Category Archives: Our Opinion

5 Ways To Add More Value To Your Audience Than Ever Before

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Busi­ness suc­cess today is based on adding far more value than ever before. It’s there if we make the most of it.

The inter­est­ing thing is that the world now allows us to be any­thing that we want to be; from the writer; to the designer; to the video­grapher; to the printer. What this means is that for the first time in our life­time, we all have the oppor­tun­ity and power to decide what the next step is, how it’s pro­duced and how it’s delivered.

If You Don’t Do It, Someone Else Will

By tak­ing all these actions on board enables us to make con­nec­tions, build a dia­logue with our audi­ences and to make some­thing hap­pen. It is down to us to decide what to do next, because if we don’t someone else surely will.

That is exactly the point, with a breadth of ways to tar­get our audi­ences it becomes far more inter­est­ing using a vari­ety of plat­forms than just stick­ing to send­ing emails to pro­spect­ive cus­tom­ers and hop­ing for the best.

Here are five really effect­ive ways to add more value in terms of pro­du­cing new work, con­nect­ing, ask­ing, learn­ing, spread­ing and repeating.

1) Take On A Pro­ject Per­sonal To Your Business

If there is an area of expert­ise that you stand for, there are ways to cre­ate your own pro­ject and tie in with the over­all busi­ness. Remem­ber the over­all aim is to cre­ate some­thing that people will engage with. It is about pro­du­cing work that mat­ters to the audi­ence that you choose. For instance, The ID Group have an up and com­ing pro­ject that focuses on local busi­ness own­ers and what advice would they give to their younger selves start­ing their own busi­ness. It is inten­ded to be used as a resource for any­one start­ing their own business.

2) Cre­ate A ‘White Paper’ (Or Guide)

From an industry topic related to your busi­ness, you can pro­duce power­ful insights aimed at provid­ing inform­a­tion by deliv­er­ing mar­ket data that is far more motiv­a­tional than product data. Who­ever provides their audi­ence with the best inform­a­tion will always stand head and shoulders above the com­pany who just wants to sell their ser­vices. It’s also a good idea to share what you have cre­ated on SlideShare.

3) News­let­ters

Ban­ish the one page enews­let­ter and bom­bard­ing every­one with as much text crammed onto a page, it’s time to make the most of the print options that are avail­able. Keep to the 80/​20 rule, with 80% aimed at provid­ing value to the reader and the 20% to allow a bit of pro­mo­tion for your busi­ness (but not too much self congratulation).

4) Video

If you have the oppor­tun­ity to talk to an audi­ence on a topic that you believe in and want to share, film the present­a­tion. The best pos­i­tion is to devote your­self to help­ing oth­ers suc­ceed and to share what you believe in. Once the video is pro­duced (and uploaded to You­Tube), you then have the plat­forms to share and inter­act with (from LinkedIn to Twit­ter). If the whole aim is to inform and edu­cate you build rap­port as opposed to break­ing rap­port by selling.

5) Invite Oth­ers To Be Part Of Your Brand

Using your web­site as a plat­form for oth­ers to write and con­trib­ute to a par­tic­u­lar topic, helps present you as the author­ity in your areas of expert­ise, by a col­lect­ive group of people shar­ing ideas and com­ment­ing in one cent­ral place ie. your site/​blog. If the inform­a­tion pro­duced is of value, it auto­mat­ic­ally repos­i­tions you in the mind of the pro­spect as much more of an expert than all your com­pet­it­ors, isn’t this a great place to be?

To Sum Up

The secret to all the points made is to pro­duce con­tent that can tar­get audi­ences over a vari­ety of tac­tics (and test­ing what works for you). In a new era of empowered pro­spects and cus­tom­ers it is vital to cre­ate qual­ity con­tent that is rel­ev­ant and provides value.

Design In The Browser — 7 Ways Why It’s The Future!

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We’ve recently put our belief in design­ing web­sites in the browser to the test, it works!

The tried and tested way for build­ing web­sites, is to cre­ate a visual in InDesign/​Photoshop, the concept/​style is signed off and then the files are provided to the pro­gram­mer to build. How­ever, the world of design pack­ages and browsers don’t neces­sar­ily mean that the fin­ished product looks the same.

How It Works

Thus the idea to design in the browser came to fruition and a great example from one of our recent sites is for light­ing design prac­tice, Michael Grubb Stu­dio.

The way it works is rel­at­ively straight­for­ward, from an ini­tial idea, we designed the lay­out and sent live, actual code back to the cus­tomer for comment/​approval. The whole pro­cess becomes one where every­one is clear what the final ver­sion will even­tu­ally look like.

Rather than build­ing the visual within InDesign/​Photoshop and then mak­ing changes, you get your teeth into the browser and pro­duce a site that every­one becomes famil­iar with.

7 Bene­fits To Why It Works

Here are The ID Group seven huge bene­fits to design in the browser:

- It saves a huge amount of time with design amends. This nor­mally hap­pens before any­thing is sup­plied for programming

- Cus­tom­ers buy what they see, design­ing in the browser gives con­trol to cus­tom­ers to become famil­iar in it’s final platform

- It’s much more effect­ive to present to cus­tom­ers this way

- It can be viewed in a host of browser sizes, before any­thing is finally live. A huge bonus when test­ing the ini­tial layout.

- Inter­ac­tion is encour­aged from the out­set, where but­tons can be pressed, pages can be swiped and visual effects are seen from an early stage

- Con­tent is con­sidered first and then you design around it (not cram­ming in ideas and design)

- The whole pro­cess becomes focused and clear

A web­site still needs good design and who­ever is design­ing your site needs an appre­ci­ation and under­stand­ing of the devel­op­ment aspect.

The key to design in the browser is effi­ciency and trans­par­ency. It keeps everything clear from the out­set and makes the whole pro­cess one that cham­pi­ons clarity.

Image: Cour­tesy of Flickr icecreamqueen99

Why You Need To Stand For Something

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If you stand for some­thing that oth­ers believe in, then you’ll be head and shoulders above the com­pet­i­tion, by becom­ing a trus­ted source.

If you share your beliefs and val­ues, then imme­di­ately you’ve chosen your side of the road to stick to. If you keep to the middle, you’ll even­tu­ally you’ll get run over and then for­got­ten about.

Com­mu­nic­at­ing clearly and with a sense of pur­pose, enables you to become under­stood. What is even bet­ter is that oth­ers see that you believe in what you rep­res­ent and that’s what helps form rela­tion­ships, by find­ing some­thing in common.

Suc­cess­ful busi­ness is based on the right atti­tude and exchanges with people who believe what you believe. What is even bet­ter is when oth­ers turn to you for assist­ance based on trust and recog­ni­tion of the expert­ise you provide.

Plat­forms to be seen as stand­ing for some­thing can vary from speak­ing at events, through to 140 char­ac­ters on Twit­ter. Although, there seems to be even smal­ler con­ver­sa­tion on Twit­ter these days, which looks dom­in­ated by auto­ma­tion and self pro­mo­tion, which then proves an excel­lent oppor­tun­ity to find your place.

Once oth­ers recog­nise that you stand for some­thing, the shift moves from being pass­ive to build­ing a com­munity that listens and responds, which is a fant­astic way to become a vis­ible brand (that unites).

The key bene­fit is that it strengthens the bond between you and your audi­ence, but always remem­ber that stand­ing for some­thing means that you are not going to be liked by every­one. Which is fant­astic news, as you don’t want to be liked like every­one, you want the right people and busi­nesses on your side.

In fact, ‘balls’ to those who don’t like you! If you put everything you have into those who listen and value what you do, then those who aren’t ‘into you’ aren’t worth your atten­tion (they were never going to become cus­tom­ers anyway!).

To stand for some­thing, the key driver is to edu­cate and inform, rather than for self gain. For oth­ers to recog­nise what you believe in can become one of the strongest tools to build­ing a brand that has cred­ib­il­ity and recognition.

Image: cour­tesy of Flickr (Lincolnian)

How Do Companies Create Loyalty?

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The secret to a suc­cess­ful busi­ness is owed to the loy­alty com­manded from your cus­tomer base by show­ing an interest. If we cre­ate more of a social move­ment, where people love us, then this is worth it’s weight in gold.

I have found that the more you look to build a rela­tion­ship and show an interest in oth­ers, as opposed to a gen­eric LinkedIn ‘join my net­work via a tem­plated text intro­duc­tion’ then you make that leap from the rest of the crowd.

Loy­alty comes about by mak­ing a con­nec­tion with oth­ers and con­trib­ut­ing to your mar­ket­place. This week alone I received four news­let­ters (why did I sign up for them in the first place, they were all pap) that were keen to tell me how their product was the best in the mar­ket. It had noth­ing to do with the fact that they cared more, did more, served bet­ter than the oth­ers and could give me a bet­ter way of work­ing. It’s the same for all of us, the sooner you start improv­ing your cus­tom­ers’ lives, the quicker they recog­nise the value you provide when com­pared to the competition.

An example from my past fort­night, has been the quest for a new builder to quote for my new loft con­ver­sion. The roll-​call began with sup­ply­ing archi­tects plans and meas­ure­ments to quote and only one sup­plier stood miles out from the rest (seven in total). Why, because they were bothered. Ok, the cost was slightly more than the oth­ers, but with the samples they brought with them, to the phone call to double check the quote had been received, they almost became an advisor as opposed to a supplier.

Loy­alty is driven from look­ing at how many ways you can add the dimen­sion of value, not by you but in the eyes of the prospect/​customer. Human nature means we all want to feel spe­cial and val­ued by oth­ers. If we can give bet­ter res­ults for oth­ers, then your repu­ta­tion will become wide­spread within your marketplace.

How Brand Personality Is Key To Your Success

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Decisions are based on the rela­tion­ships we cre­ate, you’ll never build a rela­tion­ship by hop­ing someone will react to a mes­sage you send out.

A couple of good examples from the past fort­night, included a LinkedIn mes­sage where I was ‘pitch slapped’ from one side of the room to the other with what was being sold to me and the second was after a net­work­ing event and someone who I didn’t speak to, but obvi­ously had the sheet of contacts/​email addresses, sent me the email (which we prob­ably have all seen before) with the ‘good to see you at the event yesterday…now here’s eight para­graphs about us.’

These are examples where it is blatantly clear that the whole focus was to make the sale and noth­ing to do with sow­ing the seeds of a rela­tion­ship. Never become ‘that per­son’ because when you do, your per­son­al­ity goes com­pletely out the window.

Always remem­ber that the brands we cre­ate, aren’t the logos we sit behind, but the suc­cess­ful ones are those that act human and evoke an emo­tion. The biggest fear for us all is that no one cares and what we pro­duce is irrel­ev­ant. It’s time to let the human side come to the surface.

What changed for my busi­ness was the moment when cus­tom­ers and pro­spects were all treated ‘nor­mally’ and the same found­a­tions used to build friend­ships with people.

When we meet someone new in our per­sonal lives, we don’t go guns blaz­ing say­ing how fant­astic we are, we see how they fit into our way of beha­viour through listen­ing, con­vers­ing and ulti­mately, we like who they are and what they rep­res­ent. This is exactly the same for build­ing busi­ness rela­tion­ships and cre­at­ing a brand personality.

Our inten­tions should never be to please every­one, if you do this you merely sit on the fence and become unim­port­ant. To be seen as hav­ing a per­son­al­ity, you need to stand for some­thing that you believe in and be worthy of your audience’s atten­tion. When you do this, you are con­sidered as the expert because you have an opinion.

Your brand’s per­son­al­ity is one that should be con­tinu­ally evolving through the dif­fer­ent prospects/​customers you meet. By hav­ing a brand per­son­al­ity that has a human side, also means that none of us are per­fect, we all make mis­takes and if we can be strong enough to say ‘whoops my fault’ some­times, then at least shows our busi­nesses rep­res­ent being hon­est, trans­par­ent and authentic.

The rela­tion­ships we cre­ate are firmly built on the brand char­ac­ter­ist­ics we rep­res­ent. By hav­ing a clear per­son­al­ity helps build bonds and alli­ances and send those that don’t fit in the other direction.