Identifying what the fundamental values are in your business and what you determine as your business ethics is VITAL for your brand awareness and shaping the essence of your brand.
Therefore, identifying what those core values are in your business will do two main things:
a) Give you a platform for everything your business stands for to be based upon, enabling a strong foundation for growth.
b) Educates your customers into understanding what your company is about.
Your core values are the most important things that matter in your business – the things that you focus on from the ground up and what you want your clients to know about. You are providing a set of guidelines for you and your business.
It can be a challenging exercise to decide upon core values but so very valuable in the long run. Establishing a foundation that your WHOLE business runs with gives your brand its identity and enables you to stand out from the crowd.
When putting a strategy together for your business and in the initial stages of thinking about direction, it’s important to put values in place that you want your business to stick to. This gives your business direction and allows you to have rules in places that guides the way that your business runs.
Deciding on your core values and understanding those values contributes to your brand identity and this in turn will enable people to know who you are and what your business stands for.
Brand awareness is so important when it comes to being known with your target audience, identifying who it is that you are trying to target and then using everything possible to get your voice heard in a busy and chaotic digital world. Without a brand strategy or a marketing plan in place, it’s so easy to drift away in directions that are outside of your initial goals and although this may not be a bad thing in terms of reaching out, it’s good to stick to a plan and to reach those people that you can truly add value to.
Add Value
Add value and you will gain respect, become known within your industry and see business growth. It may take time to establish a good business reputation but with effort, dedication and strategy it is possible.
However to achieve this you need to be clear in your thinking, clear in the way that you showcase your business and clear in what your business stands for. Having core values that people are instantly able to relate to a) makes good business sense but b) allows people who are on board with your values to connect with you.
Your core values speak about you personally and not only your business so live those values. If you’re a small business or a startup who is just getting a business off the ground, make sure that you live by those values and in everything that your business does, do it in line with your core values.
Get Started
So, get your thinking caps on and really spend time investing in your business. What do you truly believe in, what values do you base your business upon? When you get your values in place – then your business will start to move in the right direction.
We’d love to help if you’re looking to work on your brand identity and putting a strategy and plan together for business growth. Get in touch today to find out more.
The word strategy might sound a bit daunting but putting together a business strategy and a marketing strategy is a vital part of any business success. To see business growth and success over a period of time, it’s vital to plan out everything that needs to be done in order to achieve this.
The same goes with a social media strategy. This will fall into your marketing planning but social media is such a large part everyday life that it needs to be incorporated into the mix. People are mobile and people carry their mobile devices with them wherever they go. In order to reach a target audience directly – you need to be at the heart of where they are.
What is a social media strategy?
The basis to a strategy is a summary and plan of everything that you plan to do in order to see a result or achieve a certain goal. It will guide the way that you manage your social media, the way you engage with the audience and will allow you to see if you on track or need to change direction.
This will play a part in every post, tweet or comment that you do within all your social media platforms, keeping the same tone of voice throughout.
Here are 5 ways to get you started with a social media strategy:
Get SMART
Each of your goals should be:
Specific
Measurable
Attainable
Relevant
Time-bound
This is the smart framework that will align your goals with real achievements, rather than guessing or taking things by chance. Every goal or action you take should be measured against the smart framework knowing that you will keep everything tied together – with a plan for how to execute details.
The social media plan needs to align with your overall marketing strategy. This can be started by establishing 3-4 goals that you want to achieve and then working out a plan of how to achieve these.
Love your audience
The most vital stage of your social media plan comes down to understanding your audience. In order to meet their needs and provide a service that they will actually want to buy into, you need to fully understanding them. When you start to understand and love what they love, sharing tips, advice or general information that they are actually interested in – then they will start to engage, share and comment – giving you ground to be able to give great customer service and to build working relationships.
If you love your audience and they know it – they will start to love and trust your brand, making it so much easier to build your business and see growth for the future.
Conduct a social media audit
If you’ve already been using social media for your business but are finding it difficult to grow or establish a connection with your audience, then perhaps it’s time to do a social media audit in order to find out what’s going on.
What does this entail? Try answering these questions…
Look through all your social media channels – Facebook, Twitter, instagram, Google+, Pinterest, YouTube, Quora and make a list of all of them.
Next to each one, write down the number of followers
Who is connecting with you on your social media platforms?
What is working – what is not working?
Is your target audience present on these channels?
Do text or image posts create the best engagement?
Am I providing a level of customer of service on every channel?
Are all my profiles branded?
How does your social media compare to your competitors accounts?
Answering these questions will give you a good overall analysis of where you currently stand within your social media marketing. You can then use this to better plan out your social media strategy as you now know what is working and what’s not. You now know where you main target audience is based and which channels will help you reach them quicker and more effectively.
Create engaging content
Work out what works for your audience in terms of content. Does their demographics determine what type of posts they would like to see?
In most cases, visuals catch the attention of the target audience. If they are presented with something that is eye-catching and immediately says ‘wow’ to them, they are more likely to engage or to share your content.
Depending on what social media platform you are using, see what works best by testing different mediums, the posts that create the most amount of feedback and engagement are the types that you need to build into your social media strategy. You could be the best copywriter in the world but if your posts are not grabbing the attention of the audience, they are not going to be effective. Test, test and test again to see what works. Create images that are powerful and have impact. Create images that speak directly to the customer – giving them solutions or advice that they want to hear. Text can be incorporated into the images and of course any text or wording alongside these images need to be just as impactful as the visuals. Give depth and knowledge, provide value in every post you create.
Learn from your competitors – find inspiration
Yes your business is unique and you need to come across as providing a unique service to every customer you come into contact with. But this doesn’t mean that you can’t learn from other experts in your industry. Establishing your audience and finding what they engage best with will give you grounding for your strategy. Finding inspiration from others can provide you with valuable insights that will help boost your brand awareness. Don’t forget that the key to social media is engagement – it is SOCIAL for a reason!
If you’d like help in putting together a social media strategy for your business or brand, we’d love to chat with you. Get in touch to find out more.
In a busy chaotic world there is so much competition with brands trying to be heard, that it’s vital you offer something which is unique and engaging to your audience.
If you provide a service or a product where there is a lot of choice to obtain that particular service, then YOUR brand needs to stand out and be seen. You could have the best product in the world but if you don’t have an audience, you won’t see the sales.
1) Understand
Understanding your audience and truly getting to know them will give you edge in the competition. Find where they hang out, what their interests are, where they engage the most. Speak to people in those areas and ask questions (we would call it research!) and all the time learning more about them.
If you can understand what would make a client purchase from you rather than another brand, then you can work towards achieving that and providing a service that is 100% accurate.
2) Address the needs
What are the needs of your ideal audience? Are you able to fulfill that need? If so, that’s where you need to start. Understand the audience and address their needs. Once you understand what they need, you will be able to provide a better level of service targeting exactly where they need it the most.
3) Be honest
The worst thing that a business can do is promise something that they cannot deliver. Therefore, always ensure honesty and transparency. If you’re clear from the start in what you can provide and how you can provide it, people will know where they stand.
If you’re struggling to meet a deadline date – let the customer know.
So many businesses fail because they are not upfront with their clients. Just be honest and clear in all your practices and your clients and potential clients will thank you for it.
4) Provide excellent customer service
Customer service can make or break a brand. And people remember from experience once they’ve had a bad one! Therefore your customer service is so important to ensure good client retention. Always be on hand to help. Always be on hand to answer questions. Always be ready to get stuck in and solve a problem. Your customers will see what you do for them and whether you care and this will result in them purchasing from you or going elsewhere.
If you provide a memorable and reliable customer service experience, people are more likely to recommend you to others.
5) Be personal
At the end of the day, what’s going to make your brand unique is by being personal. Just be yourself. People learn to trust and like a brand that they can relate to and can engage with on a personal level – a brand that makes them feel special and unique and gives them time and energy to communicate. When you offer a service like that where people can rely on your service, THEN you will see your business grow.
When you get down to the details of what your business is about and what you have to offer, this can really be broken down to a human level. You can use your personality and strengths to provide a 1st class service that people won’t easily forget!
How do you get your brand to be known? Get down to be being personal!
Love your business, love your brand, love what you can be and show it off – and let people learn to trust and respect the real face behind your business. Be true to what you believe, don’t go with the flow because you think it’s the right thing to do, but stand out and be different and follow your dreams and the plans that you have for your brand. Every step you take is a step in your journey. You can make the choice to either make that step count or to get lost in the crowd.
We’d love to help you get noticed in a busy digital world where every post or comment matters. Let us help you get the engagement and reach you need to target your specific audience and don’t waste time doing an ‘ok’ job – do it right and do it GOOD!
Get in touch if you’d like to find out about our social media marketing packages.
Every post on Facebook, or any tweet on Twitter highlights the voice of your brand. Every reply or comment you make is a showcase for your brand. If you do not stick to the same voice, your brand lacks definition and continuity.
Just as providing killer content and great visuals throughout your social media marketing is essential, so is your brand voice. The key to always being the right voice is brand awareness; understanding the basics behind your business and what you are looking to achieve through it.
Brand awareness
Think of all the household names that you recognise today, Coca Cola, Amazon, Fairy Liquid – these are brands that you recognise just by the name. These companies have defined exactly what their products are, defined clear images/logos that everyone knows and relates to – these brands are well loved, well known products. Yes, it takes time to get to that stage but the key to behind an up and coming brand taking off and becoming popular and well-known is having a clear brand awareness and committing 100% to it.
Definition of brand awareness:
“Brand awarenessrefers to the extent to which customers are able to recall or recognise a brand. Brand awareness is a key consideration in consumer behaviour, advertising management, brand management and strategy development. The consumer’s ability to recognise or recall a brand is central to purchasing decision-making. Purchasing cannot proceed unless a consumer is first aware of a product category and a brand within that category. Awareness does not necessarily mean that the consumer must be able to recall a specific brand name, but he or she must be able to recall sufficient distinguishing features for purchasing to proceed.
Having a clear voice
When you understand your brand and know in which direction you want your business to go in, by utilising a marketing strategy, you can create a clear voice in every aspect of your marketing – whether that be online or offline. Your voice is your brand.
Consistency needs to shine through. Every post you make needs to be recognised as your brand and followers and potential clients need to easily recognise your content as being your brand.
As tempting as it may be to become lots of different voices behind a brand to tailor to different audiences – this will not show continuity throughout your marketing efforts and will result in failure. Creating a marketing strategy will enable you to pin point your ideal audience and target those specific people and increase your sales and profits from there.
Target audience
Your brand has a target audience – do you know who they are? If not, it’s time to get thinking clearly about who your brand appeals to and who you want to target. Spreading yourself thin and targeting every consumer group out there won’t work! Pinning down your target audience will define your brand and will increase your ROI (return on investment).
Once you have a clear vision of who your brand is for, it’s time to understand them – what makes them tick, what they are looking for, what will help them, what solutions are they looking for? From here on it’s time to promote your brand or product around these needs. Creating offers that will appeal to them and their requirements, offering EXACTLY what they need.
It’s a good idea to get talking to your ideal audience and build relationships so people know and trust your name, this way when you create your offers, they already know who you are. Doing this through your social media channels is a good place to start. And this is where your brand voice comes in.
Consistently keeping your brand tone of voice and being the name that people are starting to know and love will help build your business and from this you will see business growth and an increase in sales.
It doesn’t matter if you are a small business or a large business, the basis behind a successful business is about creating a strong business plan, along with a defined marketing strategy and embracing everything included in these to take risks, create culture and to have a brand that your audience loves.
So, when you create your next Facebook post or campaign, ensure consistency in every aspect of that campaign. If you’re a believer of great customer service (and everyone should be if they want a successful business), make sure you showcase this through your brand’s tone of voice and to every prospective customer that comes through your social channels.
Social media is a fantastic tool that every business can embrace to reach their audience. Don’t be scared to use it or to over use it. The more places people can get in touch with your brand, the more chances you have to connect with people on their comfort level and build relationships. But be careful not to spread yourself too thin and to lose the brand tone due to overwork and using too many channels. This can be overcome by reaching out to a social media agency or virtual assistants to help you stay in touch and up to date with your social media while you work on the other aspects that you love to do.
If you’re looking for social media experts who can help you define your brand and create a marketing strategy to see your business move forward, we’d love to chat with you. Get in touch today to find out more.
There are many things you can do within your business to get someone’s attention but to keep their attention and to build relationships means taking a further step. Building a business and to engage with customers online requires a trust and dedication, hard work and empathy. You need to understand your customer and take note of what it is they are looking for. From that point on you will be able to provide solutions and offer services that will be tailored to them.
All this is wrapped up in ‘giving value’.
Giving value to a customer is vital to retention and success rates.
“Knowledge is of no value unless you put it into practice.” ~ Anton Chekhov
When you have a clear vision of what you want to achieve and you have put plans in place for the steps of how you’re going to achieve it, then you will see the fruits of your work.
There are many ways in giving value in your business. If you’re unsure of how to go about it, take a step back to outline what it is you are really doing within your business and what your ultimate goals are. If you can put these down on paper, you can then start to look at how the people around you – your customers, your colleagues – will be impacted by what you do. What can you do that will make them feel valued?
Understand your customer
Connection with a customer and getting to know their needs, what they are searching for, will build trust in your relationship. If you go about it the right way, a customer will confide in you and tell you everything. Once you understand them and they know that you are really interested in what they need, they will come back to you each time. Providing value comes in many forms but understanding boosts value.
Offer quality
Again, there are many things you can do to gain the attention of a potential customer but someone that goes above and beyond and provides quality rather than quantity will see better results. If you know what other’s are offering in your niche, go a step further and provide more. Show that you care about the outcome and that you want to build a lasting customer relationship that means as much to you as it does to them.
Believe that you can
Believe in what you are offering, know that you if you have a product or service that is yours – own it! Believe that your product is the best and that people do want to buy from you. If you doubt in yourself, then this will come across in your business. Be confident and know that you can add value to someone else.
Make it personal
Depending on what type of business you are running, providing a personal touch can often go a long way. A quick email to see how someone is getting on or a social media post congratulating a new customer can be valued dearly. People appreciate thought and when you go above and beyond to show that their customer journey is valuable to you, they know that they are in good hands.
Your customers are the lifeblood of your business and without them, you wouldn’t have a business. Therefore do what you can to add value wherever you can and believe in yourself.
Here at KJP Creative we offer 1-2-1 coaching services for those people who are just starting out in business and require a little nudge in building confidence and knowing how to build their online presence. If you’d like to know more, please get in touch!
