Introducing Constructive Marketing
All businesses need to evolve and move forward… It’s exciting times at our HQ in Lancing. No business should ever stand still and for us, as Seaside Creative, we recently decided to rename the company and become Constructive Marketing. The name might be different but not everything is changing as, for the most part, we’re the same company offering the same expertise. We’re even keeping a beach hut in our logos as people love them so much. Why change the name? Seaside Creative started as a small agency offering full service marketing expertise, mainly to SMEs in the local area. In the beginning we worked for a wide variety of clients covering; retail, care, restaurants, hair and beauty, pharmaceutical, property and construction. This was mainly because the Seaside Creative team provided different services to different industries – such as photographing a production line and then writing technical articles for construction firms – sometimes on the same day! Lockdown was hard for the agency, just like it was for most businesses, with many clients pausing services for significant amounts of time. But it did give us time to really assess what worked best. What we realised was that the industry where we had supplied the widest variety of expertise and achieved the most success for clients was construction. It was also one of the few industries that continued to thrive during the Pandemic. Seeing this as an opportunity to grow the business, we decided to focus our efforts on becoming known as a specialist in marketing for companies involved in the construction industry. Fast forward to today and the agency now has over a dozen construction clients from across the South East. With a growing reputation as construction marketing specialists, it made sense to change our name to better reflect that. We still have clients that are not in the construction industry, which is why we think the name ‘Constructive Marketing’ works really well. The meaning behind Constructive Marketing When deciding to change the name of the business, we wanted something that was both positive and appealing to those working within, as well as outside of, the construction industry. The great thing about the word ‘constructive’ is, while it alludes to ‘construction’, it also means ‘to have a useful or beneficial purpose’. This is exactly what we aim to be for our clients, regardless of what industry they’re in. Why now? Knowing that we have been beginning to specialise in construction for the last 2-3 years may make you wonder why we’re making the change now. In truth, although focusing on construction has been creeping up, it has only really been the majority of what we do within the last year. So, in the background, our name change has been something that’s been on our minds for a while. We were just waiting for the right time to do it. Although, as most people in business will agree, there isn’t ever really a ‘right time’. Now was as good a time as any! Moving forward So, from now on, we’re Constructive Marketing. A diverse team of marketing experts ready to help you with your marketing needs. Could we help you? Give us a call on 01903 686858 or email us at info@constructivemarketing.co.uk to get in touch with the team.
Why Marketers Need To Be Good Storytellers
The art of storytelling is something that goes back thousands of years. What began as the simple use of verbal instruction to facilitate survival, evolved with the use of imagination and shadows thrown up by the fire inside cave dwellings. The first documented story known by historians is the Epic of Gilgamesh, dating back to 2700 BC. With storytelling so ingrained into who we are, it’s no wonder that we respond so well to them. Most of us have childhood memories of being read stories, particularly at bedtime, and even as we get older, hearing someone tell a funny story about their day can keep us gripped. Forbes released an article at the start of this year which stated that science shows that humans have massive capacity for sustained attention and storytelling unlocks it. Which is why it’s so important for marketers to be good storytellers. Just as it says in the Forbes article; ‘although it was debunked, the statement that -humans have an eight-second attention span-, scared marketers’. Now, one of the most talked about things in the marketing world is how quickly can we get our message across to avoid losing the consumers’ attention. The fact is, while short and ‘snackable’ content becomes increasingly popular, you can keep your audience hooked for much longer with a good story. Why is storytelling important in marketing? While we now understand that good storytelling can keep an audience gripped, why is it important in marketing? Well, the main aim of telling a story is to get a message across and it’s the same with marketing. If marketers can hone their storytelling skills, they’ll be able to retain the attention of their audience and ultimately get their message across in an effective way. With the audience being able to recall the information too. Giving your information in the form of a story helps people retain the information and recall it later. A study was conducted where students had to remember 12 words. Half of the group had 2 minutes to simply study the list while the other half had 2 minutes to create a story that contained all of the words. 93% of students who created a story remembered the words, while only 13% of students who tried to just memorise the words could recall them. How to use storytelling in marketing Trying to find a way to incorporate storytelling into your marketing efforts can seem hard at first. After all, you don’t want to be starting your next Instagram post with ‘once upon a time’! Here are some simple ways you can start using storytelling in your marketing to create a better connection with your audience and ultimately ensure that your message gets across to them: Write case studies Case studies are a great way to showcase the amazing work that you do as well as how you helped find a solution to a client’s problem. Case studies also lend themselves quite well to storytelling as they can be written in a way that allows you to explain, from start to finish, how you helped a client/ customer. Why not begin with, ‘x client first got in touch with us and explained that they had y problem’? From there, you can talk about how you suggested a solution and ultimately executed that solution to give them the end result. Which you can then of course showcase at the end of the case study with stunning photos or even a video. Tell your business story At the end of the day, people buy people and consumers love to find out about the people behind an organisation. So telling the story of how your business came to be can be a fantastic way to start building a relationship with a potential client/ customer. Telling this story also provides you with an opportunity to talk about how much you love doing what you do. Helping you to stand out against your competitors. It can also help to establish key figures within your organisation as experts in their fields and even lead them to become industry influencers. Create a narrative When talking about storytelling, this might seem like an obvious thing, but narratives don’t have to be long stories as we typically think. Instead, a short and simple narrative can be all you need to explain your product/ service. This works particularly well when what you offer is something that people may need at a particular moment. Or if your product/ service solved a problem your ideal customer faces. Top Tip: If you do use a narrative, make sure that the main character in it is relatable to your target audience. I.e the character runs into the same problem and has the same thought process as your target audience. This is why it’s so important to know your audience – something we talk about in more detail in another blog post. The reality is, storytelling is a fantastic skill for marketers to have as it allows them to convey their message to the target audience in a way that resonates with them. If you feel that your marketing messages aren’t getting through to your audience, it might be time to change things up. If you’re looking for marketing support, don’t hesitate to get in touch with us. We have years of marketing experience and are specialists in the construction industry. Give us a call on 01903 686858 or email us at info@constructivemarketing.co.uk.
Here’s Why Your Digital Marketing Isn’t Working And How To Fix It
One of the most common things we hear when we discuss digital marketing with a business owner is, ‘I tried it once, but it didn’t work for me’. While it’s true that communicating online is harder for some businesses than others, it’s usually just a case of finding out which type of communication works best – both for the target market as well as for the company/brand itself. The leading cause for digital marketing efforts not working is that the business doesn’t know its target audience well enough to know how to communicate with them. Know your audience A concept that is the cornerstone of all marketing activities, and something that should be considered before any marketing activities begin, is ‘know your audience’. More often than not, the business owners who say digital marketing hasn’t worked for them have simply approached it ‘blind’. What we mean by that is they haven’t looked at who their audience is and therefore they don’t know who they’re talking to. If that’s the case, how can you expect to be saying the right things? So many make the mistake of just doing things because ‘everyone else is’ and then becoming disheartened when it doesn’t work. Just because the majority of businesses have a Facebook page these days doesn’t mean that your customers are there. In fact, most of our clients – who are B2B – find success on LinkedIn. So understanding your audience is crucial to being able to invest in the right marketing efforts. How to understand your audience There are so many different ways of getting an understanding of who your customer base is and the way in which you do will depend on a few things: Relevance is key. One of the biggest questions you need to ask before you conduct research of any kind is, ‘what is it that I want to know?’ As lovely as it would be to sit down with a cuppa and exchange pleasantries with your customers, that’s probably not going to help you market to them better or even acquire other customers like them. Instead, you need to understand why they chose to buy from you, what sets you apart from others in their mind and how they would like you to keep in touch with them. Is it through email or would they rather see your Tweets in their feed? The budget that you have. Some research methods are more thorough and therefore more costly than others. For bigger businesses with a research budget, conducting questionnaires and even focus groups is a good way to get to know the customers. For smaller businesses without much budget, there are free tools such as Google forms which could be sent to your existing clientele. . Asking questions via your social media channels is also a great way to get feedback, just prepare for it to be really honest! Sometimes simply looking at the competition can be a good indication as to what yours should be doing as you can take a more objective view on what’s working for a company that isn’t yours. Feeling a bit overwhelmed? Don’t worry, we can help! We offer an expert diagnosis service to help time-poor business owners and managers to gain focus and control over their marketing. You’ll get: Give us a call on 01903 686858 to speak to our expert team today.
Top 3 Most Common Website Mistakes And How To Fix Them
Websites are essential to the success of a business, whatever the sector. . It’s therefore very important that they are well-designed and contain good quality content to make sure that they serve your customers well. Our many years of designing and building websites for clients in different industries mean that we are often asked to cast our expert eye on other websites to suggest improvements. With our vast experience, we’ve noticed the same mistakes being made and thought it would be helpful to point out our top three and tell you how to fix them. 1. Outdated Images Images are a great way to showcase your work on your website; especially if what you do is visual. They’re also great to break up text and make your website more engaging. Having said that, it’s important to make sure you update them. This applies more to websites that have been live for an extended period of time, as images can become outdated. Showing something fresh that your audience may not have seen before can spring new life into your website, making it feel new while not actually changing the design or layout of the website. Google and other search engines will recognise new images (with ALT text – see below!) as new content to your website and this will help to boost your website’s organic SEO. Ultimately increasing your ranking on Google or other search engines. How to fix outdated images on a website What we recommend is to allocate time every six months to go through the images on your website and change them up. Whether that be simply updating photos of the team, or swapping a stock photo for a different one. 2. Not Including ALT Text Speaking of images, you would be surprised at the amount of websites that upload them without ALT text. Providing ALT text for your images is a necessity when it comes to accessibility. Screen readers can’t detect text that overlaps images, therefore alt text is required so that the image can be described to the user. Adding ALT text can also have a significant organic SEO as, put simply, search engines can’t read pictures – they can only read words. By describing uploaded images with keywords and search terms, search engines will be able to understand them and rank them in relevant search results. How to add ALT text to images Adding ALT text to your website images can be done through the backend of your website. Usually through the media gallery, you’ll find somewhere to write ALT text for each image. If you’re unsure, it’s always best to speak to your web professional, if you don’t have one, we’d be happy to help. 3. Lack of Common Phrases and Keywords When it comes to writing the content for your website you need to make sure that you are including keywords and phrases that your potential customers would use. By using common terms that are related to your business, search engines will be able to rank your website in relevant search results. Increasing your search engine ranking and ensuring that your website is associated with search terms that your audience are using. How to write SEO-friendly content We could write a whole blog post on this! But the main thing is to keep it relevant and always be mindful of what you are writing and who it is for. It’s not going to be beneficial to include phrases that you might search for as a business owner as they could be completely different to the keywords and phrases that your clients search for. So make sure that you know your audience! After all, Google is now ranking websites that are helpful to the target user more highly. You can find out what Google finds unhelpful on websites here We understand that making sure a website works for your business and its target audience can be difficult. If you’re looking for expert help with your website, we would love to help you. Give us a call on 01903 686858 or email us at info@constructivemarketing.co.uk.
What is a Google Business Profile?
And how can you optimise it? Google Business Profile (GBP) previously known as Google My Business (GMB), is an amazing free tool that allows you to be visible on the tech giant’s search engine. Making the most of this tool is one of the best ways to appeal to your local market as the information you provide on your GBP not only appears in Google search but also on Google Maps. So what can you do to optimise your GBP to improve your online presence locally? Here’s our top three ways to optimise your GBP. Location, Location, Location! One of the best ways to optimise your GBP is to include all of the local geographical areas that your business operates in. When it comes to selecting the areas to put onto your profile it’s important to be as specific as possible. Be sure to include specific town or city names, not just the county and country in which you operate. By including more locations on your GBP you will increase your chances of appearing when people search with location keywords, however, if you want to appear locally, you don’t want to include every city and town in the country. Optimise your services Another great way to improve your local reach is to update the services that your business provides. By listing all of the services that you provide your presence within the local market will be much higher as you will appear under a lot more search terms. For example, if you are an electrician, you could include services such as: electrical inspections, electrical wire repair and electrical socket and switch installation. Simply head into the services section of your GBP to start exploring the different services available. If you can’t find every service you provide, you can create a custom service. A powerful description The description of your business is one of the ways that you grab the attention of the reader, it is how you let the reader know what your business is all about, what you do and how your services can be of use to them. With that in mind, you must ensure that the description on your GBP is the best it can possibly be. The description section of your profile does have a character limit of 750 so you don’t need to write an essay on your business, just something simple that gets your point across. On the Constructive Marketing Google Business Profile, our description reads; “We are marketing experts. Our expertise includes Marketing, PR, Social Media, Graphic Design and Websites. We have the skills to cover this and more. We have extensive experience with writing content for websites, social media, award entries or print. We also create websites that combine the art of design and content optimisation along with the science of building organic SEO into every page. Contact us now to find out how we can take your business to the next level. Specialist sectors include Construction, Education and Care.” This uses 650 of the 750 allowed characters, so you can see that you don’t have to write much, just make it count!Having a well-optimised GBP is an integral part of your online presence. We work with a variety of clients from different industries to maintain a good online reputation for them. If you’re looking for help with maintaining a good reputation for your business, give our team a call on 01903 686858 or send us an email at info@constructivemarketing.co.uk. We’d love to help!
How Content Marketing Can Help Your Business
Content marketing is one of those industry developed terms that can be confusing for clients. We can’t bear marketing jargon, so we thought we’d write this blog post to explain what content marketing is and how it can work for your business. For us, content marketing campaigns work to organically improve sales and communication through the targeted placement of visual and written content. It’s the proven ‘right message, to the right people, at the right time’, mainly delivered through your social and digital channels. Good content marketing is not just about gaining more customers, but also about keeping the old ones engaged too. After all, retaining customers is cheaper than getting new ones. Consumer habits are changing Marketers have to constantly adapt to ever-changing customer needs and behaviours. In the last couple of years, we’ve seen people discussing how the digital age has been propelled because of the pandemic. In fact, 87% of shoppers begin their search on digital channels so it’s more crucial than ever that the right content is on those channels. The way consumers make their buying decisions has changed substantially over the years. Did you know that 55% of consumers of all ages say social media is one of the most typical ways they learn about brands or companies? In this day and age, the decision-making process is no longer linear. In July 2020, Google proposed that consumers could go through an infinite decision-making process; never actually making a purchase. They call this the Messy Middle and state that the process between problem recognition and purchase is ‘messy’ and could involve hundreds of touchpoints. So how can businesses keep up with this? That’s where content marketing comes in, as it can be used to support consumers through every stage of the Messy Middle. Content marketing and the sales funnel Most of us are familiar with the sales funnel; it’s the thing that visualises the customer journey from awareness of a brand/company, right through to the sale and, in some cases, customer loyalty. Here’s a diagram to jog your memory: The great thing about content marketing is that it can support customers through every stage of the funnel. Using a multi-channel approach, people can be guided through this funnel and right through the other side into customer loyalty and even to the ultimate achievement – advocacy. Using multi-channel marketing, all the right content can be in all the right places to captivate your target audience and carry them through the buying process. As we mentioned, content marketing can also help your business to communicate to its existing customers and make sure that they don’t forget about you. Think email newsletters and a well-established social media channel, combined with up to date website content. How Constructive Marketing can help It’s no secret that content marketing can be time-consuming to action. However, the great thing about working with a full-service marketing agency, like Constructive Marketing, is that we are able to produce a huge variety of content and we can implement it for you too. Just like content marketing, we can help your business through every stage of implementing a marketing plan. From diagnosing the issues to writing the plan, producing the content and putting it on the right channels, to analysing the data. It all comes together to make sure that your business stays on track and hits its goals. For more information on how we can help you make content marketing work for you, give our team a call on 01903 686858 or email info@constructivemarketing.co.uk.
3 Ways You Can Maximise Your Award Win
If you’ve celebrated an award win recently then congratulations! Your business is officially award-winning, a fantastic achievement that’s certainly worth celebrating. Once the celebration is over though, there are things you can do to make sure you make the most out of your well-deserved win. After all, being an award-winning business is a great reputation to have and it can even help you win more business. In helping you to win an award we can raise your business profile and brand so that you will stand out as a preferred supplier against your competition, be more selective who you work with and improve your client base. Here are three ways to maximise your award win: An award win is something that can be celebrated and spoken about years after it has been awarded. Don’t just celebrate it on the day and then sweep it under the rug. Make sure that people know you’re award-winning for years to come. We’ve helped many clients to win awards. One of our Construction clients (pictured) had a huge boost in interest, new business and team productivity following their wins. Another client in the Retail industry saw a huge change in the amount of footfall coming into their stores following the publicity generated around their wins. Once a company becomes award winning, then this never goes away. You are always an award winning company. It’s worth noting that the positive publicity can start even before the awards have been judged. Becoming a finalist is also something that can be spoken about even a year after the awards have happened. We see too many people not maximising something that they’ve worked hard to achieve. Don’t be one of those people! As an agency, we are proud to have achieved over 20 award wins for clients so far. If you need help with getting the most out of your award win, get in touch to find out how we can help.
7 Ways to Improve Your Networking
How much time do you have? Do you need to attend networking meetings or could you be winning business some other way instead? As an agency, we would always advocate promoting your strengths through a variety of targeted media – as a complement to the personal touch. We have all learnt how to use online meeting platforms and ‘see each other’ via screens. If you’re virtually networking you have to be really clear vocally about what you’re after because it’s much harder to display your body language via a screen. However, no matter how virtual life gets, people will still always buy people – so, in business, making time for face to face networking is still vitally important. We do a lot of networking both virtually and face to face. Virtual networking allows us to reach beyond our usual geographical area without having to travel, but we still think face to face networking forms a stronger bond in less time. We have attended all sorts of groups and meetings at various times of day. We often joke that we could become the size of a house and have no time to do any work if we attended all the meetings to which we were invited, so how do you pick the right ones and then make them work for you? Here’s our top tips: There are many helpful, friendly and positive business groups out there you can join. One of the best places to start is with your local Chamber of Commerce. If, like us, you’re based in Worthing and Adur you can find the Chamber here and the countywide Sussex Chamber here. Other UK branches are here. We are also members of Worthing Business Circle and other local independent networking groups too – each organisation offers different benefits but we would say that all of them have been positive for us so far. We hope these few points are helpful, and maybe we’ll see you out networking soon! In the meantime, sign up for our newsletter so we can keep you updated with more useful advice like this.
Why Should I Join A Membership Organisation?
It’s very common for businesses to display lots of membership badges somewhere on their website; wearing them with pride for all to see. But what exactly are the benefits of all of these memberships? The truth is, like a lot of other things in the business world, it doesn’t pay to be involved in everything. So it’s important to do your research and find out which communities are going to be the most beneficial for you to be involved in. These benefits will differ from business to business; we’ve listed three benefits that a business can get from being a member of a group, community or association. The benefits of being a member of an association: All in all there are lots of different benefits of different member organisations. What one business thinks is well worth the money, is another business’ waste of money. It’s important to research the different organisations and find out what it is they offer their members. Some organisations, such as the Sussex Chamber of Commerce, offer a tiered system – bronze, silver and gold – which means your busines
6 Easy Ways To Refresh Your Marketing
Small Changes Can Make a BIG Difference To Your Marketing You might not have the time nor the resources to do a full on redesign of your website or completely revamp your social media channels. However there are quick wins that you can achieve in a few hours, whether doing it yourself or asking a professional to help. Here’s a few ideas that we’re undertaking at the moment for both ourselves and some of our clients: Refresh your logo – visual branding is often created at the beginning of your business’s life when you’re keen to get something ‘out there’ to get the ball rolling. Several years down the line and you’re still using the same one but times – and your business – have moved on. If you’ve built good brand recognition you won’t want to waste that credibility, trust and awareness so, rather than throwing the baby out with the bathwater and ditching the existing logo, why not go for a refresh? With a successful logo refresh, you can continue to reap the benefits of the brand awareness and trustworthiness of your ‘old’ logo but demonstrate your currency, dynamism and forward-thinking approach with a new look. Revisit your website content – like your logo, you may have created your website when you were first looking to tell people about your business, and it’s been left like that for some time. For some of you, a redesign and rebuild may be necessary but an update of images and written content (aka copy) could work in many cases. For example, is your ‘about’ page up to date with any staff featured? Is your portfolio showing your most recent clients and work? Perhaps some of the language you used doesn’t reflect the tone you wish to convey? Take some time to read through the copy and change the bits that don’t fit with how you now see your business. There may also be references to past promotions or events that have taken place and are no longer relevant. Similarly, perhaps you used stock images at the start but now have (or are in a position to get) images of your actual products or services? Small changes can make big differences to customer and client perception and is great for enhancing your Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). Google especially loves new content and even making slight changes to existing copy will mean that Google improves the ranking of that page. Update your social bios and headers – In the same way that website content needs to move on to reflect any changes in the business, so too do your social media bio and ‘about’ information. Similarly, you might like to change the header image on your Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn business page. Perhaps you’re now offering a new service or product that you’d like to highlight? There is also lots of free or good value design software out there that offers exact match templates for specific header sizes to ensure you get the maximum effect. We love Canva (you can check it out here) which is super easy to use. Icons and thumbnails These are often ignored in design, which is a huge mistake as icons are often the first thing someone sees about you. Does your logo actually work when used in this small format? If not, can you focus on a part of the logo? Can you simplify it in some way? When designing the Seaside Creative branding, we realised that our logo where the beach hut is being constructed would not work across our social media icons so we developed our single beach hut which is now equally recognised along with our main logo. Consistency across all channels – consistency is a key aim in marketing. You want people to recognise your brand and what it represents easily and quickly. The best way is to keep your branding consistent, that is imagery, tone of voice in your copy, typography (the fonts, colours and sizes you use), any uniforms, signage or livery, customer service, or anything else that represents your business. This won’t always be possible down to the tiniest details but you can certainly take an overall look at your website, any literature (brochures, adverts, leaflets), your email signature, etc to make sure that each one looks broadly the same. Are you using the most up to date logo? If you’ve chosen to use a certain font, is it the same in your emails, your website, etc? If someone looked at your website, would they know it was the same business as when looking at your brochure or any other aspect of your business? Remove or update out of date stuff – this ties in with the previous point as it’s very easy to change logos, a point of contact, or a page on your website, without ensuring that it’s been updated everywhere it needs to be. Did you pin a post to the top of your Facebook page when you had a promo on and have left it there months after? Perhaps you’ve got printed literature featuring old price lists? Save yourself awkward moments by making it a regular task to check everything is current. Customers and clients will either be confused by out of date information – creating more work for you when they contact you about it – or get the impression of an inactive, stagnant business and this won’t help you win new customers. Set aside a morning or one day to take a look at each of these ideas – in fact, some may be achieved alongside each other. If there’s anything you’ve got questions about do get in touch.