Let’s do a thought exercise! Imagine that you’ve outgrown your old home. You lived there for years and loved it, but it no longer suits your needs. To build something a bit bigger with more amenities is needed. You want it to look even better than your old home, with beautiful landscaping and an inviting facade. So, you have two choices. One, you could go with a professional construction company that will build you the home of your dreams. A place that will suit your needs for years to come. Or two, you could go with Frank, a friend of…
Read More
Do you know why testimonials are so important? Say, you’re walking down the street and a bus passes with an ad on the side promoting the “best coffee ever,” do you believe it? In all likelihood, you probably instantly think “Pfft. What a load of bull!” This is one of the biggest problems facing advertisers nowadays. Countless people are so instinctively distrustful of marketing that they dismiss any claims made in ads as exaggerations or outright fabrications. Even if the product is genuinely the “best coffee ever,” the average person probably isn’t going to believe it until they try it…
Read More
Do you know what a hashtag is? Or how to use them? Do you remember the very first time you heard the term “Hashtag?” Nowadays, if you are even slightly aware of social media, then you know what a hashtag is. Not only have they become a key component for getting your marketing message out on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and other social media platforms, but the word has even been added to the Oxford English Dictionary! You may know what hashtags are, but do you know how to use them? Well, here is a quick primer that will explain everything…
Read More
How exactly do you go about building a brand for your new business? Over the last few weeks, we’ve been taking a look at the various aspects of brand building. This included the basics of branding, graphic design, and how to rescue a struggling brand. But you might be wondering, but how do I start building a brand from scratch? Well, help is on the way! What is a Brand? As I’ve said before, a brand is like a container that holds all of the assets, both tangible and intangible, of your business. Everything from your logo and color scheme…
Read More
What happens when a brand gets a “bad name?” I consider a brand to be a container that holds everything about a business, both tangible and intangible. From logo to customer service to reputation, your brand encompasses all of the qualities that your customers think when they see the name of your company. The problem happens when some of those qualities are less than desirable. Maybe in the early days of your business, your customer service needed a little more work. Or that your prices were just a little too high. After enough time, many of those negative qualities got…
Read More
When I’m working with a client to either create a new brand or reimagine their existing one, a common question I hear is, “What’s the difference between graphic design and branding?” Conflating the two is an easy mistake to make. After all, when people think of brands, they think of logos. Coca-Cola, McDonalds, Nike… All of these brands have logos that instantly identify them. At a glance, a customer knows everything about those businesses, just by seeing their logo. However, logos and other graphic components are only one part of branding. As I’ve said in the past, think of a…
Read More
Ok, pop quiz time! What exactly is branding? I wouldn’t bother trying to look online for the answer. You look at 100 marketing websites, you’re going to find at least 100 slightly different ideas. Why is it so difficult to nail down a single definition of branding? It’s because branding… is huge. It’s massive. It encompasses everything about your business. Trying to shrink that down to a single sentence is nearly impossible. So I’m not going to try! Instead, I’m going to break it down that massive concept into some smaller pieces, helping you understand what branding means for YOU…
Read More
Writing a Facebook Ad is easy, right? You throw together some text with an image and watch the clicks roll in! Uh, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but that’s a surefire way to end up with a Facebook Ad disaster! Social Media Ad creation is an art onto itself. Much like writing all kinds of social media, it’s a unique mixture of both marketing copy, target research and graphic design meant to attract the eye, intrigue the mind, and eventually, lead the user to your Website or Landing Page. There are a total of seven elements…
Read More
How much time do you spend on Facebook every day? I’m not just talking about your personal account, but also your professional one. If you’re a small business owner, then you should absolutely have a significant professional presence on Facebook (and other social media networks). Facebook is one of the most popular social media channels in the world, with over 2.4 billion users and over 1.56 billion daily users. There are 9.3 million in Florida alone! That’s a lot of horn honking Floridians! Those kinds of numbers can give you a massive reach to connect with both current and potential…
Read More
Does your website have a core lead magnet attached? Imagine this: You’re looking for a digital marketer (a pretty big stretch, huh?) You go onto a website, but the only things that are offered on it are paid products. There is no real way to see what kind of content they create for free. Instead, you have to go in blind and hope that they can meet your content creation/social media/email marketing/ funnel creation/ technical needs etc. And for some, that can be too high a price. Now, when you come to my website, I offer free content right off…
Read More
