0723ee95

How SMEs Can Market Effectively on a Limited Budget

Tue, 22 Apr 2025 20:41:11 GMT

And how I can help!

The SME Marketing Dilemma

I know from first-hand experience how tight the marketing budget can be for any SME – I’m even more aware that often, there isn’t marketing budget at all! As the one tasked with generating engagement, inbound enquiries and even sales, it can feel like an impossible task.

Here is the good news though: it is possible to effectively market your business without spending a fortune, it just requires focusing on the right areas. If marketing isn’t your ‘thing’, it can be overwhelming trying to understand where to start.

I believe that there’s always a solution and I provide a problem-solving approach to marketing, working within your budge to find effective solutions, providing strategic support along the way.

1. Start with a Clear Strategy

You need to be clear on what your ultimate marketing goal is and work backwards from there to figure out how you can make that vision a reality. Without fully understanding what you’re aiming for, how can you possibly achieve it? This is what leads to poor ROI and wasted resources. If that happens, you’ll struggle to convince anyone that marketing is worth a designated budget in the future.

On a strategic level, I can help you by clearly defining your brand values, tone of voice and target audience, ensuring that all your marketing efforts are consistent and correctly positioned.

Once we have clarified who your target audience is, we can identify the right channels for you: the ones that will be most effective in reaching your target audience and achieving your goals. The scatter gun approach feels like blind panic – ‘I don’t know where to target so I’ll communicate everything, everywhere and hope for the best!’ This is a waste of time and energy and ultimately, ineffective.

“ When you speak to everyone, you speak to no one ” Meredith Hill.

I can create a plan for you that is easy to action and will yield results.

2. Make the Most of Organic Content

Organic content is a great budget-friendly solution and it holds great long-term value but consistency and quality have to be the focus. Make sure that you always have your goal in mind and your target audience –

Does this speak to them?

Does it appeal to them?

Does it make them want to take action?

The obvious places to start for organic content are blogs, social media and newsletters. There are some key things to consider when it comes to each of these:

Blogs:

- What are the key topics that your audience will want to read about?

- Who will write these for you?

- How will you promote them? There’s no value in having blogs if no one knows they’re there…

Social media:

- Which channels will be most effective in reaching your target audience?

- Consistency is essential for building an engaged audience.

- Engage with your target audience, industry leaders and relevant topics to raise your own profile and encourage engagement.

- Make sure that written and visual content is consistent with your brand.

Newsletters:

- GDPR is a huge factor here and needs to be considered when building your list.

- Consider length, design and value of each newsletter.

- Research the optimum frequency for your target audience.

If none of this is within your comfort zone, I can help by providing a content creation package that includes branded templates for your social media and newsletters, ideas for content and support with writing blogs.

I also offer a social media management service.

3. Make Your Brand Stand Out

In a world where we scroll through endless adverts, images and videos, it’s easy for your brand to get lost amongst the noise but it doesn’t have to be that way! Create something that leaves a lasting impression, with your audience thinking of your brand long after your post has passed.

Good design builds instant trust. If your brand looks professional, legitimate, consistent and considered, your audience will be more inclined to trust you from the outset and buy in to your messaging.

We offer affordable brand identity packages, covering everything from logo design to website builds and everything in between. Ask for more details on how this simple and affordable solution could take the pressure off and leave you feeling confident as you move forward with your marketing journey.

4. Reuse, Repurpose, Repeat

Sometimes the best solutions are the most obvious, sitting right under your nose but you can’t see it because your focus is elsewhere on the business. One quick and easy win is to reuse and repurpose your content across platforms. This is smart marketing, saving your time and resources by reiterating your key messages across platforms. For example, one blog post can become 5 LinkedIn posts, an email and an infographic!

I can help you by outlining key topics to cover with your blog posts over a period of a year, with a basic structure and clear outline for use across social media, email and visuals.

5. Measure What Matters

Make sure that you’re measuring the success of your channels, platforms and messaging.

- What forms of content are getting engagement?

- Which channels are driving traffic to your website?

- Which messages are driving enquiries?

Data should drive your decision making and with so many free tools available, the only real resource required is time. Don’t waste time getting lost in the abundance of metrics available, focus on engagement, conversions and lead sources.

I provide my clients with monthly reports to demonstrate which strategies are proving most effective, to drive and shape future marketing and to help with decision making and budget allocation.

Let’s Grow Your Business Without the Overwhelm

You don’t need a huge budget to successfully market your business, so much of this can be done in-house but time is often a huge factor. Time is money and no one knows that better than a small business owner.

Why not book a discovery call to see how I can help you, within your budget?

Email me on lisa.ellison@liontooth.co.uk or call 07590907043.

The Value of Storytelling

Sun, 23 Mar 2025 21:37:20 GMT

An event that gripped the nation and converted to £2m+

I've been thinking a lot about someone so I wanted to share my thoughts...

Jamie Laing - before you roll your eyes and scroll on, hear me out. (I know, the photo gave away my cliff hanger!) You may have been one of the 50,000+ people that saw my LinkedIn post last week, very much a throw away passing comment, essentially, to say I drove past Jamie Laing on my way home from the school run whilst he was on his fundraising mission for Children In Need.

I followed the story closely last week, quite hooked on his progress and whether or not he would make it. I'm not a celebrity-obsessed person and I rarely engage with anything celebrities do but last week was different and I'm sure I'm not the only one. I believe that many people didn't know he was even embarking on that challenge until last week - I didn't and I listen to Radio 1 daily! I also believe there's a lot of people that either don't know who Jamie Laing is or do know and don't particularly like him - we can't please everyone!

So, what was it about his fundraising effort that gripped the nation and led to him raising over £2m?! It's all about the story. And *this* is a great example of marketing done well - with an emphasis on storytelling and humanising your brand. His fundraising effort, backed by BBC Radio 1 coverage, provides a perfect case study on the power of storytelling in marketing. His journey emphasised his struggle, determination, vulnerability and honesty and that played a pivotal role in engaging the public emotionally and driving donations. If his personal narrative hadn’t been shared so openly, it’s unlikely that such a significant amount would have been raised.

This is something I've also experienced in fundraising efforts that I've been involved in and it makes all the difference but it takes strength to be vulnerable, and I'll always admire those who found the strength to tell their story (you know who you are ��).

Here's what we can learn about the value of storytelling in marketing:

Emotional connection drives action : Jamie's story wasn't just about asking for donations; it was about sharing his personal experience and struggles throughout last week. People are more likely to connect with a cause when they can empathise with the storyteller. In marketing, emotional engagement creates a bond between the audience and the brand, making them more likely to engage.

Vulnerability builds trust : By being honest and vulnerable about his efforts and the challenges he faced, Jamie Laing built trust with the Radio 1 listeners. Vulnerability *humanises* a brand. In marketing, being transparent and acknowledging (and addressing!) flaws can enhance credibility and build a stronger, more authentic relationship with consumers.

Narrative creates value : Jamie Laing didn’t just promote an event, he shared a compelling and authentic story about his commitment. In marketing, your story can be the difference between blending in and standing out. Crafting a narrative around your brand or product creates meaning, making it more likely to stick in the minds of consumers.

Great - now how can you implement this in your marketing?

If you have ever worked with me, you'll have heard me going on about the importance of authenticity. This applies to everything from branding to customer service. If a brand is transparent about its processes, challenges and goals, customers are more likely to engage and support it.

Emotion drives engagement - whether it’s a product, service or cause, storytelling can create an emotional connection that compels action.

Consistent storytelling over time, where customers can see growth and commitment, helps keep them invested.

So basically, Jamie Laing’s Children In Need campaign demonstrated that storytelling - driven by vulnerability, determination and honesty, was the key to the level of success in his fundraising last week.

For marketers, it highlights that connecting with people on an emotional level, telling authentic stories and leveraging the right platforms can make all the difference in achieving success.

It can feel difficult to build emotion into corporate marketing but there's ALWAYS room to be human.

Does your brand feel a bit fuzzy? Let’s fix that.
The Define & Align Workshop is designed to bring clarity, structure and purpose to your brand- fast.

9 Compelling Reasons to Hire a Freelance Marketing Manager for Your Business

Wed, 23 Oct 2024 12:45:03 GMT

Discover the Benefits of Flexible Expertise and Cost-Effective Solutions in Today's Dynamic Marketing Landscape

Hiring me as your freelance marketing manager can offer several advantages compared to bringing on a full-time employee. Here are some key benefits:

1. Cost Efficiency : Freelancers typically come with lower overhead costs. You avoid expenses related to benefits, taxes, and office space, which can make budgeting simpler and more flexible.

2. Flexibility : Freelancers can be hired on a project basis or for specific campaigns, allowing you to scale your marketing efforts up or down as needed. This flexibility can be particularly valuable for start-ups or businesses with fluctuating demands.

3. Access to Diverse Skills : Freelance marketing managers often bring a broad range of expertise from working with various clients across industries. This diversity can infuse fresh ideas and innovative strategies into your marketing efforts.

4. Quick Onboarding : Freelancers are generally accustomed to jumping into new projects and can often get started right away, reducing the time spent on training and onboarding.

5. Focus on Results : Freelancers are typically motivated by performance and results, as their reputation depends on the success of the projects they manage. This can lead to a more results-driven approach to your marketing initiatives.

6. Reduced Commitment : Engaging a freelancer allows you to test out a working relationship without the long-term commitment of hiring a full-time employee. If it’s not the right fit, you can part ways more easily.

7. Specialised Expertise : Many freelancers have niche skills or focus areas, such as (with me) social media marketing, email marketing, or content strategy. This specialisation can provide targeted expertise that might be harder to find in a generalist employee.

8. Fresh Perspectives : A freelancer can bring a fresh viewpoint to your marketing strategies, helping you identify blind spots and explore new opportunities that in-house teams might overlook.

9. Network and Resources : Established freelancers often have extensive professional networks and access to resources (like tools and platforms) that can benefit your marketing efforts.

By hiring me as your freelance marketing manager, you can gain the agility and expertise needed to navigate today’s fast-paced marketing landscape effectively.

Contact me to find out more about how I could help your business today - lisa.ellison@liontooth.co.uk.

Why I'm Not Your Typical Marketing Agency: The Story Behind Liontooth

Tue, 12 Sep 2023 13:01:46 GMT

Flexible, Personalised Marketing Solutions Without the Agency Overhead

Sometimes I'll get a message to my inbox referencing my marketing agency �� God no! I'm not an agency! No . Sorry, no.

I'm a 1.5-person band. (The other half is my husband who's a silent partner, providing the incredible design skills). I don't want to be thought of as a marketing agency. For me it has connotations of frustration, waiting, chasing, and to be fair, more often than not incredible results but still.

I'm a no-nonsense , to the point communicator .

I like to be efficient and get stuff done and that includes getting results for my clients . I like the fact I'm basically flying solo with this, it's easy. It's straightforward. It's DONE.

Let me give you context and insight...

I have experience with agencies from BOTH sides - I've been the client AND the service provider. Honestly, I had challenges with both. See if anything sounds familiar:

From a client perspective , my biggest frustrations were always...

The huge bill. Sorry guys, I always found it eye watering even though I wasn't paying!
Not being able to get hold of my point of contact and waiting whilst others frantically ran around trying to get answers for me.
I felt bad for (and frustrated about) the person playing piggy in the middle. I couldn't speak to Studio to get answers or explanations about design issues/challenges/restrictions. Information was often lost in transit.

As the service provider , (for me) these were my biggest frustrations...

There too many systems and processes that got in the way of me just getting on and providing the level of service I wanted to.
Too many other cogs in the wheel slowing down the process.
Too many hoops to jump through and restrictions.

So, this led me to where I am today - running my own business providing marketing and branding services on a freelance and consultative basis .

I try to run my business as flexibly as possible, always making sure that the service I provide is tailored to each individual client. This is why you won't find price lists on my website. I understand that every client is different in terms of size and budget. I want everybody to be able to have the support they need and to be able to access the services that will help them to grow their own business.

I've used my experience in international marketing management , as well as my experiences both as a service provider for a creative agency and as the client receiving such services, to shape the level of service that I provide today.

In addition to my lived experience of working with businesses of all sizes, from micro businesses all the way through to businesses run based on global networks of distributors around the world, I have qualifications in marketing.

Working with me, you will only ever have one point of contact . I'm contactable pretty much anytime of the day or night.

If you want design work doing, I'm able to provide that service via my husband who is an incredibly talented graphic designer. But again, I will be your one point of contact. If you have a particularly intricate, challenging or unusual design requirement, we are always happy to have a group meeting with our clients to ensure that all possibilities, challenges and hurdles are discussed and ironed out, with any visions understood and options provided.

One of the biggest benefits to my clients about the way I run my business is the low overheads. This means I'm not inflating my prices to cover increasing costs. You get the value of strategic branding and marketing, as well as incredible design, without breaking the bank to pay for it.

I have developed a range of frameworks from which I can offer suggested solutions to any branding and marketing challenges.

My favourite part about running my own business is that I have the opportunity to build valuable, long-term relationships with people, helping them to understand what the challenges are so that they not only can move forward, but they can also navigate their way independently in the future.

In terms of my business values , they are very much aligned with my personal values.

I love to help other people and this is key for me.
Building strong relationships that are loyal , trustworthy and valuable .
I'm very much a down to earth kind of person; what you see is what you get.

I really enjoy meeting new people from all sorts of industries and backgrounds. This gives me the opportunity to learn as well as impart my knowledge on somebody else. Although my background is in human pharmaceuticals, animal health and large format printing, since starting Liontooth I have worked with people from all industries including health and wellness, technology, real estate and more.

Does your brand feel a bit fuzzy? Let’s fix that.

The Define & Align Workshop is designed to bring clarity, structure and purpose to your brand- fast.

FIVE Things To Consider In Your Content Marketing

Wed, 29 Jun 2022 10:13:19 GMT

What would I look for and consider if you asked me to review a piece of marketing content for you? Here are the top 5 things I’d be considering…

I want to feel 'close' to your brand and welcomed.

This might seem like a strange one but it’s part and parcel of content being easy to read; the language that’s used, the layout of the content and visuals used.

Some content is written in such a way that I feel like there’s a barrier stopping me from getting just close enough. I want to understand but the way the content is written is making it difficult. If I'm having to go back, re-read and un-pick the copy, I will give up and leave (unless you're my client...).

This barrier is often created by:

overly formal language
acronyms that I'm not familiar with
typos
the use of the company name instead of ‘I/me/we’.

The use of YOU instead of ‘they/their’ also helps to pull the reader in, make them feel like YOU (the person) are talking to THEM (the individual). This instantly brings your audience in and makes them pay attention.

Here’s an example of the more formal Vs the more personable -

‘Liontooth provides high quality branding services to small business owners in order to improve their ROI.’

‘I love working with small business owners, I want to help you see improved return on your investment – essentially doing less work for more money!’

What do you think? Can you FEEL the difference?

I'd be checking the layout of text and images - is it well-balanced?

To look at a screen or page and see BLOCKS OF TEXT is overwhelming and off-putting. It’s like standing at the foot of a mountain, knowing you need to get to the top to get the answer to your question.

There’s a trend to use ‘listicles’ (one of those great words that’s been invented…), Top 5s and generally much shorter sentences in marketing copy. These provide more bitesize and easily digestible options for consuming information. All marketing content is now written more like social media posts for this very reason.

This is on the basis that we’re all so busy nowadays and people want to be able to skim read, consume and run. I do - unless it’s for a client (obviously!) I’m terrible for skim reading and running. If your content isn’t easy to digest, your audience might end up misunderstanding and being misinformed.

In addition to this, we’re largely very visual beings. The boom in the trend for infographics and apps such as Canva support this idea. Use visuals, where you can. This will break up bodies of text, give a little mental refresh for your reader and create a little intrigue during a content skim read which will hopefully encourage them to go back and read more (or just read it properly, would be nice).

Ease of flow in the information :

When you’re reading a body of text, what are the things that make it feel clunky and difficult to ‘stick with it’? What are the things that make your brain have a little battle between ‘let’s bail out, this is too much hard work’ and ‘no, keep going, it might be useful’?

Firstly, if your audience is having that mental battle whether to stay or go now (I couldn’t help that, sorry) why should they stay? Really? Why should they carry on reading? Unless you’ve made the value 100% clear in that first sentence and they must make it to the end of your content to get that value, they’ll bail out. I only stick at reading something that’s hard work if I MUST read it - i.e. legal documents!

The content needs to flow with shorter sentences, well punctuated and easy to consume language.

This often means less formal language but I appreciate that isn’t always appropriate and very much depends on your brand personality and tone of voice. If this is the case for you, I can help you to get that balance right.

I’d want to feel that there’s consistency.

You hopefully have a defined brand tone of voice and personality (if you don’t, please let me help you) and this needs to be evident across all your marketing materials.

If you’re going to use ‘we/I’ and ‘you’, make sure you do that throughout, don’t chop and change between formal and personable styles. This will feel weird and clunky to your reader. It comes across as if you’re not really sure who you are or what you’re trying to say.

People are drawn to people who speak with unwavering confidence (not arrogance) and believe what they say. This is what you need to do with your audience. Make sure your content is written with such consistency that it never waivers.

If your content doesn’t consistently and accurately represent your brand, your audience will start to see red flags and wonder who you REALLY are.

Are you what you seem to be?

Are you what you say you are?

Yes, I’m just not great at conveying that.!

If that’s you, again, I can help.

I'd be looking to make sure the content feels genuine.

Following on from the consistency message above, your content needs to feel genuine. Use evidence where possible – often referred to as social proof. If you can get testimonials, reviews and user generated content to use in your marketing, you’ll find you get much better buy-in from your audience.

Again, going back to your brand, if you have values that you state and share, make sure that your content is aligned with these. There’s nothing worse than a brand that has some really nice and impressive brand values that are just never represented in their marketing materials.

Disingenuousness (I wasn’t sure that’s a real word but Google seems to approve!) is the biggest turn-off.

No one enjoys that, don’t do it.

Did you find this useful? Can you implement this on your own marketing content?

If you’re thinking ‘wow, that was so useful but I do NOT have the time or inclination to sort it out for myself’ – just drop me an email (lisa.ellison@liontooth.co.uk) and we can work something out together.

Here’s my little bit of social proof – you can find more elsewhere on my website if you’re still not convinced...

Branding - My Top 5 Points to Better Understand What's Involved

Thu, 31 Mar 2022 20:07:22 GMT

Feel more confident in a conversation around branding

1. What is branding?

You really need to understand this before you can move forward with anything else. It’s not just the logo. Imagine your brand is a person: a good-looking person will only get so far, if there’s no substance to back-up the looks, let’s be honest, we lose interest pretty quickly. This is your brand. Make sure that the visuals are backed with a solid substance.

2. Target audience

You need to know who this is and really understand them and build your brand around them . There’s no point in having a lovely brand if it doesn’t appeal to your target audience. To learn more about the level of understanding that you should have around your target audience, check out my previous blog posts.

3. Brand personality

This needs to appeal to your target audience. When you meet new people, you decide whether you’d like to see them again (whether that’s personally, professionally or romantically) based on their personality. Think about your brand in this capacity. I shared a post on LinkedIn asking if your brand and your target audience were in a room, would they be drawn to each other?

4. Tone of voice

You need to make sure that you’re using the right language, pace (even in written content!), terminology etc to appeal to your audience. You need to be ‘speaking’ to someone at their level. Don’t try to show off with your fancy terminology if it’s going to leave your audience lost and overwhelmed. This should suit your brand personality. If you have the personality of a well-educated, grounded and experienced 50-something female, it wouldn’t be right to speak with the tone of an excitable 8-year-old boy who’s talking about his latest Disney figures (I’m not here for the stereotypes).

5. Visual

Like meeting a partner, you want to feel attracted to them! Your visuals need to be clear, consistent and visually appealing to your target audience. Don’t create something that YOU think is beautiful/striking/bold/classy if it’s not what will appeal to your target audience.

At the end of the day, we’re all here to make money, so we need to make sure that the product or service we’re selling APPEALS to those lovely people that are going to spend their hard-earned pennies with us.

Don’t rush this process, take your time and think it through. Make sure it’s right.

What you build now could be the make or break of your business so it’s worth investing the time and money to get it right from the beginning.

If you'd like help and advice for your business, contact me now to see how I can help - lisa.ellison@liontooth.co.uk.

Does your brand feel a bit fuzzy? Let’s fix that.
The Define & Align Workshop is designed to bring clarity, structure and purpose to your brand- fast.

Case Study: Developing a Logo for Your Brand

Fri, 26 Mar 2021 14:43:53 GMT

Getting started with a logo can be overwhelming but we can help.

We recently completed this logo (above) for a client in Chamonix. In this blog post, I’ll give insight to the process behind achieving this final look, as well as what it’s like to work with Liontooth for logo development.

Our client came to Liontooth in need of a logo as she is setting up a yoga business in Chamonix, France.

The initial brief was this:

To create a logo for a new yoga instructor.
The brand name is The Yoga Space.
‘Space’ has multiple interpretations: physical space, their own mental space, their practice space.
Preferred colours are blues and greens.
This needs to feel like accessible yoga, not just for advanced ‘yogis’.
The brand needs to appeal to both men and women.

Before we do anything in terms of design, we always ask for examples of existing logos that the client does and does not like, ideally five of each with a detailed explanation of the reasons for liking or disliking each. This really helps to build an idea of their preferences and helps to steer the initial concept stages of the design process. This streamlines our journey from initial discussions to completed logo.

To begin with, we played with the concept of ‘space’ and how this could be represented in the logo. As previously mentioned, this client is based in Chamonix and her environment is very mountainous, so this was an obvious option. Rather than just running with the first idea we had, we explored this further and started to look at relevant shapes that could be used to represent this and we landed upon the idea of the Japanese Zen circle;

“In Zen, ensō ("circular form") is a circle that is hand-drawn in one or two uninhibited brushstrokes to express a moment when the mind is free to let the body create.”

We used this brush stroke to also incorporate a yoga pose, giving a clear and immediate visual indication as to the brand offering, which you can see in the above concepts.

‘Space’ can also be represented by white space, which you can see in some of these concepts, where the silhouette has been created leaving the yoga pose as the clear space.

We played around with having just the circle, just the mountains and then as the process moved on, we experimented with combining the two.

In terms of the brand name, we needed YOGA to be the most prominent word; again, giving clear and immediate indication of the brand’s offering and intention. You can see from the concepts that we tried a range of layouts and positions for the wording, always trying to maintain a sense of balance and the focus on YOGA.

At this point, the focus was on the overall concept of the logo; colours and fonts could be adapted further down the line. By offering these multiple shapes, styles and fonts in the initial concepts, it meant these could be used to help direct the design process and narrow down what our client wanted. So, from here it became a case of pick and mix, and tweaking. Logo A, with the yoga pose from B and the font from C.

Often, as the process goes on, a client will get a clearer idea of what they do and don’t want for their own logo, what they do and don’t like. Through this process, our client requested we try spacing out the word ‘Yoga’. In order to make this work with the layout, some adaptations needed to be made to the font. As a result, the ‘Y’ has been amended so that the ‘leg’ of it sits to the left, rather than straight down (as you can see in the above image). Without this adaptation, it looks like ‘space’ is misaligned. As an experienced graphic designer, it wasn’t necessary to change the font entirely, just to make this minor amend to make sure everything sat correctly and centrally.

The beauty of a logo like this is that the various elements can be split out and used independently for various purposes such as social media visuals, branding physical spaces or merchandise. With this particular logo, there are a lot of options making this a very versatile and user-friendly logo design.

If you would like help with designing a logo, please feel free to contact me . It doesn’t matter if you have all the ideas or no idea, I can help.

And go check out The Yoga Space on Instagram!

Marketing help through mentoring

Sun, 07 Mar 2021 14:46:57 GMT

Let me tell you about this new mentoring service...

After my first year of providing a range of marketing services through Liontooth, I have found myself offering more and more advice, guidance and tips. This has made me realise that there's a real need for a service that enables people to carry out their own marketing and maintain ownership of it.

With this in mind, I am now providing a new service – mentoring.

Rather than handing it over to someone else and paying for the convenience of them carrying out the activities, there are plenty of people who do have the time and resources but perhaps not the knowledge and know-how. This is where mentoring could be your golden ticket to improving your marketing, without the price tag.

This might be something you need, as the owner of a small business; it might be something you need as the manager of a junior marketer, to free up your time to concentrate on more strategic business plans; whatever the need, this is something I will be able to help with.

If any of these questions or statements sound familiar, you could benefit from mentoring:

"We've got a junior marketing administrator but they're not clear on how or why to plan ahead with the social media."
"I hear brand personality mentioned a lot and tone of voice but I don't really understand it or the relevance to what I'm doing."
"I've got a marketing plan and I've got a social media plan, is that right?"
"What sort of hashtags should I be using?"
"I need to get people from my social media, onto my website and into my membership zone."
"How can I make my social media posts look more professional?"
"I've got 5000 contacts in my database, shall I just send them the same email?"

These are common questions that I get asked and what often happens is that I answer one question, it almost pulls at a thread and more questions come rushing through. This is the best way to learn, on the job, applying it practically to what you're doing and seeing the results.

What qualifies me to answer these questions?

Over 10 years in marketing
Experience in a number of industries
I’ve worked in UK and global markets
I have my CIM Diploma in Professional Marketing

This service will offer a more-cost effective way to get a handle on your marketing, rather than paying someone to plan and execute everything on your behalf, one hour a week of planning, discussion and review could be all it takes to get you going.

I love working with people and building strong relationships. Weekly catch-ups offers the chance for me to really get to know your business and offer the best, most tailored advice.

As with all of my services, you are not tied into a contract so you are free to end the working relationship whenever you feel the time is right.

Think of it like learning to ride a bike, I can be your stabilisers until you feel more confident.

Find out how and why you should listen to your audience

Wed, 24 Feb 2021 19:51:45 GMT

"If you make listening and observation your occupation, you will gain much more than you can by talk." - Robert Baden-Powell

It's easy to get caught up in telling your audience -

Who you are…
What you do…
Why you're the best at what you do…
How they can find out more…
How much your services cost…

This is useful information BUT if you don't LISTEN to what they're saying or what they're asking, how will you know if you're telling them what they want or need to hear?

Listening doesn't just mean responding to their FAQs:

It means being in the places where they spend time.

Join in and engage with what they're saying.

Answer their questions and ask more questions.

GET THE CONVERSATION GOING.

This will help to build a thorough and clear understanding of your target audience in terms of their interests, their hobbies, their problems and the language they use. Create a conversation with your customers and clients; dig deeper, get the detail, understand the nitty gritty. This will build relationships, trust and add value to your offering.

If they're on LinkedIn, spend time there, connect with them, look out for the conversations they engage with, the questions they ask and the polls they create.

If they're on Facebook, join the groups they're in, follow the pages they follow and again, observe and listen.

If they're on Instagram or Twitter, follow their pages, their hashtags and connect with them in conversation. Watch for the questions they ask and understand the information they're trying to seek.

You will learn so much more when you listen. When you talk you are only sharing what you already know or what you think you know and that is fine but things change, people change, markets change and audiences change. If you start by listening so that you can build your brand to suit your audience, you need to continue to listen. If you treat it as a one-off task your messages and approach will become outdated and stop hitting the mark. Your investments will be wasted and you won't see the ROI you want.

Listening not only helps to shape your content but it also helps to ensure your brand personality and tone of voice are hitting the mark. You can't decide on a tone and personality based on your personal preference, it has to be relevant to your target audience. It has to speak to them on a level, appeal to them, relate to them and make them want to listen to what you have to say. This is something that you can best understand by observing them in their own ‘space’, in their comfort zone, among their peers. When you’re using their language to discuss their topics , they will tune in.

Meeting your audience's needs is a constant and ongoing task of adjustment and readjustment. It's like an infinite task of titration to hit the sweet spot and get your messaging just right.

Listen.

Adjust.

Listen.

Readjust.

Repeat.

Know Your Target Audience

Sat, 20 Feb 2021 14:13:26 GMT

If you don’t know your target audience, like REALLY know them, how can you make sure that your content speaks to them?

One of the biggest mistakes that people make is to continue to write/record/share content that they feel is valuable to their audience without having done the research to find out who their target audience actually is in terms of age, interests, demographics, psychographics etc.

The temptation is to walk into a role and think, we’re X industry, the audience is probably Y, so they’ll be interested in Z. That’s not good enough. You need to delve deeper to really KNOW who you’re targeting with your marketing content.

How?

Use the resources you have at your fingertips:

Social media –

Find your audience. Where do they hang out? Facebook/Twitter/Instagram/LinkedIn?

What are they engaging with around your industry and products or services?

Use hashtags. Which hashtags are relevant to your audience? What will they use to research or what will they follow out of interest? Follow those hashtags. See what content is shared, what’s being asked? What’s doing well?

Email -

Send an email survey.

Be picky, make sure the questions are relevant to what you want to know. Make sure you dig deep to get the detailed information that you need.

Do you have a clear idea of your ICA (ideal client avatar)? If not and you’re not sure what that is, check out this blog post here .

If you know your ICA, you should have a good understanding of their personality, behaviours and overall psychographics around your target audience. If you don’t know this yet, do the research, learn, understand and craft your narrative around your ICA.

This is all great for content marketing but it goes beyond that.

Knowing your audience really REALLY well, better than your competition, will enable you to streamline, refine and enhance all of your marketing activity. And you know what happens when you refine your marketing to that extent? You ROI will improve significantly.

If you know who you’re talking to and you know their personality, you can in-turn refine your branding: your tone of voice, your brand personality. If you’re an established business, don’t feel like it’s too late to change because your branding is already established and in place. Branding isn’t just about the colours you use and the style of your logo, it’s about much more and once you understand and tailor that to your target audience, you’ll see the benefits.

You may feel like you’re running constantly to get in front of your target audience, to be seen and trying to get their attention. If you know who they are and adapt your marketing content and branding accordingly, they’ll find you. You will end up in the same places at the same time, you’ll hit all of the right sweet spots with them, they’ll feel like you’re talking directly to them and they’ll be drawn to you. They’ll bring their friends/family/colleagues.

The groundwork can feel tedious and frustrating but it’s worth it. It will reward you for your hard work and determination and let’s be honest, if you’ve not done it, will your competition have done it? If they have, you don’t want to fall behind. If they haven’t, take the chance, do the work and get ahead. Leave them in your trail of dust wondering what happened and how come your marketing has suddenly got legs and run!

Jargon isn't always appropriate

Sat, 13 Feb 2021 18:53:07 GMT

There are times when it is and isn't fitting

According to the Cambridge Dictionary, the definition of jargon is as follows: " special words and phrases that are used by particular groups of people, especially in their work " (cambridgedictionary.com)

It’s tempting to use jargon to demonstrate your depth of specialist knowledge, especially if you’re not feeling too confident about your position in the business, your company’s position in the industry or you’re new to a role and you’re trying to prove yourself.

Using jargon can be a bit of a muscle flex in terms of ‘look how much I know – are you impressed?’

Who is your audience?

First of all, we really need to establish who your audience is because that’s a huge influencing factor. If your audience is internal or the same industry, some jargon might be ok but even within your organisation and industry, there will be people who don’t know what you’re talking about.

If you want to communicate something internally from the technical team to colleagues at all levels for example, consider whether everyone from the intern to the MD will understand your terminology.

If you’re going to use acronyms, help a colleague out and drop the full term in brackets at least once, to help them learn. In fact, this is just good practice and so should always be included.

If you’re targeting others within your industry, again, some jargon will probably be ok but consider whether it’s widely used and understood or unique to your organisation. Find out more about this and ‘hyper-local jargon’ towards the end of this post.

What’s the problem with using jargon?

Jargon can be like finding a hair in your dinner, it’s off-putting and makes you question whether or not you should continue.

- Nine times out of ten, people don’t appreciate being shown up and made to feel intellectually inferior.

- Using jargon can make your content clunky, over-complicated and disengaging.

- Disengaging content results in lost sales. People will fall out of the sales funnel at the point that the information they’re trying to glean about a product or service is not flowing and easy to digest.

If you’re not sure whether you use too much jargon, pick 5 pieces of marketing material at random and hand them out to 5 people outside of your organisation and industry and ask them to have a read through. If they can get the whole way through without:

a) Having to Google a word or term

b) Having to ask someone else what something means

c) Having to re-read a sentence or paragraph three times to make sense of it

….you’re probably doing ok.

If the feedback involves any of the above, I would suggest your revise your existing blog posts, web content, brochures etc. and be more mindful when producing future content. You want your content to slip down like a good wine, with your audience keen to consume more of this appetising information.

The reason I suggest asking people outside of your organisation is that more often than not, organisations develop their own jargon or ‘ hyper-local jargon ’. How many acronyms do you hear banded about or how many times do you hear terms used where you know what it means in the context of your work but someone else would have no clue what you’re talking about?

It can be particularly hard to cut out all of the jargon if you work in a technical or scientific industry. It can be tedious and drawn-out, but it might be a case of going over it time and time again, breaking it down further and further until you can hand it to Bob on the street and him read through it, hand it back to you and say ‘yeah that makes sense’. Literally, it needs to be that simple.

In summary

- Sense-check your content with people within or outside of your industry, depending on your target audience.

- Be aware of hyper-local jargon and avoid it.

- Always include the full term at least once before using the acronym.

- Make your content as easy to consume as a good glass of wine, not a bony fish.

How to Hold The Interest of Your Audience

Thu, 04 Feb 2021 19:47:40 GMT

Peaking and maintaining your audience's interest is challenging...

It can seem like an impossible task to gain and maintain the interest of your target audience but this is where that groundwork and research comes into its own and really pays dividends.

If you have been watching my videos and reading my previous blog posts, you will now be very familiar with my mantra about knowing your audience but just in case you’ve managed to avoid it all completely (where have you been?!) I’ll do a quick re-cap but I’d also recommend looking back through some previous posts and videos on my social media.

So, basically, you really need to do your research…

Before launching your brand, you should know who you’re targeting:

o Are they male or female?

o How old are they?

o What do they do for a living?

o Who do they live with?

o Do they own a home/rent/live with parents?

o How many rooms in their property?

o What kind of car do they have?

o What’s their disposable income like?

o Are they sociable?

Where and when do they socialise?

Where and when do they spend their time online?

o Do they work?

Full time/part time?

o What’s their relationship status?

o How do they dress?

o What do they spend their disposable income on?

o Are they family-oriented?

o Do they have pets?

o Where and when do they holiday?

o How often do they get their hair cut?

Some of this might seem a bit OTT and to be honest, depending on the kind of product or service you’re offering, some of this will be OTT but if you’re selling fashion or beauty products for example, all of this information will help to build a really clear picture in your mind of who you’re talking to. This is your IDEAL CLIENT AVATAR . You might have heard of this before or seen the acronym ICA dotted about in marketing circles.

It can seem like a LOT but it you can get all of this clear in your mind, you will be able to know what will peak and hold your target audience’s interest. It’s really important to be aware of the kind of person you’re trying to reach with your messages and content.

If you’re still not convinced let me demonstrate with a few examples - see below...

Imagine you are a beautician, thinking about your target audience or ICA:

If you know they always (pre-COVID) go to the pub with their female friends on a Friday night, they’re likely to want their nails done for that.
If you know they work a full-time job but still live at home with mum and dad, you know they’re likely to have a decent amount of disposable income, so they won’t be scraping together the pennies each time they want a facial.
If they drive an Audi, the chances are they’re happy to spend a bit more if they know they’ll get the quality in return.
If they work in events, they will likely want to have a number of beauty treatments regularly, you could put together a few monthly package deals.
If they scroll through Instagram for inspiration for the latest beauty trends, make sure that is where you invest in your content marketing.
If they like to holiday abroad in the biggest party places, they will likely want a full body slimming/toning/waxing/manicure/pedicure/eyebrow shebang treatment before they go. FIND OUT WHEN THEY GO and make sure your emails are hitting their inbox a good month or two before, reminding them to book their appointment with you.

So that’s the content and the where, now you just need to make sure it looks good, it’s easily digestible, accessible and varied.

Hopefully that’s enough to convince you. It’s simple really, knowing your audience means that you can effectively INTEREST your audience.

If you’re still not sure or if you’d like some help, please do just get in touch and I can help you to work it all out.

Be Helpful to Your Audience

Wed, 09 Dec 2020 10:31:18 GMT

Being helpful to your audience will put you in a position of trust

The one thing you can do for your audience, not just through your content marketing but through your online presence as a whole, is to be helpful.

Being helpful will:

provide engaging and valuable content
keep your audience coming back
put you in a position of trust
build your reputation as genuine
make you a voice of authority in your industry

Let’s put this into a real life scenario: who do you go to more?

The friend who sometimes answers the phone, more often than not misses your call and then rushes you off the phone when they finally do answer.
The friend that 99% of the time answers and then makes time to listen to what’s on your mind and gives sound advice.

(Content marketing is real life by the way).

Friend number one is your last resort in a crisis, you’ve probably tried everyone else first and they’re all busy. Friend number two is the one you really want to have on speed dial or as your ICE contact.

This applies to brands and consumers in just the same way. Be that brand that is always there. Always responds to comments on blogs and social media posts. It doesn’t just have to be on or about your own content. Look for other content that is relevant. Look for competitors’ content.

Get in front of your target audience and HELP them.

If you are going to build a brand reputation, you want it to sound like friend number two, the reliable, trustworthy one.

This relates back to my previous blog posts about knowing your audience, where are they and what are they looking for. Be THERE. If you know them well enough, you’ll know where to find them. Don’t wait for them to come to you, seek them out and put yourself in front of them. If they’re in Facebook groups, on forums or on Instagram, be there and be helpful.

Keep reading for more tips on how you can create helpful content for your target audience...

You should know the questions that your consumers want answered, think about the frequently asked questions you get asked or see in your industry, not just about your brand or your products but in general. Make a note of them and use this to form the basis of a content calendar. Use that content across social media, blogs, your website… anywhere and everywhere. Show that you know your audience and show that you know what they want to know. Make yourself a source. Give insight into the commonly asked questions and musings.

My most asked questions are things like:

Should we be on all social media platforms?
What is tone of voice?
What’s brand personality and what’s the relevance of it?
Do I need more than one brand colour?
I’ve got my logo in a JPEG format from a previous designer, is that enough? (No).

These are all things that have been covered in my content marketing across various formats and platforms: videos on YouTube and social media, social media posts and blog posts.

By becoming the go-to brand for information, you will be the first one they think of when they need something from your industry, you will be the first one they think of when friends/family/colleagues need something from your industry.

By putting yourself out there and putting the time and effort into being present, consistent and helpful, your audience will slowly but surely start to come to you, and they will bring their tribe. The more groundwork you put in, the more it will pay off in the long run.

If you’re not sure about the kind of content that you can produce or where to share it, have a look through the previous blog posts in this series or contact me for 1:1 advice and guidance. I can work with you to help form a plan and produce a content calendar. You can do as much or as little of the work as you like.

My job is to support and partner with you.

Give Value to Your Audience

Sun, 06 Dec 2020 21:49:25 GMT

Add to their lives and see engagement soar.

Whether you are selling products or providing services, it is always imperative that you GIVE value in your content marketing. Don’t just promote yourself, your products, your latest offers, your services.

Give value. Real value.

The point of considering what you can give to your audience, in terms of value, is to ensure that you are engaging them, obtaining and holding their attention. If you can do this, they will listen when you talk. If you take your time to consider your content and ensure it is of interest, your audience will be more likely to listen, engage and take action when you DO promote your products or services.

Content marketing is about conversations. You may not always be in an overtly two-way conversation but this is how you have to imagine your content marketing. If you make a statement, what follow-up questions might someone have from that? This feeds your ongoing content, tells a story and maintains engagement.

Don’t’ just talk about yourself. No one wants to be ‘THAT guy’ in real life, neither should you be in content marketing. Talk about the industry, about the wider world, related issues, concerns and considerations.

The problem with constantly talking about yourself and ‘selling’ is that it can begin to feel like spam. It becomes a one-way conversation and people switch off. Imagine that you go to a party and the person who is renowned for being self-obsessed is making their way over to you; do you think ‘I wonder what gems she has today!’ or do you think ‘oh no, how can I avoid this?!’

Consider this and then think about your content marketing. What are you doing? Are you the self-obsessed sales pusher or are you the inquisitive, thoughtful and considerate one that everyone loves to chat to?

If people feel like you’re just constantly pushing your latest offers and trying to get them to buy your products or services, they will get fed up and tune out.

Your audience needs to leave feeling fulfilled and intrigued for more.

Make sure your content is informative, valuable and insightful.

Think about…

… what it is that your audience might like to know

… what they might find interesting

… quick hints and tips to make their lives easier

… what they’re looking for when they stumble across your content

… are you answering the questions that they need answered?

For example, if you own a print business and you are always asked which file format is required for printing, why not write a blog post about that? Give the answers your audience is looking for, explain which file type and why. This then provides content for your social media channels as well as your website.

If you sell products internationally and you’re often asked what sales channels you use, add it your ‘About’ section on your website, write a blog about it, make a video. You’re answering the questions people are asking.

As a general rule, your content should be 80% value and 20% promotional.

Why not have a look at your content and work out how your stats add up?

If you would like help with creating a content plan for your marketing, please get in touch.

Find Out About Your Audience

Fri, 04 Dec 2020 15:39:24 GMT

If you’re creating content, you need to know who, what, where and when… and more about your audience.

You really need to know who you’re talking to in your content marketing. Not just, aged 25-35 and likes beauty products. You need to REALLY understand their financial circumstances, their personality, what their social situation is like, if they ever have any free time, when it is and how they spend it.

Here are a few questions for you to ponder. Why not see how many of these you can answer about your target audience?

What’s their home situation? Do they live with parents/rent/own a home?

- This gives an idea of life stage, income and social life.

Do they live on their own/with friends/with family?

- How close are they to others that might be influenced by their interests and brand loyalties?

What’s their family situation? Do they live with parents or are they settled down with their own family.

- If they’re living with parents, who’s the decision maker in that household?

Are they sociable? If so, in what ways – do they go out, socialise online, big groups or small groups?

- Could word of mouth be impactful with your marketing? Will your content be passed through large social circles or be read by one person before they move on to the next thing?

- Which members of your audience would count as influencers?

What social media platforms do they BUY from?

- This will impact where you invest your content marketing. You need to be where your audience is buying from.

Do they buy from physical shops or online?

- This will give an indication of their thoughts/feelings and trust towards the internet. Do they think everything on the internet is fake news, set-up to lead them into fraudulent purchases? Don’t invest your money in getting your content seen online if your audience won’t be there or buy into it.

When do they buy – what time of day and what time of year?

- If you can understand and predict their purchasing patterns, you can get your content marketing in front of them at the right time to influence their decision-making process.

How much disposable income do they have?

- If you know this, you’ll know from your pricing point whether or not they’re a worthwhile target for your content marketing.

These are just some of the questions that you’ll need to know the answers to in order to be able to really understand your audience and ensure that your content is in the right place at the right time, using the right language and the right visual appeal.

By having a full understanding of you audience and their likes, dislikes, interests and social situation, you can build a really clear picture of you audience. This information will help you to build a clear picture of specific characteristics of your target audience. Through knowing your audience to this level, you can optimise SEO and your content, carefully craft messages to appeal to your audience, and ultimately bring them to you.

I think it’s underestimated the value and the need of fully understanding who you’re talking to. The more you know, the more refined and honed your content marketing will be.

Why is it important to give explanations in your content marketing?

Fri, 27 Nov 2020 10:00:46 GMT

Giving clear explanations creates transparency and breeds trust

It might seem obvious but not everyone does it, explaining simple things like:

- who you are

- what you do

- where your name came from

- how the products are made

- what level of service can be expected?

These are all simple but important points of discussion in your content marketing. People feel comfortable when they know what to expect. Setting expectation gives a safe framework and will create a space where prospects feel comfortable to reach out to ask for more information, therefore breaking down barriers and creating relationships.

Explaining who you are might seem obvious but look at what it says on your website and social media:

- Is the information there and is it clear?

- Does it go right back to the beginning?

- Show your face, who’s the owner?

- How did the business come about?

- When was it started?

- What is the purpose of the company?

Telling people what you do might seem pointless, you might think it’s obvious or that it’s evident across your content marketing but really breaking it down gives you the opportunity to talk about your brand values as well as your brand vision and mission.

Unless the brand name is literally your name, tell the story of how the name came about. Liontooth for example is not obvious and the story behind it gives insight into my personality (as the person behind the brand) and the vision of my business.

If you manufacture and sell products, tell your audience how it’s made. Show them videos and talk about the ingredients or parts, what’s used and why did you select that supplier? It helps to build a bigger picture and shows the thought and care that goes into your products, adding value.

Setting out what level and tone of service can be expected, helps to create an idea of what your audience can expect. They can go into a sale or service engagement with you, anticipating the personality that they will be working with.

All of these bits of information help to build a beautiful and robust story, nurturing your relationship with your audience, breaking down barriers and building brand loyalty.

Design is integral to great content marketing

Tue, 24 Nov 2020 20:39:28 GMT

You can’t afford to overlook the graphic design element of your content marketing

It can be incredibly easy to get wrapped up in the CONTENT side of your content marketing but please don’t overlook the graphic design side. If you overlook this, you risk damaging your brand.

Here are some examples of content that you might be creating:

- Creating memes

- Sharing testimonials

- Official company announcements

- Industry statistics

- Special offers and discounts

- ‘About’ information

- Infographics

- Images in articles

If this looks familiar, are you making sure that all of the visuals are ‘on-brand’?

If you’re using colour pallets that reflect your mood on that particular day, rather than your brand colours, you’re weakening your brand.

If you’re lifting memes from the internet rather than creating them for yourself in your own brand identity, you’re weakening your brand.

If you’re using infographics from technical papers rather than creating your own, you’re weakening your brand.

You’re undoing the hard work of the marketing team or graphic designer that set up your branding in the first place, of the people that have invested money in having brand guidelines created, of the people that painstakingly created branded visuals before you.

It’s not too late. Don’t despair. You can change and you can do it now.

There are apps available that allow you to create templates for a wide variety of purposes; in fact, all of those listed above. You don’t have to invest in a graphic designer to have in-house and on-hand, you can do it yourself. If you don’t feel confident, you could invest a small amount in having someone setup your templates for you.

If you don’t already have brand guidelines, I would recommend having some set out. They don’t have to be huge, laborious and complicated; they can be simple and to the point.

What are the benefits of paying more attention to the visuals?

- Clear and reinforced branding

- Strengthened brand identity

- Content easily recognised by your audience

- Clean and lovely looking pieces of work

- Imagine the thing of beauty that your Instagram grid could become…

- Clearly defined tone of voice and brand personality

When you become a BRAND and not just another company pedalling their products and services, you gain momentum in your marketing and you can charge a premium.

That’s the difference and that’s why it’s worth it.

Check out previous blog posts on branding and why it’s necessary, alternatively visit the Liontooth YouTube channel.

Consistency is Key to Quality Content Marketing

Mon, 23 Nov 2020 14:07:17 GMT

If you haven’t heard ‘consistency is key’ in terms of marketing – lucky you! (And sorry that I’ve just destroyed that for you).

One of the biggest factors in content marketing (and all marketing) is consistency, whether that’s:

- Showing up on your social media

- Posting regular blogs

- The tone of voice you use

- The branding you use

- The message you promote

- Your brand identity

By being consistent, you’ll reach and maintain engagement with the right people, in the right places and as you’ll know from my previous videos (see YouTube) and social media posts, I frequently reiterate the importance of place and time.

In order to be effective in your marketing efforts, you need to ensure you are consistent; some of the benefits of this include:

- Creating and meeting audience expectation

- Increasing audience retention

- Building a feeling of dependability from your audience

- Reliability is a big trust-builder

- Better traction on your social media

- People feel comfortable with predictability

- Become a voice of authority

- Strengthen your SEO

By building a framework of expectation for your audience , consistency in your content marketing will ensure you fulfil and exceed this expectation, putting you in a trusted and reliable position as a brand. This framework of expectation and the consistency of meeting it, also means that you will retain an engaged audience. They will grow to expect certain content from you and by providing that, you are becoming dependable, trusted and predictable. This creates a feeling of comfort.

By consistently providing quality content across your marketing channels, you will become a voice of authority in your industry, strengthening your position and helping you to become a ‘go-to’ brand.

Consistency also helps to build traction on your social media. By telling stories and providing quality content, your audience become hooked. They want to listen and engage, waiting for the next bit of the brand story, the next product release, the next snippet of information. The consistent, quality marketing content feeds the need for constant consumption and will have your audience coming back for more, showing up in anticipation.

Consistent, regular content marketing, which is accurate in its message, will help to improve your SEO and increase your audience reach.

To help in your efforts of consistency, planning is key. By planning ahead and not being left on the backfoot, you can ensure that you are always sticking to the brand guidelines and messaging as well as showing up regularly across your channels.

Behind The Scenes

Fri, 20 Nov 2020 15:01:04 GMT

Give a little insight and make yourself relatable. People want to work with people, not robots.

What’s the point in showing what goes on behind the scenes in our business? That’s not relevant. No one cares about that, they just want their product or service to be the best quality and delivered in a timely manner. Nothing else is relevant.

Sort of true.

BUT what if you do show a little more?

Think about your relationships with friends and family. If you open up a little more, do you not feel those relationships strengthen? Barriers come down, more honest and open conversations occur, trust is built and they become your ‘go-to’ person.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could do the same with customers and clients? Become their go-to brand?

It can seem unnecessary and too revealing, some may say over the top and unprofessional but it doesn’t have to be any of those things. Make sure your behind the scenes content is considered. Don’t share a video or photos without doing a quick scan of what else is in the shot – is it going to give away anything you wouldn’t want to be made public knowledge? Consider and plan what you’re going to say in your videos. Who is going to speak and what will they say?

If you work in a medium or large business, make the most of having a team or multiple teams of people. Get everyone involved. Your audience will likely know who your sales and customer services teams are but have they only ever heard their voice on the end of the phone? Have they seen what they look like?

- Do they know that your head of customer service is a 65 year old man who’s an absolute yoga king? That’s an interesting little nugget of information.

- Do they know your head of sales is a 22 year old woman that’s champion weight lifter for Great Britain? That’s a conversation starter.

This sort of information is fun, interesting, breaks down barriers and makes people want to open up conversations with you. Take your audience on a behind the scenes tour of your facility; whether that’s one big office (go to each desk and say "hi, what’s your name and what do you do?") or a multi-floored building with production (walk around and show how things are made and who’s making them). If you have an office pet, do a daily feature on ‘the life of bob the cat’ – what antics is he up to today?

If you work on your own or with a business partner from a home office, share what your day to day life is like. Share your hints and tips on achieving a work-life balance:

- How do you stay active?

- How do you not spend all day with your head in the fridge?

- Do you have a pet that acts as a foot warmer?

- Are you studying whilst working?

- What books do you read to relax or grow your knowledge?

- How do you unwind?

- Are you juggling different thinking caps throughout the day – parent, carer, boss, dog walker.

Give a little insight and make yourself relatable. People want to work with people, not robots.

There is always something of interest to be shared and you don’t have to lose your professional front in order to break down the barriers.

Keep reading for my top tips...

Tips:

· Keep it brief

· Keep it professional

· Keep it in your stories

· Be mindful of what’s in the background

· Make it relatable

· Keep it interesting

· Make it a conversation starter

· Ask questions

Remember, we’re all nosey by nature and to get a little sneak peek feels a bit naughty, a bit exciting and will make your audience want more.

We want engagement, we want conversations and we want opportunities.

Tell Your Audience ABOUT Yourself

Sun, 15 Nov 2020 20:43:06 GMT

I’ll be sharing some hints and tips on how to be consistent and give structure to your content marketing. I’ll be covering the A-Z of content marketing, giving you inspiration and direction for your marketing plans.

Starting with A for ABOUT.

Tell you customers, clients and prospects all ABOUT yourself, your business and what you do.

The best thing you can do as a business is think about the questions you are frequently asked and make a note of them, these are the things that people want to know ABOUT your business. Answer those questions through your content marketing and you’ll be appealing to your target audience.

If you are a bigger business with sales or customer services teams, get them involved and ask them to let you know what sort of questions they are often asked. You can make it a regular weekly post.

Here are some ideas of things you might like to consider:

When was your business established?
Who set it up?
Why was your business set up?
Who are your staff and what do they do?
What do you offer?
What problems can you solve for you clients or customers?
What are your Values?

All of this will give you some lovely quality content that will appeal to the right people.

Keeping Your Branding Consistent

Fri, 23 Oct 2020 09:45:52 GMT

Could anyone represent your brand, based on the guidelines you have?

Whether you are newly established, well established, have acquired an existing company or are looking to franchise your company, it is essential that you maintain clear brand guidelines which are easily accessed and understood by those representing your brand.

Without clear and concise guidelines, it's easy for company representatives to weaken the brand identity with off-brand communications such as 'similar' colours or fonts being used, the logo to be stretched or misplaced on a page, the wrong tone of voice to be used...

Some of the elements that should be included in brand guidelines include:

Brand Story

How did your business come about? What's the back story?

Vision, Mission and Values
These give insight into your drivers and brand personality.
Brand Proposition
What can you offer that other brands can't?
Brand Benefits
Whether these be practical or emotional, it's important for this to be understood so that it can be communicated, consistently.
Brand Personality
If your brand were a person, what would they be like?
Tone of Voice
How does your brand 'speak'? This should tie in with brand personality.
Ideal Client
Who do you want to attract to your brand?
Logo use
Size/orientation/colours/location on a page and much more!
Typography
Which fonts, weights and sizes should be used for headers and bodies of text?
Brand Colours
What colours represent your brand? Not just 'red' but do you know the CMYK, RGB, Pantone and HEX for each of your brand colours?

If your brand guidelines include all of the above and are well written, they should be easily applied to any area of the business's communications, creating a clear and strong brand identity.
Adhering to strict brand guidelines is how businesses such as McDonald's, Adidas and Apple have managed to grow to the size they are with no one ever having to ask 'Is that McDonald's? It looks like it but the logo doesn't look the right shade of yellow?'. Those golden arches were not accident. We all recognise them from a mile off and that's because of strong and consistent branding.
Branding is far more involved than a logo.
If you were surprised by any of the above, please feel free to get in touch and I'll be more than happy to talk through how I can help clarify things for you.

Market Segmentation

Tue, 06 Oct 2020 19:05:48 GMT

What is it and how can it add value to your business?

Market segmentation is something that's key to successful marketing.

You'll often hear people say "imagine your target audience as one person" but it's not always that simple. If you offer a range of products or services that appeal to a range of people, there's no point in trying to imagine one monstrous amalgamation of all of those needs and personality traits.

Effective market segmentation is the process of splitting and grouping your target market according to similar wants, needs, values and characteristics. In doing this, you are creating more manageable and realistic sub-markets for you to better target through refined means.

The benefits of segmenting your market include:
- Stronger marketing messages
- Advertising can be more targeted
- Strengthened brand affinity
- More effective marketing tactics
- Better quality leads and as a result, higher conversion rate
- Clearer differentiation from competitors
- More focused marketing planning

As you can see, from a business perspective, segmenting your market will lead to streamlined processes and as a result, less wasted spend and higher returns on the money you do invest.

There are various types of segmentation:
- Demographic
- Geographic
- Behavioural
- Psychographic

Demographic market segmentation considers characteristics such as age, gender, race, income, location, finances, education and cultural background. By considering and grouping according to these factors, you instantly have a group of people who will have similar interests, life experiences, reading abilities and disposable incomes. For example, this means that you can target your higher-end leisure products by advertising in a glossy magazine, reaching people with more disposable income and more free time on their hands (at a very obvious and basic level).

Geographic market segmentation looks at not just country or postcode, it has bigger implications. By considering the geographical location of your market segments, you can establish groups of urban, suburban or rural audiences, you can be aware of and appreciate cultural implications, weather conditions and much more. There's no point in promoting flip flops to people at the North Pole!

Behavioural market segmentation enables you to predict your customers’ actions. There are a number of elements to consider, such as:

- Purchasing habits: where, how often and through what means are they buying?
- Spending habits: once a month, weekly, special occasions? Not just on your brand but others.
- Brand interactions: how frequently and on what platforms are they interacting with your brand? Just via promoted ads, when you put yourself in front of them or are they seeking you out?

Psychogr aphic market segmentation is very much more subjective and obtained from in-depth qualitative research, as opposed to running data full of numbers and figures. Establishing an understanding of personality traits will help lead into a better read of your target markets' values, drivers, fears and really shape an understanding of their personality.

Here are some things to consider:

- Lifestyle
- Values
- Interests
- Motivators
- Personality traits
- Attitudes
- Interests
- Drivers
- Beliefs

How do you approach your marketing? Do you go for a blanket approach and hope it hits the mark with enough people to make it worthwhile or are you really refining and targeting your products, prices, places and promotions?

Market segmentation is a big but hugely valuable investment of time. If you would like help with segmenting your market, get in touch.

#marketsegmentation #targetmarket #targetaudience #marketingconsultant #freelancemarketer #demographics #psychographics

How Liontooth Works

Tue, 28 Jul 2020 06:11:49 GMT

What to expect from working with Liontooth

Liontooth was set-up with the intention of working collaboratively and in partnership with clients. Not all work requires a partnership situation but for others it requires more than a relatively simple transaction. Either way, trust and transparency is paramount to the success of the interaction.

The usual process you could expect from working with Liontooth looks something like this:

After an initial enquiry to Liontooth, we will arrange a meeting, either face to face or via video call, to establish your marketing need and how I can help you meet that.

Following the call I'll go away and consider what I believe will be essential to your business, based on the conversation; what will help strengthen your business's marketing and as a result, strengthen your profits. This can include everything from situational analysis, competitor research, workshops, branding or building a website through to social media content planning, designing marketing materials, stationery and brand revisions.

I'll put together a proposal with costings, broken down by hourly rates. This gives you the opportunity to decide whether to go ahead with the whole proposal or pick and choose what to go ahead with and when.

Giving complete transparency on cost and estimated timings provides full disclosure and allows you the control to ensure you remain within your budget. There is never any pressure to proceed with more than you want, the decision is entirely yours. All I will do is advise on which I believe to be the priority but you are in the position of power and it is your decision how your money is spent.

I never use third party providers which means that once the decision has been made to proceed and timings agreed, turnaround time is minimal and costs will not escalate. Working with a marketing consultant as opposed to a marketing agency, you will only ever have one point of contact and I will have all of the information you need, on the spot. There will be no need to chase for feedback or wait for answers to be gleaned internally.

If this sounds appealing or interesting to you, please feel free to get in touch.

The Basics of Branding

Wed, 27 May 2020 11:44:51 GMT

Branding is, in the most basic sense, a uniform.

Much like a uniform, branding is a way to distinguish your products or services from anyone else’s.

Branding is often believed to just be the logo but it is much more than that. Once you say, ‘it’s much more than a logo’, the concept can become a bit overwhelming and you can end up feeling like it’s too complex for you to grasp.

It doesn’t need to be any more complicated than this: branding is a way to identify products, services, communications and materials as belonging to one entity. i.e. a school uniform is worn by kids of all ages, shapes and sizes but you know they’re all from the same school, because of the uniform.

Brand identity

Having a strong and consistent colour pallet, as well as things like brand fonts and visuals will all help to provide you with a tool kit that you can use to help build your visual brand identity.

There are brands that are so well established, you can identify them just by the colour, tag line, a snippet of the logo or hearing the voice used over their adverts. That is when you know you have done a good job with building a strong brand identity.

Tone of voice

It becomes a bit more complicated when we talk about that uniform reaching beyond a visual identification, but it still works. If you consider tone of voice, this feeds into branding because it’s a way of identifying the personality and target audience of a product or service. Tone of voice is, essentially, the language you use when communicating your brand message. Are you talking to a young audience, in a casual and fun way or are you talking to professionals with a more formal tone? A clearly identifiable tone of voice will help strengthen brand identity and become easily recognisable as belonging to a particular brand. This tone of voice should be uniform throughout all communications including advertising, promotional and informational materials, websites, customer services, sales teams, finance department… EVERYTHING.

It’s emotional

All of the above work together to create an emotional response from your audience. This emotional response is what will set you apart from your competition. If the competition are offering the same (or very similar) products or services at similar prices, the choice between the two can be a hard one to make but if you have worked hard to create a positive emotional response through your branding, this could be your differentiating and (hopefully) winning factor.

An example of this would be Heinz. Heinz has built a brand around the idea of comforting and cosy family environments – i.e. tomato ketchup and the famous ‘Daddy or chips’ debate; recent tomato soup visuals of a warm and cosy cottage on a cold winters day with a steaming bowl of tomato soup. Those are positive, warming and comforting emotions evoked by the brand.

Consistency is key

In order to build a strong brand, you need to be consistent.

This may seem straightforward and obvious but I will leave you with some things to consider; if you collaborate with another brand or choose to sponsor an event or competition etc., consider whether or not your ‘partner’ fits with your brand identity.

Maintaining consistency goes beyond your own brand. Consider who you associate yourself with and how that reflects on you.

Quick Content Tips

Wed, 13 May 2020 18:41:57 GMT

Here are some ideas to help you keep producing content during a pandemic

There are numerous ways that you can ensure that you continue to produce relevant content in order to continue engaging with your target audience, even if you’re not able to actively work as you would normally. Recent conversations with clients and prospects have highlighted the lack of inspiration and direction people are suffering due to not being able to go about their usual daily business.

Here I will provide you with some tips and tricks to (hopefully!) help inspire you to produce fresh and relevant content during this pandemic.

Some things I have picked up from my own experiences with social media:

- Your content should be valuable with some added fun

- Throwback Thursday

- People like lists, or ‘listicles’ (?!)

- Behind the scenes photos and insights are popular

- ‘Deskies’ are also popular – ‘this is my home desk’

The #ThrowbackThursday Concept

This is a useful one to use for content at this particular time because it gives you the opportunity to reflect on and highlight past successes. It doesn’t need to be on a Thursday and you don’t need to use that hashtag but use this mindset to help inspire your content. Look back over past social media posts or newsletters and use that content to create new posts, newsletters or blog posts.

Listicles

Use lists to give quick insights and overviews for things like Top 5 Stretches to Do At Home or Top 5 Venues for International Conferences. You can use these on a branded background for a social media post, ideally coupled with a blog post to drive traffic to your website. These could also be used in targeted newsletters to your mailing list. If you have a segmented mailing list, you could target your recipients with relevant content e.g. an estate agent could target people on the 'landlords list' with ‘ Top 5 things to check before you can let your property ’ or people on the ‘new buyers list’ with ‘ Top 5 things to look out for when viewing a property ’.

You could also do these as a quick video. Video marketing is a great way to communicate with people. It also helps to build trust and brand personality.

Behind the Scenes

People like to see behind the scenes photos and hear about your world.

- How are you coping in the current Covid lockdown?

- How are you managing to share your house with housemates/family/pets whilst maintaining a professional façade?

- Give tips and ask for tips.

- Keep it interactive.

This is a great way to feed into and strengthen your brand personality and as a result, brand identity. It helps to create bonds and brand loyalty which is incredibly important.

'Deskies'

Apparently, people love a photo of your desk. It is another good way to show a bit of your personality – are you messy or tidy, do you have a penchant for stationery, or do you work on scraps of paper with a broken Bic?

I have given you a small handful of tips which you will hopefully find helpful. It’s important to remain active and present in your usual ways, whether that’s on social media, newsletters or blog posts.

If you would like any further help or support, please get in touch.

Did you see my recent video 'Quick Content Tips'? If not, please visit the Liontooth YouTube channel via the link at the bottom of the page to check it out.

SWOT Analysis for Short-Term Goals During Covid-19

Fri, 03 Apr 2020 14:52:54 GMT

A look at how businesses can use SWOT analysis to approach the current pandemic

SWOT analysis (also known as situational analysis) is something that should be regularly carried out for any business; essential to adapting and succeeding through challenging times.

What better time is there than now, in the midst of a worldwide pandemic, to conduct a situational analysis?

At a time when all your plans for the year (and beyond) have been thrown into disarray in such an extreme way, that no one could have predicted. Maybe you’ve had to close your business or your clients have all had to close their businesses. No one will go unaffected by this pandemic.

The easy but ineffective thing to do, is hide under a rock until this all blows over. It will blow over but what will the extent of the damage be that’s left in its wake? By carrying out a SWOT analysis now, you can put your business in a stronger position than the competition to get through this period and for when the current restrictions are lifted or at the very least, relaxed.

What’s a SWOT analysis?

SWOT analysis looks at the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats in and around your business. It’s a great way to evaluate a situation in terms of whether something is a smart move or not; look ahead to things you need to be aware of to minimise negative impact or maximise on the potential opportunity.

This form of analysis is essential when it comes to planning in any capacity, for the long-term and the short-term. SWOT analysis can be used in a number of circumstances such as launching a new business, new product development or a new service offering.

Strengths and weaknesses refer to resources, knowledge and assets held by the business i.e. computers, buildings owned, capabilities of employees. Opportunities and threats refer to things outside of the business that could have an impact – i.e. coronavirus, changes in legislation, new competition arising.

How would I carry out a SWOT analysis?

Currently, it might be difficult to see the strengths and opportunities but that’s why it’s all the more important to take the time and space to go through this process.

Look at what your company offers, whether it’s a service or a range of products. How were you previously getting this product or service to your customer? If you own a shop for example and you have had to close it because it’s not considered ‘essential’, are you able to create a website or adapt an existing one in order to offer an online shopping service with delivery? If you organise and host events, are you able to find an online platform that has the capacity and interactivity required to make the event a success online, as a virtual event?

For the purposes of a very simplified example, imagine you own a boutique clothes shop on the high street, a very basic SWOT for you might look like this:

Strengths

Great customer relationships
Committed staff
Dave is a computer wizz
Customer email database from mailing list
Jane is a part-time fashion photographer
Saving on gas/electric in the shop

Weaknesses

No website
No photos of the clothes
Overheads to cover for shop rental

Opportunities

Dave could build a website with online shop
Use mailing list to let customers know
Use social media to promote online shop
People are looking to cheer themselves up – retail therapy!

Threats

Coronavirus
Forced to close shop
Barbara from the shop next door is offering sales online

By carrying out this kind of analysis, it will help you to lift the fog of panic and disarray, giving you a clear vision of opportunities and direction to get you through this turbulent time.

Once the storm has passed

The ultimate silver lining of this situation is that as a nation (business or not) we will have all been forced out of comfort zones and challenged to overcome hurdles that we did not expect and certainly would not have chosen.

We will be more agile, with a stronger and broader means of reaching our audiences.

If you would like any further help or advice, please feel free to contact me.

Lisa.ellison@liontooth.co.uk