The Cynefin Framework, marketing and you
Business wouldn’t be business without some plate spinning and juggling. We all know problems find their way into proceedings and those problems come in many different shapes and sizes. There is ‘no one size fits all’. Still, how we respond to a problem is half the battle. Even if the appropriate response isn’t always clear (as in current circumstances) we still need a way to at least understand the shape of what we’re facing, otherwise everything that veers off-script could be deadly. That’s where the Cynefin Framework comes in. At its simplest, it’s a tool that allows you to make better decisions by understanding the situation you’re in and how to plan in different degrees of uncertainity. In this article we’ll take a look at how it works, how it applies to marketing in a crisis and of course, how to pronounce it. A quick history Let’s get the basics out of the way. The Cynefin Framework has been around for almost two decades. It was developed by Dave Snowden and the reason you’re struggling to say it is that it’s a Welsh word, so to help you out it’s pronounced ‘Kih-neh-vihn’. Frustratingly there’s no direct English translation, but among the suggestions of other commentators is ‘habitat’ – and if we extend that to ‘environment’ we’re getting pretty close to what it’s all about. The four ‘domains’ (and that shadowy bit in the middle) The framework offers a way of understanding your environment, to give you the best possible chance of solving the problems that occur within in. It’s not always easy to see the best way forward, which can lead to underestimating a complicated problem, or over-engineering a simple one. It’s a bit like Christopher Brooker’s ‘Seven Basic Plots’ – the idea that no matter where it’s from or what it’s about, every story fits into one of a handful of broad categories. 1. Obvious (the domain of best practices). Problems in this domain are pretty much routine. They’re the ‘known-knowns’, the things that crop up from day to day but are so commonplace and unremarkable that you’re entirely comfortable in dealing with them, almost without thinking. Solving these issues is so routine that you can ‘sense, categorise and respond’ – that’s important, because as we progress, we’ll see the ‘sense’ part taking a back seat. You can use your standard planning approaches here and they work. 2. Complicated (the domain of good practices). Here we’re getting into known-unknowns – problems that require a bit more thought. These aren’t the real head-scratchers, but they’re not things you automatically have the answer to either. Problems in this domain need a bit of applied knowledge, but that’s fine, because they’re in your field of expertise. You can still ‘sense’ your way through to a degree, but you also need to ‘analyse’ before you ‘respond’. It’s a mix of knowledge and investigation. Planning in its traditional sense still works. 3. Complex (the domain of emergent solutions). Now things get tricky. With ‘complex’ problems, the first step is to understand what you’re looking at, and it may well be that you’re not starting with the full picture. Complex problems need you to understand what’s happening and why, before you can go about finding the solution. At this stage ‘sense’ takes second billing and now ‘probe’ is the first step. Solutions may seem obvious in hindsight, but they’re anything but obvious at the time and solving one such problem doesn’t set you up for solving others in future. This is when traditional planning starts to become less effective – you need a more agile and adaptive way of working and small changes need to be made often. 4. Chaotic (the domain of novel solutions). These are the real curve balls. In the chaotic domain there’s no clear relationship between cause and effect and the absolute priority is just to establish order and stability. It’s here that we hear people talking about ‘fire-fighting’ and ‘triage’. We’re in the realm of crisis and emergency now and even if the solution you land on isn’t right first time, you need to ‘act, sense, respond’ to find some kind of solution, just to put the brakes on. Normal planning with long term predictions goes out the window – those who can adapt to the environment quickly are the winners. Finally, disorder – (the space in the middle). We’ll only spend a moment here, because it’s not somewhere we’d ever really want to be. There’s a reason it’s a shadowy space in the middle of the diagram, because it sits outside the framework – it represents having no plan whatsoever – you need to act in the moment. On to spring 2020 So what does all this mean for marketing planning, given what’s going on right now? It may feel that ‘Obvious’ problems and even those that sit in the ‘Complicated’ domain are now just fuzzy memories (like pubs and flour). It’s safe to say that the current pandemic has brought major challenges for every business, which can make it feel like we’re spending all our time in the ‘Complex’ and ‘Chaotic’ domains. I’ve often blogged about the importance of routine and planning in giving you the mental bandwidth to deal with the unexpected, and if those are your strong suits, then you’ll be thanking yourself for having that foresight. The Cynefin Framework sits well with an organisation that has conducted a risk analysis, prioritised those risks and their likely impacts and put all of that into a crisis plan. The framework helps you to recognise a crisis as such, the plan tells you how to plan next. Short timescales are required and lots of revisiting based on what you are learning. What if there is no plan? If planning doesn’t come naturally and you now find yourself in a crisis without a plan, then all of the above may feel like things to promise yourself you’ll take care of once we’re through all this. But in the meantime,
LinkedIn, opinion polls and the big questions
According to a recent poll by YouGov, Elon Musk is America’s third most popular business figure and the sixth most famous. Almost three quarters of the study group have heard of him and would variously describe him as ‘exciting’, ‘intelligent’ and ‘charismatic’. Despite that, 18% of those asked had a negative opinion of him. Now, Elon would probably find all of this fascinating, as he once said, “It’s very important to have a feedback loop, where you’re constantly thinking about what you’ve done and how you could be doing it better.” Couldn’t agree more – feedback is so important, from clients, co-workers and the industry. This week LinkedIn sent its brand new poll feature live, meaning that in a couple of minutes you can tune into the thoughts and feelings of your whole network on any question you like. Let’s have a look at how it works, and how you might use it. What’s all the fuss about? Sometimes an innovation comes along that’s so useful (and so obvious) that it’s actually a surprise it’s been missing until now. To be fair, LinkedIn is far from the first social media platform to introduce the idea – Facebook, Instagram and Twitter have all offered polling for some time, alongside specific services like Pollpop, Doopoll and Polltab. In fact, it’s not even new to LinkedIn. Back in 2014 you could use polls within groups, but in the six years that have passed, technology has moved on. You can now track results in real-time and review who responded (and which way they voted), which gives you all sorts of insight for future segmentation of your audience. Of course, what makes LinkedIn different is the type of social media platform and the scale of what you might be able to achieve. If you’re a heavy user of LinkedIn, chances are you’ll have a pretty large network. Between your connections, their connections and the companies and groups you follow, polling on LinkedIn taps into a huge pool of professional and expert opinions from your own field, related fields and fields you may not have given any thought to before. But you can also use your network to set up specific, targeted polls that drill down to the exact people whose feedback you’d like to gather in response to very specific questions. The new tool is invaluable for taking a broad view, but also good for close-ups. How does it work? To get started, you just need to select ‘Create a Poll’, add your question, with up to four answer options, then set the duration for anything between 24 hours and two weeks. Give a short intro for context if you need to, then hit ‘Publish’. You can find out more about how polls work at LinkedIn’s own FAQ page. It’s not just about feedback though. Polls can be a way of increasing your presence, not just finding out what people think of your current offering, but a way of making yourself more visible, sparking debate and even providing answers and thought leadership within your industry. While it’s good to be asking intelligent questions within your own walls, nobody else knows you’re doing it. You don’t need to do it for the sake of showing off, but after all, part of being an innovator is being recognised as such. So, what should you be asking? The beauty of creating polls on LinkedIn and tuning in to what is potentially a vast audience of professionals (who of course are people and consumers too), is that you can be as broad or as precise as you want to be. The really granular questions will depend on your industry, but like any social media channel, you need to have a plan before you start. Let’s look at some of the broad types of questions you could be asking. 1. Change one thing Innovation often comes from one small, but significant change. It can be something that’s been staring us in the face for years, only to have a massive impact once we notice it. You could sit around trying to think of innovations in abstract, or in the words of Jeremy Clarkson, you could ask the audience. If they could change one thing about their working day, or the kind of service you provide, what would that one thing be? It’s a direct line to understanding what customers really need from you. 2. What do they want to see more of (and less of)? Believe it or not, people really do read blogs. If you’re a wealth planning firm for example, then your existing clients and potential future clients will be interested in your take on pension planning. But to keep your blog helpful and to keep your audience coming back, you need to know what they want to read about. You could ask about your current content and the areas that are most important to them, but equally you could branch into new topics and see whether any of them are things that people would be interested in reading about (before you commit the time, money and resources to writing them). 3. Ask for opinions People feel much better about a business and a brand when there’s a two-way discourse going on. People like to be listened to, they like to talk about what they’ve enjoyed and also about what irks them. It doesn’t have to be about the service you’re providing – it could be about things that concern them in their day-to-day life, or things that prey on their mind for the future. By tapping into the questions that are swirling around unanswered, you’ll be able to provide targeted resources to help. 4. Ask about values We’ve all sat around a table at some point, writing on Post-it notes, sticking cards on the wall and asking ourselves what really matters to us. That’s how most of us sketch out our brand values and come up with our mission statement. But wouldn’t it be useful to learn about
Lockdown habits to last a lifetime
Since lockdown began, we’ve all found ourselves on an unexpected crash course in building a new normal. We’ve faced new challenges, but many businesses are really stepping up. We’ve had lots of positive conversations with clients about helping them adapt, because as businesses that’s what we do – we take a deep breath and find a way through. But what about as people? We’ve all joked about Zoom fatigue and missing the pub, but we need to remember that none of this is normal. It’s ok to feel the pressure, to miss family and friends. It’s ok to just take a moment. And in taking that moment, we might surprise ourselves. Lockdown is a unique opportunity to build a new routine, to form new habits, that will not only help us get through these tough times, but give us a new edge for the future. Routine – so good you’ll want to do it again and again I’ve written about the importance of routine before – it’s about getting your day off on the right foot from the moment you wake up, and it’s more important than ever. In the absence of the routine we’re used to, we need to build our own. It may sound counter-intuitive, but a daily routine actually helps you to cope better when things change. Structuring your day puts you in control, so instead of trying to handle everything on the fly, you can see the road ahead. It puts you in a better position to react to hazards and obstacles. Habit is a huge part of this. It’s like learning a new language – if you don’t practice, it’ll take you 20 minutes to tell the barista you’d like your cappuccino extra frothy. But practice little and often, and you’ll answer automatically. In ‘Atomic Habits’ James Clear suggests habits are there to “solve the problems of life with as little energy and effort as possible”. I couldn’t agree more. Make the knowns easy, so you can handle the unknowns A few days ago I listened to a webinar with Dr Nicola Bunting in which she introduced the idea of creating “10 delicious daily habits”. The idea is to cultivate the habits you enjoy, making them easy (even fun) to do – so in that spirit, here are mine 1. Meditate There isn’t enough space to list all the benefits of meditation, so I’ll just give you a few to be going on with. First, it can help you to deal with distraction, even when you’re no longer meditating. Research shows that meditation helps you to regulate a brain wave called the ‘alpha rhythm’, which shuts out overstimulation. It can also reduce anxiety, raise cognition, and improve body image, so what’s not to like? I make it easy by switching on my meditation app as soon as I wake up. For me it’s Insightly, particularly the meditations by Sarah Blunden. We’re not talking hours spent in a darkened room, just 10-15 minutes each day. 2. Keep a journal ‘Dear diary, today I stayed indoors again’. Not quite. My journal is a helpful way to look inward. I’ll begin by freestyling – just whatever’s going on in my head – then move on to what I’m grateful for and my intentions and goals for the day. It serves two purposes. First, it’s useful for self-reflection and clearing the mind. But it’s also a means of reinforcing ideas. How many times have you been told to write something down to remember it? Studies show that writing ideas down forces you to shape them into something tangible, improving recall. 3. Eat and drink healthily Lockdown has some contrary effects – we’re all worried about eating too much, but at the same time getting creative in the kitchen has never been more popular. For me, starting out with a healthy breakfast makes me feel better about the whole day. I’m a NutriBullet fan so every morning I have a delicious smoothie. My current favourite is bananas, dates, almond milk, spinach and blueberries. I’m also doing my best to drink three litres of water, it’s something we’re meant to do, but it’s not always easy. I find it helps to drink a large glass first thing, then ensure I have water next to me all day. 4. Read Surely it’s on everyone’s list, but deserving of its place. As with all of these habits, little and often is the key. Reading expands the mind, but recall is really important – to reach the end of the book having enjoyed the experience (and having learned something). You’ll recall it a lot better if you take your time and make it a pleasure, not a chore. I’ll mention ‘Atomic Habits’ for the second time because that’s what I’m reading, that and ‘Good Vibes, Good Life’ by Vex King. 5. Move This one might seem a little perverse, what with the lockdown rules, but there’s plenty you can do at home, even in a small space. The trick, as with any exercise, is to find what you enjoy. For me it’s yoga with Adrienne (you’ll find her videos on YouTube) and I’m also a fan of the Joe Wicks workouts for a high-intensity blast. I still enjoy a good old-fashioned run though (respecting the rules around social distancing of course). 6. Plan your day As a professional there’s no way on earth that planning is new to you. Without planning, everything would be a surprise, all the time, and that just isn’t sustainable. But planning itself takes planning – I use half-hour slots in my day to divide up my time, plan my workload and enjoy the satisfaction of reviewing what I’ve already achieved. It’s my version of the Pomodoro Technique (named after inventor Francesco Cirillo’s tomato-shaped kitchen timer). The idea is to use your time in your favour – rather than against you. 7. Stay in touch As a marketing company we’re always working on our presence – it’s important to stay visible, for ourselves and for our clients. I’m really grateful we’ve been so busy
How to ask for Google Reviews
If you’re running a business, Google Reviews is your best friend. 88% of people trust online reviews written by other clients as much as they trust recommendations from their friends and family, yet only a third of businesses are actively seeking out and collecting reviews. If you’re one of the two-thirds of businesses who don’t currently have a referral and reviews strategy, the number of potential clients you’re not reaching is pretty significant. 74% of consumers identify word of mouth as a key influencer in purchasing decisions, and reviews count among those figures. For potential clients, the fact that other people love what you do is both compelling and reassuring. When they do their research and you pop up on Google, it’s that star rating, those reviews, that will all help to inform their decision. It shows them that you’re active and legitimate, and that you do such a good job your clients are happy to tell the world about it. It’s unfiltered, uncensored social proof and one of the most valuable assets you can have. So far so good. But there’s also another benefit to collecting Google Reviews. Google algorithms love activity, and a review counts among that. This is especially true of local searches (for example ‘financial planner near me’,) where reviews will help you climb your way up the Google rankings. Remember us when you reach the top! WHEN? If you’re starting from scratch, you’ll need to do an initial push with your clients to get the ball rolling. Once the groundwork is done, we then recommend you ask for reviews regularly. The best way is to build it into your existing processes to ensure it gets asked and gets done. Two excellent points to ask are when your client is feeling good at the end of the onboarding process, or at the end of a review meeting. WHO? Nobody knows your clients better than you. If you’ve got a good relationship with them – and they’re trusting you with their money and their life plans – chances are they’ll be more than happy to spend five minutes leaving you a review on Google. You don’t need a Google mail account to leave business reviews on Google. However, you do need some kind of Google account. So, that could mean YouTube, Google Play, Google Drive, Gmail, or a Google mail account of another kind. While you’re building your review base, choose clients that you know best and who you know will definitely say yes. Beyond that, ask everybody. HOW? Great question! Download our guide to learn how, including an email template to make it simple and fuss-free.
The Museum of Brands
If you think about visiting a museum in London, what springs to mind? The Natural History Museum, The British Museum, or perhaps the Science Museum? The Museum of Brands is not an obvious choice, but I recommend planning a visit as this trip down brand memory lane is more than worthy of a couple of hours of your free time. It’s situated in an unassuming street in Ladbroke Grove, and the bright visual welcome of illustrations on the building wall of familiar household products sets the tone for what awaits inside. Going back in time The museum presents temporary exhibitions, talks and workshops that will examine the role of brands in history and their influence on consumer behaviour. Start by walking through the Time Tunnel showcasing 150 years of brands, packaging and advertising through the permanent exhibition created by consumer historian Robert Opie. Wandering through the Time Tunnel, it was fascinating to see the familiar brands through the ages recognised from childhood and growing up. There were the staple foods and ingredients we all still have in our kitchen cupboards today as well as the crazes that every child simply had to have for their next birthday to keep up with their friends. Keeping up with the consumers Many brands have undergone multiple rebrands over the decades with clever campaign execution to keep them appealing to their target audience. You may not always be a fan of the actual design choices, but you can’t argue that some brands really understand the need to consistently adapt to audiences that are endlessly growing and changing. Let’s take McDonald’s, for example. The golden arches are probably one of the most easily recognisable logos in the world. Those famous arches are what tied – and still tie – all the varying aspects of McDonald’s branding and marketing together. Whether you’re a PC or a Mac user, there’s no denying that Apple is one of the most successful brands of all time. Since its beginnings as a humble start-up in a garage in 1976, Apple has very quickly evolved into the corporate giant we know today. The secret weapon? Steve Jobs’ uncanny ability to understand his audience and adapt consistently strong marketing tactics for that audience. The Apple I computer released in 1976 was the company’s first product and was accompanied by a manual with an illustrated logo to represent the new Apple Computer Company. The Indian-ink drawing for the original logo was created by Ron Wayne, the third member of the small start-up company. At first, Steve Jobs kept this version which is understandable after reading the history of the logo. However, when the company began work on the Apple II computer, Steve Jobs allegedly advocated that a more “stylish” logo would improve the company’s sales. Thus the rainbow apple logo was born later that same year. This new design saw a new era of Apple marketing. Apple took its brand to the next level again in the 1990s “Think different” campaigns, “which were more focused on brand image than specific products.” Although the logo hasn’t changed that much since 1998, the brand obviously has. Why does it matter? We could go on with several more examples of brands that have evolved over time, but what struck me when reflecting on my visit to the Museum of Brands is that to keep a brand front of mind with its target audience, it has to move with the times and maintain its appeal to customer needs. At Uniquity we work with some wonderful brands, some who have been in business for decades and some just a handful of years. It’s not always about brand identity revolution, but sometimes evolution is the key to keep your look and visual appeal fresh and reflective of the service you offer today. Why not talk to us about refreshing your brand? We’d love to see what we can do for you. Chloe George
What is SEO and how do I use it?
SEO seems to have garnered a rather mystical reputation over the years. It’s elusive, nobody really understands how to crack it, but everybody knows that’s it’s crucial to the success of your website online. Let’s put it simply: SEO, or ‘search engine optimisation’, is what makes your website discoverable in Google. Every time somebody does a Google search, trillions of tiny ‘spiders’ are sent out to crawl every page in its index. Google sifts through the page results and organises them for you in the order it thinks is most helpful and relevant, against a set of criteria. By optimising your page for search engines, you’re making it easier for Google to read and understand your page. As a result, you stand a better chance of ranking as high as your site deserves when somebody searches for something relevant to you. BRILLIANT! SOUNDS WONDERFUL. SO IF I MAKE MY SEO PERFECT, I’LL ALWAYS RANK IN THE TOP SPOT, RIGHT? Well, no. Not necessarily. Note I said ‘as high as your page deserves’, not ‘at the top’. By helping Google understand your website – what it contains, what it’s about, where you’re based, and what you offer – you help it to rank you appropriately. It will compare all that information against the search term used and where the person searching is geographically located. You won’t show up on the first page of results for “financial planners Glasgow” if you’re based in Exeter (unless you’ve really messed up), because that’s not how SEO works. Sorry, but there’s no tricking Google. SEO is also not a one-time fix. It needs to be maintained lovingly and often to keep it up-to-date and in Google’s good graces. Many of the things that will influence your SEO score significantly are layered in the code of your site, so we don’t recommend tinkering with these yourself – ask your developer. That said, there are some nice quick wins that you can easily implement without risk of breaking your site which will give you a good immediate boost. I use the term ‘quick’ very loosely – each of these can be quite long and tedious tasks, but I promise the results are worth it. 1. Alt tags on all images Alt tags are pieces of metadata attached to images that describe what is in the image. They’re easy to add, and they will help boost your page visibility significantly; think of it as additional keywords embedded in your page. The site crawlers that Google sends out are robots – they can’t see what’s in a picture, but they can read it. Get an alt tag on every image on your website to help Google understand your page content in full, not just the copy. Make sure your alt text is short and descriptive, and forms a full sentence rather than just lining up keywords. This guide shows you how to add alt text in WordPress; this one for Squarespace. If you host on another platform, a quick search will bring up a good guide (if they’re optimised!) 2. Site and page meta descriptions You’re going to notice a theme here. The meta descriptions for both your site and the individual pages within are an important indexing tool for search engines. As with alt text image tags above, these should be descriptive and should feature relevant keywords. The ideal length is between 70-160 characters, including spaces. For example, let’s say we’re writing a site meta description for a bakery in Bristol which specialises in pastry: Welcome to La Patisserie Bleu – pastries crafted with care from our bakery on Corn Street, Bristol, by our world-class bakers. This is an example of a good site meta description. It’s 126 characters. It contains the bakery’s name, location, and a brief summary of what they do, as well as some additional key words: “world-class bakers”, “bakery Bristol”, etc. If we were writing a page description for, say, their Contact page, it might look something like this: Visit La Patisserie Bleu at our Corn Street location to get your sweet fix. Find our bakery address here, or contact us on the details below. It contains the site title (‘La Patisserie Bleu’), the page title (‘contact us’) and additional relevant keywords (“address”, “corn street”, “visit”, “location”), in readable prose. It’s 141 characters long. Perfect. A bad example of this same site description might look like this: Bristol bakery Corn Street pastry croissants petits-fours macarons This is just lining up a bunch of keywords. It doesn’t make a comprehensive sentence or help Google understand the page content. It’s a nonsense sentence. Many people make the mistake of thinking this ‘keyword stuffing’ will help them, since it’s putting all your desired keywords in one place, but it’s actually doing the opposite. It’s also only 66 characters, which is not long enough for Google to count as meaningful. 3. Check your page titles (including blogs!) Finally, let’s talk about page titles. Yes, that includes blogs. There are two main areas which companies regularly trip up on: Let’s start with #1. Your page titles shouldn’t be longer than 70 characters, including spaces. The simple reason is that they get cut off in search results if they’re longer, resulting in some of the context of the page being lost. Simple as that. #2 is one that many, many are guilty of. It’s unlikely you’ll have site pages with duplicate titles (although worth checking), but it happens in blog posts all the time. Google does not like duplicates at all. If two pages have almost or totally identical titles, site crawlers interpret them as two versions of the same content. Rather than reading them both to see which version is the definitive one, they will simply discard them both in favour of another result with one version. LET’S SAY YOU HAVE A BLOG SERIES TITLED ‘SEO FOR DUMMIES’. If you were to title each of them ‘SEO for Dummies Part 1’, ‘SEO for Dummies Part 2’, and so on, and labelled the URLs /blog/seo-for-dummies-part-1 and /blog/seo-for-dummies-part-2, Google would class them as duplicates. The difference
It’s not you, it’s your brand – have you outgrown your company branding?
This blog entry is about a five-minute read, so maybe get out your Pret Crayfish and Avocado? This might be the time for that bar of Dairy Milk you’ve been stashing in your desk drawer too. You may even want to nip across the road for a Costa, to enjoy reading more. Don’t worry, I’ll wait. I’m not being judgmental about your lunch choices. I’d happily consume all three of those. What I’m getting at is this – to even eat your lunch, you’ve engaged in three transactions with brands you trust. Not just financial transactions either, I’m talking about transactions of the head and the heart. You might argue that your choice of sandwich, coffee and chocolaty treat comes down to habit, or having no time. But even if that’s true, at some point, however long ago, they won you over – and you kept coming back. Branding keeps getting bigger I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know when I say that every day you interact with thousands of companies. With TV, social media and even the blunt instrument of billboard adverts, you can’t fail to notice that brands are in our faces 24/7. Even those you think you’ve filtered out along the way will likely come calling somewhere down the line. Branding, and standing out, can feel like an arms race. And it is. In 1984 you’d see an average of 2,000 ads per day. By 2014, you’d see 5,000. Between 2017 and 2018 spending on advertising in the UK went up 6.3% across all media. But there’s more to branding than how much you spend on shouting indiscriminately at the population, or infiltrating their inbox. Getting branding right is about working hard, and spending money, but it’s also about working smart. What does working smart mean? Think about what your brand is for. It’s there to provide clarity about your product or service, it helps you communicate with your ideal clients and ideally, it provokes emotions that lead to repeat business. It’s a well-reported statistic that there’ll normally be five to seven brand interactions before a consumer remembers a brand. That would make sense, McDonald’s spent a long time getting us to associate “I’m loving it” with a little melody, so that eventually we’d hear five whistled notes and think ‘Big Mac’. Buyers aren’t fools, they take convincing. But for a brand to ring true to them, we have to believe in ourselves. We have to create a brand, the sum of whose parts add up to something that’s not a fabrication, but an embodiment, an amplification, of who we are and what we stand for. That means for all the outward facing work, it’s important to turn it inward, to build a brand we’re happy with and content to show to the world. Authenticity and consistency What we’re talking about here is authenticity. It’s often spoken about and notoriously hard to pin down. But it’s important, up to 91% of consumers would rather buy from an authentic brand. What does ‘authentic’ mean though? Isn’t it one of those words like ‘charisma’ or the dreaded ‘pizazz’?. Not really, and it doesn’t need to be that hard. Authenticity comes from sitting down and working out who you are, what your company is in business to achieve and how you’d like your customers to see you. That’s the way round to approach it, because branding comes from within. Start with ‘branding’ and you’ll achieve artifice, start with understanding your angle then build a brand around it, and you’ll get authenticity. Once you have authenticity in the bag, it needs to be followed up by its partner, consistency. According to Forbes, consistent brand presentation across all platforms increases revenue by up to 23%. As they point out, it’s more than just your logo. Every piece of collateral that goes out of the door, social media, printed media, signage, it should all maintain a similar aesthetic and communicate the same message that fits your brand identity and core values. Why? Because familiarity builds trust and trust builds business. If you’ve landed your messaging well in the authenticity space, people want to deal with you. If you then show them with every communication, every transaction that it’s still you, still your voice, still your way of working, still you, standing for all the things you stand for, they’ll keep coming back. So what happens if you’ve outgrown your brand? Despite what I’ve set out above, not everyone is getting it right. According to Source, 77% of marketing leaders say a strong brand is critical to their growth plans. But only 60% of marketers think their brand is well aligned with their long-term goals. That may be because the opportunity to really get your branding right from the very beginning wasn’t taken, but it can just as easily be because the brand that once suited you down to the ground is now something you’ve outgrown. Businesses change, their direction can shift, their demographic can evolve and somewhere along the line branding that used to reliably hit the nail on the head can begin to miss. It’s not a disaster and it’s easy to put right, but it’s important to do it. A changing audience or shifting goals are to be expected, but you need to retain that trust, those transactions of the head and the heart. To labour the metaphor, if you’ve outgrown your brand, you need to take some new measurements to make sure it’s the right fit – for you and for them. Brand, not bland! In truth, I could throw slogans like that at you all day or quote high numbers and eye-popping statistics that demonstrate the benefits of getting branding right. The truth is, you already know it’s important and if your branding is off target, reading too many of those statistics can actually cause despondency rather than inspiration. The key to remember is that branding is all about you and your ideals, it always was and always will be. It’s not a
7 tools to improve your brand experience
In an increasingly complex business environment, the challenge for each and every company is how to deliver consistent, connected and meaningful brand experiences for its clients. What on earth is a ‘brand experience’ I hear you cry? Well, it’s a term that’s relatively new, so you’re forgiven if you’ve never come across it before. Put simply, brand experience is how your brand lives across all of the touchpoints that your clients interact with. It’s like an ecosystem that exists around your brand and can encompass anything from your brochure, website, innovation, communications, events, customer service and social media. So how does brand experience differ from client experience or client journey? With client experience, we’re talking about matching expectations on the hygiene factors. So it might be how fast your web pages load, if you deliver your services on time or respond to a customer enquiry promptly. Brand experience is all-encompassing. It’s how people feel about a brand – the warm fuzzy feeling that you get from buying a brilliant product, or from having a great interaction with a customer service representative. It’s the memorable hero moment along a client’s journey. Get it right and it can have a significant impact on spending, recommendations and inevitably, loyalty. There’s evidence to back this up too. Companies with a strong brand experience command 79% higher purchase intent and an average of 45 more Net Promoter Score points than those who offer a lesser experience. In fact, a MESH Experience study revealed that positive brand experience has around three times the impact on brand consideration compared with a neutral experience. Given all of that, to ignore brand experience and its ability to propel your brand to the top would be a huge mistake. Here at Uniquity, we’re fascinated by any tech that can help us improve the overall brand experience for our clients – or anything that makes our business more efficient. Take a look at some of our favourite tools below and see if they can work wonders for you too. ActiveCampaign If you want to create great brand experiences, ActiveCampaign gives you all the email marketing, marketing automation and CRM tools you need. It also has a great function for managing leads. And there’s more to come. After raising another $100 million, it’s all set to build on its ability to automate, personalise, segment and overall improve the full brand experience. We’re increasingly using marketing automation to take the hard work out of managing new leads, onboarding and communicating with existing clients. Human interaction is of course still key but there are elements of the process where technology can make huge improvements. Issuu Issuu is the tool you need to send digital brochures in a standalone online reader, or to help you embed them in websites and emails. It takes your PDFs, images and text, then transforms them using its own templates and your design. It’s the perfect way to achieve a native experience on desktop, mobile web, app, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest and all other social media. Brilliant for sending documents or to use for presenting in meetings. Buffer This is our social media scheduling tool of choice – it’s simple to use and has an effective sign-off process. And by having some of your social posts scheduled, you can focus your attention on the in-the-moment, more personal posts around your team, clients and events. Calendly We find this a brilliant tool for scheduling meetings and linking them effortlessly with your diary. It means your clients can book meetings at their own convenience and you’re updated instantly. Zoom With this simple-to-use video conferencing tool, you can meet your clients at any time and in any place. It’s brilliant for international calls too. Otter We’re just testing this one. It creates a meeting transcript in note form, saving you lots of time and allowing you to get your actions recorded more quickly. And that means more time to focus on what’s really important – your clients. Soapbox You can use this to deliver personalised videos to clients for updates and tutorials. With Soapbox, all you need to create a great video is a Chrome extension, a webcam, and something to say! Hit record and then edit to share your webcam, your screen, or a split-screen view. Technology really does have the power to transform your business and we’re big fans. But before embracing any new tech we have one golden rule – we always start by making sure the original process is working well first. And Bill Gates agrees: “The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.” If you’re keen to improve the brand experience for your clients, a good place to start is with a mapping exercise. Best done as a team, this can give you a really clear view of where you can make a difference.
3 Words to Guide Your Year
With 2020 underway at great pace, we’ve been doing a lot of planning to make sure we begin the decade as we mean to go on. For the past couple of years, I’ve been using Chris Brogan’s practice of choosing 3 words to guide our business actions and choices over the year to come. Each January reflecting back on the previous year’s words and setting new ones for the coming year has been an invaluable practice. If you’ve seen our blog on picking your brand words you’ll know we’re a bit obsessed with the ‘power of 3’ for making your marketing consistent and well-positioned. We find that having the 3 words for the year in addition to your core 3 words results in an extra dimension of focus and clarity. As it works so well for us, I wanted to share how Chris’s method works (he also uses the hashtag #my3words so you can see other examples.) What is ‘My 3 Words’ About? The ‘My 3 Words’ idea is simple. Choose 3 words – not 1, not 4 – that will help guide your choices and actions day-to-day. Think of them as a guiding light; “Should I say yes to this project?” “Does this align with my three words?” How to Choose 3 Words When Chris started this process back in 2006 his 3 words were “Ask; Do; Share.” These very simple words served him well – the result was one of his best years ever. When he asked questions, he learned. When he took action based on his learning, he covered more ground and took over more of the universe. When he shared what he learned with everyone, he made connections. You can choose any 3 words you feel will guide you forward, but to help you Chris has some key tips… Review Them Daily The more often you review your 3 words, the better. We have them hanging up in our office and reflect on them daily. Past Iterations of Uniquity’s ‘My 3 Words’ 2019: Clarity, elevate, inspire 2018: Upscale, refine, thrive And My 3 Words for 2020 Are: POSITIONING More of our work is becoming about creating amazing brands and brand experiences with so much of this to do with positioning. Our world is becoming increasingly commodified, and as a result the expression ‘differentiate or die’ has never been more true. This is the element we are passionate about – creating brands businesses and their clients love. And finally, on a personal note, this year I also want to write a book about how to create great professional services brands as part of our company differentiation. PROCESS For the past year we’ve been creating all of our processes on Asana and our marketing automation on ActiveCampaign – it’s paid dividends. We’ve laid the foundation, now it’s time to build and scale to the next level. For our clients, marketing technology is a huge theme and we’ve built some brilliant frameworks that are making businesses more efficient whilst engaging with more clients. COLLABORATION We love to learn, especially from the experts. This year we’re on a mission to learn from the best in the business build that learning into our work; we’ll learn from marketeers, established brands, growing brands, and influencers. One of those activities will be to interview some of our most admired brands and share the learnings – maybe it will even make a podcast at some point! Your Turn. What are your 3 Words for 2020?
5 steps to building a brand you love
How does your brand make you feel? It might seem like an odd question, after all, you’re pitching to your audience, so isn’t it all about how they feel? Understanding your audience is really important (we’ll get to that later), but before you do anything else, you need to know what you’re building and why. ‘Authenticity’ is mentioned a lot in business, but it’s the one thing you can’t buy. You can become more efficient, more experienced and of course bigger, but if you don’t build a brand you love, there’ll always be something missing in its soul. At Uniquity, we live for financial and professional services. We love brands and marketing and we love seeing clients get excited about their own businesses. Building a brand that excites you can be the difference between doing ok and doing great, so here are five key steps to think about. 1. Don’t pay lip service to ‘purpose’ Building a brand is hard – exciting, rewarding, but hard. We all have days when it feels like our purpose is just to ‘make money’, which is why it’s so important to have a purpose you really believe in. We’re bombarded with words like ‘purpose’, ‘vision’ and ‘values’ all the time – it’s confusing and it can leave us wondering whether any of it really matters. But it does. Remember, you got into this to do what you want to do, to call the shots, so the foundation must be something you’re passionate about. How do you get there? Ask yourself what you love doing, what you’d do all the time if you could. What makes you happy, proud, fulfilled? It’s not just an exercise in finding a mantra (although it helps to have one) it’s about knowing who you are and what you do best. If you don’t know, your audience won’t either, so it’s important to understand what you really excel at and then push that. 2. Get to grips with your audience Being absolutely sure of your purpose means the audience you start to connect with will be the right one. There’s nothing more certain to make a brand veer off course than not connecting with the people it’s trying to help. You need to genuinely care about what they’re going through – be excited about their prospects and their next steps. It’s true that people love brands, sometimes passionately, but it’s not unconditional love. It depends on your ability to capture attention and deliver results. Ultimately you’re there to solve a problem and to do that you need to understand and identify with that problem. There are lots of ways to do it, you can research your audience on social media and you can scour the market to understand what’s available to them. Of course, you can just talk to them (and more importantly, listen to what they have to say). The point is, the more passionate you are about connecting and understanding where they’re coming from, the more successful you’ll be. 3. The experience of transformation Once you’re certain about who you’re in business to help, you need to think about what that experience looks like. The difference between just going through the motions and building a brand you love is the difference between providing a ‘transaction’ and an ‘experience’. A good mechanic changes your tyres competently and safely – a great one makes you feel like you’re driving a new car. Yes, you’re there to guide them from problem to solution, to take them by the hand, clearly explain what you’ll do and then do it. It’s about communication, understanding and openness, but the real trick is to leave them feeling like nobody else could have done it, at least not like you. The benefit is twofold, because not only do you both feel great about the outcome, they’ll be keen to pass on the experience they’ve had – and word of mouth is still so important. 4. Be unique Whatever your field, there are thousands of businesses doing something a bit like you, competing for overlapping audiences, standing up, shouting, tapping their chest. What they don’t have is you. There’s only one you, with your experiences, education and skills. Your quality of being unique – uniquity (we didn’t get there by accident) – is your greatest asset. That might be daunting in a growing business, because you can’t be everywhere at once. But if you start from a place of building a brand that you’re intrinsically in tune with, you’ll be able to spread that passion throughout your workforce. The thing is, you already know what makes you unique, the trick is to tease it out and get it down on paper. There are some useful exercises you can do to help you. First, you can narrow down the field by finding your brand archetype. When you’ve done that, there’s a great exercise we call ‘three words’ – it’s like triangulation for your brand, a set of unique coordinates to cut through the landscape and define what it is that you do that nobody else does. 5. Create a brand that’s authentic That word again. We see it in pop music, in politics, on TV and in the papers. Person A is ‘authentic’, while person B is decidedly ‘inauthentic’. But it’s not a magical quality – being authentic just means doing something you truly care about. You can’t fake authenticity, but you can build on it. Do that and your authenticity will come through in everything you do, in the way you connect with customers, in the way they experience working with you and in the way they pass that enthusiasm on. But to connect in the first place, that authenticity and passion needs to come through in your branding. It starts with determining your unique selling points, setting out your purpose, and must then be reflected in your logo, website, imagery, everything.People are visual and they make quick decisions, so if what you’re showing them doesn’t stand out, people they may pass you by. Don’t forget