Honey Birdette – Marketing Masterstroke or Mistake?

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Honey Birdette – Marketing Masterstroke or Mistake?

The over-sexualisation of women in advertising appears to indicate that sex still sells in 2017 … or is it a trope that lingers around from times gone by?

From UltraTune ads to Wicked Campers, the objectification and at times sheer disrespect for women and their bodies is ubiquitous. Morally, it’s wrong – all of the research indicates that this kind of advertising leads to a higher support of sexist beliefs and an increased tolerance to sexual violence.

From a marketing perspective, it’s complicated. We certainly do not condone any of the aforementioned advertising campaigns, but we are interested in why they exist. When global giants like Dove, L’Oreal and Audi are attempting to make a statement on gender equality, you would assume that the rest would follow. But ad campaigns like this one are continually rolled out, and every magazine seems to have toned abs and pert butts splashed across their covers.

Is this because half naked women catch the eye, or because risque advertising campaigns are guaranteed to create a publicity storm, allowing brands to reach millions organically. Possibly a bit of both and Honey Birdette claim the campaign has led to a “spike” in sales.

This approach might work for Honey Birdette’s consumers, but does it resonate with the majority of women? And would it work for other businesses? Larger companies are pivoting away from such campaigns, because they know the general public expect more in 2017. Plus, promoting body shapes that are unattainable makes the consumer feel bad about their own bodies, which leads to more covering up, and less stripping off. And that is something lingerie companies DON’T want to happen.

So for these reasons, this week, it’s a Marketing Mistake.

What do you think? Let us know on FB or drop us a line.

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Written By: Joshua Britt

Marie Claire – Marketing Masterstroke or Mistake?

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Marie Claire – Marketing Masterstroke or Mistake?

This week we’re looking at Marie Claire’s limited edition magazine cover celebrating the success of the marriage equality vote in Australia.

In 2012, the magazine ran a similar ‘limited-edition cover’ with Aussie celebrities declaring their support for the cause. We can safely assume it was a success at the magazine stand, because they’ve done it again.

The importance for brands to align themselves with social causes is becoming more important and the impetus has been the realisation that ‘hot button’ topics are a phenomenal way to spark conversations on social media. Also, the same-sex marriage result is an historic moment, meaning that this cover really is a one-off.

Marie Claire’s base of readers are middle to upper class women, who are relatively well educated and this group showed some of the highest levels of support.

Then there will be some who will buy this edition purely for sentimental reasons, so it’s sure to send sales skyrocketing.

So, what’s the verdict?

This is most definitely a Marketing Masterstroke.

What do you think? Hit us up on FB or drop us a line.

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Written By: Joshua Britt

Should I go with a big agency or small agency?

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Should I go with a big agency or small agency?

Digital Matters – Bigger Agencies Vs Small
Should I go with a big agency or small agency?

I had to laugh when meeting a potential client the other day… let’s call her Jane… Jane is a middle aged entrepreneur.

We had met me at an event and we got to talking, as you do, and Jane spoke of her desire to find a big agency to help market her product. She had a marketing background herself and loved the idea of working with the BIG names. Jane asked me about about my business and I said I thought I could help her with her marketing challenges. As I discussed my business she said “I’ve never heard of Remember Creative”. I explained we were small, but growing. Later on in the event we had connected on LinkedIn and after looking at my profile “oh wow you have worked for X,Y and Z… You must be really good” I sheepishly thanked her for her kind words. As the conversation drew to a close she said “Why don’t you work for the big guys? You’re clearly good enough”.

I pondered her question on my way home and I thought there was value in sharing some thoughts on big vs small agencies…

 

In the current climate (I know there are digital climate change deniers out there but it’s hard to refute that digital has changed the marketing conditions) it’s hard to know where to put your money when it comes to marketing.

As in-house teams are getting larger (http://www.agencynewbusiness.com/combating-the-rise-of-in-house-agencies/), and depending on which blogs you frequent the generalist and specialist are both growing in prominence, the waters are becoming increasingly muddied – even for the well initiated.

Caveat – I am writing this, and work for, a small agency myself so this list is obviously as impartial as they come.

Less Overhead
There is a bulk that comes from being big that’s the nature of the beast. So if bang for your buck is a major concern then a smaller boutique digital agency might be for you.

History of success
There is a certain comfort going with a much lauded agency – the runs on the board can speak volumes but will the creative team that made you consider company X be the same that will be working on your project?
And yet, the pocket sized agency will usually have a director who have, themselves, been the creatives that have run and been responsible for a number of amazing campaigns – which in turn led to the genesis of owning their own company.

Less polished at presentations
This is a feather in the cap of big agencies for sure, they have the resources to throw at a presentation or pitch meeting and they are doing it far more regularly. Their presentation game is tight!

More Importance
Your business might mean that much more to the smaller agency and with that comes added benefits of your digital agency going that extra mile to make you happy.

A one stop shop
A smaller agency may not be a 360 degree agency which means that you might need to go to more than one source or that the agency will need to collaborate with another niche agency to make the grand vision you have into a reality. This can be a positive in the case of the specialty agency as they have to choose agencies that do good work (to make them look good) and that work well with them (to make everything run smoothly).

More Access
With a smaller creative agency you will find that you have much more access. You might find yourself regularly conversing with the boss or Creative Director rather than a newly vetted project manager.

Familiarity
Perhaps intertwined with access is familiarity – The high demand, churn and burn nature of a bigger digital agency often means that you might have a different person running your account and different team members doing your work often. Seeing as you will quite often be conversing with the senior management and/or owner there is less chance to see the owner moving to another organisation.

And if nothing else, there is the simplest rule Follow Your Gut. Your comfort level with your new agency is tantamount to your sanity, progress and productivity.

If there is a level of apprehension then you will spend more time worrying, checking in and checking up on your new outlay and less time doing what you should be doing running your business.

Remember is a boutique agency and proud of it. If you would like to have a discussion about our processes. Here’s my email.

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Written By: Michael Menzies

How to increase your conversion rate on a budget

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How to increase your conversion rate on a budget

How to increase your conversion rate on a budget – CRO

Optimising your website to convert visits into sales and enquiries may be simpler than you’ve been led to believe.

The big multinationals constantly test and tweak every aspect of their sites to increase conversions, but that doesn’t mean you can’t apply their principles within a small team (and a reasonable budget).

Conversion Rate Optimisation demystified

Conversation Rate Optimisation or CRO simply refers to the process of tracking what your website visitors do – and what they don’t do – then making changes to increase the number of sales or enquiries coming through your site. In other words, it’s about finding ways to make more people buy your product or contact you, more often.

Good CRO starts with real user behaviour

The most important thing to remember about CRO is that it’s not about copying the latest online trend, it’s about what your users want.

CRO should always start with:

      How users get to key landing pages: Are they coming from organic search results, paid advertising, social media or other sites?

      Who your users are: Are they new or returning visitors? Where are they based?

      What they do next: Do they bounce straight off the landing page or continue through the user journey you’ve planned for them?

All this information can be tracked by platforms like Google Analytics or custom software. Once you have a clear picture of what’s happening on your site now, you can make plans about what you want to happen next.

Beware of anyone promising a huge increase in conversions who doesn’t talk about tracking what your audience is doing right now.

Test, tweak, then test again

You probably already have suspicions about what’s causing your users to leave your site before they convert. But before you launch a full website overhaul, start with one of these simple tests:

      A/B testing: Set up a new version of a landing page, then send half your traffic to the current version, half to the new one. It’s important not to change more than one or two things on the new page, so you know exactly what made the difference.

      In-person user testing: Sitting someone down with your site and asking them to complete a task is a great way to see where they get confused. But remember, this isn’t as objective as A/B testing. People tend to display more patience when they know their response may offend someone in the room.

      Mouse tracking: Tracking the exact moves a user makes while on your site can be very revealing, showing you exactly where they focus (and what they ignore). This is only one piece of the puzzle, but it could be the best way to figure out why no one is noticing that call/email/purchase button.

Make CRO part of your routine

Once you’ve tested and found the key weaknesses in your site, it can be tempting to simply make a few changes and call it a day. But CRO is a lot like physical exercise – one session isn’t enough to get real results.

This doesn’t mean you need to spend thousands of dollars or hundreds of hours tracking and testing. However, to see consistent conversions you should incorporate regular reviews and changes into your site’s lifecycle.

Want more?

Whether you’re starting a new site from scratch or looking at a full-scale rebuild, our team can help you put a strong CRO process in place.

To talk about your goals and simple ways to work towards them, get in touch today.

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The best SEO advice you’ll ever receive

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The best SEO advice you’ll ever receive

The best SEO advice you’ll ever receive

‘What should I do to get better SEO,’ people often ask us?

Their reasoning is usually that Google and other search engines keep changing the rules, so what they do today should be different to what they were doing yesterday.

We tell them that the best advice on search engine optimisation (SEO): give users the content they’re looking for and your site will rise to the top.

It’s such simple advice – yet so difficult to stick to when there are thousands of SEO companies out there promising a quick fix. Before you shell out for a ‘guaranteed’ boost in rankings, consider whether you’ve got these basics covered.

What do search engines want?  

Search engines vary in the methods they use to crawl and rank sites, but they’re all essentially hunting for content that is:

  • It’s not enough for your site to focus solely on the hard sell. To outrank the competition, it’s important to offer content that helps those looking for information, along with products and services. Ideally, your content will also be the kind visitors want to share with their network and other sites will want to link to.
  • Search engines look at the usability of your site as a whole when they serve up results. This means that everything from your site’s URL structure to mobile optimisation and internal links need to support a streamlined, logical user journey. If not, a more user-friendly option will outrank you.
  • Sites that are search engine friendly are those that meet key accessibility guidelines. All text content should be marked-up to reflect its importance in a given page hierarchy (not just for style). Meanwhile, essential non-text elements like images, banners and even embedded files need to have text equivalents that search engines can actually read.

What makes your SEO ranking drop?

  • Landing pages stuffed with keywords. We still hear stories of keyword stuffing and even find sites hiding keywords against a background of the same colour. This is a huge mistake that could get your site penalised.
  • Pretty, unreadable images. A full bleed, full colour landing page is lovely, but can a search engine read it? Everything you want your users to see needs to be readable by a search engine too. This goes for every element, from banners to buttons.
  • Black hat tactics. There are still so many SEO services out there promising huge, instant improvements for a fee. If it sounds too good to be true, it is. Search engines know about these companies and being connected with them risks a ban that could take months to lift.

Track and tweak to improve your SEO

Like any other aspect of good website management, SEO requires vigilance. Once you have an SEO strategy in place, it’s important to keep tracking your performance so you can find any drop in rankings early and take steps to counter this.

We know how important it is that your site ranks first and how frustrating it is to be outranked by competitors.

For expert advice on reaching your SEO goals, get in touch with our team today.

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Why strategy is key to digital growth

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WHY STRATEGY IS KEY TO HOW YOU USE DIGITAL  TO ENHANCE THE GROWTH OF YOUR BUSINESS

The digital environment is HUGE…with so many options to successfully reach your customers and promote your business – but many businesses think of Digital as some sort of abstract THING that sits over in the corner on its own – they have someone “look after the website” once or twice a year and they spend a little bit on AdWords but aren’t really sure if it does anything.

In the same vein, I don’t know how many times I have heard someone say to me “we’re doing some stuff in social – we’ve got a Facebook page”.

How many of you are like this?

If you are – don’t worry you are not alone but if you are it is time to change up your thinking – its time for a truly integrated and strategic approach to your digital marketing needs.

We have a wide variety of customers across a wide variety of industries and each face there own unique set of marketing challenges. So today I am going to take you through three examples of how your digital approach should be both inclusive and complementary to your REAL WORLD product and marketing initiatives and how doing  so will dramatically improve your business.

Your Database

We had a client that had a very nice website. They had got good traction with it and have over 3000 customer email addresses for interested customers who had previously enquired about their products.

When we began working with them on their new website – we asked them how they utilised their database.

“We don’t” they replied.

When we re-lunched their site, we also worked with them to develop a strategic approach to utilising their database to engage these already interested customers.

In a very short space of time – they have begun reaching out regularly to their database with a variety of content we have helped them generate. The upshot is they are regularly seeing 35%+ of that database reacting to their communications. They have improved there enquiry rate and generated sales they had not budgeted for.

We tied this approach directly to their traditional print offering – making the online offering for products that they wanted to move more quickly and thus differentiated the offers across print and digital – giving us real world feedback on the specific interest in the digital product offering but also using the instantaneous nature of digital to strategically promote products that had a shorter sales lead time.

Why?

Because they thought they were doing enough by having a website. If you have a database make sure you are using it. You are 60% more likely to sell to existing clients or clients that have been engaged by your brand previously, and like this client, you can use digital to compliment your existing initiatives and delver a different sales channel for your business.

Your Social Approach

We met with a client the other day. A well established business and they asked for some advice.

They were a logistical service business looking to communicate with their audience in the big bold world of social media.

So they began to tell me their “Facebook strategy”….. it involved finding some fun videos and images she felt were related to their business/audience  posting weekly. After a good ten minutes I stopped said client and asked – “so who are you talking too?”

Her response was “business owners looking for logistical services with a turnover of $20 million plus”.

I said – “Do you think these clients are searching for you on Facebook”?

Her response was simply – “but everyone is on Facebook right?”

There is some level of truth to this no doubt with almost everyone having a Facebook account, but just because everyone has one, doesn’t necessarily mean this is the most ideal way for your business to find its customers.

Whilst, I wouldn’t discredit having a Facebook presence in this particular example my recommendation would have been to look at some alternate social channels that perhaps better suited her business and her customers. And besides the channel selection – the other key consideration is content. Leveraging content from around the web is great, but in the case of this client they needed to truly showcase their skills and expertise – something that found content wasn’t likely to achieve

So embarking on a social path isn’t as easy as a few posts here and there – so consider investing in quality content – in the case of this client my recommendation was to create a YouTube channel and set aside some budget for some quality video content that showcased their capabilities and offered insights and advice (often what people are looking for).

Having worked with Taubman’s in the past – I can testify to the success of their approach using You Tube – https://www.youtube.com/user/TaubmansAustralia

What social channel you select is vital to the success of your approach. So consider who your customers are and where they are likely to be looking for your types of services online. Really consider the content – your content selection should show off your brand, your capabilities and it doesn’t have to be done with a massive budget – Here is a great example of a similar approach taken from a fantastic Aussie business: SORTED EVENTS

https://www.facebook.com/sortedprojectsandevents/videos/1171049916265447/

Now, Hailey’s audience is considerably different to the example I gave above and when you look at her demographic it makes total sense to be showcasing her content on facebook, but the principle remains the same –insightful content that is targeted!

Once you have created great content, however, don’t leave it in the digital space. Tie it back to your other activities and marketing initiatives.

In the case of Taubman’s, they brought there content to life at large housing expos and got the likes of Shaynna Blaze to work the crowd; SORTED are offering a range of paid short courses in event management building a paid product offering around a broader marketing objective.

The content will generate interest across her broader service offering but importantly she has considered how to build an integrated approach to using digital in this way and leveraging her experience.

Search

Search and cost per click can be expensive if they are not carefully considered. Some of the keywords we would want to target for our business for example are upward of $15 click if we wanted to bid eagerly for them.

Adwords and search is a genuine science. But so often businesses, much like social,  think if they throw a few bucks at it and they are “doing search”.

I was talking to two distinct clients recently, I asked both how they were using adwords. And both basically said we throw a few dollars a month at it.

I asked how it performed? And both couldn’t tell me if “doing search” had delivered one single client to business.

Now a few bucks was between $750 and $1400/month – which, whilst not a fortune, is hardly small change.

So there are a few things to consider to make search work more effectively for your business.

  • First try and understand your customer and what they are wanting to find. Try and put yourself in a potential customers place and even develop some “personas” that emulate particular clients.
  • Utilise the tools within the adwords platform to help select the best set of keywords for your business.
  • You can also use these to identify what people are searching for, which can both help better select your keywords and understand what your potential customers are searching for will also help develop your content, which in turn will complement search.

The other key aspect to search, from our perspective, comes down to taking an integrated approach, as in the other two examples. For example, consider how the content of your newsletter grows from the content you are generating in other channels and how does your search strategy helps define the content you are producing. Moreover, think, how does your website complement each?

The key takeaways

If you read our blog, you may recall I recently talked about a range of things you may not know your website could do  – One area you should be particularly thinking about in terms of “what your website does” is how it integrates with your search and social/content strategy. – Think about how all these things play together.

The phenomenal thing about the digital environment is you don’t always need to be “selling” your product to “sell your product”.

We believe your content should reflect your skills and expert knowledge, your strategy should be to engage your customers in your brand personality and guide them on how and why your brand, your products and your service are their best choice. And the wonderful thing is in the digital environment you have an opportunity to do all of this 24 hours day

It takes work and careful consideration – but digital can engage your clients far more often and for far longer helping grow your business like few other media.

Give us a call or drop us an email to discuss your strategy. Do it now… seriously we won’t bite… except for Tim* but we don’t let him meet with clients.

*Tim is fictional – none of the Remember Creative staff have ever bitten a client… yet.

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Written By: Michael Menzies

5 elements to get a great result for a client

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5 ELEMENTS TO GETTING A GREAT RESULT FOR A CLIENT

Every business wants to be profitable and the way to be truly profitable in a digital design and marketing agency is simple: make your customers profitable.

We don’t hold all the cards to a clients future but we can leave a lasting impression.

We want to deliver great results from every project we produce. And to that end we have 5 major areas that we focus on.

Set goals & expectations

Just as getting out of bed on the right side (which is, of course, the left side) is essential to having a good day, being proactive in the formative time of a digital product build will set you in good stead for the remainder of a project. First cab off the rank is goal setting: defining the scope of work and the expectations of and for all parties involved.

Communications & Relationships

Making everyone’s expectations known leads into the next step which may not get a great amount of press at the end of the day because it’s not a tangible result but open, honest, and comprehensive communication makes for smooth sailing which is part and parcel with building the relationships and trust with clients and vice versa is important. Trust will lessen frivolous communication and needless angst.

And above all remember to listen.

Processes & Timelines

The engine is running everyone is onboard we need to define when it all happens; the process will be tweaked for individual jobs but having a processes in place, will build the trust

Agility

Often roads have bumps in them, a wary project manager will be agile enough to unruffle their feathers and get on with the job at hand. Whether it is a power surge that loses hours of work; a client needing to change scope due to extenuating circumstances a great digital agency will adapt. Agility, whilst some may see as opposite of process if you are deviating, is actually at the very heart of process – a process should be rigid to guide you but flexible enough to encounter problems and handle them with ease.

Results & Assessment

But the project is over and the proof is in the pudding why is this section needed in an article about getting a great result. Well, following through on the goals we set early on shows that accountability is another part of getting a great result but we also want to reflect on the goals set and see where we succeeded, exceeded and fell behind (although when following the other four elements this last column should remain unmarked). Not only that, it is great to take stock at the end of what can sometimes be a long term project over many months or a small project that was in a constant state of flux – clients can sing praises and or air grievances (hopefully small or none at all) and we get to discuss how enjoyable the process was and that we would be more than ready to tackle the next project.

A project is a fluid environment and many of these elements go hand in hand – Agility can even mean changing the goals, an expectation shortcoming may need to be communicated honestly to the agency or the client (yes, it works both ways, e.g. a client might be late on delivering content or an agency might need an extra day tweaking the design to perfection) which could in turn change the timeline or even the final output but at the end of the day when we are shaking hands and putting our tools of the trade away – a great result is our main aim.

PS

This was written by a project manager. A project manager that doesn’t have a creative bone in their body, I’m sure that our developers, strategists, designers, copywriters etc. all think they have a little something to do with achieving a great result for the client. Well… they can write the next article and prove me wrong… I’d like to see them try…  except the copywriters I can’t compete with the wordsmiths.

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Side Scrolling – The horizontal lambada of web design.

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Side Scrolling – The horizontal lambada of web design.

We have been recently experimenting with the use of side to side movement on the web.

Sometimes, it’s always nice to build in bite sized chunks for the audience so side to side movement can break up the monotony of endless scrolling and it is very useful in getting a magazine or coffee table book feel to a website plus it’s a nice niche.

Two great examples are pictured and can be found here:

http://www.pubdesign.com.br/

http://www.the-studio.co.il/en/work/

Also be sure to check back in couple of weeks for an update; we will publish one of our old websites on our staging servers that used side scrolling to great effect.

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4 questions to start you on your social media journey

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The 4 questions businesses should ask before starting social media

Social Media: Where do I start?

Starting a social media strategy for your business can be a daunting prospect. After all, there’s a stack of information out there – much of it written in jargon or going into intricate detail about things that really aren’t that important.

So if information overload means you’re struggling to know where to start, you’re not alone. That’s why we created a simple guide to the 4 questions you need to ask before you start using social media.

Answer these and you’ll have a pretty good idea of the way forward for your business.

Which platform should you use?

There’s no point trying to master every platform. You usually won’t have the time or budget to do it all and you’ll end up spreading yourself way too thin.

Instead, think about the purpose of your content and who you’re trying to connect with.

Facebook is the biggest social media platform in Australia – over 60% of Australians have an active account. It’s focus is largely personal but it can be a great platform for any business: especially if you have a consumer focus or you can create content that people engage with and are happy to share with their friends.

LinkedIn is often seen as the corporate facing social media platform and is a natural fit for B2B businesses such as professional services. But that doesn’t mean it’s not a place to find new clients for B2C businesses too.

Instagram is highly visual. If you’re prepared to invest in top notch imagery it can be a perfect fit. Insta has been used to devastating effect by many lifestyle brands, which lend themselves to this kind of “picture is worth a thousand words” marketing.

Twitter has over 2.8million active users but it’s a tough one to master and requires almost constant attention. Some businesses use it well but it’s not for the time poor.

Snapchat is the young’un of the group, quite literally. It has the youngest user base and can be particularly useful if your target audience is under 30.

Pinterest may not be as popular in Australia as it is in other countries but its users tend to be more engaged and it has the highest percentage of online shoppers out of the platforms. It also skews female” around two-thirds of Pinterest users are women, again the highest of all platforms.

The right platform for you will depend on who you’re targeting. And, just because the majority of users on a platform like Pintrest are women, that doesn’t mean they can’t also be used with devastating effect to target men too.

How often should you post?

This is something of a loaded question. You don’t want to bore your audience by bombarding them with constant content. But you don’t want them to forget about you either. Getting the balance right usually involves trial and error and a bit of tweaking until you find out what works best for you.

We know it’s not perfect but the answer to “how often” might just be as much as your time allows as it you might only find an hour a week to squeeze in.

That said, spending just one hour a week on social media is probably not enough to really engage an audience. Which leads to the next question you should ask…

How will you find the time?

Most people – especially most SME owners – simply don’t time necessary to spend hours a week learning how to use a platforms, run campaigns, create engaging content and build an audience.

There are some tools that will help you reduce the time burden by scheduling all you posts from one place – some of the best are Sproutsocial, Hootsuite and Buffer. (For the record, we use Hootsuite but they all have their place.)

But then then there’s the little things you need to know, such as the fact that some social media platforms actually image doesn’t show a face.

For that reason, we think the best solution for most businesses is to save time, save money and get it done right by outsourcing it.

Do you really have to understand all those terms?

You’ve probably noticed that social media is a world of acronyms and jargon. You probably don’t need to know what most of them mean. But there are a few you should probably be aware of (not least because you’ll hear your agency bandying them about all the time). So, for the record, here they are:

CTA – Call to action. This is the next step you want someone to take after reading your content.

CPC – Cost per click. How much you need to spend for every person who clicks on a link to your site.

CTR – Click through rate. The number of people who click through to your site divided by the total number of people who see/read your post.

B2C – Business to consumer. Marketing to the masses.

And finally…

If you’re struggling to create a social strategy that is right for your business, or if you can’t find the time or don’t have the skills to create the kind of content your audience wants, drop us a line.

Get in touch to find out more.

Statistics compiled by SocialMediaNews.com.au for August 2016.

Stats and research courtesy: Vivid Social. Figures correct as of 31/08/16.

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What can a personal website do for you?

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What can a personal website do for you?

Most of us know the benefits of a company website. They’ve become our first port of call for checking out what that organisation offers; we use it to find out what they do and how they do it differently. We compare that business with its competitors and see whether we want to buy from them or not.

From the business’s point of view this is fantastic – not least because their website lets them control the message you’re getting about them. Sure, you can google them and find out reviews and try to track down people who’ve had a positive or negative experience. But if they do it well, give you the right experience and make it easy to buy, they may be able to convince you that they’re the one to go with – then and there.

Guess what, all these same benefits apply to a personal website too. If you’re in the market for a job, if you’re looking to grow your profile, or even if you’re after a promotion or pay rise, a personal website can be gold. After all….

You are not a company

Consider this… the average length of time that someone stays in a job in the United States is now just 4.6 years. In Australia, it’s probably not much different. That means, statistically, you’re unlikely to be with your current employer for that much longer.

So, if you’re hitching your mast to your employer’s, hiding your skills behind their branding and letting their website and positioning in the marketplace sell your skills and expertise, you’re doing yourself a disservice.

If you’re in any kind of services industry – such as real estate, law, financial advice, accounting – that’s probably obvious enough. That’s because you, as the professional, really are what brings value to the business, Everyone already knows that. Without your knowledge, experience and networks the business wouldn’t be able to survive. So the need to position yourself properly if you’re ever going to build a career is obvious.

Another group for whom a personal website is a no-brainer is franchisees. Often the franchisor will only do so much for your marketing and branding. A more personal touch that speaks directly to your clients or customers and speaks to your individual market can work wonders.

But it’s broader than that

Because, while professional services and franchises are the most obvious examples of where this problem lies, I don’t think they’re the only ones who could do with a personal website. No matter what line of work you’re in, a personal website will let you speak to future employers, clients and others in a way that’s just not possible through other means.
In the creative industries, designers, art directors and copywriters have been doing this for years: having their own room to show a portfolio of their work: ad campaigns they’ve worked on or ideas they’ve developed.

When it comes time for a pay rise, when they’re considering moving on, when a business is out there looking to headhunt, this is what they can point to and what states their case.

Why shouldn’t people in other industries take a leaf from our book and build their own online portfolio of work too, in the form of a website?

Isn’t that what LinkedIn is for?

I can hear the response already… I already do that, it’s called LinkedIn.

Well, yes and no.

Sure, Linkedin is great if you want to display what you can offer in a format that’s built around a CV. But really, can a CV show off all your talents and achievements and position you the right way? I don’t think so.

It’s also built around words, and while there’s now the ability to stick up a video to support what your content, even that’s a bit limiting and one-dimensional. There’s not really much scope for story-telling or narrative.

But there’s even more to it than that…

We’re not rational

Like it or not, we don’t always connect with things rationally, and LinkedIn provides little scope to do anything but that. It’s formulaic. There’s little scope to ‘show’ rather than ‘tell’ and there’s very little room to engage people with anything other than a brief summary of who we are and the projects we’ve worked on.

I think it’s pretty hard to get a full sense of who someone is and what they do just through a LinkedIn profile.

Besides, most of us aren’t solely word-based people. We like visuals, we like colour and we connect with information on many levels. Unlike LinkedIn, a personal website lets you:

  • Use visuals to reinforce your message
  • Give people a three-dimensional experience
  • Show off your projects in a way LinkedIn simply can’t
  • Use SEO keywords to drive people to your site
  • Connect with people emotionally, not just rationally
  • Be as creative as you want to be without having to worry about templates
  • Become a publisher and drive people to your site with high-quality content
  • Emphasise whatever you want and provide whatever experience you want.

You’ve taken time to build your relationships

And it’s often your skills that your business’s clients or customers are benefiting from. A personal website can let you take advantage of that, giving you repository for all your experience that’s transportable, rebrandable and lets you maintain a relationship with your clients regardless of where you end up.

It also lets you position yourself the way you want, not the way a social media platform tells you to. Who could resist that?

Get in touch if you’d like to discuss how a personal website can help you.

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Written By: Michael Menzies