If you're planning to optimize your branding or rebranding, we have tools to support your brand development at every stage

Have you ever wondered how brands grow as large and as well known as they do? From companies like Google to Starbucks, their names are known, customers know exactly what services and products they provide, and satisfied customers keep coming back for more. Brand development is how this happens, and it is no small feat. It takes time to cultivate a brand, to the point that a company has universal recognition like Gillette and Coca-Cola.

What does brand development involve?

Now that you recognize the importance of branding, what do you need to create a good brand? In a nutshell, brand development means: Finding your brand’s voice and communicating your value proposition Implementing your voice and style consistently throughout…

Personalized marketing, as we know from our experiences as brand-lovers and as marketers, is the make or break of any e-commerce marketing strategy in a competitive environment

Personalized marketing is all about offering improved user experience (UX) by serving relevant content, or targeting key messages in the funnel, based on your customer’s e-commerce activities and behaviour. Personalized marketing unlocks tactics for retailers to form personal relationships with their customers during their online experience (CX), to nurture leads and drive more sales from digital marketing. According to SmarterHQ, 72% of consumers say they now only engage with marketing messages that are personalized and tailored to their interests. And with competition at an all-time high, value added by personalized marketing is exactly the tactic your retail/e-commerce marketing strategy needs. [si_monthly_campaign_blog_cta_banner id=156146] Despite this, customer security and privacy concerns are at their peak. A McKinsey 2020 consumer-data report…

More choice means it not only becomes harder to persuade customers to engage with a particular proposition but also to retain their interest post-transaction.

Digital has leveraged the greater array of choices available to consumers now, which is much more than at any other time in our economic development, representing a real challenges to build brand loyalty for marketers. At the same time, it has made it this choice available to far more people than in any previous period of history. This combination of choice and availability does two things: It disrupts traditional or established relationships, particularly where the choice becomes limited or stale. It creates an enhanced set of expectations for customer experience. As a consequence, it not only becomes harder to persuade customers to engage with a particular proposition but also to retain their interest post-transaction. In our experience, this is primarily down to a failure to deliver the best possible…

A vital step towards marketing digital transformation

In the current climate, digital interactions between brands and their B2B and B2C partners have become a major feature in their customers' buying journey. Given the complexity of customer interactions via different touchpoints and channels across the modern customer lifecycle as shown in the visual, planning frameworks can help simplify the analysis and prioritization of digital marketing activities. It is sometimes difficult to orchestrate marketing activities in order to ensure that the right digital tactics are used at the right time and in the right place in that journey, to nurture a customer lead. However, in the partner world it’s a lot more complex, because before you embark on the development of any marketing campaign with or through a partner, an imperative step is to market to that partner to raise awareness of your brand and educate…

Google adding warning badge to slow sites, Facebook's new fundraising tools, influencers and big brands lacking credibility, traditional TV ad spend declining and Instagram's new feature takes on TikTok

Following the addition of a new Speed Report in Google Search Console, Google has announced that it is set to start adding warning badges to sites with slow load speeds as a signal to users. This could ultimately lead to other 'badges' rewarding sites that offer good experiences. Facebook is aiming to make donating and fundraising on its platforms easier ahead of the holiday season by releasing several new tools. A new report has found that consumers don't believe that big brands or social media influencers have any credibility and that they support social issues purely for profit. New data reveals that spend on traditional TV advertising is declining with more people switching to streaming services. However, this could provide some…

Chart of the Week: 64% of consumers are now belief-driven buyers who want brands to deliver on societal issues, as well as products

We all know that trusting a brand increases the chances of a customer buying from it. Building trust turns customers into advocates, providing priceless word-of-mouth marketing. On top of this, brand trust means customers keep coming back, which is hugely beneficial considering the fact that customer retention is cheaper than acquisition. But exactly what does brand trust mean to customers and how can it impact their decision making? Today, brand trust is everything to customers, meaning that once you’ve lost it, you’ve likely lost them. [si_guide_block id="50995" title="Download our Business Resource – Brand storytelling guide" description="This guide helps you explore the fundamentals of developing powerful authentic brand stories."/] In fact, according to Edelman’s latest research, businesses are trusted even more than governments, showing…

Brand marketing needs to be engrained into the genetics of the brand

The Walt Disney Company has a long and interesting history that spans almost 100 years. It was founded by brothers Walt Disney and Roy O. Disney on October 16, 1923. Originally, the company was called ‘Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio’. At first, they established themselves in the animation industry before extending their interests to producing live-action films. The business has also operated using the names ‘The Walt Disney Studio’ and ‘Walt Disney Productions’. It didn’t take on its current name until 1986. After the success of the films, Walt Disney started building parks, the first of which was Disney World in Florida. He was a very clever man and even bought the land under multiple company names so that locals would not hike the land prices. That ingenuity spread into their marketing strategy and I'm going to show you how they…

6 Keys to building a better online brand experience for your customers.

Online brand experience and customer experience is a widely discussed topic amongst brand managers and marketers, and for good reason — customers who have a better brand experience with one brand over another will naturally veer toward the brand they favour when making a purchase. It’s not rocket science.

Put simply, the customer experience includes every touchpoint between customer and company. Marketers usually break this experience into three categories: pre-purchase, purchase, and post-purchase.

These experiences extend from online forums to in-person interactions, but in today’s connected world, pre-purchase often begins online with researching a company, reading reviews, and browsing blog posts — so optimizing your brand experience across all things digital is essential.

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The Problem With Perfection

The mistake many…