Are you confident that your employees are portraying your brand how you want it to be portrayed? Do they truly understand the function of sales and marketing? 

Strong brands aren’t built by the marketing team alone; employees that understand their role in the company and represent and communicate the brand well when dealing with clients and prospects help you reach your brand potential.

To help your business accomplish this goal, Whale makes sure to involve all members of staff in our branding workshops right at the start of the process.  By being able to contribute to the exercise, employees feel more engaged and informed of the brand values and will be more motivated in communicating and representing those values when following up with marketing activities.

The business development awareness skills in your ‘front line’ staff can have a significant impact on your business, if they are coached effectively in communicating your brand values, you will be able to maximise the effect of your marketing.

You can be more confident knowing your staff are pro-actively:

–  Representing  your brand values

–  Developing stronger relationships with clients and potential customers

-  Spotting opportunities and actively encouraging business

–  Following up marketing campaigns

–  Developing good personal branding that enhances your business values

Kathryn Bistacchi, Business Development Associate at Whale Marketing specialises in helping client facing teams work closely with marketing to maximise results. Using a range of methods including, workshops, training, coaching and mentoring we tailor our service to help clients increase returns and achieve their business goals.

If you want to learn more about the services at Whale Marketing & how we can help your staff represent your brand. Call us now on 0161 236 5395. Or email us on info@whalemarketing.co.uk

They help to convey your brand messages.

As covered in our previous blog, a brand isn’t just a logo – it’s the experience a customer has at every touch point with a business. Video provides a great opportunity for businesses to portray what their business and their brand really stand for. Today we are constantly bombarded with marketing messages on a daily basis but video gives brands a platform to cut through the noise and tell their story. Nobody wants to read a bland company mission statement anymore – get creative and have some fun!

They put across your personality.
As above, video gives companies an opportunity to get their personality across in a way that is just not achievable through any other medium. For example, two years ago we were taken on by accountancy firm Stafford & Co to undertake a complete rebrand and help promote their business. As part of the process, we discussed video content; they had previously produced a corporate video that hadn’t made much of an impact. So we talked about creating a new style of ‘corporate video’ to help put across their brand personality in a fun, engaging way. We worked closely with a video specialist and the resulting video can be viewed below.

For what is often considered to be a fairly ‘dry’ industry, this humorous video really stands out and says something different about the firm and its people – therefore positioning them differently from their competitors. This video has resulted in excellent feedback from clients and helped Stafford & Co to achieve their aim of standing out in a crowded marketplace.

They’re good for search.
YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world and receives more than one billion unique visitors every month. Let’s not also forget that YouTube is owned by the planet’s biggest search engine – Google. This is no coincidence; videos started to be included as a ranking factor for SEO some five or so years ago. As part of Google’s aim to provide the best and most relevant content for users, it isn’t unusual for videos to appear in search listings. What’s more, research shows that 75% of people who view a video will go on to visit the brand website afterwards, thus creating real and tangible results.

You can provide information succinctly.
In this day and age, people are busy and simply don’t have the time to go digging around for information. If you work in a particularly technical field, it may be likely that you need to convey a lot of information to potential clients. Not everybody likes to read reams of text, however, and video therefore provides the ideal alternative. In fact, humans process visual information 60,000 times faster than text, so by providing videos for clients will help to make their life easier – something I’m sure they’ll appreciate! Some studies suggest that because of the speed in which information can be digested, along with all of the other visual cues conveyed about your brand in the process, the speed of purchasing decisions is increased on the back of watching a business’ video content.

They can generate a ‘buzz’ quickly and easily.
The very nature of videos and the platforms they sit upon make them easy to like, comment on and share. If you can create a video campaign that is either extremely useful or very funny, it is likely to be shared, thereby helping to raise brand awareness. A study by Axonn Research found seven in ten people view brands in a more positive light after watching interesting video content from them. So if you can get your video in front of more potential consumers, you’re almost certainly going to see the benefit.

Videos can be tricky things to master and achieving a professional production isn’t always as quick or low cost as other forms of marketing. However, when done right, they can be extremely effective and can be used for years to come. To discuss creating a video campaign to add to your marketing mix, get in contact with the Whale team.

We were recently asked to deliver a seminar for Barclays aimed at the professional services sector. After some thought about what would be of interest and use to the audience, we decided to get ‘back to basics’ and came up with the topic ‘How to Maximise Your Brand’.

Throughout the course of putting the presentation together, we came up with some pretty interesting points on the importance of creating, developing and reimagining a company brand. Here are just a few of them…

A brand isn’t just a logo! Throughout the twelve years since we started Whale, I have lost count of the number of clients that have asked us for a ‘rebrand’ – thinking that this just involves creating a new logo! In fact, a brand is much, MUCH more than that…It’s how people think and feel about a company; the experience a customer (or potential customer) has at every touch point they have with the business. How people feel about a brand can influence whether they choose to engage or interact with a company; having a direct impact on sales and therefore being vital to business growth.

Mind the gap. It is arguable that any company that is in the public domain and servicing customers has a ‘brand’, and it’s important to know what the perception of yours is if you want to target new audiences or reposition your business. There are many components of a brand, including the company’s vision/goals, its ‘personality’ and where the brand is seen – both physically in terms of its outward presentation and theoretically, ie. where it is within the marketplace. Very often, there is a discord between where the company wants to be and what the reality is with regards these factors. This discord is what we call the ‘communication gap’ – and this is the point from which any brand building or rebranding exercise should start.

Consistency is key. The main element of any branding exercise is developing the business’ key messages and target positioning. Part of the process might be to create a new logo or corporate identity to help communicate those messages. When carrying branding across into your marketing materials and communication platforms, ensure that every touch point is covered. For example, there’s no point investing in a new website and marketing materials if your office still looks the same as it did 20 years ago! Embrace your brand and use any branding exercise as an opportunity to improve and take the business to the next level.

Remember to involve employees. Whilst what a brand stands for is likely to have been developed by the business owners, it’s important to remember that quite often, it is the front line employees who deal with everyday enquiries that become the business’ voice. If you are going to do a ‘rebranding’ exercise, try to involve employees by asking their feedback and involving them in the process. Obtaining their ‘buy in’ at the outset will make it much easier down the line when the time comes to roll out any changes.

Don’t forget your personal brand. In larger organisations, the vast majority of employees have little say or control over the company’s brand or messaging. Everybody, however, has the ability to control their own personal brand. Take a step back and think about what you stand for in business and in life, and think about how this carries across into the way you deal with people. As mentioned in the previous point, if you are representing a business, you should also consider whether your communications marry up with the brand’s key messages and ethos. Employees are the everyday representation of a company’s brand, so singing from the same hymn sheet can help to reinforce branding and create customer ‘brand loyalty’.

For more help and tips on B2B branding, or to discuss your business’ brand, please contact The Pod. To obtain a copy of the presentation slides, please get in touch.

How to maximise marketing through Social Media:
Before investing in social media marketing it’s important to set out a clear strategy, be clear about what success looks like for your organisation as its unlikely to be +500 connections but more about generating good quality leads. Agreeing objectives and a plan that sets out how to achieve these and measure your activity is vital. To find out more about social media for Business2Business organisations please contact @WhalePod

most used platforms

The Basics:
Here is a basic overview of the most popular Social Media platforms that you may want to think about using;

LinkedIn:
LinkedIn is a social media network that is specifically built for professionals that focus on developing business relationships. If your business doesn’t have a company profile on LinkedIn, it’s missing out on excellent connection opportunities. LinkedIn company profiles allow businesses to highlight their products, services and available job opportunities, facilitating outreach to new talent and partners. Develop an active presence on your company page by posting press releases, relevant blogs, corporate literature and event announcements. This will increase your brand’s visibility on the network and engage the attention of business users. Marketers can also take advantage of paid promotions through LinkedIn Ads that target specific demographics, industries and locations, capturing new leads. In terms of B2B marketing, if you just wanted to use just one platform LinkedIn would be the best one to use.

Twitter:
Twitter plays a big part in regard to B2B communication. It may be a fast-paced, short-form communication channel, but that enables businesses to make consistent, repeated impressions on other industry members. Business professionals are active on Twitter, using the network to discover industry news, events and other relevant content. The expansive nature of Twitter makes it a great place to develop new business connections.

Facebook:
Facebook has more than 750 million users. The social network has become a representative sample of the world’s population. It is usually used by consumers but it can also be just as affective for marketing businesses. As a company selling to other companies, Facebook serves as an important tool for generating leads and nurturing customer relationships. Facebook is good for B2b marketing as you can build a fan base, share engaging content, photos and videos, capture leads and contact information. You can amplify through ads, make it personal and fun, and segment and target to ensure you are reaching the right customer profile. Although Facebook is a proven consumer marketing tool it’s not normally the first choice for B2B companies.

Google+ :
Google+ is important for B2B marketing primarily because of the network’s SEO implications. Establishing a detailed company page and maintaining an active presence can boost your company’s placement in the Google+ search rankings, promoting visibility and credibility of your brand. Google+ has become the world’s second largest social platform, meaning that your competitors and potential partners are likely present themselves on here. So Google+ is not one to be left out …