Branding & Marketing. What’s the Difference?

There are so many terms when you’re starting a company that it may be difficult to keep track of them all. And two terms, in particular, have a propensity to be conflated: marketing and branding. So how does marketing and branding differ? We’re going to break down stuff for you.

The reality is that branding and marketing are not the same things. If you want your business to excel, you must grasp the distinctions between the two and how to utilize each successfully to propel your company forward.

So, precisely what is branding? What exactly is marketing? What are the distinctions between the two, and how can you use both to create a successful business?

Marketing vs Branding Definition

First and foremost, before delving into the distinctions between marketing and branding, let us define marketing and branding. The collection of tools, procedures, and strategies used to market a product, service, or business constantly is described as marketing. Consider marketing to be the activities you do to engage with your consumers and persuade them to purchase your goods or services.

In contrast, branding is the marketing activity of actively developing your brand. Branding is the process of establishing who you are as a business. It is your purpose, your principles, and what makes you distinct and unique. It is your main brand component, such as your logo, website, and brand style standards. Branding is what retains people coming back for years to come If marketing is what causes people to interact with your business for the first time.

Differences Between Marketing and Branding

Now let us speak about the main distinctions between marketing and branding:
Branding is used to develop your brand actively and who you are, While marketing is used for advertising your product or service. You need approaches for each, and they have distinct objectives and outcomes.

• Marketing draws a customer’s attention; branding keeps it.
• Marketing promotes revenue, while branding drives awareness and loyalty.
• Branding comes first, and marketing follows second.
• Marketing techniques come and go, but branding remains forever.
• Branding affects your staff just as much as it does your consumers.

Marketing Promotes Revenue, While Branding Drives Awareness and Loyalty

At their heart, most marketing tactics (think SEO, content marketing, or advertising) are intended to generate results—and, more often than not, the outcomes such strategies are attempting to drive have to do with sales.

If you want your business to thrive, you must generate sales. However, branding takes a different—and more long-term—approach. If you want to increase sales, branding isn’t the greatest option. However, it is the ideal option to create brand awareness, generate good brand emotion, and nurture customer loyalty. Which is just as if not more important and will significantly affect your capacity to increase sales in the long term.

Branding Comes First and Marketing Follows Second

In the big scheme of things, branding always comes before marketing when growing your company. And with good cause! You can’t exactly sell a brand you haven’t created yet.

Before you can consider implementing a marketing plan, you need to concentrate on your branding. Who are you as a brand? What do you want to offer to the market? What are your fundamental values? And, most crucially, how will you convey this to your target customers?

Only until you’ve answered these questions does it make sense to start thinking about marketing. Once you have your branding in place, you will have a better knowledge of who you are, who your consumer is, and the best methods to interact with that consumer—and you will be able to create a marketing plan to bring it to life.

Marketing Techniques Come and Go, but Branding Remains Forever

Don’t get us wrong: if you want to create a great company, you’ll need to promote it constantly. However, the methods you employ to promote your company are only transitory; each marketing strategy has a distinct beginning, middle, and conclusion.

Branding is distinct. No matter where you are in your business, you will constantly be working on establishing who you are as a company, moulding your brand’s image with your audience, and building a deeper, more meaningful connection with your consumers. As your business develops and changes, so must its branding.

Conclusion

Marketing and branding will both play a part in various phases of every company. It is most advantageous to establish a strong branding foundation early in the life of a company to generate distinct and consistent brand features. Marketing efforts may and will thrive due to the branding foundation that a business has previously established. Combining a well-planned marketing campaign with the momentum of a strong branding strategy puts any company on the right track to long-term success.

It’s critical to grasp the distinctions between branding and marketing. Understanding them individually will enable the two components to be integrated properly and effectively. This will keep the company on track.

The post Branding & Marketing. What’s the Difference? first appeared on High Design Agency.

Colors are vibrant, abstract ways to depict what you, your company, and brand stands for. Colors play a significant role in how your visitors perceive your brand, your product when they land on your organization’s website.

Every color shares its own diversified set of moods and symbolism. The most prominent symbolism used in the website is the color palette for your website.

Many companies pick the color for their site based on their logo. Many organizations fail to realize that their website represents the psychological aspect of what their organization stands for and affects the consumers on a conscious level.

The Psychology of Colors

Color psychology is one of the major aspects while building a site. As per reports, if the colors used for your site is in sync with what your website has to offer, it is likely to increase the conversion rate by 24%, based on a recent case study.

Since color is omnipresent, we can all concede over the fact that our likeness for certain things depends a lot on the colors used. It doesn’t take a genius to understand the importance of colors and their placement. Your website needs to be designed with colors rightly placed, making your consumers perceive exactly what you are aiming for.

The right placement of colors when designing an organization’s website is vital. You will need to set a color palette for your site and assign the ratio of each color you have chosen. Pick the right color for each section.

Using the right color is not only important for aesthetic reasons, but it also makes navigation much easier for a better user experience.

Deciding which Color is Best for your Website

Decide what you want to be perceived as. What do you want the users to feel while they navigate through your website? Understanding exactly how you want your consumers would help you decide the right color combination for your website. Always examine the psychology of your target audience before choosing the right color.

Here are some points you can work upon while picking the right color for your website:

Analyse Your Audience

You would understand what their preferences are and what they don’t find appealing to the eyes by analyzing your audience. It would also be best if you narrowed down your target audience to analyze them better and more concisely.

Your colors and scheme should resonate with your potential clients and their state of mind.

Stimulate Better User Experience

The excellent color combination leads to an influence on the psychology of your potential clients. We cannot emphasize more over the importance of how it affects the conversion rate for your website. However, it would help if you also made sure that the color blend is in sync with your brand logo, helping you build a brand.

Acknowledge the Ratio of Colors Used

Just because color plays one of the most significant roles, you need to make sure that you don’t go overboard with it. Understanding where to use the right color and what ratio is just as important as knowing where not to use them.

There are eleven primary colors widely used interchangeably, depending on the goal a website needs to achieve. These different colors have different emotions and psychological impact individually. But when mixed and amalgamated with the right combination and ratio, they can inflict an extensive amount of diversified psychological experiences.

Let’s check out a few common colors and their psychological impact:

Red

Have you ever noticed how red is used for signs which are generally meant to create instant awareness? From hospitals to an ambulance, the plus sign is always seen in red color worldwide. This is because red carries the capability of creating a sense of urgency in the people who can see it.

Red is also perceived as a color that instigates love, lust, energy, anger, violence, and threat. It can take the human pulse to rise to a certain level in some cases.

Suppose you see websites like ShaadiSaga, Jeevansathi (Indian wedding web portals). In that case, their target audience is looking for services for their marriage, or they are searching for someone to get married. Both the purpose is oriented from love, lust, and excitement. That is the reason their website’s scheme is majorly red color – based, which resonates well with what their potential customers are feeling.

Yellow

Yellow signifies youth, energy, positivity, competence, happiness, optimism. It signifies a lot with sunshine.
The negative aspect it instigates is timidity, parsimony, duplicity.

Using yellow would instigate the readers to feel youthful, upbeat. Yellow makes a great color when you are designing a call to action page. It also gives a sense of calm to your visitors. But be wary of overusing it, as it has a negative impact psychologically too. Too much yellow can make your site look like spam.

Orange

Orange depicts the fun and celebratory mood when perfectly blended with other colors. Orange originates from yellow and red, so it shares a very similar property with these two colors. With orange, you get to have a little bit of the impact which red and yellow gives.

Orange is best to use when portraying clearance sales, entertainment, bonanza offers, etc. Though overusing orange can be overwhelming and might have the same negative impact, red does. Be wary of not overusing it.

Green

Green is associated with nature and thus very prominent in making people feel relaxed, calm, and more environment – oriented.

The green color is easy on the eyes. It is best used to inflict a sense of growth, health, nature, peace, generosity, fertility, envy, support, and energy. Green depicts mother nature and has a broad spectrum of how it makes people feel.

For websites selling medicines, tourism, sustainable items, green can be the ideal color to use. What it can’t be used is for products from the luxury end, technology – oriented products, etc.

Blue

Blue is associated with masculinity, competence, quality, trust, productivity, reliability, brawn, and gives a sense of refreshment. Blue is widely used for social media like Facebook for its reliability aspect. It is best for health care, government, medical and science – based websites.

Be wary of using blue as too dark shade or over – use can inflict cold vibes and may curb the appetite, which isn’t good for food serving websites.

Purple

Purple depicts royalty. Many celebrities known for their style and statement will go with purple to pull off any bold presence on the red carpet if you have noticed. It depicts respect, mystery, wealth, prosperity, creativity, authority.

It is widely used to depict luxury and wealth. Purple is often used in luxury, high – end beauty products. It inflicts romantic mood, also supports websites offering yoga, massage, spirituality, and products related to femininity.

Too much purple can make your site appear too distant and uncompassionate for your potential clients.

Brown

Brown is easily perceived with the psychology of being grounded and connected with the roots. It depicts ruggedness, stability, nature, and friendship.

Brown is ideal for food – related websites. If you are offering coffee and chocolate as one of your products, a brown theme can be used in the background. It can also be used for animals, veterinary, finance – oriented website blended with other colors.

Too much brown can cause your site to appear conservative and boring.

Black

Black is a powerful color; it often depicts elegance, ability, ability, sleekness, equilibrium, potency, formality, and intellect. However, it may also signify death, puzzle, evil, as well as rhetoric. Black can be tasteful and traditional, contemporary, and edgy.

Black may be perfect for luxury products, fashion, promotion, and makeup. Too much black could become overwhelming. Black may also feel ominous or menacing, making folks feel uneasy or even fearful.

White

White is associated with cleanliness, innocence, virtue, happiness, sincerity, piousness, and safety. White is connected with doctors, nurses, and dentists, making it great for sites associated with the healthcare industry.
It can also work with high – tech and science sites. When paired with dark gold, silver, or grey, white can also be ideal for luxury goods.

Since the effects of white are subjective of the other color being used along with it, it can be used for any web site.

Grey

Grey depicts formality, professionalism, elegance, practicality, timelessness, and robust personality. Grey is suitable for professional sites, luxury merchandise, or to make reconciliation and calming impact. Specific colors of gray can feel mundane and detached, as well as chilly.

Grey isn’t an excellent choice when you want to captivate your audience Let’s say you use a grey color palette for a website which talks about fashion. Grey would not go with the offerings your website is making because the fashion industry has colors and vibrant colors.

Pink

Even though pink is another crimson shade, it has different properties than what red has to offer. Pink represents elegance, sincerity, love, and passion. It doesn’t hold the brutal, mad implications of red. Also, it is often quite soothing and tender. Pink is perfect for feminine merchandise or web sites with articles specifically targeted towards women and girls.

Pink can also come off as tawdry to many people and might make your site look too amiable than it should.

While designing your website, don’t confine yourself to choosing colors only related to your logo. The color palette has to balance what your brand depicts with your logo and what your potential clients need to see and perceive.

Ask yourself, does your website need a color or tone facelift? So if you are in search of an agency that will establish and reinforce the desired user experience with specific colors and design elements, get in touch with us TODAY!

The post 101 Color Psychology for Website Conversion Design first appeared on High Design Agency.

It’s always advisable to invest in your team member’s enrichment because a company grows when the people working in it grow. You, as a company, need to work on the development of your employees in an overall manner, which prepares them for the challenges brought upon your company.

Ensuring that you put the right person on the right industry project enables your employee to channel the new learning’s while handling the project that interests them. By doing this, you not only hone the niche expert of your team but also boost their confidence.

It’s best to have a team that comprises a master of one rather than having people who are the jack of all trades.

Before you proceed, you need to identify your goal and the process to achieve it. Doing this helps you to reverse engineer your strategies for any milestones you wish to achieve.

The goals set for your organization will help you hand-pick the right person you need for each peculiar niche.

There are five essential components of any good marketing team, you can always have a more specific dedicated team for more niche, but you got to have these five essential components.

1. Content Team

Responsible for creating content like blog posts, podcasts, videos, social media posts, and many other things. You must have heard this that content is the king. Irrespective of how good you are in your field, if you can’t represent yourself or your organization in a lucrative manner, nobody will bother to check out you or your services.

2. Acquisition Team

Accountable for creating new prospects and back-end earnings, strategizing the budget, auditing the plans. The acquisition team needs to be realistic and set achievable goals. This will help in building bridges between the marketing team.

3. Monetization Team

Responsible for lead generation and front-end earnings into clients. Once your content team is ready, and the strategies are prepared. Now it’s finally the time to pitch your proposal to potential clients. This part of your marketing team has to hold nuances of understanding your target audience and reach out to them in a manner which procures the right premium clients.

4. UX, UI and CX Specialist

At first glance, user experience (UX), user interface (UI), and customer expertise (CX) roles can appear the same to marketers. What’s apparent is that the roles aren’t necessarily restricted to website optimization.

A UX specialist designs a positive customer experience to maximize conversions. It’s growing more common as companies devote more funds to website enhancements and digital commerce. The UX Specialist job focuses on discovering the customer’s needs through various behavioral science research and testing methodologies. The outcome is a hybrid, hands-on, but big-picture advertising and marketing role.

A CX specialist’s job is to design blueprints – including roadmaps, wireframes, workflows – of websites that amplify customer experience and excellent results on metrics such as conversion rates and customer engagement.

Your website is your organization’s face, it gives your website’s first impression, and first impressions are mostly the last impressions. A UI specialist plays a crucial role in making that captivating experience for your visitors. The color and its placement play a significant role in making purchase decisions. UI specialist gets the visitor hooked with satisfactory results. They are thus increasing the return of investment (ROI).

5. Data Scientists

For your team to keep generating new leads and innovative ideas, it would help if robust data scientists, who are great at churning data from various platforms, backed you. Data churning is the most crucial step for any marketing team. Your data scientist will not only generate data but also track your progress by multiple means of analytics to keep a record of what works best and which method was a flop-thus empowering your organization to make decisions.

Apart from these 5, you can have specialists in a hybrid niche but a great marketer. The one needs to think out of the box and be as creative as they can get. Having someone who is a jack of all trades and the master of one can be life-changing for your organization. The person will make your organization stand out and come out with innovative ways to curb the challenges faced by your organization. Thus, giving your agency an edge over its competitors. In today’s time, these people like to address themselves as growth-hackers.

While you are building your dream team, you also need to consider these focal points:

Recognise Your Gaps and Work On It

While you are building a killer marketing team, it’s unnecessary that you excel in each field. You are going to come across such an instance which will act as a blocker for your organization. Instead of trying to juggle between all areas, you can always turn to outsource your work to other professional agencies. This will not only lessen your workload by managing time but ensure that you get the best from its experts.

Keep Your Budget in Mind

Budget is the key when you’re employing the best from each field. Sometimes. It’s not feasible for you to hire a full-time employee for a job that is not recurring every day. That’s when outsourcing agencies come in the picture. Hiring outsourcing agencies gives you an expert on the specific department without paying them for their extra futile hours by just paying them for hours they invest in your company. These agencies will take care of the conundrum of additional workload efficiently so you can give your 100% in what you’re best at.

Stay Realistic

It’s important to set achievable goals, which is based on robust strategies. By achieving those goals, the employee’s morale gets a boost.

Invest in Brand Awareness For Your Organization

Setting up your marketing team is crucial to set a budget for spreading brand awareness for your organization, which will help build trust for your clients and make you indispensable. Brand awareness is all about what your ideal clients perceive when they see your company logo or come across news across media about your organization.

Focus on Overall Organic Growth

This goes without saying that if your employees grow, your organization’s growth becomes inevitable. For them to grow, it’s crucial to maintain a healthy and functional culture for efficiency. Culture not only dictates the best way to surface fresh ideas and brings them to life but also enables you to attract and keep the best individuals.

Question yourself this, “Have you got a culture that promotes experimentation and cooperation? Does the intern feel comfortable introducing ideas to the group leader?” The way you ask individuals to socialize together provides ideas, and complete tasks make an difference in how the team will get work done.

If you need assistance about building a successful brand, facing challenges in execution of marketing strategies or need to outsource your projects, get in touch with us TODAY!

The post 5 Factors You Should Never Underestimate While Building A Marketing Team first appeared on High Design Agency.

The global economy is facing major challenges. Work patterns have totally gone under transformation. Working from home/remote is the in thing today. Some companies are accustomed to this work mode particularly in the IT outsourcing sector, whereas for others it’s a new work model and are facing challenges. Also the distinction between in-house, remote and onsite teams has diminished.

Challenges in the Remote Work Model
With working remotely becoming a necessity for companies to run their business, many enterprises and organizations are experiencing challenges of adapting a remote working model for their employees. From poor network connectivity, outdated work stations, lack of training (of working from home for long time periods), collaboration tools, etc. Another key factor that plays a crucial role is human interaction. With the remote mode, human interaction has been limited to virtual meetings. This is a psychological factor which affects even the top performer in a team or organization. WSJ recently came out with an article on the challenges of working remotely – companies have started to think remote work isn’t so great after all.

In today’s changing marketplace, with the remote working model, managing all of your marketing and design in-house which needs strong collaboration between different teams is a big challenge.

Check out a few insights below on why to outsource your design and marketing business in the scenario created by COVID-19 pandemic and how to keep your business running.

Time Utilization and Business Focus

As a marketing head you have endless list of tasks to manage and deliver. Does it make sense to occupy your time working on marketing aspects of your business which are not billable? Let an experienced boutique agency develop and manage your marketing solutions, while you focus your prime time on priority responsibilities.

Cost Efficiency

To lower operational costs, hiring an agency on as needed will allow you to pay for the actual hours worked. Compared to a full time employee this is a cheaper option keeping unforeseen expenditure in maintaining internal assets. Expenditure can be manpower, office space and rentals, trainings, work stations, etc.

New Projects and Initiatives

Business has to move on, and companies need to come up with new projects or enhancements of current products keeping in mind the market scenario. It may take weeks or even months to gather up resources to get started. If the launch is crucial, consider outsourcing the needs to a boutique agency with the required resources and experience to take on the project.

Keep up with the Competition

Outsourcing can be used by anyone whether a large or a small organization. For small/medium organizations with limited budget or resources, outsourcing their needs will allow them to compete with large companies by offering the same expertise and services as provided to larger clients.

As the whole world is passing through difficult times, and businesses continue to recover from the impacts of COVID-19, outsource your branding and digital marketing requirements, while you focus on the core competencies of your business.

If you are looking for an experienced boutique agency specializing in outsourcing creative, branding and digital marketing, get in touch with us TODAY!

The post Are You Downsizing Due To COVID-19? Consider Outsourcing Your Design and Marketing Business first appeared on High Design Agency.

It’s not an easy time for anyone. Not for the first responders, doctors, nurses, sanitation workers, world leaders, businesses, and marketers. No one is exempt from the physical, psychological, and professional impact caused by COVID-19.

Marketers, especially, find themselves walking on eggshells. It’s true that because of the lockdown, people are spending more time on social media but what floated their boats 3 weeks ago, in our pre-coronavirus world, will not cut it now, the current coronavirus battered world. Their expectations, motivation, and intent have changed. And so our marketing approach will have to be in lockstep with it.

It’s a time when brands and marketers need to know when to hit the pause button and what and how to communicate when they do. Here are some guidelines that will help you navigate through this strange COVID-19 beleaguered digital environment.

Spread the Message of “Flattening the Curve”

Goes without saying. Brands and influencers need to communicate to their followers how crucial it is to follow the precautionary protocols prescribed by the government. As digital entities with a following, it behooves each and every brand-from an established player or a fledgling startup to use their voice and influence to educate and encourage. It could be something as simple as sharing with your followers how you and your staff/team are religiously practicing social distancing.

Be Sensitive in your Messaging

With the rapidly changing situation and the surge in infected cases, people are heavy with stress and anxiety. Brands need to be discreet and sensible in their messaging. They will need to think about how their product or service is relevant in the current situation and convey it in a voice that is empathetic.

Brands will have to keep in mind that some of their followers may have lost someone close to them to COVID-19 or lost their job because of the economic crisis brought on by the pandemic. This is why they will need to rethink their marketing strategy and work sensibly towards crafting useful, responsible, and brand-relevant “message” than tone-deaf, call to action gimmicks that will do more harm than good.

Keep your Audiences Engaged Through Relevant and Creative Content

Social media is where people log in to escape from the banality of their lives. But the currently configured situation not only calls for escapism but assurance and the yearning to stay connected with those going through this difficult time. This is where brands can help. Depending on the industry, brands can develop a content strategy that will keep their followers creatively engaged.

Say, for example, if you are a furniture brand-you could give simple decor tips to deck up a home office; it will definitely hit the nail right on the head as most of us are working from home and will be searching for such topics.

Don’t Make Light of the Crisis or Circulate Incorrect Information

We all love memes, don’t we? But as long as the memes don’t cross the boundary of crass humor or trivialize the global health crisis and the lives lost and stays within the lines of smile-producing-uplifting humor, it’s all okay. It’s also important to double, triple check any information regarding the pandemic that you will be putting out on your social media. One piece of misinformation will reach hundreds and thousands by the minute. This isn’t the time to perpetuate incorrect and unverified news and instill fear in the already panic-stricken people.

Avoid Publishing Tone-Deaf, Sales-y Posts

This isn’t the time to use COVID-19 as a click-bait to lure users on your website. Nor is it the time to turn a blind eye to the real problem that the whole world is grappling with and continue with outright, sales-y posts. Period. Your followers will be watching you, ever more closely now. One wrong move and you could lose their loyalty and goodwill for which you probably worked very hard to gain, forever.

Context and consideration are two operative words here. As long as you will be considerate towards your followers and communicate in a language that is couched in context-they will pull through this difficult time with the love and support of those who matter to them.

The post How To Handle Social Media During COVID-19 Crisis first appeared on High Design Agency.

Each of these platforms has its own demographic, intended use, language, tone, and subculture. Like, for example, Instagram is the natural go-to choice for lifestyle brands, whereas LinkedIn is more of a no-nonsense professional outlet that is massively popular with B2B companies. Another important thing to know about these social media platforms is the way their community interacts. It is this underlying dynamic that separates a tweet from an Instagram caption or a connection invitation to a friend’s request. So, you now get the drift-simply setting up accounts on every social media platform won’t bring you the desired results.

You need to have the right mix of social media that aligns with the personality and business objectives of your brand. Here’s a detailed primer on how to choose platforms that will dovetail with your target audience:

Define your Goals

Start by clearly defining your goals for being on social media. What it is that you want to achieve? Do you want your target audience to know about the existence of your brand-aka brand awareness or do you want people to buy your products or avail of your services-aka lead generation? While every social media outlet has a provision for both, however, if your intention is simply to create awareness for your brand then Facebook and Instagram are your best bets. Likewise, if your main objective is to generate leads or drive conversions-Facebook along with LinkedIn and Twitter will be a lucrative blend for you.

Understand Where your Target Audience is Spending Most of its Time

As we said earlier, every social media outlet has its own subculture and demographic. Which means that after you have pinned down your business goals, you will need to study where all your target audience loves spending most of their time. It would mean wasting your time, efforts, and money if the demographic you want to target is 65 years old women and you are looking for them on Snapchat or Instagram. To get a better insight into platform-wise social media demographic, we recommend you peruse Social Media Demographics for Marketers in 2020 put together by Hubspot that has all the statistical information you need to get going.

However, if you already have accounts on multiple social media channels and are wondering which ones to keep and which ones to say ba-bye to, we suggest conducting social monitoring, also known as social listening (there are many GOOD and FREE tools available) to check out what people are talking about your brand or the topics that matter to your business. The data you find there will help you determine which platforms are worth sticking to, which aren’t.

Study your Competitors’ Social Media Arsenal

You can learn a lot about your industry’s trends and content formats favored by your target audience by examining your competitors’ social media activity. Cherry-pick 3 competitors who you think are doing really well on social media and study their strategy. Do an in-depth analysis as to what social media channels they are on, the kind of content they publish, the frequency of posting, the average number of likes and shares they get on their posts, etc.

It goes without saying that your content has to be original and not simply a copy-paste of your competitors’ content. The idea here is to basically be equipped with the strategy and current trends so that you can build and hone your own social media skills.

Know How many Social Media Outlets you can Handle

Of course, you can’t miss this out. Given the fact that each of these platforms is a uniquely engaging world in itself with its own rules and language-you need to ask yourself if you have the right resources to produce content on a regular basis that will fit with your objectives and the platforms.

Say, if you are a beauty brand, then your content repository will HAVE TO HAVE videos (as people want to know how to apply the product or to choose a shade according to their complexion). Can you create video content frequently? Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Snapchat yield encouraging results for video content, so it goes without saying if you are intending to be on them, videos need to be a constant. If you are a B2B company and looking to establish thought leadership, you will need to incorporate long-form content formats like white papers, case studies, trend reports, etc.

Depending on the social channels, you will have to keep relevant content ready in the pipeline so that your audiences are being consistently drip-fed with the information they need to stay connected with you. There are many good automated software options that will ease your load in scheduling and publishing your content at a time on various platforms. Make use of them.

We hope our blog helps you in cherry-picking relevant channels for your business. If you are in search of an agency that will guide you from start to finish for social media marketing, get in touch with us TODAY!

The post How To Choose The Right Mix Of Social Media For Your Business first appeared on High Design Agency.

Website is the First Step Towards Your Goal

Your website is one of the many tools that will help you in achieving your goals. It isn’t a definite solution. For that, you need to be on social media, send emails, write blogs, network, and promote. Online presence is an overarching term and your website is one of the many avenues that have the potential of getting your business under the radar of those who are looking for it.

We keep hearing people complain as to how their website isn’t giving them the leads or reach they expected. To this, we ask them if they are deploying the right strategies that will help their target audience find them. If people aren’t even aware of your existence, how do you expect to generate sales?

But there are sure-fire of catapulting yourself into visibility. In this blog post, we are exploring what these are:

Mobile Responsive Website

We can’t emphasize this enough. In the first quarter of 2019 alone, mobile accounted for 51.51% of global website traffic-which in other words means that you are probably missing out on a whopping chunk of business if your website isn’t mobile responsive! Simply put, a mobile responsive website means a seamless online experience that is tailored to your smartphone.

Nobody likes to scroll horizontally or pinch in or out every now and then to read the content. It’s a big turn-off. A consistent and fluid layout that adjusts effortlessly to your user’s mobile screen without them having to make an effort is what mobile responsiveness is all about.

Social Media

Here’s the thing-every day millions of people launch their websites and not all of them show up on Google. You certainly don’t want to be lost in a sea of websites. So, what do you do? You establish your presence on social media and work diligently to forge a strong relationship with your target audiences.

Unlike traditional media, which is expensive and not necessarily effective as you can’t monitor the response-social media allows you precise targeting and a creative way of presenting your brand. From publishing product pages with updates to creating promoted campaigns-social media will help you direct your followers to your website.

Valuable Content

This goes without saying. Google and humans love content that offers relevant, original, and helpful information. Your content strategy needs to be well-thought-out and centered around the needs of your target audiences. You just can’t produce content for the heck of it; that attitude will not win you any brownie points but do exactly the opposite, so invest your time in hiring a team that will create valuable content for your website.

The content should clearly communicate with the users-if it is not to the point or ambiguous, you have lost them. It should contain relevant keywords that talk about your products or services so that the search engines can know what your website is about and show it when someone searches for them. This will increase your chances of visibility on the SERPs and conversions.

Local Business Listing 

One of the best ways to reach your customers is through business listings. With them, local businesses can list pertinent information such as their contact number, address, website, etc. when people type queries. By adding your website in business listings, you improve its visibility as well as boost your online presence.

Search Engine Optimization 

SEO to your website is what water is to fish. You need it and there are no two ways about it unless, of course, you don’t want your website to ever get discovered! The idea behind SEO is to get your website on the result pages by making it appealing to both the search engines as well as people. There are two types of SEO practices that you need to do to enhance your website visibility and search ability.

First is on-site, which as the term suggests involves activities done on the website to improve your ranking and help search engines better understand what your website is all about. On-site SEO includes effective use of meta titles and descriptions, organization of the content hierarchy, H1 tags, Alt text for images, properly-formatted URLs, etc.

The second type of SEO that is off-site, are the activities done outside your website to boost its discoverability. This involves having a strong and consistent presence on relevant social media, guest blogging, link building, and listing in local business directories as we discussed earlier. Your SEO strategy must incorporate both these practices so that you can reach your right target audiences.

So if you are in search of an agency that will enhance your website’s search ability and transform it into a robust sales engine, get in touch with us TODAY!

The post Why Just Having a Running Website Isn’t Enough to be Successful Today first appeared on High Design Agency.

The best way for this would have been a blog post announcing the launch of the feature or a newsletter landing page including the followers/subscribers in on what is being offered rather than going directly for the kill.

Whether your objective is to generate sales or garner attention for a new product/service or capture leads-you need the right mix of marketing collateral to nudge your target audience to take the intended action. Every marketer has a diverse mash-up of marketing collaterals in their sales arsenal. But knowing which one to deploy to achieve a specific purpose is crucial or else you end up wasting an opportunity.

What are Marketing Collaterals, Exactly?

Marketing collaterals are informative pieces that talk about the company’s products and/or services. These include blog posts, e-magazines, case studies, company brochures, ROI reports, landing pages, white papers, product catalogs, newsletters, members-only branded content, and more. So now you get the idea.

Let’s delve deep into the collaterals and in what stage of the buyer’s journey they should be used for unfailing results.

Blog Posts

The beauty of blog posts is that they can be used to convey your message to target audiences for any stage of the buyer’s journey but they prove especially useful in the awareness stage. They are a great way for creating awareness about your company and its offerings.

Blog posts should be addressing user-specific concerns and not employ a tone that is outright sales-y. A call-to-action at the end directing the reader to a dedicated page is an ideal way of rounding off your blog post and subtly fulfilling your purpose.

Landing Pages

Landing pages serve up specific information to readers, which in turn help marketers gain information about them for future targeted lead generation campaigns. They are a part of a website but talk only about a particular facet of your product/service. By offering an insightful piece of content in return for filling out the form, you are engaging in a give-and-take equation that benefits both the parties involved.

Downloadable Guides

Downloadable guides such as e-books or e-magazines are used by companies to bolster their image as thought leaders. Downloadable guides such as these contain insightful, high-quality content which provides readers with requisite information about a particular topic such as how-to guides.

Case Studies

Case studies are a go-to push that marketers use to help clients arrive at a decision (the one that ultimately results in shaking hands). The purpose of case studies is to essentially present an in-depth, start to finish approach undertaken by a company to serve its clients. It begins with a problem, followed by the solutions offered, results achieved and supported by client testimonials.

White papers

White papers are a no-nonsense, to-the-point, technical content material that is intended to educate readers in addition to building your reputation as an expert in the industry. White papers, if done correctly, (by this we mean no tooting your own trumpet or using flowery language) are a surefire way of convincing clients of your credibility and warming them up towards your products or services.

Proposals & Presentations

Proposals and presentations are the collaterals that focus on the value that partnering with your company, can provide. While the traditional PPT and PDF formats are still used by companies, for an engaging experience-interactive presentations are becoming a popular choice for sparking interests. Proposals and presentations help clients weigh in on their options at the decision stage.

If you are looking for an experienced agency specializing in creating effective marketing collaterals, get in touch with us here TODAY!

The post Supercharge Your Sales With Marketing Collaterals first appeared on High Design Agency.

While the goal of both marketers and designers is to arrive at the same destination-which is creating and executing insightful and engaging content for the desired audience, it’s more often than not, their work approaches that lead to confusion/tension (at best) and project delay/unsuccessful campaign (at worst).

Many a time the designers feel that marketers cramp their style by placing too much importance on the ‘sales’ aspect over the design while marketers feel designers don’t ask the right questions and dive straight into designing which might not be in keeping with the strategy.

But it doesn’t have to be like this, at all. Designers and marketers can very much work happily with each other-all they need to do is, first-understand their similarities and differences and second-give precedence to their shared goals by finding ways to work around the differences.

Here’s how that can be achieved:

Knowing the Purpose of the Design from the Get-Go

First and foremost, there is a BIG, THICK, DISTINCT line separating design from art. This, in other words, means that what the designers’ create shouldn’t be all about the aesthetics but also be rooted in functionality and offering a solution to a problem. It’s very important for marketers and designers to sit together before they launch into the ‘actual work’.

The marketer must make their marketing objectives clear to the designer right off the bat instead of conveying them after the designer has started the process of creation. Once the designer is equipped with the insights and details, say, for example, whether the brochure is meant for a B2B audience and calls for a formal treatment or a website needing an upbeat yet minimalist look, etc-they can give the marketer a fair idea about their approach and timeline for the project.

Taking the Time to Understand Each Other

By this, we mean understanding the norms and trends of the respective industries. It would be hugely helpful to marketers if designers gave them a mapped-out trajectory of their process using guideposts such as wire-frames, sitemaps, mock-ups, website architecture, etc.

Likewise, it would also make the process much easier if the marketers are abreast with the latest developments and trends in the design world.

Providing Timely Feedback and Asking Questions

If there’s one crucial thing to remember in the designer-marketer-equation it is this-successful design doesn’t happen on a wing and a prayer but on timely feedback and by asking the right questions.

For the collaboration between the designer and marketer to be a fruitful one, both of them must keep tabs on each other’s progress-a marketer must work closely with the designer to know how the design is shaping up and whether or not it is in sync with the overarching objective. Similarly, the designer must check with the marketer if their design is meeting the brand guidelines, intended purpose, etc.

Putting Down a Number for Time and Revisions

We can’t emphasize enough on this point. Given the fact that design is subjective-what the designer thinks does perfect justice to the brief may not be ‘quite there’ according to the marketer. This is why it becomes important for both parties to know how much time and effort they need to spend on getting it right.

Designers must breakdown their deliverables in stages (in the first couple of weeks of starting at least) so that they know they are on the right track. Setting a deadline for every step allows for unhurried discussions and revisions which might not be the case if there are too many deliverables, too many revisions, and too many minds sharing their opinions.

Marketers must stick to their original brief and not have a change of mind as they come across something else. Designers must ensure they are adhering to the deadlines and not putting the marketers in a tight spot where they have to reluctantly approve content because of the lack of time.

If designers and marketers keep in mind these basic pointers before working on a project, we bet the collaboration will be anything but satisfactory!

To have more than satisfactory branding and integrated marketing activities for your company, we’d be more than happy to assist. Get in touch with us to know how we can do that.

The post How Can Designers and Marketers Collaborate Peacefully Without Hating Each Other first appeared on High Design Agency.