Tag: Brand

What is your personal brand?

by adventureadagency, posted in Blog, Marketing, Social Media

Who are you? What are you about? What do people think when they first meet you? These questions are weird to think about, because we do not often stop to consider them. We are more focused on what we are doing, not why we are doing it. The problem is that whether or not we are aware of it we are constantly conveying a sense to others of who we are through our personal brand.

The concept of a personal brand can sound vague and made up, but I will assure you it is not just real, but also crucial to professional success. It can make or break you in the business and marketing world.

Let’s break it down. The word “brand” simply means mark. Your personal brand then is your personal mark. A mark can be either a tangible or intangible impression that is left upon someone or something else as a result of someone or something else.

For instance, you can take this literally and think about the act of branding a cow. While this has a slightly different meaning, the concept is the same. The branding stick leaves a mark or an impression on the cow that will remain on that cow unless altered by some other force. Businesses have brands that convey the meaning and purposes of their organization. They also use their brand to create emotional associations. These associations and impressions can not be changed unless the business actively works to change them.

Similarly, when you meet someone for the first time, an impression is imprinted into their memory about who you are and how they feel about you. Every time you post on social media, develop a new relationship, or publish work, you are building your personal brand.

Therefore, everyone has a personal brand, and if you understand this, then you can focus on how to control what you personal brand is. Often, what people convey to others can be different than what they think they convey or want to convey. What can you do then to make sure that doesn’t happen?

First, think about it. Think about who you are and who you want you be. Then, each time you post, ask yourself if this post is adding to or taking away from your personal brand. Each time you meet someone new, consider what you are wearing and how you can conduct yourself to convey your personal brand.

Second, look the part. A big part of brand is image. Humans do not get logos. They get themselves, a powerful advertising tool in its own right. It is important then that we humans utilize this gift. We have all heard the sayings “dress the part” or “dress for success.”

Thirdly, beyond the day to day, look for opportunities to build your personal brand the same way you build your resume. If you want to convey to the world that you are care about the community, go out of your way to get involved. If you want to convey to the professional industry that you are serious about your career and informed about the industry, make sure to be informed by reading relevant journals and maybe even sharing interesting articles on social media or with colleagues.

Finally, to have a strong brand, you need to have something unique to set you apart. Luckily, you are already a unique and inspiring individual. You just need to spend sometime thinking and tapping into what makes you who you are. Never stop trying to answer that question.

10 Step Website Self-Check

by adventureadagency, posted in Blog

What makes a website great? What makes a website terrible? The quality and effectiveness of a website really comes down to ten main elements. All of these ten elements are pretty simple, but due to the wide variety of options in each category, sometime people make websites overly complicated or confusing, or maybe on the other side of things, they make it boring and dull.

Fear no more. We have broken down these ten elements for you a created a 10 Step Self-Check Test for you to use to rate your website. What do you think your score will be.

  • If you have 2 or less elements, your website is an F.
  • If you have 2-5 elements, your website is average and is a C.
  • If you have 5-8 elements, your website is pretty good and receives a B.
  • If you have 9 or 10 elements, your website is fantastic and is an A.

Good luck! Here is our 10 Step Self-Check Test:

  1. Home Page: Your homepage is your front door, your welcome mat, your first impression, and your first impression is one of the most important. It sets the tone. While this may sound silly, think about the way you feel when you open your home page. Does your homepage leave your audience with the right feeling?
  2. Design: The way you set up and design your website will make a big impact on the experience your user has. The most important design element about a website is if it is functional. Can your user find everything they need to find easily? Does the layout make sense for the purpose?
  3. Timeliness: This is simple. Is the website being updated? Look at the last social media post and see if it was in the last week or two. Are you regularly posting new content? At the very least, is all the information correct and up to date.
  4. Searchability: Most people come to websites with a purpose, not just to look around. The search bar needs to be somewhere easy to find so that people can use it. Your menu also must make sense and clearly direct your audience to information through helpful categories or whatever is best for your purpose.
  5. Branding: Does your website stay true to your brand? Is your logo thoroughly incorporated through the website? The easiest thing to forget is to maintain your brand on every section of your website. Your logo should be the same across sections and social media platforms. The colors and theme of your website should go not only with what you are trying to convey, but also you brand.
  6. Credibility: A section of your website need to be devoted to showing that you are a legitimate and serious website. For a company, this would mean including you mission statement, certifications, a portfolio of your work or services, and other additional resources to build credibility. Often people like to showcase their employees and give background on the company’s purpose and founding. All of these benefit the credibility of your site which is an ever increasing problem online.
  7. Headlines: Your headlines are important. They bring your audience into what you are trying to tell them. Whether it is a blog post, a news blurb, or a helpful tip, creative and engaging headlines make the difference between people clicking to read and just passing over it. Do you have thoughtful engaging headlines?
  8. Social Media: In the world we live in, most websites will also have corresponding social media accounts, even if it is just a Facebook page or a LinkedIn account. Optimally, a website will add as many social media accounts as makes sense for them. Whether or not they are incorporated into the website well is usually the problem. What is the point of having them is they don’t work together with you website. Plus, the most important thing is that you add as many as you can keep updated.
  9. Audience: Remember who your target audience is. If you are trying to sell children’s toys, make the website more user friendly for a younger audience. Make it a fun, colorful, exciting experience. If you are a dentist, you may not need as much color and fun, but you will need to appear professional with a clean website that is easy to use.
  10. Overall: At the end of all of this, it is the combination of these nine other areas that leave an overall impression. When your user leaves the website, they will leave with either a good overall feeling of being satisfied or a bad overall feeling. The big question is which does your website give? Does it leave your audience satisfied and do you believe they can find and enjoy finding what they need to on your website?

The Secret To Boosting Your Organic Reach On Facebook

by adventureadagency, posted in Blog, Social Media

Facebook has become a top social media platform. With 1.71 billion monthly active users, Facebook’s potential for advertisers is endless. Because of Facebook’s popularity, it has also become a big advertising platforms. Brands have seen great success using Facebook. For example, when Wendy’s launched a new burger, their Facebook campaign resulted in 1.7 million total engagements and their page attracted more than 50,000 new Facebook fans.

Facebook Ads give businesses a completely customizable platform that allows ads to be promoted to users across the globe. Although this feature is a great advertising tool, your small business doesn’t want to pay to reach an audience every time you post an ad on Facebook. Your marketing budget would be spent on just Facebook alone! We are here today to give you a few tips on how you can reach more people on Facebook without using paid advertising.

To understand how you can reach a wider audience on Facebook, you must first understand how Facebook shows your ad to people. On Facebook, you can promote a paid ad, or you can promote an ad organically. We will be covering organic ads in this blog post. Organic reach refers to how many people you can reach for free just from posting on your business’ page. Organic reach sounds great, right? Reaching an audience without paying a penny! However, the plethora of content on Facebook has resulted in a decline of organic reach. Because an average of 1,500 posts compete for attention in a user’s news Feed, the organic reach has decreased from 16% of followers to just over 2%. Facebook asserts that there are two major reasons for this decline in organic reach. The first is the sheer volume of content competing for a user’s attention. There is more content on the social site than people can absorb. Therefore, only a limited number of posts are actually seen by users. The second reason for organic reach decline is Facebook’s algorithm. Facebook tries to ensure only the most relevant, high quality content makes it into users’ News Feeds. The algorithm assess thousands of factors to determine which posts are News Feed-worthy and displays only around 300 of the 1,500 choices at any given time.

So how does your business perform well with such a wealth of content on Facebook? Our number one tip on making your content valuable is to post quality content. Post content that your audience will find valuable – something that will make them think, provide information, provide entertainment, etc. Another helpful tip is to add business objectives to your Facebook page, such as increasing brand awareness or driving traffic to your website. In addition, you can see when most of your audience members are online and post during those prime times. In addition to the time you post, another important factor is how often you post. There is no magic number of posts that is optimal for Facebook, but rather this number depends on your brand and your users. You will need to determine the correct posting frequency for your specific campaign. Post too often and you may annoy fans; post too scarcely and your fans may forget about it. It is important to find that perfect number of postings that is right for your specific page and audience.

We hope these tips will help you get the most out of your organic reach on Facebook. If you need additional assistance figuring out how to better optimize you Facebook posts, contact us today!

8 Reasons to Exemplify Cohesiveness on Social Media

by adventureadagency, posted in Blog, Social Media

Has your brand jumped on the social media bandwagon yet? If so, you’re probably on multiple social channels such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, Google +, and Pinterest. With so many social networks, it can be hard to manage a consistent brand and a cohesive look. Lucky for you, Adventure Ad Agency is here to help! We’ve got some branding tips to help you knock it out of the park on every platform.

Brand cohesiveness is important because you want to establish a clear message to your customers. If your pages on various social platforms do are not consistent, customers may be confused about who you brand is and what it represents. What do we mean when we say cohesive? Brand cohesiveness across all platforms refers to your layout, color scheme, logo, and message. Cohesiveness does not mean all of your social media pages should look exactly the same. They need to be unified, but not identical. Here’s why:

1. It reinforces your brand identity.

Think about a brand everyone knows, such as Apple. Their brand identity is strong because they have consistent advertising techniques. Everything Apple does displays innovation, style, and efficiency, and people remember them for these things. To establish a clear brand identity, all of your marketing efforts must exude that identity.

2. It helps with brand recall.

One of the biggest reasons to have a consistent social media strategy is brand recall. You want your customers to remember your brand, right? That comes from repeated exposure to the same material. Of course, we don’t want every post to be the same, but they should all have the same message across various platforms.

3. It makes your message clear.

Brand consistency ensures customers understand your message. If you send the same message across all platforms, it will be clear to customers what you are trying to convey.

4. It adds to credibility.

Being credible is a very important part of marketing and branding. Having a professional, consistent social network will add to your brand’s credibility.

5. It makes you stand out.

Consistent imagery, colors, fonts, etc. will make your ads stand out from competitors. It is all about making the customer think of your brand when they need a certain product, and cohesiveness across social channels can help do just that.

If you need additional tips to create a cohesive branding strategy for your brand, feel free to contact us today.

What You Can Learn From “Big Business” Marketing

by adventureadagency, posted in Blog

Think about some of the most successful brands you know and ask yourself how they got there. Was it a great product, a great marketing strategy, or both? Obviously a business cannot survive unless it is offering a product or service people are willing to buy, but marketing plays a vital role in the ongoing success of a business.

Let’s take Apple, for example. Is the iPhone really superior in terms of quality to any other phone? Almost all smartphones have great graphics, easy to use technology, and the newest features, but why do most people tend to gravitate toward Apple products? It is because Apple has established itself as the “go to” brand; if you don’t have Apple, you have something inferior. Since it’s humble beginnings, Apple has utilized a marketing strategy that showcases Apple products are sleek, fresh, and wanted by everyone. They have put themselves at the top of their industry.

So what does this mean for you? We can all learn from Apple and other successful brands when it comes to marketing. Let’s take a look at how these big companies become big.

1. They view marketing as a necessity.

Many business owners use marketing as a startup strategy, but forget about it once they have reached large enough revenue. They think marketing is something that should only be used when more customers are needed. This way of thinking is not going to get you on the same level as Apple or Coca-Cola. If you wait until it is absolutely necessary to start marketing, it’s already too late. By creating and implementing a regular marketing strategy, these businesses thrive year after year. They do this ongoing marketing to maintain the customer base, ensure their reputation, keep things interesting for customers, and secure their business’ future.

2. They keep their brand consistent.

Coca-Cola and Apple, huge businesses with boundless budgets, don’t do anything crazy with their branding. The logo of both companies has remained more or less the same throughout the years. The message is the same, and the brand identity is the same. Although you need to keep your marketing fresh and innovative, your brand should always stay consistent. This will help your business build character and create brand loyalty within your customer base.

3. They are active on social media.

Over 80% of Fortune 500 companies are active on Facebook and Twitter. This helps their brand become more personable and gets customers more involved. Social media allows customers to be not only content absorbers, but also content creators. It allows customers to have personal interactions with the brand and gives the brand an outlet to be a little more creative and fun.

If you need assistance in developing a “big business” marketing plan for your business, contact us today! We’d love to show you how your brand can incorporate these strategies to secure success for years to come.