Have you been hearing the term brand identity being used often and been wondering about how important it really is? It is supremely imperative for a small business to develop a solid brand identity. This will aid in establishing the brand image. However, the reality is that many neglects to do this. Yet, those businesses that do invest the effort in doing this tend to reap great benefits.
You can foster a powerful connection with consumers when you are able to develop a brand identity based on your values. Customers will be able to be more aware of your brand over your competitors when you are able to consistently present your brand both online and offline.
The perception that customers form regarding your particular brand is based on the customer experience that you provide, along with sharing values that really matter to consumers. With this being the case it is relevant to gain a comprehensive understanding concerning the differences pertaining to corporate identity and brand identity. Your success in marketing will be based on those distinctions.
What is a corporate identity?
The visual elements that comprise the personality and style of a company are what make up its corporate identity. This includes the typography, colors, and graphics, along with the guidelines of how such elements will be implemented in all forms of media, such as marketing materials, the website, etc. Thus, anything that provides a visual connotation of the business is part of its corporate identity.
When the corporate identity of a business is consistent and clear, this results in achieving an image that is distinct from competitors. When your business stands out this way, customers can remember the business with quicker ease. When there is a look that is consistent, this forms the perception of a powerful brand.
It is, thus, highly recommended for businesses to develop a style guide. This will aid in ensuring that consistency is always maintained when consumers see the company. This makes the company more memorable for consumers.
What is the brand identity?
The total value proposition that customers receive from a company is identified as the brand identity. Elements that contribute to forming the brand identity of a company may include benefits, quality, features, attributes, the values of the brand and support. Whether consumers decide to buy your products and services or those from their competitors is strongly connected to your brand identity.
Who you truly equate to your brand identity. It is like a positioning statement that has values and a personality. Your brand identity is what you promise to consumers. It is what the company desires consumers to believe and sense about its products and services.
The brand identity is the place the brand has in the minds of consumers. Brand loyalty can be increased among consumers when there is a well-established brand identity since this builds trust and helps to make a company more memorable to consumers.
Then consideration should also be given to the brand image. Brand image refers to the manner in which consumers feel or think concerning your brand in relation to the experience they associate with your brand. Your brand image will be impacted by the good or bad experiences of your customers. The reputation of a company is strongly influenced by the brand image of a company.
When consumers believe that their experience has been negative, it is rather difficult to amend the perception of the brand of the company. On the other hand, when consumers sense that their experience has been positive, then they are likely to be more loyal toward your brand. This provides a truly powerful competitive edge for the brand.
When it comes to forming the brand identity of your company, it is imperative that the brand image aligns with the brand identity. This means that the manner in which customers perceive the brand should be well aligned with the way that you want the brand to be perceived.
It cannot be denied that possessing a powerful brand is truly a valuable asset for a company. This means that you want customers to associate service, quality and other intangible elements in a positive manner when they interact with the brand name of your company. This will contribute to the overall prosperity of the company in the long term.
The importance of a website to any business in this digital age cannot be overstated here. A business website can be used for accomplishing different marketing strategies for helping your business grow. Compared with other advertising channels, the internet has a wider reach. A website is the center of the online presence of your company. Once you have decided to have a website, it is important to understand that one of the factors for you to consider is choosing between Web design and Custom Template Design. You have to know the difference between website templates and custom web design to decide the option best for your business.
Custom Web Design
This involves having a team behind a business. For the team to come up with custom built websites, a creative process is involved. The process is meant for understanding various issues such as your target audience and how the website is to function. As you may have known by now, for any website to be successful, SEO is really important. There are rules that need to be followed when building a website and not all website templates/themes are able to abide by these rules. That is why custom web design is much more superior. The web developer is in a position to optimize the website during its creation to allow search engines like Google to read every page. The result is that end users are supplied with search results that are more relevant and custom website design is ranked naturally better. With custom website design, every business gets a site according to its needs and website visitors benefit from the exceptional user experience.
Advantages
I. The website has a unique design and it is based on the particular needs of your company. You can incorporate the branding of your company into the design of the website.
II. Search engine friendly and as a result rank higher in search results.
III. Adaptable to the needs of the company.
IV. Works across all browsers
Disadvantages
I. More expensive than a website template.
II. The process of custom web design takes longer. There may be delays in completing your project because the process is complex and time-consuming.
Website Templates
The use of website templates is for those who do not have enough time and money to spend on the web design process which is usually lengthy and complicated. A website template is also for you if you are not sure about the particular website design that is able to suit the needs of your business. The use of website templates is a common way to start a site. After setting up a WordPress site, you simply apply a particular template that has been purchased from Template Monster, Elegant Themes, or ThemeForest. While these websites are able to supply you with numerous website templates types, understand that not all of the templates/themes are 100% responsive. You should also note that website templates/themes often come with features that are in-built. Hence, while more customizability is possible, the SEO performance and the load speed of the website will be compromised or affected. Moreover, you will have to continue using designs, features, and functions that do not suit the needs or brand of your business.
Advantages
I. Great for those who do not have the technical knowledge for accomplishing web programming.
II. Shorter development cycle.
III. Requires low budget.
Disadvantages
I. There is often a high chance that there are other businesses and competitors using the same template you are using. Thus, your website will not stand out from the rest. Your website will lack a competitive edge.
II. Customization is limited. Usually, what you see is what you get. Fitting web elements like videos, texts, and images are challenging when using website templates.
III. There are some website templates that do not search engine friendly. In view of that, website templates tend to stay at the bottom of search engine rankings.
IV. Poor support system when compared to the support system of a custom-built website.
V. Browser and device compatibility. Website templates may not function 100% on some devices and browsers.
Conclusion
For you to choose between Web design and Custom Template Design, that greatly depends on personal preferences and business needs. You can either choose to concentrate your energy and attention on running the core tasks of the business and leaving the online visibility of the business to be handled by professionals or spend time trying to make your website appear and behave in a particular way.
It is the third month of my Internship at BWD and ..where do I even begin. My first day was beyond nerve-wracking and it felt like walking down the corridor as a grade 8 learner on the first day of high school. Despite the first day jitters, I adjusted and got into the hang of things. With such a hands-on experience, I want to share what has been instilled in me and how my knowledge has expanded.
BWD Advertising is a marketing agency that offers a wide range of services from Website Design, Social Media Management to Video Animations. The internship is aimed at making you a well-rounded person as this agency is always evolving. Everything is at your disposal to improve your skills and to gain first-hand knowledge from people who have more experience in the field that you are interested in. This is the time to be inquisitive, show passion and determination as no one else can want you to succeed more than you do.
I came in with a strong interest in Social Media and Content Marketing. I had my insight on how complex Social Media is but little did I know, it was only the beginning. I was equipped with more knowledge from experts, blogs and through tasks such as completing the Google Analytics Course for Beginners. One of the most inspiring things with this agency is the persistence and interest in helping you grow and master your craft, as they always say here “ We grow when you grow”. You will leave the BWD doors being a more refined person than when you came in.
Even though I was interested in Social Media, I learned that there are different aspects that all ensure that you deliver the best content that you can. Practice makes perfect and that purely means you have to be driven enough to take the skills that have been instilled in you and master them. For example, if you want to be a good photographer, take more or less 100 pictures in a week and after let’s say 6 months, you would have taken 520 pictures. If you decide to go with the 10% rating of your work, you should have 52 quality pictures. Go above the bare minimum for your craft and be intentional with what you are trying to accomplish.
DOs and DON’Ts in making the most of your internship.
I still have a lot to learn during my time at BWD but here are three DOs and DON’Ts that are important in making the most of your internship:
DOs
Do set goals and expectations. It is important to have a plan for what you expect to get out of it.
Do look for guidance. Learn from your co-workers by asking them about their tasks and the obstacles they had to overcome to get where they are.
Absorb like a sponge. Ask questions to help clarify what you are learning and take notes to reference later.
DON’Ts
Don’t allow your inexperience to affect you. Contribute any ideas you might have without fear of rejection. If anything, your employer will see that you are keen on helping.
Don’t assume that any task given to you is unimportant, even the smallest of tasks have some value to the company.
Don’t hide mistakes. Nobody is perfect so always take accountability and offer solutions on how such mistakes will not happen in the future.
Internships are the best way to align your career path and to know exactly where you want to go. It is a way of getting your feet wet and finding out if working in a specific field is something that you could see yourself doing. Internships make candidates more competitive in the job market. By maintaining professionalism and taking on the individual responsibility that is required of you, you will be creating a good impression that can provide you with a reference letter or even better, a potential job offer. Keeping yourself flexible during your internship will open many doors. Seize that opportunity and put everything that you have learned into action.
Having a solid graphic design process helps us deliver better designs. Although the graphic design process is relatively standardized, there are ways to improve the workflow. There are different stages of the graphic design steps we take into consideration when designing a website. Well-designed websites offer much more than just aesthetics, they attract visitors and help people understand the product, company, and branding through a variety of indicators, encompassing visuals, text, and interactions. That means every element of a website needs to work towards a defined goal. Below are 7 short steps we follow at BWD.
Before I break down the steps, let’s start by understanding what the design process is.
The graphic design process describes the different stages of a design project. It can be broken down into four sub-processes (definition, creation, feedback, and delivery) and consists of 7 single steps. This approach can be used for almost every design project.
1. Goal identification
The first step in the creative graphic design process is the creative brief. It helps the designer learn more about the needs of the client. This step is critical since the designer needs to gather as much information as possible about the client, his or her company, and his or her project expectations. We also have questions to explore and answer in this stage of the process, and some of them are as follow:
Who is the site for?
What is the nature of your company or corporation?
What is its core business?
Who are your customers? Where are they? Are your products/services aimed at a particular sex/age/ income range/group?
What existing website is an appeal to the client?
2. Sitemap and Wireframe
The sitemap provides the foundation for any well-designed website. It helps give web designers a clear idea of the website’s information architecture and explains the relationships between the various pages and content elements. Building a site without a sitemap is like building a house without a blueprint. And that rarely turns out well. The next step is to sketch the wireframe, although a wireframe doesn’t contain any final design elements but it does act as a guide for how the site will ultimately look.
3. Pre-design Process
Once we have a good wireframe, we can then start the brainstorming process, research, and mind mapping. This process helps us define how the website will look and how the content and features we defined in the brief will interrelate. Of course, brainstorming means that we then come up with a lot of ideas but at the same time keep our main focus in mind while shooting out designs ideas.
4. Content Creation
Now that we have done our research and brainstorming and we have a bigger picture of the site in mind, we can now start designing the website and work from the backend to the frontend of the website. At this stage, we also focus on how vital it is that we have real content to work with. At this stage, our creative director monitors progress and gives feedback to ensure that we are following the client brief and if the design is going in the right direction.
5. Testing
Once the site has all its visuals and content, we are now ready to test the website. With the rapid change in technology, mobile devices are taking over as the primary way people experience the web which is one of the reasons responsive design is more important. This is the stage where we ensure that the website is responsive on all multimedia devices and designing for multiple devices requires an obsessive focus on details, clear information architecture, and new layout methods of responsiveness.
6. Presentation“The way you’re presenting your work will affect your number of revisions, as well as the related feedback. Of course, it also depends on your clients. Being able to tell a story about your designs will help you influence and convince your client.” We take time to properly present our work and we make use of this time to tell a story about the design. We also concentrate on presenting the process of a design in a way that the client will better understand our work
7. Client Approval
We do get revision requests from clients, hence, we gather the feedback, structure it, and implement the needed changes. How we do it? We use email and/or telephone calls between our project manager and clients as communication bases and create a client issue document as it helps us structure feedback and speed up review cycles. After the client approves the website, we then take it to live which is the final process.
Conclusion
Designing and developing a website is no overnight job. It is clear that the numerous steps in the web design process all take time and all the steps need to be followed for things to be done properly, though strong communication between client and agency often helps to reduce it.
Hopefully, this short overview will enable you to better understand the process. Not only will you understand the web design process, but you will be better equipped to communicate with and to assist the design and development team to create a website that both parties can be truly proud of.
Whatever your industry, segment and audience, a substantial portion of your customers and leads are on social. A recent research study found that 68% of South African adults are Facebook users. Among 18 to 24-year-olds, 78% use Instagram and 45% are on Twitter. Even among South African 65 and older, 37% are social media users.
Having access to all those customers helps you boost traffic, particularly for new site content. When you post a new blog or update your homepage, it can take a while to get traction with Google. That means very few customers will know the new content is there until the next time they’re searching for your product or service.
Social media posts provide an opportunity for the public to find your new web content and click through to your site.
And because those posts will primarily show up in the feeds of followers and people interested in your product, that traffic is typically very targeted. It won’t just boost your traffic numbers — it will bring in the type of visitors you want to attract.
The traffic benefits of social media marketing can be dramatic.
Social media posts provide an opportunity for the public to find your new web content and click through to your site. And because those posts will primarily show up in the feeds of followers and people interested in your product, that traffic is typically very targeted. It won’t just boost your traffic numbers — it will bring in the type of visitors you want to attract.
1. Using social media for business boosts your site’s SEO.
Search engine crawlers know which pages are consistently earning traffic and which are just floating out there, forgotten and ignored. Although your killer content strategy is the most important factor in your search rankings, driving traffic to your optimized pages will cause them to climb much faster.
A lot of times, this can be as simple as re-sharing evergreen content (of course, in addition to sharing your new content when it goes live). We recommend each post be re-shared once a month — a task that doesn’t have to be as time-intensive as you might think. With Facebook’s scheduling tool or Hootsuite (for Twitter, Instagram & LinkedIn), you can set the entire month all at once and you’re done.
2. Social media can increase your reach via quoted experts.
This is one of our very favorite benefits of social media marketing. Perhaps you quoted someone with a killer social media presence. Of course, you’re going to email them a link to the post when it goes live and encourage them to share it, but leveraging your own social media channels will help you go the extra mile here.
In your tweet and Facebook post sharing your new content, be sure to tag the experts you quoted so they see it pop up in their notifications.
Doing so makes it far more likely your source will share or retweet the link to their thousands (or tens of thousands) of followers, which drives traffic back to your website. It’s a win-win all around.
Social Media Is THE BEST Tool to Connect with (& Learn From!) Consumers & Industry Leaders
3. Social media marketing helps you understand your audience.
Part of what makes social channels like Twitter and Instagram effective marketing tools is the interaction you have with your customer base. By reading their tweets and status updates, you’ll gain insights into their daily lives and consumer behaviors, and answer questions such as:
What products/services are they buying and why?
What hobbies do they have?
What kinds of posts do they love to share?
What websites do they visit?
These insights have obvious marketing benefits. When you understand your customers, you can write better content and more compelling posts, which leads to more traffic. But the benefits can sometimes go far beyond marketing, helping you identify customer pain points, improve sales conversions and even refine your product strategy.
4. An active social media presence builds relationships with your audience.
Consumers see Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram as social networks, not marketing machines.
That can be a challenge when you’re first developing your social media marketing strategy. A lot of companies instinctively take a hard-sell approach, inundating their followers with discount offer codes, new product announcements and customer reviews. Then, when the account only brings in modest traffic gains, they assume social just isn’t a good fit for their brand.
But customers don’t want to be pitched to — they want authentic engagement.
When you stop seeing social as a way to pitch your customers and start seeing it as a way to connect with them, it can transform your brand. You help customers by answering their questions, entertaining and informing them with relevant content and even forming bonds over shared interests.
And that comes with serious ROI. If you’re following social media marketing best practices, you’ll get a ton of exposure. That exposure brings in new leads. Over time, those leads become followers, followers become customers and customers become dedicated brand promoters, continuing the cycle.
5. Social media ads allow targeting and retargeting.
Why advertise on social media?
Because social media platforms offer highly targeted ads, which can be customized around your customers’ needs. Facebook ads, for example, can target customers by factors like age, location, education level, industry and even user behavior — e.g. the pages a user has liked.
Pro Tip: Install a Facebook pixel on your website to track how your ads affect customer behavior and retarget your ads accordingly. Over time, Facebook will learn which users are more likely to click your link or buy a product, delivering your ads to the people most likely to convert into solid leads and sales.
6. A strong social media presence builds brand loyalty.
It’s easy to understand why: when you’re engaging the public on social media, you’re building connection and rapport. You’re taking the time to provide your followers with useful information, help, and entertainment, without asking for anything in return.
That shows customers you value them, not just as a source of revenue, but as people. Customers will begin to see you as an entity that cares about them and has values, personality, and vision. And in a competitive market, that can make a huge difference.
7. Social media is the perfect addition to your PR strategy.
Press releases are an important part of any marketing strategy, especially when you’re launching a new product or making a huge change in your company, but most people get the distribution part terribly wrong. If what you’re accustomed to is writing a press release and sending it out on PRWeb, you’re wasting your money.
Social media, on the other hand, provides you with space where you can reach your target audience in a more personal, conversational way. And if your customers have questions, they can ask you right then and there.
When it comes to newsjacking, social media is king.
In our media-saturated culture, it’s hard to tell when fate will throw a great opportunity at your brand. Sometimes your brand gets mentioned on a cable TV show or tweeted about by an influencer. Other times, there’s a news story, meme, or pop-culture phenomenon that fits perfectly with your branding.
If you can jump in and engage with the story while everyone is paying attention, it can lead to viral posts, traffic boosts, press coverage and greater visibility for your brand. This strategy, known as newsjacking, works best if you get your voice out there while it’s still breaking news. If you join in too late, you’ll just look like another company trying to ride the trend.
You can find potential customers who don’t already know your brand.
Social media marketing enables you to search out customers looking for information related to your product — even if they aren’t familiar with your company.
For example, on Twitter, you can use Hootsuite to set up streams, following specific keywords related to your industry or products. When you spot people tweeting about those products, you can direct them to your site, or explain how your product can address their needs.
This strategy can also be valuable for customers who tweet about your brand, but may not be familiar with a new product or use case. By reaching out to them with new information, you can not only influence a sales decision but also show customers how your brand is growing to better meet their needs.
I have reached month seven of my internship at BWD and I can say, without a doubt, that I have learned an incredible amount. Far more than I could’ve learned independently or from a book. The learning I have done at BWD has been almost exclusively through practical application. Two sayings that stand out with my experience here are:
“You’ll learn everything as you go”
“Practice makes perfect”
During my time here at BWD I have learned a lot about:
Photoshop
Design concepts
Illustrator
InDesign
Photography
Videography
Image Selection
1. Photoshop
Photoshop was easily one of the most painful, yet rewarding things I have ever learned. BWD taught me how to use this powerful program through video tutorials, practice projects and consultation with the other designers. My true test, however, was when I was given the task of designing social media posts for a certain company. Learning how to use photoshop is more than just the interface. It’s about finding the quickest and most effective ways to create, manipulate and design.
2. Design Concepts
Design concepts was a phrase I had never even heard of before coming to BWD. Learning about them made me realize that the rules of design aren’t far off the rules of photography. Small things like color contrast and the rule of thirds. These are concepts that I was familiar with but not in the same way they’re used in the design. Advanced things like drawing the eye and creating a “path” with which to get the consumer to follow absolutely blew my mind! I feel so privileged to know these concepts as they have helped me improve in both design and photography.
3. Illustrator
Illustrator is a program that has a similar feel to Photoshop but it’s more for illustrations and artworks. It, not unlike Photoshop, is a very powerful program and I’m still in the process of learning how to use it effectively but so far it’s blown me away. Just a few months ago I hadn’t touched Illustrator and in a matter of a month or two I can create simple artworks. All from the phrase “Practice makes perfect”.
4. InDesign
InDesign is a layout program used to create things like booklets, brochures, magazines, or anything with multiple pages. InDesign was a massive challenge for me as I had never touched on anything remotely similar to it. However, with the help of the designers at BWD and the projects I had to complete, I built an understanding of the program.
5. Photography
Photography was an area of expertise I already had some experience in when coming to BWD. But not nearly at this scale. I had always relied on natural lighting, lights in the room or the camera’s built-in flash. To work with such professional-grade equipment was absolutely monumental to me. BWD taught me so much about lighting, background control as well as features on my camera, I didn’t even know existed!
6. Videography
Videography is still a relatively new concept to me but that doesn’t mean I haven’t already learned a lot! So far, I have only been in charge of recording the BWD vlogs, which are very interesting and you should check them out. During my time at BWD, I learned a lot about videos that are fit for the editor, lighting, and audio.
7. Image Selection
Image selection is one of those things nobody really thinks about when they imagine design but it is one of the most important parts of the design process. Selecting the right image is crucial in the design process. Image selection involves thinking about color contrasting, selecting an image that can be easily manipulated in Photoshop, as well as selecting an image that actually fits the message that you’re trying to portray.
Hi, everyone. My question today is, are you maintaining your website? If not you really need to watch this video. The reason why website maintenance is very important is that, when hackers try to hack into your website, its easier for them to go into a website that is not updated and maintained. So, let’s talk about the first thing or the first area of maintenance.
Updating your Website
So, the first area of maintenance is updating the plugins and the core WordPress platform. Occasionally, you will get updates from WordPress which are pretty much security updates. In most cases, it features, but security is the main thing. So, if you don’t update your website, it means that the hackers are able to get into your website and install the software.
On the other hand, you also get updates from the plugin developers of the plugins that you’re using. We have a WordPress 4.4.1 update available, and then here, you can see we have all these updates that are needed for the plugins. So, these are the updates I’m talking about.
WordPress
Sometimes these updates may break the system because it’s not compatible with the current WordPress version. So, here, for example, you can see that this WooCommerce plugin, it says here, & Compatibility with WordPress 4.4.1: 100% So, this is very good. As I mentioned before, updating your WordPress core system and upgrading your plugins is very, very important because this is an open door for hackers to come into your website.
Now, let me give you an example of one of the clients that we used to work with, who decided not to update her website, and here it is. So, when you go to this URL, straightaway you can see, it says the site contains malware. The other thing is, sometimes these hack attacks are so sophisticated that you don’t even see it.
The website could be running okay, but when someone accesses your website through a mobile device, it then redirects to the hacker’s website for a page where they are selling their own products.
Strong Password
Now, let’s talk about the second thing, which is brute force attacks. When you have a weak password on your computer, it is very easy for hackers to come into your website by guessing your password. So, here, we can see, we have an attempted failed login using username admin. Now, this is true evidence that your website is being targeted on a daily basis, sometimes even an hourly basis.
Let’s move on to the last thing, which is troubleshooting. Now, sometimes when you update your website, you update the theme, your update WordPress, things do break, as I mentioned earlier on. You could fall into a problem where, when things break, you’re not sure where to go and fix your problem. So, you need to have the ability to back up your website to make sure that when these things happen you can always go back to your backup and make sure your website is back up and running.
Now, why is it important for small businesses to make sure that they have this maintenance in place? Well, number one, obviously, if you’re running a business, you want to make sure that you are up there on the internet 24/7, so when people visit your website, it’s always up and running, it always gives a good impression that you’re always online.
Secondly, when people come to your website and they see that your website is down, or it’s got malware installed on it, or it’s redirecting you to unwanted websites, this can cause your visitors to your website to distrust, you know, what you’re doing. So, maintenance is very, very important.
Now, the question is, why would anyone want to hack your website? Of course, you know, you’ve just built your website, you’re a small business, why are you the target? As I mentioned before, these targets are done automatically, okay? It’s unlikely that these hackers have seen your website and they’re coming directly at you because of your business or who you are, although sometimes it does happen.
But these are ways these hackers can redirect traffic to their own website and sell their products using your information on your website. Secondly, they could want…they would want to come, maybe, into your website to grab your database, especially if you’re running an e-commerce website, to see if they can get information from your web…
In simple terms, growth marketing is “the process of testing marketing strategies aligned with KPIs and measure the performance of it.”
More so than traditional marketing, growth marketing focuses on maximizing the lifetime value of a customer, while minimizing the cost and time it takes to do it.
Growth Hacking
Growth marketing is often referred to as “growth hacking.” The idea behind growth hacking is that you find some little tactic or some little way to grow a list or grow a campaign, or get exposure, that was maybe a little bit under the table or a little bit different than what other people are doing.
Your Growth Marketing Tactics
Instead of keep searching for a little tactic, that will create growth. Or even a strategy, why not consider the idea of a systematic, repeatable, consistent system in a way that allows them to clearly serve your objectives for the business in the long term?
Meaning, to identify potential opportunities or hacks or tactics, whatever we want to call them, but put them in order and put them in a priority, and analyze and measure them, not around just growth for growth’s sake, but growth to drive objectives.
Growth System
The idea here is first to understand why you want growth. And often defining why you want to growth results in prioritizing your objectives.
Once you define your main objective, which may be; profit, net sales, increase database, find influencers, increase mentions and so on… You will have to first analyze your channels and see how they are performing related to this objective.
It’s important that you focus on one so that you can make decisions about everything that comes in building your growth system.
A great deal of this relies on mining the channels that are going to give you the greatest opportunity for a return on investment.
Remember! You can’t growth what you can’t measure
A growth system is a hypothesis testing cycle. You will find a hypothesis, tested and review it. And here are some simple steps to develop it:
The 1st step is to look at your business today and identify clearly where your business comes from.
What channel today increase my business? Is it word of mouth, referrals, paid ads?
Is it search engine optimization, keyword planning?
If you look at the way that you convert clients today, where is that coming from?
Where do your leads come from?
Start really analyzing those channels a little deeper and you can discover a confluence of channels.
2nd step — The idea behind confluence it’s to discover if you have two channel that combined together will change the dynamics of your business.
For example, if a referral is how you get most of your business, maybe you can create ways to develop a community and improve the creation of interactive content making your channel greater. But we also start looking for ways that you can use another new channel that’s going to enhance our referral channel.
3rd step— Now that you have identified your core channels and started looking at ways that you can combine core channels, you will start to develop a list of projects or experiments, that you can measure on how your core channels can achieve your objective.
4th step — Measure it. Identify the metrics and KPIs is part of the testing. How these core channels combined or by itself are performing to you get to your objective?
5th step — Make the changes and re-do hypothesis
After testing your channels and measuring the first results, maybe you will want to continue to increase this objective, or maybe you want to test another.
From my point of view, it’s better to insist on the same objective, until you had the change to make all the channels combinations as possible. Once you have exhausted all the alternatives, move to the next objective in the customer journey.
What to avoid?
Changing hypothesis every month. If you get off plan, you probably won’t be serving your objectives.
Overthinking this – develop a project, develop a plan, and a tactic, and launch. Launch quickly, get it out there.
Beware of false metrics. Things like traffic may look really good. You’ve run a campaign and all of a sudden traffic spikes. But did it lead to the real objective? So don’t lean on false metrics.
Accommodation — once you adopt this mindset, you’re never done. You should never think about a growth system as being done because you’re constantly reiterating, amplifying, improving, documenting, and then you go out there and you try it again.
Conclusion
Another way to grow your business is to be on the lookout for new opportunities because those opportunities are vital for the survival of your business. You may be able to find those new opportunities through a SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats). The SWOT analysis is used by many businesses to be able to identify new opportunities that you may not have thought of. Be particularly mindful of the Opportunities portion of the analysis, because that is where new ideas come from.
Allon: This is The Big Small Business Show, and this is our expert slot. And today in the studio with us, we have Bongani Gosa. He is the founder and CEO of BWD Advertising. And we’re going to be talking about making your own corporate video, or do you go to the experts or do you do it yourself? Welcome to The Big Small Business Show.
Bongani: Thank you for having me.
Allon: All right. So let’s just start off by talking about this is something that you’ve been doing for 13 years, you’ve been in the advertising space. You’ve certainly got a lot of experience and I’m gonna ask you the question, should you be filming it yourself or should you be using an expert like you? The bias is gonna be, you should use guys like me, but today with the fantastic cameras that we have on our phone and technology, which has become relatively cheap, can’t I do it myself?
Bongani: I suppose you can do it yourself, but I suppose the first step that you want to ask yourself is, how much value or how much am I hoping to make from this video before you start doing that. So let’s say hypothetically you’re hoping to help boost your sales with the creation of this video and you’re hoping to make, let’s say hypothetically 100,000 bucks. So if you’re doing the video yourself, it means your total investment because you’re going to be doing in your phone, you’re going to be recording with your phone, it’s zero. So the question that you want to ask yourself, is it realistic for me to invest zero in order to make 100,000k?
Allon: All right, so but that’s just a video. I need to edit it. I need to make it look like something.
Bongani: No, no, 100%. Remember now let’s take the iPhone for argument’s sake. You can record and edit on your phone so the video can look beautiful, can sound good, can be edited nicely on a phone. So you can do pretty much everything on your phone so you don’t necessarily need to take it to someone else to do. The issue is just the amount of time that you have to learn how to say, to shoot, the amount of time that you are going to spend learning how to use iMovie for argument’s sake. But just coming back to the point, so you just need to kind of calculate, I mean, how much am I willing to invest in this process in order to make the amount of output that I’m hoping to make.
If let’s say, like I said, hypothetically, you’re hoping to make 100K, how much am I willing to make? But in some instances, you are running a smaller business. You’re running a very tight ship. You can still shoot the video yourself. As I said, you could use your own phone for argument’s sake. Let’s take the iPhone as an example. You might want to buy a small tripod. It will cost you less than 2000 bucks, like a smaller one, and then you can shoot the video. But obviously, if you’re going to shoot, you probably want to learn just these simple basics of shooting a video. Say for argument’s sake, framing, how are you going to frame your different shots? The other thing you could learn how to…
Allon: Are you suggesting that I can go online, go onto YouTube, find a tutorial on how to form a video?
Bongani: A hundred percent, 100%. But like I’m saying if you are running like a very tight ship and maybe your budget is a little limited because it’s gonna take you a bit of time to learn how those basic things like I’m saying, framing, lights, and audio, and stuff like that.
Allon: Just let’s talk about audio for a second. So you and I have both got microphones on us right now as we’re filming. If I am doing my own corporate video, would I be required to have my own lapel mic or another mic as well, or will the phone be able to pick up the sound?
Bongani: It would mainly depend on how you’re shooting. If you’re shooting yourself, then you don’t necessarily need a lapel mic because you can come closer to the phone. Then the audio will still be clear. But if you’re going to shoot something that’s further, then the audio is not gonna be as clear.
Allon: So that might be some further investment you require.
Bongani: A hundred percent. These lapel mics, if they were…just that I forgot to check the brand, but if it was said, a Sennheiser, you’re looking at like 10 grand for a pair, but you can rent it at like some shop for 2 grand per day.
Allon: Okay. So what I’m hearing, and just correct me if I’m wrong, Bongani, is that what we’re saying here is that it’s possible to use a cell phone with or without a lapel mic using very standard lighting and natural lighting in order to film. If it’s a “Low budget, close-up,” type of video where I’m talking about my company, and then I don’t need to come to the likes of you to do that.
Bongani: A hundred percent correct.
Allon: And then there is the editing. So I still have to learn how to now stop and to edit, put in some, perhaps some graphics on there. Now, what do I do if I want to do that?
Bongani: So iMovie it’s fairly easy to use if I have to be honest. So you could go through tutorials online to check how iMovie works, but in order to make those nice graphics at the bottom or maybe intros, you would need someone that understands graphics design or maybe someone that understands how to make those small intros so that you can put them onto your video. For you to do that stuff yourself, it’s a little tricky, but you can try and find stuff online that you can use. So I’m gonna look at scripts crisp or as nice as what you ordinarily see maybe on TV. Like on Business Day TV, there’s probably some stuff now running at the bottom, yeah.
Allon: It’s over here.
Bongani: Oh, sorry, yes, yes, yes. So to create something that looks as nice and as crisp as those takes quite a bit of time and practice. Yeah.
Allon: Okay. So, you know, for me because of our viewers, and I’m glad you said it, and I really appreciate Bongani you talking about this, because I know that in the context of various scopes where the guys are in startup mode, we say to them, you know, keep it tight and as the business grows, and to your point about how much you want to get a return, then you can start using professional people as you grow. But it’s also important, and I don’t know what your last thoughts are on this, that the entrepreneur should go through this experience themselves. Because then when it comes to actually deal with people like yourselves, there’s more appreciation for the complexity. A video doesn’t just appear, it’s what’s the script, like where you’re sitting, what’s behind? What’s the frame? You know, what’s the lighting? Is the sound working, etc., etc.
Bongani: No, no, no. I totally agree that in the beginning stages of your business, you might want to try to do the stuff yourself but if your company has been running, let’s say for about, let’s say, three years, you’re probably making a decent amount of money. So it’s always advisable that if you’re making a decent amount of money, invest a decent amount into creating a video because of a video, unlike, let’s say, a website or a brochure, it’s more persuasive. It tells the story much clearer. Let’s say now as I’m speaking, you can see whether I’m anxious, I’m tired, I’m passionate. So it’s easier for you to buy into whatever I’m trying to sell or what I’m trying to say. So with the video, you just, like I’m saying, if you’ve been running for three years, it’s advisable that you invest a little bit into making a decent video.
Allon: Bongani, that’s all we’ve got time for today. We are going to have you back. The next time we have you back, I want to talk about the actual content and how to think about content. Thanks for being on the show.
Bongani: Thank you. Thank you for having me.
Allon: Well, that’s it for our expert slot today. Please stay tuned to find out some of my reflections on the entrepreneurial journey.
Well, it’s time for my entrepreneurial reflections. And as you might’ve picked up of the last while from time to time we’ll be talking about the tweets that I’m putting out on Twitter at my handle @allonraiz and the more in-depth version on my Instagram account @allonraiz. Today’s tweet is entitled, “When somebody leaves your company, you normally find that the person who replaces them performs far better because YOU know more about what YOU expect and require from the role.” So let’s talk about this because I see with many entrepreneurs who lose their staff, I think one of two things happen. The first is they get incredibly sad and maybe bitter and they start self-flagellating what could they have done to keep that person. And then the other response is really to blame the employee and to say, “Well, they didn’t do what I said and it’s all about them.”
But perhaps a healthier way to frame the people leaving is that your company is a stage, and in your movie, you are the best…you are the main actor. But in their movie, in your employee’s movie, they are the main actor and you are just a supporting actor in their movie. So they’re always going to leave. But what’s important now once you’ve accepted that somebody will leave whether it’s a month, a year, or 10 years, that they will leave because of circumstances in their life, is that to make sure that you understand that the process of having somebody in a role has helped you define that role more, has helped you define what you want and what you don’t want. And the advantage of somebody leaving is that the next person who walks in walks into a far more well-defined role with a boss that does far better what he or she wants.
Well, that’s it for my reflections for today. I hope you enjoyed today’s show. Do remember, if you think it, write it down and make it a reality.
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