Email marketing is a fundamental part of business communications, but how many are customers actually reading? According to a recent survey by af2m (French Association for the Development of Multi-Operator Multimedia Services and Uses), only 20% – far fewer than most marketing teams would care to admit. Is there a better way to reach your customers?  Research by af2m has found that SMS campaigns are blessed with a 90% open rate within three minutes of receipt!

Make no mistake, this is a challenging time for start-up businesses looking to make a splash. When we finally emerge blinking into the light after this most recent UK lockdown, we will still be operating in a business landscape that has drastically changed in the last twelve months.

If we learned anything from 2020, it's that the world is changing faster than expected and that new trends are shaping our realities. For businesses, this means increased pressure to adapt and remain relevant to their customers.

It’s no secret that 2020 has been a difficult year for many businesses out there. Many have been faced with unexpected hurdles and challenges that have made them rethink their advertising efforts and direction.

2020 has redefined healthcare for good. In the same way that every company wanting to thrive has had to become a tech company, every company’s become a healthcare business too; safeguarding people and customers is at the core of everything. 

As the UK is now in its third national lockdown, consumers and businesses are turning once more to remotely delivered services and digital experiences to survive in the coming month. As the world adapted to the impact of COVID-19, 2020 saw a rapid increase in digitisation, including from age groups that traditionally had been slower to adapt.

The online world is vital to many people in the current climate. Face to face coffee dates and lunch with friends have been swapped for the scheduled Zoom calls and frequent internet issues. The light at the end of the tunnel is slowly becoming clearer for us all, but that does not mean that digital marketing should be ignored once things begin to become 'normal' once more.

There was a time when online and offline marketing efforts were considered to be altogether separate and unrelated activities. Thankfully, most marketing professionals know better than that now – but that’s not to say that the integration of the two can’t be a challenge.

The biggest marketing trend that we’ve seen throughout 2020 is the drive to build a strong personal brand. Customers are becoming savvy to the ethics and ethos of the businesses that they are buying from. They are being more discerning in their choices driven by the desire to do good and to avoid untrustworthy brands during an unpredictable time.

As a startup, you’ve got loads of goals, problems and opportunities to think about, but make sure you carve out some time for some PR activity that will help raise your profile and grow your business. 

In the fifth part of business mix's series of articles, they harnesses our Associate and Partner network and focusses on learning from those that have walked this path before and getting inside the mindset of the successful challengers. This time White Bear Studio is in the spotlight. 

A new survey by the Data & Marketing Association (DMA) has found that brands have become more compassionate in 2020. The majority of senior marketers (74%) surveyed said their brands or clients have shown more compassion and thoughtfulness amid the pandemic - this included 14% who said this increased, with just 6% reported this happening less.

In Part One of our Crisis Series, we looked at how brand purpose can be a powerful tool when navigating a crisis. Now in Part Two, we are taking a look at how brands reacted during the onset of the COVID crisis and how these lessons can be applied to building a resilient brand no matter the crisis. We’ll look closer at how to best react using brand personality and values.

One of the rules of a startup is that there’s always more to do than there are people to do it! Even when you are hiring, you have to remain lean and startups are usually moving from one round of funding to another. That means you cannot always deliver what you want, and usually, marketing is at the bottom of the list.

The growing number of channels in which to advertise your business online can be a tempting route to target your ideal audience. Businesses have flocked to digital media to gain traction for their brand, but they’ve dismissed an incredibly valuable and highly successful form of marketing – direct mail.

We’ve all heard of the importance and growing demand for authentic branded content over the years, but what does it actually mean and how can you set to achieve this within your business?

Business videos attract customers through eight marketing channels at once. EIGHT! And all eight can be used simultaneously! We conducted a survey and found that on average customers use no more than two of them. Don't do that. Since you paid for a cool video, make the most of it!

One of the major issues with most business websites is that they're largely lifeless in more ways than one. Not only do they come off as feeling cold and calculated, but they're updated infrequently - thus leaving a lot of people wondering why they should be paying attention to you at all.

With the sudden shock and panic now over from the COVID crisis, we are now settling into the ‘new normal’ of on-and-off-again lockdowns and formulating new habits for our businesses, all the while, bracing ourselves for the next crisis; the quietly creeping recession and wondering how our brand can survive.

Grabbing attention wherever possible is vital as a startup, particularly when it comes to your online marketing efforts, so it’s no surprise that you’re thinking about PPC — or pay-per-click — advertising. Unlike SEO, which takes time to produce results, PPC helps to create instant brand awareness and, when done well, generates all-important clicks. This can be an especially valuable part of your marketing strategy but not an easy one to pull off, and if you don’t put the work in, disappointing campaigns can be incredibly costly.

COVID-19 has made history by affecting each industry in the world. From the lockdown that caused the closure of businesses to people adapting to work from home, there is a need to identify strategies of how businesses will be run going forward. The pandemic has disrupted how people socialise as well as their shopping patterns. To adapt to this new normal, business owners have to make significant adjustments to reach out to their customers or less they risk failure.

The economic downturn has been a struggle for many businesses but it has also been an opportunity for many to review their marketing activity.  POLARIS, a digital marketing agency based in London, suggests that as part of this marketing review, now might be the ideal time to consider the effectiveness of your business website and if planning an update, migrate your website now.

People all over the world are spending more time online and brands have quickly shifted their strategies to adapt to this new normal. However, all that time online means that consumers are now facing a barrage of visual clutter from competing companies. 

The marketing industry may have the biggest responsibility when it comes to the advancement of equality - of the sexes, of the races, of sexualities, of mental & health conditions, and more.

Entrepreneurs: let’s be honest, all of us probably spend a little too much on social media. It’s easy to get lost on Twitter or on LinkedIn, scrolling through and seeing what everyone else is sharing, what is trending, and posting your updates.

Just when the lockdown period seemed to be drawing to a close, cases of Coronavirus took a sharp upwards turn and local lockdowns were enforced. Already, almost ten million people in the UK have been confined to their homes once again. Nationally, too, restrictions have tightened and fears of a second lockdown period are circulating as Health Secretary Matt Hancock refuses to rule out the possibility of another strict set of restrictions being brought in.

In a recent survey, over half of customers polled revealed that they tend to buy from a brand with a big personality. The study found that 57.5% of customers buy from brands with strong personalities, whilst 51.2% of people have purchased from a brand because of the way they spoke online.

When you’re building something from the ground up, it’s essential to have a strong foundation for support right from the start. Your business needs to have one main idea you can use to create a brand identity, to generate strong branding and to produce an effective brand development strategy to reach your goals.

As a startup, taking the first steps into marketing can be daunting. Where should you start? What activity will be the best use of my time? If you’re limited on time or budget - and even if you’re not - a great place to start is content marketing.

 One of the most regular questions many entrepreneurs ask themselves: 'Why do some companies succeed and stay longer on the market?' and 'Why do some of them not?' 

In this era where life is fast-paced, customers’ demand and needs keep changing at a rapid rate. If your company is to consistently meet these needs, then it must be equipped to keep changing as the market dictates. In addition, competition is tough, and others are waiting to take advantage of where you are slacking off. If you are to survive the competition, remaining innovative is the only survival tactic. In fact, you should always anticipate future demands and work towards meeting them. That way, you stay a step ahead of the competition.

Marketing journey for startups isn’t an easy task, no matter how excellent your idea is or how hard you’ve worked to implement it. Until none knows about your project, you are not there in the game.

If you have come up with a catchy and distinctive brand name for your product or service and/or put in place a logo and design packaging, you may be wondering which specific branding elements you can protect as a trade mark.

Startups Magazine recently spoke to Nicky Pasquier, CEO Virtuoso Assistant, the digital marketing for entrepreneurs and small business. 

The coronavirus crisis and the impact it has had on businesses and financial resources has made the prospect of growing a business seem like a distant reality for some organisations. But for British small and medium-sized B2B organisations, Brexit is an opportunity to look beyond the EU to new geographies.

The words ‘martech’ and ‘Marketing Technology’ constantly get thrown around a lot. According to research conducted by the martech Alliance, they’re used some 678.7k times a year - but it begs the question… how often are they being used correctly? For anyone who is unfamiliar with the word ‘martech’, it is otherwise known as marketing technology, and it is the term for the software and tech tools that marketers leverage to plan, execute and measure marketing campaigns.

A customer service provider has challenged businesses in the UK to change the way they think about customer interaction, amid rising levels of consumer dissatisfaction. Woven is a contact centre, customer management and BPO service provider, operating from offices in Bristol, Swindon and Ipswich and working with brands across a range of industries, including Toyota and Kärcher.

The amount of information we are exposed to exceeds our ability to process it. Out of the about 70,000 thoughts we have per day, our short term memory can hold no more than seven for only about 20 to 30 seconds. How does this relate to branding? Our long-term memory stores our associations with specific brands which is also ultimately the desired effect of marketing campaigns or PR activities - for people to remember your company (or you as a person!) when in need of the products or services you provide.

In today's global and increasingly competitive marketplace, it is more important than ever to stand out from the crowd and capture the attention of consumers. Trade marks are essentially 'signs' which help consumers to identify and differentiate your products or services from those of competitors and other traders.

So, you’re starting a business - you’re ready to go, you’re excited to start chasing clients, you get some enquiries, you convert those enquiries into leads and now it is time to turn those leads into clients - and ultimately, cash. But there’s a problem… what do you charge? 

With COVID-19 set to spark the worst economic recession since the Great Depression, new research by the World Federation of Advertisers says 89% of large international companies have put their marketing and advertising campaigns on hold. Global marketing and advertising spend is plummeting at the fastest rate since the 2007-2008 financial crisis, leading to uncertainty and trepidation within the sector.

Let’s not beat about the bush: social media has tonnes of benefits. It empowers people to stay connected across huge distances, it has kept people motivated during crises such as the coronavirus pandemic (you thought you could read a blog without that being mentioned?), it empowers quick and simple customer service, and for businesses, it’s a free way to demonstrate your brand values.

As renowned author and alternative medicine practitioner, Deepak Chopra once said: “You have to think of your brand as a kind of myth. A myth is a compelling story that is archetypal, if you know the teachings of Carl Jung. It has to have emotional content and all the themes of a great story: mystery, magic, adventure, intrigue, conflicts, contradiction, paradox."

Early 2020, a Chinese city called Wuhan was spotlighted on the global stage, as the epicentre to a global pandemic forcing large parts of the world to go into lockdown. The stuff of movies became a reality, and humanity was thrown into turmoil. 

Does affiliate marketing have an image problem? Almost certainly. The industry has been dogged with claims of fraudulent practices in the past, and many advertisers have a bad story to tell about ‘data cowboys’ who’ve ripped them off.

It goes without saying that for any business, in any sector, in order for it to survive, grow and prosper, sales are imperative, because sales generate profit and cash flow and these are the lifeblood of any business. It is understandable, therefore, that I often overhear the question ‘how do I promote my business?’

Emerging and fast-growing markets offer the biggest opportunities to build and grow a brand. If you can start at the point of early adoption and gain enough traction, your brand could become a leader as the market becomes established. Identifying the right market is about understanding cultural trends and then positioning your brand as the solution to shifts in consumer behaviour and growing demands such as meat and dairy reduction or a move towards a more natural, skin-first makeup routine. With the right timing, you can hit a perfect intersection like the widespread adoption of craft beer coinciding with the cultural shift towards independent brands. 

The day has arrived...your new freshly baked web designs, hot from the design oven are about to go live. You’ve briefed the designer thoroughly to make sure your new look matches the moodboard. The excitement is palpable and the expectations are high.

Let’s face it. Sales and customers are a startup’s bread and butter. Even if you’d like to go the VC route, you need to show traction. But how do you acquire users and customers without much, or any money? Seems like a chicken and egg problem doesn’t it.

The Halo Effect is a type of cognitive bias, commonly known in marketing as the tendency for positive impressions in one area to influence one's opinion or feelings in other areas. When it comes to branding specifically, I believe that this effect has been demonstrated to reinforce as well as rejuvenate a brand in the eyes of its fans, it can be utilised to spark conversations around it and thus leading to more organic growth. The question that poses itself is how can we successfully achieve this effect, and why is it necessary to keep a brand alive in the fast paced and media devouring environment that we live in today?

The founders, marketers, brand managers, whoevers, who remember to think long term in times of crisis will be the ones who come out above the rest once things settle. We’ve been seeing this theory plastered all over our Linkedin feeds recently.  

Perhaps you know it: the iconic scene from Jerry Maguire where Dorothy (Renee Zellweger) stares longingly at Jerry (Tom Cruise) as he declares his undying love for her, announcing that she completes him, hoping it will win her over but he needn’t have, he had her at 'hello'. She was gripped from the moment he walked in, she wasn’t listening to his fumbled speech, she was mesmerised, and one thing is for sure, she certainly wasn’t thinking about leadership. Nope. That was far from her mind.

If a guest asked for toast, would you butter a piece of bread and serve it up to them? No way - the ‘toasting’ is the essence of toast, and anything else is simply a job half done. The same applies to your brand. Skipping straight to designing your business logo is equal to spreading the butter straight onto bread...it’s ineffective and lacks the ‘essence’.

How hard can it be to design a logo? Simply draw a shape, choose a font, type in the company name and that’s a job well done, right? 

When a startup has a headache, it is far more critical to the business than if it was a corporate. Why? There are quite a few reasons...

Does design really impact how your brand is perceived? We break down how this ‘hidden’ visual language of design can be used to influence in branding.

Across the globe we have witnessed a plethora of brands hit impressive targets in terms of sustainability. Despite clear leeway opening up between these brands and those left behind, an opportunity presents itself for reinvention.

In my first article on 'Burnout' I said: “If a tree falls in the woods and doesn’t get a flurry of retweets, did it even?” It’s a good question that could be called facetious, depending on how seriously you take social media.

While there may be stories of some brands named in eureka moments, there is a methodical process you can follow so you don’t have to rely on random inspiration. We break down what goes into naming a brand.

As a global pandemic sweeps large parts of our world, one could be forgiven for not having their new marketing strategy or business pivot plan at the top of their agenda. We are collectively experiencing some form of anxiety to one degree or another, with our systems on constant, low-level 'limbic alert'.

Social media has been a phenomenon. Before Facebook’s founding in 2004 there was the likes of Bebo, Faceparty, and MySpace. However, the last ten years have seen a huge spike in both users of social media and reasons for using it.

'How to prepare your brand for the next stage of growth': Many of us have tried a digital detox for ourselves: whether we’re trying to get back to nature, not ignore our families, or just step away from the phone for more than an hour! It is often far harder than we think, no matter how many influencers go on about it - ironically, on social media.

Your brand identity is how customers perceive you. A simple way to look at it, is to view your brand as a person. Someone unique, with their own beliefs, values, look and feel. Your brand identity is what sets you apart from others. So, it’s important to have this down pat. Here, Carie Barkhuizen, founder of Seymour PR, shares her top tips for building brand identity quick-smart.

A science-backed checklist for startups who want their marketing to get noticed.

Startups shouldn’t try and be liked - Instead, they must strive to be noticed and remembered  – that’s any new businesses biggest marketing challenge. Why is that?

Every leader has a distinctive emotional signature, which they imprint on every person they meet. That emotional signature is one of the most powerful tools of motivation. How you make other people feel will determine how motivated they are, and that will determine how well your team performs.

Congratulations! You are officially moving from the status of startup to scaleup. It’s a big move that brings lots of opportunities, and you have managed it because you have been successful. What that success looks like will be different for different companies. For some, it’s because of sales: either a few big global sales, or in other cases, huge numbers of small scale sales. For others, it will be because you’ve landed investment. In some parts of the world, grants allow a startup to accelerate their growth and really anchor themselves in the market.

With the UK currently home to more than 5.9 million SMEs, the likelihood of reaching success for any small business owner depends largely upon their ability to make their company stand out from the crowd. Differentiating your brand from others can be a challenge in any industry, but with the right knowledge and mindset it can be achieved.

You’ve dreamt it. You’ve started it. Now comes the hard part: talking about it. Whether you’re revolutionising banking or taking on healthcare, words are a big part of growing your business. They get investors excited. Bring recruits up to speed. And convince customers to give you a try.

Nigel Botterill’s entrepreneurial journey began in much the same way as many others. The Founder and CEO of The Entrepreneurs Circle, a company whose mantra is to educate, motivate, help and inspire business owners to achieve more than they ever thought possible, was following a classic corporate path and had forged a very successful career with Barclays, who he joined at 16.

The startup landscape is notoriously difficult to navigate. The numbers speak for themselves – 60% of startups will fail in the first three years of launching. Whether it’s because their core proposition is unworkable and fails to fulfill a market need, or the fact they simply haven’t built the right team, there are a variety of reasons that could lead to a company ultimately closing its doors.

We’ve all wondered how to crack the world of Twitter. How much should I tweet? Am I tweeting too much? What time should I tweet to get the most engagement? If you’ve ever been curious about how tech giants like Elon Musk Jeff Benzos compare on Twitter, then you’re in the right place.

Building a website is about more than just an online page that shows who you are in today’s society, it is part of your brand identity, and imperative to your company or business. Wix really understand that, it’s not just putting some text and images onto a page and sharing your website with people. It’s something that reflects your business which is a part of you, and that’s why it includes a number of features that help you take your website further.

Companies have been marketing their business in weird and wonderful ways for centuries, but, in 2019, what is the best way to draw in, and retain a solid customer base through strategic marketing. When you think of Nike, you think of ‘Just Do It’, when you think of McDonalds, you think of ‘I’m Loving It’.

John Armstrong co-created Custom Planet with his friend Andrew Dark in 2008, while they were both at university. The company has since grown to become one of the UK's leading printwear specialists. Here, he gives his expert tips for startups wanting to create their own merchandise for a podcast.

This guest post comes from Caroline Macdonald, CEO and founder of OggaDoon, the guerrilla comms business. If you have no idea what tone of voice is, head to Twitter and scroll through Innocent Drinks’ feed. Then come back here. Done it? Great. 

More than 200,000 small companies have been created in 2019, according to the Federation of Small Businesses, and each and every one of these businesses will have their own story to tell. So, what’s yours?  

Global creative production studio The Mill has revealed its new digital platform designed and built by Studio Output.The project shows how bespoke digital and motion design can evolve a brand’s story, without needing to change its core identity.

We speak to Chris Gunn – MD of LoveGunn – on why a brand is much more than a logo, especially for startups.

Branding builds reputation! It is what has the ability to make you stand out from the crowd and get you noticed amongst consumers so before anything else you need to ask yourself, ‘what is my brand identity?’

Do you remember that time you posted something accidentally on your Instagram and then you tried to delete it? How many likes did you get before the post came down?

Greek philosophy and public relations: two subjects that rarely inform the same discussion. But here we go (please bear with me).

As we approach this new decade, it is clear that chasing after customers is getting increasingly harder and harder. Social media advertising is now as saturated if not even more than its traditional counterpart.

Have you heard of ‘associative learning’? If not then, very simply, this is the basis upon which people mentally connect things together.

Business is becoming ever-more personal. Today’s leading companies have human faces: to think of Facebook is to think of Mark Zuckerberg; to hear Amazon is to call to mind Jeff Bezos.

“We can no longer continue to operate in this linear B2B / B2C world when it comes to business. People buy people and all relationships are human to human,” Sallee Poinsette-Nash.

Sounds like a simple question, doesn’t it? And yet a fundamental lack of understanding in who your customer is, where to find them and what they think or feel is often one of the most common mistakes businesses can’t afford to make, but do.

When it comes to marketing a startup, there can often be some misconceptions: Is it too soon to start thinking about? Is the company too small? Some people think marketing isn’t a priority and budget should be spent elsewhere (something that bigger corporations also fall foul of), or that any type of marketing is good.

When you’re keen to win more customers, you turn to marketing. And more often than not, you look at advertising, PR, or anything else that you think that will make a change quickly.

On the ScaleX stage at Dublin Tech Summit 2019, April 10th, a panel comprised of: Andrew Lindsay VP Corporate Development and Business Development at Hubspot; Alan Costello Venture Investor Leader at NDRC; Niall McEvoy Manager of High Potential Startups at Enterprise Ireland; and moderated by Graham Hussey co-founder of The Startup Van, discussed how to position your team and brand for international scaling.

Jane Henry, co-founder of Marylebone Difference Marketing shares some words of PR wisdom for startups.

At the start of any new year, a slew of gurus and thought leaders come out of hiding. Ben Hayes, Director at Grasp Brands, explains.

Ben Hayes, Director of Grasp Brands, exposes the tech industry's big and costly branding problem.

Startups Magazine talks with Julie Rice, WeWork Partner and co-founder of SoulCycle, to discuss what she envisions for the future of branding.