Importance of Branding for Your Business

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StrategyDriven Marketing and Sales ArticleBranding are the logos and design choices that you make for your business. In many ways, they act as the “face” of your company, and this is the “face” that your customers and associates alike will interact with. Poor branding insinuates that your company is poor, while good branding, and, even better, a great brand marketing scheme, can make a company famous. Branding is key, and it starts with a good logo design, and continues from there. Investing in branding isn’t just a waste of money, it can create long-term, positive associations that bring in more business and increased reputation.

1. Creates Brand Association

When you have reached the point where a simple icon can make someone think of your product and the great associations they have with it, then you’ve done your job. When you create a brand, you create an image that people learn to associate with your product or your service. This, in turn, leads to credibility and even increased sales, since consumers trust in your product and your service.

This is incredibly important if you’re about to launch a new product and want the launch to excel. If you have inconsistent or poor branding, you will have to start marketing your new product from ground zero. If, on the other hand, your brand show authority and is considered reliable, then you can easily sell this new product as an extension. If people trust you and trust your brand, they’ll be more likely to buy a new product you put out.

2. It Can Increase Value

Some branding is designer, which means that not only can you benefit from good associations, but you also benefit from having your name and your logo increase the price of your product. Think of it as a signature on a piece of artwork; it’s there to assure your loyal customers that they are buying your brand, and not some cheap knockoff.

3. It Shows Professionalism

When you have logos and branding, it shows professionalism. This means having custom business forms created so that your branding and your image is repeated for every transaction. It means having customized creations that look professional and thought out. It also instills a sense of pride within your company, showing that you care about the small details, and that your company is a unified business regardless of sector.

4. It Shows Your Values

Great branding is, effectively, a 24/7 marketing tool. Regardless of time of day, it should show your values and highlight your ideals. Is your company fun and exciting? Is it working hard on being environmentally sustainable? Use your branding to showcase these principles through the use of color and through the logo design you choose. Typography alone can tell a story, and proper branding requires you to take that story and share its narrative in everything that you do.

Branding is critical when it comes to creating and fostering relationships. It is how people learn to recognize your company, and it is how they become more likely to buy from you again. Work on coupling your great branding with excellent customer service and a good product, and you’ll create a great association that keeps them coming back.

Photo by Julian O’hayon on Unsplash

3 Alternative Marketing Strategies

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StrategyDriven Marketing and Sales Article

Your business might have the best product or service in the market, but if you aren’t retaining customers, or no one knows your name, then your sales won’t increase (and may even drop). Companies need to undertake a marketing strategy so that consumers are aware that the firm exists, and more importantly, so that the dollars keep rolling in.

Marketing exists in various forms. While consumers may be more familiar with TV and print strategies, this doesn’t mean that you have to use the same strategy for your company. There is a range of marketing methods that you can use to help your business make its mark, especially in this digital age when mobile marketing and social media are at a full swing. Read on to find out if the following ideas could help you and your company.

Merchandising

Merchandising is one of the oldest, and most effective types of marketing. From mugs to custom lapel pins, t-shirts or sunglasses, your options are endless. Merchandising is a great alternative if you attend a lot of trade shows, or community events. By giving your consumers a take home gift, they will instantly remember your company, while associating it with a positive experience or memory. Even if the item that they take is only used within the home, any visitors may comment or engage with the item if they see that it has your company name or logo. If you are looking to boost awareness, get creative and are restricted by a small budget, then merchandising is the ideal tool for you. For best results, have merchandise that sits on an office desk or can be worn with pride.

Go Digital

The way we do business is changing. In fact, consumers are increasingly influenced by information that they obtain or interact with online. From Facebook to Instagram, and even LinkedIn and Twitter, don’t underestimate the power of using social media as part of your marketing strategy. The beauty of digital marketing is that you can start small too. From only a few posts a day, or scheduled tweets, you can begin to increase coverage and interest in your product or service. So if you thought that social media was only for millennials then think again. If you aren’t using digital marketing to help your business, then you risk getting left behind and becoming invisible.  But it doesn’t have to be that way.  There are plenty of tools and templates for social media marketing available to support your digital marketing efforts.

Go Traditional

Make sure that more traditional marketing methods also remain in your marketing strategy. It’s a good idea to produce brochures and sales materials if you are out and about, and want to provide potential customers with a point of reference, or catalogue for them to refer to. Depending on what your company offers, you may also want to consider TV and radio alternatives too. These methods are essential if you want to make the most of potential sales during key sales periods, including Christmas, Thanksgiving and Black Friday. Using TV or radio doesn’t mean that you have to produce a cheesy or dated commercial either. In fact, airtime is crucial if you want to obtain those all-important sales.

From traditional marketing methods, to merchandising and social media, you will need to review your marketing plan if you want to increase your business potential. Make sure to set aside some of your budget to aid your marketing plan, and feel free to get creative.

What Is Inbound Marketing, and Why Is Everyone Doing It?

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StrategyDriven Marketing and Sales ArticleFinding new customers is one of the primary challenges facing businesses. While many businesses rely on traditional outbound marketing strategies to find new leads, this can be costly and even ineffective. For most businesses, paid advertising and cold calling alone are no longer enough to attract customers. Consumer expectations have changed with the advent of the Internet, and many will need a better reason than a catchy jingle or a slick logo to become your customer.

Inbound marketing has emerged as an attractive complement to traditional advertising strategies. Whereas outbound marketing requires your business to cast a wide net to catch a few good leads, with an inbound strategy, you can lure potential customers who are already actively searching for the services you offer. This can increase the quality of your leads, lowering the customer acquisition cost and increasing the ROI of your marketing efforts.

What Is Inbound Marketing?

Inbound marketing is a strategy in which a business creates high-quality content to attract potential customers and to build its brand. It is a holistic online marketing strategy that nurtures leads at every stage of the “buyer’s journey,” which models the decisions process a buyer persona goes through before making a purchase.

During the Awareness stage, the prospect tries to find out information about a problem they are experiencing. Next comes the Consideration stage, when they begin thinking about possible solutions. By the time the prospect has reached the Decision stage, they are interested in buying a specific product or service, and want to learn more about it.

With an inbound strategy, you can position your website as an attractive destination with useful information that can help potential customers make a purchase decision. The self-selection process this strategy implies means that potential leads are likely to be of relatively high-quality and receptive to your efforts to nurture them into customers. With an effective inbound marketing strategy, you can expand your market and turn new customers into dedicated promoters of your brand.

1. Defining Your Target Audience

Your marketing efforts should be tailored to your business’s buyer persona. This is a research-based model of your typical customer, which may include their information about their socioeconomic status, psychology, and consumption patterns.

To identify your buyer personas, try to find trends in your customer’s careers, buying habits, or the way they found your business. Interview a wide range of customers, including those who were satisfied and dissatisfied with your product. You gain further insight about your company by interviewing current leads, referrals they may have, and people who don’t know about your company.

2. Attracting New Visitors

Once you have your buyer personas, you’ll be able to create content which addresses their pain points and educates them about relevant subject matter. Blogging is one of the best ways to accomplish this, and the more high-quality content you create, the more authority you can have with potential customers.

Use search-engine optimization techniques to make it easy for prospects to find your content. You can promote your blog posts on social media, which can bring in more prospects as they are shared. The more you blog, the more important you can be to your buyer personas, and the more likely they will be to buy your products or services in the future.

3. Converting Visitors to Leads

Once your content starts bringing in visitors, it’s important to collect their contact information to convert them to leads.

An effective way to do this is through relevant content offers and opt-ins. Visitors can gain access to these once they fill out a form that includes their e-mail, phone number, social media account, or any other way you might want to contact them. Once you’re in touch, you can maintain their interest with further content offers and even start a dialogue.

4. Automated Nurturing

Email marketing is important for staying top of mind with your prospects. Once you have their contact information, you can provide them with content and communications that nurture them along the buyer’s journey. This makes it easy for you to communicate with them, and to make offers which appeal to them, such as a webinar or a teleconference.

By keeping track of what other offers they sign up for, you’ll know which content to offer in order to convert them from a lead into a customer.

5. Delighting Customers

Inbound marketing allows you to turn your customers into brand evangelists. You can keep their interest after they have made their purchase by providing them with a steady stream of useful content which addresses their current needs and builds off your previous work. Ultimately, by keeping former customers engaged with your business, you can increase the ROI of your marketing efforts and make it more likely that they will return as a customer. They may even refer others to your business.

Inbound marketing allows you to build your company while advertising it. The content and relationships you create can provide a steady stream of revenue. There’s no better way to use today’s technology to build a strong brand and a loyal customer base.

About the Author

StrategyDriven Marketing and Sales Article

ShaDrena Simon in an inbound marketing expert and digital strategist at Yokel Local, an inbound marketing agency that helps businesses grow with confidence.

Top Marketing Strategies that Really Work

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StrategyDriven Marketing and Sales Article
Paying per click to Google isn’t how you make money. It isn’t how you make new, organic hits, and it isn’t how you make sales. Instead, it’s how you pay for a click. There is no guarantee how long that person stays there, whether it was a bot, or even a real person. When you market, especially as a small business, you need to be smart. You need to ensure that you are getting the right message out to the right people. You need to use these five marketing strategies that really work, instead of paying for ones that make every sale an uphill battle:

1. Improve Your SEO

The whole point of pay-per-click advertising is that it takes your listing to the top of the SERPs. This means you can cut out all the hard work and be the first result that someone sees when they search for a keyword you have chosen. The other way to get to the top spot is to improve your on-site and off-site SEO. There are many different methods and strategies for improving your SEO, and they continuously change as Google rolls out new and improved programs to fight against spam and to improve the quality of their links. Focus on improving your SEO, and you will be ranked more highly on relevant searches, without paying for everyone who clicks on your site.

Once you reach the coveted #1 spot, you’ll have organic hits coming in for years.

2. Social Media Marketing, With Emphasis on Social

Using bots and buying followers is a thing of the past. Not only is it pointless regarding your sales, but it can also make you look like spam. Instead, work on building up real relationships and real connections. Post great content that is shared and interacted with. Communicate not only with those who comment and message you, but to also engage with the community at large. The more genuine and real you seem, the better. Having a few repeat customers is better than battling it out for every new sale, and the same is true for your social communities. Real relationships will lead to sales; fake ones will make you look like spam, so work on improving your social media marketing strategy.

3. Daily Marketing with a One-Time Cost

The more people see a name and a brand, the more they learn to trust it. When you work in a neighborhood or small-town marketing by wrapping your vehicle will pay off greatly. Neighbors will see their neighbors use your service, and will call you up themselves. Similarly, just seeing your name over and over again will help them remember you, and trust you.

Start today by picking up some great used cars for sale, create the branding and the car wrap, and benefit from marketing yourself while you work. Create a few yard signs as well so that after you are done with a project, you can market your services on your client’s lawn (with their permission, of course).

Marketing is all about making connections. It is about creating relationships with your customers, even if they never see you in person. Use these proven marketing strategies, and benefit from the increased sales and repeat customers.

Boosting Your Customers Confidence in Your Brand

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Attracting and keeping customers, especially for small businesses is a delicate balance. You need to ensure that they are getting a quality product, but also a good service. If either of these things is not up to standard, then it can cost your business money. Your customers and clients need to feel wanted, appreciated and safe for them to do business with you. If your business is struggling to give your customers confidence, then there are some simple ways you can try to boost it.

Let Them Deal with People

One of the biggest complaints from customers and clients when dealing with customer service is that everything is too automated. If they try to contact your company and are met with an automated email reply or an automated message on your telephone, then they are more likely to walk away. Make sure that your customers can get through to a person as soon as possible without going through too many steps. Also, send them a personalized reply to emails advising that you are dealing with their request. By allowing your customers to deal with real people, you can dramatically raise the confidence and happiness of your customers.

Be Approachable

In the same way as eliminating automated lines, you also need to be approachable to your customers when they need you. You can use social media and emails to let your customers get in touch easily, though it is important to reply to them promptly. It is also important to show how your customers can contact you on your website. If you bury your customer service number at the bottom of the page, then your customers will become frustrated.

Keep Them Informed

There is nothing worse for a customer that not being told when something is wrong. If their order has been delayed or cancelled, you must inform them as soon as possible. If you do not, then they may have wasted time waiting for a delivery that hasn’t arrived. In the same vein, you need to be honest and open about any problems with customers data. If you suffer a data breach, you need to inform them as soon as possible so they can protect their personal information. You should also employ digital forensic services to look into the breach and feedback any loss of data to your customers and the authorities.

Make Payment Easy

You might be surprised that some companies don’t make ordering or paying for their goods especially easy for their customers. They are so concerned about informing them of the goods and services they provide that they don’t make the payment systems obvious. It can frustrate and put your customers off purchasing if you don’t give them a quick and easy way to pay.

Your business relies on its customers, so why not make them feel important by giving them what they need? It will not only boost your customer’s confidence but also boost your sales as a result.