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"Marketing is a Contest for People's Attention." - Seth Godin

How Top SEO Firms Shape Natural Search Engine Rankings?

By Gilbert

Every business wants its website to appear on the first page of search engine results. However, intense competition makes it very difficult to achieve high natural search engine rankings. And the job becomes possible without a well-planned SEO strategy in place.

So, here are some SEO strategies used by top best SEO Houston to achieve natural search engine rankings.

Choose the Right Keywords

Right Keywords are important elements of strong SEO strategy. Many businesses make the mistake of choosing keywords based on search volume and end up spending money that gets them useless traffic.

You need to choose keywords that are used by your target audience. For example, if you sell accounting services in Houston, you should avoid choosing general keywords like accounting firms. It will send visitors from all over the globe who may not be your target audience. The right target keywords in this context would be “accounting firm in Houston” or “Houston accounting firm”.

Focus on On-Page Optimization

Today just having an attractive website is not enough. Many local businesses ignore the importance of on-page optimization that leads to lower search engine rankings. On-page optimization refers to different SEO activities including optimizing title tags, and content on the page. There are several other page elements like LSI keywords, image optimization, H1 and H2 tags, internal links, outbound links, responsive design that are also important in on-page optimization.

Have a Foolproof Content Strategy

Make sure your website has a blog section and are updated with fresh contents every week. Search engines would love that.

Posting blogs also give you an opportunity to spread the content on social media and reach a wider audience. The blog can be used as a platform to provide more information about your products and services or answer questions that your potential users may have. However, you should avoid the temptation of using the blog for only promotions.

Build High-Quality Links

Links still play an important role in SEO. However, you should avoid using poor quality or bad links that can get your website penalized. You should use high-quality links only that can help in shaping natural search engine rankings.

Infographic distribution and guest blogging are two great ways to get high-quality links. Focus on quality of links and not quantity of links. You should follow a strategy of getting quality links from blogs and websites that are relevant to your business. Shaping natural search engine rankings take time and if anyone assures they can raise your search engine rankings overnight, it is a red flag.

Monitor Performance and Optimize Strategy

SEO is not a onetime thing but a long process which needs to be optimized as you go. After devising a strong SEO strategy for a website, the SEO firms continually monitors the performance of different SEO elements and optimize the strategy to meet the goals.

Monitoring performance is not limited to monitoring rankings but SEO firms in Houston use analytics to determine which keywords are working well to attract traffic and which aren’t. Link building, content marketing, and keyword research are some of the things that are continually researched in order to shape natural search engine rankings.

Also, don’t make the mistake of slowing down or stop SEO efforts after reaching to the top. Your competitors might then take the top position in a few weeks and you would need to start all over again. Top SEO firms in Houston continually refine their SEO efforts to help their client’s websites reach top position and maintain their lead over competitors.

It is not an easy task to optimize your whole site for search engines. You need the best SEO firm in Houston which has the knowledge and experience to get significant SEO traffic and put your website miles ahead of the competition.

Do you use any SEO company for website optimization or get more organic traffic? Do you’ve any questions? Please feel free to leave your comments below.

Three Skills That Marketing Recruitment Agencies are Looking for

By Gilbert

The term marketing is often confused with sales and administration, and so most businesses and recruiters end up selecting wrong candidate for the job. Marketing recruitment agencies however, have the expertise, experience and understand the broader scope of this function. Hiring through such agencies will help you with the right marketing talent.

Marketing professionals have both short term and long-term responsibilities. In the short run, they need to increase the sales of the company’s products and services to generate revenue and keep the company going; on the other hand, it has a broader responsibility of creating and improving the brand identity of the company, and finally supporting the sales team.

You need marketing professionals with business acumen, communication skills, adaptability, flexibility, ability to multi task, creativity etc., so they can create brand awareness, communicate the brand story effectively to the target audience, be open to new ideas for developing new product line, creative to devise unique sales campaigns, etc. In addition to these skills, as various online marketing platforms gain strength, recruitment agencies also look for candidates with online skills essential for marketing.

Three Online Skills Required for Marketing Professionals:

As online marketing evolves, there are various ways businesses can leverage this to achieve business goals. Marketing recruitment agencies look for candidates who understand the dynamics of digital marketing using various skills.

  • Social media: Social media continues to grow at a rapid pace and it has informally become the official channel for businesses to engage with consumers and spread a word about business, create brand awareness. As the popularity of social media increases, the number of social channels available is also on the rise, and marketing professionals need to devise strategies for engaging with consumers. There are many fun-filled ways to engage consumers using activities such as surveys, quizzes, etc. Marketing recruitment agencies look for professionals who are adept at creating a social media strategy that presents a credible and professional picture of the business to the prospects.
  • Content marketing: In the digital marketing arena, content is the king. Ability to create viral content is the key to success. Developing content that everyone likes, shares, and responds to by commenting is a popular way to increase consumer engagement and increase your brand visibility. Marketing professionals need to have an understanding of the content types such as informative articles, blog posts, sales copy, video content, etc., so they can formulate the right content strategy that helps consumer engagement. It is essential for professional to possess excellent communication, and interpersonal skills to excel at content marketing.
  • Mobile marketing: Mobile marketing is gaining strength as more and more people are browsing the internet using their mobile phones. The number of transactions over mobile phones either for checking emails, connecting on social media to even making purchases is on the rise, as they offer convenience of browsing on the go. Marketing recruitment agencies look for professionals who understands the dynamics of mobile marketing, as it differs from the usual online marketing for desktop. Your marketing professional should be able to devise the perfect mobile marketing strategy make your websites mobile ready, make web pages load faster and accept mobile payments etc.

In addition to these online skills, marketing recruiting professionals look for other online skills that include an understanding search marketing – both organic and paid- email marketing, etc.

Public Relations Research – The Best Way to Get the Data You Need for a Successful Campaign

By Gilbert

A key element to public relations research is identifying the factors that affect the behaviors of a market. This is imperative if you’re trying to get them to change their minds when offering a new product or change their point of view if you want to get them to try something new—as well as if you’re promoting something, such as a product, person, or your brand.

Of course, knowing why they behave the way they do also affects how to best market to them. Most of the time spent performing public relations research is devoted to digging deeper into the why of their behavior in order to change or enhance it.

This can involve a range of different public relations research techniques, from uncovering whether safety issues drive certain behaviors and/or if the benefits derived from changing to a newer or improved product is important to them. Often, the public is waiting for something new and refreshing.

Therefore, in-depth public relations research should be carried out prior to any campaign launch, and even before planning a campaign. The key to influencing behavior using public relation techniques isn’t so much how a marketing campaign is executed, but what research uncovers as identifiers of what drives and changes behavior.

The point of public relations is to establish a favorable public image to create a fond relationship between a company and the public. Thus, the better the public relations research, the more successful a marketing campaign or launch will be.

So, how do you perform effective public relations research? Below we’ll look at different ways to uncover buying behaviors of consumers in general, or of a specific market.

How to Carry out Effective Public Relations Research

One of the main considerations when preparing for a marketing campaign is the cost. The most cost-effective ways to uncover your market’s spending habits, values, and behaviors are as follows:

Surveys: This kind of public relations research is a way to gather detailed information quickly, and they work well with smaller budgets. You can request detailed answers and ask for personal views and comments that are all directed to a specific portion of the market.

Polling: Whether to use a survey or a poll depends on the information about your audience and what data you want to get from your public relations research. A poll is a general way to uncover the direction your market is headed in. You can ask one question and offer multiple answer choices to get hundreds or thousands of opinions, or you can ask a multitude of questions.

Omnibus Surveys: Omnibus surveys for public relations research is a way for companies to hone in on specific markets to get the information they need quickly. It’s a method of quantitative research where data from a variety of subjects can be collected.

Three Things to Consider Before Beginning Public Relations Research

Before jumping into your market research, there are three things to consider.

1. Plan Your Intended Reach – Analyze the specific reasons why you want to research your audience. Figure out where they live (in person and/or online), their age, and if they currently use or are interested in what you’re promoting. This helps you focus your public relations research so you get the valuable data you need going forward.

2. Plan Your Timing – Make sure you send your public relations research out in increments. Try to send your survey or poll when it makes sense, and not too often so your market doesn’t ignore them. Choose an ideal time, such as after they buy a product online or comment on social media.

3. Acknowledge Your Customers – This last tip has a bonus. When you’re preparing how you’ll go about obtaining your public relations research, make sure you let your market know that their opinion matters. This is a way to speed up a positive relationship. Everyone loves to share their opinion and feel important.

The Goal of Public Relations Research

The end game of a marketing campaign is to know the best way to get your promotion into the hands or eyes of your audience via the press. After you have the data you need to communicate with your audience, you must spend time on how to get it in front of reporters. This can be tricky, so you should always engage the assistance of a public relations research professional who knows how reporters think.

What to Look for in Marketing Staffing Agencies?

By Gilbert

Marketing has changed a lot over the time. Today, you need a specialist recruiter when hiring staff for your marketing department. With so many marketing staffing agencies out there, it can be hard to select the right agency. Hence, we have compiled a list of attributes that you need to focus on while selecting prospective marketing Chicago staffing agencies.

Make the Recruitment Effortless

The agency should manage all tasks starting from writing job descriptions, posting job adverts, short listing candidates, scheduling interviews, and other tasks related to recruitment.

The recruiter should present 4-5 potential candidates for each job position. If the agency is lining up 15-20 potential candidates for every job position, it is a red flag. It might mean the recruiter is not doing the due diligence to eliminate unsuitable candidates.

Category Competence

The staffing agency (http://www.wisegeek.org/what-is-a-staffing-agency.htm) should have a deep understanding of skills and abilities required of potential candidates for different marketing positions. It is unwise to select an agency who only supplies office staff and do not understand your business, target customer or marketing talent required to achieve success.

The agency should be able to answer with authority the questions you have about marketing functions and skill sets. The more knowledge the recruiter has about the category, the more accurate the agency’s hiring decisions would be.

Depth of Their Recruiting Process

Anyone can hire candidates from online job boards. The marketing staffing agency should be able to demonstrate the depth of their recruitment process. It is necessary the agency shows interest in going deeper than their competitors to find the right marketing candidates.

Some of the aspects that you should focus on are how they will be sourcing candidates and the qualitative research technique used in the in-depth interview. The structure of the interview should cover areas and topics that are closely related to marketing job functions.

Connected with Active and Passive Candidates

A recruitment agency which has access to both active and passive candidates will be able to raise the quality of each new hire. Passive candidates are favored by organizations for many reasons. They have most updated skills relevant to the job as they are employed and connected to their industry.

Unlike active candidates who are looking for immediate income, passive candidates are not pressurized or are not looking for a job to support their life. Passive candidates also have a higher attrition rate as they leave their current job for a better opportunity and are more likely to stay longer in your organization.

Focus on Fit Candidates

While skill testing is a part of the recruitment process. A good recruitment agency will also integrate personality testing in the hiring process to ensure the candidate is a perfect fit for your organization. The agency should also provide background and criminal checks and additional requests for information to ensure the potential candidate is not a bad hire in any aspect.

Speed

A vacant position is hard on morale (other employees) and budget. If the recruiter spends long periods of time finding potential candidates, the company loses thousands of dollars during that period due to inefficiencies. It is necessary the recruiter has a large talent pool of pre-screened candidates with relevant skills and experience that are ready to take up jobs when they are available.

A good marketing staffing agency in Chicago, IL would have hundreds to thousands of candidates and they should have several quality candidates in the pipeline at all times for the majority of marketing job positions. Only a well-connected recruiter would be able to fill the vacancies in few days and reduce the time-to-hire.

Offer Temporary Solutions

Not every hiring decision can be made quickly. The recruiter should be able to offer temporary staff to fill vacant positions until the hiring decision is made. The temporary candidates they provide should need little training until you find a suitable candidate for the permanent position. And you may never know the temporary employee that you have hired is the perfect candidate for the position.

Now that you know the important attributes of the right marketing staffing agency, don’t forget to thoroughly research the recruiter profile (experience, reputation, clients) before making the final decision. By ignoring research, you will not only be putting your company by choosing an average recruiter, you will also lose the advantages of partnering with a right marketing staffing agency.

Things to Look for in Finding the Best SEO Company

By Gilbert

Maintaining a strong online presence is necessary for every business organization today. Customers and clients demand that you are easy to find and easy to interact with online. Search engines are one of the primary sources of their search for information and any business organization that doesn’t make itself found will have a hard time tackling competition. It is very important for your website to be on the first page of the search engine results as people don’t tend to go beyond the first page to find what they need. Optimizing your website to search engines like Google thus becomes extremely important and organic SEO is the go to solution to win the search game.

SEO can either be done in-house or outsourced to an agency that specializes in search engine optimization. The benefits of outsourcing to an agency is that you gain access to knowledge, skills, experience and expertise that in-house teams can never deliver. Moreover, you will be saving your time and money by not hiring an internal team to do the needful. If you are looking forward to hire a Miami SEO agency for your requirements, this article is for you. We will list out the characteristics and practices of the best SEO companies in Houston or anywhere else. We will also discuss the things you need to expect from an SEO company when you are planning to hire one.

1. Referrals

When you start your search for the best SEO company, the first thing you should expect from a company is that you get sufficient referrals recommending you to approach the SEO company. The referrals could from your friends, colleagues, partners, advisors, family, etc. If an SEO company/agency is being referred to as the best, it is quite believable that the company knows what it is doing and is good at doing what it does. You can proceed to contact the company with some background research without any hesitation when you have received a referral from a person/entity you can trust.

2. Previous List of Clients

Apart from referrals, you can also believe that an SEO agency is the best at what it does by looking at its previous list of clients. A good list of clients would include reputed brands, business organizations of all sizes, companies that are doing extremely well on their digital marketing initiatives and of course your competitors. If you find two or three names that you are impressed with, you can certainly make the next move of conducting a brief background research and contacting the company representative.

3. Realistic Assurances

When you are looking for the best SEO companies, another thing to expect from them is realistic assurances. Once you have shortlisted two to three agencies that have referrals and a good list of clients, you can contact them and set up a meeting on the telephone or face to face. You then brief your current situation and also ask the company do its preliminary research to know where your company websites stands on the search market. Avoid an SEO company that will give you false and unrealistic assurances like greater visibility, increased traffic, first position in the SERP and so on within a span of 2-3 months. SEO is all about long-term planning and execution, suggesting it will take a lot of time, at least a good 6 months to reach the top position.

4. Customization

Every business organization has its own set of requirements and search is not an exception to this. There are specific keywords you would want to focus on, specific objectives that you would want to meet, turnaround times you would define based on your requirements and so on. You should also differentiate from your competitors and do things that they are not doing to stay ahead in the race. The best SEO companies ensure to offer a customized approach to each of their clients by rightly assessing their requirements and hurdles that exist. When you meet the SEO company for the first time, expect them to conduct a brief study on your status quo and suggest you the options that they could offer to improve the situation.

What to Look for When Hiring Content Development Companies?

By Gilbert

Are you thinking of hiring a content development company for content production? Seek the best content development firm and get a high-quality copy for your business. In the recent years, businesses have realized the potential of copy and started leveraging content for business. Nowadays, businesses are looking for content development services to enhance the reach of the content, attracting more readers. However, creating high-quality content can be difficult at times. In fact, producing engaging content is one of the challenges faced by organizations. Getting skilled content professionals is also one of the major challenges. It is often difficult to get prolific content professionals that create compelling content consistently. Hence, you have to check out some basic skills while appointing a content development organization. Some of the skills that content development companies should have include the ability to produce grammatically sound content, the ability for pro journalistic research, capability for having fun with numbers and the competence of organizing a consistent publishing schedule with project management skills. These skills are present in the successful publishing houses. If you want to search for proficient and powerful content professionals, these four skills are sufficient. Nevertheless, the content requirements should be personalized as per the campaign. Let’s check out the skills in this regard:

§ Ability to produce Grammatically Sound Content – It is nothing new. Every content development company should be aware of the nuts and bolts of writing. However, with additional skills thrown into the mix along with plotting excel sheet graph, running a bunch of software and keyword research, businesses lose out. About 26% of the college graduates have deficient writing skills. Texting and tweeting have taken a toll on how well people write and spell, thus increasing the demand for copywriters who can twist a smart sentence. In case you want your business and content strategy to be taken seriously, you should get the language basics right. Spelling mistake and grammatical errors can hurt the reputation of your brand. In a poll of more than 1000 UK adults, Global Lingo found that over 70% of the consumers pay heed to the quality of grammar and spelling on a company’s website. About 59% of the people said that they don’t want to deal with a company which has grammar and spelling on the website. On the other hand, in another survey conducted by Standing Dog Interactive, just 3% of the polled audience said that they didn’t mind copy errors. Even if the survey results vary, the safe option is to hire a company which can produce grammatically sound content.

§ Capability of Producing Engaging Content – Now, do you think that flawless grammar is the final parameter of making a writing skill analysis? No, it is not the only parameter. Other factors should also be taken into consideration while you are hiring content development companies like the capability of producing engaging copy. If the content is devoid of emotion, stories, and personality, it will not be able to engage readers. Often content development companies demand a lot of money as they are creative and they know the tactics of engaging readers emotionally. The word choice of the writers, the tone and the understanding of target audience play a crucial role in creating a persuasive content leading to increase in conversions. This is a long-term skill that automatically comes with writing more and more content. The essential features that should be used for separating the wheat from the chaff include a compelling headline, subheadings, and CTA. Expert copywriters know that 7 out of 10 readers won’t go beyond titles. Hence, they should put the effort in creating an attractive title. In order to gain the attention and trust of readers, the writers should write conversationally in first or second person and make use of the exact words in describing challenges. It is also significant to pick up the right subject for writing. It could be difficult to come up with different writing ideas for content strategy, but one should try to find out new and interesting angles or else, people won’t spare time to read the copy. A creative content developer understands keyword research, uses research for content creation and produces ideas that are confirmed to get traction.

Follow these simple considerations and hire the competent content development company to produce high-quality content fast for attracting readers. Collaborate with authors, provide and maintain editorial standards, interacting with illustrators and printers and set parameters to ensure high-quality content creation.

The Impact of Advertising Copy Testing

By Outley

When we are young, we are often told that there is no harm in making a mistake. To quote Magic School Bus, it’s a necessary part of our learning experiences to “take chances, get messy, and make mistakes.” But while making mistakes is an important part of learning, the result of making that mistake isn’t always limited to what we learn from it. Sometimes mistakes have really dire consequences. In fact, when it comes to an advertising campaign, a mistake can be fatal to the campaign, the product or service being advertised, and sometimes even to the company in question. That’s why copy testing is so important to the campaign—and the company.

Let’s take a look at some popular examples:

The most recent (and viral) example of a company making a giant advertising mistake is the latest Pepsi ad, which features Kendall Jenner diffusing a protest march by “breaking barriers” to offer a police officer a Pepsi, turning the protest into a giant unified celebration of the power of Pepsi to deliver a message of peace. The “global message of unity, peace, and understanding” that Pepsi was going for, however, missed its mark—by a lot. Pepsi later apologized for the ad’s apparent minimization and dismissal of the importance of social movements like Women’s Marches and Black Lives Matter protests. So far, Pepsi—and Jenner—seem to have come out of the controversy relatively unscathed, but while many companies attempt to target controversy in order to gain the potential of “going viral,” this particular attempt was most definitely a mistake for the company.

The lesson? Choose your controversial statement wisely to ensure you aren’t alienating, undermining, or re-victimising your target demographic.

And Pepsi isn’t the only corporation to fall victim to airing a commercial that never should have seen the light of day.

Motrin also made a commercial blunder with their wear your baby ad. Intended to offer Motrin as a solution for those who suffer back and neck pain from “wearing their babies” in strap-on backpack-style carriers and the like, the ad decided to take a more creative approach by sarcastically commenting on the “trend” of wearing a baby as a fashion statement. The ad also suggested this fashion trend could be detrimental to the health and safety of the infant, and concluded by telling parents that they need to take Motrin so they won’t look “tired and crazy.” The commercial was pulled and an apology was issued after a “digital tsunami of protest” was followed by a boycott of the product.

If the plan was to appeal to parents to sell more Motrin, then the company’s mistake ended up driving away the exact demographic they were attempting to attract.

These are just two of the dozens of examples out there of advertising blunders that have had severe impacts on the companies involved. The wrong statement in the wrong tone at the wrong time or in the wrong context can create a lot of backlash that can do more than end the company’s campaign—it can destroy the company’s image. If Pepsi was trying to look hip and youthful, it managed only to convey the message that it really isn’t connecting with its millennial audience, and that creates the potential to alienate that entire audience—and it only takes one mistake in one advertising campaign to do it. Motrin was clearly trying to appeal to parents, and it ended up creating a boycott that would cost the company significant sales.

And issuing a mere apology isn’t going to resolve the situation. Those previous customers who were offended by the add felt betrayed by a campaign that is supposed to communicate directly to them to sell a product that clearly must be for them. It will take work for both of these companies to regain the trust of the potential consumers they’ve alienated.

And it all could have been prevented

Instead of focusing their efforts on damage control and reparation, both Pepsi and Motrin could be working on attracting new clients, and all it would have taken is copy testing. Copy testing those ads before they went out could have prevented the controversial backlash that cost both companies their customers, but the key is that the product needs to be copy tested to the right people. You can’t show the Pepsi commercial to a group of white supremacists and expect the same results from the Black Lives Matter activists. Using the right copy testing techniques and appealing to the right company to help you achieve those techniques is the best thing you can do for your advertising campaign.

What is Concept Testing?

By Gilbert

One of the core tasks that marketers can use to increase a product’s success on the market, concept testing can occur at many different stages of a product’s development. At each stage, from initial vision to packaging and promotion, concept testing helps to narrow the focus of developers and maximize resource allocation. The ultimate result? Products with good concept testing will be in a position to succeed.

Testing Ideas

The name “concept testing” gets to the heart of what it’s about: testing concepts, or ideas, before you spend resources executing them. If you have an idea for a product, you can invest in developing that product, and then, when it gets to market, it might succeed or it might fail. If it succeeds, great, but if it fails, you will have invested time and money for nothing.

If, instead, you investigate your idea using concept testing, you mitigate the risk of failure in two ways. First, you determine whether the idea is worth pursuing at all—if concept testing shows that your idea would fail, then you know to move on and find a different idea to invest in. Second, concept testing tells you what, specifically, people find appealing about your idea, so that you can focus on developing those unique, appealing qualities, rather than focusing on an aspect of your idea that might not be as exciting to the market.

Feedback at Every Stage

The development of a product is a long and complex process. You begin with an idea, but you then iterate on that idea, finding better versions of it until you settle on what exactly to develop. Even then, however, you have a long way to go—you have to determine the specific features that distinguish your product on the market, and you have to make sure those features appeal. You have to determine the best way to package your product and draw the right attention to it. You have to determine who exactly you want to appeal to, and you have to target your product to that market’s needs.

Even when your product is on the market and selling well, you will always be working to improve it. Perhaps you want to make variants of your product that will appeal to slightly different markets, such as a simpler but more user-friendly version of software for amateurs, or a healthier burger for people on a diet. You will also want to keep the marketing of your product up-to-date, adjusting to changing tastes and staying ahead of the competition. All of these projects require further concept testing to make sure they continue to succeed in an evolving market.

You might have heard the theory that it takes 10,000 hours to master something, but that’s only half the story. The only way to guarantee improvement, whether you’re learning a skill or developing a product, is to have constant feedback informing you of what needs work. Concept testing provides that constant feedback at every stage of development so you can be certain that your product continues to improve.

The Art of Concept Testing

While concept testing involves predictive behavioral measurements and qualitative analysis, it is not all science. The truth is, what people say about their reactions to a product will always contain some bias. For example, if you have introduced multiple products, then the order in which you introduce them will affect how people respond to them—they might respond more positively to an idea just because it is different from the previous idea, which they disliked. Another problem is that, when concept testing is done in groups, people will give answers that are influenced by their perception of what the others around them think. Finally, saying you would buy something is different from actually buying it.

Marketing experts develop techniques to filter through this bias and determine the underlying patterns of behavior. For example, they can change the order in which they present concepts, and then track how the order affected responses. They can encourage people to answer written questions before having a group discussion. Most of all, they develop experience with how responses line up with actual behaviors.

Good concept testing is an invaluable component of any product’s development, no matter how raw or polished that product might be.

Know the Importance of a Branding Agency for a Startup

By Gilbert

One of the common mistakes of startups is overlooking the need for branding their company image. There is no doubt finances, new hires, shipping and delivery is important for startups. However, advertising and startup branding is also essential for customer outreach and overall success.

You need to strategically think about branding that will ultimately get you the users and lead your startup to profit. For all this you need a branding agency in Seattle or Los Angeles that will build a brand that stands test of time and connects you to users. Let’s see the importance of a branding agency for your startup.

Know the Importance of a Branding Agency for a Startup

Sometimes Even the Best Ideas and Product Fail

A great idea or product is not a guarantee of success. However, your startup can write a new success story by considering branding strategically. One of the biggest benefits of branding is recognition. This can help you in meeting with investors when you pitch them for investing in your startup.

If your brand cannot be marketed, there are very less chances of getting investment. A strong brand attracts investors and users. Having investors supporting your idea means you will have the required funds to run the company while having users means you have finally tapped the stream of revenue.

Establish your Company Identity

A brand is not just a name, website or a logo. It is a promise made to the customers and fulfilled. For startups, brand is a living experience that starts with aspirations of the founder and extends to everything from product to customer service and marketing.

A company’s brand allows your customers to pick your product in the crowd of sameness. Your brand is specifically associated with the experience your customer gets from your product. For example, in overcrowded smartphone market, Apple comes across as a popular brand that has a character of sophistication and simplicity.

A creative agency will take the creative responsibility of the brand while you focus on other essential activities of your business.

Inspire Customer Loyalty

Every day your consumers are bombarded with several new product offers and new brands. To grab the attention of your consumer, you need more than a great product.  You need to accept the challenge of creating a unique marketing campaign that will connect you with customers because without customers, your startup cannot succeed.

A good branding company will successfully create a brand image that will help your company stand out in the crowd and will also encourage customer loyalty. Branding continues to remain one of the key elements of success for all businesses.

Differentiate from competition

Branding helps a startup differentiate from competition. Formulating a brand requires a company to conduct a research of the customer base. This helps them articulate what makes them unique and what gaps their product is filling in the market. The ability to specify their unique contribution enables the company to attract new customers who are looking for new product or service offered by startup.

Promise of Longevity

Establishing and marketing a brand sends clear signal and assurance to customer that company will be in business for long time.  A branding agency works to formulate a brand identity that coincides with your company’s value statement, mission and goals. Employing a branding strategy also shows that your startup is investing in its own mission and product.

Every startup begins with a story and branding makes it easy for you to tell the story to your customers in an interesting way. The visual aspect of branding makes your startup image stick to the minds of the customer.

There is no doubt creating a brand image is essential to the success of the company. It is also a fact that it is the hardest task to accomplish unless you hire a branding agency for the job. A good brand image can make your presence felt in the market and a market share means customers that bring in revenue.

Retail Signage Creates Lasting Effects

By Gilbert

One of, if not the earliest, examples of retail signage is found at the site of ancient Ephesus in Turkey. Etched into a rock beside a marble pathway is a picture of a footprint and a lovely lady. Below this sketch is lettering. Loosely translated, this ancient sign reads “this lady is sad and lonely. You can make her feel better and she can make you feel great. Bring money. Follow the direction of the footprint.” An old retail sign for one of the world’s oldest professions!

Retail signage is not a new concept; even in ancient times, signage was used to influence purchasing decisions. For centuries, humans have recognized that retail signage is a very powerful tool. An article by Jennifer LeClaire entitled Unlocking the Psychology of Signage states, “According to the Small Business Association, effective POP signage develops a memory for a location of the products or services, reinforces a memory and extends recall of other advertising efforts, attracts new customers and modifies customary purchase decisions or habits.”

The effect of retail signage extends far beyond the impulse point of purchase. It influences repeat purchases and draws the consumer back to the store. Effective signage also influences patrons to purchase items they may not have otherwise tried. It is not enough to rely on the products to “sell themselves”. Retail signage brings the consumer to the product, creates a memory of the product and greatly increases the chance of the repeat business.

Truly effective signage is placed in such a way that consumer feels calm, composed, directed and positively influenced. Poor retail signage management, such as signs hanging from varying lengths, misdirection due to poor placement, dated or dirty signage creates a sense of chaos, a rushed feeling, and a disorientation that will ultimately drive the customer from the store.

When you are planning your marketing strategy, do not overlook the importance of retail signage. As for the sign in ancient Ephesus, it must have been effective because there is a permanent groove worn into the marble walkway from foot traffic to the brothel! Who knows? Perhaps you will have the next historic sign that tourists flock from all over the world to see. Until then, we will just have to keep going to Ephesus.

About Perpetual Marketing

Marketing isn't easy. Marketers know that and so do business owners. We, at Perpetual Marketing, seek to make a sense of the art of marketing. While we do so, we invite you to share your thoughts in comments section of our blogposts. We look forward to your ideas and experiences both good and not-so-good ones. Let’s market and market better than competitors.
June 2025
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