The presentation topic was definitely of interest to me. It was about bringing up teenagers (I have a 14-year-old son, thankfully showing no major teenage behaviour traits . . . yet, other than a propensity to leave everything to the last minute, which he’s had all his life!). But I couldn’t believe how fast the time went or how captivated I was by the speaker’s fantastic storytelling ability.  And for someone who doesn’t always remember things without writing them down, I really believe his stories will stick with me.

It made me think about the role of storytelling in marketing. Today’s digital marketing channels are completely overloaded with stories; Instagram and Facebook have completely adopted this concept with “Facebook Stories” and “Instagram Stories”.

Stories resonate with people and are something we typically respond well to, because everyone likes a good story – and in fact, we are actually hardwired to listen and pay attention to stories. Individual ads, emails or promotions are great for short-term action, but stories can reinforce your brand and resonate more over a longer period of time.

As a marketer, I urge clients to create stories and write engaging content all the time. But every company is trying to tell a story and get customers to pay attention to their websites, their email campaigns, text messages and Google ads.  I’m doing it now with this article!  There’s endless competition. Apparently, people now see between 6,000 to 10,000 ads every single day . . . and that’s just ads.

So how do we cut through all the noise, get people to stop scrolling and hear us? Do our stories need to be more shocking?  Media outlets and tabloids have tried this for years with ‘propaganda’ headlines and ‘fake news’, etc., but especially after COVID, we’re all really tired of shouty headlines designed to reel you in when there’s really no substance behind the magic curtain.

We want good stories.

Here are three things that engaging stories provide:

1. Emotion

“Shock” may grab people for a few seconds, but much more often, people want to feel something real, such as inspiration, hope, fear, excitement, comfort or joy. Using genuine emotion in your marketing gives you a way to connect with customers on a meaningful level. In the best cases, it boosts engagements AND leads to improved sales and customer loyalty. For example, Budweiser beer is known for making people laugh or pulling on their heartstrings through the use of animal stories in its TV ads.  Almost every year for the Super Bowl football game in the U.S., the company releases an ad that viewers vote for as one of the best.  One of my favourites was from 2014 – what’s not to love about horses making friends with puppies, to get across the ‘Best Buds’ tagline?More recently, the company has switched over to human subjects in their ads but has continued to tell stories that people could connect with, while successfully promoting their brand. The ads make people feel good, and customers (consciously or unconsciously) connect that feeling with Budweiser.

2. Information or instruction

Marketing software giant Hubspot recently conducted a survey to find out why people read the blog posts that they do. The top answer? “To learn something new.” This was especially true during COVID (with people searching for help with things like, “How do I cook my favourite Asian dish while that restaurant is closed?” “My pipe is broken in lockdown! How can I fix it?”), but video and written tutorials will always remain popular. Whether it’s watching a video showing them how to plant and care for the perennials they bought at your gardening shop or tips from an accounting firm on how to better prepare for tax time, customers like to be provided with solid information that helps them and offers value.

3.  Relevance and/or personalisation

One of the great benefits of storytelling is that it helps humanise your brand. When customers can recognise where they fit into or connect with the story, you’ve got a winner. When you send a personalised email message that shares a story relevant to that person, instead of a generic message to the whole world, you’re much more likely to grab attention. And with all the clever marketing automation software around at the moment to help you tailor your messages, it should be even easier to make a connection.

Need help creating your stories and cutting through the noise? Contact Breathe Marketing today.

In addition to building an easy-to-find and easy-to-use website, one great way to make sure Google knows about your company is to get a free listing on Google My Business.  It’s a no-brainer method to get in front of your customers – and you don’t even need to earn your way there with SEO or buy your way with Google Ads – you just need to own a business that has some face-to-face interaction with customers (eg. you can’t operate 100% online).  No online strategy is complete without Google My Business (GMB) and there are new features you need to know about.

What is Google My Business?

Google My Business is a free tool you can use to help manage your business’ online presence across Google, including Search and Maps. In short, it’s Google’s local business listing management system.  If you don’t have a free listing for your business yet, you can get started at google.com/business. You can also download Google’s free mobile app, which allows you to update your listing from any mobile device.

Once you create a listing, you’ll need to verify it to prove that your business really exists in the location you say it does. You have a few options – including email, phone or using your Google Search Console listing – but most companies choose to verify by mail.

Why is Google My Business so important?

If you’ve created a GMB listing and people search for your business name, Google will provide that information immediately on the first page, as you can see from my example below:

Aside from the benefits this can bring (people can call you, get directions, see your opening hours, etc.) it also means they can leave your business a review, which is great for your digital footprint (more on this here).  Also, if you don’t fill out all your business information, someone else could, because anyone can suggest an edit to your business listing . . . including unhappy customers or your competitors. So make sure you take the time to complete all the information you can.

What’s new: Posts, Booking Buttons & More

Just as Google regularly updates their algorithm to improve the search experience for users, they also make regular changes and improvements to business listings. Some of the most recent changes they’ve made to GMB have to do with their desire to optimise search results and answer as many questions as possible within those results.  Here are some of the new features to consider:

1. Posts – posts are a new feature that you can use to write text, add an image or video clip and a call-to-action to your GMB listing. These can be used for events, sales, promotions, products, blog posts, or any type of announcement. Posts ‘go dark’ after seven days but give you a chance to change things up regularly so your customers have the latest information about what’s going on at your business (and old posts are still there, they just get moved down).
2. Photos and videos – you can now add more photos and even video to your GMB listing. Google reports that businesses with photos receive 42% more requests for driving directions and 35% more click-throughs to their websites. Create high-quality, engaging images to help draw customers in and refresh them regularly. Name, tag and describe your images and videos as well as geotag them to help with your SEO.
3. Make a booking – bookings are another new feature that’s now available. If your business relies on customers making appointments – such as a hair salon or massage therapist – and you use connected scheduling software, clients can book appointments directly from your GMB listing. This feature makes it really easy to get new customers, because they don’t even have to leave Google search to book an appointment!
4. Owner identity attributes – Google has added new owner identity attributes that allow you to let people know immediately if you are a female-led or veteran-led local business. The information gets added next to other details about your business such as if you have wi-fi, accessible seating, take reservations, etc. This could be meaningful to some potential customers and one to keep an eye on as Google says that it will be adding more over time.

There are many ways to optimise your Google My Business listing and best of all, they’re all free!  If you need any help, contact Breathe Marketing today.

However, in my opinion, it’s vital for many businesses, especially if you offer professional services of some kind.  When one person is potentially buying the services of another, these kind of peer reviews can help tip the balance between a potential new client contacting you or not.  They can save you the trouble of arranging references, and for prospects, they can help to de-risk a new relationship.

What’s the secret?

Want to know the secret formula I’ve uncovered in my 20+ years of asking for testimonials?  I ask.  I simply ask the question: “Please can you give me a testimonial?”  It’s that simple.  (The worst they can do is say no, right?)

Obviously, when asking for testimonials, you want to pick your clients carefully (choose the happy ones) and pick the right moment.

In reality, some clients will want you to write something up for them.  I never do this, but I will happily provide some pointers if they need (never putting words in their mouth) about practical details like when we first started working together, the scope of a particular project, the results, etc.

Here are some other tips and options when asking for testimonials from your clients:

• Give details – if you’re publishing the testimonial, include the full name of the person giving the testimonial, and if it’s a business, include a job title and company name. Doing so helps add credibility (rather than just saying, ‘Mr. M. in Murray Bridge’) and reduces the feeling that a review might be ‘made up.’
• Ask as soon as possible – if you’ve just finished a project with a happy client – or if they’re starting to see results due to your work – now’s the time to ask. The sooner you do, the better the client will be able to remember specifics about the project and what he/she liked, how you helped the business, delivered value, etc.
• Consider video testimonials – video testimonials and/or case studies are great. There’s no arguing with them, and they give prospects a chance to hear about your work straight from the horse’s mouth.
• Ask by ‘not asking’ – still nervous about asking for praise? Instead, ask the client how things are going with your product or service. If they have positive things to say, dig a little deeper, summarise what they’ve told you and ask if you have their permission to use it as a testimonial.
• Try an email – by asking via email, you can separate yourself a bit from a face-to-face ‘ask’ and streamline the process. Create a basic template in Word that makes the process easy for clients and provides lines for name, company name, job title, location and project, as well as space for writing out details on how you helped solve their problems, offered great service, etc.
• Ask for a LinkedIn ‘Recommendation’ – these are also a great way to get testimonials.  The system is automated, which can take the sting out of sitting across the table from someone, pen in hand. It’s easy: you send a personal message to one of your contacts asking if they’d mind giving you a recommendation, they write it in the LinkedIn template, you get to review it before you publish, and then it’s there online for all to see on your LinkedIn profile.  Here are some of my LinkedIn recommendations.
• Facebook Reviews & Google Reviews – these are great places for testimonials, too, so if someone is willing to give you a testimonial or say something nice about you and your business, encourage them to write it on your business Facebook page or Google business page.  Huge kudos for your digital footprint!
• Repurpose them – if you have other places you want to show testimonials (such as on your website), you can simply copy and paste what your happy clients have already written in email, or your LinkedIn, Facebook, or Google page – just check to make sure clients are OK with this first. Here’s my testimonial page.

(By the way, I promise I’m not showing off by linking to my testimonials – I just thought it would be useful to show how I do it.  Remember, being British means self-publicity doesn’t come as easily to me, although I do work in marketing, after all ….)

Also, one final reminder: be sure to get permission so there aren’t any surprises if a client sees their name and feedback on your website or in print. The last thing you want is to have a happy client become an angry one because of a misunderstanding!

Need help in asking for or displaying testimonials from your clients? Contact Breathe Marketing today.

Sponsorships can be a great way to raise brand awareness and (potentially) increase sales, IF you chose the right events, but there are a number of questions you should ask before you take the plunge. Here’s a look at some important things to think about before committing your time and marketing dollars to any sponsorship.

Important questions to ask

The first question to ask yourself is, what do you hope to get out of the sponsorship? Are you hoping to raise brand awareness and get your name out to more people? Are you going to leverage the opportunity to get more sales in the short or long term?  Be clear from the start about your goals so expectations are managed.

The second key question to ask is, does a sponsorship align with your overall marketing strategy? Does the audience for the event or opportunity align with your target market? Does the event fit with your company mission, values and how you want to be perceived in the market?  For example, if you position your organisation as being family-owned or family-friendly, you’ll want any sponsorships to align with this.

Here are several other questions to ask before committing to any sponsorship:

• How will your company be identified or showcased? Just getting your logo on something is NOT going to cut it.  Despite what you may be told by the sponsorship organisers, there’s little value in adding your logo to programs or TV screens, or having a name-check in announcements.  These things can help with branding and awareness, but there’s no real call to action or longevity if you just get your logo on a poster. See if you have a chance to tell your story or reach out to potential customers in a way that’s meaningful. Getting leverage from sponsorship is key.
• How many other sponsors are there?  Will you have exclusivity in your industry category? If you get a mid-range sponsorship level, will you be overshadowed by bigger sponsors?
• Does the sponsorship deal include perks such as free passes, VIP tickets, an email lists of attendees you can use, a designated table for guests, etc.? All of these things can be used as leverage by holding contests for customers to win tickets, provide benefits for staff, build relationships, gain new emails for future marketing, etc.
• How will you measure success? How will you gauge whether or not your investment was worthwhile – and worth doing again?

The REAL costs

Last – but certainly not least – you need to assess if the sponsorship fits your budget. The dollars spent at any given sponsorship level are usually just the beginning. Overall, the rule of thumb with sponsorships is that you need to spend at least twice the amount of the sponsorship on supplementary activities to get the appropriate return on investment.

For example, if the sponsorship level is $10,000, you need to plan on spending $20,000 in total, looking for additional PR/advertising/communications opportunities, to get the full value out of your investment. Examples of this extra spend may come in the form of printed materials, banners, giveaways for attendees (like pens, t-shirts, other branded items, etc.) to help promote your brand or products way beyond your logo appearing on a program or some signage.

Need help deciding whether a sponsorship opportunity is right for you – or how to make the most of one? Contact Breathe Marketing today.

YouTube now has over a billion users worldwide. In addition, advertising on YouTube has reached new heights, as the number of channels earning six figures per year from advertising is now up 50% year over year.

What’s fuelling all of this growth? Smartphones and tablets have a lot to do with it.  With better networks and improved bandwidth, more people view and access videos from mobile devices, which means they can easily view videos while on the go. In fact, a recent Interactive Advertising Bureau study showed that mobile video consumption is expected to surpass desktop consumption by the end of this year.

Why video?

One of the best things about video is its flexibility. With video, you can provide information or share your story in a unique way by making things as simple or as high-tech as you choose, so it’s no surprise that more and more companies are choosing it as a primary marketing tool.

Plus, online video allows you to promote your brand with a wide variety of audiences. It provides an experience that both entertains and educates an audience, creating a more personal feel and connection with viewers than is possible in text alone. And having video on your company website helps boost your search engine rankings.

So, how can your business benefit from this medium? You can certainly create online ads and commercials, but here are four additional areas in which companies are using videos to educate, inform and sell:

1. Customer testimonials

Creating case studies or video testimonials with satisfied customers can serve as a great way to promote your business. Nothing is more enticing to potential buyers than seeing and hearing customers rave about your company, explain how great your products are and how they helped solve a problem!

2. Presentations

A well-produced video can provide a professional presentation for a board meeting or pitch. Especially for a project bid, a video can not only highlight your capabilities, but also demonstrate your serious commitment and interest in taking on a project.

3. Email campaigns

In the past, it was difficult to include video footage in emails. Plus, emails with videos tended to be really big, so they either wouldn’t load properly in an inbox or would end up in SPAM folders. However, with advances in technology – such as HTML5, new types of image compression, greater bandwidth and the use of smartphones and tablets – it’s much easier to incorporate videos in an email.

4. Training/Education

Videos are a great way to welcome new staff, review policies and procedures, and share new concepts. Health and safety issues are a popular education topic within organisations, and videos can serve as a cost-effective way to educate large numbers of employees.  Plus, with more employees working from home, an online video can serve as a great way of sharing information.

Need some help bringing video in to your marketing mix? Contact Breathe Marketing today.

That’s where SEO comes in. As mentioned in a previous post on SEO, search engine optimisation is all about creating websites so that search engines (namely Google) can easily identify, categorise and select them when a user does an online search. This means that users have an easier time finding your site.

In the past, some companies tried to use underhanded practices (known as ‘black hat’ techniques) to improve their search rankings, such as duplicating content, putting in bad links or adding keywords into their page content just for the sake of getting extra keywords in there (a practice known as ‘keyword stuffing’). But Google is onto these tactics and constantly updates their algorithms to improve results for users and reward sites that follow legitimate, or ‘white hat’ SEO practices.

If you’re building a new site, it’s a good idea to include SEO best practices from the start, but you can also improve an existing site by making adjustments that keep Google (and your users) happy.

SEO is a huge topic (plus there’s onsite and offsite SEO techniques to consider too).  There’s way too much to cover in this blog – but here are 4 best practices for designing or updating a site so that it’s SEO-friendly:

1. Make sure your content can be indexed

Creating good, engaging content for your site will always benefit your company and your viewers. But you can do more to help Google understand exactly what your content is. Why is this necessary? When Google sends out its “spiders” or bots to crawl the web, they collect data to bring back to Google’s massive database. But the spiders can’t ‘see’ images like photos, Flash animation or videos – they can really only collect HTML text – so it’s hard for them to index this information.

Of course, photos and videos are very valuable, because they help you tell the story of your brand, sell your products, make your site more attractive and improve user experience. Therefore, the best thing to do is to help the spiders out by creating ALT text for photos and images (by assigning actual text that explains what’s in them), adding supplemental text for Flash images and providing a transcript for videos and audio recordings whenever possible. Your web designer can help you put all these in place.

If you can get keywords into your ALT tags and transcripts, that’s even better. On that note . . .

2. Watch those keywords, and use them wisely

It’s a good idea to work with your web designer to do some keyword research prior to building your website, because it can help you focus your content, build your meta data such as title tags and descriptions (more on that in a moment) and determine where you can target potential searchers.  To start, you’ll definitely want to include the name of your business as a keyword, as well as particular products or services you offer. If you have a local business, using your name with your location is important for searchers.

For instance, if you’re an accounting firm in Adelaide, you’d probably want to consider keyword phrases such as “Adelaide accounting firm”, “Adelaide accountants”, or “top accounting firm in Adelaide”. As noted above, it’s not a good idea to throw in more keywords just for the sake of getting those terms onto your pages. Doing so makes for bad content, and Google will punish you for this kind of ‘keyword stuffing’.  A good rule of thumb is to choose a couple of keywords to focus on for each page.

3. Title tags

Title tags are one of the most important elements of SEO. A title tag is the main text that describes what’s on a web page or in a document, and these tags appear in three key places: browsers, search engine results pages and external websites. Even though you probably won’t see them when viewing a web page, they’re in the source code and show up in searches.The text in blue below is an example of how and where a title tag appears in search results:

Ideally, each page of your site should have its own title tag – preferably including a keyword or two – so Google knows what each one is about (and so do your searchers).  However, don’t make your titles too long or they’ll get cut off – if you keep your titles under 55 characters, at least 95% should display correctly.

4. Meta descriptions

Like title tags, meta descriptions help search engines and searchers understand what’s on your web pages. Meta descriptions are in your source code and appear underneath your title tag and URL in search results, as shown in the grey text below:

A meta description gives you a chance to introduce your brand and what you offer to searchers before they come to your site – they act as ‘organic ad text’, helping connect searchers to your content when keywords appear in the text and match a search.

With meta descriptions, you have a little more text space than with title tags, but you still need to keep them fairly short and sweet. Ideally, your meta descriptions should be between 150-160 characters so they don’t get cut off.

As I said earlier, there is a lot more to SEO than I can talk about in one blog.  If you need help improving your onsite or offsite SEO, contact Breathe Marketing today.

What is branding, anyway?

In marketing, branding refers to the creation of a name, symbol (such as a logo) or design that identifies what your company is and does. Not only that, but a brand also helps differentiate your company’s products or services from your competitors – it helps express who you are and what you offer.

For instance, as part of their brand, many companies have established logos that you can immediately recognise without seeing the company name at all – and just by seeing the logo, you know exactly what they offer. Here are a few examples:

Seeing each of these probably also makes you feel something, such as, “Oh, I love my new iPhone!” or “Ah, that’s my bank,” or “Ugh, I hate Big Macs!” In each case, you have some type of recognition and reaction.

A company like Apple, for example, sells many products, but you immediately recognise their logo and know what it represents. Whether in print, online or on a billboard – and whether it’s black and white or in colour – you know that symbol and the company it refers to. If you want to buy a computer (or a smartphone) and it has the Apple logo on it, that immediately tells you something about the quality of the product and what to expect. Plus, you’re going to be willing to pay more for it than for a computer from a company you’ve never heard of because Apple has established itself as a leading, high-quality brand. Just as an aside, I was delighted to visit the new Apple store in Adelaide recently. Their strong brand certainly pulls in the punters, as seen in the photo I took.

Defining your brand

Your brand is ultimately your promise to your customer. You want to create a brand that not only helps your customers identify you, but helps you create a connection with them – and ideally, you want them to choose your brand over your competitor’s. So how do you go about building a strong brand? Here are three starting tips:

1) A logo by itself is not a brand, but having a good logo that can be used in all kinds of applications (such as in print, online, on t-shirts, etc.) is an important start. Work with a good designer to help create something that represents who you are and what you do.

2) Have clear guidelines about what your company offers and stands for – and then make sure that message gets communicated to your employees and customers in everything you do. Is great service what sets your company apart? Low prices? High quality? Whatever it is, share that message and back it up in practice.

3) Be consistent with your brand. Once you have a good logo and an established look for your brand, use it in your invoices, ads, on your website and in your emails to communicate your message. Help your customers learn to recognise you.

Have questions? Need some help building or improving your brand? We can help – contact us today.