Category: Business

Nowadays, the online market is over saturated, to say the least. Online consumers are overrun by various offers on every media channel. There’s too much noise that it makes it difficult for consumers to pick one business over the other, especially since everything looks pretty much the same to them. However, developing a personal brand is a good way to stand out in the crowd and capture the attention of the target audience.

Brands are unique and can establish a more personal relationship with their customers. Nevertheless, simply developing a personal brand isn’t enough to truly inspire engagement and loyalty in customers these days. The main reason is that many brands blindly follow the same strategies and have difficulties differentiating themselves from one another.

Or, simply put, failing to find their unique “x-factor” that will effectively attract their audience. That being said, a brand is more than just a logo or a color palette used to customize the company’s website. What’s more, sacrificing the quality of your product just to lower the price isn’t an effective brand strategy that will help attract customers or help outrun your competition. Here are a few branding strategies you overlooked and why you should start implementing them.

Video content

Visual content is the best marketing strategy a brand can use, with video being the most popular aspect of visual content. It’s no secret that online audiences prefer watching a video rather than reading text. That’s why video content can prove to be much more effective at delivering brand messages about products, services or personalized offers to customers than articles. As a matter of fact, 96% of online consumers stated that product videos are very helpful in their decision-making process.

Moreover, brands can improve their conversion rate by 80% simply by adding video to their landing page. That’s not all that video content can do for a brand. By adding video to an email newsletter, a brand can improve click-through rate (CTR) by 200-300%. Optimizing video content for mobile is also crucial, especially since 53% of mobile users prefer brands that offer video on their mobile sites and apps. A successful branding strategy is meeting customer’ expectations and demands, and that’s where video content can be of great aid.

Storytelling

Businesses develop personal brands, in order to gain competitive advantage and convince their audience that they’re the right brand for them. However, gaining that advantage is more difficult than ever, especially since competition is quite strong. That’s why brands implement creativity and innovation into their strategies to win over customers. In order to achieve that, you need to have at least some kind of grasp of storytelling 101. Basically, you need to use your brand identity in a creative way to tailor your messages, as well as your brand’s story to the audience.

That way, a brand is able to showcase their company mission and their goals in a way that’s appealing to their customers. Moreover, it shows that a brand is much more than just a business behind a logo. Most importantly, it shows the reasons behind the brand’s agenda and how they want to solve problems and serve their customers the best way possible. Simply put, this strategy portrays a brand more human-like, which helps customers develop more personal relationships with that brand.

Social listening

It’s in every brand’s interest to know what their target audience thinks and talks about them, as well as how they are perceived. That information is crucial in developing and growing a brand further. The main reason is that brands are designed in way that’s most appealing to their consumers. For instance, the tone of voice used in communication that will encourage engagement, colors on the brand’s website that trigger specific emotions and much more. Everything a brand does must positively reflect on their audience, in order to inspire loyalty.

Social listening is a good way to find out what your customers think about your brand. Nowadays, it’s difficult to control the flow of information, which means that people will openly and publicly state their opinions on social media and other channels. One dissatisfied customer may easily ruin your entire reputation if you don’t respond accordingly. Moreover, competitors may deliberately try to give out bad reviews in order to undermine you. With social listening, you’re able to track brand mentions across various channels and monitor conversations concerning your brand. That way, you can always zero in on those conversations and respond when a situation requires you to do so.

Hosting and sponsoring an event

Sponsoring or hosting an event is a great way to improve your brand’s visibility and gain favorable reputation. Building an image of success and a business that can meet customers’ expectations is always a good thing. Brand sponsoring means providing funding, services or products to endorse events, trade shows, nonprofit organizations, charities and more, in order to gain more exposure and attract new customers. Event hosting and sponsorship are quite popular these days.

So much in fact, that it’s estimated that sponsor spending will reach $24.2 billion in the U.S. and $65.6 billion worldwide in 2018. The main benefit of hosting or sponsoring an event is placing your brand in front of a large audience. The bigger and more meaningful the event is, the more publicity you’ll be able to gain. What’s more, you’ll able to effectively market your brand to a niche audience and attract more qualified leads. Furthermore, if the event is philanthropic in nature, such as fundraisers or charities, you’ll gain community’s goodwill and positive sentiment from your target audience.

Businesses oftentimes believe that developing a brand is simply adding a fancy logo. Moreover, they believe that if they pronounce themselves a brand it will be enough to cut through the crowded market. In reality, developing a personal brand requires much more dedication and effort. That’s why newly found brands overlook branding strategies that can elevate their business and truly help them stand out in the crowd. The key is to try out different strategies until you find what’s best for your brand.

Author Bio:

Jolene Rutheford is a marketing specialist- turned blogger, currently writing quality content for Technivorz. She is interested in and passionate about media and social media, digital marketing, psychology and much more.  Jolene loves coffee, jazz, dystopian and fantasy movies.

 

Any questions? Leave them in the comments section below!

Branding your business demands a thorough marketing plan that will be implemented every day, in every situation. It’s a long-lasting process that requires devotion and patience. One of the most important aspects of branding is the humanizing factor. People conceive of corporations as mere profiteers without a soul and a face, and to be fair, they’re often right. They’ve been flooded with tons of commercials every day for the last several decades and they’ve become completely insensitive to typical, obtrusive, obvious and in-your-face advertisements and messages they’re trying to send.

Thus, a good way to stand out is to give your brand a human face. This way you’re not just building your customer base, you’re building a community. You’re putting yourself on the same level as people who buy your stuff, proving that your business also consists of human beings not any different from your customers. Here are a few tips on how to manage to look more like people’s actual friend or advisor and less like a faceless corporation whose only message is “buy our products” and whose only aim is to make piles of money.

Personal brand voice

First of all, to leave a humane impression on people, you need to use a consistent language and tone across all promotional channels and create an illusion of an actual person addressing them, instead of a cold, detached corporation. Of course, you’ll need to know your target audience very well and try using their slang, their common phrases and deal with problems they’re interested in. You can go a step further and design a mascot or pick a face that’ll speak for your brand. However, you should be careful with this, especially if you’re trying to build a reputation as a highly serious business.

Your brand should stick to specific values and define a mission, so that you can tell authentic stories from everyday life that support and promote your message. You can start off with a character that’s more neutral and try experimenting with what works with your audience. Once you have the feedback, you’ll know which approach is the most respected among your audience and then you can focus on building a more specific and more detailed personality of your brand.

Jokes and humor

Nietzsche defines human beings as “animals that laugh”, and undoubtedly, there is something innately humane in laughter and joking. Showing that you’re ready to crack an occasional, spontaneous joke can build closer ties with your customers. Moreover, it proves that you don’t take yourself too seriously, which will in general provoke some positive emotions among your audience.

Reconsider scheduling social media posts

Overall, scheduling posts on social networks can save you a world of effort and substantially simplify your community management. Automation tools do help you a lot in this respect, but there’s a negative effect to it. When people see that you post always at the same time and that you’re generally following an established pattern, they might have a feeling they’re dealing with a robot rather than a human. Therefore, don’t overuse scheduling, no matter how useful it can be sometimes.

Show that you care about the community

If you want to show people you’re not all about profits, then you’ll simply have to stop being all about profits and start practicing what you preach. Show your customers you’re aware that it’s necessary to give something back to the community and that you care about its prosperity and well-being. People can exist only in society, and if your brand wants to put on a human face you’ll have to demonstrate that its life is not separate and independent from the life of its surroundings.

You don’t have to put too much effort into this. A small-scale humanitarian campaign, if well designed, can attract a lot of attention. For instance, you can choose not to charge services that actually cost you nothing and take little of your time, but instead suggest that people put some money in the box located somewhere in your shop. You can later donate the contents of the box to someone in need. If you want to go large-scale, a good idea is to turn to companies and organizations such as Leafcutter. They can help you develop web platforms that would support your idea and even give you a hand with designing an overall digital strategy.

Give your brand a human face – literally

Shedding some light on actual people behind your brand, whether they’re employees, management or influencers that fancy your brand, is also a great idea. If you’re posting stories and photos involving your employees, they should avoid leaving the impression like they’re posing for a cheap stock photo. Try to make them and their stories seem authentic and spontaneous. As for influencers, associating a well-known face to your brand is a great strategy. Just make sure you find the right one, in terms of credibility, field of expertise and target audience.

The process of humanizing your business may seem like a lot of work, but it’s a great way to build a community around your brand, instead of simply attracting a bunch of consumers who blindly and occasionally buy your products. This way you’re actually developing a specific relationship between your brand and the customers. A relationship built in such a manner has a good potential to become solid, long-lasting and at the end of the day, highly profitable.

Author Bio:

Lauren Wiseman is a contributor to bizzmarkblog.com a marketing specialist and an entrepreneur. She helps clients grow their personal and professional brands in fast-changing and demanding markets, strongly believing in a holistic approach to business.

 

 

Any questions? Leave them below!

Building and maintaining a successful brand is all about marketing your products, services or yourself. Although mistakes can be thought of as opportunities to learn new things, marketers often have to work with very small margins for error, namely due to being very limited with their time and available resources. All it takes is a single mistake to further limit their resources and it would take even more time just to make things right, let alone do a decent job advertising the brand. Here are some of the most common marketing pitfalls small business get caught in, as well as advice on how to avoid them in the first place.

1.) Not having an advertising plan

Promoting your products and services without an advertising plan is nothing more than shooting blindfolded and hoping to get a hit. While you may experience a lucky streak and achieve your results, in the end, you’ll be wasting a lot of money and time in order to do so. An advertising strategy will outline precisely what it is you want to accomplish, but a marketing plan will provide you with details on how you’re going to do it. If you plan out your strategy properly, you will know the exact tactics you need to deploy, how much will they cost and the amount of time needed to achieve positive results.

2.) Not having a business website

Considering that people tend to search for everything these days, whether it’s for directions, pricing and availability information or to simply to compare two products, having a business website to provide them with that information is very important. Just make sure that the website you’re making will be mobile friendly, or at least responsive. This way, you’re catering to both desktop and mobile users and providing them with an excellent user experience.

3.) Lack of a dedicated marketing budget

Whether you’re running a small to medium-sized business or a billion-dollar corporation, advertising is crucial for your company’s growth and profitability. The issue is that the majority of startups and small businesses simply don’t allocate enough resources into advertising, or worse, they don’t even have a dedicated budget for marketing. A marketing budget is calculated based on the industry you’re working in, the size of your company, as well as the stage of growth you’re currently in. It is split into costs regarding brand development such as blogs, websites, sales, etc. and business promotion costs that include advertising, different marketing campaigns, events, product and service promotion, etc.

As a rule of thumb, a small business that generates less than few million dollars a year needs to allocate around 7%-8% of their overall revenue for marketing. That said, startups and small businesses are notoriously low on cash, which is why business owners often get into massive bank and credit card debt in order to keep their companies afloat. A much more reasonable idea would be to consider low rate personal loans, namely due to significantly lower interest rates, which can also be completely personalized, but also very quick to get a hold of. All you have to do is get a personalized rate quote, which can be done for free, complete the application and your loan will be ready within about 72 hours.

4.) Lack of an adequate sales funnel

A properly developed advertising budget requires going over every little detail regarding your sales funnel. This requires knowing the exact number of monthly visits, generated leads, converting leads, as well as the costs associated with generating and converting them, such as content creation, website development, pay-per-click advertising, SEO etc. You also need to know the typical value and the revenue of every new conversion and use all this information to further improve your strategy and maximize your revenue, which leads us to the last mistake on this list and that is:

5.) Not tracking your results

Unless you track your results, there’s no way to know whether your strategy actually works. Whether it’s tracking website goals with Google Analytics, conversion rates via your pay-per-click advertiser or the amount of paying customers you need to generate in order to keep your company running. This information is crucial- without it, you’re not making a way for improvement and you’re essentially throwing all of your hard-earned money away.

These mistakes are just the tip of the advertising iceberg. Other mistakes include not researching your market, not knowing your target audience, failing to keep track of your competitors and simply positioning marketing as a cost, instead of an investment. Develop a strategy and create a plan to see it through, measure the results, tweak and repeat. As simple as it sounds, far too many companies don’t even advertise in the first place, limiting the amount of brand exposure, as well as the amount of revenue they could potentially generate.

Author Bio:

Lauren Wiseman is an entrepreneur, currently based in Melbourne and a regular contributor to bizzmarkblog.com. She assists clients in growing their personal and professional brands in a fast-changing and demanding market environment. Covering finance and investment topics, Lauren strongly believes in holistic approach to business.

 

Any questions on this post? Just ask!

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One of the most important parameters of your business’ health is its liquidity, which comes down to the amount of cash you have on your hands at all times. Insufficient cash flow is something that can hurt your company severely, as 60% of failed businesses report that their collapse was due to some kind of cash flow problems. In general, the liquidity of an asset or its security is determined by its potential to be traded quickly without losing value. In this sense, cash is the most liquid asset, while a car or real estate are less liquid since you can’t trade them right away without being forced to lower their price. Now let’s see what liquidity means for your company and how to maintain it at a satisfactory level.

The importance of liquidity

When it comes to particular businesses, they are considered liquid if they have enough cash at their disposal to effectively cover all their liabilities in the forthcoming period. Note that the fact that you’re making profit doesn’t necessarily mean your company is liquid. In accrual accounting, as soon as the invoice is sent, the amount of money you are owed is calculated as income. However, this is usually not the point in time when the money is actually transferred to your account. Why is this discrepancy important?

The fact is, you can’t pay the bills, taxes, goods or raw material with invoices. You can use only cash. So, to keep your business running and your liabilities under control, you need to find the way to maintain a positive cash flow. A lack of liquidity can damage your credit rating as well, since you might find yourself unable to pay out your loans. Furthermore, having money on your hands enables you to make smart strategic moves whenever an opportunity arises. For instance, you can take advantage of discounts or special offers that last for a limited amount of time and thus save money, but that’s impossible without being able to pay for those things right away.

Liquidity is also very important for seasonal businesses and new businesses. Neither of these have time to lose, and need every dime they can get their hands on in order to keep the business rolling.

Maintaining the cash flow

To maintain a positive cash flow, it’s necessary to always have a plan. When planning to give out discounts to your customers, make sure you know exactly how it will affect your balance. The actual cost of your offer and profit margins should be calculated in detail. It’s useful to try cash accounting, which takes into account only the transactions made in cash and provides you with valuable info regarding the liquidity of your business.

However, your financial plan can’t be perfectly designed and you can’t predict all the factors. Therefore, you might end up deep in trouble anyway. Loans are the easiest way to inject some cash into your company, but this should be your last resort. First, you should try to get the money from your debtors, and avoid making new ones. There are a few ways to do this.

One of the things you could try is recurring payment. You can give your customers an option to subscribe to your service and pay periodically, usually on a monthly level, instead of paying for everything up front. This flexible paying system will make people more eager to use your service. It will do good things for you as well, since you’ll get a regular and stable cash injection you can count on every month. You can use recurring payment platforms that automatize the whole process and leave you with more time to deal with your business.

Another way is factoring. Factoring firms will buy your accounts receivable right away, in return for a small percentage of the money you’re owed. A factoring company basically “buys” your future income and then proceeds to deal with the original debtor.

Instead of maximizing cash flow, you can also try minimizing your liabilities. A uselessly large inventory or an unnecessary excess of employees should be avoided at all times. Cut your regular expenses whenever you can and always try to get an extra few days to pay what you’re due.

Of course, if your business is not doing well, no trick can help you maximize your cash flow. But if your business is generally healthy, then liquidity is all about good planning, balancing ongoing expenses and making sure you get the money you’re owed in time. This is something you ought to be doing regularly and systematically, making it a routine part of your business.

Author Bio:

Jolene Rutheford is a marketing specialist- turned blogger, currently writing quality content for Technivorz. She is interested in and passionate about media and social media, digital marketing, psychology and much more.  Jolene loves coffee, jazz, dystopian and fantasy movies.

 

Any questions for Jolene or I? Please leave them below!