As marketers, we all want to avoid wasting precious dollars on campaigns that don’t work. If we have it our way, we’d like our strategies to be on point and to deliver results right away. But – and as much as we may like to believe it – it’s not all rainbows in the marketing world and we are bound to fall short numerous times before we get the right marketing recipe that will bring in money into our businesses. (Well unless you are using data management of some description…).

But fear of falling short should not render us impotent. Sometimes it is a case of not seeing the forest for the trees. But, the good news is, there are things that we can do to minimise our errors and create more meaningful and efficient campaigns that make our ROI worthwhile, these things can be achieved through a data management platform.

In this article, we’re going to dive into the role of data management platforms in data-driven marketing and how we can maximise one to make our work as marketers easier and more productive.

Leaning into Data-Driven Marketing

If you’re one of the marketers who rely on gut feeling, constantly telling yourself, I think this will work for my customers, then you are someone who needs to read on. Nowadays, it is hard to stand out as a brand by simply relying on your hunch, especially when there is so much data available for you to leverage. There’s no way you can predict what your target market will do or what their needs and behaviour will be except by analysing real customer information.

If you want to provide meaningful experiences and value to consumers (because let’s face it, this is what brings them back time and time again), beyond the obvious first sale, you need to invest in data-driven marketing which gives you useful insights into the preferences of your customers.

Why is data important in marketing?

We cannot emphasise enough the value and overlap between IT platform management and marketing, specifically, using customer data analysis from IT based initiatives. In fact, some of the most compelling benefits you can take away from shifting your marketing approach include.

• Clearer understanding of the target audience
• Better understanding of where they engage and when
• More ways to develop personalised advertising messages
• Engaging communication with your customers in the right channel

In short, solid analysis facilitated by a customer data platform manager, will enable you to target your customers at the right time and through the right promotional channel. Not only is this a more native experience and one which people engage with more, but it translates to more satisfied customers, increased revenue, and improved loyalty.  Who wouldn’t want that, right?

But how can you gather data to make your marketing efforts better and more targeted?

Types of Data

• First-Party Data. This is first-hand data that you collect from your customers and prospects when they use your website, subscribe to your email list, engage in your social media posts, download your app, and other related actions they do within assets that you own.
• Second-Party Data. This is information that you acquire from a partner company with whom you signed a data sharing agreement with.
• Third-Party Data. This data is readily available for use by the public (you may need to buy it) and is usually collated by marketing research groups, website analysis companies, and analytics platforms.

In evaluating your market, your first-party data will provide the most useful information. However, to ensure accuracy in what you collate, we recommend you compare your own data with industry insights so that you can have a more intelligent approach to developing your branding and advertising strategy.

Tools You Can Use to Find Data

It is all good and well to tell you to use data-driven marketing but the catch is, , actually collecting data that matters. Top-level quantitative or qualitative data is not going to cut it. It is important you use the data-driven marketing tools – not only ones that allow you to collate information easily, but which allow you to leverage it for true insight. In our experience, there are a few key tools you should consider when gearing up.

• Google Data Studio – This is an amazing platform that allows you to import data Analytics, Google Ads, BigQuery, and spreadsheets. You can also integrate other tools including SEMRush, Ahrefs, and the like. And the interface is easy to use
• AnyRoad – If you want to gather data from live experiences to help improve your understanding of your customers’ buying behaviour, AnyRoad is a must for your business.
• GetFeedback – Learning about how satisfied consumers are about your product or service is key to helping you modify your offering to further meet the needs of the people who need it. A tool like GetFeedback, which you can integrate with SalesForce, gives you valuable data straight from the customers who used your product or service.

Creating a Strategy Using Data

It’s hard to collect information when you don’t know what you’ll be using the results for. As such before you even attempt to gather data, you should first establish clear marketing goals and objectives and postulate what you may want to do. Look at the current performance of your product or service and your company and then identify areas of improvement that you can use as the basis for your objectives.

Let’s say, for instance, that you’ve been paying to show your ads on Facebook and the Google Display Network but you notice that your business is not getting enough traction. Despite the paid ads, you are not getting sufficient leads to make you profitable. The questions you might have include:

• Are my ads not communicating well to my target audience?
• Am I showing my ads in the right place?
• Where are the majority of my target audience hanging out online?

First thing you should do, would be to develop some theories as to the causes of your business dilemma, and then counterbalance it with your end goal and of course, the data that you need to collect so that you can create a plan that will help you achieve your end goal.

This is when you can start collecting data from different sources. Remember to use a data IT management platform to organise the data and for you and your team to easily analyse the information collected later on.

At the start, use Google Data Studio or another simple to use insights tool that you find comfortable using as your data management platform. As you get more skilled, then look to change it up to a more powerful suite. But this should all come once you have proven it is working and have extra money as a result to spend on a better data management platform.

Once all of the data points you need are laid out properly, transform raw data into the metrics that you can use to devise a new data-driven strategy. You and your team can now brainstorm ways forward including campaigns you can launch as part of your experiential marketing plan.

But don’t treat it as a set and forget, make sure you are constantly monitoring and tweaking things to drive towards better performance.

A final thought on Data Management Platform

It may have once been the way to go, but today, it is not enough to expect that advertising alone will boost sales. You need to be more intentional and data-driven. By shifting to a data-driven approach, you can help reach your customers at the right time and you can craft more personalised messages that they will truly love.

If you are seeking help to make the shift to data management and analysis as part of your marketing strategy, consult us here at Three Piece Marketing today.

Most people hate receiving emails from businesses. I, for one, dislike it when I get too many messages from the same company, seemingly trying to shove their products and services down my throat. It just makes you want to click Unsubscribe as quickly as possible and never hear from them again. Yup email marketing can be polarising – especially if you are not reading your audience.

The truth is, people do not hit Unsubscribe because they don’t like the brand, they opt-out from the email list because the emails, instead of adding value to them, spam them with overly sales-sy messages or email them too often which is downright annoying.

But when planned out properly and sent out at the right moment, email marketing can prove to be a valuable supplement to your entire marketing efforts that will generate a high return.

Let’s find out when to use email marketing and how you can maximise them in your customer’s buying journey.

How you can benefit from email marketing

According to Statista, more than 293.6 billion emails were sent and received each day in 2019 alone, and that number is set to grow to 347.3 billion daily emails by 2022. Of that total, a large number are marketing emails:

Indeed, email marketing has become such a powerful tool for marketers because:

It helps with lead generation.

If done right, an email marketing campaign can produce valuable leads that give you a higher chance of getting a sale. Since subscribers are already familiar with your brand, reaching out to them is a warm(ish) lead and closing the deal that little bit easier.

It helps you build credibility.

Consumers these days are more connected than ever and this gives them more access to information than ever. With strong email marketing strategies in your arsenal, you’ll be able to build your company credibility and be more relevant in your industry.

It helps improve your communication with clients.

You know how important it is to build a strong relationship with your clients, but have you realised how important they are as a marketing tool themselves? Look after them, add value and be humble and they may just become advocates, helping to sell your brand and products above what you can do yourself.

It helps you determine what’s working and what’s not.

Email marketing services go a long way to helping you obtain the metrics you need to see how the rest of your marketing campaigns are performing. For instance, you can determine what type of content is mostly consumed by customers through your click-through rates. Do they like images? Videos? Content about super user tips? Learn from what they engage with and use it to improve your content to make it more effective.

 So, when should you use email marketing?

To build a good foundation for your email marketing strategies, you need to remember that an email is a personal experience for your consumer. Unlike advertisements that are targeted towards a general audience, an email campaign seeks to reach out to a consumer on a more personal level. It should be more targeted.

Think about it as sending that first message to a girl or guy you like.

• You don’t go in too brash and bold, or they will think you are arrogant.
• You don’t tell them why you are amazing, you let them find out slowly.
• You don’t shout at them or make them feel pressured, you give them the power to decide.
• You make sure your reputation matches what you are trying to say.
• It comes down to tone, what you have to say and being interesting.

Keep this in mind for your emails as well. With that in mind, here are some scenarios where email marketing is a smart strategy to employ:

To Inform your consumers about a new product, service, or promotion.

Send a short yet compelling email message that offers a sneak peek of a new offering. Tease at it, show the benefits, but let them be in control. Let them drive interest in your product and choose to visit your website or give you a call.

Keep in touch with your customers.

These people already know your brand and they’ve probably tried your product before. But the truth is, you can’t rely on your consumers’ memory to keep them loyal to your brand. After all, (as we said above) they are digitally connected and trying something new is simple. Sending emails is a smart way to keep in touch with customers where you can deliver timely and relevant information to them. Alluding to a “Soon-to-be-released” offer means you can then ask them to register interest/or give you a reason to contact them (see above).

Reach out to prospects who are not active on social media.

Although social media is used by almost everyone these days, you can’t pass up the opportunity to reach out to consumers who are not as active on these platforms.

With email marketing, you have the power to reach out to a demographic on a more personal level to give your audience useful content, and not just focus on sales.

Plus, you can use email to augment what you are saying across other channels.

What are some of the best practices in email marketing that you can adapt?

Email marketing should never be used to bombard your consumers and prospects with emails that don’t add any value to them. Here are some key points that you should remember when creating an email people want to engage with:

Have purpose.

Remember, your customers are receiving potentially hundreds of emails every day. Don’t be just another email.  Have a clear purpose for what your email is about and make the relevant. It could be to introduce a new product, to request feedback, or to offer a discount or promotion to your consumer.

Personalise your content.

Creating personas which group people is a good start to personalising email, BUT if you have the tools to embed insights truly relevant to each recipient (EG if they have visited your site and not transacted), then use them to make the emails you send truly valuable.

Stick to a schedule.

When it comes to email marketing, you need to distribute regularly but not too often or too little. It’s best to stick to a schedule so consumers can anticipate your content and make it part of their reading routine.

Keep an eye on your metrics.

Open rates and click-through rates are very important metrics that will allow you to know if your email marketing campaign is effective or not. You should keep an eye on these numbers to make the necessary adjustments to your strategies and create content that is not only readable but also shareable. This is already easy with all the modern email analytics tools available today.

The Bottomline

If done right, email marketing can do wonders for your business. As long as you know what your goals are and how you can implement them properly, you’ll get the benefits out of your email marketing campaign.

If you need help in developing a good email marketing strategy for your brand, we are here to help – drop us a line and one of the Three Piece Marketing team will get back to you.

We all know that the most important aspect of running a business is converting your audience into actual customers—READ: those who buy your product or service and hopefully, refer you to their friends, colleagues, and family.

Let’s say you have an amazing product or service but your target market doesn’t know you or they can’t see what differentiates you from the competition. This makes it difficult to grow revenue.

Timing is everything. If you hard-sell to tire kickers or those just canvassing, they may be turned off by your “aggression”. If you are running awareness campaigns to the component of your audience holding space in their cart, you risk losing them in the process.

It is important for you to evaluate your potential customers’ purchase decision journey. Identify how to approach them to raise awareness of your brand and then lure them into buying what you are offering. You can do that through a sales funnel.

So what is a sales funnel and how do you create one for your business?

Here is your step-by-step guide.

Sales Funnel Defined

A sales funnel, also known as a marketing funnel, is an essential marketing strategy and development tool that every marketer should use. Shaped like an inverted pyramid, it provides a breakdown of the stages or steps that a customer goes through in their purchase journey.

Now imagine you’re running an ecommerce website selling essential oils.  Before a person purchases your product, he or she could;

• Search Google for “essential oils seller AU”.
• Visitor sees an ad about your shop or discovers your business in the SERPs.
• The user clicks on the link and visits your online shop.\
• The user browses through your product listings and views the one he/she likes.
• He/she adds items to the cart.
• The user finalises the order by paying for it.

Stages in the Customer Journey Funnel

A funnel’s purpose is to provide sound promotional tactics based on the intent of your buyer. The funnel is divided into three or four stages that represent the steps the customer undergoes.

Awareness Stage

This is the stage where the buyer recognizes they have a problem that needs a solution.

Let’s use our example above on essential oils.

Let’s say that the person has regular headaches. He is looking for essential oils to relax his mind and lessen his stress at the end of the day.

You have the product he is looking for. Great! But… how will my target market know I have the answer to their problem? How will they know I sell essential oils to alleviate stress and headaches?

When your prospects are still in the awareness stage, remember it is not ideal to have a very salesy approach. It will just turn them off. Instead, make them aware of who you are and what you sell. Run a paid search campaign that uses the keywords that your target market uses in their searches. You can also post a link of your website on your social media channels using the appropriate hashtags and boosting the post to show to the right audience.

Alternatively, start showing informational content, for instance, about the health benefits of essential oils. You can put this online either as a blog post, infographics or even as a short video to grow  interest in your offering.

Remember, the goal is to provide useful information and to lead your target market to the next level of the funnel.

Interest and Evaluation Stages

In the ‘Interest level’ stage, people already know who you are. They are aware you sell essential oils. It is therefore crucial to lure them further into the ‘evaluation stage’, which you can only do with the right marketing business development actions.

Before making a purchase decision, they will often compare you to your competitors on the below factors:

• Price point
• Effectiveness of solution provided
• Promptness of delivery
• Returns policy
• Materials / ingredients used
• Reputation of company

So how do you approach this phase successfully? The simple answer is educate and engage your target.

Sharing customer testimonials detailing how your product has benefitted others is a great angle to approach. Featuring real people and highlighting their problems and solutions you’ve provided can help earn the trust of your target market.

The evaluation process will also be less complicated for potential buyers if you offer them a FREE TRIAL pack or a similar promotion in exchange for their email addresses. PLUS, once you have their personal information on file, getting in touch and utilising an email remarketing campaign will be easier and more succesful.

The key thing to remember at this point is, your audience is closer to making their purchase decision. Don’t let them go. Give them valuable content that will help make the decision process easier.

Purchase Stage

This is the final step in the sales funnel. Your prospective buyer has identified his problem, sought for and investigated the solutions in the market, and finally narrowed down the options with the final choice. What needs to be done at this point is entering the payment details and clicking on the BUY or ORDER button.

A good way to hook the customer is to offer something of value to them at that exact moment. For instance, you can offer an exclusive discount if the person orders in a timely manner. Always capitalise on personalisation so that the customer feels special; this emotional tug will contribute to their final decision of purchasing from you.

After the Conversion, What Happens Next?

Your role as a marketer should not end when the buyer finally purchases your product. In fact, business marketing development efforts need to be undertaken post-purchase in order to convert your buyers into advocates of your business.

Sending them a thank-you email or a voucher for their next order will make a huge difference in your reputation as a business. Your customer will most likely refer you to their peers, which will be PLUS points for you.

Remember, at the end of the day, it is by treating your customers right, even after the end of their transaction with you, that will keep you relevant and loved in this highly competitive industry.

“It’s much easier to double your business by doubling your conversion rate instead of doubling your traffic.” This is what online marketing pioneer, Bryan Eisenberg, said. He believes that businesses focus on the wrong side of advertising. Instead of managing campaigns – specifically a marketing campaign –  that prioritise paying customers and those who are already prepared to purchase, many marketers are purely focussed on bringing in traffic to their websites. There needs to be balance.

This shouldn’t be the case. Instead of spending money, predominantly on making the audience aware of your website, marketers should focus on converting their website traffic into sales, which is only possible if you build a solid marketing campaign as your foundation.

Whether you have a $5000 or a $100 monthly budget, the truth is, you want to bring in as many purchases from your target market as possible, right? It is therefore important for you to understand how to plan a campaign that will get the most out of your budget and the time you spend on your promotion. And at Three Piece, that is our core focus – helping you spend less on production and more on bringing business.

So, what are the details you need to gather before launching an effective marketing campaign? Here’s what the brains trust at Three Piece Marketing have to say about it…

Detailed Audience Persona

Successful marketing and campaign management means effectively identifying your customer, audience, or buyer persona.

Managing various marketing campaigns is an exercise in targeting. Hone in on who can, and will likely, buy your products and services. Delve into their demographics, gender, age ranges, livelihoods, income ranges, buying psychology, and habits. By knowing how they tick, you can tailor your advertisements properly without wasting a lot of your marketing budget.

Improve your targeting by grouping your audience into four categories: spontaneous, methodical, humanistic, and competitive.

• Spontaneous buyers tend to just go by catchy titles or headings to convince themselves to purchase.
• Methodical people, meanwhile, will need detailed product reviews. Competitive individuals may respond better to marketing campaigns that benefit their status in society while Humanistic buyers will look for human dignity, compassion, and similar approaches before parting with their money.

Success Measurement Factors

A campaign management system is incomplete without key performance indicators (KPI’s). These should not be vague – more than being smart and measurable, they must be the right factors to measure and conversion-driven in order to not waste any of your marketing budget on simply attracting visitors to your website.

Aside from measuring sales and profit margins, ensure you set a timeline for your success measurement factors and monitor conversion rates closely.

Eisenberg gets it

“Most business websites often do not have a traffic problem. Instead, they have a conversion problem.”

Statistics state that for every $92 marketing spend on traffic generation campaigns, only $1 is for conversion drives.

It is important that you prevent this from being a statistic you relate to. Start with conversion optimisation at the forefront of your mind. Make sure the amount you are spending on advertisements is cost-effective when considered against factors such as what ads are encouraging visitors to buy what you’re offering and how much you are spending.

Persuasive Marketing Content

Creating persuasive content is essential to marketing and campaign management. According to an in-depth study that interviewed over 500 marketers, content marketing is considered “the second most important future skill for marketers.”

In particular, persuasive marketing content is what you should aim to achieve each time your business launches an advert. What exactly classifies as persuasive marketing copy?

Marketing-Schools.org provides three specific elements of persuasion marketing:

• Structured communication – have control of the conversation between you and your target market. Be sure as to which funnels you are letting them experience.
• Storytelling and copywriting – connect with your audience through the power of stories and the emotions those narratives can stir.
• Neuromarketing – apply the right psychology to your marketing messages and aim to tap 90% of the brain’s decision-making process that happens in the subconscious.

Implement these techniques and see your conversion rates soar.

Solutions to Conversion Rate Obstacles

Employ insights-driven marketing by carefully analysing customer behaviour and preference data. By pouring over the numbers and understanding why and how your consumers interact with your offers, you’ll be able to more easily convince them your services are valuable.

Additionally, you can use the information to grow your business by creating supplemental products and services. You can use the data to inform your future campaign management system and marketing decisions, as well as empower your team to cross-sell or upsell more successfully.

A Word to the Wise, however: Carefully check the button labels and functionality on your website and see if they are resulting in conversions. Go over headlines or headings as well. See if the forms are customer-friendly and if there are any improvements you can make to the marketing copy and images on your webpages.

Effective Marketing Technology and Channels

Due to an influx of options; identifying which marketing technologies and channels to use can be a headache.

Start with conversion analysis tools. Good examples are Google Analytics, Website Optimizer, Website Testing Tools, BitBuckets, and Runa. If you are a heavy user of Facebook, Instagram, or other social media platforms, make sure to take full advantage of the analytics tools they provide their users.

If you are dealing with shopping cart abandonment, which is an ubiquitous issue for most e-commerce site owners – check out CafePress. This is an online shop that marketer Bryan Eisenberg worked on. It should give you plenty of useful ideas on how to improve your own shopping cart system.

Cohesive Customer Privacy and Security Plan

Online communications company, Zoom, are currently receiving coming under intense scrutiny for the mishandling of their customers’ private information and messages. And other big names such as Facebook and Google have not gone unscathed when user privacy is concerned. Learn from their mistakes and react – you have the power with your size to be faster. Ensure you have up-to-date privacy policies, advise users how you are using their data and keep it safe!

When you manage campaigns for your marketing plans, ensure that your consumers’ data is secure. Inform your customers that you are taking the necessary steps to keep their data safe. This will help with your brand trustworthiness as well as increasing conversion rates.

Key Takeaways for your Next Marketing Campaign

For marketing and campaign management to be successful and worth your ad spend, do not focus too much on traffic generation that you forget to allocate resources on targeting and conversion endeavours.

Make sure you dedicate planning time on all of the considerations outlined above in order to ensure a cohesive, cost-effective, and profitable marketing campaign.

With everything going on in the world, it may seem hard to know how to build, let alone ensure your brand development is on track. And as you sit there contemplating everything deciding how to either arrest a fall in revenue or capitalise on new opportunities you may find that you start to second guess yourself. Working from home, (in ISO as has become the catchphrase) comes with inherent issues (and advantages) and one of these is that you don’t have the ability to bounce ideas off co-workers as easily as you do when face-to-face. In fact, you may find that as you start figuring out how to pivot that questions and issues start to cloud your mind and, because you don’t necessarily have a team around you to discuss things through like you would at work, you may find you are getting confused which direction to take.

WHAT should our logo look like as we evolve Does it need to change?

WHO are our target market now?

HOW should we position our business with the target market?

ARE we evolving?

WHAT differentiates my brand from the competition?

There will be plenty more of these and answers that seem to be just beyond your field of vision. The key is to take some time out and look at your brand development plan.

At Three Piece Marketing, we understand some of the skepticism surrounding brand development and marketing. After all, it is challenging to connect the dots between the people you are targeting and the product you are offering and at times people think it is as easy as having a great product and a solid offer. But the reality is it is more complex – customers expect end-to-end service which means you need to consider how your brand is perceived at all touch points, not just in the lead up to purchase. Given this, we wanted to give you an easy-to-follow guide to help you build your brand in what is likely to be one of the more challenging years you are likely to face.

#1 – Determine your brand’s purpose.

When you get down to the very heart of it, what is your brand all about? And no, it’s not just about the product or service that you’re selling. It’s who you are as a company and what great accomplishments you wish to achieve. There should always be at least one lofty goal that drives you forward in every decision you make as if it is too easy to achieve, you will never truly stand out.

So, ask yourself why you exist as a business. What makes you different from similar enterprises? What problems do you solve for your customers and, most important of all, why should people care?

Once you’ve figured out what gets you up every morning to do what you do, then you can start making plans for your brand development marketing. Make sure you have a story you can tell to your customers so they know what you stand for. IF you don’t have a story…. Why would they want to engage you?

#2 – Identify your target customers.

The whole world can’t be your client. Trying to keep up and deal with all the different customer profiles would drive your marketing and sales teams to distraction. Instead, you need to keep a narrow focus on those who would derive the most benefit from what you’re offering. Remember, the customer needs to be at the centre of all you do.

Get specific and find out details about the lifestyles and behaviours of your primary consumers. Determine why they look to buy from your industry and build a buyer persona that lists the characteristics of your target demographics. Determine their ages, locations, genders, incomes, and education levels.

Then, discover the motivations and pain points that compel them to take action. For brand development, Internet marketing can be a vital tool. So make sure your analysis takes into account usage trends including sites visited, social media, key influencers etc. Take all this information into account when formulating your marketing strategies.

#3 – Find out about your competition.

When you’re just starting out and you take a look at your more established competitors, you may feel you could never catch up and reduce the gap between their businesses and yours. But herein lies the key to success. You can learn from the mistakes they’ve made.

Study the competition and what worked for them, and pay special attention to what didn’t work. Their failures can provide you with invaluable insights that would be useful for your marketing brand strategies development. Create a spreadsheet that helps you compare the different aspects of each competitor’s brand identity, then note their success rates. Pay special attention to the quality and consistency of their messaging, and how customers respond to their marketing efforts.

#4 – List the qualities that are unique to your brand.

Once you’ve done your research on both your target customers and competitors, it’s time to identify what makes you different in the market. This difference should clearly set you apart from your competition while making you attractive to clients.

Don’t just focus on the apparent features of your products or services. Instead, determine the value that you offer in terms of experience. How will your service or product make things better for your customers? Why should people choose you over another business? Your responses will help determine the best way you can position yourself in your chosen industry.

After you’ve answered those questions, you can begin executing the rest of your brand development strategies marketing plan.

#5 – Define your Brand Identity

This part can be the trickiest (which is why we offer it as a current component of our portfolio) but it is definitely the most rewarding for your brand. Determining (or for established businesses, refining) your brand identity and as part of that your tone of voice ensures you have a platform for consistency, accuracy and delivery.

Ensure you interrogate yourself and your brand values thoroughly, so that what you get is not just what you want, but who you actually are. Involve others from the company where you can so you get a truthful and holistic view.

#6 – Create your messaging strategy.

As part of your brand identity you will define your tone of voice. You will have also, as part of this process developed a list of things you excel out, identified pain points and know what you want to do. The intersects of these areas becomes your marketing opportunity. Now it comes time to craft the right messages for your target audience.

Make sure you are keeping your messaging simple, that there is value for a customer and that you can back up what you say. Consistency, is the key to success – especially when it comes to brand development.

#7 – Create a content marketing strategy.

In the digital age, content marketing is shaping up to be more efficient than traditional marketing when it comes to increasing a company’s visibility and reputation. It’s because this branch of marketing makes use of educational content in order to attract and nurture leads. It provides value right away, so potential customers become more receptive to a brand’s efforts to make a connection.

When that connection is established, it becomes easier to build the trust needed to develop a relationship with a prospect, turning a potential customer into a loyal one.

#8 – Create or revisit your website.

Having your own website is one of the most important brand development tools you can employ. It is also a massive proof point – a destination where your audience go to find learn about you and what you offer. It also serves as a repository for the online content that you will use to engage your audience and improve your search engine optimisation (SEO) efforts.

You might be wondering if you really need a website when there’s social media. You can definitely post content on your accounts, but think about this: Do you really want to exclusively rely on a third-party platform you have no control over?

By all means, establish a social media presence. It’s great for reaching out to and interacting with customers. But having your own website is vital because it helps to establish your legitimacy and brand identity.

#9 – Create a marketing toolkit.

Develop other essential marketing tools for your business. These can include brochures, customer presentations, sales sheets, pitch decks, infographics, videos, etc. The information contained in these materials should highlight both your key offerings and brand identity. Make it easy for your sales teams to use and share these tools when interacting with clients.

#10 – Keep working at it.

The hard part’s over, right? You’ve already got your brand name, logo, tagline, website, and toolkit. You’ve done all your research and you know all about your customers as well as your competitors. Don’t take it easy yet. There’s still more work to be done.

This is where you keep close track of what’s working and what’s not working with your plan. Is your target audience responding favourably to your messaging? Is there any confusion about your brand positioning? Are you seeing successful results from all your efforts in building your brand?

Develop a system that will help you track the implementation of each stage of your plan so you can identify what aspects need to be adjusted in the future. Tracking will help you formulate better strategies that will, in turn, make your brand stronger.

If you would like any help with your overall brand development, or a specific item listed above, we’d love to have a chat. Send us an email and tell us a few details so we can get started.