business tips

The difference between branding, marketing, and advertising…

I was researching a similar topic for one of our clients, and became fascinated by the differences between these “things” – these “things” that can either propel our businesses forward into an abyss of awesomeness, freeze our businesses into a state of stagnation, or hurl our businesses backwards into a state of non-existence. Yes…it is that serious…

When I started reading through various articles, it became more and more clear how crucial it is to KNOW the difference between branding, marketing, and advertising, and to not confuse them. Just KNOWING the difference will affect how you choose to get your business out there – actually GETTING your business out there will also become a lot more consistent and strategic.

After much interweb exploring, reading, and comparing, I have come up with my simple definitions:

Branding

Branding is what shows the world what your business stands for – it is the personality, the glue, and the passion behind your business. Branding is psychological.

Branding says, “Hello, I am trustworthy, reliable, cool, trendy, and awesome.”

Marketing

Marketing is the act of getting your business/product out there. Marketing is practical.

Marketing says, “Hello, look at me! This is what I am and what I can offer you. Look at me!”

Advertising

Advertising is simply the purchasing of a space where you can push your business/product. Advertising is persuasive.

Advertising says, “Hello! Here I am, now buy me!”

Once you understand these differences, you can understand the value of each one separately, and then also understand how they work together:

Marketing and advertising gets the public interested and gets them buying, but it is the branding that will keep them loyal year after year. 

 

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Infographic Friday: Grow your business

Today we got inspired by infographics that are all about growing your business and getting you to the point of success!

Grow your business thought content marketing – dendritepark.com

 

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Grow your business with the power of Pinterest – fastcodedesign.com

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What good is having a business if you have nothing to share with people to let them know what you are all about? – Source Unknown 

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These three infographics highlight 3 important aspects to incorporate when starting a business – an effective business card, clever and frequent content marketing, and using social media platforms, such as Pinterest, to get your business some exposure.

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Increase Traffic to Your WordPress Site – 4 Things You Can Do

GUEST BLOG by Camille McClane

As you consider ways to increase traffic to your WordPress site, keep in mind that it’s not your traffic technique that’s going to win the war, but what you offer people in terms of service, content, products or resources that will do most of the work for you.

That being said, marketing and traffic-building techniques are tools in your hand, and you should know how to use them.

1. Searching Engine Optimization and Keyword Research

Using tools, like Google’s Keyword Planner, to find the most optimal keywords to include in your content can help you rank higher in Google’s search results.

It can take some time, but effective keyword research is an important step when you’re trying to figure out how to word the following:

·         Permanent URLS

·         Page Titles

·         Blog Post Titles

·         Page Descriptions

·         Paragraph Content

 2. Engage in Forums and Communities in Your Niche

One of the most effective ways to build a reputation and gain popularity within your niche is to be active and post on forums and communities of the same topic as your site. Including a link in your signature and bio on those sites will provide a doorway back to your page wherever you post, which can bring in a lot of enthusiastic and interested people.

3. Guest Blogging

Even if your site isn’t strictly a blog, you can still write content for other people’s sites and send it out as a guest post.

However, you do need to be careful with this tactic as low-quality guest content marketing doesn’t put you in great standing with Google.

4. Offering Something Substantive

Above all, if you want any kind of sustainable traffic, make sure that you offer something substantive on your site that people will want to visit and utilize, or the traffic you build will be temporary at best.

What can deter traffic?

Generally speaking, avoiding low-quality guest posts and black-hat SEO techniques, like keyword stuffing and hidden texts, is the best way to avoid harming your site. If you do that while providing content that’s of a high quality and worth people’s time, traffic will come.

Camille McClane is a freelance writer and online entrepreneur in the Los Angeles area. As a writer for BlogWranglers, she is able to share her knowledge on all things WordPress, and enjoys offering tips to fellow guest bloggers so that they too can increase their online exposure.

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The results of the Creative Cape Town Survey 2013

Creative Cape Town recently did a survey, completed by creatives, and when we read through the results, a few patterns emerged. Firstly, we realised what a large industry we are part of, and secondly, we noticed that there was a great need for support when it comes to starting your own business, networking opportunities, and further education.

Here are some of the result we found most interesting:

CCT - start business
We love this result because we believe that the more entrepreneurs we have in the world, the more the world will begin to change. Having your own business means doing what you love, what you are good at and what you enjoy, which in return means that there will be a lot more happy people around, and wouldn’t that be wonderful!?

CCT - sectors
Where do you fit in? We were surprised by this result – in our experience, we thought that the design sector was over saturated. It is a great insight into what careers are “trending” – could this be related to what services are in demand?

CCT - Netowrking events
Are you an events company? Do you own a stunning venue? Are you an entrepreneur that wants to meet new people and connect with other businesses? Take note of this result and maybe start planning some networking events.

CCT - Learn about events
If you are advertising events, you should keep this result in mind – Looks like the majority of people find out about events on Facebook and word of mouth – this is not to say that print advertising is not effective, but it proves again how valuable social media can be for your business.

CCT - Info needed
Knowing what kind of information creatives are looking for can help you in terms of what content you should share on your social media accounts and your blogs – for both SEO and marketing reasons, maybe consider writing more about events, marketing, and business education.

Below are three more Creative Cape Town survey results that grabbed our attention:

CCT - Ages

CCT - Events to attendCCT - Funding

 

 

 

 

 

For the full survey, just click here.

Let us know what you think of this year’s Creative Cape Town survey by commenting below – we’d love to hear your thoughts.

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The Hout Bay Green Faire (and why your business should attend)…

The annual Hout Bay Green Faire is a day of fun, socialising, and being introduced to the latest eco-friendly trends, products and services. It is held at the Kronendal Primary School field in Hout Bay and is guaranteed fun for the whole family. As Hout Bay locals, we support all initiatives started by other locals, and we strongly suggest that you attend this event. As an individual, staying on top of what green innovations are available is very important, but going there with your business in mind is equally valuable – how green is YOUR business?

In terms of making your business as green as possible, here are 3 factors who should take into consideration:

1. How much electricity do you use? Should you be looking into more eco-friendly options?

2. What happens to any waste your business has? Do you recycle? Do you have compost bins?

3. What else can you do to save money while saving the environment?

The Hout Bay Green Faire can help you turn your company into a green, environmentally friendly business – it really is easier than you think.

There will be over 70 stalls and the entire faire is powered by solar and wind energy! Green businesses and individuals get an opportunity to showcase their products and services, as well as educating people of the importance of “going green”.

Exhibitors, which your business should take note of, include:

1. CES – A Community Exchange System, which supports the exchange of skills instead of money

2. SolarStar – Solar powered products

3. Rain Queen Tanks – Harvesting water from the rain

For more information on the talks and demonstrations, and the programme, just click here.

The Hout Bay Green Faire is the perfect place to get started on the path of a greener life (and business) and the best part is that you can bring your kids, your neighbours, and your grandparents – there is something for everyone!

You can join their Facebook event page too and stay informed about the day’s happenings. Get a glimpse of what you can expect here – The Hout Bay Green Faire

If you would like to have a stall, please contact them on stalls@houtbaygreenfaire.org

 

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3 tips on turning your service into a product

Our business is service based and we find that marketing a service can be more challenging than marketing a product – on many levels selling a product seems easier, especially in terms of payment, time management, marketing and finding your target market. If you are a service based company you might want to consider turning your service into a product – here’s how you can do it…

1. Identify what your target market needs in terms of a product

For example, if you are a plumber your customers might also need plumbing related products or information. You could create easy to use DIY plumbing kits for simple plumbing problems – not only will your current customers buy these, but you could stock them at other plumbing businesses too as well as larger retail stores.

2. What information can your business share?

Even if you are not a writer, putting a small book together can be easier than you think. For example, if you are a music teacher, why not create a book for children, which outlines basic music principles and theory? Your clients are sure to buy them and before you know it they will be stocked in book stores and even music stores.

3. Who can you partner up with?

Think about businesses that you can align with in terms of turning your service into a product – for example, if you are a writer, think about photographers that can take beautiful photographs and then you can add inspiring words to the images, frame them and sell them as wall art.

The most important element of successfully turning your service into a product is innovation – you have to think outside of the box. We strongly believe that this can be done with ANY service and if you feel otherwise, get in touch with us and we’ll happily show you the way. Have some fun, step out of your comfort zone and create something your target market really wants – if done well, it is guaranteed to work!

 

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The Importance of a Creative Brief

We have had people not sign on with us because we asked them to fill out a creative brief – their reason being, “Oh no, we just want something simple and quick. We thought you were a small company?” Here’s what we could have replied with…

Dear So and so,

We are a small business, but we are also a professional business and even though you would like a quick and simple logo, we would like to offer you quality work that ends up reflecting what you want. By filling out the creative brief, you give us insight into your brand, your competitors, the imagery you want, the style of your brand, what you stand for and how you wish to be represented to the public.

If you would like us to create something that is the opposite of what you want, letting us go around in circles, wasting our time and your money, by all means, don’t fill out the brief.

We would love an opportunity to create a logo for you that captures all your brand stands for – we are assuming that you would like the same thing? Have a think about it, weigh up your options (good logo vs. bad logo) and let us know when you are ready to fill out the brief.

Kind regards,
The Small, Professional and Creative Lotus Media Team

This blog is meant to highlight the importance of a creative brief to both potential clients and other design companies – here are the top 3 reasons you need a creative brief:

1. It gives you insights that you might not get otherwise (for both client and design company)

2. It is a map of what your client wants and where they want to end up

3. It provides security for both client and company when either one fails to provide what was asked for – go back to the brief and see what went wrong (if the brief is thorough enough, this shouldn’t happen).

5 Questions to ask in your creative brief:

1. Please describe your business
2. Who are your competitors?
3. Who is your target market?
4. What makes you stand out from other similar businesses?
5. Do you have any imagery, words or specific colours associated with your brand?

As a design business, save yourself hours of work and get your clients to fill out a creative brief. As a client, respect that a brief is needed to create something incredible for you; put 10 minutes aside, grab a drink, and fill out the brief – you won’t regret it.

For an example of our creative brief, you can go click here.

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How to create a Design Style Guide for your brand

Let’s start by defining what a design style guide is – simply put, it is a guide to how your brand must be presented. This can refer to graphic design elements, fonts, colours, imagery, language style, your target market as well as your mission statement. Often businesses print this information out and create a book, which is often referred to as a Brand Bible.

You design style guide can be used as a resource for your own business and your employees, but it is also a great resource to have when needing to explain your brand to another company or individual. Here are the 3 most important aspects we find to be essential to any design style guide:

1. Just be yourself

Don’t get overly wordy and descriptive or think of it as a way to impress others – it is merely an outline of what you stand for and a way to show others (or reminding yourself) what your voice is and what brand elements bring this voice across. Keep it simple and to the point.

2. Use design to captivate the reader

Give some insight into why your brand colours were chosen, why a certain font speaks to you as a business, what imagery do you want associated with your brand and why, and explain the story behind your logo design – get creative and give examples of each of these style elements. The visual section of your design style guide can be equated to a sort of scrap book of ideas – share your inspiration and your journey.

3. Keep it updated

Your brand will develop and change over the years (sometimes even within a month), so it’s important to keep updating your style guide – don’t remove the old brand elements, just add onto it – this adds to your story, to your journey, and allows people to see how you have evolved.

To summarise , here are the suggested page headings for your design style guide:

1. Our Mission

2. Our Logo

3. Our Voice (as well as sharing how you portray this on various platforms)

4. Our Journey (this is optional and depends on how much of a journey your brand has had so far)

Having a Brand Bible to refer to every now and again is a great way to firstly remind yourself of what your brand’s voice is and, secondly, it is a great way to see if your brand still speaks to you – if you read over it and something doesn’t sit right with you, you have an opportunity to adjust your brand – without a style guide this change might not be noticed right away.

So, get your team together, go over your brand’s style and put together an exciting and creative guide to what your business is really all about!

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Being an entrepreneur: What I’ve learnt so far…

In 2010 I left my job as a teacher and began my journey as a freelance writer. I say “journey” rather than “career” because it wasn’t much of a career until I became an entrepreneur. The journey began with me naively thinking that because I know I can write, others will see this and they will just offer me writing work left, right and centre –  unfortunately, this was not the case. I became very familiar with the words, “we do not accept unsolicited articles”, to which I responded (shouting at my computer), “how can I get exposure if you need me to have exposure before you ask me to write anything for you, which will get me exposure?!”

As you can imagine, this unproductive cycle was driving me slightly insane, and so came the idea to add a bit of clout behind my name. Myself and my husband started Lotus Media because we, like so many creatives out there, had the passion and the talent (and a bit of experience), but we lacked the fancy titles, awards, and exposure that many companies were looking for. Becoming entrepreneurs instead of remaining freelancers opened doors for us that, I feel, we would’ve only come across years and years later had we not taken the entrepreneurial plunge.

We have now been working for ourselves for about 2 years, and here are the top 5 lessons we have learnt so far:

1. Just begin…

If you are thinking about it when you wake up, and you are thinking about it in the shower, and you are thinking about it when you should be listening to your friends, and you are thinking about it when you go to bed at night, and then in your dreams you dream of being an awesome entrepreneur, then you just need to do it! Quit your job, don’t quit your job, but whatever you do, just begin…

2. It doesn’t get easier, it just gets more rewarding…

Do not expect that one day it will just “be OK” – the work is never done, the search for clients and customers is never done, the marketing and advertising never ends, but what does happen after a while is that you begin to reap the rewards.

3. Learn to let go…

Let go of the client who can’t for the life of them reply to emails within a one week period. Let go of the fact that not everyone knows how to communicate on the phone. Let go of the anger towards people who continuously suggest changes to your business (without being asked!). Let go of the fact that your big dream sometimes feels like a long nightmare (you will get there!). Just let go of all that could affect your mood and make you cranky – let go and move on!

4. Change needs to be your best friend not your enemy…

The plan you had for your business in the beginning might not be the plan you have 6 months down the line. Revisit your business plan all the time – you’ll be surprised how off track you can go – businesses have a life of their own, and often they take you on a whole different journey. Accept these changes and new opportunities – for lack of a better statement, “just go with the flow” and then assess the flow and adjust accordingly…

5. Admire how far you have come…

Take a moment every now and again and look at what you have achieved, buy a bottle of champagne, and celebrate (feel free to do this even after your first logo is completed) – the more you celebrate, the more you emphasise the positive and move attention away from the negative. Be proud of yourself, no matter how big or small the accomplishment.

There are possibly many other lessons we have learnt, like never going into business without a contract or a deposit, but we thought we’d focus on the more philosophical ones for now. I have no doubt that in 2 weeks there will be even more lessons, and then I shall share them too – please feel free to comment below about your entrepreneurial lessons, we’d love to hear about them!

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Top Questions to Ask in a Job Interview

When interviewing potential employees, your questions need to provide you with enough information (and the right information) to allow you to accurately assess the person and their skills. It is important to have a few questions in mind before starting the interview as well as using what they say as a lead for other questions.

Here are the top 11 job interview questions you should ask:

1. Tell me a bit about yourself – Not a question exactly, but this is a great way to break the ice and possibly relax the interviewee. It is also a good indicator of how the person sees themselves, and what they choose to share can reveal a lot about who they are.

2. What is your greatest strength? – For obvious reasons, this is an important question to ask. If you feel like they are being too modest, rephrase the question and ask them what others would consider their greatest strength to be.

3. What are your weaknesses? Not everyone will want to admit this in an interview, so again, you can rephrase and ask what skills they might need to improve on OR what do they wish to learn when getting this job.

4. How do you handle stress? This is always good to know – you want to find out if they can handle pressure and how they go about dealing with it.

5. Come up with a scenario that might occur in your business and ask them how they would react – using a concrete example can often help the interviewee to give a less vague problem solving answer.

6. Why did you apply for this job? – You know the type of person you want on your team, so this question will allow you to determine if they reflect what it is you want. Their motivation for applying for the job is crucial in deciding if they are right for the position.

7. Why did you leave your previous job? – Always an important question – were they fired and why? Did they resign and why? You need to know what the reason was to see if this may effect their time at your company.

8. What are your long term career goals? – This will give you an idea if they are looking to grow within a company or if it is merely a stepping stone for something else – depending on your needs, their answer will either work in your favour or not.

9. What qualities do you value in others? – This will give you an idea of what they might expect from their working environment and their peers.

10. What will you bring to this company? Find out what they feel they can add to the business and how it will benefit your growth.

11. What does success mean to you? This will give you an idea of their priorities and hopefully it will match yours – if you are a business that runs on passion rather than financial success, then you will want someone to join your team that is equally enthusiastic and motivated.

These 10 job interview questions should form the foundation of the interview – ideally, there should be other questions that are asked, which feed from the interviewee’s answers – the more organic the job interview process, the more you will get out of the interview.

Personally. we feel that one of the most important traits to see in an interviewee is happiness – “Your employees are your best asset. Happy employees make for happy customers” – Richard Branson

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