Design an Office for Millennials and They Will Come

If it feels like millennials rule the workplace, it’s because they do. By 2030, they’ll make up at least 75% of the American workforce. Millennials are often critiqued for being entitled and having overly high expectations, but performance marketing expert and entrepreneur Eyal Gutentag believes that companies would do well to rise to their demands as it will only make them a more high-performing business in the long run. But first you need to attract millennials to you, and their discerning interests cover everything from corporate culture to office design. So, while you may not be able to change everything overnight, here are some design suggestions to enable you to work towards a more millennial-friendly environment.

Flexibility

Far from wanting their own desk, millennials want the freedom to work where they like within the office – whether that be with a table full of people, on a desk for one, or even on the roof. Make sure you have power sockets and USB ports everywhere as you never know where they might want to gather inspiration.

Light

You might not have the biggest office space, but if you can create natural light and space with what you do have, you’ll stand out from the crowd – think huge floor-to-ceiling windows. But if that’s unrealistic, there are many light solutions that recreate an outdoorsy feel.

Comfort

Millennials aren’t your typical nine-to-fiver – they pull all-nighters, they sit down for hours, and they’re restless. They’re looking for comfort: an office space they can chill out in when they take a break, ergonomically designed furniture – free food and drink, even.

With a little bit of thought, you can create an innovative, fun, and creative work environment in which any millennial would be proud to work. And if you’re stumped for ideas, turn to social media as it is ripe with design inspiration from the audience themselves.

Digital Channels for Sponsorship

Getting digital marketing sponsorship right is a challenge.  Activations using digital channels depend on robust messaging strategies and careful persona creation.  In this presentation we have a case study from Air New Zealand and Akzo Nobel Volvo Ocean Race which you can adapt to your needs.

Rebecca was speaking on the topic of digital channels for sponsorship at the Conferenz Sponsorship Summit and NZ Marketing Summit joint event.  Here are the slides and a video of my keynote.

 

Thanks to Lana Mihelcic who kindly shot the video for me.  Connect with her if you want a dynamic sports event manager or have contacts in sailing and The Americas Cup.

Instagram B2B, Business marketing using Instagram,

Tips to increase your B2B Instagram followers for better long term success

Tapping Into Instagram: Increasing Your B2B Followers

Instagram B2B, get B2B instagram followers, Creative Agency Instagram, social media agency New Zealand

Instagram for business

With the above in mind, it’s important to remember that increasing your B2B Instagram followers is more than just finding the best way to “appeal” to your market. Rather, you should start learning how exactly you can tap into the interests of B2B presence on Instagram and using that to your advantage. Thankfully, getting “the hang” of this process can be trained. Here’s how it works:

  • Buy Instagram followers to offset growth: This is a temporary strategy, but it might work to get you a headstart. While you’re planning for better ways to pursue your followers, you can actually avail services that acquire followers for your resources. This is a good way for you to at least have a support system in place so you won’t risk losing your followers when you try a new strategy. Remember, though, that this isn’t a permanent solution. It’s best to tackle this matter as a worst-case scenario or a short-term solution, but never as something you should rely on. It’s still important to learn how to actually gain followers in an efficient and natural way, In speaking of,
  • Prioritise investments towards organic growth: A lot of marketers measure the success of their social media campaigns based on the number of likes, shares, or engagements they acquire over the shortest period of time. While this does display efficiently, it’s not quite the practical approach to build your branding. Remember that branding takes time, and as such gaining brand attraction needs time as well. You should gear your campaigns towards getting long-term followers, not short-term ones. Make sure your hashtags and keywords are easily-recognisable and remembered. Also, make sure your initiatives and campaigns are easy to remember.
  • Add humanity to your brand by doing community projects and socialising: Make sure you use positive visuals when you create Instagram posts, as displaying your service, products or brand involved in positive action can greatly boost appeal to you. For instance, if you go for action-oriented pieces such as cute animals, holiday destinations, or anything that shows a story, it’s likely that people will grab their attention. Make photos you can make stories revolve around them, that way you have a way of engaging your consumers and encouraging them to talk with you and have conversations with them.
  • Encourage your users to interact with you, but don’t be pushy: You can also try to encourage your users to interact with you without being pushy. You can start by making a particular hashtag trend among your brand employees and to encourage people to use that hashtag to share their stories. Give them a reason to be encouraged and motivated to participate in your campaigns by involving them, as it’s a powerful tool to secure brand followers. Make sure your initiatives always have space for you to interact with your customers.
  • Get your hashtags primed and ready: When you want to pursue better followers for your Instagram page, you’ve got to remember that #hashtags are where it’s at. However, don’t just rely on what hashtags are currently trending. Try to tap into hashtags B2B companies in your niche will use as well – and you can often do this by doing proper keyword assessment. Search for keywords that rank high but aren’t used as much by your competition. Tap into those keywords and try combining them with hashtags that actually trend. That way, you can tackle both attracting natural Instagram followers and those searching the internet and happened to stumble upon your page.
  • Always remember to keep track, assess, evaluate, and adjust your parameters: One of the fatal flaws in making any strategy in any business is that a lot of higher-ups tend to stop assessing the moment they started to see success. This shouldn’t be the case. Regardless of the performance of your campaigns, be sure to always have systems in place that promote assessment and evaluation of performance. This can be through regular meetings, weekly submission of reports, or even having a software with easy-to-access analytics. This puts you in a position of advantage as you’re always going to be able to assess your performance so far and make adjustments as needed.

The Takeaway: Tapping Into Instagram, Social Media For Long Term Marketing

With the above tips in mind, it’s important to remember that Instagram is actually more than just a platform for fancy images. It’s actually quite a powerful platform to reach your clients and audiences from an aesthetic standpoint – and a lot of successful marketing pushes nowadays do rely on the creative and innovative use of graphics. With this in mind, it’s important you remember and take note of the tips above in order to gain traction with your B2B campaigns, and get more customers in the long run.

6 Ways To Successfully Grow Your Business

Growing your business can be challenging if you do not know where or how to start. Your financial survival depends on it, but what are you doing to grow your enterprise?

Photo by Alesia Kazantceva on Unsplash

Growing your customer base is one solution, but how do you attract more customers? What will convince people to purchase products and services from you as opposed to someone else?

Scaling a business is difficult, but the following steps and strategies will help you.

1. Innovate Your Product or Service

The products and services that you are creating should be innovative and unlike anything else that exists on the market. It will take some trial and error, but don’t be afraid to take risks if you are creating a new product.

Ask yourself whether or not this meets a need in society, and how it is different to everything else that exists in that marketplace.

2. Know who your customers are

 Outline who your customers are from the start because every product or service you are developing will be targeted at this individual.

Remember to ask for customer feedback, and listen to it. Good customer service will create loyal consumers that will spread the word about your company to their friends and family members.

3. Use social media to your advantage

Social media offers you the possibility to communicate with your customers on a daily basis. You can receive insight into your target audience, and find out more information about their behavior and purchasing habits. There is no easier way to attract new customers than through posting quality content and engaging with them online.

4. Network and build relationships

Attend industry-relevant networking events that will allow you to build relations with key players in your market. This could include customers, clients or investors.

5. Protect your reputation

 Your company’s reputation is essential for strong employee relations, for customers to purchase products from you and for clients and investors to trust you.

You should remain transparent and be realistic about the promises you are making to the general public. You should be able to deliver on them, after all.

Do you know what to do if your reputation is brought into question? What if one of your employees makes a fraudulent injury claim, and they are demanding an excessive amount of compensation for it? Look for red flags that would state the injuries are fake; such as exaggerated pain from minor scratches, and contact the legal injury attorneys at Charleston Law to represent you.

6. Research the competition

Know who your competitors are so that you can create products and services that are different. How do they market to their customers? What do they price their products at? Learn from their mistakes to improve your own performance.

Growing a business takes effort and it can be mentally exhausting. No successful enterprise was built overnight, and no one said it was easy, but with strategic oversight and dedication, you will start to notice results. All of your hard work will pay off when you see your business steadily growing and generating more profit as time goes on.

 

Shelly Davies book, sweary

“Hey Y’all…” Shelly Davies book launch

Join us for the Auckland launch of Shelly Davies’ new book Good Shit I’ve Learned.

Shelly Davies book, sweary

The unexpurgated version

Shelly Davies book, swear words excluded

No swearing in this version

Yes, She is a REAL WOMAN who swears not just for emphasis, but because it communicates meaning.

Why?

Rebecca and Shelly have danced around each other’s online profiles and commenting on things for at least a couple of years. And this is our first party we’re hosting together.

You might have heard… Shelly wrote a book! It’s so good that Creative Agency Secrets want to help her sell a few copies AND get you facetime with the raw, sensible life-advice which is cram-packed into this volume.  We”re organising a book launch – more on that below and link to get tickets.

** When I read the book, I knew I wanted to give copies to my friends – it’s that sort of a book. **

You know how you sit around with wise girlfriends and guyfriends and talk shit and love on each other and share cool stuff you’ve learned and just generally lift each other up, because, #love? That’s what this book is – a collection of good shit I’ve learned, that brings me joy, and has helped me become, well, ME. And I hope it’ll help you become more YOU.

This event ticket INCLUDES a copy of Shelly’s book – but wait – there are 2 versions……

Oh and FYI… YOU who’s cringing at her potty mouth…. Shelly has a NON-SWEARY VERSION. So don’t be put off – she thought of you!!  The book will be RELEASED on 22 September and costs $38.87 at bookstores. Your ticket price includes a FREE copy of the book (did I mention this already?).

So choose your ticket carefully because one gives you the warts-and-all sweary version of “Good Shit I’ve Learned” by Shelly Davies and the other ticket gives you the nicely-tidy-no-swear-words version of “Good Stuff I’ve Learned” by Shelly Davies.

And just bring a friend with you – or your teen child – or your auntie or business partner. They will thank you. I promise.

Who should attend?

Women. Women in business, women wanting to advance their careers, women who know that being self-aware is the pathway to freedom, success, joy.
Men. Men who work with women. Men who are challenged by the #MeToo and want to understand and not look like an idiot, men who want to understand their co-workers, their life partners, their children.

What will you learn that you can use?

It’s full of powerful thinking that can help us feel and behave differently in our lives, work, and careers. At the very least, it’s fucking entertaining – as is Shelly when you meet her in the flesh. 

Get your tickets to Shelly Davies live and in the flesh Auckland Book Launch. 

Oh, and you can watch Shelly’s TEDx talk “Write Like a Reader” so you can see her style.  And read her website to understand why she’s a Rockstar Writer.