Be Different or be dead

July 9, 2022

Why a customer engagement strategy is critically important to your business

Why a customer engagement strategy is critically important to your business.

Businesses these days are realizing the importance of customer engagement and its effects on their overall success.

A customer engagement strategy is a plan to improve the relationships you have with your customers.

Customer engagement has a major impact on your bottom line. Happy customers will continue to do business with you and they are also more likely to recommend you to others.
On the other hand, unhappy customers are more likely to leave for your competition and they will also spread negative reviews about your business.

Check out the infographics below by GetVoIP that includes 6 clever customer engagement strategies to boost your customer loyalty and your business.

— Md Umar Khan is the SEO Executive at Wild Idea Marketing. He loves writing about marketing, entrepreneurship, and technology. In his free time, he loves to play video games.

• Posted 7.9.22 at 06:35 am by Roy Osing
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March 26, 2022

Three easy ways you can market how you treat your employees

Image Source: Pixabay

From a business and a human standpoint, you must treat employees well. First, well taken care of employees work better. Second, it takes more than a good product or service to convert today’s consumer into a customer. People look deeper into a brand and business before making a purchase.

Specifically, how a company treats its employees influences a person’s purchase decisions. For example, say a consumer wants to purchase clothing from a boutique. The clothes may be amazing, but if the boutique has a reputation for shady workplace practices and mistreating employees, it will likely dissuade them from making a purchase.

Because consumers focus more on employee treatment and company culture before supporting a business, company leaders should prioritize marketing how they treat their employees.

This article will dive into tips for successfully marketing how you treat your employees, and how treating your workers well gives your business a competitive advantage. But, first, let’s talk about why it’s important to treat employees well.

Why it’s important to treat employees well

It’s important to treat employees well because when they feel supported and valued, they’re more likely to do their best work for your company.

Also, it positively affects your customer service when you treat your employees as more than just warm bodies. They’ll do more than list the functions and features of your products or services. Instead, your employees will become advocates for your customers and do everything they can to ensure your customers get the most out of your brand and their purchases.

On the other hand, when employees are overworked, underpaid, and undervalued, they are unlikely to treat customers well and they’re probably going to leave the company sooner than later.

Companies that fail to treat their employees well are losing them in droves.

How customers view companies that treat their employees well

Customers view companies that are good to their employees as trustworthy.

Trust is the foundation of every relationship, including customer relationships. When customers see how much your employees trust your business, they feel more comfortable moving forward with your company.

All in all, when you create trust-filled relationships with potential customers, they’re more likely to become actual customers and loyal ones at that. And you can use marketing how you treat your employees as a vehicle for creating that trust.

Three easy ways you can market how you treat your employees:

#1. Create content around your company culture

One of the main things to focus on when marketing how you treat your employees is content. You must create content around your company culture, employees, and the behind-the-scenes of your operation.

For example, let’s say you’re making remote work a permanent part of your workforce. In that case, you must be mindful of people who are skeptical of remote work because of the lack of support for these employees. If you’ve built a comprehensive employee recognition program for remote workers, create content about it and market it.

You can also create content that focuses on the following to highlight how well you treat your employees:

● Compensation and benefits packages
● Your company’s mission and values
● A day in the life of each employee
● What each team in your company does
● How each employee contributes to excellent customer service
● Employee accomplishments and milestones
● Personal employee stories
● Company culture

#2. Share how you support your employees on social media

Company leaders worldwide can attest to the power of social media in their businesses. You can boost brand recognition and awareness, in particular, on social media by connecting with potential and current customers.

Social media is also beneficial when sharing content on how you treat your employees. For instance, one of your employees can do a social media takeover and share a day in their life at work. You can tell your brand’s story in a series of posts. Or you can create content that talks openly and honestly about things most companies don’t talk about, like wages and benefits.

Whatever content you share on social media about how you take care of your employees, be sure it’s emotionally intelligent, genuine, and that your company culture is embedded in it.

#3. Appeal to the “anti-work” crowd

Anti-workers are focused on ending work as we know it. They aren’t against making money. They’re against the mistreatment, inadequate support, and toxic work habits that find their ways into many workplaces.

If you treat your employees so well that even the “anti-work” movement says, “If you have to work somewhere, work here,” customers, potential employees, and the like will come running. 

Focus on how the “anti-work” crowd perceives you. What are people who hate work saying about your company, its culture, and how you treat employees? Create a workplace environment that makes a person who despises working for someone else want to work for you.

Ultimately, if you can get the “anti-workers” to say nothing but good things about your company culture and employee treatment, it will go a long way with your customers.

Conclusion

Attracting customers by marketing how you treat your employees can’t be achieved overnight. Consumers are more knowledgeable and empowered than ever before. So, you must connect with them in ways that don’t involve selling your products and services.

Start by showing them who you are by highlighting how well you take care of your employees.

— Jori Hamilton is an experienced writer residing in the Pacific Northwest U.S. She covers a wide range of topics but takes a particular interest in covering topics related to wellness and mental health. To learn more about Jori, you can follow her on Twitter and LinkedIn.

• Posted 3.26.22 at 03:34 am by Roy Osing
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March 19, 2022

Proven easy ways to integrate TikTok into your video marketing strategy

Source: Unsplash

Looking for the secret sauce guaranteed to boost your company’s video marketing strategy?

TikTok may be exactly what you’re looking for. This worldwide phenomenon originally soared in popularity with younger audience members and is now amassing even more users in older demographics thanks to the hours of entertainment it promises.

What does this mean for you as a business owner? Frankly, it means you need to be on it and figure out how to show up and show off. While having a presence on TikTok can be beneficial to nearly any business in any market, it’s an especially strategic move for those targeting females ages 16 to 39 as this demographic makes up the majority of app users.

Here are some ways you can integrate TikTok into your video marketing strategy right away.

What You Can Expect

Before you start investing time, energy, and money into your TikTok marketing, you may be wondering what you can expect to get in return. Is this even worth the effort?

Well, how would you like to see the following:
● Better connection between your business and online communities.
● Increased Brand Awareness.
● More engagement with your products and services.
● Improved conversions for advertisements.

If those sound like something you’d be interested in seeing for your business, let’s move along and find out how you can achieve them thanks to the help of TikTok.

Getting started with TikTok

If you’re entirely new to the app, you’ll need to first set up a TikTok business account so you’ll have access to analytics, insights, editing tools, and other metrics that will help you gauge the effectiveness of your efforts. Next, take a look around the app and familiarize yourself with its features while starting to build your presence.

Take notice of trending topics, hashtags, and content with high views. What do you notice about them? Why are people engaging with it? By taking note of these observations, you’ll be better prepared when it comes time to make your own content.

Finally, start engaging with other brands and the TikTok community. This is the kind of app that works best when you’re actively communicating with others instead of just sitting back and watching.
‘Like’ videos, subscribe to users, even post comments. These small acts of engagement are all part of your TikTok strategy so spend some time building your presence.

Get your toes wet

Now that you’ve taken the time to observe other users, it’s time to get your toes wet and create some of your first content. Don’t worry, this is the fun part! Play around with the filters TikTok offers and don’t take yourself too seriously! TikTok is universally entertaining because it showcases authenticity so just be real and get to creating.

Keys to success

As with any form of marketing, especially in the social media world, the first key to success is to be consistent. Set a schedule for posting content and try your best to keep it. Even if you’re just putting out a short clip, it’s better than being inactive.
Let your audience peek behind the curtain and see the “real” you with behind-the-scenes content and interviews. Post something silly like a TikTok challenge. Or, create a how-to video for one of your products.

Key point: post often.

The BIG goal

When it comes to TikTok, the Holy Grail is being featured on someone’s ‘For You’ page. This content is curated for users with AI and is based on their past views and interactions.
Getting your content on this feed will boost your interactions as more and more users like and comment on your video. Once your post gets in the flow, your content can live in perpetuity and your new followers will be as organic as they come.

Top ways to use TikTok for business

Now that you understand more about TikTok, let’s look at the top three ways your business can use it to your advantage. It’s not all about posting content, believe it or not!

#1. Post TikTok videos — Now, we said it’s not ALL about posting content but that doesn’t mean doing so isn’t the best way to utilize TikTok. Finding ways to creatively engage your audience through videos is crucial to your TikTok success.
Your posts need to be fun, authentic, engaging, and consistent. Think about what your followers want to see and find a way to give it to them.

#2. Team up with influencers — Before you give us a huge eye roll, hear us out. Influencers have gotten a bad rep in the media but they can actually be hugely beneficial to your business.
How? Imagine the biggest influencers on TikTok posting raving reviews about your product or service. What do you think their followers are going to do? Finding the right influencers to partner with can be a game-changer for a business!

#3. Run TikTok ads — This wouldn’t be a marketing blog if we didn’t talk about paid advertising, right? TikTok advertising is one of the best places to spend your marketing dollars and it currently gives you five different ways to do so:

▪️In-Feed Ads: These ads are posted on the user’s ‘For You’ page and from there can be shared, liked, and commented on. With an engaging Call to Action, your ad can give a huge boost to your revenue.
▪️Top-View Ads: As TikTok says, these ads are ‘top of feed, top of mind.’ While they’re also featured on the FYP, these ads present your brand first on someone’s news feed.
▪️Brand Takeovers: These short ads appear when a user first opens their app before they even get to their news feed.
▪️Branded Hashtags: This option can be a part of your influencer strategy and is a fast and easy way to increase engagement.
▪️Branded Effects: The most creative option, your company can create a branded filter or effect that users can create their own content with.

Time is TikTok-ing
Forgive the pun but the truth remains: it’s time to get your business on TikTok and start boosting your video marketing strategy by utilizing this insanely popular app.

Remember, the key is having fun with your content so followers will engage with it and share, share, share! What will you create first?

— Torrey Tayenaka is the co-founder and CEO at Sparkhouse, a corporate video production agency. He is often asked to contribute expertise in publications like Entrepreneur, Single Grain and Forbes.
Sparkhouse is known for transforming video marketing and advertising into real conversations.Rather than hitting the consumer over the head with blatant ads, Sparkhouse creates interesting, entertaining and useful videos that enrich the lives of his clients’ customers.
In addition to Sparkhouse, Torrey has also founded the companies Eva Smart Shower, Litehouse & Forge54.

• Posted 3.19.22 at 06:17 am by Roy Osing
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November 27, 2021

5 surprising reasons product packaging can be a competitive advantage for your business

5 surprising reasons product packaging can be a competitive advantage for your business.

There’s more to product packaging than meets the eye. It plays a huge role in influencing customer decisions more than you might imagine. Packaging communicates lots of things. For example, ingredients, company values, what all the product can do, how to use it, etc.

Many marketing experts go so far as to say that packaging is just as important as the actual product itself. It’s integral to overall marketing and brand communication.

In this post, we look at ways in which smart and flexible product packaging can give you a competitive edge over others.

#1. Packaging encourages informed buying decisions

Whether browsing through the market isles or a website catalog, it’s likely that a first-time consumer would have little to no information about what your product has to offer. Especially in the case of offline shopping, customers have no time to do research.

They will count on the packaging to know what the product is all about. Based on the information supplied on the package, they will arrive at a buying decision.

Always make sure that your packaging includes the following information:

● List of ingredients
● Usage instructions
● Nutrition information
● Product benefits
● Product description
● Company name, logo, and contact information
● Any disclaimers and/or warnings

Make sure that the font and colors are concise, scannable, and quick to understand. All the necessary information should be easily accessible to encourage buying decisions. Things like how the product will help and why it’s the best should all be very clear.

#2. Packaging with colour can sway consumer purchase habits

If you understand colour theory and the psychology of colors, you’ll know that the human brain reacts differently to different colors. That’s why picking the right color for product packaging parlays nicely into using human psychology to secure a competitive advantage.

For example, white colors generally translate to simplicity, panache, sophistication, purity, and safety. At the same time, using too many colors generally signifies a lack of sophistication. Brighter colors like pink and red are mostly used in kids’ products.

Other shades like blue can convey different meanings. A lighter blue is associated with playfulness while darker tones like navy blue carry professional meaning. Blue and Green are the most used colors in packaging worldwide. However, it doesn’t make them automatically right for your brand.

So, study the nature of your product, target demographics, and accordingly pick the right color scheme.

#3. Packaging differentiates your brand from others

For any type of product, there are thousands of contenders vying for customer attention on a typical market aisle. With such tough competition, it’s generally the packaging that grabs customer attention. To make sure a customer reaches for your product, your packaging and color scheme must be unique. It must stand out from your competitors.

For instance, Cannon Blast, one of the recent products by Captain Morgan, comes in a rather quirky packaging. The battle is shaped like a cannonball. Not only is the design relevant to the product, but it’s also unique and eye-catching.

#4. Packaging indicates product quality

The quality of the packaging is a direct indicator of product quality. This is particularly true for food-related products. Therefore, unique packaging is not only a way to differentiate yourself, it’s also a way to communicate value.

You’re telling customers how much thought and consideration you’ve put. It shows you to take your products seriously. In a nutshell, quality packaging doesn’t just protect the product, it protects the brand as well.

#5. Packaging is an opportunity for promotion

Packaging is just another avenue for you to express yourself and promote your company. By using typography, color schemes, taglines, logo, and mascot; you can strengthen your branding game.

A brand name has stronger recall value and uniformity. It’s important that what you promote/advertise and the design are one and the same. Also, while uniformity and consistency are important, adjusting the color schemes is a great way to keep up with changing trends.

Experimenting with packaging and advertising is a great way to see if sales go up or down. It can also be a great opportunity for offering product promotions like BOGO—buy one get one free—offers.

Product packaging is one of the most underrated and powerful marketing tools for brands. It can do a lot more than you asked for. So, be sure to invest a lot of time in your brand packaging.

— Alice MacKenzie is a content writer and publisher at SigmaQ which provides packaging and displays to create memorable experiences with your brand. She writes on different categories based on packaging by providing a variety of tips and solutions for their business. Her mission is to create sustainable solutions for lasting business that empower the packaging industry.

• Posted 11.27.21 at 06:43 am by Roy Osing
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