- At a recent event on small business, experts advised that having a clear vision is the key to brand success.
- A strong brand identity and effective marketing strategy depend on connecting with your customers.
- This conversation was part of an Insider event. ”Marketing for small businesses” was held on Tuesday, April 25th.
- Click here to watch a recording of the entire event.
This is the era of small and medium-sized enterprises. With marketing resources such as social media, podcasting, and local advertising readily available, marketing opportunities for small business owners are exploding.
At a recent event hosted by Insider and hosted by Mailchimp, marketing experts shared insights on how small business owners can take advantage of these tools. The panel discussion included Jamal Miller, Senior Director of Product Marketing at Mailchimp, Shane Pittson, VP of Marketing at Quip, and Tiffany Tollive, Founder and CEO of The EmmaRose Agency. They spoke with Jennifer Ortacares Dawkins, senior entrepreneurship reporter at Insider, as part of “Marketing for Small Businesses.”
These industry experts shared their roadmap for small business growth, from building a strong brand identity to finding the best marketing tools.
Start by building your brand identity
Panelists explained how important it is to build a strong brand identity to move small businesses forward.
“If you want your brand identity to stand out, you have to have a clear vision,” Tolliver says. “What we’re communicating is bigger than generating revenue.”
Toliver's best advice for ensuring your brand identity is to keep it simple and consistent. “If you think about logos like Nike or Target that are really legacy-based and easy to spot, they don't change their brand identity all that often, they just tweak it a little bit,” she said. Ta.
Identify your core customer base
Another important step to running a successful business is determining your core customer base: the people who are loyal to your brand.
“There's no better way to get to know your audience than to intentionally spend time with them,” said Miller. “One of the things we're proud of at Mailchimp is that we're very close to our customers, “It's about setting a time.'' To engage with them. ”
Establish trust through marketing
One of the elements of nurturing your customer base is fostering trust between your brand and your customers.
“Be proactive in your communications, think about your email, advertising, organic social presence, and be consistent. Also, if you're posting regularly and within your framework, This will increase the trust of our viewers and customers.” Come to us for such insights. ”
Identify success metrics
Tolliver argues that each company's marketing metrics will be different.
She said: “Companies need to evaluate what success looks like for them in marketing, because we all have different goals. If they're working, the measure of their success is even though they may be doing the exact same thing.”
Panelists gave examples of how technology can be used to measure the effectiveness of campaigns. “One of the things we did early on was to set up an automation that says, “If someone tweets about Quip or any of the product lines that we're a part of, it was this, then that,'' Pittson said. We had different Slack channels.
“The key to automation is connecting all the different tools you have in your marketing technology stack so that when something happens in one channel, you can respond quickly in another channel,” Miller said. ”
Build a loyal community
Supporting activities outside of business helps Quip build trust with consumers. “Always take a step back and be opportunistic about those moments, so that in the end that authenticity comes through,” Pittson said.
Starting with a clear vision and maintaining authenticity are Miller's top tips. “Tiffany started us with the idea of vision,” he said. “How rooted and authentic you can be in your brand vision and brand voice is always going to win in terms of scale.” With a degree of authenticity. ”
“What many of my clients are facing now when building their communities is not just who are they serving demographically, but also psychologically,” Tolliver said. “People are dealing with a lot of things today.” And, at least in service-based industries, being fired or not being recognized by customers is harmful. ”
We put our customers first
Pittson advised reading reviews and allowing customers to guide their small business vision.
“Ensuring that you are guided, directed and guided by your vision based on the voice of the customer and the customer's experience will always be the secret to success in any business,” he said. in. “
