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Marketing

9 ways to streamline your marketing process

Papirfly
6 minutes read

As anyone in the marketing industry will tell you, marketing is a carefully considered process, not just a smorgasbord of knee jerk activities.

Your success hinges on your marketing process, the set of steps that you take to execute your marketing plan, with the overriding goal of attracting interest in your products, services or brand. It is about making sure there’s a clear methodology in place to complete the various goals most seen as critical to successful execution, including: 

  • Defining a mission statement
  • Setting KPIs and objectives
  • Conducting analyses of your offering and audience
  • Developing a comprehensive market strategy
  • Building your marketing mix
  • Executing work across your various channels
  • Measuring and reflecting on results

The 5 elements in the marketing process

The marketing process can be divided into a five-step model:

The marketing process model

  • Situational Analysis
  • Objectives and KPIs
  • Marketing Strategy
  • Marketing Mix
  • Execution and Adaptation

Situational analysis refers to the foundations of your overall plan – this part of any marketing process is where you scrutinise the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats and more across your brand, product or service. This gives you fundamental information which you’ll use to present your offering in the best possible light. 

Your objectives and KPIs are what you hope to achieve as a result of this marketing process.

  • What typical increase in sales do you expect for your product or service?
  • How many leads do you want to bring in?
  • By how much do you want website traffic to increase? What is realistic?

The marketing strategy process is creating a plan of action for how you intend to realise your objectives. This is where you’ll define your audience, consider appropriate activities and position your offering to give it the best chance of succeeding.

The marketing mix process meanwhile refers to how you manage the variables under your control in promoting your offering to your audience. This is of course the famous 7Ps:

  • Product
  • Price
  • Place
  • Promotion
  • People
  • Process
  • Physical

Finally, execution and adaptation is essentially putting the planning and preparation you’ve conducted earlier in the marketing process into action – creating, posting, sharing, sending, installing and uploading everything across your various marketing channels.

Then, it is analysing the impact these had in relation to your objectives, and making recalibrations if and where necessary.

Though there’s a significant number of steps involved in the marketing process, each one lends itself to leaving the biggest positive impact on your audience. 

Subsequently, finding ways to streamline this process, without compromising on the thoroughness or quality of your output, is important to turning around work efficiently as part of your marketing efforts. Below, we break down 9 ways this can be accomplished.

9 ways to streamline the marketing process

1. Create a shared terminology

Within your team, you might refer to certain words and phrases that relate to part of your marketing process. But it’s possible not everyone on your team is clued into this terminology, or the context in which it’s applied.

So, to save you the time of people sending emails questioning an acronym that was used in your last meeting or miscommunicating information because they didn’t understand the term used, devote a window of time to brainstorm and set in stone your terminology for your marketing efforts.

Also, look to encourage a culture of asking more questions. Sometimes people can feel afraid to ask the meaning of something they don’t understand if those around them seem to grasp it. Make sure your team understand that there are no ‘stupid’ questions. It’s much more valuable for everyone to be on the same page, and preventing teams from going down the wrong path because of a blip in communication.

2. Don’t shy away from setting goals

Everyone knows the importance of setting goals as part of the marketing process. But not everyone is as clear about the best way to go about it. Establishing these in a simple yet effective way will help the wider team get to grips with what needs to be achieved. After all, how will you know if your efforts are succeeding or failing?

Establish SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, timely) goals at the outset of any project to ensure that all actions are working towards a clear objective, keeping everyone’s focus set and making sure all future adjustments are made promptly and smartly.

If your team has clear goals in mind, they can feel empowered to make tweaks that they believe will make a positive impact, rather than shy away. And, not all goals will be achieved overnight, so make sure stakeholders are aware of this and that you can provide them with a timeline of when they can expect to see results.

3. Establish service-level agreements

Developing a service-level agreement (SLA) between your marketing team, third parties and other relevant areas of your organisation documents the objectives each should be fulfilling, so nothing is left open to interpretation.

Again, this small investment of time early saves even more time down the road by keeping every person involved in the various elements of the marketing process in sync and accountable for what they need to deliver.

4. Collaborate at every opportunity…

Collaboration is key. Especially in a multi-location company, maintaining communication between everyone involved in your marketing process is essential to avoiding pieces falling out of place and, consequently, deadlines being missed and work not achieving the correct quality.

Introducing collaboration apps and additional systems across a range of platforms will help make significant time savings and avoid mistakes.

5. …But give your team the tools to work independently

While collaboration is important, having to organise a meeting before every step of the process or cluttering inboxes with emails can be just as big of a drain on time. So, it’s equally as important that members of your team have the capacity to execute each task self-sufficiently, without risk of repercussions.

That is one of the key elements of BAM by Papirfly™ – by establishing clear templates and briefs for your team members on marketing best practice, on-brand content can be delivered day-to-day in line with your visions, without having to resort to lengthy approval processes or futile meetings.

6. Keep key information accessible

Employees not being able to find information like brand guidelines or the assets they need to deliver a project can burn through hours in the working day. In fact, 19% of a typical worker’s time is spent looking for files!

Placing your most crucial documents in a central resource (another strong feature of our solutions) is an effective time-saver, as well as useful to ensure consistency and quality is maintained throughout the steps of your marketing process.

7. Use templates whenever possible

Templates are not a cheat, but a crucial support for both time and consistency reasons. If your marketing teams are commonly using the same type of material as part of your strategy, why constantly go back to square one in regards to content?

Instead, utilise templates and make minor updates to these when required to save time and energy when executing your plan – plus, it will normalise how your audience anticipates content from you.

When we say templates, we aren’t talking about everything looking the same. They need to be intelligent and intuitive to allow you the flexibility to make studio-standard marketing materials, without compromising on things such as culturally appropriate imagery, layout tweaks and resizes.

8. Bring automation tools into the mix 

Investing in marketing automation tools is a valuable way to shed time off your marketing processes. The effort it can take to market your company on the wide range of platforms available these days is difficult enough as it is – and manually it is practically impossible.

If you want to regularly connect with your audiences and work towards your KPIs, automating various aspects of your process, be it emails, social media, lead generation or another component is an increasingly pressing need.

9. Recycle successful material

Finally, in a similar vein to using templates, if a particular piece of content or design you’ve used has delivered results, tweaking this and reusing it at a later date saves time on creating a whole new piece from scratch – especially one that you don’t have solid evidence of it being successful. 

Plus, your audience may have grown significantly since the first time around, or perhaps many of them missed it the first time around, so there’s an opportunity to generate even stronger results.

This alternative approach offers a greater layer of security in terms of success, as well as substantial time savings for your team. 

Maximising your marketing process

Now you have a deeper understanding of the importance of the marketing process and techniques you can use to speed things along, you’re well-positioned to make your approach as efficient as possible. But, while you have the knowledge, it’s essential you also have the tools.

At the heart of Papirfly is a desire to transform the way businesses approach marketing forever, empowering their whole team to turn around studio-quality assets in a matter of minutes. BAM by Papirfly™ gives your team the ability to create, educate, manage, store & share marketing materials on a global scale, helping you accelerate your marketing process.

Get in touch today and find your freedom.

Marketing

The fundamentals of social media marketing

Papirfly
8 minutes read

Social media has had its fair share of bad press in recent years, with many claiming it’s turned an entire generation into tech zombies. Whether or not you agree with this, one thing we can say for certain is that social media has become completely embedded into 21st-century culture – it’s as habitual as reading the morning newspaper (albeit several times a day) and its impact on the way we communicate has changed the world forever.

Whether it’s sharing a viral video of a llama on a skateboard or promoting a campaign on the must-have shirts of the season, social media marketing remains one of the most effective, targeted ways to get your brand’s message out there.

What is social media marketing?

The landscape of social media marketing is incredibly broad, with new platforms emerging all the time. The only thing you can ever really guarantee to stay constant in the world of social media is its sheer unpredictability. That said, there are some basic fundamentals that help to shape the way brands communicate with their audiences online.

Depending on your strategy, you will use several channels to communicate with your audiences. It’s a way for you to distribute multiple messages on a regular basis with existing or new prospects.

This can be achieved usually one of two ways:

Organically – a free method to grow, engage with and retain a following using shareable and interesting content.

Paid – Paid social media marketing, which can help support customer acquisition, remarketing and reaching a more specific type of audience.

Organic marketing through social media

Building an organic following is no easy feat, and unless you have unlimited time and resources to dedicate to it, it’s incredibly difficult to deliver on your own and make an impact. Snatching at your content here and there won’t be enough to keep people coming back. And with audience expectations of organic social media marketing becoming more sophisticated (or unsophisticated, depending on how you look at it), brands are now expected to produce gifs, memes, videos, polls, topical content and more.

And the hardest part? Avoiding an approach that’s too self-promotional. Nobody wants to be sold to the entire time. And if you ARE going to ‘sell’ something, it should be done in a way that provides value to your followers.

Do something that’s going to entertain, engage or inform. Surprise, delight or shock them. As long as it falls in line with your strategy and your overall identity as a brand, you can dedicate the time to understand your audience, and what it is they relate to. Not only will it increase your share-ability and the prospect of new people discovering you, but it will also give your existing followers a reason to stay.

It goes without saying that each social media platform operates very differently. Despite this, algorithms are often analysed and scrutinised by many marketing professionals, with conclusions and advice often drawn that can help loosely guide your individual channel strategies.  

We say loosely because, in reality, determining the exact way to get organic content showing more frequently in news feeds is not very straightforward at all.

Why? 

Because social media marketing is a business. A very lucrative one at that (with social media advertising revenue forecast at $51.3 billion USD for 2018 alone). If we all knew how to hack the system, social media simply wouldn’t work or exist for that matter. Platforms WANT you to pay to get in front of your audience. And in exchange, many of them give highly detailed, targeted demographics – from the more generic ones such as age, gender and location, through to buying habits and interests.

Targeting is one of many reasons why a brand may choose paid social media marketing platforms over more traditional methods. New customer acquisition, increasing web traffic and raising brand awareness are all key objectives for many businesses. And remarketing on these channels can help you reach people already engaged with your brand, to further prompt them into taking action.

How to develop a social media strategy

Whether you work for an in-house team, a marketing agency, or you’re simply trying to set up something for your own business, it’s important you don’t start doing it until you understand why you’re doing it. Your strategy is the what, how, why and when of your social media marketing. It’s your plan of action, a blueprint to success and a guide to make sure you keep focused.

Define your goals

  • What do you hope to get out of your social media marketing?
  • Would you like to build a following?
  • Generate leads?
  • Increase conversions?
  • Give your brand a stronger presence?
  • Or even just provide a platform for customer service?

Be realistic about what you’re going to use social media marketing tools for. And, depending on budget, what can be achieved within your timeframe. Are you using a combination of paid and organic? What are the short-term and long-term goals? Can you break these down into quarterly, more manageable chunks?

Think about your audience<

  • Who are they? How old are they?
  • Where do they spend their time online and offline?
  • Which platforms are they likely to use?
  • What are their pain points?

Decide on content

  • How can you use your audience’s pain points to create useful social media content? Can these pain points be split into overarching themes and topics?
  • Are there any awareness days you should incorporate?
  • How will your paid advertising support your organic content?

Get to planning

Once you have your broader topics in place for your social media marketing, you can start putting together top line calendars and schedules for your team to execute. You’ll need to think about content, design and any scheduling tools you may need.

Determine your process for execution


Give your teams their schedule, their briefs and ensure they have all the right sizes for the different social media channels. And that they understand the nuance of social advertising on individual platforms (for example, the 20% text rule on Facebook ads).

Publishing


Once the content and assets have sign-off from all stakeholders, you can begin publishing. Depending on how many posts you need to schedule, you should consider using a publishing tool so you can automate what time they are released to remove some of the manual tasks

Listening and engagement


Once your posts are out, it’s important to monitor your channels on a daily basis. Multiple times a day if your team has capacity. Being able to listen and engage with your followers is important. Plus if anything negative should be said, you can respond to it quickly before anyone has the chance to form the wrong opinion

Analytics and reporting


Most good publishing tools allow you to automate report generation, so make sure you find the right platform for you. Manually checking each channel can be incredibly time-consuming – particularly if you’re tracking multiple brands.

Advertising


While smaller brands can manage their paid advertising in-house, an expert in paid advertising is always beneficial. Having a specialist to support you helps ensure your campaigns are optimised for the right audiences and your strategy is updated in line with any new insights.

Social media as a marketing tool – B2C

How social media marketing techniques are implemented very much depends on the nature of your business. With business-to-consumer brands, there’s often a lot more scope to be visual. If you have a physical product or a personal service, you know you’re talking to an individual about their specific pain points. Things you yourself should be able to relate to on some level.

While any brand will want to retain a certain level of professionalism, you can really push the boundaries with your brand’s personality. Using humour or trending topics and relating them back to your business can be a sure-fire way to capture the attention of social media users – not just your audience but also those beyond it.

Social media as a marketing tool – B2B 

Business to business marketing techniques traditionally tend to be more information-led. They’re trying to solve problems for business owners and high-level decision-makers. This does strip back the number of channels that can be used effectively for the B2B market, as professional networks greatly differ from accounts for personal use.  

LinkedIn is usually the go-to for B2B social media marketing, either elevating individuals through their personal profiles, LinkedIn advertising or making their company page a source of insight for people’s feeds. That being said, some of the other channels still hold their place for B2B marketers when used in the right way.

Social media marketing on Facebook

Facebook is one of the most widely used platforms in the world. Brands can build organic followings, become content publishers and create highly tailored advertising in the form of videos, static advertising, carousels, slideshows and even Messenger, to name a few.  

Social media marketing on Instagram

Owned by Facebook, Instagram is often used by brands to build a loyal following. A great feature of Instagram is the hashtag function, which makes it much easier to build organic engagement – although the ‘following’ earned is often too broad to be relevant. Brands can also explore Instagram advertising in the form of ads, with the ability to now shop ‘in-app’ by tagging products to your post.

Social media marketing on LinkedIn

LinkedIn has had somewhat of a revival recently, with a wider cross-spectrum of people using the online network to promote their skills or brand. Some of the most effective ways to reach business decision-makers can be found through LinkedIn: the option to create thought leaders via individual profiles, build valuable connections and relationships, create a company page that’s the go-to for industry insight or through the targeted, but sometimes expensive, advertising route.  

Social media marketing on Twitter

While Twitter’s use may have decreased for teens, 80% of its users are considered ‘affluent millennials’, and 75% of businesses can be found on the platform – two incredible opportunities for marketers. Twitter is also a very popular platform for providing personalised customer service, and for many consumers it’s the first port of call when they have a complaint or query about a missing parcel.


But a lot of Twitter’s appeal lies in how current it is; news breaks here, people share their stories first-hand and live events effectively come with a running commentary when televised. In fact, advertising on the platform is considered 11% more effective than TV ads during live events.

Social media influencer marketing

Another strand of social media marketing that can prove successful for brands with particular products, events or services can be the use of social media influencers. This could be in the form of huge celebrity endorsements with millions on the counter or micro-influencers with just 1,000 to 100,000 followers, but with a deeper connection with an audience interested in your niche.

Instagram is the most effective channel for brands looking to promote via those with a big social following. Giving your brand an ambassador in the form of someone your audience can relate to and admire can prove lucrative.

The future of social media marketing…

Even as the world becomes more critical of the role social media plays in shaping minds, opinions, and the way we show off our day-to-day lives, its evolution is one that marketers will be keen to keep up with. Technology is set to become more sophisticated, targeting will get even more precise and brands will continue to raise the bar when it comes to creating quality content.

There’s no way of knowing where social media marketing will be in 10 years, or even 10 months from now. In an age of instant gratification, and readily available information on quite literally anything you could imagine, social media will continue to play a critical role in B2C and B2B communications. Of course, as the amount of brands entering the same space continues to grow, it’s going to take a remarkable strategy and team to be able to shout above the noise.

Papirfly offers Brand Activation Management software that enables companies to create professionally designed printed and digital assets – in-house in under 30 minutes. Social media posts are often hard to keep up with, which is why empowering any employee to effortlessly create social media assets is a client favourite feature. You can also store & share assets in a dedicated Digital Asset Management platform, educate teams on brand guidelines and manage your campaigns from one central login.

Discover what Papirfly’s all-in-one brand management platform can do for you, or visit our complete guide to marketing.

Table of contents:

  1. What is social media marketing?
  2. Organic marketing through social media
  3. Paid marketing through social media
  4. How to develop a social media strategy
  5. Social media as a marketing tool – B2C
  6. Social media as a marketing tool – B2B
  7. Social media marketing on Facebook
  8. Social media marketing on Instagram
  9. Social media marketing on LinkedIn
  10. Social media marketing on Twitter
  11. Social media influencer marketing
  12. The future of social media marketing…
Brand Asset Management / BAM

Why a Brand Asset Management system is important to your business

Papirfly
4 minutes read

Have you ever asked yourself what the most powerful corporations in the world have in common? Nike, Coca-Cola, Disney.. What are they doing to achieve success? The common denominator in these companies is that their success has been driven largely by the strength of their brands. 

Your brand is your most valuable asset – there is no question about it. The fact that you have reached this blog means that you probably agree. Taking care of the most valuable asset in your company requires hard work, and your brand in itself consists of several assets that you need to take care of if your brand is going to thrive. So, let’s start with the basics of why a brand asset management system, or BAM system, is important.

Continue reading “Why a Brand Asset Management system is important to your business”

Have you ever asked yourself what the most powerful corporations in the world have in common? Nike, Coca-Cola, Disney.. What are they doing to achieve success? The common denominator in these companies is that their success has been driven largely by the strength of their brands. 

Your brand is your most valuable asset – there is no question about it. The fact that you have reached this blog means that you probably agree. Taking care of the most valuable asset in your company requires hard work, and your brand in itself consists of several assets that you need to take care of if your brand is going to thrive. So, let’s start with the basics of why a brand asset management system, or BAM system, is important.

Continue reading “Why a Brand Asset Management system is important to your business”

Have you ever asked yourself what the most powerful corporations in the world have in common? Nike, Coca-Cola, Disney.. What are they doing to achieve success? The common denominator in these companies is that their success has been driven largely by the strength of their brands. 

Your brand is your most valuable asset – there is no question about it. The fact that you have reached this blog means that you probably agree. Taking care of the most valuable asset in your company requires hard work, and your brand in itself consists of several assets that you need to take care of if your brand is going to thrive. So, let’s start with the basics of why a brand asset management system, or BAM system, is important.

Continue reading “Why a Brand Asset Management system is important to your business”

Marketing

5 inspiring marketing podcasts to get you motivated

Papirfly
4 minutes read

The extent of on-demand media means marketers are spoilt for choice when it comes to inspiration and learning resources. The podcast format started off with humble beginnings and is now over 30 million episodes strong across the world. With so many podcasts to choose from, how do you find the ones that provide the most value?

One way is to sift through the charts, the other is to get recommendations by word-of-mouth. The brilliant team here at Papirfly have taken the time to share their favourites below. With different roles, backgrounds and interests, our top 5 gives you an unbiased, varied selection of some of the best contenders for marketing knowledge.

Sara Picks: Marketing School

Let’s kick off with something effortlessly easy to digest for even the most prominent podcast sceptic. Neil Patel and Eric Siu’s Marketing School delivers useful, actionable digital marketing tips and techniques in bitesize chunks, with episodes never exceeding 10 minutes.

Covering every corner of the digital landscape, the expertise and experience that Neil and Eric offer make this a must-listen for anyone looking to keep on the cutting-edge of this ever-changing space.

What’s so good about it?

  • Concise episodes make it easy to fit into your existing routine
  • Neil and Eric are two of the most knowledgeable and informed minds in their industry
  • Daily opportunities to expand on your existing skillbase
  • A back catalogue of over 1,600 episodes to work your way through

Anyone working in digital marketing, be it SEO, content marketing, social media, email marketing or anything online, Marketing School is a can’t-miss.

Frequency: Typically one new episode launches every day

If you only listen to one episode, make it this: How to Rank on Page 1 of Google in 2021

Luke Picks: Marketing Over Coffee

While many other marketing podcasts springboard from one topic to the next, this one is focused on the use of technology within marketing, though the hosts (Christopher Penn and John Wall) frequently talk about the value of traditional campaigns. 

The natural style makes you feel like you’re listening in on someone else’s (very useful) conversation.

What’s so good about it?

  • Usually covers the latest updates on social networks
  • Lots of great insights on SEO 
  • Whilst big on digital, also covers ‘offline’ marketing 
  • Gets to the important points quickly

Anyone who is interested in continually hearing opinions and improving upon their understanding of the marketing world. The podcast itself has picked up huge traction and often features some of the most influential marketers of our time, including Simon Sinek and Seth Godin. 

Frequency: Usually once a week, but this can vary.

If you only listen to one episode, make it this: Simon Sinek: Start With Why

Justin Picks: CIM Marketing Podcast

For the latest news and views from throughout the marketing industry, where better to turn than the world’s leading professional marketing body?

The Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) Podcast hones in on relevant, essential stories that are impacting how marketers work right now, and discusses these openly and accessibly, delivering a lot of up-to-date information for listeners.

What’s so good about it?

  • Features interviews with leading marketers in globally recognised companies
  • Spirited debate and insight from highly experienced professionals in the CIM team
  • Covers the length and breadth of the marketing industry

The CIM Marketing Podcast is perfect for anyone interested in getting the latest news and views from the world of marketing, and who want to apply these developments immediately into their own work.

Frequency: They aim for an episode every 2 weeks, but there’s the odd gap here and there.

If you only listen to one episode, make it this: The secrets of great brand storytelling

Phil Picks: Brand Builder

For an in-depth exploration of organisations from all industries who have forged and perfected their brand identity, Brand Builder is the ideal destination for you.

The show’s three hosts, Sean Kelly, Jordan Cohen, and Jeff Murphy, interview business leaders and brand managers from some of the world’s most innovative brands. This gives listeners an unparalleled understanding of their journey to where these companies are today, to inspire their own approaches.

What’s so good about it?

  • Interviews with branding experts across a wide range of industries and geographies
  • Learn from real people’s experiences in the world of branding to support your own perspectives
  • Lengthy interviews really get to the heart of each brand’s techniques, challenges, and unique insights

Brand managers and people fascinated with how brands establish their distinctive identity and tone among their audience and the wider public.

Frequency: There is no set timetable for Brand Builder, but expect at least 1 new episode to drop every month.

If you only listen to one episode, make it this: How to Master Demand Planning in 2021, with Ancient Provisions Founder Alex Duong

James Picks: This Old Marketing

Everything content, social media and the wider media space, Joe Poluzzi and Robert Rose host what could be described as an ‘audio newsletter’ podcast: a round-up of all the best bits, lessons learnt and headlines facing the media and marketing industries.

What’s so good about it?

  • Breakdown of industry news and what it means
  • Good mix of useful insights and light-hearted rants
  • Created by the Content Marketing Institute, so expect everything to be up-to-date

Anyone that wants to keep up-to-date, and hear unbiased views on what’s going on in the marketing, advertising and media world. 

Frequency: At least every other week, but are sometimes released more often.

If you only listen to one episode, make it this: The Greatest Marketing Predictions Episode Ever (2021 version)

We understand that every type of marketer faces a unique set of challenges in their role, which is why our team was tasked with sharing the podcasts they felt would be relevant to people in a wide range of positions. 

The way we consume media is changing, and over the last year podcasts have helped people across many industries stay connected to the things they care about most. 

Whether you’re thinking about starting a branded podcast, are interested in sharpening your marketing skills or just want to discover new opinions on the world, we hope you enjoyed your journey into the world of marketing podcasts, and meeting some of our valued team.

Table of contents:

  1. Marketing School
  2. Marketing Over Coffee
  3. CIM Marketing Podcast
  4. Brand Builder
  5. This Old Marketing
Marketing

Feeling courageous? Get inspired by the world’s boldest brands

Papirfly
8 minutes read

When we talk about brands being brave, we don’t mean the ‘running into burning buildings’ kind of brave. We’re talking about a risky move that has the potential to go very well or horribly wrong. 

Let’s take a look at the reasons why a brand may choose to do something a little on the edgy side, and at some classic and modern examples of where these have paid off.

Why does the potential payoff outweigh the risk?

Even some of the most established brands in the world can fall into the trap of becoming too comfortable, too predictable or too familiar. They need to be consistent, yes, but never dull. 

A move that’s out of the ordinary reawakens an audience to new possibilities and provides them with a fresh perspective or view of the brand. It may reposition them entirely for some or reaffirm what an existing audience already knew. 

When this happens, there’s usually a flurry of free PR that follows. And not just from industry news outlets. Brands doing things out of the ordinary usually gain traction on wider social media and content publishing platforms. Understanding the impact on a brand from a business, customer and marketing level is one thing – how the media spins it is another. So teams need to have a plan in place to cover all eventualities.

What does brand bravery mean?

While in more recent times, brand bravery has shaped itself to be more about taking a stand on a particular topic or movement, historically it has involved doing something controversial or irreverent – which doesn’t fit our definition of brave. It would be great if every campaign has a direct positive impact on society, but this would flood the world with inauthentic attempts to make a difference. 

Below we’ve selected 4 brands that have made distinctly ‘brave’ moves in their marketing…

Guinness took a risk

Guinness advertising has long been iconic. But back in 2019, they took things to the next level. When Guinness cleverly announced that it was launching ‘Guinness Clear’ in a slot before the Six Nations rugby, they sent Twitter into a frenzy with desperate fans scrambling to find the new drink online. 

Of course, many others quickly caught onto the purpose of the ads. Guinness Clear was simply a pint of water. What the drinks giant had done was highlight the need to consume more water in between pints of the black stuff, to reduce overall alcohol consumption for a healthier attitude towards drinking during matches.

The ad was later re-released at Christmas, a time that’s notorious for revellers having more than one too many.

We think out of all the stunts Guinness has pulled, this is the one that sets them apart, and defines them most closely to the term brave. While the concept was lost initially on some people, it eventually got everyone talking and raised awareness of the power of drinking water in between alcohol. Which of course, means buying less Guinness. When a brand prioritises the health and safety of consumers over sales, it’s an unusual and welcome step in the right direction.

Lush turned the light off

While Lush has come under fire in the past for what some have described as “crossing a line” between being a retailer and an advocate for pushing societal issues, the brand seems more than comfortable as a rebellious crusader promoting what’s right.

All the deep and complex issues the handmade cosmetics company manages to address are very impressive, and you’d think that social media would be a great place to amplify the good work you’re doing. 

However, back in 2019 Lush made the announcement it was to stop publishing from its UK social media platforms.

Now the reason behind this was due to how the organic algorithm works on Facebook. The Lush team had become frequently frustrated with pouring their heart and soul into their content, only for the social media platform to make it hard for them to reach many people organically. 

It’s widely known that Facebook has a much more powerful audience reach when you pay-to-play through their advertising services. But Lush took a stand against the tech giant by calling it quits, and as it turned out it has paid off very well for them.

What the data showed them was that their audience was more engaged on their ‘owned’ platforms. So Lush now communicates via its employees and own platforms, to create richer, more authentic experiences and conversations for its customers.

Regardless of your relationship with Facebook, a global brand turning its back on a huge channel in an act of taking the moral high ground is pretty cool. Think of just how many sales they will have lost from the move. What we’re wondering is how long will they be able to keep it up? 

Burger King threw out the rule book

While many of BK’s stunts have been hit and miss, they always garner attention from the media. Whether it’s encouraging customers in Brazil to virtually burn the adverts of its rivals, or highlighting gender disparity in China with its Burger Queen campaign, the Burger King marketing team appear to be working overtime to continually create sometimes regrettable but mostly unforgettable campaigns. 

Here are just some of the bold moves the brand has taken…

They launched a Christmas ad in July

When the world realised 2020 wasn’t quite shaping up to be the year we all expected, Burger King jumped in and transformed one of its stores in the U.S. with Christmas decorations. The advert highlights to customers that they’re doing their bit to help wrap up the negative year by bringing the holidays much earlier. We’re not sure how many additional burgers it helped them sell, but it was a nice move nonetheless. 

They weighed in on British politics 

Driving an iconic red London bus around Westminster (where England’s MPs are based) with a controversial message takes some courage. Burger King’s use of Whopper in this ad not only plays on their product, but it’s also an informal word for a lie in the UK. Make of that what you will.

Another-Whopper

Credit @stu_bot3000 via Twitter 

They showed their burgers growing mould

Who could forget when Burger King removed artificial preservatives from its burger? They boldly left a Whopper to decay over a period of 34 days and then shared the results with the world. While this was met with some criticism of the ad being more for ‘ad people’ than customers, it certainly seemed to get people talking. Regardless of opinions, in a sea of been-done-before creatives, Burger King burst through with this unexpected and insightful concept. We say, bravo. 

Mouldy-Whopper

They undertook their first rebrand in 20 years

Burger King’s new logo took everyone by surprise. If you’re in marketing, you’ll understand just how much a rebrand can cost a company, let alone someone that has signage all over the world. The justification behind the move was that the brand wanted to capture more of its characteristics in its identity, big and bold, playful and irreverent. The retro-inspired logo certainly stirs up nostalgia.

BK-1

Other examples worth mentioning 

Always – Like A Girl campaign

The global personal hygiene company took purpose-driven marketing to a whole new level back in 2014. Always was keen to keep young girls feeling confident through puberty and set out to change perceptions of what it means to ‘be a girl’. They addressed many sexist misconceptions on female abilities all based around the hashtag #LikeAGirl. 

The idea stems from phrases that have been wrongly used as derogatory such as “You throw like a girl”. The creatives behind these realigned perceptions, turning any negative preconceptions about the abilities of girls into positive ones. 

Read about the incredible results here. 

Coca-Cola – One-brand move

Back in 2014, the global drinks brand united 14 of its product family under one aligned campaign. They described the move as “putting the product at the heart of the creative” and it gave them the opportunity to create universal storytelling that would connect consumers from around the world. You can read how it’s benefited the brand here. 

While it isn’t bravery in the traditional sense, from the internal and logistical perspective of their marketing teams, it was a big step. And it paid off well in the short-term – although they have recently decided to change tact to unveil an all-new look for Coca-Cola Zero cans to try and set them apart.

Maersk Line – Learning from a mistake

Also in 2014, Maersk Line made a brave move by sharing a photo of a dead whale on their social media channels that was struck by one of their cargo ships. Maersk did not shy away from this unfortunate accident, and instead highlighted it as a signal of their intention to learn more about whale behaviour and adjust their own practices to ensure this can never happen again.

This open, honest discussion captured worldwide attention and engaged many marine experts offering their advice as to how Maersk’s team can avoid these events in future. Taking this bold step allowed them to control the narrative and shape it as a teachable moment – something they will learn from to better their process in future.

The Met Museum – Ignored traditional design rules 

The Metropolitan Museum of Art has been a staple institution in society for over 145 years. So when they replaced their logo with one that featured an unusually kerned typeface, it caused a bit of controversy amongst its die-hard fans. When you delve into the reasons behind the move, bringing together serif and sans serif letters to recognise its ability to unify both the classic and the modern, it makes a lot of sense. 

Premier League – No Room for Racism Campaign

What started as bringing together footballers to encourage people to report racism in the stadiums has evolved into a long-standing campaign to try and stamp out discrimination in the football industry. The sporting institution came under fire in 2020 when it publicly showed support for the Black Lives Matter movement in the UK. They have since released a statement to say that the support is not in any way political and that it aligns with their objectives of “eradicating racial prejudice wherever it exists”. They have stuck by this and continue their support to this day. 

ITV – Mental Wellness Campaign

The television channel used a primetime TV show and ad break to run silent adverts, and encouraging viewers to instead talk to each other about what’s going on in their lives and their minds.

Does it pay to take risks?

Every brand is different, and while taking some of these risks could have gone either way for the mentioned brands, ultimately they stood up, did something different and it paid off. The scale of the risk you take depends on what you’re comfortable with, and how your brand needs to be positioned to the world. 

Not taking any risks at all can be greater than taking them to begin with. Producing stale, uninspiring campaigns could leave you looking predictable. It’s always important to weigh up the pros and cons behind any idea, and be prepared for all eventualities should it not go the way you’d hoped. 

Finally, ensure that any big move you make is grounded in strategy, controversy or bravery for the sake of it could fall flat if there’s no solid direction and reasoning.

Table of contents:

  1. Why does the potential payoff outweigh the risk?
  2. What does brand bravery mean?
  3. Guinness took a risk
  4. Lush turned the light off
  5. Burger King threw out the rule book
  6. Other examples worth mentioning
  7. Does it pay to take risks?
Brand Asset Management / BAM

What is Brand Asset Management?

Papirfly
4 minutes read

Trending words are something marketers are used to. The Martech space is in constant movement and forces us to stay alert and pay attention. You don’t have to embrace all new trends, but at least you need to familiarize yourself with the trends and base your decision on know-how.

One word that perhaps you have heard but not paid attention to, is BAM or Brand Asset Management. Did your brush it off as a trend? Then get back in, this is not a trend, this is an essential tool all marketers should acknowledge.

This is Brand Asset Management (BAM)

A Brand Asset Management solution is the extension of Digital Asset Management, BAM starts where DAM ends. This is the solution that connects your brand identity guidelines and your brand assets, putting your brand in context.

Continue reading “What is Brand Asset Management?”

Trending words are something marketers are used to. The Martech space is in constant movement and forces us to stay alert and pay attention. You don’t have to embrace all new trends, but at least you need to familiarize yourself with the trends and base your decision on know-how.

One word that perhaps you have heard but not paid attention to, is BAM or Brand Asset Management. Did your brush it off as a trend? Then get back in, this is not a trend, this is an essential tool all marketers should acknowledge.

This is Brand Asset Management (BAM)

A Brand Asset Management solution is the extension of Digital Asset Management, BAM starts where DAM ends. This is the solution that connects your brand identity guidelines and your brand assets, putting your brand in context.

Continue reading “What is Brand Asset Management?”

Trending words are something marketers are used to. The Martech space is in constant movement and forces us to stay alert and pay attention. You don’t have to embrace all new trends, but at least you need to familiarize yourself with the trends and base your decision on know-how.

One word that perhaps you have heard but not paid attention to, is BAM or Brand Asset Management. Did your brush it off as a trend? Then get back in, this is not a trend, this is an essential tool all marketers should acknowledge.

This is Brand Asset Management (BAM)

A Brand Asset Management solution is the extension of Digital Asset Management, BAM starts where DAM ends. This is the solution that connects your brand identity guidelines and your brand assets, putting your brand in context.

Continue reading “What is Brand Asset Management?”

Marketing

Top industry tips to make your best content go further

Papirfly
5 minutes read

90% of all organisations use content as part of their marketing, and 60% of marketers create content on a daily basis. You don’t need to do the maths to know that’s a lot of content. It may come as no surprise to most that keeping it consistently fresh, relevant and creative isn’t easy. In fact, research has shown that content production is the top challenge for 50% of marketers.

The quality of the content that your team produces is a reflection of your brand. A poorly written blog post or a tweet in bad taste has the potential to come back and haunt your brand years down the line.

So, how can you produce quality content at scale – consistently and easily?

Keeping on top of your content production doesn’t have to mean hiring an army of writers and designers. Nor does it mean re-inventing the wheel every time you put something out in the world.

Repurposing content is the smartest way of working that helps you get maximum reach from a concept or message. It’s the process of modifying a piece of content to work in a different format (from an article to a podcast, for example), or adapting the content to make it more relevant to a new audience.

Essentially, content repurposing is a way to squeeze every last drop out of a great idea or important insight, in a meaningful and valuable way.

Aside from saving time and effort, what are the benefits of repurposing content?

Target specific audiences

Reframe your content to make it resonate with a different type of customer. Consider what unique problems your content can help them solve, which formats they respond best to (eg. snappy Instagram posts or in-depth long-reads) and what motivates them to take action.

Reinforce a message

If there’s an idea that you really need to land, repurposing can help you drive it home by presenting it in a number of different ways.

Build your brand’s reputation as an industry thought leader

Highlight your company’s expertise by giving thought leaders within your business a platform to talk further around a subject they specialise in.

Ensuring your audience sees it

There’s no point investing lots of hours into a message that’s only going to be conveyed or posted once. You can never assume your audience has been reached in such a short window of time.

Get more from your best performing content

If you have a piece of content that’s generating lots of traffic, why stop there? Keep up the momentum by resharing the key insights and adapting them to suit as many different formats as possible.

9 ways to repurpose your content

There are many ways to capitalise on your content, and you’ll need to customise your approach in line with your brand positioning and what’s appropriate for your industry. We’ve put together 9 tried-and-tested methods that every brand can sink their teeth into.

#1 Turn a collection of articles into listicles

If you have a number of articles surrounding a particular theme, combine the key takeouts wholly or partially in list form. There’s something naturally appealing to readers about headlines with ‘11 reasons why’ or ‘3 ways to’ formats… They’re clear, concise and tell the reader exactly what they’ll get out of it. 

#2 Share your insights in a podcast

Podcasts offer a more tangible insight into the personality of your brand. With a relatively small investment, they can help your business to speak directly to audiences in order to build trust and garner a following. Not sure who would be suitable within your business? Why not invite clients on to chat?

#3 Create a highlights reel from a webinar

Webinars are ideal for walking people through your products and services in an educational and engaging way, but for those who couldn’t tune in, or who need a recap, highlight reels can help get them up to speed. They also give you the opportunity to answer questions or revisit interesting points raised in the webinar.

#4 Follow up a video with a blog summarising its key points

It’s possible to get across a lot of information through video. To help make sure they effectively deliver your message, and to encourage those who haven’t yet seen your video to press play, create an article that consolidates the most important take-outs.

#5 Present content on Slideshare

Slideshare is one of the top 100 most visited sites in the world and allows you to create concise presentations that help readers quickly catch up on in-depth topics. This format is ideal for highlighting expert quotes, actionable tips and powerful statistics.

#6 Compile a series of blog posts into an ebook

If you already have a backlog of articles that are still relevant, give them new life in a new context by collating them into an insightful long read. Your ebook could become a gated asset and gives you the opportunity to create social posts and emails to promote it.

#7 Visualise your ideas as an infographic 

Take the key points from comprehensive research, white papers or articles and create visual assets to make them more digestible for readers short on time.

#8 Revisit previous learnings

Things change fast in the world of marketing. You’ll often find new angles on previous insights by looking back at your old content in a new context.

#9 Use the power of social media

Social media platforms can be used to repurpose any type of content. Whether it’s focusing on an interesting snippet from an article, asking the audience a question that relates to a longer piece of content, creating short engaging videos that incorporate previous insights, or sharing actionable advice, or key takeouts as a carousel. 

Top tip

Content repurposing can save time and resources, but it shouldn’t be considered a shortcut. It’s important to make sure that you’re clear on what the new piece of content is addressing, how it’s different from the original piece and why. Having a watertight content strategy that does this will help stop your repurposed content from becoming repetitive and irrelevant.

How to decide what content to repurpose

Only use evergreen content

The most crucial factor in determining whether a piece of content is repurposable or not is making sure that it’s evergreen. In essence, this is content that will stay relevant long after it’s published.

Audit your existing content

Conducting a thorough content audit before you begin repurposing will make it easier to gather your evergreen content, see what is performing well, understand which keywords you are ranking for and highlight any gaps in your content strategy.

Review your recent feedback

Make sure you don’t ignore comments, questions and suggestions that your audience have left on your previous content. It’s more than likely that you’ll find useful insights that give you a better idea of what’s landing well and how your repurposed content can add value to their lives.

How BAM by Papirfly™ can help keep your content on track

Today, marketing leaders feel that they create “moderate-to-enormous” volumes of content, according to a report by Accenture. The same study also found that 92% of marketers surveyed said they are producing more content now than they were two years ago, with 90% expecting their output to increase further over the next two years. Upkeeping a steady flow of high-quality content may seem like a daunting task, but with the right tools, you can streamline your processes and maximise your output.

Brand Activation Management, BAM by Papirfly™, brings asset creation in-house. Our all-in-one asset creation suite is full of features that empower your teams to create studio-quality marketing materials with no agency help required. And, because you can set bespoke templates, you can ensure consistency in everything they produce. Here are just some of the digital and print assets your team can create in a matter of minutes:

  • Videos
  • Social media posts, perfectly sized and formatted
  • HTML emails
  • Digital signage 
  • Localised assets in different languages
  • Posters and brochures

Some of the world’s largest global brands, including Coca Cola and Unilever are already seeing the benefits of BAM’s easy-to-use design software. To see how it can propel your content production for your brand, get in touch to arrange a live demo.

Table of contents:

  1. Produce content of quality and quantity
  2. The key benefits of repurposing content
  3. 9 ways to repurpose your content
  4. How to decide what content to repurpose
  5. How BAM by Papirfly™ can help keep your content on track
Retail Marketing

What global retail brands can learn from small businesses

Papirfly
6 minutes read

Without the big budgets and limitless resources of their global counterparts, smaller brands have to get a little more creative to make a name for themselves.

Traditionally, small businesses have looked up to big brands and industry leaders for inspiration on processes, productivity and creativity.  However, with faster decision making and less approval stages, small brands actually have many hidden advantages. When time is of the essence, they can use their speed and agility to achieve big results in a relatively short time frame.

What are the key differences between small and large retailers?

Aside from the obvious larger workforce and bigger budgets, there are a number of other differences between the inner workings of large organisations compared with small businesses.

Leadership

Larger organisations tend to have more complex management layers than their smaller counterparts. Closer relationships are able to be formed between business owners, managers and employees within a micro-enterprise.

More direct communication makes it easier for employees to interact with key decision-makers, as they are more likely to be interacting on a daily basis.

In small businesses, leadership generally has a more obvious impact on a brand’s core values as they are often created in line with the personalities and aspirations of those who run them.

Structure

Due to the more cautious nature of large companies, ideas need to be signed off by committees, sub-committees and other managerial higher-ups before they see the light of day. While key stakeholder approval is vital, bureaucracy and hierarchy can get in the way of responding to consumer demands ahead of the competition. As small businesses are usually independent, this is not often a challenge for them.

Siloing

Teams within larger businesses are able to specialise in specific areas due to the larger workforce. However, a heavy reliance on this approach can leave siloed employees unaware of what other teams are doing and what’s going on in the wider business. 

This is much less of a problem for smaller organisations as the actions of individual employees tend to have a much more noticeable impact on the business.

Brand perception

Having strong associations with a brand is inherently a good thing for ingraining your company’s products in the minds of consumers. However, years of brand awareness can be lost if a retail brand is steered off track, fails to adapt or becomes associated with negative connotations.

Lesser known retailers with a relatively small share of the market are freer to take new opportunities and experiment with new concepts and ideas — whether that’s in their advertising, the adoption of new technology, or the way they work. 

6 things large retail brands can learn from small businesses

#1 The personal touch

A vast majority of consumers are disappointed with the lack of personalisation they receive while shopping in-store. On average 71% express some level of frustration when their experience is impersonal.

Small retailers often have a more independent feel to the in-store buying experience, due to their ability to be less uniform than supermarkets and chain stores. Even as retail becomes increasingly digital, small brands are able to bring their personal touch online — with various CRM tools to help them.

For example, with a team of just 36, New York-based ‘Deathwish Coffee’ uses MailChimp to deliver personalised email marketing to a list of over 400,000 recipients, with messages reflecting personal preferences.

In an article by Fast Company, owner of Death Wish Coffee, Michael Brown had this advice to share; “Keep that one-on-one relationship. If you can find tools that help you create that or make it feel that way, it is powerful.”

#2 Don’t let going viral compromise on quality

The most successful viral marketing is usually a complete accident, or at least somewhat unexpected. However, a brand’s immediate response is often what determines whether it has a positive or negative effect.

Small business lesson:

When Pastry Chef and Bakery Owner, Dominique Ansel, infused his French heritage with the classic New York donut, he created what many would describe as a modern-day delicacy.

The resulting ‘Cronut’ was picked up in an article for Grub Street (New York Magazine’s food and restaurant blog), causing traffic to the bakery website to skyrocket by around 300%, with hundreds of people queuing up outside before its 8am opening time.

Because every batch of cronuts took Ansel’s team three days to prepare, they were limited to 350 cronuts per day. Instead of upscaling production at the cost of quality, Ansel focussed on maintaining his traditional baking methods to ensure the cronut secured a permanent place on the menu instead of becoming a short-lived fad.

#3 Embracing micro-influencers

Many smaller companies start their influencer marketing with micro-influencers due to their lower price tag. However, micro-influencers can have a huge impact on big retail brands too.

Small business lesson:

While it may seem counterintuitive to use an influencer with a smaller following than the brand they’re promoting, their audience is more likely to have followed them purely because of their interests. This means that after conducting research into finding the right micro-influencer, you have a more effective platform for reaching a targeted audience.

One growing retail brand who have benefitted from this method is BarkBox — a monthly subscription service for dog toys, treats, and goodies. Instead of looking towards influencers with the biggest following, many of whom may have an affinity with dogs but not necessarily a fan base of dog owners, BarkBox focussed on partnering with Instagram dog influencers who come with a guaranteed following of dog lovers.

#4 Being part of a local community

64% of people in the UK want to support local businesses and buy local products

Both family-run corner shops and multinational corporations can impact local communities in a myriad of ways. However, hidden behind a faceless logo, it’s more difficult for brands to engage with their customers in the same way.

Retail brands can replicate the more human feel of locally-run small businesses with a pivot towards more community-focused advertising such as sponsored posts on community platforms and by looking at how they can build community spirit on a national (or international) scale.

Small business lesson:

British supermarket chain, Morrisons, has made it their priority to source more local produce where possible and aims to reduce the distance that food travels to get to its stores.

Through their ‘Local Foodmakers’ search, Morrisons aims to recruit new local suppliers and ensure that more customers are able to buy products that have been grown, made, picked or packaged within approximately 35 miles of their local store.

#5 Sustainability and product transparency

42% of U.S. and UK consumers say products that use sustainable materials are important in their day-to-day purchasing

With environmental impact influencing buying decisions more than ever before, smaller retailers have benefited from building sustainability into their business model from the ground up. It’s meant that startups have been paving a more sustainable path for larger brands to follow.

One of the key takeouts for big retail brands trying to replicate this approach is to build more transparency into their supply chains, explore new packaging strategies and do more to back up messaging surrounding environmentally friendly products.

Small business lesson:

Sustainable clothing company TALA, has made it their mission to cut the notoriously high energy usage and material wastage associated with the fast-fashion industry. 

By partnering with facilities across the globe, TALA  makes use of the very best in sustainable technologies, processes and materials. Even the tags on their clothing contain seasonal seeds and are attached with biodegradable hemp twine. This means their customers get a different plant with each tag they grow.

#6 Find the freedom to take risks

Sticking to a tried-and-tested formula may seem like the safest way to ensure that your brand makes an impact. However, there are countless examples of relatively unknown retailers and startups that have become big names overnight because they dared to do things differently.

Small business lesson:

The Dollar Shave Club may have taken male grooming by storm, but its humble beginnings were founded on taking a risk. 

At the time Dollar Shave Club started out, 71% of the market share belonged to Procter & Gamble. To most people, competing with this would have seemed unthinkable, or even delusional. But not to Michael Dublin. 

With a simple subscription model starting at $2 a month, as well as a marketing video in which he features putting his improv comedy to use, Dublin gave male grooming a new look and claimed 41.6% of the online razor market in just three years.

How global retail brands can gain the agility of small businesses

With Brand Activation Management, BAM by Papirfly™, you can bring thousands of employees closer together. By organising your in-store promotions, briefs and timelines through an intuitive campaign planner, global brands can empower their teams to respond faster to opportunities in their local markets.

Table of contents:

  1. What are the key differences between small and large retailers?
  2. 6 things large retail brands can learn from small businesses
Brand management, Corporate communications

3 steps to a successful branding process

Papirfly
6 minutes read

Being a Brand Manager is a demanding job even at the best of times. Whether your brand is emerging, established or fighting for its place on the world stage, there are many areas you must consider to ensure brand strategy is effectively activated, developed, monitored, maintained and driven in the right direction.
If the global pandemic has taught us anything in marketing it’s that in order to thrive, brands need to be prepared for anything.

Every organisation should already have a brand management strategy where it belongs – right at the top of the corporate agenda, and marketers need to be ready for any eventuality. Brand management should be framed as a continual process of constant evolution – agile and responsive to global and competitive factors.

Brand identity is the most fundamental consumer touchpoint for your business and 77% of marketing leaders say branding is critical to growth. Your brand is your reputation, and therefore the most important asset your company has. If you’re authentic and keep your promises, and if your customers have positive experiences, they will tell other people. If they have a bad experience, you can be sure they will tell the world.

So when it comes to establishing a successful brand activation strategy and brand development process, what does an effective process look like? And what does being prepared actually mean in practice?

First, you need to create a plan that prepares you to overcome any obstacles and challenges which may lie ahead. We believe the best approach to creating or enhancing a successful branding process is as follows.

Step 1: Establish the foundations of your brand identity

Brand identity is about more than just logo, font, and colours. It’s a unique, consistent customer experience of an organisation’s purpose, voice, visual style, and vision. Consistency is especially important during times of change, when customers are looking for stability and trust.

3-steps-to-a-successful-branding-process

A useful starting point is to think about your current brand asset management processes and identify the key challenges you need to overcome. This is a critical element of the entire process as it will also establish the groundwork for measuring your brand development success further down the line.

Start by listing the issues and problems faced by the organisation with regards to brand management. Look closely at the challenges faced by your marketing department:

The ability to remain consistent:
  • Colleagues and local offices are struggling to access the latest branded materials resulting in off-brand assets and communications are regularly being distributed.
Lack of resources:
  • Your marketing team is struggling to deliver requests on-demand. There is simply not enough time to support ad-hoc tasks and you fall behind, unable to deliver brand assets on time.
Limited budget:
  • Budget cuts are not uncommon, and sometimes you are forced to cancel or limit brand campaigns.
Challenges staying relevant in the market:

The market changes fast, and if you’re already struggling with the above, your ability to remain relevant is a major challenge.

Next up is to analyse your current brand environment. New brands have the luxury of starting from scratch, but if you’ve been in the market for a while and the brand has stagnated, you need to know why. Key questions to consider include:

How loyal is your customer target group?
  • What elements does your group focus on when choosing a brand? Price, quality, purchase locality, etc. can all be factors in this decision-making process.
Is your brand perceived as it was intended to be?
  • Is your brand clearly understood and are you delivering on your promise?
What’s the competition?
  • Who are they and how well is their brand resonating with their audience? Know what you are up against and understand how to get in front.
How do you reach your target group? In store? Online?
  • You need to be where your customers are, so make sure you know where that is.
What is the length of the buying decision process?
  • If the purchase decision is made in store, you need to plan on how to convince and build-up brand recognition that puts you in front of your competitors. If the decision process is long and requires research, you need to plan on how you can help them decide and take part in their purchase cycle.

It’s important that these and many more questions are considered before you move on to deciding what branding and identity development strategy to choose.

Step 2: Optimise your brand strategy to ensure growth

There is no exact timetable to determine how regularly you should optimise your brand strategy. It’s a good idea to be constantly vigilant about your brand’s overall health and identity, always keeping in mind customer feedback, employee morale and the business’ growth trajectory.

When feedback, morale and/or growth aren’t where you want them to be, it’s a good time to take a step back and assess things. Taking the time to check the current strengths and weaknesses of your brand while evaluating where you want to go will only serve to strengthen your positioning. A brand asset audit is a useful exercise to conduct regularly.

An audit could include the following inventory:

  • Strapline
  • Purpose
  • Logo
  • Visual identity
  • Colour scheme
  • Brand marketing templates

A strong brand is the foundation upon which the business stands, which means it must always be firm and resolute. While a solid product or service remains the core of your business, few customers will take the time to explore your offering if there isn’t a confident and credible brand to back it.

Knowing exactly what your brand’s messaging is and what it stands for is crucial, and having a coherent strategy to communicate that to prospective customers and clients will propel future success.

3-steps-to-a-successful-branding-process-2

Step 3: Identify your brand’s development metrics

When you’re ready to execute your brand activation, make sure you have the necessary KPIs in place so you can measure your success based on facts instead of your gut feeling.

There is a significant amount of value in your strategic brand management process, but how do you accurately determine how much? Set KPIs that can measure the situation before and after activation. Consider these examples:

Metric 1:

As initially stated, consistency is key to brand growth, but your current state is showing that local offices are repeatedly using the wrong logo.

  • Strategy goal: Secure brand consistency
  • KPI: All local offices should within 3 months use the correct logo according to brand guidelines.
Metric 2:

Regardless of how much you try, you simply do not have enough resources and time to deliver brand assets on-demand and you lose out on brand presence. Yet brand growth is dependent on your ability to be visible in the market.

  • Strategy goal: Secure brand presence
  • KPI: No backlog of requests. Respond to requests within the same working day.
Metric 3:

Growing a brand demands focus. However, current status shows that you are constantly spending your time on ad-hoc and repetitive tasks, meaning your time for value-added brand work is reduced.

  • Strategy goal: Enable self-serviced brand assets
  • KPI: Eliminate requests for existing assets.

Tracking your brand KPIs can help validate everything you do as a marketing professional. Thanks to the countless tracking tools available today, businesses have the opportunity to gain more visibility over their marketing efforts and the continual progression of their brand than ever before. Get to know your marketing failures and fix them. Get to know your marketing successes and highlight them.

Supporting your branding process

By following the three steps outlined above, your branding process will be more robust and capable of supporting the constant evolution and progression that every brand goes through in order to survive and thrive.

But this is only the beginning – there is a lot more ground to cover. For more on enhancing brand management in your organisation, check out our whitepaper on the value of an investment in your brand.

3-steps-to-a-successful-branding-process

Take your branding process further with a brand management platform

Once you have a process and strategy in place to maintain your brand strength and security as it develops and evolves over time, it’s crucial that this is consistently applied across all marketing channels. This is where Brand Management, or the Papirfly Platform, will make a big difference for your brand.

With an all all-in-one brand management platform you can confidently streamline processes that accommodate multi-channel asset production to support building brand awareness and the efforts of multiple teams.

A brand management platform provides a single online destination for your global employees dedicated to preserving, protecting and propelling your brand. Teams can produce studio-standard marketing materials from bespoke templates, store, share and adapt them for their own markets and stay firmly educated on the brand’s purpose, guidelines and evolution – with no agency help necessary.

Whilst improving your workflows creates more time and saves money as internal bottlenecks are eliminated, relying less on external agencies and reducing time wasted on back and forth approval processes makes bringing asset creation in-house an appealing choice.

Start empowering your team with the all-in-one brand management platform by Papirfly.

Table of contents:

  1. Establish the foundations of your brand identity
  2. Optimise your brand strategy to ensure growth 
  3. Identify your brand’s development metrics
  4. Supporting your branding process
  5. Take your branding process further with a brand management platform

The best way
to manage your brand.
See it in action.

  • Boosting revenues
  • Doing more for less
  • Activating brands on a global scale
See how it fits your needs

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Marketing

The challenges and opportunities of digital content creation

Papirfly
4 minutes read

As professionals, we’re constantly consuming; videos, podcasts, articles. We just can’t get enough.

As brands, we know that digital platforms are the best way to get in front of our potential customers. But getting to them at the ideal stage of the customer journey and serving them the right piece of content at the best time can be a challenge. 

Now multiply that by several personas, channels, industries and locations, this is the reality that so many teams are facing.

Producing digital content on any scale can be taxing, but on a global scale the process can be even more burdensome.

Today we’re identifying some of the key challenges facing marketing teams worldwide, and what can be done to alleviate some of this pressure, so that teams can keep up, keep evolving and keep producing engaging content.

What are the common challenges and opportunities?

Creating a digital content schedule

Challenge:

Knowing how much to schedule and how frequently

Solution:

No matter how many great ideas you have, it all starts with objectives, budget and capacity. If you don’t have the infrastructure to fulfil all your content needs, you’ll end up putting your team in a compromising position (unless you have BAM by Papirfly™, of course).

If you don’t have a solid grounding of data or strategy to guide your scheduling decisions, take a look at what competitors are doing as a starting point. 

Challenge:

Preparing for reactive content

Solution:

Have a full plan in place should there be an exceptional opportunity to jump on something topical. If your content guidelines require a heavy sign off process, then create a scoring system for your content team to assess the opportunity of the topical piece. If the benefits outweigh the consequences of missing out, they can proceed with an abridged sign-off process.

Or, if this is not an option, explore Brand Activation Management to make sure teams have the tools they need to create the assets they need both quickly and autonomously, as well as to streamline the sign-off process. 

Tips for creating a digital content schedule

  • Work backwards from launch deadlines in order to determine feasibility
  • Don’t rely too heavily on hard deadlines, give yourself some wiggle room of a day or two
  • Check the diaries of those delivering the schedule beforehand to make sure there’s nothing that could affect production

Assigning roles in the process

Challenge:

Knowing who is responsible for what 

Solution:

If there’s confusion or crossover on duties, get everyone to make a list of their skill sets and daily tasks and rate their competency level for each. By doing this, you’ll spot who is doing things within the process that shouldn’t be, and you’ll utilise skill sets you may have not known about.

If you have an internal messaging platform, also ask employees to put their job roles in their names. This helps prevent requests that aren’t relevant coming through to the wrong person, and wasting their time. 

Challenge:

One or two people knowing the process better than others

Solution:

Whilst clear hierarchy is integral to ensuring content production runs smoothly, if all the information is kept under wraps, you could end up stuck if someone leaves. Ensure that every process and guideline is documented and accessible, and make sure your team is kept up-to-date with any changes made to avoid confusion.

Tips for assigning roles

  • Assign a primary and secondary person (in case one person goes on holiday)
  • Ensure each person knows who they report to and get sign off from
  • Give everyone a copy of the production schedule and who is responsible for what

Make your budget go further

Challenge:

Keeping up with volume of demand 

Solution:

Invest in a digital solution that allows you to quickly create, edit, duplicate and deliver at scale. The Brand Activation Management space, home to BAM by Papirfly™, is opening up a whole new world of opportunity for teams to create assets that are tailored for markets, countries and more. 

Challenge:

Utilising skills in-house 

Solution:

Not everyone can be a creative, designer or writer. But it’s not always cost-effective to keep engaging agencies or hiring new team members. Having pre-defined templates that give individuals flexibility in a framework ensures peace of mind and optimal levels of delivery. 

Tips to make your budget go further

  • Repurpose content when and where you can
  • Revisit and update outdated content if it’s still relevant
  • Bring production in-house if it’s still BAM by Papirfly

What is the future of digital content creation?

Like every other area of marketing, it’s only a matter of time before the creation side of content production is automated to some degree. It’s safe to say that Brand Activation Management is here to stay.

The digitisation and centralisation of all brand assets worldwide is a logical next step for the biggest brands across the globe. The likes of Coca-Cola, HSBC, Vodafone and IBM are already using BAM by Papirfly™ to deliver more digital and print assets than they ever thought possible. More empowerment and autonomy for their teams. More output for their budgets. More efficiencies and much less stress. This is the future of digital content creation.

If you would like to learn more about BAM by Papirfly™ and book a demo for you or your team, please get in touch.  

Table of contents:

  1. Creating a digital content schedule
  2. Assigning roles in the process
  3. Make your budget go further
  4. What is the future of digital content creation?