Consistency is a key element in a business’ success. Of course, there are other important factors but consistency is what will create name recognition. Consistency is what will build your online community so you can develop a trusting relationship with your audience, and it will showcase your expertise to new followers.
Here’s an example: You go out to dinner at your favorite restaurant and you fall in love with your entrée. A few weeks later you take a friend to the same restaurant, order the same meal, but it tastes different and you send it back to the kitchen. Their lack of consistency in how your meal was prepared will now leave doubt in your head about that particular dish and possibly about the whole restaurant in general. Can you relate?
Doubt in a customer’s mind generally means you must rebuild that trust again to show that they should continue to do business with you. It’s not impossible to earn their trust again but you’re basically starting from square one. Working your business consistently and focusing on superb content and excellent customer service will help to keep your clients happy and trusting in you.
Have you ever had this occur: You opt-in to an email list which resonates with you and your interest, you receive a few weekly emails and then nothing? Crickets. Then a month or two later you receive an email from that same person, making an offer to you to purchase their product. How does that lack of consistency make you feel? I’m guessing your first reaction would be, “Who the heck is this person?” Their lack of consistency will cause you to forget who they are and why you signed up for their list in the first place. Lack of name recognition generally leads to, “I don’t know who you are so why would I give you my money?” or “ I don’t remember you at all and you unsubscribe from their mailings.” Again, this business owner just made it much harder to win your trust, right?
Have you noticed how many gurus there are, each proclaiming to have the answers to earning 6 or 7-figure incomes? Don’t get me wrong there are a lot of great coaches and programs out there but if you tried implementing all of their different strategies, you’d be exhausted from keeping up with it all and your audience would be very confused about your overall message. Your messaging is part of your branding. Don’t borrow someone else’s. Learn from others, embrace what works for you and your ideal audience and use your voice, personality, and idiosyncrasies.
When it comes to branding, consistency and repetition will help develop name recognition. Make sure you are consistent with your branding across all channels online and your website. It confuses people when they go to one of your online profiles and it doesn’t look at all like your website or the email you sent them. Be consistent with your brand image, colors, and message, both online and offline so you’re always recognized.
Your brand identity is the image your company portrays to the world at large, to your audience or clients. When people look at your online presence, they should know what you do and that you bring value to the market. Your brand identity should be appealing to your target market and should be consistent in every printed piece you produce and across every online platform.
Consistency is important because it helps your brand standout. If people see your logo and/or your brand colors online, they will recognize your mailed brochure when it arrives, and vice versa. When people recognize your identity, your name is always top of mind, which is helpful when they receive your email or see your social media posts.
Let’s examine the four most important places to perfect your brand identity:
1. Your Website
Very often your company website is the first element a potential client will see, and most people will make a 10-second decision (more or less) whether to explore further than the home page. Your identity should be strongly represented on that home page so your potential clients will explore further or contact you.
On your website brand colors, fonts, and your logo are vitally important and should reflect your brand identity. If your message is sobering and you handle tough problems, using whimsical fonts and cutesy graphics doesn’t mesh with the serious issues your company handles. The opposite is also true; if your identity and mission are more light-hearted, using deep, dark colors and traditional fonts might turn people away after they visit your site.
2. Your Social Media Platforms
Not everyone in your target audience will use the same social media platform and those reasons vary widely, so it would be appropriate for you to post across multiple platforms to reach more of your audience (If of course, that makes sense for your marketing efforts). However, if your name, colors, and logo are different on all these platforms, when someone jumps from Facebook to LinkedIn, they may not think yours is the same company because the profiles look different. Or if they receive an email that looks different than the social media profile, they may also be confused. Consistency brings recognition and helps to build trust between you and your clients.
3. All Company Communications
Business cards, invoices, printed marketing pieces; these should all have the same colors, fonts, and logo as your website and your social media platforms. Just one more way to show your professionalism and attention to detail and your clients will certainly notice.
4. Your Email Marketing Campaigns
Contrary to popular belief, email marketing is still one of the best ways to keep in touch with clients and to keep your company name in their memory. The key is to be relevant with your messages and offer valuable and engaging content. On top of these, create a template that incorporates your brand colors, fonts, and logo. Don’t miss a chance to build that trust between you and your audience.
Well we have covered a lot in this post so let’s review some best practices. Building trust with your audience is easier if you have consistency with your logo, images, messaging, and your personal vibe. When we market, we are marketing to other humans who expect a certain experience. Let’s not disappoint them. Keep true to you and your brand. Don’t imitate others but instead find what works for you and your community of followers. Do this and you will gain new business.
To be successful at creative visual marketing it’s important to understand what it means, how it works, and the tools that you need to make it work. That’s why it’s called “creative” and in 2018 that’s what audiences are looking for.
We know that most people are visually oriented. According to David Hyerle, the brain can absorb 36,000 images every minute and 80-90 percent of information received from the brain is through the eyes. Wow, if that isn’t mind blowing. Keep in mind that the brain is a visual organ. So, to me it just makes since that using visual marketing should be a key factor in our marketing mix.
Visual marketing allows us to use a variety of design elements, graphics, photographs and videos to tell the story of our brands. The visual cues we use to tell that story will help make our brand more memorable to everyone who views the information. No wonderful live streaming and broadcasting has become so popular and keeps growing.
Pictures tell stories in ways that words cannot. Pictures combined with text will make your story come to life in a new way. Marketing is all about communicating a detailed message to a specific audience. And today’s online tools can help you create very effective images to help complete your marketing story and gain momentum online.
There are free or low-cost options to help you integrate visual eye candy. There is Canva, PicMonkey or Stencil.
Anytime you have the chance to include images in your marketing − whether it’s your social media profile, your website, your blog, or an advertisement, do so and give a lot of thought to every image that you put on your marketing material.
Using visual prompts helps tell your story and will attract the people in your audience who are interested in the topic but who don’t want to read a long text-based story. They say a picture is worth a thousand words. If this is the case, the graphic images you show will enable you to tell your audience a thousand words of information with just a simple glance from them. Keep in mind that a lot of people skim what they are reading these days.
Plus, when you use graphics, photos, and/or video with your text information, blog posts, and sales pages, you make it easier and more likely that others will share the information via social media such as Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest. In addition, it makes it easier for the search engines to locate the information due to the tags you place with the images. So be sure to use tags!
Using all the visually creative marketing material that you can craft will help you get information out to more people, because they will be more likely to share something that is great to look at.
There are many types of visual marketing that you can choose from such as:
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Depending on the marketing channel you’re using, you’ll use one or more of these visual marketing tactics. If you can figure out a way to add visual interest to every marketing campaign, you’ll experience more success and reach your goals faster than if you don’t.
So, let’s look at how to stand out visually and best practices.
Choosing the right images can make your content and marketing stand out better than plain textual content. You can use creative copy, gorgeous typography and graphical images that bring your content to life, and draw the eye through the copy quickly.
We looked at what creative visual marketing is and its value for our future marketing efforts online. The psychological factor and how the brain works in absorbing visual information. We also looked at how pictures tell stories and when combined with text attract readers attention. And we know that visually appealing images results in more social media shares.
Also, we looked at the different types of visual marketing options and how we can engage the reader’s imagination with our marketing efforts through well-known visual cues that help your reader get to the mindset that you want. And over time, as you study your audience, you’ll come to know what types of visual cues will work best with them.
Branding your business helps you develop a relationship with your potential and current customers by helping them understand your business’s personality, products and/or services. By developing a brand that people feel they know and understand, you can start to compete with other businesses in a whole new way. You can compete based on the essential value of your products and services rather than simply the cost of them.
You have many different types of tools that you can use for branding your business. Some obvious and some not so obvious.
All of these tools need to have a consistent style to them. By being consistent across all of the tools that you can use to brand your business, you will increase your brand image even more. Your brand has a core value to your entire business. It helps people understand what you do, how you do it, why you do it and will bring feelings of goodwill (or bad) to your clients or potential clients.
One of the branding tools that is most useful is your website. Often times when a business that has been around awhile decides to build a website, the owners get carried away and forget that they already have an established brand. Unless you want to re-brand yourself, essentially starting from scratch as a new business, it is best if you carry forth the brand you’ve already created into your web design.
After all, it takes time to develop a brand. You don’t want to confuse your current customers and catch them off guard by changing your image in their minds. After all, a customer’s belief in your brand can change on a dime if you’re not careful. You could lose customers, and we all know that keeping customers is one of the best marketing methods there is. Getting a new customer is much more expensive.
Your website, if designed well, can evoke the same feelings in new and old customers alike. Using your website to tell your story and expand your reach is an excellent use of the marketing tool, but it’s not a time to switch it all up and change everything. Instead look at the colors, images, and feelings you evoke now with the marketing collateral that you have and pull it in to your web design. Sometimes just using the same logos, the same colors, and the same font can go far in bringing the look and feel of your brand to the web.
Consider allowing your customers to tell their story about your brand. Your website is an excellent place to bring in customer testimonials, whether written or in video. Who is better at explaining your brand to others than people who already know you? By expanding your brand using consistent design practices across all your marketing media, you’ll be able to engage clients and potential clients in a new way – without reinventing the wheel.
Need help with your branding? Contact me today for a private coaching session.
Stepping outside our comfort zone can be one of the hardest things any of us can do. Some people experience panic attacks or freeze up just thinking about trying new things. Have you stepped out of your comfort zone lately?
I like change and learning new things but I still have my comfort zone. So what I purposely do is make myself step outside the zone all the time. I’m not going to lie sometimes its scary and nerve racking but well worth it in the end because I know that’s were awesome happens. You end up gaining new skills and experience that otherwise you may have never mastered.
Many successful people will tell you that challenging yourself and trying new ideas and strategies doesn’t always work but if you’re not learning or growing you will never experience awesome!
Being a marketing coach and consultant I find that change is a constant in my marketplace. My job is to help my clients stay current and also step outside their box. Just this past week I worked with my one of my clients and together we both tried something new. She had not really done much video marketing and I had never produced anyone in a video (besides myself) so together we did it!
What a great time we had with the camera crew and the staff at GMLCPA. We both made our debut, stepped outside the zone and gained experience. What more could you ask for, right? Well now I’m ready to do more of these and so is my client because we got over the scary part of trying something new.
I’d like to challenge you to take time this week and step outside your comfort zone and push your personal boundaries. Try something new. Stretch yourself. Push yourself to do something even if it’s a small step and be the brilliant, talented and brave person that you know you can be. Please be sure to share your experience with us here on the blog.
Many people think that building a huge following on social media is all it takes to become a successful influencer. There is actually a lot more to this than you may realize.
While it may be easy for you to create a new Facebook fan page and build a following of thousands of fans, what you need is active followers. An active follower or fan is someone who takes the time to comment and share your content. It is this activity that the major sites like Klout and Kred take into consideration when measuring your influence.
It is possible to get your fans and followers to engage with you by following some simple steps. First remember that social media is about sharing content. While your main goal may be to have others share your content, this will not happen unless you share theirs first.
Another aspect that you want to master is the one of listening. Listen and read the comments that your fans post and then take action on them. By doing this you are actually showing them that you are interested in what they have to say. This will help you build trust and respect amongst your followers and in turn this will improve your power of influence.
Always remember to be yourself when using social media and don’t try to come over as you think people want you to. You should know what your brand
is and what message you are trying to convey to people. This places you in an honest light and again helps to build trust with your customers. After all you want to be someone who your customers can happily do business with.
When it comes to adding content to your social media sites then always aim for quality content first. When having any type of social media conversation it is best to have one great conversation with one person than to try and have a mediocre one with ten or twenty people at one time.
Social media is meant to be fun so don’t forget to include this in your business. You don’t always have to be serious. Exposing a fun side will not hurt your business at all. Instead it will make you look more human and friendly to your followers and more approachable.
So instead of worrying about how to become the next best social influencer, just get out there and inject your personality into your sites. You may be surprised by what happens. And remember to have fun!
If you are your looking for assistance with your social media influence please feel free to reach out to me. I understand what it’s like to struggle with the constant changes that happen in our fast paced business world and I’d be glad to be your guide.
One of the best things about online marketing is the advent of social media. Social media lets you promote your content, expand awareness of your brand, and engage with your clients and potential customers. But you can’t just send blind updates without doing just a bit more to ensure that your audience wants to engage with you. Getting your audience to respond to your calls to action is all about engagement. After all, social media is supposed to be social, right?
First things first – start updating your “About” pages on your websites, and all your social media profiles. You want there to be no mistake what your brand stands for, and who you are. In addition, every change you make is a chance to cross-promote on other social media. Your About pages, Contact pages and Social Media profiles are great places to cross promote.
When you share any content, whether yours or someone else’s, always provide a little blurb to help pique interest and make your audience curious. For instance, if you’re sharing a Top 10 Ways that You Can Engage Your Clients thru Social Media article, you might say something like “Pay special attention to tip number 2” in your promotions. This will make your audience want to click through to read the blog post or article. In addition, ask them “What’s your favorite tip? Come back and share here in the comments.”
Don’t only share one type or form of content. There are so many forms of content to choose from, such as images, text, eBooks, articles, blog posts, infographics, memes, videos and so forth. There are also many types of content (such as evergreen content) that will be current for a long time, and then there is newsworthy timely content that you will want to share as soon as it occurs. Keep your audience interested by being exciting and different.
When you share anything on social media, always remember to put a CTA. It’s also important to vary the CTA. For instance, sometimes you might say, “share this with your friends” another time you might say “comment if you disagree, like if you agree” or you might say “buy now” as your CTA. Whatever you choose as your CTA, don’t overwhelm your audience with too many choices. But always include one, and make it different than the last time.
Consumers want to feel as if they’re engaging with real people. Since you’re a real person that should be easy. But, we often get so tied up with automation (which is wonderful and useful) that we forget to engage with people. If you outsource to anyone who is handling your social media, they don’t need to act like robots. Let them show their personality too. Keep your business’s mission statement handy not only for yourself but for those who represent your brand. As long as you stay on message, it’s okay to let your personality show through.
What posts, updates, and sorts of shares are your fans currently interacting with the most? By knowing what the numbers say, you can use that information to increase your efforts in a smart way so that you avoid doing what isn’t working, and do more of what is working. Not every audience will respond the same to every type of content that you share. But it’s impossible to know without looking at the analytics. When is your audience online? What types of content do they like, share, respond to the most? Never rely on guesses; rely on the facts and figures that you can obtain.
There are so many apps that you can use to schedule, study, and interact with your audience. Did you know that there are custom apps that you can use for Facebook that will help you run contests, encourage email sign ups, add a storefront and more? Try Heyo to create mobile optimized campaigns for Facebook. Want to create useful Facebook Tabs, awesome cover photos, scheduled posts and more? Try Pagemodo.com. There are apps that can do so much, the best thing for you to do is ask your colleagues what they use, or simply do a Google search.
Speaking of apps, you can put apps on your smartphone that enable you to speak with your audience at all times. You want to talk to them at “off” times as much as “on” times. You might seem too robotic if you only post on Monday through Friday during business hours. It’s also great to post from different locations; it shows that you’re a busy person who nevertheless cares about your audience. Be sure to use some automation for this, such as using apps to schedule weekend updates.
Metadata is information that essentially summarizes data on your site, like the title, description, author, date and other things such as identifying images and more. The thing to remember is which metadata is important to include on your website so that when you share a link on social media the right information is presented in an attractive way. This will make your audience want to click through.
a. Titles – This is the keyword rich title of your article or blog post. On Facebook, it will show up in bold above the link.
b. Description – This shows up under the link and is usually the first words of your article or blog post that are NOT header text.
c. Image – You can use the code of your page to specify the images that are allowed to show up in the thumbnail.
d. Canonical URL – Within the code of the site you can ensure that everyone goes to the same home page when clicking through to your site.
It’s important to consider these factors when creating your WebPages and blogs so that when you or others share articles or blog posts they find interesting on their social media sites, it looks good and gets the message across that you want.
Finally, never forget to ask your current fans, connections, and followers what they want from you. You can send out a survey, answer questions, and more to find out what your connections what. The more you give them what they want, the more they’re likely to engage with you in social media.
Use social media to communicate the story of your brand. As you use these top ten ways to engage your audience in social media, try to remember what your business core values are, what the benefits of your products and services are to your clients, and your point of being on social media.
Let us help you brand your business. Visit our services area on our site to find out how we can make YOUR BUSINESS more visible and unique. If you don’t see a service that you need let us know how we can help you GROW your business.
Social media marketing is one of the most powerful tools business owners have access to. It allows you to connect with your audience. You can engage and build a community around your business. Business owners can also use it to learn more about their audience so they can better meet their needs.
So let’s take a look what you should be considering when utilizing social media for your business.
Why are you using social media and what do you hope to accomplish? There are many different reasons to use social media. You may use it to sell products, to build your opt-in list, or to drive traffic to your landing page. Do you want to generate new leads or build relationships with your existing prospects and clients? Consider both your long-term and short-term goals.
For example, if you want to build your opt-in list with social media marketing, how much do you want to achieve by the end of this month and what are your goals for the next three years? Setting the right goals for you and your business will help you create a social media marketing strategy that’s effective and productive.
There are different tactics to consider based on your business goals. For example, if you want to drive people to your opt-in page then you may want to hold a contest or sweepstakes that motivates people to sign up (be sure to check social media platform rules). You may also want to create a content marketing strategy specifically for social media that identifies you as an authority and promotes your opt-in offer. Once you’ve identified a tactic that works for your business, create an action plan and timeline.
What message do you want to convey on your social media page(s) and how do you want to communicate it? Keep in mind that your message and brand should support your other branding efforts. However, your approach can be different on social media.
Finally, assess your resources and leverage technology. Identify the tools and technologies that can help you achieve your social media marketing goals. For example, there are services that automatically publish a link to your blog post on all of your social media accounts. There are also plug-ins that can be added to your website or blog that help visitors connect with you on social media. Take advantage of technology it will help you achieve your social media marketing goals and save you time and money.
At Strategize Your Success we help our clients reach their goals with technology so that they can build a stronger and more profitable business. Contact us today if you need help with strategic planning, branding or technology. Also, check out our resources page for additional tips.
Businesses, like everything else, need a refresher once in a while. If you haven’t updated your business or added new features and benefits to your website, it may be time. Often simple steps can help you attract more life into your business.
The majority of business owners share an occasional video. However, by creating a video channel on YouTube or Vine you can reach a new audience and add some life to your business. You can even use short video messages on your sales and landing pages to welcome visitors and connect with them on a more personal level.
If being in front of a camera is not your thing I understand consider taking a Power Point Presentation and make it into a video.
Consider creating a video series and a channel to add some interest to your business.
Adding a membership feature to your business model and your website can help you build a community. Membership can be free and provide a number of different features and benefits.
For example, you can use a membership to share more content or more product offers and promotions. You can use a membership to help your prospects and customers connect with each other, ask questions, and build relationships.
You can also use it as a means to provide a little more value to those who take the time and energy to join. There are a number of plug-ins that you can use to add membership to your blog or website. On our resource page you can find a link to WordPress eMember but there is also Wishlist, Optimize Press and Member Mouse to mention a few. You will need to check out the features and cost to determine which is best for your situation.
Mobile ApplicationsMore and more people are buying smart phones. As this trend grows, so too does the opportunity to market with mobile applications. Just about any business model can brainstorm an application that provides value and draws attention to their website and business.
For example, a business coach might create a mobile app that helps business owners track their goals. A virtual assistant might create a ‘helpful tip of the day” application. A fitness blogger could create a fitness motivation tool. Check out this post from Mashable it lists a variety of platforms for building mobile apps.
There’s no end to what you can create. It doesn’t have to be complicated to provide value. In fact, some of the most useful applications are the simplest. Take a look at your audience and consider how you might meet their needs with technology. You can sell the application or give it away for free and profit from the advertising. Additionally, you’ll build awareness for your business and attract more life into it.
Finally, you don’t have to take extreme measures to attract more life to your business. You can create a new content series, free report, or hold a webinar to build interest. Look to your audience first and evaluate how you can provide the most value and benefit.
I hope these ideas helped you to think about ways to make changes in your online presence. If you have some other great ideas please share them in our blog comments.
At Strategize Your Success we help our clients make change with a variety of services to simplify their online marketing.
If you need tweaks to your WordPress site, graphic designs, more attractive handouts for your presentations or even a new look for your social media covers we can help. Check out our services!
It’s a simple question. “What do you want to accomplish with your Facebook page?”
Yet the answer isn’t always so simple. Ultimately you likely want to use your Facebook page to make more money and grow your business. But there are many ways to accomplish that and many directions to take. Perhaps a better question is, “How do you want to use your Facebook page to grow your business?”
Don’t worry, if you don’t know the answer right now. However, it’s important to have a direction – to have goals when marketing your business through social media. 
So let’s take a look at some ways that Facebook pages are used to promote business.
Keep in mind they may include but are not limited to:
In fact, Syncapse.com surveyed 4,000 people who “Liked” the top 20 brands with Facebook pages. They found that someone who has “Liked” a brand spends an average of $71.84 more each year on that brand’s products or services.
So here is a little story about turning fans into paying customers…
Company ABC created a Facebook fan page. Their audience is strongly represented on Facebook so they went all out and hired someone to maintain their page for them. They created a custom Facebook page that offered a ton of valuable content, promotions, news items and interactive tools and applications. They even included a Q&A page and a page where Facebook fans could learn about products and services and could purchase directly from the page.
When a fan made a purchase they also tended to post a note on their profile about the great new product they purchased from Company ABC. The company gained more fans from these mini reviews. This resulted with an increase to their monthly sales by 10%.
This story can easily be you. And if selling products or services on your Facebook page isn’t your goal and you’d rather build your opt in list, you can do that too through Facebook.
If you would like to learn more about working with FaceBook Pages or other social media platforms please join us for one of our training webinars. You can check out our events at https://www.strategizeyoursuccess.com/events
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