How to Take Your Brand Strategy to the Next Level in 2020
At the beginning of the new decade, we are poised on the precipice of big changes when it comes to driving brand strategy for your company. Looking to expand your company’s brand outreach over 2020 and into the new decade? Here are just a few tips to stay ahead of the pack in a rapidly evolving marketing environment. 1. Diversify your outreach Diversification has been a sector buzzword for quite some time, but as we progress into 2020, the advantages of spreading your brand outreach through a range of marketing channels have never been more pronounced. The bottom line is this: if you want to grow your brand and attract more customers, you must reach targeted and general customers where they are. Although social media remains a vital piece of the modern branding puzzle, if growth is your goal, you simply can’t place too much emphasis on social media alone. The leading United Kingdom business magazine Business Matters recommends a varied branding outreach strategy, bolstered by elements that include “a well-designed website, great social media across multiple platforms, digital PR, in-person networking and email marketing.” Plus, for most companies seeking to grow its brand, traditional media outlets such as print, broadcasting, and cable channels, still play a major role. 2. Integrate consumer-facing IoT The Internet of Things (IoT) — the vast and diverse network of interrelated digital devices and smart machines that not only interact with but learn from one another — is ready to “revolutionize branding.” Or so says no less an authority than Forbes Magazine, which points to the data and control of IoT technology as a key tool for companies that have “blurred the lines between digital and brand strategy, effectively making them function as one, in many cases.” In short, the IoT not only gives companies ample opportunity to grow and expand their branding operations, but it can be instrumental in boosting the brand unity and overall cohesion that is so key to success in the modern consumer sector. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the tech-driven retail giant Amazon is positioned at the cutting edge of IoT-driven branding with network and product unifying devices such as the Amazon Echo. This year, Amazon announced three new wearable technology products (Echo Frames, Echo Loop, and Echo Buds) that promise to draw the average consumer even deeper into the IoT world. 3. Learn to use the full potential of Google to drive traffic to your virtual doorstep Your online branding strategy may have be ambling forward with an official website and a few relatively well-managed social media pages. You may even have launched a basic search engine optimization (SEO) campaign. But if you really want connect with existing and prospective customers online, you must remain up to date with the ongoing developments of Google. Facilitating over 90 percent of all online searches, Google is, essentially, the only search engine that truly matters. In order to make the most of Google’s tremendous potential, companies should engage a brand strategy agency with the expertise to use the search engine’s rapidly evolving policies and particular idiosyncrasies in order to optimize online content and drive SEO. 4. Leverage the power of branded apps Branded digital applications are also a great way to expand and solidify brand loyalty. Industry giants such as McDonald’s and Starbucks have already learned the tremendous value of these apps, which can provide tremendous insights into the buying habits of customers. On the consumer side, Forbes identifies “incentivization and gamification” as “two tried-and-true carrots” that can make branded apps irresistible. Starbucks’ branded app, for example, offers discounts for devoted customers, provides an easy payment method for in-store purchases, and allows for the storage of gift card credit. In short, the Starbucks app has largely replaced Starbucks loyalty cards and similar physical branding outreach products. No matter what form your branded app takes, it can serve as a powerful centerpiece for much of your brand strategy. After all, what can identify a loyal customer faster than an app on his or her smartphone? To learn more For more information about managing and growing your brand over 2020 and for years to come, you should consider contacting a brand strategy agency that can address the specific needs and unique attributes of your company and the business sector in which it operates. A forward-thinking marketing firm, Bigeye can help you chart a brand strategy that can take you through the new decade.
Why More Cities and Towns are Taking on Place Branding
Read why place branding has become a key differentiation strategy for cities and towns seeking to compete for a larger share of tourism dollars. Corporations have long known the value of branding — and in the age of social media influencers, personal branding has also become routine. Yet there’s another branding category that often flies beneath the radar: Place branding. Let’s take a closer look at how smart place branding works and why more cities and towns are engaging in the practice. Why place branding has become a critical differentiator Great branding tells a story and helps establish an identity. Companies use it to connect with consumers; people brand themselves for competitive positioning and places use branding to help generate tourism revenue. Travel is now the second-fastest growing industry in the world. The travel and tourism sector generated a staggering $8.8 trillion in global revenue in 2018, generated 319 million jobs and was responsible for roughly 10% of all worldwide economic activity. Why is the travel and tourism sector growing with such rapidity? Two reasons: First, globalization has lifted tens of millions of people into the middle class over the last decade. These people now have the resources to travel. Second, travel has become ever more desirable. Instagram and other social media platforms have made documenting vacations a global obsession. Millennials and Gen Z prize experiences over items, and few experiences can compare with travel. This means there is a massive – and ever growing — tourist revenue pie for cities to split. Barcelona and other major tourist hubs are dealing with an epidemic of overtourism, which has created a market opportunity for other cities and town to pursue some of these tourist dollars. So how do these locations best compete for travelers? In most cases, through smart and well executed place branding. How Place Branding Works Years ago, cities and towns were competing against other regional municipalities for tourist money. Today, they have the power to market themselves globally. There’s a problem, however: Most of the information in guidebooks and online resources is outdated and superficial. In order to draw tourists in significant numbers, cities and towns need to take a strategic and creative approach to creating a brand narrative — something that can be done by partnering with a place branding agency. What does an example of well-executed place branding look like? Consider the case of Austin, Texas. For most of its existence, Austin was a sleepy college town with no national profile — a very junior brother to Houston and Dallas. Austin had something that larger Texas cities lacked, however: An incredibly diverse and eclectic music and arts scene. City officials leaned into this, promoting Austin as a world capital of live music and reinforcing the city’s status as a creative hub for talented misfits. “Keep Austin Weird” became a civic mantra and rallying cry during this period. Today, Austin is one of the fastest growing cities in the US. It hosts the massive South By Southwest festival and draws more than 50 million visitors annually. This kind of strategic push and creative thinking eclipses the limited, catch phrase and logo-based place branding of a few decades ago — think “I Love NY” or “Virginia is for Lovers.” It shows that cities and towns need to determine what makes them special and then engage their own people, places and institutions in an effort to tell that story to the wider world. They need to go beyond the guidebook — and really think about the singular experiences that only their community can offer visitors. In a travel-crazed world, that’s a brand story that a lot of people will want to hear. Finding the right brand identity design company Effective place marketing isn’t easy — it helps to have the services of a truly top drawer neighborhood marketing firm. The right agency can help your city or town develop a marketing plan that goes beyond routine local attractions and delivers the unique experiences that travelers are seeking. Call Bigeye today to learn more about what inspired place branding can do for you.
Why Replacing the Last Click Model is Imperative for All Brands
When it comes to updating software we tend to delay changing out the systems we already use, which is why making a partnership with an attribution modeling company is crucial. The last click attribution model isn’t just antiquated in today’s advertising and marketing world — it’s been outmoded for years. In order to remain competitive, brands that have not kept pace should consider partnering with an advanced attribution modeling company. Let’s take a closer look at why the last click model is lacking, and how businesses can develop newer and more effective approaches. Turning the page on last click Conversions, generally, come after a series of touch points between the consumer and the individual elements within the marketing funnel. Given this multitude of touch points (and lacking access to each consumer’s thinking process), assigning credit for conversions has historically been a challenging task. The last click model offers a simple — but highly inadequate — solution to this problem: The last click or ad event gets all the credit. Of course, in many cases the last click or ad event may have been entirely irrelevant. In fact, it may have even been a net negative in the conversion process, giving the consumer a moment of doubt before converting. Nevertheless, under this model, it earns full credit to the exclusion of all other touch points. Despite these profound limitations, last click remains widely used. According to data from eMarketer, 87% of companies with more than 100 workers and at least one digital advertising channel will use attribution modeling. Yet only 58.3% of these companies will use multichannel modeling, which assigns credit to multiple touch points. So why are so many organizations sticking with a process that provides such limited visibility into the efficacy of a campaign? There are a few reasons. First, implementing new, more sophisticated models is a challenge, while last click is simple. Organizational inertia — and the fear of integrating more complicated approaches — helps keep last click in play. Observers also point out that data is often siloed, and marketers aren’t incentivized to share information across an organization. Additionally, many in the C-suite haven’t taken steps to push marketers away from last click modeling, either due to a lack of understanding or by simply viewing it as a low priority. A better solution As eMarketer points out, there has long been skepticism among C-suite executives about certain aspects of digital marketing. Namely, concern about marketers using vanity metrics that make them look good and a lack of a clear link to concrete outcomes. Dumping last click in favor of a more sophisticated modeling approach can play an instrumental part in diminishing such concerns. With a more fine-tuned modeling methodology linked to core outcomes, brands can gain much deeper visibility into the efficacy of their efforts, determining causality rather than correlation. By working with a top digital marketing agency or attribution modeling company, businesses can implement alternative approaches. Some of the most common of these include: Linear models (which assign credit equally) Time decay models (where more credit is given closer to the conversion) Position-based models (where the first and last touch points earn the largest credit) Data-driven models (which harness machine learning technology to assign credit and can learn over time). The takeaway At BIGEYE, we’re committed to providing our clients with sophisticated attribution models that provide greater clarity into the buying process and campaign performance. If you would like to hear more about what an attribution modeling company can do for you, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us today.
Design Trends, Friends, Other Creative Odds & Ends
2018 was a year of unique design approaches that will continue into 2019. Bold colors, duotone photo filtering, playful typography layouts, deconstructed and asymmetrical layouts, and rich metallic and holographic foiling techniques are just a few of the visuals that dominated design these last 365 days. The philosophy of building a complete brand system (not just a singular standing logo) was also something that bubbled over into the mainstream this year, especially for larger brands. These are brand identity systems that are structured for ease of use and at extremely small sizes while also being allowed to flex, expand, and contract with execution. This approach will continue on as the most effective way to create and implement a modern-day brand. 2018 also revealed the growing trend of larger brands beginning to bite the bullet and commission their own typefaces. The point being to avoid hefty licensing fees, and having their own custom-designed typeface is the ideal long-term solution. Photography also took a hard right turn this year. Compositions that appear more amateur and “Insta-documented” were a noteworthy visual, especially for brands wanting to connect with younger audiences. Lastly, we have a hunch that the stripped-down-personality of the super sans-serif wordmark-only type treatment trend in logo design may slowly start to fade away as we get further into 2019 and 2020. But of course, that’s yet to be seen! No matter the trends that come and go, two important things will always remain—using tried-and-true design principles of balance, rhythm, and harmony, paired with telling a brand story that connects with its intended audience. That’s our take on how the best brands (with the best products) of today will truly thrive in tomorrow’s rapidly changing world of tastes, needs, and desires.
Why the Smartest Brands Pay Attention to Typeface
When it comes to top brands, excellence filters all the way down to the details. No single element is unimportant enough to escape careful consideration — and that includes fonts. For brands that lack the resources or expertise to create stellar fonts, partnering with a creative branding agency is a logical step. Three reasons why fonts are crucial to your branding efforts A font may be (quite literally) a small thing. Yet, it is a serious error to underestimate the power of the role it plays. The right font selection can have a serious impact on the effectiveness of your company’s branding. Consider the Bodoni font, which has a clean and classic look that’s made it perennially popular in the world of high fashion (Vogue Magazine’s famous logo is one such example). Because Bodoni is so closely linked with that particular milieu, those seeking to give their brand a touch of class and sophistication can earn a head start by using Bodoni. Or consider the counter-example of Comic sans, Microsoft’s attempt to create a playful, comic book-inspired font. Universally reviled, any non-ironic use of Comic sans is likely to be greeted with ridicule at best, antipathy at worst. Overall, font design is critical to brand success for three key reasons. These include: 1.Tone setting Before an audience even begins to process words, it first must process how those words are presented. So, in this sense, the typeface sets the tone for how a brand is ultimately perceived. Bodoni gives your logo or written content a classy, high style connotation. By setting the tone for what follows, font choice plays an essential role in how audiences respond to what they see. 2.Legibility When it comes to fonts, it is not all form over function. Aesthetics need to work hand in glove with practical concerns like readability. The right font choice makes all visual imagery more accessible, which in turn engenders positive feelings in audiences. A cluttered font or a font that distracts due to being inappropriate for the context (think comic sans in business correspondence) is a serious turn-off. Brands need to choose a font that improves legibility across every platform, channel, and device possible. 3.Values and identity Font selection plays an integral role in telling the public who you are. It gives the audience a sense of your values, your identity, and organizational personality. The right font should help tell a brand’s story; in fact, it should serve as that story’s introduction. Choose a font that clashes with your intended branding and identity and the audience will receive a contradictory message that makes a business seem amateurish and unfocused. Working with the right branding agency The importance of a great font should never be underestimated. Some organizations, however, lack the experience or expertise to operate in this area without the assistance of a branding agency. A top Florida advertising agency like BIGEYE can help you choose or design a font that delivers brilliant form and function. Contact our design team today to get your brand fonts in order!
Enhance Your Marketing Strategy with Display Advertising Services
When used the right way, display advertising can deliver exceptional results, whether the goal is to raise awareness, capture leads, or drive sales. The key there is using the ads “the right way.” Too often, companies spend money on ads that don’t attract the right audience, or worse, attract the wrong audience — people who click an ad with no intention of making a purchase. The best way to ensure you get the maximum return for your advertising investment is to leverage the expertise of an agency that has a proven track record with display advertising services. 5 Reasons you should add high-impact display ads to your marketing strategy Why are display ads an effective addition to any marketing plan? We’ve narrowed it down to five imperative reasons: 1. They work If you spend any time at all on the internet, you’ve seen (and probably ignored) display ads. Ads that are highly targeted with the help of a display advertising services agency still get results. At the end of the day, we’re all looking for efficiency and convenience in our lives. When we’re in the market for some quality hiking boots and an ad for “Quality Hiking Boots” comes up while we’re surfing the web, what could be more convenient than clicking the ad and making the purchase? 2. You have full control over starting and stopping ads Many forms of advertising involve a lengthy contract. Display advertising gives you the freedom of starting and stopping your ads whenever you like, as often as you like, allowing you to optimize your ad campaign as it runs. 3. You can get a second chance with retargeting and remarketing With retargeting, ads are displayed on other sites in an ad network for people who recently visited your website. In effect, your ads “follow” them around the internet. Sure, there’s a creepy aspect to that. But today’s consumers are familiar with this tactic and will often give in to clicking the ad if the product or service is something they really want or need. 4. They offer highly refined targeting Display ads can be targeted in a number of ways to maximize the “eye share” you get with your ideal prospect. This can include geo-targeting in which your ad is shown only to people in a particular geographic area. 5. They increase brand awareness Even if a person doesn’t click on a display ad, simply seeing it starts to create some familiarity with your brand. Over time, familiarity can turn into curiosity, and curious people often become customers! Display advertising services: Get more for your money By capitalizing on the knowledge and expertise of a digital marketing agency, you can create and place display ads that reach the right people, in the right place, at the right time. That’s our mantra here at BIGEYE for all services we provide. Get in touch with out team today if you’re interested in talking about your display ad strategy, or any aspect of your digital marketing.
Shaping Your Business Model Is More Important Than You Think
A company chooses how to compete in a given industry with its business model – also known as its plan to make big money! A business model states a firm’s logic, operations, and value. Companies must navigate between two considerations to shape its business model: 1. The first consideration is the value proposition. What is the main value your company brings to its customers? [quote]A value proposition can be based on low cost, differentiation, and in some cases, a combination of the two.[/quote] A value proposition can be based on low cost, differentiation, and in some cases, a combination of the two. A firm based on differentiation offers a product or service that appears to be more desirable than alternatives, and therefore, customers are willing to pay a higher price. Whereas, a firm based on low-cost attracts its customers by offering a product or service at a better value than alternatives. The third value proposition, a combination of low-cost and differentiation, is more difficult to offer because providing a higher quality product or service is a larger investment. Here are some examples of the types of value propositions to give you a better idea of where your company may fit: Lululemon: Differentiation – Lululemon provides high quality, unique fitness and lifestyle apparel that customer’s are willing to pay for at a premium cost. Walmart: Low-cost – Walmart is a mass merchandiser that has everyday low prices. Trader Joe’s: Combination – TJ’s offers a one-of-a-kind experience in store and a compelling brand while maintaining low-cost products. 2. The second consideration is the target market. A target market can be defined as either a mass market or a niche market. Typically a firm that is focused on low-cost targets a mass market, while a firm focused on differentiation focuses on a distinct market. For example, Walmart is able to offer products at the lowest prices because it targets a mass market. This results heavy store traffic and high purchase volume that are required to operate at low gross margins. Which business model does your company follow? Contact our strategic marketing agency today, and we will help to showcase your company’s value! Source: Casadesus-Masanell, Ramon. September 4, 2014. “Introduction to Strategy”. Retrieved from Harvard Business School.