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SaaS Marketing: How to Get More Quality Leads for Your Brand

September 4, 2020 No Comments

Discover three tactics that can help your SaaS brand become more discoverable and exponentially grow qualified lead volume.

Many SaaS marketers are working diligently but they are just not seeing the marketing qualified lead (MQL) growth they’re striving for.

On August 12, I moderated a sponsored Search Engine Journal webinar presented by Garrett Mehrguth, CEO, Directive.

Mehrguth explored:

Actionable ways to make SaaS brands more discoverable on search engines.
Strategic methods to build brand impressions.
The actual math behind why the current marketing funnel is financially broken.

Here’s a recap of the webinar presentation.

SaaS Marketing: A Differentiated Approach

Have you ever felt helpless to grow your pipeline?

Are you working hard, but not getting results?

You aren’t alone.

Many marketers are experiencing the same things – for a plethora of reasons.

But one of the biggest reasons is that things have changed with the funnel.

In the old funnel, marketers needed to do top of funnel awareness campaigns because consumers can’t
discover the brand without them.

But then websites like Amazon and Yelp started to grow by aggregating people’s opinions of a product.

And now, people are able to get their own interest in something, evaluate their options, then become aware of what exists, and so on.

In this new funnel, what’s so so important is understanding the reality you’re playing.

So how do we adapt to this new reality as SaaS marketers?

The Big Idea: Your Brand Is Better Than Your Website

The big idea that we need to embrace here is that your brand is now more important than your website.

This isn’t to say your website doesn’t matter – it’s just that it matters less compared to your brand.

Bottom of Funnel: Websites Are No Longer Ranking

If you look at the B2C query [best day trading software], you’ll find four ads above the fold:

Here, your click-through rate doesn’t widely vary from the fourth spot to the first spot.

Mostly your CPC does OK.

Down below, there are SERP features and then different third-party review sites.

What’s really interesting about this is that individual websites and their core pages are no longer ranking – and that’s for a B2C query.

Now, if you look at a B2B query for [best accounting software], you’ll see SERP features at the top, four ads, and then PCMag.com, Capterra, and other review sites.

QuickBooks, one of the most popular software companies among business owners for accounting have a very strong market share, yet you won’t see their website anywhere in the organic listings for this query.

It’s not that QuickBooks has bad SEO.

It’s that the search engine results pages have changed.

If consumers have expressed that they want to hear what other people are saying before they buy a $5
burrito, then they will surely want information before they buy a $20,000 software.

And so what Google decided to do here was put their searcher first.

They realized that these searchers want unbiased information.

So if you aren’t showing up on these queries, you’re missing out on up to 30% of your market share.

SEO is no longer about trying to get your website to rank for bottom of the funnel queries because it can’t – Google won’t allow it.

Another thing is that some third-party and review sites are starting to bid.

This is driving up the cost per click, decreasing the profitability, and it’s cutting competition.

This new reality is happening and we need to be aware of it.

Organic CTR

Almost all SaaS marketers still universally default to advertising at Google Ads.

The truth is, that’s not necessarily the best option.

If you advertise on Google Ads, you’re going to average a 2-4% click-through rate.

Let’s say 100 people are searching for that accounting software query.

If our plan to advertise the people with purchase intent on a search engine is G0ogle Ads, we’re only capturing 4% of the total addressable market.

While the number one organic result is now a listing on a third-party website.

This means you can be a start-up accounting software company, build a great product, and get some raving fans (i.e. 10-15 users compared to the millions on QuickBooks).

Immediately, you’ll look like a true competitor to QuickBooks by simply paying to be X, Y or Z on a review site.

When you change your fundamental and understand how you can position your brand in a strong spot, you’ll have the chance to capture the number one spot and get up to 32% of market share.

With this, you almost have complete discoverability and that is an important part of being able to drive marketing qualified leads (MQLs).

Across millions of dollars of spend across multiple SaaS clients, Mehrguth’s team is averaging a 4% CTR.

You don’t necessarily want too high of a click-through rate because ideally, you want to use your ad copy to pre-qualify your clicks.

In other words, if you are required to do X amount of seats or X amount of price, a really great way especially if you’re a mid-market or enterprise organization who doesn’t win on price but instead on quality, you can include
base fundamental pricing in your ads.

Then you’ll essentially be able to disqualify the wrong clicks, qualify the right ones, and lower your cost per
acquisition (CPA).

Many SaaS companies have been brainwashed that the lower your CPA, the better.

What they do is they take your most expensive terms and they stop bidding.

Unfortunately, sometimes your most expensive terms are also your most valuable.

Even though third-party sites, such as Capterra and Software Advice, have much higher CPCs, they have much better close rates and cost per opportunity.

This means you are getting more qualified leads.

Financial Model

How SaaS owners decide to allocate capital is the most important part of marketing.

Simply reallocating where you spend your money can help grow your business significantly.

To do this, you can follow what’s called LTV:CAC modelling where you are going to understand the actual lifetime value versus the customer acquisition cost of all of your marketing channels.

There are two ways to proceed with this.

LTV:CAC SaaS Non-Trial

If you have a SaaS firm and you don’t do a free trial, here’s the spreadsheet you can use.

You also have a budget template where you can model out different scenarios and then look at each of your channels in real time.

It also allows you to put in all your numbers (i.e., at the product level) and calculate it.

You can run through any type of scenario and see what’s most efficient.

This is helpful because the second you start modelling this out, driving budget, and working on these types of elements, you’ll get much better alignment from your CFO and build trust with the CMO.

LTV:CAC SaaS Free Trial

If your SaaS offers free trial, you can use a simple but awesome model where you can see how much your team costing, software costing, ad spend, how many customers you want, etc.

And then it’ll compute your LTV:CAC ratio, as well as months to recover.

You can start to use it as a log to get better at forecasting budgeting.

Validated Tactics

If you’re the CMO of a mid-market to enterprise SaaS firm, here are a few validated tactics to consider if you want to increase your marketing qualified leads.

Paid tactics

Google Ads
Podcasts
LinkedIn
Review Sites
Terminus
Sponsored Webinars

Organic tactics

SEO
Content
Partner Marketing
PR

One thing you need to have in place before you get too deep in your tactics is to make sure you have the foundation right.

You may have all sorts of templates or tools to use, but that’s codependent on how people move through your funnel.

Ideally, anyone on your team should be able to go into your marketing platform, get the data they need, and be effective.

Nothing is more powerful than your team having the information they need when they need it – and being
able to actually do it themselves.

So now that you have your spreadsheet right, you’ll also need your data.

What’s next?

With revenue being such a big gap, you should also be thinking about OCT, or offline conversion tracking.

That would entail integrating SalesForce into your Google Ads.

The reason this is so important is because Google has come a long way and you can now trust Google Smart
Bidding.

Directive’s paid search team rebuilt all their accounts in Q2 and migrated away from the old-school way of thinking of single keyword ad groups and started bringing their clients into target CPA.

Now the issue with target CPA is how do you determine it if you don’t know your LTV:CAC ratio?

So this is why using the budget modeling template is really helpful.

1. Smart Broad Campaigns

The way Smart Broad campaigns work is that you’re going to “trust” Google’s engine.

You’ll want to integrate it with Salesforce using offline conversion tracking and then run broad keywords.

You can’t just let your account run wild so negatives are super critical.

Daily management is also extremely important.

2. Conversation Ads

One of the issues with SEO and PPC in the traditional sense is that you can’t control firmographic data.

Google has rolled out some white-label reports with industries and employee size, but the data’s not there yet.

But LinkedIn always had this phenomenal ability to give firmographic data.

For instance, you can target demand gen marketers with x amount of employees in these industries.

You can use “single persona ad groups or campaigns”, write essential one asset, and advertise to a specific target audience.

Now that conversation ads are here, it gets even better.

Conversation ads allow advertisers to “start conversations with professionals and business decision-makers via LinkedIn Messaging.”

You can use this to book a discovery call, leverage gift-giving as an offer, and so much more.

Mehrguth’s team has been working on this and saw exceptional results across the board.

3. Content Marketing with Partners

Content marketing is tough especially for SaaS companies that don’t have a brand.

Producing content is useless if you don’t have a distribution plan in place.

This is why your content marketing needs its promotion buit in.

PR is tough because you are trying to be the guest. Let’s simply reverse the roles.

Consider these ideas to boost your content marketing campaigns:

Sour interviews.
SaaS marketing competition.
Friday roundtables.

Empowering People

Marketing starts with your team and needs to bubble up into your vision at a boil.

Create a culture where your team can submit new ideas and has their own model.

Share this Financial Model for Submitting New Content Ideas to your team members to encourage them to make a business case.

All of a sudden, you’ve just given your team rocket fuel.

They can now drive strategy, have complete alignment, know if a campaign’s going to be successful, and be fully empowered.

Q&A

Here are just some of the attendee questions answered by Garrett Mehrguth.

Q: You talked about branding. I often find it difficult to justify ROI for spend done behind branding. Have you ever come across such a dilemma?

Garrett Mehrguth (GH): A lot of times, people think about how much money they need to spend to grow.

What I’ve found is that in B2B, we have really long sales cycles.

It’s always challenging to get funding from finance to spend at the top of the funnel. We often get money for the bottom of the funnel because it’s easy to prove ROI quickly.

However, we know that the bottom of the funnel is co-dependent on brand, but it seems like the “results” come just from the bottom of the funnel.

However, time goes by, and you start to wonder why you haven’t built a brand.

So when you think about brand advertising, try to set your budget up to spend just enough, so you never stop, so that eventually you can prove it out.

From there, start to grow that budget slowly.

A small budget used strategically, that you let run its course, with incremental growth is a wise way to change your financial modelling and get more approval.

Q: Our SaaS is dipping our toes into marketing. What are the 1-3 tactics or channels I should focus my attention on so I can get some immediate wins and maximize my small budget?

GM: Review sites, Google ads, and case studies.

By Brent Csutoras

Managing Partner at Search Engine Journal and a Digital Marketing Consultant, providing consulting, training, and coaching services at an hourly … [Read full bio]

Sourced from Search Engine Journal

In News

How Gymshark Became A $1.3 Billion Brand, And What We Can Learn

August 25, 2020 No Comments

By Jodie Cook.

Sports apparel brand Gymshark has just hit a $1.3 billion valuation after securing investment from General Atlantic. The company, started by Birmingham U.K.-born Ben Francis in 2012, now age 28, has entered into a strategic partnership in order to expand further internationally. General Atlantic will take a 21% stake in the business following the deal, which marks Gymshark’s first ever investment round.

Gymshark began life as a supplements company, before moving into clothing. The apparel, initially consisting of gym vests and t-shirts, was sewn and screen-printed by Francis, his brother and a group of friends after Francis’ grandmother taught him how to use a sewing machine. Francis said, at first, they were just making clothes they really wanted to wear themselves. They enjoyed learning how to create and fulfil the orders they had received, and priced items based on what sounded about right. Here’s how they grew so fast and here’s what entrepreneurs can learn from their approach.

Staying humble

This motto is displayed on walls at Gymshark HQ, and the #stayhumble Instagram hashtag is peppered with selfies from Gymshark fans and team members. Steve Hewitt, Gymshark’s CEO, advised that, “It takes zero talent to work hard and zero talent to stay humble; if you get those things right you will always do well in your journey.” Further advice from Hewitt is to “Learn to fail fast” and “Own as much of the supply chain as you can.”

The lessons: Staying humble is far harder the more success and fame you achieve. Keep things as simple as possible for as long as possible, scale with demand, and remember where you came from. Never underestimate the contribution of those around you and the fortune you’ve been granted.

Focusing on customer needs

Gymshark has a clear target audience of 18-25-year-olds whose lives revolve around fitness, fashion and music. They do not deviate from the audience and everything they do is aimed at their needs. Customers are looked after. In 2015 Gymshark suffered a website outage on Black Friday, resulting in customers not being able to get their deals. Whilst this might have broken many companies, Gymshark’s founder personally hand-wrote 2500 apology letters to customers, including discounts, who weren’t able to purchase during the crash.

The lessons: Proudly exclude everyone except your target audience so you can focus solely on them. Double down on the customer experience. Test your site, and test some more. Utilise the best technology to create exceptional customer touchpoints, via your website and in-person. If you do mess up, own the mistake, respond in an exceptional way and carry on.

Being visionaries

Part of Gymshark’s mission statement reads: “In everything we do, be true to our own vision and respectful of others. We are here to bring ideas to life. There is no idea too big, or too small… We are not future-proof. We are the future.” The brand is known by its fans for putting its own spin on timely topics. During the U.K.’s lengthy lockdown Gymshark employed otherwise out-of-work personal trainers to present on its gym workout app. They raised £180,000 for the NHS with their #NHSsweatyselfie campaign and their own version of the last Black Friday was #blackout, whereby the entire website was rebranded to match the theme.

The lessons: Dream big with what you could achieve and how many people could be involved. Plan your calendar of activity far in advance and be prepared to respond to last-minute events with hard-hitting campaigns. Explore everything that your target audience is already talking about and work out how to make it relevant to your brand in a big way.

How Gymshark became a $1.3bn brand, and what we can learn

GYMSHARK

Building an influencer community

Gymshark were the earliest adopters of the influencer marketing model, partnering with YouTubers including Lex Griffin and Nikki Blackketter. Now, the brand markets products through its community of Instagram influencers and YouTubers and sponsors a range of athletes, each of whom operate at the top of their game. The athletes include Irish professional boxer Katie Taylor and Ross Edgley, who in 2018 became the first person to swim (1780 miles) all the way around Great Britain.

Francis said, “From the point of view of the athletes we work with, we want to create a real, strong team that speaks to our values. And we work with them for a long, sustained period of time.”

The lessons: Don’t think of influencer marketing as a quick smash and grab, think of it as building relationships with people over a long period of time, for the benefit of both of your brands. The goal isn’t shallow and fleeting promotion. Be prepared to invest in the process and communicate you’re looking for long term. Do the research and keep standards insanely high.

Assembling a dream team

The brand’s HQ houses 500 team members and aims to “create a culture where every morning feels like Christmas morning” according to Hewitt. The Solihull campus also has Gymshark Lifting Club, a state-of-the-art strength training centre reserved for team members and invitation-only athletes.

Although Francis is founder and owner, he has opted out of the CEO role, explaining the decision in a YouTube video called “I’m not Gymshark’s CEO anymore” and recognising, “The most difficult thing for me was learning to trust others to do the things in the business that I used to do.” He also asserted, “You need to constantly be around people who give you a reality check, people who are better than you.” and admitted he rarely communicates via email, saying it’s too slow and he prefers to talk to his team.

The lessons: Hire the right people for the right seats, ensure alignment with vision and values and leave them to get on with executing. As the owner, you don’t have to be the CEO if that’s not your jam, you can design your own role. Work out how to give your team more and more, to ensure their best work and their pride at working for your brand.

Documenting everything

Gymshark uses its busy social media channels to document its entire journey. Videos and images appear regularly, whenever it opens a new premises or takes a new step. There are professionally filmed and edited walkthroughs of Gymshark HQ, Gymshark Lifting Club, plus the in-person events and behind-the-scenes photoshoots by different members of the team. There are topical updates in response to COVID-19 and how it affected their community and fans, as well as explainers of the decision behind getting involved in certain campaigns and opting out of others.

The lessons: The global brands set up before the 2000s didn’t have chance to document their journeys in such detail, but if they had they might be stronger today. Documenting every part of a brand’s journey lets its customers feel like they are getting an inside look. Use social media to be transparent. Everything you do can be remarkable content as long as it’s planned and executed exceptionally.

Building the founder’s profile

Francis has his own YouTube channel, with 162k followers, where he answers in-depth Q&As about his company and role, including how he grew the business and challenges he overcomes. He also uses it to announce news and share his own journey. Francis works with so many influencers, it makes sense that he practices what he preaches.

Video titles include, “My favourite apps for running Gymshark,” “Full explanation: the future of Gymshark” and “Creating the world’s greatest office.” It’s content of substance and it amasses messages of support, congratulations and secures customer loyalty.

The lessons: In documenting everything, include the founder. Be prominent as a company founder. It’s interesting. People want to know what you’re doing so they can associate with your success. They like to tell people when they first found out about you. Hold yourself accountable to staying humble and being personable. Create the public persona and control the news channels. Break the stories before the media do.

Emulate Gymshark’s journey by dreaming big but staying humble, documenting and sharing every part of your journey, including from the founder’s perspective, building long-term relationships with influencers and surprising and delighting your growing customer base.

Feature Image Credit: UNSPLASH

By Jodie Cook

Since starting my social media agency in 2011 I have been fascinated by the influences that create entrepreneurs. I co-wrote a series of children’s storybooks, Clever Tykes, which develop positive, resourceful and creative behaviour in 6-9 year olds; they are now read in every primary school in the United Kingdom and I’m determined to replicate this in countries across the world. I was included in Forbes’ 30 under 30 social entrepreneurs in Europe 2017 and gave a TEDx talk with the title ‘creating useful people’. I’m big on travel, lifestyle design and helping people access the freedom that modern entrepreneurship should bring.

Sourced from Forbes

In News

The Missing Link in Brand Purpose: Measurement

August 20, 2020 No Comments

By Julie Storer,

Jim Stengel’s post-corporate pivot was working with companies to discover and act on their purpose. His next move? Helping them measure how purpose pays.

The idea that brand purpose is key to a company’s success is one Jim Stengel, president and CEO of The Jim Stengel Company, has been talking about for more than 10 years. He focused a consumer products business on it. He researched it, wrote a book about it, and even built a company around the concept. But measuring that connection to business outcomes has always been the end goal.

“Many companies are doing a great job at finding a purpose and bringing it to life, activating it, engaging their employees, and attracting customers,” Stengel says. “What’s missing is the link between purpose activation and the bottom line.”

As companies invest energy, time, and hard dollars in defining their brand purpose and building customer experiences to deliver it, that missing measurement becomes more evident. “The challenge marketers have with assessing purpose is just lack of data,” Stengel says. “We need to find a quant model to show the impact of purpose on business results.”

Stengel’s company is working with BERA and its brand equity assessment platform to develop such a model, demonstrating how purpose is connected to revenue and other important business metrics. He maintains that measuring business outcomes will keep purpose core to business operations. “It has to be valued by leadership, starting with the CEO and the people who report to the CEO,” he says. “They need to believe it will lead to better results.”

By Julie Storer,

writer, Deloitte Insights for CMOs

Sourced from The Wall Street Journal

In News

Stacey Ross Cohen: “Be a problem solver, not a problem spotter and continually challenge yourself”

August 10, 2020 No Comments

By Ben Ari

Define Your Brand. Building a personal brand is the first step to develop thought leader status. Identify your purpose, strengths, values and passion. This is not about me, me, me — — it’s about your value to others. You need to understand your target audience as well as competition. What’s important to your audience? How can you solve their needs better than your competitors? Only then can you crystallize your expertise or niche and put your stake in the ground. My personal branding talks often begin with a question: “Who in the audience has a personal brand?” and am surprised at the small percentage who raise their hand. Everyone has a personal brand — positive, neutral, or negative — which defines them. Although it seems personal brands (and thought leadership) “just happen,” they don’t — the best ones take years and require an ongoing effort.

As part of our series about how to become known as a thought leader in your industry, I had the pleasure of interviewing Stacey Ross Cohen CEO and founder, Co-Communications, Inc.

Stacey is an award-winning brand professional who earned her marketing stripes on Madison Avenue and at major television networks before launching Co-Communications, a full-service PR/Marketing firm with offices in New York and Connecticut. Stacey is also co-founder of College Prime, a company that provides social media and personal branding training to high school students to succeed with college admissions, internships, and beyond. She is a Huffington Post and Thrive Global blogger, TEDx speaker, and has been featured in Entrepreneur, Forbes, Crain’s, Sales & Marketing and other leading national media. She holds a B.S. from Syracuse University, MBA from Fordham University and recently completed a certificate program in Media, Technology and Entertainment at NYU Leonard Stern School of Business.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you share your “backstory” with us?

I was born in Brooklyn, NY and grew up in a very entrepreneurial family. My parents had successful businesses of their own in the fashion industry and later years — real estate. I’ve always been a risk taker and love to take on new challenges. In fact, I started my first business at age 14 — — a home waitress service — — with my friend Jen. Driven to make more than the standard hourly babysitting rate, we placed an ad in the local newspaper with the headline: We Set, Serve & Clean up. Let us help you at your next party. The only expense was the purchase of a white uniform bought second-hand. We ended up increasing our earnings by 500%…plus we were booked for months out with repeat business.

After a short stint in corporate (CBS and a division of Young & Rubicam), I started Co-Communications in 1997 in a spare bedroom of my house with no lofty goals — just to “do it better.” Our team of 15 incredibly talented individuals create high-impact communications programs for diverse clients in real estate, education, healthcare, professional services, non-profit and hospitality. I’m particularly passionate about real estate since I grew up in it and am also married to a real estate attorney. One of the projects that I’m most proud of is the 18-month communication campaign “Build the Bridge Now” to raise awareness about replacing the Tappan Zee Bridge with a new Hudson River crossing, the largest public works project in state history.

I’m extremely passionate about helping people “be” and communicate their best selves online and off and am currently working on a book project on personal branding. I live in Westchester County, New York and have two amazing daughters, one dog and one grand pup. I love spending time with my family, travel, movies, and am a die-hard Orange Theory fitness fan.

Can you briefly share with our readers why you are an authority about the topic of thought leadership? I havehelped build brands and thought leadership for CEOs, executives, and entrepreneurs across a range of industries for 25 plus years. I’ve been fortunate to study and tap into the expertise and wisdom of prominent thought leaders to see “what makes them tick.” I frequently write and speak on the topic of personal branding and thought leadership at universities, corporations, and industry conferences (and also am proud to wear the badge of a TEDx speaker). Besides being skilled at positioning an individual’s narrative in highly competitive markets, I educate them on the online/offline tools and techniques that produce thought leadership success.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career?

After college, I worked at an ad agency in HR which closely aligned with my “then” career objectives and education. I became mesmerized with the ads adorning the office walls and would constantly ask the creatives and account execs for the “why” behind the concept. I realized that this was my true calling — to bring words and images to life that tell a story. I moved on to take a position at CBS/FOX Video in the international marketing division and was lucky to have an amazing boss and mentor. Much of my day was spent gazing at spread sheets analyzing past performance and forecasting — — which I found interesting but lonely. I’d somehow always find my way to the PR department to find out what exciting campaign they were working on — — e.g., screening of a Mick Jagger video at a downtown hot spot. The PR department was eliminated and the woman who headed it up started her own agency, and upon chance meeting, she asked if I’d like to chat about a job opportunity. I was hired as a Senior Account Executive and CBS/FOX became my main client. PR was foreign to me and there were no You Tube videos or internet at the time. I just figured it out and quickly became the owner’s right-hand person. I saw the good, bad, and ugly of running an agency and this learning was priceless for starting my own agency.

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

I was managing the press at a world premier video screening for the Boston Celtics at Boston Garden when I worked with CBS. When an attendee approached me, I assumed he was there to cover the event and directed him to the press “pit.” A sales rep from the company elbowed me and whispered Stacey, “That’s the Boston Celtics’ coach.” I turned 10 colors of red but the coach and I became quick friends. Lesson learned: Research the key players prior to covering events!

Ok, thank you for that. Let’s now jump to the main focus of our interview. In a nutshell, how would you define what a ‘Thought Leader’ is. How is a thought leader different than a typical leader? How is a thought leader different than an influencer?

A thought leader is considered an authority on a particular subject matter or industry. They share their deep knowledge, insights and ideas with audiences through speaking engagements, media interviews and content development — — and have a truly distinct (sometimes disruptive) perspective which inspires innovative thinking in others. A leader, on the other hand,holds a dominant position within his or her field and sets direction for their team. Their success is usually measured against specific organizational objectives. One of my favorite leadership quotes is by Ronald Reagan:“The greatest leader is not necessarily the one who does the greatest things. He is the one that gets the people to do the greatest things.” An influencer can be a thought leader and vice versa. Where they differ is their motivation. Influencers typically seek fame and financial benefit from advertisers/sponsors who want to reach the influencer’s audience whereas “knowledge is power” for thought leaders.

Can you talk to our readers a bit about the benefits of becoming a thought leader. Why do you think it is worthwhile to invest resources and energy into this?

Establishing yourself as an expert in your field gives you a competitive edge and builds both mind and market share. When done right, you can reap many benefits — career advancement, higher salary, rewarding partnerships, new clients/business opportunities, and revenue growth.

Let’s talk about business opportunities specifically. Can you share a few examples of how thought leadership can help a business grow or create lucrative opportunities?

Consumers make purchase decisions based on an emotional connection with a brand or individual. In order for someone to engage or buy something — they need to know, like and trust you.. Since thought leaders humanize a brand and are perceived as credible sources, they (positively) influence purchase decisions which drives sales.

Ok. Now that we have that behind us, we’d love to hear your thoughts about how to eventually become a thought leader. Can you share 5 strategies that a person should implement to become known as a thought leader in their industry. Please tell us a story or example (ideally from your own experience) for each.

Define Your Brand. Building a personal brand is the first step to develop thought leader status. Identify your purpose, strengths, values and passion. This is not about me, me, me — — it’s about your value to others. You need to understand your target audience as well as competition. What’s important to your audience? How can you solve their needs better than your competitors? Only then can you crystallize your expertise or niche and put your stake in the ground. My personal branding talks often begin with a question: “Who in the audience has a personal brand?” and am surprised at the small percentage who raise their hand. Everyone has a personal brand — positive, neutral, or negative — which defines them. Although it seems personal brands (and thought leadership) “just happen,” they don’t — the best ones take years and require an ongoing effort.

Create a strategic roadmap. Throwing spaghetti at the wall simply does not work. It’s all too easy to jump into the tactics (e.g., creating a blog). You need to be both intentional and proactive and have a well-informed strategy. When we work with a new client to build thought leadership, we insist on starting with a plan which details objectives, target audiences, messaging, tactics and a 6–12 month timeline. It’s also a good idea to create a monthly content calendar to schedule what, when, where to publish. Align your content with trends and national holidays. For instance, if you’re a climate change expert, you may want to step up your content during Earth month (April).

Develop Content That’s Relevant (and Platform-Appropriate) Good is not enough — you need to create great content (curated and self-published) to capture your audience. Whether you develop articles, blog posts, ebooks, news releases, white papers or videos, make certain the content speaks to your audience. It is also important to be bold, share your point of view, and make industry predictions. Content is more than words; make use of striking visuals. Consider creating infographics to present data in a more digestible way. Also, showcase your value with a “wow” portfolio of client testimonials, achievements, success stories, and a professional bio/profile with headshot. Nothing matches the power of earned media to build thought leadership and brand recognition. I work closely with thought leaders to secure high-level media coverage — broadcast, print, online — — and then we cast a net far and wide.

Become your own news channel: Once you have great content, you need to deliver through a multi-channel approach (websites, speaking engagements, social media, blogs, e-newsletters, podcasts). Select channels that are in sync with who you are and reach your audience — — you can’t be on everything. Here’s the important thing to remember: Communications does not work if you turn up the volume and walk away — instead, you need a consistent drumbeat to achieve top of mind awareness. Speaking is a top tool to build thought leadership. Capture your speaking engagements and make sure to publish them on your website and social channels. Create a speaker’s bio and/or sizzle reel to further grow your opportunities within the speaking realm. I recently interviewed Ryan Serhant, a top-ranking real estate broker, author, and television personality (Million Dollar Listing New York) who recognizes the importance of educating and entertaining his audience. With 2 million plus social media followers, Ryan is an example of “broadcasting” at its best. He is a Forbes contributor, YouTube Vlogger, speaks at industry associations, and is frequently interviewed and quoted by national media. He is particularly proud of his new online course “Sell It Like Serhant” and media and entertainment company, Serhant Media Group, which allows him to have deeper content capabilities.

Grow Your Network. It’s been said that “Your network is your net worth” and there’s actually a great book written by Porter Gal with this title which shares best practices on how to establish and grow your online and offline connections. Networking is one of the most important investments you can make to grow your following. Engage and build relationships with mentors, influencers, and industry leaders. Consider joining a board or committee (both professional and community). Be social — — attend live networking events and be sure to connect with your new contact promptly via LinkedIn etc. I have organically grown my LinkedIn followers to 27,000 which has given me brand visibility, higher search ranking, and business/speaking opportunities.

In your opinion, who is an example of someone who has that has done a fantastic job as a thought leader? Which specific things have impressed you about that person? What lessons can we learn from this person’s approach.

I’m a huge fan of Elizabeth Gilbert who wrote the book Eat, Pray, Love, and gave an inspiring TED Talk (which I’ve watched half a dozen times) called Your Elusive Creative Genius. She talks about creativity in a disruptive way contradicting the predominant view that creativity is a rare gift and contends that ALL of us have a genius within us. She shares her own personal creative journey and challenges her audience to find their own creativity. Her thought leadership status is well-deserved — she is insightful, visionary and is a sought-out authority and speaker on creativity. She also regularly delivers thought-provoking content through social channels and has a podcast in which she interviews famous creatives.

I have seen some discussion that the term “thought leader” is trite, overused, and should be avoided. What is your feeling about this?

I agree that it is overused. There are many individuals who call themselves thought leaders and they are not. You can’t just put the stake in the ground and say “I’m a thought leader in xyz” — — thought leadership is earned and requires time, effort and reinforcement plus a large and engaged following to help spread their insights and ideas. Ultimately, it is your audience who decides if you deserve thought leader status.

What advice would you give to other leaders to thrive and avoid burnout?

We need to “own” our days which are often ambushed by trivial “stuff” — — raising our stress levels and causing us to lose focus on our priorities. My simple advice is to avoid this by creating boundaries and saying “No” more….

You are a person of enormous influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂

#cando — — be a problem solver, not a problem spotter and continually challenge yourself

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

Wayne Gretsky’s quote “Skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been” is my all-time favorite. The need to be one step ahead in business has never been more important. If you continually look in the rear view mirror, you’ll soon be obsolete. Marketing is an art and a science and requires us to anticipate trends and be nimble to change a campaign’s direction in real time. Our client’s appreciate and benefit from the constant flow of forward-thinking ideas and technology that we bring to the table.

We are blessed that very prominent leaders in business and entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world with whom you would like to have a lunch or breakfast with? He or she might just see this, especially if we tag them. 🙂

Richard Branson. I saw him headline a session a few years ago at Forbes 30 under 30 conference in Boston and I could have listened to him for hours….maybe days! He is incredibly insightful, funny, inspirational and authentic.

By Ben Ari

Sourced from THRIVE GLOBAL

In News

Marketing has the power to change the world

August 5, 2020 No Comments

By Emma Mulcahy

Marketing holds a unique place in the modern world; it has the ability to challenge and shape perspectives, to inform culture and to kickstart movements.

Now, in a time of global crisis, we see more clearly than ever the industry’s ability to effect real change, by driving positive messages and offering platforms to those that need it.

It is in the spirit of this fundamental belief that The Drum and Facebook have teamed up to launch the ‘Marketers Can Change the World’ global initiative, which aims to unite and support the industry across three areas: EMEA, North America and APAC.

At its heart, Facebook exists to help create and sustain communities, even from a distance. Now, during Covid-19, that distance is felt more than ever. Pledging to donate $100mn to 30,000 small-to-medium size businesses (SMBs) across these markets, Facebook will support established and rising marketing leaders to rethink how these businesses are run and how we can make them more resilient in times of struggle.

Discussing the exciting new initiative and how marketing can effect positive change in the world is; General Mills marketing head- culture & brand experience (Europe-Australasia), Arjoon Bose, Bombay Sapphire brand director, North America, Tom Spaven, Facebook global industry relations and intelligence lead, Sylvia Zhou, and The Drum associate editor, Sonoo Singh.

What steps have been taken?

“You’ll have seen the Coronavirus Information Centre located at the top of your news feed from the start of the pandemic,” says Zhou. “This was introduced so that our users are up-to-date with news and developments, from a source they can trust.” Facebook has also offered free ads to public health authorities such as the W.H.O, created Community Help where people can support their peers and recently launched Facebook Shops to help users pivot their business online.

Spaven speaks of Bacardi’s commitment to their consumers during this trying period: “The bar and events industry was particularly impacted by Covid-19, so we wanted to give back to the businesses that have continually supported our business.” The project pledged $3mn in financial aid to bars and bartenders facing difficulty during this period, as well as offering up their platforms and marketing expertise for those that need it. For Bacardi, it was a case of serving those that serve them; an idea also seen at General Mills. With the enforcement of lockdown, Bose understood that it was essential to reiterate the kitchen as being the heart of the home and to promote the everyday products needed by families.

What more can bigger brands do to provide support?

“Now is the time to be bold and responsible,” Bose responds. Marketing has always been at the forefront of significant change. He argues that during these difficult times marketing gives consumers a reason to spend and a reason to hope. Now is the time to reiterate brand identity.

Spaven believes that going back to basics is the surest way to engage your consumer base. “The fundamentals of marketing, as well as of human behavior don’t change, only budgets and resources do.”

What are the objectives of the Facebook project?

The ‘Marketers Can Change the World’ global initiative supports small-to-medium size businesses (SMBs) across EMEA, North America and APAC and will focus predominantly on those run by immigrants, senior citizens, or women. “Statistics show that businesses run by these marginalized groups encounter more difficulties in acquiring resources and financial funding,” Zhou shares with us. The project will give rising stars in the marketing industry the opportunity to collaborate with senior mentors with vast experience in the field. Working together on a prescribed brief, the teams will create business policies that give value for the people and communities they impact. Facebook will provide essential training and access to tools that will allow these businesses to thrive both during and after the pandemic.

What knowledge will the mentors be able to impart?

Both Arjoon Bose and Tom Spaven express their sincere gratitude at having been asked to take part in the initiative as mentors. “This is a great opportunity to listen and learn from others, and to experience situations in a new way,” Spaven says. These views are echoed by Bose, who recognizes this opportunity to collaborate with different people and teams, as a teaching moment.

“I hope to be able to provide a fresh perspective to the team members and ask the right questions,” shares Spaven. This initiative lets teams combine the quick thinking of big brands with the even quicker movement of smaller, more centralised businesses.

At the heart of this, is our consumers- and their needs are changing rapidly. How are brands able to keep pace with this?

“Brands have to always be open to change,” states Bose. “Whether that’s remaining open to rethinking your retention strategy, trying out new tools or reprioritizing your products in line with consumer needs- we must be agile.”

Similarly, for Spaven businesses should always be thinking about their brand experience and how this meets customer needs. “Purpose is so important for every brand, but that doesn’t mean they all have to save the world,” he affirms. Understanding your brand’s mission and ensuring you deliver that, ethically and responsibly is enough.

Spaven adds that diversifying the industry needs to be a top priority if we are to truly meet the demands of today’s consumer; “It’s not about ticking a box, it’s about benefitting your bottom line- it’s just good business sense.”

Zhou agrees: “This mission is at the core of what Facebook wants to achieve in this initiative. By channelling our every effort into increasing the visibility of these groups, we want to create a ripple effect throughout the industry. This project will reveal the true power of marketing to influence for good and change the world for the better.”

By Emma Mulcahy

Sourced from The Drum

In News

How to Make Your Brand More Cohesive

July 29, 2020 No Comments

By Jessica Abo,

Learn tips for early business growth and branding from strategist, brand designer and entrepreneur Nikki Arensman.

Nikki Arensman is a brand designer and strategist who works with female entrepreneurs, particularly those building digital businesses. She spoke with Jessica Abo via Zoom about how entrepreneurs can navigate the early stages of growing their businesses and beyond.

What do you think is the biggest mistake that most entrepreneurs make in year one of their business?

Arensman: Ultimately, in year one, you’re really just wanting to prove to yourself that your business is not only viable but that it can also impact your industry and earn you an income. You’re wanting to make money. We’re building a business. The mistake that I see all the time is not building a foundation from day one that supports building trust between you and your dream audience.

Our most favorite brands, they’re the ones that we can count on for X, Y, Z. Whatever they’re doing good at. We know that if we go over to their Instagram, if we open up their emails, if we listen to their podcast, if we read their blog, we know what we’re going to expect from them in terms of the way that they look, their language, the way that they talk and the way they communicate. And, subconsciously, what that does for us is it starts to build reliability and build trust. And we know that ‘Okay, I can always expect this from them.’ Then when we need something, we immediately think of them.

What this does is it really makes us, the consumer, want to be a part of their story and want to be a part of their success and have a piece of their brand. I always think of the formula consistency equals reliability, reliability equals trust, and trust brings in more sales.

For those entrepreneurs who just finished year one, and they’re entering year two and they just feel like they’re all over the place, what are your pieces of advice on what they should do first and what they should focus on long-term?

Arensman: First things first for me. When I’m either wrapping up year one with a client or even back to when I was exiting year one and moving on, it’s figuring out what worked and what didn’t work. Strategically, what worked in your business, what brought in income, but also what felt really good and in alignment and what was a struggle and just was like pulling teeth, trying to get you to show up and do it. And then, what did your audience and your clients just absolutely love? Whether that was a service, an offer, a webinar you did, a live training, something that it just hit it out of the park.

From there, I decide how this person should move forward. Either they can do one of three things or a combination of three things. They can either scale an offer with an audience that was a total win. Something like a webinar that did really well and piece together whether it was the audience or was it the actual topic of discussion?

Number two is continuing to explore new offers and figuring out where I really shine the brightest.

Number three is really bringing your branding and your messaging up to speed with where you’re at at that point, which is typically such a different place from day one when you first got started.

For those who identify with one of those or all of those, break down each one for us a little bit more.

Arensman: Let’s take number one, which is scaling an offer. Was there an offer or service that was a total win for you and the client? If so, then it might be worth turning this into an offer that you can scale. For example, if that’s a one-on-one offer, you can think about it like breaking down each piece of content that you worked on in that one-on-one setting and turning those into lessons or modules for a digital course that then removes you from the equation. The plus side of doing that is that you can still have your one-on-one offer. Except now you can raise the pricing on that and bump it up because they’re going to get access to you and your time. You can still have the course that could be sold to a wider audience. That’s an example of that.

Or maybe it was a group program that you launched live and you had a set of four or five calls where they did get access to you. You can now break that course down into smaller training sessions at lower cost. Say you’re taking module one and turning it into its own little offer at a lower ticket than somebody needing to buy into the giant group program. This introduces your audience into what we like to call “the binge and buy” mentality — it supports them in coming back for more. It eliminates people just being one-and-done with a service. Instead, they’re saying, “Oh, I want this,” and, “Oh, I can see they offer this.”

There are some programs that do offer that. One of my favorites is MemberVault. These let you have easy access to a marketplace. These options are a great place to begin. Getting comfortable with paid advertising through Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest ads that will basically lead traffic into these scalable offers that you could have.

If someone is not ready to scale, but they feel more comfortable continuing new offers, what does that look like?

Arensman: This is a great route if you are still figuring out who your people are or you haven’t totally clicked with a certain ideal client or niche. If you didn’t really feel yourself get in a flow in year one at any time, then it’s worth taking a step back and looking at what felt out of alignment and find the gap between what you offered and your messaging and what your audience is wanting.

One of the ways of doing this is having past clients answer a set of questions about their time working with you. What was it like, where did they feel most supported and how did the work that they did with you and the time that they spent with you really impact their business? That’ll give you a really good insider look from the client themselves, what felt good and what didn’t feel good. That scares people because they might get some answers that they’re not ready to hear, but it’s so powerful to look at that and analyze and then say, ‘Here’s where I really excelled, straight from the client.’ Sometimes you don’t even have the awareness of that as the provider.

Also, just trying some new things. Don’t be afraid to pivot and put something new out there and see if it sticks. You don’t always need a fully built-out sales page, the perfect email sequence or the perfect funnel in order to get some sales and gauge, what works and what doesn’t. And sometimes the thing that you just get from a blip of inspiration and you throw out there —whether it’s on social media, on your story or in your feed or you email out your list — sometimes that’s the thing that sticks. And it turns into that killer program that does really well or that new one-on-one service that you can then go back and scale in the coming months.

You also say that it’s okay to give yourself time to catch up to your business. What do you mean by that?

Arensman: Sometimes, when you have an offer or service that isn’t converting the way that you hoped, it’s not always the offer’s fault. Sometimes it’s the messaging or not really reaching the right client. This really comes back to having a beyond basic understanding of who you’re serving and ultimately what their problem is. This requires taking a look at your brand as a whole and, like you said, really just taking a second to let everything catch up.

In addition to knowing relevant information about your ideal client, it’s equally important for you as a brand to have a solid foundation in both visuals and content. The two of those being able to work in tandem together. If one gets left at the starting line — let’s just say you DIY’d your logo over a year ago, and you are avoiding using it on client documents or in your email footer or things like that because you’re embarrassed of it or it makes you want to cringe. That is an energetic block there between the presentation of you out there. It’s time to upgrade and bring it up to speed with where you’re at as an entrepreneur. Ultimately, it’s elevating the experience that a client can expect to have from working with you.

That’s one way, through your logo and visuals like that. Maybe up until now, you’ve been getting by using stock photography, but this is now the year that you’re going to invest in a brand photoshoot and really put some time and energy into curating the visuals that are important to you. It’s really about the experience that your client gets, that they want to be a part of that and can make a visual connection where they want to be to what your photos look like.

And lastly, if in general you just feel like you don’t know what to talk about on social media or you’re getting stuck every time you go to write an email campaign — I hear it all the time, “I feel all over the place.” And whether that is on your feed or in a live session, then I would get clear on three-to-five things that are relevant to your ideal client and their needs and also important to you and your brand.

You want to think of these, they’re three-to-five main topics that are important to you, and they make sense for your client and the problem that you’re solving for them. And then within those three-to-five topics, you’ve got a whole bunch of content that you could talk about and ways that you could maintain within those topics every time that you show up. You’re no longer just fishing and trying to figure out things to talk about and ways to connect. It’s like, “These are my three-to-five things, and I’m going to give these three-to-six months of just maintaining this lane and see how that starts to convert within messaging, within offers and in general,” — just the way that you are communicating with your audience.

By Jessica Abo

ENTREPRENEUR LEADERSHIP NETWORK VIP, Founder of JaboTV, Media Personality, Keynote Speaker and Consultant

Sourced from Entrepreneur

In News

What’s next for social ad spend as one third of brands plot hate-speech boycott?

July 22, 2020 No Comments

By Rebecca Stewart

As brands continue to add their name to the growing list of companies boycotting Facebook, fresh research from the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) has painted a sobering picture of how marketers view the social network and its rivals.

Volkswagen and Mars are the latest corporations to halt ad spend with Facebook over its handling of damaging content and misinformation. The car marque and food giant join Levi’s, Coca-Cola, Unilever and more in signing up to the ‘Stop Profit for Hate campaign’ which is backed by civil rights groups including the NAACP, Color of Change and the Anti-Defamation League.

The coalition has been calling on major corporations to put a pause on advertising on Facebook for the month of July, citing its “repeated failure to meaningfully address the vast proliferation of hate on its platforms”.

Some brands have gone further, pulling the plug on all investment for the foreseeable future across all social networks.

The WFA’s research has revealed a diminishing faith in not only Facebook, but also its bedfellows, to address the issue at hand.

What did the WFA’s research find?

The WFA’s members control nearly $100bn in global ad spend. Following on from the news of the Facebook boycott, the trade body asked members about their policies on social media ad spend. The WFA’s research asked advertiser views on all social media platforms.
76 responded, representing 58 companies and $92bn in marketing dollars.
Almost one-third of these marketers (31%) said they will, or are likely to, suspend advertising on social media over platforms’ failure to police hate speech. A further 40% said they were also considering doing so.
17% said they were unlikely to withhold spend. 12% said they had no plans to withhold spend.
Brands were also asked which other actions they’d taken or had considered. 53% said they’d already had direct conversations with social platforms about hate speech. 48% said their main approach was to work through industry bodies to deal with the issue. 32% said they weren’t taking action for now and 13% said they were taking other actions.

What does the data show?

If anything, the survey shows how divided the industry is on how to handle the issue. Some brands are set on pulling spend, where others remain undecided.
The WFA also released some anonymised qualitative responses as part of the research. Again, these are a mixed bag: one marketer laments that it’s “simply depressing” how much the platforms are still falling short and says they would “appreciate support with identifying and viable alternatives for investments”.
Another pointed out that neither the platforms nor the advertisers propping them up are perfect: “Advertisers may pull out of these platforms,” the brand marketer continues, “but consumers will not.

What’s next?

Hate speech and how brands inadvertently fund it is an issue that has been on the WFA’s radar for some time. Working with social networks to find a solution to the problem is already being prioritised by the trade body’s Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM).
For its part, Facebook has promised “new policies to connect people with authoritative information about voting, crack down on voter suppression, and fight hate speech”.
Actions include labelling posts that are potentially harmful and even in violation of the platform’s policies but are not censored by the platform because they are deemed newsworthy.
Facebook will also add a link to its voting information centre to posts that reference voting, including those made by politicians such as President Trump.
Speaking to the Financial Times earlier this week, chief executive of the WFA Stephen Loerke noted how this moment feels like a turning point amid the pressure of the ‘Stop Hate for Profit’ campaign.
“What’s striking is the number of brands who are saying they are reassessing their longer-term media allocation strategies and demanding structural changes in the way platforms address racial intolerance, hate speech and harmful content,” he explained.
The magnitude of the brand exodus won’t really be clear until Facebook releases its Q3 results in October.

Feature Image Credit: Volkswagen and Mars are the latest corporations to halt ad spend with Facebook over its handling of damaging content / Unsplash

By Rebecca Stewart

Sourced from The Drum

In News

Style Guide: How to Write One for Your Brand

July 22, 2020 No Comments

By SASHA LAFERTE

Sometimes branding fails happen when something gets lost in translation. For example, when Coors translated its slogan “Turn It Loose” into Spanish, it used a colloquial term for diarrhea.

More often, though, branding fails happen because of a lack of a clear style guide, which can result in inconsistency or miscommunication among your content team.

#Branding fails happen because of a lack of a clear style guide, says @SashaLaFerte via @CMIContent.CLICK TO TWEET

A style guide also can be a way to foster content authenticity by containing instructions for all parties creating content for your company.

This article addresses why your organization needs a style guide, details what to include in your style guide, and gives examples of top-notch style guides to ensure streamlined external communications.

Why you need a style guide

First, what is a brand style guide?

A brand style guide is a holistic set of standards that defines your company’s branding. It references grammar, tone, logo usage, colors, visuals, word usage, point of view, and more.

A brand style guide references grammar, tone, logo usage, colors, visuals, point of view, says @SashaLaFerte via @CMIContent.CLICK TO TWEET

By creating a detailed brand style guide, you ensure that your published content is consistent, polished, recognizable, and more enjoyable. A thorough, well-thought-out style guide puts your readers first. It creates a recognizable, engaging voice and personality that readers can form a more personal connection with.

What to include in your style guide

GatherContent recommends keeping a style guide to between four and five pages. Anything longer is too much to digest. Before creating it, research who your audience members are and what they want. Create a style guide based on what resonates with them.

Keep style guide to no more than 4 or 5 pages, according to @GatherContent. @SashaLaFerte via @CMIContent.CLICK TO TWEET

If you already have a mission statement or boilerplate “About Us” description for your brand, start there. Revisit it to make sure it’s not only on point with what it says but how it says it. If you define your brand voice as conversational, but your mission statement is filled with corporate jargon, it’s probably worth revisiting.

From there, create a table of contents for your style guide and use it as an outline. All style guides should include an introduction. This might include a mission statement, letter from the CEO, About Us page, or general overview of the company’s brand and audience. Next, create a section on how your brand talks and writes, and another section on branded visuals. Here’s a breakdown of what these sections should include.

Writing section

Roughly 45% of a brand’s image can be attributed to what a brand says and how it says it. Details like whether to use “&” or “and” or if you should use the numerical or written versions of numbers may seem trivial. But the sum of these details adds up. If they are consistent throughout your published work, they convey a coherent voice, coherent thinking, and a credibility impossible to attain without this consistency.

Here are some tips for ensuring that your brand guide aids in creating first-rate content:

Baseline guide: Use an existing style guide (like AP Style) as a baseline. Add your brand’s differences, such as the use of the Oxford comma or general best practices for emojis.
Formatting: Add a small section around formatting. Include details on how to format bullets, lists, hyphens, and quotes.
Tone and voice: Give descriptions of these and examples of how the tone and voice might be right or wrong. If you want a playful tone, explain what that means. This section also should include information on sentence structure. Do you want long complex sentence structures, a mix, or Hemingway simplicity? (Pro tip: You don’t want long sentences if you want to be persuasive.)
Additional details: Include a section on how to engage, words to stay away from, and any other details important to your brand. Use the brand personality spectrum below to get a better idea of what’s important to your brand’s written content.

In your brand style guide, give descriptions and examples of tone and voice, says @SashaLaferte via @CMIContent.CLICK TO TWEET

Visual section

Visual cues are as important to brand consistency as the written aspects. Consider including these elements in your style guide’s visual section:

Formats: Include information on how to stay on brand with other formats of content, including infographics, video, motion graphics, etc.

Colors: Detail your brand’s palette of colors, including function. Make sure to include the hex, CMYK, and RGB codes for each color, as well as Pantone numbers.
Logo: Include all versions of your logo and examples of proper uses. If you have older or frequently misused versions, include them as “don’t-use” examples.
Fonts: Include all brand fonts for headings, paragraphs, etc., and their uses.
Presentation format: Include a link to a company slideshow template for presentations.

2 brands with awesome style guides

Here are two brands we all know that have first-class style guides and highlights on what makes them special.

MailChimp

MailChimp’s style guide thoroughly prepares any contributor to create on-brand content. Check out its style guide if you’re looking to create a guide with a lot of detail. Highlights include the voice and tone section and word list section. MailChimp also breaks out writing guidelines by content type, from emails to blog posts to social media.

.@Mailchimp’s style guide prepares any contributor to create on-brand #content, says @SashaLaferte via @CMIContent. #Contentmarketing #ExamplesCLICK TO TWEET

Uber

Uber’s brand style guide is packed with GIFs and videos that convey the very movement Uber is so proud of. Uber uses this site to not only describe brand style but to share the brand story, showcase examples of its branding done well, and provide helpful tools.

.@Uber’s brand style guide is packed with GIFs and videos that convey the very movement Uber is so proud of, says @SashaLaferte via @CMIContent. #Contentmarketing #ExamplesCLICK TO TWEET

According to Uber, the guidelines cover nine elements: logo, color, composition, iconography, illustration, motion, photography, tone of voice, and typography. The style guide’s home page also makes it convenient for users by highlighting and linking the most frequently requested assets:

Create your brand’s style guide

Now you know why a good style guide is important, what it should look like, and what to include. It’s time to create one for your company. Include the marketing team, sales team, and any other creatives working on your marketing and products when creating a style guide. Upon completion, share it companywide, and store it as a living document in a place that’s easy to find.

By SASHA LAFERTE

Sasha Laferte is Checkr’s senior customer marketing manager. She’s written for several digital marketing publications including Young Women in Digital and HubSpot’s Blog. Her experience spans writing content for marketing software companies to creating viral media for Wenner Media (the parent company of Rolling Stone and Us Weekly). Follow her on Twitter @SashaLaferte.

Sourced from Content Marketing Institute

In News

The ups and downs of printing indie magazine Delayed Gratification in lockdown

July 2, 2020 No Comments

By Sam Bradley

With both legacy and new media titles strained, we discover how indie magazine Delayed Gratification has been adapting to changed circumstances under lockdown.

With the collapse of advertising and marketing spend in recent months, media titles and especially magazine publishers have had a rough time of it, with lay-offs and pay cuts reported across the sector. Just this week, Dennis Publishing, the owner of brands such as Viz and The Week, announced that it was putting a quarter of its staff into a redundancy consultation.

However, for some publishers, a significant increase in magazine subscriptions has offset market woes. A study from Jellyfish found that demand for magazine subs has skyrocketed under lockdown, with verticals such as tech and gaming seeing a 268% year-on-year increase.

With less reliance on physical office space and smaller staffs, independent magazines have found themselves better positioned to cater to that increase in subscription demand.

Delayed Gratification is a quarterly indie title that champions ‘slow journalism’, covering current affairs with a three-month lag. Founded in 2010 with the tag ’Last to breaking news’, it’s considered a darling of the indie scene for its infographics and longform reporting.

According to co-founder and editorial director Rob Orchard, it’s also seen record-breaking subscription sales during the lockdown period.

“We’ve seen subscription sales that at times look more like Christmas sales,” he says. “We’ve seen a major rise in subscriptions, which has been the silver lining for us. We’ve had record-breaking sales, at times double what we would expect for this time of year.”

However, distribution networks and the newsstand have been significantly impaired.

According to Orchard, Delayed Gratification’s latest issue, which covered the final quarter of 2019, was sent to the United States the day before the country locked down incoming air mail deliveries. While US subscribers got their copies on time, thousands meant for the newsstand have been held up at distribution houses, as the bookshops and magazine stores that stock the magazine closed their doors.

“They’ve just been sitting there in warehouses. That’s tens of thousands of pounds worth of stock that is usable, but only if we sell insane numbers of back issues over the next 20 years.”

Digital edition

Distribution headaches, and the fear that the title’s printers would cease operations, led to the magazine unveiling its first-ever digital edition. ”People have asked us for years for a digital version of the magazine… but we’ve always shied away from it because we didn’t think that it was as special,” says Orchard. Since launching “with zero fanfare”, the title has gained its first seven digital-only subscribers. Orchard says the title will build on that base going forward to capture those readers uninterested in printed matter or in territories that make shipping prohibitive.

“That prospect of not being able to print the magazine gave us a real kick up the bottom to get that sorted,” he adds.

The magazine has also taken its events business virtual, albeit reluctantly. “We’ve always said it won’t be the same. You wouldn’t have that kind of intimacy that you get from being in the same room as other people.

“If anything, it’s kind of been better and more intimate, in a weird way. We’ve had smaller groups of readers, but from all over the world. It’s amazing – you’re talking to somebody in Brazil, and somebody who’s in Las Vegas, and somebody who’s in Dublin, all on the same call in a way that would never be possible before.”

Changing reader habits

To cope with changed circumstances in the streets, the title plans to clip back the print run – usually around 10,000 copies – of its next issue, due out later this month. “We’ll be bringing it down significantly,” Orchard explains. And while high streets and newsstands are beginning to re-open, he suggests consumer habits will not return to normal as quickly, if at all.

“Independent magazines cost quite a lot – it’s much less of an impulse purchase. And if people are not going to be browsing in the same way, then I think there’s every chance that sales of indie mags will be much, much lower.”

“It may just be that all people want to do is go to the pub and just drink solidly, as much as they possibly can,” he suggests.

On the other hand, recent events could spur the adoption of new habit-forming behaviours for magazine readers. “More people are going to need things that make them feel part of something. I think there is going to be real engagement with the world and a desire to know about it.

“People need to know what’s going on, more than ever before.”

Feature Image Credit: Delayed Gratification has, like many other indie titles, been boosted and hit by the coronavirus lockdown. / Delayed Gratification

By Sam Bradley

Sourced from The Drum

In News

Brands can turn the tide during coronavirus by building new consumer journeys

June 16, 2020 No Comments

By Shawn Lim

Brands need to focus on hyper-localisation by connecting with consumers where they are, as Covid-19 has dramatically changed consumer behaviour and altered the path-to-purchase, according to Facebook and Boston Consulting Group.

According to a new report called ‘Turn the Tide’, released by Facebook India and Boston Consulting Group, the use of micro-targeting can help brands get the first-mover advantage. This is because countries are being divided into different zones, with distinct restrictions due to the pandemic, so they need to build social connections despite social distancing, by engaging with consumers in their context

To cope with pandemic lockdown, which has caused significant disruption for communities and businesses, people are spending more time on social media platforms. This means brands have an opportunity to build stronger dialogues and deeper connections with users.

The aim of the guide, according to Facebook India and Boston Consulting Group, is to guide brands to adapt to the pandemic and ensure business continuity.

Nimisha Jain, the managing director and partner at Boston Consulting Group, says: “We are experiencing unprecedented shifts in consumer attitudes and behaviours as 80%+ consumers will continue to practice social distancing and are bringing the outside inside, over 40% of consumers are dialling up on health and wellness spends, e-commerce adoption has already advanced by two-three years, to name a few.”

“These aren’t just temporary surges, and many will last longer and become more defining traits. Our analysis reveals that only one in six companies emerged stronger in past crises. Players who show the agility to reinvent their value propositions, go-to-market plans and business models to address these demand shifts, will be the ones that set themselves apart from the pack.”

In addition, the report also shares actionable guidance for brands to build for the new consumer journeys in times of Covid-19 and beyond.

For example, brands can bring alive experiences through virtual launches and product demos as people turn to virtual experiences for every facet of their life. Facebook said it is already seeing more brands explore Facebook and Instagram ‘Live’ to connect with their followers and customers, with brands now thinking about using social media platforms for new product launches too.

Heeru Dingra, the chief executive officer at WATConsult tells The Drum the agency has modified its planning and strategy around the new consumer journeys, urging its clients to follow a simple mantra of ‘solve, serve and sell’.

She explains brands should focus on solving the problems their consumers face, serve their purpose and the result thereof could be the sale of services or products. She notes a lot of brands have understood this concept and have already started altering their approach to fit this mantra.

“We leveraged the power of gaming and re-created one of the most iconic games of all time, Ludo, for our client Tata Motors. Titled #SafetyFirst Ludo, this version aims to spread awareness about the importance of personal hygiene and social distancing amid the Covid-19 outbreak,” she says.

She also calls out work by Bajaj Allianz General Insurance called #CareWillOvercome, which salutes frontline workers, while a #ReconnectWithStarbucks campaign turned the act of baristas calling out people’s names into a digital phenomenon.

She adds: “These examples summarize how we integrated the need of the hour that is to maintain social distancing, continue to concentrate on personal hygiene and at the same time have our heartfelt appreciation for the ones who have been fighting for us day and night, into our brand approach in some way. This helps to amplify the brand message while being sensitive to the current situation, serving the purpose of extending the required communication and increasing as well as sustaining brand recall.”

The report also advised brands to look at their media mix models to drive growth by aligning to new media landscapes. According to the report, when brands, especially those with traditional product categories, start spending more online, they need to understand incremental outcomes, as well as cross-platform efficiency.

This would increase the need for digital measurement standards, such as custom mix modelling (CMM) by Nielsen, which Facebook said it had piloted last year.

Gautam Mehra, the chief data officer for South Asia and chief executive officer of programmatic at Dentsu Aegis Network observes the importance of moving away from traditional marketing metrics to real business metrics that can be measured and improved on an ongoing basis.

“With the impetus of commerce, CRM and digital transformation, I think, every company will now have a direct-to-consumer line of business and will want to bring themselves closer to the consumer, and rely less on the intermediaries,” he explains.

While most brands are dealing with huge change across many aspects of business, focusing on the changing customer journey is a good place for marketing to focus attention.

Feature Image Credit: the report also shares actionable guidance for brands to build for the new consumer journeys in times of Covid-19 and beyond.

By Shawn Lim

Sourced from The Drum