Social Media Consultancy London

The Trick To Making A Brand Stick

Behind every successful business is a successful brand. There’s so much competition in the modern marketplace that the only way to truly stand out from the many similar companies in your respective industry is to have a distinguishable brand. You need to stand out in some regard, and the best way to do that is to design a unique and captivating image for your business. This is about more than engaging pictures and color themes; it’s about the message you project in words and ideas. The following points discuss the trick to making your brand stick.

Compose a striking statement.

What does your company represent? What are the core values at the heart of all your business does? These are the questions you need to answer. All the big brands have a slogan or a key message which represents their business in an aptly-summarized fashion. You need to do the same. Locate your target market instantly by hooking them with a captivating line. Of course, the following point is important when it comes to doing this…

Make your brand work from the inside out.

If a brand is going to succeed then it needs to stick to its guns. If you promise an eco-friendly standard of goods then your office needs to be eco-friendly on the inside too. Stick to your message and values. If you promise a kind and caring service then make sure your workers are happy people who are well cared for by the company too. You might want to look into options such as HR consultancy from Peninsula Group because outsourcing human resource services could better help to manage vacations and personal information for your employees. It’s crucial that you prove to your workforce how important they are to the company so that they know the brand is real and want to spread that joy to the customers with which they interact.

The point is that you need to invest time in your workforce. If you don’t have time to cover all the many administrative tasks for each individual employee then outsourcing might help with this. Simply put, you need to show the same level of care and dedication to your workers as you do to your customers. If you want your brand to be genuine then you’ve got to uphold the same standards for all people associated with it. Provide outstanding customer service by ensuring that the workers providing it are satisfied and happy people.

Figure out the internet.

The internet is the place in which the majority of your target audience will be. It doesn’t matter if you’re operating on a localized or a globalized scale; people use the internet for all their shopping and searching in the digital age. If you want to spread a brand then you need to be using online resources to do so because posters, business cards, and billboards just aren’t going to cut it in this instantaneous modern world. You need to master the art of optimizing your business website to rank highly on search engine result pages through responsive layouts and good keywords. You also need to start using your social media profiles to connect with customers by answering questions, offering great deals, and generally creating a human connection with people.

That really wraps things up. Your brand needs to be human. If you want your business model to appeal to people then stop droning on with boring business jargon. Start talking in friendly terms. Excite people; talk about how your company’s goods or services will help solve the problems they have.

Attract & Retain: Get The Best Digital Marketing Talent For Your Business

The term digital marketing is a slight misnomer – let’s face it, any kind of marketing is just marketing. But make no mistake about it, it’s an important part of your armory these days, whether it’s to grow your business into new areas or just to keep up with the competition.

That said, the online marketing field can be a bewildering one for those looking in from the outside. If you struggle to get to grips with how social media can benefit your business, or don’t know your SEO from your CRO, how can you possibly hope to find the right talent to help you achieve your overall marketing goals?

As a consultant, I see this a lot – particularly in startups and small businesses. But, if you can get the online marketing right, it can help you compete against the major players in your industry, with a lot more resources. So it’s important to be able to attract – and retain – the best people your money can buy.

Let’s take a look at how small business and startup owners can source that talent, put it to good use, and get a good return on their marketing investment. Read on to find out more!

Understand the reality

First and foremost, you might think that every marketer out there would love to work for your company. After all, given that marketing is essentially about growth, what more could a marketer – online or otherwise – want more than to take a small company to enterprise size? The reality is those good online marketers have a huge range of opportunities open to them. You should also be suspicious of anyone knocking down your door to work for you if you haven’t got much to offer – going down that particular route will often lead to a lot more damage than success. The solution is to make sure you have a unique value proposition to offer potential candidates that help you stand out from everyone else. And that’s where this guide should – I hope – come in handy.

The short-term fix

Of course, you don’t have to start hiring full-time marketing employees. If you are in your nascent stages as a business, you will often be better off outsourcing rather than employing full-timers. This way, you only have to pay per project, and you won’t be paying wages, taxes, National Insurance, and benefits to people who have no work to do when your business goes through quiet phases. You can also expect to learn a little more about the online marketing world this way, so make sure you find a reputable consultant who is willing to talk things through with you – any freelance marketer or consultant worth their salt will do this for you as part of their package.

The must-nots

Before you start reaching out to potential online marketing employees, there are a few rules you need to abide by. Firstly, throwing vast sums of money in an attempt to compete with other employers isn’t going to work. You won’t be able to match what an enterprise-level company can offer in financial terms – even if you outgun them on wages, they will beat you on benefits. And anyway, money and perks are only part of the equation. As a startup, you should be looking at bringing to the fore all those intangible benefits that you get from working with a startup. We’re talking about things like giving candidates the opportunity to work in an exciting and flexible environment that you just can’t have in the corporate world.

The must-haves

It’s also important to have a few things in place before you start hiring people. As you become a bigger company, you should be ensuring you have a safe workplace. There is no room for cutting corners, here – it’s the law. Managing larger teams will have it’s own inherent problems, too, so there are a few things to consider. You’ll need help with the human resources side of things for issues like drawing up contracts and employee absence management. It’s also worth trying to find someone to head up your marketing team – someone who has an understanding of the online marketing world and can help you with your hiring decisions. Finally, it’s a good idea to establish your company culture – what are you about, how can you sell your team and vision to a candidate, and what is exciting about your product or service?

Highlighting opportunity

OK, so now all the basics are in place, you should have a better understanding of how you might attract people – in theory. But when it comes to actual practice, how does this work? Well, firstly, you need to have a good idea of the opportunity on offer at your company, in real, quantifiable terms. Marketers – good ones, at any rate – are the type of people that want to see figures, and imagine how they can improve them. So, make sure you know everything possible about your current market to grab their attention from the outset. Who is your current market, and how are you addressing them? What problems are you finding, and what is the total market opportunity that can be tapped into? The idea here is to challenge the marketing candidates, get their brains working, and start thinking about how they can help you straight away. If you can offer them an awesome opportunity and progression (more on which in a moment), money may not even come into it if their bright ideas can guarantee you results.

Highlighting investment

Ultimately, if you want to attract and retain talent, you’ll need to show how you invest in your employees. Progression is important to candidates, as they will want to climb up the ladder and become successful in their own right. And as a small business, that passion to self-grow is something you want to see in every employee – you can’t afford to take on coasters. You’ll need to have a rough idea of what that progression looks like, too, so be prepared to discuss their role in three months, six months, or even a year in advance. Finally, it’s important to understand that interviews are not the one-way process you might think they are – your online marketing candidates will be interviewing you as much as you are them. Good luck on your search!

Team Spirit: A Winning Marketing Tactic?

Marketing is an incredibly important weapon that every business must deploy. Now, many people might think that marketing is simply about promoting a business, product or service – and while they would be right to think that, and that these aspects of marketing are important – they are not the main goal. The main goal of marketing? Well, it is in the name. Marketing is all about finding your place within a market. That’s why it’s so important, it is like good footing for a climber – you need it if you want to get to your goal. Without it? Well – the consequences just are not worth thinking about, are they?

Now, finding your place can be quite a hard job – it’s not easy in the slightest. Even if you do market yourself and your business, you’ll have dozens of like-minded competitors that might just appeal more to the market than you do. Marketing is extremely hard work – which is why any business owner worth anything at all needs to be flexible, dedicated and most of all, open with their approach to marketing. If success in marketing and finding your place in the market is based on anything, it’s about being open.

That’s so you can take ideas on from all angles. You might find inspiration from articles, lectures, theories and the media in general. However, you might not be looking from within. Now, what that means is looking not within yourself and projecting yourself (although that is good) – it means searching for ideas within your business.

Now your business is going to work and involve people from all different backgrounds – and more likely than not, the stakeholders and staff working in your business will have some sort of connection with the people you are aiming at.

However, you’ve got work to do if you want to ride to the top based on the ideas and input of your employees. Firstly, unhappy employees aren’t going to want to contribute at all, are they? If the business is not serving their needs, why would they serve your needs? Ensure they have all the benefits they need through services like Health Assured, and make sure they are well compensated and happy to push forward for the business. If they are not, they won’t get involved. If your workplace is toxic, for any reason – sort that out, or getting ideas for marketing will be the least of your worries.

Communication is key – simply because it teaches you the skills you need to be an effective marketer. If you cannot communicate from within and help generate ideas for your gain, how do you expect to promote your business? Encouraging the fostering and development of ideas can lead to winning campaigns and ideas in marketing – the voice of the crowd can help with your marketing, but also in other areas – your promotional abilities are not the only thing that will benefit from involving your employees.

In business, you cannot do things on your own well. Involve your team and encourage ideas from within – someone in your structure might. Encourage this behaviour, as team spirit leads to success!