buyer persona

Lessons Learned: Buyer Persona Gone Wrong

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Before a company can establish a solid marketing plan, it must be aware of the specific target markets or customer profiles it has the best chance to attract to its product or service. Creating a buyer persona is essential to effective attraction marketing.

Market Segmentation

In order to perfect your approach in buyer persona launch, these are some common mistakes to avoid:

  1. Don’t Forget to Focus on the Buyer Decision

The most common mistake marketers make is solely defining a buyer persona by the buyer profile, rather than putting detailed consideration in what is most useful: the buyer decision.

How to fix this:

Aside from using previous data, we recommend using the research questions provided by 5 Rings of Buying Insight™, which incorporates every aspect you need to know about your buyer persona’s decision making process:

  1. Priority initiatives – What causes certain buyers to invest in solutions like yours? What is different about buyers who are satisfied with the status quo?
  2. Success factors – What operational or personal results do your buyers expect to achieve by purchasing this solution?
  3. Perceived barriers – What concerns cause your buyers to believe that your solution or company is not their best option?
  4. Buyer’s journey – Who and what impacts your buyers as they evaluate their options and make a selection?
  5. Decision criteria – Which aspects of competing products, services, solutions, or companies do your buyers perceive as most critical? What do your buyers expect for each?

Ultimate Guide to the Buyer’s Journey- Find out What Each Stage of the Buyer’s Journey Entails

  1. Keep Your Research Questions Simple and Sweet

Marketers often stray from insightful target market findings if they use too much detail in their research questions. When conducting research about your buyer persona through surveys or focus groups, avoid questions that are overly personal or technical. This may deviate your campaign away from any productive findings that would help you truly get to know your ideal customer niche.

How to fix this:

When developing questions, it is best to start by establishing what the key problems or questions are that you ultimately want answers for.  You may start with a larger, broader list of questions… however, do not make the mistake of forgetting to shave it down. In the end, all questions should lead to answers that are simple, sweet, and directly related to the problem trying to be solved at hand.

 

  1. Assuming About the Buyer Persona Leads Campaigns Astray

It is important to remember that the most helpful information comes directly from the customers. When researching a potential buyer persona, it is crucial to avoid filling in the blanks, skipping the interview, or assuming anything about the client. A campaign could go in the complete wrong direction if this occurs.

How to fix this:

Rather than making an incorrect assumption based on survey results, in-depth conversations with people can provide the answers you need to bring your brand to the next level. Additionally, a small sample size may lead to incorrect assumptions. Since quality > quantity, and many agencies fixate too much into demographic or other obvious information rather than actually helpful insights, in-depth interviews are again a solution to avoiding this mistake. In order to avoid an over-reliance on anecdotes, always ensure they are backed up by data. You know what they say about assuming… it definitely does not make an accurate buyer persona!

 

  1. Less is More: Master One Buyer Persona First!

It is important to focus on mastering one target market rather than taking on too many to handle. Trying to tackle too many buyer personas at once can overwhelm. This results in a lower quality of target profile insights and vague understanding of individual buyer personas.  Before deciding to take on another buyer persona, it is important to know that this new initiative will bring about sufficient revenue and that your company has the resources necessary to execute.

How to fix this:  

Instead of pondering how many buyer personas to generate, it is important to first focus on establishing how many ways your company needs to market its product or service as the solution for a given buyer persona. Once these are established, it is much easier to gauge if another buyer persona should emerge.

 

  1. One Stock Photo Cannot Fit All

Though stock photos incorporate a creative, personable, and emotion-driven touch to a targeted campaign. However, marketers often forget that one stock photo cannot fit all customers within a buyer persona. Do not make the common mistake of overthinking a stock photo to the point it (mis)leads your campaign into the (wrong) direction.

How to fix this:

In order to solidify your campaign, be sure to start the buyer persona creation process with fleshed out, concrete ideas about who exactly your target market is. Only then should you allow yourself to do the fun part of depicting this persona; stock photos should embellish your envisioned buyer persona- not create it.

More on Buyer Personas:

buyer persona guide for business

 

Google ads credit

How the Covid-19 Relief Google Ads Credit Program Works

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Google has responded to Covid-19 globally by giving qualified small and medium sized businesses $340 million in free Google ads credit. This includes small and medium sized businesses who advertised with Google Ads directly through Google and/or a digital marketing agency (like Stevens and Tate).

google ads credit

Eligibility and Amount Given:

In order to qualify for the Google Ads Credit Program, a small or medium sized business must have spent money with a Google Ads account in 10 of 12 months in the year 2019, and in January and/or February of the year 2020.

Each eligible customer will receive one ad credit, even if that customer advertises with more than one account. The maximum U.S. Dollars the free ad would be worth is $1,000, and the amount varies by factors including: amount spent on Google Ads in the past, country billing address, and currency.

How to View your Google Ad Credit:

Google Ad credits have launched in Australia, China, Germany, India, Italy, New Zealand, Spain, Taiwan, Ukraine, United Kingdom, and United States. There is no application process; the Google ad credits are automatically applied. Additionally, qualified customers cannot transfer, split, or refund their Google ad credits. Qualified accounts will receive a notification email. The applied credit appears on the Google Ads account by clicking “Tools” > “Billing” > “Promotion”. The Google ad amount appears on the “Transactions” page. The free ad credit expires on December 31, 2020.

Helpful Resources for your Business During This Time of Uncertainty:

Free Marketing Consultation

Senior Living Advertising Ideas That Avoid Stereotyping

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One of the main reasons why marketing a senior living community is so challenging is because it’s easy to fall into the trap of advertising to seniors in a stereotypical way. In fact, a recent survey of 400 seniors aged 70 or over revealed that 60 percent of respondents felt that most advertisements used stereotypes to represent seniors. Keeping that in mind, the following are a few advertising ideas to help you avoid senior living stereotypes:

Don’t Be Pushy Or Preachy

A lot of ads that target seniors tend to be on the condescending side. You’ll want to try and position yourself as an authority on the subject, but you won’t want to do so in a way that you’re telling your audience you know better than they do. This will come off as pushy or preachy, which is a tone you should avoid. Be factual and informative in an honest and respectful manner.

Focus On The Individual, Not The Demographic

One of the biggest offenses in senior stereotyping is to use actors that fit the general demographic of your audience and have them do something mundane, like smiling while they drink a glass of wine and stare out into the distance. How is your audience supposed to relate to an image like this? On the other hand, you also don’t want to deceive a senior struggling to live on their own; such as someone being helped into bed because they are too feeble to function by themselves.

Instead of trying to represent an entire demographic by the extreme ends of the spectrum, focus on the individual. What does your target audience actually want and need out of a senior living community? Highlight purposeful activities, such as actively participating in the world and continuing to pursue their passions.

Check out this article for tips on how to market senior living communities

Show Don’t Tell

Having someone speaking to the audience about the benefits of moving into your living community is a tired trope. It’s something that most seniors expect from a pamphlet. Showing is much more effective than telling. A great example of a senior living community that did this focused on showing the day-to-day lives of its residents as they dined, exercised, played pool, painted, and more — all without any dialogue whatsoever. Like they always say, an image is worth a thousand words.

Entertain Your Audience

It seems like many advertisers forget that seniors still like to be entertained and that they have a great sense of humor. You don’t need to be deadly serious when marketing towards seniors. Try to entertain them and appeal to their sense of humor — you’ll find that they’ll be much more engaged as a result.

Many senior living communities fail to market to a senior audience effectively. This is because they fall into the trap of using advertising ideas that rely on senior stereotypes. Seniors recognize these stereotypes and do not appreciate them. As a result,  you will have difficulty generating interest in your community. Use these advertising ideas to help avoid stereotyping seniors in your marketing efforts.

25 Website Must Haves For Driving Traffic, Leads & Sales

digital marketing tactics

How Visual Searching is Changing Digital Marketing Tactics

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Search marketing is constantly evolving, requiring businesses to adapt their digital marketing tactics accordingly or risk falling behind. Not only is Google known for continually adjusting and improving their search engine algorithm (often requiring SEO strategies to be adjusted to keep up), but new forms of search are emerging. Over the past few years, we are all becoming accustomed to the rise of voice search; however, visual search is advancing in leaps and bounds as well.

Visual search has been around for a few years now. According to a report published in 2017, 27 percent of all searches across ten major online platforms (including Google Images, Google, Amazon, and YouTube) were visual searches. With that in mind, visual search should be implemented into your digital marketing tactics.

Visual search is exactly what it sounds like — performing a search on the web using a visual. While this might not seem very convenient when done on a desktop or laptop, it makes a lot of sense when done on smartphones. Essentially, a consumer can take a picture using their phone’s camera of a product in-store to perform a search on that product. If the company producing the product has optimized for visual search, then that customer should be able to pull up valuable information on their phone. This isn’t the only way visual search can be accomplished. For example, someone could take a picture of a tree to find out what type of tree it is.

Find out other digital marketing techniques: Types of Digital Marketing Strategies Your Business Should Use

What are the Benefits of Visual Search?

Brands that sell products that are more visual have the most to gain from implementing visual search. For example, some of the most common products that users perform visual searches on include fashion, home decor, art, food, animals, and vehicles. One great example of visual search in action is Pinterest. They allow users to take pictures of objects in the real world, which will then pull up results of similar-looking objects featured on Pinterest. The following are a few of the benefits of implementing visual search into your digital marketing tactics:

  • Improve the shopping experience

    There are several ways that visual search can improve the shopping experience. For example, a customer that sees a product that they want to buy can use visual search to find similar products and compare prices. Retailers can also make product recommendations based on the visual attributes of the products the customers have been searching for using visual search. This allows for a more personalized shopping experience.

  • While many businesses monitor social media for mentions of their brand, few employ visual search. Using visual search, allows you to look for your brand logo across social media. This can be very helpful, especially on social channels that are more visually-based, such as Instagram. Take for example, Starbucks. They used visual search to discover that customers were filling their Starbucks cups with whipped cream and giving them to their dogs. Such a trend can be taken advantage of as a marketing opportunity — and they would have never known about it without a visual search.

  • Identify influencers

    Building relationships with brand influencers is an effective way to gain access to large target audiences. However, finding those influencers can sometimes be a challenge. Many influencers do their “influencing” with visual content. For example, it’s well known that there are many influencers on Instagram. Performing a visual search can help you find influencers that are posting visual content related to your company’s products. It’s a more effective way of finding relevant influencers than through text-based searches.

  • Engage users more effectively

    Simply optimizing for visual search can help you engage with your users more successfully. This is because people are visual beings. They engage with and relate to visual content much more than they do with text. The ability to take photographs and obtain information or recommendations based on those photographs will go a long way toward keeping your brand on the top of their minds.

  • Attract more mobile users

    Considering how important the mobile market is, visual search is an excellent way to attract more mobile users. Visual search is a very mobile-centric feature, after all. Few people are going to use visual search on their desktops or laptops due to their static or bulky shape. Smartphones and tablets make it easy to snap photographs whenever users want.

Visual search grows more prominent by the day. The ability to perform searches using images can help to greatly improve your user experience in many different ways. If you have a visual product, then you should begin thinking about how you can employ visual search into your digital marketing tactics.

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what is brand strategy

Long-term essentials: What is a brand strategy?

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The term brand gets thrown around a lot these days. When people think about a brand, they often think about the name of the company and its logo. For example, Nike and its swoosh. However, these are just elements of their brand. Your brand encompasses much more than just your name and logo. Your brand is about your unique selling proposition, what your company stands for, how you engage with consumers, and more. As a result, you’re going to need to create a brand strategy. What is a brand strategy? A brand strategy involves building your brand identity and reputation as well as increasing brand awareness. A good brand strategy will consist of the following eight essentials:

1. Establish Your Brand Strategy Goals

Without goals, a strategy isn’t a strategy. How are you supposed to measure the performance of any of your branding efforts if you don’t have any goals to measure them against, after all? As such, you need to establish clearly defined goals at the outset. These need to be long-term goals. What are your main business goals? Do you want to reach a new audience? Do you want to be an industry leader? Your brand strategy will vary based on what your main goals are — and while every company’s goal is to “make money,” you need to get a little more specific than this.

2. Maintain Brand Consistency

In order to increase brand awareness, you need to strengthen your brand identity. One of the most important elements of a strong brand identity is consistency. All of your branding efforts need to be consistent across all platforms. If your tone is generally somber (for example, if your company provides funeral services or sells anxiety medication), then posting wacky memes or pictures of cats onto your Facebook page isn’t going to be consistent with your brand. Doing so will only confuse your audience, especially if they jump from one platform to another. For instance, if they’re on your Facebook page and they decide to visit your website and your branding isn’t consistent, they’ll be unsure as to whether they’re in the right place. A lack of consistency causes doubt into what your company is and does, which is not going to help you retain your audience or capture new leads.

The key to maintaining brand consistency is to maintain the same tone and to always keep your message in mind. All of your branding efforts should align with that message. Even the aesthetic of your brand needs to remain consistent. You can’t just have different logos or different color schemes for each platform you use. Consistency is important because it helps to contribute to brand recognition, which is vital when it comes to building customer loyalty.

Learn more about brand development: Why Brand Development Matters and How it Works

3. Avoid Short-Term Brand Building

While getting immediate results would be nice, you don’t want to sacrifice long-term brand building for short-term results. Successful brands take years to build and require continuous work and consistency. It can be easy to lose focus of your long-term goals when you see other companies implement branding tactics that appear to be successful. Just because it works for one company doesn’t mean it will work for you — especially if what they’re doing doesn’t align with your goals. For example, one brand might put out a video that goes viral. Creating a similar video does not guarantee similar results, especially if it’s not in line with your existing branding efforts. You should also be careful about following the latest trends within your industry. Many branding trends are often short-term tactics that may hurt your long-term strategy.

4. Create An Emotional Connection

Branding isn’t just about putting information about your company out into the world in the hopes that consumers remember why your product or service is the best one available. Consumers don’t always use rational thought to justify their purchases, after all. It’s why you need to engage consumers on an emotional level. Not only are they more likely to purchase products from a brand that they can relate to emotionally, but they are more likely to be loyal as a result. The reason behind this is simple: humans have an innate need to belong and to feel a connection.

When building your brand, you need to figure out how you can foster such an emotional connection. It’s why you need to make sure your branding efforts engage consumers on a personal level. Many businesses employ a more informal marketing strategy as a result as its easier to connect to. Developing a brand personality or even putting a face behind your brand makes it easier for audiences to connect to you as well. Take, for example, Apple’s commercials in which a young actor wearing casual clothes and speaking in a friendly, informal manner represented Apple, while an older actor dressed in a suit with a more formal demeanor represented Microsoft. Apple used these commercials to connect to their younger audience, essentially showing younger, hipper consumers that they were just like them.

5. Involve Your Employees

One of the most important ways to maintain brand consistency is by involving your employees. You’ll want to make sure that everyone is on the same page when it comes to the tone and message of your brand. For example, if you’re pushing a more informal and playful tone on your social media pages, then you’ll want your customer service reps to follow that tone. The last thing you want is for someone who follows your brand on social media to call your company only to speak with someone who is incredibly dry and informal. This lack of consistency may not fool consumers, but it will hurt your ability to build brand loyalty.

Consumers are expecting a certain kind of experience and engagement as a result of your branding and if they don’t get something similar when actually interacting with your employees, they will likely be let down. It’s why you should make sure that your employees understand your message, goals, and tone so that they can accurately represent your brand when speaking or engaging with consumers, whether it’s over the phone, via email or online chat, or even in your physical location.

6. Reward Loyalty

Customers who have already showcased loyalty to your brand can help strengthen your brand. Such customers will often go out of their way to recommend your brand to others, whether it’s by writing reviews, providing testimonials, or simply recommending products and services to friends and colleagues over social media. There is nobody consumers trust more than another consumer. That is why you should turn to these types of customers to act as brand ambassadors on your behalf.

Reach out to customers who have made multiple purchases with a personal thank you note. Ask them to write a review for you. Thank them for any reviews that they have written. Engage them on social media. You can even reward their loyalty with something like a discount or a special offer. These kinds of efforts don’t go unnoticed and will help to further encourage their loyalty. Making such efforts in public (such as on social media) can help highlight your relationship with your best customers, which will strengthen your brand’s reputation and entice other consumers.

7. Track Your Competitors

Your competition is likely targeting the same audience you are. It’s why it’s worth your effort to keep an eye on what they’re doing to build their brand. While you don’t necessarily want to copy their ideas and tactics (remember, short-term tactics may not benefit you in the long run if they don’t align with your goals), you do want to track what their strategy is and whether or not their tactics prove to be effective. This can help you identify tactics that work and to figure out why they worked or didn’t work. This information can be incredibly beneficial for your own branding strategy since it can allow you to avoid certain pitfalls.

You can also track your competition by following what consumers are saying about them. You can see what positive things people are saying about your competition and use that information to your advantage. Negative comments can also be helpful as they can allow you to address a need your competition isn’t addressing. For instance, if you notice that consumers are complaining because a competitor is difficult to get a hold of, you can make sure that this won’t be the case for you by offering various channels of communication to your audience.

8. Be Flexible

While you don’t want to jump on the latest branding tactics just because they’re trending, you do want to remain flexible. For example, your branding goals may end up changing over time, so you’ll want to adjust your branding strategy accordingly. Additionally, some short-term branding tactics may actually align with your goals and could benefit your long-term strategy. You shouldn’t be afraid to deviate from your existing strategy in order to adopt such tactics. Flexibility is important to your brand’s continuous success.

 

No brand strategy is the same, nor should it be. Your brand strategy should align with what your goals are. However, these are eight essential tips to keep in mind when creating your brand strategy. Just remember, don’t expect overnight results. Building your brand is a long-term strategy that never ends — you should continue to build your brand even as you gain success. While consistency is important, change is inevitable, whether it’s your products and services that change, your customers that change, or your market that changes.

buyer persona guide for business

5 Noteworthy User Generated Content Examples & Benefits

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Content marketing is an essential component of any successful online marketing strategy. The success of your content marketing depends on a variety of factors. Your content has to be relevant, informative, and of high quality. However, it also has to be varied. Creating content takes a lot of effort and it can sometimes be a challenge to create content that’s both new and exciting. One type of content that you should focus on is user generated content. User generated content adds to your content’s variety and provides benefits. Before going into some user generated content examples, it’s important that you understand what those benefits are.

The Benefits of User Generated Content

The following are a few ways in which user generated content can benefit your marketing strategy:

  • Free content – Constantly creating new content is a challenge for any business. However, user generated content does it for you for free. For example, asking your audience to submit creative content such as artwork or stories relevant to your brand creates a positive experience for both parties. Also, free content can boost your SEO and your social media reach.
  • Build brand trust – Consumers are naturally skeptical about anything that businesses have to say to them. It’s why they tend to trust the word of other consumers more. User-generated content, such as brand hashtags, gives users the opportunity to share their positive feedback about your company in a more authentic form. The content comes from the consumer’s point of view, which means that they’ll be more likely to trust it.
  • Engage customers – Allowing your customers to create content for your brand is a great way to get them involved. Brand engagement lets customers participate directly in your marketing efforts, which also boosts brand loyalty. Engagement helps customers feel like they’re communicating with real people, rather than just a business.

Learn more about content creation from Stevens & Tate: How To Create Content For Each Sale Funnel Stage

5 User Generated Content Examples

Now that you know the benefits of user generated content, take a look at some examples of brands putting it into action:

  1. T-Mobile

    T-Mobile attempted to steal customers away from its competitors by offering to pay for the early termination fees charged by carriers for any customers who switched over. In addition to being a stellar unique selling proposition, it was accompanied by an excellent marketing strategy that focused on user generated content. They invited customers of other carriers to submit break-up letters that highlighted why they were leaving their existing carriers for T-Mobile. Not only were many of these letters hilarious, they also highlighted the weaknesses of their competition. Over 113,000 letters were written, resulting in close to 70 million social impressions.

  2. Warby-Parker

    Roughly five years ago, Warby-Parker launched a campaign in which customers were allowed to request five pairs of glasses online to try on at home. This allowed them to try the glasses, pay for the pair they liked most and send the others back. It was an effective way to promote their online store. Additionally, they encouraged participants to post photographs on line of them trying on the glasses. Customers then gave and obtained feedback from each other, thereby driving engagement between customers and their brand.

  3. GoPro

    GoPro uniquely allows users to capture incredible footage using small cameras that can be strapped to their heads. To highlight the GoPro’s capabilities, GoPro used the footage that their customers filmed using their products as part of their marketing campaign. It was such a successful endeavor that you can now find over 40 million results for the word “GoPro” on YouTube, and GoPro itself has almost 8 million YouTube subscribers.

  4. Adobe

    This popular design software company ran a campaign not long ago called the Art Maker Series. During the campaign, they asked their users to share the work they did using Adobe products. Adobe used this content to promote their software. The campaign was incredibly effective as it allowed Adobe to show off their software capabilities while providing exposure to talented designers.

  5. Starbucks

    Starbucks ran a similar campaign to Adobe in terms of highlighting the creativity of their customers. They did this by running a Twitter contest called #WhiteCupContest. The contest encouraged participants to draw on their white coffee cups and submit them. Starbucks used the winning cup as a limited edition reusable cup design. They received over 4,000 submissions in just three weeks. It was so successful that Starbucks ran several similar contests after that.

User generated content is a great way to develop more content and help build your credibility with consumers. It also encourages consumers to participate, thereby building brand loyalty. Hopefully, these five user generated content examples inspired you to encourage your consumers to help create content for your brand.

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website strategy

Planning a Website? Consider Growth-Driven Design

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A business without a website is practically unheard of in this day and age. Not having a website severely limits your ability to market your brand. However, designing and building a website can be more difficult than you might think. The traditional way of building a website requires that you figure out exactly what you want your website to have and then launching the completed version. The problem with this method is that you’ll end up having to redesign it after a few years. This is especially true if it turns out that your website isn’t very user-friendly or needs additional features. It’s one of the main reasons that many companies are opting to use Growth-Driven Design instead.

What Is Growth-Driven Design?

Growth-Driven Design (GDD) is a website design methodology that uses an incremental approach. Instead of designing and developing a website and launching it after completion, GDD allows you to launch an incomplete site. The idea is to launch a site with basic functionality and to add to it over time. With GDD, you can continuously test the usability of your site and collect feedback. You can use this data to make changes or add features to your website over time. GDD consists of two phases:

Phase One

During phase one, you need to determine what your users want and need. With that in mind, plan a wishlist of features and functionalities you want for your website. Once a wishlist has been created, you’ll need to prioritize the list by features that will have an immediate impact. You will develop and launch your website to have those core features. Although not complete, your site should have the basic functionality to make it useable.

Phase Two

During phase two, you will analyze the performance of your website. Take into account things like user experience and goal achievement. You will then improve your website using what you’ve learned during specific increments throughout the future (such as every month or every two months). This allows you to continue to build your website even while it’s live.

See how Stevens & Tate implemented a Growth-Driven Design Strategy to help a client: DSI Spaceframes Case Study

The Benefits Of Implementing A Growth-Driven Design

At first glance, it might make more sense to wait until you completely finish the website to launch it. However, there are actually a number of advantages to using GDD instead. The following are some of the main benefits of implementing GDD:

  • Launch your site quickly

    Because the launchpad site only needs to have 20 percent of your wishlist’s features implemented, you’ll be able to launch it much faster. The quicker your site is up and running, the better (as long as it’s functional, of course).

  • Continuously improve your website

    With a traditional website design, what you see is what you get. Once it’s been launched, you’re done. You won’t be able to improve it unless you decide to do a major redesign or update. With

    GDD, you have the opportunity to improve your website continually based on the data you collect.

  • Minimize your risk

    You won’t spend as much money upfront with GDD since you’re launching an incomplete version. With a traditional website design, you’re taking a bigger risk because you’re using your entire design budget in one go. Your website could end up being a failure upon its launch, resulting in the loss of a significant amount of money. By building your website in increments, you’re taking less of a financial risk — especially since your budget can be spread across a longer period of time.

  • Avoid massive redesign projects

    With a traditional website design, you’re going to have to invest in a significant update or website redesign at some point in the future. This will be an expensive undertaking and it will be a necessary one. That’s just the nature of technology. With GDD, this will never be required since you’re constantly updating and improving your site.

  • Gain valuable insight into users

    GDD allows you to use what you learn about your users to continuously improve your site. At the same time, you’ll be gaining valuable insight into users that can be used in your marketing and sales strategies.

  • Evolve your site with your business

    Your business may change over time. With GDD, your website will be able to evolve naturally to keep up with all the changes your business experiences.

You simply can’t go without a company website, no matter how small your business might be. When planning your website design, consider implementing a Growth-Driven Design. Doing so will provide your company with a number of advantages over a more traditional design methodology. With a Growth-Driven Design, you’ll be able to adapt more successfully to the needs of your users, as well as your business.

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brand development

Why Brand Development Matters and How it Works

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Branding is more than just creating a logo and slapping it on a website or the side of a van. Developing your brand takes time, but the sooner you start, the sooner you’ll see results. Your brand makes you recognizable to consumers and without having it clearly established, your company becomes lost in the crowd. You want to impress your prospects and brand development does a lot of the work for you. Get ready to put your other projects aside, because right now, developing your brand matters most.

Developing your strategy

Brand development is a multi-stage process with the ultimate goal of building brand equity in a consumer’s mind. Brand equity is an intangible set of assets that cannot be tracked on a balance sheet. But, the value of that equity is the most valuable asset a company can own. Think about Kraft, Amazon, Apple, Steve Carell or Servpro. What emotional ties do you have with these brands?

Developing a brand must be part of the larger marketing plan for the company. It is often the biggest challenge, but the most critical. You don’t have to invest millions to develop your brand, but making the effort will pay off.

You first need an understanding of the clients you want to reach. Don’t assume you already know them, and instead take the time to do some research. You want to figure out your brand’s buyer persona. This includes your audience’s demographic and even their psychographics, such as their goals and motivations. Put yourself in their shoes and think about what they want to see from you. From there, you can be sure you’re focusing your brand on the correct target audience.

Defining your brand

Next, focus on your brand definition. This definition can be in the form of a story or statement that clearly reflects what your brand is all about. Your marketing team will help you define what you are offering, how your target audience will benefit from it, what guarantees your offer, and what your unique selling proposition (USP) is. Remember to ask the question, what can this brand do or stand for that no other brand can say?

Think of what valuable services your company provides to customers that make their lives better. In order to compete with other brands, you need to have key differentiators that set you apart. Make a list of all you have to offer and then determine which unique offer stands out the most. This can be your lead differentiator you use in your branding when trying to appeal to your target audience.

Logo and Slogan

For your next step, you want to design a logo. Your logo should help convey your message to the audience you want to reach. Also, keep in mind that your logo is like the face of your brand, because it’s often the first thing people recognize. For example, if you think about Starbucks, McDonald’s or Louis Vuitton, their logo probably immediately comes to mind.

Now, you need to consider creating a slogan. This is part of letting your customers know what your company is about. Your slogan needs to be concise and relevant to your business. If you have trouble coming up with one on your own, consider using a slogan generator. You might also include your slogan in your logo, or create another version of your logo with the slogan in it that you can use, when suitable, to further establish your brand.

You know your buyer persona, you have your logo and slogan, now examine your company goals. How do you want consumers to see you? You need to make your brand strategy align with your goals and ideals in order to be consistent with your business. This step is important, because if you do not get it right, the rest of your brand strategy will fail. Take time to evaluate different possibilities and narrow it down to the one you think works best for you. This doesn’t have to be a one person job. Put together a team or get in contact with a marketing company for a fresh perspective.

Still unsure? Check out: The Brand Development Process Demystified 

Growing your brand

You’ve established your brand, but you’re not done yet. Now you need to help it grow. Put your brand out there for everyone to see. Incorporate it into your social media, SEO, ads and more. Specifically, focus on your website. Potential customers come to your website for a number of needs, so you want it to reflect your brand in the best way possible. Your new brand can also help you stand out at trade shows. The more public appearances your brand has, the more recognizable it will become. Don’t be intimidated by the amount of work it takes to grow the brand. It will be worth it when you start seeing the results of your carefully curated strategy.

Have patience while you wait for the results of establishing your brand. This is not an overnight process. So, take a look at your website and business analytics and continue to monitor them on a weekly or monthly basis. If your brand is a success, analytics will be able to show you how its helped your company flourish with growing numbers in connections and clients.

Going forward, continue to monitor your brand, conduct research into more growth opportunities and update as the market changes. Don’t let all your hard work go to waste by letting your brand fall behind. Better yet, invest in receiving help from a marketing company. Often, they know the best techniques and practices for your brand development. With them, you can be sure your brand has the best chance to excel in your industry.

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first party cookies

Why You Should Be Using First-Party Cookies Instead Of Third-Party Cookies

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In order to effectively target consumers online, advertisers use cookies, which provide them with data concerning their online behavior. A cookie is a snippet of data that saves information about a user’s browsing history. This means that these cookies can provide a lot of helpful information to the advertiser. The thing is, there are two types of cookies that you can use — third-party cookies and first-party cookies. While third-party cookies can be very helpful to your advertising needs, depending on them may be a mistake.

The Difference Between First-Party And Third-Party Cookies

Usually, when someone visits a website, both a first-party cookie and a third-party cookie are generated. First-party cookies will be created by the website that a person visits directly. A third-party cookie is created by a party outside of the website. For example, if you visit a website that has third-party advertisements on it, any third-party ads that are viewed as part of the website by the visitor will generate their own cookies. These are third-party cookies.

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The Benefits Of Using First-Party Cookies

You can obtain a lot of useful data from visitors who come to your website. The following are just some of the ways that first-party cookies can help you obtain valuable insight as well as help to improve the website experience of your visitors:

  • Remember visitor session activity. For example, their logins, game scores, or what they’ve added to their shopping cart. This helps to improve their experience the next time they visit.
  • Remember their privacy controls and settings.
  • Profile users, segment them, and optimize your site for them to improve how your website engages with each visitor.
  • Use visitor behavior on your site for analytics, attribution, and verification.
  • Map your visitors across multiple platforms.
  • Cap the frequency of your ads.
  • Improve your ability to target and retarget your leads.first party cookies

The Drawbacks Of Using Third-Party Cookies

If first-party cookies are so helpful, why not use third-party cookies as well? If you’re running ads on other websites, wouldn’t the information you can collect on users of that site be helpful for a variety of different reasons? While this is true — you can collect and act on insightful data through third-party cookies — users tend to view them as an invasion of their privacy. First-party cookies at least help to improve their website experience, which means that they won’t be frowned upon nearly as much. Additionally, even if you plan on using the data you collect responsibly, people can actually block third-party cookies using the following methods:

  • Surf the web using a private mode, such as incognito mode, on their browser, which essentially disables third-party cookies.
  • Browse the web on their Apple devices using the Safari browser, which will automatically block third-party cookies.
  • Change their browser’s cookie and tracking settings.
  • Use software that enables anonymous communication, such as Tor.
  • Install an ad blocker extension to their browser.

Using first-party cookies makes much more sense. Not only do you have greater control over the data being collected due to the fact that you have full ownership, but first-party cookies have a longer lifespan. Although they can be deleted, they are not blocked nearly as often as third-party cookies are. Last, but not least, first-party cookies are more user-friendly since they improve the website experience.

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Digital Advertising Display

Pump Up the Power of Your Digital Advertising Display

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Display ads are one of the oldest forms of online advertising. Unfortunately, the typical display ad doesn’t have as much of an impact as it once had. It has been surpassed by many other online marketing strategies. This is in part because display ads are often irrelevant to the consumer viewing them, not to mention they may disrupt the consumer’s website experience. But that doesn’t mean that display ads don’t have a place in your marketing strategy. The following are a few tips for using a digital advertising display in an effective manner:

1. Combine Your Display Ads With Native Formats

Using a native format allows your digital advertising display to blend in with the content on the page that they are being displayed on. Whereas users often skip over traditional display ads, they are more likely to read native display ads because they are part of the overall content experience. Several studies have backed this, finding that consumers view native display ads 52 percent more frequently than traditional display ads.

2. Set Targeting Dimensions Of Your Display Ads

Contextual targeting allows you to target your display ads to specific demographics, which means that your display ads will be more relevant to the user experience. Private platforms, such as Google and Facebook, allow for contextual targeting by letting you choose who you want to target (age range, gender, etc.) and when.

3. Test Your Display Ads On Social Media

Because of how social media lets you target specific demographics when running display ads, it’s also a great way to test your display ads. This is because social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook have excellent analytics tools that you can use to measure your advertising outreach’s value. This means you can test different display ads against certain demographics to see which perform better. This allows you to adjust your strategy so that it’s more effective.

Check out our article: What’s New with Google: How Page Speed Affects SEO and Adwords

4. Make Your Digital Advertising Display Mobile-Friendly

Make sure that you design your display ads with mobile use in mind. Some display ads may look great on your desktop but won’t translate as well to a smaller screen. The fact that the majority of your audience is going to be viewing your display ads on a mobile device, it’s incredibly important your ads are built for mobile viewing.

5. Focus On Delivering Your Message Quickly

A display ad functions in the same manner as a roadside billboard. Billboards can’t be jam-packed with text and information because drivers don’t have the time to read it all as they pass by. They must deliver their message within a couple of seconds. The same applies to display ads. Users need to be able to consume the message with a quick glance.

The traditional method for using a digital display ad is somewhat outdated. However, display ads can still be effective if you know how to use them. Follow these tips and your display ads are likely to have a bigger impact on your audience.

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