Every marketing campaign is an investment. Whether it’s the money you put into the tools you use and the advertising space you buy to bring those campaigns to life, or the time and expertise exerted by your employees. The real question is how can you be certain that your marketing ROI is living up to your expectations?
Well let’s start at the basics – what is your marketing ROI? It is the process of attributing revenue growth in your organisation to your various marketing initiatives. It determines how much of a return you’ve seen on your investment across your various campaigns and processes, and provides a solid indication of whether your techniques are delivering.
At its bare bones, your marketing ROI is designed to establish:
The financial cost of your marketing strategy and implementation
The financial gain coming directly from your strategy and process
Whether these gains match expectations and your approach is worth repeating
And, with the consensus suggesting that the ROI in marketing should ideally sit around a 5:1 ratio or greater, being able to measure this is crucial to determine if your money, time and other expenditures are paying off in the long run.
This leads back to the first question, and it’s one that marketers continue to struggle with to this day:
Only 22% of marketers believe they are using data-driven marketing initiatives
Just 44% of CMOs can confidently say they can measure their marketing ROI
A mere 21% of marketers use analytics to measure their marketing ROI
74% of marketers feel they cannot measure and report their contribution to their company/client
The challenge of measuring ROI in marketing
Why the lack of assurance? It’s because measuring marketing ROI comes with a variety of challenges and difficulties that other aspects of your organisation might find more black-and-white.
These challenges include:
Existing measurements are too simplistic
While there are an extensive number of metrics out there that can be used to indicate marketing ROI, there are so many factors to consider that these often don’t tell the whole picture – weather, seasonal trends, changing customer behaviours, etc. This makes it important to establish a base of key metrics to prioritise, but will these tell the whole story?
Marketers prioritise the short-term
Methods of measuring ROI and results of marketing campaigns like email click-through-rates and social shares are often too short-sighted to base the overall ROI of your marketing efforts. With many marketers concerned with the short-term success of campaigns, it illustrates the need to segment these and determine their ROI separately, rather than try to blend all your marketing into one lump sum.
Most campaigns cover multiple channels
The spectrum of marketing channels available to organisations of any size is incredibly broad:
Social media assets
Video content
Email marketing
Digital signage
Paid advertising
These and more play a distinct role in a company’s overall marketing ROI. It is important to treat these independently to determine accurate results before bringing the results together to determine the combined effects of your marketing initiatives.
Many aspects of marketing are difficult to quantify
Certain goals of marketing teams like boosting brand awareness, customer engagement and other intangibles are a challenge to accurately measure. At their core, the goals of these campaigns are to change behaviors and build recognition, and while certain metrics can indicate that this is taking place, none offer an exact illustration of these results taking place.
Is there a marketing ROI formula?
These and further issues have made the pursuit of ROI-driven marketing more difficult for marketing teams worldwide, despite attempts to establish a firm ROI formula.
At its most basic level, a marketing ROI calculator breaks down as:
(Revenue – Investment) / Investment x 100
However, most would agree that this is too simplistic, as it doesn’t take into account the organic revenue a company generates outside of any marketing campaigns taking place. Say for instance that your organisation’s organic monthly sales growth sits at £5,000. So, if you spend £10,000 on a marketing campaign and gained £25,000 revenue over this period, the ROI formula would actually be:
(25,000 – 10,000 – 5,000) / 10,000 x 100 = 100% ROI
HubSpot has taken it even further with their own marketing ROI calculator, basing it on four core components of determining ROI in marketing:
Number of leads
Lead-to-customer rate
Average sales price
Cost or ad spend
This results in an ROI formula of:
(Number of leads x lead-to-customer rate x average sales price) – cost or ad spend] / cost of ad spend x 100
So, while formulas exist to help companies determine ROI in their marketing efforts, there remains a lack of agreement and numerous challenges to accurately determine these values for organisations or any size or industry. Yet, the importance of ROI in marketing is still critical in ascertaining the quality of your campaigns.
To try and add clarity to this tricky situation, we’ve outlined 6 aspects we feel are crucial to measuring your marketing ROI.
1. Identify the metrics you want to track
Fundamentally, you can’t measure the impact of a marketing initiative without a clear definition of the results you’re seeking. Before launching your strategy, you need to have a firm understanding of what you hope to achieve, and through this, you can identify several of the key metrics that success will be measured against.
Your goals and strategy should always be in perfect alignment. By outlining the metrics and KPIs that will indicate your marketing ROI early on, you are best placed to see if results are being delivered where you expect them to. Some of these will be financial, others may not be – as noted earlier, part of the complicated nature of marketing ROIs is the diversity of the outcomes you receive.
Of course, this also requires you to have accurately identified the costs involved – this is the base you are looking to build from, and if this isn’t noted, you’ll have no idea if the investment was worth the reward.
2. Ensure that there’s a timeline in place
Marketing is an ongoing aspect of many organisations, but that isn’t especially helpful when you’re trying to determine its ROI. Instead, it is essential that you put a specific timeline in place when measuring marketing ROI to assess the change in a set, clearly defined period.
Always remember that your marketing ROI is an ever-evolving value. Whether you choose to measure this across two weeks or two years (or a mixture of both for different campaigns), make sure there’s a limit in place to determine a valid result.
3. Utilise marketing automation tools
By harnessing the power of the various marketing automation tools out there, particularly all-in-one solutions like HubSpot or Pardot, you have greater scope to monitor and assess your ROI across multiple touchpoints, not just focus on the end results.
The fact is that throughout the course of a marketing campaigns existence, there will likely be elements that meet expectations and parts that fall short. Benefitting from marketing automation platforms helps you better identify these variables and refine your strategies moving forward, so you apply best practice in your marketing ROI.
4. Segment results in your various channels
Due to the omnichannel nature of most marketing campaigns, especially across a worldwide audience, it is valuable to segment these when determining ROI. The ROI of one marketing campaign or initiative will likely vary wildly from another, and capturing them all in one lump sum doesn’t give a clear indication of what is working and what isn’t.
Segmenting by audiences, channels, traffic, sales and other variables makes it much more straightforward and accurate when tracking marketing ROI. By taking this deeper insight, you are better-placed to tell if your approaches are delivering.
5. Dig beneath the surface of your results
An aspect of measuring marketing ROI that often flies under the radar is not looking further beyond the immediate quantitative data received. In order to get a firm grasp of your true marketing ROI, you should conduct deeper analysis and investigations to understand what results your initiatives are delivering. These approaches include:
Control variables – investigate other factors that could be influencing traffic, revenue and other outcomes to determine what your marketing efforts can take credit for.
Cohort analysis – assess the lifetime value your processes offer to customers, helping you present a return on metrics that are difficult to measure.
First-touch attribution – where possible, track customers and leads back to their original referral point to ascertain if your marketing campaigns were responsible.
Of course, this will require an investment in time and third-party tools. But, it provides a much greater level of clarity over the performance of your efforts.
6. Talk to your clients/customers/audiences
Finally, it’s helpful to go out and get feedback from the people your campaign matters the most to – your audiences. Whether it’s an email campaign to present new offers to your customers, or an internal employer branding initiative, gauging their response is a way to measure marketing ROI for the more challenging metrics like brand awareness and customer engagement.
Ideally, this should be conducted both before and following the campaign in question. Prior to work commencing, you want to understand your audience’s wants and interests to correlate these to your own strategy and goals. Then, when you survey recipients following, you can see whether the goals were fulfilled and if this demonstrates it was worth the investment.
Measuring and improving marketing ROI
The importance of ROI in marketing can hardly be overstated. It illustrates whether your achieving results that benefit your organisation overall. It is no wonder that 78% of marketers feel that measuring and improving ROI is among their biggest concerns.
Only by accurately measuring this can you identify and appreciate which of your campaigns and initiatives are performing well, and where there is room to improve your marketing ROI.
If you are interested in improving your marketing ROI, one way you can enhance this is by tightening your processes and boosting efficiency across the journey to market. That is where Papirfly comes in.
Through BAM by Papirfly™, you can reduce the time and effort involved in getting high-quality assets to market, with bespoke, intelligent templates enabling your employees worldwide to engage their audience. No waste. No delays. No specialists.
Unlock the power to create, educate, manage, store and share your brand – get in touch with our team for more information, or to arrange a short demonstration.
5 wishes BAM can grant your marketing team right now
Papirfly
5minutes read
Working in marketing is never for the faint-hearted. By the time you’ve gotten up to speed with the latest trend, you’ve already missed five new ones. People enter the industry because they thrive on innovation, creativity and have an unquenching thirst to solve the next challenge – but sometimes it feels as though things are a little too complicated.
If you find yourself often wishing for more time and more resources, as well as less pressure and less reliance on other people, don’t panic as we’re going to give you all the answers in this article. Our team has identified some of the most frequent requests we get and show you how to solve them.
#1 – “I wish we could do more with less resources”
The challenge:
With budgets being cut, more people working from home and no breathing space on turnaround times, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to deliver vast volumes of marketing assets on time and within budget. If hiring is off the table, then the only way to keep up the momentum is to make your existing team more productive.
That’s not to say they’re not already doing their very best, but empowering them with the tools and processes to work smarter, not harder, is the only way to take your content production up a notch or three.
How BAM solves it:
The key to freeing up time, budget and resources is having pre-set templates that are intuitive, intelligent and can be used by anyone. We’re not talking about off-the-shelf designs that anyone can access – the value of great design and concepts continue to be vital for your brand, but having the power to make considered edits is important to reduce the reliance on external agencies that takes up so much time and money.
With smart templates from BAM by Papirfly™, you have variables within a predefined design that can allow even those with zero design knowledge or experience to make easy updates without compromising your brand or creativity. Teams can quickly create new digital or print designs in the form of social media posts, HTML emails, brochures, billboards and more. All exported at the right size, in the correct format.
#2 – “I wish we could make these quick design updates ourselves”
The challenge:
Not having designers in-house means spending money externally for all your design needs. This works well in most cases, but should a last-minute text change come in or you decide to create a quick adaptation of a particular asset, it means going back to the agency, who may not be able to fit it in right away and it’s going to cost you more money. It’s not ideal, particularly when you’re up against the clock.
How BAM solves it:
Engaging your agency for every little tweak or update becomes costly for you and pretty painful for them. These updates could be made possible if guidelines were pre-programmed on specific asset types. This is where BAM comes in.
Here’s just one of many examples that demonstrate its power. You can create a social post that can only alternate between exact colour sets, only includes two lines of text and keeps the logo fixed to the bottom-right no matter what.
When you or your agency sets the rules contained within the templates, you have total peace of mind that no matter who in the world is making amends, they are doing so on-brand and without spending additional budget.
Likewise, should you need to adapt a campaign for a specific country or territory, teams will be able to update colours, logos, language and other specifics in a matter of minutes.
#3 – “I wish we had the capability to deliver video in-house”
The challenge:
Video has become essential. Specialist production houses can be pricey. Your team needs to deliver videos at a greater pace than can be delivered. They need to be reactive and can’t sit around hoping deadlines will be met before the topic becomes redundant.
There is also an abundance of different tools online that help you create videos, but these can be expensive, are largely restrictive in what you can do branding-wise, and also require a certain level of knowledge or expertise in the software.
How BAM solves it:
Within your creation suite, you are able to easily import your branded intro and outro slides, dividers, edit transitions, sound levels, add music, text, imagery, video content and much more.
What sets this software apart from others is that it’s designed to be easy for anyone to use, sits within an already familiar portal where users can easily import the elements they need, and allows you to easily export in different sizes and formats. There are no features limited to certain levels of ‘package’ – once the module is available in your portal, you get access to everything you need.
#4 – “I wish we could bring our brand in-line globally”
The challenge:
When multiple agencies and in-house teams are in charge of your brand across the globe, messaging can sometimes get diluted, brands can get misinterpreted, and chaos can ultimately ensue. Having all eyes on teams and each asset produced is a Herculean task for anybody. Guidelines must be issued and adhered to, the proper foundation work for your brand elements must be laid and rules must be cemented for each country or team across the globe.
How BAM solves it:
A birds-eye view is absolutely possible. As is re-issuing guidelines. As is having brand rules that are enforced automatically, while allowing global teams to have flexibility and freedom within a framework. All with BAM.
Outside of the educate section, which houses everything your teams need to execute your brand expertly, the create section uses the intelligent templates to make sure teams are only able to edit elements of a campaign that you predefine, and also ensures things like logos, translations and imagery are all culturally relevant.
The store & share part of the portal, a powerful DAM-like system, acts as a central repository for files, elements, designs and imagery, giving individuals access to only the files they need and allowing them to make edits or re-format a desired piece of collateral all within the same SaaS platform.
#5 – “I wish we could produce as much as the teams with bigger budgets”
The challenge:
Brand budgets are not always distributed evenly for offices across the world, but that doesn’t mean demand for marketing collateral isn’t consistently high.
When you’re under pressure to do what you can with less budget, perhaps fewer team members than your other colleagues, or want to be more reactive, having something that allows you to produce content effectively within your existing team is very important. Budget has its limitations, but empowering employees to easily produce assets en masse with BAM – while using agency-designed templates – gives everyone a level playing field.
How BAM solves it:
Because BAM is a single SaaS licence, it means that no matter how many assets teams produce, this is all covered within the software cost. Technically there is no limit to how many marketing assets each team can create each year.
Stop wishing, start delivering
We understand the nuances of marketing, and the challenges teams face on a daily basis. We work with some of the most recognised brands globally, such as Coca-Cola, IBM, Vodafone and more. With over 500,000 users of BAM by Papirfly™ worldwide, we continually push the boundaries of what’s possible, to break down some of the biggest barriers for marketing teams worldwide.
You can find out more about BAM here, or if you would like to see the magic first-hand, you can book a demo with one of our team.
How to create an employee newsletter people will want to read
Papirfly
7minutes read
It’s difficult to hear the words employee newsletter without suppressing an eye-roll.
But in the wake of workplace shake-ups and reshuffles, there’s a genuine opportunity for employee newsletters to add real value, and provide an integral corporate communications channel for both employees and external stakeholders.
If you’re no stranger to stuffy email updates and dated four-pagers, then a little bit of planning, creativity and careful thought could help your employee newsletter shed its uninspiring reputation and take on a whole new lease of life.
Why you may want an employee newsletter
While most people consider newsletters as a great way to keep customers up-to-speed with what your brand is up to right now, extending this approach to your employees can carry a wide range of benefits, such as:
Keeping everyone on your team informed about the latest developments
Creating clarity between departments and fostering communication between employees
Connecting employees to your brand values, vision and voice
Consolidating many piecemeal emails into one, to create an easily digestible news source
Inspiring social advocacy among your employees
Ensuring that key messages, events and updates are not lost in email threads
Instilling transparency within your organisation, gaining employees’ trust in your brand
Boosting employees’ feeling of recognition as part of their organisation
Through these benefits, employee newsletters can play a major role in developing workforces that feel informed, appreciated and united, and subsequently make them more likely to feel motivated to be part of your brand.
Does your employee newsletter have a purpose?
Before you start putting together your employee newsletter, first you need to consider if it’s needed.
If there isn’t much company news to share, or you have found other means to share updates frequently with your team (potentially through video conferences or face-to-face meetings), then an internal newsletter might be a waste of resources.
Similarly, consider the size, scale and geography of your team. If you are part of a small, more close-knit business, it’s likely you can inform people about relevant company news and events personally. For larger, global organisations, a newsletter is often a more practical and efficient way to send this information to employees worldwide.
So consider the following to determine how effective an employee newsletter would be within your organisation:
Do you have a lot of company news and successes you wish to share on a frequent basis?
Is it impractical to share these updates face-to-face or through other internal communication channels?
Are you concerned about company culture or how employees are engaging with your brand?
Do you want to increase the reach of your brand values among your team members?
Formatting your newsletter
Once you have determined that an employee newsletter would be a useful addition to your internal communications, now it’s time to consider how it’s formatted.
Did you know that while 65% of daily emails employees receive are opened, only around 10% actually click any of the material or links within them? That demonstrates that while employees recognise communications like internal newsletters, a much lower percentage actually engage with them. And a lot of that can come down to how accessible these are formatted.
With that in mind, the following 5 tips should go far in making newsletters that resonate across your team:
Lead with imagery
While plain text emails are often quite successful in the world of email marketing, to add more character to your employee newsletter you should look to incorporate imagery, videos and design features that add vibrancy and perfectly capture your brand.
This doesn’t mean it has to be overloaded with these elements and scant on copy. But a more visual approach is likely to catch your employees’ attention and actually intrigue them to explore the content within the email, rather than simply skip it over like the hundreds of other emails they receive on a weekly basis.
Plus, 75% of employees are more likely to want to watch a video than read any copy.
Ensure they’re on-brand and consistent
As part of your design, make sure that your brand colours, logos and other markers of your identity are present throughout. We mentioned earlier that one of the core objectives of an employee email is to embody your company values and bring your employees under one unified brand voice.
To achieve this, it’s essential that once you have developed an email template that you are happy with, this is kept consistent and always encapsulates your brand identity. This could be always having the logo in the top-right corner, or breaking up different news sections with splashes of your brand colours.
BAM by Papirfly™ can be a powerful ally in helping you achieve this consistency, enabling your team to quickly and seamlessly create beautifully branded email templates for all purposes.
Make them scannable
It is said that you have only 11 seconds to capture a reader’s attention in your company newsletter. So, in order to make this count, as well as being visually appealing your employee newsletter should be easy to scan and digest.
To achieve this when formatting your newsletter, consider the following:
Split it up into smaller, distinct sections with relevant headers – it doesn’t have to be super short (although conciseness is appreciated), but formatted this way for the ease of the reader, as bulky paragraphs are an eyesore in emails
Put the biggest piece of news or the information that resonates most with your employees on top to immediately capture their attention – experiment with different layouts early in your newsletter’s lifecycle to see which sections resonate with readers
Try breaking things up with different design elements, be it a video, infographic, list, etc. – these keep the content delivered fresh and will engage readers for longer
Give your copy personality
Use the copy of your employee newsletter to tell stories, as that is the kind of writing that people want to read.
When writing your newsletter, make your employees the stars and the protagonists. Inform them of the things that they have done, or what they can do. Maybe create a running narrative that blends from one newsletter to the next, rewarding people who pay attention and follow each one when it is released.
For a great example of this in action, check out AirBnB’s example, as its language really brings the reader on their brand journey.
Make sure buttons stand out
Finally, when formatting your internal newsletter, if you want your employees to take an action, make sure that it is clearly visible to them. Whether you would like their feedback on a survey or them to register their RSVP for an upcoming company get-together, buttons and links should stand out like sore thumbs.
Plus, make sure your buttons and links lead to valuable content, even if it is from outside your organisation. The more your employees get used to receiving useful, thought-provoking and relevant insight when they engage with your newsletter, the more likely this will become a habit for them.
12 powerful ideas for your employee newsletter
So now you have a stronger idea about how to format your employee newsletter, what should you actually include inside of that eye-catching layout?
Here are 12 great ideas to get you started:
Company news and milestones
If you have a big company update to share with your employees, or you’ve done something well to get spotted in the local or national news, use your internal newsletter to shout about it. This will give them a collective sense of achievement for their brand, which can do wonders for their motivation and productivity.
Birthdays, anniversaries and celebrations
Celebrating your employees’ birthdays, anniversaries and more in your company newsletter is not only a great way to make them feel appreciated and recognised, but it can also foster conversations between members of your team.
Job opportunities
Have a job opening that you’re looking to fill? Adding it to your employee newsletter will encourage your team to look among their friendship groups and professional networks for potential fits. Or, they might feel they are actually a great fit, empowering them to seek new career goals as part of your organisation.
Resources and recommendations
If you’ve picked up a great book or listened to an informative podcast recently, share it around with your employees in your newsletter. Even if it’s not strictly work-related, this can help build bonds between employees with similar interests and give them access to valuable content that might have otherwise missed out on.
Training opportunities
In a similar vein, if you have pinpointed a particular conference or webinar that you think can benefit your employees’ development, make that a highlight of your newsletter. Keep in mind that 70% of employees don’t believe they’ve mastered the skills they need to do their jobs, so inclusions like these show employees you care about their growth.
Employee surveys
Whether you want to get a general sense of your team’s satisfaction levels, or are looking for feedback for a recently introduced process or tool, a survey in your employee newsletter demonstrates that you value their input, and shows they have a say in your company’s direction.
Employee profiles and stories
Has an employee recently climbed Mount Everest, or completed 3 consecutive marathons for charity? Highlight your team’s accomplishments, journeys and skills in profile segments. These encourage communication and strong company cultures, while reinforcing the appreciation you have for your team as individuals.
Games and contests
Everyone appreciates a break from time to time, so why not incorporate a brain teaser, crossword or Sudoku in your employee newsletter. You could even make it a competition with the fastest person to respond winning a prize!
Calendar and events
If you’re organising a company get-together or social outing, your employee newsletter is a great place to promote it and attract RSVPs. These events can be a big boost to company culture and camaraderie, so should be prioritised in your communications.
Product and service updates
Have you recently introduced any new products to your line-up? Adjusted one of your service offerings? Modern, savvy employees want to be in the loop with what’s happening in your company. Including these updates in your internal newsletter helps them feel informed and shows you are a transparent, caring employer.
Company insights and articles
If you’ve recently added an article or piece of content to your website that you absolutely love, chances are your employees might love it too. Share it around to inform their development, and encourage them to share it with their friends and family, increasing that article’s reach.
Customer stories and testimonials
Finally, when one of your customers has great things to say about a member of staff or your company in general, you should highlight it in your newsletter. This ensures people recognise the great work being done by your brand for your customers, meaning they feel proud to be a part of your team.
How frequent should your internal newsletter be?
The frequency of your employee newsletters is often a delicate balance – you want them to appear frequently enough that readers stay engaged with your brand’s communications, but not overwhelm them with information to the point they become disconnected.
With that in mind, once a month is typically a good benchmark to aim for with your newsletters. This gives enough time to create a body of news and content to flesh out your emails, rather than having to scratch around for details every week or fortnight. Also, with consistency once again in mind, try to ensure they’re delivered on the same day every month, allowing employees to get a pattern in their minds.
Finally when it comes to frequency, if your company is undergoing a period of upheaval or has done something particularly newsworthy, it is okay to deviate from your calendar to deliver these updates in a timely fashion.
Maximise your employee newsletters with BAM
We hope that these tips and ideas will lead to more powerful, effective internal newsletters for your organisation. Communication plays a critical role in fostering a strong team spirit and transforming employees into true brand advocates.
And with BAM by Papirfly™, you can make creating, managing and sending these emails utterly effortless. With easy-to-use, fully customisable templates, BAM empowers anyone on your team to create stunning, standout newsletters in minutes to inform and entertain your teams across the globe.
No waiting on agency turnaround times, or painstaking hours in design. It’s all in-house and super-responsive.
Famous logo designs that have redefined global brands
Papirfly
5minutes read
Rebranding is undertaken for many different reasons; when a company is going through a big period of change, is coming out the other side of a scandal, or taking the advice of their marketing agency. Whatever the reasons, it’s a bold move for any team to take on.
Logos are iconic for many reasons, including that they become synonymous with products, feelings and, in some cases, an entire generation. Though a logo only forms a small part of a brand, when changed without warning, or without the right communication strategy, it can dramatically impact the perception of a consumer and, if not well-received, takes a considerable amount of time to get used to.
In this article we take a quick look at 4 iconic logo changes that dared to be different and are still doing the business for their global brands many years after the big switch.
Zara
You may remember this one from 2019. Perhaps only the die-hard Zara fans were as devastated as the designers who took to social media to heavily criticize the new direction.
Traditionally, having letters overlap would be considered a huge design faux pas, but as French agency Baron & Baron have shown us, not playing by the rules makes quite the statement. The agency is the creative brain behind Dior and Maison Margiela – both known as high-end, luxury fashion designers.
Zara is very much becoming the fashion house of the high street, and no matter what your opinion on the logo change, it may just have helped them to solidify this position further.
Instagram
Another social media rebrand that sent shockwaves through the digital world was the rebirth of Instagram in 2016. Users could not believe their eyes when they opted to replace their retro polaroid camera logo with a flat, neon-colored, gradient icon.
At the time, Instagram faced widespread criticism that it was so simplistic that many from outside of the design world claimed they “could have produced something similar”.
The change was drastic, but absolutely the right move for them at the time. The irony is, after such a critical reception, many other brands have followed suit with stripped back, flatter logos in the last couple of years. Instagram took a risk as a trailblazer, and their gamble certainly paid off.
Mastercard
Something must have been in the air in 2016 was certainly the year of the rebrand, with Mastercard getting its first new logo and branding refresh in 20 years. The design keeps the iconic overlapping circles, but is completely modernized with the removal of the dated stripes.
MasterCard’s team had foreseen the major transition into the digital age and created a new logo that would stand the test of time…That is, until January 2019. Just when the world thought MasterCard couldn’t get any bolder, they went against every branding rule in the book and removed their brand name from the logo, leaving behind only the red and yellow circles.
MasterCard opted for minimal in every sense of the word, and reconfirmed what we already knew – their identity is iconic enough that it needs no introduction.
Premier League
Consumers will always be your biggest critics when you make a big brand move, but having a global fan base of loyal football supporters opens you up to a whole new level of scrutiny. A(nother!) rebrand that took place in 2016 saw DesignStudio responsible for the clean, minimal Premier League logo fans have now become firmly accustomed to.
The initial controversy surrounded a miscommunication whereby it was rumoured that ‘Cecil the Lion’ would be removed in the new logo. The hearsay spiralled without being addressed properly and, when the rebrand did finally launch, there was Cecil front and centre.
Perhaps by keeping the rumours swirling, the agency helped to keep the new rebrand the hot topic of conversation. Free PR aside, if anything drastic is to change within your logo, you could consider a full communications strategy to make sure there are no surprises that could affect your reputation in the long term.
Conversely, if you have total confidence in your new direction (as Instagram did), a sudden launch could be just what you need to raise your profile in the media and cause a stir online. The dust will always eventually settle as today’s big rebrand becomes tomorrow’s chip paper.
Why are rebrands such a big deal?
These rebrands are thriving a few years on. Yet it’s not always the case that bold changes guarantee success.
It’s worth considering that a huge portion of global marketing budgets is spent on brand recognition campaigns. In doing so, brands build a rapport with consumers over the years that forms ongoing loyalty and relationships. If a change happens too suddenly, it can feel as though they haven’t been considered in the process. It can come as a shock and suddenly the brand they’ve known and loved throughout their lives is unrecognizable. Of course, most of the time it’s only a new visual direction, but psychologically consumers may feel uneasy about what to expect in the future.
The decision to rebrand is never taken lightly, particularly for global companies. A new logo requires a new set of brand guidelines, tone of voice guidance, color palettes, fonts and more. Having these assets created is the starting point – the rollout across the globe is where the real work begins. Every piece of internal communication, be it email signatures, letterheads, business cards and more, needs to be overhauled. External marketing, websites, employer brand documents, interiors, signage and every piece of collateral needs to be replaced over a period of time.
On the face of it, it sounds like a costly task many would want to avoid. That’s why it’s essential that companies decide carefully whether rebranding is right for them.
If you’ve decided rebranding is the way to go, then making sure you have the technology to roll it out is essential.
Whatever stage you’re at in considering your brand’s next steps, check out the insights from our rebranding experts.
Brand Activation Management
How campaign design templates unlock creativity, not restrict it
Papirfly
5minutes read
You don’t have to look very far on the Internet to find templates for any number of marketing mediums. Website layouts. Email designs. Business cards. Social media. You name it, you can find a template for it.
The reasons why they are so widespread are fairly obvious:
They can be massive time and effort savers for design teams
They help preserve brand consistency by locking down critical elements
They can be moulded to the ideal dimensions for digital and print materials, from social assets to billboard posters
They make creating perfectly branded designs accessible to anyone, regardless of design skills
Sounds fantastic so far. But, these advantages are frequently contested with this counter-argument:
“By placing firm boundaries on designers and promoting the duplication of the same layouts, templates greatly restrict creativity.”
While this assumption that templates restrict creativity is understandable, when they are used correctly, this is far from accurate. In fact, they can give designers the opportunity to work more creatively and feel more empowered in their role.
Why do many designers despise templates?
As highlighted above, a core issue that designers have with templates is how they limit the possibilities to produce unique, bespoke graphics.
Quite understandably, this “conveyor-belt” style approach to asset creation goes against their passion for producing innovative, one-of-a-kind pieces.
A quick counter to this argument is that competent companies already place these boundaries through their clearly defined brand guidelines. This is critical to maintaining consistency across all communications, a powerful marker of brand quality and essential for building trust among audiences.
With strict guidelines in place in place, designers can only push the boundaries so far in order to preserve their brand’s identity – any further and you can quickly lose recognition and trust among consumers. Good templates should manifest these guidelines, ensuring that anybody using them can’t stray away from the core foundations of your branding.
But, alongside these limitations on creative thinking, designers have further concerns about relying on templates, such as fears that templates will diminish the importance of their roles, making them dispensable if less-skilled workers can create graphics.
Again, this is an understandable concern. However, we would never advocate that templates exist to replace designers. A designer’s discipline extends far beyond just choosing from a predefined list of colours and patterns.
Without the unique insight and understanding that only a skilled designer can provide into any form of visual content, templates can result in a constant flow of bland, uninspiring and cookie-cutter assets.
We recognise that the core role of designers is being the overarching creative forces behind the brand. Rather than be caught up in the minutiae of producing repeat assets and making an endless stream of subtle tweaks, using templates ensures that designers can shift their focus to bespoke projects and creative thinking, while other, less-skilled employees can confidently work on day-to-day asset production.
Do templates actually benefit creativity?
Rather than cut off designers’ flow, there are many reasons why templates go a long way to freeing up designers’ time and preserving their creative energy, while empowering others to play an active role in asset creation.
No more mundane tasks
The use of templates means that those with minimal design skills can take responsibility for the more straightforward, mundane asset creations and tweaks. This removes the burden on your more qualified designers, who could be at risk of burning out or becoming disillusioned by making repeated adjustments or copies of old assets time and again.
More time for creative thinking
By freeing up your designers’ schedules, they will have more time to drive new ideas, research the latest trends and think conceptually, helping you stand out in today’s crowded market.
Not everything you push through your marketing channels necessarily needs to come from a template. While these can notably scale up the amount of content you produce for less time and money, for campaigns that need that extra creative spark or bespoke touch, you need your best designers on the case.
While your wider team uses templates to keep your content ticking over smoothly, you’ll have total confidence that all other collateral is going out perfectly on-brand.
Furthermore, this creative thinking time is likely to also form the basis for future templates, or helpful adjustments to your existing ones, which will improve the quality and attractiveness of your assets for your global audiences.
Conserving energy
It may sound frivolous, but even the prospect of your designers being able to go home on time and maintain more beneficial work-life balances, because templates have freed up their schedule, can greatly enhance their capacity to create and find inspiration for future works.
Designers can find inspiration practically everywhere, from films, television and books, to walking in the countryside. However, they are less likely to find new ideas when sitting behind the same desk, making miniscule amends to previous assets.
Let your templates do their job, so your designers can do theirs better, both inside and outside the workplace.
How to make the most of your templates
With all of these benefits for using templates in mind, it is possible to have too much of a good thing.
Using templates to replace the role of your designers is a recipe for disaster. This approach will inevitably hamper the uniqueness of your content, as only the insight of an effective designer can craft visuals that really capture people’s attention and illustrate your distinct brand identity the right way.
The solution is to have your design team play an active role in the creation of your templates, so that these receive their seal of approval, before they can be harnessed by other, less-skilled members of your organisation to apply as required.
That’s why a solution like BAM by Papirfly™ offers you more than cookie-cutter templates that can be downloaded or bought online. As well as providing an array of pre-built templates, our powerful platform enables you to structure your own smart templates across all forms of collateral, which can then be harnessed by your wider team to produce high-quality, on-brand results every time.
Create templates for every channel; social media posts, video, posters, brochures, banners, signage. All this and more can be housed within your platform, equipping your teams to produce an infinite amount of perfectly branded assets.
This means total consistency and content production that’s faster and more cost-effective than ever before. The ability to quickly amend or adjust collateral for your global markets and sub-brands, all while your designers have more capacity and less pressure, allowing them to work at their most creative, without burning out.
Empower your team’s creativity with smart templates
When used effectively and with the direct input of your insightful designers, templates can result in massive improvements to the productivity, consistency and ROI of your marketing output.
While your designers might immediately be hesitant about the idea due to the fears that we’ve pinpointed in this article, after using BAM by Papirfly™ these concerns will be replaced with celebrations for greatly reducing their share of mundane, repetitive tasks, and giving them the freedom to do what they do best: conceptualise and create great content.
Easy-to-use software and intelligent templates make creating exceptional assets simple
Provide your input on a wide range of fully bespoke templates
Reduce your dependence on external agencies to produce content that you could be creating in-house
Locked-down elements give you complete confidence that all content produced is consistent with your brand’s identity
Accelerated content creation is just one way that BAM can revolutionise your approach to marketing. Discover the full scope of our platform’s potential – get in touch with our team or arrange your free demo today.
Ditching outdated personas for real-world examples
Papirfly
5minutes read
At the heart of great content marketing is a strong understanding of who your audience is. What do they do? Where do they go? How do they shop? What do they care about? Having solid answers to these questions is a big boost to your attempts to convince customers about your brand.
Customer personas have been a tried-and-tested technique that marketing teams have relied on to find these answers. Yet, even today many of these personas are grounded in factors such as age, gender, location, occupation, etc.
This isn’t to say that demographics don’t hold any weight in forming a content strategy. However it is possible to get too tied to these factors, which can lead to sweeping statements like:
“Millennials really want…”
“People from this town care about…”
“Teachers want to see…”
These generalisations ignore the incredibly diverse personalities that exist within each of these categories. So, for content marketing to really hit home with prospective customers, it is better to actually work with identifiable, real-world personality traits, and build your strategies around their patterns of behaviour.
To help you get started, here we will define seven updated customer personas based on a key characteristic, personality and actions, and how you can influence them with content across their sales journey with your brand.
#1 – The activist
The activist consumer has really emerged in the past couple of decades, as more and more people take a keen interest in the values, actions and stances of today’s brands. Companies can no longer stay neutral on major debates if they want to engage with this customer – and their content must reflect that.
Who are they?
Care about the values and ethics of brands
Long memories for any misgivings
Slow to build trust, but then fiercely loyal
Approach to buying
Examine a brand’s ‘about’ pages
Seek out third-party reviews
Care about how products are made
Your content strategy
Focus on strong value-based pages and resources
Share core value content on social media and other campaigns
Highlight your customers and employees’ experiences
Take a stance on significant news and events
#2 – The bargain hunter
As the name suggests, the bargain hunter’s biggest priority is sniffing out a great deal. Discounts, limited-time offers, competitions – these spur their interest and get them excited above all else.
Who are they?
Prioritise cost, value and ROI over quality
Prone to making impulse purchases
Challenging to build brand loyalty with
Approach to buying
More likely to shop online
Will browse price comparison websites
Drawn to discounts, vouchers, free shipping, etc.
Your content strategy
Track your competitors’ prices
Maintain a flow of special offers to your audience
Encourage sign-ups with promises of bespoke special offers
#3 – The time-sensitive shopper
The world today is more on-demand than ever – every movie and TV show you could ever want on Netflix, next-day delivery from Amazon, instant connections through Tinder. Whether it’s due to having to handle a ton of responsibilities at work and home, or living an active and varied lifestyle, time-sensitive shoppers don’t stay focused on a brand for long… unless you give them a reason…
Who are they?
Their free time is sparse and precious
Have short attention spans
Care about getting what they need when they want it
Approach to buying
Don’t appreciate being sold to
Respond to interactive, short-form content
Less inclined to research all possibilities
Your content strategy
Stick to simple, concise, clear messaging early
Split up content to make it easy to digest
Personalise content to connect with individuals
#4 – The researcher
Unlike the time-sensitive shopper, the researcher is willing to devote plenty of time and effort into finding everything they can about a brand and what it offers. They will search far and wide to reach a solid consensus over which companies they will get behind.
Who are they?
Devote time to comparing brands, products and services
Look at cost, quality, production, brand values, etc.
Conduct research both online and in-store
Approach to buying
Browse online reviews, testimonials, etc.
Appreciate long-form content and want the full details
Buy from brands with depth
Your content strategy
Present in-depth information on product/service pages
Create FAQs, white papers, guides, feature comparisons, etc.
Encourage reviews and feedback from existing customers
Develop a range of in-store branded materials
#5 – The fence-sitter
Indecisive, pensive, non-committal – the fence-sitter is more cautious and doubtful than the other customers found in this list. They take a fair amount of convincing before they will pledge themselves to a brand, but your content can help you overcome that blockade.
Who are they?
Really need to understand a product/service before committing
Will talk to others before making a decision
Cautious when building trust with a brand
Approach to buying
Visit websites multiple times before buying anything
Check through ratings, reviews and other feedback
Can be spurred on by limited-time offers
Your content strategy
Use high-quality video content that emphasises your brand
Develop informative downloads to address any doubts
Lean heavily on social-proof content
#6 – The pioneer
The early-adopters. The trend-setters. There’s nothing a pioneer loves more than getting involved with a product, service or brand before it goes mainstream. They want to know what sets your brand apart from the crowd, and settle for nothing less than special.
Who are they?
Seek out independent, niche brands
Frequently review products and services
Generally wealthier than other consumers
Risk-takers and optimists
Approach to buying
Look for emerging brands on forums or social media
Prioritise the potential of a product over cost and current quality
Care about a brand’s story and journey
Your content strategy
Share news and developments on social media
Produce content audiences can engage with
Highlight your company’s story in videos
Attract user-generated content where possible
#7 – The enthusiast
Say it quietly, but the enthusiast is every brand’s favourite customer. The ones that provide repeat business. Advocate your service. Refer you to their friends. But because they’re already loyal does that mean you can safely ignore them to pursue no business? Absolutely not!
Who are they?
Devoted loyalty towards your brand
Will often share your content on their platforms
Recommend your products/services to friends
Approach to buying
Expect special treatment for their loyalty
Have their ‘go-to’ products and services
Don’t need to learn more about your brand
Your content strategy
Feature their experiences in your marketing
Send them personalised content and offers
Produce community-driven campaigns
Getting content to your customers on brand, every time
Focusing your content strategy on the unique characteristics and personalities of today’s customers is key to forging and maintaining strong relationships with your audience. We hope that this insight into several standout customer types will make a difference in how effective and engaging your content is moving forward.
Of course, while it’s important to vary your content based on consumer characteristics, some things about content production will always remain true. It must be high-quality. It must be consistent. And it must be on-brand.
BAM by Papirfly™ helps you fulfil these core requirements so you can produce an extensive range of content to capture the imaginations of as many of these customer types as possible.
Create an infinite amount of marketing collateral in-house, with minimal training required
Bespoke, intelligent templates ensure that asset creation is simple and there is no risk of going off-brand
Easily adapt campaign materials, text and imagery for your global audiences
Embrace the future of marketing today – discover the full possibilities of BAM by arranging your own personal demo, or get in touch with our team.
8 brand tools every successful customer service team uses
Papirfly
4minutes read
Customers are the bedrock of any business. Large or small. Global or local. Startup or established. Your customers drive revenue and lend credibility to your company’s offerings.
Few would disagree with this statement. So, it is odd that numerous marketing teams tend to overlook the value that their customer service team brings to the table.
There should be no questioning the significance that strong customer service offers to an organisation:
96% of customers consider customer service a key component of their loyalty to a brand
Increasing customer retention by just 5% can lead to profits increasing 25%
72% of customers will share positive experiences with 6 or more people
67% of customers would pay more for better customer service experiences
Investment in customer experience can increase employee engagement by 20%
But, its value doesn’t just extend to helping people and fostering better customer relationships. These teams can bring valuable insight to marketers and companies overall.
In a landscape that is increasingly guided by data, and appears keen to understand customers on a more detailed level than ever before, who better to provide this perception than those directly interacting with customers on a daily basis?
However, to help them acquire this insight, and to enhance their ability to build their brand’s reputation through strong customer support, they need to be properly equipped. Below, we highlight eight crucial brand tools to maximise the benefits your customer service team brings to your business.
1. In-depth knowledge base
Particularly in extensive global organisations, your customer service team can’t be everywhere at once. So, it is vital that customers have a way to serve themselves if they are in need of information. A robust, regularly updated knowledge base should be at the heart of this.
From a range of blog posts, FAQs and other resources on your website, to extensive sales collateral to inform your internal teams, a good knowledge base is a cornerstone of a successful customer service team. With this knowledge base, you are better-placed to:
Keep customers happy and informed
Consistently deliver support when your customers need it
Proactively respond to your customers’ concerns
Limit the amount of time devoted to phone calls, emails and other messages
Build your reputation as an authority within your industry
2. Empathy maps
When it comes to directly engaging with your customers, your customer service team is on the frontline. They have access to first-hand information about what your customers enjoy about your brand, what they don’t like, what they would like to see improved and what their pain points are.
Unfortunately, it is all too easy for the flow of that information to begin and end with a customer service rep. An empathy map can help ensure that the right data is gathered to guide the content your marketing team develops day-to-day.
Through these maps, you gain a categorised, clear layout of your audiences’ thoughts and feelings, including:
What problems they are looking to resolve
What their biggest fears and concerns are
What their goals and ambitions are
What content or support they would like to see from your brand
Where they are engaging with your brand
What they do, see hear, and say on a daily basis
With this knowledge collected by your customer service team and laid out during strategy meetings, your brand is better positioned to address your consumers’ needs and wants through your marketing.
3. Persona profiles
It is also important that your customer service team has a good understanding of your brand’s “ideal consumers”. Without this, they may be left in the dark about how to respond to a customer’s request or issue. Messages will need to be escalated up the chain of command, hindering your efficiency.
Creating persona profiles based on your insight into your preferred audiences – something your customer service team can help you gather – will give these teams a stronger sense of how to handle those who reach out to them.
Of course, every customer is unique, and personalisation is important. But these profiles can give your representatives a starting point to best guide this interaction. This can result in faster, more focused responses to messages, improving your customers’ experiences.
Download the full whitepaper
To explore our complete list of brand tools that help unlock the true potential of your customer service team, click here to get hold of our latest whitepaper.
Amplify the power of your customer service team
Equipping your customer service team with the right tools unlocks their true potential, not only in how they support your audiences, but in how they steer your marketing strategy.
The insight that these professionals offer on how your customers think, feel and act can be invaluable when harnessed properly. We hope that by emphasising these tools above, you too can get more value out of this important strand of your company.
Of course, a comprehensive platform such as BAM by Papirfly™ can help you take a massive step towards fully equipping your customer service teams with the resources they need to best perform their role.
For more information about the full capabilities of BAM and how it can positively influence every aspect of your marketing efforts, get in touch with our team, or book your free demo.
5 quick marketing strategies to keep customers beyond Christmas…
Papirfly
3minutes read
Building brand loyalty is often spoken about as if there’s some kind of magic formula. The truth is, there are hundreds of ways to do it, and no one method can be suitable for everyone. It can take years, months or in some cases just a couple of minutes to build depending on the exact motivations of your individual purchasers.
Luckily, there are some very popular methods that can be tried, tested and tweaked to optimise your success.
#1 Email marketing post-purchase
This is the simplest and arguably most effective way to keep the conversation going. Contacting customers any time past the return period will push your brand front and centre, encourage reviews and feedback, and remind them of what will have hopefully been a pleasant shopping experience. If the prospect had forgotten their purchase, this will give them a friendly reminder while helping to build brand familiarity.
#2 Use their data to personalise their experience and build a relationship
If your website required a customer to sign up and they gave you permission to collect information, you can do some very clever things to help them feel loved. This could include any of the following:
Recommending items similar to what they have purchased
Giving them the opportunity to save items or request to be notified when something is out of stock
Letting them know when sets of items have been purchased together frequently
Tailor promotions and content to them
#3 Provide incentive for a follow-up sale
If someone has committed to spending their hard-earned money with you at Christmas, consider that they may be looking to tighten the purse strings in the new year. This means their thought process for purchasing may be more considered. Give them an incentive to make a repeat purchase, but also keep them excited about the generosity of your brand with an early opportunity to access sale items or discounts. Even just 24 hours before it’s made public will be enough to make some first-time customers feel special and appreciated.
#4 Unlimited delivery
A popular option for large retailers is to offer a whole year of ‘free’ next-day delivery, for a small annual fee. The cost of the whole year is usually comparable to two single delivery costs, which makes it a very attractive deal for customers. This helps to breed loyalty because if a consumer is torn between your brand and another, and they hold what they see as unlimited delivery with your brand, they are more inclined to make the purchase with you.
#5 Memberships
Creating a points system or VIP account option with incentives can make you more attractive than your competitors. It might be that you can cash in your points for money off or rewards, receive a gift or discount on your birthday and get access to VIP sales or promotion earlier than regular customers.
Being reactive in retail
As we outlined earlier, what hooks each customer will differ depending on their motivations and circumstances at the time of marketing to them. There are many different ways to engage customers both digitally and in-store, but the latter can be difficult without any digitisation or data capture.
The more data you have, the more opportunities you have to focus your messaging and tailor your promotions to your audience’s preferences. Beyond this, a strong brand, purpose and marketing strategy to stay front and centre will act as an integral foundation layer to all this additional activity. Over and above this, your team needs the tools to be able to react quickly to trends and opportunities, and shouldn’t be bogged down by limitations such as budget and time.
What are digital assets and how do you manage them?
Papirfly
4minutes read
Digital assets are indispensable valuables. They consume our surroundings more than we probably are aware of. In your private life alone, you have family photos, video recordings, insurance papers, banking papers, and personal papers to name a few. At work, any file you create, capture, copy or consume on your digital devices are considered digital assets. In 2020, this data required 64.2 zettabytes, in 2025 this number is expected to grow to more than 180 zettabytes.
Where is this data stored, and most importantly, how is this data stored? Do you have control of your digital assets, and are you prepared for the data growth?
Every company and every person has some sort of system for their digital assets, but the devil is in the details. How you do this means the world of difference and the impact when something backfires can be devastating.
Digital assets are valuables
Images are a good example of why digital assets are valuables. We constantly take pictures with our phones or cameras because we want to preserve a moment, whether it is of our kids, pets, partner, or a place. But then what? Do you store these images on your iCloud, Google Photos, or do you just leave them on the memory card?
Digital assets are indispensable valuables. They consume our surroundings more than we probably are aware of. In your private life alone, you have family photos, video recordings, insurance papers, banking papers, and personal papers to name a few. At work, any file you create, capture, copy or consume on your digital devices are considered digital assets. In 2020, this data required 64.2 zettabytes, in 2025 this number is expected to grow to more than 180 zettabytes.
Where is this data stored, and most importantly, how is this data stored? Do you have control of your digital assets, and are you prepared for the data growth?
Every company and every person has some sort of system for their digital assets, but the devil is in the details. How you do this means the world of difference and the impact when something backfires can be devastating.
Digital assets are valuables
Images are a good example of why digital assets are valuables. We constantly take pictures with our phones or cameras because we want to preserve a moment, whether it is of our kids, pets, partner, or a place. But then what? Do you store these images on your iCloud, Google Photos, or do you just leave them on the memory card?
Digital assets are indispensable valuables. They consume our surroundings more than we probably are aware of. In your private life alone, you have family photos, video recordings, insurance papers, banking papers, and personal papers to name a few. At work, any file you create, capture, copy or consume on your digital devices are considered digital assets. In 2020, this data required 64.2 zettabytes, in 2025 this number is expected to grow to more than 180 zettabytes.
Where is this data stored, and most importantly, how is this data stored? Do you have control of your digital assets, and are you prepared for the data growth?
Every company and every person has some sort of system for their digital assets, but the devil is in the details. How you do this means the world of difference and the impact when something backfires can be devastating.
Digital assets are valuables
Images are a good example of why digital assets are valuables. We constantly take pictures with our phones or cameras because we want to preserve a moment, whether it is of our kids, pets, partner, or a place. But then what? Do you store these images on your iCloud, Google Photos, or do you just leave them on the memory card?
Employer branding – how important is your employer brand?
Papirfly
22minutes read
In any organisation, the skills and dedication of the workforce is the lifeforce powering its future. You want to attract the best possible talent to your company, and retain them for the long term to bring continued success to your business.
Employer branding is critical to achieving this objective. How effectively you market the values that underpin your organisation, emphasise the unique benefits of working for your company, and demonstrate a strong, defined culture will have a powerful influence on your ability to capture the imagination of those at the top of the talent pool.
This guide is designed to help you unlock the true potential of your employer brand in 2021 and beyond. Settle in and discover everything you need to know in today’s landscape.
What is employer brand?
Employer branding at its most basic is the way a company promotes itself as a place to work. It comes from the external reputation the company has as a business and the way its employees view it. Having an effective employer brand in place can lead to benefits including:
Reduced turnover of staff
Attraction of high-quality talent
Help in retaining valued employees
Less money spent on hiring new staff
Engaged employees
In the modern world of business, employer branding and recruitment have become entwined, creating strategies that are as much Human Resources department initiatives as they are marketing.
Employer branding and employee branding are different too. Employee branding is really a focus on how the employees act in accordance with the values of a company, and how the organisation promotes this.
Employer branding and corporate branding differ in that the latter focuses on a value proposition to customers, defining what your organisation offers to the marketplace.
Some employer branding statistics
When you’re successful in employer branding, the numbers really stack up. These are just some of the statistics reported in the employer branding space:
43% decrease in hiring costs
67% of employees would accept a lower wage if a company has positive reviews online
69% of employees are likely to apply if the company actively manages its brand
84% of employees consider leaving their current job if another company has a better reputation
88% of millennials believe that being in the right culture is important
72% of global recruiting leaders believe that employer brand has a significant impact on hiring
79% of jobseekers are likely to use social media in their job search
A good employer brand leads to 50% more qualified candidates
Staff have serious expectations of what they want from a company. And one of the very bottom line commercial benefits of employer branding is that staff turnover can be reduced by 28%.
High turnover is demoralising for other employees and costly for a business. Taking into account recruitment hiring fees, it can cost an SME £5,500 to replace a member of staff on a national average salary wage.
Stats revealed by Staffbase below show just how costly employee turnover can be for corporates:
While a company may consider its staff as its greatest asset, so many organisations still don’t employ effective processes when it comes to hiring staff. And retaining staff once on board, is often something that falls by the wayside. Even companies who do recognise the importance of retention, sometimes struggle to dedicate the time to implement change.
In an increasingly competitive market, hiring and retaining talent is tough, but attracting the right people to your positions can be pretty much impossible without a powerful employer brand.
Messaging, creative and distribution of campaigns need to be targeted and carefully considered. That’s only made possible with employer brand initiatives, driven by the employer branding teams.
…For hiring and retention
Your business should make employees feel proud to work there. Company culture is of course important for most people, but particularly for those from generation Y, who are more likely to read reviews and use social media to determine if they are a good fit for your brand.
Having an effective employer branding plan really helps retain employees and recruit new ones. People are the core of any business, so you will want to find the best. Having a popular brand makes it easier and faster to hire good staff.
This is because with good employer branding the Human Resources team will spend less time trying to find quality candidates. Talented people will want to work for your company and be drawn to it for all the right reasons. Hiring time can be as much as two times quicker with a strong employer brand. Generally, the hiring process will differ depending on the candidate’s circumstances such as how much notice period they need to give, but this top-line process from Google shows how an average application might unfold.
…For more engaged employees
When employees are happy and engaged with the brand they work for, they’re more likely to evangelise about these positive experiences. They become ambassadors and you’ll likely see more applications as a result of direct referrals.
…For reducing costs
There are two ways of looking at cost reductions in relation to great employer branding:
Firstly, if you have a good reputation a lot of the hard work in recruiting the best people is already done for you. Staff are looking for good companies with positive reviews and experiences. Applicants will seek out good companies to work for, and will see your brand as a good place to work.
Money is saved as hiring is quicker and talent is placed in the business sooner. It can be spent strategically instead of on recruitment costs.
Secondly, having a lower staff turnover reaps significant savings to the overall recruitment budget.
Cost per head goes down and potential staff are willing to accept a lower salary if the company had very positive reviews online. This is because the value of a good environment is worth more than a higher salary in the wrong environment.
How has the global pandemic reshaped employer branding?
The ground-shaking consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic turned the marketing landscape on its head several times over, and employer branding was not immune to its effects. While the pandemic itself will eventually subside, its ramifications will live on for significantly longer.
In times of crisis such as what many in the world experienced in 2020, or the uncertainty with which we entered 2021, employer brand teams will need to work harder to meet the expectations of available talent and existing employees.
Here’s a breakdown of what changed for employer branding since the start of the 2020s – and how you can adjust to meet this new landscape.
The response to COVID-19
Many organisations were hit hard by the global pandemic. The hit to the economy and restrictions to certain industries, namely retail, leisure and travel, resulted in many redundancies and cost-cutting measures.
Unfortunately, no matter how unavoidable these were in the circumstances, a brand’s response to COVID-19 will live long in the memory for many past and prospective employees.
75% of prospective employees consider a brand’s reputation before deciding to make an application (CareerArc)
Brands that demonstrated a desire to put people over profits during the hardest months of this pandemic will have strengthened their reputation among today’s talent. Even if they were forced to proceed with mass lay-offs, companies that handled it with compassion, like Airbnb, came away with credit for when the world returns to some semblance of “normal”.
Conversely, those brands that failed to convey this will need to spend the coming months and years rebuilding their image.
COVID-19 left employer brand teams with a valuable lesson – it’s not enough to say you care about staff, but this must be reinforced when times are tough. It will pay dividends for employer brand managers to explore the best and worst brand responses to this crisis to inform how they approach circumstances like this in future.
Values matter more than ever
The fallout from COVID-19 has put a magnifying glass on company values like never before. The worst company responses to the pandemic have made talent particularly skeptical of the values that an employer brand emphasises. To combat this, employer brand teams should go to greater lengths to demonstrate these values in action across their content.
Promote the ways you have prioritised the wellbeing of your employees throughout this challenging period, and harness employee stories of how they’ve appreciated your support in these strange times.
Any authentic stories of this nature will hit home with prospective employees in a way they never have before, helping your company stand out as a destination that cares about its team.
Global talent wants more from employers in 2021
Newly-hired remote workers want their onboarding process to be as robust and reassuring as it would be for ‘traditional hires’
Employees want to know their company has clearly defined remote and hybrid working models
Talent wants to see companies pushing their diversity and inclusion efforts further than ever, especially following the events of 2020
The need for clear communication
The excessive amounts of misinformation and hearsay about the global pandemic have made it more important for employer brands to deliver clarity and consistency to both existing employees and available talent.
In order to meet people’s need for clarity in times of substantial uncertainty, employer brand managers should:
Facilitate regular meetings/video conferencing calls with teams to communicate important information and check on employees’ wellbeing
House up-to-date company policies and guidelines in a shared, accessible space
Share positive events and stories where possible to build morale
Approach any bad news earnestly and empathetically
Investigate straightforward chat/workflow management systems that will keep remote employees connected
Up to a third of employees have contemplated leaving their job due to poor communication from management (Dynamic Signal)
Remote recruitment and onboarding
The greater emphasis on remote working inspired by the pandemic will have a long-term impact on how recruitment and onboarding will take place. Video interviews are now commonplace. Employees are hired and start work without ever having stepped inside an office.
While traditional, face-to-face interviews will never disappear entirely, employer brand teams should work to better facilitate these evolutions in order to deliver the biggest benefits to new recruits and your overall organisation.
Consider including someone from your branding team in video interviews to give recruits a strong picture of your company culture that they can’t experience in person
Account for technical issues on either side that might affect the interview
Make clear company literature available for newly-recruited employees to inform their understanding of your operations
Assign recruits with a remote “buddy” to ease their integration into your team and handle any initial problems they may be facing
Immediately engage them with your IT team to demonstrate anything they need to know to work effectively from home
Include them in team social events and gatherings so they don’t feel distanced from the brand following their introduction to your team
Remote working is not the only recruitment-based challenge that employer brand teams will need to confront and conquer this year:
Harness data for continuous improvement
Employer brand teams should be empowered to track the response and engagement to the content they promote, and use this data to inform agile adjustments over time and to guide future campaigns based on what resonates most with their audiences.
Restructure company material for the new reality
With a marked shift towards recruitment materials that prioritise empathetic, authentic storytelling over lists of perks, now is the time for employer brand professionals to reassess their content and determine the right story to tell prospective recruits in the current climate.
Remove barriers to internal recruitment
Internal mobility gained a lot of momentum in 2020, and employer brand managers in 2021 should work harder to emphasise this possibility within their teams. Consider what obstacles must be eliminated to educate talent on their potential to switch roles within the same company.
Supporting company culture
Finally, it’s important to recognise the impact of the pandemic on company culture. The transition to remote working across numerous organisations has rendered traditional office hotspots for socialising and creature comforts unavailable for the time being.
But, that doesn’t mean that company culture can be put on pause until COVID-19 is behind us. For many in the modern landscape, a strong, welcoming culture trumps salary and other perks in attracting them to work for an organisation:
With this in mind, the onus is on employer brand experts to rise to the occasion and find ways to maintain (and even strengthen) company culture for the remote-working era.
Document your company’s values clearly and make them accessible to all
Ensure consistency across all communications to make your values and identity inherent to everyone
Showcase the history and future of your company to help employees find their identity within your company
Harness your video conferencing technology for company social events like gaming, movies or friendly get-togethers
The importance of employer branding to an organisation
Two in five organisations say that hiring is becoming tougher. Businesses are having to become more flexible in finding the right candidate.
With a powerful employer brand strategy, you’re looking to become an employer of choice. By creating a strong, positive reputation you’ll stop talented employees from voting with their feet.
Potential candidates will often look to an employer of choice before all others. Positioning yourself in this way starts with the following:
Creating a positive candidate selection process
Having a focus on career growth opportunities
Putting the company’s values at the heart of everything
Reviewing your pay scales and benefits
You might also like to consider these eight values when positioning yourself as an employer of choice. They’re part of what may help attract a person in the first place:
Flexible placement – this is where an employee has opportunities to work in a variety of roles and settings within the organisation, where they have an interest in expanding their understanding. Employers should encourage staff to work in a variety of roles too, to give them a better view of the overall business.
A customer focus – business should be customer-centric and understand that for the employee the customer comes first. Managers should give staff the tools needed to achieve this, and support the idea that the employee serves the customer’s needs first, before those of the manager. For example, a customer service employee would want to satisfy a customer’s complaint, before serving a manager’s needs. This would require the entire organisation to have a customer-centric mentality.
Performance focus – employers should use performance and benefit-based rewards to support staff development and keep them motivated. This might include additional days off or performance-related pay bonuses.
Project-based work – where possible, employees should have work structured around internal projects rather than organisational functions. For example, this might see employees in a marketing department working collaboratively on a new project from the start, rather than being focussed only on their singular role within that project at the time it’s ready to go to market.
Valuable work – work needs to be meaningful for staff. If tasks become menial or meaningless, it can cause them to become disengaged.
Commitment is important – staff should be committed to the outcomes of the organisation, while employers should be committed to helping staff do their jobs to the best of their abilities.
Ongoing learning and development – the company should encourage staff to learn and develop within the organisation. Whether that’s a certified CPD course or discovering the way another area of the business works – professional development can be invaluable to employees. A typical process for keeping employees at their best can be found below, but will of course vary from business to business:
Share information – employers should help staff by giving them access to a wide range of company data. In return staff should be willing to digest this information and show initiative to help move things forward, address any issues and drive productivity.
Creating and maintaining these processes are part of a culture change that needs to be supported in the long term by the HR staff. Building this relationship is critical when it comes to an effective employer brand strategy.
Whether it’s holiday allowance, perks or salary, great talent demands great benefits. But they also want a culture they can identify with.
So, in this context employer branding strategy becomes a combination of economic benefits, functional rewards and psychological attributes that make employees connect with your company on an emotional level too.
If you can understand these benefits and what they mean to staff, you can create an attractive benefits package, which helps create a stronger employer brand.
By investing in your employer branding tactics, you can engage better with prospective and current employees whose values fit yours. It’s this that will make your brand stand out to the right people.
Always begin with understanding who you are trying to reach, and what they want.
To be successful, and as with any form of marketing, you need a good employer branding strategy to help create and promote your campaigns.
Audit your brand’s perception
How does the world see you? What do your employees really think about working for your company? Unless you’re fully engaged in your internal employer branding you probably won’t understand how employees genuinely feel about working in the organisation. And working in hectic global organisations can mean these get forgotten, albeit unintentionally.
There’s a host of places to look. Check employment review sites – did you get five stars as an employer? Staff often post on social media too. Are they proud of their work or are they critical? Do they say nothing? Look for the underlying message. Other options for feedback include internal surveys or using an agency to monitor your reputation.
Whichever method you choose should uncover where staff are happy or where changes can be made.
Also check for brand consistency. Do you convey the right message at all times? Do your visuals and tone match that message?
It’s important to have a realistic understanding of how you are perceived. Then you can begin to address the issues with your employer brand.
Decide what makes your company unique
Once you know what makes your company unique you can create your story. Look at your company’s mission statement, its values, its social responsibility and culture. Look at what makes your company stand out. Is it the best? Is it the fastest? What do you stand for? Do you have a social responsibility stance?
From here you can create your brand story for prospective employees. By having a brand story you’ll be helping candidates to match their personal values to those of your organisation and your employer brand marketing. A story will also help provide clarity for existing staff too, and drive better employer branding internally and externally.
Create an EVP – an employee value proposition
This is a mission statement or marketing promise to employees. It’s important that it’s truthful, and that you intend to stick to it.
And it’s important that it creates a sense of passion for the business and working there, as well as relaying how many days’ holiday you get by joining. It might include any positives about corporate social responsibility, or how valuable staff are at your organisation.
It can also be shared with recruiters. It’s designed for everyone who interacts with your employer brand.
The employee should be at the centre of your EVP and ideally your proposition should have been well received within your organisation. Think about all the things that are important to staff. These might include:
Professional development
Workplace culture
Additional benefits such as healthcare
Flexitime
Quality of work
Bonuses
Office location
Perks such as free fruit, gym memberships and social outings
Company values
Work-life balance
People want to feel their work is valued and meaningful, and that the company culture is the right fit for them. Creating an Employee Value Proposition cements this for the entire organisation. It’s a chance to showcase your positive impact as a brand.
Offer career development and learning opportunities
What’s the reason most people leave their jobs? Its staff feeling bored and wanting a new challenge is at the top of the list.
By offering learning opportunities to staff you’re showing a commitment to the employee, and gaining a staff with an improved skill set.
By making their roles challenging will help stave off the risk of staff feeling like they’re stuck in a rut. You should find they’ll be less likely to move on, or in reality won’t move on so quickly as they might have otherwise.
Developing staff skills is an easy solution to the age-old problem of workplace boredom. Perhaps it’s strange then that still employees cite lack of challenges as the primary reason to leave, and organisations aren’t responding.
Employer branding begins at home
Current employees will be your best advocates, provided they’re happy. Candidates frequently use testimonials from current employees in the research as to whether to join a company or not.
Use testimonials on your website or encourage employees to leave reviews on sites where staff talk about where they work. Recruitment company Glassdoor is one of the most widely used in terms of encouraging testimonials.
Encourage staff to use social media to post about fun events that have taken place in the company. Staff posting about these things, whether corporate team building or a night out, will show your company as an exciting place to be and a vibrant place to work. If someone likes it enough to post about it in their spare time it shows you to be an employer that promotes a happy workplace.
This is important. Test and refine – success is only measured against goals or targets. Doing all the above is imperative but measuring the effectiveness of your employer branding marketing is the only way to know if it’s working. The list below should help with how to measure employer branding in your business.
Useful employer branding metrics
Quality of hire
It’s hard to measure, but the quality of hire defines the value a new employee brings to the company by performing and improving tasks and helping others. It is one of the most important metrics if you can get the data.
The value or performance of an employee generally drops when dissatisfaction kicks in so it’s a good indicator of the effectiveness of your employer brand. Unhappy employees are less productive and will not stay with you for long.
Job offer acceptance rate
Keep track of how many applicants reject your job offers and ask for feedback on why you’re not their employer of choice. Also, try to find out which company they have chosen instead and note at what stage of the process they dropped out.
Employee referral rate
Employees recommending your organisation to their family, friends and network as a great place to work means they like your employer brand. Employee referrals are a great source of talent. So if you don’t have a referral programme in place it’s probably time to start one.
Employee retention rate
There is no such thing as a static workforce. Employees will leave. However, the lower your voluntary attrition rate, the better because happy employees will want to stay and keep working for you. It also reduces the amount of confusion and disruption to daily projects and delivery.
It’s a powerful indicator of a strong employer brand and the savings in having a reduced staff turnover are great. Be sure to conduct exit interviews, as you can get valuable feedback.
Giveaway/takeaway ratio
This measures how many of your applicants come from direct competitors and how many of your current employees leave to join the competition. It’s a good direct comparison of employer brands.
Hiring manager satisfaction
Companies often overlook the hiring managers, but their feedback is valuable in determining the strength of your employer brand and the candidates it attracts. Are these managers satisfied with the number and quality of applicants, their fit with role expectations and company culture?
Number of open applications
Open applications are those received for no specific job opening but more to express interest in the organisation. Candidates are applying to you as a company because they feel there is a good cultural fit. If you’ve got a high number of open applications, it’s a good indicator of a strong employer brand.
For many prospective employees, the first engagement with a company’s culture is often their website. An attractive and engaging website remains a powerful tool in an employer’s arsenal when it comes to attracting new talent.
Modern progressive companies use their site to set themselves apart, fostering a positive, welcoming employer brand through their inclusive approach, open engagement and simplicity in navigation and application. They demonstrate care for their employees, a pride in their image and cultivating a desire in candidates that this is a company worth working for.
The careers hub
Beyond simple job ads and application procedures, a careers hub offers space and scope to introduce the candidate to additional content that supports the positive employer brand message. Think testimonials, links to your employee value proposition and company values. These should all make a good case as to why candidates should come and work for your organisation.
Staff contributed blogs
Just as happy staff are your greatest advocates; staff blogs can offer a glimpse of the company culture too. Having employees share positive stories is often directed towards social media. But populating staff-led content on your website shouldn’t be overlooked.
For example, look at the following themes:
Contributions on industry issues – shows that you trust your employees’ levels of expertise and value their opinions enough to publish them under the corporate banner.
Contributions around ‘out of work’ topics – employee biographies, stories of fundraising or personal achievements foster an inclusive culture. The organisation cares about the person beyond their job.
Prospective employees are immediately being offered an environment of inclusivity, engaging them in the culture of the organisation even before they’ve started their application process.
Brand-promoting content
It’s worth remembering that your website offers you complete control when it comes to building a positive employer brand. Again, this can be achieved by incorporating inclusivity into the content used on the site, as well as creative use of video and new media technology.
It’s a chance to blend the corporate nature of the business with the personal side. On the one hand, you have space to deliver video presentations that take candidates on the journey from application to successful career. While ‘off-setting’ this with supporting content from throughout the company, creating the rounded view that everyone has bought into the company philosophy.
Having campaigns that are country-specific isn’t just about having the copy in the correct language. There is culturally appropriate imagery, legal details, contact information, colour palettes, logo considerations and a whole host of factors to think about. Trying to make one campaign apply to multiple countries by tweaking it slightly won’t land well with prospective and existing employees.
If you don’t have a tool like BAM by Papirfly™ in place where all of this is made easy, you should consider involving team members that are based in the country you’re promoting in. Ultimately you will need to make sure your employer brand is consistent but the insight will need to come from someone that truly understands the market.
Employer branding online goes beyond just posting company updates and recruitment drives on LinkedIn. Sites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Quora and Pinterest can all be excellent places to represent your employer brand.
But it is easy to get social media wrong. When using your employer branding through social media remember it’s a conversation, not a soapbox. Your first step should be to understand the conversation people are already having about your company. Then join in.
Here are some tools that can help you find out what people are already saying about your company:
Social Mention – These tools look at what people have been saying about you on social media and provides useful data such as the number of comments which are generally positive compared to those which are negative.
Google Alerts – The free Google Alerts service is a great way to find out what is being said about your company and have it delivered straight to your inbox.
Sites like Reddit and Quora can also be great for discovering what employees want from an employer in general. Here people are more than happy to express opinions about their experiences in detail.
Your communication should be friendly and open while still maintaining a sense of professionalism. Having your employees contribute to your organisation’s Facebook fan page is another great way to create content and show a human face for your company.
LinkedIn groups and company pages are another good way to develop your employee brand. Potential employees who follow your company page will receive updates into their news feed. This is a good way to share videos, articles and other content which helps people understand what your company is about. Pinterest is less used than the other major social networks but is perfect for showing the fun and creative side of your business.
Candidates from this group want idea sharing and innovation. Remember the co-founder of Google, Larry Page, is a Gen X, so don’t think digital is lost on this generation of employees. They’ve seen how digital has changed the working world.
They’ll visit your website and they’re sometimes on social media too. They’re looking for work-life balance and forward-thinking organisations, so ensure your messaging really reflects this where you offer it. Remember to tailor your recruitment campaigns depending on your audience’s needs. While you can’t generalise every person in a generation, you can use guides to steer your strategy, such as the one below:
A focus on employer branding reflects a change in the hiring market. Employees want to work for companies that have an excellent reputation, for example where a company has a particular corporate social responsibility in place.
Graduates are becoming more discerning when choosing a company to work for.
This means there’s an opportunity for a new approach for HR departments. Maintaining brand reputation becomes more of a consideration when building HR policies, because it has important implications for how HR departments recruit and retain staff.
The HR function becomes an extension of a brand achieving dominance in the market. They can get more access to, for example, marketing or other areas where traditionally they might have struggled to be an influence.
For HR practitioners, the focus on employer and employee branding is all part of an overall goal of getting existing employees and potential employees to identify with the brand. It’s not a ‘facing out’ process. It’s facing both in and out.
This Reputation Management Study from global recruiters MRINetwork, shows 35% of job candidates think that a strong employer brand is important and a further 34% regard it as ‘very important’. Employees want to see a strong, definable identity – and if it is not there, they will likely look elsewhere.
In tech, the skills gap is huge. Talent shortages are a global phenomenon – affecting sectors as diverse as construction through to healthcare. So, when it comes to talent, it’s most definitely a seller’s market.
And resource management is becoming more difficult. One estimate suggests that 85% of the jobs that will exist in 2030 have not yet been invented.
It’s becoming increasingly hard to predict precisely what type of roles you will need to fill in a few years’ time – and you may need to redeploy or recruit staff into new roles at short notice. If you have already built up a definite employer brand identity, you have a head start in attracting the right people into those new positions.
Trends to consider
Authenticity and employee authorship
Whether candidates are thinking of joining a company or mulling over whether it’s time to move on, people want to hear what real people have to say. And your employees are your most valuable asset.
Consider snippets of info that showcase the working environment, updates on projects they are involved with, individual career progression updates, fly on the wall videos, news relating to internal redeployments. Collectively, they provide an incredibly compelling and authentic picture.
Companies need to get creative – but stay consistent
How do you make sure that your central brand message stays consistent? If companies are doing more campaigns and content types this year, they will also need to look very carefully at ways to overcome this challenge.
For this, you need a clear set of rules, governing everything from what you can and cannot say in individual Tweets – right through to how and where your logo and straplines should appear.
The continued rise of VR
Virtual Reality makes it possible for new candidates to dive right into the workplace environment and to help employees get to grips with an organisation’s unique culture.
If you are considering making immersive digital experiences part of your branding strategy this year, just make sure that these experiences are authentic.
Doing more with less
Faced with the pressure of reduced budgets the focus is on doing more with less. For instance, is it possible to reduce your agency spend and still produce effective employer branding initiatives?
That’s why this is the year to equip your people with employer branding solutions that enable them to produce amazing assets – even without specialist knowledge.
You can understand why employer branding initiatives are important in an organisation. If a company’s biggest asset truly is the staff, then the quality of the staff is the same as the quality of the business itself. And therefore, investment should be put into getting the best.
But it’s not just about employer branding and talent acquisition, it’s about retaining that talent too.
Your culture is fast becoming the main reason candidates take on a role. So make sure your values are clear and communicated in everything you do.
Get feedback from both successful and unsuccessful candidates and ensure that your selection process is engaging. Career development and growth opportunities matter to employees. Review your pay and benefits where possible.
In summary
Involve, not just marketing, but HR, the CEO and find brand champions within the organisation. The combined efforts of all involved will reap benefits.
As an organisation you’ll find the speed of recruiting is increased, costs are decreased and staff churn is reduced.
And measure what you do to track its success. Even the smallest piece of data can lead to an improvement.
Employer brand building. If it’s not your present, it needs to be your future.
