Marketing Archives - Page 17 of 53 - Creative Agency Secrets

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

6 September, 2018/0 Comments/in Marketing /by Sudip Mutt

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

4 September, 2018/0 Comments/in Marketing /by Sudip Mutt

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.

“Hey Y’all…” Shelly Davies book launch

3 September, 2018/0 Comments/in Conferences / Exhibitions /by Rebecca Caroe

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

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.

What’s new in Search Engine Marketing 2018

31 August, 2018/0 Comments/in B2B, Marketing, SEO /by Rebecca Caroe

What is new in SEM for business? Rebecca Caroe discusses the Wild West of agency service providers and how to avoid getting ripped off by a marketing firm.

Louise runs the Creative Store – a recruitment and placement agency specialising in the creative industries. This is her interview with Rebecca published in August 2018. When starting our companies, Louise and Rebecca shared offices in the BizDojo and shared jokes about English sweets and beer!

Q. How do you define search engine marketing?

A. Anything you do for your business that gets it showing up in search results. So this can cover keyword SEO on your website, having a strong LinkedIn profile, guest articles, Slideshare presentations and advertising.

Q. Are many companies doing a terrible job of this?

A. It is my view that SEO service provision is a “wild west” there are a lot of cowboys. This is not just a supply side problem, it’s also caused by clients who do not brief well, are not experienced buyers and have unrealistic expectations of what is possible. We know that business owners come to our events because they want to learn. Many tell anecdotes about past experiences which didn’t go well. To challenge and counteract the wild west, I am part of a Facebook group called The Ethical Digital Marketing Community (EDMC) – you’re very welcome to join us, share and learn together. I certainly don’t claim to have all the answers.

Q. How do you identify your clients?

A. Our clients are businesses who sell to other businesses. Many are new to marketing and do not have in-house staff with expertise.

Q. You can spot pretty quickly where they are going wrong

Normally, they aren’t going wrong – they are getting started. For many, the part of their marketing which they notice is not performing is their website. It’s not showing up in search, they aren’t getting inbound enquiries and competitors are more prominent. We recommend they do a self-test using WooRank Checker or Hubspot Website Grader Tool and see what their website score out of 100 is. That identifies many of the areas where they’re underperforming.

Q. If clients wish to engage you, is this on a retainer or do you do a sweep of their work for a charge?

A. We do both. Unusually for an agency we are very happy to train and up-skill the client’s team and also work with existing agencies who they already have on retainer. Our strategic leadership allows both to deliver better outcomes for the client – and that is always the end goal. By having a clear strategy and goals we are able to brief agencies better, they work to a clear objective and the client trusts us both to get the results. It’s a win-win-win scenario.

Q. You are hosting an exciting event with Blair Enns in October about this subject – how do you put a price on your work – what will we expect to see from this workshop?

A. Blair is a world expert in how to win without pitching. October is his first event on the topic of pricing creative work. His thesis is that most creative firms under-price their skills and expertise. And so he teaches “value pricing” where you learn how to price the client, not the job. Watch Blair’s summary webinar and understand where you could improve http://pitchpack.co.nz/pricing-creativity-free-webinar/

Q. Who needs your services the most?

A. Owner-managed businesses where the owners don’t know modern digital marketing and are too busy to do it themselves.

Q. Where is the future of SEM going?

A. Deeper and wider into ever more businesses. Good SEM techniques are straightforward to apply to any business. I summarise this into – State what you do, Answer questions clearly and Keep your focus on local or niche audiences. Then repeat and improve.

Q. Any helpful tips and hints to our clients on their SEM and simples fixes they could be applying?

A. Sure – Three things. 1 do a website check and see what your score out of 100 is. 2 connect your Google Analytics and Search Console so you can see the queries driving your natural search traffic. 3 review where your last 10 new clients came from – was it referrals or web search or directories or public speaking or something else. Then double down on what’s working and do more of it.

Q. Where to from here for Creative Agency Secrets

A. More collaborative relationships with other agencies and mutual clients. I firmly believe that collaboration is an under-used business principle and it is working amazingly well for us. Who doesn’t want to look good in front of the client?

Air NZ, holiday styles quiz, CRM, Customer segmentation tool

AirNZ gamifys its customer segments

29 August, 2018/0 Comments/in B2C, Case Studies, Data, Golden Question, Social Media /by Rebecca Caroe

As a marketer I love being marketed to and so when I got invited by Air New Zealand to “Find out what’s your travel style?” I clicked to do the self-test quiz.

Backstory – Customer Differentiation for CRM

Air NZ Contest quiz, CRM, customer segmentation

Facebook advert for Air NZ Quiz

Brands need to be clear about different messages to different audiences. This is basic database marketing concept is easy to achieve using segmentation based on actions. The difficult part is identifying customer attitudes and desires which have not yet become actions.

Creating a differentiation matrix for your customer base is worthwhile and if you have never done one before, ask us to help you create it.

After you have actions plus attitudes then you can create a layered differentiation plan – plugging your customer journey and content plan with clear guidelines which your team will love because it makes it very easy to track progress towards your goals.

Here’s Per Caroe’s slide from our Unhurried Conversation in which we focused on discussing customer journey maps.

Back to Air New Zealand’s segmentation strategy

The team will have created the segments based on research data (Qual and Quant) but their challenge is how to populate their existing customers into the data grid. Here’s where the fun quiz fits. By running a campaign with a prize draw, they are creating a series of Golden Questions and the obliging customer fills in the quiz and creates a score which populates their preferences in the database. What follows is the clever part – using the insights gained, AirNZ will be cross-populating the insights into their current database of customers who did not fill in the quiz – by inference from other customers who look alike.

What I’m looking forward to is the communications that should follow – will I (A Lounger) get more customised messaging?

The Travel Style quiz told in screenshots

First up the quiz questions – you can guess the alignment between the four travel styles (lower down) and the questions if you choose to base your own quiz on this format.

Then the detail of the travel styles.

And lastly the up-sell in every travel style description – mine was for the Skycouch including a video and a transcript (very important for people using social without sound enabled).

Quiz step 1

Quiz question 2

Quiz question 3

Quiz question 4

Quiz question 5

Quiz outcome – Travel Lounger segment

Quiz result Savvy selector

Quiz result segment opportunist

Quiz result segment Goody gatherer

Skycouch advert from my segment profile

Skycouch video and 360 tour – with transcript

Unique Personalized Gift Ideas

28 August, 2018/0 Comments/in Marketing /by Rebecca Caroe

Gift giving can seem a little challenging when you’re feeling uncertain about what someone would like or use. Opting for a gift that has a personal touch is generally a good bet because it shows that you put thought into your gift and speaks to something that is unique to someone as an individual. Here are some creative personalized gifts ideas.

Subscription Delivery Box

Rather than give someone a single gift, you can get them a subscription to a monthly delivery of something that you know they love. Subscription boxes are available for almost everything. You can order monthly shipments of things such as someone’s favorite foods, health products, or fragrances. Your gift recipient will delight in getting new packages every month and continually be reminded of how thoughtful you are every month.

Custom Rewritable T-Shirts

You can use fill-in-the-blank custom t-shirts to write a unique message that you know someone will like. These unique designs allow writing to be erased and rewritten, so no worries about getting your message wrong because you can redo it. Alternatively, you can give the shirt with empty spaces to fill-in-the-blank so that somebody can write in their own unique message. It’s a fantastic way for people to express their individuality. They can also share an important opinion about a social or political issue without having to get behind a preordained label that doesn’t really convey how they feel or doesn’t accurately portray the issue. Despite dire circumstances, some groups who are advocating for critical change have fallen victim to mistakes in branding. For example, people have continually characterized the effects of destroying the environment as “climate change” when it should be referred to as “the climate crisis.” Ultimately, fill-in-the-blank t-shirts are an excellent gift to share a personal sentiment or to give to someone who cares deeply about calling attention to important causes.

Photo Throw Blanket

A throw blanket featuring a fun photo is a wonderful and inexpensive gift. You can put on virtually any type of image ranging from a posed family picture, a beautiful photo of scenery in an area that is special to someone, or a particularly photogenic pet looking cute or just goofy. Most custom photo throw blankets are made on a soft fleece material, so they’re super snuggly without being too heavy.

Personal gifts are a great option when you’re not sure about what to get somebody. Choosing a gift that’s fun, thoughtful, and personal is sure to make a positive impression.

An Intern’s Experience At CAS

16 August, 2018/0 Comments/in Marketing /by Creative Agency Secrets Team

Before I Start

Before I go into what I learned from Creative Agency Secrets and the benefits of the experience, I wanted to start by explaining what an incredible opportunity this really was. Very few people are given the chance that I was. An international work experience is absolutely invaluable. The fact that I was able to, halfway through my undergraduate degree, fly to another side of the world for two months simply to experience another culture and essentially take a potential career path on a “test-drive” is absolutely insane and I am deeply grateful to all the amazing people who helped me make the most of it.

So Let’s Talk About CAS

That being said, Creative Agency Secrets has been a strongly defining part of my time here and has introduced me to a variety of new skills in the digital marketing realm. It’s worth noting that, with the ever-rising presence of social media, mobile integration, and online interactions, digital marketing becomes increasingly more important to understand by the day. While it is true that print media and other forms of “traditional marketing” are not dead, as a member of the younger generation, I do know that what we see doesn’t come from newspapers or magazines, but from websites, Instagram, and YouTube. This is where the future of marketing lies and this is exactly what I was trained in during my time here.

The benefit of working for a small company like Creative Agency Secrets is that, as an intern, you aren’t simply filing papers or running errands; you’re applying your knowledge from the classroom to a real-world context with actual clients. During my time here, I did everything from plan, design and build landing pages in six different languages, to run social media campaigns for events. Just to highlight a few, these are some new skills I learned during my time here:

How to optimize blog posts with internal links to decrease a website’s bounce rate
How to use WordPress to code websites, landing pages, and press pages that enhance the user experience and achieve the site’s goals
How to create graphics, logos, and sites that align with a company’s brand and make the mission/message of the company clear in every aspect of the experience
How to plan a business promotion event with everything from creating the concept, planning the marketing strategy and adapting to hurdles
How to use a variety of programs send out newsletters, emails, and promotions

And much, much more.

However, I believe the most important thing I learned from my experience here was not the technical or business skills: it was the ability to face and overcome a challenge that arose in the process. This sounds straightforward, but it’s an underestimated and vital skill to have. I believe that regardless of the company or job, every project will have some challenge or problem; this is inevitable. What defines a strong worker from a weak one is the ability to effectively deal with these setbacks and turn them into successes. This isn’t really something that can be taught in textbooks or lectures, but rather, needs to be experienced. During my two months here, every single issue I encountered taught me a little more about how to deal with hurdles and that is more valuable than anything I have encountered here. While marketing platforms and relevancy of strategies might change over time, this is a skill that will stay constant through the years. For that, I cannot thank Creative Agency Secrets enough.

Shout-outs And Thanks

I would also like to give a small shout-out to the CAS team for being such a cool group. Thank you to Conrado for being the best supervisor I could ever ask for and teaching me so much over the past two months. I don’t think I have met a more dedicated and patient teacher in my life, and without you, I probably wouldn’t have learned half of what I did. Tabhitha, your incredible knowledge on social media and website design never fails to amaze so thank you for showing me how logical and interesting digital marketing can really be. And of course, shout out to Rebecca for helping me with my email writing skills and explaining whether I should say “bollocks” or “bugger”. CAS team, I will miss our morning coffee sessions, midday snack runs, and all of our amazing conversations. Thank you all for helping make my internship abroad such a valuable one. I can’t wait to take what I have learned to future endeavors and wish the company the best of luck as I move on.

Stay cool, fam.

Your favorite (favourite) intern,

Shubha

Dear Valued Customer – How Not To Write Customer Service Letters

15 August, 2018/5 Comments/in Case Studies, Copywriting, Marketing ideas /by Rebecca Caroe

From: Jim Bird On Behalf Of reviewus@XXXXX.com

Sent: 16 October, 2012 10:04 PM

Subject: Thank you for using XXXXXX – Please Review Us

Dear Valued Customer,

According to our records you placed at least one order through XXXX in September. Thank you very much for your business and may it continue for a very long time.

We at XXXX hope that you are very happy with our services and ask that you spend just a few minutes leaving us a review at either (or both if you would be so kind) of the below sites:

http://www.trustpilot.co.uk/evaluate/www.XXXX.com

http://www.reviewcentre.com/add-XXXX.html

Of course we would prefer a glowing 5 Star review, however we are also interested in any feedback, suggestions or ideas you may have.

Thank you once again for using XXXX, and please do not hesitate to contact us should you have any queries.

Kind regards,

Jim Bird

Customer Services Manager

What could be improved in this letter?

I find it incredible that this type of templated mass messaging is being used FOR THE FIRST COMMUNICATION to a customer.

Hey did someone just think – it’d be a great idea to get some customer feedback? What ho, Jeeves, let’s off and ask them to say we’re wonderful.

Crikey.

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When to Call AND Text (yes, both!) in Business Communications

14 August, 2018/0 Comments/in Marketing /by Rebecca Caroe

There are clear rules as to what forms of communication should be used at what times, and usually one clear, succinct message via voice call, Email, or text will suffice.

Business etiquette also has rules about over-communicating and bombardment, but there are some instances where BOTH a phone call and text message are needed to cover your bases. In any of the below scenarios, start with an immediate phone call. If there’s no answer, leave a message and follow up with a text.

If There is an Emergency

There are some statistics that show that about 90% of text messages are read within three minutes of receiving them so it is a great back-up system to have when you need it. If you have first left a voice mail about the emergency, following up with a text message is completely acceptable.

If There Are Any Kind of Last Minute Changes to Anything

We are still operating in a time when last minute changes to an expected plan merits a phone call. This is especially true if your client is waiting for or awaiting information from you, or if the change could potentially be bad news. Things do happen to cause last minute changes, but try to avoid this at all costs. It is incredibly rude to spring last minute changes on anyone, personally or professionally.

If You Are Returning an Important Call or Message

You should always try to answer the phone or respond within minutes when a customer reaches out. If for good reason you do miss a communication from them that is urgent, respond immediately. First use the method they used, then follow up with the other. This shows you are reliable and they can count on you; it builds trust and adds value to the relationship. Failing to do so will cost your business money and hard-earned reputation points.

There are always exceptions; you know your customer best and should, therefore, know what the relationship can and cannot tolerate. Communications technologies are useful tools and, used for good, will ensure loyal and repeat customers.

That is the lifeblood of business.