure of working with a variety of organisations across various industries and 2017 was no exception.

Before we start any project, the first thing we like to do is get to know our clients because if we understand them and their customers, then we can understand how best to market their product or service to their audience.

Of course, working with some clients requires a little more research than others but we’re always keen to learn! With this in mind we thought we’d share some of the weird and wonderful facts and figures that our clients shared with us in 2017.

 

Border Sundials

Christmas Day is the only day when your clock and your sundial will read exactly the same time, meaning that you can take a break from mathematics and the Equation of Time.

 

Osius Bone Broth

According to research, the average person needs approximately 3.5g of collagen in their diet each day to prevent wrinkles, strengthen bones, and improve overall health, although this will of course vary from person to person depending on the age and general health. Osius Beef Bone Broth contains a huge 3.4g of natural collagen per 100ml.

 

The National White-Water Centre

In order to kayak at the National White-Water Centre there must be 7 cumecs of water or more flowing in the River Tryweryn. If you want to raft then you’ll need 9 cumecs of water or more. The water is released from Llyn Celyn Reservoir by Natural Resources Wales (NRW).

 

Ridgeway Research

Anthelmintic resistance is a serious and increasing threat to the global health and welfare of livestock. Basically it’s where parasites such as worms have become resistant to the drugs (anthelmintics) used to contain  livestock infections. If unchecked, it could lead to existing drugs becoming ineffective with a potentially catastrophic impact on animal welfare and production. 

 

Novalux

More than 1/3 of farmers and growers in the UK are using the sun, wind, farm by-products and energy crops to produce clean, low-carbon energy. The NFU believes that domestic land-based renewable energy can deliver up to a quarter of UK clean energy needs by 2020. 

 

Harts Traditional Turkeys

 

Female turkeys are called hens, male turkeys are stags and baby turkeys are called poults until they are 5 weeks old.   And the average weight of a Christmas turkey is 5.5kg/12lb with approximately 10 million eaten in UK every Christmas.

 

If you’d like to find out more about the fantastic organisations we’ve been supported, check out our work. If you’d like to talk to one of our team about your own marketing call us on 01600 891525 or email info@limegreenmarketing.co.uk.

 

GDPR Are you ready for it?

GDPR – Are you ready?

 

You may not have heard of it or may not really understand it, but its big and its coming. In fact, 25th May 2018 is when the General Data Protection Regulations or GDPR becomes law. 

Basically, if you collect, manage, use or store any personal data of EU citizens, you’re processing EU personal data within the meaning set out by the GDPR.

You can’t ignore it as it will affect most businesses.  Do you

•  have a newsletter sign up on your website?

•  keep details on your employees or suppliers?

•  use a mailing list for networking or sales?

•  make sales calls?

•  need to collect personal information to carry out your business?

Then GDPR affects you.


SO, WHAT IS GDPR?

If you hold and process personal information about your clients, employees or suppliers, you are legally obliged to protect that information under current Data Protection Act.  Currently this means that you must

•  only collect information that you need for a specific purpose;

•  keep it secure;

•  ensure it is relevant and up to date;

•  only hold as much as you need, and only for as long as you need it; and

•  allow the subject of the information to see it on request.

GDPR has many of the same principles as the Data Protection Act but strengthens the rights to individuals.  These include

The right to be forgotten – An individual may request that an organization deletes all data held on them without undue delay.

The right to object – An individual may forbid the use of certain data.

The right to rectification –  Individuals may request that incomplete data be completed or that incorrect data be corrected.

The right of access – Individuals have the right to know what data is being held about them and how and what it is used for.

The right of portability – Individuals may request that personal data held by one organisation be transported to another.

GDPR also has stronger data processing requirements and places greater emphasis on the documentation that data controllers must keep to demonstrate accountability and the contractual relationship between controllers and processors.  It also has far stricter and more financially punitive rules on data breaches.


WHO DOES GDPR APPLY TO?

The GDPR applies to what they call ‘controllers’ and ‘processors’. 

•  A controller controls the purposes and means of processing personal data.

•  A processor is responsible for processing personal data on behalf of a controller.

•  If you are a processor, the GDPR places specific legal obligations on you; for example, you are required to maintain records of personal data and processing activities. You will have legal liability if you are responsible for a breach.

•  If you are a controller, the GDPR requires you to ensure you have appropriate contracts in place with your processors to ensure compliance with the GDPR.

•  The GDPR applies to processing carried out by organisations operating within the EU. It also applies to organisations outside the EU that offer goods or services to individuals in the EU.

•  The GDPR does not apply to certain activities including processing covered by the Law Enforcement Directive, processing for national security purposes and processing carried out by individuals purely for personal/household activities.

GDPR covers a vast range of compliance so it’s impossible to cover everything here.  The rest of this paper is an overview from a marketing perspective for small businesses.  We’re assuming therefore that the data acquisition requires consent. Some business, e.g. a doctor’s surgery, may not need to gain consent as this could prevent them from carrying out tasks critical to the service they offer. Because remember that under GDPR by giving consent individuals have far greater rights over their data including the right to object or be forgotten.

For more information on this visit https://ico.org.uk/


OK, SO WHAT DO I NEED TO DO?

Firstly, you need to understand the personal data that you hold, how you collected it and what you do with it.    Questions to ask yourself are:

•  What is the ‘lawful process’ for processing data?

•  What data do I actually need for my business?

•  How old is my data – how long do I need to keep data for?

•  How do I collect my data – do I get specific consent?

•  Do I share this data with third parties for example, your marketing agency?

•  Where do I store the data?

So, for example, you collect data to send out email newsletters on your business services. You use a mailing list curated from website sign ups and network events from the last 5 years.  You use MailChimp and store the data on your hard drive.

There is also data that you might not be aware you collect. If you’ve got Google Analytics on your website then you too are collecting data as GDPR also applies to data which could be traced back to an individual such as their computer IP addresses.

Secondly, you need to agree an internal policy as to how you manage this data and how you are going to collect data going forward to be compliant with GDPR.  You need to then update your privacy policy to reflect this.  This policy will need to explain what your lawful basis is for processing the data i.e. what you are going to do with their data. And how long you will keep their data, and their rights over their data.

Even if you don’t collect physical data if you run Google Analytics on your website you’ll also need a privacy policy.


GAINING CONSENT

If you have a mailing list you need explicit permission to email individuals i.e. they must have opted in.  This is called giving their consent.  Silence, pre-ticked boxes or inactivity does not imply consent;

Also GDPR regulations apply to data that was collected in the past. If you’re unsure about whether the data you currently hold will comply with GDPR then you’ll need to get fresh, affirmative consent for all the personal data you possess.  You could do this by contacting your mailing list and asking them if they would still like to receive information from you.  Remember they will have to explicitly give consent.  If you’re emailing them to ask for this then they will have to click a link to give consent. If you’re sending a mailer by post you’ll have to ask them to send back a reply (a pre-paid envelope will help with response).  Yes, this does mean your mailing list is going to get a serious culling but on the flip side it means that those people who remain on your list are committed to your business. 

From May 2018, all your avenues of data collection will need to have explicit consent and also the ability to unsubscribe from your database be that direct mail or an e-newsletter. So, if you have a newsletter sign up on your website you will need to ask them to specifically subscribe.  You may have experienced this yourself.  You sign up on a website, receive an email saying, ‘hey just checking you wanted to subscribe to our newsletter, if so please click the subscribe button here’.   This is called ‘double opt in’.  And any communication with your database must have the option to unsubscribe or opt out.  It may lead to fewer subscribers but again these subscribers are actively committed to your business.  

You will also need to record when they gave you permission and log what they were shown when they opted in.  This could be an email notification when somebody subscribes, provided it shows which boxes they ticked. And you’ll need to store that email securely for reference.

Why? Because, as mentioned, giving consent gives individuals the right to access the data that you hold on them. And if they’ve given consent they have a right to see what data you hold on them and to ask for their data to be deleted.  You also need to plan how you would handle such a request.

If you’re collecting data on children then GDPR has additional provision that you’ll need to be aware of. For more information on children’s data visit https://ico.org.uk/ 


SHARING YOUR DATA

If you use third parties that will be processing your data e.g. marketing agencies, MailChimp etc. then you need to ensure that they are GDPR compliant and that you have appropriate contracts in place to ensure that processing carried out by the third party meets all the requirements of GDPR.  Controllers are liable for their compliance with GDPR and must only appoint processors who can provide ‘sufficient guarantee’s that the requirements of GDPR will be met and the rights of data subjects protected.  Likewise, processors must only act on the documented instructions of a controller. They also can be held directly responsible for non-compliance with GDPR or the contract terms.   

You’ll find that most major processors such as MailChimp and Active Campaign are getting ready for GDPR and will support their customers with compliance.

⇒ MailChimp

⇒ Active Campaign


WHAT HAPPENS IF I SUFFER A DATA BREACH?

If such a breach is likely to have a significant detrimental effect on individuals e.g., result in discrimination, damage to reputation, financial loss, loss of confidentiality or leave them open to identity theft then you need to notify the ICO within 72 hours of finding the breach. They will assess the severity of the breach and act accordingly.  Failure to do so can result in a huge fine. Again, if you’re not sure visit the ICO website https://ico.org.uk/    

You also may not be aware that the Data Protection Act 1998 requires every data controller from large organization to sole trader who is processing personal information to register with the ICO.  There are exemptions but this requirement will carry over into GDPR.  You can register at https://ico.org.uk/    


CONCLUSION

As we said in the beginning the scope of the GDPR is vast There’s so much more that the GDPR covers including Social Media profiling and the use of Cookies.  The key thing is to be aware of GDPR, understand the impact it will have on your business, your role as either a data processor or data controller and then put in place documented policies and contracts for the management and compliancy of all personal data that you hold and process.

This paper is just an overview of GDPR and does not provide legal advice. If you need help, the ICO website is extremely helpful and has numerous resources and checklists including

⇒ A useful 12 step checklist to help you get ready for 25th May 2018. 

⇒ A guide to direct marketing 

⇒ A direct marketing check list for small businesses  

 

9 Reasons We Love Infographics

By definition, an Infographic is a visual representation of information or data, for example as a chart or diagram. Sounds exciting, right?  Well perhaps not and you might wonder what we’re doing talking about them on our website.

 

What does an infographic have to do with marketing and how is it relevant to your organisation? Don’t be fooled. Infographics can be incredibly useful tools, providing a new way to share information and engage your audience.

Here are just some of the reasons we love infographics…

 

One – Infographics are a great way to display lots of information clearly in a small space. 

Two – Infographics keep your audience engaged as they’re much more interesting to look at than a plain block of text. This one shows some facts and figures from the 2015 Rugby World Cup…

 

 

Three – Infographics are easier to produce than you think. Take a look at some of the useful tips and tools we’ve included at the bottom of this post.

Four – They’re easily updatable which means that you can keep your information current and infographics can be a great way of sprucing up your annual report.

Five – If you want to tell a story and/or show off your organisation’s achievements use an infographic. We love this one from Macmillan!

 

 

 

Six – A well branded infographic can explain who you are and what you do, raising brand awareness.

Seven – 90% of information transmitted to the brain is visual. They say that a picture paints a thousand words so imagine what you can achieve with a striking infographic.

Eight – It’s been proven that infographics get more shares on social media, increasing their potential to go viral.

Nine – Infographics can be exactly what you want them to be. Most templates are customisable and if you’re designing your own, well the possibilities are endless! Here’s one we put together for Monmouth Festival.

 

 

We’ve included some useful websites here which can help you get started with creating your own infographics.

 

Canva

https://www.canva.com/create/infographics/

We’re always championing Canva with our clients. If you’re no Photoshop whiz this website provides great templates for you to customise and post on your social media channels. And they now do infographics too!

 

Piktochart

https://piktochart.com/

More advanced in its function and dedicated specifically to displaying data, Piktochart offers different paid subscription options depending on how advanced you’d like your artwork to be.

 

Venngage

https://venngage.com/

Like Piktochart, Venngage also offers more paid-for subscription options based on user requirements. Templates are easily organised into business, marketing, education, tech. and social media.

 

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

What is hosting?

What is hosting?

 

When you create a website you obviously want people to see it so you will need to publish (or upload) it onto the world wide web with a web hosting service.

Web hosting works by storing your website files in high-powered computers called servers. When someone types in your web address the Internet connects to the web server holding your website files and then transfers your website information back to their computer. From there they can surf and view the pages of your website, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Basically, web hosting provides the technology and services to manage these servers and their software, security, support, bandwidth, speed etc.!

 

Domain Names

 

Before you can present your brand new website to the world you need a domain name like www.limegreenmarketing.co.uk. To have your own domain, you will need to register it with a domain registrar.  There are a large number of domain registrar providers on the internet such as 123 Reg and 1 & 1. If possible it is best to choose a domain register provider from your own country, not least because you will be billed in the right currency!

It’s quite common to get confused between a domain name and web hosting. Put simply: a domain name, is the address of your home or office; web hosting is the space in your house or office into which you place your belongings. It is often made more confusing because many domain name companies also offer services like hosting, email etc.

 

Different types of hosting

 

There are 4 main types of web hosting; shared, dedicated, VPS and Cloud. 

While all types of hosting servers will act as a storage centre for your website, they differ in the amount of storage capacity, control, technical knowledge requirement, server speed, and reliability.  Let’s take a look…

1) Shared Web hosting is where a large number of web sites are typically housed on the same server.  This includes sharing the physical server and the software applications within the server. Shared hosting services are affordable because the cost to operate the server is shared between you and these other owners.

There are, however, some down sides, such as limits on storage and bandwidth, and the performance of your website is largely affected by the needs of the other websites, as you will be sharing the same server resources. The type of content on other sites on the same server can also have a negative affect on your website. For example, if you’re sharing a server with websites relating to religion, sex, or politics, these type of sites could be more prone to an attack due to their content, which – if you’re on a shared server – may in turn impact your website.

2) Dedicated Web hosting is where you have the entire server to yourself! This allows for faster performance as you are not sharing with other website owners. The only limit is the size of the server. However, this also means that you will be responsible for the entire cost of server operation.

This is a good choice for websites that are:

 

Very popular

Require a lot of system resources

Need a high level of security 

 

Typically, these servers start at around £200 per month and usually require a 2-year contract and setup fees.

3) Virtual Private Server hosting is a sort of fusion of the first two options. Your web site is hosted on its own virtual server so that it won’t be affected by the web sites of other customers.  However, the server shares computer resources with other virtual servers.  This means it is not a dedicated server i.e. the entire computer is not dedicated to running just one server software. 

Virtual Web servers are a very popular way of providing low-cost web hosting services. Instead of requiring a separate computer for each server, dozens of virtual servers can co-reside on the same computer. In most cases, performance is not affected and each web site behaves as if it is being served by a dedicated server. However, if too many virtual servers reside on the same computer, or if one virtual server starts hogging resources, web pages will be delivered more slowly.

Done properly VPS can be the best option for medium sized websites as the head server is often of a very high standard. VPS is great if you are running WordPress or small Magento websites as all patching and upgrades are performed by the company managing the head server.

4) Cloud hosting is a server system that provides web hosting via multiple connected resources that comprise of a cloud. Whereas standalone servers and virtual servers can have limited scalability options and the potential for service disruption, a cloud host can provide you with:

seamless capacity

increased accessibility

superior reliability

more expense for added flexibility

good for site with periodic times of high use

 

Things to consider when choosing your hosting

 

Support

How much support do you need to keep your website running smoothly?  If you are an IT whizz, then perhaps not a lot, but for most of us we don’t have the time or knowledge.  Choosing a web host provider that offers easily accessible, on-going support should be a consideration.  And if it all goes wrong, what emergency systems do they have in place to get your website back up and running?

The web hosting company will own support of certain things; they’ll make sure that your physical webs server is online (which is a different thing from your website). However, if your website is hacked, they’ll probably not be able to help. And if you need additional functionality added, they’ll certainly be unable to help.

This being the case, you can imagine there are two tiers of support. The underlying hosting provider is offering technology and network level support; they may even offer some support on your website (to varying degrees). Your site developer may offer ongoing support on top of this; as these people are best place to update the website etc.

Reliability

Your customers expect to gain to access your website 24/7 and quickly.  And whilst nothing in life is 100% guaranteed, you need to make sure that your web hosting provider can supply an uninterrupted network connection and manage your server space, to ensure quick upload speeds. You get what you pay for here! There is a world of difference in reliability between a cheap hosting account and a premium plan from a tier 3 hosting company.

Security

The last thing you want is your web site going down or being hacked.  You need to ensure that your web hosting provider can give you peace of mind with:

 

offsite backups,

storage of your data

higher security (if you need it)

 

This is one area where the initially cheap services create their additional bolt-on’s, these come at a cost. Different hosting companies will put different levels of security in place; your cheap and cheerful outfits will hardly do anything.

Again, be wary of the fine line here. The hosting company are traditionally less concerned about getting your website back online in comparison to the web server itself. There is an important and subtle difference and having someone to support the actual website itself is of benefit here.

Scalability

We all hope our businesses will grow. So it makes sense to ensure that your server can match your expansion by providing additional space and services as and when they are required.

Location

Using a server based in the UK will help your SEO.  You will have preferences on local searches compared to websites outside of the UK.  And when you target UK customers you will benefit from a faster web loading speed, based on the fact that the server is located far closer to the customer. It has been noted that Google prefers faster servers, so the shared hosting is only really recommended where Google placement is not so important, maybe a local club website or nursery in the local area.

CDN (Content Delivery Networks) also assist with this. This is a system of distributed servers (network) that delivers webpage images and other web content to a user based on the geographic location of the user, the origin of the webpage and a content delivery server.

Performance

Fast hosting is crucial to SEO. Google are hot on measuring how fast your website is as they know, statistically, how many people drop off websites as load times increase. Performance on cheaper companies like 123-REG and Go DADDY can be sluggish. Having a relationship with a company who actually cares about this side of things is beneficial, someone who will benchmark the performance profile of the website and make adjustments where needed. 

 

What happens once you have chosen your web hosting provider?

 

In order to transfer the website to the hosting company they will ask for temporary access to your domain name provider.

If you have email addresses with your domain name provider, then these will stay there unless you ask them to be transferred over to the hosting company to manage.

When your site is ready to go live it needs to have its “A” record changed to point to the new Hosting web space. This is a relatively simple task that informs all the DNS servers (those servers that translate numbers to sensible name’s) that your website name now resides at this new address. It can take anything between 12 to 72 hours for this process – known as DNS propagation – to take effect. 

So, at the end of the day, hosting generally comes down to ‘you get what you pay for’.  The more you invest in your website hosting, the better your website will perform.  Hopefully now you have the information you need to make an informed decision when choosing your website’s hosting. 

 

 

 

 

 

Complex Made Simple

Complex made simple

 

How do you ensure your product is used correctly?

 

Do you have a brilliant yet technically complicated product.  One that requires detailed and precise instructions to make sure correct procedures are followed in order for your product to work properly?  How do you make sure that your customers carry out those instructions, especially when they are using your product in a busy working environment full of distractions or perhaps are new to the job?

For Ridgeway Science, this problem was complicated further. Their world leading dairy in-milk heat detection test kits, P4 Rapid, has a global user-base and the many languages spoken in their markets were an additional barrier to effective product understanding.

Ridgeway Science needed to convey their technical kit instructions in the simplest way, not only to ensure that their product was used correctly in a busy milking parlour but also to make it easy to translate for international markets.  To do this we had to significantly reduce the amount of text and create visual instructions in a few simple steps.

Using Ikea as our style guide, we designed 6 illustrated steps to ensure the P4 Rapid tests were used accurately and also be easy for anyone to follow from the milking technician to the relief milker. Instructions such as they had to strip the teat 3 times before they could collect a milk sample. That the milk had to be shaken to distribute the fat. And most importantly there should only be 7mm of milk which would go just up to the red section of the test stick. Otherwise the test stick became flooded and the results could not be relied on.

P4 Rapid Pack Instructions illustrations (1)

We also worked with Ridgeway to devise a series of videos and animations to help farmers understand how use and how to read the tests. Again, keeping visual text to a minimum and with a simple voice-over, which could be easily overlaid with other languages, we created a portfolio of P4 Rapid marketing aids for their international distributors and customers. Aids which clearly explained the benefits of the product in a way that balanced the clever science behind it with its practical application in the farmyard.

So no matter where their clients were in the world, understanding P4 Rapid and how best to use it would never be a problem.

All it took is a little lateral thinking…

 

Have a look at our P4 Rapid case study here

You can watch videos and animations we made for P4 Rapid here

Making Science Sexy

Keep it simple – Top 5 tips for writing good scientific copy

 

E=MC2, Einstein got it, that doesn’t mean the rest of us will.

Whether it’s website copy, offline brochures or simply B2B and B2C emails, making your data sexy and simple is the key to keeping your customers on-board. Dealing with scientific data can be a very tough gig, science may be cool in practice but the analysis and the explanation is often kept under the hats of the experts.

Sometimes it’s necessary to bridge the gap between the lab and the consumer to promote a product and make some money from all those late nights.  When this time comes its essential that data is made accessible to people who don’t spend all day in white coats and safety goggles. After all, if it’s not understood by the consumers it’s meant for, your data is about as useful as a chocolate test tube.

We have highlighted the top 5 tips on how to write a good scientific copy, so you can make sure that you are achieving your potential.

(1  Short and Sweet! Keep your sentences and paragraphs short and concise. This keeps your reader engaged, but also breaks down information into manageable chunks.

(2  Be specific: Only use what is necessary for your clients to know, the facts! Your product may go through rigorous routines that are important to the scientific community, but your customer just wants to know what it does and what it’s going to cost.

(3  Limit jargon: Your customers aren’t necessarily going to be experts in your field, if you have to use specific jargon, make sure to bracket an explanation of what it is.

(4  Don’t repeat! Avoid repetition; It sounds simple but it happens all too often and no one really wants to read the same thing multiple times; however relevant it may seem.

(5  Q&A: Make sure you’ve answered all questions that your consumers need to know in a way that makes the most sense to them.

Here comes the sun!

Border Sundials Photoshoot

 

Once again we have been working with the amazing Emma Drabble.  This time a photoshoot for Border Sundials for their new brochure. Here is a sneak preview!

border sundials photoshoot may 2016 2

5 warning signs your brand needs to detox!

5 Warning Signs Your Brand Needs to Detox!

 

Symptoms of fatigue and sluggishness warn us when our bodies are out of balance. But are you savvy to key business signs that show your brand could be suffering a similar malaise? Brands, like bodies, deteriorate with unhealthy choices and too little nourishment. How can you tell when your brand needs detoxing?

To get to grips with this, you need to understand the basic physiology of a brand. Brands reside in consumers’ minds. Your brand is built out of all the beliefs and associations that consumers hold about your products and your business. This bundle of perceptions is built up over time, and it will determine how likely consumers are to buy your brand.

Brand perception is fed, for good or ill, by all your marketing communications including: packaging, advertising, website, social media, direct interaction with staff, press coverage, emails, promotions, and printed materials such as brochures etc. Brands living in consumers’ minds will be nourished by clear, relevant and motivating communication or toxified by conflicting or ill-judged messages.

Here are 5 key signs that your brand is ready for a detox.

1. You don’t know who your brand is for.

How easily can you paint a clear mental picture of your typical consumer? To develop an engaging brand, you need to have a good understanding of the people who use your product. You need to understand both the big stuff (what their needs are, what’s important to them) and the little stuff (such as what makes them laugh, what magazines they read). Strong brands are relevant to their audiences; they speak the right language and deliver meaningful benefits. Without consumer insight you are blindfolded. Understanding your consumers better will make your marketing activity fitter, leaner, and more effective.

2. Your consumers aren’t engaged

Be very wary of a one-way relationship with your customer base. If you receive little feedback to social media, have below-par email open and click-through rates, struggle to generate interest in promotions, or rarely receive any spontaneous feedback, these could all be important warning signs and a lead indicator of sales trouble ahead. Potential causes of consumer apathy include: overloading them with irrelevant messages, failing to reach the right people at the right time, or simply poor execution; marketing activity that fails to cut through the noise.
In contrast, an active core of brand loyalists is a good sign of a healthy brand. Engaged consumers with strong emotional ties to your brand, will act as advocates, recommending your products to others. Rejuvenate your marketing plan with a focus on engaging and mobilising your consumer base.

3. You haven’t nailed your brand’s most important benefit

Perhaps your brand has an impressively long list of features and benefits. It is not easy however, to embed many different benefits into busy consumer’s minds with a scattergun approach. For much better results, take aim with your brand’s most powerful, top-level benefit. For example a mobile phone will have 100’s of features and benefits that might include: a faster loading camera, battery that won’t let you down, hands-free use with voice control etc. But focusing the marketing on a single benefit that emerges from all of these – such as ‘living in the moment’ – will be far more successful.

4. Your staff can’t articulate what your brand stands for.

This is a great litmus test for brand health. Your staff are exposed to all your brand marketing. If staff can’t give a coherent answer to ‘what is your brand about?’, consumers will definitely struggle! One of the main pillars of good brand management is clarity. If your brand has become confused through poor communications, then it is time to get back to basics and detox your marketing approach.

5. Your branding is not consistent.

Lay out all your visual representations of your brand i.e. packaging, brochures, website, flyer, brochures, website, everything. Is the branding consistent and harmonious, or viewed altogether does it give you a headache? Over time, it can be easy to get cast adrift with minor logo variations creeping in, colourways and fonts wandering off in various directions. What about the tone of voice? Are all the materials written in the same style or is a bit of split personality showing through? If you want consumers to really believe in your brand, you need to present a reliable face. Detox your branding by capturing some simple brand style rules and then sticking to them fanatically.

In business, as in life, we all need to take stock and invest a little time and effort in regaining good health every so often. Use these 5 warning signs to recognise when a brand detox would be beneficial. Remember that brand perceptions live in consumers’ minds; a diet of good marketing communications will sustain your brand to keep it pure, fit and healthy!