The Importance Of Branding Your Business

Branding your business.

No matter how big or small your business is, creating a brand for yourself is crucial to the image, reputation, and success of your business. Branding yourself is beneficial to both traditional marketing and digital marketing, especially.

What does it mean to brand your business? It’s as simple as it sounds; a way for others to identify your business. From logo to language to advertisements. So, how do you get started? Branding can be somewhat complex, so we’ve broken down the different steps to make it easier for you.

Voice and Language

Is your company more laid-back and casual or professional? Do your morals fall around the importance of family, growth, community, or all of the above? Do you have a catchphrase you often find your employees and even consumers using? Once you identify the key parts that make your business your business, it’ll be easier to move forward.

Logo and Website

Visuals are everything! People will base their opinion of your business based off of not only the design of your logo, but how accessible and easy your website is to navigate through. Like your voice, your visuals should represent you and what you stand for. For example, we all know the iconic Nike swoosh. It symbolizes movement and speed. It depicts the art of movement, which is exactly what Nike is about. Once a logo is figured out, match the rest of your visuals on your website, advertisements, and video to that of your logo. This will bring familiarity and comfort to your customers.

Means of Marketing

While businesses can have great benefit from all forms of marketing, does yours have a signature way of marketing? Maybe it’s podcasts, digital art, or live streaming. The possibilities are endless and through trial-and-error, you can determine what your consumers love and look forward to and what may not be pushing a lot of traffic and engagement.

Be Authentic

Above all, most important is being authentic and real with your consumers. Across all platforms, customers not only love being able to interact with you, but showing off personality helps build trust. This goes for more than just communication with consumers. Make sure every aspect of your business is on the same page! From business cards to employees, promote yourself.

Seek Professional Advice

Branding can be a lot of work. There are a lot of moving parts that need to work to come together to make a beautiful, meaningful brand for your business. There’s nothing wrong with reaching out and asking for help. Whether it’s solely for digital advertisements, communicating, or all of the above, Paragon Marketing Group has got your back!

How Are You Using Video In Your Marketing?

Video marketing trends.

We all know digital marketing is king in today’s age of technology, but what tops these strategies? Video marketing, which has been on the rise for the last few years, is now one of the best ways to market your business. According to Social Media Today, videos are shared 1200% more on social media than image and text combined. They also found that 64% of consumers are more likely to buy a product or service after watching a video about it. With numbers like these, who wouldn’t want to research the latest trends in video marketing? Don’t worry, we’ve already done the work for you.

Make it Personal

Before we dive into the different forms of videos to create, let’s talk content. 72% of consumers say they will only engage with marketing posts that are personalized (SmarterHQ). Making your videos more personal could mean having members from your business on screen selling a service rather than just text and graphics. Let’s say your company sells women’s clothing and that the majority of your audience are young women between the ages of 18-25, try to create content that they would find fun and relatable.

Live Streaming

While it’s recently become a popular platform, video streaming counts for over two-thirds of all internet traffic, and there’s so much your business can do with it! You can hop on a live stream and not only show customers new products, host Q&As, and make announcements, but you can interact with them in real time. Live streaming gives the option to have viewers submit their questions and comments in a chatroom while the video is happening, making communication personal and easy. Another benefit of streaming is that there’s no editing involved. Just open your laptop, start your livestream, and you’re set.

Long-form Videos

This one might surprise you, but research suggests that long-form videos are the way to go. We’ve all been told that the shorter the video, the better, especially with the short attention span of humans. However, this has recently changed. According to 23, videos under five minutes in length only receive less than one third of overall engage, whereas videos over 15 minutes can result in 50% overall engagement. This would require more pre production work and editing, but if you’re really looking to communicate with or send a message to your consumers, try it out!

Video Podcasts

Being another recent success in marketing, video podcasts are on the rise, and it’s exactly what it sounds like. Instead of just having your microphone set up, you also have a camera to record with. What’s the point? It’s always nice for consumers to put a face to the voices they’re used to hearing, and they can see exactly what’s happening in the studio. It’s another way to invite your audience on a personal level, and you have two times the amount of footage to use for marketing!

Regardless if you choose to try out one of these or all of these new video marketing techniques, remember what it’s about; your consumers. Video is one of the best tools to include new and long-term consumers in your business. It’s a way to show your appreciation for them, get out new and important information, and show the faces of your company!

Reviews and Testimonials

Business reviews and testimonials help your business.

Reviews and testimonials. What are they? Why do they matter? A testimonial is a statement that supports the credibility of one’s business; aka a positive reputation builder! A lot of a business’ success relies on word-of-mouth and communication. Having written or recorded reviews and testimonials posted for your business will help bring in prospective customers and keep strong relationships with current customers.

Why Do You Need Testimonials and Reviews?

As stated before, credibility is everything for a small or growing business. Of course, you know your services and products work, but how are consumers supposed to know that? Reviews left on Google, Yelp, or your site verifying that your services provide 100% satisfaction for past customers helps support your claim. Chances are, you’re more willing to purchase or invest in something that has high reviews than something with zero reviews. While being conversational and quick with interaction with customers is helpful, they still may not feel ready to purchase or use your services without words of affirmation from past and current customers.

How Can My Business Gain Reviews?

You may think the only way to get reviews is sitting around and hoping a customer will decide to post about your business themselves, but that’s not the case! There’s nothing wrong with reaching out to customers and asking them to leave a review. You can ask them face-to-face, through a personalized email, or even making a post on social media. If your customers feel strongly about your good work and you have a positive relationship with them, don’t be afraid to reach out to them.

What are the Best Ways to Publicize Testimonials?

  1. Google, Yelp, online forums
    Chances are a prospective customer’s first interaction with you is through a search engine, use Google reviews and your website to your advantage.
  2. Images
    Using an image of your customer with their testimonial is a step up. Including a picture of the person leaving the review brings a more personal and direct message to consumers.
  3. Video
    Video is huge nowadays in building a business! Consumers love to be able to visualize what’s going on, and it’s easy to do with testimonials. It doesn’t have to be a fancy production with animations and crazy video effects. It can be a simple video recording of your customer speaking about their experience with you and verbalizing their testimonial. Video makes it engaging and intimate! Having prospective customers being able to watch a real person leave an authentic message is the best way to provide credibility.

Tips When Using Social Media

Social media tips.

So, you started up a social media page for your business! Maybe on Facebook, or Twitter, or Instagram. You read articles and watched videos on the importance of having a social media presence, but how can you effectively use it? Below is a master list of the top 7 tips to keep in mind when using social media to help your business succeed.

  1. Have an objective

    How do you want to use social media to help your business? What are you trying to accomplish? Determine; do you want to improve sales or improve your relationship with your customers? What kind of image do you want for your business online? Once you identify how you want to use your social pages, it will be a lot easier to create content for them.

  2. Be visual

    Photos and videos are very useful when communicating with prospects and clients. It’s a great way to show off a product or to give a face to your company. People don’t always have time to sit and read every post they see on their Facebook feed, so using a photo or video that compliments your post can catch their eye and make them want to find out more.

  3. Be authentic and transparent

    Social media is a great tool to create a relationship and open communication with your clients. Whether it’s posting a photo, video, or a blog post about your business, your audience will get to know who you are, what your business is all about, and what you can do for them. Honesty is a key component to developing trust and accreditation.

  4. Identify your target audience

    Let’s say your business makes products for hair growth for men – your primary audience probably isn’t a teenage girl. Research what main platforms your target audience uses, their means of consumption (video, articles, etc.), and what kind of language you should be using to best communicate with them.

  5. Create a calendar

    Not only does creating a calendar help to keep you organized, but it can help grow your online presence. It’s estimated that internet users spend an average of 2 hours and 22 minutes a day on social media. If prospects become familiar with your presence online, they feel more connected to your business. With consistent posting, you can also determine what content is getting more views and feedback, and you will eventually get into the groove of what kind of posts work for your company and what doesn’t.

  6. Step outside of your comfort zone

    Things are constantly changing, especially in today’s digital-dominated world. If you see a trend blossoming on social media, like video marketing for example, don’t hesitate to branch out. Research the topic to figure out where to start and how to most effectively integrate it into your business. Don’t be afraid to experiment with new strategies to improve your online presence.

  7. Be interactive

    Social media was created to be social! It’s important to consistently answer prospective customers’ questions, but it’s also important to spark up a conversation. Social platforms are a great way for you to connect with your clients, partnering businesses, or people inside your company! Let them know that they are heard and that you acknowledge them by taking time to connect with them. Social media is a great tool to promote your business, but it’s an even better tool to show your business’ appreciation!

Does Your Wifi Bring Customers In The Door?

restaurant marketing.

Zenreach is the relationship engine that helps you know what your customers do in the real world, so you can keep them rushing back for more.

  • Boosted Contact List
    Zenreach turns your WiFi network into an automated contact collection tool—effortlessly growing your customer list 5x faster than before.
  • Automated Marketing
    It’s time to truly understand your customers—send messages that are automatically triggered by your guests’ unique visit behavior.
  • Transparent ROI
    Don’t rely on open rates and social media to guess the effectiveness of your online marketing—Zenreach shows you which messages bring customers through your door.

What other tech out there shows you exactly how many customers return after receiving an email? It’s inarguable ROI.
—DogHaus, Las Vegas

  1. It all starts with WiFi
    5 minute setup–Just plug in your access point and customers will get instant access to free, fast, and secure WiFi. Customers can use their own routers or purchase a plug-and-play Zenreach AP.
  2. Custom-branded portal
    No more fishbowls on your counter and manually logging outdated guest contact info. Zenreach automatically builds your contact list over WiFi through a customized portal complete with demographic and visit behavior.
  3. Collect contacts 5x faster
    Send the right message at the right time with our automated campaign tools – personalize messages to each individual customer based on behavior, demographics, and more.
  4. See your Walk-Through-Rate™
    Success your clients can see—We show you and your clients exactly how well their marketing is working by calculating the Walk-Through-Rate™. This is how many customers respond to messages by physically walking through the business doors.
  5. Build Your Reputation
    Get direct feedback and take control of your reputation. You can tell satisfied customers which popular review sites matter most (so they can leave their reviews there) while interacting personally with any unhappy customers before they post bad reviews.

“65% of customers are happy to share their information in exchange for more targeted marketing.”
—Big Commerce, 2015

 

Article Courtesy Of Zenreach

6 steps to retail marketing

This is a view of a mall from the top floor.

Marketing in the retail world can be a lot of fun. It also can be very time consuming and monotonous. However, without marketing in the retail world, you will not maintain or grow. Retail has an attrition rate and it doesn’t matter how long you have been in business or how great of a reputation you have, there still has to be marketing. You have to replace the people you lose yearly or you might as well shut your doors right now. How do you do this, is the question and how do you do it well?

1. It all starts with building a brand. You have to have a brand recognition or you will not grow. When people think of the typical products you sell, you want your name to come to mind first. In marketing, there is a rule called the rule of seven. Now, some marketers will say it is the rule of 10 or a rule of 5, regardless, it is still important that you follow it. A person must see your brand 7 times before they start thinking about you for a certain product. How those 7 times is achieved can be hard, however, the rest of this blog explains a few tricks.

2. How you are found is important and that is where listings come into the equation. There are literally hundreds of sites that your business should be listed on depending on exactly what your product is. Personally, I believe that if you are listed properly on the top sites then the rest will follow over time. What people do not realize is that everything HAS to be exactly the same across all of your online listings, right down to the dot in the same place.

3. Social media marketing is going to give you the most bang for your buck. Depending on your demographic you will utilize Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or LinkedIn. Anyone of these 4 are going to be important, however, the two most important are going to be Facebook and Twitter. The most important thing with these platforms is to not post just 1 time per week about your store and expect people to flock in. You have to post regularly and you have to not only educate the consumer about you but also about your products.

4. You have to create a personalized experience. Just as we talked about social being important well, so is mobile marketing. It is said that 58% of people will look on cell phones before they look for your store on a desktop or laptop. With the world of artificial intelligence growing it is very important to learn new ways to use personalized mobile marketing in order to attract new clients.

5. Reward programs are becoming very popular. Create an awards program through email marketing and offer a free product for being a member of your newsletter program. Once you start getting emails from consumers, do not miss a single month of sending newsletters out. I would suggest that you send out an email at a minimum of bi-weekly. One can be a newsletter talking about anything new that you have done and the other can be an offer of the month for members of the group.

6. People will come in and spend more if they know you are supporting the community. Your local chamber of commerce or business group will have a list of events that are community-based in order to help you find a great charity or event to support. Once you find one, offer your support or sponsorship then market about your contribution. Millennials today want to know that you support a charity or local event. They will remember that and come back to you because of it.

Having a retail establishment is a very exciting and fun thing. In today’s world, you have a great opportunity to provide a great location for people to get what you need. The more people that know who you are, the better. With the digital world, you have a great opportunity to tell the world about you! Have fun with it but remember to be respectful and responsible. You will be successful with these suggestions.

Why Do I Need Video?

In today’s day and age people are very visual in nature. I know that at my house my kids are watching videos all the time. What amazes me even more is that I talk to people who say they are too busy to talk or to decide or even to go to the bathroom. However, those same people message me and say “Did you see the video on youtube? Wow, it was amazing”. Then I look at the video and it was the latest fails of the week. This is the world we live in now! People do not have the time to do as much as the world moves quickly but they can always watch the latest video.

Here is where reality crosses with marketing. We get calls everyday about video because that is what we do. Everybody wants to make a video that goes viral to promote their company. Did you know that less than 1% of videos go viral? To say that anybody has the secret sauce to make a video viral would be a lie. Not to mention, is the best representation of your company really a viral video? Viral videos are silly or show what not to do a lot of times. However, if you can get a 6 second video ad during the pre-roll of a viral video, it makes a lot of sense. The key to it is making the most out of 6 seconds. That we can do!

Having a video on the homepage of you website increases conversions by 80%. This statistic varies based on who you look up the statistic with; however, there is one common theme. Video gives you more conversions than words. Think about how many conversions you currently have from your site. Now think of how much your website costs you per lead. Who wouldn’t want the cost per lead to go down and the amount of leads to go up?

What do we record? You are not looking to be the next viral video so stop thinking it. You are wanting to show why someone HAS to have you as their vendor of choice for the project they have or why they have to buy the product they want from you. You do not have to reinvent the wheel but you do have to tell them why you! I have said it many times. Know the why of what you do. Why do people come to you? Why do people need you? Why do you exist as a company? If you answer those questions in a 15–30 second video then you can watch your leads roll. Do not try to shove 50 years into 30 seconds. It will not show well at all. Show the why now! I believe that there’s a place for history videos, bio videos and product videos, however, that place is not on your homepage. Furthermore, you should absolutely have those videos as well. Those videos should be throughout your website and they should all link to your Youtube page therefore fulfilling one requirement of content marketing.

So in short, should you have video as part of your overall strategy? YES, for sure and definitely!

To Be Found Or Not To Be Found, That Is The Question

This is a woman searching something on Google on her laptop.

When you go into your phone and you type in air conditioning repair you get a list of people nearby that do that, right? Imagine if you are the business owner and somebody is 20 feet from your location and they type in air conditioning repair but your name doesn’t come up? That would probably upset you, correct? Well that is because you are not listed correctly with the major search engines. The last I checked there are over 700 online directories that you can be listed on. Do all of them make sense to you? NO.

There are many directories that are specific to industries that do not make sense for everybody. If you are a doctors office then it makes sense to be listed on WebMD however if you do AC repair then it does not. How do you know which ones you should be listed on? How much time does it take to go into each one individually and make sure everything is exact. That is where a Marketing company comes in with listing expertise.

Listings are very important to SEO for a website. There are a lot of decisions that have to be made with listing and no matter how little you think they are it is very important that you make decisions prior to starting the project. Decisions like Spelling Avenue or using Ave with or without a period? What phone number do you want to use? What email? What are your hours? If you are a restaurant do you want the menu? What pictures do you want to use? What keywords do you want to use? These all seem like basic things but they are very important because ALL of your listings need to be EXACT across all platforms!

Furthermore if you take this project on yourself you have to go in and fix these on a very regular basis. There are crawlers that will go in and change the information within 6 days of fixing it. At first it is one or maybe 2 sites. After 30 days over half of the sites you fixed are changed. That is why it is much more cost effective to work with a Listing Power user service like we are. We constantly fix listings and once they are fixed the crawlers can not change them. There is a fee of course, however how much would it cost you to have to go in and fix them all the time?

What I hear all the time is that I will hire an employee to do this and make sure I stay up to date. Let’s figure this out mathematically. You pay an employee $10 per hour to go in and fix your listings and keep them up to date. Each listing service will take about 30 minutes to fix. That means you are paying that employee $360 every time they have to go through all 72 sites. Now only about half of them get changes monthly. So you will have to pay an employee $180 every month to keep them fixed. These numbers do not include taxes, insurance and all the extra payments you need to make for every employee you have. For a listing professional to come in and have them constantly fixed it will cost you between $100 – $150 per month. So the math is easy right?

You are found online, now what?

When creating a website there’s many things to think about. You want it to represent you and your company. You want it to represent your core beliefs and how you want the public to perceive those beliefs.

 

We come across one issue all the time. We offer free web reports and listing reports as part of our service. The web report is graded on many levels with 100 be the highest score that your website can get. 90 if you do not have a SSL certificate. We constantly run across sites that are 85-90 without SSL certificate. Pretty good right? Wrong! See the issue is that they are not getting conversions off of the site. The site is Mobile, It is Keyworded, it is maintained, updated, easy to navigate and linked to analytics. It ticks all of the boxes for a good site except one.

 

Can you guess what it is?

This one thing it is missing is more important than anything else.

This one thing they are missing is the largest representation of the company that can be.

This one thing is what makes people want to click to learn more.

Do you give up on what it is yet?

 

ATTRACTION! Yes I said attraction! You can have the best site in the world. It can get people to come to your site by the hundreds or even thousands. However if it does not look good than people will not want to know more about your company, product or service? Why do people want to click the contact form if they do not like what they see online? 81% of consumers research you online before they make a decision so in this case you are found but you do not look good as a company.

 

Imagine a website likes this scenario. You are looking to buy a car. You run across 2 ads for the exact same car and the exact same price and mileage. One is an ad that is just words and the other has pictures and a video. Which ad will you request information from? The same goes for your website. You can have the best wording in the world and you could have a literary genius write it but if people can’t see it then they can’t relate to it. I read this statistic recently “90% of information transmitted to the brain is visual which the brain will process 60,000 times faster than text information. That is an amazing number. I also read another statistic that having a video on your homepage will increase your conversions by 80%. We are in a visual world so your website needs to be as well!

It’s Time to Start Thinking about Budgeting

This is vector art of a content marketing strategist.

It is the middle of August and it seems very strange to be thinking about 2018. You are still finishing up vacations and the kids are on their way back to school. The question is how long do you want to wait? In today’s business world marketing budgets take longer to prepare, especially when Content Marketing is the largest growth possibility in 2018. If your business is grossing  more than 5 million in revenue, according to the Small Business Association, your company should be spending 8% to 10% of the total gross revenue in order to grow. If less than $5 million in gross revenue, a company should be spending 10% to 12%. It is further suggested that in 2018 a company spends ⅓ of this on Digital and ⅔ on traditional marketing avenues.

 

The real question is how do you use it? Where do you spend it? What do you spend it on? The answer is Content Marketing! I know what you are thinking, “You are nuts, that is against all marketing principles and that puts all of my eggs in one basket.” I would agree with you unless we are talking about Content Marketing.   

 

Content Marketing is a marketing art that combines both Traditional marketing and non-traditional marketing. I like to explain it as a spider web, You have your Mooring threads, these we would explain as Traditional and non-traditional marketing, these connect to your anchor point which is your business. Your frame threads are your different avenues, TV, Radio, Newspaper, social media, digital advertising and many other avenues. Your radials are your different possibilities in your categories which include items like ABC, CBS, Facebook, Instagram, Journal Sentinel, google in our local Milwaukee market. Finally you have the most important element and that is the Viscid thread. The Viscid thread ties it all together and create the foundation for the success of the web. That is the part that creates the personal touch for the consumer all leading them to the Hub of the web which is your website, your location, a phone call or email.

 

Imagine you are watching TV. Then you see an ad that shows you what is possible with a certain laundry detergent. Then you look on Youtube and see a different story for the same company that shows the same story in a different way. Then you look on Facebook and see an ad for the same product telling the story of the Laundry detergent. Now imagine you are in the store trying to pick out a laundry detergent. You are most likely to relate to the story they provided and get the detergent that you saw in all those advertisements. That is Content Marketing!

 

We believe that “Your success is our Success” It is what makes us different. It is what makes us Paragon.