Tag: Marketing

Why Blogging Is Important To Your Business

LArge

 

There are many arguments as to whether blogging is still relevant especially in this ever expanding social media marketing environment. But it does not matter whether you are a small business, or a multinational company, blogging is a massive part of your online content, presence and marketing strategy. Here are a few benefits that your business will receive from blogging regularly. Enjoy!

SEO

Regular blogging helps to boost your business’ SEO (Search Engine Optimisation). Search engines love new, up-to-date and valuable content and by blogging the search engines will reward you by boosting your website in the rankings. This improves organic search visibility and increases website traffic.

 

Illustration10_expanded-text

 

Brand Story

A blog allows you to tell your business’ brand story. A blog is a great place to offer consumers a better insight into your company, philosophy, employees, and ideas. It also tells your customers why you’re in business and how you can help them. It also gives your business a way to touch on some of your issues, concerns and prospects. Your blog posts will give you a great way to share your voice and personality, building up trust and increasing your brand’s likability.

Increase Traffic 

Your blogs will give you an opportunity to make relevant content for your consumers, this is a marketing tool used to drive traffic back to your business’ website. For this to work, the blog on your website will be the foundation for all of your social media platforms. Your business should already be on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and LinkedIn. You should be posting links with relevant visuals of what you are blogging about to your social sites. This way you are giving your social followers more of a reason to click through to your website.

Increase in Sales 

Roughly 60% of consumers will feel more positive about your business after reading content on your website. When a consumer is looking to purchase a product or acquire a service, consumers mainly want a business that they can rely on. The best way for a consumer to do this is to look for proof to see if your reliable or if you can actually deliver what you say you can. By sharing regular blog posts your business is showing what expertise you have and how your potential customers can trust you.

 

13750-NPPVZX

 

Target Audience 

Blogging will attract your business’ target audience. By writing blogs that are helpful and relevant, your business is attracting visitors to the website that would otherwise not know your business existed. Also by showing expertise in your industry by blogging, this can instil trust and make your users more inclined to purchase a product or service from you. A blog can give a business a way of connecting with customers and prospects through a two-way conversation. It signals to visitors that your open to comments, feedback and even criticisms. This allows you to form a business perspective, as learning what’s on the minds of prospects is marketing gold.

To Conclude, Blogging….

  • Increases your business’ SEO
  • Lets your consumers understand your company’s brand story
  • Drives traffic to your website
  • Increases sales of products and services due to increased website traffic
  • Reaches your target audience

Blogging has now become more than just an individual’s hobby; it is now a very influential tool that most businesses of today use regularly. Blogging has been able to create an even playing field among businesses, allowing small businesses to compete with the Fortune 500 companies. A business does not need millions of pounds to maintain a blog; all it requires is someone educated in the field or even willing to do research in order to consistently keep updating and educating your readers.

 

Do you need any help with business blogging? 

Contact Us 

What Makes an Advert Successful to the Younger Audience

Everyones view of what makes a good advert are different. Some focus on if the advert conveys a message well. I feel as long as the advert can make you remember it, no matter what the reason, then it has been successful. An advert does not always have to convey the message of the product or company to be successful. If you can make the audience remember the product and company just from being funny, quirky or outrageous then as an advertising team you have done your job.

Make it colourful and out there

One of the best examples for colours in an advert would be the Sony ‘balls’ advert for their TV set brand Bravia to show how well it’s screens distinguish colours. For this advert they took thousands of different coloured bouncy balls and let them bounce freely down a street in San Fransisco. The advert, released back in 2005, was an amazingly creative idea and very memorable.

Add some fun and humour

The One Dollar Shave Club have a collection of quirky and funny adverts, but the stand out has to be the first advert they made. It had the strapline “Our Blades are F***ing Great”. In the ad, the adventurous CEO helps out immigrants and wielding a machete. It even has hillarious dance party at the end with money flying around. As an advert it gets its point across very well in a humourous way and keeps you interested throughout. If something is very funny, it is highly likely to be shared across social media.

Accompany with good music

Beats by Dre (now Beats Music) released an advert for their headphone ranges called ‘The Game Before The Game’ for the Football World Cup in 2014. The music used was ‘Jungle’ by X Ambassadors & Jamie N Commons and it really captures and immerses you in the advert. The advert is very good at captivating its audience and making them feel part of the prematch rituals of the football players.

Go a bit wierd and random

In my eyes there is only one advert that takes the award for being totally random and a little wierd. Mountain Dew’s advert for this years’ Super Bowl for their new drink Kickstart starred the ‘PuppyMonkeyBaby’. No words can describe it, just watch below…

You might be thinking “what the hell did I just watch?” but for being so bizarre it could potentially be one of the most memorable adverts. Your not likely to forget a puppy/monkey/baby in a hurry!

Even annoying can work

In what could potentially be one of the most annoying adverts of all time, the Go Compare advert was released in 2009 to the annoyance of audiences across the country. You will only have to watch this advert once to totally understand how annoying it is but due to hearing the company name “Go Compare” being sang in an annoying classical style, it quite powerfully sticks in your head which means everyone knows the brand name of the company. Controversially it’s brand awareness at it’s best.

In conclusion, for adverts to appeal to a younger audience you don’t need all of the above points together but if you play just one or two to your strength it can work out to be a very powerful advert. Out of all the adverts listed above my stand out favourite has to be the Mountain Dew ‘Kickstart’ advert with the “PuppyMonkeyBaby”. Just on the basis of it having the wierd factor and being a very out there piece of advertising which will be remembered for being so random yet funny.

8 Tips For Making An Effective Product Video

Recently we’ve been panning, zooming and expertly editing product videos for some of our clients over here at MeeCreative. Take a look at a recent sample video we created here:

We must say we’re pretty pleased with the outcomes. Video content is now splashed in our faces more than ever. Lets take it, who hasn’t sat on Youtube or social media and been transfixed by the most random of video’s? You’re not the only one! But amongst the cat videos and epic fail shenanigans, some of the biggest retailers in the world are implementing video to not only showcase their products globally but to show the user how to use their product and fix them if problems ever occur, now in the world of digital, that’s pretty damn good user experience right?

Anywho, we could talk until the cows come home about the benefits of video to help advertise your businesses products and services but as the lovely, kind and helpful people we are here at MeeCreative, we thought we’d give you 8 Tips For Making An Effective Product Video –  of course, if you’re not too keen on picking up a camera and trying to shoot a stunning video you could always give us a tinkle? (That was a pretty subtle plug, right?!)

Anyway, with that sordid self-promotion over, just scroll down and take a look. Enjoy!

8 Tips For Making An Effective Product Video

Making product videos is a great way to effectively convey information, show products in use and create trust with the customer. And with YouTube now being the second most popular search engine in the world, your product videos can even bring you new customers in addition to adding value to your existing ones. If your timid abut jumping into the video production world, here are a few tips to get you started:

1.Keep it short. Your customers don’t want to sit & watch a flashy drawn-out product video, they want to get the information they need and nothing more.  Shoot for making  your videos 2 minutes or less. Constricting yourself to certain time-parameters will also help you to focus on the most important aspects.

2. Write a script. There are many times when you can ‘wing it’ in business, but videos are not one of them. In order to get everything across to your customer in the most effective way, you’re going to need to spend time collecting your thoughts & organising them in a script.. and then write it again. The best writing is done when you spend the time to write several drafts, refining your thoughts and words until you have a gem of a script!

3. Get in there & demo your product. Don’t just hold up your product, USE your product. The goal of your video is to give your customers an interactive view of the product, so swing that golf club, wear that dress, make that pan sizzle – your video should demonstrate whatever your customer will be doing with the product.

4. Decide on what your company’s voice is and be consistant.  We all know that the funny videos are the ones that go viral, and they also make the companies relatable & personal.  But funny isn’t for every company, brand, product or audience. However if you think you have the right personality and products for an outlandish or witty video, go for it!

But if funny & outlandish is not who you & your company are, don’t try to be. Being authentic and true to your brand is key to earn customers’ trust. Videos give your customers a more well-rounded view of your brand so don’t send them mixed messages ( you risk coming off as ‘phony’).  An educational informative video will sell more products than one that misses the mark trying to be something that it is not.

5. Be personal. Let your customers know the people behind the brand. Introducing yourself and your relationship with the company , starts the video off on a friendly inviting note.

6. Get the money-shots. Customers are watching the video to see the products so make sure you show the product form multiple angles. Shoot close-ups to show off the products detail, and features.

7. Don’t talk their ear-off. In a 2 minute video, it is perfectly ok to have 30 seconds of light background music while you show off the product from different angles or in use. If a picture speaks a thousand words, a video speaks a novel so don’t worry about filling every second with your commentary.

8. Make your products look their best Production value isn’t everything, but be conscious of how your products look. Here are a few production tips:

  • Shoot in high definition, and in widescreen
  • Pay careful attention to the lighting to avoid harsh shadows and dimly lighted environments.
  • Shoot with a tripod to keep the shots steady.

 

 

Need a professional video for your business?

Give us a call: 01639 897200

Use Video To Grow Your Business

Benefits-of-Video-Advertisingweb

Video has grown rapidly over recent years and it’s predicted to continue, making video fundamental to the way consumers consume content. With technology improving, businesses of all sizes are able to effectively use video to reach and engage a wider audience. Here’s 5 reasons why your company should be investing in video to advertise.

 

 

 

When A Brand Becomes Background Noise

Let’s get one thing clear, we’ve all experienced this at some point in our lives. It may have happened in our inboxes, on social media or during an advert on telly.

As brands bombard us with each passing day, they fail to understand why engagement rates are reducing, or why marketing just isn’t working the way it used to.

Falling short in marketing can have a worse effect than to even have no marketing in the first place.

Take this example.

So I sign up to a newsletter. I decide, “Hmm, my living room could do with a better TV. I do like the one we’ve got, but my friend’s TV has all this cool stuff and is bigger.” So I sign up for Hi-Def Electronics’ newsletter. What do I get to my inbox? Well, I get a “Welcome to our newsletter”. Not what I was expecting, but okay.

Tomorrow comes, “Meet Dan, our latest recruit.” Meet Dan? Who’s Dan?

I’m pretty sure that employing new members to Hi-Def is very important to the company, but I’ve only just been introduced to your brand. I don’t care too much about who you bring on. For all I’m concerned, the sales team could be a tower of giraffes.

“Hi-Def Fitness Monthly Event.” “Find us at stand D356”; I was signing up for a TV newsletter, I don’t want to go to an event about fitness. That’s why I’m searching online.

How brands can cause friction

With newsletters, it’s not necessarily the quality of the content produced, but the volume at which it happens. You’ve probably seen this before. I’m currently signed up to a list on Groupon, a global company that offer deals on a wide range of things.

At first, I thought it was a good idea to sign up. Since then I’ve been inundated with deals day after day, some of them good, but a lot of them aren’t even related to what interests me. For that reason, I soon lost interest in the brand and started hitting the delete button as soon as they landed in my inbox. A lot of brands make this mistake by not keeping a consistency on the content they send out. The longer you leave this, the more damage you risk to your business.

We get mentally inundated by brands

These days, we don’t even need to leave the bedroom to understand how many brands are involved in our lives. As human beings, we have a tolerance to quantify how much is too much, before it’s handled subconsciously. We might not be aware of it, but brands like Coca-Cola are so well embedded into our lives, we simply take no notice of them.

With certain brands however, this might not always work the way it should.

As we all know, the brain is a very complex organ. If for some reason it begins to associate a brand with something negative, such as a previous event or an emotion, that’s pretty much game over for them.

When you see the same brand, same person, same logo over and over again, all these associations with the company turns to background noise. You may not notice these changes at all, but your brain soon filters them because it can’t handle the volume at which it’s receiving. So the next time you see that associated brand, your brain switches on ‘filter mode’ and deals with the issue at hand, which may happen on a subconscious level.

Team tip #1: Be unique, be consistent and don’t become repetitive. Consistency in terms of design language is good. But consistency in general may lead to repetitiveness.

Quality is too low or not regular enough for my attention

When quality of the content is lacking or too infrequent to matter, you’ve got yourself a growing problem. This goes back to what I was talking about with Groupon, where one out of a dozen emails were interesting. But the same thing happens if it becomes too infrequently, where having fewer engaging messages will guarantee that people will not want to pay attention and engage with your brand.

You may not know this with Facebook, but if a campaign doesn’t perform up to par with others you’ve produced, the next time you send out a campaign, they’ll set the bar much higher than normal. That way you’ll have to work harder to get the same reach of engagement.

Team tip #2: Make sure to keep an eye on how each campaign is performing; if you notice a spike in engagement, try to figure out how and why this happened.

Team tip #3: Consider producing content that helps and entertains the customer. This might be an obvious one, but we’ve all seen the countless posts about “our latest product range” and “introducing the latest member to the team.” This might be relevant to some, but if the customer signed up just for insight, everything else is just background noise. In short, make sure to only focus on creating content that is insightful, rather than the frequency they get sent out.

Users have limited control over what they receive

Most websites still don’t offer the option to let the user choose the frequency they get emailed, which in my opinion is quite frustrating. If you send out regular emails, why not give control back to the users and let them choose how often they want to receive those emails.

Team tip #4: Even better, give them the choice to choose what type of emails to opt into, be it marketing tips, educational, etc.

 

In short:

  • Keep an eye on how well (or not) your content engages with the audience – if you fall short in an area figure out why that’s happening.
  • Bad marketing is just as bad as having no marketing at all.
  • Don’t sell your services all the time; make sure to create engaging content that is also educational.
  • All companies should use brand guidelines right? The same should apply for your newsletters. Create a brand focused template and stick to it!
  • Sometimes campaigns don’t always need to be about the services that your company offer. How about creating a softer campaign that subconsciously draws the reader in while promoting your brand.

Make 2015 The Most Successful Year Yet!

It’s come to that time of year again, where we leave the slumber of our homes to start work anew. So why not make 2015 the most successful year yet by improving your company image?

Work with MeeCreative to implement these core elements to help your business grow and become more profitable:

It’s impossible to understate the importance of an effective logo; it’s the first thing people see when searching for you on social media, receiving your business card, visiting your website, or walking into your office. Your logo is the public face of your company, so it’s important that it looks its best.

A tag line / slogan incorporates your company’s most important benefits in a single phrase or sentence. Successful tag lines are great for marketing and even better for memorability, and including one alongside your company’s logo is a great way to present yourself in the public eye.

Although on paper it is easy to separate a brand identity into its separate parts, it’s difficult to put them together in the first place. Logo, name and all other brand elements must work together to paint a much bigger picture; giving your brand a graphical DNA is essential to helping people recognise and understand your company effortlessly.

Printed media is a big part of showcasing your company both directly and indirectly. You can include as few or as many elements of your company’s brand as you wish depending on the type of item, but keeping business cards, invoices, and even internal memos within your company’s brand guidelines helps to solidify your image in the customers’ minds.

Having a website that effectively portrays the character and values of your company is more important today than it has ever been. With more and more people searching for services on mobile devices, your website is more often than not both the first and the most used point-of-entry into your company’s services. Making sure your website fits your company image makes all the difference in the world.