Fake Reviews Are a Real Problem: 8 Statistics That Show Why

BrightLocal has been studying the impact of consumer reviews for the last nine years and, in that time, we’ve seen a huge spike in importance. In our first-ever Local Consumer Review Survey carried out in 2010, fewer than seven in 10 local consumers trusted reviews as much as a personal recommendation and just 70% of people had gone online to find a local business.

Fast-forward to 2017 and 97% of local consumers had looked online for local businesses while 9 in 10 trusted online reviews as much as personal recommendations. As reviews have become more ubiquitous, the need to remove fake reviews has soared in tandem.

While fake reviews are good for no-one in the long term, the growth of this dubious tactic is quite enlightening. The fact that huge amounts of time, energy and resources are being poured into fake review spamming is an indicator of just how valuable it can be to have a decent number of reviews.

The ongoing presence of fake reviews also tells us that reviews are a big part of the consumer decision-making process and underscores exactly how important they are for local SEO. As always in SEO, if someone’s trying to short-cut or cheat something, it tends to suggest that doing it properly is worth the effort. You can find our five-step guide to building your review profile the right way, here.

It’s fair to say that negative reviews are every business owner’s worst nightmare. When they’re fake, that feeling is magnified tenfold. Over and above reputational damage, fake reviews could – at least in the short term – give unscrupulous rivals a leg up.

There are plenty of reasons that you’ll want to remove fake reviews to protect your business, especially given how prolific they are becoming.

Let’s take a look at some eye-opening statistics that are sure to convince even the skeptics to take fake reviews seriously.

74% of consumers have read a fake review in the last year, though they’re not always easy to spot

According to BrightLocal research, 74% of consumers have read a fake review in the last year. Among 18-34-year-old consumers, the proportion is even higher, with 89% saying they’ve seen fake reviews (more on that shortly). Interestingly, this number has declined over the last 12 months as the proportion of consumers reading a fake review peaked at 79% in 2017.

The sheer volume of fake reviews being observed is obviously a cause for concern. It highlights how prevalent fake reviews now are, underscoring the importance both of being vigilant and of knowing how to get them removed.

The extent to which fake reviews have infiltrated this area of reputation management threatens the trustworthiness of reviews as a whole – should consumers be exposed to an increasing number of fake reviews, it’s perfectly feasible that we’ll soon begin to see confidence in peer-to-peer recommendations being eroded.

That being said, it’s not time to hit the panic button just yet. While fake reviews continue to emerge, it’s worth bearing in mind that the same Local Consumer Review Survey also shows that trust in reviews and recommendations is on the up.

89% of 18-34-year-olds have read a fake review in the last year

As we touched upon earlier, more 18-34-year-olds have read a fake review in the last year than consumers of any other demographic. While 89% of this younger age group say they have read a fake review in the last 12 months, only 74% of 35-54-year-olds have seen a fake review in the last year. This number drops to just 59% for consumers over the age of 54.

It’s clear that 18-34-year-olds find fake reviews much easier to spot. This could be because they have grown up online as digital natives and so are savvier when it comes to navigating the online landscape. It’s also possible that this constant exposure has given them digital street smarts to the extent that they’re naturally more suspicious or untrusting of user-generated content such as online reviews until given good reason to think otherwise.

This wariness should raise a few red flags for business owners. First and foremost, if your target demographic falls within the 18-34 age group, your immediate concern may (rightly) be that earning their trust and their dollars is going to be an uphill struggle. After all, when it’s universally understood that reviews are critical to the consumer purchase process, how do you bridge the gap when reviews are deemed to be fake so frequently?

A second worry is that this statistic suggests future generations are already being programmed to be wary of online reviews. If that’s the case, you’ll need to find new means of establishing trust with future customers.

In order to tackle fake reviews and instill confidence in those aged 18-35, it’s important to be proactive. Responding to reviews is a local SEO ranking factor but replying can also help to boost trust because it shows that you recognize and value feedback.

Reviews with repeated exclamation points are more likely to come from reviewers who have never made a purchase

According to research conducted by MIT, deceptive reviews (those submitted by consumers who actually haven’t made a purchase from the business being reviewed) have a tendency to use repeated exclamation points such as ‘!!’ and ‘!!!’ in the text of the review.

Use of exclamation points may not seem like a huge problem on the surface but delve a little deeper and it’s the connotation that becomes troubling. Multiple exclamation marks indicate a heightened emotion such as excitement or frustration. The use of multiple exclamation marks mimics colloquial syntax and grammar on social media and messaging apps. Add this to the indicated heightened emotions and there is the worrying prospect of consumers believing the fake review because it’s written in a style that the reader themselves also employs day to day.

Some business owners may not feel the impact of these deceptive reviews, given that their power to mislead consumers depends on the business’s own demographics. If your particular target market doesn’t employ similar styles on social media, you may not need to worry that your audience will be swayed.

Fake reviewers are much more likely to make specific requests to the seller or business

MIT researchers studying reviews without purchases discovered that those leaving a review without having made a purchase contain significantly more words and are much more likely to contain requests for the business such as ‘please’, ‘bring back’, ‘offer more’ and ‘go back to’.

This particular statistic can be quite problematic for those responsible for reputation management because it’s necessary to respond to detailed reviews – even if you’re sure it’s a fake review or that it has been left by someone who hasn’t made a purchase.

As review response speed and frequency is a local SEO ranking factor – and something that 89% of consumers will read – it’s still important to formulate a professional, courteous response. In his post, Google My Business gold product expert Ben Fisher recommends that you should still respond to show genuine consumers that you take all reviews seriously.

As with any response to a negative review, whether it’s true or false, it’s wise to demonstrate a willingness to fix the issue being raised. Invite the reviewer to get in touch privately, either by private message, email or telephone to resolve the issue. In the case of a fake review, you obviously won’t hear from the reviewer but publicly, you have demonstrated you care about service levels, product quality, opportunities for improvement and the customer experience.

The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) estimates fake reviews potentially influence £23bn of UK customer spending each year

The CMA has launched a program of work after a lengthy investigation into fake reviews determined that they potentially influence around £23 billion of UK consumer spending each year. It says millions of shoppers consult reviews before booking holidays and buying products or services but found that some companies were buying reviews or paying third party agencies to write fake reviews about products and services.

The 2008 Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations forbids this practice. The CMA says,

It is a banned practice to use editorial content in the media to promote a product where a trader has paid for the promotion without making that clear in the content or by images or sounds clearly identifiable by the consumer. It is also a banned practice to falsely claim or create the impression that a trader is not acting for purposes relating to his trade, business or profession, or to falsely represent oneself as a consumer.

The CMA says that the use of fake reviews is a concern due to the volume of adults relying on reviews to make purchase decisions and the amount of money at stake. Fake reviews also pose additional problems in that they mislead consumers to spend money with a business or on a product they may not have otherwise chosen. This could mean other businesses are losing out on revenue they may have earnt, had it not been for the fake or misleading reviews.

For some sectors, fake positive or fake malicious reviews have a bigger impact – findings from the CMA suggest small businesses in the hospitality sector in particular are badly affected by fake reviews.

Cherry-picking or suppressing negative reviews can also mislead consumers and affect the ultimate purchase choice.

One in seven TripAdvisor reviews could be fake

An investigation by the consumer group, Which? concluded that up to one in seven TripAdvisor reviews are fake. Its research determined that several top-rated hotels in ten top tourist cities bore the hallmarks of fake reviews, with those reviews then boosting rankings and pushing the hotels up into the list of the best in that region.

TripAdvisor confirmed that a number of the hotels under suspicion had previously been warned about the use of fake reviews. Which? said,

The 15 that looked most blatantly suspicious included some of the best-rated hotels in the Middle East, four of the best-rated hotels in Las Vegas, and one of the hotels in Britain’s second-biggest hotel chain, Travelodge. When we reported them to TripAdvisor, it admitted that 14 of them – 93% – had been caught with dodgy reviews in the past year.

As we saw from the CMA findings, small hospitality businesses are especially vulnerable to fake reviews. The use of fake reviews to boost TripAdvisor placement means that not only are travelers at risk of disappointing trips when selecting accommodation based on five-star TripAdvisor reviews and city ratings, but independent hoteliers not partaking in fake reviews could be missing out on bookings and revenue, putting their businesses at risk.

Suspicious reviews can be reported to TripAdvisor – hallmarks of fake reviews include a large number of five-star reviews from users who have only submitted one review, and reviews from lots of users who haven’t reviewed other locations. Buying reviews, offering incentives for reviews or posting reviews for your own business are all against TripAdvisor review policies. Our guidelines for the top local review platforms including TripAdvisor can be found here.

61% of electronics reviews on Amazon are fake

Research carried out by The Washington Post has determined that 61% of reviews for electronics on Amazon are fake. The fake reviews affect categories such as wireless Bluetooth headphones and Bluetooth speakers, though other categories such as testosterone pills and diet pills were also found to be impacted.

Analysis showed that 50.7% of reviews for the top 10 Bluetooth headphones were fake along with 55.6% of reviews for the top 10 weight loss tablets, 58.2% of Bluetooth speaker reviews and 67% of reviews for the leading testosterone products.

Amazon dominates the e-commerce industry, accounting for 54% of online sales and 5% of all US retail sales. It also handles 54% of product searches – making it even more powerful than Google for merchants. This proliferation of fake reviews is therefore all the more worrying, especially for retailers. The numbers alone suggest that there are serious benefits up for grabs from faking Amazon reviews.

As per the Washington Post analysis, the abundance of fake reviews artificially giving greater visibility to certain items without merit makes it very difficult to reach shoppers on Amazon without also engaging in fake reviews. One small business owner told The Washington Post fake reviews have a “devastating” effect because they “make it impossible to sell anything on Amazon if you play by the rules.”

While Amazon is primarily a B2C site, this underscores exactly what the business impact of fake reviews can be. With reviews important to Amazon rankings, having a process in place to acquire genuine reviews and build an authentic review profile is essential to prevent further decline in visibility.

55,000 fake reviews are generated on Facebook per month

It is estimated that more than 55,000 fake reviews are generated each month on Facebook. Which? research says that fake review groups are plentiful on Facebook and are responsible for generating over 3000 fake reviews for businesses each day. The consumer group says Facebook has ‘systematically’ failed to take action and that the platform is ‘plagued’ by groups that create and sell thousands of fake reviews every day.

These figures again underscore just how prolific fake reviews are becoming with industries and businesses springing up to capitalize on the trade of fake reviews. If this becomes more prolific, there is a real danger that trust in reviews will be lost. The issue for business owners is that with a whole industry being created around fake reviews, local businesses will almost certainly find themselves competing for business against rivals who have purchased their five-star ratings.

Conclusion

Consumer trust in online reviews is at an all-time high. They are a vital tool in the decision making process with a strong review profile having clear financial benefits for local businesses. Reviews are now so important, both to sales and to SEO, that fake reviews are becoming more prevalent. This raises several issues for businesses and consumers alike, with consumers increasingly likely to be faced with fake reviews and businesses increasingly being placed at a disadvantage if they don’t join unscrupulous competitors in buying or faking reviews to win visibility on review platforms and e-commerce sites.

However, as the research above shows, there is a concerted effort being made by consumer groups, journalists and government bodies to crack down on fake reviews, so any investment in fake reviews is likely to backfire sooner rather than later. Do the right thing: generate reviews in a natural way and you’ll be rewarded.

The post Fake Reviews Are a Real Problem: 8 Statistics That Show Why appeared first on BrightLocal.

source https://thebtrade.com/2019/11/06/fake-reviews-are-a-real-problem-8-statistics-that-show-why/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=fake-reviews-are-a-real-problem-8-statistics-that-show-why

4 Ways Marketers Can Build Emotional Connections With Their Audiences

Your first job as a marketer is to connect with the audience on an emotional level. Many companies revert to salesy, aggressive, buy-now behavior, but that doesn’t work often. Creating meaningful, authentic content such as high-quality podcasts, animations and videos are imperative because it allows you to make the connection and build upon it over time.

The creation of content isn’t the hard part. The means of content creation and distribution have gotten so much easier. As a result, content production and consumption have soared.

With such quality and quantity of media, people view advertising as wallpaper, something to be ignored or avoided altogether and having to pay the money often required to do so. No slight intended to wallpaper lovers — I love a good statement wall, myself. The challenge lies in figuring out how to introduce your brand to your audience while creating quality content.

So, what’s a marketer to do? How do you take advantage of the proliferated means of production for all kinds of content? How do you build a relationship between your brand and prospective customers before they’re even in the zone to buy your product or potentially before they even shop and find you?

Get in the zone

This zone is right where your brand needs to play. With inexpensive distribution and hosting, a media landscape that has endless targeting possibilities and the ability to retarget many interactions to create a customer path, the content world is your oyster.

You’re not selling anything; you’re communicating something of value, connecting at an emotional level.

I’m not saying you won’t be advertising, but you’ll be advertising in a different way, sharing content that is inherently more appealing, entertaining and top of the funnel than your standard campaign. Then you can retarget based on engagement with this content, making every step down the funnel more efficient. For most categories, despite any protestations to the contrary, you can’t just pour ad funds into the bottom of the funnel and expect your cost of acquisition to work out in the end.

One bonus that should help in the financial return department is creating evergreen content that will stay relevant over the long term. If you can get your team to think of high-quality content more like capital expenditure and less like operating expense, then you’re on the way to building your brand in the most powerful way and rewiring how your company thinks about brand investments.

With all those caveats and provisos, here are steps for putting high-quality content behind growing your brand and avoiding the more traditional, expensive, overtly commercial and ephemeral investments in advertising.

Develop a content strategy

In this context, what really matters is generating authenticity at scale. You don’t want content that’s off-brand, bad or, the kiss of death, boring. You need content that represents your brand yet is entertaining enough to stand on its own: something that is made for your audience and fits into their life, something that prospects can use to connect with, get to know and learn the kinds of problems you solve.

Develop and vet creative concepts that align with your strategy

So often, the tactical pressures of marketing causes marketers to skip this step—at their peril. When creating a concept, you want to get the most creative and strategic people in a room with the content developers. It’s best to have concepts of your own in mind but also to recognize that you’re likely working with people who might be much better at storytelling than you are. Be open to this.

Focus on telling the story

Creative content can provide audiences with a continuous, intriguing story and also allows brands to connect in a more meaningful way. You’re not selling anything; you’re communicating something of value, connecting at an emotional level. If you try to pitch your wares or sneak in something that you think will help you sell, no one will pay attention. Be entertaining, be useful, be real.

Develop your marketing campaign

In most instances, you’ll want to leverage traditional media channels to reach prospective customers. Beyond that, consider how to best leverage existing channels—social media, your website, email—to reach current customers. One of the great benefits of developing compelling content for prospects, unlike traditional advertising, is that it also allows you to connect with current customers in a new way, adding value to their experience. Remember that your content often has a longer shelf life than functional benefits and features that change quickly.

Once you have compelling stories to share and a marketing plan behind it, publish them and make them easy to enjoy. The experience of consuming the content is just as important as the quality. Make it accessible and optimize the experience across channels so it can be enjoyed anywhere and at any time.

With entertainment content, consumers are trading their time for value and gaining awareness or insight into a company’s brand and offering, a very different approach from a disruptive ad. Delivering that value through authentic content is a surefire way to nurture your customer relationships and grow the business.

 

This article was written by Tom Klein from Adweek and was legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network. Please direct all licensing questions to legal@newscred.com.

The post 4 Ways Marketers Can Build Emotional Connections With Their Audiences appeared first on Insights.

source https://thebtrade.com/2019/11/06/4-ways-marketers-can-build-emotional-connections-with-their-audiences/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=4-ways-marketers-can-build-emotional-connections-with-their-audiences

A Crash Course in Custom Audiences for Your Social Media Ads

---

When you want to get your message in front of the right people on social media, where do you turn? 

More and more, brands and businesses are turning to social ads and custom audiences. You can do a lot of awesome, targeted messaging by focusing on the right audiences with your ads — whether you’re talking to a group of customers, a bunch of website visitors, or a list of subscribers

In this post, we’ll talk you through ways to build custom audiences and lookalike audiences on all the major social media platforms, plus share a couple ideas of how you can put these audiences to the best use.

Best wishes for some well-targeted, highly successful ads!

---

An introduction to custom audiences

There’s a huge amount to cover with social media ads.

Since this blog post focuses specifically on audiences, let’s start there. In general, an audience is going to be the bucket of people who will potentially see your ad. This group can be customized based on a variety of factors, which we’ll get to in a minute. 

A custom audience is a step beyond the basic demographic and psychographic audience filters. A custom audience can be based on an outside source like a set of emails or website visitors or on the social media behavior of users. 

Types of custom audiences you can build within Facebook

And then you have lookalike audiences, which take one of your custom audience and expand it to a larger group based on the qualities that the custom audience has in common. For instance, if all the people in your custom audience are interested in augmented reality, use social on a tablet, and have master’s degrees, then a lookalike audience will include people who share these attributes, too.

How to create a lookalike audience for Facebook / Instagram

As you can tell, there are many ways to slice and dice this information to build some really unique audiences. 

So let’s get dive into some of the details, starting with the biggest and most robust social advertising networks … Facebook and Instagram. 

How to Create Custom Audiences for Facebook and Instagram Ads

Advertising for both Facebook and Instagram is combined into the Facebook Ads Manager. You can run all your ads from here as well as create and manage all your audiences. 

Within Facebook, there are a handful of custom audiences that you can build. This list includes: 

1. A customer list — also known as a standard custom audiences.

This audience is based on a list of emails, phone numbers, or Facebook user IDs that Facebook can then take and match to its list of users. Typically you’ll find that Facebook can match between 60 and 70 percent of the contacts on your customer list. 

2. You can create a website custom audience.

With this audience, instead of uploading a list of customer emails or phone numbers, you build the audience based on traffic to your website. Using Facebook Pixel tracking, you can create an audience of people who have visited any specific page on your website during a set time period. 

3. You can create custom audiences based on app activity

If you happen to have a mobile app or game, you can build audiences based on the actions that people take within your product. 

4. You can use offline activity to build a Facebook audience.

This could include things like conversations that happen offline in brick-and-mortar stores or information you collect on a spreadsheet. 

5. Build an audience from Facebook and Instagram engagement

These can be based on who engages with your posts, videos, events, and profile. You can even set the timeframe of this engagement so that you’re building an audience of people who recently engaged, like in the last 90 days, or who engaged anytime in the past year. 

Strategy Ideas for Making the Most of Your Custom Audiences

Jumping quickly into the strategy of ads and audiences, we thought this nugget from a recent Jon Loomer blog post was really interesting. In the blog post, they shared that the most popular Instagram audience strategy is lumping all audience types and time windows together into one large chunk — like, everyone who engaged with your profile in the last 365 days, for instance. 

As you might guess, there is so much more you can be doing with these audiences!

Let’s take a closer look at engagement audiences for instance:
With the robust filtering of Facebook’s ads tool, you can build audiences of engagers based on a huge number of different factors like who has visited your Instagram profile, messaged you, or saved a post or an ad.

When it comes to these custom audiences, we quite liked this tip from social media today:Building “warm” audiences of people who have engaged with your content within a recent timeframe. Video in particular is a useful engagement and attention metric. So, say you create a ‘warm’ audience of people who’ve watched a certain amount of video from your page. From there, you can create a Lookalike Audience based on the warm audience, which will allow you to expand your reach to include people who share similar behaviors to that initial, warm, engaged group. 

The Jon Loomer blog has a few favorite audience tips, too, specifically around building engagement-based audiences. These include:

• People who have engaged in any way with your brand on Instagram in the past seven days, the past 20 days, and the past 90 days.
• People who have visited your Instagram profile in the past 30 days but who are not customers
• and People who have viewed your Instagram Stories videos in the past seven days 

Another way to work with custom audiences is through retargeting.

This gets at the custom audience type of pixel tracking and website / profile visits. 

We’ve talked to lots of brands that start out with targeting anyone and everyone that visits their website in their retargeting campaigns. Needless to say that approach isn’t always the most effective.

Customers visit your website for lots of different reasons. They visit different pages. The pages they visit represent different buyer intents. Perhaps they’re not looking to buy your product at all. The key is to match your custom advertising audiences to those shoppers’ intents.
For example, if you’re an e-commerce brand and someone visits your website shopping for shoes, make sure that you segment those people into a custom audience labeled “shoe shoppers” or “footwear.”

Over the past year at Buffer we’ve created various audiences based on the subject matter our visitors are interested in learning about. We have a custom audience for traffic to all Facebook marketing pages, Instagram marketing, customer experience, case studies, etc. That allows us to be hyper-focused on what type of content we deliver, which helps to drive down costs.

We have a whole podcast about it if you want to check out.

How to Create Custom Audiences for Pinterest Ads

As you’ll find with all of these social networks, they’re not quite as robust with ads offerings as Facebook and Instagram. But that’s okay! There’s still plenty of customization you can do.For Pinterest, you have a few options for what to create when it comes to customer audiences.

You can build audiences

• Based on visitors who went to your site
• Through a customer list that you upload — like a list of emails
• Based on people who engaged with pins that link to your website
• With an actalike audience that behaves similarly to an existing custom audience that you’ve created

Pinterest audience options

The visitor audience is based on a Pinterest tag, very much like the Facebook pixel. The Pinterest tag is a piece of JavaScript code you can install on your website to gather conversion insights and to build audiences that you can then target, based on actions taken on your site.

The Pinterest engagement audiences are really interesting, too. For these, all you need is to confirm your domain with Pinterest, and then Pinterest will be able to check to see which Pinterest users have engaged with pins that link back to your website. So for instance, if 1,000 people had saved a pin of Buffer blog content, we could build an engagement audience based on this. 

Similar to the Facebook and Instagram engagement audiences, Pinterest gives you a handful of options to further customize this group. You can filter based on a specific URL, based on a pin category, or even based on the percentage of video that’s been viewed. 

One interesting way that e-commerce brands can use this is to create audiences that are interested in particular product categories — people who click on certain links or certain Pins. 

How to Create Custom Audiences for Twitter

With Twitter ads, you can build custom audiences based on

• An uploaded list of contacts or customers
• A collection of website visitors based on data you get from using a Twitter website tag
• A list of  your mobile app users
• A flexible audience.

Twitter audience options

The flexible audiences feature is similar in nature to some of the engagement audiences we’ve talked about before. These audiences give Twitter advertisers a way to save combinations of audiences and subsets of audiences, based on factors like recency and frequency of interactions.

How to Create Custom Audiences for LinkedIn

You can build custom audiences on LinkedIn based on a list of contacts that you upload or you can build audiences based on website data, captured using a LinkedIn tag. 

LinkedIn audience options

One interesting bit of audience customization that LinkedIn provides is with account-based audiences. Let’s say that you want to get a certain percentage of Fortune 500 companies using your product; well, you can upload this list of accounts to LinkedIn and build a custom audience that focused on the stakeholders of these companies. 

Yes, there’s a lot of interesting things you can do on LinkedIn if you’re a business selling to other businesses. Then of course Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and Twitter are all great for selling your products and services direct to consumers.

That’s right, and before we go, we’d love to leave you with just a couple more ideas for how you can use these custom audiences in unique ways. 

More Tips for Getting the Most out of Your Custom Audiences

I thought this tip from AdEspresso was pretty intriguing.They boost a lot of their content to a wide audience and then create a custom audience based on people who click that content and visit the website. This custom website audience, then, is made up of people who have already shown a lot of intent and might be more primed to start a trial.

Another exciting way to use custom audiences is to think creatively about what you share with a custom audience of existing customers. Typically you might think of ads as a way to acquire more customers. But what if you used this list as a way to keep existing customers engaged? You can build a custom audience based on people who have shopped with you in the past or used your product before, but it’s been awhile since they returned — a “sleepy” audience of sorts.

And finally, there are some neat things you can do with custom audiences of newsletter subscribers. You can segment the list into audiences of engaged subscribers and disengaged subscribers and deliver unique content to each group. For the disengaged group in particular there’s a lot of value in re-engaging: MailChimp ran an analysis of 60 million e-commerce purchases and 40 million email addresses from retailers and found that a single inactive subscriber is still worth 32% of an active subscriber.

---

About the Science of Social Media

The Science of Social Media is your weekly sandbox for social media stories, insights, experimentation, and inspiration. Every Monday (and sometimes more) we share the most cutting-edge social media marketing strategies from brands and influencers in every industry. If you’re a social media team of one, business owner, marketer, or someone simply interested in social media marketing, you’re sure to find something useful in each episode.  It’s our hope that you’ll join our 27,000+ listeners each week and rock your social media channels as a result!

source https://thebtrade.com/2019/11/05/a-crash-course-in-custom-audiences-for-your-social-media-ads/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=a-crash-course-in-custom-audiences-for-your-social-media-ads

7 Lessons to Unleash Your Marketing Potential at Work

Exploring how you can you can unleash your marketing potential is the difference between being a good marketer or a great marketer.

Learning is fundamental to your own improvement, but the advice you receive can sometimes be biased or hard to apply. Because of that, we’ve created an objective, practical list that can help you on your journey to unleashing your full potential.

Innovation – Use Technology That Allows You to Flourish

Technology can help you to become a better marketer in lots of ways; it all depends on just how you want to flourish:

• Do you need a tool that’ll free up time so you can take a course?
• Do you need a tool to unlock your creativity, so that you can create better marketing collateral?
• Do you need a tool to help you with budgeting?

If you’re struggling to determine what type of technological helping hand you need, ask yourself a few questions:

• Would this technology help me achieve any of my goals?
• What are the advantages and disadvantages of using it?
• Would it improve my skills?
• Would I learn something new?
• Is implementation realistic?
• Do we have a budget for it?

The last thing you want is to see a solution implemented that becomes a problem – that’ll hinder both your personal and professional growth (and the growth of others). Here are some actionable tips:

• Short-term – start researching software and conduct (or encourage!) a current systems analysis.
• Medium-term – develop and deliver a proposal.
• Long-term – prepare yourself and your team for implementation.

Trust – Interact With Different Departments

You can easily get so lost in your department that you forget there are other departments. Interacting with different departments can have more than one benefit:

• It improves your social skills (and your popularity!) within your organization. 
• You’ll pick up new ideas and points of view that are different from yours.
• You can get tips from others about how to improve your work.
• You can become a trusted ally to your colleagues.
• You’ll help to extinguish conflicts before they spread.

Here are 6 tips for connecting with other teams:

• Understand their challenges and limitations.
• Suggest cross-departmental meetings.
• Avoid speaking in jargon.
• Make a positive contribution to their projects.
• Celebrate their wins.
• Ask for feedback.

Self-Promotion – Market Yourself

Everyone wants to be seen as an attractive or magnetic proposition. It’s natural. But how many of us self-promote enough to actively encourage this? Self-promotion isn’t the same as boasting; nobody wants to hear someone shout their latest and greatest achievement across the room.

You’re marketing the company you work for – but are you marketing yourself? There are 4 benefits of self-promotion:

• People will gravitate towards you because of your positive energy.
• You’ll increase your chances of connecting with the right people internally and externally.
• Your ideas will manifest through collaboration.
• Your reputation will improve.

Here are 3 practical tips for self-promotion:

1. Help People

You could use this tip on its own and you’d nail your personal marketing campaign. People love helpful people – whether you helped them book a holiday or solve a complex problem, always be ready to lend a hand.

2. Promote Others

If you want recognition for the work you’ve done, you need to recognize the people within your organization. Tell your clients how good your fellow Content Writer is, or your Marketing Manager how good your colleagues are.

3. Be Authentic

We are drawn towards genuine, honest people; they make us feel safe and we always know we can trust them. Simple things like being confidential with information or giving honest, constructive feedback will always be appealing.

We all know we have to self-promote in some form, but we often get it wrong.

Here are 5 things you shouldn’t do when you’re self-promoting:

• Depreciate others to make yourself look better.
• Focus all the attention on yourself.
• Brag.
• Exaggerate.
• Be economical with the truth.

Understanding – Know Your Colleagues

Everyone wants to be understood.  Your marketing manager wants you to understand why they made that particular decision on a project. Your designer colleague wants you to understand that he’d rather you didn’t give feedback in front of the team. Understand what motivates everyone, what demotivates them, or what they like and dislike doing. This will enable you to:

• Gain the trust of your colleagues.
• Build confidence.
• Lessen the risk of isolation.
• Foster healthy relationships.
• Allow people to be vulnerable.
• Make people feel like you aren’t judging them.

Your colleagues hold the key to success, so you need to build strong bonds with them. If you want to make everyone feel understood, try the following:

Ask Thoughtful Questions

Next time a problem arises, even if you don’t think it’s your fault, instead of asking why this happened, ask if there is anything you could have done to prevent this from happening. The first option immediately puts a person on the defensive because there’s no real attempt to understand. The second doesn’t hand out any blame, and if the person being asked is to blame, they’re more likely to accept it. It’s natural to make mistakes, we’re human. Learning through our experiences can help turn a negative into a positive and is a great way to improve and develop.

Understand Everyone’s Strengths and Weaknesses

If you understand everyone’s strengths and weaknesses, you’ll be able to get the best results for any project. You’ll also be able to give better feedback on what people do well and what they need to improve. Plus, you can go to them with tasks they actually enjoy doing, which will make them feel like you value their expertise.

Empowerment – Listen to Your Colleagues

Once you know the destination, you need to get there. Everyone in the team is going to help you navigate through problems with their tools and expertise. If you listen to people’s suggestions then you can reap these 5 rewards:

• More growth and innovation.
• Better colleague engagement.
• Increased initiative.
• Determining the best action (negotiation, encouragement, etc).
• Contribute to increased staff retention.

Remember, it’s not enough to just listen, you have to act positively as well. You can use this simple formula to show people that you’ve listened to them:

• Ask people what they want to talk about.
• Provide feedback (compromise, encourage).
• Create actions for both of you.

Decision Making & Problem-Solving – Know When to Use Logic and Intuition

You have to make plenty of decisions at work and help solve various problems – but how do you maximize your chances of making the correct decision? Sometimes, it feels like it’s impossible to make a choice, regardless of whether it’s based on data or a hunch. If you can analyze problems, you can make better decisions by using a combination of intuition and logic.

For example, logic would mean basing a new product on the feedback from the latest version. Intuition would mean basing a new product on the fact that you think it’ll disrupt the market. The fact is – both data and hunches can get results.

Here are 6 tips for thinking logically:

• Organize information so it’s easier to analyze.
• Give reasons for your opinion and consider other outcomes.
• Present data to back up your claims.
• Identify assumptions.
• Evaluate all arguments.
• Conclude.

Here are 6 tips for thinking intuitively:

• Pay attention to your first impulse when you have to make a decision.
• Identify when your intuition misleads you.
• Don’t confuse wanting an outcome with intuition.
• Add some excitement to decision-making.
• Ask for an expert’s intuition.
• Detect unproductive systems or patterns.

Reflection – Continue to Evolve in Your Position

Reflect and improve: that’s what all the greatest marketers do! Taking the time to reflect puts you in a better position to understand your strengths and weaknesses, as well as identify where you want to go and how you’re going to get there. Here are 3 benefits of practicing self-reflection:

• Improved emotional self-awareness – once you start to understand yourself, you’ll know how to react in different situations.
• Integrity – you know what your core values are, which means you can stick to them and they’ll drive you forward every day.
• Improved analytical skills – it’s easy to be busy moving from task to task and forget to stop and think about what you’ve done. Reflection forces you to analyse and can result in new ideas bubbling to the surface.

Sometimes, reflection can sound a bit abstract, though. Just how do you do reflection?

It’s a lot easier than it sounds. Here are 4 simple steps:

• Find out why you’re self-reflecting – for example, you’ve got a review coming up and you want to reflect on your work.
• Find a quiet place – you can’t self-reflect on the train home, you need a comfortable, distraction-free area.
• Self-reflect – talk to yourself, write a self-reflection letter, do a breathing exercise, meditate. Whatever it takes to get information from your brain into something tangible.
• Act – create a list of tasks that you need to complete to make your self-reflection session as beneficial as possible.

Are you ready to continue your evolution and unleash your full marketing potential? Here are the 7 lessons we’ve covered in this article:

1. Innovation – Use Technology That Allows You to Flourish
2. Trust – Interact With Different Departments
3. Self-Promotion – Market Yourself
4. Understanding – Know Your Colleagues
5. Empowerment – Listen to Your Colleagues
6. Decision Making & Problem-Solving – Know When to Use Logic and Intuition
7. Reflection – Continue to Evolve in Your Position

Remember, everyone is different – if you’re struggling, use the self-reflection exercise to determine which areas of improvement would bring about the most benefit.

The post 7 Lessons to Unleash Your Marketing Potential at Work appeared first on Marketo Marketing Blog – Best Practices and Thought Leadership.

source https://thebtrade.com/2019/11/05/7-lessons-to-unleash-your-marketing-potential-at-work/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=7-lessons-to-unleash-your-marketing-potential-at-work

Top 10 Daycare Centres in Newmarket

Choosing to leave your children with someone else during the day can be nerve-wracking, but it’s a reality for most Canadian parents. The good news is that you can choose a reputable centre by carefully reviewing the top options.

A daycare centre with a good reputation and positive reviews is an excellent choice to care for your children. If you’re wondering whom to call, here are the top 10 daycare centres in Newmarket.

Top 10 Daycare Centres in Newmarket

1. BrightPath Early Learning & Child Care. If you’re looking for a centre that will not only care for your kids but also help them get a head start on school, BrightPath is a great choice. Their award-winning curriculum is a mixture of play-based and child-led, helping children grow and exceed early learning goals.

“The facility is clean, safe and staff are very accommodating. The staff work well with children to engage them in a variety of learning concepts and techniques and offer detailed descriptions of the children’s day. I would highly recommend this provider.” –Deborah Hecimovich

“The Centre that has supported me in so many ways! My two little guys love the teachers whom welcome them every morning with big hugs since six months old and always care for them. I would recommend this care centre to anyone in the area, they truly are amazing!!” –Nadia Y

2. Tiny Hoppers. Tiny Hoppers is an award-winning childcare centre that also focuses on learning in a safe, fun, and unique environment. Instructors are certified professionals, and they teach a proprietary curriculum in their innovative classrooms.

“This Friday will be Austin’s last day here. It’s really a wonderful one year and nine months in Tiny Hoppers. The staff are patient, dedicated to provide high-quality daycare services. We’re so glad to have Tiny Hoopers as Austin’s first daycare provider. We’ll miss the moments enjoyed here!” –Bin Song

3. Learning Jungle. Learning Jungle focuses on creating a sense of belonging and well-being, along with providing a creative teaching curriculum. The flexible teaching plan is customized for each child based on observations of development. If you’re interested in a place that educates both the mind and heart, this could be an excellent centre for you.

“Over the years, we have found the staff to be stupendous, helpful, caring, and very creative. They are always coming up with various crafts and events for the children to participate in. As well, they are always easy to talk to in the event of any questions or concerns.” –Nancy W.

4. Two Trees Childcare Centre. This childcare centre is licensed by the Ministry of Education. They offer high-quality care and education focused on play-based learning, which encourages children to grow in both knowledge and development. They care for those as young as two weeks old up to preschool. You won’t go wrong with Two Trees!

“Two Trees has been our daycare since 2015. It’s bright, spacious and has a nice outdoor space. The staff are friendly and caring. My child loves going and has made many friends. Their activities are well planned out and my child has learned a lot. I recommend Two Trees to anyone looking for reliable and safe care for their child.” –Katie P

5. York Child Development. You know a centre is a fun place when they have a cockatiel named Pete as their EarlyON Child and Family Centre mascot. The childcare programs encourage kids to develop a healthy self-image using education, literature, and play. They do not use time-outs or negative reinforcement. The centre believes a child’s behaviour is a reflection of how they feel about themselves.

6. Cuties and Patooties Childcare. This award-winning centre is staffed by qualified and caring teachers who love providing a safe & secure environment for your child to grow. They offer a cozy, family atmosphere so that your child has a “home away from home.” Children are encouraged to explore, have fun, and discover new things through a variety of activities. Tuition is all-inclusive, so check out this centre!

“This is by far the best daycare out there… from educating your kids, feeding your kids their homemade food, ensuring their safety has clearly always been #1, ensuring they’re happy, stimulated, entertained, always having fun, and, of course, very cost-effective!

They offer a loving and caring environment with owners who have ALWAYS answered and received any questions or concerns I had with kindness and professionalism.

My son is now three years old and knows all of the months, days of the week, numbers, seasons, colours, shapes, how to spell his name, you name it; he is beyond ready for kindergarten and is still a year away all thanks to them! He also still cries when it’s time to come home all the time because he’s having so much fun!” –Jenny

7. Denison Child Care Services. If you’re looking for programs and care that continue into school-age for your child, this is the centre to choose. They offer care for infants to school children, as well as offering programs for March Break, Summer Camp, and PA Day. They encourage children to be responsible for their own behaviour and help them solve their own problems. This is an excellent option for children of every age.

“It is almost two years that our loved one is in this daycare. Well-equipped daycare with a professional staff and manager. I have seen leadership skills in every teacher. Now, I grab this opportunity to show my appreciation. Thanks!” –Mahbod Khodadad

8. Leslie St. Daycare. This award-winning centre offers a warm, supportive educational environment. They have a well-structured and monitored preschool that gives you daily reports on how your child did and what has improved. They help kids reach key milestones early and learn how to succeed alone or with others. It’s an excellent option for your family!

“Our little one has been with Leslie Street daycare for most of her early years. They’ve treated her with so much love, and the whole staff has been so amazing in her growth and learning. The food they’ve offered was nutritious and lots of different variety that my little one enjoyed. It was also nice to get photo and video updates during the day of what they were up to through their app. I highly recommend this daycare!” –Elle V.

9. Diana Home Daycare. For care from 12 months to 4 years old, Diana Home Daycare can give you the environment you’re looking for. With affordable prices, nutritious food, and a curriculum with a broad range of age-appropriate activities, you can’t go wrong with this independent care provider. Diana encourages independence, self-confidence, and respect for self and others.

“Being first-time parents, it can be a nervous time finding a daycare provider. However, meeting Diana and seeing how our daughter responds to her is so relieving to see. We are so happy to have found Diana and appreciate all that she does for our daughter. She keeps the kids on a great schedule, which is easy to follow at home, and keeps me updated every night on how she did during the day. Thank you, Diana, for making going back to work a little bit easier!” –Paige Cleary

10. Grace Church Daycare. If you’re looking for a childcare option with a spiritual focus, Grace Church is an excellent choice. They help children develop spiritually, emotionally, socially, and cognitively using play-based education. They offer high-quality care to children from age three months up to eight years old.

“Both my kids went here. Awesome place!!! Very safe, lovely staff, food and a great playground.”

How do you know you’ve found a great daycare centre? Look for these attributes:

• A Great Curriculum. You’ll want to find a centre that has a curriculum that will help your child thrive. Pay attention to how much extra learning they offer to those who are advanced and how well they help those who are slower to learn.
• A Philosophy You Agree With. Whether you want faith-based education, a positive-reinforcement environment, or a more structured setup, you can find a childcare centre to meet your needs.
• A Place Your Child Loves. Ultimately, you’re choosing the best place for your child and your family. Do they enjoy the centre? Do they connect with the teachers? This is the best way to know you’ve found a winner!

Trusting your child’s development to a childcare centre can be difficult, but there are a lot of good options to choose from. These ten centres are a great place to start, and you’ll love seeing your child grow and thrive.

source https://thebtrade.com/2019/11/05/top-10-daycare-centres-in-newmarket/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=top-10-daycare-centres-in-newmarket

Crafting a Local Digital Marketing Strategy for Your Small Business in 2020

[block]11[/block]

A digital marketing strategy for small local businesses is an extremely effective tool and crucial to help reach their marketing objectives. Every business, regardless of size, can benefit from using a local digital element in their marketing practice. Small local businesses, in particular, stand to gain the most from its inclusion.

In this article, we delve into what you’ll need to focus on to craft and develop an effective digital marketing strategy for 2020 and beyond!

What is [block]0[/block]?

Digital marketing refers to the marketing of products or services, using digital technologies. This involves using the internet (social media, search engines, email, and websites) and electronic devices to connect with current and prospective customers.

Digital marketing strategies for local businesses are important because they’re financially feasible.

Cost-Effective Digital Marketing Strategies

A characteristic of all small businesses, especially those just starting, is small budgets. Small businesses utilize digital channels to increase their local visibility. These often include social media and search engines. These enhance their presence while keeping expenses down.

How to Craft a Local Digital Marketing Strategy for Your Small Business in 2020

Developing a digital marketing strategy for a local business isn’t as difficult as you may think. Your strategy should include these core elements:

1) Understanding Your Objective

Before anything, you should have a clear understanding of your marketing goals. Do you want to generate more leads? Increase sales? Boost your social media following or email subscribers? Build brand recognition? Whatever your goal/goals are, every detail listed in your local digital marketing strategy should be in line with your intentions.

2) Create a Target Audience Persona

What is a ‘target audience persona’? It refers to an idealized depiction of the customer you’d like to attract to your brand’s products or services via your marketing efforts. The practice includes understanding and building a strategy around your target audience persona. It entails using the blueprint already created by your best customers.

• Who are your best existing customers?
• What qualities do these customers possess?
• When are they purchasing your products and services?
• Where are they making the majority of their purchases (online or in-store)?
• Why are they purchasing from your business?

You can achieve this understanding by sending out customer surveys (online or in-store). Ask questions that can be useful in learning about the information listed above.

3) Content Marketing

Once you’ve identified your objectives and target audience personas, its time to start crafting relevant, valuable and shareable content.

You need to make sure your content is going to be addressing the various pain points and concerns that your target audience personas are dealing with in the various stages of the purchasing cycle funnel.

Content marketing is defined as the creation and sharing of online material such as social media posts, blogs, and videos for the purpose of growing interest around your business’s products or services. This can be improved by doing keyword research and incorporating practices such as SEO.

It’s also important to understand the current algorithms and the dynamics associated with your most-used digital channel.

Additionally, you need to be disseminating your content on the platforms and mediums your target audience hangs out on.  Doing this will increase the chances of your content being seen and engaged with. This draws more people with intent back to your website or into your store.

4) Understanding Local SEO Fundamentals

Local SEO refers to the process of increasing the online visibility of a business that services a specific community. There are two ways to boost local SEO. One involves including a business’s name, address, and phone number on all digital channels. The second way can help small businesses with or without a brick and mortar location, achieved by simply optimizing the content your business produces.

Some easy-to-follow local SEO fundamentals that can have a huge impact on your business include:

 – Keywords:

Put high-ranking keywords into the description of your business’s services online and the content your business produces. This can profoundly impact your local SERP (search engine results page) ranking. Finding the right keywords isn’t a difficult task; all you need to do is little research using Google’s Keyword Planner and SEMrush. Additionally, a bit of surveillance of your competitors to study their keyword selection goes a long way.

 – Search Engine Listings:

Many search engine platforms Google My Business (the most important), Apple Maps Listings, and Bing Places are essential tools for managing how your business appears online. The management aspect of these tools lets you control how your business name, hours of operation, location, and phone number will appear, all while monitoring how and where people are searching for your business.

 – Local Citations:

This refers to online mentions of your business including display NAP (name, address, phone) collectively. Local citations are important because they help your local ranking positions on search engines.

 – On-Page SEO:

On-page SEO refers to good, traditional SEO practices, including combining keywords in H1, keywords in the title tag, keyword in URL, simple URL’s, and interesting meta descriptions.

 – Link Building:

Link building refers to increasing the number of times your webpage and website is used by other sites, which usually comes from giving users helpful material. When other sites and pages use your sites as links, your business ranks higher on search engines.

5) Advanced Local SEO Tactics

Online competition continues to grow and search engine algorithms constantly update. It’s now becoming much harder to rank using the usual SEO tactics. Due to the increased difficulty, we are beginning to see the use of more advanced SEO tactics which involve three major SEO pillars: relevance, proximity, and prominence. They all work to help give businesses struggling for position, a slight advantage.

6) PPC/Google Ad

PPC (pay-per-click) is another way in which small business owners can help increase their online visibility (by drawing online traffic to their website). Specifically, it refers to the process of advertisers (your business) paying a fee each time their ad is clicked. The most popular PPC system in the world is Google Ad (or Google AdWords).

7) Measuring/Monitoring Success

There are many ways to track the success of your local digital marketing strategy. One is tracking data on your CRM (customer relationship management) software or using a platform like Google Analytics. This allows you to monitor information such as engagement metrics, search traffic, bounce rate, conversion rate, scroll depth, and pages per visit.

The benefit of digital marketing is that everything can be measured and tracked. By analyzing your Key Performance Indicators, it allows seeing what’s working and what’s not. This enables you to make data-driven decisions to improve your business and get a leg up on the competition..

Consider Working with a Digital Marketing Agency

If you’d prefer to rid yourself of the headache associated with the constant monitoring and strategy adjusting, you can also hire a professional, like the team over at LocalBizGuru.

For small local business owners looking to boost their online presence, but prefer working with a team of professionals, look no further. LocalBizGuru is here to help you reach your marketing objectives. We will be happy to help develop and execute an effective and affordable digital marketing strategy with you.

To learn more about how we can help increase your local online traffic, visit and contact LocalBizGuru today.

The post Crafting a Local Digital Marketing Strategy for Your Small Business in 2020 appeared first on LocalBizGuru.com.

source https://thebtrade.com/2019/11/04/crafting-a-local-digital-marketing-strategy-for-your-small-business-in-2020/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=crafting-a-local-digital-marketing-strategy-for-your-small-business-in-2020

Successful Rebrand: What to Watch Out for and How to Make It Rewarding

When a computer malfunctions, the easiest step is often a quick reboot. For many tech hiccups, that’s all it takes to get back on track — problem solved. If only a company rebrand were that simple.

A comprehensive rebrand is more intentional and nuanced than hitting “reset” or initiating superficial changes. After purchasing Whole Foods, Amazon had to shed the grocery chain’s “Whole Paycheck” image. Customers had come to find the store overpriced when compared to competitors, so Amazon cut prices significantly and set up Amazon Prime customers to save even more. The best way to deal with an image problem, according to Amazon? Face it head-on.

This brand realignment didn’t happen for Whole Foods overnight. It took a willingness to dig below the surface to spot signs of consumer disengagement.

Monitoring the Migration of Consumer Wants

Successful rebrands hook people. When Phillips 66 found itself lumped together with a litany of other gas providers, for example, the company launched the Live to the Full campaign, which connected the idea of full gas tanks with emotional journeys. The spots garnered attention for their uniqueness and vibrancy, but more importantly, appealing to human emotion — and not being afraid to do so — differentiated Phillips 66 from its competitors.

In addition to connecting with customers psychologically, modern brands must provide perceived value in terms of time. For instance, people pay to join Amazon Prime for its rapid delivery options. Amazon is handing those consumers precious minutes of their lives back.

However, consumers will willingly give up time for brands that have the “cool factor.” This is why people will gladly wait in line for the latest iPhone or drive a few extra miles to Target, even if a Walmart is within walking distance. Consumer decisions will always be personal. But as the majority swells in one direction, brands would be wise to mark the change. Sometimes, that necessitates an inside-out overhaul.

Know the Signs: Getting Ahead of Rebranding

You might be unsure of whether it’s time for your business to rebrand, so if you spot any of the following flags, take note.

Positive consumer sentiment is waning: Do consumers feel connected to your brand? Are they out there spreading the word? Do you have die-hard fans? If your company doesn’t have a groundswell of support, it may be time to generate some.

Your customer base has declined or flattened: Are consumers aging out of your offering? Are you struggling to connect with the emerging demographic? Unless you’re replacing lost buyers with younger or different-minded customers, you’re headed toward problems.

Influencers aren’t interested in promoting your brand: If you can’t find brand advocates to endorse your offerings, this could be a red flag that consumer sentiment truly isn’t in your company’s favor. Influencers earn a living through paid sponsorships, and many are selective about the brands they work with. When they pass on being associated with your organization, it’s not a good sign.

Change Course: The Steps to a Rewarding Rebrand

Rebrands that are done well are achieved by pairing a healthy dose of reality with a clear sense of where the company needs to go next. To get from the status quo to new frontier, brands can combine a variety of tried-and-true tactics.

1. Come to terms with the current state of your brand and business. While it can be tempting to put a positive spin on negative numbers, now is the time to take stock and surface your company’s problem areas. You can’t fix what you can’t see.

To help with your stock-taking, seek out an objective external partner, such as a global research firm, to get a true sense of how consumers view your company. You can explore the data the firm gathers to see where you stand, allowing you to make necessary changes to your brand’s image to ensure its survival (and revival). Many organizations conduct internal research, but the results are usually biased when compared to the results from an outside agency.

2. Think ahead. As you decide on a direction for your rebrand, ensure you have a long-term plan. Flash-in-the-pan rebrands tend to fail pretty quickly. On their own, new logos and websites are not rebrands. Storefront changes spark chatter, but they don’t provide a sustainable shift in business practices. A true rebrand upends the actual brand experience.

J.C. Penney is a good example of short-term thinking. It launched its “Fair and Square” repositioning — which eschewed high-low pricing practices — without long-term board member backing. Shoppers were confused at best and unimpressed at worst. According to a consumer survey, shoppers had trouble understanding and comparing the new pricing model and deals. In fact, they said the new scheme actually provided “low value” for their money. The rebrand became a cautionary tale instead of a success story.

3. Put in the creative work. Make sure your organization is structured in such a way that the rebrand is real from top to bottom. Can this brand image sustain your company for the next several years? Does this shift affect everything from your advertising to your sales associate uniforms? You have to check all the boxes, or there’s going to be a disconnect for consumers. Any change in your company image needs to be holistic.

A rebrand is about changing the identity of your company to communicate your DNA in a new, exciting way. While a good rebrand can be complex, it should also point out the possibilities that lie ahead if you plan, invest, and trust in the process.

The post Successful Rebrand: What to Watch Out for and How to Make It Rewarding appeared first on Marketo Marketing Blog – Best Practices and Thought Leadership.

source https://thebtrade.com/2019/11/01/successful-rebrand-what-to-watch-out-for-and-how-to-make-it-rewarding/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=successful-rebrand-what-to-watch-out-for-and-how-to-make-it-rewarding