Display Advertising, Marketing Tools

Why Display Ads are key in winning the battle for brand awareness

Standing out above your competitors is no easy task in today’s market. Even when you believe you offer a superior product or service, your brand won’t capture the hearts and minds of your target customers if rival brands are unchallenged in capturing their attention .

Launching display ads is an essential tactic for any brand serious about increasing its visibility and impact in their ideal customers’ lives. Also known as banner ads, we’ll help you understand just why focussing on display advertising can boost your brand’s chances in the market and increase your bottom line.

Is display advertising right for your brand?

Simply put, yes – that is, if you want to keep up with the competition. As 84% of marketers invest in display ads your brand is in the minority if it isn’t utilising this crucial method of increasing brand awareness.

This isn’t to say you should be following the crowd for the sake of it. Yet when you consider your own experience the chances are you can appreciate the benefit of display ads. For instance, when browsing the internet can you remember ever NOT seeing a display ad on a webpage?

Also read: What is a banner ad creator?

Target your brand’s perfect customers

Going further, can you remember seeing ads that felt totally relevant and specific to you – linked to your recent searches or completely in line with your long-term beliefs, needs or interests? We all have and, of course, this is a familiar experience for us all.

For example, if you’re interested in physical fitness then websites on this topic will likely display adverts that relate to exercise equipment, strength-building programmes or nutritional food products. In addition, ads on these themes might present themselves to you on websites of an entirely different subject matter as sophisticated, targeted advertising picks up your personal online behaviour. 

Display ads work exceptionally well at reaching the people your brand and your product will serve best, increasing the likelihood new customers will discover you and that your brand’s identity will be  more frequently visible in their day to day lives. 

Also read: How to create dynamic display ads that count 

Display Ads increase the likelihood of brand strategy success

A Cost Per Click (CPC) system is usually applied when paying for display ads. This offers great value as you know those who click are interested in your product and brand. Naturally, not every click ends up in a purchase, yet it creates a touchpoint and increases brand awareness that could lead the customer to make future transactions.

Yet there is even greater value in using display ads when you consider how they complement other channels. Sticking with TV, there is more than a 25% probability that someone recognizes a television commercial if they have previously seen it on a digital platform.

So while it’s difficult to track how a TV ad for, let’s say, physical exercise equipment will result in a customer purchase – when screened in the commercial break for a healthy cooking show for example – using display ads fundamentally increases the chance the ad will catch their attention.

In fact, one survey shows that your ROI’s can increase by as much as 35% if you use a wide range of platforms, including TV. With its more sophisticated ability to reach a pinpoint target audience, display ads must be part of that brand marketing strategy. This provides confidence that the structure of your brand can remain strong when this tactic is embraced, using a solution that doesn’t blow your marketing budget.

Also read: How to structure your brand with Papirfly

Invest in the right tech to manage your display advertising

Clearly there is some effort required to create display advertising which can be time-consuming and demand resources from marketing teams, with the right expertise and knowledge required to deliver optimal results. Such resources are often in short supply internally and with agency fees ever-rising, it’s easy to see why some brands avoid display advertising altogether.

Reassuringly, creating instant recognition by producing high-quality display advertising can be done by building ad templates and automating creation and publishing workflows. Achieving brand consistency across every digital channel and platform is within reach, as is a higher chance of brand awareness.

Our solutions support your display ad template creation and brand asset management, with technology that anyone can learn to use easily, so your marketing team can create ads aligned with your brand guidelines.

From here you can become quick, efficient and brand consistent with every asset as you begin to stand out from the crowd. So, when your customers consider whether they choose you or your rivals… there is no competition. 

Also read: How Papirfly’s Display Ads elevate your banner ad creation

Brand Activation Management

How to optimize your marketing content approval workflow

Brand managers have a big responsibility: to make sure the brand is aligned across every asset, every campaign, and every channel, all over the world. And without the right approval process in place, it’s easy for the content creation workflow to spiral into confusion, delays, inconsistencies.

It doesn’t have to be that way.

With the right structure and tools, approvals can run smoothly – and even help your team deliver better and faster.

Here’s how to simplify sign-off and keep every asset perfectly on-brand.

Five steps to streamline your sign‑off process

There are many ways to approach your marketing content approval workflow. The right approach will depend on the size and nature of your brand. That said, there are some key principles that always apply. The aim here is not to micromanage the content creation process – this is about ensuring clarity, consistency and control over all your brand campaigns.

Step 1: Map your approval process

Before you can streamline, you need clarity. Start by identifying all the people and processes involved in getting assets signed off. Your audit needs to include:

  • What type of content and campaign material is being created
  • The stages involved in the creation of each type
  • Who is accountable at each stage
  • Timelines for each stage
  • Triggers for moving from each stage to the next
  • How progress is communicated
  • How campaigns are adapted for different markets
  • Any alternative processes that exist for urgent or topical content

Does everyone know their role in this process? The advantage of using software like Papirfly is that the marketing content approval workflow is automated and visible to everyone, removing any confusion over who does what.

Step 2: Document everything

Ideally, you’re fully digital by now. If not, you may still be using physical forms, emails, a PDF annotator or project management tool to submit requests. Either way, it’s worth creating a standard template to keep everything consistent. This may be in the form of a checklist, comment boxes, or signature sections. Don’t just automatically go with what you’ve already got. You need to make sure you have documentation that addresses the following:

  • How to submit change requests
  • What happens after approval or refusal
  • Who is accountable if something goes wrong
  • What happens if the approval is unavailable
  • How many revisions are allowed before escalation
  • How are general review phases separated from approvals

A clear, shared approval guide is invaluable here. It helps new starters and existing employees get to grips with how things work – and gives you peace of mind that brand quality will be protected, even when you’re not there.

Step 3: Share brand guidelines

Without comprehensive brand guidelines, your approvals process could end up being unnecessarily long and complicated. Or worse, campaigns could go to market completely wrong. At the very minimum, brand guidelines should include:

  • Logo use across different markets and applications
  • Typeface and text sizing
  • Supporting visual assets and icons
  • Imagery guidance 
  • Tone of voice rules

Step 4: Make feedback meaningful

Marketing content approval workflows work best when feedback is:

  • Specific – you point to the exact issue and solution
  • Actionable – you explain what happens next, and who takes ownership
  • Aligned – you use brand guidelines to prevent subjective or inconsistent changes

Does everyone in your organization know this? To boost understanding, include examples of constructive feedback in your approval guide or as a separate piece of training. For example:

❌ Not specific

“The information looks too much.”

✅ Specific

“Volume of information makes it hard to read. Remove section B. (marked up).”

❌ Not actionable

“I’m happy with this now. Send it across to David and see what he thinks.”

✅ Actionable

“I’m happy with this now. You will need David’s final approval before posting. Please make sure he does this today and confirm with me when it’s done.”

❌ Not aligned

“That logo doesn’t seem quite right.”

✅ Aligned

“The exclusion zone around the logo is too small. Refer to brand guidelines for correct measurements.”

Step 5: Keep refining processes and fix recurring issues

Even the best processes hit bumps. Debrief after major projects to identify bottlenecks and fixes. Map imperfect journeys and rebuild your process if it’s not delivering. It’s also important to ensure all templates evolve with your brand.

If the same problems keep appearing in approvals, your brief might be the culprit. By refining briefs, you reduce amends – which means quicker sign-off and fewer bottlenecks. Check: 

  • Are briefs detailed enough?
  • Do different roles need tailored briefing formats?
  • Does everyone have easy access to brand guidelines and assets?

How Papirfly transforms your marketing content approval workflow

With Papirfly’s Digital Asset Management and Templated Content Creation suite, your approvals are fully digitized, tracked, and optimized.

Key features to support your marketing content approval workflow include:

  • Chat function — all stakeholders discuss feedback in one place, avoiding conflicting instructions
  • Document markup — pinpoint exactly where changes are needed
  • Locked templates empower employees to create their own materials with core brand elements locked in, reducing the number of review steps required
  • Automated workflows — from submission to sign-off, every stage is visible, accountable, and recorded
  • Re-approval safeguards — any post-sign-off change reopens the approval process, ensuring final assets are always correct

The result? Faster approvals, stronger consistency, and full confidence in every asset you release – from one central portal.

Bring your approval workflow under control

With Papirfly, you can protect your brand, empower your teams, and get campaigns to market without the chaos. Book your demo today.

Does everyone create content that’s on‑brand, every time?

Find peace of mind with
better brand governance.

Does everyone create content that’s on‑brand, every time?

Find peace of mind with
better brand governance.

Find peace of mind with
better brand governance.

Branded marketing content created with Papirfly’s solutions.

FAQs

How can documentation improve your marketing content approval workflow?

Standardized documentation like templates, checklists, and approval guides ensures everyone follows the same process. It also reduces the risk of missed steps, miscommunication, or repeated revisions.

What role do brand guidelines play in speeding up the content creation process?

Comprehensive guidelines help creators get assets right the first time. This reduces unnecessary back-and-forth and ensures campaigns go to market on-brand and on time.

What makes feedback meaningful in an approval process?

Feedback should be specific, actionable, and aligned to brand guidelines. This prevents subjective changes and ensures clear next steps for the person making updates.

How does Papirfly’s platform transform the marketing content approval workflow?

Papirfly digitizes and automates approvals, centralizes feedback, and uses locked templates to protect brand elements. This ensures every asset meets brand standards before it is published.

Brand Communication, Digital brand book

Why an online brand book is key for your brand communication

When communicating your brand, do you ever get the feeling you’re talking to a wall? Or wonder if anyone ever reads your messages? Successful branding demands proper brand communication. And it requires an entire company pulling in the same direction. For this to happen, everyone needs to be on the same page, receiving the same information about your brand. But the fact is that 74% of employees feel they are missing out on company and news. So, what do you do?

You invest in an online brand book!

What is a brand book?

Brand book or brand guidelines are two and the same. It’s a document that describes your brand from a-z. The brand identity and its origin, the brand values, and its purpose in life. A brand book also includes branding rules – Every detail on how to apply your brand in different scenarios as well as how to communicate your brand. This all sums up to a brand book.

Your first reaction is perhaps that all companies have a brand book. Surprisingly, this is not the case. A study done among US organisations found that only 30% have well-known and used brand guidelines. The remaining 70% do not have any, or no one knows where to find them and it’s random who follows them. What does this tell us? First and foremost, having brand guidelines in place is not enough to secure your brand. Next, how a brand book is shared and distributed affects how your colleagues engage with your brand and communicate it.  

To get everyone pulling in the same direction, communicating ONE brand, everyone in your organisation needs to be informed and included in your branding efforts. You need to make sure everyone is familiar with your brand and its guidelines, and you need to secure availability and accessibility to avoid ending up in the same situation as the US companies mentioned above.

Also read: Who do you need on your team when building your brand?

An online brand book enables seamless brand communication

Aligning everyone can seem like an impossible task. You know first-hand how hard it is to get everyone to read your messages about brand updates and new assets, and they never seem to remember where to locate the brand book. At the same time, they feel left out of the communication loop. Clearly there is a mismatch somewhere.

Accessibility and user-friendliness are key if you want everyone aligned. Remember that for most of your colleagues, the brand book is perhaps needed once or twice a month and if it’s “hidden” in a marketing folder and the link was sent to them ages ago, how can you expect them to remember where to find it? And perhaps there was an update you emailed them about, but they have downloaded your brand book to their desktop for easy access, and they missed your email update. Then what?

An online brand book removes these worries and makes brand communication effective, easy, and seamless. One link, updated in real-time and everything collected in one single location. Everyone receives the same information at the same time. Communicating news, guideline updates, events, campaigns and more has never been easier.  

Also read: Build your brand with effective brand communication 

An online brand book enables consistent brand communication

Communication is part of any branding effort. How you communicate internally, how you communicate with the market, your customers, and other stakeholders. And it’s not only how you express yourself with words, visuals and choice of channels are also a form of communication.

All this needs to match and align. How your brand is presented and communicated by everyone in the company needs to match the brand strategy and the brand book. By managing all of this online from one single location, you can rest assured that your brand will look and sound the same everywhere.  

An online brand book unifies your brand communication

When everyone and everything is connected to one source of truth, getting your message distributed and your brand shared is easy.

Any update or news you have about your brand runs smoothly online. Publish updates and news, connect necessary brand assets, campaign information, marketing collateral and more and communicate your brand with ease.

Also read: How to communicate your brand

Get started with an online brand book

An online brand book is more than uploading a PDF document to your SharePoint or Google Workspace. This is about establishing an online solution where you can properly present and connect your brand securing automated workflows. This is where you connect your rules to the actual brand assets, and even self-serviced brand templates. The right brand book activates your brand online.  

Brand Activation Management

Why tone of voice and language are critical to a consistent brand

When it comes to building a strong, memorable brand, consistency is crucial.

Presenting your audiences with a dependable, distinguishable identity on all channels is the origin of them building trust with your brand. Without trust, there can be no brand loyalty, and you lose your opportunity at securing that sought-after return customer.

To preserve consistency at a time where the demands on content production are greater than ever, organisations are encouraged to create clear brand guidelines that underpin everything that is published. Much of these concern the visual aspects of the brand, ensuring these don’t deviate from their identity.

Why tone of voice is so important

Just as important is keeping tone of voice and language on-brand and markets specific. Yet, this is often overlooked when it comes to these guidelines, as it is viewed as difficult to enforce and manage in the way visual assets can be.

The end result? Copywriters that are unsure of how to evoke their brand’s personality across content. With incessant pressure to produce this content, they instead write in their own style to compensate.

These inconsistencies impact how audiences view your brands. If there is no binding thread between your various touchpoints, this will prevent potential customers from gaining a solid sense of what your brand represents, making you appear less trustworthy.

What is tone of voice?

Although tone of voice is a commonly held expression, it is important to recognise that tone and voice are two separate entities.

Your brand’s voice is the base of your verbal personality. It represents the core values, characteristics and features that make up your brand’s unique identity, and will be unwavering across every piece of marketing collateral.

Tone by contrast is much more malleable and flexible. Tone is the application of your brand’s voice to fit the context of where it is used. For instance, a social post on Twitter hopping on the back of a trending meme will probably have a notably different tone than a press release about your latest development.

The tone and style it is written can be markedly different, but they can still carry that overarching voice behind your brand. That is the secret to a tone of voice that maintains complete consistency, but perfectly adapts to the channel it’s placed on.

This is a difficult balancing act, and certainly one that some brands perform better than others. But at the heart of the most successful examples are tone of voice guidelines, that remove any room for interpretation and make it clear to everyone in your company how you should be projected verbally in all circumstances.

Building your brand’s tone of voice guidelines

Your tone of voice guidelines set the rules for every aspect of your written communications. It is the document that all writers, both internal and freelance, should refer to in order to ensure they are producing content in line with your personality.

This will also streamline the process of onboarding new copywriters in how they get to grips with communicating your brand, and used as a reference guide for when it comes to editing and proofing.

Below, we’ve outlined our 9 tips to making these guidelines as robust and useful as they need to be to guarantee consistency throughout your content.

9 steps to great tone of voice guidelines

1. Perform a language audit

First, it’s important to assess the content that your brand currently produces across its various channels to identify anything that you feel is inconsistent with how you wish your brand to be perceived.

What words stand out most frequently in your content? How long are your sentences? How often do you use colloquialisms or abbreviations? Do you employ emojis?

Ask these questions and more across a wide body of your existing content. This will give your team a base to determine the elements you like within your current copy, and what needs to be tightened up or addressed in order to consistently present your brand’s personality. Understanding these will be important to what you include within your final guidelines.

2. Identify your brand’s personality

When determining the right tone of voice for your brand, think of it as a person. Imagine meeting them at a dinner party:

  • Would they be loud and confident?
  • Would they be thoughtful and reserved?
  • Would they be assertive and forthright?

What would they be wearing? What subjects would they talk about? Who would they be inspired by? When you start to think of your brand in this context, you can develop a more vivid understanding of what its voice is and how it would be used in a variety of contexts.

By developing this persona, one that incorporates all of the top values and aspects of your brand, it becomes clearer how it would interact with your audiences.

3. Assess your target audiences

Speaking of your audiences, it’s important to perform some critical analysis on who they are and what they would want to hear from your brand.

Is your primary audience niche or is it more mainstream? Do they prioritise particular social issues over others? Is there particular jargon that they use day-to-day?

Building this understanding will cement what your brand’s voice should be to best engage your customers and, importantly, help you recognise how its tone needs to shift to capture the imagination of different audiences across your various channels.

4Construct a glossary

An essential component of your tone of voice guidelines should be a glossary, which outlines specific terminology and jargon that is unique to your brand or industry, and that needs to be incorporated into your copy.

This will include product names, brand language, warranty terms and department names, and will span across both content you produce for customers, and phrases you use internally. It will also be valuable in outlining how terms will differ when used in different contexts or in a variety of languages (more on that later). It should also address any words that should be avoided at all costs.

Also, it’s important that this glossary is not left static. As your brand evolves and expands into different locations and onto different platforms, it’s crucial that this list is kept up-to-date.

5. List clear grammatical dos and don’ts

Alongside the glossary, your tone of voice guide should also have a distinct list of grammatical rules for your writers to follow. This should be as comprehensive as possible, but listed in a digestible way so it is easier for writers to understand and apply to your brand.

  • Do you want hyphens to be used in words like double-click?
  • What perspective do you speak with? (i.e. first-person, second-person, third-person)
  • What slang words or abbreviations are allowed and which are forbidden?
  • Are writers encouraged to use idioms, cliches, metaphors and other literary devices?
  • What are your rules relating to punctuation and formatting?
  • How long should sentences and paragraphs be in general?

This sounds like nit-picking, but if you want to achieve complete consistency, it is best that nothing about your voice is left to chance.

6. Put copy into context

Remember what we said about voice and tone being separate? That’s because the overarching language and grammatical rules you outline in your tone of voice guidelines might shift slightly depending on the context of the writing.

For instance, on a press release or product description, your copy might be more formal and to-the-point, with little margin for humour or creative expression. At the same time, your social posts could be more colloquial and quirky. The nature of these different types of content necessitates a change in tone to not appear jarring to the audiences reading it.

So, make sure your guidelines address any difference in approach on specific content channels. This will allow for the writing to be rightly adjusted for these various audiences, but not stray too far away from your brand’s core identity.

7. Provide plenty of examples

To give your writers complete clarity over how they should produce content for your brand, it is vital that you give them clear examples of copy that ticks all the right boxes, and copy that is completely off-brand.

Providing several examples, across all of your brand channels, will make it apparent to new and existing writers what is expected of them in a way that simply explaining doesn’t always cover. When you’re learning grammar in school, you will be presented with good and bad examples to make that process easier – this works in exactly the same way here.

Consider the “Goldilocks” technique here: If you want your brand to be perceived as “approachable yet professional”, you might title your emails with “hello” rather than “dear” (too formal and familiar) or “hey” (too colloquial).

8. Don’t forget the details

While it is important not to overwhelm writers with detail to make it as straightforward as possible for them to absorb and apply your tone of voice requirements, not covering all your bases widens the risk of inconsistencies creeping in over time.

With this in mind, make sure you also incorporate sections dedicated to:

  • The degree of formality of your content in various contexts
  • Your stance on swearing and other potential sticking points
  • How and when to reference news and pop culture

Continue to review and assess your copy over time to see if any off-brand tendencies start to emerge, and if they do, update your guidelines where necessary to reflect this.

9. Make it easily accessible

Finally, you can have the most complete, comprehensible tone of voice guide imaginable – but if nobody can access it or knows where it is, it will have no effect. So, it is vital that the location of the guide is known company-wide, and that your teams globally can access it at all times to inform their writing.

This is where a platform like Papirfly’s all-in-one brand management solution can be a powerful complement to your tone of voice guidelines. By providing a single, central destination for all your brand guidelines, this keeps your teams worldwide aware of your brand’s unique identity and how they should maintain this both verbally and visually.

A single source of truth for your brand voice that your entire team can engage with.

4 brands that know their tone of voice

Coca-Cola

A brand that is already benefiting from the Papirfly Platform, Coca-Cola’s tone of voice has been clear and consistent across its 130-year history – it is all about bringing happiness to people.

Coca-Cola maintains a positive, friendly and down-to-earth tone across all its primary communications, built around their core personality trait of helping people live happy lives. Through the language they use, no one is left in any doubt what their brand stands for, and that’s helped it become one of the world’s most celebrated brands.

Examples

“Open happiness”

“Together tastes better”

“Refresh on the Coca-Cola side of life”

Starbucks

Starbucks’ voice guidelines plainly outline their tone of voice in a way anyone can understand, including several examples.

By employing a blend of functional and expressive language, Starbucks sets out their brand identity as one that wants to be clear, helpful and digestible for their customers, but to unlock their passion for what they drink and to indulge in what they love.

Examples

“That first sip feeling”

“It’s not just coffee. It’s Starbucks”

“Our mission: to inspire and nurture the human spirit – one person, one cup and one neighbourhood at a time”

Dove

As a company built around beauty and self-care, it is important that Dove’s messages of empowerment and body positivity are projected throughout its communications.

Dove keeps this consistent in their various marketing and social media campaigns, through to their website, where their vision aligns them as an organisation that wants to make beauty a source of confidence, rather than anxiety.

Examples

“Making a genuine difference”

“Welcome to Dove…the home of real beauty”

“We believe that real beauty comes from confidence, and confidence comes from embracing who you are”

Old Spice

Following their rebrand in 2010, Old Spice unshackled themselves from their former tone of voice, which was associating them with a mature audience, and revitalised it to attract a broader, younger demographic.

By focusing on wit, humour and a new perspective on masculinity, Old Spice used its new voice to regain its foothold as a global leader in men’s deodorant.

Examples

“The man your man could smell like”

“How to keep excessive sweat from stopping your swagger”

“Get more awesomeness, good smellingness, and Old Spice exclusiveness than ever before”

Lock down your tone of voice

We hope this has helped you recognise the absolute importance of being clear and consistent with your brand’s tone of voice and language, and how you can guarantee this in your own marketing.

Consistency is the cornerstone of customers trusting your brand – and this needs to be maintained every time you engage with them. Your tone of voice and the language you use is just one component of this, but it is one that demands your attention to prevent your voice from becoming confused or inaccurate.

Our all-in-one brand management platform is designed to help your brand lockdown consistency across all areas of your marketing, both verbally and visually. 

  • Harness bespoke, intelligent templates to produce assets faster and more cost-effectively, with no chance of going off-brand
  • Make all guidelines, training videos and assets available company-wide
  • Set permissions for different team members to ensure they can only access features and assets relevant to them and their market

Start empowering your brand with a brand management platform – get in touch with our team today.

Brand Activation Management

Unlocking the Power of Brand Portals

A brand portal’s power can’t be understated. It’s a game-changer for not only your brand, but for you and your teams – but that’s only when you fully understand what you’re signing up for.

It won’t transport you to another galaxy, but this kind of portal will take your brand to places it has never been before. 

There are hundreds, possibly thousands of brand portals available. It’s a saturated market and the term ‘brand portal’ alone is interpreted in many different ways, delivering many contrasting solutions.

The problem is that they’ve been developed by teams from all different backgrounds, solving different pain points and problems – which leaves you with an overwhelming amount of choice but not a lot of context or clarity. 

In this article, we aim to help you understand the core features of every solid brand portal, what it should help you achieve day-to-day and how it can propel your brand long term. Lastly, we’ll help you navigate and narrow down your choices.

What is a brand portal and what does it do?

At its most basic level, a brand portal is a digital home for your brand. Many give you access to brand assets, videos, guidelines and campaign materials. It allows employees, agencies, suppliers and whoever else needs access to log in and get what they need, when they need it, without having to interrupt anyone else.

This is still an accurate description of many brand portals that exist. But there are many vendors taking this to a new level, and redefining what a brand portal is and should be.

The trouble with the traditional definition is that it only solves one of many brand problems. A comprehensive brand portal should give teams the ability to create and edit assets, as well as access them.

Otherwise, there’s still a great disconnect between what’s being produced and what’s available. There’s no true oversight or assurance of brand consistency, and mistakes can only be noticed once the files are uploaded. 

What features should a brand portal have?

A brand portal solution like Papirflys are being continually updated and invested in, so it can be hard to know what you should be looking for in terms of features. We’re proud to say our core product allows for the vast majority of features to be accessed, with very few module upgrades available. 

Here’s the list of features you should be looking for in your next brand portal: 

An easy-to-use, customisable dashboard or ‘homepage’

Tailored login credentials, so that certain individuals or companies only have access to what they need

A built-in, intuitive Digital Asset Management (DAM) system to organise and locate files and assets easily – with tagging functionality, as well as the ability to download in different file formats

Dedicated education section for brand assets, guidelines, usage and more to educate teams on the wider brand consistency mission and reduce internal requests

Intelligent design studio integrated into the portal, with guaranteed on-brand digital, print, social, video and email templates that can be created from scratch, edited or translated and adapted for other sub-brands, languages and regions

Campaign planning tools and timelines where campaign materials can also be easily accessed – with the option to discontinue asset availability once campaigns have finished

How will a brand portal make your life easier?

Aside from giving you a centralised place for your content production and brand management, it will also give teams a direct way to get the assets they need. They can create and edit anything themselves, while you are assured your brand guidelines are always adhered to.

This means no waiting around for agencies or third-party suppliers; teams can go to market quickly and you’re not bombarded with requests.

Wider than this, everything your brand produces will be on-brand and consistent, helping to create a more unified approach to marketing and communications. A brand that’s presented consistently tends to generate 23% more revenue.

Budget will be saved by reducing agency spending. Time will be saved by having a single place to go to for files and creation of assets. Teams will be more productive and deliver more in less time. 

There are very few (if any) downsides to implementing a brand portal. The benefits extend far beyond just being able to deliver more day-to-day – it has an incredible positive impact on the wider brand and business. 

Making an informed choice

We’ve compiled a list of key questions to help you select the brand portal that’s right for you. 

  • Are big, reputable brands using the portal?
  • How many active users do they have globally?
  • Can the company demonstrate reviews and detailed case studies (preferably video)?
  • How many years has the company been established?
  • How many employees does the company have? (this will help you to establish the level of customer service you can expect)
  • Are the pricing and package levels transparent?
  • Was the demo useful and informative?
  • Are the sales and customer service representatives knowledgeable? 
  • Is there a set roadmap for updates over the next year?

Could a brand management platform by Papirfly be your next brand portal?

We’re proud of the brand portal we created back in 2000. We’ve had a vision for over 21 years to become the best brand portal available and help global companies reach their full potential. And we’re doing it.

If you would like to learn more about Papirfly book your demo today. 

Corporate communications

The transparency strategy: the power of honesty in your corporate marketing

Strong relationships are built on trust.

This is as true for a brand and its customers as it is for couples, friendships and work colleagues.

More than ever before, consumers want assurances over the products they buy, the services they use, and the companies they engage with.

However, trust is fragile; it’s hard to gain, yet easy to lose. Brands must consistently work to earn the trust of their audience – if they do, they are rewarded with a loyal, devoted following who will regularly return and urge their friends, families and acquaintances to join them.

To reap the benefits of a trusting, committed fanbase, many companies are placing a firm focus on transparency. By maintaining open, honest communication with customers and the wider world, these brands are being rewarded with meaningful relationships with audiences across the globe.

What is transparency in corporate marketing?

While an increasing number of brands are familiar with the term ‘corporate marketing’, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they put it into action.

Brand transparency is more than a buzzword. It is an organisation opening itself up to all internal and external stakeholders. 

Especially since the outbreak of COVID-19, there has been a growing urgency among consumers for brands to enforce honesty above all else. At a time when “fake news” and misinformation is rife globally, customers understandably want to know as much as they can about the companies they engage with.

A transparent company discloses information on all aspects of its business, such as:

  • Company operations
  • Goals and KPIs
  • Core values
  • Product information and sourcing
  • Supply chain models
  • Working practices
  • Financial data
  • Pricing

The Consumer Good Forum outlines three elements of truly transparent brands:

  • Corporate practice: The brand communicates its policies and performance.
  • Product proof: The brand communicates the processes behind its products and services.
  • Brand purpose: The brand communicates its mission statements, values and beliefs.

Even information that could be considered highly sensitive, such as a company’s environmental impact and sales figures, are made accessible to anybody who wants to know more about their brand. What was once purely confidential is now showcased for the world to see.

And although this “age of authenticity” is still developing globally, several brands are already making strides to be completely clear with their audiences… 

5 brands with transparency at their core

Patagonia

True leaders in brand transparency, clothing brand Patagonia’s ‘Footprint Chronicles’ tell customers exactly how it sources the raw materials for their products, and the conditions of the warehouses they are stored in. By placing its supply chain in the public eye, it is showing their customers that they can trust their working practices.

Lush

Cosmetics company Lush translates transparency in a number of ways. From highlighting their policies and ethos throughout their company website, to sharing their products’ ingredient lists and results of their regular third-party audits, they communicate to their customers that they are a fair, ethical and cruelty-free manufacturer.

Buffer

Social media management platform Buffer believes transparency is crucial to the development of their brand. They achieve this in multiple ways, such as publishing each employee’s pay rate by name (from founders to content writers), and making all internal emails accessible to their entire team.

Warby Parker

Eyewear brand Warby Parker is incredibly open with their customers and shareholders when it comes to its financial information. It publishes data that reinforces its commitment to donate a pair of frames for every four pairs sold, as well as the standards that it holds its suppliers to.

Ben & Jerry’s

Rather than present a boilerplate response to global events, ice cream giants Ben & Jerry’s are always upfront about their efforts to combat climate change. They have actively supported climate protests held worldwide, and produced advertising campaigns built around the steps they take to ensure the sustainability of their practices.

The benefits of being a transparent brand

With consumers increasingly wanting to know more about brands, from how they source their products to what societal issues they stand for, this trend of transparency shows no signs of slowing. On the contrary – continuing to stick to standard confidentiality could lead to brands developing a negative reputation.

Here are some of the ways that practising brand transparency can make a meaningful difference to your relationships with customers:

Gain consumer trust

First and foremost, in a landscape littered with misinformation, and where data breaches and privacy concerns are hot topics, brands that are authentic and transparent will really resonate with audiences. In a world that feels increasingly unreliable, these brands can be the trusting voice that modern customers need.

Trust inspires loyalty, and customer loyalty means repeat business that your brand can rely upon through thick and thin. Remember – acquiring a new customer can be five times more costly than retaining an existing customer.

Spur business growth

Access to a loyal, dedicated customer base offers a brand competitive advantage. When consumers are fully trusting of a company, they will be more on board if:

  • The price of products or services rises
  • New products or services are introduced
  • Former products or services are removed or replaced

If the company is transparent about the reasons for these shifts, it is much easier for customers to digest and continue to support the company, which can lead to further growth.

Show evidence of CSR efforts

There is a rising expectation among consumers that the companies they engage with are committed to pursuing positive goals for their employees, customers and the world as a whole. 

If your brand is engaged in these efforts, being transparent about this helps demonstrate that you practice what you preach. There are few things more potentially damaging to a brand’s reputation than talking about the values you uphold, but failing to follow through.

This is particularly true when it comes to sustainability. In fact, the word “greenwashing” was devised to define brands that invest more time and money into marketing their sustainability than in actual corporate environmental efforts.

By focusing on transparency within your business, you can give your audiences complete reassurance that the values you promote are genuine. This will show them that your values are aligned, and make them more willing to engage with your brand.

Elevate customer experiences

A customer experience covers every touchpoint between a customer and a company. From visiting their website or social media channels, to actively purchasing products at checkout, everything contributes to how consumers feel about your brand.

Brand transparency can improve these perceptions significantly. For example, if you are transparent about the pricing and manufacturing of your products, rather than leaving this shrouded in mystery, this helps customers feel more informed about whether it is right for them based on their budgets, needs and personal values.

This means that, even if that particular customer does not do business with your brand, this positive experience may encourage them to recommend you to friends or family members.

Recover reputation

When bad publicity rears its ugly head around your brand, it may feel natural to perform damage control in private and wait for everything to blow over. However, with mistrust among consumers at an all-time high, this activity could have a massive detriment on the trust that they have towards your brand. Now more than ever, they want brands to be accountable for their actions – good or bad.

By taking a transparent approach following a hit to your reputation – apologising for what happened, not making excuses and explaining how you intend to remedy the situation – this can reassure customers that you are taking ownership for what happened. This could help maintain the loyalty of many customers that may have walked away in other circumstances.

Take Ovo Energy as an example to follow. After an ill-thought-out blog post suggesting that people “cuddle their pets” to stay warm during the winter, they owned up to their poor judgement and created a rejuvenated article with more meaningful information for their customers.

Build employee engagement

Transparency doesn’t simply appeal to customers – it can also foster employee engagement and happiness. In a survey conducted by TINYpulse across 40,000 workers, transparency was named as the number one factor contributing to their overall happiness.

Whether it is making company-wide details more accessible to all employees through a newsletter or monthly meetings, or it is ensuring that working practices are made readily available to potential candidates, a more transparent approach to your employer brand can make a major difference to your ability to recruit and retain top talent.

Remember, happy, fulfilled employees are significantly more productive and engaged than unhappy employees.

3 tips to inspire brand transparency
1. Be honest and real in all communications

From an internal memo to customer-facing product descriptions, it is vital to ensure that everything communicated to your audiences is authentic and straightforward. Very little, if anything, should feel fabricated or illusory.

For instance, on the company pages of your website, don’t revert to stock images of happy workers. Instead, use shots of your real employees. When providing product information on your packaging, especially price, ensure this is accurate and verifiable. Integrating your content production with your PIM and ERP systems through Papirfly’s all-in-one brand management platform can be a useful way to maintain this accuracy.

Consider Everlane’s “radical transparency”. The online retailer incorporates the name of the factory a product was produced on their descriptions, with a link sharing information and images of the factory itself. This removes any concerns customers may have about unethical manufacturing processes.

2. Develop transparency webpages

If you are keen to make customers aware of the quality of your practices and products, or how you are following through on the causes that you promote as a company, create dedicated pages within your website to showcase this information.

For example, clothing company H&M include a page on their website outlining the sustainability of their supply chain, with facts and figures illustrating their clear commitment to this. This openness surrounding their approach reassures customers that they are truly focused on making sure they are ethical and sustainable in everything they do.

3. Promote honest feedback

Both customers and employees will ask tough questions about brands, and it is crucial that you do not shy away from these. Instead, you should welcome them, sending surveys and questionnaires to your audiences to gauge their thoughts on your company.

Even negative feedback can be positive in the long-run. If a customer or employee identifies an area that can be improved, being transparent about taking this feedback on board and the steps you will take to address this can illustrate to everyone that you listen and respond.

This approach will naturally garner people’s trust, and indicate that you are a brand that learns from and grows following missteps – this will help ensure they remain loyal even through testing times.

Keep your brand consistent with a brand management platform

The power of transparency and honesty is something that brands cannot afford to overlook in today’s landscape. We hope that this has informed you of the positive difference that this outlook can have on all aspects of your business, so you are better prepared to adopt it in your organisation moving forward.

But, building true transparency is not a one-and-done. It needs to be applied continuously and consistently within your company. Especially if you are transitioning from a more confidential approach, it will take time and effort to make customers, employees and others aware that transparency is now your default – and you’ll be rewarded with a more loyal, more resilient fanbase than ever.

Consistency is at the core of Papirfly‘s brand management platform. Our software empowers your marketing teams to produce perfectly branded content at all times, ensuring that wherever you communicate with your customers, it will carry your unique identity. No deviation. No misinterpretation.

  • Fully bespoke templates lock down the core aspects of your branding, with set design, text and database parameters
  • All brand guidelines, training videos and assets are accessible company-wide through a single online location
  • Your employees gain the tools for total autonomy, where they can create materials in minutes without design expertise or experience

Discover the full benefits of brand management today – get in touch with our team for more details.

Brand Activation Management

3 key considerations when building a global DAM

Keeping on top of marketing campaign assets can be a mighty task at the best of times, but managing them across global teams is an even greater challenge. As the capacity for organisations to reach consumers across the globe expands ever further, and the number of channels available to engage them continues to grow, the problem of effectively managing digital assets has become more prevalent than ever before.

Consider the following statistics:

  • It is believed around 90% of companies meet bottlenecks when handling digital content
  • 41% of companies have over 1,000 folders of sensitive assets accessible to anyone
  • Up to 19% of an employee’s time is spent searching for files
  • 15% of companies’ documents are misplaced, while a further 7.5% are kept despite being obsolete

These figures and more illustrate the overriding issues that many companies are having when trying to stay in control of their assets.

From the effort wasted on reproducing or duplicating content due to misplaced or lost files, to the time it takes to produce and supply tailored assets for specific markets, the inability to track and manage assets can be a significant drain on any organisation’s resources.

A DAM system can go a long way in helping organisations avoid and overcome these issues and become far more efficient and effective at managing their ever-growing collection of digital assets. Moreover, a DAM that’s integrated into a BAM portal becomes an even more powerful tool.

What is DAM?

DAM (Digital Asset Management) is software designed to centralise all of an organisation’s digital assets into one straightforward, spacious location. Be it documents, images, videos, photos, audio or any other digital medium, these assets are held in one place to remove the risks of content going missing or being unnecessarily duplicated.

Fundamentally, implementing a DAM solution is done with the goal of optimising the production, management and mobility of a company’s digital assets. Using one should help employees locate the media they need for upcoming campaigns without any hassle, eliminate doubts about lost content and preserve brand consistency across all locations.

In fact, it is estimated that the average DAM system can save a company over £150,000 in as little as five years, while well-managed, consistent brands are worth up to 20 times as much as those that do not invest in controlling their digital library.

This is why DAM makes up a key component of our BAM by Papirfly™. In order to help our clients harness the full potential of their brand, it is critical that they can maintain, access and share their assets in one place, ensuring there is little-to-no room for inconsistencies to creep in or wasted resources spent on unnecessary content.

Nevertheless, while a DAM solution is ideal in principle, it is vital that you select one that meets your specific needs. While these will vary from company to company, below we’ve identified three critical considerations that you should keep in mind when looking to introduce this powerful software into your organisation.

3 important considerations for your DAM solution

1. Make navigation and user experience a priority

First, it is vital that your DAM solution presents an excellent user experience for your employees and any other users. Because, as we’ve identified earlier, the primary goal of any DAM is to make it easier for your team to find and use the resources they need to support the creation of marketing collateral. If the UX makes this challenging, the DAM is not working as it should.

In addition, a poor user experience will make it more likely that your employees avoid using the DAM, instead relying on less effective but user-friendly means of storing assets, such as Dropbox or Google Drive.

A good user experience will start with how people navigate the system:

  • How intuitive is the structure, hierarchy and navigation of the software?
  • Does the system allow you to tag and categorise assets using terminology you and your team are familiar with?
  • Can you quickly filter resources by a particular tag or category to help you find the asset you’re looking for faster?
  • Is the display and user interface straightforward and intuitive to users?
  • Is it easy to share assets with your teams in a variety of locations?
  • Can the system be translated into multiple languages to support its use by your teams across the globe?
  • Does it offer any indication if an asset has already been uploaded to the system to remove the risk of duplication?
  • Is it easy to operate across multiple devices, including mobile and tablets?
  • Can you export digital assets into a variety of file formats?

These are just some of the questions you should ask about any prospective DAM solution to ensure it provides you and your team with an effective user experience. Without this, it will inevitably be ignored and underutilised, meaning you miss out on the ROI that other organisations gain from this kind of software.

Think of it as a library – if its filing system is too complicated or difficult to digest, it’s unlikely you’re going to visit it again.

However, the user experience also depends a great deal on how you as an organisation manage your assets when the system you’ve selected is implemented. While it can do a lot, it requires those responsible for the solution to manage it professionally and prudently. 

This includes ensuring that all labelling is applied consistently and in terminology that your global teams can recognise, that any resources specific to a particular location or outlet are clearly marked, and that assets that are grouped together are done so for a specific reason.

When the user interface offered by a high-quality DAM aligns with the effective organisation of the team operating it, then the management of your digital assets can reach a whole new level.

2. Work on a global and local level

Secondly, there is a need to differentiate between digital assets that are globally available, and resources that specifically cater to a particular market or location. A problem that our clients identify before working with Papirfly is that the time and resources required to produce dedicated campaigns for a particular location mean these often aren’t worthwhile.

Yet, as we’ve explored in other articles, localised marketing is essential to effectively engage your audience at a deeper, personalised level. Giving this attention can help you build stronger bonds with the various communities your brand interacts with and foster customer loyalty. Remember: 71% of consumers prefer advertising tailored to their situation.

How can a DAM solution help you achieve this? By establishing a central hub for all on-brand digital assets and making this accessible via the cloud to employees based around the world, you can provide them with the resources they need to create and share assets for localised campaigns, rather than conserving time and resources by sticking to a global, universal focus.

Through your DAM system, employees should be in a position to access content that is translatable to the required language and contains imagery that is culturally appropriate, which means you can create hyper-targeted local campaigns quickly to work alongside your global branding – all while ensuring your overarching brand messaging is never compromised.

Of course, BAM by Papirfly™ takes this a step further in providing teams, regardless of their design experience or expertise, with an intuitive creation suite and intelligent templates. This means that, once they have access to the assets available on the DAM, they can then immediately use these to edit or create new, tailored assets for an upcoming campaign, without the financial or time burden of bringing in a specialist.

3. Don’t give everyone access to everything

Thirdly, let’s discuss accessibility. While one of the key benefits that a DAM solution offers is sharing assets to employees worldwide, this doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ll want every asset to be available to every person at all times.

This can lead to human error and inconsistencies creeping into your process. For instance, say someone mistakenly selects an asset designated for the incorrect country or campaign for a separate project; this would at a minimum be time wasted on developing an unusable asset, or at worst be shared to your audience and potentially hurting your brand’s reputation.

To prevent this from happening, it’s vital that any DAM software you implement has measures in place to assign administrators and lockdown certain assets for particular employees or locations. By adding this extra level of security, it gives you greater assurance that your assets are governed and nothing off-brand will be broadcast across any of your platforms.

In addition, setting these administration levels will make it possible that not everyone can upload or delete files, or can only do so when permission is granted. This helps add another layer of protection from duplicated or low-quality content reaching being stored within the library, which again goes further to protect your brand’s reputation.

Our BAM portal expands on this with an “add to basket” feature. This allows the user to select multiple files from different sources within the DAM and download these at one time, speeding up the process for people to access the resources they need.

Finally, check with your DAM provider if the system offers a way to monitor who is adding, sharing and editing assets. This ensures you have a record of any changes that have been made to your library of assets at any given time, so nothing ever has to slip under the radar. Plus, if it carries stats about how often particular assets are used, this can help marketing teams determine the ROI of these materials.

Take control of your digital library

We hope this will help you in your efforts to properly manage the vast array of digital assets that any organisation needs to have to hand nowadays. With the potential for assets to be mislaid or misused a high as ever due to the assortment of channels that organisations need to have a presence on, having a DAM solution that meets these considerations in particular is more crucial than ever before.

With that in mind, our BAM solution is geared with a dedicated, intelligent DAM, making it easy for you to store and locate an unlimited number of assets, categorise these appropriately and present them in the right format and optimal resolution.

However, BAM is much more than digital asset management, empowering users to also:

  • Create high-quality, on-brand assets through an intuitive, powerful creation suite
  • Educate your employees worldwide on the values and guidelines behind your brand
  • Manage campaigns with a birds-eye view of all materials used at a given time

If you’d like to know more about how you can activate your global brand, request a demo or speak to our team today.

Employer Branding

Employee engagement strategies: Everything you need to know

Understanding how to promote employee engagement starts with a simple question…what does employee engagement really mean? 

At its most basic level, it is a set of strategies that creates a working environment and atmosphere where employees feel they are empowered to do their jobs effectively, work towards personal and common goals, and have a general sense of satisfaction and happiness. 

There is never a one-size-fits-all approach to employee engagement, as each organisation and their employer branding stands for very different things. However, these strategies do tend to achieve many of the same objectives.

These objectives can be broadly categorised as follows:

  • Unification – Creating a ‘one team’ spirit, ensuring teams are aligned and making employees feel part of something bigger 
  • Embracing purpose – Instilling the same values, standards and expectations in employees across every level of seniority 
  • Driving the brand vision – Ensure that teams are motivated to work towards long-term goals, growing professionally and personally in the process 
  • Promoting a positive culture – A working environment that is enjoyable, inspiring and encourages development, trust and autonomy 
  • Creating strong leadership – Respectful, knowledgeable and supportive leadership encourages feedback and channels of open communication 
  • Building the ideal workforce – Engaged employees are happier and more productive, likely to form an emotional connection with your brand/their workplace and are less likely to leave 

The importance of employee engagement 

While employee engagement can be hard to measure, the short and long-term benefits are very tangible. If an individual feels nurtured and supported, while being surrounded by a like-minded team, they are likely to thrive in their working environment. 

When they feel trusted, they are more likely to bring ideas to the table, and this is where innovation within the business can stem from. 

It’s no longer enough for employees to just feel satisfied in their workplace – they want to excel. When people are proud of the work they do, they will shout about it. When they are proud of the brand they work for and the way they are treated, they will become advocates. This creates a positive cycle within the business, as this encourages and drives successful recruitment. 

While high employee retention is sometimes a result of high employee engagement, just because an employee has been retained a long time doesn’t always mean they are actively engaged. There are plenty of businesses and brands out there who have had employees with them since their inception, but they have become stagnant or comfortable in their positions. 

All of these benefits will have a direct impact on the day-to-day of your business. Here are the topline benefits of employee engagement, and how they can be loosely categorised when putting together your business case…

  • Increase the productivity of your employees
  • Higher quality of output
  • A positive workplace atmosphere
  • Greater client satisfaction
  • Increased profitability

The list goes on. No matter how intangible employee engagement may feel at the beginning, investing the time and effort will positively affect your bottom line.

4 employee engagement strategy examples 

In Daniel H. Pink’s book ‘Drive’, he combines research from MIT and other universities to lay out what really motivates us as humans and professionals. While we will explore 4 proven employee engagement strategies in more detail, we wanted to touch upon some of his core findings as they really help to give the strategies context. 

The conclusion that the book reaches is that employees need 3 things outside of pay progression and benefits to be fulfilled in their roles: purpose, mastery and autonomy. 

These 3 short words hold a lot of power in the workplace – if you can enable every employee to feel as though these have been achieved, you will be in a good position. 

Now you understand some of the underlying desires of the individual, let’s discuss how we can make these a reality…

#1 Open communication and feedback

While the benefits of open communication and feedback are far-reaching, one of the main benefits is that psychologically employees feel they can speak openly and feel comfortable enough to offer input without fear or dread of ridicule. 

There are a number of great ways to foster this level of communication:

  • Encourage questions, feedback and insight from employees at all levels of seniority
  • Provide feedback in a constructive way and avoid overly critical language
  • When negative feedback is given, ensure there is clear support to help the individual address the issue
  • Give employees a platform for anonymous commentary, such as through a suggestion box or employee engagement survey
  • When a decision about the company is made, or there is big news to announce, make sure an effective communication strategy is put in place to avoid hearsay, gossip and confusion 

#2 Professional development

Part of nurturing good employees means bringing them into your brand’s growth mindset. If you want an individual to invest their time and effort into making your brand more successful, you need to invest in them, and the skills they will need in order to make this possible.

Here are some of the different ways you can promote CPD within your organisation…

  • Create a training bursary so that employees can ‘apply’ for course funding that will help them in their job role
  • Create an in-office library space or set an annual personal book/kindle allowance 
  • Find industry-relevant webinars (paid for or free) and create an employee newsletter to inform them of upcoming courses and lectures 
  • Introduce a ‘lunch and learn’ or give employees a shot at a ‘Whiteboard Friday’ style CPD session. Encourage different individuals to come forward and share their skills and what they do with other team members or departments.
  • Bring in industry experts a couple of times a year to give tailored sessions on subjects employees are keen to learn about. You could put together a list of desired individuals and put it out to a vote on who comes in. 

#3 Set out clear expectations and progression

There’s not much worse than the first day at a job and not understanding what you’re supposed to be doing. Too often people are left to their own devices, so having proper training and support in place is crucial to getting off on the right foot. 

At the very minimum, each recruit should have:

  • A job description of their expected duties
  • A handbook or welcome pack that tells them everything they need to know about the company 
  • Who they should go to if they have a problem related to the work they are delivering
  • Goals they should work towards in the next quarter or within another specified timeframe
  • Regular one-to-ones and conversations about progression

#4 Social events

Many companies plan lots of wonderful days and nights out, without implementing the 3 prior strategies first. While social events and team bonding is very important, communication, development and clarity are the critical foundations for strong employee engagement.

Social events play their part too, but only work to support everything else. Here are some ideas to ensure your team gets to enjoy some fun outside of the office:

  • Introduce Friday drinks with a weekly debrief and chat 
  • Plan summer and Christmas socials well in advance 
  • See if any willing employees are up for creating their own initiatives, such as a book club or team lunches 
  • While not a social event, having social areas within an office for breaks can provide a welcome space to unwind and mingle with colleagues during lunch 

Barriers to employee engagement

While budget, time and lack of know-how will affect the level of commitment you can provide, there really is no just reason to avoid implementing some kind of employee engagement strategy. 

Lack of budget? 

Look for free courses online. Encourage a book sharing club internally. Get employees to skillshare on dedicated days. Instead of fancy nights out, have a takeaway and boardgames night in the office. Likewise, communication doesn’t need to cost the earth. A quick weekly standup on a Friday to share what’s going on is a great starting point. 

Lack of time? 

First you need to identify what you need to do and see if there are people already in the business who would have the skill-sets to drive initiative forward. This in itself could act as motivation. Alternatively, if what you need to do is an administrative nightmare, it could be worth exploring digital employee engagement tools that take care of a lot of the behind-the-scenes stuff, keep you updated and send out calendar reminders on your behalf. 

Lack of know-how?

If you haven’t gleaned enough from this article, there are lots of useful resources online. Or why not consider a brainstorming session with some of your team members? Conduct a survey and see how people are feeling, and hear their ideas first-hand. 

Is an employee engagement strategy worth it? 

While measuring employee engagement can be difficult, the results will speak from themselves in terms of employee satisfaction, happiness, retention and the new and improved way your business operates. 


If you have highly-skilled employees and you want them to stay put, your team will need to put in the effort to keep them engaged. It’s not about providing ‘fluffy’ benefits, it’s giving individuals and teams the tools and support they need to grow. As a result, your business and brand will benefit.

Discover more about our employer branding marketing solution and how it can support your employee engagement strategies. 

Employer Branding

Mapping the employee experience is a crucial part of your employer brand strategy

For today’s job seekers, there’s no such thing as ‘just a job’ anymore. The average person spends over a third of their life at work and people are now demanding more from their employers than ever – and many would argue rightly so. 

Employee retention is harder than it was even 5 or 10 years ago. What were once seen as ‘solid’ benefits – competitive salary and holiday allowance – are now seen as the bare minimum. And big brands are increasingly competitive when it comes to talent acquisition across the globe. 


This article will cover the key milestones in the employee journey, highlighting the importance of employer branding and delving into some of the lesser considered areas within each area. With this under your belt, you’ll be confident that you can push your employee experience to the next level.

The hiring stage

Role advertising 

An employee’s experience starts far before they get through the door – it begins as a candidate. And even if they are unsuitable for a role, or aren’t going to apply for your vacancy, to build a strong employer brand you need to cover all bases.

This is because potential employees might become suitable or interested in the future. If their initial perception of your employer brand is a positive one, they are more likely to consider you the next time they are thinking about career development. 


Here are some must-haves to ensure your advertising and career site attracts top talent:

  • Post clear information on what the role is and how to apply
  • Don’t be coy about the wage – people deserve to know what their prospective salary could be
  • Use honest and diverse imagery in your campaign
  • Be clear on your employee value proposition – what your company can offer them
70% of employees find a company more attractive when clear plans for diversity, inclusion and social responsibility are stated

Role consideration

When job seekers show interest in a role, a lack of time or resources in your office could leave them feeling a little unloved. While having too many tasks to complete may have an impact on candidate communication, it is important to ensure consistency is as smooth as possible. 

Here are some easy ways to make that happen:

  • If you don’t have time to respond to all applications, make this clear on the job role itself 
  • Ensure your career site includes additional details about the role put together in a nicely presented yet simple PDF – that way if a candidate calls to speak to someone about the role, but the team are all busy, the PDF will make them feel like their questions have been answered
  • When candidates enquire why their application was unsuccessful, it’s best to give as tailored feedback as possible – if you’re too short on time, compose a generic response as the bare minimum (this means the candidate will still consider you a strong employer brand, should they be more suitable for another role in the future)

Pre-interview and interview

When a candidate is invited for an interview, there are lots of ways it could go wrong if they are not properly prepared. While some bad employers might see this as the candidate’s fault, often it’s because people in charge of people management have not properly briefed them. 

We’ve put together our tips to keep everyone on the same page:

  • Determine whether an in-person or virtual interview would be better
  • Ensure the candidate is aware of all the stages in the interview process
  • Provide an agenda for the interview beforehand 
  • If the interview is being carried out via video conferencing, ask the candidate which tool they prefer to use 
  • During the interview, ensure the candidate is welcomed properly and full introductions are made 
  • Give them plenty of time to talk about their experience and their hopes for career progression, but also include some time to talk about themselves as a person – get to know them and put them at ease
  • Be open and honest when giving responses to candidate questions (for example, if they ask for a higher salary and you know this isn’t possible, don’t set false expectations)

Post-interview

The period after an interview can be one of the most nerve-wracking times for prospective job seekers. If your talent acquisition efforts don’t involve keeping in touch post-interview, candidates may lose interest, react negatively towards your company or take an offer elsewhere. 

These are our suggestions when trying to keep talent on the hook while you make your final decision:

  • Give an estimated timeline of when candidates can expect to hear from you – it will put them at ease and prevent them from chasing you
  • If the candidate is unsuccessful, detail why this was the case in an email
  • Offer a follow-up call to chat through the feedback 
  • If a job offer is made, give the candidate time to read through their contract and to ask questions to relevant people
  • If any benefits are subject to specific circumstances (such as years of service), make sure this is outlined before the candidate takes the job offer, or they could end up feeling misled
  • Once contracts are signed and a start date agreed, give your new employee a timetable or agenda of what their first few weeks will look like – they will feel much more confident on their first day when they know what they’re walking into

The onboarding stage

Your employer branding team needs to be ready to deliver what your company has promised. Onboarding can literally make or break a new employee’s perception of a company. It’s where they discover if your employee value proposition was sincere, or a lot of hot air. 

If they aren’t made to feel welcome, they feel abandoned or they are overwhelmed with tasks that haven’t been properly explained, they will be out of the door before they have had a chance to shut it on their way in. And that’s not to mention what they might say to people in their network or on social media about their experience.

Going the extra mile at this stage will give your new employee the welcome they crave and set them off on the right path. These are our tips for making it as smooth as possible:

  • Put together a welcome pack for the new employee – stationery, water bottles, notepad, sweets – anything that will make them feel appreciated
  • Give them information on their colleagues, such as names and job titles – you may want to include a welcome card with messages from their team and their photos (to help them get to know people better)
  • Buddy them up with a colleague for lunch so they don’t have to sit alone (ask them if they would like this before committing to it as some people may prefer to spend lunch on their own)
  • Set out their training schedule and what kind of tasks they will be expected to complete week-by-week – this will help them understand how long they have to get up-to-speed
  • Give them a company handbook that instils your core values, mission, etc.
  • If applicable, make sure they know about remote work arrangements and expectations
  • Ensure they know who they should go to if they have any concerns

The progression stage

There’s little worse than being in a role and feeling like you’re not going anywhere. Just because you put in a lot of effort to build a strong employer brand at the onboarding stage, that doesn’t mean a new employee should be left to just get on with it. 

The Employee Retention Report from the Work Institute found lack of career development was the number one reason for employees leaving a company – and this has been so for over 9 years. From the perspective of people management, this is crucial to understand and plan around. 


Employee retention can be improved by following some simple but vital steps:

  • Set out clear KPIs for your employee and if these KPIs are linked to pay rises or bonuses, ensure that these KPIs are achievable – you can do this by presenting the goals to your employee and giving them the opportunity to provide feedback
  • A dedicated learning and training allowance will show you care about your employee’s growth and career development – you could let them choose which course they want to take, ask them to select them based on a predefined list or link the courses with KPI improvements that are needed 
  • Even if an employee is working exceptionally well and hard, performance reviews are still just as important – positive employee engagement matters, and people need to know that they’re appreciated on a regular basis 
  • Consider introducing a dedicated career management conversation, this provides a chance for employees to reflect on your employer value proposition, feedback on THEIR goals and gives you a chance to shape their KPIs accordingly
Each year, approximately 20% of employees that leave their company do so due to a lack of career development

The ‘moving on’ stage

It can be devastating when an employee leaves a company – whether they’ve been there for 10 years or 10 months. The time and commitment invested will always leave a hole in their department until you can get someone else in and up-to-speed.


However difficult it is, it’s important to have processes in place to ensure the transition is smooth and that you learn from their experience. This will improve your ability to understand and attract top talent in future, and might also help with existing employee retention.

When someone quits…

  • Conduct an exit interview and give the employee time to vent their issues
  • Ensure you let them know how much you value them and their time at the company
  • Ask them if they would like to make an announcement along with management about them leaving, or if they would prefer just a member of management to communicate this
  • Give them a ‘phase out’ agenda of when they can hand things over to other colleagues
  • Throw them a leaving event or provide a card and gift

When someone retires…

  • Give everyone the opportunity to show their appreciation for the colleague – this could be at a social event or through a gift
  • Ensure they are involved in training the next generation to take on their role
  • Ask them if they would like to make a speech before they leave

Day-to-day extras to consider

Receiving a payslip

With a little effort, a simple gesture that happens once a month can become a great way to cement a strong employer brand. A generic or personalised message from the CEO or manager to show appreciation for all the hard work completed in the month will help employees associate their pay with being valued, beyond just financial remuneration.

Calling in sick 

People get sick, and it can’t always be helped. If an employee is nervous about calling in sick, reassure them about their performance, and advise them you hope they get better soon. If their sickness is particularly low, you could specifically mention this to help put them at ease.

Birthdays

Companies with hundreds of employees may struggle to keep on top of birthdays, so if you’re in the position to do so, an extra day off on your birthday can serve as a powerful reminder to your employees that their work is appreciated. If an extra day off isn’t on the cards, you could make sure they get a cake, card and small present to make their day at work feel special.

Company updates

When meetings take place behind closed doors, speculation can run rife in an office and even virtually. Where important company updates are available, ensure that employee engagement is prioritised – this could be in the form of a quarterly newsletter or quick announcement on Friday afternoons.

Show off their expertise 

Give employees the chance to share their knowledge with colleagues and the world. If there are events they can be guest speakers on, podcasts they can get involved in, or even internal CPD sessions they can hold, asking them to take part will give them a confidence boost in their abilities and help with their career development.

Working environment

Consider the physical environment your team operates in. Are the chairs comfortable enough? Are there enough breakout areas? Do they have a quiet space to go to when they need to concentrate? Is there enough fresh air? Do you give them options for remote work?

Not only will a properly considered environment make working a more pleasurable experience for employees, but it will also help them be more productive and deliver their best work.

Raising issues/improvements 

Introduce both an open-forum style meeting to do this and an anonymous route, as this will help cater for every type of employee. Many talented people have ideas about diversity and inclusion, sustainability and employee wellbeing, and it’s important to find ways to listen to and act on what they have to say.

Feedback surveys can also help you gauge answers to exact questions you may have.

Enhance the employee journey with brand management tools

We hope you’re feeling inspired and that we’ve opened your eyes to just how broad the employee journey can be. To assist your talent and acquisition team in all of these areas, see how Papirfly’s brand management platform supports employer branding teams.  


To build a brand that consistently attracts top talent, be reassured that Papirfly’s brand management platform already helps huge brands like Vodafone, Unilever and IBM. Discover the brand stories from these enterprises, including how Papirfly helps deliver infinite employer brand assets every month. Videos, social, emails, print and more – all made possible with on-brand templating tools as part of our platform.

Brand Communication, Brand management

Mastering brand communication with a brand management platform

Without a clear brand identity, it’s hard to establish your place on the market – perhaps even impossible. At the end of the day, your brand is your ID. It makes you original and separates you from your competitors, driving brand recognition and helping you craft unique customer experiences.

But originality requires more than plastering your logo over every piece of content and last-minute messaging. Behind every logo, there should be a well thought out and defined identity, brand strategy and a story.

Creating and defining your brand identity and identifying core strategic measurements is a major assignment and includes a range of different tasks. In this blog, we’ll take you through why effective brand communication will improve your brand marketing, and look at why a powerful brand management platform should underpin your efforts.

What is brand communication?

In everyday life, communication is more than words and text. Communication encompasses how you act, dress, move, face expressions and what you do. Great communication helps build a great reputation. The same applies to branding.

For your company, a well-built brand with a good reputation is an essential intangible asset. How your customers feel about your brand, how they talk about it, and the position it occupies in their day-to-day lives, matters.

Underpinning this are the ways you communicate your brand. The look and consistency of your brand assets, your tone-of-voice, your customer engagement, social responsibilities, your values, your pricing, store location and more, all fall under brand communication. Said differently, every part of your branding processes is about communication. It’s the different approaches and methods you choose to use your brand and build brand awareness.

Establish effective brand communication

You have established your brand identity and your branding strategy goals are defined. Now you’re ready to tell your audience that you are here. It’s time to get to work.

The first thing you need to do is to acknowledge that nothing should be set in stone. Your audience and the market are destined to change, and you and your team members have to be prepared to adapt. Next, you need a communication strategy to keep you focused and aligned with the brand strategy.

Define your communication channels


You know who, but what channels and sources do they engage with and trust for their decision-making? Don’t limit this in the beginning. Most likely, marketing teams need to test and experience how your audience reacts to your brand before you narrow down the most effective communication channels.

Remember, just because a channel exists does not mean that you need to use it. It’s not about the channel, it’s about your audience. There’s little point in focusing too much effort on a social media platform like TikTok if your target audience isn’t using it – or indeed any effort at all.

Identify what your audience is looking for and is triggered by


Unfortunately, what you want to be acknowledged for and what your audience looks for don’t always match. You need to know these details when creating marketing strategies. Otherwise you’ll be spending a lot of time and resources shooting blanks – it’s ineffective and pointless.

Be flexible and adaptable with your message

“One voice – one brand” is a key attitude when building a brand, but don’t mistake this for one message. You need to acknowledge that your audience is varied and consists of different personas.

The better you meet your personas needs, the more relevant you’ll be with your message and the more precisely you’ll hit home with the target audience(s). It’s all about adapting to what the audience wants, but remember to be honest, reliable, and relevant. If your audience catches you lying or feels you’re wasting their time, you’ll lose them.In other words, don’t use a sledgehammer to crack a nut. Effective brand communication occurs when you use your resources wisely and meet your target audience with what they want to hear. The smarter you are about it, the less money it will cost you and the more successful you’ll be at building your brand.

Unleash your brand with a brand management platform

With the above in place, it’s time to initiate your strategy and build your brand. Through your website, chosen social media channels, a blog, advertising or any other channel or platform you see fit, you’ll present your brand. 

Bear in mind that a hectic work life puts strains on your ability to deliver on demand, and if you have limited resources as well, you may get careless with your brand assets. We’re only human after all, and inconsistency is a fact of life. 

Unfortunately, inconsistency quickly undermines your brand equity – the perception customers have of your brand, and the trust they place in it. Any ground lost here is very difficult to recover.

A brand management solution is a life saver. Great brand management tools will provide all you need to create memorable brand experiences, while also establishing clear brand guidelines to ensure 100% consistency in everything you do. It’s no use going to all that effort to create great brand communication, only to drop the ball on the touchline due to human error. With brand management software, you can be sure that your work will be embedded in a powerful platform that everyone in your organisation can trust and rely on.