READ MORE: PR and Digital Marketing: A Hybrid Approach

When to Reposition your Brand

The key question many businesses ponder is whether or not they should reposition their brand, and if so, then when?

Repositioning may be helpful if you feel you are no longer connecting with your customer base. Additionally, a repositioning is highly beneficial if you are expanding to a new, broader market or adapting to competitive forces.

If your market seems to be overtaking you, a solid brand repositioning strategy may be your lifeline. If your enterprise is experiencing periods of little to no growth, it might be time to reframe your offering to (re)appeal to your audience.

The Kellogg School of Management notes that “[brand] repositioning typically takes considerable time and financial resources. Nevertheless, modest changes in a position are sometimes warranted to better align a brand’s frame of reference with its point of difference”.

While lengthy and potentially costly, brand repositioning is critical if your brand’s existing position is failing to gain traction. Brand reframing is an absolute necessity when your services or products have changed or been updated.

Your customers should know what you are offering at all times so that they can buy into your brand. Your brand is more approachable and your audience will more easily spend money with you if your customers are informed.

How to Begin

So how to begin? Firstly, you need to consider the industry landscape your enterprise functions in. Within your business, you also have to take stock of your goals, courses of action, and plans for the future – this then has to be considered in light of what your competitors are delivering. Be sure to highlight your differentiating factors, future-proof your growth strategies as far as possible, and stay up-to-date with what your competing enterprises’ movements.

Similarly, it is essential that you listen to your customers and do the necessary market research. Brand repositioning is of no use if you pivot in the wrong direction. Once you understand what your clients need, you will need to re-look at your brand messaging and internal functioning. Your cross-platform messaging should address your updated offering, (re)connect with clients, and foster trust within your audience.

Next, it is critical that you update and reconsider your marketing touch-points. Every single interaction and offering your company delivers should align with your repositioned brand’s message. It may be difficult at first, but you have to commit to your new message across all your brand’s touch-points. Slipping into old patterns is easy for business owners but confusing to customers on the receiving end of the messaging and should thus be avoided.

There’s No Need to Rush

Finally, brand repositioning is relatively scalable and can be implemented over a period of time. While most businesses want to reposition, or even relaunch, at full-speed with guns blazing, this may be difficult to justify financially. Instead, you can revise your brand positioning bit-by-bit. For a time-sensitive approach, start by re-looking your social media platforms and advertising copy, then move on to website updates. Eventually, you can roll out your remaining touch-points.

A marketing agency with a holistic, results-driven approach can help you achieve effective repositioning by walking this journey with you and strategising to meet your needs. We work with many clients to refine their brand transformation process. Get in touch to see how we can help you.

READ MORE: Why Businesses Should Leverage Social Media for Sustained Growth

The post The Fundamentals of Brand Repositioning first appeared on Fenix Marketing.

The post The Fundamentals of Brand Repositioning appeared first on Fenix Marketing.

READ MORE: How to develop a Marketing Budget that supports Business Growth

The Perks of Social Media

For many business owners, the digital landscape can be intimidating… Approaching a platform without the relevant knowledge is daunting. As a result, many businesses stick to less advantageous, old-fashioned advertising mediums. But it is absolutely essential for businesses to step into the digital landscape, even though it may seem challenging at first.

As the Covid-19 pandemic continues to disrupt life as we know it, social media platforms are growing in reach, time spent on the respective apps, and overall ad spend. The longer consumers social distance at home, the more spend is allocated to social media advertising because of how effectively it can target consumers and deliver clear, convenient calls to action.

The 2020 Sprout Social Index showed that

• 89% of consumers say they will buy from a brand they follow on social media;
• 84% will choose that brand over a competitor;
• 75% of consumers say they are likely to increase their spending with brands they follow.

This data shows that an active social media presence ensures heightened brand awareness and will allow you to grow your audience (and ultimately, your entire enterprise). You can also promote content and drive sales in a palatable, professional way that engages, enlightens, and encourages customers.

But to maximise social media’s potential, you need to approach it with a plan. Flying blind will lead to minimal results and you will be spending more time on social media than what it will ultimately be worth. You need a strategy to ensure measurable, evergreen growth.

The Importance of Strategy

An effective social media strategy should ensure

• interesting, insightful content creation;
• consistency in posting, brand tone, and overall brand image;
• comprehensive leveraging of targeting tools to help you reach your ideal audience;
• and the adaptive revision of your content and targeting to make sure you get the best results for your spend.

The benefits of a sustained, engaging online presence for businesses are undeniable. But this can be a lot to take on, especially if you are running your own business or are part of a small enterprise.

As a small to medium-sized business, the starting point of your journey should be finding an agency that is willing to walk through everything with you. Ideally, you want a smaller agency that will be considerate of your starting-out social media budget and is willing to grow as you grow.

A full-service digital agency will help you untangle seemingly impossibly knotted digital concepts. Your agency should help you with ad spend, brand tone, lead generation, content creation, and client targeting. You need a data-driven agency that will make social media approachable and effective. Effective management should leave you to focus on doing what you do best: running your business.

READ MORE: Online Usage Surges, how should you respond?

The post Why Businesses Should Leverage Social Media for Sustained Growth first appeared on Fenix Marketing.

The post Why Businesses Should Leverage Social Media for Sustained Growth appeared first on Fenix Marketing.

READ MORE: Why Businesses Should Leverage Social Media for Sustained Growth

How to Refine your Marketing Budget

As a general guideline, your Marketing Budget should be between 5% – 10% of your total revenue for the year. Some businesses will have much more room to work within their budgets than others.

Start-up companies who have high overheads may struggle to invest in marketing. However, an advantage of the percentage approach is that the budget is not fixed. So it will grow as revenue increases ensuring long-term profitability. Whether you are a start-up or established company, no businesses can afford not to invest in marketing.

Once you have an overall figure set aside, the next question is how and where to allocate the budget. As a business owner, you should have a good idea of your products and services. This includes knowings what the ‘cash cow’ currently is, and which product shows the most potential for future growth.

Where most get it wrong is that they focus all their efforts (and marketing budget) on the cash cow and lose sight of where the businesses future growth will come from. As a first step, identify the current cash cow and set it to one side. Then identify the future ‘money maker’ and have a marketing allocation for each.

Budgeting with the Pandemic

With the current pandemic, there are a few things for business owners to consider when developing or adjusting their Marketing Budget. Is the Marketing Budget in line with current expenses? How much should I set aside for future growth? Does the Marketing Budget support business goals? In the same respect, how have the current consumer trends shifted?

Imagine your business as a pie chart, ‘Product A’ currently drives 60% of your business revenue, ‘Product B’ makes up 30% of your revenue and ‘Product C’ only makes up 10% of your current business revenue. One would naturally split the marketing budget allocations as such, 60% of the budget to ‘A’, 30% to ‘B’ and so on. But what if your future ‘money maker’ was ‘Product C’, then it would make sense to allocate more marketing spend and focus on growing Product C that will one day evolve into your cash cow. With some research, market insight and a good understanding of the change in consumer and media trends, one can identify how to adapt their current budget and strategy to ensure future growth.

Future-proof your Strategy

If your business is only barely covering costs, then a 5 to 10 percent marketing budget may not be practical. Although identifying your Product C or future money maker and investing as such could have a significant trade-off. Ultimately marketing is required for growth, and if carefully thought out, the trade-off of cutting into narrow margins now to increase overall sales in future will pay off in the end by preparing the business for cycles of future growth. Budgeting is a long view undertaking, think about where your business is headed, not just where you are now.

The post How to develop a Marketing Budget that supports Business Growth first appeared on Fenix Marketing.

The post How to develop a Marketing Budget that supports Business Growth appeared first on Fenix Marketing.