Persona

Posted at: 11:22 AM by Vivienne

Buying expensive ad space guarantees you a slice of the pie - placed in the right media it'll be seen by your audience and it's where you have full "advertorial" control. But it's not cheap and free it certainly isn't. The alternative is to create your own news regularly and using your own business as the publicity platform. The sticking point is you may not always have something to say - so, create your own publicity. Consider: - Who your audience is - Where you're most likely to get the best coverage, - Stories which are niche to your audience - Target appropriate publications - What response are you hoping to achieve The sticking point with this is you may not always have something to say - so you create your own publicity. Orchestrating a publicity stunt is a fun exercise to undertake and adds a splash of colour to your regular news thread. Whether it's taking part in local community/business issues or challenging conventional views in your market. Look for ways where you can achieve a cross-over of publicity. There are so many ways in which you can create your own free advertising even by offering a local, regional or national publication a competition to win a taste of your service or product. Sounds great doesn't it? Gratis advertising is fun and we love it. If you don't have the time or budgets to implement something with enough impact, or creating a media plan sounds too daunting, give us a call at Persona Creative and see what magic we can work for you as your creative account team.

Labels: media

Posted at: 11:20 AM by Vivienne

If you have a product/service or trade through your own skills and experience, you have a brand. Chances are you've been building it up for a while too; not just your current visual identity, but a subconscious persona that combines communication, reputation, trust and accountability. What's really interesting about your brand is that it could be worth a fortune. So what's your brand worth? No really, if you had to put a price on your brand's worth, what would it be? Would your market peers and audience agree with your assessment? Placing an actual value on your brand which is a non-physical asset is tricky to quantify, so here are four ways which can go some way to assessing what your brand is worth: Brand Preference - This is how clients and customers identify the source of the product or service and this is what makes them choose one brand over another. The cost of the product to some is irregardless at this stage, as the client is recognising a brand which is familiar to them and choosing it over one which is less well known to their subconscious. The "pulling power" of the brand enables the justification of a higher price over a similar proposition. Product Growth - Established brands that launch a new service or add a new product to their range, have the advantage being able to use their company branding as a platform to penetrate new markets more quickly. There are advantages of growing such services and ranges as they not only strengthen the core brand by increasing the portfolio, but more importantly helps to strengthen the relationship with the customer. Customer Retention - Equity in branding is determined by the way the client or consumer associates itself with a brand. Successful branding should evoke positive emotions with its audience; such positive traits are nurtured through good brand experience and in turn maintaining a loyal customer base thus creating real brand equity. This needs to occur even in bad situations through good customer service, responsiveness and good old fashioned manners. Communication - The ability of your brand to convey these messages is crucial, but often overlooked is the brands ability to have the dialogue become two-way with the audience. Citizen media, freedom of speech, price wars and increased choice makes this the definitive factor in any sustainable brand lifetime. By considering your brands performance in each of these areas and placing a figure on it's value to your and your customers can help you understand if your efforts so far have been a worthy investment. Whatever the outcome, you can discuss your thoughts with us to help unleash this equity in positive ways and maximise your potential in ways you've never thought of before.

Posted at: 11:15 AM by Hammad

Once upon a time the Internet was created. Then, everybody found out about it and started using it to connect all over the world. Then, the world went crazy and thought it was a magic place where you could sell anything to anybody. The bubble burst and all those silly people got their fingers burnt. Meanwhile, there was a whole other group of smart business people who didn't fall into the trap - people like you! These people have created quality web sites to convey their message and have even spent some money on Google AdWords lately. Then, there were those who had a bit more cash and so they created some eye-catching online adverts and ran some clever campaigns using things like SMS text messaging, HTML Email and Viral marketing. Cut to a few years later and the Internet has grown up. Consumers are spending in record numbers, while high streets continue to suffer a downward trend. Business people all over the world are reliant on using it to find suppliers, compare prices and research products and services - all the way through to enquiry or purchase stage. E-Marketing is no longer an optional extra when it comes to business. But who is really winning? From inside the digital marketing industry, we see a few other trends. Agencies of all shapes and sizes are changing too. They are increasing their rates whilst recruiting inexperienced talent to fill the demand. They are pushing unproven gimmicks as 'innovation' and they are merging and buying each other out in a massive sweep of consolidation. In essence, they seem to be going the way of the archaic Ad Agencies - expensive, pretentious and questionable when it comes to cost versus quality. Businesses and their marketers are under increasing pressure to use digital media to interact with their audience, whether that means information, calls to action or transactional and interactive services. The problems of the early days were very much to do with user take up and whether digital was going to deliver results. There can be no doubt that usage is now very high (and still growing!) and that the freedoms it provides has delivered excellent results for those who have used it in campaigns. The problem now is that of exploitation. Suppliers of interactive services have increasing costs and therefore, client budgets are not able to spread far enough in order to make the most of integrated marketing. Clients needs to have a mix of established media, interactive campaigns and still have budget left to experiement with emerging opportunities. It's very hard to do when everything comes with a big price tag. Fortunately, with a team who has many years of experience, working only with 'proper' businesses Persona Creative is quite unique in it's business model. We've found a way to deliver effective digital marketing projects to our clients at rates that are justifiable. We're independent to large media groups, so have no big brother to watch out for and are small and friendly enough to never be pretentious. In fact, every single one of our clients has commented positively on the return on investment we provide in the mystical land of E-marketing. Call us to discuss your own dreams and we can live happily ever after. The end.