Author: Becky Umweni

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Must Read Books: MORE THAN ENOUGH by ELAINE WELTEROTH

MUST READ BOOKS

More Than Enough By Elaine Welteroth

JAN 10, 2020

The Deets:

I had a feeing that this book was going to be a good read. Being that most millennial women are aware to some degree of who Elaine Welteroth is (she was the editor-in-chief at Teen Vogue).

I would say for any fellow girlboss or ambitious young women in general trying to make way in her career (especially as a women of colour). Welteroth share bits of wisdom from the on-goings of life while taking us on her journey through her career which have moments i’m sure all of us as women can relate to at one time or another. If your looking for a modern yet cohesive take on navigating the workspace as a young female professional, I would highly suggest grabbing a copy of More Than Enough.

BU

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Web Design & Redesign

Web Design & Redesign

WE GO DEEPER INTO INTENTIONAL STRATEGY, YOUR BUSINESS DREAMS AND CREATE A TIMELESS WEB DESIGN THAT EVOLVES AS YOU DO

Custom Website Design

INVESTMENT: START AT $1250 – TIMELINE: FOUR-WEEKS

Beautiful design doesn’t have to be complicated, stressful and take up months of your time. I use a four-week process where we design your site start to finish in that time, leaving room for an entire week of site edits and train you on your specific site. It’s personal, quick, and easy.

Audit Includes

  • An in-depth questionnaire on your website likes, dislikes, goals, wants + desires
  • A page-by-page review of your website
  • Suggestions and recommendations for design, strategy, copy, direction
  • Report of my recommendations, with screen-recordings where necessary

How It Works

I’ll send over your questionnaire and give you plenty of time to complete it (it’s quite hefty). From there I’ll complete the audit and create my “report”. You’ll have post-completion access to my emails for two-weeks, and in that time can ask me anything (no question is a stupid question!).

Personalized Website Audit

INVESTMENT: START AT $250

Perhaps you want a little hand-holding through the strategy, more complicated design bits and how to navigate traffic through your site. I personalize each website review to you and your business. I’ll give you thoughtful feedback that you can implement into your own site, or if you’d prefer I can implement the suggestions for you (at my hourly/daily rate).

Audit Includes

  • An in-depth questionnaire on your website likes, dislikes, goals, wants and desires
  • A page-by-page review of your website
  • Suggestions and recommendations for design, strategy, copy, direction
  • Report of my recommendations, with screen-recordings/ screenshots where necessary

How It Works

I’ll send over your questionnaire and give you plenty of time to complete it. From there I’ll complete the audit and create my report. You’ll have post-completion access to my emails for two-weeks, and in that time can ask me anything that comes to mind about your project.

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5 Types of Facebook Ads to Utilize This Holiday Season

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5 Types of Facebook Ads to Utilize This Holiday Season

NOV 28, 2020

Facebook is one of the biggest advertising platforms in the world – second only to Google – but it can get a bit of a bad rap. Many see Facebook ads on the site as nothing more than an awareness tool. And that muddies the water between ad spend and return on investment.

Facebook advertising remains incredibly powerful. The following stats prove it:

  • More than half of all Canadians check Facebook once per month.
  • More than 14 million Canadians check their Facebook news feed every day.
  • There are more than 19 million Facebook users in Canada.
  • 45 percent of people use Facebook once per day

In this post, we outline how to plan your Facebook advertising this holiday season. We discuss the importance of paid social, different types of ads you can use, what makes for great ads, and some useful tools that help with ad creation.

Why you need paid social with organic

Facebook ads: who needs them if you’ve got organic, right?

Everyone. Increased competition for space in user feeds is now so fierce that going 100 percent organic isn’t a great strategy. Most firms now adopt a hybrid approach, taking advantage of the benefits of both types of outreach.

In general, organic is for improving your online presence and reputation, allowing you to construct a more detailed brand persona. Paid is for increasing your reach and raising awareness among specific audiences. Ideally, you need both to thrive.

Here are some stats that prove the value of paid social:

  1. The average Facebook user clicks on 11 ads per month.
  2. The number of impressions generated by Facebook ads grew 33 percent last year.
  3. Facebook is responsible for 80.4 percent of social traffic referral to eCommerce sites.
  4. More than 94 percent Facebook’s paid ad revenue comes from mobile.

Types of Facebook ads

Facebook – like most online ad platforms – offers several types of ads, each with a different format and objectives.

Link-click ads

Link click ads are perhaps the most common type of ad on Facebook. These rely on users clicking a link in the right column, desktop or mobile newsfeeds, or on secondary sites, such as Instagram. They’re ideal for driving people directly to your landing pages and getting them interested in products now. You’ll need to keep the ad copy short, though – Facebook limits you to just 90 characters.

Video ads

Video ads are similar to link-click ads but have a slightly different objective. You’re still trying to get people to follow links to your landing pages, but it is not a pure sales play. Often, companies will use Facebook videos to talk about their brand or even entertain their audience.

Placement works in just the same way as link-click ads, but instead of a static image, a video appears. Facebook allows videos up to 4 GB and lasts a maximum of 120 minutes, giving you a massive scope to communicate with your audience. Most videos are in the 15 to 30-second range.

Boosted page posts

Boosted page posts are tools Facebooks gives you for extending the reach of posts you place on your Facebook page. Clicking the boost page allows you to set up bidding methods to target your audience. Again, the purpose is to get people to click your links and forward them to your landing pages.

Multi-product carousels

Facebook allows you to create multi-product carousels that display the types of items your audience might want to buy in the desktop newsfeed, mobile newsfeed, and audience network. You can add up to ten images and videos, and include headlines and links to all your products from a single ad box. Ecommerce companies find this particular option very useful.

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Tips for Marketing Your Business Online for Post-COVID

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Tips for Marketing Your Business Online for Post-COVID

DEC 4, 2020

Nothing is predictable in business, but nobody would have thought when the bells struck midnight on the 1st January that we’d be staying at home for weeks due to a viral pandemic. The last few months have been incredibly challenging for business owners, and this is why getting your marketing strategy right is so crucial. If you’re looking to bounce back, engage with customers and send sales soaring again, here are some marketing to keep in mind moving forward.

Increase your marketing budget

It may seem daunting to increase any expenses at the moment, but this is a time to invest in effective, targeted marketing techniques, rather than to cut back on funding for campaigns. Focus on maximizing your ROI by carrying out market research to define and get to know your audience and responding to emerging and changing trends. Figures from Forbes indicate a significant increase (61%) in social media engagement during lockdown, with brands taking the opportunity to connect with customers and followers while usage is up due to lockdown measures and fewer people being in work. Adapting the way you market and promote products and brands and investing in proven online techniques and methods that will resonate with the right buyer will have a positive impact.

Provide reassurance and be empathetic

The Coronavirus crisis has hit everyone hard. As a business owner, it’s critical to look out for your employees and your customers and clients and to show empathy. Offer reassurance through information and communication updates and check in on your loyal customers. People want to feel safe when they emerge from lockdown, and some people may take longer to leave the house and return to ‘normal.’ Showing empathy, interacting with customers and offering services and features that take problems or fears into account can all help to rebuild confidence and trust and ensure clients view your brand in a positive light.

Prioritise consistency

Consistency is essential when planning and implementing marketing strategies. Your campaigns should promote your brand, tell people more about your ethos and convey the same message. In light of the COVID-19 crisis, the primary aim is to reach out, reconnect and build towards the future. Brand image is crucial at a time when many people might not be keen to make purchases or spend money on services. By being consistent in the way you communicate and brand your business, you can ensure you set the right tone, offer reassurance and comfort, inspire confidence and present your brand in the best light. Confused, inconsistent marketing can damage your identity and dilute the message.

Storytelling

Storytelling is an increasingly effective marketing method for businesses of all sizes. People are captivated by stories and they remember what they’re reading about or looking at. A recent study suggested that brands that employ storytelling successfully have the ability to boost the value of services and products by 20 times. Storytelling can be beneficial at any time, but it’s likely to be particularly impactful at the moment when we’re navigating uncharted waters and the future is uncertain. Many customers are eager to get back into shops, to resume work on their houses or to spend money in the hospitality sector, but they’re not quite sure whether it’s safe to take that step. Businesses can utilize storytelling to provide an insight into what is going on and what’s been happening behind the scenes and explain how life is going to be a little bit different in the coming days, weeks, and months. Using visual content, providing digestible, clear explanations and interacting with customers through posts and emails that tell stories is an excellent way to increase consumer confidence and enhance your brand image. The human brain processes visual data around 60,000 times faster than text, so when trying to provide somw clarity for your audience that would be a great way to approach marketing efforts.

Honesty and openness

Every customer knows that the pandemic has wreaked havoc for businesses. To strengthen relationships and work towards a successful recovery, it’s beneficial to be open and honest with your clients. Tell them what is happening with your business, how you’re adapting or changing and what they can expect if they choose to place an order, pop into a store or make an inquiry online. Sending out emails with infographics, video clips and illustrated guides and sharing social media posts about new safety measures will help to bridge gaps and ensure your customers understand what has happened in the past and what that means for the future.

Manage expectations and keep communicating

Even the most well-prepared, well-adjusted business will need to learn on the job in the coming weeks. We are all experiencing a ‘new normal’ and businesses are operating in a different way. As a company owner, it’s important to manage expectations, provide clear explanations and instructions and keep in touch with clients. Send out emails, post blogs on your website or share updates on social media to inform customers of changes. If your delivery times are expected to increase, you’re limiting numbers in a restaurant or hair salon, or you’re asking customers to place orders online or to wear a face covering when they visit, communicate these measures and make sure you’re accessible to respond to questions or concerns. It’s always best to inform people of potential delays or modifications, which might affect the quality of the service temporarily, in advance so that your customer knows what to expect.

Summary

Marketing can play a key role in helping businesses to recover after the Covid-19 crisis. If you’re looking to promote your business, to drum up interest in products and services and to connect with new and existing clients, it’s wise to bear these best practice guidelines in mind.

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7 Digital Marketing Tools That Help Your Business

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7 Digital Marketing Tools That Help Your Business

JUNE 29, 2020

Keen to get started with your digital marketing for your business but not sure where to start?

Helpfully, loads of digital marketing tool creators have focussed on SEO, so a Google around the topic throws up loads of results, written by the makers themselves. This makes it difficult sometimes to work out which one is right for you, and before you know it you’ve signed up to hundreds of free trials! There are also tons of blogs just like this that profess to tell you which is best, which might have had some financial help (by way of sponsored posts or affiliate links) along the way too.

Not this one however, I can 100% state I’m not linked to with any of the providers listed here, my aim is to pass on my own opinion of what I’ve personally found useful to get my own business started, and to help clients out when budgets and time are tight.

Not all marketing tools are created equal, and what might be the best-in-class market might not be best for your business (read, many SaaS providers are interested in enterprise level use, so their monthly fees are pretty high for what you might actually use it for).

The balance needs to be in finding the mix of best tools for you, that help you get the right level of analytics, get you where you need to be and as much as possible don’t eat into your (already limited) time you have devoted to spending on digital marketing.

A great tool like this should:

  • Be Intuitive
  • Have a simple layout so you can do what you want to do first time
  • Keep you coming back!

As much as possible you will want to find the best free tools to save you time with your digital marketing. From analytics to specific tools that help with SEO and your Social Media.

There’s no one tool that will do everything, but the best use of time is to consolidate as much as possible, so your digital marketing efforts are going to perform the best they can. It’s possible to do many things manually, but at the outset of your digital marketing, you want to use your time as efficiently as possible.

Here is my overview of some of the best tools I have found really useful, and hopefully you will be able to use them for your marketing too:

Canva

An app and website that allows you to create digital designs quickly, while on the move. An added benefit that they already have social media sizes saved in the platform, so you can just choose the size you want and off you go. You can also utilise their templates to create beautifully branded Facebook and Instagram stories, posts, banners, posters and many more.

Planoly

If Instagram is your core digital marketing channel, then a little help with visually planning your grid via Planoly really helps. If you want to post an Instagram Grid Mosaic, then their handy Splitter Tool helps you manage these beautifully and effortlessly. You can use Planoly to automatically post and measure all of your analytics, so if you want to use this instead of Instagram, the tools are built in to do so.

Feedly

A great way to compile Google alerts and particular news sources into one place. Useful for yourself and your team to stay ahead of what’s emerging in your industry, and to curate for your followers too. If you’re a B2B business particularly, being able to repost links to useful insights and then offer your own take or insight is a great way to stay front of mind with your clients and prospects. Set up a search term for topics around your niche, and also use this to inform possible SEO research too.

Typeform

Create professional looking surveys to send to your network to gather some early insight into what they think and feel about your industry, niche or brand. Far more engaging than some traditional survey formats, the site is great for design led and visual brands, as well as offering a great user experience. Great for capturing data and insight to inform future innovation and developments in your brand.

Social Scheduling Tools

Hootsuite, SproutSocial and Buffer are great social tools (with varying levels or pricing depending on how many accounts you connect). Each tool has varying control levels and intuitiveness within them, and are slightly better suited to certain social channels.

  1. Hootsuite is pretty ubiquitous and is free to a point but you will need to take out a paid subscription to unlock some of the more advanced tools.
  2. SproutSocial offers a free trial and then a more expensive paid subscription, but also allows for smart analytics such as tracking of competitors and advanced features.
  3. Buffer is totally free and is great to get started with your social media marketing, to allow your scheduling to be done in one place. I’d wager that a full run down of each of these could turn into another blogpost, so I’ll pause here for now.

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Setting a Purpose for your Social Media Channels.

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Setting a Purpose for your Social Media Channels.

NOV 9, 2020

Businesses needing support with their social media isn’t departure any time soon. With numerous social channels to think about , the task to manage all of them, know all the ins and outs and understand how they fit into the larger picture can feel quite daunting, which is why it makes sense to outsource. Before you hire someone to help you with your social channels, I’d encourage you to consider the role, voice and support Social needs within your business. If you’re a CEO with an outsized following, make certain to think how closely linked your brand must be together with your own personal views and voice. How do you leverage your team and advocate to share your message? How do the platform’s continual updates affect your potential customer base?

Before you get started, take a step back and consider the below:

  • Think about who you’re targeting.
  • Divide your potential customers into groups and think about which channels these groups are most likely to use.
  • What is it you want out of social? Is volume of followers the right metric? And does it matter by social channel? If you’re a B2B business, is going for volume of followers on Instagram right for you? Do you want people to stay on social or drive them to sign up to a newsletter?
  • What space does your business occupy other than what you’re selling – what facets of your brand make people want to interact with you? Make these the cornerstones of your social content.
  • What news articles are relevant and of interest to your audience? How can you elevate yourself to be the brand with the finger on the pulse of the latest developments?
  • Is there anything you want to avoid talking about or have a particular stance on?

A channel-by-channel approach.

Understand how each channel is applicable to your business is important. Furthermore, understanding the quirks of every channel, the lifespan of posts then what makes for an excellent creative brief or messaging strategy is that the next piece of the puzzle.

What next?

Understand how social fits into your overall channel mix. Social media can serve a multi-faceted number of purposes, from brand building to acquisition, to retention for existing customers and of course, referral. Try breaking down all of the other activity and thinking about this in the context of social.