Importance of branding for your business
Brands are more important now than ever before. Decades ago, branding helped identify a product and distinguish it from other products and services. In this age, branding is more complex and even more important.
Branding doesn't happen overnight, it's quite a long process.
Branding includes every part of a consumer's experience, from logo to your site, social media, advertising and so on. Many businesses overlook branding efforts because they think of themselves as a business and not a brand.
In simple terms, your brand is defined by a customer's perception of your business.
Let's take a look at a few ways a strong brand impacts your business :
Generates New Customers
A strong brand generates referrals. Would it be possible to tell a friend about the new product that you love If you couldn't remember the brand? The word 'brand' is used because the goal is to leave an indelible impression. People are constantly talking and sharing information about the brands they love. It's all about word-of-mouth when it comes to successful brands.
Improves Recognition
One of the main reasons branding is important is because its how a company gains recognition and becomes familiar with consumers. One of the major components of a brand is its logo as it is essentially the face of the company. Having a powerful and memorable logo for your business is crucial to make an impression.
Drives a Higher Price Point
Great branding is everything when it comes to making your company more desirable to your target audience. Companies like Apple or Starbucks is more valuable thanks to branding alone. The brand makes the company stand out from the rest of the crowd.
Creates Trust
To develop elusive trust, you must convey why consumers should try you out. The more your audience know about your business, the more they trust you.
Having a professional appearance and strategic branding helps your company build trust with the consumers. Potential clients or consumers trust your brand when your company professionally presents itself and has social proof that your products and services are of great quality.
Improves Employee Satisfaction
Working for an established brand can often help employees satisfied with work. Besides, when employees work for a reputed brand, they are more likely to work in the direction to meet the goals the owner has set.
Wrapping It Up
Good branding brings about greater financial returns, improved employee performance, greater loyalty and brand perception among others.
Habits of Highly Effective Content Creators
Content marketing is an important tool that businesses use to generate leads, engage users, increase revenue, improve brand awareness and ROI. Content creation is an essential part of any marketing strategy. Content marketing focuses on editing, writing and publishing content online to a targeted audience.
But how can one be a great content creator?
Keep in mind that it's not going to happen overnight. Becoming a seasoned content creator takes time, it doesn't happen overnight and it shouldn't. For starters, while being naturally creative is important, it is also equally important to have a strong understanding of the subject, its internal and external factors greatly help during the process.
Just about anyone can report a topic but only a hardened content creator can reach their target audience with their work.
We've assembled a few of the habits of great content creators that are worth taking note of,
Habit #1 Understand Your Target Audience
Studying your audience is one step that simply cannot be skipped. Content creators thrive on this. To create content that the audiences love, there needs to be an in-depth understanding of that audience.
1. Who am I creating content for?
2. What's the personality I am going for?
3. What's my target audience's age?
Different audiences are going to have different questions, needs, and problems. To tackle all those, researching in-depth is crucial.
Habit #2 They Write Consistently
When it comes to posting, striking a balance between posting too often and rarely is key. Learning to find a way to post within that grey area is something that needs to be taken into account. Developing a plan for posting helps set expectations, build a consistent and loyal audience. Without overwhelming readers with excessive content, crafting new content regularly is necessary to reach people.
Habit #3 They Update Regularly
Great content creators know how to keep things fresh. They're aware of the latest information and updates to gain a competitive edge over others and also to enhance their user's experience. Eventually content turns stale, repetitive or outdated. They need to be constantly updating according to the changing environment.
Habit #4 Stand Out From The Crowd
There are a whole lot of content creators in every industry. What makes one stand out from the crowd? What is it that one can bring to the table that other content creators can't? To stand out, these are some of the hints: have a personality, diversify into a new medium, create fresh and original content, promote on different platforms and gain trust over time.
Habit #5 Networking All The Time
Successful content creators seize every opportunity they find. They accept the fact there's always more to learn and open to ideas. Networking makes one do exactly that. They're known to make full use of social media platforms. Also, following and collaborating with leaders in the industry. If it's hard to start networking big right away, take it easy and start small with colleagues.
Habit #6 Question Everything
Even seasoned content creators are always out looking for information that's being promoted. Curiosity has always been a common trait of great creators. Being so often leads to exploring new thoughts along the way. It isn't always about the existing problems but also about finding unidentified problems worth solving.
Bottom Line
Creating great content isn't easy, it takes time and effort. Most of the top content creators have attained that level after years of following a successful routine. Our list of habits gives you insights, so don't forget to note it down! In short: read, write, update, be unique and question everything!
Video Marketing Is Taking Over
If you've heard that video marketing is the future, then you've heard right. According to recent statistics, 60% of the businesses have started using video marketing as a part of their marketing strategy.
Scrolling through Facebook or Instagram, most of the content that's present is a video. Millions of people are scrolling through their social media feeds or watching online videos. Video content is easily absorbed and provides actionable responses from consumers. That's an opportunity to reach millions of customers every minute.
Marketers have realized that video marketing not only heightens brand awareness but also helps brands connect with their target audience. In a recent poll, more than 50% voted to see more video related information from brands. Incorporating video content in their marketing strategies is crucial to stay competitive and relevant.
Videos allow you to communicate detailed information in a short amount of time. Here are a few reasons why you should incorporate videos in your marketing strategies.
Increases Engagement
Videos are extremely easy to consume, especially because humans are highly visual creatures. Written content has never been more attractive than videos. Consumers don't want to see long descriptions, they want to see the product in action.
Consumers don't want to see long descriptions, they want to see the product in action. Crafting information-dense, easy-to-understand and accessible videos, brands can develop a significant online following. Videos engage even the laziest buyers.
Appeals to Mobile Users
The number of smartphones is growing exponentially, and people like to watch videos on the go. Over 90% of consumers watch videos on their mobile. YouTube reports show a 100% increase in video content consumption every year. Being sensitive to the consumer's experience on their smartphones is something brands need to be careful about while crafting their video content.
Builds Trust
Consumers gain more confidence in your brand when they see your product or team in videos. Building long-term relationships with your consumers is a goal on its own. Video is an incredible way to evoke emotions, unlike any other medium.
Increases conversions and boosts sales
Videos can lead directly to sales. Recent studies show that over 80% of customers are more likely to purchase after watching a product video. Crafting an exciting video for your brand is important. Brands that used video marketing effectively see the highest numbers. Simply put, videos offer detailed description in a short amount of time which creates trust and eventually leads to conversions.
Improves Search Engine Ranking
Top search engine companies prioritize video content when updating algorithms. Posting videos on blogs, social media and your website increases your chances of hitting your target audience and ranking higher.
Google algorithms prioritize pages with video content ranks them higher in their search results. For your video SEO effort, make sure you:
Keep videos short Create high-quality thumbnails Optimize videos Transcribe your video script
Wrap Up
Video marketing is projected to only keep growing because it’s inexpensive, friendly and quite simply, it works. It will be critical for brands to incorporate video into their content marketing strategy to stay competitive and relevant.
Secrets of Online Marketing