8 Top Tips for Building Your Brand Impact on Facebook Timeline

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Now that Facebook has rolled out their Timeline format to all business page users it’s a prime opportunity to capitalize on all the benefits the new layout offers your brand.

 

1. Your Cover Image:

Facebook’s cover image really enables a business/brand to capture its audience’s attention and make a strong impression with immediate impact. For brands this offers an opportunity to communicate your brand’s personality in an imaginative way and really leverage your core brand message. 

However, remember to read the Facebook guidelines when customizing your cover imagery. You can use this space to let your audience know what you are about but you cannot include promotional writing or a call to action on the cover photo. In short your cover image requires some more creative thinking to grab your key target markets attention while reaffirming your core brand message in a somewhat more subtle way. Cover images should be 851 x 315 pixels. Profile thumbnails should be 180 x 180 pixels

  

Mcdonalds Cover Image

 

2. Get Visual:

The new layout reduces the visibility of text posts but really highlights image and video content. For some businesses this may mean you need to change the way you post your brand information on Facebook.

The huge popularity of imagery orientated social platforms like Pinterest and Instagram confirm the mass attraction and powerful impact of visual content so start getting great visual content onto your timeline and raise the profile of your brand (products or services) through imagery where ever possible. A note of caution, make sure your selected imagery is relevant to, or congruent with your core brand message and your audiences interests.

  

Starbucks Cover Image

 

3. Directly Reach Your Audience:

The new timeline allows your customers to talk directly to you using private messages and most importantly it allows you to respond. It is critical that you have someone checking your Facebook page frequently to make a timely response. A query ignored could be a sale lost or worse still, compromise your brand.

   

Coca Cola Highlighted Post

 

4. Milestone Your Brand:

While your brand may have only recently joined Facebook, its story may have begun years ago. The new Milestone feature allows you to go back through the years, prior to you joining, and add landmark information and visuals, such as the year you were founded, significant new developments, the look of your brand through the years etc. This enables you to really share your brand’s story and build strong imagery communicating your brand’s development.

    

 Tiffany Milestone Image

  

5. Highlight What’s Important:

While it is important to post regularly on your page, some posts may be more important than others and require greater exposure. You can now ‘pin’ posts, which means that that post will remain at the top of your Facebook timeline for the entire week. Other posts can be ‘highlighted’ which means they are given wider display space and therefore stand out more.

If you have a special offer, top tips, important news or an impending event, pinning it or highlighting it commands great visual impact thereby saving you the need to make multiple posts just to gain your audience’s attention.

  

Starbucks Pinned Post

 

6. Benchmark Your Brand:

While your administrator can view your page insights and find out how many visitors the page receives, the new timeline also allows you to view some insights from your competitors’ pages. Simply go to their page, click their ‘likes’ and you will see some basic insights regarding their visitor analytics.

   

7. Monitor and Control the Conversation:

While it is important that your customers can post on your wall and create a conversation around your brand, it is equally important that what they post is appropriate. Deleting negative comments is never advised but the new timeline allows you to approve posts before they are displayed on your company’s Facebook wall.

   

8. Attention to Apps:

Landing page welcome apps no longer apply to the timeline but Facebook has provided the space to feature apps on your page. If your brand has a Youtube channel app, a competition app, etc the new Timeline enables you to display them on the top of your page.

 

We have already looked at how social media mistakes can damage your brand, however, managed correctly the role social media can play in shaping your brand’s identity, raising its online profile and enhancing customer engagement is undeniable.

   

• Does your brand’s Facebook page make the most of all the new features?

   

• Do you have a social networking strategy to help build your brand?

   

• Are your social media profiles fully utilized to support your brand communication strategy?

   

 

    

 

Using Guerrilla Marketing to Achieve Massive Brand Impact

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Guerrilla marketing is not a new concept for achieving significant brand attention. It first came into use in the mid-eighties but in the last number of years it has become a much more widely used marketing ploy, for both small and global brands alike. Its attractiveness and increasingly effective use is largely due to the ease of online sharing.

According to Jay Conrad Levinson (the man who coined the phrase), Guerrilla marketing “works because it’s simple to understand, easy to implement and outrageously inexpensive. It is about achieving conventional goals, such as profits and joy, with unconventional methods, such as investing energy instead of money”.

   

Need A Topchop 

    

This makes Guerrilla marketing a particularly attractive marketing tool for small and medium size businesses alike, which are typically working with more modest budgets that usually prohibit access to large scale campaigns such as national TV or radio advertising.

 

Why is guerrilla marketing so effective? If nothing else it breaks through the monotony of traditional advertising. Today’s customers are so over loaded by multiple media channels that it often takes a special kind of advertising campaign to actually get their attention, never mind hold it long enough to make an impact.

   

Feed A Trolley

    

While an initial draw back of guerrilla marketing might have been the inability to aim directly at your target market, as is possible with traditional advertising channels, the popularity of sharing funny or interesting videos and images on the web has meant that even the smallest businesses are getting the attention of thousands, even millions, on the likes of Youtube. The numbers are then so high they are bound to hit some of their target customers among that mass audience!

 

While some larger companies use quite elaborate guerrilla marketing techniques to get attention such as this latest stunt from television network TNT. 

   

    

Some of the most effective guerrilla marketing campaigns have been the most simplistic, with companies thinking outside the box and playing on humour in order to gain publicity. 

     

Need A New Bbq

     

It must be acknowledged though that not all guerrilla campaigns have a positive effect on a company’s brand. In 2005, Sony launched a graffiti ad campaign to promote the release of its new PlayStation Portable device.

The company hired local graffiti artists to spray-paint ads depicting animated kids playing with the new video game console. The ads were featured on the sides of buildings in seven cities across the U.S., including New York, Philadelphia and San Francisco. Sony came under fire for the campaign from city governments, many of which complained the ads violated their own anti-graffiti initiatives and encouraged vandalism.

 

In San Francisco, local residents and artists took matters into their own hands, defacing many of the designs with anti-Sony sentiments and tagging one such ad with “Fony.” Sony defended the campaign, stating the marketing was meant to target the “urban nomad.”

     

Skoda Mercedes

     

When deciding to engage in a guerrilla marketing campaign you need to consider it in the broader context of your company’s brand message. It is not just about getting attention. It’s about adding another layer to how your customer thinks about, and engages with your brand. 

 

The campaign’s message must be congruent with your other marketing communications, all of which must be true to your core brand message. Maintaining consistency in your brand communications is critical and on no account should you risk confusing your customers or send them mixed messages.

 

If your business is in insurance and is strongly reliant on building customer trust than perhaps a guerrilla campaign is not the best tactic for you. If you think it fits with your company’s brand image then ask yourself: 

  • Would it fit within your current brand strategy?
  • Would it appeal to your target market?
  • How would it reinforce your other marketing activity?
  • Could it offer a point of differentiation over your competitors?
  • What call to action would you desire from your customers?

  

And most importantly, could you handle the potential additional business if the campaign went viral?

   

  

Maximizing Profitability: Training Your Employees To Be Brand Champions

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In Ireland, possibly more so than in any other European country, a company’s reputation is the foundation from which strong brands evolve. We may be known for our talkers but the result of all this chatter can have a significant impact on Irish businesses where a restricted market size often means that word-of-mouth endorsement, or criticism from customers can make or break the reputation of a business, particularly in the early years. 

 

I have spoken before about the impact a leader can have on shaping their company’s brand and developing the brand image from the inside out.  One of the strongest ways a leader can develop their brand is through their selection of employees and how they inspire their employees to become genuine brand champions or custodians of their brand.

 

While marketing plays a strong role in shaping the external identity of the brand, employees are a critical asset that cannot be overlooked in creating a strong brand and positive reputation for your company.

   

Employee Brand Champion

  

Your employees not only spread your brand message with your customers, but also through their friends and family, and publicly on their online networks. Your employees are involved in the core of your business so their opinions on your company/brand(s) are very important.

 

How do you make sure your employees are spreading the right brand message? What can you do to influence how your employees impact on your brand? The key is to turn their role in the company from being standard employees to becoming highly informed brand champions or brand ambassadors.

 

Whether your business offering is as tangible as selling a car or as intangible as selling insurance over the phone, the service the customer receives during those few minutes of interaction with your company employee (the human extension of your brand) will strongly shape his or her impression of your brand.

 

 Customer Brand Champions

  

Every positive experience, or negative interaction for that matter, that occurs between your frontline staff and your customer establishes trust and credibility, bolstering your company’s brand reputation or equally undermining it too if badly represented.

 

When your customer then shares this positive (or negative) experience with their friends and family they are inadvertently advertising your brand and helping shape your brand image. Never forget, referral is one of the strongest and most trusted forms of brand endorsement, and never more so then in this world of instant viral communication.

 

Developing brand champions begins with ensuring that your employee’s brand training and internal cultural experience of your brand, and the image it aspires to create, is fully aligned with your company’s brand strategy.

 

Right now, if you asked each of your employees, from those in your accounts department to your frontline staff, to stand up and give a short pitch about your business would they all be able to say the same thing?

 

Does their impression of your business brand match that which you believe or have set out to achieve? They must really live and believe your brand to authentically share your brand message with the outside world. If your own employees cannot fully articulate what your company’s brand is all about, the do’s and don’ts of how they interact and what your brand stands for, then how can they be expected to communicate your brand effectively to your customers?

  

Building Your Brand

 

Leading a company with a powerful team of brand champions is essential to the success of your brand and ultimately the profitability of your business. In short it must be incorporated into your overall brand building strategy if you want to be a market leader. Doing so will not only strengthen your brand and company reputation but it will also:

 

1. Increase Motivation: A workforce that believes in what they do and what the company is striving to accomplish will naturally be motivated to achieve their goals and therefore productivity and profitability will increase.

 

2. Increase Word-of-Mouth Promotion: An employee who truly believes in your brand is more likely to naturally share their enthusiasm with family and friends and will be an advocate for your brand even outside normal work hours.

 

3. Improve Service: an employee who really believes in your brand will embrace a sense of ownership in their work and the service they provide, which will result in a greatly improved customer experience.

 

4. Reduce Employee Turn-over: a brand champion who believes in your brand will also be less likely to leave a position in which they are motivated and satisfied with their work. In fact if employees speak highly and openly about your brand, your company has a better chance of increasing retention rates and attracting new high performing, talent.

 

If you want your employees to become brand ambassadors then get them onboard, share and educate them in your brand vision. Make sure they really understand at a fundamental level what your brand is all about. Explain to them how important they are in the process of building the company brand.

 

A positive brand image leads to loyal customers, strong referral sources and solid internal growth. Bottom line: Take care of your employees and they in turn will take care of your brand. They are your strongest brand advocates, but they can’t champion your brand effectively if they don’t understand it or buy into it.

 

• Do your employees know and understand your main brand message and what your brand’s image is?

 

• Do they know how your brand is positioned relative to similar brands on the market?

 

• Are your employee’s impressions of the brand aligned with that of the company?

 

• Most importantly, does your company have a clear brand strategy that can be articulated to and through your employees?

 

Feel free to get in touch. We’d love to hear your thoughts and would be delighted to answer any questions asked.

15 Reasons Why You Need a Brand Audit to Increase Your Revenue

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Fact: Strong brands make more money, are more profitable and increase company value. They enable you to command a premium, ensure customer preference in buying decisions and build customer loyalty which reduces cost of sales and fends off competition. 

 

If your profits are falling and sales are not performing a “Brand Audit” will help give you insights into your brand’s impact and performance in the marketplace and, most importantly, why it’s not delivering.  

 

Fact: All brands, global or national or regional, need a health check. Brands are like living entities with life cycles. They start with much excitement and promise, grow and then eventually plateau. 

 

It’s at this mature stage of evolvement, when they potentially start to loose relevance as the market evolves and customers move on to the latest hot new thing, that you need to conduct a Brand Audit. 

 

A Brand Audit helps you monitor this cycle so you keep your brand fresh and relevant and know when to reinvigorate or revitalise before sales start to slip.

 

Brand Audit Team

 

Need some more reasons to use a Brand Audit to increase your bottom line ? Here’s 15 more to chew on . . .

 

1. Use it to grow your bottom line, your money’s in your brand. 

    N.B.: Products can be copied, brands can’t.

2. Get clarity with your marketing activities and step up a gear.

3. Know what your core customers think of your brand NOW and re-evaluate.

4. Create sharp focus in your bullseye customers mind.

5. Revitalise with multi-channel emotional connections with your customers.

6. Re-energise what your brand stands for and make it hit home.

7. Leverage it to be seen as an innovative trail blazer and increase your visability.

8. Get distinct and memorable competitive advantage.

9. Attract and develop more effective raving brand advocates.

10. Enhance your brand credibility and generate more buzz.

11. Differentiate your brand more strongly to become a money making magnet.

12. Enhance your internal sense of proud brand ownership with both the board and employees. It massively impacts on how everybody engages and interacts with the brand and your customers.

13. Leverage growth by using external professional validation. 

14. Discover new ideas, insights, tactics and strategies for your brand.

15. Get an outside experts point of view. You are too close to your brand and invariably can’t see your own brand shortcomings to address the problems objectively.

 

Brand Audit Girl

 

These are just some reasons to engage in a Brand Audit. Do you really know how your brand is performing and where it could be improved ?

 

Is it coasting along but in need of re-evaluation before the competition catches up ? Or is it disconnected, out of touch, caught up in price discounting and endless promotions with a shrinking market and failing sales that will ultimately put you out of business ?


Now is the time for an audit to reinvigorate your brand to stay on top or, more critically, provide a life saver to identify and address the problem areas so you can turn things around and grow your bottom line. 

 

Phone Icon Purple

 

To find out more about what’s involved in our proprietary brand audit process, and how you can use our Persona Brand Audit to greatly increase your performance, drop us a line or give us call today. 

We’re here to help you address your brand challenges and support you in growing your business/brand.

T: +353 1 8322724

E: [email protected]

 

Brand Audit Magnifyer

Top 10 Reasons For Rebranding To Grow Your Business

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Brands are constantly evolving to ensure they keep abreast of changing needs in the market place. Even some of the greatest brands in the world need rejuvenation.

Brands like Guinness, Coca-Cola, Starbucks and Kellogg’s are iconic, global in their status. Yet when you look at their market leadership over the decades, they have all changed even if it has been in a more evolutionary sense over time, rather then radical overhauls. However some branding does require an extensive change in order for the business to achieve the required regeneration for growth and profitable returns.

 

Guinness Word Device

 

Guinness Logo

 

Revitalisation maintains and celebrates the history and heritage of the brand but shows its target audience (current and future) that you are adaptive to change. Change is necessary to stay relevant to the times in which a brand exists and to ensure its future success.

 

Starbucks Logo Evolution

 

Some of the reasons for rebranding, relaunching and revitalising a brand include the following: 

 

1. Relevance:

Brands need to stay relevant to their target market, to keep up with the times and keep pace with changing customer needs (e.g. services, accessibility, convenience, choice, changing trends, technology). A brand that has become old-fashioned in the eyes of its audience is in danger of stagnation if not already in a state of erosion and loss of market share.

 

2. Competition:

In a fast moving environment with aggressive competition, rebranding may be required to change the offering to the market in order to create a more compelling reason to buy, in the minds of the target audience. Rebranding can be used as a means of blocking or outmanoeuvring competitors or a way of handling increased price competitiveness.

 

3. Globalisation:

Sometimes rebranding is required because of globalisation where the same product sold across multiple markets is inconsistent or different e.g. Marathon’s change to Snickers, Opal Fruits change to Starburst, Jif’s change to Cif. 

 

Starburst Opalfruits Rebrand

 

4. Mergers & Acquisitions:

When two entities combine there are typically two unique audiences left to communicate with. Sometimes this can require a rebrand or relaunch in a way that will appeal to both. In other cases one of the brands may be more dominant requiring more of a revitalisation or refresh with it becoming the sole dominant player. 

 

5. Innovation:

Technology is constantly evolving and the rate of change often exponential. If a brand is technology related e.g. internet, software, hardware and the product offering constantly innovating then a rebrand frequently follows the natural and fast rate of change. Rebranding or revitalisation becomes an outward expression of the companies evolution and ensures the brand’s change hungry customers keep coming back to see “what’s new”.

 

Apple Logo Old And New

 

6. Repositioning:

Taking a brand to a new position is an involved process e.g. from an economy price fighter to a premium position, and invariably requires a rebrand to signal a change in direction, focus, attitude or strategy to its target market. Also again used as a means of blocking or outmanoeuvring competitors or a way of handling increased price competitiveness.

 

7. Rationalisation:

Rebranding can be used to decrease business development and operational costs, or a way of countering declining profitability or consumer confidence. It can also be used where there are complex and sometimes confusing mixes of product portfolios which frequently undermine the brands impact, (along with considerable advertising, branding clutter and media proliferation) all of which causes brand incongruence and audience fragmentation and consequently badly needs consolidation through rebranding to achieve brand impact and strong growth again. 

 

Mcconnells Old And New Logo

 

8. Outgrowth:

When small companies grow into bigger entities they and/or their products frequently require a rebrand or revitalisation to meet the needs of the bigger business. Typically smaller companies start with more modest brand offering, due to budget restrictions, which are inadequate to meet the needs of a bigger more sophisticated business and a rebrand is required.

 

9. Legal Requirements:

Occasionally legal issues may arise that require a company to make changes to their branding such as copyright issues or bankruptcy e.g. similarities between naming and designs e.g. The Jelly Bean Factory became The Jelly Bean Planet in Ireland to ensure differentiation from the USA brand Jelly Belly.

 

10. Morale & Reputation:

If a company brand has demoralised employees or confused customers then a rebrand may required. A thorough rebrand process will work to unearth the issues that need addressing and could be solved through key changes, including a completely new look and feel to the organisation. A rebrand in this instance can improve a brand’s competitiveness by creating a common sense of purpose and unified identity, building staff morale and pride, as well as a way of attracting new customers, enhancing relationships with existing customers and attracting the best talent to the business.

 

In the case of compromised or damaged reputations rebranding becomes a more pressing requirement. Obvious examples in the current market include certain aspects of the financial sector and banking institutions with damaged reputations which in time will need rebranding. BP is another example and its handling of the Gulf spill which may also require a rebrand in the US the help rebuild its reputation.

 

If you’re considering a rebrand to grow your business and would like to know more, give us a call. We’d love to talk T: +353 1 8322724